Beauty

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Janice was still crying, wiping her eyes. “What happened to Bill? To his body?”

  I tried to tell her and I choked. It was as if it had happened yesterday, rather than a year, two years ago. I finally got it out, about Jaybee having carried his body away.

  “That bastard,” she whispered again. “Oh, that rotten bastard.” Then she wiped her eyes and said firmly, “When the day of judgement comes, he’ll be among the damned.” Then she went out, shutting the door behind her, leaving me alone.

  I lay down on my own bed next to the cat, so tired it was hard to think, hard to move. I was old. Funny, I didn’t know where my youth had gone, but I was old. When I looked in the mirror, I expected to see someone else, that younger face, that smooth skin, that unlined brow. Mama was still young. I should be still young. Instead, there was this thin, slightly wrinkled woman with flyaway gray hair who had to lean close to the mirror to see because she was nearsighted. I sat up and stared in the mirror, squinting my eyes as Thomas the Rhymer had taught me, wishing to see true.

  It reminded me of one of the songs they had sung in Faery, in Oberon’s court. “Lovely the days of your youth, and fleeting as grass. Stay with me forever in Faery, my golden-haired lass….”

  And that reminded me of Puck and Fenoderee, my only friends. I said their names, wishing they were with me.

  “Yes?” said Puck. He came out from the wall, from the bookcase, from somewhere near there. Grumpkin opened his eyes for a moment, yawned, then went back to sleep. He wasn’t impressed by half-naked Bogles appearing out of the walls. Puck said, “I came to tell you Elladine is back in Faery.”

  I felt my heart thudding, like a weary hammer. “Is she angry at me?”

  “Why should she be angry at you?”

  “Because I ran off.” I felt guilty about that, had felt guilty ever since I’d done it.

  “I ran you off,” he said. “Elladine is of Faery, and she’s old in years. Age is a powerful protection against such as he. He’s not really interested in those of Faery, so he let her go. He wouldn’t have let you go.”

  “Still …” I said, tears in my eyes.

  “Still, nothing. She risked your life taking you on that Halloween ride. It was sheer arrogance, too. Elladine is arrogant where humans are concerned. All that lot are.”

  I thought it must be true. “She never comes to me, even though I know she can!” I cried. “She never came to me when I was a child. The only time she came was after the Curse, to move my body, and it wasn’t even me!”

  What I felt was the same longing I had felt ever since I was a child. I needed someone to care about me. Stubbornly, I could not stop seeking love. I wanted Elladine to love me.

  “Beauty, you’re such a child,” he laughed at me. “Why don’t you take affection from those who’d give it to you gladly? Me, for instance.” He made a languishing face at me, enough to make me laugh.

  “Elladine told me you’re trying to be an angel,” I said. “Is that why you’re here, looking after me? And how come you never came before when I was here?”

  He chuckled ruefully. “I was here before. As soon as Carabosse let me come. Who do you think pushed those boots into your hands when that man was coming after you?”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  He shrugged. “I know. Carabosse thought it was dangerous for me to show up, in the flesh, so to speak. You knew nothing about Faery then, and she thought you might go silly.”

  “I wouldn’t have,” I said indignantly. “If I could get dragged from the fourteenth to the twenty-first, and then back here, if I could go through all that with Jaybee without going silly, why would I go silly seeing you?”

  “Magic’s thin on the ground here,” he said. “She thought perhaps you’d stopped believing in it.”

  I sniffed to verify the fact. “I can hardly smell it at all. If I put on my cloak in full sunlight, people can almost see me.”

  “So, don’t put on your cloak.”

  “I need it,” I said stubbornly.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I must make sure Jaybee hurts no more women,” I told him.

  He made a face.

  I said, angrily, “I know you think it’s only for vengeance, but it’s not only that! It isn’t vengeance when you kill a poison snake in the yard where children play, to keep it from killing someone else. I need to make sure he hurts no more people, fathers no more children like Elly. After that, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go join a nunnery somewhere.” What else was there to do? What had been between Giles and me had been quite perfect. I could never love anyone else in that way.

