The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four

by Jonathan Strahan

  To keep his mind off the day to come, Darlington asked, "And what's it like, then, that indoors Under the Hill?"

  Elias Patterson was not looking at him, but plainly far beyond the flames. "All things, all at once—rather like Titania herself, if you will. In Faery space is just as deceptive as time. For instance, there always seems to be as much forest as any hunter could desire, and those who dwell in Faery love the chase just as we do. Only their beasts of venery are a bit other than those we pursue: they'll be after the manticore for its claws and teeth, as we take wolf and bear; they'll shoot down griffins to make knives from their sharp-edged feathers; and there's a great serpent-thing that the hunter has to strangle, because no blade, no point will even scratch that hide. And the hunts themselves can last a month or a year, for they've got all the time in the world. Remember, Tír na nÓg means The Land of Youth."

  After a considering moment, he added, "They won't take the fox or the unicorn, by the way—those two are sacred in Faery. I never knew why, but I was always glad of it. They can come and go as they desire between the worlds, though foxes clearly do it more often."

  "You really were there," Darlington said softly. "By God, old man, you really walked in those woods, didn't you?" This time, it was his eyes holding Elias Patterson's eyes across the fire. "Bloody hell. You danced in the halls of Faery."

  "They're full of light," Elias Patterson whispered, "bursting with it, humming with it. It's alive, that light. It moves as it pleases, stroking the faces of dancers and musicians, cooks and servants alike, just as Titania caressed me." Darlington could barely hear him. He said, "When you stay long enough in that light, you can feel yourself turning into it, becoming something neither faery nor mortal—nothing but the light. That's the only way those folk ever die, did you know? Dancing too long in the light. Titania told me that. She said sometimes they did it a-purpose."

  The clearing sky had let the half-moon come out, and Darlington hunched down against its brightness. He said, "And the gold? The faery gold your church lot were always after?"

  Elias Patterson raised his eyebrows. "My, I expected that question well before now. Well, yes, I saw a great deal of gold everywhere—there's another thing the faery folk love as much as we do. But they had too much of it to treat it as money, do you see; everybody had enough that more or less of it made no difference. I never worked out whether they had any actual notion of currency, but sometimes I thought it might be poetry." He smiled fondly at the night. "Say a poem to any one of Titania's people, and he'd be in your debt; the richest folk were those who knew the most poems by heart. Especially good long ones, the kind that can run on for an hour, more. They really like long poems."

  "None of my sort in Faery, then. Pity." Darlington hesitated, and then asked, oddly but genuinely shy himself, "What about their music? You'd not think so, but my family had a music master come to the house for little Roger. I was to be a fiddler in some grand gentleman's private orchestra—that was the proudest career they could imagine for me, poor souls. Alas, all their hopes were dashed when I discovered how easy it was to pick the music master's pocket. I blame them—and him—for my becoming what I am. Tell me about the music you heard Under the Hill, good Reverend."

  He halted abruptly when Elias Patterson turned away, too late to hide the tears glittering in the firelight. Darlington waited, but on this subject there was plainly no answer to be had from the man. "Never mind the music, then. Tell me what sort of table they set in Faery."

  "There was always food and wine," Elias Patterson said, when he could, "as there was always music. And whether or not I even recognized the dish, or the taste and fume of the drink, I learned to savor it and swallow it, and ask no questions. I remember one wine—they keep it for certain special occasions—that never tastes the same from glass to glass in the course of the feast. He makes that one himself. Titania told me so."

  "He?" Darlington blinked in puzzlement.

  "Oberon. Her husband." Elias Patterson's voice was completely without expression. "King of Faery since ever there's been Faery, just as she's been Queen. I went a long while without meeting him, or even catching a glimpse of him, for they spent far more time apart than they did together. They were forever fighting over this or that, like children—what one had, the other wanted, exactly like children. I was just as content to see no more of King Oberon than the shadow in Titania's eyes that always told me when she'd been with him. I became quite good at reading her whims and moods, as we all must learn to read our mates if we mean to keep them. Perhaps that was because she had a heart, as I've said, like a mortal woman. I don't think I could have fathomed any other woman of Faery in the same way."

