Fool on the Hill (52 page)

Then Luther came running. Barking in alarm as he dodged through the burning debris, he revived George with a series of sloppy licks, drenching his face until he lifted his head weakly, shook it. For all the acridness of the smoke, Luther could still smell the scent on him, the Heaven scent of hills and rain.

Taking a firm grip on George’s arm with his teeth, he once again began to lead the storyteller out.

X.

“The end,” Mr. Sunshine pronounced, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. “Or almost.” He gazed across the Quad at the far statue and winked. “Told you it’d be a good Story, didn’t I, Ezra? Now, just a little cleaning up to do around here and then I think I’ll see how World War III is coming along. . . .”

A KISS AT DAYBREAK

It was early morning of the next day when the town of Ithaca reconnected fully with reality, and became once again just an ordinary part of the world, however ordinary that ever is. One by one the townspeople awoke, and like a cat who had dreamt remembered nothing of what had taken place the day before. Even if some suspected an important occurrence, no evidence remained to help them puzzle it out. Nattie Hollister and Sam Doubleday, for example, started from sleep at about nine o’clock in the front seat of their undamaged cruiser, stiff but uninjured, wondering how they had come to be parked out front of the head shop on State Street. Ten yards away at the beginning of The Commons, the remnants of the mannequin and the corpse of the Wolfhound had been swept away, carried off by the receding fog. Ragnarok opened his eyes in his dark, unvandalized house, wondering how he had sprained his left hand. And Jack Baron . . . well, the circumstances of his waking were somewhat indelicate; it is enough to say·he wondered where his clothes had got to.

The town awoke, but first up, ahead of everyone, was a pale-cheeked Princess who preceded even the dawn. As the sun rose in the east she stood on the crest of The Hill, seeming to lead the new day above the horizon, the hospital gown she wore glowing like the finest of dresses in the rose light of daybreak.

She walked across the Arts Quad, illuminating it, illuminating the ashen debris of the Dragon that lay on the otherwise unscarred Hilltop. Remnants of yesterday’s Parade, nothing special . . . but the storyteller was not here, he had wandered some distance once he had escaped the fire, so Aurora moved on, seeking him out. The new day was warm and fine, more like June than March. She walked out by the Slope and passed the Johnson Museum, pausing to listen to the wind chimes, then continuing on along the same route that Preacher had taken to his death. But this morning it was safe, safe as daydreaming.

She found her love on the suspension bridge, covered with soot, looking more dead than alive. The dog had curled up to sleep beside him, offering what warmth he could to a kind Master. At Aurora’s approach Luther opened his eyes and barked a joyous welcome, recognizing her. She bore the Heaven scent now as strongly as the storyteller, and the mongrel began to hop about like a young Beagle, certain that she would set all things right.

“Oh, George,” Aurora said, kneeling beside him and cradling his head.

“Poor George . . .” He did not stir as she touched him, did not seem even to be breathing.

Aurora didn’t worry about this, though; she knew what to do.

“Because I love you,” she said, an enchantment of her own making, and kissed him. A tremor ran through the bridge that even Luther felt. Called back from slumber the storyteller opened his eyes, reached up his arms to embrace her, and returned the kiss. They stayed that way a long time.

“Hooray!” Luther said, yelping, hopping about in a perfect imitation of Skippy. “Hooray! Hooray!”

And as if this happiness were not enough, the mongrel looked down at the near entrance to the bridge and saw something which nearly bowled him over. The bodies of Denmark and Rover Too-Bad had vanished with the fog as sure as the Wolfhound’s, but another animal that should by all rights have been a corpse had appeared, fur muddy and unkempt, badly scarred, and as always lacking a tail.

“BLACKJACK!” Luther burst out, racing down to meet him, his feelings one with paradise now.

“Oh shit!” the Manx responded, as Luther knocked him down with a barrage of sloppy dog-kisses. “Shit, no more water, please, Luther
Luther
, don’t bark so loud, I have a splitting headache for Christ’s sake! Luther, would you
please stop it!
”

But Luther wouldn’t, and Blackjack was forced to suffer the affection while uttering many a “Shit!” and “Fuck off, would you please?” On the bridge, the two human lovers continued their embrace, while the sun came up and chased away the remaining chill from the air.

