by Ron Miller
After her meal, Rykkla stripped off her clothing and, gritting her teeth, crouched beneath the stream of icy water that arched like a crystal buttress from the middle of a wall; it felt like broken glass pouring over her. Most of the grime sluiced away, and she used her kerchief to wipe herself as clean as she could. She was just straightening up when Thud reentered, asking: “What are you doing?”
“Taking a bath, what does it look like?”
“Why are you taking a bath there?”
“Because this is where the water is.”
“But these are the special rooms that King Slagelse got for us.”
“I can see that. It must be awful to have to stay in one of the ordinary rooms. What does that entail? getting a shovel and digging your own hole?”
“I don’t think so.” He pondered for a long moment, realizing that his thought had gotten off its track and it required a little effort to discover where it had wandered to. “Why didn’t you take a bath in the bathroom?”
“Is there one?”
“Sure.”
“Well, where is it?”
“Why?”
“What do you mean ‘why?’?”
“Well, you’ve already taken your bath.”
“Hardly. I just spread the dirt around more evenly. Show me where this bathroom is, will you?”
“Sure, if you want.”
He turned and walked out of the room. Wrapping her blouse towel-like around her hips, Rykkla hurried to follow, her bare feet slapping on the hard, smooth floor. There was a corridor that twisted, rose and fell nonsensically, which then opened into a medium-sized chamber that was dark, and not dark merely by reason of being lightless, but because any lingering glimmers were crowded out by a dense cloud of mineral-laden steam. The room was only medium-sized by Kobold standards; to Rykkla it looked as cavernous and gloomy as an empty theater. The only light was a faint beam of the same blue phosphorescence that illuminated the outside; this filtered through a narrow crack that split the ceiling diagonally from corner to corner. The thin curtain of light made her vision wavery and uncertain, as though she had just developed nictating membranes.
The steam billowed from half a dozen craters in the floor of the chamber. Among these sizzling fumaroles were two or three circular pools of water that bubbled like champagne, with wraiths of vapor curling and writhing across their surfaces like phantom ice skaters. Rykkla needed no more encouragement. She tossed her shirt aside and tentatively poked a toe into the water of the nearest pool, a crystalline disk four or five yards in diameter, absolutely transparent at its edge and rapidly segueing through every imaginable shade of blue from the palest cerulean to the deepest cobalt into an indigo in the center as pure and bottomless as a moonless night sky. The water was hot enough to sting, but not so hot as to scald and she stepped into the pool. It was only an inch or so deep at the rim, shelving funicularily toward its abyssal center. She gently walked into the deeper water, savoring the heat as it rose up her legs, until the sloping bottom became too steep to stand upon; then she allowed herself to drift into the seething liquid.
The water was only slightly hotter than body temperature and so laden with minerals and salts that it buoyed her body as weightlessly as a bubble; she was suspended in it as though she were in solution, neither rising nor sinking.
She turned her head, lazily, to where Thud stood, a massive silhouette against the billowing light, watching her motionlessly until he suddenly moved, with his characteristically bovine grace, to the edge of her pool. There, with only two or three efficient movements, he removed his own clothing, like a self-peeling grapefruit. For a moment he stood there, towering above her like a monument to some forgotten Titan, making her feel as though she were but some trifling offering placed at the feet of that heroic god of earth and mountains, some master sculptor’s Spirit of Geology, as though she were crawling at the plinth of one of the very columns that upheld the vault of heaven. Thud was no longer a Kobold, nor was he altogether a human, or if he was, he was a human according to the undespairing standards of those ancients whose idealized sculptures filled modern museums. What, she wondered, dreamily, could the human race have become had not the race of Kobolds chosen to live underground, where over the millenia they softened and bloated like enormous corpses? Once upon a time Thud had resembled more than anything one of those balloon figures that the late Slappo the Clown had made for the youthful patrons of her circus: a soft, featureless, undistinguished collection of spheres and ellipsoids. He was still superhumanly large, as massive as an ox, but now instead of the smooth superficialities of a balloon, Thud was as detailed as a planet. Even his round head was no longer as blankly innocuous as a loaf of bread but, while still remaining distinctively Thudean, had gained a strange refinement. He was not ugly, he was homely, and there is a world of difference between those two adjectives. His body was muscled in enormous slabs, like the overlapping plates of the rhinoceros, as though he were some artist’s attempt at symbolizing the raw forces of the earthquake, avalanche or volcano, a monument to steam power, turbines and drop forge presses. When he moved it was like watching the dynamic and ponderous gavotte of drifting continents, where epochs took place in seconds, and mountains, valleys and plains were created and destroyed before her eyes. His arms and legs looked like veins of precious ores, with mercury and molten lava running through those veins, while at the core of it all throbbed a heart of surging magma.
