Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon

by Lisa Goldstein

  He tried to see Arthur, but the boy was still hidden by the press of fighting. He closed his eyes again, felt the last of his strength ebb away. The noises around him stilled.

  The red king looked out at the battle. He had not moved or changed his expression, but Alice thought that something had happened to displease him. He raised his arm and a giant shape came into the yard, something so huge it battered the gate’s lintel to the ground. It was the size of a tree, and it carried a chain in one hand and a club in the other. It headed purposefully toward Arthur, moving quickly, and the red king’s soldiers parted to make way for it.

  Arthur’s mount shied as it caught sight of the thing. In two steps the giant was upon him, the length of chain swinging from its hand. Arthur brought his sword up to meet it. He looked very young. With one thrust of its club the creature knocked the sword from Arthur’s hand. Another thrust, and Arthur fell from his mount. He moaned and clutched his side. The giant stood over him, its club upraised.

  Without even thinking about what she was doing Alice darted out into the fighting. She snatched Tom’s dagger from his hand, and before he had time to react she came up behind the giant and plunged the dagger deep into the sinews of its knee.

  It roared and turned to face her. She ran as its club struck downward. It raised the length of chain. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Arthur stand and retrieve his sword, and as the giant bore down upon her Arthur struck. It turned again, and Arthur stabbed it in the stomach.

  The giant staggered back. Alice felt the ground shake as it fell. Two of the horned men hurried up to it, their swords lifted. She moved as quickly as she could toward the pillars of the cathedral, not waiting to see what they did with it.

  Tom looked around him slowly. The noises of battle were fading, and it seemed as if the sun rose, though surely they had been fighting all day. He picked up the dagger Alice had dropped and noticed that it was covered not with blood but with a sort of pale watery fluid. The sight appalled him.

  So did the memory of the exultant mood that had come over him in battle. He had never killed before. Had the brown woman truly bewitched him? Or did he only feel what all soldiers felt in the heat of war? He backed away. Fighting was not for him. Yet was this so very different from the paper battles he fought with Gabriel Harvey?

  He stumbled toward one of the side doors of the church. The brown woman stepped out from the shelter of the doorway and came toward him. She put her arms around him and kissed him, her mouth tasting smooth as clear water.

  The silver dragon screamed. The red dragon backed away and then, to the horror of the stationers who had stayed to watch, it plunged down and came in toward the churchyard, near the gate. A few stalls toppled as it landed, and the swing of its tail burst one of the stained glass windows.

  Seeing it in the sky had not prepared Alice for the size of the thing. It stretched nearly half the length of Paul’s, and its scales were as big as dinner plates. The scales reared up into two ridges, almost horns, over its eyes. The eyes were slitted, like a cat’s, and a plume of smoke came from its nostrils.

  The dragon lowered its snout to the ground as if questing for something. It took the red king in its mouth, carrying him almost gently, and turned and set him on its back. Then it lifted its wings and flew away. The wind of its passage raised the dirt in the yard, blew clothing backward and knocked the stationers’ books to the ground.

  The silver dragon dove for it as it gained the air. The red dragon feinted to the left and then swooped back over the tower, but the other was too quick for it. The silver dragon flew in close and gripped the red dragon hard with its talons.

  The red dragon struggled to get free, its tail lashing back and forth like a whip. Something the size of a child’s toy dropped from its back and plummeted to the earth. The stationers watched in horror as the red king fell to the churchyard. No one moved for a long moment. Then, as if he were licked from inside by flame, the king caught fire and burned to ash. The red dragon keened, a sound of such grief it seemed to rend the air in two, and flew off toward the river. The other followed, crying out in triumph.

  With the red king dead his soldiers seemed to lose heart. All around the churchyard his creatures dropped their weapons and ran for the gate, those that were not caught and killed by the queen’s folk. A few people cheered. Even some of the booksellers cheered, though there was not one of them who had not suffered some loss in the destruction of the yard.

  Suddenly Alice noticed that a knot of stationers had gathered around George’s stall. Curious, she made her way toward it. As she came closer she heard some of the men murmur in alarm, and one or two of them crossed themselves. A few of the men moved aside for her, as if to acknowledge that she of all people had a right to be present, and finally she stood at the front of the crowd. What she saw there made her gasp aloud.

  All the books on George’s stall had turned to coal.

  21

  Anthony Drury pushed George toward the churchyard gate. “Wait—” George said. “What are you—”

  “He’s dead,” Anthony said harshly. “He won’t be able to protect us anymore.”

  Did Anthony mean Hogg or the red king? It didn’t seem to matter. George glanced back once at his stall and saw that a crowd of people surrounded it. He thought he could guess what had happened.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, hurrying after Anthony.

  “I have a friend, a man who worked for the red king. He’ll help us.”

  They left the churchyard, moving quickly. Why did Anthony need help? If all George’s books had turned to coal the stationers would very likely hunt him down for a witch, but what had Anthony done?

  “Hurry!” Anthony said. “Do you know what happens to counterfeiters?”

  George could barely summon the breath to speak, let alone to answer Anthony’s question. “They’ll cut my ears off,” Anthony said. “If I’m lucky. They could kill me if they were angry enough.”

