21

I write the truth when I say that Ylles is an almost-Baskarone. When one eats fairy fruit, one sees it as glorious, lovely, utterly beyond compare. Since I had eaten no fairy fruit prior to arrival, however, my first glimpse of it was disappointing. It looked rather like a waste of moorland with some pigpens and hovels scattered here and there. The moment we arrived, Mama darted away into the bushes, and Carabosse, who was standing quietly beside me with an expression of deep pain upon her old face, leaned forward and said, "Come see me as soon as you can, Beauty. Ask Puck to bring you." Before I could ask her who Puck was, she took a step or two down the path toward some pigpens, sidled a little to the right and was gone. It was a method of coming and going I was to see much of in Faery.

Mama emerged from the shrubbery with a handful of berries which she thrust upon me, urging me to eat them all as quickly as possible. While I did so, she gathered others for herself. She chewed them as though famished, eyes rolled up, jaws working furiously. It was an astonishing sight which kept my eyes fixed on her for several minutes. When I looked at my surroundings again, I found myself in true Ylles. Parkland had replaced moorland; castles stood where the hovels had been, and over all stretched a sky of late-evening blue spangled with early stars. The grasses were also starred with tiny five-pointed flowers of silver, umbels of golden bloom, and tinkling sprays of bluebells. Though I saw it all quite clearly, Mama was not content until she had uprooted a small, hairy stemmed plant and rubbed the juice of its root into my eyes. It stung horribly for a time, but when the pain vanished, my eyesight was like that of a falcon.

"Elvenroot," she explained. "It grows only in Faery, nowhere else. It enables one to see all our marvels."

"Ylles is in Faery?" I asked stupidly, sniffing at an odor which had caught my nostrils, a familiar scent.

"A province," she said, nodding. "One of many. It goes from those hills over there," and she pointed, "to the ocean over there," pointing once more. "I am the ruler of it, when I'm here. When I'm not here, another of the Theena Shee takes it over."

I had not understood the word she used. She said it again, then smoothed a patch of ground and spelled it out with her finger, in Irish, evidently the only human language in which the word was written. "Daoine Sidhe," she said. "Theena Shee. My people. The people of True Faery. One of whom takes over rul-ership of my province when I am away. Here, I'll show you the boundaries."

She turned me to face a direction I thought of as north, where loomed a range of shadowy mountains, their ridges making a jagged line against the stars. At the foot of the mountains lay dark folds of forest. Mama turned me widdershins from the forest to see the land sloping down to a starlit sea, the white combers rolling endlessly toward us. Widdershins from the sea was moorland, covered with low growth and extending as far as I could see. Widdershins from the moorland brought me facing uplands, where many fantastic and marvelous palaces stood, though none, to my surprise, as lovely as Westfaire. Whichever direction I turned, the familiar odor came past me on the wind, as though blown from every quarter.

"Oberon's and Mab's," she said, pointing to the two closest palaces. "And mine, and a dozen more. It doesn't really matter which part belongs to who. Oberon's realm is next to mine, and he would look after it if I left."

We stood beside a copse which was more or less at the center of all this: tall trees, lacy, silvery, softly susurant.

"Why would you ever leave it?" I asked, staring in wonder around myself. Truthfully, it was very lovely.

"Oh," she said vaguely. "Sometimes one wants a change."

Every view was one a painter would sell his brushes for. Every aspect thrilled. Every structure was perfect from every angle. The scent of the flowers alone was enough to make one drunk, though it did not mask that other scent ...

"Mama, what is that smell?" I asked.

"Smell?" She sniffed delicately. "The flowers?"

"No, the smell on the wind."

She sniffed again, her ivory nostrils dilating to take in the breeze. "Not the sea? Not the pines of the forest?"

"No. The smell ... the smell that's everywhere."

She laughed, liltingly. "The smell of Faery, silly child. The smell of magic!"

As I was about to pursue that matter, we were interrupted by the sound of horns, tiny horns pitched high as a wasp's buzz. Mama gestured to one side, and I turned to see a troupe passing by, little men mounted on mice, butterfly-winged maidens riding hedgehogs saddled with roses. Elladine called and they answered, their voices like infant bells, waving tiny hands, calling a greeting but not turning aside from their processionary way.

"Trouping fairies," she told me with an indulgent smile.

"Where are they going?"

"Nowhere. Everywhere. They simply go. They camp on the mosses and dance. Then they move on. They are not serious creatures. They have only small enchantments, small as themselves. Sometimes they are seen in the human world, sometimes they are heard. Sometimes their dance floors are seen."

"Fairy rings?"

She nodded. "They are the only fairies with butterfly wings, the only fairies to inhabit human gardens. Once they were as large as we; once they were worshipped as gods and goddesses, long, oh long, long ago. They had mighty names then: Pomona. Naiad. Dryad. Aurora. Over time they have shrunk. They get smaller with every passing century. Eventually I believe they will vanish into the atmosphere, and we will hear them for a time, like midges, then they will be entirely gone." There was something careless and remote in her voice, a tone I had noted before, a tone I had shuddered to hear.

"Won't you miss them?" I asked, wanting her to say yes, yes, she would miss them because they were fanciful and marvelous.

She didn't answer the question I had asked. "We Sidhe do not need wings, nor mice to serve as steeds. We have our own hunt, our own ways." She sounded eager, almost voracious. There was something uncomfortable in her voice, something like an edge of grass, seeming so soft, cutting so deep, the life's blood following it almost invisibly so that one does not know one is cut until one sees the red. I drew in my breath, waiting for the wound to gape, but she walked away over the verdant meadow, and I followed her, drawn like the tail of a kite, wondering what had happened to her. Even in Chinanga she had seemed more ... more human. But then, I told myself, Chinanga had been a human imagining, while Faery was not.

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.

Ah, but they were horrible. Hairy and twisted, fanged and dewlapped. Some among them were better-looking, more nearly straight, but as a general rule they gave the appearance of half-made things. One had long toenails that scratched upon the marble floors. One had an eye in the middle of his forehead. Some had batwings and others had rat teeth.

"Who are they," I whispered to my neighbor, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

"The Bogles," he replied. I knew the voice and turned in surprise to find Thomas the Rhymer standing close behind me. "Has your mother taught you to use the power of sight?" he whispered to me, seeing the fear in my eyes.

I shook my head at him.

"Narrow your eyes, and wish to see them true," he said. So I did, slitting both eyes and concentrating on the wish. In the moment I saw them differently, shorter, stouter people than those of the Sidhe, and darker-colored, but certainly not hideous. Somewhat like those who had ridden at the rear of the procession, though more open of face.

"They appear ugly to keep men at a distance," Thomas said. "Unlike those of the Sidhe who appear beautiful to make men come nearer. To men's eternal loss." His voice was bitter, though only a whisper, as he fell silent in order that we could hear the speeches.

My first view of them had been human sight, obviously. But once I had seen them true, I could not bring back the former vision of them. Most surprising, I had seen their leader before, every now and then when I was a child. He was my old friend, the pointy-eared boy! Of course! Puck.

"You've one among you seven years now," he challenged them. "Taken from human kind, Queen Mab. Time's near come for the teind, and you have him still. We've come to see the treaty complied with."

"It is no affair of yours what I do," the Queen replied in a silky voice. "Be back about your swamp dancing, Puck. We've had this talk before." I didn't know what a teind was, but his voice made it something serious.

"There's a new one come, as well," he went on in an even voice. "And she's none of yours," and he turned and looked at me with a wry look as though to say, "Fancy seeing you here."

Mama rose on the dais and beckoned to me. I stepped forward uncertainly. Puck watched me with his green eyes, like water over stones. He had a brown face with great bushy brows and a wide mouth. My old acquaintance. I started to greet him, then, warned by something in his eyes, did not. Still, I was so taken with his familiar face I almost didn't hear what Mama said. "She is ours, Puck. My daughter. Beauty. Borne by me to a human noble and come to Faery to seek her mother."

He looked saddened by this, though why should he? He knew who I was, who I'd always been. Who had sent him to watch over me, back at Westfaire? I had always assumed it was Martin, or maybe Mama. Obviously not, but then who? Carabosse? He shook his head at me and turned to those on the dais. I stepped back to feel Thomas's hand rest lightly on my shoulder.

Puck tried again, "So, sad though it be, she's here by her own will, Mab. Still, there's Thomas the Rhymer who is not here of his own will. He's not been lastingly harmed as yet, but what use will you make of him?"

"I say it again, Puck. Take your Bogles back to the swamps and the streams. Get back to the crossroads. Tell your brownies to get to their sweeping, your leprechauns to their shoemaking, your kobolds to their mines. There are enough humans out there for you to cosset without worrying over mine."

"He isn't yours," said Puck, something strained in his voice. "Queen Mab ... "

"All that is mine is mine," she chanted. "And all that is yours is mine as well. If I so choose."

"I beg you not to choose," he said to her holding out his hard, square hands. His words were an entreaty, but she merely laughed, then went on laughing with those about her as the Bogles conferred among themselves. Puck threw up his hands, then turned to leave, the others coming behind him. Except for one very small, plain one with a scythe over his shoulder, who slipped out of their ranks and took me by the hand.

"I am the Fenoderee," he whispered. "If you have need of a friend, call me." Then he, too, was gone.

Thomas spoke in my ear. "Unless you wish to see the Fenoderee destroyed, do not tell anyone he offered to be your friend."

"I won't tell anyone but Mama," I said.

"Then he is surely dead," Thomas said.

I turned on him angrily, but he had gone back into the crowd. Looking at Mama on the dais where she laughed with Queen Mab, however, I decided I did not need to tell her about the Fenoderee. I had not called for a friend, and the little Bogle's offer did not necessarily warrant mention.

The audience seemed to be over. The nobles were coming down off the dais, talking with one another in careless voices. Curiosity would certainly not be out of place, so when Mama came down to me, I asked her what all that had been about.

"Puck and his following tend to be officious," she said with her remote, careless look. "They have taken it upon themselves to be protectors of man."

"I thought angels were the protectors of man," I said in a puzzled tone, remembering things Father Raymond had taught me.

"Well then," she laughed, with a nasty twist to her amusement. "Puck has taken it into his head to become an angel. It's an old argument, going far back into time."

I hoped she would tell me more, but Oberon came up just then, and we both fell silent as we made our deep reverences to him. He invited us to join him in the hunt, and we went out to mount horses already standing ready in the courtyard. This was in accord with something I had already noticed about Faery. Food was always ready when one was hungry. Horses were saddled and bridled when one wanted to hunt. Water was hot when one wanted to bathe. Possibly the most altogether magical thing about Faery was that we did not have to wait about for other people to do things before we could do the things we wanted.

