by Greg Bear
“He wanted to kill me.”
“I’m sure you go against everything he holds dear,” Savarin said, chuckling. “You are being treated in a most unusual way—like a Sidhe in many respects.”
Michael looked down at the hard-packed dirt floor. “I must have a million questions, and nobody knows the answers, or will tell me if they do.”
“If the Crane Women haven’t told you by now,” Savarin said, “perhaps being ignorant is part of the training.” He stood. “Ignorance loves company. I’ve someone I want you to meet… if you’re free, that is.”
“I’m free,” Michael said with a touch too much defiance.
Chapter Twelve
The last person to arrive in the Realm before you was—is—a young woman.” Savarin led Michael down a narrow alley. Their feet squelched in the still-damp mud. “She’s been here two years, counting by days—which is more reliable than counting by seasons. I’ve told her about you, and she wishes to meet you. She is from your country, the United States.”
“Where in the United States?”
“New York.”
“Savarin, how long have you been here?”
“Perhaps thirty, thirty-five years.”
“You don’t look old enough,” Michael said, astonished.
“Here, we get old to a point, then no older. Our souls are aware there is no place for them to go, and so they take better care of our bodies. Aging stops, even for old Wolfer.”
Michael was silent for a moment, letting that sink in. “What’s her name?”
“Helena.” Savarin turned left and waved for him to follow. At the end of an even narrower, T-shaped alley, a door was set into a mud-brick wall. The T’s extensions branched to the right and left, ending in blind walls. Within the doorway a flight of steps led up into shadows. The feeble glow of a candle in a sconce at the top of the stairs lit their way as they climbed.
Savarin straightened Michael’s coat collar and tugged his shirt collar out around it, shook his head at the hopeless task of making him presentable, then turned to a fabric-covered wicker door and lightly rapped it with his knuckles.
“Yes? Who is it?”
“I’ve brought a visitor,” Savarin said, winking at Michael.
The door opened with a dry scrape and a young woman, not much older than Michael, stood in the frame. She smiled nervously and glanced at Savarin, smoothed the lower half of her blouse with her hands, and glanced at Michael. She wore a short skirt made of the same dun-colored cloth most of the human and breeds had to make do with. Her blouse, however, was white and cottony, cut short around her shoulders. Her face was broad, with generous black eyes and wide full lips. Her hair was dark brown with hints of red. She was well-formed, slightly plump, but as tall as Michael and able to carry her figure well.
“Helena Davies, this is Michael Perrin.” Savarin waved his hand between them.
“Hello,” Michael said, offering his hand. Helena took it—her fingers were warm and dry, slightly callused—and stepped back.
“Please come in. Savarin’s told me about you.”
The apartment was separated into two rooms by a plastered brick wall, the door between hung with curtains made of pieces of hollow twig strung on twine. Two chairs of woven cane stood in opposite corners, covered with tiny gray pillows. In another corner, a washbasin sat on a stand made of sticks, much like the one in the inn room Michael had first shared with Savarin.
“I’m brewing herb tea,” Helena said, showing them to the seats. She pulled out a bedroll and went behind the curtain to retrieve a white ceramic pot and three mugs. She set them down on a second wicker stand and pulled the bedroll close to Michael’s chair, then sat on it, serving the tea and handing them their mugs. She stood abruptly, her hands going this way and that as she searched for something with her eyes. She said, “Ah!” and walked briskly to a box on the window ledge, from which she withdrew honeycomb wrapped in waxed cloth. “Honey for your tea?”
“Please,” Michael said. She broke off a bit of comb and handed it to him. He dropped it into his mug. Realizing his mistake, he started to fish out the melting bits of wax, then gave it up. Helena laughed, but not unkindly, and sat down again.
“I’m so nervous,” Helena said to Savarin. “Henrik tells me you didn’t come here the way the rest of us did.” He didn’t want to repeat what was becoming, to him, a tiresome story. “How did you get here?” he asked.
“Helena was a budding concerto pianist,” Savarin said. She shrugged with false modesty and held her mug to her lips, looking at Michael over the rim.
“Prokofiev,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“I was playing Prokofiev. I’d been practicing the Piano Concerto Number Three for a month, preparing for a recital. I was very tired. Up in the morning with Bach, and around all afternoon with Prokofiev.”
Michael waited for her to continue. She returned his gaze intently, then laughed and went on. “My hands felt all numb, so I decided to take a walk. The music was in my head. I could feel it. In my body, too, especially my chest and arms.” She touched a spot above her right breast. Her breasts swung enticingly free beneath the blouse. “Like I was having a musical heart attack, you know?”
Michael shook his head.
“Perhaps not. Anyway, I was dizzy. I stood at the top of a flight of stairs in my apartment building, and at the bottom was nothing but a pool of mercury—you know, quicksilver—and I stumbled. Put my foot in it. Woke up here.” She set her cup down and wiped her lips delicately with a forefinger. “I still don’t like stairs, even living on an upper floor.”
“That was two years ago?” Michael asked.
“Give or take. Now—how did you get here? I mean. Henrik explained, but I’d like to hear it from you.”
