by Edward Aubry
Harrison wondered what the Kennedy assassination could possibly have to do with Dallas's idiotic dice power, or the moon landing's connection with Sarah's talent for stopping clocks. Details were starting to evade him. Maybe he was hitting his information saturation point. This was, somehow, impossibly, even bigger than he thought it was.
"Harrison," the queen sounded like she might be losing him and wanted him to stay on track, "your work is not over yet. Ru'opihm's prison holds, but it is weak. Its walls must be braced. As long as this world is in flux, we are all in danger."
Harrison looked up. "Will you help us?"
She looked away. "I cannot act. It has taken all of my strength to rebuild my realm. I haven't the force left to solve this crisis. If I try, my people will likely all perish."
"Can you at least tell us what we should do?"
A tear fell from her eye. It was a ray of purest sunlight, and it pulled at Harrison's heart. "Sometimes," she said, "the magic doesn't work unless the puzzle is solved. I'm sorry." She wiped the tear, then touched her moist finger to Harrison's cheek. It felt like cool, pure trust. "You are the Key, Harrison. You have the Tools, and you have the Power. Now you must find the courage to fix this world." She looked at Harrison, then at Apryl, looked them both in the eye as she spoke.
"Fix this world." He had never liked riddles. He liked this one least of all, especially since he had already solved a piece of it.
"I don't understand," said Apryl. "You just told us we can't set the world back."
"She doesn't mean repair it," said Harrison, still looking at the queen. "She means make it permanent."
Chapter Thirty-Three:
History
The discussion continued in that vein for quite a while. Harrison's sense of time was significantly skewed by the effects of Faerie, and he had no estimate for how long they had been there, but much of the time he spent wishing he were thinking of better questions. Even so, virtually everything she told them was new, surprising, or helpful.
"So is the counterbomb plan completely worthless?" he asked at one point. He assumed it was and was trying to formally and logically eliminate it.
"No!" said the queen. "The counterbomb is a stroke of genius. I wouldn't even have thought of it myself. Use it correctly, and it should save you measureless labor."
Harrison shook his head at that one. Hadley had been right. They were fortunate to have someone with such a gift for understanding the inexplicable. "Thank you, Dr. Tucker," he muttered, before asking, "But we can't set it off in New York?"
"Indeed not."
The process was insanely frustrating. She wanted to help them, he was sure, and yet she had made it clear that anything they didn't deduce on their own-anything they didn't earn-they couldn't use.
Apryl spoke up again. "Why were we attacked when we were?" she asked, She was becoming less timid as the interview continued and had asked some of the more cogent questions. Harrison thought this was a good one. "How did the …?" she turned to Glimmer. "What did you call them?"
"Minions."
Apryl faced the queen again. "How did the minions of Evil know where we were? That we were just figuring out what we were up against?"
"Just as you have been given an advantage with the special abilities you possess," Titania said, "you have also been given a handicap."
"What kind of handicap?" Harrison asked.
"Coincidence. The world has been subtly engineered so that unlikely juxtapositions are now not quite so unlikely, more often than not in such a way that they will work against you. This is why your enemies chose that moment to attack you. They had no way of knowing why that was the right moment. It simply was."
He remembered their adventure in Texas. "Scott! That's why he was someone I knew!" He thought back on his blunder, when he had called out their captor's name, and spoiled their cover. "I was set up!"
"Yes."
"Wait a minute. If they found us once, could they have tracked us the whole way here? Have we put you all in danger?"
"No," said the queen. "You're quite safe here."
"How do you know?" Desperation was starting to creep into his voice.
"I rimed the transport," said Glimmer.
This halted his runaway fear. He rolled her sentence around in his head. "What rhymes with transport?"
The pixie sighed impatiently. "Not that kind of rime. I put a coating on it. I did it as soon as I figured out what was after us. They won't be able to find the transport by magic for a while. If at all."
Harrison tried to imagine what she had done to the buggy. It had looked no different to him, and he suddenly had a nagging thought that she might have covered it with something toxic. "What kind of coating?" he asked.
"Altruism," she said. "Feel-good stuff. Evil doesn't understand that."
"Oh. Wait, I thought you couldn't cast a spell on anything tech."
"It's not a spell. It's just a rime. It'll probably flake off pretty soon, but by now we're so far away from where we were, they'll have to start over, anyway."
He mentally filed this new information with all the other magical abstractions he did not quite get. He could feel himself becoming exhausted. Over the course of their discussion, he had learned a great deal, but he was still having trouble making all the pieces fit. He was also feeling overwhelmed by the revelation that his ability with locks had been given to him on purpose. He had been selected to fill a vital role in this conflict, and the very idea frightened him. This was what Glimmer had meant when she had said that he mattered. The enemy had set spies on him, had used both magic and technology to try to kill him. He wondered what kind of threat he could possibly pose. The whole thing seemed unfair.
"Why didn't you do that before?" he suddenly thought to ask.
"I didn't think of it before," she said. Unsatisfying, but consistent with her inconsistency.
"Is there anything else you can do you haven't told us about?" The question was not quite sarcastic.
