Beauty

by Sheri S. Tepper

  And this is only one leaf. The camera pulls back to let me see two, then three, then four. Each a triumph of architecture. Each a wonder, a marvel. The camera pulls back, back, and suddenly the fingers come down. Grasp the leaves. Crunch them together. The microphone picks up that crunch as cells explode, as their tender juices run out onto those fingers. The fingers pull.

  Soil shatters. Crumbs of moist soil rain down the sides of a growing cone. There is a volcano of disturbed soil. Out of its top emerges a flame-red, spherical shape, slowly rising, like a great balloon, like the sun, a gleaming ruby, a vast carbuncle brighter than blood, up, slowly, the long, white root trailing behind, tiny hairs on it broken from their home within the earth. It quivers. It almost screams.

  The camera follows the fingers, up, and up, and up.

  The camera sees a mouth. Opening. The radish is inserted, halfway. Yellowed teeth champ down. Saliva perks at the corners of the lips. The mouth opens again.

  “Shit,” says Mr. Tupp, spitting. “That’s awful.” The camera follows the radish as it falls, a bite out of one side, the other still glowing like martyr’s blood, wet and miraculous.

  The camera sees Martin walking away with Mr. Tupp, his arm around Mr. Tupp’s shoulders in comradely fashion. For a moment the camera follows them. Then it turns downward, down to the last radish.

  Jaybee always knew what made a good picture. As the camera draws away, and turns, and draws away, the radish becomes a sun on the horizon, an arc eaten out of it by a low brown hill; the leaves around it are a forest, and behind that forest the glowing ruby sun is setting. Forever setting.

  The gong rings. Stronger this time, I hear a murmur, as maybe many voices whispering, “Two.”

  I am alone in my place. Barry is being tortured somewhere else. I am thinking of my mama. And of myself.

  I was Elly’s mother. Unwillingly. Without intention. Mama was my mother. If not unwillingly, at least without intention. She left me, left me to Westfaire and the Curse, a short span in her life, telling me to come to her when it was over. I left Elly, only for a few years, I thought, intending to return when they were over. So, perhaps, mothers leave children every day, intending to return, only to find they are too late, returning. The thing has happened. The hour has struck. The time has passed when it would have mattered.

  So, are they to blame? Am I to blame, for Elly? Is Mama to blame for me?

  And if the mother hovers, settles like a hen upon the nest, clucks to her chick beneath her wings and does not let it go; if the mother says, “No, the hour may strike, the thing may happen, and I will not leave you alone”; if the mother does that? What?

  The chick struggles, and runs, and hides, wanting to feel the sun on its feathers, the air beneath its wings. And if it runs away and the hawk gets it, whose fault is that?

  Is Mama to blame I am in hell? Was I to blame that Elly was in hell from the day of her birth?

  The third gong. I wasn’t expecting it. The sound came in a great wave. It left in slow vibration, and after it the almost hysterical gabble of thousands of voices moving from a whisper to a grunt to a shout: “Three, three, three.”

  Then the voices, saying the words I had taught them, words my favorite poet had made long ago, in some other place:

  “From too much love of living,

  From hope and fear set free,”

  The words were ragged. I joined them, shouting, hearing Barry’s voice rise up next to mine.

  “We thank with brief thanksgiving,

  Whatever gods may be”

  The words came more strongly, more surely.

  “That no life lives forever;

  That dead men rise up never;”

  A shriek from the Dark Lord. He had heard us. Was he too late to stop us? Did all the victims believe it enough?

  “That even the weariest river

  Winds somewhere safe to sea.”

  We were on the river shore! I heard the shriek, the cry, the bellow of the whistle of the Stugos Queen. We were standing on the riverbank in Chinanga, watching it come around the bend. From the high deck, Captain Karon waved at me. Around me lay the bodies of some dead, including Barry, who would rise up never, and some living, who now knew they would surely die. And before them was their transportation on their journey toward that final sea, the one the captain had long wished to find.

  I heard a cooing voice and looked up to see Mrs. Gallimar clinging to Captain Karon’s arm. She looked like Bill. She was Bill.

