Someplace to Be Flying

Someplace to Be Flying (1998) Charles de Lint

I’ll admit it–I didn’t read this previously because the cover made me think it was one of the books he wrote as Samuel Key–horror. The new cover does a much better job of making it clear this is in large part about the Corbae.

But not entirely.

Hank is a living on the edges of society, with the family he’s made–Moth, Paris, the rest who hang out at the junk yard, and a giant stray dog.

He’d never given the dog a name, never gave any of the animals he brought back to Moth’s a name.

Hank is driving a Gypsy cab when he sees a woman being beaten by a man. When he stops the cab to do something, that’s when things take a strange turn. If you’re familiar with the Crow Girls, you know they’re the ones who appear from seemingly out of nowhere. But I don’t think it would make a difference if you weren’t familiar with them.

Lily is a photographer, and after she was rescued by Hank, she admits that she’s been out looking for the Animal People of Jack Daw’s stories.

I like Lily.

She could hear her voice go up on the last syllable, making a question of it. It was an affectation that always irritated her when she heard others do it and it irritated her more now that she was doing it herself.

Then there is Kerry, who has moved into the Rookery, finally on her own after years of being locked up by her family.

Kerry didn’t think she’d ever been brave. She could endure, but that wasn’t the same thing at all.

And of course, there are the Crow Girls.

“Look at this,” Rory said as they joined him on the porch. “Notice how when there’s work to be done, the crow girls are never to be found?”

“You really think it would go quicker if they were here to help?” Annie asked.

Rory nodded. “You’re right. What was I thinking?”

“We have to go,” Zia says.

Maida nods. “We’re working on a surprise for Margaret for when she gets back home.”

“Do you know where we can get a thousand spiders?” Zia asks.

(twitch)

But the Crow Girls are also wise when they need to be, although they try not to need to be.

“The best change you can make is to hold up a mirror so that people can look into it and change themselves. That’s the only way a person can be changed.”

“By looking inside yourself,” Zia said. “Even if you have to look into a mirror that’s outside yourself to do it.”

“And you know,” Maida added. “That mirror can be a story you hear, or just somebody else’s eyes. Anything that reflects back so that you can see yourself in it.”

And I was quite amused by this:

“Imagine if life was fair,” she says to me one time. “I think maybe that’d be worse.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, then we’d deserve all the awful things that happen to us, wouldn’t we? It’d mean that at some point in our lives—or maybe some life we had before this one—we were pretty creepy people.”

I never thought about it like that before. Seems odd to take comfort in life’s unfairness, but I start to feel the same way she does.

(If that sounds familiar, you can click on the link to see another iteration of it.)

“Too late,” Zia echoed.

“Those are two of the least fun words in the world,” Maida said.

Ah, the Crow Girls. And the other Corbae. I’m glad I finally got around to reading this.
Rating: 9/10

Published by Triskell Press

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