  Dusk had fallen; that and the strange events of the day kept folks from venturing out-of-doors. Anthony and George ran through the empty streets, blown like embers from a long-dead fire.

  “Pray that he’s home,” Anthony said, slowing to study the houses as they passed. “He does a great deal of business overseas.”

  Finally he stopped and knocked on a door. Every window in the house was lit; someone, George thought, had stayed up for something. For them? A man carrying a lantern came to the door. In the dim light his pale blue eyes shone like wet stones.

  “The red king?” the man asked.

  “Dead,” Anthony said, pushing his way past him into the house. “It went badly for us, Master Poley. The red king fell, and Hogg is dead as well.”

  George sat shakily on a stool near the hearth, suddenly overcome with weariness. “Dead,” Poley said, pacing back and forth in front of the fire. “Well. Worse than I’d expected, far worse.” He seemed to be talking to himself, to have forgotten the presence of the other men.

  “They’re after George,” Anthony said. “They’ll be after me soon enough—the magic that protected me is gone, and they’ll see how I debased the coins. We have to get away, go—go somewhere—”

  “Of course,” Poley said. He seemed to rouse himself. “I can arrange that. I’ll send you to the Low Countries, there or to France. You’ll be caught in the middle of war either way, but it can’t be helped.”

  George raised his head. Did Poley mean exile? He had never bargained for this when he had listened so heedlessly to Anthony, that day in the churchyard. He began to shiver, though the fire at his back was warm. “I don’t—I don’t want to—”

  “Quiet, George,” Anthony said. “You have no choice in the matter. Either come with me or be tried as a witch.”

  George fell back, feeling miserable. “You’ll have to stay here for the night,” Poley said. Even through his unhappiness George understood that nothing would happen to Poley; he was the sort of man who would be able to start over whatever h
appened, who could always find a port no matter what the weather. “We’ll leave in the morning.”

  Alice looked around for George, could not find him anywhere. “Imagine,” one of the men said to her, “him calling you a witch when he was the witch all along.”

  She felt too shaky to answer. The light began to fade from the churchyard. She looked around her in alarm, saw that only a handful of Oriana’s folk were left. Brownie—Where was Brownie? And where was her son?

  “What a sight,” one of the stationers said to her, and all the men in the little group turned to hear her reply. She understood that they wanted to talk to her, wanted to make amends for the shabby way they had treated her. But she noticed that none of them attempted an apology.

  She pushed her way through the crowd, feeling impatient and angry. She had no time to waste on these people, who, after all, had left her to herself for three long years. Art was still missing, and she needed to find Brownie.

  “Alice!” someone called to her from across the churchyard. “Hurry!”

  It was Brownie. She ran toward him with relief. As she left the circle of stationers she saw Walter, standing at the edge of the crowd and watching her with an expression she could not make out.

  “We must hurry,” Brownie said. “They’re starting to leave us.”

  “Who?”

  “Queen Oriana and her people. They’ve had terrible losses here today. I doubt you’ll see the Fair Folk ever again.”

  “Why? Where are they going?”

  “I don’t know. They’re moving away from mortals, away from this world. All the passages are growing dim and hard to find. We must find your son soon, or he will be lost to you.”

  “But you—you were the one to hide him.”

  “Aye. But they’ve cast a glamour over the roads. Soon their lives and yours will be sundered forever.”

  “I don’t understand. How will we find him?”

  “Come,” Brownie said. “Take my hand.”

  She reached out hesitantly. His hand felt warm and dry, with only the soft fur on the back to remind her of who he was.

  They began to walk. The sun had set, or the Fair Folk had taken their light with them. She could barely see Brownie at her side. After a moment she realized that they had somehow left Paul’s, that they should have reached the gate or the walls by now. The air had grown cold. “Where are we?” she said, whispering.

  “Hush.”

  She looked at Brownie and saw that the lines on his face were creased with concentration. Then a glow came up around them, at first so faint she thought she might have imagined it. The light grew stronger. “Did you do that?” she asked, but he did not answer.

  Now she could see that they walked through a dense forest, a place of thick leaves and overgrown paths. She had not seen such large trees since she left her village; certainly there was nothing like them near London. Almost immediately they came to a fork in the road, a junction where three paths met. Brownie stopped. He looked from one road to another, and Alice felt afraid to see the puzzled look that appeared on his broad seamed face.

  He chose the left-hand path and they continued onward. A screech owl called, and another answered. Something scurried beside them through the drift of leaves. Frogs croaked in the distance.

  A long howl came to them from far off and she cried out. Brownie urged her forward. But soon he stopped at another fork in the road, four paths radiating outward, and this time he took even longer to decide what to do. At last he chose one of the middle paths and they went on.

  She thought they might have spent the night walking through the forest, but she saw no hint of dawn. Once something brushed past her and she nearly turned back; once she saw the hint of a luminous bird flying far off and away from them, the only bright thing in all those dark woods. And through it all Brownie had to stop and choose their path perhaps a dozen times, until she thought that they must be hopelessly lost.

  Finally he raised his head, as if sniffing the air. They began to hurry, tripping over roots and breaking through hanging branches. Once she thought they might have left the path altogether. The animal’s howl came again, closer this time.