  So, and so. The captain had done some dreaming of his own. Or he had taken my dreams for himself.

  There was a swirling darkness behind us. Out of this aching cloud a figure lunged toward me, a scrambling monster, a hurtling shadow: Jaybee, alive. Well. He had not suffered here. He belonged here, and he was coming to get me. It had been too late, and useless. His breath touched my face, his fingers touched me…

  “May I drop you somewhere,” said a voice from behind me. It was Israfel. The ambassador from Baskarone. Jaybee’s hand slid away, an empty skin, a sack, something hollow and unliving.

  “Ylles, Israfel, if you please,” I said in a fair imitation of Mama’s tone.

  “Faery, Israfel,” said another voice. Carabosse.

  He took our hands and we went up.

  I looked down to see the river winding toward a far horizon, an endless starlit sea. Behind us was a seething darkness which no light penetrated. “He’s still there,” I said, disappointed that he had not vanished, as Chinanga once had done.

  “A great deal of creativity has gone into that hell,” said Israfel. “You and Carabosse and I, we made a spell that freed a few of us, but it will take more than a few verses of Swinburne to free him.”

  He meant the Dark Lord, of course. I meant Jay-bee and all who are like him. Perhaps we both meant the same thing.

  “Did you plan for him to catch me?” I asked, wondering now that it was over what it had all been about. “Did you plan it?”

  “No,” said Carabosse. “Oberon planned it, and Mab. But we knew of it and let it happen. If we’d stopped it, he’d have tried something else. He had the scent and wouldn’t give up until he knew—or thought he knew. So we let it happen, but we came along to make sure he would not find in you what he was looking for.”

  “Will he try again?” I asked, wondering if I could last, again. “No,” said Israfel. “He thinks there’s nothing there. He thinks he was misled, and he finds you troublesome. Besides, if things go as we believe they will, he’ll be too busy.” His voice was furry and throat-stopped with grief. He said nothing more.

  28

  Israfel and Carabosse suggested that I stop in the world. I did so. They waited while I ate, bathed myself, dressed myself. It took forever. I was so slow. I kept dropping things. Finally, I looked at my hands and cried out, hearing the sound of the cry, a tiny shrilling, like a lost bird. My hands were like claws!

  “How long?” I cried.

  “The bell rang once each year,” Israfel told me.

  How many times had it rung. Fifteen? Twenty? “How old am I?” I cried.

  “About a hundred and three,” said Carabosse, adding kindly, “Don’t worry about it, Beauty. It won’t matter in Faery.”

  I laughed, a quavery little laugh. “Odile may not live long enough for me to return again. I think I’ll take my things with me this time.”

  “Things?” Israfel asked, smiling his radiant smile.

  “There’s still one hank of thread left,” I said. “And the needles. I’ll put them in my pocket.”

  When I had dressed myself, I got out Mama’s box. It still had the letters in it, her letter, and Giles. I left them there. The time was past for letters. I put on the ring with its little winged figure. I put the needles and thread in my pocket. Then Israfel and Carabosse took me by the hands and led me back into Faery, back onto the flowery meadow where the tents had been set up. A dozen of so of the tents were clustered not far distant from us. Their occupants were standing outside, ve
ry quietly, as though they had been waiting for us to arrive.

  Carabosse sidled sideways and was gone, but Israfel did not leave me as he had done when he brought me from Chinanga. He walked with me toward the clustered tents, holding my hand upon his arm. On either side, the Sidhe bowed, as though reluctantly, as though forced to do so. None of them looked me or Israfel in the eye, I noticed. I stared them down just to make them more uncomfortable, for among them were the riders who had used me for the teind.

  My eyes were drawn to the Copse of the Covenant, where it sat afar upon the grass. There, too, a tent had been raised, and there was no question but that it, too, was occupied. The fabric glowed with a blinding effulgence. I looked away, my eyes watering.

  “The messenger of the Holy One, Blessed be He,” whispered Israfel, as he prepared to introduce me to those who had been standing by the tents. His fellows. His companions. Male and female.

  Michael. Gabriel. Raphael. Uriel. They are the eldest, says Israfel.

