The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four (49 page)

"I asked a question in my turn," Elias Patterson replied. "I said, 'Is it a part of the
geas
that each of Titania's lovers returns to a world that is a hundred years older than he left it?' And Oberon answered, 'That is true. The dislocation, the shock of finding oneself an alien in one's own land, it keeps your lot fully occupied, far too busy merely remaining sane to be concerned with any notion of returning, any dream of a second chance at Faery. For if any man ever did succeed in returning to her, then the
geas
would be broken, and she free to fancy whom she chose, for as long as she chose. But that will never happen, Elias Patterson—never while I live. And I live forever.'

"'And you tell us all this?' I asked him. 'You take all your wife's men in turn for pleasant morning strolls, and inform them that there is a
geas
on her, and that it can be lifted if any of them should find his way back Under the Hill? Is that wise, my lord?'"

Darlington muttered, "I should have done something like that with that woman. I should have told everyone that she was diseased—something really horrible, really disgusting." He sighed. "I always think of things too late." A second fox barked, fairly close by, and Darlington said, "There's the vixen."

"Yes," Elias Patterson said. "I have spent a good deal of time studying the foxes in this district."

Darlington cocked his head, but the reverend did not explain further, choosing instead to continue his tale. "In response to my question, Oberon replied, 'I tell you about the
geas
, as I have told few others, because, of them all, you
will
try to come back to her. I know this. But you will fail, and fail again and again, and you will suffer endlessly and needlessly until you die. I am only trying to spare you such a fate.'

"'I am touched by your concern,' I said. 'Even honored.' And I was not mocking him, Mr. Darlington, truly. I said, 'But you and I both know that the three of us will do what God in his mystery has put it on us to do. I have failed Him, and I will be punished for it, but that changes nothing. That changes nothing at all.'

"'No,' Oberon answered. 'You are right—we will all do what we will do.' And then he smiled at me in a strange way, almost a sad way, and he said, 'And you may bear this triumph away, if you will, that I, undying Oberon, am indeed envious of a mortal man, which has only once before occurred in all my life Under the Hill. It will be long before my lady forgets you and forgives me what I do. Savor it, human. Savor it well.'"

Elias Patterson drew a deep breath, putting his hands out to the flames and looking straight at Roger Darlington. "Then he was gone, in the way he had of coming and going, and the little stream was still singing to itself. I walked slowly back to where Titania lay in her bower, awake now. And that was how the morning passed, and I envied nobody in the world, nor ever have again."

"I envy you," Darlington said quietly. "I'm telling you that right now."

"Envy nobody. It is the true secret of happiness, or at least the only one I know. So the years passed for me in Faery: not only in making love with Titania, but in hunting with her and her friends and her maidens—for she too loved the chase as well as any—and walking and sporting together in those sunlit woods that became my true home. And if I was happier than the priests and the ministers like myself think mortal man has any right to be . . . all the same, I never deceived myself into believing that my joy would have no end. One midnight I would fall asleep in Titania's embrace, as I had done every night for seven years, and awaken on the very same cold hillside where I had lain myself down, exactly seven years before. Then the payment would begin, and I was ready for that, too."

"You thought you were," the highwayman said somberly. "We always
think
we're ready."

"Not that I had any sort of calendar, or any way of marking my days: I only had to look in Titania's eyes to see the seventh Beltane come upon us. I had become well skilled at reading her moods, as I've told you—certainly better at it than Oberon, or any of her ladies. We gazed at each other for a long, wordless time, when that day came, and then she said, 'It is not my choice. It is my fate, and my doom.'

"And I answered her simply, saying, 'I know. There was never a moment when I did not know.'

"Faery folk do not—cannot—weep, Mr. Darlington. Only Titania. It is part of her loneliness. I held her that night for the last time, as she rocked and moaned and whimpered against me, and her tears scarred my face and my throat. This is why I grew my beard, you know, to cover the marks. She quieted a little after some while, and I said to her, 'Forget me, my love. It will be hard enough for me in my world without knowing you unhappy in this one. I beg you, forget even my name, as God has done. Will you do that for me, you for whom I forgot Heaven?' And I kissed her tears, though they burned my mouth.

