Harvest of Changelings (43 page)

Our first walk in the White City was a slow one, and not because we were tired, or even because we stopped often to look or because Larissa wanted us to see one thing or another. No, our first walk was a slow one because of all the people who came and talked to us, touched us, laid their hands on our faces—which I know now is a form of greeting—if they were First-born, touched our foreheads with their fingertips if Second, and for the different Thirds, the pans, the centaurs, the mers, the sylvans, it is different, and I can't remember them all.
(
I am not even sure if I should capitalize all the species' names. I wonder if there is a fairy
Chicago Manual of Style.)
They watched us as we walked, Russell and Jeff, Hazel and the cat, Larissa and me and Malachi, from their houses—some of the houses. Two-thirds of the houses, Larissa told me that first morning, are empty.

The war with the Fomorii was long; it began before Valeria or Larissa was born, and I know how long-lived the First-born are. Victories, defeats, truces made and broken, retreats, advances. The First Island, their Eden (Atlantis?)—they know where it is—was—sank, taking with it the fairest of the cities, and millions of people. The White City, here on the coast of their northern continent, Tir Mar, a coast that looks like Maine, was where they retreated, to regroup, rearm, and fight again. Finally there was victory, but the cost was all these empty houses. That is why they called Malachi and the
others back—the changelings taken to the human universe in the very first years of the war, fosterlings they had hoped to retrieve before too many of our years and their years passed. If the changelings had not returned, if Thomas and his black magic and his red-eyed Fomorii had won, then Faerie's victory would have been a pyrrhic one, and two universes would be lost, theirs and ours.

Although Larissa tells me this is mine now, I can't quite say it or write it. I still feel like I am a visitor here, that at some point, I will have to go home, walk the Straight Road again.

The Fomorii have gone back to their universe, another room in the House of Creation. For now.

I thought the fairies would fly to greet us, swooping down like great birds. But, Larissa tells me, it is considered bad manners for adults to fly within a city. In and out of a city is another matter. The children, the few of them left, were told not to fly just yet by their parents. To wait, give us time to settle in. By the time we reached the end of the street where Valeria had lived, they had started to come out of their houses. They came, most of them, in fours: one golden-haired, bronze-eyed; one red-haired and green-eyed; one hair almost black, with blue-green eyes; one brown-haired, silver-eyed. Air, fire, water, earth. The gender combinations don't seem to matter. The children reminded me of collie puppies, everywhere, flashing, a few flying, glowing, making starry trails.

They came and they touched us.

Malachi looked at me when one tetrad swooped down on my four like a flock of crazed crows, shouting and laughing.

Go ahead, I told him.

I watched him take off. Larissa told me children sometimes stay airborne for days, especially after they first learn to levitate, to fly. I asked her if I could learn and she only said she didn't know, but she would try to teach me.

Valeria's street led to another, more houses, and another, then we reached the open-air market and the great city square, a park, a plaza, a fountain.

And I met two centaurs—Roth and Thorfin—who knew Russell and Jeff quite well.

“Thanks, Dad,” Malachi had said and flew straight up and up and up, until he could see the entire White City below him, enclosed in its shining white wall, its houses like nests of glowing jewels
spilled out of a bag, the domes of the temples, the arches and spiraling towers of the schools, the Tower of the Dodecagon, growing out of the city's heart. Just outside the walls, a forest to the south, gardens to the west, and to the east and to the north, rocks, a cliff, and below, white sand, and the sea, the sea, the sea.

He turned and spiraled and flipped and fell back on the warm air and floated and rolled over and over again. It had been so long since he had felt so well. Below him, he could see the others. He could pick out his father's aura, and the other three, auras he knew as well as his own.
Uncle Jack should have been here.
Then he flew straight up, up, up, and up, the city dwindling and shrinking, the sea growing and growing, the sky so close, so blue, so deep and shocking a blue, like no blue he had ever seen on Earth, and the clouds. Oh the clouds, they were almost alive in the sky. And there: yes, a dragon, very far away and red and golden, its wings molten in the sun, flying as he was, for the sheer pleasure of the flight.

Then he dropped, his aura flaming behind him, the tail of a golden comet, a falling stone of light.

