The Shadow People

by Margaret St. Clair

  I straightened. My body felt limber and alert. Fay was already holding out Merlin's sword to me, her face furious with urgency. It seemed to leap into my hand.

  The drumming stopped. The Dwarf's mouth came open. Before he could turn to run, I had lunged forward across the barrier of the circle and buried the sword in his chest.

  I lunged? No, it hardly seemed to me that I had struck the blow. My arm had only carried out the desires of a mightier hand.

  Even in the dim light I could see that the Dwarf looked thoroughly surprised. "Merlin—Merlin can't have won," he said in a weak, painful whisper. He tried ineffectively to pull the sword out of his chest.

  For a moment, the blade stirred back and forth, moved by the beating of his heart. He moaned, not very loud. Then he fell backward, kicking. The drum was smashed under him.

  The drum, the symbol and source of his power, would beat no more. I pulled the sword out of his body, scarcely noticing the gush of blood that followed it, and ran toward Carol. Her captors must have fled when they saw that their chief was killed; she was alone, leaning against the wall with the green paint stain, looking very white.

  I half-carried her back to stand inside the protection of the circle. I could hardly realize what had happened. It was beginning to be day. The basement floor was wet with blood. I wondered what we should do with the embarrassment of Hood's body. He had obviously died a violent death, he had been a government employee, and we had no plausible account to give of how he had met his end.

  Fay seemed to share my concern, for she was looking at the body and frowning. We were all exhausted, and to try to think what to do with a cumbersome corpse seemed too much of an effort for us to make.

  I had my arm around Carol, supporting her, though I felt I could do with some supporting myself. "Look," she whispered after a moment, bending forward and pointing. "Something is happening to Hood."

  Fay was watching the body, too. The three of us exchanged glances. Hood's body, no longer tenanted by the Dwarf, was shriveling and shrinking under our eyes. It was an extraordinary process, like seeing an orange sucked by an invisible man. "The elves are draining him," Carol said in a low voice.

  The face grew more and more wrinkled. The supporting tissues seemed to melt away, leaving a dry, brown mummified husk. I caught a glimpse of bare bones and sinews, lying loose in Hood's clothing. Then even the bones were gone, tugged away into the corner by unseen feeders. Hood's body had ceased to be a problem to us.

  Fay picked up Hood's clothing. "We can put them in the garbage," she said. "There's almost no blood on them now. The elves lapped up most of it, and from the floor, too. But there's blood on the sword. Give it to me, Dick. I'll clean it off."

  I handed her the sword. She hunted through Hood's clothing until she found a Kleenex. She wiped the sword carefully on it. But when she handed the blade back to me, there was a shadow on her face. And when I touched the sword myself, I knew why.

  I drew a deep breath. The Dwarf had been defeated. Carol was, at least, free of any immediate threat. But the sword—the beautiful, faithful sword that had been my companion in so many perils—the sword had lost virtue.

  It was still a handsome thing, a fine blade with an interesting boss and hilt. But I felt a poignant sense of personal loss. The soul of the sword was gone. It was only a piece of metal now.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Carol kept seeing elves. They may really have been there; Hood had anointed her eyes so she would be able to see what was ordinarily invisible. But at the time, I doubted it. I felt that Underearth had been finally defeated when the Dwarf's drum had been smashed under him.

  Carol, though free of her atter-corn addiction, remained exceedingly high-strung, anxious, and tense. I don't think this came from any inherent weakness of hers. She was actually a brave and resilient girl who had been through what would have swamped a weaker personality. Also, the world around us was worsening steadily as sides were chosen up and moderation became a suspect thing. No wonder she slept badly, stayed up half the night, and couldn't eat!

  Like Carol, I was troubled by my past experiences. The moment when I had seen our whole sensible universe tremble before a vaster cosmos stayed with me. It was an ultimate glory, an ultimate horror, an ultimate meaninglessness. I didn't know how to master it. And I badly missed the sword.

  We had left it hanging on the wall of Fay's living room, a dead piece of metal. But without it, without the sword as it used to be, would I be able to fend for Carol in the troubled days I foresaw ahead? I thought she was capable of making a good recovery eventually. But would she get the chance?

