by Ryk E. Spoor
She gave a sympathetic giggle. “No, none at all.”
Holy Jesus. I was utterly appalled. How was it possible that someone like me could be the key to this mystery? Even worse, how could it be that by not meeting this criterion I’d doom all Faerie? “…for mortal heart has withered, and Faerie has no friend.” The whole thing implied that there was in fact something special about me that would be difficult or impossible to duplicate — that is, finding another person that would fit those qualifications would take too long, or — worst case — there simply wasn’t anyone else with those qualifications.
One good thing about this new wrinkle was that I was finding it a lot easier to concentrate. “‘When a man knows he is to be hanged in the morning, it concentrates his mind wonderfully,’” I said, slightly misquoting Johnson. “Poly — you don’t mind, I hope, if I call you that?”
“Not at all. My friends mostly do.”
“Poly, that last verse…that means that there has to be something specifically about me that’s unique. Trivially that’s of course true — my genetic structure, exact personality, all of that is unique — but I find it hard to believe that it’s that which is so important. Do you know any more about what about me is supposed to be unusual?”
She looked as though she were having an internal debate, then nodded. “First…Erik, understand that there are things I know that I can only tell you at particular times. And there are things that I haven’t been told, and won’t be maybe ever, or only whenever I’m supposed to. My father is the only one who’s heard the whole of the prophecies of the Little Bear, and the way the prophecies work…” She sighed again. “Just telling the wrong person the wrong part could ruin the entire thing. I suppose it might end up making things better, but I would be very unwilling to risk it.”
I nodded. “Just as long as all of you also remember the old, old problem of prophecies biting people on the, er, nether regions because they took actions trying to either avoid the prophecy or make it come true too literally.”
“Oh, believe me, Erik, we are all too aware of that. It’s one of Father’s biggest worries, and the Little Bear can’t clarify things too much.” She followed me as I started sorting through books, looking for something that might give me an idea as to what kind of “beauty” I might show her that she wouldn’t already have seen. “But there are a few things I can tell you. The most important is that you’re supposed to be pure mortal, not more than the faintest trace of Faerie in you.”
I glanced at her. “That’s unusual? You’ve had people like Dorothy, Cap’n Bill, all of them there –”
“Most of them aren’t pure mortal. Most people who end up in Oz or other parts of Faerie have at least some trace of Faerie in them. Often quite a bit.”
“Really? You mean most of the mortals in the Oz books are--?”
“-- part Faerie, though often a very, very small part. It’s one reason many of them didn’t have parents or were missing at least one parent. Such people often get…lost, between worlds, especially if something distracts them from their anchor in this world, or if they encounter some passing magic. The cyclone that picked up Dorothy on her first venture had some spirits playing in it — against the laws of Faerie, I’ll note! — and that brought her across.”
“So I’m supposed to be purely mundane, then.”
Poly smiled. “Don’t sound disappointed. There’s nothing wrong with it, and according to Father you should find it an advantage in many ways, though exactly what those advantages are he’s not discussing until you arrive.”
The thought of “arriving” at the palace of the Lord of Rainbows was still mindboggling. But that wasn’t going to happen if I couldn’t figure out what I could show her.
I was connected to the Internet, which gave me access to an awful lot of possibilities. Computers themselves were pretty impressive. But impressive wasn’t the key here. I shrugged. Nothing for it but to try to find something.
I showed her pictures of just about everything I could think of. I showed her television and modern sculptures and paintings of old masters, video games and clips of movies, parades and models, clothing old and new, mountains and jungles and ancient ruins.
A lot of things she found silly, quite a few were fascinating, others nothing special; after all, as I should have realized, in her past visits to the mortal world she’d probably seen every type of natural wonder we had. It was the newer material that interested her at all — things invented since the era of the early Oz novels. But none of them really touched her sense of beauty.
