Scene 43
The room as before, but seen through Kit’s eyes. He stands behind Poley, facing the bewildered-looking Queen and, beyond her, Will and Frizer and Skeres.
“You do not want to die,” the elf whispered through Kit’s lips. “You do not want to die, Kit Marlowe.”
And while Frizer, Skeres, and Poley stared, wide-eyed, the elf went on, speaking persuasively through Kit’s mouth, trying to convince Kit’s ears.
“Look, look at all you’ll have.”
Behind Kit’s eyes, like an awakening dream, images of food passed, and images of young bodies, young people, female and male, ready to obey his every whim, and images of Kit, crowned, upon a throne.
“If it’s the child you lament,” the elf said, “you can sire many.”
Those words broke the spell. The images disappeared from Kit’s eyes, leaving only the image of Imp. Imp, dead in that alley.
Nothing—no one—could ever replace Imp.
How could this creature, this being, so lack feeling and love that it did not even know that one child was not another, that a child could not be replaced?
And such an elf, such a creature, would rule the world?
The arms that had started turning pliable, the legs that Kit had almost yielded control of onto the elf, suddenly became rigid again and locked, with all of Kit’s strength, against the elf’s desire.
Kit had not wanted to die before. No, God’s death, he’d wanted to avenge himself on the elf, he’d been willing to endure torture for that, but in faith, he’d not wanted to die.
He still didn’t want to die. The elf knew the truth about Kit. Kit loved the world and its joys too much to wish to depart it at twenty-nine.
Yet he would die, he thought. He would die to take out the wolf with him.
He saw Will Shakespeare draw his dagger, a dagger cheap enough that it probably wouldn’t pierce a good suit, and Kit wished it would pierce a suit and more, wished it would plunge into his own treacherous heart.
Will jumped straight at Kit.
Skeres and Frizer moved too late.
Kit still remained immobile, holding the elf at bay, but just barely. Like two men, locked in arm wrestling, each just as strong as the other, they each kept the other from moving but could do no more.
And Kit wished that Will would kill him.
But Will stopped, the dagger poised, in front of Kit as though his courage failed him.
“I cannot kill you, Kit, I cannot,” Will yelled.
Within Kit the wolf roared, “Nonsense. All this is nonsense.”
He raised a hand so suddenly that Kit didn’t anticipate it or stop it.
Force flowed through the hand, magical force, the strange tingling sensation that Kit had felt before.
Was the creature sending the Queen to Never Land? Could humans be sent there?
But instead, the wolf seized Kit’s mouth and spoke through it, once more. “All of you,” he said as energy flowed through his hand. “Kill her.”
Poley, Skeres, and Frizer unsheathed their daggers.
Will looked confused.
Kit gathered all his strength. He’d die trying this, but he must shield the Queen with his own body.
Scene 44
The same scene as before, but through Will’s eyes. Will stares in horror as the two men beside him advance toward the Queen, daggers unsheathed. Marlowe steps forward, toward the Queen, in a slow walk, like an ill-controlled puppet.
For the oddest moment, for no more than a breath, Will wished to kill the Queen.
It was the voice of the elf, and whatever magical compulsion he’d thrown from his lifted hand.
But Will had been bespelled before, and had endured the spells and lived through them.
Will was a Sunday child, who saw the hidden and felt what no other man could feel. That gave him power for magic perceived is magic halved.
He shook the spell from his back, like a dog shaking water from his fur.
“You may come all, curs,” the Queen yelled. “I’ll see you all hanging high.” She twirled her rusty, edgeless sword with amazing agility, smacking Skeres’s, Frizer’s, and Poley’s daggers from their hand. “I will see you all hanging. I knew what villainy was passing. I knew Cecil hid things from me.”
In her triumph she didn’t see Frizer snatching Kit’s dagger from its sheath and speeding it toward her heart.
It all took the space of a breath.
Thoughts seared through Will’s brain like a dream. He couldn’t let the Queen die. The whole world depended on her, old and insane though she might be. Order must be preserved. Hamnet must be allowed to grow up. The wolf must be defeated.