He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and that revelation struck her as though an electric current had been applied directly to her brain; her whole body stiffened with the jolt and her fingers and toes stuck out like the quills of the fretful porcupine.
Without violating his habitual silence, Thud stepped into the water, creating waves that rocked and splashed around the mesmerized girl, as though he were some rogue planet entering her private solar system, his irresistable gravity tearing and warping the peaceful orbit of her world. The dim light glinted from the ripples like meteors.
Rykkla, who had allowed no man to approach her for years, flowed toward Thud tropistically, like water seeking the center of the earth.
“It had occured to us, of course,” said King Slagelse at the next audience he permitted Rykkla and Thud, “that you might be inclined to make whatever promises you felt necessary to encourage me to allow you to leave, then go about your way once back on the surface.”
“Your Highness!” protested Rykkla. “Such a thing never crossed my mind!”
“We’re sure it didn’t, but you can appreciate our need for caution, can you not? You are an opportunity that may not occur again, certainly not before the faeries have created their catastrophe. It puts us in a quandary, however. You will need assistance, yet it would behoove us to ask someone to remain behind as, ”
“Hostage!”
“, insurance against the default of our agreement. However, Musrum has been kind to us and has provided us with a solution. Thud,” he said, turning to the big man, “you will remain here with us until Rykkla returns after having successfully completed her mission.”
“If Thud stays here,” protested the girl, “who will go with me to the upper world?”
“Gyven, here.” At which words a tall man stepped from behind the dais. Rykkla stared at him speechlessly for a very long moment.
“Gyven!” she finally cried, half in disbelief.
“Hello, Rykkla. It’s certainly good to see you.”
“What in the world are you doing here? Where’s Bronwyn? Is she here, too?”
“No. In fact, I have no idea where she is. I was called away by King Slagelse, to consult with him concerning what was then the very mysterious occurence of the meteor impacts. Such random, inexplicable events are very upsetting to a civilization as ordered and as concerned with the earth as is the Kobolds’. Of course, once I discovered that the faeries were behind the whole thing, I knew that there was nothing that I could do. I returned to Toth, finally able to explain to Bronwyn why I
had to have been so mysteriously absent so often and for so long, only to find that she was no longer of this earth.”
“What?” Rykkla felt her blood drain from her as though someone had just opened taps in her feet. Could the princess be dead? “Bronwyn . . . Bronwyn is gone?”
“Well, in a manner of speaking. She had volunteered for a place in a rocket that was to be sent to the moon. I knew about this before leaving, of course, and saw nothing particularly wrong with it. However, once I found that the reason for the meteors was the imminent disintegration of the moon, I knew that it would be tragically dangerous to go there. I hastened to warn her, but it was too late; she had already left.”
“In a rocket?” Rykkla asked in some disbelief. “To the moon? What happened to her? Is she back? Is she all right?”
“I have no idea. Apparently the rocket reached the moon and was even able to leave it, and headed back to the earth. Beyond that, I don’t know what happened to her.”
“Poor Bronwyn! But she must be all right! Perhaps she landed someplace other than where she was supposed to? Who was with her?”
“Two others, both scientists from the Academy: Professor Wittenoom, who you know, and someone named Doctor Hughenden.”