"I could barely hear the words when she breathed her answer. 'If I say that, my beautiful, beautiful mortal, I will be lying, who never once lied to you.'

"'Lie to me now,' I told her then, and Titania did as I bade her."

"And even so." Darlington was not looking at him, but at the ground, his head low. "Even so, you're still never ready."

Elias Patterson smiled in some surprise. "You're quite right, Mr. Darlington. I certainly wasn't ready, on the last night of the last year, for her to shake me out of an exhausted sleep—when you know, as I did, that you will never do something unbearably wonderful ever again in your life, you see no reason to hold back anything for tomorrow—whispering, 'My love, my love, you must run! Please,
wake—
you are in terrible danger!'"

Darlington looked up, his mouth crooked. "I'm always hearing tales of brave women who risk their lives to warn their lovers of one approaching peril or another. Never met one in my life, you understand, but I'm sure there must be thousands."

"Titania never looked more beautiful than she did that midnight," Elias Patterson said, "bending over me, with the moon in her hair and the wild terror in her eyes. I reached out to pull her down once again—
once more, oh, once more—
but she resisted, tugging at my wrist, crying over and over, 'No, no, they are here, I feel them, you
must
fly!' When I dream of her, that is how she comes to me, always."

"What was the danger? I don't imagine they've got troopers or High Sheriffs in Paradise."

"She did not want to tell me at first. But I saw the figures moving in the darkness, and each time, pulling me along as she was, she would freeze in place, absolutely, like a fawn when the wolves are near, knowing that its only chance of life is not to move, not to make a sound, not to breathe." Elias Patterson shook his head in fresh wonder. "Titania, Queen of Faery, who hunted manticores."

Darlington waited, saying nothing. Elias Patterson said, "I never got a close look at them, thanks to her wariness and her skill. They were great shadows, for the most part, moving as silently as she under the ever-blooming trees and meadows of Faery. What I did see of them I will not tell you, for I still dream that, too. But I
felt
them, as she said: hungry shadows who knew my name, clawing at my mind and my soul to be let in—and if I let them in there would be nothing left of me but skin; nothing but a shadow inside, like themselves. And all the same, there was as well a terrible lassitude that came with that feeling—a sense that it would be so pleasant to surrender, even to invite them in, since what would life matter without Titania?" He laughed then, but there was no smile in the laughter. "And when I look back, that is probably just what I should have done."

"But you didn't." Darlington's voice was hoarse and expressionless.

"No. But if it had not been for Titania, holding me together and
them
outside with her faery hands and her human heart . . . well, I would be in another place than Yorkshire today. For what she said to me was that Faery exists on sufferance of the Hell—whatever it actually is—that you and I were both raised to believe in. 'It is a mere token tithe we pay, every seven years,' she told me, 'most often an animal, though I have known it to be as simple as a flower that grows only here, Under the Hill. But this time, this time'—and dark as it was, her face was white as a flower itself, white as alyssum, white as anemone, white as yarrow—'this time, my darling,
you
are the tithe . . . '"

"Oberon," Darlington said through his teeth. "It was Oberon who shopped you."

"Aye, I never doubted that, nor did Titania. But it is a curious thing, how certain horrors are so vastly horrible to think about that they simply do not take hold on your imagination at the time, but go almost unnoticed—sooner or later to wake you screaming, surely, but not
now.
What was real was Titania, crouching beside me in a thicket while those—what were they? Demons, monsters, damned souls? I've no idea to this day—while those creatures
who had been sent for me glided soundlessly by, close, so close, drawn perhaps by the ticking of my blood, perhaps by the chatter of my mind, the betraying rustle of the hair rising on my forearms." He paused for a moment, and then said in an oddly younger voice, "Or by the sweetness of Titania's breath on my cheek, which I
will
not think of,
will
not remember . . . " He caught himself, abruptly, but Darlington could hear the effort.

