Unclosing my eyes, which I had shut in the first new thrill of pain, I saw that now M. Frostflower, by kneeling with one knee upon the window sill—the other leg seemed still to be in the belfry’s interior, and I hoped it would anchor her—had succeeded in catching hold of the minute hand’s point and appeared to be concentrating upon it with all her powers. Her own eyelids were closed, and, fearing that any alarm might act upon her more dangerously than upon a sleepwalker, I determined to clench my teeth and make no sound. My resolution was assisted by the minute hand’s seeming indeed to have halted in its efforts to follow its customary course.
Meanwhile, M. Thorn was climbing up the outside of the belfry, finding toeholds in brickwork and ivy. Being unable to turn my head, I could scarcely catch her movements out of the corner of one eye, and it was something of a shock when her dagger blade drove down hard into the clock face between the minute hand and my ear. For a moment I thought she had meant to dispatch me with merciful speed, and missed her aim. Only gradually did I come to appreciate that she had done it to maximize my safety and minimize my discomfort by holding the minute hand as steady as possible against the fluctuations caused by her further operations, as her friend was holding it against its own mechanism.
By inserting part of her sword between the minute hand and clock face above my head, clamping one leg round the curve of the window arch, and holding fast with one arm to the brickwork, M. Thorn was able, at last, to lever up on the thin minute hand until it broke with a grinding snap. Her position during all this was of course yet more perilous than that of the sorceress; ruminating upon this afterward was to cause me acute embarrassment for my initial adverse reactions to the guerilla. At the moment, I could feel little save relief as M. Frostflower unclosed her eyes, eased the broken end of the minute hand out of and away from my neck, cast it clattering into the belfry, and followed it safely inside.
“Barely broke the skin,” said M. Thorn, for another thirteenth peal had ended and the fiddle cacophony was only just starting up. “Get yourself back inside.” She gave my cranium a little shove, and I brought my head back inside, exercising the utmost caution, and taking care to avoid putting my hand to my neck and thus risk increasing my giddiness by the sight of my own blood, until I should be safely on the solid floor.
My vertigo was scarcely lessened by the unmusical screeching of the fiddle, but M. Frostflower helped steady me in my descent of the ladder. Once on the floor, I permitted myself the luxury of collapsing.
M. Frostflower found a dusty bottle of Hollands gin, obviously put here long ago for the occasional refreshment of the belfry-man, and administered it to me both externally—by dabbing it on my face with a handkerchief—and internally, by holding the bottle to my lips. By this time, M. Thorn was safely inside, leaning against the wall with her arms folded, her weapons sheathed, and her face wearing a scowl as she regarded the Devil, who had once more begun swinging on the remains of the bell-rope. M. Frostflower probed my injury with the utmost tenderness and, at the next hiatus in the tolling, pronounced it neither so deep as I had supposed nor yet so trifling as M. Thorn had insinuated. The bladelike edge had penetrated skin and flesh, but stopped at the tendon.
“I think,” said M. Frostflower, “from how easily I seemed able to manipulate the time of that ‘clock’ device, that I can heal you in a few moments. Shall I try?”
“By all means,” I replied, not a little interested.
Then followed a most remarkable experience. Laying her fingers on my neck near the wound, my angel closed her eyes and sat perfectly still. M. Thorn, the dog, and the Devil took on the appearance of so many statues, while the tones of the fiddle sank to a basso below the bottom limit of human audibility, and the very motes of dust ceased their dance and hung all but motionless in the sunbeam above my head. In myself, I observed a quickening of breath and heartbeat, and a strange sort of ... I can, perhaps, best characterize it as a crawling, somewhat as if my blood had become surcharged with soda water, though this might make it sound an unpleasant sensation, when on the contrary it was remarkably agreeable and soothing.
Presently I heard the fiddle sounds again, which rapidly achieved their former scratchy pitch; the Devil, the dog, and M. Thorn began once again to move; and the dust motes to whirl lazily in their ray of light. M. Frostflower opened her eyes and breathed a sigh of happy satisfaction. Lifting one hand to my neck, I found the cut entirely healed, not even a scab remaining. As a side benefit, my bruises, too, seemed to have vanished—to be replaced, less happily, with voracious hunger and raging thirst.