“Wittenoom’s a genius, he wouldn’t allow anything to happen to the princess.”
“I can only hope not, but even genius cannot stand in the way of fate.”
“Pardon us,” interrupted the king, “but there is some urgency here. Rykkla, you and Gyven will confer with Hod Tawley, who is king of the faeries, with the purpose of convincing him that the continuation of his scheme would be folly of the highest order. Thud, you will remain here until our ambassadors return from their mission.”
“Sure,” replied Thud.
“Thud!” cried Rykkla.
“You will transport us to Hod Tawley’s kingdom?” asked Gyven, practically.
“It will take but a matter of minutes,” replied the king.
“Then we may as well get it over with,” Gyven said to Rykkla, reasonably, “and get back here as soon as we can.”
“But . . . “ There was no arguing; she could see that. She could even see the necessity of doing what Gyven suggested. She just did not like it.
Not wishing to waste another moment, the king directed a cadre of Kobolds to escort Rykkla and Gyven. The girl turned for a last look at Thud, who remained standing placidly, stolidly beside the throne, before she left the audience chamber. She waved, but he did not respond.
She and Gyven silently followed the Kobolds; she was grateful for the silence, as she was in no mood for conversation, even had her guides been capable of it. She scarcely noticed the twisting streets, the blandly curious crowds, neither the entrance to the side tunnel nor the circuitous, corkscrewing route that led inexorably upwards. She was scarcely aware of anything other than her own black mood until she noticed that there was a persistant breeze blowing across her face and ruffling her hair, and that it had the fragrance of green. Soon, there was the soft sound of rushing, splashing water and she saw not far ahead an indistinct circle of light: the mouth of the cave. Their Kobold guides would and could go no further, but only indicated that they would remain where they were until they had seen their charges pass beyond the opening. Rykkla saw no reason to argue, but hurried toward the cave mouth like a moth taking a bead on a lantern. The cave opened, she discovered, behind a waterfall that fell in a shimmering, metallic curtain not ten feet from where she stood. Its cool mist settled on her face like dew and the water was clean and aromatic. A narrow, muddy path, hardly six inches wide, led around the pool, over a pile of mossy rocks, and finally onto a grassy bank. She looked back and saw that the waterfall was scarcely thirty or forty feet high and perhaps equally broad, a transparent drapery that fell into a limpid basin perhaps a hundred feet across, full of water so clear that she could see the gravel and rocks at its bottom and fish swarming above them as distinctly as butterflies in the open air. There was no indication that a cave existed.
“Now what?” she asked Gyven as he joined her.
“I suppose that we need to find this Hod Tawley,” he replied.
“And how do we do that? Take out an ad? Nail notices to toadstools? Spread the word among the squirrels and nuthatches?”
“There’s no need to get sarcastic . . . ”
“Shout ‘Yoo hoo! Here we are, Mr. Tawley! Where are you?’?”
“Right here,” came the unexpected reply. Rykkla jumped in surprise, slipped on the grass and stumbled up to her calves in the water, where she tottered for a moment atop the round, slick stones, before sitting down with a splash.
“Damn everyone and everything to turtle-fornicating hell!” she cried, smacking her fist onto the surface.
“Sorry about that,” said a white light that hovered just beyond the point of her nose. She squinted and resolved within the light something that she first assumed was a variety of luminous dragonfly. As her irises adjusted the contrast, she realized that the dragonfly had only four legs, two at one end and two at the other . . . in fact, they looked a great deal more like a pair of legs and a pair of arms, all the more so since a little, egg-shaped head was cocked curiously between the latter.
“Who are you who called for Hod Tawley?” asked the dragonfly that Rykkla now knew, against a judgement that had been made considerably less skeptical since its encounter with the Kobolds, was in fact a faerie. She could see now that a pair of dark eyes, as large as a tarsier’s, were regarding her with the dispassionate, amused disinterest of a cat. They looked like the huge, wet eyes on the children in the ubiquitous velvet paintings that were sold in the street markets. They seemed to grow larger, almost imperceptibly, as she stared into them.
