All Night Awake (39 page)

The same scene as previously, but seen through Quicksilver’s eyes. The landscape seems to waver and shift even more than before, since Quicksilver is dying of weakness and lack of magic.

Q
uicksilver saw fear of death in Will’s eyes. Ariel, her arm around Quicksilver, attempting to support him, trembled at the wolf’s words.

And Kit—Kit was perforce already dead, already a ghost. Never Land would eat the substance of Kit’s spirit and wholly drain him away. Kit would be no more. No soul would remain of the great human poet. Kit would have no ever-after, no life after life such as other humans were entitled to.

And Quicksilver himself, feeling himself die, could only think that he couldn’t allow that.

He himself was dead. All his mistakes, all he’d done since taking the crown of the hill, had only justified Sylvanus’s belief that he’d bring ruin to all.

Ariel had told Quicksilver of the blight and the deaths in the hill, and on whom should the blame for those rest, but on Quicksilver?

Oh, let him die, but let Ariel and Will leave here in peace. And let Kit go free, while his spirit yet existed.

Trembling, but thinking that if the wolf listened to anything, it would be Quicksilver’s true submission, Quicksilver shook off Ariel’s arm.

He walked halfway to the wolf and knelt down on the shifting ground, now marsh now sandy desert.

How cold the ground. How cold Quicksilver. He gathered his meager force and spoke, his voice scarcely louder than the howling wind. “Brother, the time and case require haste: Look here, I throw my infamy at thee. I will not ruin my father’s hill, nor by demanding the crown see my friends dead. Maybe I was never fit to govern the hill. The present seems to confirm it.” Quicksilver took his hand to his chest in a show of honesty. Never Land had leeched him so, he could barely feel his own hand.

“I’ll no more bend the fatal instruments of war against my brother and my lawful king. Aye, have the kingdom, Sylvanus, return to the hill. Let the hill power cloak you in a new body. And be our king, and I your loyal subject. In witness of which, I bend my knee.” He opened his hands, as if to show that he was there, on his knees, and he bent his head in true submission.

Oh, only let Sylvanus believe his submission. Oh, only let the others go.

Behind him, Ariel said, “No, milord. You cannot give the hill to him.”

Quicksilver looked over his shoulder. A single look that commanded his loved lady to silence.

The wolf grinned, fangs exposed in a gloating smile. “You beg prettily, brother.” The smile broadened and green, glowing saliva dripped from the fangs. “See what fear does. And longing for life.”

His life? Quicksilver had never expected to get out of this with his life. “Life? Oh, I long not for life, nor did I ever expect you’d let me live. Only let these three go on whom my heart is set. Let Ariel to the hill, let Will to London, and let Kit go to whatever destiny awaits him, beyond this desolate land, where his spirit will be swallowed by nothingness.” He looked back over his shoulder, taking a last look at Kit, Ariel, and Will. “Listen, listen. I am so sorry for my trespass that I here proclaim myself ready to die. Ariel, you must be loyal to my brother, now your king. And Will, you must strive to be a friend to the king of elves. And Kit . . . . Fare thee well, Kit . . . and pardon me. I was wrong and so to my brother I turn my blushing cheeks.

“Pardon me, Sylvanus. Spare them. And take revenge on me as you will.” His words were exhausted with his breath. He knelt, and tried to hope.

Silence reigned yet after he had stopped speaking.

The cold, leeching wind howled around them and Quicksilver shivered with it.

Then Sylvanus laughed. His laughter, colder than his voice, visibly curled in coils of darkness around them all. “Brother, you call me? I have no brother, I am like no brother, and this word ‘love,’ which graybeards call divine, be resident in men like one another and not in me: I am myself alone. And what do you expect with your speech to excite: pity or fear?” The dog snarled and growled and, with bared fangs, approached Quicksilver’s kneeling figure, walked around and around him, in sullen menace.

Quicksilver quivered, but made no sound, nor did he change his kneeling, imploring stance. Was it all lost? Even this, his meager hope, that he might die here alone?

“You ask me to spare your loved ones? I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear.” More laughter echoed, chillingly, through the air.

“Indeed,” the wolf spoke again. “I often heard my mother say I came into the world with my legs forward. The midwife wonder’d and the women cried ‘O, bless us, he is born with teeth!’ And so I was; which plainly signified that I should snarl and bite and play the dog.”

With a low growl, half-laughter half-menace, the wolf said, “And so I shall. And so you die. All of you.”

Quicksilver saw the wolf jump through the air and tried to roll out of the way. But he had not the energy to be quick, and he knew he would die.

And the other three hostages after him.

Scene 47

The same scene, but seen through Kit’s one eye.

K
it saw the wolf leap toward the defenseless, kneeling Quicksilver. If any love remained in Kit’s stilled heart, it was his devotion to the dual sovereign of Elvenland.

He jumped forward, at the same time that Ariel did.

He smiled at Ariel, a flashing smile, and didn’t realize that his injury might make it look like a rictus, until he saw her answering, startled gaze.

