I had calmed down enough to repeat what the soldier had whispered to me.
Grandmother didn’t seem alarmed by the words at all, which relieved me.
“What do you think he was talking about?” I asked.
She shrugged, stooping to let a wave crash over her arms. “The end of the world, maybe. Soldiers think about such things.”
“Does the world end in fire?”
“Yes, next time. Water the first time, fire the next.”
I watched the foam sluice landward around my feet, then retreat, trailing silt—in and out, the sea always roaring. Out beyond the breakwater, the water was deep blue, and the scattered white caps on waves were like shreds of the clouds.
Neither of us wanted to leave, but we thought it best to take the one o’clock ferry back. For one thing, the soldiers and Major P —— would likely stay until the five o’clock departure; and for another, I think Grandmother felt as guilty as I did for playing on the beach when R —— lay in his condition in the leaning house, and Mr. Girandole had the whole job of watching over him. We wanted to be back home where Mr. Girandole could find us, at least.
There wasn’t a single soldier in the ticket office or on board, which relieved us. The ferry itself was a different boat but designed the same: this must be the one that had left the mainland in the early morning. The only drawback was that Mrs. C —— waved to us from the middle of the cabin, and there was no escape. She talked without stopping, showing us everything she’d bought and then explaining how she’d come over on the six a.m. ferry, which strictly speaking was a violation of the curfew, but she lived near enough to the ferry dock that she’d decided to brave the short walk through the streets in the gray light. And a tense journey it had been: she’d heard footsteps crunching behind the garden hedge where Mr. and Mrs. A —— lived, moving along in parallel to her as she hurried down the street. Since she knew neither of the A ——s were early risers, the sounds alarmed her greatly, especially when—looking back from the corner—she saw the dark figure of a man watching her from between the rose bushes. She’d run the last few steps to the ferry and counted herself lucky to have made it with her life. Then her talk ranged on through a radio show she’d heard and a visit she’d had with Mrs. D ——.
In time, Grandmother’s polite replies became mere grunts, and she closed her eyes for longer and longer intervals as she listened. Even I abandoned her, taking a turn through the upper deck and out onto the back platform, where I watched the gulls and the waves. I wondered if the mer-folk down in the quiet emerald depths had found R ——’s gun, and what they might do with it. I imagined their king feeding it to the greatest of the giant clams, and that someday, the gun would lie at the center of a huge pearl.
Back in the village at a little past three o’clock, we noticed a pair of soldiers trudging up the main street and a couple more patrolling a field. I thought it was unfair that not all of them had gotten to go to Wool Island.
At home, I put the seashells into the drawer of the table beside my bed, then picked up the photo in its frame and studied my parents’ faces. Grandmother had said that soldiers thought about the end of the world; I wondered if my papa did as he sat in his tent or watched the waves or the night sky. I touched the four of us with my fingertips, wishing we were all together.
Grandmother went straight to her room, exhausted. But she suggested that if I had the energy, I might want to hike up to the sacred woods and see how things were going there. The idea thrilled me—Grandmother was asking me to do something important in her stead. “Do you remember the way?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Well, you can’t get really lost,” she said. “Up leads to the mountain, and down will bring you back to the village.” She determined I should take nothing with me. “If anyone asks, you’re just exploring the woods. See if Girandole needs anything. Get back before dark.” Having an afterthought, she asked, “You’re not afraid to go up there alone, are you?”
“No.” But I agreed with the notion of leaving the garden well before dark.
She nodded. “You don’t have to go, you know. If you don’t, I expect Girandole will come here tonight.”
I told her I wanted to visit the grove again.
“Be careful,” she added.
* * * *
As we’d done the day before, I looked carefully around from the shelter of the arbors, but again I saw no one patrolling or watching. It was the hottest part of the day. The sun pounded the steaming grasses in that delightful, unrestrained way it has at the height of summer. Everything in the meadow was still, save for a few buzzing insects, a sprinkling of white-winged butterflies. A pale puff of smoke from the cannery’s chimney hung stationary like the splash from a bucket of white paint, rinse-water swirled in the bucket and flung against the sky.
I moved quickly up into the green light of the woods. The shade felt good. Even so, my shirt was sticking to me by the time I’d reached the parachute. I had no trouble finding my way. There was a weary, trampled look to the underbrush; it had seen a lot of traffic. In another few minutes I faced the dragon again, forever roaring at the harassing dogs.
I hurried beneath the archway, passed Neptune and the boar, then crossed the open sward between the pool of the four women and the elephant. I moved cautiously now, listening, as I approached the leaning house.
As I set foot on the left-hand stairway that climbed to the terrace, Mr. Girandole appeared above me. His expression was so distressed that I froze, staring up at him, unable to voice the terrible question.
Mr. Girandole must have seen my shock. At once, he forced a smile and said, “Oh, no. Forgive me. He is alive, but—where is M ——? Is she all right?”
I started breathing again and nodded. Trotting up the steps to the platform, I explained about our trip to Wool Island, but that we’d hurried home, and that Grandmother was taking a nap. When I was close enough to him to whisper, I added, “We threw the gun overboard into the sea. That’s why we went.”