“I speeded your body’s time,” my white lady explained. “Now, if you are not to lose three weeks from the end of your natural lifespan, I’ll have to put you into a trance state for a short while. It should seem a very restful sleep. I’d prefer to do it here, at once, since my power of time manipulation seems to work wonderfully well in this world, and it some worlds it fails completely.”
“I have no objection whatsoever, assuming that infernal clock bell doesn’t wake me—but wait!” I cried, sitting up just as the little fellow was arranging his fiddle for another hop up to the end of the bell-rope. “M. Devil, suppose we were to break off all this clock’s minute hands, leaving only the seven shorter hour hands? Would that satisfy your desire to torment these hapless folk with minute-by-minute uncertainties, while leaving them in peace to readjust their lives hour by hour?”
He paused with one foot on the fiddle and the other poised in midair, stood storklike for a moment rubbing his chin, and ultimately nodded. “Yes, I believe it would. I’ll even lend a hand with the job.”
“Thank the gods for a happy ending,” commented M. Thorn. “All right, Frost, put M. Corwin under and we’ll tackle the job while he’s sleeping it off. Save a little time.”
From that deep and trancelike sleep I fully expected to awaken alone once more beside the dank tarn of Auber—i.e., the Sparks McFarlane Memorial Outdoor Pool. I came again to myself, however, still in the clock belfry of Vondervotteimittiss.
The Devil was gone, and in his place sat the belfry-man, pulling alternately at his bottle of gin and his pipe, which was fumigating the steeple nicely. M.’s Frostflower and Thorn, together with their dog, were at the farthest window from that screen of tobacco smoke, no more than half visible through the haze. I joined them.
“You haff restored our good old course uff dings,” said the belfry-man, nodding to us. “Nodt qvite der same as id oudt do pe,” he added, with a somewhat annoyed glance at the pile of seven broken minute hands in one corner, “bodt still wery much petter den id vos vhile dot foreign chentleman vos here. Ve dank you. Dere vill pe sauerkraut und sausages vaiting vor you downshtairs.”
“Yes, yes,” snapped M. Thorn, “we heard all that before.”
“He did nodt,” the belfry-man rejoined, with a nod at me. He then lost no time in returning to his pipe.
“Does the ‘foreign gentleman,’” I asked of my saviors, a bit anxiously, “still labor under the misapprehension that I have bet him my head?”
M. Thorn grinned. “He did, but I won it from him at Falling Doubles. Don’t worry—I don’t want it. Not detached from the rest of you, anyway. I give it back to you free, even if that was one of the best blamed dice series I ever rolled.”
“He seemed more interested in mischief than in true wickedness,” said M. Frostflower, to which her friend added,
“We’ve met worse. All in all, for a demon, this one wasn’t too bad a little fellow.”
That was a matter of opinion, but I refrained from pointing out that neither of them had had their lives, clocks, and sauerkraut disrupted for two centuries and a half, nor stood entrapped whilst awaiting decapitation. I merely inquired, “What now?”
“Now,” M. Thorn remarked, cleaning her fingernails, “we go down and eat. And then we send you home. We can do that, anyway, even if we can’t get home ourselves quite yet.”
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br /> M. Frostflower sighed and explained: “If you step into the Circle while I hold it, M. Corwin, and stand just inside its rim, I can cause it to review the worlds. When you recognize your own, it will ... reassimilate you.”
“That sounds admirable,” said I, “but will my world recognize me? For I cannot rest at all sure that I shall recognize it. My perception of places often depends more upon my internal mood than upon my external surroundings.”
The guerilla smote her forehead. “That’s right! The young lunker’s crazy.”
“Not crazy,” I informed her with all suitable asperity. “I simply enjoy a well-developed fantasy perception.”
“Whatever you call it.” She shrugged. “So if we want to make sure sweetfella gets home safe, Frost, you’ll have to find some way to hold the target world steady while we slip through with him. Just one more step. You’ve almost had the trick of it for several worlds now.”
“Just one more very long step.”