  "I've never fathomed a woman in my life," Darlington said shortly. "I never understood my mother and sisters, if you want to know—let alone the silly sluts who run after highwaymen." He stood up, moving to the edge of the firelight, as though he were about to relieve himself again. The night remained as deeply silent as he could have wished, but a lifetime of flight had long since turned even silence chancy. Turning again, and looking down at Elias Patterson, he said, "And I have my doubts that you ever rightly knew the heart of the Queen of Faery. Meaning no disrespect."

  "None at all," Elias Patterson assured him. "King Oberon certainly would have agreed with you." The fire flinched from a sudden cold breeze, and the reverend drew his cloak closer around his shoulders. He said, "Once I'd been introduced to company, as you might say, I saw something more of Oberon. Rarely alone, though, for his attendants were always on hand: musicians first of all, and then dancers, jugglers, faery clowns even, and others so strange that it made my eyes hurt to look at them for long, as though important bits of them were hidden around some other corner and my eyes were trying to find the way there, and could not. On such occasion we met face-on—often during a dance, with Titania on my arm, and Oberon hand in hand with his latest elven beauty . . . why then, it squeezed my earthly heart to see how those two regarded one another, as though no one else existed, for good or ill. Minister no longer, to look at them was to understand where hell and heaven truly dwell, and harps and fire everlasting have no part in it."

  "Aye, I'll drink to that one," Darlington swore. "There was this one bloody woman in Sussex—haven't seen her for years, and damned well don't want to, but when I think of her . . . aye, it squeezes. It does that. I know it was her turned me in for the reward money that time! How can you still wake up sad about someone who does that to you?"

  Elias Patterson seemed not to have heard him. "It's a puzzling business, but while the lady Titania was, and surely remains, the most beautiful woman who ever walked this world or any other, I could have named you a dozen of my own parishioners handsomer than King Oberon. His cheekbones were too high and too prominent; his eyes too sharply angled, too wolfishly green; and his nose, chin and ears altogether too pointed for anything like beauty as we see it. Yet when Oberon looked at you, you felt naked as a white bone in the rain; and when he spoke, the voice of the Lord Himself would not have distracted you from his words. I was quite relieved that he spoke to me no more than necessary.

  "But it happened one glorious Faery morning," Elias Patterson said, "while Titania yet drowsed in her bower, that Oberon came alone to me and drew me away with a single look to walk with him along the bank of that twittering little stream that I had heard on first waking with my head in Titania's lap. We said nothing to one another for a time, and then Oberon addressed me so: 'Do you imagine that my wife loves you?'

  "'I would not presume,' I answered him, and that was true. But the shameless pride of having loved the Queen of Faery to sleep was on me, and for the life of me I could not keep from adding, 'But I do know that I make her happy.'"

  "Aye, the Sussex woman always said that. No man but me had ever made her really happy, that's exactly what she said. Lying, conniving trull."

  Elias Patterson said, "The contempt in Oberon's green eyes should have withered me where I stood, but I was younger then,
and I could still hear Titania whispering her desire against my skin. Oberon said, 'You make her happy. And have you any notion of how many mortal men have made her happy? Of how many there will be after you?'

  "'Jealous yourself,' I answered him—good God, how dared I speak so to such a king?—'you'll not make me as bitter and spiteful as you are. I know well enough that my time in Faery is limited to seven years. All the old tales and ballads tell me that much, and I would howl at your gates for more, for a lifetime, if I thought it would do me any good. But my religion and my raising have both taught me the virtue of settling for less—less than my dreams, less than my visions—so that I will do when the time comes, and count myself the most fortunate of men, however empty the rest of my life may be. Can you understand that, Lord of Faery?'