The elf and the human who loved the same being looked at each other, both with a kind of wonder that the other should feel the same, then turned their attention to their beloved who must be protected.

Quicksilver must be saved, and for that he depended on them now that he was for once too weak to save himself.

Ariel folded herself upon Quicksilver, protecting his body with hers.

Kit interposed himself between them and the wolf’s snarling menace.

“No,” Kit yelled. “No, cur, no, mangy wolf. You shall not have him. Your crimes end here. I’m not afraid of you, for I have died already, and a man can die but once.”

But even as Kit yelled, the wolf jumped through Kit as though Kit weren’t there and set to, growling and snarling, tearing at Ariel’s arm that protected Quicksilver’s face.

Scene 48

Never Land from Will’s viewpoint, as he watches the wolf attack the Queen of Elvenland.

W
ill felt frozen with fear, iced with despair.

Watching the wolf bite and tear at Ariel’s arms, listening to her scream, hearing Quicksilver imploring her to let the wolf at him, listening to Marlowe bemoan his immateriality, Will thought the wolf would come for him next.

If Quicksilver’s courage wouldn’t move the wolf, if Ariel’s grace didn’t mollify it, if Kit’s mad rage was to no effect, what could Will do that would save him? Save them all?

Will was a mere mortal, without even the magic that Ariel must still have, after Never Land had leeched almost all.

Will was a nothing. A failed poet. An absent father.

The wind of Never Land robbed him of hope and strength.

And yet an idea formed in his mind. The wolf had taken human form to do a type of magic. Sympathetic magic. Will’s hand fell to his dagger.

The wolf was not truly alive, and he couldn’t be killed, and yet . . .

Holding his dagger, clasping it tight, Will said, “Thou art a dagger of the mind, and will cut through spirit.”

The idea was insane, yet the new Will, the Will who had learned to be foolish sometimes and expose himself to ridicule to save himself greater pains, would try this. And what could happen to Will that would be worse than shortening a life expectancy little worth mentioning?

He stepped up behind the wolf, who, absorbed in mauling the Queen of Fairyland, didn’t notice the mere mortal.

Will drew his dagger.

“No, Will. He’ll go for you,” Kit Marlowe whispered, his immaterial form touching Will. “And he can’t be killed thus.”

But Will raised his dagger and let it fall. The wolf could be killed thus, for it was magic. Sympathetic magic. Will would do the gesture and thus visualize the result and bring it about by the force of his wishing.

The dagger went into the wolf’s grey fur.

The wolf howled, letting go of Ariel, and turned his head to try to bite Will, but his fangs wouldn’t reach

Black blood poured out over Will’s hand.

And Will plunged the dagger again and yet again.

The wolf bayed and writhed.

Will visualized the wolf dead, the force gone out from the dread creature. “Now die, die, die, die, die.”

The wolf bayed a last, awful scream, half-human, half-canine, and then collapsed, rolling off the sovereigns of Elvenland.

Ariel stood, shaking, cradling her torn, mangled arm.

Quicksilver stood, quivering, almost wholly transparent.

Marlowe looked at Will amazed, awe in his one remaining eye.

Far in the distance, a Hunter’s horn sounded.

Scene 49

Never Land seems to stabilize and freeze in dark, dreary outlines, with towering trees from which hangs moss like winding sheets. From the grey sky marred by wisps of black cloud, the Hunter’s dogs, and horse, and the Hunter himself appear.

S
trange how one’s idea of fear changed.

The first time Will had seen the Hunter, in the forest so many years ago, he’d thought him a dread being, full of majestic menace.

Now, standing amid a magical land that shouldn’t—that in a greater sense didn’t—exist, his hands tinged with the blood of a magical creature, Will found the Hunter reassuring. The Hunter was something of forest and glade and the more rational world of Fairyland. A lord of justice, justice that could not be averted.

Will sheathed his dagger, and stood beside the corpse of the Hunter’s dog, while the dread gigantic horse of shadow galloped down from the sky, and while the pack of the Hunter’s dogs approached, growling, threatening, fangs bared, menace in every limb.

Did the Hunter mean to take revenge for his dog?

Will couldn’t credit it.

The man who’d been afraid of approaching a theater owner, the man who’d let everyone cozen him and fool him, for once stood his ground, proud and sure of his actions.

The Hunter descended from his horse, and whistled his dogs to heel.

The creatures crowded around him, silent, menacing.

“How so now?” the Hunter asked Will. “How so now, mortal? You dare kill my dog?”

The Hunter’s voice was like icy daggers, his eyes—a blue burning within the perfect, immortal features—transfixed Will.

But Will gathered his voice, and threw his head back. “I did what I must do, to protect myself and those who depend on me for protection.”

Something like laughter rumbled from the Hunter.

What could laughter mean from such a creature?

“Did you now?” the Hunter asked. “Did you now? Then no more can be asked of you. I, too, do what I do for the same reason.” The darkness that was the Hunter’s face shifted and changed. Somehow it looked friendly, calmer. “And the dog’s death has healed me, and restored the world.”