We stood at the edge of the great plaza and watched. First-born, the Fairies, the Elfin, I suppose all the words we used, the Daoine Sidhe—except they are not little. The Second-Born: Dwarves: stout, hairy, eyes blinking against the light, or shielded by hoods—Larissa whispered they live mostly beneath the ground. The Third-born: people of the wood. Centaurs and pans. Sylvans, the tree people: dryads, wood nymphs. Hamadryads: oak-folk. Birch-men and women. Beeches. Hollies. Willows. Shapeshifters, the wer. Beasts like Alex, whose mind-speech touched me, flickering words, stray thoughts, odd images. All the Threes, she said, are, well, a bit wild. In the sea there are dolphins, and the swimmers, the mers.

There are so many colors here, sharp and clear against the white—here in the plaza, the public buildings, the temples, are all white. The centaurs' horse-bodies are magnificent, not as big as a Percheron or a Clydesdale, but much bigger than any horse I have ever seen back home. Roans, sorrels, chestnuts, bays, palominos, appaloosas, white, black, grey . . . And the dripping, dark green swimmers, a few, hurried, anxious to get back to the sea, others in the fountains. Beasts—Talking Beasts—great bears, large-sized mice, porcupines, wolves, panthers who come up and nudge against Alex . . .

I am just making a list.

It will take me forever to learn all of who they are and what they can and cannot do.

I wonder if I will ever feel at home here. I look at Hazel and wonder the same thing.

And others like my four children, bewildered, excited, dazed changelings. The Fourth-born?

The day we arrived, Samhain, is a holy day, the New Year.

The temple chimes rang and sang in the wind from the sea, a constant melody.

I wish I had a camera—I will have to ask Larissa what they do to record memories—when two of the centaurs made their way through the crowd. Not so much for them—by then I was on sensory overload. No, I wish I could have recorded the looks on Russell's and Jeff's faces. They knew these centaurs; they had told me about them: Roth and Thorfin. Roth a red-golden-chestnut, his beard and hair, golden red, and Thorfin, a glossy black, his beard and hair even blacker.

For all Russell's bravado, his bigger size, his quick temper, Jeff knew he was the stronger and the braver. Was it, Jeff had once wondered, the difference in how they had both been hurt? Russell's mother had left him, choosing as far as Russell ever knew, the child she loved best. His father had only taken him in when his grandfather had gotten sick. Then, the succession of stepmothers, with the last one the worst. Russell was her target. Not that he hadn't been his father's for years. Russell had shown Jeff the scars on his back, buttocks, and legs.

Jeff had no visible scars like Russell's to show. The places he had bled had long since healed. Jeff's scars were all interior and were only tangible in darkness. His father's hands hadn't bruised like Larry White's had. But Jeff still knew exactly how and where his father had touched him, each fingerprint on his skin. His mother had left, too. She had fixed him breakfast and sat with him as he had eaten it, just the two of them, his father already gone to work. Jeff remembered everything she had fixed that morning: wheat toast, soft poached eggs so he could wipe the plate with the toast, orange juice, milk. His
Star Wars
lunch box on the counter: apple and pear, sliced cheese cubes, thermos with hot cream of tomato soup, half an egg salad sandwich, a fistful of Oreo's in a baggie. She had dropped him off at school, waved, and he waved back, and he had never seen her again. She refused to talk to him the times she had to call later.

Jeff had told Ben most of what had happened and he had told Ben about Russell's scars and how they got there. Jeff had told no one else but Russell everything that had happened, at night when they had to stay first in Malachi's house, then at Father Jamey's church.

No, there isn't that much different in how we got hurt, not really, Jeff thought. But I didn't let it break me. Why it had finally broken Russell, when the shadow had come for him, Jeff wasn't sure. And he wasn't sure if his shadows had come for him that he wouldn't have broken, too.

 

Russell froze when they came to the plaza. Jeff didn't know for a few minutes until he turned to say something to Russell, to point out the Tree-people, and their hair, the leaves that kept falling around them. Russell wasn't there. Jeff had to tell the others to go ahead and he went back to where Russell was standing, in front of one of the silver-white trees.

