Chapter 19 Too close. Then a voice began to wail
It started barely two weeks after the Saint Jollify Fair.
Nigel was going about the regular morning routine, glancing at the clock every so often in expectation of Miss Talbot’s arrival. He was in the middle of feeding the double-delight rose her Mama Morgana’s when he heard it.
Strains of a sighing violin. Quite close.
Too close.
Then a voice began to wail:
“Green Yule is here, oh, what fun!
Jingle bells ringing, everyone!
Merry little faces, shining bright
Dancing round in the—"
Before the end of the verse was reached, Nigel was across the shop floor. He yanked open the door, took a lunging step, and nearly fell over the street fiddler, who had taken up residence right there on his very doorstep.
“Out!” Nigel bellowed, flinging his arm in stern command. “No Green Yule carols on these premises, sir!” Then he added in tones of pure disgust, “My gods, man, it’s not even the first of winter yet!”
The fiddler unfolded his long limbs and scrambled to his feet, snatching his hat up from the sidewalk and cramming it on his head as he went.
He tipped that hat to Luna, who just then approached from across the street, as though carried on a gust of cold, late-autumnal wind.
She smiled in return, then saw Nigel standing in the doorway, red-faced with wrath.
“Is everything all right, Mr. Grimm?” she asked.
“Every year!” Nigel growled. He watched the fiddler’s retreat, undisguised fury sparking in his eyes.
The melodious vagrant took up residence in the doorway of the bicycle shop directly across the road, set out his hat, and made himself comfortable.
“Every year, it’s the same! No matter where you go in the world, the instant there’s even the faintest chill in the air—BAM!
Green Yule carols, everywhere! It’s like a plague. ”
The fiddler plucked a few strings of his violin like a tiny guitar. He took up the song, serenading the city with a scratchy-voiced yowl that stayed only just this side of tuneful.
“Green Yule, Oh! Let’s sing our song,
Together we’ll dance all the night long!
With a boogie that makes us swing and sway,
Join the fun, come out and play!”
“And what is this atrocity?” Nigel demanded, dismayed. “Isn’t Green Yule supposed to be a holy day? Now they’ve replaced the sacred hymns with boogies?”
“I thought you weren’t religious, Mr. Grimm?” Luna said, crossing her arms.
“I don’t have to worship the Green Mother to be offended for Her sake!”
At this Luna laughed outright, tossing back her head and sending a burst of cold air from her lips. “You, sir,” she declared, “are a regular Gronk Cat.”
“A what?”
“A Gronk Cat,” she repeated. “You know:
“Watch out now, don’t you frown,
Gronk Cat's here to mess around,
Haunts the streets in every town,
He’ll steal your smile, he’ll bring you down!”
Nigel gaped at her in abject bewilderment.
“Gronk Cat hates Green Yule, you see,” Luna continued. “During the Green Yule season, it grows to the size of a carthorse at night and hunts down all the bad little boys and girls, who forget to put holly over their doors in honor of the Green Mother.”
Nigel narrowed his eyes. “If this Gronk Cat of yours hates Green Yule so much, you’d think he’d reward boys and girls who refuse to bow to social dictates and leave their doors un-festooned.”
Luna shrugged. “No one ever claimed the Gronk Cat was a logical creature.” She added with a tilt of one eyebrow, “You know, the best way to drive him off is with the loud singing of Green Yule carols, so . . .”
“I trust Green Yule boogies are less effective,” Nigel snarled.
“Oh, but the Gronk Cat Boogie was the hit of last season! Didn’t you hear it?” Luna performed a little shuffle right there on the frosty sidewalk, singing:
“You're so mean, Gronk Cat, watch out,
Green Yule's coming, let’s twist and shout,
Boogie Woogie fun, we’ll dance it out,
Show Gronk Cat what it’s all about!”
Nigel blinked slowly. “I have never so desperately longed for death.”
Luna rolled her eyes. “All right, Mr. Gronk. Let’s get some tea in you before all this Green Yule spirit makes you giddy!”
With that, she led the way into the shop. Nigel paused to cast the fiddler a last withering glare. The man was just starting to pick out the Gronk Cat Boogie on his instrument, and he shot a huge, gap-toothed grin right back.
Nigel slammed the door.
He turned to face into the shop just in time to see Luna removing her hat and allowed himself a brief moment to admire the way her hair bounced against her shoulders.
Despite the horrors of the oncoming festive season, he felt a momentary breath of peace pass through him.
