A Green and Ancient Light (13 page)

“What's he saying?” I asked.

“‘Red star,'” said Mr. Girandole. “‘The red star.'”

I frowned and looked from the feverish man to the faun.

“I don't know what it means,” said Mr. Girandole, brushing stray hair back from his face. “R —— had a notebook in one back pocket, and a pencil stub. I helped him get them out when he asked me to, and he wrote something strange.”

From the cluttered floor of the sunken compartment, Mr. Girandole picked up a very small notebook with a worn leather cover. An elastic band, anchored in the spine, stretched around it to hold the book closed. Mr. Girandole opened it now and flipped through the pages until he came to a place near the middle, which he showed to me.

I recognized the language of R ——'s country. The short, ordered lines seemed to make up a poem. But almost at once I noticed an unusual symmetry to the writing, to the shape it made on the page. Though I didn't understand a word of it, I saw that each line was written first forward and then backward—perfectly backward, as if it were being reflected in a mirror. How a man trembling with fever had done such a neat job was quite beyond me—as was the reason for it.

Again I looked wonderingly at Mr. Girandole.

“I translated it on the next page,” he said, and turned one leaf.

Mr. Girandole's writing sent out loops and dots and cross-slashes in all directions, as if his letters had grown in a wild garden and were still blossoming. But in painstaking detail, he had imitated the mirroring of each line as well. The forward parts read:

A duke the secret knew

And locked the riddle here

Find twice the number Taurus follows with his eye

Sisters dancing in the water and the sky

Heed the words among the trees in stone

Though not all words are true

And they will lead you home

After reading it through several times, I handed the book back to Mr. Girandole. “I'm not sure Grandmother can make any sense of it, either,” I said.

“Perhaps not.” He let out a long breath, fixing a troubled gaze on R ——.

“How many languages do you know?” I asked, guessing that a person who never aged would have time to learn plenty.

He smiled. “All there are—and none, I suppose, when it comes down to it. We Elder Folk—fauns, fairies, all the people of the deep woods, sea, and earth—we're not children of Babel, like you. Language is not something we learn. Meaning in words is another thing we see and hear, like bark or moss or birdsong.”

“But . . . what you wrote—” I pointed at the notebook. “That was our language, and that was R ——'s. You translated his to ours. You said ‘translated' yourself.”

He shrugged and nodded. “Just as I know that when your grand­mother says ‘We'll see' she typically means ‘Yes, eventually.' That's translating, isn't it?”

I couldn't help laughing. “So . . . there are others?” I asked carefully, watching him. I didn't want to make him sad if all the Elder Folk had gone from the world, as Grandmother suspected.

“Others of the Old Kind?” He wore again the expression that was both sorrowful and happy. “Oh, yes, there are many others—Folk of so many kinds they can't all be counted.”

I was relieved. “Grandmother said there weren't so many left anymore.”

Mr. Girandole nodded slowly, looking far off. “That's true enough. Great numbers of them have gone back to where we came from. But they won't all go, as long as there are seasons here—as
long as there are dawn and dusk, forests and caverns and flowers and mountains, stars and the moon and the sea—old, deep places and new places and edges to things. Some remain.”

“Are all those things like where you came from?”

“Those things
are
where we came from. It's not really a different place—not
there
and
here.
” He looked apologetic. “I suppose it doesn't make sense, the way I say it.”

I shrugged. “It makes sense to me.” It was one of those things I grasped on a deep level, with my heart rather than my mind. It has rung truer to me with every passing year: that the essence of Faery is all around us, written in every leaf.

He regarded me strangely then and looked happier.

But remembering the other part of my errand, I asked if there was anything Mr. Girandole needed.

He appeared to force his thoughts back to the situation. “I've already fetched clean water, so for the present, no. I believe M —— mentioned clean bandages. If you can, come back with her early tomorrow. I would risk coming to your cottage tonight, but I'd have to shut R —— inside the secret space. If he woke up, he'd think he was inside his own grave, buried alive.”

“We'll come early.” I wanted to commend Mr. Girandole for the tremendous job he was doing of caring for R ——. But I only managed a shy smile and a murmured “Thanks.”