All of Michael’s confidence, built up (he had thought) during the weeks of training, dissolved in her presence. She was fresh, lively, young and completely human. He stumbled over his words, then bore down on memories and produced a passable re-telling of his experiences. When he had finished, Helena looked out the small curtained window, the subdued light from the alley softly dividing her face.
“We really don’t understand anything about life, do we?” she said. “I thought this was like purgatory for those who spent too much time with music and too little time in church. At first, I mean. I was that naïve.”
“Many people feel a religious confusion when they first arrive,” Savarin said. “I’m studying it.”
“You study everything,” Helena said, reaching out with a slender hand to touch Savarin’s arm. Michael focused on the contact, with a twinge of jealousy. “Isn’t he too much?”
“You’re from New York?”
“Brooklyn. And you?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Oh my gawd,” she said, shaking her head. “A crazy Californian. I’ve never heard of Arno Walt…what’s his name. Did he ever write serious music?”
“For movies,” Michael said.
“Nothing else?”
“Well, the concerto…”
“Funny, I’ve never heard of that, either.”
“I think it was suppressed or something. It got him into a lot of trouble.”
“Well, music’s a big world. And I do suppose composers have a hard time, even harder than pianists. What are you doing now that you’re here?”
“I’m training,” Michael said before he had a chance to think.
“Training for what?”
“I don’t know.” He grinned sheepishly. Helena regarded him with apparent shocked surprise.
“You must know what you’re training for,” she said.
“To get my strength up, I suppose.”
“You don’t look particularly sick to me.”
“Weak,” he said. “I mean, I just never did much physical exercise.”
“A bookworm like Henrik, I suppose,” Helena said. “Well, then it’s good for you there are so few books here.”
“Michael brough
t one with him.”
“Oh, did you? Can I see it?”
“I don’t have it with me.” He was surprised how touchy the subject was to him; he recalled Lamia’s expression when he told her he had a book. “It’s just a volume of poetry.”
“More’s the pity it’s not a book of music. I’m terribly out of practice.” She held up her hands and spread her fingers, crooking the pinkies slightly. “I’ll bet you think musicians are terribly vain,” she said, sighing. “Talk too much.”
“No, not at all.”
“Most of the people here are older than me. Some have been here for a hundred years or more. Isn’t that amazing? Yet most don’t look any older than Henrik, and those who do, were older when they came here. I think it’s all very profound.”
“It is,” Michael agreed, though he might have chosen a different word. He could hardly keep his eyes off of her. To his embarrassment, he was getting an erection. He held his hands in his lap and tried concentrating on other things—Alyons and his coursers, the Umbral.
“I wonder if we’ll ever figure it all out,” Helena continued. She seemed aware Michael’s shyness—even of his predicament—and appeared to enjoy it. “Will you be staying with the Crane Women for long? I mean, will they let you live in town?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really know much of anything. I’m so ignorant, but…” He wanted to just blurt everything out to her, bury his head in her—He raised his eyes from the blouse. “I have to go,” he said. The thought of Alyons had made him presentable again. “They might need me for something. Maybe.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Helena said, standing. He glanced down at her knees, then at her eyes. No doubt about it. She was beautiful. He wondered what Savarin was to her—just a friend? “Can you come back? I’d like to talk some more—remember old times.”
“I’ll try,” Michael said. “When would… uh… be convenient?‘
“I work early mornings doing laundry.” She displayed her hands. “Ugly, aren’t they?” she said, holding them up before his face again. “No labor-saving devices in the Realm. You can come in the afternoon. I’m usually here otherwise. Do call.” She smiled radiantly.
“I have to go,” Michael said to Savarin.
“Certainly,” Savarin said. He accompanied Michael.
“Good-by, until later,” Helena said.
“By,” Michael said, waving awkwardly. At the end of the alley, Savarin chuckled.
“She likes you, my boy.”
Michael merely nodded.
“And I suppose you won’t be seeing me as much, telling me so many interesting things?”
“I’ll tell you whatever I learn,” Michael said.
“After you tell Helena.” Savarin cut off Michael’s weak protest with a smile. “No, I well understand. Everybody’s priorities are for the immediate. I am cursed, in the meanwhile, with an interest in the long-term.”
They parted at the outskirts of Euterpe and Michael returned to Halftown, his thoughts crowded and confused.
Chapter Thirteen
For the first time, life in the Realm had some purpose besides survival and the now-distant goal of returning home. Michael wandered down Halftown’s curving market street, thinking of Helena’s face, of her lips and the way they moved when she talked to him.
He found the flattened courtyard and picked through the rubble to the front door of Lirg’s—now Eleuth’s—house. He knocked on the doorframe. There was no answer for a moment, then Eleuth swung the door wide open and stared at him, blinking wide-eyed.
“Hello,” she said. Her face seemed older, worn.
“You wanted to talk with me?” Michael asked. He compared Eleuth’s strange beauty with Helena’s brisk familiarity and felt slightly repelled.
“I need company,” Eleuth said. “But if you have something to do…”
“No,” Michael said. Queerly, the repulsion was turning itself around now to attraction, but a distanced kind of attraction, something he could handle. Eleuth motioned for him to come in and closed the door softly behind.