  "I like to think now that Oberon looked at me with a trifle less scorn after I spoke those words, but perhaps not. It was long ago. At all events, he replied most evenly, saying, 'It was I who laid a geas upon her, untold thousands of your years past, enjoining that she might take all the human lovers she chose—she had a fascination with your kind even then—but that none of her alliances might endure longer than seven years. For then she grieves each time, most movingly, and I comfort her, as I—I—know better how to do than any strutting, crowing mortal, and we are happy together for a while.' And after a moment, he added, more softly, 'Sometimes quite a long while.'"

  Darlington put another log carefully on the fire. He said, "I should never have stopped here. Now I'm too warm to abandon your hearth, Elias Patterson, and if the High Sheriff himself pops up right now, he's going to have to wait until I learn how the tale turns out. He couldn't have done better if he'd actually hired you to waylay me." He spat into the flame, smiled at the resulting hiss, and said, "Go on, then. What did you say back to His Majesty?"

  "I asked a question in my turn," Elias Patterson replied. "I said, 'Is it a part of the geas that each of Titania's lovers returns to a world that is a hundred years older than he left it?' And Oberon answered, 'That is true. The dislocation, the shock of finding oneself an alien in one's own land, it keeps your lot fully occupied, far too busy merely remaining sane to be concerned with any notion of returning, any dream of a second chance at Faery. For if any man ever did succeed in returning to her, then the geas would be broken, and she free to fancy whom she chose, for as long as she chose. But that will never happen, Elias Patterson—never while I live. And I live forever.'

  "'And you tell us all this?' I asked him. 'You take all your wife's men in turn for pleasant morning strolls, and inform them that there is a geas on her, and that it can be lifted if any of them should find his way back Under the Hill? Is that wise, my lord?'"

  Darlington muttered, "I should have done something like that with that woman. I should have told everyone that she was diseased—something really horrible, really disgusting." He sighed. "I always think of things too late." A second fox barked, fairly close by, and Darlington said, "There's the vixen."

  "Yes," Elias Patterson said. "I have spent a good deal of time studying the foxes in this district."

  Darlington cocked his head, but the reverend did not explain further, choosing instead to continue his tale. "In response to my question, Oberon replied, 'I tell you about the geas, as I have told few others, because, of them all, you will try to come back to her. I know this. But you will fail, and fail again and again, and you will suffer endlessly and needlessly until you die. I am only trying to spare you such a fate.'

  "'I am touched by your concern,' I said. 'Even honored.' And I was not mocking him, Mr. Darlington, truly. I said, 'But you and I both know that the three of us will do what God in his mystery has put it on us to do. I have failed Him, and I will be punished for it, but that changes nothing. That changes nothing at all.'

  "'No,' Oberon answered. 'You are right—we will all do what we will do.' And then he smiled at me in a strange way, almost a sad way, and he said, 'And you may bear this triumph away, if you will, that I, undying Oberon, am indeed envious of a mortal man, which has only once before occurred in all my life Under the Hill. It will be long before my lady forgets you and forgives me what I do. Savor it, human. Savor it well.'"

  Elias Patterson drew a deep breath, putting his hands out to the flames and looking straight at Roger Darlington. "Then he was gone, in the way he had of coming and going, and the little stream was still singing to itself. I walked slowly back to where Titania lay in her bower, awake now. And that was how the morning passed, and I envied nobody in the world, nor ever have again."

  "I envy you," Darlington said quietly. "I'm telling you that right now."

  "Envy nobody. It is the true secret of happiness, or at least the only one I know. So the years passed for me in Faery: not only in making love with Titania, but in hunting with her and her friends and her maidens—for she too loved the chase as well as any—and walking and sporting together in those sunlit woods that became my true home. And if I was happier than the priests and the ministers like myself think mortal man has any right to be . . . all the same, I never deceived myself into believing that my joy would have no end. One midnight I would fall asleep in Titania's embrace, as I had done every night for seven years, and awaken on the very same cold hillside where I had lain myself down, exactly seven years before. Then the payment would begin, and I was ready for that, too."

  "You thought you were," the highwayman said somberly. "We always think we're ready."