Mr. Girandole reminded me of my papa in his kindness, in the warm, gentle approval he exuded—approval for those closest to him. I wondered suddenly if he and my father had been friends—surely they'd met when my papa was a boy, exploring the woods. I wished my father could come to the village again, with my mother and sister. I dreamed of what it could be like when the war was
over, when we might all visit Grandmother and sit here among the statues in the quiet green light.

*  *  *  *

Since I still had ample daylight, I decided to explore the part of the garden I hadn't seen yet: the upper reaches, beyond the dense thicket at the tower's back. When I announced my intention, Mr. Girandole asked if I wanted him to come along.

I shrugged. “Only if you'd like to,” I said, not wishing to seem either scared or rude.

He smiled, folding his arms across his chest. “Perhaps the garden is best experienced alone. I'm here within shouting distance if you need me.” Settling on his haunches to lean against the wall, he added, “You realize, I suppose, what a rare gift is yours today?”

I wondered what he meant.

“The gift of seeing the other half of the garden for the very first time. These next few moments will come to you but once in your life. Use the gift well.”

I nodded slowly. Truth be told, I often had similar thoughts about other things. Sitting in the top of a certain tree, or watching fireflies in the dusk of a particular summer day, I'd grow sad at the realization that the precise moment would never come again: even if I climbed the tree again or stood in the dusk the next day, I'd be older; the world would be different.

“Don't go with a heavy heart,” Mr. Girandole called after me. “There are always other moments coming.”

I grinned back. Without the belief in more moments to come, we could never enjoy anything.

I descended the bizarre stairs, stood with relief on the terrace,
and made my way down to the floor of the glade. The earth was green and springy underfoot, and the richness of late afternoon light, though indirect, filled the garden. Birds twittered—­sometimes the sacred silence of the woods was not silence at all, yet it was soothing.

Again, somewhere a plane droned, so far away I could not discern if it was friendly or otherwise. Of course, as Grandmother said, such distinctions lost their meanings here. I was hearing in the far-off engine the merest rumor of some other world, no more present than the other world of which seashells tell us when we press them to our ears.

First I passed, on my right, the fearsome angel I'd seen from the terrace. Still he stood in deep shade, his stone blacker than that of the other statues, his hair and robes still blown wild by an unfelt wind. Still he held the ring of keys and the mighty chain.

I wondered then at the presence of angel statues here. In the churches, there were angels and saints. This garden held angels, monsters, gods, mermaids . . . all the folk of the old stories. I knew angels to be real; they were in the Bible. And now I knew fauns were real, for one was our friend. The only logical, obvious conclusion excited me. Monsters and fairies were a part of the same world as angels. All these things were real.

Immediately behind the angel's spreading wings the grove began, a stand of huge, ancient trees rising from an impenetrable nest of bushes. More trees and brush stretched to my left, climbing the wall of the ravine and away to where, in the upper forest, the parachute hung. The single opening in this green wall lay straight ahead, framed by a vine-draped arch.

Holding my breath, I hurried quietly past the angel and through
the portal. The ground rose, crossed by exposed roots that formed a natural stairway.

I came into a second clearing, this one, too, roofed over by the limbs and leaves—the other grand gallery. On the west was a gentle slope by which I might have gone back up into the forest. Forward, the ravine ended in steep walls, thickly wooded and overgrown. Eastward, the open glade followed the upper edge of the dense central grove that I'd climbed past.

Just beside me, on the left at the root-stair's top, was what seemed at first to be a stone coffin: a rectangular slab, and lying flat upon it, the sculpted image of a woman sleeping or dead. She wore a long dress that left only her face, hands, and feet exposed. Her hair flowed down to her waist, and her arms were folded over her heart.

I walked all around her, deciding I preferred the idea that she was asleep, not dead. She was larger than life, about the height of a tall man. I found on one corner of the slab a cigarette-end that one of the soldiers must have left where he mashed it out. I remembered the major talking about the statues, and that he'd spoken of them to others beyond the village. This was how
others
treated the woods. I stuck the acrid-smelling end into my pocket, determined to throw it away somewhere far from the grove.

