Enchantment (53 page)

20

Summer Vacation

The school year was over in Tantalus. Children threw papers out of bus windows and ran shouting over the lawns and meadows. But none of them was happier than Matt, Steven, Luke, and Little Esther Smetski, who knew that something more than mere summer vacation awaited them.

Father and Mother already had their bags packed—but there weren’t many, only a few days’ worth of clothes, just enough for the visit they always had with Uncle Marek and Aunt Sophia. Father always spent some time in Kiev, because he was the hero of the literary community there, having discovered the most amazing trove of ancient writings in Saint Kirill’s own hand, on parchment which had been filled by another ancient, anonymous writer, who recorded the earliest known versions of the folktales of the Russian people. In America, he was respected at the university and among colleagues, but in Kiev, he was known to the people on the street. Indeed, there was a street named after him, one which had once been called by the name of a Russian Communist who slaughtered millions of Ukrainian kulaks, but now was named for the scholar who had opened up the Ukrainian past.

But what did that matter to the children? Father had his fans—he’d be busy with them for a while. What mattered to Matt, Steven, Luke, and Little Esther—or, as they were called all summer, Matfei, Sergei, Lukas, and Tila—was the other place, the faraway place, the place they never spoke of to their friends. The land where they were princes and princess, where Mother was queen, where Father was king and counselor to her.

Matfei was old enough to be learning history in school, but he had to laugh when he read about kings. He knew what kings and queens were. In at least one kingdom, nestled up against the eastern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains, there was a kingdom once where a queen ruled over her people, while her bookish husband played with his children, worked alongside the people, argued questions of philosophy with the priests, and gave whatever counsel his wife might want. He was a foreigner there, but with only a trace of an accent, and the people loved him, partly because Queen Katerina loved him, but mostly for himself.

It was the children they adored. But when it seemed they might be pampered to death, Mother and Father always drew them back, put things in perspective, reminded them that it was the kingdom-in-them that the people loved, and that they had to learn to become worthy of the devotion of the people. “It’s not yours by right, this power,” said Mother. “It is earned, by service, by loyalty, by sacrifice.” Just one of the many lessons, the thousands of lessons that they had to learn. Of kingship, soldiering, farming. This year, Matfei and Sergei would be taken along to Kiev to be presented before the high king and have their first lessons in political maneuvering. They could see that Mother and Father feared this more than anything, but that only made it more exciting for Matt and Steven to look forward to.

Grandma and Grandpa came along with them to the airport in Syracuse, so they could drive the minivan back, as they did every summer. Grandma, as always, had a new charm for them to wear. Luke begged her to teach him how to make such things, but Grandma wouldn’t do it. “The need for magic isn’t so great anymore,” she said, “and besides, the power that sustained it all is fading. It was the old gods who were behind it, and as their power weakens from the unbelief of the people, their power also fades.” Luke had no idea what she was talking about, but Matt and Steven did. They knew how the people of Taina came to their mother for healing, and how she was able to do less and less for them, and how it grieved her. What they didn’t understand was Mother’s and Father’s refusal to take modern ideas back with them. “Why not find the penicillium mold and use it to fight infections?” Matfei asked Father once.

“Because it isn’t time yet,” he said.

“But people will die from simple cuts and injuries,” said Matfei.

“People all die eventually,” said Father, sounding utterly heartless. But then he hugged his son. “I love your compassion, Matt. But here’s the thing. In our own time, after just a few generations of using antibiotics, the bacteria are developing resistance to them all. If penicillin were put into use in 905, what would happen then? The whole history of the world would change, and we don’t know how, and so it would be wrong of us to change it.”

“But you took gunpowder back, Father. And alcohol.”

“I kept the secret of gunpowder from the others,” said Father. “A few know the ingredients, and they’ve promised not to pass the information on. I did it because the need was great. Because that was what I was sent to do. But we haven’t needed it since.”

“What about when I’m king, Father? What if I need it then? Will you tell me?”

“No,” said Father. “And if you haven’t the heart to rule without it, if you need the modern world, then you don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to be king. One of your brothers will, or your sister. Or none of them, and the people can elect another, or the high king will take the land. History will move on, whatever you decide. You don’t have to take the burden on you.”

“I will, though,” said Matfei.

“If you do, then that will be good, it will be the life you chose. But if you don’t, it won’t mean that you failed. You’re a child of both worlds. With any luck, the choice won’t be forced upon you too soon.”

Father and Mother could be so inscrutable sometimes, full of mysterious wisdom. Didn’t they know how much children were able to guess? How much they could understand if only someone would explain it to them? When we’re parents, the children told each other, we’ll tell our children
everything.

They got to the airport, they kissed Grandpa and Grandma good-bye, they flew to Kennedy, then on to Vienna, then to Kiev. There were the days at Uncle Marek’s farm. And then at last it was time to cross the bridge.

They never took the same way twice, for fear of making a path. The clearing opened before them. The chasm yawned. Then all joined hands and the bridges both appeared. They crossed to the middle and stopped, for this was a tradition that they never broke. There on the pedestal in the middle of the moat, Father and Mother sat on the slab where Mother had slept the deep enchanted sleep of centuries, and he kissed her, once, a sweet and simple kiss.

This time it was Little Esther’s turn to finally understand. “Mama!” she said. “
You’re
Sleeping Beauty!” Her brothers laughed and praised her for figuring it out. Mother and Father hugged her and let her lie on the slab herself. She closed her eyes and then said, “Kiss me, somebody, and wake me up!” And her father knelt down, and bent over her, and kissed her, while Matt and Steven and Luke all growled and roared like bears.

