Percival's Angel (3 page)

“Why not, indeed?”

The Lady hiccupped a wee, malicious laugh. “You ever see young fellow miserable like Percy?”

Alanna gasped.

“You know this, Friend. We talk this before.”

Tears dimmed Alanna's sight. Wool and spindle and her own lap swam together. “You…you have said this.”

“More than once. Quick you forget!”

“I am only Human.”

“I forget that, for love. Here we see love—confusion! What else I tell you more than once?”

“You have said…you say…my Percy…”

“Will leave you. Surely will, Alanna.”

“No. No.”

“Is only matter of time, chance. Like my lonesome fawn, Percy run to first Human herd he see.”

“Ah, but he will see none! I have sacrificed my life, more life than I thought I would have, to assure that he will see none.”

The Lady said quietly, implacably, “Is no assure, Alanna. Is never assure. So love is needless burden.”

Alanna wiped a patched sleeve across her eyes, looked up at the Lady. Firmly, she said, “Love is the meaning of life.”

“Ha! Not even Humans think so! Ivie? You think so?”

A small voice said, “Lady!”

Startled, Alanna jumped. Her spindle rolled and fell.

At her knee stood a small person wrapped in a Child Guard's “invisible” cloak. Tearily, she watched the cloak drop away. Percy's little friend Lili drooped there, dark eyes wide, braid full of twigs and leaves. Lili panted and sweated. She must have run fast. She must have poled a coracle very fast across the lake for her small breasts to heave so under her shirt.

Calmly, the Lady acknowledged her. “Lili.”

Alanna bent to pick up her spindle.

Lili gasped, “Percy…talking Human…with three Humans.”

Alanna's fingers froze on her spindle.

“Humans? In the forest?” The Lady's soft voice held wonder, and threat.

“They…won't get out…But Lady, I know a little Human talk. Percy taught me.”

“So?”

“Can you cast a spell so far? To stop them telling Percy about…Knights…and King Arthur…and the rountable?”

Darkness flooded Alanna.

She heard Ivie's frightened voice call, “Alanna!” And nothing more.

***

Three days I hunted Percy. Followed his scent. Rain washed it away. Followed his tracks. Lost them in a stream. Climbed to his tree-den. From the bottom of the oak I knew Percy was not there. No smell of Percy. But still I climbed to make sure there was no Percy. I tried out pool, where he had met those fool, doomed knights. No Percy.

Here and there I met Fey. “Have you seen Big White Percy?” No one had noticed him. All too busy dividing up the knights' baggage.

I even asked the fairies I saw, bright small ones and misty tall ones. They paused, as if they heard me. They looked at me, and vanished. As always.

Here it is bright evening on the third day; and I think of the Cliffs.

Why not sooner? Why not first thing?

Because the Cliffs are not part of my forest. Like everyone else I skirt around them, avoid the sight of them. The Cliffs that lean over rocky North River smell of Death.

Women who bear malformed babes usually drown them. But sometimes they toss them off the Cliffs.

Old Fey who decide to die toss themselves off. Bones wreathe the rocks of North River.

Naturally, Fey avoid the Cliffs. But not Percy. Long ago I found out that he cannot smell Death, or much else. The Lady says that's a Human trait.

Percy used to go off and play by himself at the Cliffs, when the Child Guard scoffed at him. He told me once he had rigged a vine to climb up and down.

I come to the top of the Cliffs. I hold my breath against the stink and look down over.

It's not so far down. Just far enough to kill.

Down there roaring North River boils about its rocks. Here and there, bones. Percy? I strain my eyes, searching.

No Percy.

I sigh relief, and draw back from the edge.

I smell Percy. Follow Percy smell around a boulder. There sits Percy on the edge, back to me, feet dangling over.

For a while I stand quiet, watching Percy's sturdy back. His solid shoulders. Sunset bright in his bright hair. Gods! This is my real, Big White Percy, breathing and alive; and I can hardly believe the way my ribs expand, how deep I can breathe, now I see him safe!

