The White Wolf's Son (7 page)

At that point I was still convinced I would soon be reunited with my parents, or that at least Monsieur Zodiac would be contacting
me. Somehow I thought they already knew about this world. I had no possible notion of the adventure on which I was about to
embark.

At last we reached the city. The tall, irregular towers had an extraordinary and profound beauty. I felt an emotion similar
to one I had known when visiting York Minster and Westminster Abbey, but far more intense. I had sensations of tremendous
joy and was so absorbed in the experience, I did not notice the creature standing in the nearest doorway, smiling at me.

“I see the city of the Off-Moo has impressed you, young miss.”

I was being addressed by that same large fox, somewhat bigger than the average man and standing a little uncertainly on his
hind legs, dressed with exquisite taste in the finery of a late-eighteenth-century fop. With one paw the fox held a tall ornamental
pole, with which he kept his balance. The other he extended to me. “How do you do, mademoiselle.” His pad was soft and sensitive,
with a living warmth to it. “I am Renyard von Grimmelshausen, Lord of the Deep City, hereditary keeper of the secrets of
the center. Oh, and many other things. I am named, I must admit, for one of my favorite authors. Have you read
Simplicissimus?
I’ve written a few books of my own, too. I will be your guide, young mistress. At your disposal. Not in this city, of course,
which is not mine, but the other city, parts of which
are
mine.”

“There’s someone wants to shoot you,” I said, shaking his paw. “You’d better be careful.”

“I am used to it,” he assured me. “I am always careful. And you are …?”

“I am Oonagh Bek. I’m hoping to get back to Ingleton as soon as possible.”

Lord Renyard frowned, not understanding everything I said. Then he bowed again. “Enchanted, mademoiselle.” He spoke in faintly
accented English. “You appear to have won the approval of our friends the Off-Moo.”

“Who’s that, again?”

“Those gentlemen. They are the builders and inhabitants of yonder city. I think it’s safe to say they are allies of mine.
They’ll not harm you.”

“But Klosterheim’s around!” I looked, but I could no longer see the skull-faced Puritan.

“Oh, he’ll not bother us for a while yet, believe me. He cannot come here. How can I help you?” He was serenely confident.
I calmed down.

“Maybe you could point me in the right direction for the village,” I suggested. There had to be another exit or entrance or
whatever. “Or even take me a bit of the way to Ingleton…”

“Ingleton, my dear child?”

“It’s where I live.”

“Is that where you entered the World Below?”

“It is.” My granny had told me bedtime stories about
the World Above and the World Below when I was a little girl. I’d forgotten all about them. “So? Any ideas about Ingleton?”

He shook his long head. For the first time I became genuinely worried. “Then how can I find my way home?”

“We’ll have to look, I suppose.”

“Is it possible to stay lost for a long time?”

“Sometimes it’s always possible.” He was regretful. “But I’m sure I can help. I have a good many maps where I live. A very
extensive library on all subjects. I was paying a casual visit to my friends the Off-Moo, so we can leave without risking
offense. I come here to relax. They see nothing strange in me, whereas most of your kind and mine are suspicious of a fox
who not only wears human clothes but is also educated, as I am, in all the Encyclopedists.”

“I don’t know much about encyclopedias, Lord Renyard.” I felt a bit silly saying that. Had he read them all?

“I am an intellectual child of Voltaire and Montaigne.” He spoke with a slight air of self-mockery. “Of whom, no doubt, you’ve
never heard.”

“I’ve heard of Voltaire, but we don’t really do much French history or philosophy yet at school.”

“Of course you don’t.” He opened his muzzle and barked several times. It took me a moment to realize that he was laughing.
“How old are you, mademoiselle?”

“I’m twelve.”

“Another six years before you go to university.”

“About that. My sister goes next year.”

He asked after my family, and I told him. I said our family name was really von Bek, and at this he barked again.

“Von Bek? It could be I know your father. Or one of your relatives at least. Is his name Manfred?”

“It’s one of his names, but they have so many names. I don’t think there’s been a Manfred first name. Not for about two hundred
years at least.”

“That could easily be, of course. I met him in about 1800.”

