Visible (Ripple)

by Cidney Swanson

  For me, the flight is one nauseating hour after another. I can’t stay asleep—I have nightmares starring Fritz Gottlieb. I see him setting the cat kennels on fire. I see him shooting Ma and the aunties. I even dreams he has an earthquake machine, like some James Bond evil mastermind, and he uses it to shake California off into the sea.

  I give up trying to sleep, but I can’t stand my thoughts while I’m awake, either.

  Sam and Will are curled around one another in the seats across from mine. Doesn’t look like they’re troubled with bad dreams. Sir Walter appears to have fallen asleep too, his head resting against the tiny window beside his seat. Mickie and Pfeffer are arguing about what Fritz is most likely to do next.

  “Fritz is a coward,” insists Pfeffer. “It’s his defining characteristic.”

  Mickie makes a raspberry noise. She’s read the journal chronicling Pfeffer and Fritz’s childhood so often that she’s probably memorized it.

  “What do you take for his defining traits, then?” asks Pfeffer.

  “I agree, he’s a coward,” says Mickie. “But he’s a sadist, too.”

  “Not as bad a one as was Hans,” says Pfeffer. He stares out his window as if remembering.

  “Don’t go there,” Mickie says, her voice softer, and so quiet I almost don’t hear it.

  Pfeffer hears, though. He runs a hand over his face like he can wipe off the memories.

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” says Mick. “Which evil trait comes out on top. The thing that’s important is that we know he’s more likely to rely on coercing others to do anything dangerous, as opposed to standing there himself and holding the gun. Or needle. Or whatever.”

  Pfeffer grunts in a way that means he agrees.

  I wish I could sleep without the bad dreams. I twist in my seat, trying to find a more comfortable position.

  “Mademoiselle,” says Chrétien, “I think you do yourself no favor to attend to the conversation between Mademoiselle Mackenzie and Monsieur Pfeffer.”

  “Next you’ll be telling me there’s nothing to worry about,” I say, folding my arms.

  Chrétien frowns. “But there is a great deal to worry about.”

  “Thanks for trying to make me feel better,” I retort. I feel bad immediately. He was trying to be helpful.

  “Why an untruth would be employed in such a situation is, I confess, beyond my understanding,” says Chrétien, his voice soft.

  My cheeks flush. “I’m sorry. You’re not the kind of person who would lie to make me feel better.”

  “I would never.”

  I know this. It’s something I like about Chrétien. “I can’t stand it when someone won’t give it to me straight. It’s as bad as lying, in my opinion.”

  Chrétien’s mouth pulls into half a smile. It is slightly off, this smile.

  “What?” I demand. “Telling partials truths is every bit as bad as lying.”

  He does one of those very French shrugs that can mean a million things.

  “Oh,” I say, thinking of something. “I suppose you had to lie and flatter at court all the time, huh?”

  “Indeed, Mademoiselle, upon my honor, I did not.”

  “Will told me courts were all about the flattery.”

  “He is correct, speaking in the most general of terms,” says Chrétien.

  “So, why the strong reaction to what I said?”

  Chrétien is quiet for a moment, his eyes fixed on something outside the window. When he speaks again, it doesn’t, at first, seem to be in answer to my question. “I am no believer in the encouragement of false hope. Especially in a situation such as our present one. However, I am quite persuaded of the value of distraction. Would Mademoiselle care to hear a story?”

  “Is that a trick question?”

  Chrétien smiles and begins.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE BRAVE LITTLE TAILOR

  Once upon a time there was an enchanter of men who was very beautiful but also very selfish. And when one day she learned she would give birth to a child, she swore an oath never to reveal to the child that it had a father at all. A father, she knew, might in time take the child from her. Whereas if the child remained and was a girl, the enchantress might train the girl in her own arts and could perhaps leave off from her life of weaving spells over the hearts of men.

  As it happened, the child was a boy. “Ah, well,” she said to herself, “a boy-child has no magic that I might train him in my own arts, but he can be taught to draw water and tend fires and mend things.”

  So she raised the boy until he was seven years of age, at which point she apprenticed him to a tailor who made garments which could transform a beggar into a courtier. The boy worked long hours, plying his needle, and at times he fell asleep cross-legged, for you know tailors sit always thus upon their benches.

  The boy grew at this time into something of a braggart, for he felt keenly the lack of a father in his life, for other children had both fathers and mothers, but the little apprentice had only the enchantress for a parent. And so, upon any occasion where the apprentice knew himself to have done well, he broadcast his deed far and wide, often embellishing the tale even as he might embroider milord’s cloak or milady’s overskirt.

  One day, he struck two rats which were in the habit of passing through the sewing room and thence through a hole in the wall and into the house of the baker, who dwelt next door. Two vermin in a single blow! Why, that was more than he had heard tell before of anyone doing. And besides, were he to tell the baker, perhaps the baker might make a present of a loaf or pastry or even a cake.

  Just to make sure of the present, the apprentice thought he would add unto the tale of his deed another rat to the number of those he killed.

  “Three did I strike down with one blow!” he cried as he told his tale to the baker.

