FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HE HAD ARRIVED AT ST. Mary’s in Garner, Jamey Applewhite didn’t make his Friday morning office hours. He had a good excuse: he didn’t get back from southwest Chatham County and the Devil’s Tramping Ground until just before dawn. He wasn’t sure about the time because his watch had stopped just after midnight, the hands locking in place when the rainbow-colored rings of light had passed through his body. He had talked with Althea, the young black woman who had been standing there, stunned and confused, after the rings of light had passed, for two hours and then he had driven her home, back to her apartment in Chapel Hill, on North Greensboro Street.
“You were seduced, Althea, by darkness, by evil. You aren’t the first; you won’t be the last,” he said, as he pulled the van into the parking lot near her building.
“But I always go to church, Father. I’ve been going to church all my life, St. Paul AME, over on Merritt Mill Road, I even sing in the choir . . .”
Finally he had told her to go inside and go to bed. Jamey gave her his number and directions to St. Mary’s; maybe, he thought, as he headed for 54 East, she would. He doubted she would talk to St. Paul AME’s minister.
Why didn’t I tell her there is darkness in all of us? That it is an integral part of human nature and if we deny or embrace it, we give it power and we leave ourselves vulnerable to people like Thomas? If she calls me and comes to Garner, I will tell her. I will tell her about my own darknesses. I will tell her about Thomas.
Jamey tried the radio on the way home: WUNC 91.5 FM’s all-night jazz wasn’t on. He turned the knob as far as it would go in either direction, AM and FM: the radio waves were silent. Maybe it was the continuing aurora borealis, maybe the rainbow rings broke up radio waves, maybe the stations’ staffs were just as stunned and confused as Althea. Just as well, he thought, they probably had no idea what to say. Not yet, anyway. He had never known NPR to be at a loss for words before, but there was a first time for everything. He wished he had found the words to say to Althea. He knew he would have parishioners coming with questions—huge, larger-than-life questions—to which he wouldn’t have a lot of answers. The world has changed. Magic has been released. Good fought evil and for now, good has won. No, I don’t think your missing wife, husband, son, daughter, friend, whoever, will ever come back. That might work, he had thought, as he drove east into the dawn.
Now—what time was it, eleven, eleven thirty?—he wasn’t so sure if the answers he had come up with on the way back would work. Jamey got out of bed to check the clock on his dresser to be sure the time was right. That clock was an old-fashioned wind-up; it still worked. Yes, he had slept almost all morning and he was still tired, still sleepy. Those answers might work for some—but what about those who had dreams like he had? He glanced into the mirror over the dresser: yes, his ears were still visibly pointed; yes, his blue eyes had a faint silver glow to them. On the top of the dresser, a rosary, St. Anthony and the Christ Child prayer cards, a thin, red-leather-clad book of prayers. A crucifix hung on the wall by the mirror. Two white votive candles sat on the dresser right below the crucifix. Yawning, he glanced about the room—bed, dresser, nightstand and lamp, closet, the two windows. Small bookcase and table in one corner, chair, another smaller lamp. Just like the bedroom of most priests he knew.
Except a changeling lived in it. His aura flared then, an intense white-yellow, and with one slight wave of his hand, he dropped a tiny spiral galaxy of light into the air. Then, he leaned over and blew gently and the galaxy dissolved. His aura dimmed, but didn’t altogether fade. It was as if a pale haze surrounded him, the faint echo of fog, of a low, barely glowing cloud.
And yes, Jamey had had an erotic dream about three other people: a man, and two women. He had known them—their faces, their eyes, their hands as they had touched him, their bodies. He could still feel their hands on his skin. He had never seen them before or dreamed of them before; he didn’t know their names. Even so, Jamey knew them and that they were close, in time, not yet in space. There was only a fine, faint disturbance in the ether of molecules displaced by their approach. They’re looking for me. They were the rest of his tetrad. He wasn’t, if the dream were true, the only changeling who had not been called to cross over.
But I am a priest. I can’t marry anybody, let alone three other people. Can I?
But the world had changed.
When would they find him, these three with whom he would make four? He knew he had to stay here, to listen to the questions of his parishioners. Was he air, water, fire, or earth?
But I am a Catholic priest. I have no doubts that this is what I am supposed to be, what I am meant to be.
But the world had changed. How much remained to be seen.
