Pamela Dean (56 page)

"Go on."

"I won't. It's ridiculous."

"Yes, I know it is, but that doesn't prevent its being true. Look. I wrote it all down after it happened. Do you want to just sit here quietly and read it? I can make you some tea."

"No," said Janet. "I can't read your handwriting. And I don't want any tea. Thank you,"

she added; she could tell not so much from what she had said, which she could hardly remember, but from the trapped and furious feeling in her stomach, that she was being rude. "Just tell me. And sit
down
first. Please."

Thomas came slowly across the room and sat down at the head of the bed. "Seven years ago," said Thomas, "it was fall term of my freshman year. I was going to major in Political Science and change the world. I was going to make history behave itself. The people in Govy 10 were having a Hallowe'en party, but I already didn't really like the looks of them; I figured they were going to think up something worse than climbing the water tower. So I went up to the farm and asked for the friskiest horse they had. That was athletic, you see, and manly, but I could do it in solitary splendor.

"They were having a party up there, too, a whole bunch of Classics majors, waiting for Medeous to come so they could ride all over town and feel superior—never mind. Johnny Lane was minding the stable, and he tried to warn me. If it had been Kit, it might have worked, but Johnny's got an awful way with him, the minute he tells you something's a bad idea you think it's the unified field theory and you have to try it."

"Excuse me. You say, 'Johnny Lane' as if—I don't know—isn't he your brother?"

"No, he isn't, that's one of Medeous's little jokes. He's a great-granduncle, or something like that. She likes the resemblance. He really did try to tell me, but nobody's going to persuade me to take a nice placid old mare by referring to my pretty face.

"So I referred to
his
pretty face—it's the same one, more or less, except for the chin; he's got a dimple and I haven't, thank God. He was all in red and green velvet, and he had a cap with a feather in it, which of course I envied like hell, but I wouldn't have admitted it if my—well, anyway, he drew himself up and he said—I remember the exact words, because it was the only dead-serious thing I ever heard him say—he said, 'You ride at your peril; this is the night for ambition; distraction comes later.'"

"He alluded to Lewis Carroll?"

"Yes, he did. And he spoke indirectly, the way they all do. He was trying to tell me that this was a night for recruiting—"

"Addition."

"Yes. And that the sacrifice came later."

"Subtraction and distraction too?"

"Uh-huh."

"So what happened?"

"I said that the uglification and derision were already right in front of me; and that was that. Never cap the quotation of somebody who's helping you against his instincts, that's all I can say. He gave me one of the black horses. It was a mare, and I thought he'd foisted off on me the very placid old horse I'd said I didn't want. But we rode off, down the shoulder of the highway, past the bridge and the Lower Arb and all the playing fields, and along a path there used to be, before they put up the New Men's Gym, and down to the river. And I could tell that she wasn't placid, but I thought she had very good manners, at least. We had a gallop along the river path, which was suicidal, but she managed, and I managed. We stopped in that sort of sunken meadow you can see from the bus, right after the good view of campus. She ate some grass and I lay down and stared at the s tars until all the bugs still left came and bit me.

"We went back along the river path, not even galloping; and I heard horses coming, and bells, and tried to rein her in. She wasn't having any of it. She had me off her back in a second, down there by the river. I landed stupidly and sprained my wrist, and I was sitting there in a clump of goldenrod swearing at it and the horse, and I looked up."

Janet felt as if she had turned the page of a book in the middle of a sentence and found herself staring at the Afterword. Thomas was looking over her head, into his chaotic closet.

"What happened then?" she said, not loudly.

"You know what Thomas the Rhymer said when he met the Queen of Faerie? He said,

'All hail thou mighty queen of Heaven, your like on earth I never did see.' But she didn't look like that to me. I knew who Medeous was, because she'd been the speaker at Convocation. But I didn't recognize her. All the red in her hair was glowing. There were fireflies all around her, in October. I thought, one or the other of us shouldn't be here; this is a meeting that shouldn't happen; it's against the rules. She frightened me more than anything ever has. I was more scared then than I am now, when I know what's going to happen. I don't want to die, but it's a thing people do. But I should be dying for some human thing, even if it's folly or stupidity—not for her. Not for them. They're not evil; even that is comprehensible; people can be evil. They're foreign. They're like Linear A. They look as if they ought to mean something, but you can't tell what it is."

