Beauty (27 page)

We had gone only a little way when we saw the Sidhe coming toward us, a host on horseback, the first among them leading two riderless horses by their bridles. Oh, the horses were fine! All the horses I had seen as a child were nothing to these, and all the tack I had cared for was nothing to what they wore. Milk-white steeds, they were, shod with silver and bridled in gold, with gemmed frontispieces over their foreheads and jeweled taches across their chests. The skirts of the saddles were dagged, with gilded edges, and were gemmed in patterns of flowers and leaves. Broad in the chest, those horses were, and their nostrils flared and their eyes gleamed as though made of fire.

The riders wore green mantles fringed with gold and bright helmets feathered with green plumes. Each one had in his hand a golden spear from which a long, narrow banner flew, the banners coiling across the sky like the writing I had seen on leatherwork brought back to Westfaire by Papa's father, the liquid writing of the heathen in the Holy Land.

"Read the banners," Mama instructed me, laying her hand on my eyes, and in that instant I could understand them, for they spelled words and paragraphs that slipped into my mind as a hand into a well-worn glove. They expressed the language of the djinni, the banner language of the slow-winds which all in Faery know. The words told me it was the King of that place coming to welcome Mama, and with him a whole host of other elvish peoples, all curling their banners to make her name: Elladine.

Behind these male fairies the females rode, clad in bright silks of colors and designs I had never seen, their hair bound in circlets of oak leaves tied with ivy, the ivy leaves dangling beside their pure white brows. Most among them had golden hair, and this was obviously the color preferred. Others, male and female, were smaller, swarthier folk who rode at the sides of the procession, and at the rear, mostly unheeded by the golden-haired. The King wore a high crown tipped with diamonds like drops of dew glittering with inner lights.

Mama bowed when he approached, tugging me into a similar obeisance. He got down from his horse and bowed in return. There was much talk as I was led forward and introduced. Beauty. Daughter of Elladine. Only half fairy, but true to her mother's line. Much murmuring among the ladies. "Elladine's child? But so old!" I tried not to let the shock show on my face as I tucked that away to think on later. There were many glittering eyes among the men. "Elladine's daughter. Still young enough!" No one explained, but it was not long before I learned why this difference in their perceptions.

We mounted the white horses brought out for us. I had never ridden a horse like that. His feet fell like feathers upon the grass. His mane tossed like silver floss, floating upon the air. His gait was smooth, firm, and steady as a stone, and his eyes were full of intelligence. I had no need to ride. He carried me. Mama touched me, and I found myself clad as they all were, silken gown, green mantle, and wreath of leaves. We rode toward the djinni castle nearest us, one with towers impossibly narrow and high, with conical roofs so tall I did not know how they could have been built, topped with banners which reached to the stars.

A fairy woman rode up beside me, and another on the other side. "Well met, Beauty," they called to me. "We are your grandaunts. We were at your christening." They waved and rode on, looking at me curiously over their shoulders with something of the same expression Mama had first shown me. That slight narrowing of eyes, that barely noticeable discomfiture.

Another took their place. "I am your Grandaunt Joyeause," she introduced herself. "When your mother and I carried your sleeping body up to the tower, I had no idea the curse would seem to take such little time."

"The curse ... " I faltered. So far as I knew, the curse was continuing. Mama and Joyeause had gone back to Westfaire to move my body into the tower, and it was then, returning to Ylles, that Mama had been caught by Carabosse's spell. But it hadn't been my body they had carried up to the tower of Westfaire. With sudden pain I admitted to myself that they hadn't known the difference!

I turned away, trying not to think of that. "Is it morning or evening," I asked Mama, gesturing at the sky.

"It is as it is," she said. "As it always is in Faery. The sky a dark and glorious blue. The stars just showing. The flowers still visible, and their perfume lying soft on the air. The grasses cool with evening. The air warm from day just past and the warmed leaves of the trees exuding fragrance. As it always is, in Faery."

What was the emotion in her voice? I could not place it. Not sadness, not quite. What? I was lost among these people. I could not tell what they were feeling, or why!

"Look there!" cried Aunt Joyeause.

There were whisperings among the host. "Mab. Queen Mab. Come to greet Elladine."