  “Three of the nasty little vermin? At once?” asked the baker, in some wonder.

  The boy, upon beholding all the mouthwatering cakes, thought to make himself more certain of his reward. “Three, sir, or perhaps it was indeed four. The light was not good and my eyes are at all times strained from sewing all the long day.”

  “Three or four, say you?” The baker nodded. “Well, you shall have both thanks and a reward from me, lad. Only eight years of age, and to strike down four enemies in one blow!”

  The boy smiled, licking his chops and imagining which of the cakes he would accept when he was given the chance.

  “But let us see these foul vermin, that we make be certain they are killed indeed,” said the baker.

  Now, the boy paled, for he had not considered how, perhaps, there might be occasion for the proof of the three or four dead bodies. Nevertheless, he bade the baker come and see for himself.

  And when the baker had stepped into the tailor’s shop, he saw for himself two dead vermin. The boy now prepared to swallow his pride and declare that in truth, he had only struck down two rats.

  But the baker, upon seeing the two, sighed and said, “Ah, it would seem Mistress Cat has claimed two for herself already.”

  The apprentice, hungering still for the cakes, decided that allowing someone else to invent a lie was not so damning a sin as inventing the lie oneself, so he shrugged and, when it was offered, accepted his cake.

  But, being accustomed to plain food, the cake only made the boy ill, which ought to have perhaps stirred him into a full confession of the truth, but it did not.

  The baker, meanwhile, boasted of the boy’s prowess to the tailor, who boasted of it to the cobbler, who boasted of it to the tapster, and with each telling, the tale grew a bit grander. One day, as the apprentice sewed upon his bench, he heard the tapster telling milord the baron that the tailor’s apprentice struck one day seven vile creatures dead with one blow.

  Now, milord the baron smiled at the lad, patted the boy’s head, and said such a strong lad should have lessons in the art of war as well as that of the needle. The tailor demanded who should then do the boy’s work, and th
ere seemed to be an end of it.

  But the next week, the tailor told the little apprentice that a sum of gold had been paid so that the apprentice might spend a small portion of every day learning the arts of war for a year and a day. And all this came to pass because of two dead rats and a few lies.

  But the tailor warned the boy that milord the baron would expect to see results as surely as he, the tailor, expected to see them when once an investment had been made in a boy’s training. At this, the boy grew fearful, but the tailor explained milord would come back in a year, or perhaps two, so that there would be time for the boy to prove he had studied with care.

  At the end of the first year, milord returned and demanded to examine the boy’s progress in dancing and fencing and riding. Milord was pleased and praised the boy.

  “I see I was right to pay for your training. Some day, the boy who struck seven vermin with one blow may do more in service of his village, should enemies attack.”

  The boy, meanwhile, had suffered greatly in his heart from the lie, and determined to tell milord the truth. And when he had done so, milord the baron stroked his beard thoughtfully.

  “I see you have learned more than the arts of needle and sword,” said milord. “You have learned also the cost to the soul of telling an untruth. For allowing an untruth to be told and making no effort to correct it is as grave a sin as to tell it oneself.”

  “Is it?” asked the boy. “Then I am a very great sinner.” And he hung his head. For now milord would not wish to have anything further to do with the boy.

  But milord the baron stroked his beard once more and replied, “We are all of us great sinners, but we may try to rise above our own propensities to evil. What say you to a bargain between us two: let us keep careful watch upon our tongues this twelve-month and a day. In a year, when I return for the hunt, we shall both make account to one another of any untruths we utter. In addition, because you have valued the truth, I shall pay for another year’s lessons in the arts of war.”

  The apprentice, for all that his mother was a honey-tongued enchanter of men, could only nod, dumbstruck that milord had offered kindness instead of contempt. And the boy made a vow to speak only the truth, neither more nor less, for the twelve-month and a day until milord returned.

  He kept his word, both that year, and the year following, and the year following, until he had completed his fourteenth year. Milord the baron returned every year, smiling when the boy passed him in stature, and striking with the boy every year the same bargain: tell no lies, and I shall pay for your training in the deadly arts for another year.

  Now, it was not easy for the boy, for many times a lie rises more easily to the tongue than the truth, but he guarded his tongue carefully, and came to be known as a plainspoken young man who could be trusted. And this was, to him, more precious than all the baker’s cakes.

  As he approached manhood, the apprentice thought and thought, wondering how he might show his gratitude to milord the baron for the valuable gifts he had been given.

  And one day, when milord was making his yearly visit, the opportunity presented itself. The baron had asked for a demonstration of the boy’s skills, such as they were, and so the two had struck out from the village where the boy could more readily demonstrate what he had learned of dancing, sword-play, and riding.

  Milord praised the boy when the demonstrations had been concluded, but he was honest as well. “You are not as skilled as one who has devoted his whole days to the pursuit of these arts, but you have a good eye and carry yourself well on foot and on horse.”

  The boy laughed, for he knew his horsemanship to be most appalling, having only an old nag to train upon. The two sat down to eat bread and cheese together with the great forest at their backs and the sun upon their faces. And after a time, milord, who had been drinking sweet wine as well, grew drowsy in the sun and slept. The boy sat idly for awhile and grew drowsy himself, and was just upon the point of falling asleep when he heard the thunderous approach of a wild boar.