We rode out, the horses' hooves making a steady drumbeat as we crossed the bridge and came onto the road of velvety dust. I thought that all the soil of this place must be soft, else the silver shoes on the horses would not last. Mama rode up beside me and hissed, "Riding clothes, girl! Have some manners!"

I looked up see everyone clad in riding clothes with high boots and flowing skirts on the ladies and their hair done up in narrow caps with veils flying behind. As soon as I saw it, I was dressed the same as they, but it had taken my perceiving them to do it. I had done it myself. This gave me a momentary exultation followed by a shiver of fear. If I'd been a child when I came here, I'd have done it without even thinking. What else could I do, just by thinking about it?

We hunted white deer that day. Two of them, a stag and a hind. They fled like the wind, and we pursued like the gale. They fled like the hawk, and we came after them like the eagle. They fled like the flame of candles, and we burned their trails like the fire in a forge. At last they wearied and we came up to them. Oberon shot them both with bright arrows, and the huntsman cut off their heads. When the heads came off, I had a momentary vision of something not right, something frightening and horrid. I turned away only to find Thomas's eyes on me, as though in warning. The huntsmen put the carcasses over a horse, and we returned to the castle, our horses' equipment jingling, a lutist playing, the people singing. When we came near, I had fallen a little behind, and Thomas rode up beside me to say, "Do not eat of the venison served tonight."

I started to ask him why, but he rode on, faster and faster, until he came up beside Queen Mab. She turned and smiled at him, and he smiled in return. A very sad, hopeless smile.

Most of the people went to the hot springs where they bathed. I went to my room. When the door was tight shut behind me, I sat down on the bed and called, "Fenoderee! I need a friend."

He was there in the instant, standing beside me.

I said, "There was something frightening. I can't remember what!"

"Ah, weel," he said to me, "you've not the knack of the seein' yet, and your human sight comes through. It wasna only deer they lopped the heads from there in the wood. It was a man and his wife they hunted down, a man and his wife who'd refused to give their child to Queen Mab when she wanted it."

"And they'll eat them?" I cried, unable to believe it.

"Ach, no, lass. They'll eat venison right enough. They wouldn't kill or eat human flesh, for that would break the covenant. But it was human flesh they enchanted into deer. So, what is it they eat? Ah? Did they indeed break the covenant? They'll tell you it's venison, and they'll tell you true, but you know what you saw, don't you?"

"Thomas told me not to eat it."

"Then Thomas told you what was good for you."

"Then he saw it, too." What I had seen, that overlay of human flesh when the heads had come off.

"Aye, he sees. A man so fearful as that will see what's true."

"What's he fearful of, Fenoderee?"

Fenoderee turned himself around like a dog trying to find a place to lie down. "He's fearful Oberon will use him for something forbidden."

"And what's that?" I could not imagine what could be forbidden in this land where cannibalism seemed to be a matter of course.

"Long ago," said Fenoderee, "when man was made, the Holy One asked us of Faery to help man out, for he was a witless thing then, barely able to stand on his two feet. Some of the Sidhe assented, a few. But Oberon was King then, as he is now, and he told them to hold their tongues, that the Sidhe would do it only if the Holy One commanded it.

" 'No,' said the Holy One, 'I could command it, true, but I will not. I have not designed this universe in all its unpredictable glory in order to interrupt it with gratuitous commands and arbitrary miracles. If you honor my request, you do it out of your own will, out of goodness, in thankfulness for what you've been given.'"

"What did Oberon say?"

"He said no, as he'd said before. So then the Holy One said, 'I will not command, but I may destroy some parts of my creation if they threaten other parts. So I will make treaty with the Sidhe. It is I who made the Sidhe immortal, and they may remain so only so long as no man comes to lasting harm at their hands.' And Oberon accepted that."

. "Who were the ones who said they'd help man?"

"Israfel and his lot. Oh, and Carabosse. Oberon paid them no attention. They didn't even go on living in Faery; they went off to Baskarone. Since then, we Bogles have called them our Separated Kindred, or the Long Lost. Oberon calls them something else, but then he's not a forgiving sort."

"But the deer," I cried. "The enchanted deer! That was surely lasting harm to the man and his wife. To be eaten!"

"Sneaky the Sidhe have become," said Fenoderee. "Sneaky and sly. It wasn't the man and his wife that they killed, you see. It was only deer. Sneakiness like that has been going on for some time now. They've kept the letter of the treaty, no matter what they've done to the intentions."

"Why?"

"Because they're proud, lass. The creation of man was a dreadful blow to them. It needn't have been if they'd put their minds to understanding man rather than just resenting him. But then, after the Dark Lord went off and made his own place, he sent whisperers among the Sidhe, telling them how much their pride had been offended. And some time after the treaty was made, Oberon made another one, this one with the Dark Lord, who pledged to teach Oberon ways to keep the Holy One at bay-though the Dark Lord couldn't keep daylight at bay if the Holy One didn't allow it. The payment to the Dark Lord comes every seven years, and it's what is called the teind to hell, for that is what the Dark Lord has made for himself."

"The hell?"

"The only one I know of," he said.

"What's the payment?" I asked, my throat suddenly dry.

"The payment is a person," he said. "Of some sort. Oberon's been using us Bogles for the teind, when he can catch us, but we've grown too smart for him and he hasn't caught one of us in recent time. That's why there were so many of us come to court with Puck, to fight them off if they tried to take one of us by force. Oberon knows if he uses one of the Sidhe, it could cause rebellion against him. So he's thinking of defying the treaty and using a human. And the only human resident in Faery now is Thomas the Rhymer. And you, Beauty."

"But I'm half fairy!" I cried.

"No teind is better than half. Half a teind is better than a whole," he said softly. "And once he's used human, half or whole, then the treaty's broken." Then, "Whsst. I'm gone." And he was.

Outside in the hallway I could hear Mama's voice, along with those of the others. She, still laughing at something Oberon had said, came into the room where I was, her nose twitching, like a cat when it smells a mouse.

"I smell Bogle," she cried. "Has that filthy Puck been near?"

I shook my head at her. "I've not seen Puck since the audience, Mama," I said, truthfully enough. She looked me in the face as though to tell whether I was lying or not, and then she said, "We of Faery value truth above all else, Beauty."

"I know you do, Mama," I said, thinking over what I had said to be sure there were no lies in it.

She sat down on the bed beside me. "Do not put yourself in peril, daughter," she said.

"In peril, Mama?"

"If you make cause with the Bogles against us, no place or time will be safe from Oberon's vengeance. The Bogles are always snuggling up to mankind. They mix more than they should."

I thought this a strange thing for her to say, she who had married my mortal Papa. Was that not mixing? Or even snuggling, come to that. Evidently she did not feel the need to be consistent. I had noticed the same thing among the aunts. What they told me to do was not always what they told others, or what they did themselves.

Mama went on. "Oberon will find you if you offend him, no matter where you go."

"Why should I offend any of you, Mama?" I cried. "You're my mother. These are your people." And, indeed, why should I? What did she know that I did not?

Satisfied at what she saw on my face, she told me to create a marvelous dress and come to dinner.

I ate fruit and bread and clotted cream and none of the venison. I drank what would have been too much wine anywhere else. All around me others were eating the meat with good appetite. I don't think anyone noticed that I left it well alone. Once or twice I looked up to find Thomas's eyes upon me and my plate. Once or twice I looked up to see Queen Mab staring at me with curiosity. I smiled carefully back, and cast my eyes modestly down. If she had enchanted a man and his wife for refusing her their child, what might she do to one who entertained Bogles in her bedroom? All the time I was thinking about the doctrine of transubstantiation and wondering if the man and wife were still present in the venison, though they had been enchanted into something else.

After everyone had gone to sleep, I heard the scratching at my door again. This time I knew it was Thomas, and he slipped into my room like a shadow. He was clearly frantic, his hands trembling, his eyes flicking like hummingbirds from one place to another. "I have to get out of here," he said.

"I know," I told him, going on to tell him how I knew.

"Queen Mab says she will neither let me be used as teind nor let me go," he said, his voice shaking. "But Oberon says he will use me as he sees fit. Queen Mab says she will use you, instead, but Elladine is in favor with the King, so he will not permit that. Oh, Elladine is in excellent odor just now for having brought a half-human woman into Faery, even old as you are. They are all in a frenzy over you."

"Can't you just run away?"

"How? In what direction? Are we under the sea or high in the air? Are we deep beneath the earth under a barrow, as some say, or are we in some enchanted land beyond the bounds of earth? In what direction should I go? And when I have gone, what is to keep Mab from turning me into a deer and hunting me down as she did today with those others? I can escape from this place only by human help, and there is none human here but you."

"When is the teind to be paid?" I asked.

"Soon," he whispered. "Faery time is not the time of earth. It flows fast, it flows slow. Sometimes it almost stops, wandering like the tortoise, long hours in the space of a breath. Other times it dives like the hawk, a year in a moment's pace. I only know it is soon."

He left me then, as quickly as he had come, his face haggard with fear. I lay on the bed, looking out at the sky, scarcely darker now than in midday. Blue, spangled with stars. There had to be a way to help him. Had to be a way.

Mama and I had a picnic together in the meadow. I had asked her for it, as a favor, wanting to, as I put it, "know her better."

"You must tell me some things," I assured her. "Simply must, Mama, or I shall make the most dreadful mistakes. You must tell me what not to say in front of Queen Mab or King Oberon, or any of the others."

"Don't talk of treaties or Bogles and all will be well," she said, not looking me in the eye.

"Can I speak of the teind to hell?" I asked innocently.

She blanched. "It would be wisest not."

"Then you must tell me what it is, so that I will not mention some aspect of it inadvertently."

"It's a payment," she said impatiently. "To the Dark One. For guarding our borders. For keeping out ... other influences."

"Angels?" I asked. "But, aren't you acquainted with angels?"

She looked around, making sure we were not overheard. "If you are speaking of those from Baskarone, Beauty, then be sure they are not angels. They are no more angelic than we. They are our own kindred who separated from us when man was created, over some fear they have that we or mankind or both of us will do something ... something irrevocable. Foolishness. Are we not Faery? Are we not wiser than that? Our separated kindred dwell in Baskarone, but they are not angels."

Though I very much wanted to pursue that subject, I had other matters at hand which needed concentration. "I heard some of the Sidhe speaking, Mama. They said I might be used as the teind."

"Nonsense," she cried. "Who would say such a wicked thing." There were tears in her eyes, the first I had seen there on my behalf. So, like it or not, she was fond of me. Or she was afraid. Or she cried for some other reason.