As I stooped, studying the slab, I discovered carved letters on the vertical edge. The language was that of our country but in a very old style, so that I had trouble reading it. Part of it, I thought, said
like the rain
. Now I wished I'd asked Mr. Girandole to accompany me. But with an inward smile, I reminded myself there would be plenty of time to ask about it later: it was a sentence carved in stone and wasn't going anywhere.

North of the sleeping woman, a magnificent centaur stood beneath a tree, looking just like the best pictures of centaurs. He appeared wise and dextrous, playing an instrument like a harp. Now that I was searching for inscriptions, sure enough, I saw one on his pedestal. I could make it out a little better than the other:
Hurry now to find me,
then something obscured by moss, and then:
but not inside
.

I backed away, pondering, and turned in a complete circle. So, the garden was full of words as well as creatures—dreams and riddles. . . . Though I wanted to race ahead, I forced myself to go slowly, to look in all directions, to notice how the light fell. These moments would come but once.

Not far from the centaur, a second angel waited near the ravine's end. This Heavenly messenger didn't frighten me in the least. He held his hands up, palms forward, before his shoulders, like Gabriel making his announcement to Mary. But his inscription, cryptically, said,
I am it is very true.

I probed all around his base, wondering if I'd missed something. Surely there was more to the sentence. I am
what
? But there was no more, only smooth stone. I passed my fingers over his sleeve. Even in its weathered state, the craftsmanship was evident; when new, the stone must have seemed as soft and rippling as cloth.
I am
, the angel asserted;
it is very true
. I found this angel comforting, as were the words to my imagination. “You
all
are,” I whispered to the entire garden. “It is very true.”

Turning then, I crossed back to the thicket, drawn toward the space where another statue should fit, though at first I made out only rampant foliage. As I drew very near to the wall of trees, I stopped short, my scalp prickling. A huge beast was hidden there as
if about to pounce on me—yes, only another statue; but it was the image of a monstrous bear—now I saw it clearly, buried under the thorns, the base beneath its paws completely obscured. Its stone eyes peered out from the shadows of leaves, its broad head higher than mine.

Mr. Girandole had kept the main gates and pathways clear of vegetation, and I suspected he'd pulled vines off some of the ­statues, too. Had he let this bear be covered over because it frightened him?

As I stood quivering before the bear, a memory filled my mind, dark and chilly as an unwelcome cloud shadow.

*  *  *  *

The bear prowled in my dreams. The bear could come into any dream, always when least expected. It didn't need a forest; it didn't need the dark to hide in. I could be in a sunny room, playing with my soldiers or building a block tower, and I could hear the bear breathing. I could hear the scratch of its claws outside the window, where the curtains fluttered. I could hear the ponderous thudding of its paws in the hallway, creaking the boards. Behind the murmur of traffic or voices, I could hear it grunt. No one else in the dream heard it. Only me.

I screamed, springing up in terror, the bedcovers bunched at my throat.

The bear waited, somewhere nearby.

My mother would turn on the light. She would rock me and sit beside me and stroke my hair. She would sing softly. The bear padded away, but it was only biding its time.

My father said there were good policemen in dreams—so silent and watchful that I would never see or hear them, but they had rifles and would shoot any bear who came near me. I liked the idea, but I knew he was only saying it to make me feel better. The bear came close all the time, and no unseen policemen ever shot it.

One day when I was five, I found that the bear was not confined to dreams. I was wide awake, looking out of the back window on a dim, blustery day, and somehow— by the strange light, by the gusting, twisty wind—I knew the bear had come. It was out there, behind the fence of our narrow city yard, behind the pickets with their rusty nails, behind the stack of bricks. It was beyond the edge of the window
'
s frame with its globby white paint. It was hidden by the curtains my mother had sewn, printed with clusters of grapes, apples, and pears. I couldn't move, couldn't look away from the window or call to my mother, because if I did, the bear would be in the house, just beyond the kitchen arch by the tall mirror. Its enormous body would fill the hallway. I could smell the bear. With that musk filling my senses, my eyesight shimmered as if everything were electric and sparking. I remember the fruit on the curtains fading to gray.