“Over two hundred years ago.” Was I dreaming or not? Somehow the logic seemed to be that of a dream. “What’s the year here?”

“The Off-Moo don’t have calendars as we do. But in Mirenburg, the City in the Autumn Stars, where I rule as a prince, it would
be about, I don’t know, 1820 perhaps. To tell you the truth, my dear, it could as easily be 1920. If I had any means of measuring,
I’d be better able to compute exactly what year it was in comparison. When we arrive there I’ll be able to help you more.”

“Then I suppose we’d better get off to Mirenburg. My mum and dad will be worrying. We can probably phone from there.”

“Perhaps they won’t be worrying, child.” His voice softened in reassurance. “Time has substantial variations, and only a moment
or two might have passed in Ingleton while days and weeks go by out here.”

For some reason I was reassured by him, just as I had been in my dreams.

“Or several years,” added Lord Renyard. Then, realizing he might have disappointed me, he leaned down, offering something
like a smile. “But it’s generally only a matter of moments. I was just finishing my business here. Would you like to come
with me to my home? From there it might be possible to reckon a little more specifically.”

“I don’t seem to have much choice,” I said.

“You could, of course, also stay with the Off-Moo. That gentleman over there is Scholar Ree, their spiritual counselor. He
can be very kind.”

“I think I’d better stay with you, Lord Renyard, if it’s all the same…”

“I shall be glad of the company.” The handsome fox again offered me his paw and began to lead me back to the larger group
of stonelike beings. “First we’ll make our adieux.”

With grace Lord Renyard bowed to his hosts, then led me out along a narrow trail of smooth rock. Above us the enormous cave
widened. The roof of the cavern seemed miles overhead. Instead of stars, crystals glittered and a silver river ran away into
the distance, its luminous waters lighting a landscape of stalagmites and stalactites and what seemed like forests of fronds,
all pale, shimmering and ethereal.

Reconciled to my inability to contact my parents at that moment, I felt better when Lord Renyard’s soft padded paw grasped
my hand and we left the Off-Moo city behind. As we walked, he told me a little of the people inhabiting the land he called
Mu-Ooria. They had lived here long before the surface of the earth was occupied by sentient beings, he said. Their world was
sometimes known as the Border Land or the Middle March, existing on a plane shared in common by many aspects of the multiverse.
I was familiar with the idea of alternative universes, so I grasped what he told me fairly easily, though I had never really
expected to experience what old-fashioned writers sometimes called “another dimension,” and had until now pretty much taken
the ideas as fiction. Most of the children’s stories that my brother and sister and I read were the kind which
describe another world parallel to ours, and I had never thought the idea strange. That said, I knew it might be difficult
to escape from such a universe once you had fallen into one, and I remained concerned for my worried parents, feeling somewhat
guilty that the fascinating underground world kept distracting my attention.

The Off-Moo had few natural enemies and were peaceful, Lord Renyard told me. The cats I had seen often visited them and communicated
between them and certain humans. “Felines often come and go from that city. They have a special fondness for it. I know not
why.”

Lord Renyard said he found the intellectual stimulus he craved by visiting the Off-Moo. Most of his colleagues in Mirenburg
were positively anti-intellectual, he said. “Many are outrageously superstitious. But if they were not, I should probably
not rule them.”

“You are Mirenburg’s ruler?”

“Not the whole city, dear young lady.” As we strolled along he told me that he had enjoyed the company of my great-great-great-umpteenth-grandfather
and that of another adventurer, his friend the famous aerial navigator, the Chevalier St. Odhran.

“You know the Chevalier St. Odhran? I met him yesterday!” I was excited to have a friend in common with him.

“Indeed? Not his descendant?”

“Only if his descendant is also a balloonist.”

He described his friend who often visited Mirenburg. It was my St. Odhran to the letter. And sometimes, I heard, he came here
with two friends who
had
to be Lobkowitz and Fromental. This gave me more hope. If the Scot had been able to fly his balloon to Ingleton, then it
suggested there was a way I could easily be reunited
with my parents and that the Chevalier St. Odhran might also know where to look for me. In that way kids can do, I made up
my mind not to worry and to enjoy the experience as much as possible. If a minor earth tremor had opened the world to me,
there was a good chance that a similar tremor would get me out.