  "Not that I had any sort of calendar, or any way of marking my days: I only had to look in Titania's eyes to see the seventh Beltane come upon us. I had become well skilled at reading her moods, as I've told you—certainly better at it than Oberon, or any of her ladies. We gazed at each other for a long, wordless time, when that day came, and then she said, 'It is not my choice. It is my fate, and my doom.'

  "And I answered her simply, saying, 'I know. There was never a moment when I did not know.'

  "Faery folk do not—cannot—weep, Mr. Darlington. Only Titania. It is part of her loneliness. I held her that night for the last time, as she rocked and moaned and whimpered against me, and her tears scarred my face and my throat. This is why I grew my beard, you know, to cover the marks. She quieted a little after some while, and I said to her, 'Forget me, my love. It will be hard enough for me in my world without knowing you unhappy in this one. I beg you, forget even my name, as God has done. Will you do that for me, you for whom I forgot Heaven?' And I kissed her tears, though they burned my mouth.

  "I could barely hear the words when she breathed her answer. 'If I say that, my beautiful, beautiful mortal, I will be lying, who never once lied to you.'

  "'Lie to me now,' I told her then, and Titania did as I bade her."

  "And even so." Darlington was not looking at him, but at the ground, his head low. "Even so, you're still never ready."

  Elias Patterson smiled in some surprise. "You're quite right, Mr. Darlington. I certainly wasn't ready, on the last night of the last year, for her to shake me out of an exhausted sleep—when you know, as I did, that you will never do something unbearably wonderful ever again in your life, you see no reason to hold back anything for tomorrow—whispering, 'My love, my love, you must run! Please, wake—you are in terrible danger!'"

  Darlington looked up, his mouth crooked. "I'm always hearing tales of brave women who risk their lives to warn their lovers of one approaching peril or another. Never met one in my life, you understand, but I'm sure there must be thousands."

  "Titania never looked more beautiful than she did that midnight," Elias Patterson said, "bending over me, with the moon in her hair and the wild terror in her eyes. I reached out to pull her down once again—once more, oh, once more—but she resisted, tugging at my wrist, crying over and over, 'No, no, they are here, I feel them, you must fly!' When I dream of her, that is how she comes to me, always."

  "What was the danger? I don't imagine they've got troopers or High Sheriffs in Paradise."

  "She did not want
to tell me at first. But I saw the figures moving in the darkness, and each time, pulling me along as she was, she would freeze in place, absolutely, like a fawn when the wolves are near, knowing that its only chance of life is not to move, not to make a sound, not to breathe." Elias Patterson shook his head in fresh wonder. "Titania, Queen of Faery, who hunted manticores."

  Darlington waited, saying nothing. Elias Patterson said, "I never got a close look at them, thanks to her wariness and her skill. They were great shadows, for the most part, moving as silently as she under the ever-blooming trees and meadows of Faery. What I did see of them I will not tell you, for I still dream that, too. But I felt them, as she said: hungry shadows who knew my name, clawing at my mind and my soul to be let in—and if I let them in there would be nothing left of me but skin; nothing but a shadow inside, like themselves. And all the same, there was as well a terrible lassitude that came with that feeling—a sense that it would be so pleasant to surrender, even to invite them in, since what would life matter without Titania?" He laughed then, but there was no smile in the laughter. "And when I look back, that is probably just what I should have done."

  "But you didn't." Darlington's voice was hoarse and expressionless.

  "No. But if it had not been for Titania, holding me together and them outside with her faery hands and her human heart . . . well, I would be in another place than Yorkshire today. For what she said to me was that Faery exists on sufferance of the Hell—whatever it actually is—that you and I were both raised to believe in. 'It is a mere token tithe we pay, every seven years,' she told me, 'most often an animal, though I have known it to be as simple as a flower that grows only here, Under the Hill. But this time, this time'—and dark as it was, her face was white as a flower itself, white as alyssum, white as anemone, white as yarrow—'this time, my darling, you are the tithe . . . '"