The house was decorated very differently from the human dwellings he had seen: solid-looking, clean wooden furniture draped with rugs and fabrics, lamps burning sweet-scented wax in corners away from the windows, a ceramic brick firepit in the center of the house with a chimney poking through the roof. Thick, intricately patterned rugs hung from iron rods between wall and chimney, dividing the interior into four rooms. He sat on a bench and Eleuth sat across from him on the edge of the firepit, which was dark and covered with a brass mesh screen.
“It’s not as if Lirg’s dead,” she said after a few awkward minutes of silence.
“What will they do with him?” Michael asked.
Eleuth lowered her gaze and reached down to adjust a boot. “He will serve Adonna.”
“Whatever that means,” Michael said.
“It means he will add his magic to the rituals. That will weaken him. Breeds are not like Sidhe full-bloods. Magic tires us. The more human blood we have, the less power to spare.”
“And after that?”
“These are cruel thoughts,” Eleuth said. “I’ll never see him again, either way. He was a good father.”
Her words were slow and sweet. The sadder she became, the more he was attracted to her. It took very little effort to sit beside her and reach for her hand. For the first time, he felt he was in control. She looked up at him and there were tears in her eyes. “What is death like on Earth?”
That took Michael aback. Except for Waltiri, he had never experienced the death of a loved one on Earth. Friends, parents, grandparents were all still living, as far as he knew. Death was an intellectual exercise, something to be imagined and not deeply felt. “Final,” he said. “Everybody keeps saying humans have souls and Sidhe don’t, but I know a lot of humans who would disagree.”
“It makes no difference here,” Eleuth said. “So I’m told. Young people must rely a lot on what they’re told, no?”
Michael lifted his shoulders. “I suppose.”
“And what they’re told not to do. Breeds are less constrained then Sidhe. We are already among the low. We don’t have much farther to fall.”
“Humans aren’t exactly respected here, either,” Michael reminded her.
“But the Sidhe leave them alone. The Umbrals don’t come to snatch them away.”
“That’s because we’re useless. We have no magic. Have you done magic?”
Eleuth nodded slowly. “A little. I’m learning, but not quickly.”
Michael patted her arm and stood. “I should get back to the Crane Women.” He didn’t particularly want to, but it was an excuse; he had no idea what more he could do here.
Eleuth stood, eyes still lowered, and reached out to touch the back of his hand with one finger. “When we are alone, we are most vulnerable,” she said. She looked up at him. “Both of us need strength.”
“I guess that’s true,” Michael said. There was an awkward moment as he tried to figure out how to say good-by. Finally, he just smiled and sidled out the door. She looked after him, eyes wide as when he had entered. Just before the door closed, he saw her turn away with a slow elegance that sent shivers down his arms.
His confusion multiplied as he crossed the stream and walked across the mound to the huts. Grateful none of the Crane Women were outside, he entered his small dwelling and stood with head brushing the ceiling rafters. His face was marked by lines of reddened sunlight gliding down the opposite wall.
Michael wasn’t disturbed that night, except by a distant, deep hum that filled the land for a second or two. When that passed, he lay on the plaited reeds and stared up into darkness. For a dizzying moment, it seemed that it wasn’t the world that had changed, but himself; that somehow he had twisted around to present a new face. He didn’t feel sixteen years old.
He felt full, expectant… waiting.
Chapter Fourteen
Spart roused Michael early the next morning, taking him by th
e hand and dragging him from his hut, all the while making strange half-humming, half-whistling noises. She seemed to be trying for a tune and not quite finding it, but the closer he listened, the more he realized the sound went beyond tunes. Before he was awake enough to think clearly, she stopped and strutted around him, her critical eye sweeping him from head to foot. “Ready?” she asked, halting before him with hands on hips.
“I suppose I must be,” he said.
“We are going on a trip. We will cross the Blasted Plain. You will come with.”
“Okay,” he said, swallowing. “Breakfast first?”
Coom emerged from the hut and tossed him a gray-green lime the size of an orange. Nare offered a crust of bread from the window. He knew better than to protest; besides, Sidhe food seemed to satisfy more. At least, he was seldom ravenous, and on bulk alone he should have starved by now.
They walked along the banks of the river in the early morning sun, through waist-high reeds and feathery-fronded water plants he couldn’t identify. Creepers like green rubber hoses slithered down to the water. Ahead, to the northeast, a patch of intense blue coruscated above the faded orange ribbon which hung over the Blasted Plain.
The Crane Women plunged along ahead and behind him. He remembered some of the landscape from his unexpected journey during the Kaeli. After two hours of steady hiking, they reached the grassland that had been most stricken by the storm. The grass was still bent and disheveled. Four hours later, he recognized the mound where he had awoken, with its topknot of greener grass, and he saw the border. But the Crane Women veered northwest, clambering out of the reeds and following a winding trail.
Three hours later, always coming within view of the border only to veer away, Michael was tired enough to halt and utter a weak protest. The Crane Women had been bounding along like children on an outing, acting much younger than they looked (if he could apply any human age at all to them—he wasn’t sure he could). “Please!” Michael called out after them. “What are we doing, where are we going?”
