Israfel sighed. “There,” he said, pointing. I looked where he pointed and saw a glimmer of light, so faint, so dim, as though in the very bottom of the pool some treasure gleamed, softly and infinitely far.
“Well, so,” breathed Carabosse. She and Israfel looked at one another, no expression on their faces at all, but I could feel something flowing between them.
We went back into the cottage. “What’s going to happen?” I asked them.
“Something other than what we planned,” Carabosse whispered. “It is almost as though someone else had done the planning.”
“Whatever happens,” Israfel said, “we have seen light at the end of time. I will carry word of that to the others. I think it will be enough.”
And that is absolutely all he would say, though his hand lingered caressingly upon my shoulder as he bid me farewell. I stayed only a little while longer. When I went out, Puck was standing there with the horse to take me back. We rode through the forest while Puck sang ballads at me and the Fenoderee accompanied him on a lute.
We stopped on the way to have a picnic. More human food: sliced ham and fresh baked bread and fruit. Several of the more interesting Bogles joined us and vied with one another in telling strange tales of humans they had known. I think I slept. I seem to remember sleeping. We stopped in a wonderful glade to pick orchidlike flowers that grew in the trees. Several Bogles came along and lectured me on the flora and fauna of Faery. It was interesting that some of the creatures I had taken as Bogles, they took as animals, and that some of the creatures I had thought were animals definitely were Bogles. There seemed to be no clear way to tell. Black dogs, for example, are Bogles. The Hedly Kowe, however, is an animal. At least, most of the time it is. And so are the Gwartheg y Llyn. I may have fallen asleep again, during one of the lectures.
We stopped again, to look at a waterfall which Puck thought extremely beautiful. There he introduced me to a nixie, and she insisted that we try some of her water-moss wine, which was exceedingly delicious. Could I have fallen asleep again? It seems to me I did.
When Puck suggested we stop for the fourth time, I said, “Puck, you’re preventing my getting back, aren’t you? I think you should tell me why.”
He shook his head at me. “Well, to begin with, there was some talk among Oberon and his close kin about your knowing your way about in the Dark One’s halls. Oberon was talking about taking you along, as a guide.”
“I don’t know my way about,” I said, astonished. “The Dark Lord is one of the Sidhe. They would know more about him than I. Every time I moved about in that place, it was different.”
“We know that,” said Puck. “And so does Oberon by now. We were just giving him time to become sensible, that’s all.”
“A very long time,” I complained, suddenly worried that we had been away too long.
“We could have returned sooner,” he replied. “But Israfel suggested we should allow some time for other developments to occur.”
With all the picnics and wine tastings and zoological lectures, I felt we had been gone long enough for most anything to occur. When we came out of the trees, however, it was apparent that what Israfel had meant by “developments” was much more than I could possibly have foreseen. I had rather expected to see Oberon and his kindred making ready for battle, a few hundreds of the folk of Faery making a brave but futile array upon the meadow. What I saw instead was a sea of lances, the assembling of a mighty host, all in bright armor with banners coiling slowly overhead.
And there at the center of the host were the twelve from Baskarone, the Separated Ones. Israfel. Michael. Gabriel. All. The great swans’ wings they wore made them stand out, glowing like stars.
“Why?” I whispered.
“Hush,” said Puck. “Watch now!”
We stood at the edge of the trees as other of the Sidhe came over the hills and kept coming, more and more of them, more than I had ever seen or had known existed. Puck whispered into my ear as they came, identifying them, telling me about them. These were Faery folk, though not of Oberon’s lineage, and they came from afar: an army marching from Tirfo Thuinn, the lands beneath the sea; a mounted troop of the Plant Annwn, led by their King, Gwyn ap Nud, and another troop from the Plant Rhys Dwfen; people of the Gwyllion; Ethal Anbual, the Sidhe king of Connaught, galloping down the hill at the head of a great host of his people, mounted all on golden horses.
