by Lisa Tuttle
“Didn't you?” He raised an eyebrow, and as he looked directly and rather mockingly into my eyes I understood that, despite appearances, this was no mere mortal landowner, and remembered the gigantic face I'd seen in my dream.
“You're Mider.”
“I am. What do you want with me?”
“I've come for Peri. Peri-Etain.”
“My wife? Do you mean to challenge me?” His eyes narrowed, and he shifted the gun's position as if to draw my attention to it.
“No.” He didn't say anything to that, so I rushed on, desperately. “I'll trade you for her.”
“What do you propose to trade me?”
According to the old stories, fairy morality required them to accept any trade a mortal offered—a handkerchief, a cap, the unknown contents of a sack—but looking into Mider's immortal eyes I knew he'd treat any such offer as an insult, and even if he didn't blow my head off for it, I'd be blowing my chance.
So, knowing that it was dangerous, but feeling I must risk everything, I said, “Anything you want.”
“You think you have something I want?”
I waited, feeling that to answer either way would put me in the wrong, and he nodded. “Perhaps you do. Your life for hers? A soul for a soul; that would seem fair.”
“But if you take my life, how can you give me Peri?”
“A fair question. And I might ask you another: Why do you think she's mine to give?”
“You took her.”
He shook his head. “She chose to come with me.”
“Meaning that she could choose to leave you? You wouldn't stop her?”
“She has a foot in both worlds. It's she who decides which foot to lift, and when.”
“Let me see her. Let me speak with her.”
“Is that a demand?”
I bowed my head, terrified and trying not to show it. “A request. Please. I'm not seeking Peri for myself. She belongs in the mortal world, where she was born. With the people who love her. Of course, it's her choice.”
The silence went on for a long time. Finally, I raised my head and saw he was gone. I looked around. The mist pressed even closer, damp and chilly. I was alone in a place I didn't know.
Anger, disappointment, and fear all welled up, battling for supremacy. Mostly I felt mad, which was better than being scared. What sort of answer was that? Had he taken my life after all? Had I just disappeared?
Before I could make a move, I felt a warm gust of wind stir the mist, then I heard a voice, quite plainly and clearly, close to my ear, although I could see no one.
“If I find you here again, I won't let you go so easily. Remember this.”
The wind blew harder and harder, whipping up dirt and bits of dead vegetation so fiercely that I had to shut my eyes. Then, just as suddenly, the wind dropped. I opened my eyes and found that the mist had blown away.
It was a beautiful evening. Away to the west the setting sun dyed the still waters of the narrow sea loch pink and gold. An empty, narrow road snaked along beside it, far below me. I knew immediately that I was back in my own world and, as I gazed to get my bearings, I recognized the road and the shoreline, and realized that I was standing on the high moorland somewhere above the Fairy Door.
My watch had recovered its powers and told me it was 21:56. The position of the sun suggested it would very soon be dark. I decided it would be safer to follow the road, so I made my clumsy, sliding way down the slope.
I wasn't the only person out walking so late; ahead of me was a woman: long blond hair, black dress. She moved so slowly and awkwardly that I thought she must be drunk or physically disabled. I didn't have to run to catch up to her.
At the sound of my footsteps she turned. I knew her face.
“Peri!”
A tiny frown wrinkled her brow. “I'm sorry . . .”
“Peri Lensky?”
“Yes, but . . . do I know you?”
I thrust out my hand. “Ian Kennedy. We haven't met before, but I know your mother.”
“Oh! You do? How is she? Where is she?”
I thought of Laura as I'd last seen her, walking away from me, into the mist, and pushed the thought away. “I was hoping I could bring you back to her.”
Her face cleared and she beamed at me. “Brilliant! I'm fed up with walking. I lost my shoes, see?” She indicated her bare feet, and I understood the reason for her crippled gait. “Where's your car?”
