Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson (ebook voice reader TXT) 📗

had taken up a bulky space inside him, and now that it wasn’t there, he could see how it had filled him. He heard footsteps, but he didn’t want to move.

“Jared,” Sophia said. “Get up.”

He couldn’t turn away from the dancing light. From the corner of his eye, he noticed the man beside Sophia and finally turned his head. The man was ridiculously tall and had a cascade of grey hair and a full beard, but beneath it, beneath his skin, something older showed, something not human. For a supernatural being, he was wearing a lot of earthy-coloured Mountain Equipment Co-op fleece.

“Hey,” Jared said.

“He can see me through the illusion,” the man said, his voice deep and gravelly.

Jared looked up to the crown of the tree. “It shimmers.”

“Yes, it’s a chief tree,” the man said. “They do that.”

“Jared, get up now.”

“It’s singing, sort of like wind chimes.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sophia said. “Jared, you’re being rude.”

“The tree is talking to him,” the man said. “It’s hard to leave that. I built here so no one could cut it down.”

“He’s going to catch a cold.”

“Your baby Trickster is fine, Sophia. Go. I’ll text you when it’s time to pick him up.”

“I’ll get a blanket.”

“I’ll handle this,” Charles said. “Isn’t that why you brought him here?”

Sophia knelt and put her hand to Jared’s forehead. “Are you all right?”

“I can hear it, but I can’t understand it.”

She stroked his hair. “I won’t be far.”

She was gone. Minutes or hours passed. In the shimmering light, other worlds shifted through his vision. Other people, not necessarily human but close. An old Native man pressed his cheek to the bark, eyes closed, his hair wild, his clothes looking like pyjamas from a few generations past. He opened his eyes suddenly and Jared rolled away from the tree, then struggled to his feet, stumbling into the Wild Man, who caught and held him.

“Chill,” Charles the Wild Man of the Woods said. “They can’t come through. Whatever you saw is stuck in its own time and world.”

Jared nodded, sort of understanding and not wanting to look as clueless as he felt. Charles carefully let him go.

“Can you walk?”

He nodded.

Charles studied him. “Hungry?”

Jared shook his head.

“I take it you didn’t get your father’s gift of the gab.”

“You know Wee’git?”

“He hung out with me whenever your gran kicked him to the curb. They were very Liz and Richard. They used to laugh about it. His nickname for her was Angel Tits and she called him her Fucking Monolith.”

“What?”

“You know. The movie. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Never mind.” He put his hands on his hips and studied the sky. “The wind’s picking up. Come on. If you do catch a cold, Sophia will nail me to a tree.”

Jared followed Charles down the path towards the house. Charles set a slow pace. Jared wanted to know more about his gran and Wee’git, but he also didn’t. He’d assumed that their relationship had been a one-off type of thing, like his mom’s night at the All Native Basketball Tournament, the one that had resulted in his birth. Charles’s picture didn’t sound like the Granny Nita he knew. But maybe she just sobered up and found God. He couldn’t imagine asking her about it either. Hey, Gran, were you and Wee’git, like, the fight-y rez couple that everyone knew before Jesus took the wheel? He found that harder to believe than the fact that he was currently walking beside a sasquatch.

The glass door swung open as they approached. Jared could not throw rocks at anyone because he was literally in a glass house. It was as if they were still outside, but warmer, comfortable. The concrete parts of the walls were painted to look like a continuation of the forest, trees and ferns in moody lighting. Jared’s reflection in the glass walls was like a ghost.

“Leave your shoes on if you want,” Charles said.

A waterfall babbled against a rippled glass pane flowing from the ceiling, puddling in a square pond level with the floor. As they approached the sunken living room, a fireplace blazed to life in a large black bowl empty of wood. The floor of the living room was rounded river rocks. There were two large steps all around that formed benches covered in cushions also designed to look like rocks. On the other side of the fire, some random dude was sleeping with his green toque pulled down over his eyes, hands shoved down into the pockets of his jeans. Jared could hear the faint thump of someone’s music upstairs. Charles sat cross-legged on the lower bench and tipped his head to stretch left then right. He patted the cushion beside him.

“Whaddya wanna know, Baby Trickster?”

“Um, who’s that?”

“Yard Sale.”

“What?”

“The vagarious arrival of powder perturbs him and, lo, Yard Sale was indeed driving us all batshit. Nothing so dire that ripping copious bongage can’t solve. Bear witness to his most excellent couch lock.”

“Maybe you should put some Depends on him,” Jared said.

Charles burst out in a bray that sounded like Chewbacca strangling, which Jared realized was his laughter. He studied Jared, and then settled deeper into the cushions, grinning.

“House rules,” Charles said. “Don’t touch the flyers. No drawing on them, no taking clothes on or off, and no putting things on or in them. If Yard Sale shits himself, well, that’s his learning experience.”

“Consequences,” Jared said, nodding.

“Sophia was right. You’re nothing like your father.”

Jared was torn between wanting to know and not wanting to find out just how weird the rabbit hole was going to get. Just face it, you big baby, he told himself. “I want to know about Tricksters, please.”

“You guys are the messiest bitches at the party, popping off when you get bored. You are the bringers of drama. But hey, you show up.”

“Okay,” Jared said, trying not to be offended and failing.

“Did I hurt your feelings?”

He considered denying it, but knew he had a serious lack of poker face. “A bit.”

“Sorry. Them’s the facts. Tricksters are down here