“Why did she wait till dark?”
“They need the darkness. It’s the only canvas they can draw their liars’ pictures on. Daylight is for truth.”
“I’ve heard of ghosts being seen by daylight.” Dro ignored this. Ridiculously, inappropriately, with death just across the ravine, Myal insisted, “Well, I have."
“It’s dark now,” Dro said, “and she’s there.”
“Is she really?”
“Look for yourself.”
“No, I’ll take your word for it. I’m scared. I didn’t bring anything but the shoe. I haven’t...”
“We’ll argue it out later.” Dro shifted as if searching for a firmer place to stand. “Tell me, are you right-or left-handed?”
“Both,” said Myal. ‘To play that thing, you have to be.”
“She,” said Dro, “was left-handed, what I recall of her, as any witch is inclined to train herself to be. That song you played her, have you got it straight in your head?”
“You don’t want me to play it? You said—”
“I want you to play it. Backwards.”
“What?”
“You heard. Can you do it?”
“No,” Myal raised the instrument and studied it. “Maybe.”
“Try.”
“What happens if I succeed?”
“You get a prize. Her kind are more superstitious even than the living. Reflection, inversion of any sort, might get a response. If it works, she’ll go away. Start.”
Myal coughed nervously. He settled the instrument. Dro stared across the ravine.
Abruptly Myal began to play furiously, the notes skittering off his fingers. Reversed, the melody was no longer poignant, but of a hideous and macabre jollity, a dance in hell.
Myal, even over the sound of the strings, heard the sudden female laugh, high and clear as a bell. The noise almost froze his hands. The hair felt as if it rose on his head at a totally vertical and ridiculous angle. He shuddered.
“All right,” Dro said, “stop now.”
“Did it—Is she—?”
“Yes. She’s gone.”
For the first time, Myal cast a frantic glance across the ravine into the steeping of empty shadows.
Even he could not hide from himself that it had been too easy. Far, far too easy.
“Last night,” said Myal, “I didn’t see her then.”
“No,” Dro said. He began to walk back along the ravine side toward the low throbbing on the poplar trunks that was the fire. Myal hung about, terrified of being left alone, but not attempting to follow. After a moment, Dro looked around at him. “We’ll be travelling together after all,” he said. “I need to keep an eye on you. In case you remember what it is you did to give her this power through you. The music helps. But it’s more than the music.”
Myal held his ground. Angrily he said, “I told you I didn’t see her yesterday. It’s nothing to do with me.”
Dro said, in that curious voice of his which carried so softly and so perfectly across the atmosphere of night, “What did you say to her when she was alive?”
Myal’s thoughts poured over. The words stuck up sharp as flints. He wished they did not. He did not say them aloud.
“If you want my advice... you’d run for it.”
And she, “Where would I go?”
And he, “Maybe—with me.”
He did not say them aloud, but Dro seemed to read them off his guilty flinching face.
“You’d better understand,” said Dro, “you didn’t see her last night, because you weren’t near me.”
“I don’t get it,” said Myal. But he did.
And, “Think about it,” Dro said. “You will.”
Somehow Myal had given Ciddey a path back into the world, and she utilised him for that purpose. Myal was the means of her manifestation. But Dro, whom she hated, with whom she had a score to settle, Dro was the reason for her return. Now, while she had little strength, she might only trouble them. But when she grew stronger, when Myal, and her returning phases themselves, had fed her sufficiently—