  As I have said, I thought Carol's anxiety about elves was unjustified. But one evening I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom, preparatory to going to bed, when I saw something odd on the floor. I bent over, puzzled. After a moment, I identified it: it was a bone, long, slender and curving, probably a human rib. There were a lot of dents on it, as if it had been gnawed by small, sharp teeth.

  I leaned back against the wash basin, feeling a little sick. Elves again? Surely not When the drum was broken, they—But how else could the bone have got where it was? We had no pets, and neither did the neighbors. A rat? The bone was too big for a rat to have brought.

  I didn't want to alarm Carol, who was already in bed. (Carol and I were living together and sharing the same bed. But we weren't, in the old-fashioned phrase, sleeping together. The one time I had tried sex with her since the Dwarf's defeat had been so frustrating that I had resolved to let things coast and hope for better times. We had a king-sized bed, which made it easier.) I tried to think what Fay, my authority on elf matters, would do if she found a human bone in the bathroom. Finally, I went to the kitchen and got a carton of salt.

  There was only a dim light in the bedroom. Carol was lying on her back, her arm over her eyes. I began to crawl around on the floor, laying a broad trail of salt clear around the bed. "What are you doing?" Carol asked after a moment.

  "I'm looking for my cough drops. They fell off the nightstand."

  "Oh. Good night, Dick."

  "Good night, honey." I turned off the light. I lay awake for a while, but everything in the apartment was quiet. All the same, I called Fay the next day, tried to get her to have lunch with me, found she was already engaged, and settled on dinner chez nous for that same night.

  Fay arrived a little before seven, out of breath and a little irritable. "Some neighborhood you live in," she observed. "I was stopped by three pigs in one block, one black and two white. Since I got transferred to day shift, I'd forgotten what the streets are like at night. Well. How've you people been?"

  "O.K.," I replied evasively. I didn't want to mention the bone while Carol was in the room. "Carol's been trying to get a job, but the personnel people don't like her."

  "One woman asked me if I was hooked on anything," Carol said. She tried to laugh. "I'll go get us a drink."

  While she was in the kitchen, I leaned toward Fay and said softly, "I found a bone, a human bone in the bathroom last night."

  Fay's eyes grew wide. "Oh, my," she said.

  "Does it mean the elves are trying to take her back?"

  "They might be. They do dislike giving up prey. But it's more likely to be some of their animals."

  "What shall I do?"

  "You might try ringing the bed with salt—"

  "I've already done that."

  "And sleeping with a knife under your pillow. They hate metal that comes to a point."

  "How about the sword?"

  "It would be O.K., but it's rather unwieldy. A knife would be just as good."

  "The sword hasn't come back, has it?" I asked.

  She knew what I meant. "No, it's still dead. It always will be, I think."

  Carol came back with wine and glasses on a tray. "You're too thin, kiddo," Fay observed benevolently as Carol handed her a glass.

  "So Dick tells me. Dick, your pouch-meals are in the water, but I don't know how long they ought to boil
."

  "I'll take care of them," I said. I went out to the kitchen, collected silverware, and set the table. (I had found it unwise to have Carol in the kitchen much, since she burned things and cut herself.) Then I dumped the pouch-meals, two each, on plates and said, "Dinner is served."

  It wasn't much of a meal, but there was plenty of wine. When we had done eating, I washed the dishes and made coffee. I turned the lights down. Fay and I sat on the sofa, and Carol, in the shadow, in a big chair.

  It was the moment I had been waiting for. I wanted to find out more—a lot more—about Underearth and its denizens from Fay, but I didn't want to alarm Carol in doing it.

  Fay came to my aid. "This time of year's depressing," she said. "Even the elves feel it, I think. Or, at least, Kirk says they do."

  "Kirk?" Carol asked.

  "In his Secret Commonwealth," Fay answered. "Does it bother you to talk about elves, Carol?"

