All Night Awake (35 page)

It would all come through Kit, yet Kit could do nothing to prevent it. Carried like a lamb bound for the slaughter, he would be both victim and sacrificer, see his world destroyed, his present as obliterated as his future had been by Imp’s death.

“This is hell,” Kit whispered, his lips barely moving. “Nor are we out of it.”

Yet what could Kit do? How could Kit prevent it?

He stared at his own wide-open grey eyes that gazed upon him from the mirror.

And in the mirror, he saw a flash.

In that moment, without his thought, without his saying so, Kit’s body turned.

The elf’s voice returned to his throat, the elf’s roar of surprise, of anger erupted from his lips.

“Dare they?” the elf said.

Kit’s hand, still raised, dropped his twelve-pence dagger.

It fell, point down, and stuck a-quiver on the floorboards.

Kit’s heart sped up. Was this Silver? He couldn’t let this elf hurt Silver.

But the elf who’d materialized in the burst of light looked slighter than Silver had ever been, a blond girl-elf, blue-eyed, with a child’s wide-eyed innocence, a child’s wide-eyed despair.

She stared at Kit with anger and disgust. “Sylvanus,” she said.

Grasping her skirt all into her right hand to uncover thin legs in white stockings, she marched forward in broad strides. “Sylvanus. Give me my husband.”

She raised her hand also, the mirror image of the gesture Kit’s body made.

“Milady,” Kit Marlowe said, amazed. “Milady. I have not the pleasure—” And then, before his lips fully closed, before he gathered his dispersed breath, a voice spoke through his lips, a cold, cold voice that chilled him to the soul. “Ariel. Well met. I’ll be more than glad to help you along to Quicksilver’s company.”

Ariel stomped her foot. “You’ll not find me as unprepared as Quicksilver,” she said. “You will not find me so easy to defeat.”

Raising her own hand, she did something, and a shimmer like diffused light from a candle played up and down her pale, slim figure.

“You oppose me with that?” Sylvanus asked through Kit’s mouth. “Think you that the waning power of the hill can withstand
my
power? Did I not
show
you otherwise but yesternight?”

“That was the night,” Ariel said. “This is the day. And you’ll not have such full control of your body under the blessed mortal sun.”

Sylvanus laughed. “You’re wrong, milady. I fed long and well, and the strength thus gained, on sweet mortal lives, more than compensates for the loss of magic that the day brings.”

A tingle ran along Kit’s lifted hand.

All of a sudden, Kit realized what that meant. Magic would issue from that hand.

Understanding seared into his mind. This elf had done something to Quicksilver, and would now do it to Ariel, whom Kit deduced to be Quicksilver’s wife.

With roaring intensity, Kit awoke within his own body. He threw all his willpower at his hand. With all his strength, he commanded it down.

Down and down and down, by slow, measured inches. He closed it, too, though the tingle continued, running through his arm, up and down.

“Milady, run,” he said, forcing his words past the wolf’s incensed roar that would have used up all Kit’s breath. “Milady, run. Be gone. He has the power to send you somewhere—I know not where, but I know there you’ll die.”

Ariel shook her head. She looked amazed, hesitated, as if noticing the difference in the voice, but not sure who spoke. “To Never Land, he’ll send me, aye, where my lord is, where no elf can survive a second sunset. To Never Land, where my lord is dying.” Tears drowned out her blue eyes. She lowered her hand to wipe them.

“You will obey me,” Sylvanus’s voice screamed through Kit’s mouth, and Kit’s hand, breaking free of his control, raised itself.

In vain Kit struggled to pull it down. In vain did he try to regain control of his own body.

The anger of the elf surged through Kit. Kit’s hand lifted. The tingle on Kit’s arm was unbearable, a scouring pain.

“Slave, vassal, vile villain, you will obey me,” Sylvanus roared, and as his hand lifted, a burst of light erupted and engulfed the blond and fragile fairy queen.

“Oh, help, help, help me,” Ariel screamed. “You are our only hope.”

Her voice died away, as if swallowed by a merciless distance.

When the light flickered down, nothing was there, no one was in Kit’s room, but Kit and the elf that possessed Kit’s body.

The elf let go of Kit’s body, then. Kit fell, exhausted, limp, to the floor.

His face to those rushes so recently stained with bloodied water, Kit realized that he’d been the undoing of Silver and Quicksilver also, as well as Imp.

Covered in sweat, too tired, too weak to rise, he whispered his grief to mingle with the howls of grief from below the floor, the female lamentations so loud that they blocked even all that had passed in this room.

“Twice I’ve loved, twice,” he said. “And both loves dead by my hand. How this hand smells still of blood. All the perfumes of Araby will not sweeten this hand again.”

But already the elf quickened within Kit and cut Kit’s breath with a chuckle. “Repine later, now you have my work to do. We have a Queen to kill.”

And on those words, Kit’s weak body rose from the floor, and washed itself carefully, and shaved and attired itself in Kit’s remaining clean suit.

Through it all as a man in a nightmare from which he can’t waken, Kit watched himself act, watched his body perform the routines he’d so often performed, and marveled at his former blindness.

How vile this captivity, how base. He would go to Deptford and destroy the world, in the command of a master he could not disobey. He, Kit Marlowe, who’d never been true to friend or foe before.

He’d do the command of the thing that had slain Imp.

And yet, and yet he would have it otherwise. For it was right and meet he should avenge his son’s blood upon the foul being.