When the rings of colored light—at that point, bands of light—passed through Hallie, it had been sixteen minutes after midnight. Her wristwatch had exploded when the blue band had touched her, the crystal shattering into fine dust, the green digital face flaring into a quick, green fire. When the violet band passed, only darkness remained. Hallie had lain very still then, waiting, on the cushions she had dragged in her office from the teachers’ lounge. She hadn’t been the only person to spend the night in the school. There had been a good twenty or thirty waiting for her when she had driven in from Leadmine Road. People from the neighborhood, with their kids, Camille Bondurant and her boyfriend, Caroline and Charlie Perkins, Rob Warner, who taught fourth grade, his partner, Carter. Michael Murphy, the gifted and talented specialist and his partner. They were carrying sleeping bags, deflated air mattresses, pillows, quilts. She had told them to use the mats in the gym; most of them had slept in there.
How long she had lain there, waiting for another colored band, Hallie didn’t know. Finally she had slept, only to waken when she heard voices outside her office door. Somebody was up—or somebodies were, Hallie thought. She decided to lay there on the floor awhile longer, wondering what they were talking about, what they saw outside, if the trees and grass and evergreen shrubs and the steps leading down to the street or the street lights and the houses looked any different, if they were still there.
The magnolia by her window was still there. Did it look the same? After staring it, Hallie decided it did and slowly got up, thinking: just because things look the same doesn’t mean they are.
It was morning. Where there had been dark ships, a dark, fanged prince, with eyes of glowing fires, a dark, sharp-clawed lieutenant, hungry for a feast of souls, the sea was clear. But, still barely visible on the far horizon, a small and getting smaller dark shape. Eventually the dark shape disappeared.
Once the door of blue and white fire closed, it took Ben a long moment to just be able to focus and see what was around him, where he was, where the others were. The sky was different, a darker, deeper blue. The air: sweeter and warmer, and he knew, as he inhaled, the sea was near. Four very ordinary just-like-back-home-on-Earth sea gulls confirmed the sea’s nearness. Their plaintive cries, for a moment, made him think it hadn’t happened; they had only gotten as far as the beach back in North Carolina. It was a very short moment, as he looked down at the flowers around him: none of these had ever grown in any garden or meadow in North Carolina. But he recognized a few: the tiny, twinkling star-blooms, the spicy fragrance from the violet ones cascading down a rock wall. Valeria had told him and Ben remembered. He looked down again: there, in the grass, burnt, its chain missing, was Valeria’s twelve-pointed star. Ben picked it up and dropped it in his pocket; maybe some day Malachi would want it.
They were in Faerie, in a walled garden, with flowers and bushes and small trees, by a small house that seemed to have grown out of the ground, on a street, in a neighborhood, in a city. The house to the left and the right and across the street—all had grown out of the ground. Not all of them were white, but rather soft earth tones: beige, dusty pink, a fine grey, a faded orange. A few, up the street, were ivory, cream, eggshell, and behind them, the city walls were white. Tall, silver-white golden-leafed trees lined the street on both sides. There were no lawns; instead other small walled gardens or what could only be described as tiny meadows, with thick grasses or a thicket of more silver-white trees. The whole effect was an odd mixture of the neat and the untidy.
Ben knew, without doubt, that Valeria had lived in the house, walked in the garden, on the street, in the city. He had brought Valeria’s son home to his mother’s garden. There was no sign of all the others who followed them to the Devil’s Tramping Ground. Much later, Ben was to find out what happened. Everyone who had followed them had also walked on the Straight Road that led between the gate in the human universe to the gate in the fairy universe. There were other gates besides the Devil’s Tramping Ground on Earth, all fixed and set in one place. Most of the gates in Faerie were not: they shifted and moved, depositing people in first one place, then another, responding in some way to whom the Straight Road walkers were, where their fairy ancestors had lived.
But his charges were all here in the garden: Malachi, Jeff, Russell, Hazel, and Alexander, the cat.
Now, what was he supposed to do?
She saw them before they saw her, standing bewildered in Valeria’s garden, by the small house where Valeria had lived when she was Prime Mover, the garden in which she had been when she had gone on that furlough to Earth from which she had not returned. Today, Valeria had returned, in the presence of the human she had loved there, and the son she had born there, and the other three who completed Valeria’s son’s tetrad. Larissa, who had been Second and had succeeded Valeria as the Prime Mover, had come alone, despite the protests of Roth and Thorfin. Fortunately Tasos had gone back into the ocean or she would have had to argue with the swimmer, as well as the two centaurs. At least Hazel’s dragon and winged horse had said they preferred to wait.