The warrior Queen Tyton came. She was armed with an ebon bow and silver arrows, and she wore the crescent moon upon her helm. Around her gathered a host of warrior maidens, all serious-faced and fell, with knots of red upon their breastplates to show they intended that their blood be shed to the last if need be. Their banners bore the image of the hoodie crow and they cried names of Neman, Macha, and Morrigu in shrill voices. These are the three names of Badb, the goddess of war.
Came also the seven winter sisters, Cailleach Bheur of the Highlands, Black Annis of the Dane Hills, the Loathely Hag of the Midlands, the Gyre-Carline of the Lowlands, Cally Berry of Ulster, Caillagh ny Groamagh of the Isle of Man, and Gentle Annie of Cromarty Firth (where winter is softer yet more treacherous than most), all in gray robes, their heads wreathed with gorse, and their faces the color of blue-gray stone. They bore triangular banners of gray with a tiny sun in one corner, and their voices were the voice of winter wind calling death upon the world.
“Why do they come?” I cried to Puck again. “I thought it was only Oberon and his folk! Are they all following Oberon?”
Puck shook his head and held my hand tightly. “They are following Israfel and his kindred,” he said. “The Long Lost have gone among them, speaking of the end of time. They know why they are fighting, Beauty. See how they look at you out of the sides of their eyes, without seeming to. See how they glance. It is why we came late to this meadow, why we are posed here against the trees. It is so they can see you, Beauty. They will carry your image and your name into battle, like a flag. It is for you, all this array.”
I had not noticed the glamour until then. It was around me as it had been when we confronted the seraph, as much, and yet a different thing. A truer thing. I was as beautiful, but they were not seeing me, but what I carried.
“Tss,” whispered Puck as he saw the tears in my eyes. “Hold your head high and do not dare to weep. They are going for you, and they must not see you weeping when they go.”
It was a very great host. Many faces in that array showed the determination to die quickly for some great cause rather than to die slowly for none.
I, who was dying slowly, could not find it in my heart to abuse them for that.
And still they came, from afar, from the new world as well as the old, from the islands of the sea, from the forests of Africa, from great chasms and mighty rivers, from all the places of the world where Faery had made a home. I did not know the names of a tenth of them. Even Puck did not know them all.
And when the last of them had come, Mama came riding out from the edge of the host, up the long slope toward us. She looked very wan and worn.
“I told Oberon you could not guide us,” she said. “So he’s left you out of it. Besides, with all this….” She turned to gesture at the host and sighed. “It was funny to watch him when they started coming. He suddenly remembered who he was! He suddenly measured himself against Israfel and did not want to appear unworthy.” She said it with a tiny smile, a tiny, mocking smile. “He is Oberon once more, as I remember him from the distant past. Here at the end of things, he is Oberon once more, perilous and puissant.”
I threw my arms around her. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“The route we know best,” she said. “To the cavern on the heath. The same place the ride took you.”
“I’ll go with you that far,” I said. She nodded and turned back to join the host.
Puck pulled at my leg. I looked down and he whispered to me. “If you ride with them, Beauty, wear your boots, bear your cloak, carry everything that matters to you.”
r /> “I don’t even know where my things are,” I said. “I haven’t seen some of them since I was taken to hell.”
“They’re here,” said the Fenoderee. “I gathered them up for you and kept them safe.”
And there they were: boots, cloak, and book. He stowed the book in the cloak pocket and slipped the boots on my feet. The cloak I tied behind me, where I could get it in an instant.
“The Dark One hasn’t forgotten what you did,” Puck whispered again. “You’d be wiser not to go at all.”
“It may be the last time,” I told him. “The last time I see Mama. I can’t just let her ride away without going with her as far as I can. You have to understand about mothers, Puck. I’m one, and I know. You can’t always do for your children what you’d like to do. Your children aren’t always people you can do for.
But she never meant me ill, Puck. Never once. She must see that the same is true. I’ve never wished her ill.”