Looking at his smooth face in the mirror, the face from which the elf’s possession had erased all brand of grief, every wrinkle of care, Kit sighed.

But for his own cowardice, this would never have happened. He should have braved the council’s pleasure and by other means confronted the noose encircling him. By means that didn’t require sacrificing others. He should have cut loose the noose by means of truth and courage. Else, should he have run.

That many years ago, in Cambridge, he should have refused to turn anyone in. He should have stood his ground. He should have remained clean and loyal and got his money from poetry only.

“A plague on all cowards,” he whispered to the uncaring face in the mirror. “A plague, I say, and a vengeance, too!”

He must find a way to defeat the elf. But how could he, when he was but a helpless slave?

Scene 38

Will sits at his table, in his room. Scribbled-on papers litter the floor. Ink blots mar the table top, and a large bluish black block of solid ink sits nearby, waiting to have water added to it, and thus be converted into usable ink. Beside it sits a bag of fine sand, used to dry the ink after writing.

W
ill sat at his table, his head in his hands.

How was he supposed to write? His words, never plentiful, now came haltingly and slow to his hesitating pen.

The dream he’d had—of the three women and their threats—and Ariel and her suspicions, all danced in his head, a ceaseless, threatening jig.

How could Ariel believe that Kit Marlowe was possessed by Sylvanus? When had Kit done anything less than honorable?

No. Nothing was wrong. Kit had lost his son and mourned for him, and Ariel would soon see the folly of thinking Kit the vessel of the evil elf, Sylvanus.

Will reached for his pen, dipped it in the ink.

The pen hovered over the new blank leaf of paper in front of him.

Venus and Adonis. He must write about Venus and Adonis.

Something, something, rosy-fingered dawn.

His mind almost touched the words he should use, stretching toward them like fingers.

But—if Kit Marlowe didn’t harbor the wolf, who did? Surely Sylvanus was still loose, surely dangerous, whomever he’d possessed?

The words vanished from Will’s mind, and into it, another voice, another thought poured—clear as words screamed in that very room.
Oh, help, help, help me,
Ariel screamed.
You are our only hope.

Will stood up, startled. His chair fell with a crash to the floor and splintered into many bits. His ink bottle spilled, pouring blue oblivion over the few words he’d scratched on the page.

Still holding the pen in his hand, Will looked for the fairy queen. Where was she, and why had she screamed?

His heart still racing, he remembered what Ariel had said, about hearing a mind cry from Quicksilver. Was this then it? A mind cry?

Had Ariel been taken then? Taken to the same place as Quicksilver? The place where Quicksilver would soon die?

But that meant Marlowe truly must be guilty . . . . No, it could not mean that.

Will righted his ink bottle, set his pen down in the midst of a pool of spilled blue, and stared at Marlowe’s glove, which was fast becoming dyed a deep azure.

Yet Will remembered the fear in Kit’s eyes when the two men had flanked him in Paul’s.

Kit had gone away with them, and soon after had come to Will with a job offer, with an invitation to dinner, with marks of kindness such as Will could never have anticipated.

And it was not that Kit believed Will to be a great poet. No. Will knew better. Something had changed, but what? Had Kit thought to involve Will in some secret dealing? Will remembered the invitation to Mistress Bull’s in Deptford.

And then how Kit had told him not to go there, under any account.

What did it all mean?

Will’s hands shook so that he couldn’t attempt to write, couldn’t attempt even to right the mess on his desk. The puddle of ink had started dripping onto the floor, staining the rushes and the floorboards beneath.

Will wiped his hand on his doublet.

He was their only hope? He?

He supposed that meant Marlowe really was the harborer of the wolf. And if that were the case, what could Will do?

The two sovereigns of Elvenland had gone to face this adversary, and both had lost.

Why should Will go now, after them? Will, who had no knowledge of magic, no power of deception? Will, who until just now had believed fair behavior to bespeak fair thoughts and hadn’t realized that a man may smile and smile and be a villain?

Will’s heart beat a marching rhythm, but he did not know where to march. He swallowed hard. He must do something. The three old women—aspects of the female element, Ariel had called them—had told him he was their champion. Those shadows of human thought that enformed multidinous reality had chosen him. Silver had come to him for help. He’d failed them all.

But now Ariel herself had asked for his help, and how could he fail her?

Kit had told Will not to go to Deptford. Yet if Kit were evil, then Will must do the opposite of what Kit had entreated.

Therefore, Will must go to Deptford, go as soon as possible.

Will covered his eyes with his inky hands. To go to Deptford, he must ride, and Will had no horse. He looked toward the mattress that hid his purse.

Will was fast becoming penniless once more.

Groaning, he went to get the money.

Groaning, he thought what a fool he was to be doing this.

When magical might collided, shaking heaven and earth with its clash—what could a mere mortal do?

Scene 39

Never Land, the in-between worlds—a desolate place with no taste, no smell, and no feeling save overweening cold. Shadows appear and disappear, like windblown clouds, now prefiguring trees, now palaces. None of the shapes remains in solid reality but it all changes like shadows of wind-whipped branches. Amid these shadows Ariel walks, her eyes now dry but looking as if they have dried from crying every tear that could be summoned to their bruised, reddened orbs.

W
here was Quicksilver? Why couldn’t she find him in the mutable landscape of this lost land?

Ariel stumbled on a grey root that momentarily sprawled across her path. Before she’d regained her feet, the root vanished.