Beauty (55 page)

"And the man found her there. When she told him what she had done, he took the core of the fruit she had eaten and tasted it and put the seeds in his pocket. 'For,' he said, 'if you must leave the garden, so will I. And if you must die, so will I. I will go with you wherever you go, leaving all the garden behind. And of the tree of knowledge you have given up paradise for, we will take the seeds to plant in every land we come to, and we will find the fruit bitter and we will find the fruit sweet."

Mama sighed. "And that is why man was cast out to be no better than a beast, dirty and itchy and covered by smuts from the fire. And it is why he creates, and why he may grow wise, and why he is numerous. Though it is said among the Sidhe that both wisdom and children are the burden of men, we have desired only children. We have not much valued wisdom, for we considered it less valuable than the immortality man gave up for it. Which is why I gave you the hank of thread, child. To sew a cap of wisdom if you liked, for you are half mortal and might care about such things."

A thinking cap! Oh, I should have known. Of course. What else could it have been?

We had come to the road which wound among the dun hills. I could see the moonlight on the lances far ahead, for the host was strung out for miles. Here and there I noticed huddled human forms, their faces in their hands, trying hard not to see us. We must have seemed very terrible indeed, awesome and fell. I wondered what stories those people would tell their children about the night they had seen the Fairy Ride, going out in their thousands from the lands below.

Something itched at me. Something I had seen, or thought I had seen. A flicker, perhaps, along the route we were taking. Something or someone upon the hills. I searched, seeing nothing. Mama's eyes were better than mine, and so were Puck's. "Look," I told them. "Along the hills. Is there something there that shouldn't be?"

Both of them scanned the horizon. At first they saw nothing, but then Mama stiffened and pointed. Then Puck saw it, too, and then I did. The gleam of moonlight on metal, high upon a hilltop overlooking the road we were taking. I knew what it was.

"The television crew," I told them both, barking unamused laughter. "Here to film the end of Faery."

"They may be here to film it," said Puck, angrily, "but it will not be filmed." He jumped up behind me and turned my horse aside, and we went behind the hill. I heard a snort behind us and saw Carabosse's donkey following. So there were four of us, Mama, me, Puck, and Carabosse. We circled around the hills, the horses picking their way through the gorse and the tumbled stones as we worked our way higher, toward the ridge. Evidently no one else among the host had seen them. When we came out behind them, they had no idea they had been observed.

"Let me," I suggested in a bleak voice. "I know their language."

Mama nodded. Carabosse snorted, sitting still upon her donkey. Puck sat down cross-legged and waited to see what I would do.

"This sequence," I said loudly, "is expected to complete the documentary on the last fairies."

Bill spun toward me, then Janice and Alice. The machine sat a short distance away, like a great stone tub. Martin stood up from the place he'd been kneeling behind a stone, watching the host pass below. Jaybee turned slowly, letting the camera rest on me. Carabosse did something with one hand, and he cursed, taking the camera off his shoulder.

"Damned lens fogged," he snarled.

"You are filming the departure of magic from the world. However, your premise is false." I was determined to say it, no matter whether it was true or not. Mama was there, and she needed to hear it. "This host, it is true, will leave the world, but magic will return."

"The hell it will," said Janice. "This is the beginning of the end." She laughed, shortly. "From here on out, it's all downhill. Magic is gone. From here on out, it's religion, then romance, then horror, then the end!"

"Whatever comes when," I said, fixing Jaybee with a loathing glare, "you film nothing here today. Nothing at all."

He had the lens wiped off and raised it to his eye once more, only to curse once more, taking it down to stare at it. Carabosse had evidently fixed it so that he could not get a picture.

"Give it up," I told them. "Go home. We're not going to let you do it."

Jaybee got up and stalked toward Carabosse, violence obviously in his mind. When he got there, she wasn't there. She was a hundred feet away, sitting on her donkey. "No," she said firmly, "you'll not show anyone what happened here tonight. No one at all."

"You have no right," blustered Martin. "People have a right to ... "

"Know only what others choose to let them know about private matters," finished Mama. "These are private matters."