A single rider came toward us, clad all in silver with a crown of pearls. Far behind her white horse was another steed ridden by a dark-haired young man. He was dressed in silver, also, but he was not her son or her brother or her lover. They appeared to be of an age, but this was only seeming. She was old as the hills and lovely as the dawn, and he was something other than that.

"Young Tom-lin of Ercildoune," they whispered. "See, she's brought young Tom-lin."

"He fell from his horse, hunting," Mama whispered to me. "In time to see Mab riding by. He greeted her, and she snatched him up. She brought him here to Faery, and here he's dwelt since, almost seven Faery years. She longs for him, but though he gives her every reverence, he'll have none of her." Mama's nostrils flared, as though in disgust at such ingratitude and impertinence.

"Maybe he longs for home," I suggested.

"What has home to compare with this," Mama said.

"Why do they call him Tom-lin?" I asked.

"Because he has ceased to be Tom," she said. "Though when he speaks of himself, he calls himself Thomas the Rhymer, still, and writes verses down on bits of paper."

Mama greeted Queen Mab, evidently a higher ranking queen than herself, though Mab was kindness itself when she spoke to me, welcoming me to Faery.

"You've been long away," she said to Mama.

"A hundred mortal years, evidently," Mama said gaily. "Else my daughter would not be with me."

So Mama hadn't known the difference between me and Beloved. So what. I'd been asleep. Or rather Beloved had. And Mama hadn't seen me since I was a baby. How would she have known? Inside me, something said, "Somehow, she should have known."

Queen Mab turned to ride with us to the palace and Tom-lin turned to follow. I caught the full strength of his stare, hungry and demanding. I was careful not to stare back, having the feeling Queen Mab would not much like it, but something in me responded to that stare. Something human and sympathetic.

There was a feast prepared at the castle. We ate and drank. The wine was wonderfully flavored and scented, but it did not make one drunk. The food was wonderfully prepared, but it did not make one full. One could eat and drink forever if one wished, pandering, as Aunt Basil had used to say, to one's palate with no thought for tomorrow's indigestion.

When everyone was weary of eating, we trooped outside. I thought, perhaps, we would walk in the gardens or have music or even dance, but no. In the glades behind the castle streams ran into silver pools, steaming beneath the stars. The water was warm, and my astonishment at this had not faded when I looked up to see the inhabitants of Faery slipping into the pools, naked as eggs, Mama among them.

She called to me in a bell-like voice. I sat on a stone and fumbled with one shoe, trying not to stare. I could see them, males and females both, slender, the woman almost breastless, their vulvas naked of hair, their bodies like little manikins carved from ivory. The males had a kind of sheath, like a dog, or goat, coming from between their legs and a little way up their bellies, and these sheaths seemed covered with golden fur. Nothing dangled. Nothing protruded. Nothing seemed awkward or erotic. Their smooth buttocks folded gently together on either side of a simple, unperforated crease. Mama had told me the truth. They did not piss or shit in Faery.

But I was not built as they were. I had breasts. I had hair on me. If I bent over, as some of them were doing, my parts would show. I was overcome with shame. I blushed.

And every eye was on me, fierce and prurient. Out of the doggy sheathes, little penises protruded, like darting red tongues. On every female face a luxurious interest gleamed, and I saw their hands reach out to stroke one another familiarly.

I stood up and walked away.

Mama was beside me. "When our fairy children are reared here, they do not find our habits strange," she said with a little tinkle of laughter which did not cover her distress. Her tone was as it had been sometimes in Chinanga, when she turned remote and still. "Grown-up children have too much of the world in them. Perhaps, in time ... " She patted me on the arm and went away, leaving me to walk among the flowers.

Thomas walked there, too, evidently as discomfited as I at the naked licentiousness of Faery. He glanced at me, but did not offer conversation. After a time the fairy folk came to get us, and we went into the palace, to our own rooms, to sleep on beds where soft moss grew instead of mattresses, and coverlets sewn of rose petals kept off the drafts. If there had been any drafts, which there were not. Fountains played in that place, and their music was an unending melody. I was glad to be left alone.