I almost stopped then, not wanting to be disloyal to her, but something made me go on. Perhaps the anguish I'd heard in Thomas's voice. He had been so fearful, so terrorized, so very human. I said, "So I thought. They have a perfectly good teind in Thomas, do they not? And yet, someone said they thought he might escape."

"He cannot escape."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know the spell set upon him. The only way he could escape would be if a human woman were to see him riding by, were to ask for him and hold him tight, despite all the changes Mab could put him through, hold him fast from midnight to dawn, then he could leave Mab and return to the land of mortal men." She said it carelessly, as though it didn't matter.

"That's not very likely, is it?" I asked faintly.

"Not likely at all, which is why Mab thought it up," she said. "So you've nothing to worry about. It is not long until Samhain, All Hallows Eve on earth, the night when the teind is paid. Once that is done, we'll have no more worries for seven Faery years."

"Mama," I asked, changing the subject, "I think it's time I learned some magic. What am I half fairy for, otherwise?"

That night I told Tom-lin what Mama had told me. "Have you such a human woman, Thomas?" I asked. "I could attempt it myself, but I'm only half and it might not work. Besides, it would so offend Mama and my other kindred, I could not stay in Faery."

"My fair Janet," he said. "Oh, yes, my fair Janet might well hold fast against all hell."

"Where will I find her," I whispered.

"Near Ercle's Down is a wood, named for the carter's house which is there and, near the wood, a well. By that well, roses grow, and Janet will come there at sunset to pull a rose in my memory, for it was there I pledged her my love and gave her a rose in troth."

"In what country?" I asked.

"Why," he replied, "in Scotland."

So, in the midnight hours of Faery, it was to Scotland, to Ercle's Down I went, begging my boots in a whisper to take me quietly.

I came there on a late afternoon in summer. I begged directions from a passing shepherd, who directed me to Carterhaugh Wood, and I went there, quickly enough. The well was less easy to find, for there were a number of wells. Only one grew roses, however, the last one I went to, at the edge of the woods. I waited impatiently for evening, watching the shadows lengthen. As it was growing dark, when I had about given her up, she came walking across the downs toward the trees. I was about to go out to her when I felt a tug at my sleeve, and there were Puck and Fenoderee. "Now that you've led us here, best leave it to us," Puck whispered.

I bridled.

"Nae, lass, leave it to us," Puck admonished me. "Ye have none of the language needed, and it has to be set in rhyme."

"Why does it?"

"Because she'll not believe it's from him, otherwise," and he gripped my hand tightly for a moment. I could feel his hand there for a long time after he had gone.

The girl came to the well and pulled a rose, and I heard Puck's voice in fair imitation of Tom-lin's.

 

"The Queen of fairies caught me up
in a far green land to dwell.
And though it's pleasant in that land,
I've a fearful thing to tell,
For at the end of seven years
they pay a teind to hell;
And I'm a fleshy human man,
that the Dark Lord would like well.
The night is Halloween, my love,
the morn is Hallowday;
Then win me, win me, if you will,
as well I know you may."

 

It went on for some little time, but was clear enough for all that, despite being interrupted by the girl's questions every line or two. Puck told her how to recognize him, that is, Thomas: right hand gloved, left hand bare, hat cocked up and hair down, riding nearest the town. He also told her where she would encounter the ride (at Miles Cross) and what horrors he would probably turn into, and that she must hold him until dawn. When he had done, we watched the woman go running back across the downs, her hair loose and tangled behind her, then Puck took me by one hand and Fenoderee by the other while I commanded the boots to take me back outside Oberon's castle.

There we stood upon the terrace, looking out across the midnight meadows, listening to the night creatures and the stream, both murmuring.

"That was a courageous thing you did," said Puck. "To help your fellowman."

"Help fellowman, play Faery false," I said bitterly. "One is the same as the other. I am neither nor, Puck. I am confused and wishing myself other than I am."

"Would we could help you, Beauty. Will it help to know you are helping Faery, too?"

"How?" I asked, very sceptically.

"They break the treaty if they give Thomas to the Dark Lord. And that will harm them far more than losing Thomas will do."

I heard him, but was not sure he told the truth. "Would you take me to visit Carabosse?"

"Old Carabosse of the clocks?" asked Fenoderee. "Old tick-tock?"

"Will you?"

"I will," he said. "I will come for you soon," and with that he was gone.

 

It was Puck who came for me. I was alone when he came.

"Get yourself upon a horse," he said, "ride out and call for Fenoderee."

So I had a stableboy saddle me a lovely horse, rode out some distance from the castle, paused beside a large rock and said into the air, "Fenoderee, I need a friend." Immediately, both he and Puck were standing beside the rock, Fenoderee grinning, Puck picking at a toenail. He liked to stand storkwise, on one leg, his fingers playing with the toes of the upraised foot.

"The fairy Carabosse has invited you to tea," Puck informed me.

"Clockwork Carabosse," chanted Fenoderee, cutting a circle about himself with his scythe. "Old gears and ratchets."

"Who calls her that?" I wondered.

"I just did," said Fenoderee. "Lots of the Bogles do."

"Some," admitted Puck. "Not lots."

"Why do they?"

"You'll find out when we get there."

Puck got up behind me on the horse and held me around the waist. It reminded me of all the times Bill had held me in the twentieth, when I was tired or discouraged or didn't know what to do next. Both he and Puck were small, but wiry and strong. Capable. I relaxed and let him guide the horse. Fenoderee bounded ahead like a fawn, disappearing behind clumps of grass and then appearing again, far ahead.

We came to the forest, went along it to the left until we came to a small stream, followed the stream into the woods, up a narrow defile, and then out into a clearing where a cottage stood, smoke rising from its chimney. It was a fairy-tale cottage. Though I don't know much about tales of that kind, I had seen cartoons in the twentieth. This cottage could have appeared in "Hansel and Gretel" or "The Three Bears" or "Red Riding Hood" without any changes at all.

"We'll wait," said Puck. "Just in case you need us when you come out."

I was fairly sure I could find my way back, but company on the homeward ride would be welcome. I dismounted and walked toward the cottage, hearing as I approached a sound like the muttering of rain on dried leaves. It grew louder and louder, and as I stepped onto the stoop, a chime rang, followed immediately by a cacophony of bells, whistles, cuckoos, gongs, all telling the hour with indiscriminate fervor. After a time the noise died away to the murmur once more, which I now recognized as the ticking of countless clocks, and I knocked firmly upon the cracked panels of the door.

"Enter!" cried a cracked old voice.

She was sitting beside the fire, under her tumult of timepieces. They dangled on every wall; they squatted on every flat surface. They made a noise like a storm of rain until she raised her hand and the sound stopped. All the little pendulums swung, all the little hands moved, but they moved in silence.

"So you've come," she said.

"I've come," I agreed. "I've come because you are the only one who knows what's going on, and I cannot go on, not knowing."

"You weren't supposed to know," she muttered. "You weren't supposed to be bothered with it. All we intended to do was keep it safe, inside you, until the proper times comes ... " Her voice dragged away into the clock-silence, the endless movement of hands and swinging pendulums, and she stared into the fire.

I did not disturb her. If she would tell me, she would. If she wouldn't, there was nothing I could do.

"Long ago," she said at last, "when man was made, which was long after we were made, I looked into the future and saw an ending there. You have seen that ending."

I had seen it. Of course, I had seen it.

"At that ending is no magic," she said. "At that ending, all beauty stops. There may be some life after, bacteria perhaps. Small, senseless things moving endlessly on the winds and in the seas. No matter.

"I saw an end. And those of us who could-they were not many, for most of us have been less than diligent in learning what may be done-decided that a certain thing should be preserved."

"In Baskarone," I said, suddenly sure of it.

"Of Baskarone, partly. Israfel was one of them who did the preserving. He and his kindred distilled a thing from ... From the necessary materials. They made it. But then we had to hide it."

And I knew then. "You hid it here," I said, putting my hand to my breast. "It burns."

She looked at me pitifully. "Does it hurt you?"

I shook my head at her in wonder. No. It did not hurt. "What is it?"

"It is what it is. It is what Oberon wishes for but has never been able to hold. It is what the Dark Lord lusts for. We must keep it from him."

"That's a riddle, Carabosse!"

"It is how we old fairies speak," she said, looking at me from under her scanty lashes. "If you knew what was going to happen, you could not behave normally."

"This thing ... I suppose it's important."

She sat unbreathing. It was as though the universe had stopped for that instant. At last her breath left her in a sigh.

"Important," she whispered to herself. "Yes. Important." She sighed again. "We thought no one would look for it in a child. Then we planned to entice you into some place where you could live happily for a long time. We picked Chinanga, the timeless land. No one had ever aged in Chinanga. Chinanga was poised there in the always, and we thought it would go on forever. How long did we need, after all? Only a few hundred years.

"We planned you would want to leave Westfaire, that you would think of the boots, that you would make them and go to Chinanga. Meantime, your mama would return to Westfaire to move your sleeping body to the tower, and on her way back to Faery she would be caught by our spells and brought to Chinanga also. By the time you traveled upriver, she would be there to meet you.

"But, you didn't make the boots, and as you were leaving Westfaire, those people came. They came from the twenty-first. We cannot even see into the twenty-first. And when they took you away, we could not reach you. And when you returned you were pregnant. We didn't want you to go while you were pregnant."

"But then Elly was born," I said.

"That was the first good opportunity for you to go to Chinanga," she murmured. "But then, by the time you got to Chinanga, you were too old for your mama to be easy with, and the Viceroy had already heard of this virgin with a difference. Between them, the Viceroy and Elladine, they destroyed the whole place. Imaginary worlds do not show up in my Forever Pool. Elladine has always done things that are quite unreasonable. And now you are here, where we had never intended you should come."

"Why me?" I asked. "Why did you choose me?"

She sighed. "People don't understand about magic. There are always certain limitations and proprieties: certain symbols which must be kept aligned; certain congruities we must observe. It was born of magic and could not live unless there was magic around it. It was born in truth, so the place we put it had to be named truly. It had to mature in a place where no ugliness is, and that was Westfaire. It could not have been set into just anyone or put just anywhere."

"Why didn't you just let it be me there in Westfaire, sound asleep? That would have kept it safe for you."

She shook her head at me. "The rarer a thing is, the more assiduously it is sought. As magic grows rarer and rarer, the more intent the Dark Lord will become at seeking it out. Eventually, Westfaire will gleam like a beacon, the last repository of magic. Do you think he would ignore that? No. Westfaire was intended as misdirection, Beauty. Legerdemain. Even if he seeks it there, he will not find it. Mary Blossom is only a decoy. You were to have been in Chinanga."