  “You should leave Jaybee to Fate, Beauty. It would be safer. Truly. Listen to me. You have a granddaughter, back then. You could live then, be with her.”

  I shook my head at him. “They don’t know I’m her grandmother, Puck. They think I’m a fairly distant relative. I’d be an intruder. She has a grandma, a grandpa, a father. She’ll be a princess.” I shook my head, firmly. “Are you going to stay here with me?”

  “I’ll drop in from time to time. I can’t stay, though. We’re still trying to convert Faery before they all dwindle, though they’re a stubborn lot. Well, so are we Bogles.”

  “Tell me about it,” I asked him, curling up on the bed the way I had used to do when I was young. My bones protested, but I persevered, wanting that feeling of having a whole long time to just sit and talk about anything at all, with pillows softening the world, and maybe hot chocolate to drink. That feeling of being in a safe nest where nothing could hurt me. The way I used to cuddle into my tower bed, when I was young. Grumpkin half-opened his eyes, crawled over to put his feet up against my leg, and started kneading me as he went back to sleep.

  “What are you and the Fenoderee and the others trying to do?”

  He cocked one ear at me, like a horse might do, or a dog. “We want Faery to fight the Dark Lord. On man’s behalf, and its own.”

  I laughed. “I can see Oberon’s face.”

  Puck grimaced. “Well, he’s not receptive thus far.”

  “Why do you want Faery to fight, Puck?”

  He settled himself on my bed. “I’ll give you my lecture, which I’ve given the Bogles over and over. I’ve given it to the Sidhe, too, but they pay no attention. Mind now. Fold your hands in your lap and pay attention:

  “When Faery looks at mankind, it sees him as mostly animal, not immortal and far from perfect. Since those of Faery are immortal, it stands to reason they should feel sorry for mankind, right? Poor little sinful, short-lived thing.”

  I nodded. I’d felt sorry for myself, often enough.

  “But there’s this unexpected thing about man. He climbs. That’s the thing about him. He climbs. Not all of him, oh no, or there’d be no more living with him than with the angels, but now and then there’s one who does.” Puck folded his legs and leaned against my bedpost, scratching one brown ankle and furrowing his brow. “And when a man or a woman climbs, Beauty, he or she can end up as high as the angels or higher.”

  “The saints,” I nodded, thinking I knew.

  “Oh, saints,” Puck said. “Whsst. Saints! Martyrs and virgins and what all. Relics in churches, and both the relic and the churches dead as brass. No. I’ll tell you who climbs. Gardeners climb. And farmers. And painters. And poets. People who build beautiful things without destroying to do it. The ones who designed Westfaire, them. And people who live with animals and learn of them until they know every twitch of a tail or an ear. Them, too. And those that study atoms and how they move, and stars and how they move. Those who learn about the Holy One by reading his own book of nature and creation, that’s who climbs.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. “How do you know those people climb?”

  “Ach,” he said, rubbing his head. “You know how, if you sing a note, sometimes a wine glass sitting in a cupboard sings the same note back again?”

  I told him I did.

  “Well, sometimes you say
the name of a man or a woman and it comes back to you out of the air, singing, and you know that man or that woman has climbed up somewhere.”

  “Dead or alive?” I wondered.

  “Either,” he said. “Maybe it’s only us Bogles that can hear it, but when you’re in Faery next, you try it. Say the name of the ones who built Westfaire and listen for it to come back at you.”

  I didn’t know their names, more’s the pity. “Why is that, do you suppose?”

  “Because that’s the way the Holy One wanted things to be, don’t you see? The Holy One created the world beautiful and manifold and complicated, and the way it was made was the way He meant it to be! He wasn’t just playing, making a toy world with the real world somewhere else. No, this is it! Anybody with eyes can see the truth of that. The Holy One wanted mankind to understand creation so he could create in his turn, for man’s the only one among us who can create anything at all! Angels don’t! They burn with a pure flame, like stars, but they don’t create. Faery doesn’t! It grows and flowers, without much thought, and it doesn’t create.”

  “Faery is beautiful.”