“We met the two boys first, when they were dream-visiting,” Roth said, shaking his red tail with a hint of anger, his nostrils slightly flared. If he had a mane, he’d been shaking it at me. Not that his head of hair isn’t close to a mane.
“I know, but—”
“So we should meet them here, now, now they have crossed over,” Thorfin interrupted, his black tail twitching as much as Roth’s red one. “They will be expected us. Seeing us will make them more at ease, more comfortable, and they can see that there are others like them here.”
“And I should get the dragon for the girl? The winged horse? No, you will see them all soon enough. I am the Prime Mover; I took Valeria’s place,” Larissa said impatiently. “I have to do this alone. Besides, they are still very young—even Russell has only just turned thirteen, I don’t think they have even begun to figure out how they are like the two of you.”
She sighed. The two centaurs, their hooves loud on the stone of the street, had not been gracious in agreeing, huffing and snorting, swishing their tails. She watched the man and the children and the cat from behind a rhian tree. All five and the cat just stood there, looking—no, they were dazed. Enough. Why should she be nervous anyway?
Larissa stepped out from behind the tree and walked toward them, waving when at last one of the children saw her and called out and ran toward her. Then he stopped, his face frozen. Malachi. He thought I was his mother. The cat got to her first, bounding over the garden wall, up the street, to jump on her shoulders and lick her face, pushing at her with a jumble of excited thoughts and images.
Can I, will it be okay, would anyone care, are there other cats?
Yes, you can, it will be fine, I don’t think anyone would care, but there are acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, here too, and yes, there are other cats like you. Ben, she saw, between pushing Alex down and laughing and wiping her face, trailed behind them, uncertain, although he was smiling. She reminded herself that he was probably the most bewildered of them all. The children had made dream-visits; he had only memories of what Valeria had told him over ten years ago.
Hazel missed her grandparents; she wished she had been able to tell them good-bye and why she was doing this, why she was linked to these three boys and how she had changed. She walked just ahead of Ben toward the fairy woman who walked toward them from wherever the street this house and garden were on led to. Not so much a street, really, she thought, but rather a wide path of hard-packed earth. Later, she would find out there wasn’t much need for streets as there had been back in Raleigh or Garner—on Earth. Streets were for cars and trucks. Fairies flew.
Hazel wanted to hold Ben’s hand. She wanted to ask him if she could go home and visit. She wanted to ask him what would happen if she changed her mind and wanted to go home to stay. Would it be all right to leave Malachi, Jeff, and Russell here without her? Couldn’t they find another person to be the fourth, to be earth? She felt that there was nothing that would make any of the three want to go home—home would shift for them to here. Jeffs mother had abandoned him; his father had hurt him, and would hurt him again if he came back. Malachi’s father was here; his mother was from here, and here was where she had wanted him to be. And here was where he had to live, more so than any of the others. Russell’s parents were like Jeff’s; they had just done their abandoning and hurting in different ways. But, what would she be going back to? To a house where, yes, she was safe, but also where she was invisible. Her grandparents’ lives wouldn’t be disrupted by her absence—she knew she had been the disruption from the day she had arrived.
We have to stay awhile, first, Hazel, and see. Come here.
Okay, I’m coming.
The fairy woman waited for them where Alex had stopped her. He was wrapping himself around and around her, his purring loud and rumbling, as if he had swallowed a huge outboard boat motor. The woman, Hazel thought, was beautiful. Her hair was golden with grey streaks and fell down her back in a long, thick mane; a silver circlet crowned her head. Her dress was long and blue and silver and sprinkled with golden stars.
“Oh, you’re here; you’re finally here at last. Now, all Faerie will be renewed,” the fairy woman said as she let Alex push his big head into her legs so she could pet him, stroke his fur, tell him he was beautiful and amazing. The boys got to her first, and she kissed and hugged each one, Malachi last and the longest; he seemed to press into her, as if he needed this hug more than the other two boys. Hazel waited beside Ben, wishing Alex would come back to her side. “And I’m Larissa, the Prime Mover, the First on the Dodecagon, as Valeria was. I will show you the city; I should have told you that first.”
“But what do we do,” Ben asked. “Where do we go? Where do we live?”