"But I'm really here. And so is it."

"True. For a time, I was deeply dismayed at that, but Israfel assures me all is not lost. Your being here is considered to be perfectly natural. You came to see your mama. Why not? Elladine left you the means to visit her, or she thinks she did, and so long as she thinks so, so does everyone else. As for Westfaire, either they believe the curse has run its course or they know about Mary Blossom, but in either case, everything is explainable. We went to great lengths, Israfel and I, to keep everything around you as natural as possible. The use of magic leaves an aura, like a fire leaves smoke, so when we used magic, we seemed to do it openly, obviously. Anyone sniffing the smoke could see our innocent little fire and dismiss it as trivial. What was it, after all? A sleeping enchantment, a cloak, a pair of boots. Mere bagatelles. Even Elladine's stay in Chinanga is explainable-she believes the Viceroy's enchantments brought her there. No one suspects anything odd about you. No one knows except Israfel and the others in Baskarone. And I."

"Puck?"

"No. He is my trusted friend and servant, but he doesn't know. Even though he has done much running about on your behalf, he doesn't know about it. None of the Bogles know."

"So what do I do now?"

"We can still preserve that which must be preserved. If you will simply go on, as you are, pretending to be what you would have been had we never met. I have seen that your visit to Faery will end soon. You will go away from here, very naturally. You will be in the world, being yourself, and meantime, Israfel and I will be searching for some other place-something like Chinanga, only less boring."

I didn't say yes, or no. After a time she reached out and took my hand. It felt like a mother's hand, like Dame Blossom's hand. I wasn't sure I believed the business about my visit ending soon, but I chose not to remark upon it.

"Mother doesn't like me," I said, needing her to say it wasn't true.

"That's not entirely true," she said. "Humans make myths about mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. The myths are very strong. I have counted on them myself, but sometimes the two generations are simply not sympathetic. Especially when they resemble, let us say, the other side of the family."

It was true. Except around the eyes, I most resembled Father. I resembled him in other ways. Fleshiness. Corporeality. The thousand stinks and farts that flesh is heir to.

"Can you go on?" she asked me gently.

"Can you take it out?" I asked. "Can you put it somewhere else?"

She shook her head. I already knew that. It had grown into me. I could feel its roots, down to my toes, down to my fingertips. So I told her I could go on. What else was there to do but go on?

She patted me. She still felt like Dame Blossom.

"I have this problem," I said. And I told her about Thomas the Rhymer. "If I tell him, I am betraying the Faery folk."

She smiled as though she already knew all about it and said what Puck had said. "If you don't tell him, you will betray them far worse." Suddenly, inexplicably, she asked me, "What would you like to do? Right now?"

"Go back to Westfaire," I blurted. "Go back home and find Giles there and be with him."

She gave me a weary little smile. "Keep that thought in mind. I will, too. We'll see how things work out. Until then, go on, Beauty. Just let things happen, as they will. Very naturally."

 

Puck and Fenoderee were waiting to take me back to Elladine's palace.

There was a time in Faery after that, neither long nor short, but of considerable importance, during which I learned to do enchantments and spells. Mama taught me how to weave magical garments and how to lay geas on swords or jewels to make them fit for questing. There is a good deal of questing in Faery, as a pastime. This one or that one will be enchanted into forgetting who he or she is, and will then be sent off after a sword or a grail or some other marvel. Or they'll do the same thing to humans and follow along, watching it as though it were a movie. According to Mama, nine-tenths of King Arthur was questing and the other tenth was politics.

Mab taught me the magic of trees and caverns and clearings in the forest. She taught me the dwindling spell, by which things may be made tiny, and the Great Spell of Bran, by which giants may be conjured up. Even Oberon, once or twice, taught me something of spell-casting, mostly matters of bewilderment. Oberon is very strong in bewilderment.

He also invited me to his couch, quite openly, making an honor of it, though not demanding an immediate response, for which I was thankful.

Mama was quite excited about that, not least at the thought of my possibly bearing Oberon's child. I did not want to bear anyone's child.

"It wouldn't be private, would it," I half-laughed to hide my embarrassment. If I had imagined myself talking to my mama about anything in the world, it would not have been this. I could not have imagined her urging me to let Oberon ... or cooperate with Oberon ... or even enjoy with Oberon ...

"Private?" she asked. "If you didn't want anyone to watch, you could say so. I don't suppose anyone would care."

I sat beside him at dinner. He sniffed at me, my breasts, my armpits. He laid his head in my lap and smelled me through my skirts, almost as a dog does. If I had encouraged him even slightly, he would have thrust his nose into my crotch. I moved away, pretending not to notice. This sounds foolish, doesn't it, pretending not to notice. And yet, the others behaved in such very strange ways that it was not as noticeable as it sounds. Still, Israfel would not have behaved so. Perhaps that is part of what Thomas meant, when he said they were diminished from former times.

Later, I said to Mama, "I'm not like you! My body isn't made the way yours is. He'd be disgusted. Either that or he'd have to lose his memory as you did with Papa."

"He would not lose his memory," she said stiffly. "Not here, not in Faery. And the fact that your body is more fleshy, more earthy, that it has smells of animal fecundity, only adds to his interest."

I had been wrong about there being no perversions in Faery. Their perversion was to lust after human bodies, with all their stinks and scattish contiguities.

"Will I offend him greatly if I ask for time to get used to Faery first," I asked, the only excuse I could think of at the moment. "Will you explain to him about things like ... like ... "

She snorted, making it plain she thought me a fool, but she told Oberon something that put him off without angering him. I caught him watching me every now and again with a lustful little sparkle in his eyes.

In truth, my body was in rebellion. I felt constantly weak and tired. I could cast the feeling aside by a little concentration, but I often found myself simply sitting, doing nothing, not wanting to move. It was unlikely that lovemaking would have been even tolerable, and I certainly didn't feel in the least lustful. The people of the Sidhe often went about virtually unclothed. Their bodies were fair and glorious to see, but I felt no prurience or desire, though their couplings and uncouplings were very casual. Sometimes they seemed like show-offy children, staring around to see if someone was watching, more concerned with being seen than with what they were doing. I remembered Roland Mirabeau, wondering if I had caught his disease of sexual ennui, but he had at least adored little girls and I didn't seem to adore any of the Sidhe. There was nothing in the smell of them to move me. They smelled like leaves, like moss, like clear seawater, like glass.

One night I found myself walking near Thomas the Rhymer. There was no one else about, so I told him we had been to his true love, Janet, and had arranged for her to save him. He was to have his right hand gloved and his left hand bare when he rode on All Hallow's eve. "Cap cocked up and hair long," I instructed him. "That's what she'll be expecting."

"You saw her?" he breathed.

"Only in the dark," I said. In truth, I had not seen her well, though she had seemed older than I had expected. Thomas did not stay to chat. Hope lit his face as he left me there, and I stayed, watching the night until the others woke.

Time went by, and suddenly one morning Oberon announced that evening would be All Hallows Eve and we would ride to the Dark One to pay him his teind. There was a flutter of excitement at that. Mab gave Oberon an angry look, which he pretended not to see. Thomas shivered. I could see it across the room. Elladine stared at Oberon until he turned to her and smiled. So. So and So. It had all been arranged. Someone was going to be very angry if Janet was waiting at Miles Cross.

I can recall almost nothing that happened during the day.

Along toward evening a group of us walked in a grove we sometimes frequented. At its center is the Pool of Delights, crossed by a carved stone bridge, over the rail of which the people of Faery are wont to peer, admiring their reflections in the water. I remember looking down at myself, smiling up at myself. My hair was twined up in a net of sapphires, and the thin muslin of my dress was embroidered with blue flowers. The face which smiled up at me was very beautiful, and I smiled at my own reflection, not happily, but in appreciation. Mama's face, no less lovely, was beside mine. It is the only thing I can remember happening, all day.

We rode out at evening. As we went from Faery into the world, the sky lightened and turned to rose and salmon and violet. The air suddenly smelled alive. There were sounds of things living and dying all around us. We went down the road, and people, seeing us pass by, crossed themselves and dipped their heads. Oh, we were glorious to see, like smoke, like mist, like visions of glory, the horses like the waves of the sea.

We went through Miles Village and toward Ercle's Down. A mile from the village was the crossroad, with a large cross set up at its center. The fairy host rode by, not seeing the woman huddled there until she came running toward us to throw her arms around Thomas's legs, pulling him from his horse.

"Thomas, True Thomas," she cried. "I'll never let you go!" She was a middle-aged woman, with gray in her hair. Thomas, suddenly no longer young, looked as surprised as anyone else. Janet could not have said anything more guaranteed to make Mab angry. Thereafter Janet embraced a dragon, a worm, a snake, a spider, a giant many-armed thing from the sea. She held bears and tigers and man-eating lions. She held dogs and hogs and eagles which tore at her eyes. Held them all, crying the while, "I'll never let you, never let you go," the muscles in her arms knotted as though forever and the ugly tears raining from her eyes.

Too much time went by. Oberon cried like a hawk, pointing at the sky. There was a line of gold along it, the night going fast. "Come," he cried. "We must ride." And they fled away, leaving only Janet to struggle with the monsters in her arms.

Janet and me. I looked down to see Puck holding the bridle of my horse to keep him from galloping after.

"Get down, my girl," he cried, "for it will not take them long to find you gone."

"I should be with them," I said stupidly. "Mama will miss me."

"And who will they use as a teind with Thomas gone?" Puck asked. "You, Beauty, be your mama ever so fair and ever so wise, and even fond of you a little, still they'll use you rather than one of them. Carabosse never intended you should ride farther than this. Carabosse sent us, and Carabosse says to go home."

I was sensible for the first time of how foolish I had been to come on this ride. "How will I get away? My cloak, my boots are back in Faery."

"They are here," said Fenoderee, holding them up for me to see. He pulled me down, slapped the horse on its rump to send it galloping after the others, and then shoved the boots on my feet and my shoes in my pocket. "They do not know you are involved in this. Better they do not know."

"Ah, Puck, thank you," I started to say, not really knowing whether thanks were due.

"Go, Beauty," he said. "We'll meet again," and he turned me about, whispering to my boots, "Take this lady home."

Then was the familiar whirlwind, and I was gone and so were they.

22

I stood beside the rose-mound of Westfaire. Tottered, I should say, suddenly dizzy, as though something in my head had gone awry. Embarrassment, I supposed, at the prospect of meeting Edward once more. And little Elladine. She would be two, or perhaps even three by now. She would not know I was her mother, of course. She would think the wet nurse was her mother or, if she had been weaned, the nursemaid. I thought of my daughter as I had seen her last, asleep in her cradle beside the fire, her dark hair bubbling over the pillow, like black water in torrent, already long enough to reach her shoulders. A pretty child. Not one a mother should have fled from.