It was the same feeling he always had when she returned to the shop each morning, a sense of rightness settling over the atmosphere.
Luna’s presence made everything as it should be.
Regardless of what took place in the outside world—even a mass hallucination of holiday spirit—the rhythms and routines of The Arcane Bouquet would go on, infused with the delightful aromas of brewing tea and fresh flowers.
Nigel took a step to join her at the counter. Then froze.
His heart leapt to his throat and stuck there.
Slowly, he lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what, Mr. Grimm?” Luna asked, unbuttoning her coat.
“That . . . skittering.” He raised a finger. “Up there.”
She glanced up, even as she slid out of her coat.
“I don’t hear anything.” Hanging her coat on its peg, she grabbed her apron and walked over to stand by Nigel as she tied it in place.
The ceilings were ten feet high, all the beams and pipes exposed, but the low-hung thaumatic light bulbs made everything above their shades seem to disappear in shadows.
Luna frowned and tilted her head to one side. “What is it I’m looking for?”
Nigel’s lips rolled back from his teeth in a grimace. “You’ll know it when you see it,” he growled. “Trust me. You’ll know . . .”
It did not make an overt appearance that day, however.
Nor even the next.
By the third day, Addle Street was transformed into Nigel’s personal nightmare. Every shop up and down both sides of the busy road seemed to have hooked up its own personal thaumatic speaker system, which blared Green Yule music out into the open air in hopes of attracting customers.
“It’s not a bad strategy, you know,” Luna said from where she stood at one of the tables, busily weaving evergreen boughs into a large wreath.
“You might consider investing in a thaumatic radio too, Mr. Grimm. It would set a nice sort of tone in here. For the season. We could stick to the hymns of course, none of that modern stuff.”
“Why do any of us need radios when that infernal fiddler insists on haunting the sidewalks?” Nigel snarled.
The street musician could be heard on the shoemaker’s stoop directly next door, cheerfully scraping away at a lively rendition of, Green Yule, Blue Night, Sing ‘Round the Firelight. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that the tailor just on the other side of The Arcane Bouquet was currently playing the same song but in an entirely different key and tempo.
Nigel pinched the bridge of his nose in long-suffering silence. Then he scowled suddenly, his gaze flicking to Luna’s work station. “What’s that wreath for?” he demanded.
“The front door.”
“Is that holly?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s not going anywhere near our front door!”
Luna cast him a look. “You’d better stay in tonight, Mr. Grimm,” she said. “Gronk Cat will get you if you so much as stick your nose outside.”
With that, she went to hang up her wreath. On the front door.
Nigel cursed softly, exchanging glances with Debbie. The raven fluttered her wings. “Never mind.”
“You would take her side,” Nigel growled.
Just in that moment, he heard scurrying overhead. He ducked, shoulders hunching, eyes sparking. “I know you’re up there!” he whispered, craning his head at the beams and pipes as he glared into shadows. “You won’t get the best of me this year. Do you hear?”
No answer. But it was a listening sort of silence.
A mocking sort of silence.
It did not make its first appearance until three days after that, however, on the first official day of winter.
By then, snow had begun to blanket the streets of Ballycastle overnight, only to be churned into muddy sludge by mid-morning.
This didn’t seem to bother anyone; they went on proclaiming the magic of the season and blaring their Green Yule boogies all the louder.
Luna’s wreath attracted a great deal of attention, pulling customers in, who eagerly commissioned more of the same.
When she wasn’t busy brewing up teas, she was hard at work weaving more wreaths, and finally convinced Nigel to get in on the action.
He could not deny their market-appeal and, though it galled him to the depths of his being, he buckled down and learned the art.
The shop was soon filled with all the most classic Green Yule cuttings and arrangements.
Scads of holly in every conceivable configuration.
Evergreens and brilliant red poinsettias and even a few red and white roses (the rose plot in Garden was beginning to make a comeback).
There was little point in bringing out any of the off-season flowers which Garden continued to produce in abundance.
The denizens of Ballycastle became quite singular in their floral preferences during Green Yule.
There was a decided partiality for certain types of tea as well.
Both regulars and new customers alike couldn’t get enough of Luna’s peppermint and silver needle, and she was hard-pressed to keep it in stock.
All the cinnamon blends she could invent were snatched up almost as quickly.
She spent any downtime they had harvesting from Garden’s bounty and prepping teas in the kitchen.
Which meant Nigel spent far more time than he liked alone in the front of the shop. With Debbie.