Redescending to the Council Chamber, we found steaming plates and foamy mugs awaiting us on the table, or, in the dog’s case, on the floor between two of the vacated chairs. Cautioned by my white angel against attempting to make up three weeks’ abstinence in my first meal, I partook as sparingly as possible, under the circumstances, and limited my liquid intake to clear water, as did my companions.
Our meal ended and the citizens’ thanks accepted for the final time, M. Frostflower brought out her golden hoop, caused it to expand into the wide portal I had seen on those earlier occasions, and tuned it to a scene which I thought resembled my present House of Usher: i.e., Sandoval Shepkowski Residence Hall. We stepped through, all four including the dog.
Several times we missed the world we had seen and found ourselves in one subtly or totally different, until at last, through a hair-raising process of trial and error, M. Frostflower achieved the secret which had so long eluded her. It proved to be quite simple, and yet so tricky that attempting it the first time required courage. M. Frostflower must freeze the target world by removing her hand, very briefly, from the Circle as she herself stepped through, then catching it again in the merest instant of time and holding it and the world both while the rest of us followed. Never before had she dared loosen her grip for even a nanosecond, despite a formula to that effect in the instruction book that went with the Circle and looked, to me, like a huge old folio bound in gilt-stamped morocco.
This discovery made, I attempted to persuade them into what, as I look back, must have been—in dream context—the “real” worlds consecutively of the dank tarn of Auber, House of Usher, and South Pole of Arthur Gordon Pym; and actually did direct us, against their better judgment, into the Domain of Arnheim, Island of the Fay, and another wooded, moonlit landscape where we found ourselves pursued by monkish minions of the Inquisition, until at last, in some disgust, M. Thorn blindfolded me and relied upon her own eyes and memories. On our very next transit, she announced with satisfaction that she could see the same white quartz lines at the bottom of the Sparks McFarlane Pool she had seen before our journey to Vondervotteimittiss and various other worlds.
To make assurance doubly sure, they accompanied me to Sandoval Shepkowski Hall, where I climbed into my room, which was located conveniently on the ground floor, and proved it to be mine by riffling through a couple of my books.
“You’re darn sure you can trust those things, are you?” said M. Thorn, forcing me to explain how, although fantasy perception can alter the standard reality of book bindings and paper textures, yet nevertheless, for some still undetermined psychomystical reason, the actual text and illustration remain unaffected, as do the peruser’s own manual annotations—in my case, small fingers drawn in the margin to point out key passages. Else study and research would hardly be feasible. Having satisfied myself and them, again I proffered them my cash on hand, in gratitude for a fine October night’s dream, and recommended the Halbertson Arms or the White Eagle as the two local hostelries that allowed pets.
M. Frostflower shook her head. “I can get us home now,” she explained with a radiant smile, “and I’d like to do so at once. As for any debt you may think you owe us, it’s more than repaid, since I might never have attempted that final, necessary technique if it hadn’t been for you.”
“That is,” said the guerilla, “without her own ‘perceived’ need to get you home. She always was a mush-heart. But I’ll take a handful of your coins, just for curiosities.”
I gave her two handfuls from my skull-head bank, and finally prevailed upon M. Frostflower to accept an onyx and diamond stud, that being one piece for which I had once had the dealer’s certificate that it wore in standard reality the same appearance it presented to me; and M. Frostflower confirmed the fact, although the certificate had long since sought refuge from my occasional searchings. More: she allowed me to demonstrate the jewel’s catch by affixing it myself to her robe, near the seam where cowl joined neckline.
I stood well back, then, and watched as they again raised their portal, reviewed worlds until they exclaimed that they had found their own—a pleasant land it appeared to me, with mountains in the near distance—froze the scene and stepped through. They had just time to turn and wave once in my direction before the afterimage of the Circle and all it enframed dissolved from my field of vision.
Dawn had been breaking in their world. Dawn was breaking also in mine. After a hasty repast of such provisions as undergraduates habitually store in their apartments regardless of guiderules, I tumbled into bed and slept, to my eventual astonishment, for the remainder of fully two and a quarter clockrounds: having begun this great dream on a Monday night, I awakened only as noon dawned the following Thursday. I regretted not having a roommate to cast light on the situation.