Though Carabosse had said that mothers and daughters might not be sympathetic. "Particularly if the child resembles ... the other side of the family."

Well yes, but she was not a devil. Merely a child who resembled her actual father in some respects. Now she would be walking and talking, but her speech would be the speech of Wellingford. She could not possibly sound like Jaybee.

With these thoughts I calmed myself as I stood beside the shepherd's well, leaning against it almost, pulling myself up straight with an unaccustomed ache, looking myself over to see if I was well enough dressed to go straight to Wellingford. I picked at a fold of my gown, stared at it in confusion, caught in dream, nightmare, pulling the fabric through my hands ...

Aside from my cloak and the seven-league boots, I was dressed in rags. Scarcely one thread held to another. I put hands to my head in confusion, only to feel oily tangles and squirming locks. I had seen myself in the Pool of Delights only this afternoon, with my hair swept up in a net of sapphires and my dress of fine muslin, embroidered all over with flowers. How had I come to be dressed like this? And my hair so filthy? It stank. It smelled of smoke and grease and less acceptable things. My fingers found small hard specks caught in the coils: nits!

Shock held me motionless for a long, calculating moment. Hush, I told myself. Figure it out later. You are only filthy, after all. Filth can be washed away. Hair can be washed and the eggs of lice combed out. You have other clothes to wear. Hush now and do what needs doing. Comforted by decision, though not greatly, I tottered down toward the lakeside. Making myself look decent would necessitate getting into Westfaire, which meant a trip through the water gate. When I arrived at the water, I did not bother to strip. The rags I was wearing could be thrown away once I was inside. I bundled the cloak and boots atop my head. The water was cold. I thought it must be winter, then reassured myself that there were flowers growing in the woods and the trees were in leaf. Still, the water was very cold and very deep and harder to move against than when last I had come this way.

Inside the water gate the steps were taller, too, and more deeply covered with moss. Everything was more difficult than when I had last been there. The stairs to the attic seemed endless, but I had to go there to get a dress. On my way back to the kitchen I stopped in Aunt Love's room to snatch up a looking glass and the fine toothed comb made of tortoise shell she had used on me when, as a child, I had picked up lice from my acquaintances in the stables. The bath place was next to the kitchens, a small, stone-floored room with a stone-curbed well in the corner, a great wooden tub, and over the hearth a huge hanging kettle with a copper to bail the water in and out. Except for Papa, my aunts, and I, who had had tubs brought to our rooms for occasional use, everyone at Westfaire had bathed in this room, sometimes half a dozen of them at once. There was a similar arrangement at Wellingford, though I had never been able to use it when I was being Havoc the miller's son for fear of being found out. Once I was Edward's wife, there had been no need. I had had my own tub again, filled and emptied by sweating servant girls. At least, I assume they sweated for I did by the time I had filled the huge kettle from the well.

I lit the fire, already laid, tied the belt of my cloak around my neck to keep from falling asleep, took off the cloak itself, and sat down to comb my hair while the water heated. The tangles were deep. The comb pulled and the tangles caught in the teeth. I pulled the wad of hair out and threw it into the fire, combing again. The next time I threw the hair toward the fire, a draft caught it and blew it back at me. Gray hair. Not wheat straw, not silver, but gray.

The looking glass lay face down on the table. I polished it with the rags of my sleeve. An old face looked back at me. No ... no, not an old face. Just not a young face. A thirty-fiveish, fortyish face. Not old for the twentieth, but old for the fourteenth, when people did not live so long. There were tiny lines around the eyes, not deep ones, but they were there. There were more lines on my forehead, between my brows, furrows, as though I had often thought deeply, worrying over something. Most of my hair was still gold, but at either temple the gray swept upward in silver wings around a face thin as a chicken's breastbone.

I had only been gone a little time! A few weeks in Chinanga! A few weeks in Ylles! Whence came this protruding skeleton, this skull beneath the wrinkled skin? Whence came this hoary hair, this hip-stiff walk, this pale reflection of beauty gone, beauty done, beauty over! I screamed, I think. It was as though I had found a snake in my bed, a spider crouched upon my food, a monstrous devourer slinking close at my back, death, worse than death, for with death it is done soon and over, but with this, with this, I was still alive to know of it.

Panic and tears and wailing. I came to myself later to find the kettle steaming over the fire, the lid dancing upon the roiling waters, a jolly clangor which seemed to say so you're getting old, you're old, you're old. So what? Hills are old and getting older, rocks are older than that, stars are older still, so what?

"So it's gone!", I cried, half in pain, half in fury. "My youth, my beauty, gone. I didn't even use it up and it's gone! I didn't have time to waste it, time to taste it, time to glory in it, and it's gone! Here I am all sunk-cheeked, droopy-chested, flat-butted, and it's gone."

Bingity-bangety went the lid. You're half a fairy, aren't you? You've learned magic haven't you? What does it matter how old you are?

What did it matter? If I chose to use enchantment, no one would know it but me. Was there a difference if no one knew it but me? Oh, yes, I cried to myself. Oh, yes. There was more weeping, more howling, coming to myself at last with my hands buried in my filthy hair.

Old or not, I could not bear the dirt on me. I filled the tub and stripped the rags away. When I got them off, I recognized what they were: the remnants of the dress I had worn when I left Wellingford. A simple kirtle of fine wool. I had stood on the sandspit in Chinanga in that gown. I had traveled to the wall of Baskarone in that gown. I had met the ambassador in that gown. Evidently I had also grown old in that gown. It was gone. Only tatters.

I heard a voice singing.

 

"Beauty and rag tag and motley are twins.
When the one's gone then the other begins."

 

Oh, Fenoderee! How could you be so unkind! I looked around for him, but he was not there.

Chunks of soap lay on the shelf beside the copper. Cook had learned how to make it from some Teutonic connection of his, from tallow and ashes and a lengthy stirring. The aunts had been dead set against soap in the bath, thinking it fit only for the washing of filthy clothes, but water and scented oils alone would do nothing for my hair. I washed it, combed it, washed it again. The body was filthy, too. Not "my" body. It did not look or feel like "my" body. When I was done, I pulled the plug from the drain, then filled the tub again from the kettle and the well, lying in it to soak myself until I felt able to go on.

When I was clean, I fed the body. The body, though not at all familiar, was not as bad as I had feared, only very bony and ugly, like photographs I had seen in the twentieth of starvation victims or one of those unfortunate women with anorexia. Whatever I had been eating in Ylles, or thought I had been eating, whatever I had consumed in Chinanga, it had not been sufficient to sustain a half-mortal person. I felt my breast, feeling a warmth there, as though something simmered gently inside. Being half-starved had not injured what I carried.

Damn, I said to myself, Carabosse should have known!

None of my clothing would fit. Aunt Lavvy had been, was, very thin, as I recalled. Wrapped in a sheet from the linen store beside the bathroom, I went upstairs once more to Aunt Lavender's room. I found the kirtle she had used to ride in, plus several more, all of very plain stuff, with full sleeves to show the tightly buttoned sleeves of the underbodice. Aunt Lavvy's underbodices were all the color of dirt or excrement. Mama's underbodices, in the attic, were of prettier colors: madder red, and dark indigo blue, saffron yellow, and hollyhock root, which is a pale blue. They were soft enough that their fullness did not matter. Thieving through other closets, I took Aunt Terror's new cote-hardie, and Aunt Basil's surcote, which was almost new. I had never worn a wimple and veil, but it seemed a good time to start. Particularly inasmuch as the soap had left my hair as wild as a lion's mane. I found some clean headdresses in Aunt Marj's room, along with a leatherbound box in which everything could be packed. I thought of using the boots to take me to Wellingford from where I stood, inside Westfaire, but the thought of what all those thorns might do to me en passant, as it were, dissuaded me. The boots might take me without injury, but sapiens nihil affirmat quod non probat, as Father Raymond used to say, and God knows I didn't know for sure. So I went out into the lake, naked as celery, with the box teetering on top of my head, dried myself off on the shore, and assembled myself as best I might.

I had remembered to bring the looking glass and a comb and I'd taken half a dozen tortoiseshell hairpins from Aunt Lavvy's cupboard. Mama's soft linen underbodice clad me almost to my ankles. I chose the one died with madder, soft and faded pink from washing, and buttoned tightly to the wrists and neck. Over that went Aunt Lavvy's kirtle, made from soft brown wool with a low scooped neck and wide, short sleeves. Buff linen for the wimple and veil, and then Aunt Basil's black and brown striped wool surcote with red lions embroidered in the corners of the front and back panels. When I was put together, I gave myself a looking over-as best I could with the small looking glass-and saw a bony-faced but passable woman, much too thin, who would be handsome if she put on about twenty pounds. I put on cloak and boots and commanded them to take me and my box to Wellingford.

I did not say "the Dower House." I said "Wellingford," and it was to Wellingford the boots delivered me. For a moment, seeing the ruins before me, I thought I had repeated my earlier journey to the abbey. When my eyes had had time to clear, I saw that the place was indeed Wellingford Manor, but that some walls were fallen and others barely standing, that one corner of the roof had partly burned, and that no one lived there anymore. Or perhaps someone did. In the ruined hallway, I saw the embers of a fire and heard a deep voice mumble angrily, as though awakened from slumber. "Boots," I whispered, "take me to the Dower House."

One stride brought me to the door. The Dower House stood, and though it had much need of a careful hand, it gave evidence of being occupied. Broken casements sagged crazily on their hinges, paving stones tilted, weeds grew around the door, but there was smoke coming from one of the chimneys and chickens cackled in the kitchenyard. Deo gratias. I put the boots in my pocket, replaced them with a pair of Aunt Marj's pointed shoes and knocked upon the door.

A voice screamed inside, words I could not make out. Instructions to a servant, perhaps? Abuse hurled at a dog? The door opened to disclose a surly maidservant in a dirty kirtle and filthier apron who stared at me with her mouth half open. It was the hall of a place which had been my home. It did not look like home anymore. There were chicken feathers on the stairs.

"Who is it?" came the screaming voice from somewhere off to my right where the kitchens were. "Who is it?"

Who was it, indeed? Who was I? Not Beauty, wife of Edward, mother of Elladine. I had not thought of using enchantment. I was what I was, someone else, old enough to be an aunt and dressed like one. I borrowed the name of one of Edward's own aunts, adding Papa's title for verisimilitude.

"Lady Catherine Monfort, Edward Wellingford's aunt."