  Aniel, Raguel, Sariel, and Jerahmeel.

  Kafziel, Zadkiel, Asrael, and Israfel himself. There are twelve of them all together. The Long Lost. The separated kindred. Twelve who assented when the Holy One asked Faery to help man; those who went away when Oberon said no; those who built Baskarone; those now returned to Faery. Twelve visitors. Plus Carabosse. Plus the Holy One’s envoy.

  The envoy is a seraph, says Israfel. Not a star-angel but simply a messenger. Come to deliver the word of the Holy One.

  “When I was in Chinanga, I thought you were angels,” I told them, my eyes on my shoes.

  Gabriel shook his head. “Nothing so fiery. From time to time men have seen us and have assumed we were angels, but we are merely ambassadors of Baskarone.”

  His voice sank to a whisper. “To the worlds. Whatever and wherever they may be.”

  That whisper was familiar! It was like the whispers I had heard in hell, encouraging me, helping me find a way out. I realized suddenly that they might all have been there! All twelve of them! Their faces told me I was right. They had been there. Invisibly, they had followed me into hell, to keep me safe.

  Israfel squeezed my hand, giving me a significant look, and I understood. They did not want me to speak of it, not even to thank them. They did not want anyone—anything—to know what they had done. They did not want anyone—anything—to ask why.

  I tried to think of something inconsequential to say. “Are you ambassadors even to dreamworlds?” I asked. “Even to places like Chinanga?”

  Gabriel laughed. “If one stretches time long enough, they may all be dreamworlds. The only differences may be in the length of the dream and the strength of the dreamer. Perhaps we call reality that which is dreamed the longest, that’s all.”

  I had learned something of cosmology in the twentieth—what anyone who read a popular science magazine might pick up. “You mean the Big Bang?” I said.

  “God breathes in, God breathes out,” said Gabriel. “Blessed be the name of the Holy One.”

  “What is Baskarone?” I asked them. “I thought it was heaven.”

  “We have tried to make it so,” said Sariel. “By copying what was here when man came, and the best of what has been created since. Much of earthly creation had already manifested itself and departed before men came, of course, but we wished to preserve the work of the creators, somewhere.”

  She sounded almost as sad as Israfel did, and I did not ask any further questions. Besides, there would not have been time. Somewhere a fanfare of trumpets blew, a silvery shiver of sound I had not heard before in Faery. More of the Sidhe came out of their castles and walked slowly down the hills to the meadow where we stood. These were all the kindred of Oberon, those who occupied this world. Behind them came the horses of Faery, tossing their lovely heads, their silver manes flying. The dogs came, too, the white dogs with their red ears and red eyes.

  From the other directions, Bogles emerged, as they do, making that sideways sidle which brings them into one world or another.

  During what followed, I stood with my hand on Israfel’s arm, his kindred arrayed behind us, watching them come. Puck came up to us, quite unselfconsciously, nodding to Israfel as though he knew him well. While he watched his fellow Bogles assemble, he whispered to us both, taking an inventory, as it were, jigging from foot to foot with the rhythm of his voice.

  “When the silver Etrumpets sound to every puck and peri,

  From the clustered hills around, come the folk of Faery,

  Brownies, brags, bugbears, hags,

  big black dogs and banshees,

  Boggy-boes, hobby-thrusts,

  imps and lianhanshees,

  Kitty-witches, hinky-punks,

  clabber-naps and swaithes,

  Fachans, follets, fays, fiends,

  gallytrots and wraithes,

  Selkies, scrats, spunks, spurns,

  ciuthaches and cowies,

  Nickies, nacks, gholes, grants,

  tutgots and tod-lowries

  Melch-dicks and come-quicks,

  cors and mares and pixies,

  Pad-fooits and leprechauns,

  chittifaces, nixies,

  Sprets, trows, gnomes, kowes,

  goblins and Peg-powlers,

  Ouphs, brags, nickers, nags,

  nisses and night-prowlers,

  Lubbers, lobs, tantarrabobs,

  cluricans and correds,

  Tangies, trolls, tatterfoals,

  hobbits and hob-horrids,

  Mawkins, tints, gringes, squints,

  shellycoats and sprites,

  Roanes and ratchets, pinkets, patches,

  grindylows and wights,

  When they hear the summons sound, every puck and peri,

  from the clustered hills around gathers into Faery.”