  Something impossibly bright shone through the dark leaves of the forest. As they drew nearer Alice saw that it was a silver hill, almost perfectly circular. Beside her Brownie breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re here,” he said. “I’m home.”

  “Where are we?” Alice asked.

  “Oriana’s court,” he said, and walked forward.

  She had no choice but to follow him. They entered through a small door and she looked around her in amazement.

  The place was as Agnes had described it in her story. Light came from the walls, from the jewels on the people’s fingers and from their faces. In the center of the room stood a long table where the people feasted, and serving-men moved up and down, carrying silver trays filled with food. The music she had heard the night of the revels came to her; though she had forgotten the melody, and had tried countless times to remember it, she recognized it immediately.

  But Agnes had not mentioned the empty places at the table, the seats of all the men who had fallen in battle. Surely Oriana could claim fealty over more than this handful, far fewer than the ones Alice had seen the night of the revels. And those who were left seemed to have dwindled somehow, their light less strong, their music sadder. But still they feasted and sang and called for the serving-men to fill up their glasses. Don’t they mourn at all? Alice wondered.

  Oriana sat at the table’s head. Alice looked for her son and for Arthur, and finally saw the King of Faerie at the other end of the table. They had crowned him with a circlet of crystal like the one Oriana wore. He was listening to two men near him and drinking from a goblet made of silver. He looked grave, concerned, but when he glanced up and saw her she thought he smiled.

  “You made it back, my brownie,” Oriana said. “Come—sit with us. Join our feast.”

  “Aye,” Brownie said. He took an empty place at the long table and motioned to Alice to sit next to him.

  “Why did you linger? The roads were nearly closed.”

  “I know. I had to find Alice, and bring her here.”

  “Alice?” The queen turned in her direction for the first time, as if only now aware of her presence. “Why?”

  “I hid her son here.”

  “Oh, aye, the boy.” Oriana made a dismissive gesture. “Was he so important to you? Important enough to be worth exile?”

  Alice looked at Brownie sharply. What did she mean? Had he nearly missed the closing of the roads because he had stayed to look for her? Had he risked his place with Oriana for her?

  “Nay, my queen.”

  Oriana sat back in her chair. She’s jealous, Alice thought in astonishment, jealous that Brownie might have preferred me to her. But nay—they don’t feel human emotions. Who could know what Oriana thought?

  A serving-man came up to them and set his tray before her. She saw apples and pomegranates and other exotic fruit she did not recognize. “Take one,” the man whispered, but as she reached for the tray Brownie grasped her hand and held her back. She remembered how strong he was, remembered too what he had said the night of the revels, that she was not to touch either food or drink. The queen watched them with what looked like amusement.

  “The boy is hardly important to me at all,” Brownie said. “It’s Alice I care for. She would be unhappy without her son.”

  “Would she? Well then, we must give him to her.” The queen clapped her hands and someone brought out Alice’s son. “Take him and go,” she said to Alice. “You will not see us again, I assure you.”

  Alice moved closer to Brownie. Was she to travel the dark roads alone? How could she possibly find her way back? Her first thought must have been correct: the queen was jealous. Oriana could not understand why Brownie and Arthur cared for her.

  “Would you like to go with her, my brownie?” Oriana said. “You may, if you like. But if you leave you will n
ot be able to come back. Already the roads are drowned deep in mystery and confusion.”

  Brownie looked from Alice to his queen. Finally, slowly, he nodded.

  “Nay!” Alice said. “I won’t let you do it. Your place is here, with these people. I won’t have you go into exile for me.”

  “I have no choice, Alice,” Brownie said. “How will you find your way back alone?”

  “I remember the roads you took,” Alice said, lying.

  Brownie smiled sadly. “Did you think the roads are the same every time?”

  “There is another way,” Oriana said. “I will give her a guide.” The queen clapped her hands again and a cat, black as the forest Alice had come through, walked sinuously through one of the doors.

  “I accept,” Alice said quickly, before she could change her mind, or Brownie could convince her otherwise.

  “Nay, Alice,” Brownie said. “You will not be able to see this creature in the dark.”

  “It’s the only way. You can’t leave your place here. I’ll be safe—truly I will.”

  Art was watching them with his perpetually astonished look, as if he expected miracles. Did he understand why she had come? She stood and went to the boy’s side. Brownie followed her. “Fare well, Alice,” he said softly.

  She embraced him. At first he tried to pull away, startled, but then he stood calmly, as if waiting for her to finish. He was warm, and she could feel the hard cording of muscles under his fur. He smelled of dirt and sweat and leaves, a wild-animal smell.

  She broke away. “Come, Art,” she said. The cat went before them, its tail held high, and together they left the court of Faerie.

  The darkness of the forest had not lifted. After she had taken a few steps even the light of the faerie hill disappeared, and she reached out to take Art’s hand. Brownie had been right: she could barely see the cat in the dark, a shadow among shadows. It was sleek and whip-thin, unlike Margery’s fat contented cats, and it moved with a grace she had never encountered outside of Faerie. Perhaps it was not a true cat at all.