The slovenly servant trudged away. There were further noises offstage, perhaps a slap, then a door slamming. There were back stairs. Perhaps someone had gone up. After considerable time, someone came down, hand trailing upon the bannister.

"Lady Catherine Monfort?"

She could have been a pretty lady. In her thirties somewhere, rather more late than early. Her hair was red as a bonfire, and her chest as white as chalk. Both owed much to alchemy. Both could have benefitted from washing. Still, the expression on her face was open and concerned.

I nodded politely, wondering who this apparition was. "Come to visit my nephew, Edward."

"You hadn't heard!" She reached out her arms toward me with genuine compassion. "Oh, how dreadful. You didn't know that Edward had died."

"Died?" I asked stupidly. It had never occurred to me that Naughty Ned could die. Not so soon. Not in such a short time. Sweet man, dead? Is kindness and compassion rewarded so? "Not dead?"

"When the plague returned," she nodded. "In sixty-one."

"Year of our Lord," I murmured, putting out a hand to catch myself.

"Thirteen sixty-one," she said. "Yes. I am his widow, Lydia. We had only been married a short time when he died. But that was almost six years ago. How could you not have heard?"

"I've been away," I said, wondering where the intervening years had gone. I had left in fifty-one. "Far away. In ... the Holy Land."

"A pilgrim," she chirruped. "Do come in," she took my arm. "Oh, what a shock it must be."

We went into the little sitting room. It had been my room, with chairs in it, not wainscot chairs against the wall, but real chairs one could move about, with carved arms, made for me by a man who worked for Lord Robert, given me as a wedding gift. They were still there, still with the cushions I had worked when I was pregnant with Elladine. Sadly soiled and worn, those cushions. The fireplace was deep in ashes. Everything was dirty and ragged. Evidently this lady, like my aunts, did not hold with soap.

"His daughter?" I asked. "Little Elly ... ?"

"Elladine? Oh, she survived, yes indeed. Very healthy child, she was. Is, I should say, though she's not a child any longer."

"How old ... ?"

"Elladine would be what? Sixteen? Seventeen? Hard enough to keep track of my own, such an army of them."

"Your own?"

"Gloriana, that's the eldest. Then my oldest son, Harold. Then my second son, Bertram. Then Griselda. Then comes Elladine. Then the two Edward and I had together. Twins. Catherine and young Edward. Your nephew Edward named them. Why, I just thought! Catherine must be named after you?"

I nodded again, feeling lost. Possibly Edward had named his second daughter after his aunt. And possibly the twins were not Edward's children at all. "You were a widow when you married Edward?"

She threw her arms wide, miming woe. "Twice, now. Oh, it's very hard to bear. Very hard, Lady Catherine. Lord Robert died early in the year, then Janet and the children. Then the youngest brother, Richard. Then, soon after we were married, Edward himself. All of Wellingford has fallen to me. I've the care of all of it to see to, and no one to help!"

If her two sons were older than Elladine, then she should have some help. "Your sons," I suggested weakly.

"Mere children," she waved her hand to suggest something inconsiderable. "Striplings. Caring for nothing but gaming and the hunt. Boys. Mere sweet boys."

"Your daughters?" I suggested, a little more strongly.

"So talented," she said. "So very musical. And such graceful girls. A little tall, perhaps, but then so is a willow, and nothing is more graceful, moving in the wind." She mimed wind, swaying at me. "But then, I'm forgetting myself. You must be famished? Thirsty? Weary? I didn't see your carriage?"

"I rode," I said. "Hired a horse in ... in ... "

"East Sawley?" she suggested.

I nodded, inventing. "Two horses and a man to carry my box. Sent them back again."

And she was dismayed. "Then you plan to stay? Not that you aren't welcome. Oh, you're very welcome. It's just such very short notice."

I gestured vaguely, signifying that I would make do. "There's an extra room, surely."

"A very little one," she assented. "Over the kitchen."

It was the warmest room in the house. The one I had used as a nursery after Elly was born. There was a narrow bed in it, as I remembered. Though, after sixteen years ...

We got my box. I carried it myself. There seemed to be no one else to carry it. The bed was still there, full of mice. The whole room was very dirty. Why was my whole history one of being given dirty rooms to occupy? "If you'll send me up a serving maid or two," I suggested.

"Serving maid," she said vaguely, as though she should know the word but had forgotten it. "Maid?"

"Women. Who clean rooms, who sweep floors."

"Oh. Of course. Yes."

As we had come along the corridor, I had noticed that the little linen room was shut, just as I had left it when I had gone away with the key in my pocket. The key was still in the deep pocket of my cloak where I had thrust it when I left. Though it seemed a wild hope, I went back to the closet and tried the key. Inside were sheets and covers and two clean ticks, and pillow cases and the extra pillows I had made when we killed the geese the last fall I had been in the Dower House. The mice hadn't been at it, or if they had, the chunks of black hellebore root scattered along the shelves had poisoned them. The cupboard hadn't been opened in all those years! No one had wanted to break it open; perhaps there had been no locksmith available. Perhaps Lydia had simply been too lazy to bother. The linens still smelled faintly of lavender as I carried sheets and pillows and one of the ticks back to the nursery in time to meet two maids, one of them the girl who had answered the door, the other an older version. Slatterns, both. They regarded me with insolent immobility, jaws moving like cows.

"You will clean this room," I said quietly. "You will use soap. Scrub the floors. Sweep down the cobwebs. Scrub out the windows. Take that mattress away and bring me clean straw for this one."

They looked at one another, back at me, challenging me to make them move. Aha. Well and a day.

"Else," I smiled, "I will summon a dragon to eat you both." I snapped my fingers and made fire dart at them so that they screamed. It was a fine, hard fireflight, which told me I was in a time when magic flowed strong.

They had no more sense of how to clean a room than of how to fly. I kept coming back and making them do it over, getting a little angrier each time and they getting a little more frantic at the fire biting them. The whole house was evidence of their slipshod ways, theirs and Lydia's. As for Lydia, she had gone upstairs to lie about on a disordered bed with her elder daughters and the twins, playing the lute (tunelessly) and singing (less melodiously than Grumpkin had used to howl) and talking of the future. I put on my cloak for a reconnaissance and overheard them from the hallway. Their plans seemed to consist of selling Wellingford and going to London to live on the fruits of that sale. For a moment I struggled with this idea, certain that Elladine was the heir if all the Wellingford brothers were dead. But, of course, she was not. Young Edward was the heir: the six-year-old monster whom I caught torturing a dog in the stables, and whose britches I set alight to teach him better manners. He looked nothing like Edward. Nothing at all. Edward, my poor sweet fish, taken twice on the same hook!

And where was Elladine? Over an indescribably bad dinner, I asked again for my "grandniece."

"Poor Elladine," Lydia murmured. "Such an unfortunate name to give a child. Not a Christian name, surely."

"But where is she?"

"She goes off. On a horse, sometimes. Sometimes afoot. We're never sure where she is. Poor child. First motherless, then fatherless, I'm sure she'll be so glad to meet any kin at all."

"You and Edward were married in ... what year?" I asked.

"In the year of the second Death. Almost at once after Robert and Janet died," she said, "together with Robert's youngest brother and all their sons. Edward was the heir, and he felt he needed someone to help him maintain the estate. And, of course, I'd been left a widow and desperately needed someone to help me, as well. Four fatherless children to rear, with people dying everywhere, it is no pleasant Maytime to be alone in such circumstance, believe me. Edward most wanted someone to care for Ella. I told him I would maintain his daughter if he would maintain me. It was not a love match, precisely, though I was fond of Edward."

Poor Edward. Destined always to be a husband of convenience. "How did you meet?"

"Janet was my cousin. I was visiting here when the plague struck. Oh, there were many visitors, then. Robert and Janet had taken in half the countryside who were homeless. I remember Janet going on and on about being unable to keep the place clean."

Which is why the plague had struck Wellingford, I thought. Poor Janet. So charitable. Giving a home to the multitude, with all their fleas.

"Of the Wellingfords, only Edward and Ella were left alive when the dying paused for a time," Lydia said, leading me into the next room as we heard the maids breaking crockery behind us. She went on to give me the details of the dying, with an unnecessary relish in the recounting, interrupting herself to say, "Ah, here she is!"

A ravishingly beautiful young woman came through the door. Sixteen or seventeen, perhaps. Wild dark hair. Wild dark eyes. A bruise on one cheek. Hands coarse and scratched and black around the nails.

"Elladine, this is your father's Aunt Catherine," Lydia said in a kindly tone, edged with some emotion I did not quite understand.

"What would she have here, madam? What's left?" the girl asked insolently. It was the same tone in which Candy might have said "So?" or "Big deal!" in the twentieth.

Lydia flinched, giving me an apologetic glance. Discipline wasn't Lydia's forte either, poor thing. I had yet to find what Lydia's forte was. Surely she must have had something to recommend her to Edward. Or was he so distraught at all the dying, he had grasped her as he, drowning, might have grasped at a straw? Ah well, if discipline was not her thing, neither were manners my daughter's.

"Elly, my dear," I said, kissing my child on her unwelcoming face. "I am your great-aunt, from Ylles, come to visit you."

She gave me a look to tell me she did not care. Her face was Jaybee's face, made feminine, made soft, but with broken glass beneath it. Her hand, as she pushed me away, was as hard as his had been. Elladine remained with us only so long as we held her in unwilling conversation, then departed as quickly as she might, and I stared after her, wondering what I could do to make this situation tenable.

I thought, her mouth is wide and sensual. She has hooded eyes. Her figure is as graceful and lithe as mine once was. Her breasts curve like the swell of a sail, and her cheeks are softly rose. She is beautiful, not as I was, but nonetheless, beautiful. I cannot tell if she is intelligent. She is hard as stone.

I wondered, how much of her hardness is my fault? How much of this iron rancor came from doing without a mother's love?

There was no time to weary myself assessing guilt. Someone had to see to her, see to things, and it was obvious that Lydia could not see to boiling an egg. Though Elladine could use a parent, I could scarcely introduce myself as her mother. I had no idea whether Edward settled anything on her or not before he died. Without a dowry, her future would be unenviable. All I could do under the circumstances was to be her aunt, stay with her, and try to remedy the situation.

LATER

Later yesterday I met Lydia's four older children. The two daughters are awkward and ungainly girls, both with an intransigent dirtiness about them. The younger one, eighteen perhaps, would not be bad looking if she were cleaner, and if she would stand up straight and comb her hair. The older, however, Gloriana, a maiden of some twenty years, is taller than any woman I have ever seen. She has a face that could carve stone and hands as big as a large man's. I knew at once who was responsible for the bruises on Elladine's face. Gloriana's hands twitch, knot, twitch again whenever she looks at Elly, like creatures with a will of their own. She is as full of anger as Elladine is, though from a different cause. An ugly girl who hates girls who are not. When I heard her voice, it was no surprise. Hers was the knife-edged shriek from the kitchen. That both of the girls are slovens simply fills out the picture. Their shifts have not been washed in many a season, their nails are brown with unthinkable dirt, their hair, I warrant, is as full of lice as mine was when I woke at Westfaire.