Lord Renyard had a taste, it emerged, for abstraction. He reminded me a bit of my dad, who was always inclined to wander off
the practical point into speculation. I began to lose the thread of the fox’s arguments and was glad whenever he paused to
point out a spectacular view or describe some flora or fauna of the surrounding world.

I was beginning to get tired and hungry by the time the tottering towers of the City in the Autumn Stars came in sight: a
sprawl of tall tenements and chimneys, spires and domes. High overhead I could see pale, bright spots of faded color, rusty
reds and dark yellows, which might indeed have been ancient stars. I wondered if I would find my other protector, Monsieur
Zodiac, there in the city.

Lord Renyard told me to be careful where I put my feet. “We shall be at my home soon, but the path can still be treacherous.”
He pointed to the skyline of Mirenburg. “What you observe,” he explained, “is a mirror of the city you will find on the surface.
Do not ask me how this phenomenon can be. I lack the intellect to explain it. But in a certain place the upper city and the
lower city connect and allow us to move from one into the other. I think you will find that upper city more familiar. I cannot
be sure, but it might even exist on the same plane as your own.”

“In which case they’d have long-distance telephones,” I said. “And I’ll be able to get in touch with my parents.”

He hesitated, doubtful. “Our Mirenburg—
my
Mirenburg—
is not an especially progressive city, though she has lately accepted some modest manufacturing reforms.”

As we descended towards the city walls, the silence of the huge caverns was broken by a rapid drumming sound. Looking around
him, Lord Renyard drew me back into the shadow of a slab of granite. He put his paw to his muzzle, indicating to me that I
shouldn’t talk. Far away across the ridge, under the dim light of the “autumn stars,” I saw two men on horseback. I couldn’t
make out their features until they rode quite close. I would have called to them if I hadn’t remembered Lord Renyard’s instructions.
When I saw their faces, I was glad I hadn’t It was the mysterious visitor and the other man from the dreams, the Puritan with
the pale, gaunt head. Klosterheim. I suspected they were looking for me.

Soon we had reached the high walls of Mirenburg. It was a cold, rather alarming place. I gripped the fox’s paw still tighter
as he led me through unguarded gates, explaining where we were. “The larger, outer city we call, these days, the Shallow City.
But my people inhabit the core of the place. The quarter known as the Deep City. The Shallow City is ruled by the Sebastocrater,
descended from Byzantine knights. But I have little intercourse with them. They are very poorly educated, having forgotten
their old wisdom and skills. They never leave the city and certainly never venture underground, as I do.”

We walked through black, unlit streets and eventually came to a wide boulevard. A single globe of light, very dim at this
distance, lit this area of the city. The globe was seated on top of a monolith of black marble, block upon gigantic block,
ascending to cubes of basalt.

“The palace of the lower city’s Sebastocrater,” Lord Renyard murmured. “No threat to us.”

Many of the other buildings had the look of public offices or apartments of important officials. Only rarely did I see a yellow
light in a window. The buildings were high and close together. I was reminded of New York, except that this city was weirdly
silent, as if everything slept. The only time I’d been to New York, I’d been astonished at the noise of traffic and police
sirens going all night.

Lord Renyard seemed nervous, murmuring that this part of the city was not one he was familiar with. “Mine is the oldest quarter,
what most these days call the Thieves’ Quarter.”

“Thieves?”

“I am not an entirely respectable person,” he murmured, as if embarrassed. “Though I strived to educate and civilize myself
all my life, those amongst whom I am doomed to dwell still consider me a monster. Many are deeply conservative. Even their
religion is of a very old-fashioned kind. Only in that district, where no decent citizen will enter, can I find any kind of
rest.”

This sounded rather melodramatic to me. Personally I found a talking fox cool. My guess was that he’d be on every TV chat
show there was, if he moved to London. I meant to tell him this as soon as we arrived at his house. After all, if I could
travel so easily to his world, he could as easily come to mine.