But soft; don't startle. Percy smells of agitation. I cannot see his aura in this clear light, but I know it must be flaming like a forest a-fire. Surprise him, he could go right over the edge.

I scratch the boulder beside me. Over and over I scratch, as if to file down my nails. Not surprisingly, Percy hears nothing at first. His ears are full of river-roar.

Louder I scratch; by now, Fey ears would notice something. Finally, even Percy notices a discordance in the river-roar, and looks over his shoulder.

“Don't watch me like that!” He roars louder than North River. “Let me know if you're watching me! Goddamn spy!”

I kneel just behind his shoulder, not right at the edge. I do not dangle my feet over. I shout, “Percy. I've been hunting you.”

“For what?”

“Those Humans you talked with.” We're yelling. From a distance, our words can be heard and distinguished from the river's words. I poke Percy in the back till he turns around to me. I raise my hands and finger-talk, extra slow.

They made you unhappy.

Percy shouts, “Unhappy! They opened my eyes! Now at last I see the sun!” He flings a wild hand out toward the sunset. Close to him, I feel his aura that I cannot see. It boils like North River.

I draw calm Spirit around me, a mist that Percy's heat cannot scorch. This I learned from the Lady.

Percy turns sideways, one leg dangling, and shouts in my ear. Instant talk floods out of him. He cares not that somewhere, someone may hear him. Already, we Fey are less real to him than the fantasies the knights taught him. His eager words reel and stumble and trip each other up.

I flash fingers at him.
Finger-talk, Friend!

He tries; but his slow fingers shake and tangle, and he returns to wild yelling.

He yells about those three dead knights. He jabbers what they told him of their world. (I could have told him some of this, myself. Merlin could have sung it to him. A good thing we did not! With Percy, this knowledge acts like a…sickness.)

“Together, Lili! They ride together, alive or dead!”

I finger-talk.
They ride dead?

“Listen! The High King sends them here, there, to guard the Kingdom. They ride. Fight. Together. Anything they win they keep, so they get…rich. They get more and more.”

More and more what?

“At home in Arthur's Dun they have a den, a…house, each one his own. And a…wife. Woman. Each one, all his own. And…servants, to do whatever he orders. Each one his own. But listen, this is the important part.

“They owe…they owe…allegiance to the High King. Arthur. What he says, they do. Whatever.”

Like the servants. You're saying they're his servants.

“They'll die for him.”

They already have.

“What do you think of that, Lili?”

Not much at all.

“Did you ever dream of such glory?”

Glory?

“Gods, Lili! Holy Archangel Michael! Knights don't live to hunt and eat and get a bit of pleasure!” Violently, Percy points down at the water below, now shadowed. “Goddamn
fishes
live like that! Knights live for their King, his Kingdom, their Honor! Fame! Riches! Each one his own!”

Fame? Very dangerous. Hidden is better. Fishes know that.

“You don't see! I thought you, at least, would see!”

See what?

Percy chokes.

I look up from the water to his face.

Tears spill from Percy's wide, gray eyes. Big, transparent tears like heavy raindrops wander down his cheeks into his funny yellow beard.

I stare, amazed and shocked. Attacked as by high wind, my Spirit cloak shivers around me.

“I know the others can't see it. They'd laugh. They'd say, ‘Where's the glory in this…allegiance, hah? Where's the glory in dying for the King?'”

And where in the world is it?

“They'd say, ‘Why live for somebody else? I'm plenty to live for, me myself.'”

Indeed!

“But I'm not, Lili! I'm not enough to live for! To eat and drink and play and sleep!”

Every instinct tells me,
Get up! Run. You can't deal with this.

I shout, “And to look at the sky.”

“What? Look at the sky? The sky doesn't look back at me! I need for the sky to look back at me, Lili! I never knew that till now. That's what I need. That's why I've never been…happy, like all of you. Goddamn, goddamn!”

Percy sobs. Softly. But the sobs shake his big, lovely form.

Instinct says,
Run!

I hitch close up to Percy and draw my arm about his shoulder. His sobs shake me too.

