Ye Olde Ranting Space

Chapter 3

I managed to stumble my way back to the exits near the lecture hall. Nimos was perched on the edge of the cement wall that bordered the pathway shrub garden. He stood up right away when I walked out.

“You look sick,” he said immediately.

“I’m fine.” There was no conviction behind the words. “I’m hungry. Want to grab a bite?”

He grinned, which I took as a yes.

We headed to MacEwan Hall, which I’m pretty sure is what nearly every university I’ve ever heard of calls its food and student gathering building. There’s a little Mediterranean deli there whose food quality and hygiene I favour over most of the other places, and I was in need of reassurance in the form of lamb-skewers.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked Nimos while the guy behind the counter, who could have been his close cousin minus the goat, rang in our order. “You’ve never come to meet me after class before.”

He reached into the pocket of his tattered cast-off army jacket and pulled out a square of blue paper. I took it, and saw the stamp and postmark on the front. I stared at it.

“You came all this way to deliver my mail?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I was bored.”

No friggin’ kidding, I thought. Out loud, I said, “I didn’t even think you knew where I’d be.”

“I didn’t,” he said, like it should have been obvious. “I tried to follow your scent from the train station, but there are too many people around here. I was just wandering around when I found you.”

I marveled. This wasn’t the first time he’d had a random impulse to do something new, but I was surprised again by the uncanny luck he seemed to have. The university is practically its own little city, and Nimos doesn’t read all that well.

I paid for the food and we found a quiet place to sit near a potted silk plant, whose plastic veined leaves kept snagging in my hair. As my partner, I guess Nimo’s informal pay is food and lodging. Since he has no other job and no other place to stay, it’s either that or he starves. I watched him dig eagerly into his gyro sandwich, and I felt a nagging worry over my bank account that had become all too familiar in the last few weeks.

Well, now was as good a time to bring it up as any.

“Listen,” I said, fidgeting with the blue envelope. I brushed the fake plant leaves away from my face and tried to think of how to say what I’d been thinking.

He looked up, and just like that his attention was all mine. Suddenly the real reason for his impromptu visit was clear: I’d promised him something yesterday and like an eager two-year-old, he was waiting for the answer.

The words “you need to get a real job” had been flashing though my mind, but guilt reared its pouty little head at me and I found myself saying instead, “I may have to go away for a few days.”

He blinked and looked extremely confused, so I continued quickly. “There’s this thing going on that MacCormick wants me to be there for, and it’s very important. He wants me to present my work there. It’s in another country, so …”

I trailed off, because Nimos’ confusion turned to utter disappointment. I could almost see his ears droop beneath his ridiculous sock-hat. I felt horrible, and a little bewildered. That hadn’t been the point I’d intended to bring up, but I realized that it was very likely I’d accept MacCormick’s proposal. It was a good opportunity.

“I’m sorry,” I told him, feeling genuinely awful. “I know I promised ... I’m sorry,” I said again. “It’s not really for sure yet, anyway. I’ll have to see if I …”

My voice trailed off, realizing what it was saying was useless. Nimos stood up, abandoning both me and his food and walked away. Just like that.

I watched him disappear into the press of students milling through the hall, a little stunned. I almost stood up to go after him, but realized that was just as useless. You don’t have to know someone very long to know when they’re pissed.

So instead I sat there alone, picking at a corner of that stupid blue envelope and staring at my cold lamb-skewers and wondering at exactly what stage your life must reach before you stop feeling guilty for these things. I supposed never … after all, he was my partner, and I had promised him.

Never mind that my ‘partner’ was cheerfully eating his way through my delicately fixed budget, never mind that he’d shown up on my doorstep two months ago without so much as a may-I-ma’am … never mind that I was the one who’d offered to let him stay in the first place.

I wondered if my federal income tax return would allow me to list a freeloading satyr as a dependant.

I sighed loudly enough to rustle the fake plant’s leaves, gathered up the remains of our food and wrapped it up to go. I learned very early on that as a student, you can never afford to waste food.

I thought about going up to MacCormick’s office and telling him I’d decided to accept, but my feet had already carried me outside into the crisp fall air and I figured it could wait. He’d given me a few days after all, so he obviously expected me to put some serious thought into it.

Problem was, no matter how much time I took to think I knew where it would lead. I owed Dr. MacCormick more than I could admit. He’d offered to let me be his teaching aid while I was still an undergraduate, and when he’d been relocated to this university as head of the Classical department, he’d been the one to contact me about doing my Master’s here. Now again, he seemed to have negotiated place for me in an incredible opportunity that included some expensive travel arrangements.