The boys, Harry and Bert, looked slightly less dirty when I met them. I believe their relative cleanliness may be due to their having been caught in the rain oft times while hunting. Both are beefy boys, red in the face, big in the teeth, with small eyes and large noses. They are even taller than Gloriana. Though Lydia is a woman of average size, her first husband must have been a giant to have begot these monsters.

Of the twins, the least said the better. They have been spoiled so rotten that they smell of corruption. Neither has ever been forced to do anything he or she did not want to do. They have two voices: a whine; a scream. They have no graces at all.

So, if the family is of little use, what about the servants? There are serving women about the place, but I recognize none of them. Besides the two who eventually finished cleaning my room, I found several more, enough to do the washing, sweep out the filthy hall, bring in wood for the fire, heat the kettle and fill the tubs. Lydia's daughters could have bathed. Their clothes could have been scrubbed. I wonder why they choose instead to go about in dirt? Well, they could do as they chose, but the Dower House need not follow their example.

I slept last night in a clean chamber. I rose this morning at dawn. I found the maids still sleeping, routed them out, and set them to work, though they grumbled mightily when I told them to clean the fireplace in Elly's chamber, saying that she always did that herself.

"Elly," I explained sweetly, "is my nephew's daughter. She does not sweep chambers, carry out slops, or make up fires. You do. You do it well and consistently or you will be eaten alive by dragons!" I glared at them and they cowered.

Elly came upon me in mid-dudgeon, carrying a pail of ashes. She shook her head at me angrily. "It won't do any good," she sneered. "Stepmama won't keep after them once you're gone. They're lazy sluts, all of them." I noticed again that her nails were black.

"They certainly won't do it if you do it for them," I suggested. "Go wash your hands."

One of the maids sniggered behind me. I set a small imp to pinch her black and blue, and her howling could be heard for half a mile. It had a salutary effect on the others. I smiled at Elly, who regarded me with dawning interest.

"You know what these sluts call me," she asked. "Ella of the Ashes. Just because I carry out the ashes so I can get the fire in my room to burn. The others are so lazy, they'd rather freeze. They all pile in one bed together to keep each other warm. Like pigs."

"Why won't Lydia exert herself a little?" I asked, truly interested in Elly's perception of the situation.

"She doesn't want to keep Wellingford. She wants to sell it. That's why she doesn't take care of it. It used to be beautiful. It's all ugly now."

"Whether she wants to keep it or not, there is such a thing as pride," I said. "Only those without any are filthy and lazy. Perhaps she needs to be taught."

"When pigs have wings," said Elly with an ugly snort, leaving me.

It was only later I thought what she had said. Ella of the Ashes. Cinder-Ella.

"Puck," I cried.

He was there, looking at me sidelong.

"What is this?" I demanded, half hysterically. "I've been in the twentieth, Puck. I've read books. I've seen Disney, for the love of God. I know the Cinderella story. What is this?"

"Did you think the stories were made up?" he asked me. "Did you think there was no real Beauty, no real Cinderella, no real Goldilocks or Rose Red or ... "

"But why me? Why my daughter?"

He shrugged. "Did you never notice, in the twentieth, how legends gather around some people. There is the truth about a man, and then the part truths that gather afterward, and then the myths that follow later yet. A legendary man tends to have legendary sons. Power attracts power, so power gathers. It is one of the truths of magic."

"Am I to expect, then, that there will be a prince?"

He shrugged again. "It depends on what story you learned, there in the twentieth. Was it the true tale, or the part truth, or the myth? Do you know?"

I didn't know, but knowing that Elly was at the root of a fairy tale made me have some hope for her future, at least.

ST. MARY MAGDELEN'S DAY, JULY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1367

My daughter is the same age I was when I started writing this story of my life. She is not very like me, as I remember being. She is bad-tempered, quick to strike, eager to continue the fray. She hates her stepsisters and brothers with a hot, even anger. She doses their food with nutshells, boils their woolens to elf size, spreads oil upon the floor outside their rooms to make them fall. They detest her, and she glories in their dislike. Her animosity and their slothfulness seem to have kept her alive. If any one of them had been capable of decisive action, he, or she, would have killed Elly. I look at her and I marvel. So like her father. She would rather have passionate hatred than lukewarm affection.

"What are you looking at?" she snarled at me.

"The indomitable human spirit," I replied.

"Go domit somewhere else," she returned. "I'm sick of you always looking at me."

Perhaps I, too, would be sick of someone always looking at me.

"What was it like when your father was alive?" I asked her.

Pain, then, in her face, swiftly passing but sharp while it was there. "He was ... he was very good to me," she said. "I think he loved me."

"I know he did," I said. "He told me so."

"She says he didn't," she gestured toward her stepmother's window. "She says he only pretended, because I didn't have a mother. She says nobody could love someone as bad-tempered as I am. He only pretended. He thought he owed it to me."

"That's not true. He loved you. Very much. I remember once when you were a tiny baby, only a few months old, I saw him bend over your cradle and tell you that he loved you, and it was not owing, it was real."

She sat very still, like a cat that is too frightened to move, afraid I would take it back. Her stance made me think of an old friend.

"There used to be a cat here, named Grumpkin," I said. "He was a great favorite of mine. He must have died a long time ago. It's been sixteen years."

"He did die," she nodded. "He was my mother's cat, and Papa said she left him to me when the enchantment took her away."

I gulped. So Edward had told her that! Poor Edward. He had been curious, and knew it. He had blamed himself.

"Grumpkin slept on my bed sometimes. He lived to be very old. I cried when he died. But he fathered lots of kittens, and I've still got one of his sons. Daddy named him Grumpkin the Second as though he were a king." Her voice had changed. All the hostility had left it. It was for that one moment as open and communicative as a child's.

"Why did the enchantment take your mother away?" I asked, wondering if I'd been right.

"Because Papa got curious about her," she said. "He said it was all his fault."

Oh, Edward. Edward. "Let's go see Grumpkin's son," I suggested, getting up from my chair.

"I have to take out the ashes," she said, not thinking, merely expressing her habitual contrariness.

"No," I told her. "Not anymore. While I am here, I will be sure the maids do it."

Brought to herself, her lip curled into its usual sneer. "How come you can tell the maids what to do and what not to do?" she asked. "You're not the mistress of Wellingford. You're only an aunt."

I had figured out who I was that morning. Even I, who had never cared for children's stories, could not have failed to notice what role I was playing. In the twentieth, I had seen Disney, after all. Though Elly and I were not privileged to be attended by singing mice, it did not surprise me greatly that this segment of my life had gained a spurious immortality, a glossy, oversimplified and untruthful half-life.

I shook my head at Elly, trying hard to get her to smile. "No, my child. You mustn't tell anyone at all, but I'm your fairy godmother."

She laughed at me, thinking I was joking. It was a genuinely amused laugh.

ST. MARTHA'S DAY, JULY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1367

I have my Grumpkin back again. The son is like Grumpkin I, except that he has one white foot. When I picked him up, it seemed almost that he knew me, for he reached out his paw to touch my face as the other Grumpkin used to do. As I write, he is beside me, purring, opening his eyes every few moments to be sure I have not gone away. Though Elly values him, she does not care for him. I saw her slap at him, for no reason except to see him blink. Strange. With her, the having is enough. She uses or ignores. She does not maintain. In that, she is more like Lydia than she would like to think.

Though Lydia is too lazy to take charge of Wellingford herself, she does not seem to resent my doing it. In any case, I have not asked her permission. During the past days the maids have ceased to grumble: they, the household, and the household linens are clean. Elladine has had several baths (as have I), the floors have been swept, and the cook has been instructed to feed us something besides porridge and meat pies. There is plenty of food-it has been six years since the plague came and went again-but acquiring victuals from the gardens and orchards, from the sties and the poultry house and the herds, takes a little attention and good sense, neither of which Lydia seems to be capable of supplying. The small caches of coins I left behind me are still here, for the most part, and I have used some of them to purchase necessities. I also found the warrant upon the usurers of London where I hid it before I left, but I have set it aside against later need.

I have gained several pounds and look less like a skeleton. Elly's hands have come clean. Her bruises have faded. I set a small spell upon Gloriana that she should get a painful cramp each time she tried to pinch. She, robbed of her usual prey, has turned to accusing a pretty village woman of witchcraft. I will have to do something about that, too. I have not yet decided what to do to extricate Elly from her current problem, but at least the situation has been stabilized, as they would say in the twentieth.

Carabosse asked me, before I left Faery, whether I could just go along, pretending I was only what I am. Here, in this house, I am only what I am. The thing burns beneath my breastbone, but it is no stranger than my heartbeat or the sound of my own breath. It is almost as though I had stayed in Chinanga. Here, as there, no one knows who I am. I am someone else. No one knows I am here.

ST. STEPHEN'S DAY, SEPTEMBER, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1367

I was not surprised when a herald came to the door yesterday with a pronouncement. I have been expecting something of the kind.

All inhabitants of Wellingford between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five are invited to attend a series of three evening entertainments given in honor of His Royal Highness, Prince Something or Other, by his parents, the ruling family in exile of some tiny kingdom I had never heard of.

I was surprised, however, at the herald's voice. There was something familiar about it. Something that raised gooseflesh, made echoes in my heart. I went out into the courtyard with a cup of wine and offered it to the man. When I saw him, I knew him.

"Your name is Giles, isn't it?" I asked him, keeping my voice even only with a great effort. I wanted to throw my arms about him. I wanted to cry on his shoulder. "You were a man-at-arms in service to the Duke of Monfort and Westfaire." My voice trembled when I said it.

"My lady?" he asked, getting down from his horse and bowing to me. "Have we met?" He looked just the same. Older, of course, but just the same. His eyebrows quirked in the same way. He had that little turn at the corner of his lips that I had used to watch for. There was a new scar at one side of his brow. "I don't remember ... "

I waved my hand in front of my face. "Many years ago," I said. "I can scarcely remember the occasion, but your voice sounded familiar." Not only his voice. He stood as I remembered, straight and tall, feet together, one slightly turned out. As though he had been invited to dance.

"Fancy your becoming a herald!" I said. "Why did you leave Westfaire?"