"What did she do?"

"First she reamed me out for stealing one of her horses and blistered Johnny for giving it to me; and then she took me up on her own horse, in front of her, the way you'd do with a child you were giving a ride to; and we rode back through campus and into the Lower Arb, to that place where the river makes a huge bend and there are those gigantic willows. They built enormous fires there, and sang and ate and drank, and she bound up my wrist with her headband. She made Johnny take me home, which scared me almost as much as she did. I looked pleadingly at Kit, and he came along too.

"The next morning the swelling was gone from my wrist. And my advisor started trying to persuade me to major in Classics."

"Who was your advisor?"

"Janie Schafer. She hadn't gone over to History yet. I thought that was the key; that if you wouldn't be a Classics major, they couldn't have you. But she had me from the minute I fell off that horse. And every seven years, the Queen of Faerie pays a tithe to Hell. It's seven of her years, not of ours; it depends on what she does and where she goes, but she's been teaching at Blackstock for seven years, and this year is the time. She doesn't pay with one of her own; she pays with one of us."

"Do you
believe
in Hell?" Janet wanted Danny Chin here as she had never wanted anybody.

"I believe in something nasty that Medeous needs to feed me to."

"What could scare
her?
" said Janet involuntarily. When she saw Thomas's face, she wished she had kept quiet.

"Guess I'll find out," said Thomas.

With extreme care, Janet steadied her voice. If Thomas wanted to treat this as a nice academic discussion, he should be allowed to do so. It was his fate they were analyzing.

"What happens if she doesn't pay?"

"I'm not sure. Nobody is. They have all these theories on how one escapes. But the only method anybody has ever seen actually work was to have a pregnant woman come and drag the intended victim off his horse on Hallowe'en and hang onto him for dear life while he turned into everything under the sun."

"So what happens to Medeous then, if she fails to pay her tithe?"

"They think she has to pay more next time. They aren't sure. Some of them say there were two victims, one year, and some of them say that was something else; I don't know what. Robin says it's harder for her to control the department after she's missed a payment.

Kit says that's nonsense, but Nick agrees with Robin. I don't know. It's like researching Renaissance Italy."

"And you think it's you this time?"

"They give us a little time to get shriven."

"Did you know it was you when we—"

"Yes, long before that. Why do you think Nick let you go so easily?"

"Do you really expect me to believe you didn't get me pregnant on purpose?"

"Allow me to remind you that you suggested the action that made it possible."

"Allow me to remind you that you took me to that play."

"You said you were on the pill."

"I was on the pill. Do you expect me to believe you didn't know Chester Hall would—would counteract it? Chester Hall, that's got lavender growing around it all summer when you can't
grow
lavender in Minnesota this far north; Chester Hall that's got yarrow blooming next to it in October when yarrow stops blooming in September."

"I don't expect anything," said Thomas. "I've been trying to tell you that."

"My God, no wonder those girls killed themselves. Why don't
you
—" Janet stopped, horrified. What had she become? Before she could frame an apology half abject enough, Thomas answered her.

"I thought of it," he said. "I'm informed, by people who have reason to know, that that only makes it worse. And besides, if I shuffle off this mortal coil before the proper time, she's got time to choose somebody else; and I don't like to think who she might choose to keep me company. All right?"

"And whoever she chooses won't have a pregnant woman handy."

"No."

"Can't you just go get one at the hospital?"

Thomas made a noise that might have been partly a laugh. "Oh, no, you don't fool them that way. It's got to be my child—or the victim's child, whoever the victim is."

"And you really expect me to believe—"

"Stop saying that, for God's sake. If you don't know me it's too late to start collecting testimonials now. I don't expect anything. I shouldn't have said anything. Go drink your yarrow tea."

