The Catswold Portal

He barked a guttural opening spell that sent the wall swinging back, lifted Tom inside, laid the boy on the cold stone, and left him there.

Closing the wall, he picked up the sack with the cat inside and moved out into the blowing garden. He had to get rid of the beast; he dare not leave it so close to the portal for fear Siddonie would learn of it.

He’d leave it somewhere where it had a chance for life. That was all that was required. He wasn’t carrying it back up the cursed highway.

He decided to buy a Greyhound ticket in the village, watch the bag loaded on as luggage, then disappear. Let the driver worry about what to do with it. One bus went clear to Coos Bay. He’d have a drink first, there was plenty of time. The Greyhound schedules were common knowledge in the village, and the Coos Bay bus didn’t leave for two hours. He hoisted the cat to his shoulder, snuffed the lantern, and headed across the road. He didn’t like the music at Sam’s, but he liked to watch the women who came there.

Chapter 28

Basin Street jazz drowned the wind in the garden. The beat was solid, the music at once weeping and happy—primal music like a deep heartbeat. Braden, drowning in the good jazz, turned off the overhead studio lights and crossed the blowing moonlit garden, heading for Sam’s.

He paused beside the tool room door, watching wind shake the door and whip the vine that grew around it. Feeling spooked, he wanted to move on, yet was held a moment watching the blowing shadows that raced across the garden, shadows running like live things. In the restless light the carved cats’ faces seemed to move and change. Then from Sam’s a blast of trumpet and trombone rose against the wind. And the wind leaping from tree to tree suddenly stilled.

The shadows stopped running. The garden was silent, deadly still.

Elder wind. It’s an elder wind…

The term shocked him, surprised him. It was a term his Gram had used, a Welsh term from her girlhood. He hadn’t thought of it since she died.

He could see her beside him standing on the rocks above the sea, the wind whipping her carroty hair, her arm around him because he was small and the wind was strong, wind that died, then suddenly blew again, throwing salt spray in their faces. “An elder wind,” she said.

“What’s that, Gram?”

“An elder wind can speak to you, if you know how to listen.”

“How do you listen? I don’t understand.”

She had laughed, enjoying the wild evening. “You listen with something inside, the part of you that knows things.”

“But what would an elder wind say?”

“Something of the future, something that’s going to happen.” Then, seeing his expression, she had said, “Something good. Something—beyond everyday things. Something—not everyone can hear.”

He stood in the blowing garden, lost in that time that was forever gone. Lost to those he loved who were gone. Then, scowling at himself, he went on across the lane toward the warmth and the good, pure Dixieland. Above him the redwood forest loomed deep black, rattling and hushing as the wind once more tore at its branches.

Sam’s Bar was an old converted house, dark shingled, nestled alone against the redwood forest. It had no neon and needed no advertising. Its patrons parked in the lane or on the skirt of blacktop by the front door, or left their cars at home. Inside, walls had been removed to allow for a sprawling openness with quiet corners, and to make space for the bandstand. You could get dark stout on draft, and hardboiled eggs pickled in pale, hot pepper juice. You could get bock beer in the spring, and during legal crabbing months you could get a sandwich made of green olives and crab fresh from the San Francisco fleets. Sam, ex-stevedore, jazz buff, was a good listener, and held within his graying head half the secrets of the village.

Braden threaded between the cars parked tightly around Sam’s front door, and stood a moment awash in the plaintive, hypnotic rhythm of “Joe Avery’s Blues.” The porch was ten feet wide, with four steps leading up to it, and a dark wooden door with a small stained glass panel.