The sound of a great horn came thrilling over the meadow, that horn which is said to be Huon’s horn, given to Oberon as a token of friendship. And the ride began.
It was so vast, that host, that the Long Lost had reached the world of men before the last of the Sidhe left the meadow. We rode at the tail, Mama and I, with Puck holding to my stirrups and loping beside us. Not far behind I saw Carabosse on a donkey, picking her way along as though going to a fair. Quick though we rode, she kept close behind, though the donkey never went faster than a walk. She waved her stick at me, and I waved in return.
Mama said, “Did you make it up with Aunt Carabosse, then?” And I suddenly recalled that Mama knew nothing of my long association with Carabosse. Nor could I tell her, now.
“She says she never cursed me to death, but only to a sleep. It was Aunt Joyeause who made that up.”
Mama nodded thoughtfully. “Joyeause has never cared for truth much. She says whatever comes into her head. I never doubted her at the time, though.”
“Once I thought all fairies were wise,” I confessed to her as I had to Carabosse.
“Oh, no,” Mama said. “Wisdom is not a great thing among the Sidhe. I have heard a legend about that.” She settled herself in the saddle and told me the story.
“It is said that the Holy One, Blessed be He, first created mankind as he created the Sidhe, marvelously fair, and he set the first of them in a garden much like Faery except that day and night came there, spring and fall, warm and cool, dry and wet, and every animal which has ever been, and every bird and every fish.”
“I think I’ve heard this tale,” I said, remembering Father Raymond.
“Very likely. The story is very old. And it continues that He set in the middle of the garden the tree of the hunger for wisdom, and He told them what it was. ‘Eat of it or not,’ He said, ‘as you choose. Except, you eat of it, you must leave the garden of ever-life, for wisdom brings a terrible price, the price of pain and death and loneliness. But if you will be immortal, do not eat of it, and you may live here forever in peace.”
And she went on to tell me the whole story of Eden, as though she were reading it out of the Bible, as Father Raymond had used to read it to me.
“Until the first woman could bear it no more,” said Mama, “and she went to the tree of the hunger for wisdom and picked a fruit from it and ate it. Then she sat down beneath the tree and cried, for all the questions of the world percolated about in her head, like fish she could not catch, and she knew herself and all her children forever would be adrift in mystery, that as soon as one thing was found out another would present itself to be discovered.
“And the man found her there. When she told him what she had done, he took the core of the fruit she had eaten and tasted it and put the seeds in his pocket. ‘For,’ he said, ‘if you must leave the garden, so will I. And if you must die, so will I. I will go with you wherever you go, leaving all the garden behind. And of the tree of knowledge you have given up paradise for, we will take the seeds to plant in every land we come to, and we will find the fruit bitter and we will find the fruit sweet.”
Mama sighed. “And that is why man was cast out to be no better than a beast, dirty and itchy and covered by smuts from the fire. And it is why he creates, and why he may grow wise, and why he is numerous. Though it is said among the Sidhe that both wisdom and children are the burden of men, we have desired only children. We have not much valued wisdom, for we considered it less valuable than the immortality man gave up for it. Which is why I gave you the hank of thread, child. To sew a cap of wisdom if you liked, for you are half mortal and might care about such things.”
A thinking cap! Oh, I should have known. Of course. What else could it have been?
We had come to the road which wound among the dun hills. I could see the moonlight on the lances far ahead, for the host was strung out for miles. Here and there I noticed huddled human forms, their faces in their hands, trying hard not to see us. We must have seemed very terrible indeed, awesome and fell. I wondered what stories those people would tell their children about the night they had seen the Fairy Ride, going out in their thousands from the lands below.
Something itched at me. Something I had seen, or thought I had seen. A flicker, perhaps, along the route we were taking. Something or someone upon the hills. I searched, seeing nothing. Mama’s eyes were better than mine, and so were Puck’s. “Look,” I told them. “Along the hills. Is there something there that shouldn’t be?”