I won’t ever leave you Hazel don’t be afraid of this don’t leave me. Alex had pushed his way back to her, and was pressing his head into her, as he had done since he was a very tiny kitten.
But all this scares me and I miss Grandma and Granddad.
We have to stay awhile, first, Hazel, and see.
“You? You have four children to raise, Ben,” Larissa said, “and I imagine we will ask you to serve on the Dodecagon, the Council of Twelve, to represent the changelings. You are one of the few full-blooded humans here. There is a library at the university here, too. As for the rest of you: grow up, learn things, be educated—you didn’t think there would be no school here, did you?” she said, giving Russell’s red hair a quick tug at his scowl. “And figure out what sort of adults you will be. Now let me show you the White City. You will live in that house back there, where you arrived. That was Valeria’s house here in the City. It’s yours now, Ben.”
Hazel?
Okay, Alex, I’ll wait and see.
Our first walk in the White City was a slow one, and not because we were tired, or even because we stopped often to look or because Larissa wanted us to see one thing or another. No, our first walk was a slow one because of all the people who came and talked to us, touched us, laid their hands on our faces—which I know now is a form of greeting—if they were First-born, touched our foreheads with their fingertips if Second, and for the different Thirds, the pans, the centaurs, the mers, the sylvans, it is different, and I can’t remember them all. (I am not even sure if I should capitalize all the species’ names. I wonder if there is a fairy Chicago Manual of Style.) They watched us as we walked, Russell and Jeff, Hazel and the cat, Larissa and me and Malachi, from their houses—some of the houses. Two-thirds of the houses, Larissa told me that first morning, are empty.
The war with the Fomorii was long; it began before Valeria or Larissa was born, and I know how long-lived the First-born are. Victories, defeats, truces made and broken, retreats, advances. The First Island, their Eden (Atlantis?)—they know where it is—was—sank, taking with it the fairest of the cities, and millions of people. The White City, here on the coast of their northern continent, Tir Mar, a coast that looks like Maine, was where they retreated, to regroup, rearm, and fight again. Finally there was victory, but the cost was all these empty houses. That is why they called Malachi and the others back—the changelings taken to the human universe in the very first years of the war, fosterlings they had hoped to retrieve before too many of our years and their years passed. If the changelings had not returned, if Thomas and his black magic and his red-eyed Fomorii had won, then Faerie’s victory would have been a pyrrhic one, and two universes would be lost, theirs and ours.
Although Larissa tells me this is mine now, I can’t quite say it or write it. I still feel like I am a visitor here, that at some point, I will have to go home, walk the Straight Road again.
The Fomorii have gone back to their universe, another room in the House of Creation. For now.
I thought the fairies would fly to greet us, swooping down like great birds. But, Larissa tells me, it is considered bad manners for adults to fly within a city. In and out of a city is another matter. The children, the few of them left, were told not to fly just yet by their parents. To wait, give us time to settle in. By the time we reached the end of the street where Valeria had lived, they had started to come out of their houses. They came, most of them, in fours: one golden-haired, bronze-eyed; one red-haired and green-eyed; one hair almost black, with blue-green eyes; one brown-haired, silver-eyed. Air, fire, water, earth. The gender combinations don’t seem to matter. The children reminded me of collie puppies, everywhere, flashing, a few flying, glowing, making starry trails.
They came and they touched us.
Malachi looked at me when one tetrad swooped down on my four like a flock of crazed crows, shouting and laughing.
Go ahead, I told him.
I watched him take off. Larissa told me children sometimes stay airborne for days, especially after they first learn to levitate, to fly. I asked her if I could learn and she only said she didn’t know, but she would try to teach me.
Valeria’s street led to another, more houses, and another, then we reached the open-air market and the great city square, a park, a plaza, a fountain.
And I met two centaurs—Roth and Thorfin—who knew Russell and Jeff quite well.
“Thanks, Dad,” Malachi had said and flew straight up and up and up, until he could see the entire White City below him, enclosed in its shining white wall, its houses like nests of glowing jewels spilled out of a bag, the domes of the temples, the arches and spiraling towers of the schools, the Tower of the Dodecagon, growing out of the city’s heart. Just outside the walls, a forest to the south, gardens to the west, and to the east and to the north, rocks, a cliff, and below, white sand, and the sea, the sea, the sea.