  He grinned at me, cocking his eyebrows, and I knew he’d been trying to amuse me. I suppose I must have been amused, or at least interested, for I’d paid enough attention to note that he had not mentioned the Fenoderee in this inventory, which was not inclusive in any case. Puck had ignored thurses, knockers, kobolds, and a dozen other beings that Fenoderee had spoken of.

  When all the Bogles had ranged themselves on the seaside in a vast half circle, the Sidhe began to arrive, gathering on the upland side and leaving a lane clear to the Copse of the Covenant, which stood toward the mountains.

  I did not see Mama anywhere.

  Israfel put his hand on my shoulder and said, “She’ll be here.”

  And at last she came, from her own castle, which stood to the south of the upland. She came walking with one or two of her people, Joyeause and another aunt, I think it was. There were tears in my eyes. I was grieving and didn’t know why. When she came close enough, I saw how very beautiful she is. She looked at me, shaking her head a little from side to side, tears running down her cheeks. Oberon looked at her, then away, flushing angrily. He had sent her away when they gave me as the teind to hell! She hadn’t known he was going to do it.

  And it was all right. No matter that I was a hundred and three and all my remaining years had been used up in hell. It was all right. She hadn’t known. She hadn’t wished me ill. Oh, didn’t I know it’s the best we can do, sometimes, simply not to wish our children ill.

  “Get on with it,” said Oberon, impatiently.

  Gabriel answered him. “There’s nothing to get on with, brother. We are not here to make judgements.”

  “A little late to call me ‘brother,’” said Oberon.

  “Not at all,” Gabriel said. “We were made at one birth, you and I. We were both children of the Covenant. You and your people chose your way and I and my people chose ours. You have done as you have done, and we have done as we have done. Now we will be judged, both, but neither you nor I will do the judging.”

  As though that had been an introduction, the seraph came out of the tent and moved down the lane between the Bogles and Oberon’s kindred. I couldn’t tell what the seraph looked like. All I could see was light, not
too bright to look at but much too bright to see whatever was inside. Maybe it was all light and nothing else. It was not made for earth, as man and Faery were. “Earth is all we were given,” Puck had told me. “Both Faery and mortal man. Earth is all we were given.”

  “Oberon,” said the seraph. The word was really a word, but there was no sound. We all apprehended the word, but we didn’t hear it. It seemed to hang within us, somehow, like a sensation. Like a pain.

  Oberon didn’t speak. He stood, head up, staring at the light, refusing to blink.

  “You have broken the Covenant between Faery and the Holy One, Blessed be He.”

  “Not true,” said Oberon in a harsh whisper. “No human has come to harm through me.”

  “She stands before you. Beauty, daughter of Elladine. Half human in birth. Wholly human in life.”

  “She’s here! She isn’t hurt! She isn’t dead!”

  I felt the glamour around me thick as salve. I could tell from the expressions on all their faces that I was beautiful, lovely as the dawn, lovelier than Mama, even. They were all set on making me so. Their eyes were on me, strengthening me, making me glow. I wish I could have seen me at that moment. Just to remember. I felt myself shining like a star.

  Israfel’s hands touched the top of my head, came down my head to the shoulders, down my arms, on down my body. I felt the glamour stripped away. Oberon refused to look. The others could not take their eyes away. I saw Mama weeping as though she could not stop. I was so weak, I wanted to lie down. So old. So fragile. So very tired.

  And still, I wanted to defend them. I wanted to cry out, “No! They’ve given more than the pain cost! There’s beauty here. There’s enchantment here. They’ve let me have that. I’ve had a life that’s worth more than the lost years. Don’t hurt them. Don’t hurt my mama….”

  I tried to say that. Israfel’s hands rested on my thighs, my old, quivering thighs, barely able to hold me up. I gasped for air. I tried to shout and couldn’t, tried to intervene and couldn’t. I raised one hand, and it trembled.