As the thoughts flashed, already Will was airborne, leaping.
He jumped in front of the Queen at the same time that Kit, in his lumbering walk, had got close to her.
Not sure if Kit was himself or Sylvanus-controlled, Will gave Kit a shove, seeking to get him out of the way.
In that moment, Frizer lurched forward, and Kit, tripping, fell toward Frizer.
The dagger Frizer held, Kit’s own dagger, plunged into Kit’s eye.
Blood jetted forth.
Kit dropped to the floor, writhing.
Horrified, blood-spattered, Will stepped back. He thought that he heard Kit’s voice whisper “Thank you,” but he had to be dead before he even touched the floor, and from his dead lips the wolf screamed.
“Oh, curse the luck and the world and all of you. I will not die alone.”
Kit’s dead hand rose, and from Kit’s still-twitching fingers, magical sparks flew.
Will felt as if a roaring wind sucked him through unbelievable ice and unbearable cold.
Scene 45
Never Land, where Quicksilver and Ariel stand. Of a sudden, in an explosion of light, Kit Marlowe materializes, a dagger through his eye, bleeding profusely—from a certain transparent greyness, it’s clear he’s a ghost. And Will materializes after Kit, looking bewildered.
Where was Will?
At first Will thought he’d emerged onto a foggy shore, with the roar of the ocean in the distance, and sand swirling in the whistling wind.
Then he blinked and he realized that he stood in a vast forest, the trees towering overhead.
He blinked again, and saw himself in a city, with tall, baublelike, half-transparent palaces rising in all directions.
And through these half-perceived, half-seen structures, Will saw Kit—or was it Kit’s ghost?—a pale and wan Ariel and a Quicksilver so transparent, so weak, that he might well be a ghost himself.
“Never Land,” Will whispered to himself, remembering the place where Quicksilver had been sent. “I am in Never Land.” But saying didn’t help his bewildered senses to understand the place.
He stepped, half-dazed, toward Quicksilver while Marlowe, smiling softly despite his horrible, bleeding wound and the blood fast congealing on his blue suit, walked toward Will, his mincing step a fair imitation of his stroll at St. Paul’s.
“Friend Will,” he said. “I must thank you—”
“Will,” Quicksilver said. His voice was very faint, very cold, little more than the whisper of the icy wind. “And Kit. What happened to Kit? What woe is here?”
And Ariel said, “Milord, do not speak. Save your energy.”
Never Land, Will thought. Which meant that Quicksilver was nearly dead as the sun would now be setting in the mortal world.
A flash of light shone behind them, and the wolf materialized. Transparent, but not so much as Quicksilver, not even so much as Marlowe, it looked dark—dark and massive.
“You are my soul’s abhorrence,” the wolf growled. Though in canine form, he spoke with human words, words were shaped and built of growls and malice.
The landscape which, for the moment, had settled to gigantic trees with blowing sheets of moss hanging from them, seemed to become darker, whatever light there was being concentrated, caught by the wolf’s dark form, his dark core.
“
You”—it turned to Kit—“have cost me my body, so hard-earned.”
“And you”—the baleful eyes of the beast turned to Will—“it’s the second time you cross me, and it shall be the last.” The wolf’s fur ruffled and his eyes seemed to flash with cold light as his fangs glinted by the pale light of an evanescent palace. “And you . . .” He turned to Quicksilver. “You, traitor spawn of a lowly woodland spirit, you who call yourself my brother, you and your half-changeling woman also shall die. All of you shall die here. All of you at my mercy. For I have more energy than any of you here, and here I shall ensure that you all die.”
Will felt as though fear froze him, terror gripped him, panic stopped his breath.
He’d never see Nan again. He’d die here in this land of half-reality and no one would even know where he had gone.
Or why.
Scene 46
The same scene as previously, but seen through Quicksilver’s eyes. The landscape seems to waver and shift even more than before, since Quicksilver is dying of weakness and lack of magic.