" ... a right to know," he concluded.

"No, they do not," Puck said. "People have no right to crash private parties, pornographer. And this party is private."

Jaybee sputtered.

"You won't get a picture," I said. "Even if we go away, which we're about to do. You just won't get a picture, that's all. We have decided the world will never see this."

And we rode down the hill to the road, leaving them fuming behind us. Bill hadn't argued. He had just looked at me, stared at me, listening to every word that was said, as though he recognized me. This trip had happened the day after I got to the twenty-first. I remembered his returning from it, angry that we hadn't let them finish. His superiors must have been annoyed with him, laying the fault at his door. Well, the fault was not his, but there would never be a documentary on the last of the fairies. The last whales, the last dog, the last tree, the last radish, yes. No last fairy. Not yet.

We came back into the ride farther forward in the column. We passed the cross I remembered from last time. It was not long after that we came to the great cavern, the one with the door. Some of the Sidhe had already built a fire. Others were watching the eastern horizon. Evidently the door opened at moonrise, whether the Dark Lord would or no. When it opened, they planned to go through.

Mama shivered, and I got down from the horse and went to her. "You're cold," I said, idiotically. We were all cold. The night was crisp and chill. A winter's night. "Take my coat."

She shook her head. "You have nothing heavy enough to warm this chill. I know what's down there."

I stepped away, staring at the fire and at the door behind it. I was the only one who did know what was behind that door, though I had told Mama and she had tried to describe it to anyone who would listen.

"Father Raymond used to say,
'Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem,
' " I told her. "It means that victory can come out of hopelessness." She smiled, only a little.

Israfel came riding back through the quiet host, looking for me. When he saw me, he turned his horse and came straight toward me, bowing to Mama, to Carabosse, even to Puck as he came. When he reached me, he held out a hand and pulled me up onto his horse, then rode a short distance away. We both got down and stood together, looking at the assembled multitude. He was very quiet.

"I want you to have this," he said, taking a scarf from around his neck and putting it about mine. It was crimson silk, with bands of silver and gold at the edges. "It is real, not enchanted. I wove it, with my own hands. When we go in, put on your boots and your cloak and go home, back to Westfaire."

"To Westfaire? But Carabosse said he would look there."

Israfel kissed me gently. "He would have. Oh, yes, my love, he would have looked there. But now, we believe he won't have time."

"I can't let you go in there alone," I said. In that instant he was Giles, he was Bill, he was anyone who had ever cared for me. I could not let him go.

"We aren't alone," he said. "Nor are you. And you have something to do yet, Beauty. Something more important than going into that hellhole again. Carabosse knows. I know."

A sound caught his attention, and he turned to watch. The moon was rising. The door was opening. He leapt into the saddle and drew me up beside him. He kissed me again. It felt like Giles's kiss, that night when we danced on the terrace. He laid his head against my breast, where the thing burned, whatever it was. At Mama's side he left me, then rode forward into the host.

"Someone will come to tell you about it, daughter," she said. "Puck, if no one else. Do not grieve over us. We've played the proud fools for a very long time." She leaned down and kissed me, too, on the cheek. My lips and my face and my chest all burned from fairy kisses. Then she rode off, down the hill, and I was left standing beside Puck, holding the reins of my horse in one hand. Carabosse jogged past, waving to me. Below, the horses were pouring through the doors like water down a drain. In no time at all they were gone. The door closed. The cold moon looked down at me, unsmiling.

I tied Israfel's scarf around my neck. If there was something left for me to do, I could not imagine what. I had very little time left in which to do anything.

Puck was kneeling at my feet, holding the boots. I slipped my feet in, one, then the other.

"I'll see you there," he said.

Perhaps I nodded. Perhaps not. Far off on the top of a hill was a shimmer, a shifting, as of a time machine going back to its own time. I, too, needed to go to my own time.

"Boots," I said, "take me home."