I grimaced. “Back at the hotel. But don't worry; I'll call Hugh and ask him to come fetch us.”
Her animation stilled. “Hugh Bell-Rivers?”
I nodded.
“You know him, and my mother?”
“We've all been looking for you.”
“He still loves me?”
“Did you think he didn't?” I asked gently.
She dropped her gaze. “I wouldn't blame him. I left him, you know. You do know?” She met my eyes again.
I nodded. “He told me about your last night in London, and meeting Mider.”
“And he still wants me back?”
“I'm sure he does.” I hesitated, not wanting to mislead. “But . . . it's complicated. He has a new girlfriend, and . . . He must wonder about your feelings, don't you think? I mean, even if Mider kidnapped you, even if you had no choice—”
“It was my choice. I went with him because I wanted to. He never forced me to do anything.” She spoke fiercely.
“And now you want Hugh.”
“I never stopped loving him.”
“But you left him for another man.”
“Not another man. Mider isn't a man, he's . . .” But even in the magical, Celtic twilight it seemed she couldn't bring herself to say it. Maybe she was afraid it would sound silly, or maybe none of the words we use in English could properly express what he was.
She shook her head and went on. “I wasn't choosing between men. It was so much more than that. Mider was offering me another world. How could I refuse? Would you?”
I thought of Fred, of the impossibility of arguing her out of what she'd set her heart on, and shook my head. “I would. Unless my life was so miserable that I couldn't stand it. I wouldn't leave a promising future and somebody who loved me, for vague mystical promises.”
She gave me a long, cool, doubting look and shrugged. “Maybe. But you're old. It's weird, the way old people get more cautious, the nearer they are to dying anyway! I wasn't giving up, I was going for it! If I hadn't gone, I would've regretted it forever.”
“So you don't regret what you did?”
She sighed and turned away from my nagging question, my incomprehension. “How far is it to a phone?”
I pulled mine out. “Right here,” I said, pressing in Hugh's mobile number.
“Where are you?” he demanded as soon as I spoke.
“I'm on the road near the Fairy Door. Can you bring the car?”
“Is Laura with you?”
I hesitated, and Hugh rushed on. “She's got her phone switched off, and nobody's answering in their room. I'm worried.”
“Don't be. Peri's here with me.”
“What? How? Never mind. I'll be right there.”
“Hugh's coming for us,” I told Peri, putting my phone away. I nodded up the road. “Let's go wait in that lay-by.”
We made our way along the road in silence. Darkness was gathering, thickening the air. There was a large, smooth boulder at the edge of the road, not far from the black-and-white-striped pole, and Peri leaned against it. She lifted one foot and massaged it slowly. “I used to walk around barefoot all the time when I was little. I don't know how I could stand it.”
“Why did you come back?”
She put the first foot down and lifted the other, rubbing it gently. After a while she said, “It was wonderful, at first; just like he promised. I was so happy I couldn't think about anything else. I didn't want anything else. And then one day I thought about Mom. I wasn't sure exactly how long I'd been away, but it must have been weeks since I'd sp
oken to her. It was so weird. My whole life, I don't think I'd gone more than a single day without talking to her. Even when she moved to London, and I stayed on in Houston to finish high school, even with the six-hour time difference, even then we managed to talk every day. And when I went away to college it was the same. And then I went away with Mider, and that all stopped. I had no idea what she was doing or thinking. It was almost like she'd died.
“He saw I was missing her, and told me I could go back and talk to her if that's what I wanted. I could go out into the other world as often as I liked, but not for too long. The door would only open for short periods, and if I stayed away for more than an hour and a day, I'd be locked out forever.”
She gave me a stern look. “See, I could have left anytime. But I didn't want to. I just missed Mom, that's all; I wanted to hear her voice again.”
I looked at Peri's face, like a pale moon in the gathering dark. There were so many questions I wanted to ask, so much I wanted to know, and I was aware that this might be my only chance, this brief time of waiting before Hugh turned up and swept her back into his orbit.