There were a couple of moments where I thought there was something. She spent a fascinated moment looking at a picture of the Twin Towers, marveling at how huge it was, a chiming of wondrous bells echoing for an instant in her sourceless following themes. A picture of the gaudy Las Vegas Strip held her attention for a few seconds. But nothing quite managed.
I knew I was missing something, something crucially important, not just to me or her, but everyone in the world, if my guess of the connection between Faerie and the mundane world was anything like the truth. There were moments I almost had it, but in desperately grasping for that clue it evaporated, disappeared like morning mist or like a dream that seemed so clear upon awakening, but as you try to remember the details they become less and less until you are left with nothing but a vague memory and disappointment.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. 12:55. “Poly…look, I know you don’t need much rest, but you’ve had a busy day, and you might as well get some. I’m the one who has to figure this out, and maybe I’ll do that better alone. I’ll come get you if I get any ideas.”
She gave me a grave look — mixed, I thought, with sympathy as well as concern — but nodded. I showed her to my one guest room (which was, fortunately, clean, as I rarely used it), then went back to my study.
Think, man. The prophecy makes it clear that there is something you could show her. You just have to find it.
The problem was that I was running out of ideas. Oh, there were things I could envision that might do the trick, but they simply weren’t available here. “Damn me for being such a geek.” I muttered. “It may have made me able to recognize her, but almost everything I have or do is on a damn computer or in a book. And there’s nothing around here more impressive than she’s already seen. I don’t have TIME!”
I started taking books off the shelf, flipping through them, but it was a measure of desperation. Books wouldn’t do it. Videos wouldn’t, either. There was something completely different about seeing something on even the best wide-screen and seeing it in person, but what I was missing I didn’t know. Walking quietly so as to not awaken Polychrome, I went through the house one room at a time, seeking some clue, something that would bring out that vague, half-formed idea and make it solid. Minutes passed. Tens of minutes. An hour. Two.
I wandered through the attic, seeing dusty packed boxes that I hadn’t opened in years, standing in the barely adequate gloom of the streetlight like an abandoned city under a dead moon. I turned, seeing the flash of the light against the darkness, then froze.
That’s it. Almost it. What am I…
The buildings. she’d looked at buildings. But no, that couldn’t be it. she’d seen Albany as we drove across the bridge on our way here. But…somehow, that was it. The Las Vegas Strip…
And suddenly I had it. The one chance I had, the one possibility in the real world that I had ignored, that she couldn’t have ever seen, the one thing that just might work. I was downstairs in a flash, throwing things into a backpack, checking my pockets — keychain with light, mini-laser pointer, Swiss Army knife, wallet, couple of inhalers — thinking desperately fast, writing a note to leave on the table for whoever finally came in after me. After all, if this doesn’t work out, I can always just come back this morning and go back to normal. No one else will read it if nothing happens. I looked up at the clock. 3:30.
I rapped gently on the door; it opened almost immediately. My memory had
already started to fade the immediacy of her own beauty, and seeing her again made me momentarily speechless. “Yes, Erik?”
“Um.” I shook myself. “Come on, Polychrome. I have one possibility. You have to promise to just do what I say for the next few minutes. Will you trust me?”
She studied me for a minute, then gave me the smile that seemed to go straight through my heart. “Yes. I will.”
“Okay. Then I want you to close your eyes and keep them closed until I tell you to open them. I’m going to take you to the car, and we’re going somewhere. It’s not far away, but I want you to promise to keep your eyes closed until I say. Okay?”
“Understood, Erik.”
Taking her hand to lead her into the car was almost too much. I was so charged with adrenalin, loss of sleep, hope and worry that just touching her sent a tingle up my arm. Her hand was silky as rose petals, yet I could feel a strength in it, the strength that had carried me over the heads of a crowd of people, delicacy combined with immortal power. Don’t lose focus!
We got to the car and I made sure she was properly buckled in, then put the car in gear. I knew where I was going, heading up Route 4, to the point where the bridge over I-90 gave one of the best vantage points. The road streamed by, black in the headlights, streetlights flicking regularly by.