“Jesus,” George whispered. He did not know how he had come to be here in the early hours of the morning, with the breeze from the gorge tangling his hair with Aurora’s, but it surely felt grand. “Jesus, what a day to be alive.”

EPILOGUE

I.

March gave way to April, and April to May. On the last day of that month Aurora Borealis Smith graduated the Cornell University, along with two dozen Bohemians and several thousand more normal people. George stood in the stands, no longer a Writer-in-Residence but a free agent again; he would travel west from here with his Lady, to where an eventual wedding awaited them both, and whatever might come after that.

The canine graduation went less smoothly. Tension over the Fourth Question of Ultimate Wisdom—and other related issues—had reached the breaking point, but The Hill’s mongrels still had a long crusade ahead of them, a crusade of many years. Luther and Blackjack would see much of it, for they remained in Ithaca the rest of their days; they lived long and fairly well on the occasional purloined chicken, though Blackjack never really got used to all the rain.

The Bohemians scattered to find their various fortunes. Lion-Heart and Myoko went to Europe to found a dynasty; Z.Z. Top ended up shearing sheep in Tierra del Fuego, though how he got there is something of an epic tale in itself. Ragnarok, purged of the burden of his past though he did not quite understand how, roamed for a while and eventually settled in the Midwest. He and Jinsei remained lifelong friends.

Late that August, on a particularly hot night, Rho Alpha Tau burned to ashes, as the Dragon had before it. It was no small coincidence that the Brother responsible for the fire, nodding off with candles still lit on a paper-strewn table, had drunk himself to sleep with a couple of bottles of retsina; nor that so many of the Rho Alphas, homeless now and under investigation by the Inter-Fraternity Council, came to bad ends. Jack Baron was not spared, though his reckoning was the most abrupt: he was simply yanked from the stream of history one evening, like a character edited out of the last pages of a novel. He was not missed.

The sprites lived on in secrecy as they always had, helping the University keep its files straight, seeing to it that alumni got their student loan repayment notices right on schedule. The romance of Zephyr and Puck
remained something of a roller coaster, and many more stories could be told about them; but suffice it to say, for now, that though they never suffered another War, between themselves they saw a fair amount of combat.

And Rasferret the Grub? Who could say? Perhaps he faded into nothing when the Dragon was defeated; perhaps, bereft of all magic, he fled and hid in lonely places for the rest of his wretched life. One thing sure, on The Hill he was never seen nor heard from again, and as far as the Little People were concerned, that was all that mattered.

II.

On a windless summer day in an uncertain year, more than a century after the founding of Cornell, a man who told lies for a living climbed to the top of The Hill to fly one last kite. He was a young man, a surprisingly wealthy one even for a professional liar, and the woman who accompanied him up the Slope was as perfect a companion as he had ever had any right to hope for.

They sat on the Arts Quad and assembled the kite together, the man and the woman; it was a white diamond crossed with red, and at its center was a representation of a Tarot card. The card depicted a man standing at the edge of a precipice; his eyes were turned skyward, and at his feet barked a black-and-white dog very much like the one that even now ran happy circles around the two kite-flyers. Across the bottom of the card was written the legend:
THE FOOL
. It made a beautiful design. altogether.

When the kite was ready to go the man took it and stood up. The little dog yapped expectantly, and in another corner of the Quad a lounging St. Bernard turned to watch with a bit more restraint.

The man stared up into the sky, as if searching for a familiar face there. He began to turn in place, holding the kite in one hand and a spool of heavy twine in the other, facing first west, then north, then east, then south. Three times around he turned, smiling all the while, as if casting a spell that was as amusing as it was powerful.

He stopped turning and gazed deep into the face of the sky once more. “Come on,” he coaxed softly, the woman mouthing the same words, and the wind began to blow. It came out of the cast where it had been waiting all along and lifted up the kite with unseen hands.

The little dog was barking furiously now, and even the St. Bernard could not resist a bit of noisemaking. Smiling, the man offered the kite string to the woman, and they shared it back and forth between them while the Fool rose higher and higher above The Hill, borne aloft in a diamond cage.

The wind blew strong all summer.

Matt Ruff

Ithaca /New York City

May 1985–April 1987