Both of them scanned the horizon. At first they saw nothing, but then Mama stiffened and pointed. Then Puck saw it, too, and then I did. The gleam of moonlight on metal, high upon a hilltop overlooking the road we were taking. I knew what it was.
“The television crew,” I told them both, barking unamused laughter. “Here to film the end of Faery.”
“They may be here to film it,” said Puck, angrily, “but it will not be filmed.” He jumped up behind me and turned my horse aside, and we went behind the hill. I heard a snort behind us and saw Carabosse’s donkey following. So there were four of us, Mama, me, Puck, and Carabosse. We circled around the hills, the horses picking their way through the gorse and the tumbled stones as we worked our way higher, toward the ridge. Evidently no one else among the host had seen them. When we came out behind them, they had no idea they had been observed.
“Let me,” I suggested in a bleak voice. “I know their language.”
Mama nodded. Carabosse snorted, sitting still upon her donkey. Puck sat down cross-legged and waited to see what I would do.
“This sequence,” I said loudly, “is expected to complete the documentary on the last fairies.”
Bill spun toward me, then Janice and Alice. The machine sat a short distance away, like a great stone tub. Martin stood up from the place he’d been kneeling behind a stone, watching the host pass below. Jay-bee turned slowly, letting the camera rest on me. Carabosse did something with one hand, and he cursed, taking the camera off his shoulder.
“Damned lens fogged,” he snarled.
“You are filming the departure of magic from the world. However, your premise is false.” I was determined to say it, no matter whether it was true or not. Mama was there, and she needed to hear it. “This host, it is true, will leave the world, but magic will return.”
“The hell it will,” said Janice. “This is the beginning of the end.” She laughed, shortly. “From here on out, it’s all downhill. Magic is gone. From here on out, it’s religion, then romance, then horror, then the end!”
“Whatever comes when,” I said, fixing Jaybee with a loathing glare, “you film nothing here today. Nothing at all.”
He had the lens wiped off and raised it to his eye once more, only to curse once more, taking it down to stare at it. Carabosse had evidently fixed it so that he could not get a picture.
“Give it up,” I told them. “Go home. We’re not going to let you do it.”
Jaybee got up and stalked toward Carabosse, violence obviously in his mind. When he got there, she wasn’t ther
e. She was a hundred feet away, sitting on her donkey. “No,” she said firmly, “you’ll not show anyone what happened here tonight. No one at all.”
“You have no right,” blustered Martin. “People have a right to…”
“Know only what others choose to let them know about private matters,” finished Mama. “These are private matters.”
“… a right to know,” he concluded.
“No, they do not,” Puck said. “People have no right to crash private parties, pornographer. And this party is private.”
Jaybee sputtered.
“You won’t get a picture,” I said. “Even if we go away, which we’re about to do. You just won’t get a picture, that’s all. We have decided the world will never see this.”
And we rode down the hill to the road, leaving them fuming behind us. Bill hadn’t argued. He had just looked at me, stared at me, listening to every word that was said, as though he recognized me. This trip had happened the day after I got to the twenty-first. I remembered his returning from it, angry that we hadn’t let them finish. His superiors must have been annoyed with him, laying the fault at his door. Well, the fault was not his, but there would never be a documentary on the last of the fairies. The last whales, the last dog, the last tree, the last radish, yes. No last fairy. Not yet.
We came back into the ride farther forward in the column. We passed the cross I remembered from last time. It was not long after that we came to the great cavern, the one with the door. Some of the Sidhe had already built a fire. Others were watching the eastern horizon. Evidently the door opened at moonrise, whether the Dark Lord would or no. When it opened, they planned to go through.
Mama shivered, and I got down from the horse and went to her. “You’re cold,” I said, idiotically. We were all cold. The night was crisp and chill. A winter’s night. “Take my coat.”
She shook her head. “You have nothing heavy enough to warm this chill. I know what’s down there.”