Before I climbed up here I felt watched. No living creature watched me, nothing I could hear, see, or smell. Nothing that would move, roll a stone, whisper a leaf.

I feel watched now. Change watches me. The Future moves in close and watches, more invisible than Spirit. The Future stretches strange hands to grab me.

I shout into Percy's ear, “Friend, it's all right. You can do it.”

“Huh?” Percy stifles a sob to listen.

“You can be a knight.”

“Me?”

“Why not? You are Human. Put on a stone shirt, and you're a knight.”

“Holy Michael! It's not that easy.”

“And why not?”

“They told me about that too. There's all sorts of…trials and…learnings…the King has to decide to knight you. Make you a knight. You don't just decide that yourself.”

Very likely. Humans make everything hard and complicated.

“How can the King knight a man he never saw?”

Percy's tears quit flowing. (I breathe easier.) He dries face with fists.

“You must go out there, Friend. Meet this King. When he knows you, he will knight you.”

“Go out there…Where? Where do I find the King?”

A pretty little shrug. But my mind whirls. “You ask as you go. ‘Where rests King Arthur?' All Humans will know that. Point the way. If you mind living like a fish, if you want to live for the King, you must go find him.”

Percy shouts thoughtfully, “A gigantic Adventure…Such as Sir Friendly described…Find the King, and I'll deserve knighthood!”

Finger talk.
I would think so.

“First thing, how do I get out of the forest at all? Old Sir Edik has always told us we can never leave. He got us in. But we can never get out.”

No more you can. But I can.

“Aye, well. You can go in and out at will, steal from the villagers…How's that help me any at all?”

I take you with me. Right now I see how.

And this is somehow true. Right now the plan rises in my mind like Apple Island out of lake-mist.

I yell, “Percy! I'll go with you!”

“You?” Percy shines at me like the sun itself. “Goddamn!” Then, “…But I don't know. From what those knights said, you might be more trouble than worth.”

“You can use a bit of magic, Percy.”

“Goddamn truth!”

“You won't make a start without me. Can't get beyond West Edge by yourself. And out there, I can sneak around, spy, vanish. You can't do that so well.”

“Holy Hubert, we'll go together! Goddamn!”

I laugh in Percy's suddenly bright face. I'm not sure what this knight-word “goddamn” means, but I think I will hear a lot of it from now on.

Behind us, the Future rubs gleeful hands together.

In his excitement Percy has not asked me why I want to go. So much the better.

***

With the Lady of the Lake, I walk among flowering apple trees.

We glide from tree to trunk, from shadow to shade, through ringing, insistent birdsong. I draw my “invisible” cloak about me. The Lady's green gown melts into green shadow. No one looking up from the lake would notice color, or motion. No one closer would hear our words; for we use finger-talk, and gentle murmurs which even we can hardly hear over the birdsong. Invisible, inaudible, we move among the blooms of Apple Island like two drifting spirits.

Nimway says, “This is a quest you speak of. A long, dangerous adventure in search of treasure, such as Merlin sings.”

I sign,
Percy quests for Knighthood. I quest for a Human Heart.

And why?

For Power, Lady! Merlin says the Human Heart is the World's Greatest Power.

“Look at me, Lili. Have you seen greater Power?”

Mid-step, I pause; look carefully. Nimway casts on me her sharp, dark glance that sees through matter to mind and spirit. In dappled shade her huge white aura shimmers softly.

I shake my head. I have never seen more Power in a living being.

“But I have no Human Heart. Nor have I ever gone questing.”

I must do this.

We move on.

Nimway murmurs, “If I consent, your Percy will be the first Human ever to leave this forest.”

I remind her, “Merlin.”

“Merlin is half-Fey.”

“Percy grew up here, Lady.”

“Unwilling!”

“He has given his word, he will keep the Forest secret forever.”

Nimway grins briefly. “His word!”

“His word is sacred. Alanna taught him that. And then those knights, they told him the same. Percy will keep his word.”

Nimway says, “Strangely, I agree.”

Relief! The Lady will not stand in our way!

She says, “I know Alanna.”

“Yes.”