  "No-o-o-o. I mean, as long as it's just talking. I thought I saw one several times, but Dick says it's just my fancy." She leaned back in the chair with her hands over her eyes. The movement threw her breasts into relief, and I realized again what a beautiful girl she was. Her blonde hair, getting longer now, was loose around her shoulders, and the décolletage of her white dress was cut almost to her waist.

  "It probably was just your fancy," Fay agreed, with a sidelong glance at me. "Did you know that, if an elf bothers you, it can sometimes be constrained by an exchange of gifts?"

  "No, I didn't," Carol replied. "An exchange? What do you mean by that?"

  "Well, it doesn't always work. But if you say to an elf, 'As I to thee, thou to me,' and the elf blinks, then, if you hand it something, a pebble or something, the elf must obey your next command. It's a sort of geas, as they say in Irish fairy tales."

  "Why didn't you tell me this when I went below to find Carol?" I asked, feeling aggrieved.

  "I learned about it afterward. But that's why I was so calm in the circle when Hood was threatening you. I thought I could constrain him in that way, when the chips were down. Only he had that damn drum."

  There was a pause. I took the coffee cups away and brought glasses of sherry. "What was the sword?" I asked.

  "A focus for magical power," Fay answered promptly.

  "But—what's magical power?"

  "Crystalized will."

  "Whose will?"

  "Merlin's, in the first place. Afterward, the sword tended to carry out the will of whoever owned it."

  "Who was Merlin, though? You surely don't mean the enchanter in the Arthurian romance?"

  "No-o-o." Fay seemed to arrange her thoughts. "I think Merlin was a great—magician—who visited our Earth between two and three thousand years ago. I suppose the character of the Arthurian Merlin was ultimately derived from him."

  "You said 'visited our earth'. Where did the Merlin of the sword come from? Outer space?"

  Fay wrinkled up her nose. "No, upper space. Do you remember how, in the basement, it seemed that a greater world than ours was impinging on us? I think that greater world is what Merlin came from. The Macrocosmos."

  "The sword isn't a focus for magical power any longer."

  "No. Its soul has gone back to where it originated, to the greater world."

  Carol moved uneasily in her chair. I felt that the turn of the discussion was distressing her, though I didn't know why. But she said nothing, and after a moment, I asked Fay, "Why did Merlin visit our Earth?"

  "How should I know? Perhaps he was an exile. He may have had reasons we can't even guess at. But I think a Merlin, a great 'magician', really did visit our Earth two or three thousand years ago."

  "But Fay, even three thousand years ago is well within historic times. I mean, magic just isn't appropriate to a world that was taming horses, building ships, and learning metallurgy. Hammurabi was making laws in Babylon a thousand years before that."

  "It depends on what you mean by 'magic'," Fay answered mildly. "A visitor from the Macrocosmos might seem a culture hero or a god to the people he visited. But I'm not going to insist on the historical existence of 'Merlin'. You've felt the sword's powers. What else can one call them except 'magical'?"

  There was no denying this. I said, "Assuming a Merlin really existed, and was the first owner of the sword, was he also the source of the Glain?"

  "I don't know. He may have been. I've never seen the Glain."

  "What is it? Does it really exist?"

  "Oh, yes. It certainly exists. From the descriptions I've heard of it, it projects a protective field of some sort."

  "I thought it was a talisman."

  "A protective talisman, yes. Do you know the myth of the external soul? The Glain may have been where Merlin, marooned on our uncertain Earth, hid his soul—his life."

  I didn't make much sense out of this. Carol was fidgeting uneasily in her chair, twisting her hands together, it was with one eye on her that I asked, "What is Underearth really like?"

  "You ought to know what it's like," Fay retorted blandly. "You spent three years there."

  "Yes, but I was taking a drug all the time. I have a feeling that a lot was going on that I missed. What's it really like?"

  Fay considered, chewing her underlip. "It's a little more magical than you thought," she conceded at last. "But it's basically a cold, dreadful, sordid place. The inhabitants like it, of course. It's home to them. And people from the Bright World can be corrupted into liking it."

  I didn't know how to phrase my next question tactfully. Finally, I simply said, "How do crosses between elves and human beings come about?"