I have no idea what he’d seen in me that made him take so much effort on my behalf, but it was very unlikely I would turn this down, no matter how much I stewed over it.

In spite of my brooding I managed to catch the later train home at the campus station. Close enough to see the mountains and far enough to be off the tourist map, the urban area around the University was so tiny that even calling it a ‘town’ bordered on ridiculous. The campus itself consisted of at least two thirds of it, and the rest was an eclectic mix of new post-modern buildings that looked to have sprung up like daisies amid the old, weatherworn structures that had been erected at the turn of the 20^th century.

I think the University is the only reason there’s a town at all, not to mention a train line that actually extends into a couple neighbouring rural areas. The school itself used to be a hospital, which was then turned into a small local college sometime in the fifties. Like the town, it had been added to substantially in the last few decades, until its sprawl of faculty buildings and dorm halls eclipsed that of the town proper.

Still, the area had kept that sense of timelessness that most very old things tend to have. The further you went from the centre of town, the more timeless it seemed to get.

My house is on the very outskirts, and I’m not sure if it actually belongs to the town at all. Unlike the city I’d lived in before, where you had suburb after tightly-packed suburb until the whole thing just stopped, here the buildings just got gradually further and further apart and the area became more definitely rural. Eventually the houses are separated by whole fields, or in my case ten acres of fallow farmland and partial woodland.

It’s a fair walk from the train platform, and a very long ride between it and the university, but after living in huge, sprawling cities all my life I fell in love with the entire place. It was like a favourite childhood dream, where you get to leave home and live on a farm and have goats and chickens and bunnies.

I don’t have any chickens or bunnies. There’s just a cat that had come with the place, and a half-goat who was probably not speaking to me.

I walked down the lane from the platform, and once again my feet took me down the familiar turn-off and past the avenue of pine trees that marked the start of the drive. But this time they took me down the little side path and over the creaky bridge that spanned the creek, into a small gated yard only about twenty feet long on either side, surrounded by a rotting wooden picket fence.

The place is so grown over it would be impossible to tell what it was used for, if the tombstones weren’t so tall.

I stepped through the gate, which had long since fallen off its hinges, and went to sit near one of the taller tombstones. There were no more than twenty of them, all simply and crudely carved and the some were so worn you could barely read them. The few oldest were so small the grass nearly covered them, and the two largest were obelisk shaped and almost as tall as me. I set my bag down by one of them and knelt in the long grass.

The real estate agent had tried to explain why there was a cemetery on the land, but he needn’t have bothered; I knew why. It was a family plot, started when the place was a lonely piece of farmland. The earliest date that could be read on the stones was 1867, which predated the actual town by at least fifty years. The newest grave had been added less than two years ago.

It was this stone that I pulled the grass away from now, wiping the dirt from its face. It was a plain square modern-style marker, made of glossy pink-grey marble and incised with neat letters: Agatha Cebille O’Connell, February 2 1936 – May 11 2006.

“Hey, Aunt Cebille,” I said quietly to the stone.

Agatha O’Connell had been my great-aunt on my father’s side, one of my grandmother’s two sisters. She was one of those typical ‘old maid’ relatives, who never married and had little contact with the rest of the family. Whenever anyone mentioned her, they called her by her middle name instead of her first.

I’d met her only once, when I was seven years old, and she had frightened me terribly. It was at my grandma’s funeral, and I remember my father being angry because she had refused to come to the church service. I only saw her at the wake, a tall robust woman with a long grey braid who didn’t look at all to be in her sixties. She hadn’t said a word to me, but I’d felt her steely eyes on me the whole time, and my constant fidgeting had frustrated my mother.

I only found out she had died when I was told that, for some unforeseen reason, she had left me a surprising amount of money in her will. It wasn’t until nearly a year later I learned that wasn’t all she’d left me.

I finished wiping the face of the stone and relaxed back on my heels. I visited Cebille’s grave in the little family plot at least twice a week. I hadn’t known her at all, but I had quite a few reasons to be grateful to her for.

Less than a week after Dr. MacCormick had contacted me about a graduate studies opening in a small town university, Aunt Cebille’s lawyer called to tell me I now owned her house and everything in it as well as the ten acres of land she still owned from the family’s early farming days.