29

I tottered on my feet beside the rose-hedge of Westfaire. Beside me was the shepherds' well. I could barely see the cat's-head stone. I put out my hands to catch myself, and they were only bones with a little flesh bagged about them, blue veins running like rootlets across their backs and between fingers with nails all ridged and twisted. I sat down on the coping of the well and leaned against the post. Israfel had told me to go to Westfaire. What could I do in Westfaire? Besides, I had no strength to go anywhere.

I sat there for a long time, accumulating strength, or perhaps losing it. The boots were heavy upon my feet, and I slipped them off. The cloak was heavy upon my limbs, and I took it off as well, letting it lie behind me over the well coping. I sat there in a ragged kirtle, feeling the sun strike my skin through the rents. Ah, well. If I got a bit stronger, I could put the boots back on and go to the Dower House. There might be someone there who remembered me. Or who would take me in, out of charity.

As I sat up, almost determined to go, something dropped from the pocket of my cloak. I picked it up and looked at it, the hank of thread. I reached into the clock pocket for the packet of needles and found it with one unlucky fingertip.

Thread and needles. To sew, so Mama had said, a cap of wisdom, a thinking cap. If one wanted a thinking cap. Mama hadn't. Wisdom was the curse of man, she said. In seeking wisdom, we had lost our heritage. I didn't believe that. We hadn't sought wisdom diligently enough, that's how we'd lost our heritage. We preferred cleverness to wisdom. Instead of seeking the truth, we had preferred to believe in easy certainties. Always so much easier to take the lazy, easy way and then pretend God had commanded it. I sighed. I couldn't make a cap. There was nothing to make it of.

One hand went to my face to wipe frustrated tears away, encountering a corner of the scarf Israfel had given me. Such luxurious silk. Silk for a princess. Real world silk.

I could make a cap of that.

That is, I could make a cap if I could thread the needle. My eyes were weak, half-blind. The needle was small. I fumbled with the hank of thread, moving the almost invisible end of thread back and forth. The needle slipped in my hand; I grabbed at it, pricking myself; and the thread fell into the well.

I sobbed. Weakly. Without conviction. What had made me think I could do it in the first place? My back pressed against the post, I waited to die, believing I could cry myself to death if I just kept at it. There wasn't much to me anymore. I probably weighed no more than eighty pounds. I thought I would leak my life out through my eyes and then dry up and blow away. That would be the end to it, and I could quit trying.

"What's the matter, Grandmother," said a voice. It was a male voice, a young voice. I couldn't see who spoke.

"I've dropped my thread," I said hopelessly. "It dropped into the well."

"I'll get it for you, Grandmother," the voice said. I hadn't time to wonder how before I heard the plop of something sizeable dropping into the water. Not a big enough splash to be a person. Or had it been? A quite small person, perhaps?

I heard assorted liquid sounds, plashings and gulpings, then a scratching and grunting, and finally something wet and cool pressed the soaking hank of thread into my hand.

"I thank you," I said. "But I'm afraid my reach is beyond my grasp. I needed it to sew with and cannot see to thread the needle."

"It's a pity we do not have a fairy about," fretted the voice. "One who would give you keen eyesight as a fairy gift."

I started to agree with the young man, coming to myself with rather a start. I
was
a fairy, one who had been taught such spells, a long time ago. I had learned diminishing spells. The Spell of Bran. Spells for far-sight, sure-foot, keen-ear. Perhaps if I blended the former and the latter. Keen-sight was what was wanted.

I tottered to my feet, made a few graceless passes, and chanted the proper words. My vision cleared at once, and I stared at the well coping where a large green frog sat regarding me with bulging eyes. "How marvelous, Grandmother," he said. "We had a fairy after all."

"I am not your grandmother," I snapped. At my age it was not easy to snap. The few teeth I still had seemed loose.

"I know you are probably not really my grandmother," said the frog. "I was only being polite."

Indeed, he was a particularly polite frog. I could not recall, through the fog of my aged memory, that I had ever encountered a frog of such poise before. I cast about for recollections of other frogs, finding such memories sparse and unprofitable, mixed inexplicably with memories of dinners in Bayonne and Lourdes and garlicky servings of something I had preferred to think of at the time as chicken.