  "They don't happen very often nowadays," Fay said. "The main source of such crosses was the human women who were kidnapped to suckle elf children. After the woman had spent two or three years in Otherworld, she might not want to go back to the light. And, in time, she might bear a child that was half elf."

  I thought of Fay's breasts, with their tiny nipples, and wondered whether difficulties in lactation were common with elves. I didn't like to ask her. At last, I said, "I never saw a young elf," tentatively.

  "No. They're uncommon."

  "Are they dying out?"

  "No, I don't think so. Both the birthrate and the death rate are low. They war on each other incessantly, but they rarely kill. They have long lives. The low temperature slows down their metabolism."

  "Why did they kidnap me?" Carol asked abruptly. She leaned forward out of the shadow so that the light glinted on her hair. "Oh, I know they—like human flesh. But why did they select me? It doesn't happen very often, does it?"

  "No, not very often. They took you partly because you were disturbed and upset; unhappy thoughts draw them. And partly it was because you were in an accessible location. But it's also possible—"

  "What's possible? Go on," I said.

  "It's also possible that they kidnapped Carol because Hood wanted her. He may have planned for things to happen as they did. It's the kind of cold-blooded scheme a green elf who wanted a woman would think up."

  Carol gave a deep sigh and leaned back in her chair. I heard a dog—probably one of the cross-bred elkhounds the police were currently using—barking somewhere outside. I asked, "Did you ever visit Underearth, Fay?"

  "Why do you ask?" she replied evasively.

  "Because you seem to know so much about it."

  She laughed, but didn't answer. After a moment, she held her wine glass out to me. "Could I have a little more sherry, Dick? And then I must be thinking about going home. It's been a pleasant evening. I've enjoyed myself."

  She had avoided my question. Still, I was almost sure what the answer would be. "I'll walk you home," I told her.

  "No, don't bother." She finished her drink and stood up. "I still have my arsenal, and lots and lots of permits. I'll give you a ring when I get home safe. But I don't like your leaving Carol alone."

  It sounded O.K. We went with her to the door. "You know, Carol needs more diversion," Fay said, her hand on the knob. "She's alo
ne all day."

  "Do you get bored, honey?" I asked.

  "I watch TV," Carol answered.

  "You see? She needs diversion," Fay said. She sounded like a mother-in-law. "Take her dancing some night."

  "The streets aren't safe," I replied doubtfully.

  "Oh, for cat's sake!" Fay said impatiently. "Don't argue so much. There must be several places near here where you could go. And get her a camera. Good night, Dick. Good night, Carol."

  "Good night."

  "Would you like a camera, kid?" I asked when Fay had gone.

  "Oh, yes. Yes, a camera would be awfully nice."

  "What kind of a camera? The kind you used to have?"

  "I don't know. I mean, I hadn't thought about it." She began collecting the wine glasses. "The kind of camera Ansel Adams uses, I guess," she said, pausing on the threshold of the kitchen. "I don't remember what it is. But with a Polaroid back."

  That she had forgotten the details about Adams' camera, details she would once have had at the tip of her tongue, since she greatly admired his work, made me realize how changed she was. "I'll look for one for you tomorrow," I promised.

  "That would be wonderful." She began running water in the sink. "And if I see an elf"—she tried to laugh—"while you're gone, I'll put a geas on it."

  "That's right."

  I lost no time in putting Fay's suggestions into effect. I shopped for the camera during my lunch hour next day, and phoned the Cardboard Coffin, which was only a block and a half from where Carol and I were living, for a table for two that night. The Coffin was said to have nice music and an atmosphere that, even now, managed to be a little hip. I didn't think we could get into much trouble in a walk of a block and a half.

  Carol was delighted with the camera, and pleased, at least, by the prospect of going out. She dressed carefully, asking my opinion often; and before we left, she hid her new camera in the laundry basket, for fear the apartment should be looted while we were away.

  The Coffin turned out to be squarer than I had thought. We ordered beer and sandwiches, and chewed and sipped while we listened to music that seemed to go back to the 1930s.