Glimmer rolled her eyes. "Of course," she said.
"Of course," he repeated. He knew it had been far too much to hope she would be specific, but it had been worth a try.
"Milady?" said Glimmer. Harrison looked at the pixie, and only then realized that she had been fidgeting for a while. She had filled in a few details as they went along, but she had asked no questions since she had asked about Oberon. She asked one now.
"Where are all the pixies?"
Harrison knew this must have been tearing her up from the moment they had arrived in Faerie. He was amazed she had been able to hold out as long as she had before asking, but then it occurred to him that it was probably a bigger struggle to pose the question than to withhold it.
The queen looked on her pixie with kind eyes. "Little Light," she said, with a deeply sad smile, "you are all the pixies."
Glimmer was devastated. It was the answer she had dreaded, and Harrison found that he had been dreading it right along with her. "Harry?" she said. He could see the strain as she held herself together. "Would you please leave me alone with my Queen?"
Harrison was reluctant to go. "Milady?"
The queen nodded. "You've run out of questions. You'll think of more when you're far from here, but they won't be more important than those you've already asked. I could spend a lifetime giving you information about this blended world, and something would still surprise you after you left. Remember that. The unlikely answer will often be the correct one."
He nodded. He had learned not to be overconfident about understanding his situation. He had already figured out that there would always be more he did not know about magic than what he did know. She was essentially telling him to expect the unexpected. He already did that.
"You're ready, Harrison," she said. "You're the Key."
This was the second time she had called him a key. He thought she was referring to his lock trick before, but this time he heard it as a proper noun. Key, not just key. He was trembling. "I'll do my best," he said.
"Your best is more than most might hope for," she said. They both stood, as did Apryl. The Queen of Faerie held out her right hand, palm down. Harrison took it, thinking to shake it, but then, on impulse, he dropped to one knee and brushed his lips across the back of her hand. He could feel a charge from it. It was like the shock effect he got from touching Glimmer, but without the sting. He looked up, and saw her smile of approval. He had gotten this right. It gave him goose bumps. Apryl was giving him sarcastic eyes. He could only guess how foolish his expression of joy looked.
As he stood and pulled his hand away, he felt something fall into his palm. He looked at it surreptitiously, then closed his hand. He looked back to the queen, but she would no longer make eye contact with him. He looked at her hands, noticing again that each of her delicate fingers was adorned with a unique and beautiful silver ring.
He turned to leave.
They had taken two steps before Harrison stopped. He moved back to Glimmer. She looked wretched. "Is this goodbye?" he asked. He couldn't bear taking this image of her away as his last impression.
She smiled then. "Oh, Sweetie," she said, touching his cheek. "You'll know when it's goodbye."
His relief was profound, but he knew it was only a reprieve. He could feel the stress fracture forming in his heart.
* * *
The others were still sitting or lying in the outer chamber. Alec was sleeping on a bed of carnations, and Jeannette was sitting on a bench woven from living ivy. Hadley was seated on the far side of the room, arms folded across his chest and his shoulders pulled up. He looked cold. Harrison could see he was still sweating. Claudia and Jake were playing some variation of badminton over a net of dew-covered spider web, giggling as they volleyed. The motion of the birdie was approximately parabolic, but it was going in minor, random dashes in all directions. Harrison suddenly identified why. They were batting a faerie back and forth. She was giggling, too. Several other fey, some armed, were also in the room. Some were watching them, some were cheering the game, some took no interest.
Jeannette saw them and stood up. "Are we ready to go?" she asked.
"Not yet," said Harrison. "Glimmer needed to talk to the Queen." He turned his back to them and reached into his breast pocket with his right hand. The hand came away empty.
"What did you all talk about?" the doctor asked. She did not seem bothered by the possibility that her question was inappropriate.
"We should talk about it when we're back at the transport," said Harrison. He looked at Alec, who was snoring quietly. "And at our best," he added.
Jeannette nodded. "Are we heading back to Chicago? Or are we still on our scavenger hunt?"
It was a reasonable question. Even given that he wanted to postpone the larger discussion, Harrison found it awkward that she still assumed he was the decision-maker. Then he remembered that for the next couple days, he would be.
"Scavenger hunt," he said. "She likes the counterbomb idea." He didn't tell her that they would not be using it to bring back the world as they had known it. He could not tell her that her husband was still lost. That moment would come later, but not now. He thought back to Titania, to her own certainty that her lover, the King of Faerie, was gone forever.
"We can't take it back to New York, though," said Apryl.
Hadley had rejoined the group just in time to hear this. "What?" he said. "That … that doesn't make sense." He looked concerned, uncertain.
Jeannette frowned. "I thought that was the whole point. Where should we take it, then?"
Harrison shrugged. "I don't have any idea. She was pretty vague about a lot of stuff." He hoped his frustration was not too obvious. "We'll just have to take it as far away from New York as we … as we can …" He had started the sentence with barely restrained sarcasm, as though his instructions were so vague as to be meaningless. But as the words came, meaning emerged. "Oh, God," he whispered. "That's it. Of course."