  He rubbed his head and looked at me with saddened eyes. “Ah, nah, nah, you know better, Beauty. It’s all glamour in Faery. All fool-the-eye, like dreams. It’s not real. Without elvenroot and fairy fruit, we’d see no palaces nor fairy steeds. In Faery, it’s all in the eye, not in the heart or mind. You know that.”

  “What’s the difference,” I said, being stubborn. “It’s still beautiful.”

  “The difference is that nobody builds it. It doesn’t really stand there. If we leave it, it will vanish. You can’t show it to a mortal man, lest you put elvenroot in his eyes, and you do that, he can’t see anything else forever. You can’t take a picture of it. Sometimes I wonder if even the Holy One can see it.”

  “You mean if someone mortal gets elvenroot in her eyes, she can see Faery, but nothing else?” I asked in surprise.

  “It’s only your fairy blood lets you see Faery and still see this world, Beauty, and your granddaughter hasn’t enough fairy blood ever to use it safely. If she goes there, she must stay forever. She’s only one-eighth, and that’s not enough to go back and forth. If you’re thinking of taking her to Faery, beware!”

  I hadn’t been thinking of my granddaughter. I hadn’t been thinking of anyone, specially, though I suddenly thought of Jaybee, wondering what a view of Faery would do to him.

  “So why do you want Oberon to fight the Dark Lord, Puck?”

  “Because it would do what the Holy One asked of Faery in the first place! To help mankind! Help him instead of using him or ignoring him, which has been the usual pattern. Make common cause with him. Join with him.

  “And it’s so logical,” he said. “Man is dying from being too many. Faery is dying from being too few. We need to mix more, to value our children more. Men have too many of them, they’re cheap. The Sidhe have too few, and they seek them like treasure. Man needs what Faery has to give. Fewer children. Longer lives. Less speed. More thought. Mystery and wonder and glamour built in, so to speak, through the slow creation of marvelous things. Less haste and destruction. More appreciation for what’s been given. Like man and Faery were two halves of one thing. If the Dark Lord were conquered, it could all come right!”

  “Why won’t the Sidhe listen? They lust after humans enough.”

  “Oh aye, they do. But it’s that pride again, Beauty. They said no to the Holy One; you think they’re going to say yes to a Bogle? And while a little fleshy stink is exciting to them, they won’t accept it as a daily thing. It’s common. It’s not how they see themselves.”

  “So they won’t.”

  “They won’t. Perhaps it’s the dwindle, the way our magic is leaking away. And our numbers are falling, too, one here, one there. A forest gets cut down, and the fairies who were born out of that forest are gone. At one time, the glamour would have been strong enough to protect the forest, but not anymore.”

  “What’s causing it, Puck? Why do they dwindle?”

  “There’s some say it’s the Dark Lord’s doing. Every time he makes a new horror, it takes hideous magic to do it, all tied up in that terror, like gold dug out of the earth and hid away. There’s some say it’s the human priests, sucking our magic away to use it in their religion, turning wine into blood and making spells to forgive sins. There’s some who say magic came from nature, and with man destroying nature right and left, there’s not enough of it left. Whatever the reason, we’ve been losing it for a few thousand years. The only ones who’re holding fast are us Bogles. We can tolerate mankind better than most, maybe because we never went in for glamour like the Sidhe. We can even live in wasteland, where those of Faery can’t. But it’s hard times for us, too. We watch things dwindle and dwindle, and Oberon forgets what he once knew, forgets his majesty and his dignity and ruts like a goat, laughing and pretending all is well. As though time were forever.”

  “But you said they’re immortal.”

  “All that means is they don’t die. It doesn’t mean they can’t fade away. They’re tied to the forests, Beauty. Tied to the moors. Tied to the seas and rivers. They were drawn from nature and will go when nature goes. They vanish if their forests vanish. Fade away. Like snow, melting.”

  His face was drawn into a mask of tragedy, the corners of his mouth pulled down with woe. I took his hand in my own and stroked it.