  “Wake, sir, awake!” he cried to milord.

  The baron, however, would not rouse.

  The boy looked up and counted not one, but three of the great tusked beasts bearing down upon himself and the baron. In great distress, the boy threw his arms about milord and carried them both from the world of substance to the world without substance, which was a gift the boy had, as he believed, from being offspring to an enchantress.

  Milord woke, then, and finding himself without substance, cried out with an oath.

  The danger having passed, the boy brought himself and the baron back to the world of substance. And milord stared in wonder at his limbs as though to make certain they were all returned.

  “What is this you have done?” demanded milord.

  Now, the boy was sorely tempted upon this occasion to lie. For his mother the enchantress had warned him he must never speak of his ability to vanish, “lest they burn you at the stake for accepting gifts from demons.”

  But the boy reasoned that if the gift was indeed from a demon, it were better he should risk burning for a short time at the fiery stake than risk burning for eternity in hell, and besides, he had no wish to lie to milord, of whom he had grown very fond.

  So, he told the truth to milord, saying he had contracted the ability to vanish shortly after his fifth birthday, and that he did not know from whence the ability came, for his mother disavowed all knowledge of the uncanny gift.

  Milord nodded and stroked his beard and said at last that they two must pay a visit to the boy’s mother. Now the lad was in great distress, for his mother’s trade was a rude on—the enchanting of men’s … hearts—and he was not certain it was right to introduce so great a lord to so mean a dwelling. He spoke his fear, but the baron only nodded and said he would speak with the boy’s mother.

  When the baron and the enchantress met, they bowed, one to the other, as acquaintances might, and the baron told the boy to depart for an hour. And when the hour had passed, the boy returned to discover the baron in a great rage. But the boy’s mother bid him pack his few belongings, for he was to depart and live now with milord.

  Now, the boy had no great affection for his mother, with whom he had not lived since before his apprenticeship, but he was distressed to see her in an anger matching milord’s own anger.

  “Have I done aught to offend, mother, in bringing the baron here?”

  “Ask him yourself,” said she, “now you are to dwell always with him. But see you forget not your mother in her old age, when one day she loses the art of enchanting men’s hearts.”

  The boy made a vow to remember her and care for her, and departed her house, heavy of heart.

  He was, therefore, in a great shock to find himself embraced and kissed many times by milord.

  At last, when the baron left off embracing the boy, the boy found the courage to ask wherefore he was to leave his apprenticeship and his mother and his village.

  And the baron smiled and said unto him, “Once there was a lord who coupled with a beautiful enchantress, producing, unknown to himself, an heir.”

  And so the tailor’s apprentice became milord’s heir, all in consequence of a truth told after the invention of a lie, and they lived happily, father and son, for many years.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THE WORLD IS SO LOVELY A PLACE

  Neither of us says anything for several minutes after Chrétien’s tale is finished. At last I break the silence.

  “It was you, this time, right? The boy in the story?” I ask.

  “It was I.”

  I nod. Of course, a story like that, on top of the million little things I already knew about him, pretty much ruins me for falling in love with anyone else. The bar has been raised, let me tell you.

  I speak again. “But that one’s a fairytale, too,” I say. “The Brave Little Tailor, isn’t it?”

  Chrétien smiles. “Fairytales have all, I believe, their origins in one truth or another.”

>   We’re quiet again for awhile, until the silence starts bugging me.

  “Are we there yet?” I ask Chrétien. He pulls his eyes away from the window.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You know, like what little kids say in the car: Are we there yet?”

  Chrétien looks at me, amused.

  “Never mind,” I say. I twist again, trying to find a better position. These seats may look comfortable, all leather and pillows, but they’re not. Not after six hours, anyway.

  “It is incomprehensible to me,” says Chrétien, gazing out the window again. “This passage we make through the heavens.”

  I lean past him and look down. We’re not over the ocean anymore, at least. All I see is snowy fields and clouds.

  “I never thought to be more than a tailor, when I was a boy,” says Chrétien.

  The thought of Chrétien sewing clothes all day makes me smile.

  “One of my aunties sewed for a living,” I say. “Well, they all did, for awhile. Until the bakery business took off.”

  “Ah,” says Chrétien, “to be a baker must be a wonderful thing. To have always at one’s fingers items of such delectation.”

  I laugh.

  “What amuses you?”

  “You,” I say. “I don’t even know what you’re saying half the time, I swear.”

  Chrétien frowns. “My command of your language is pitiable, indeed.”

  “How do you even know English in the first place? Did Sir Walter teach you once he … took you in?”

  “Indeed, he did not,” says Chrétien. “My mother was Anglo-Norman.”

  He sees the look of confusion on my face.

  “English,” he adds.

  “Oh,” I say. “That explains a lot.”

  “Before I was apprenticed unto the tailor, she taught me both writing and reading, thinking to hire me out as an amanuensis. We had several pages from an English translation of the Bible as well as a bound copy of a play by the English poet, Shakespeare.”