He turned and spiraled and flipped and fell back on the warm air and floated and rolled over and over again. It had been so long since he had felt so well. Below him, he could see the others. He could pick out his father’s aura, and the other three, auras he knew as well as his own. Uncle Jack should have been here. Then he flew straight up, up, up, and up, the city dwindling and shrinking, the sea growing and growing, the sky so close, so blue, so deep and shocking a blue, like no blue he had ever seen on Earth, and the clouds. Oh the clouds, they were almost alive in the sky. And there: yes, a dragon, very far away and red and golden, its wings molten in the sun, flying as he was, for the sheer pleasure of the flight.
Then he dropped, his aura flaming behind him, the tail of a golden comet, a falling stone of light.
We stood at the edge of the great plaza and watched. First-born, the Fairies, the Elfin, I suppose all the words we used, the Daoine Sidhe—except they are not little. The Second-Born: Dwarves: stout, hairy, eyes blinking against the light, or shielded by hoods—Larissa whispered they live mostly beneath the ground. The Third-born: people of the wood. Centaurs and pans. Sylvans, the tree people: dryads, wood nymphs. Hamadryads: oak-folk. Birch-men and women. Beeches. Hollies. Willows. Shapeshifters, the wer. Beasts like Alex, whose mind-speech touched me, flickering words, stray thoughts, odd images. All the Threes, she said, are, well, a bit wild. In the sea there are dolphins, and the swimmers, the mers.
There are so many colors here, sharp and clear against the white—here in the plaza, the public buildings, the temples, are all white. The centaurs’ horse-bodies are magnificent, not as big as a Percheron or a Clydesdale, but much bigger than any horse I have ever seen back home. Roans, sorrels, chestnuts, bays, palominos, appaloosas, white, black, grey . . . And the dripping, dark green swimmers, a few, hurried, anxious to get back to the sea, others in the fountains. Beasts—Talking Beasts—great bears, large-sized mice, porcupines, wolves, panthers who come up and nudge against Alex . . .
I am just making a list.
It will take me forever to learn all of who they are and what they can and cannot do.
I wonder if I will ever feel at home here. I look at Hazel and wonder the same thing.
And others like my four children, bewildered, excited, dazed changelings. The Fourth-born?
The day we arrived, Samhain, is a holy day, the New Year.
The temple chimes rang and sang in the wind from the sea, a constant melody.
I wish I had a camera—I will have to ask Larissa what they do to record memories—when two of the centaurs made their way through the crowd. Not so much for them—by then I was on sensory overload. No, I wish I could have recorded the looks on Russell’s and Jeff’s faces. They knew these centaurs; they had told me about them: Roth and Thorfin. Roth a red-golden-chestnut, his beard and hair, golden red, and Thorfin, a glossy black, his beard and hair even blacker.
For all Russell’s bravado, his bigger size, his quick temper, Jeff knew he was the stronger and the braver. Was it, Jeff had once wondered, the difference in how they had both been hurt? Russell’s mother had left him, choosing as far as Russell ever knew, the child she loved best. His father had only taken him in when his grandfather had gotten sick. Then, the succession of stepmothers, with the last one the worst. Russell was her target. Not that he hadn’t been his father’s for years. Russell had shown Jeff the scars on his back, buttocks, and legs.
Jeff had no visible scars like Russell’s to show. The places he had bled had long since healed. Jeff’s scars were all interior and were only tangible in darkness. His father’s hands hadn’t bruised like Larry White’s had. But Jeff still knew exactly how and where his father had touched him, each fingerprint on his skin. His mother had left, too. She had fixed him breakfast and sat with him as he had eaten it, just the two of them, his father already gone to work. Jeff remembered everything she had fixed that morning: wheat toast, soft poached eggs so he could wipe the plate with the toast, orange juice, milk. His Star Wars lunch box on the counter: apple and pear, sliced cheese cubes, thermos with hot cream of tomato soup, half an egg salad sandwich, a fistful of Oreo’s in a baggie. She had dropped him off at school, waved, and he waved back, and he had never seen her again. She refused to talk to him the times she had to call later.
Jeff had told Ben most of what had happened and he had told Ben about Russell’s scars and how they got there. Jeff had told no one else but Russell everything that had happened, at night when they had to stay first in Malachi’s house, then at Father Jamey’s church.