"Do you want to die?"

"As I observed once before, you are the
dimmest
intelligent woman I have ever met."

This enabled Janet to get up and leave, which was perhaps

what he had intended.

She went outside. A patch of pennyroyal flaunted itself next to the sidewalk, mingling with the petunias the Blackstock gardeners planted every spring. Janet plucked a leaf and smelled it. It was minty, but bitter. There were foxgloves nearby, too. She thought of the conversation with her father, with her mother, about pregnancy and being sensible. It is easy to promise to be sensible, she thought, when one is in a sensible situation. She looked, half in accusation and half in belated sympathy, across the grass to the high windows of Ericson. She remembered another conversation; the result, in fact, of the original discussion of Margaret Roxburgh's suicide.

Whatever else fairy tales might be good for, they taught you to keep your promises.

Janet went back to Eliot without noticing how she got there. Tina was in the room, ironing a patchwork skirt for folk dancing. She chattered cheerfully about her physics professor, who had spent most of the class period telling funny anecdotes about mountain climbing and then related them all to statistical mechanics in the last ten minutes. Janet lay on her bed and listened, smiling when it seemed appropriate.

Molly came in just as Tina unplugged the iron. "Did you talk to Thomas?" she demanded.

"It's pink curtain time," said Janet.

"I thought those were looking a little faded," said Molly, "but is now the—"

"Oh,
Molly,
" said Tina. "You've got a brain. Use it." Molly glared at her. Tina said, with a certain smugness, "Pink curtains means an emergency. What's happened?"

"She thinks she's pregnant," said Molly, without missing a beat.

Tina sat down hard on her bed.

"I also think I'm haunted," said Janet. She could not bear to contemplate the results of telling them that Professor Medeous was the Queen of Elfland. But she told them about Margaret Roxburgh and Victoria Thompson. After all, it didn't matter if she really was haunted or only thought she was; they would want to keep an eye on her either way. It was a subject far less vulnerable to endless and agonizing discussion. "Do you think you guys could possibly stand watches?" she said. "I know it's getting late in the term—"

"Of course we can," said Molly, "but where's the other party in this disaster? Can't he stand some watches?"

"I don't want to ask him."

"Did you talk to him?"

"Yes, but I don't—"

"What did he say?"

"He said it was my body, but he'd do anything; whatever I wanted to do he'd stand by me. I don't want to be stood by, that's all, okay?" Janet was obliged to stop and gulp several times.

"Certainly," said Molly. "We shall stand over you instead. Come and compare schedules, Tina; do you get up early tomorrow?"

"Shouldn't you see a psychologist or something?" said Tina doubtfully.

"Tina, I really do think I'm haunted and psychologists don't believe in ghosts and would just try to talk me out of it. I don't want to be talked at; I want to be kept company until after Hallowe'en."

"Okay. I've got folk dancing Hallowe'en night, Molly; can you take then?"

"Certainly," said Molly again. They sat murmuring over their figures and drawing up little schedules on some of their lab paper. Janet lay down on her bed and, much to her own surprise, fell asleep.

Molly woke her up for dinner. "Thomas called to say he won't be joining us," said Molly, while Janet was brushing her hair and Tina was changing the cat's box, "but you're to call anytime if you want anything."

"I want to change the past," said Janet gloomily.

Janet had expected to find Tina irritating; as a matter of fact, Tina, who would talk endlessly if you let her and was also willing to read to Janet from mindless men's adventure novels with hardly an English sentence from the first page to the last, was very soothing.

Molly would, it was true, read from Dr. Johnson's
Rambler
essays, which Tina refused to do because she never knew when, if ever, the sentences were going to end. But Molly insisted on discussing Thomas and the baby and what they planned to do about it and why Thomas was never here and why Janet wouldn't call him, until finally Janet, who had thought of something, got up in disgust and did call him.

He answered the phone, breathlessly.

"It's Janet."

"What can I do for you?"

"Were you suggesting that I save your life and
then
have an abortion?"