"If I had a shilling for every man, woman and child who's shopped
me
," Darlington murmured, "well, they'd not do me much good just now, all those shillings, would they? Except maybe to bribe a turnkey to let a wench into my cell. Go on."

Elias Patterson said, "Titania led me a long way, circling and doubling back at the least sign of danger, sometimes standing motionless for minutes at a time, even when I could sense nothing. It was a strange, slow flight, and a sad one, for we passed through fields where we had rambled together in sunlight, crossed a stream where the Queen of Faery had tucked up her skirts like a girl and shown me how to tickle fish with my toes; and rounded the golden corner of a wood where I had flattened myself, marveling, against a tree to see her take down a grimly boar with nothing but a slender oaken spear longer than she was. She had leaped into my arms afterward, and rubbed her bloody hands all over my face. But we could speak of none of this, or anything else, for fear of attracting my hunters' attention. We moved along in silence, her hand always in mine; and now and then, when we could, we looked long at each other. I remember."

He was silent for a few moments, and then continued, "We came very near to evading them altogether. Titania had just pointed to a grove of tall hemlocks a little way ahead, and whispered, '
There
, my love—pass under those trees and step safely home into your own world,' and I had turned for . . . what? A last look, or word, or hopeless embrace? Perhaps none of these, for I had sworn to myself long ago that there would be no such tormented farewell for us when the time came. But all at once my mind filled with fire and stench and despair bearing down on me from all sides. I could not see Titania—I could see nothing but howling shadows—and I cried out in fear, and felt her push me down, hard, so that I sprawled flat on the ground. Something was flung over me, covering me completely, and I knew by the dear scent of her that it was Titania's cloak. I cowered in her smell, feeling the shadows raging around me—around
her—
expecting my pitiful refuge to be torn away from me at any instant. All I could think, over and over, the one light trembling in my darkness, was
when I am in Hell, I will hold her with me, and eternity cannot be so dreadful then
."

Darlington said quietly, "It's that cloak you're wearing, isn't it? That's Titania's cloak."

"I heard her laugh," Elias Patterson said, "and it was like the first time I had wakened to her singing—soft and clear and proud, as though she had just invented singing at that very moment. She was moving away slowly, back the way we had come—I could feel it, just as I felt the great shadows sullenly trailing behind, and felt their savage bewilderment. Under that cloak, I did not exist for them; and yet the Queen of Faery was laughing joyously at them, and they knew it. I could feel them knowing it, as their night lifted from my mind."

"It's a cloak of invisibility, like in the fairy tales." Darlington was talking aloud to himself. "But it can't be, for you're plain enough to see right now. How
does
the bloody thing work?" His voice had grown harsh and hungry when he raised his eyes to meet Elias Patterson's eyes.

"I wish I could tell you," Elias Patterson answered him sincerely. "It didn't make me invisible—un
thinkable
, really, is what I suspect. All I can say with any certainty is that it's quite a warm cloak. And easy to clean."

"Good to know." Darlington brought out his pistol, though not particularly pointing it at Elias Patterson. "For a man in my profession."

Elias Patterson smiled at him. "Your gun's empty, as we are both aware, but that doesn't matter. I'll give you the cloak, gladly—but if I might make a suggestion, you should wait a bit before you take possession. For your own good."

Darlington scowled, puzzled. "Why?"

"Trust me. I was, after all, a minister of the Gospel."

Darlington put his pistol away. "I do have bullets around somewhere," he said, but absently, still caught up in the tale, still eyeing Elias Patterson's cloak. "So she led them away, and you escaped back to this world."

"So it was. I waited until I could feel that I was safe, and then I scurried to that hemlock grove Titania had pointed out, like a frightened little mouse, with her cloak wrapped round me. Between one mouse-step and the next, I was walking English earth, under an English heaven, safe from the wrath of Hell and Oberon alike—and, if you'll believe it, already frantic to turn and go straight back, whatever the price, whatever the doom. But the grove was gone, the land was as flat and flavorless as I remembered it, and hemlocks don't grow in that soil, anyway. The country Under the Hill was shut to me. I was . . . home."