“So, you walked through the door . . . what then?”
“Well, I had no idea where I was. I'd expected London, somewhere I'd recognize, but instead I was in the middle of nowhere—I didn't even know what country! At least there was a road, so I started walking, figuring it would eventually take me somewhere. I had no idea it would be so hard to do something as easy as phone home!” She gave a rueful laugh and shook her head. “Such a long walk! That's when I ruined my shoes—they were these silly little dressy heels, not made for walking. I got blisters. It was horrible!”
She sighed. “You'll think I was a total wimp, but, see, that was the first time I'd felt any kind of pain, well, physical discomfort, since I'd gone away with Mider. It freaked me out. I was hot and sweaty and thirsty, with nothing to drink. My feet hurt like hell, and my back was aching, I couldn't get my breath, and—well, it was totally weird, because until I came back here I didn't even know I was—” she stopped.
“Pregnant?”
She gasped. “How did you know?”
“People saw you.”
“That lady who gave me a coin for the call? Yeah. I was pregnant, pregnant enough to show; but, believe it or not, I didn't even know it.”
“What happened to the baby?”
I couldn't make out her expression in the gathering dark, but she shifted her stance uneasily. “It was born . . . I gave birth . . . maybe prematurely, I'm not sure; it might even have been a miscarriage. It all happened so quickly, not like you hear about. And then they took it away. I never even got to—”
“They?”
“The ladies.”
“What ladies?”
She sighed impatiently. “The others. It wasn't just Mider and me, you know; there were lots of others. I didn't really make friends with them, but . . . they were company. One of them told me that babies were very rare among them. And that when they were born, they didn't often thrive.”
Far away down the winding road I glimpsed a flash of headlights.
I moved a little closer to Peri. “Why did you come back? If life was so pleasant and easy there—”
“That's why.”
I frowned.
“It was all too comfortable. Does that sound perverse? I mean, it's not like I wanted to be sad, or uncomfortable, but—well, some things just ought to make you feel unhappy, don't you think? There, nothing really mattered. I wasn't even sad about the baby. It didn't seem real. I wondered, if the baby had lived, would I have been able to love it? Also, I was starting to forget things. My old life started to seem unreal, too, like a story I'd heard a long time ago, not part of me.”
I could hear a car approaching, noisy in the nighttime stillness.
“After Mider told me that I could come back whenever I wanted, I meant to go lots, to keep in touch. But I forgot. I was starting to forget everything—except maybe my mom. I did remember her, and sometimes I really wished I could be with her, but I don't know, there wasn't any urgency about it. Then I dreamed that I saw Hugh again, and the feeling I had—well, I realized I still loved him. I didn't know how he felt about me, if he even remembered me, but I knew then I had to come back, before it was too late. Even if it was too late, it was what I wanted to do. This is where I belong.”
The car came around the final curve, headlights glaring, blindingly bright, and then swept past.
“How long have I been gone? Tell me the truth. Five years? Ten?”
“Two and a half.”
“So it's not too late?”
Brakes screeched; then the car went into reverse and began to roll back in our direction.
“It's not too late,” I promised.
31. MacRoy's Wife
A Highland crofter by the name of MacRoy one day paused in his work around noon and sat down on a little hillock to rest. And as his gaze swept about, he saw what appeared to be a cloud of midges hovering just above the ground, but as he concentrated he saw that what at first appeared to be insects was in fact a whirling, tumbling storm of wee folk, all dancing madly. Rousing himself from his fascination, MacRoy snatched up a pebble from the ground and threw it into the midst of the throng, shouting, “Let all that is within be mine, in God's name!”
Immediately, all the little people vanished, leaving behind a beautiful woman, as naked as the day she was born. MacRoy gave her his plaid and turned his back to spare her modesty as she fixed it about her. When she was as decently attired as she could manage, he led her to his cottage and gave her bread and water. She could not remember her name or where she'd come from; but she was a beautiful woman in need of protection, and he was a man in want of a wife, and so, very shortly, they were wed.