No, there isn’t that much different in how we got hurt, not really, Jeff thought. But I didn’t let it break me. Why it had finally broken Russell, when the shadow had come for him, Jeff wasn’t sure. And he wasn’t sure if his shadows had come for him that he wouldn’t have broken, too.
Russell froze when they came to the plaza. Jeff didn’t know for a few minutes until he turned to say something to Russell, to point out the Tree-people, and their hair, the leaves that kept falling around them. Russell wasn’t there. Jeff had to tell the others to go ahead and he went back to where Russell was standing, in front of one of the silver-white trees.
“Russ, it’s okay,” Jeff said, and took Russell’s hand. He felt a quick, electric surge of energy between them, as Malachi had told them would happen now. “I’m scared, too. But we’re here; we’re together; we’re safe.”
Russell couldn’t look at Jeff, although he didn’t let go of Jeff’s hand. “But, I was the dark one; I gave in.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Jeff said and hugged Russell quickly. It was, he realized, something he had wanted to do for a long time.
“Promise?” Russell said, finally looking up. Jeff saw Russell was crying.
“Yes.”
Jeff gently led Russell into that great, loud throng of so many different peoples, talking, laughing, crying, shouting, moving, touching, colors shifting, shimmering, bright, interwoven with liquid light, wind chimes, and high above it all, sea gulls wheeling and turning.
“Look, our centaurs—there they are,” Jeff cried and they were: Roth and Thorfin, cantering through the crowds toward them, Ben and Malachi and Hazel and the cat and Larissa stepping back to let the two great horse-men through, the two of them laughing.
“You’re home now,” Roth said and took Russell’s hand. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
Thorfin nodded and took Jeff’s hand. The centaurs’ hands were huge, swallowing the boys’ hands, and then they picked each boy up and drew them into an embrace.
I wish I had at least some of my books from back—home—with me. Larissa tells me that I will find plenty of books in their university library. What does one study in a fairy university, I wonder? Instead of clothes, I brought some of my journals; I figured we wouldn’t have a problem here getting more of the former. The rest of my journals—those on diskettes—I left with Father Jamey, to share, as he said, with those who didn’t cross. There is no way I could have used those diskettes here. Fairies know almost nothing of machinery; they are iron-sensitive, for one thing, and why invent the wheel if you can fly? I am writing this on what feels like vellum, with a quill pen, a bottle of black ink beside me.
Poor Hazel. She may not stay—if she can go back. No one has asked that question yet. But the boys—my son, Russell, and Jeff—this is their place, their true home. They are flowers slowly blooming, flowers that had not known how much they needed water.
I forgot Alex. It is not yet natural for me to think of him as sentient, but he is now. The children have no problem with it, of course. Larissa assures me I will get used to it—that said after introducing me to a rather earnest bear while we walked on the plaza that first morning.
When Roth picked up Russell, with those huge hands and arms, and hugged him against that huge chest, Russell felt as if he had finally come home. Jeff was right: he was safe. He felt another electrical surge between his skin and the centaur’s—not like Jeffs, but akin. When the centaur finally put him down beside Jeff, Russell found himself tongue-tied. He could only laugh and shake his head, no matter how much each of the two centaurs teased him, ruffled his hair, tugged at his ear points.
“What’s the matter, boy? If I didn’t know you are a talker, I would say you are mute,” Thorfin asked.
“I—uh—I—can’t—the words—I don’t know where they are. Not right now,” Russell finally said, knowing his face was red enough to match his hair.
“Leave him be, Thorf,” Roth said, smiling down at Russell. “He’s got some sorting to do. Why don’t all of you go up on the wall? You can see the whole city, get a sense of where you are. We’ll show you the way.”
Russell took Jeff’s hand again as they walked with the two centaurs, Malachi and Hazel and Ben and Larissa and Alex coming behind them, talking, and looking. Jeff’s hand, Russell thought, feeling a now-familiar electrical surge, weaker than before, more of a reminder, really, was familiar and known. He knew Jeff—or did he? Just in the few hours that had passed since walking through the Gate and on the Straight Road Jeff seemed to have straightened, his face was brighter, as if a shadow had begun to fade. Except for that, Jeff looked as he always did: somewhat shaggy dark brown hair, falling over his eyes, those ears, and the glowing blue-green eyes, small, half-a-head shorter than Russell, slight. Regardless, Jeff looked different. Russell wondered if he looked different. And there was something else that felt new, but that Russell recognized as old, even though he knew he had never recognized this something as being a part of him before, and Jeff was a part of it—or would be. But he knew he could not name this something, not yet.