  “Right now,” he muttered, “if I went to Faery in this time, there’d be almost nothing there. It’s all shadows and ghosts. No palaces. No enchanted places. What’s left has been invaded by him. To reach the Faery you know, I have to go back and come in from hundreds of years ago.”

  I nodded, sadly. “That’s what Bill and the crew were photographing when I met them. The end of Faery. The last enchantments. They were getting a picture of Westfaire with the roses growing up.”

  He sighed. I tried to think of something comforting to say, but someone knocked on my door. I looked up, startled, looked back to find Puck gone.

  “Yes?” I said.

  Janice opened the door. “I’ve made some tea. I thought it might do us good.”

  I nodded, trying to smile as I levered myself off the bed on aching old legs to go have tea, feeling less lonely but more lost than I had half an hour before. Grumpkin purred and stayed where he was. The end of the world does not impress cats.

  Janice wiped her eyes and made small talk. She wondered how long I’d been back in the twentieth; she wondered how I’d been getting along, without a job.

  “Oh, I had a job until just recently,” I said. “Caring for horses. Then, suddenly, I got old. Up until a year or two ago, I wasn’t … didn’t feel old at all.”

  She sipped and nodded. “That’s the way it takes us all, I think. Suddenly, you’re not young anymore, and you don’t know where it went. And people tell us they don’t love us anymore because we’re too old. And some of us fight it, and some of us realize in time that it’s God’s will.” Her eyes blazed at me.

  “So,” I went on quickly, derailing a disquisition on God’s will. “I went back to school, and that’s where I met your niece.”

  “You said you were a witness? When Jaybee came?” Her mouth was tight, but her eyes were avid.

  I had to make it up as I went along. “Dorothy and I had planned to have New Year’s dinner together. I had just arrived, and I’d asked to use the bathroom. I was inside, with the door ajar, when I heard the man come in. I heard it all, but I was afraid if he saw me, he’d kill me. There was nothing I could do. Afterwards, he picked up Bill’s body and went, and I helped Dorothy get herself together, then she decided to go away where he couldn’t find her. I don’t even know where she is.” I had to say that. Otherwise Janice would be at me to get the address. Her mouth was still downturned. Was she angry that Dorothy herself hadn’t told her? Or was she angry that Dorothy had gotten away?

  “She should have called me,” she said bitterly. “I’m terribly fond of Dorothy.” He
r tone belied the words.

  “I don’t think she was thinking about that.” Besides, I didn’t believe her. Janice had never approved of me enough to be fond of me. I equivocated, “I’m sure she’ll call you. Before she went, she suggested I come here, that you might like the company, that you might not want to be alone.”

  “Where were you living before?” she asked suspiciously. I knew she was suspecting me of having invented the tragedy for the sake of free rent.

  “In an apartment downtown,” I extemporized. “The building has been sold, and all the tenants have to move.”

  It was evidently explanation enough. Janice forgot to be suspicious of me and returned to her grief. “That bastard,” she whispered, tears coming again. “Oh, that horrible man. What will I do when he comes back?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing, please. Dorothy said not to do anything.”

  “I couldn’t do anything now anyhow,” she said. “I have to get out of town for a while. The team I used to work with is coming from the twenty-first to photograph whales. They’ll be—we’ll be coming here, to this very town. I was with them. I can’t be here when I come. Not this near or it might make a loop.”

  When I asked for details, she told me the team had come from the twenty-first on January 12, 1993, and had rented a boat named the Sally Ann, with its owner as crew. They had gone out into the ocean and photographed migrating whales. She remembered it clearly, almost yearningly. Her expression softened, as though something wonderful had been connected with that trip. “Martin’s coming,” she whispered.

  “And Bill?” I whispered. “Bill’s coming?”

  “Oh, yes. Bill. And the others.” She got up and went into the bathroom, closing the door. I heard her weeping, making loud gulping noises. I didn’t think she was weeping over Bill. Something else grieved her.

  Alice had talked about staying away from places that had previously been visited through time-travel. None of the team would want to be in this town when their former selves came back. None of them could be, but I could. They hadn’t even known I existed on January 12, 1993.