He nodded distractedly, as if he weren’t quite sure what I meant—or as if he had greater concerns on his mind. “I’m glad you’ve come. We’ll all have to speak together as soon as possible.”
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”
Mr. Girandole wasn’t wearing his hat, and his hair was in disarray. As he ushered me ahead of him up the steep stairs in the stone house, he said, “The man wakes up sometimes . . . and then he dreams again. He dreams. They. . . . We must all speak together.”
I understood then that he had something important to tell us, but it was Grandmother he most wanted to tell. I was curious but not offended; whatever the problem was, I’d be in no place to give advice.
R —— lay on his pallet, but now his head moved from side to side with the throes of delirium. He looked wretched in the bandages and tattered clothing, one sleeve and one pant leg cut off—like someone adrift in a lifeboat or chained in a dungeon. His face twitched expressively, reminding me of virtuoso musicians when they performed. Now and then he uttered a phrase between breaths—something in his own language.
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“‘Red star,’” said Mr. Girandole. “‘The red star.’”
I frowned and looked from the feverish man to the faun.
“I don’t know what it means,” said Mr. Girandole, brushing stray hair back from his face. “R —— had a notebook in one back pocket, and a pencil stub. I helped him get them out when he asked me to, and he wrote something strange.”
From the cluttered floor of the sunken compartment, Mr. Girandole picked up a very small notebook with a worn leather cover. An elastic band, anchored in the spine, stretched around it to hold the book closed. Mr. Girandole opened it now and flipped through the pages until he came to a place near the middle, which he showed to me.
I recognized the language of
R ——’s country. The short, ordered lines seemed to make up a poem. But almost at once I noticed an unusual symmetry to the writing, to the shape it made on the page. Though I didn’t understand a word of it, I saw that each line was written first forward and then backward—perfectly backward, as if it were being reflected in a mirror. How a man trembling with fever had done such a neat job was quite beyond me—as was the reason for it.
Again I looked wonderingly at Mr. Girandole.
“I translated it on the next page,” he said, and turned one leaf.
Mr. Girandole’s writing sent out loops and dots and cross-slashes in all directions, as if his letters had grown in a wild garden and were still blossoming. But in painstaking detail, he had imitated the mirroring of each line as well. The forward parts read:
A duke the secret knew
And locked the riddle here
Find twice the number Taurus follows with his eye
Sisters dancing in the water and the sky
Heed the words among the trees in stone
Though not all words are true
And they will lead you home
After reading it through several times, I handed the book back to Mr. Girandole. “I’m not sure Grandmother can make any sense of it, either,” I said.
“Perhaps not.” He let out a long breath, fixing a troubled gaze on R ——.
“How many languages do you know?” I asked, guessing that a person who never aged would have time to learn plenty.
He smiled. “All there are—and none, I suppose, when it comes down to it. We Elder Folk—fauns, fairies, all the people of the deep woods, sea, and earth—we’re not children of Babel, like you. Language is not something we learn. Meaning in words is another thing we see and hear, like bark or moss or birdsong.”
“But . . . what you wrote—” I pointed at the notebook. “That was our language, and that was R ——’s. You translated his to ours. You said ‘translated’ yourself.”
He shrugged and nodded. “Just as I know that when your grandmother says ‘We’ll see’ she typically means ‘Yes, eventually.’ That’s translating, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t help laughing. “So . . . there are others?” I asked carefully, watching him. I didn’t want to make him sad if all the Elder Folk had gone from the world, as Grandmother suspected.
“Others of the Old Kind?” He wore again the expression that was both sorrowful and happy. “Oh, yes, there are many others—Folk of so many kinds they can’t all be counted.”
I was relieved. “Grandmother said there weren’t so many left anymore.”
Mr. Girandole nodded slowly, looking far off. “That’s true enough. Great numbers of them have gone back to where we came from. But they won’t all go, as long as there are seasons here—as long as there are dawn and dusk, forests and caverns and flowers and mountains, stars and the moon and the sea—old, deep places and new places and edges to things. Some remain.”
“Are all those things like where you came from?”
“Those things are where we came from. It’s not really a different place—not there and here.” He looked apologetic. “I suppose it doesn’t make sense, the way I say it.”
I shrugged. “It makes sense to me.” It was one of those things I grasped on a deep level, with my heart rather than my mind. It has rung truer to me with every passing year: that the essence of Faery is all around us, written in every leaf.
He regarded me strangely then and looked happier.
But remembering the other part of my errand, I asked if there was anything Mr. Girandole needed.
He appeared to force his thoughts back to the situation. “I’ve already fetched clean water, so for the present, no. I believe M —— mentioned clean bandages. If you can, come back with her early tomorrow. I would risk coming to your cottage tonight, but I’d have to shut R —— inside the secret space. If he woke up, he’d think he was inside his own grave, buried alive.”
“We’ll come early.” I wanted to commend Mr. Girandole for the tremendous job he was doing of caring for R ——. But I only managed a shy smile and a murmured “Thanks.”