Quicksilver saw fear of death in Will’s eyes. Ariel, her arm around Quicksilver, attempting to support him, trembled at the wolf’s words.
And Kit—Kit was perforce already dead, already a ghost. Never Land would eat the substance of Kit’s spirit and wholly drain him away. Kit would be no more. No soul would remain of the great human poet. Kit would have no ever-after, no life after life such as other humans were entitled to.
And Quicksilver himself, feeling himself die, could only think that he couldn’t allow that.
He himself was dead. All his mistakes, all he’d done since taking the crown of the hill, had only justified Sylvanus’s belief that he’d bring ruin to all.
Ariel had told Quicksilver of the blight and the deaths in the hill, and on whom should the blame for those rest, but on Quicksilver?
Oh, let him die, but let Ariel and Will leave here in peace. And let Kit go free, while his spirit yet existed.
Trembling, but thinking that if the wolf listened to anything, it would be Quicksilver’s true submission, Quicksilver shook off Ariel’s arm.
He walked halfway to the wolf and knelt down on the shifting ground, now marsh now sandy desert.
How cold the ground. How cold Quicksilver. He gathered his meager force and spoke, his voice scarcely louder than the howling wind. “Brother, the time and case require haste: Look here, I throw my infamy at thee. I will not ruin my father’s hill, nor by demanding the crown see my friends dead. Maybe I was never fit to govern the hill. The present seems to confirm it.” Quicksilver took his hand to his chest in a show of honesty. Never Land had leeched him so, he could barely feel his own hand.
“I’ll no more bend the fatal instruments of war against my brother and my lawful king. Aye, have the kingdom, Sylvanus, return to the hill. Let the hill power cloak you in a new body. And be our king, and I your loyal subject. In witness of which, I bend my knee.” He opened his hands, as if to show that he was there, on his knees, and he bent his head in true submission.
Oh, only let Sylvanus believe his submission. Oh, only let the others go.
Behind him, Ariel said, “No, milord. You cannot give the hill to him.”
Quicksilver looked over his shoulder. A single look that commanded his loved lady to silence.
The wolf grinned, fangs exposed in a gloating smile. “You beg prettily, brother.” The smile broadened and green, glowing saliva dripped from the fangs. “See what fear does. And longing for life.”
His life? Quicksilver had never expected to get out of this with his life. “Life? Oh, I long not for life, nor did I ever expect you’d let me live. Only let these three go on whom my heart is set. Let Ariel to the hill, let Will to London, and let Kit go to whatever destiny awaits him, beyond this desolate land, where his spirit will be swallowed by nothingness.” He looked back over his shoulder, taking a last look at Kit, Ariel, and Will. “Listen, listen. I am so sorry for my trespass that I here proclaim myself ready to die. Ariel, you must be loyal to my brother, now your king. And Will, you must strive to be a friend to the king of elves. And Kit . . . . Fare thee well, Kit . . . and pardon me. I was wrong and so to my brother I turn my blushing cheeks.
“Pardon me, Sylvanus. Spare them. And take revenge on me as you will.” His words were exhausted with his breath. He knelt, and tried to hope.
Silence reigned yet after he had stopped speaking.
The cold, leeching wind howled around them and Quicksilver shivered with it.
Then Sylvanus laughed. His laughter, colder than his voice, visibly curled in coils of darkness around them all. “Brother, you call me? I have no brother, I am like no brother, and this word ‘love,’ which graybeards call divine, be resident in men like one another and not in me: I am myself alone. And what do you expect with your speech to excite: pity or fear?” The dog snarled and growled and, with bared fangs, approached Quicksilver’s kneeling figure, walked around and around him, in sullen menace.
Quicksilver quivered, but made no sound, nor did he change his kneeling, imploring stance. Was it all lost? Even this, his meager hope, that he might die here alone?
“You ask me to spare your loved ones? I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear.” More laughter echoed, chillingly, through the air.