The years passed happily enough until one day a cattle drover and his son, passing through on their way to a market in the south, stopped by the door to ask lodging for the night. This was granted. The son, a boy of about twelve, was very taken with Mrs. MacRoy, and could hardly take his eyes from her. As well, he kept tugging his father's arm, and telling him to look, until soon the father was staring as hard as the son.
MacRoy was not pleased by this discourtesy. “You must see something very strange about my wife to stare at her the way you do.”
“Indeed,” said the drover. “And had I not seen my own wife die at noon on”—and here he mentioned the day and the year—“I should say that was she!”
MacRoy gaped in wonder at this coincidence, for the hour, day, and year corresponded exactly to the time when he had found the woman who had since become his wife. Drawing them all near about the fire, he proceeded to tell the story. In response, the drover related incidents from his own life: where and how he had met his wife, how he had wooed and won her, when and where they had married, and how they had lived together. As she listened, the woman felt as one waking from a dream. Now she recognized the drover as her husband, and the boy as her son, and, leaning forward eagerly, began to ask for news of other family members, calling them by name. As they talked, more and more details came back to her, more and more vividly, until finally she remembered the whole of her previous life quite clearly.
It soon became obvious to them all what had happened: the woman, lying ill, had been spirited away by the fairies, who left behind a substitute image that had seemed to die. Now the only question was what should be done.
“Let her decide,” said MacRoy to the drover, “whether she will stay with me or go with you.”
They waited, and watched her tensely. The woman looked at neither of the men, but only gazed tenderly at the boy. After a long pause she said, “I will go to my bairns.”
And so MacRoy was a bachelor once again.
32. Jenny
Laura was not waiting for us at the hotel, and the room she had taken for herself and Peri was empty.
I stared at the two beds, one of which appeared to have been slept in, and wondered what had become of Peri's simulacrum. Vani
shed, of course, as illusions do. But if we'd only imagined her, if she'd been some sort of shared hallucination, then what had disturbed the bed?
“Mom's not here,” Peri said.
I looked at Hugh, who wore the same dazed, uncomprehending expression he'd had since picking us up at the roadside. He hadn't asked any questions; in fact, he'd hardly said a word, but from the way he looked at Peri I could tell that he recognized her, and also that he felt utterly bewildered. All his former assurance had deserted him. He still loved her, that was obvious. But her feelings remained a mystery to him, and he was afraid of making the wrong move.
“Well, where is she?”
They both looked at me accusingly. Of course, I had been the last person to see Laura. I remembered too well how she'd vanished in the mist with the horse and the child even as I recalled the old stories of fairy morality. For a few seconds, I panicked. What if Mider had let Peri go in exchange for her mother? Bewitched by the fairy child, Laura might have gone anywhere.
“Maybe she got lost coming back—she could be wandering around out there in the dark—we'd better go look for her.” I tried to sound calm, but they picked up on my anxiety at once, and we made a mad scramble to get outside and across the road, searching in the dark for the path Laura and I had taken hours earlier. Hugh and I had our torches, but there wasn't a spare for Peri.
“Keep close together,” I warned. “We must not get separated, got that? Peri, I want you to hold Hugh's hand.”
I was trying to think ahead, trying to remain rational and make plans, but luckily it wasn't necessary, as our quest took no more than a couple of minutes.
We found Laura almost immediately. She was fast asleep on the ground at the edge of the woods, lying curled up at the base of the sign that marked the start of the circular walk. She'd used her soft leather shoulder bag as a pillow, and I could see at a glance that it was emptier than when we'd set out, and guessed that the Guardians, having brought her this far, had not resumed their toy forms but vanished back into their own world where, perhaps, there was another golden-haired, magical child it was their duty to protect.