Mr. Girandole reminded me of my papa in his kindness, in the warm, gentle approval he exuded—approval for those closest to him. I wondered suddenly if he and my father had been friends—surely they’d met when my papa was a boy, exploring the woods. I wished my father could come to the village again, with my mother and sister. I dreamed of what it could be like when the war was over, when we might all visit Grandmother and sit here among the statues in the quiet green light.
* * * *
Since I still had ample daylight, I decided to explore the part of the garden I hadn’t seen yet: the upper reaches, beyond the dense thicket at the tower’s back. When I announced my intention, Mr. Girandole asked if I wanted him to come along.
I shrugged. “Only if you’d like to,” I said, not wishing to seem either scared or rude.
He smiled, folding his arms across his chest. “Perhaps the garden is best experienced alone. I’m here within shouting distance if you need me.” Settling on his haunches to lean against the wall, he added, “You realize, I suppose, what a rare gift is yours today?”
I wondered what he meant.
“The gift of seeing the other half of the garden for the very first time. These next few moments will come to you but once in your life. Use the gift well.”
I nodded slowly. Truth be told, I often had similar thoughts about other things. Sitting in the top of a certain tree, or watching fireflies in the dusk of a particular summer day, I’d grow sad at the realization that the precise moment would never come again: even if I climbed the tree again or stood in the dusk the next day, I’d be older; the world would be different.
“Don’t go with a heavy heart,” Mr. Girandole called after me. “There are always other moments coming.”
I grinned back. Without the belief in more moments to come, we could never enjoy anything.
I descended the bizarre stairs, stood with relief on the terrace, and made my way down to the floor of the glade. The earth was green and springy underfoot, and the richness of late afternoon light, though indirect, filled the garden. Birds twittered—sometimes the sacred silence of the woods was not silence at all, yet it was soothing.
Again, somewhere a plane droned, so far away I could not discern if it was friendly or otherwise. Of course, as Grandmother said, such distinctions lost their meanings here. I was hearing in the far-off engine the merest rumor of some other world, no more present than the other world of which seashells tell us when we press them to our ears.
First I passed, on my right, the fearsome angel I’d seen from the terrace. Still he stood in deep shade, his stone blacker than that of the other statues, his hair and robes still blown wild by an unfelt wind. Still he held the ring of keys and the mighty chain.
I wondered then at the presence of angel statues here. In the churches, there were angels and saints. This garden held angels, monsters, gods, mermaids . . . all the folk of the old stories. I knew angels to be real; they were in the Bible. And now I knew fauns were real, for one was our friend. The only logical, obvious conclusion excited me. Monsters and fairies were a part of the same world as angels. All these things were real.
Immediately behind the angel’s spreading wings the grove began, a stand of huge, ancient trees rising from an impenetrable nest of bushes. More trees and brush stretched to my left, climbing the wall of the ravine and away to where, in the upper forest, the parachute hung. The single opening in this green wall lay straight ahead, framed by a vine-draped arch.
Holding my breath, I hurried quietly past the angel and through the portal. The ground rose, crossed by exposed roots that formed a natural stairway.
I came into a second clearing, this one, too, roofed over by the limbs and leaves—the other grand gallery. On the west was
a gentle slope by which I might have gone back up into the forest. Forward, the ravine ended in steep walls, thickly wooded and overgrown. Eastward, the open glade followed the upper edge of the dense central grove that I’d climbed past.
Just beside me, on the left at the root-stair’s top, was what seemed at first to be a stone coffin: a rectangular slab, and lying flat upon it, the sculpted image of a woman sleeping or dead. She wore a long dress that left only her face, hands, and feet exposed. Her hair flowed down to her waist, and her arms were folded over her heart.
I walked all around her, deciding I preferred the idea that she was asleep, not dead. She was larger than life, about the height of a tall man. I found on one corner of the slab a cigarette-end that one of the soldiers must have left where he mashed it out. I remembered the major talking about the statues, and that he’d spoken of them to others beyond the village. This was how others treated the woods. I stuck the acrid-smelling end into my pocket, determined to throw it away somewhere far from the grove.
As I stooped, studying the slab, I discovered carved letters on the vertical edge. The language was that of our country but in a very old style, so that I had trouble reading it. Part of it, I thought, said like the rain. Now I wished I’d asked Mr. Girandole to accompany me. But with an inward smile, I reminded myself there would be plenty of time to ask about it later: it was a sentence carved in stone and wasn’t going anywhere.
North of the sleeping woman, a magnificent centaur stood beneath a tree, looking just like the best pictures of centaurs. He appeared wise and dextrous, playing an instrument like a harp. Now that I was searching for inscriptions, sure enough, I saw one on his pedestal. I could make it out a little better than the other: Hurry now to find me, then something obscured by moss, and then: but not inside.
I backed away, pondering, and turned in a complete circle. So, the garden was full of words as well as creatures—dreams and riddles. . . . Though I wanted to race ahead, I forced myself to go slowly, to look in all directions, to notice how the light fell. These moments would come but once.
A Green and Ancient Light Page 10