It is a curious coincidence that, as though in reversal of the customary formulistic fictional twist of the artifact brought mystically brought back out of a dream, my onyx and diamond stud seems actually to have gone the way of its certification and so many other of life’s small, mysteriously misplaced possessions.
* * * *
As I remember, Melody Grandy Keller was the one who gave Corwin that widow’s peak hairline in her illustrations of him.
THE BREAKING POINT
The notion of Corwin’s collecting three fraternity hazings so intrigued me, when I found and transcribed “A Predicament in the Belfry” decades later, that I wrote “The Breaking Point” to explain it. Although in the re-imagined R.S.A. Corwin takes a five-year degree program at the University of Astoria on the West Coast, and although at Upper Wabash in the realizers/fanciers world he seems to have spent a certain amount of time actually living in each Greek house before deciding it was not after all to his taste, I imagine his fraternity experiments to be somewhat similar in both universes.
Because this story is set in the re-imagined R.S.A., the decision whether to include it here cost me some thought. Eventually I decided to compromise by giving this collection the version which I abridged, while the story was still new, by more than 2,000 words, against the chance of reading it aloud.
“Thesaurus” Davison was singing as he dusted the staircase with a single feather.
Listening to his pledge slave, upperclassman Ken Arrowsmith mused that, actually, Davison’s singing wasn’t all that bad, without other voices or instruments to confuse his untunable ear. Davy followed the intervals pretty well, most of the time; and, if he kept sliding up and down into different keys at semi-predictable moments, at least he didn’t have the bad habit of singing the same short phrase and nothing else, over and over again at odd intervals, like some variant on the Chinese water torture. He seemed to know an amazing number of old ballads, G&S ditties, and such—all the words and, much of the time, some reasonable facsimile of the tune; and he avoided repeating the same ones over and over the same day. Nor did he sing too loudly. No Cadmus man had objected yet, in Ken’s hearing, except Thorvald Johansen
—once or twice, in private. Mama Comfrey, their housemother, even said she enjoyed it (being untunable herself).
Cadmus House was famous for how it treated its pledges: just rough enough to give them a good sense of initiation, just gentle enough to leave no psychomystical scars. Cadmus House had more than a reputation at stake here.
Ken glanced at his clock. Ten hundred hours on the sunny Saturday morning wrapping up Hell Week. Time before lunch for the talk he probably should have had with his slave a long time ago.
Outside Ken’s door, Davy had reached, “Oh, lock me where the north wind blows from the southwest corner of Hell.”
“Hey, Slave Thesaurus.”
“‘He was my man—’ Master?” Dropping Frankie’s guilt about Johnny where it was, the pledge appeared in Ken’s open doorway, grinning and bobbing his black-haired head. As per instructions, he was dressed in ragged jeans, a ragged old Cadmus House sweatshirt worn inside-out and backward, and athletic socks with the toes cut off. The jeans were black rather than blue, but that was the only liberty he had taken.
The House cat followed him in, rubbing her white hair all over his black jeans. Both Cadmus mascots, Egri the tabby and Photos the old sheepdog, acted very fond of this pledge.
Ken had to remind himself that, as a junior, he was only one school year ahead of Corwin Davison “Poe.” Looking at the pledge, the junior felt almost like a professor. Davison didn’t seem all that different from last year, when he had showed up at Cadmus House several times during Rush Week, looking intent, but finally accepted Chi Mu Eta’s pledge invitation instead.
Chi Mu Eta, a small fraternity with a big pioneer mansion sitting on a notoriously monstrous basement, was famous for accepting only half the new pledges who made it through Hell Week. In his sophomore fall, Thesaurus Davison had come back cap in hand to Cadmus House. Who had been as willing to pledge him this year as they would have been last year. He got along with everybody, didn’t take offense at very much, stood up for himself when necessary but never went out of his way to make it necessary. So what if he liked big words? They were here at Astoria State University to get an education, weren’t they? And so what if he enjoyed singing more than untunable people should.
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 65