“My name is Rykkla,” she murmurred, “Rykkla Woxen.” She was amazed at the amount of detail that she was able to perceive in something small enough to have made a bathtub out of her cupped hand. It was only by a trick of perception, she believed, that she could so easily imagine that the faerie was gradually growing larger. How else could it fill her vision so completely? How else could she now see that the faerie was an immensely graceful little man or child, it was difficult to decide which, so elongated as to look like a figure reflected in a cylindrical mirror, yet managing not to seem disproportionate at all. More man than child, she decided, as the figure grew ever larger and she discerned details that were exciting more than her interest, and she was embarrassed to discover that she was embarrassed.
Hod Tawley’s face was as long as a swans’s egg, as translucent as a porcelain cup. His nose was small and thin, his mouth wide and cynical, his ears large and pointed. His was also nude and almost aggresively masculine. Behind him, flared in four directions like the spokes of a wheel, spread the great wings that had caused Rykkla to mistake him for a dragonfly. It was as though he were standing before a stained glass window that refracted his self-illumination, shattering it into a hundred spectral fragments that flashed, glimmered and scintillated around his central light like a firework, a sparkling pinwheel. He stretched toward her an arm that was inordinately long, that seemed to literally stretch, like vanilla taffy, and he lightly rested his spun glass fingers on her bare shoulder.
By the time Rykkla had cataloged the parts of Hod Tawley, she realized that he was indeed as large as she was, somehow having inflated himself without her having noticed. He stood in front of her, not more than three paces distant, crouched slightly, looking impossibly, implausibly thin; slender and graceful as sea grass, as the thread of smoke rising from an extinguished candle, as the gliding water moccasin. He must be as light as smoke, she decided, in order to be able to stand at all. And like smoke, he cannot stand still: he wavers like a candle flame, he glows like a flame, like a hot wire; he shimmers like a sundog, like a mirage, like the afterimage of the sun in dazzled eyes, like a memory half-grasped or the lingering reverberation of an echo.
“You are a very beautiful human,” he whispered, his opaline eyes filling hers as th
ough hers were empty cups. She realized then that what she had taken for an illusion of perception was illusory indeed, but not in the direction she had originally assumed; Hod Tawley had not become the size of a human: Ryklla had been reduced to the size of a faerie. The grass that moments before had been underfoot now soared overhead in graceful gothic arches with beads of dew suspended from the apexes like crystal chandeliers. She was nude, she noticed, and had no idea where her clothes could have gone nor when they had vanished. She could see her distorted reflection in Hod Tawley’s eyes, inverted, as elongated as himself, like a taffy girl left too long in the sun, like a stream of molten tallow winding down the side of a candle. The faerie king’s fingers danced over her body like a pair of long-legged spiders, barely brushing her skin, as though they were afraid to linger too long, as though she were too hot to bear their touch, a whispering touch that horripilated her skin, raised the fine hairs that covered her nape, arms and legs like the fizzing cat, made them quiver like iron filings under a magnet, like one of Chladni’s sonorous figures; she quivered and vibrated like a compass beneath the Northern Lights; the reed-like fingers seemed to be everywhere, dancing, skating, engaged in a gay steeplechase over landscapes of scapulae, buttocks, breasts and face; they chased each other across the flat, sandy plain of her stomach, a stomach that fluttered and rolled like a luffing sail; they explored the smooth half globes of her breasts, like navigators searching for a landfall, looking for landmarks, continents, undiscovered territories; they trickled down her legs like sap bleeding from wounded trees; they brushed through the wilderness of her pubis, like herons, geese or ospreys soaring above the dark canopy of the rainforest. A storm broke over that forest, a tempest shook and thundered its darkest depths and grottoes; a tingling electric shock, lightning like a fiery bullwhip, a whipcrack of thunder, the thunder echoing in hollow forests and canyons, a seismic tremor with rebounding, delineating shivers.