“Still keep my eyes closed?” Polychrome asked.
“Still. Just a few more minutes.” Just ahead…
I pulled off to the side shortly before the bridge. “Hold on. I’ll get you out.”
The night air was cooler, and I knew that to her it would be cold, but either way it wouldn’t be long now. I led her to the best location, took a deep breath and gave a wordless prayer to whatever powers there might be. “Okay, Polychrome. Open your eyes.”
She opened her eyes…and gasped.
Before her was the city of Albany — but not the city as she’d seen it in the light of day, an impressive but somewhat dingy-grungy pile of masonry, buildings jumbled together, showing all the warts all too clearly in the sunlight. This was a magnificent blaze of light in the darkness, the mighty five hundred foot main tower of the South Mall alight with a thousand brilliant tiny squares of luminance, four smaller towers shining next to it, the curve of the Egg outlined in reflected glory, the rest of the city adding to it, standing against the surrounding night, a mighty beacon of edges and beams and hard-cut stone defying the power of darkness. In daylight it had been merely a city; with the cloak of night and the infinite brilliance of electricity, it became a symbol.
“Ohhh…” she sighed, eyes wide, harps and bells beginning to resound in the remotest distance. Slowly, hardly able to take her gaze from the city, she turned. “You…you built this?”
“Me? No, I only wish. But we did, my lady Polychrome. THAT is the power and the glory of my people, Poly, and if that will not suffice than there is nothing more I have to give.”
“Suffice?” she repeated, and I heard tears in her voice, saw a glitter in her eye, and a rising crescendo of trumpets and drums, a chorus of triumphal voices, resounded in her words. “Oh, Erik, it is beautiful!”
And, surrounded by the ethereal music, Polychrome began to dance.
Chapter 5.
He did it. He DID it! For a moment, Polychrome was so filled with joy that she could do nothing but dance in the darkness, the song in her heart echoed by the Music of the Spheres, trying to give to her dance the ascending glory and defiant, mortal pride and courage that glorious City represented. She laughed, and saw his face looking up at her as she floated lightly in the air, and for a moment, she wondered at what she saw there; he seemed transfigured by her own joy, his blue eyes exultant yet wide and filled with something she could not quite recognize, something that made her miss a step, stumble subtly, an uneven movement that a mortal might not notice, but that was the clumsiest motion she had made in centuries.
But there is still so far to go, she reminded herself, and took hold of her joy. It was still there — at long last, they could at least begin, the hope was not gone — but they had to move, and move swiftly. She extended her hand. “Dance with me, Erik.”
He stared at her and blushed. “Um… Dance? I wish I could, but me dancing with you would be like trying to get a hippopotamus to do acrobatics with a dragonfly — the hippo would look ridiculous and the dragonfly might get squashed by accident.”
She laughed and took his hand. “Oh, I am sure you are not quite that bad, Erik, even if you have never danced in all your life. And really, it’s necessary.”
He took her hand gingerly, as though afraid to break her, and she extended her fingers, gripped tightly. “I am not a porcelain doll, Erik Medon, nor a dragonfly to be crushed easily. Now follow the motions.”
He’s definitely never danced as I know it, she thought, as he tried to follow her steps. But he does have some sense of rhythm, not entirely unschooled in musical beats…
Erik seemed to finally recognize the movements, at least in essence, following the music as it followed her. Not perfect, not nearly so graceful as even one of the Storm Guards, but not so bad as she had feared or he had implied. “So…this is necessary?”
She smiled at his puzzled expression. “Very necessary. You see, only by dancing our way through the sky will we be able to reach my Father’s realm. He cannot send another of his Bows here to the mortal realm, not so soon after the last; there are many reasons for that. But I have my own magic that — if you allow it, if you are part of it — can bring us where we need to go.”