The blue of the sky seemed to deepen, only a little, as though in awareness that most of us slept. The stars crinkled and winked, as though talking. I lay awake, lost in wonder. After a time there came a scratching at my door. I went on silent feet and opened it, and it was Thomas the Rhymer there. He touched me on the arm.

"I did not dare speak to you in the gardens," he said, softly as a whisper, with great longing in his voice. He stared at me closely. "It's true, you're human!"

I let him in and shut the door behind him. I was dressed in a full, silky robe. I needed only imagine what I wore, and it was there, around me. It had sleeves that fell away from my arms, floor long panels that wafted like spider silk. "I'm half human," I told him. "Elladine is my mama, but my father is human."

He nodded. "I saw those of Faery at the pool, lusting after you. You have a fine smell about you, one that arouses them. You smell of fecundity. They are almost sterile, you know. They seldom have children of their own anymore. They must steal children from cradles, or consort with mortals to bear them."

"Why is that?"

"I do not know. It has something to do with the way they were made, at the beginning of time."

"My mama is disappointed in me." It hurt to say that, but I was sure of it.

He nodded at me soberly. "You noticed that, did you? Well, it is because you are older than most children the Sidhe get. Most half mortals are stolen as babies or are born here, and they can become like the Sidhe, almost entirely. It is too late for you, however. You will never be one of them, and Elladine knows it. Though she longs to love you, she will not let herself become too fond of you. They lust after mortals, but they do not let themselves love them much."

"Not even her own daughter?" I cried in anguish.

"Not even their own children, no. Long ago, at the beginning of time, it was a different matter. They were noble and mighty then. They did not reject the nobility of suffering for love. But things are different now."

"Why?" I cried. "Oh, why?"

"Because they are diminished from what they once were. Or if not diminished, changed. They do not say so, but one learns of it, listening to what they say and do not say."

"I thought only the trooping fairies were diminished."

"Now. As these will be later. Once these were great as gods, but Faery is dwindling, even now. When it becomes small enough, perhaps I could step out of it, but it will be too late for me."

He sounded anguished. There were tears in his eyes. I started to ask him why the diminution of the Sidhe, but there was a sound in the courtyard outside my window, and he slipped away, closing the door behind him. I heard Mab's voice, asking him where he had been, and he told her he had been walking in the courtyard.

"In the courtyard, Tom-lin?" Her voice was like honey and silk, like fire and gall.

"If it please you, Your Majesty."

"You know what would please me, Tom-Lin."

"I cannot, Your Majesty. Such an honor is not for me."

"I could put a spell upon you, Tom, so you'd think it was your Janet you were making love to."

His voice rasped as he said, "Then it would be my Janet I was making love to, Your Majesty. In my heart."

I peeked out through the window. She stood there in all her loveliness, beautiful as a goddess. If she was diminished, it did not show, not in that moment. "If I cannot have your heart and your seed, Tom-lin, then you cannot have your Janet." She turned and went away from him and he stood there in the silence, his shoulders shaking.

I fell onto the bed, deeply disturbed by what I had heard, sure I would not sleep. The next thing I knew, it was morning, or so much morning as ever comes in that land. Mama and I drank little glasses of something warmly sweet and honey-smelling, then rode out in procession to attend a session at the King's court.

"Does the King have a name?" I asked Mama.

"Some call him Oberon," she told me. "Some Finvarra. Some call him the King of Golden Halls. Some, the King of the Hill People. Some the King of the Good Folk or the Gentle Ones. We call him He Who Endures, and we know when he is gone, so will we be." I heard in her voice again that slight remoteness I had heard once or twice in Chinanga, though now, having spoken to Thomas, I thought I understood it.

When we came to the King's court, the news came out to meet us that a delegation was soon to arrive, people of another sort. It was not Faery, according to what they said, and yet it was.

"It is not heaven nor earth," Mama told me mysteriously, "Nor any hell, so it must be Faery, and yet it is not the Sidhe." She would not tell me any more, but merely laughed. None of the folk of that place seemed to take this delegation seriously, yet when the time came for them to assemble in the great hall and hear the words of those who came as envoys, everyone was still and courteous and grave. The glamour lay about us so thick that I could smell it. Mama was on the dais among the royalty, and I stood along the side in dagged velvet and cloth of gold to watch the envoys come in.