Cebille’s relatives on her other sister’s side had hushed that part of the will up, hoping to find some loophole in the legality, and they’d been less than pleased when that had fallen through. They’d hounded me for months, trying to weedle me into a settlement for part of the land. I’d even caught one of them showing a real estate agent around the property when they thought I wasn’t home.

My parents had no love for the place themselves, and the agent who’d first shown me around the place had seemed eager to convince me to sell, but it was too good a coincidence to pass up. By mid-spring I’d been accepted into the university’s graduate program, and I was moved into the place before the end of June.

I leaned back against the tallest obelisk stone, which sat facing Aunt Cebille’s marker. The house and the university weren’t the only coincidence her inheritance had brought me. I’d put most of the money into savings, but a year ago I’d used some of it to spend the summer travelling.

That was the summer I’d gotten myself hopelessly lost while hiking in the mountains on one of Aegean islands near the northern coast of Turkey, where I stumbled across a half-human creature with the hooves and horns of a goat.

I watched a crow fly overhead, cawing loudly. Even if I’d thought I would see Nimos again after that summer, I still wouldn’t have been prepared for everything he’d brought into my life with him. Two months ago I’d been ready to believe he’d been a figment of my imagination, when he showed up on my doorstep bedraggled in baggy clothes and half-starved. I hadn’t actually recognized him at first, but he remembered my name, and he’d been happy to see me. And not knowing what else to do, I’d asked him if he wanted to stay for a while.

Something rustled behind me and jumped up, startled. The crow had apparently decided to land on one of the markers behind me and perched there, watching me with its beady little eyes. After a moment or two, it took off in a frenzy of flapping, leaving a few black feathers behind.

I stood up and dusted myself off. It was going to get dark soon, and I wanted to get working on my notes. There was a lot to do before they could be ‘brushed’ into a presentation.

I left the little cemetery and walked back to the house. Nimos wasn’t there, which I’d fully expected. But even though I stayed up working well past midnight, he still wasn’t home by the time I went to bed. I fell asleep feeling guilty all over again.

Prologue

The last memory I have of my childhood is a police station in a small town in Cork County, Ireland. I was seven years old. I remember being wet, and I remember being scared.

And I still have dreams about it.

In the dream, my mother is holding my little brother, who is crying. She’s asking me over and over why I let them take him away. She asking me why they didn’t take me instead.

I try to tell her that it wasn’t my fault, and in any case, my brother was fine. But she doesn’t seem to hear me, and they both get further and further away, until I’m all alone in an empty room.

That’s not actually what happened, of course. I’ve stopped trying to tell people what actually did happen that night, and after a few years even I started to wonder if I wasn’t making it all up. It didn’t help that it all faded very quickly, like the dream itself does every time I have it. But in the police station I remembered being so sure.

My brother tells me that I was saying all sorts of crazy things, about swarms of living fog and dancing lights, and a little goblin with a hammer and thumbtack. But I remember very clearly that when I asked him to tell my parents it was the truth, he only looked away.

He laughs uneasily about it now, as though it had just been a game. We were only kids then, he says. My parents have stopped talking about it altogether.

But I remember now. The goblin had a lame foot, and he wore a very big hat.

Chapter 1

Years and years can go by, and it’s astonishing that no matter how much time or distance we put between us, some people never leave the same tired ruts they’ve always been in.

“No, I can’t come visit, Mom,” I said into the phone, sticking a finger in one ear to drown out the bleep-blooping of the video game Nimos was pounding away at on the couch.

Even with the noise, I was barely paying attention to the conversation. It was one I’d had a dozen times and, like a well-memorized play, it was always the same.

“I just can’t afford it now,” I said my line with practiced ease. “It’s too far, and too expensive.” The phone buzzed in my ear, and Nimos’ game leveled up. “Yeah, I know. I’ll try for Christmas, okay? Love you too, Mom.”

I hung up the phone, half-expecting some kind of dramatic follow-up. The phone stayed silent. Nimos continued to bleep-bloop on the couch, fully intent on the little screen in his hands.

I put down the phone. “Where did you get that thing, anyway?” I asked him, eyeing the little gray Gameboy he held, which continued to emit the cheerful background noise of Super Mario Brothers 3.

“Found it.”

“Found it where?”

“Under the couch cushion,” he answered. He stuck his tongue between his teeth, adopting the standard gamer strategy of turning the Gameboy half upside down in an effort to make the buttons respond better, but to no avail. I recognized the sad little downtrill of Mario’s premature death.