“Indeed,” the wolf spoke again. “I often heard my mother say I came into the world with my legs forward. The midwife wonder’d and the women cried ‘O, bless us, he is born with teeth!’ And so I was; which plainly signified that I should snarl and bite and play the dog.”
With a low growl, half-laughter half-menace, the wolf said, “And so I shall. And so you die. All of you.”
Quicksilver saw the wolf jump through the air and tried to roll out of the way. But he had not the energy to be quick, and he knew he would die.
And the other three hostages after him.
Scene 47
The same scene, but seen through Kit’s one eye.
Kit saw the wolf leap toward the defenseless, kneeling Quicksilver. If any love remained in Kit’s stilled heart, it was his devotion to the dual sovereign of Elvenland.
He jumped forward, at the same time that Ariel did.
He smiled at Ariel, a flashing smile, and didn’t realize that his injury might make it look like a rictus, until he saw her answering, startled gaze.
The elf and the human who loved the same being looked at each other, both with a kind of wonder that the other should feel the same, then turned their attention to their beloved who must be protected.
Quicksilver must be saved, and for that he depended on them now that he was for once too weak to save himself.
Ariel folded herself upon Quicksilver, protecting his body with hers.
Kit interposed himself between them and the wolf’s snarling menace.
“No,” Kit yelled. “No, cur, no, mangy wolf. You shall not have him. Your crimes end here. I’m not afraid of you, for I have died already, and a man can die but once.”
But even as Kit yelled, the wolf jumped through Kit as though Kit weren’t there and set to, growling and snarling, tearing at Ariel’s arm that protected Quicksilver’s face.
Scene 48
Never Land from Will’s viewpoint, as he watches the wolf attack the Queen of Elvenland.
Will felt frozen with fear, iced with despair.
Watching the wolf bite and tear at Ariel’s arms, listening to her scream, hearing Quicksilver imploring her to let the wolf at him, listening to Marlowe bemoan his immateriality, Will thought the wolf would come for him next.
If Quicksilver’s courage wouldn’t move the wolf, if Ariel’s grace didn’t mollify it, if Kit’s mad rage was to no effect, what could Will do that would save him? Save them all?
Will was a mere mortal, without even the magic that Ariel must still have, after Never Land had leeched almost all.
Will was a nothing. A failed poet. An absent father.
The wind of Never Land robbed him of hope and strength
.
And yet an idea formed in his mind. The wolf had taken human form to do a type of magic. Sympathetic magic. Will’s hand fell to his dagger.
The wolf was not truly alive, and he couldn’t be killed, and yet . . .
Holding his dagger, clasping it tight, Will said, “Thou art a dagger of the mind, and will cut through spirit.”
The idea was insane, yet the new Will, the Will who had learned to be foolish sometimes and expose himself to ridicule to save himself greater pains, would try this. And what could happen to Will that would be worse than shortening a life expectancy little worth mentioning?
He stepped up behind the wolf, who, absorbed in mauling the Queen of Fairyland, didn’t notice the mere mortal.
Will drew his dagger.
“No, Will. He’ll go for you,” Kit Marlowe whispered, his immaterial form touching Will. “And he can’t be killed thus.”
But Will raised his dagger and let it fall. The wolf could be killed thus, for it was magic. Sympathetic magic. Will would do the gesture and thus visualize the result and bring it about by the force of his wishing.
The dagger went into the wolf’s grey fur.
The wolf howled, letting go of Ariel, and turned his head to try to bite Will, but his fangs wouldn’t reach
Black blood poured out over Will’s hand.
And Will plunged the dagger again and yet again.
The wolf bayed and writhed.
Will visualized the wolf dead, the force gone out from the dread creature. “Now die, die, die, die, die.”
The wolf bayed a last, awful scream, half-human, half-canine, and then collapsed, rolling off the sovereigns of Elvenland.
Ariel stood, shaking, cradling her torn, mangled arm.
Quicksilver stood, quivering, almost wholly transparent.
All Night Awake Page 28