His eyes shut, only briefly, as though remembering an old pain. "The priest there sent me on a journey," he said. "A kind of pilgrimage, it was. To bring some sacred relics back to the chapel at Westfaire. I had to go a wearisome way, and when I returned ... "

"The enchantment," I murmured.

"The enchantment," he agreed, letting his eyes shut again. "I think ... I think they're all in there," he whispered. "All of them. One of them got out for a while, but she had to go back. She'd be a widow now."

Well, of course that is what he would have thought. It is, after all, what Edward thought, what Edward told everyone. Not about my being a widow, but about my getting out of Westfaire. "Someone you cared about?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, ma'am. Yes, indeed. Someone I care about."

I breathed deeply, taking note of the present tense. "So then, what did you do?"

"I chose to stay fairly close by, but I sought service where I might. There was plague, as you know. It seemed wisest to stay away from the cities. I lived rough as a man can. I farmed a bit. At least that meant I'd have food. Then, when these little royals took the place over by East Sawley Mill, they offered me good money to be man-at-arms for them. Escort, mostly. And herald."

"Herald," I said with a tremulous laugh.

He laughed with me. "I've got a good loud voice from calling cows, ma'am, and I remember things."

Oh, indeed he did. And so did I. "Can you remember the reason for this widespread invitation?" I teased, letting something of my old childish teasing come into my voice.

He cocked his head and smiled at me, recognizing the tone if not the origin of that flirtiness. "These little royals, they got driven out of their wee country, over near France or some such place so I'm told, but when they came, they brought a fortune with them. They bought land past East Sawley Mill and rebuilt the big old house up there. But they don't know anybody, ma'am. What with the plague and the unsettled conditions since, it's a wonder anybody's left. They told me to ride to all the noble houses in the surrounding land and pronounce the invitation. There can't be more than six or eight great houses left, and that'll be stretching it. Wellingford's not rightly great, not anymore, but I thought I'd stop." He flushed, thinking I might take umbrage, but I only nodded, telling him that I understood.

"Will there be a ball?" I asked, doubtfully.

"Close as they can get. They've got musicians hired. They've got cooks working away, making three days worth of feasts. The boy's coming of age, ma'am, and his mama wants him to have a celebration. She says they've had enough sadness recently."

He handed me back the wine cup. I watched him go with tears in my eyes and a great longing in my heart, or wherever longing resides. I felt it in my stomach, so perhaps that is where. I had wanted to tell him who I was. The only reason I had not was that he did not recognize me. When I looked into the mirror, it was hard for me to know myself. I was afraid he could not love who I had become.

I went to the kitchens to find Harry teasing his sisters. "It's him," he was telling them. "The prince who's giving the party is the man who came riding by the other day. He's the prince."

Gloriana said, "Oh, Harry, it's not. It couldn't be."

"I tell you it is. The boy with the yellow hair." Harry seized Griselda in one oversized arm and paraded her around the kitchen, stepping on her feet. His hands were the same size as Gloriana's, and even on him they bulked large. He had jowls already, blue as steel, and a bit of a belly sticking out. Not an altogether prepossessing partner for the dance. "The prince was the one with the yellow hair," he bellowed raucously.

"His hair wasn't yellow," said Elly. "It was gold." She was sitting in the chimney corner as she often did, and she said it so quietly that no one heard her. If they had heard her, they wouldn't have paid attention. I had noticed that. No one paid much attention to Elly. Except me, of course. I kept looking for something of Edward in her. His patience. His devotion. Surprising myself, each time, by remembering that he wasn't her real father. And yet he had given her so much. All to be wiped away like this, lost when he was lost.

"You saw the prince, too?" I asked her in a murmur.

She nodded, pressing her teeth together, making a tight-lipped frown. She has yet to smile at me, except at my embarrassments, and at those she laughs.

"Was he handsome?" I asked.

She took a deep breath. She did not need to answer. Her eyes were answer enough. She looked at me hatefully, detesting this self-betrayal.

"Are we going to the ball?" Harold asked his mother. "We'll need new clothes."

"All of you?" Lydia asked doubtfully. "Why, Harry, I don't know. I'm not sure we can even find anyone to make clothes."

"Have to go," he replied, significantly. "Have to show the girls off. You know what he's doing, don't you? He's looking for a wife. That's why all the young ones are invited."

"He invited men, too," Griselda commented.

"Who would the girls dance with, otherwise?"

"Mother, do you suppose he is?" asked Gloriana, face suddenly red as a boiled lobster, eyes hot with hope. Oh, poor child, I said to myself. Don't hope for it, no. It isn't fated. It isn't willed. Poor ugly thing. Her skin was rough as her hands, her hair was a jungle, and she smelled like vintage dirt. My heart swelled with pity for her, and for Griselda, and for all other barnyard geese who long to fly.

"Perhaps I can find a seamstress," I suggested. "I used to know the neighborhood rather well."

"Not only a seamstress," Lydia fussed, "but fabric. Since the second Death, there haven't been the merchants there used to be."

"I'll try," I said. Edward had set a store of fabrics by, bought for me, bought in anticipation of Elladine needing dresses. He had ordered them from London or purchased them from travelers. He loved to see me in silk from the Far East, in damask and velvet from Florence. There were boxes of folded materials in the attic, set away in linen sheets, dosed against the mice with hellebore, against the moths with wormwood and southernwood, lavender and rosemary. Boys mix the ashes of southernwood with oil and use it to make their beards grow. Lad's Love and Maid's Ruin, it is called. When I unfolded the linen, I remembered that, remembered Janet telling me. She was full of herbary, Janet. Fuller than the aunts, despite having an ordinary person-name.

There is a great length of mustard-colored silk, enough to make a gown for Gloriana, and enough greeny-blue damask for Griselda. Edward bought both pieces from a merchant who had brought them from Italy. There are other Italian damasks, too, to make cote-hardies for the boys, and velvet for overmantles. There are silks from the Far East for underbodices, and spools of finer silk for the knitting of stockings, if we had time to knit stockings. It seems there will be no time for that, or for embroidered sleeves, but the fabrics are rich enough. There is nothing in any of the boxes that I like for Elladine. She needs something light, something bright with her dark hair. White. It will have to be white, with short, full sleeves and a slash at the hem to show a bright full-length underskirt. There will be flowers embroidered on the sleeves, if I have to bribe one of Puck's people to do it.

ST. OMER'S DAY, SEPTEMBER, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1367

The seven-league boots made it an easy trip to London. I went there late at night, stayed half a day, and returned with white satin and with pairs of silken hose from Spain. So far as everyone was concerned, I had found them all in the attics.

"Mama, keep Elly home or she'll spoil everything," I had heard Gloriana saying.

"I don't think Elly should go," Lydia said.

"Oh, I agree," I said to Lydia. "She's far too young."

"I'm not too young," Elly later screamed into my face.

"Of course not, child. But you don't want Gloriana pinching you black and blue between now and then. And she will, if she thinks you're going. She might even break an arm or leg for you, or pull all your hair out, so sulk and be still. All will come right."

She sulked and was still. I suggested to Lydia that it might be wise to start bathing her daughters a week or so in advance to get rid of some of the accumulated grime. She yawned and said she supposed so and did nothing about it. I began working on Elly's hair, brushing it every night, doing it up on rags, saying quiet prayers of thankfulness for Candy's ministrations which had taught me all this, even though it did not seem to matter what I did to Elly's hair. Her hair was a treasure, like tumbling black water, lightless in its ebon flow. In anticipation of the parties, her eyes were slumbrous and her lips seemed swollen with invisible kisses.

While village women struggled with clothing for Lydia's children, I summoned some help for my own child. Sitting on the side of my bed, late at night, I said, "Fenoderee, I need a friend," only to look down and see him there.

"You're lookin' older," he said impudently.

"You knew how old I'd look," I said. "You and Puck, when you sent me back. I heard you chanting at me. Ragtag and motley, indeed!"

"You can look as young as you like," he told me.

"As Elladine does," I said. "As Mab does?"

He looked down at his feet, suddenly discomfitted.

"Fenoderee?" I asked.

"Don't bother him," said a voice, and Puck stepped out from behind the tapestry on the wall. "He's afraid to tell you."

"Tell me what?" I faltered.

"That with Thomas gone and you not there, Queen Mab went into a fury and used your mama as the teind."

There was a moment of soundlessness, and I came to myself lying flat on the floor with both of them bending over me and Fenoderee saying to Puck, "Ach, you fool, she didn't need to know that."

"Yes, she did," said Puck. "Lest she have her boots carry her back to Faery, expecting Elladine to be there. Lest she say something unwary where Oberon could hear. So far he blames us Bogles for getting Thomas loose. So far he doesn't know Beauty was involved. Nobody knows but Carabosse."

"What ... is Mama dead?" I asked.

Puck shook his head. "Us of Faery can't be killed so easy, Beauty. She's even kin to the Dark Lord. He despises Faery, but it's not Faery he wants to destroy. Carabosse says to tell you like as not, he'll play with Elladine for a time, then turn her loose. He does that with things that amuse him."

They helped me sit up, and Puck gave me a bit of wine from the bottle in the cupboard. He went to it, as though he knew right where it was. As though he had been there before.

"There's nothing you can do about it," he said. "Carabosse says you are not to upset yourself or think of doing anything! She says you will understand what she means."

I did understand. If it came to a choice between Thomas, who was a fellowman, or Elladine, who was my mother but did not much care about that, I was not sure where duty lay. In any case, Carabosse was right. I could do nothing about it. Anything I tried to do would only draw attention to me.

"You wanted something or you wouldn't have called us," said Puck.

It seemed foolishness, then, but I told them what I wanted. Someone to make some dresses for Elladine's namesake, my daughter. I had thought of doing it myself, as I had made dresses in Faery, but I felt insecure with the idea. "I want someone who's done it a lot, who knows what they're doing," I told Puck. A kind of look went back and forth between them, and Puck said he'd send someone along. As he was about to go, I asked him, "When I was a child and saw you in the woods, was it Carabosse who sent you?"

He looked at me insolently. "Me?" he asked. "Why would I have been in your woods? I'll send you a seamstress."

She came. A Bogle seamstress, to make Elly's gowns. Three bright white dresses: one embroidered with daisies over a yellow underdress; one with periwinkles over blue; one with roses over red. The trader had said the red silk was from the Far East, beyond the Holy Land. It was the only place where the dyers could achieve that color, so much brighter than madder. Cochineal, perhaps. It must have been China, I told myself. Even in the twentieth, some of the finest fabrics came from there. The seamstress also made three spider veils for Elly's hair. One with pearls, one with sapphires, one with rubies. I am keeping everything hidden as a surprise.