Nimos snorted and tossed the thing away in disgust. He gave it a little kick with one hoof, as though to show just how unimpressed he was. “So ... what did your mum have to say?”

“Nothing important,” I told him, picking up the Gameboy. The things your ex-boyfriends leave in your house. I wondered vaguely what else was hiding under couch cushions that the gremlins hadn’t gotten to yet.

“Do all humans not ever visit their mothers?” he asked, sinking back into the cushions.

“Don’t be snide,” I told him, swatting his hoof.

“I’m not,” he protested, wide-eyed and innocent. “I was just wondering. I  never had a mother, you know.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course you didn’t, Peter Pan,” I said snarkily. “The stork just rolled you out of the cabbage patch, did he?”

He looked at me the way he does when he thinks I’m nuts, with one thick eyebrow and one goaty ear raised. “Never mind,” I sighed, thinking that the half-year’s worth of English credits rotting in my brain were never going to be appreciated.

I sat down on the couch, slipping the Gameboy back into its hiding place between the cushions. Nimos stretched his legs out over my lap so I could massage his hooves, which I’ve developed a habit of doing ever since he hurt his leg. Some may call it a fetish. I call it mutual satisfaction ... Nimos can give one hell of a foot-rub.

“How’s the leg?” I asked him, kneading his ankle with the tips of my fingers. The fur there was downy and much softer than the coarse hair that covered the rest of his legs.

Nimos stretched the injured limb out, twisting against the tensor bandage that sat just above his hock.  “It’s not sore anymore. Can I take that thing off, now?” he pleaded.

“Maybe in a couple weeks,” I assured him. I didn’t bother asking if he was staying off it like I’d told him to. Even if I hadn’t been living with him, I could have seen the signs of imminent cabin fever myself. Poor guy hadn’t left the house in weeks.

He sighed and settled back, resigned to his fate of house arrest and the occasional hoof massage. “Your mum’s been calling pretty often, lately,” he remarked. “And she talks an awful lot.”

My fingers stopped kneading his ankle. “Please tell me you haven’t been answering the phone again.”

He shrugged, looking decently sheepish. “I think she likes me. We should go visit her.”

I dropped his ankle and pushed his legs off my lap. “We are not visiting my family. And stop answering the phone. I have not forgotten about those angry real estate agents.”

“I said I was sorry about that,” he huffed, sitting up. “I didn’t know they could find your house. And why can’t we go see your mum?” he added.

I stared at him. My eyes traveled pointedly from the black cloven hooves and the shaggy goat’s legs that disappeared into a pair of baggy khaki shorts, to the furred goat ears and curved velvety horns than curled up from beneath his unruly brown hair. I could just see the tuft of his little bambi tail sticking out the back of his shorts.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked him.

He looked at me, annoyed. “No, I’m not.”

I shook my head. “No. Absolutely not. Out of the question. Even if seeing you wouldn’t give her a heart attack, it is just a bad idea.”

His expression turned confused, and a little hurt. Sometimes I forget just how much I’ve gotten used to Nimos. My mother had gotten over the fact that I have had male roommates and even male boyfriends, but she would not be open to one of those roommates having horns and goat legs. Avoiding that situation was worth a little blistered skin.

“Look,” I said, a little more gently. “I don’t get along with my family very well. Every once in a while they call and act concerned, I make excuses about staying away, and everybody’s happy.”

Nimos slid his hooves along the couch and hugged his knees. It was weirdly cute. “I ... I really think we should,” he said awkwardly. “Go somewhere, I mean.”

I sighed in understanding and patted his knee. Cabin fever and ADD are a bad combination. “Being house-ridden is really starting to get to you, huh?”

“Would it really be that bad?”

“You have no idea,” I muttered, rubbing my temple.

He let out a disappointed sigh, and I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry. Aside from me, Nimos doesn’t exactly have a lot of people to hang out with. At first he used to disappear every few days or so to explore the city (and probably catch some extra female attention), but even before he got hurt I was finding him in front of the TV or on the PS2 more often then not. I know the signs of working yourself into a mental rut: I’ve done it myself often enough.

I rolled onto my butt and swung my legs up onto the couch. “Look,” I said, sitting cross-legged in front of him, “we can go somewhere. Just not there, okay?”

He looked me in the eye. “You promise?”

I hesitated. It’s a natural reaction to the word ‘promise’. It’s a word you should never take lightly, for a great many reasons.

I sat up a little straighter and put my hands on my knees. “I promise,” I told him, without blinking.

That’s kind of how it all started, really.