"What's it?" said Apryl.
Harrison looked at Jeannette. The steel in her eyes told him she was remembering the same map. "We're going to need a boat," he said.
"There's one waiting for us in the Chesapeake Bay," said Glimmer.
Harrison turned with a start. There she was, hovering right outside the door to the throne room. Many things struck Harrison at once. He congratulated himself for solving another fragment of the puzzle, he delighted in the fact of the new resource. Overshadowing that, though, was Glimmer's face. She wore the darkest expression he had ever seen. He didn't dare ask what she had discussed with the queen. Several possibilities occurred to him, none of them cheery. Her gloom was even more troubling when coupled with the one word that shone for him like the brightest of beacons.
"Us?" he said.
"Apparently my work is not quite finished," said the pixie.
His heart leapt up. Glimmer was radiating rage, or despair, or something dreadful he could not quite identify, and he rationalized that this could not be a reaction to her having to stay with him. It must be about the other pixies. The lost ones. He desperately hoped that she was not bitter about being kept from Faerie to stay with them.
But deep down, in a place he would not even allow himself to see, he selfishly did not care. He would cling to every additional moment they could spend together, no matter the cost.
"Glimmer?"
"Yeah?" She looked exhausted.
He hesitated. "Faeries? They're not ugly."
She sighed. "Yeah. I know."
He waited for her to look up. "But they've got nothing on you."
At her scale, it was difficult to tell, but he thought he saw her lip tremble. "Yeah," she said. "I know that, too."
* * *
Harrison found the experience of exiting Faerie to be like stepping off a boat onto dry land. He had become used to the unearthly effect, gotten his sea legs. He still noticed it, but he had lost all sense of how severe it was. As soon as he passed through the double-tree door, the abrupt absence of disorientation slammed into him and he lost his balance. As the others came through, they fell over, too.
They found their piles of belongings untouched. Harrison picked up his watch and checked the time. They had been in Faerie for about seven hours. It had seemed like far less.
Everyone took a few minutes to don their clothing, and the men had to face away again while Apryl and Claudia did the skirt exchange. While everyone was putting their pants and watches and shoes (and belly rings and bras) back on, Harrison pulled a silver ring out of his shirt pocket and slipped it onto the middle finger of his right hand. It was a paler white than any silver he had ever seen before and was in the form of a uniform band of ivy leaves. It fit him perfectly. He admired it while trying not to draw attention to it. Titania had slipped this bauble into his hand when he had kissed hers. Clearly, she had meant this token for him. He cherished it.
"I'm hungry," said Jake.
"Good," said Harrison. "That means you were a good boy in there. I'm famished myself." As the words came out of his mouth, he questioned the wisdom of talking about being hungry. Too late, he realized. Anyone who wasn't thinking about food before was now. He wished they had thought to bring some. He had seen plenty of clear streams on their way in, so water would not be a problem. They would simply have to grin and bear their hunger.
The hike back to the buggy was silent. They all felt depleted, as if hung over, and no one was eager to talk about their experience in Faerie, or their withdrawal from it. It was not a silence drawn from hard feelings, but Harrison could feel it dragging him down. After about fifteen minutes, he had to break it.
"Why did she call you Abril?" he asked Apryl.
"It's my name," she said without breaking stride.
"What about Apryl-with-a-Y?" he asked.
She sighed. "Abril is the name on my birth certificate. I've been April since I was very little. They mean the same thing, so it made little difference. The only person who kept calling me Abril while I was growing up was my grandmother."
>
"Were you named after her?" he asked. He had told her why he didn't use the name Harry, and he was looking for a parallel story, some frame of reference they could share.
She laughed. "I was named after my due date. Mama started calling me Abril while I was still in her womb, just to call the baby something. Eventually the joke turned into a name she liked, and I conveniently turned out to be a girl, so I became Abril for real. Then they started calling me April, like it was a cute nickname to call me that in English. My teachers all thought my name was April, anyway, even when they saw it in print, so it just sort of morphed."
"What about the Y?"
"Oh, I added that when I got to college. Just to be different, I guess. Now that I think about it, I probably should've just gone back to using Abril. Which would have been different enough all by itself. I guess I just wanted it to be a name I picked, instead of someone else picking it for me."
"Huh," said Harrison. While he found this interesting, he had run out of things to ask or add. The conversation fizzled out.
Alec was wide awake now, but unable to talk and unwilling to look at anyone. Still, he took the lead with a bold, swift stride. Harrison tried to keep up at first, but eventually decided to let him have some solitude. Overall, the walk seemed shorter than it had in the other direction. Harrison thought this might be some residual faerie effect, then caught himself projecting magic into a common phenomenon. What made the walk seem shorter was no more than the small degree of familiarity these woods now offered.
Alec reached the transport well ahead of the others, and when they arrived, Harrison found him inside, asleep, holding a half-eaten omni. It appeared to contain a sausage and some mashed potatoes, which he must have been eating with his fingers. He gently removed it from the Director's hand and set it on the seat next to him.