“Russ? What are you thinking so hard about?” Jeff asked softly, talking below the loud voices of the two centaurs who were, with Larissa, answering questions about this and that.
“Something I’m working out. I’ll tell ya later, I promise. C’mon, here are the steps up to the top of the wall.”
“I see a land more fair than any I ever saw. Its hills are clothed with trees and I see shining rivers between broad meadows, and high places where the wind blows. Beautiful is the rippling of grass on these high places, and the running of the deer there. Very beautiful are the mountains with the light upon them, and the flowering valleys, beautiful white waves upon the shore. Surely there is no music like the music of those waves.”
I could just hear the music of those waves from the top of the city wall, the wall facing the sea. It drops straight down, a sheer rock face, to a jumble of boulders at its base, a rocky beach that gradually becomes faintly glowing white sand and there is the sea. These sea gulls—am I imagining that their cries are somehow more melodic than the ones on the North Carolina coast? They look to be exactly the same and Larissa tells me many of the beasts are the same—more or less. Faerie changes those who come, whether on two feet or four or on wing or claw or hoof.
I memorized that quote. I think it is from a book by MacCana, but I’m not sure. Whoever wrote had to have been here some way or another.
The sea, the sea, the sea. Green and blue and silver and white. The smell, the air, the white waves on that white beach.
Faerie is changing me. I don’t know how, but it is. Will I be something other than human, the fourth-born, the last-comers? I don’t think so, nor would I wish it so. We have our gifts as well. I guess I will have to wait and see what happens.
I brought my son and those to whom he has bonded—his tetrad—here. I saved my son’s life; I had to do that or die trying. I kept my promise to Valeria; I kept my promise to Jack. All of us, Here and There, have managed, for a time, to defeat the Dark. I don’t imagine for one minute that the victory is permanent. I am tempted to write: and they lived happily ever after, and close this book and not write again, but I know that it wouldn’t be true if I did either. Hazel was as happy as the boys were to see the ocean, but she is not yet truly happy to be here. I don’t know how she will sort herself out. Russell’s shadow has only begun to lift; he has only begun to know who he is and the knowing is going to be painful for him. Jeff has his own shadow, his own ghost, to put to rest. The two of them are going to learn a great deal about themselves and each other as they grow up here. Malachi, of all of them, is the most whole, yet even he has to grow up, sort out his magic. I do not know when I will tell them what Larissa told me as we walked: the juvenile tetrad, formed at puberty, isn’t permanent. There will be a second tetrad formation when they become adults, and reformation of the juvenile tetrad is rare. And since the war, some adult tetrads never formed—earth did not find fire, air did not find water. Couples and triads instead. She told me Valeria was the only survivor of her tetrad: fire. If she had lived, would we be looking for two more? Could I have shared her? Third tetrads, Larissa said, are rare and difficult.
So, Valeria wasn’t whole, either. Neither am I. No, Alex is the most whole.
They stood together, the four of them, set slightly apart from the four adults. Larissa and Ben stood to one side; Roth and Thorfin, to the other. The four children stood in between, leaning into the white lip of the wall of the White City, looking down at the sea. Alex, his front paws on the white lip, stood between the children and the centaurs, but only for a short while. He sat down and began to wash, starting with his paws, so that he could wash his head. A barely visible current passed in and around and through the four of them, crackling in the salt air, like the last kernels to be popped. For a long time, or so it seemed, no one spoke. They all were content to smell the air, feel the sun, listen to the singing of the gulls, and the faint, faraway sound of the waves on the sand, and to watch the sea. Malachi saw the dolphins first, leaping, white-silver flashes above the water. Jeff saw the swimmers, in dark counterpoint to the dolphins’ flashes. Russell was sure he recognized the dolphins. And farther out, Hazel saw a dragon, its wings at full-spread, over the water.
No one could tell, later, just whose idea it was, perhaps, it was the idea of all four—something Larissa told them would happen more and more. But it was Malachi who first floated a few feet up from the wall’s stones, the others drifting up with him, until they were just above the wall. Then, as if blown by a sudden wind, they dropped, then dove down and out, out, and out, and down again, swooping down the grey rock face that grew into the white walls, and out, over the rocks at the bottom, and out again, over the white sand, over the waves, over the sea.