“Dance through the sky?” he repeated incredulously, eyes still fixed upon hers as they had been ever since he took her hand. “Poly, really, there’s just no way that could happen. Not with me, two left feet and all.”
She giggled and swept one hand outward. “But Erik… you already are doing it.”
He glanced down and gasped, stopping for a moment, forcing her to continue to dance around him. Beneath them a ghostly, circular rainbow light rippled like a spectral dance floor, but beneath that lay air, hundreds, thousands of feet of air, sparkling lights like Faerie itself dusting the land below. She laughed aloud at the wonder in his face, and again as she saw neither fear nor denial but a blaze of joy like the dawn in his face. “We’re flying!”
“Air-walking, dancing in the clouds, yes, even flying, Erik, that we are, on and within that which is my middle name, as long as you have the heart to see it with wonder as I hear in your voice.”
“Within…the glory,” he said, wonderingly. “Polychrome Glory…” His eyes met hers again for a bright needle-sharp moment, and then he seized her hand and led her in a dance, a crude dance but one of energy and sincerity that she cheerfully threw herself into wholeheartedly. “Oh, Polychrome, you -- you have no idea. To fly among the clouds…this is one of my dreams. Since I can remember!”
His joy was contagious and echoed her hope, and she saw the glory following his feet as it followed her own, resonating between them as though he had, somehow, always known. Erik glanced ahead and his own smile broadened. “Can we dance to the top of that tower, Lady Polychrome? Will I be able to make it that far?”
In the silver of moonlight and the approaching deep rose of dawn, a mighty thunderhead loomed in the distance, an argent mountain of misted rubies. “That far and farther, Erik, for beyond that a thousand miles and ten lies the castle of my Father — a thousand miles, and closer than a few heartbeats.”
He said nothing, but his eyes shone, and for a moment she saw how he must have looked ten, twenty, perhaps even thirty years before, sharp gaze filled with wonder and a happiness unadulterated by any doubt or fear.
But as they climbed the misty billows, leaping from one height to the next in a dreamlike series of leaps, she saw a flicker of light to one side, far away. Dim and small, but the violet-against-darkness was unmistakable. A Tempest.
“Erik…we must keep our eyes open. Remember what I said about my journey here.”
It was odd; for a moment, she could have swor
n that his face lit up more as he realized the implications. But it might have been her imagination, for his expression became grim almost instantly. “You saw something?” He glanced around, eyes scanning the area.
“Only one, and far away. It may not have seen us yet. And they would be scattered far and wide now, knowing that I may travel far from my landing spot ere I return. But I am afraid we need be on our guard. You…are not a warrior, I can see, and I will have to defend you if they catch us.”
His jaw set, his mouth opened as if to argue; but, despite the pride she saw in his face, she also saw him force it down. “I guess you would.”
That was not easy for him. He probably thinks of me as a fragile mortal girl. “But I’d rather we not have to worry about that.” She led the dance, off to the side of the thunderhead, now reaching the crest. “The sun will rise soon, and while they can function in daylight, their senses will be dulled and — with luck — we shall be able to evade their notice.” She took stock of the situation, the distance they must travel, what songs and steps she might take to find the shorter path between the mortal and Faerie worlds, nodded. “Just promise me — no matter what you think is the proper or right course — that you will do as I say if the time comes.”
Reluctantly, he nodded. “All right.”
She stood still for a moment, looking to the East; the bright line of sky abruptly brightened and a single beam of sunshine speared out, illuminating them and warming her, casting their shadows like arrows into the vast Western distance. “Then,” she said, with a sharp smile and hearing the music echo her resolve, “let’s go!”
Chapter 6.
We leapt from cloud to cloud, the white mists undefined at close range, yet giving springily underfoot like deep, deep turf, little puffs of mist following every step. If I die right now, I’ll die happy, I found myself thinking. It was clichéd, it was corny, but it was true. I’d met Polychrome, I’d actually found a way to show her beauty, and I’d flown and danced through the clouds themselves.