Then they joined hands again, the bridges appeared, and they crossed into Taina.

No one waited for them—that was what they asked for, not so much for privacy as because the day of their arrival was never certain, for the calendars of the two places fit together unpredictably. Why should someone waste his life waiting and watching for a queen and king who could find their own way through the woods?

This time, though, they didn’t rush away from the chasm. The children were told to play—“But stay away from the edge!”—while Mother and Father stood beside the pit and talked.

“What if one of us dies?” Ivan said to her. “A car crash. An accident at harvest time. Everyone will be stranded then, on whatever side of the bridge we’re on.”

“If only the children had been born with the power to use both bridges.”

“But they can’t use either of them without us, and they need both of us to cross at all. We can’t leave this to chance, can we? Don’t we want the children to be free to choose?”

“They’re too young to divide the family.”

“I don’t want to divide us either,” said Ivan. “I want us to live to be a hundred. But life is fragile.”

“Someday we’ll make them choose, and settle them on whichever side they want, and then we’ll choose ourselves, and stay together in the world we want to grow old in. But not yet.”

“So if one of us dies . . .”

“We plan what we plan, and if it doesn’t work out, then that’s the way life will be. What else can we do? Divide the family now, and guarantee unhappiness, for fear of a different misery later?”

“You’re right,” said Ivan. “You’re right, of course. But having children makes a man afraid.”

“Afraid, yes, and also very brave.”

“Did we really do the things the stories say?” asked Ivan.

“We did.”

“And tell me, Sleeping Beauty, are you living happily ever after?”

“Yes, I am.”

They called the children then, and as they made the trek through the wood, Matfei joked that Father ought to take his clothes off so people would recognize him when he arrived. “We should never have let people tell those stories to the children,” Ivan said to Katerina.

They got to the village and the cheering started, the crowds following them, the parade. They sat down to a feast and heard tales of the winter past, and who had babies, who died, who got married.

It was nearly dark before Ivan and Katerina slipped away and went to the church, where Bishop Sergei was waiting for them, greeting them with a kiss and an embrace. Together they walked into the graveyard, where King Matfei’s body had been buried five winters before, and where Father Lukas had a little shrine. “He’ll never be a saint,” said Sergei ruefully, “and in truth he didn’t deserve it. But he was a hero all the same.”

“And a great missionary,” said Katerina.

“So are the children Jews or Christians?” asked Sergei.

“In Ivan’s country, they are Jews,” said Katerina. “And here they’re Christians. Two worlds. Two lives. Someday they’ll decide. Or God will decide for them.”

“Doctrinally, there are problems with that,” said Sergei. Then he laughed. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

“So are we,” said Ivan. “We miss our dear friends when we’re away.”

They left the graveyard then, and returned to the royal house, where they had to speak sternly to the children before they’d finally go to bed. Then they, too, lay down on mattresses stuffed with straw, hearing the music of the flies to buzz them to sleep, holding each other’s hands as they dozed, thinking of the miracles by which love works its will in the world.

Praise for Orson Scott Card and

ENCHANTMENT

“Card is skilled at pacing and good with an action scene, but he has raised to a fine art the creation of suspense by ethical dilemma, and in doing so has raised his work to a high plane.”

—Chicago Sun-Times

“Charming and lively.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“To anyone who doubts that Orson Scott Card is a master storyteller, here, in the fantasy
Enchantment,
is the ultimate proof, the preeminent test of storytelling: being able to move intimately in totally foreign lifestyles and cultures and to make the reader believe that the writer always lived there. Between getting the cadence of the dialogue correctly and fears and rationalizations of both Jewish and Russian cultures, Card has produced a magnificent fairy-tale-that-isn’t-a-fairy-tale-at-all.”

—A
NNE
M
C
C
AFFREY

“[Card’s] prose is a model of narrative clarity; the author never says more than is needed or arbitrarily withholds information, yet even a simple declarative sentence carries a delicious hint of further revelation.”

—The New York Times

“At once deeply realistic and shot through with curious magics . . . The extreme effects of culture clash and shock often prove to be funny, and there’s a whiplash of comedy driving through the grim and gritty scenes, the perceptive comments on serious moral questions.”

—Locus

“Enchantment
is enchanting, and it resonates with the unkillable magic of the fairy tale it has followed.”

—Interzone

“Card understands the human condition. . . . He tells the truth well—ultimately the only criterion of greatness.”

—G
ENE
W
OLFE

“Appealing . . . [Card’s] new look at a classic tale is clever . . . adding attractive whimsical twists and cultural confluences to a familiar story.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Fascinating . . . richly detailed and engagingly peopled.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Have you ever wondered what happens after Happily Ever After? . . . Breathe a long sigh of relief, for at last, the wait is over. Orson Scott Card’s
Enchantment
takes us beyond the curtain of the cursive scrawl of ‘The End’ that normally bars our way, past the famous folklore kisses, past everything we’ve come to know of classic folktales, and on into a realm that will open your tear ducts even as it opens your eyes. . . .
Enchantment
is so much more than merely that ancient tale with a modern twist. . . . It feels like a cross between Twain’s
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
and the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk with a splash of two-way time travel. This is a compelling and vibrant story that turns classic ideas on their heads, written by a true master. Every fan of fantasy, of Card, or of storytelling will consider it priority reading.”

—Realms of Fantasy