“Russ, it's okay,” Jeff said, and took Russell's hand. He felt a quick, electric surge of energy between them, as Malachi had told them would happen now. “I'm scared, too. But we're here; we're together; we're safe.”

Russell couldn't look at Jeff, although he didn't let go of Jeff's hand. “But, I was the dark one; I gave in.”

“It doesn't matter anymore,” Jeff said and hugged Russell quickly. It was, he realized, something he had wanted to do for a long time.

“Promise?” Russell said, finally looking up. Jeff saw Russell was crying.

“Yes.”

Jeff gently led Russell into that great, loud throng of so many different peoples, talking, laughing, crying, shouting, moving, touching, colors shifting, shimmering, bright, interwoven with liquid light, wind chimes, and high above it all, sea gulls wheeling and turning.

“Look, our centaurs—there they are,” Jeff cried and they were: Roth and Thorfin, cantering through the crowds toward them, Ben and Malachi and Hazel and the cat and Larissa stepping back to let the two great horse-men through, the two of them laughing.

“You're home now,” Roth said and took Russell's hand. “You don't have to be afraid anymore.”

Thorfin nodded and took Jeff's hand. The centaurs' hands were huge, swallowing the boys' hands, and then they picked each boy up and drew them into an embrace.

I wish I had at least some of my books from back—home—with me. Larissa tells me that I will find plenty of books in their university library. What does one study in a fairy university, I wonder? Instead of clothes, I brought some of my journals; I figured we wouldn't have a problem here getting more of the former. The rest of my journals—those on diskettes—I left with Father Jamey, to share, as he said, with those who didn't cross. There is no way I could have used those diskettes here. Fairies know almost nothing of machinery; they are iron-sensitive, for one thing, and why invent the wheel if you can fly? I am writing this on what feels like vellum, with a quill pen, a bottle of black ink beside me.

Poor Hazel. She may not stay—if she can go back. No one has asked that question yet. But the boys—my son, Russell, and Jeff—this is their place, their true home. They are flowers slowly blooming, flowers that had not known how much they needed water.

I forgot Alex. It is not yet natural for me to think of him as sentient, but he is now. The children have no problem with it, of course. Larissa assures me I will get used to it—that said after introducing me to a rather earnest bear while we walked on the plaza that first morning.

When Roth picked up Russell, with those huge hands and arms, and hugged him against that huge chest, Russell felt as if he had finally come home. Jeff was right: he was safe. He felt another electrical surge between his skin and the centaur's—not like Jeffs, but akin. When the centaur finally put him down beside Jeff, Russell found himself tongue-tied. He could only laugh and shake his head, no matter how much each of the two centaurs teased him, ruffled his hair, tugged at his ear points.

“What's the matter, boy? If I didn't know you are a talker, I would say you are mute,” Thorfin asked.

“I—uh—I—can't—the words—I don't know where they are. Not right now,” Russell finally said, knowing his face was red enough to match his hair.

“Leave him be, Thorf,” Roth said, smiling down at Russell. “He's got some sorting to do. Why don't all of you go up on the wall? You can see the whole city, get a sense of where you are. We'll show you the way.”

Russell took Jeff's hand again as they walked with the two centaurs, Malachi and Hazel and Ben and Larissa and Alex coming behind them, talking, and looking. Jeff's hand, Russell thought, feeling a now-familiar electrical surge, weaker than before, more of a reminder, really, was familiar and known. He knew Jeff—or did he? Just in the few hours that had passed since walking through the Gate and on the Straight Road Jeff seemed to have straightened, his face was brighter, as if a shadow had begun to fade. Except for that, Jeff looked as he always did: somewhat shaggy dark brown hair, falling over his eyes, those ears, and the glowing blue-green eyes, small, half-a-head shorter than Russell, slight. Regardless, Jeff looked different. Russell wondered if
he
looked different. And there was something else that
felt
new, but that Russell recognized as old, even though he knew he had never recognized this something as being a part of him before, and Jeff was a part of it—or would be. But he knew he could not name this
something,
not yet.

“Russ? What are you thinking so hard about?” Jeff asked softly, talking below the loud voices of the two centaurs who were, with Larissa, answering questions about this and that.

“Something I'm working out. I'll tell ya later, I promise. C'mon, here are the steps up to the top of the wall.”