Fool on the Hill

by Matt Ruff

  “Hello,” he greeted her, sitting up in bed. George was careful of his head, though in fact all pain had departed now, leaving not so much as a twinge. Likewise his frostbitten joints seemed miraculously renewed.

  “Hello,” she said back, then hovered for a moment as she looked for a place to sit down. George gestured to the foot of the bed and Aurora settled there. “I’ve been waiting to see you for a while,” she told him. “They only just let me in.”

  “Mmm,” George nodded. “I think they know about my money. If I die of unexpected complications I won’t be able to endow the University in my old age.”

  “Oh George.”

  “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a hacksaw, would you? Or a getaway car?”

  Aurora smiled and shook her head. “Neither one. Sorry. But are you sure you’re all right? You look—”

  “Peachy.” He studied her. “You look like there’s something heavy on your mind.”

  “There is,” she admitted, becoming more serious. “I’m afraid if I tell you, though, you might laugh at me . . . or you might not. I’m not sure which would be worse.”

  “Guess we’ll have to see. Go ahead, I’m listening.”

  Aurora struggled to get the words out: “I think . . . I think that we’ve been set up, George.”

  “Set up? Set up how?” Despite his remarkable physical recovery, he felt emotionally drained and would not have thought it possible for anything else to shock him after the day’s events. He would have been wrong. What Aurora said next surprised him beyond all conception.

  “I’m in love with you,” she told him. “And I think, very soon, it’s going to be mutual.”

  II.

  Mr. Sunshine walked down a long and cavernous hallway. He did not like this part of the Library; the Others were here, seated along the windowless walls, ancient figures that might have been carved of stone, but were not. A well-muscled blacksmith with lightning bolts rusting at his feet; a goat man bearing two horns on his head and a third in his hands for winding; a beardless patriarch and his wife; eight younger women with an empty ninth chair in their midst; many more. They were not Dead but they were not Alive, either, and Mr. Sunshine would have far preferred to watch an eclipse than to spend any unnecessary time in their company.

  Unfortunately, the Refrigerator was here too, and Mr. Sunshine had never got around to moving it to a more congenial location. It stood at the far end of the hall, and upon reaching it and opening it Mr. Sunshine wondered, as always, whether the little light inside shined on in his absence or doused itself when the door was closed. He barely glanced at the contents of the cooler racks—Milk, Ambrosia, the Primordial Feta—going straight for the Ice Box. It was there that he found what he needed, a Toy he had kept frozen here for quite a long time.

  The thing was a bird, a fierce white bird formed of ice and snow. Cold crystal rimed its wings, curved icicles served as talons; Mr. Sunshine brought it out, put life into it with a breath.

  “Hello there,” he greeted it, as it perched on his hand, studying him with blank eyes. “Now listen carefully, I’m going to have you be a Messenger for me . . . .”

  Mr. Sunshine shut the Refrigerator door and got walking, bearing the Messenger away to another part of the Library where there was a window that opened on the World. On the way he taught it what he needed it to tell; he gave it a Message, and a job.

  III.

  “Brian Garroway asked me to marry him last night,” Aurora explained, sitting closer now; the grad student on the other bed remained catatonic. “I’ve always known he would ask me eventually; I was never sure what my answer would be.”

  “You told him no,” George guessed.

  “I thought to tell him no. And I will. Last night I chickened out, told him I needed time to think it over. It didn’t help any; he got upset that I even hesitated.”

  “He was expecting a prompt yes.”

  “He’s always expected it,” Aurora agreed. “I can’t say I ever gave him reason not to expect it. I think it may break his heart when I turn him down.”

  “Too many broken hearts around,” George said. “I broke mine today, along with nearly breaking my head.”

  “I know.”

  “You know? How do you know?”

  Aurora bit her lip. “Calliope told me.”

  He sprang like a trap, gripped her arm. “You saw her?”

  “In a dream!” she protested. “Only in a dream!”

  “A dream?”

  “I had two dreams,” Aurora told him. “One last night and one this afternoon, although I guess the second one was more like a vision. I don’t remember lying down to take a nap.

  “Last night’s dream, that was just about you. You and I. I dreamed about the Halloween party, about Thanksgiving night, other times we’ve been together. And times we haven’t been: I kept seeing us eating breakfast back in my house in Wisconsin. My father was there too, laughing.”

  “But what about Calliope?” George said, insistent.

  “The vision . . . I don’t quite know how to describe it. I talked with her. She told me some things.”

  “NO!” He practically exploded.

  “George, I swear to you—”

  “I mean no, there is absolutely no way I am ever going to go through that again. Calliope nearly drove me crazy with her secrets, with all the things she knew that I didn’t understand. And if she passed that on to you . . .”

  “No, George, it’s not like that. I don’t understand most of what she said either, all this stuff about Stories, and Plots . . . only one thing I got clear. You have what I want, what Brian could never give me.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Magic. I heard what happened in front of the Straight today. And just a while ago, in the street . . . your magic, George, your daydreams. I want a stake in that. And love.”

  “But it doesn’t work that way,” George protested. “I’m flattered, but how can I just agree to fall in love with you?”

  “Calliope said you’d ask that. But maybe it’s not a matter of agreement. Tell me, honestly, what are your feelings for me?”

  “Well, I—” It seemed a simple enough question, but as George seriously examined his own heart, he got another big surprise.

  “You see?” said Aurora, watching his eyes widen. “We’ve been set up. She did it, tangled us up somehow without letting us catch on.”

  “All the more reason to reject it. Do you have any idea what she’s already done to me? I nearly let myself die today.”

  “I don’t want to push you into love, George.” Aurora pleaded. “She she told me . . .”

  “Go ahead, say it.”

  “She told me to ask you if you could even remember what she looked like.”

  “What she looked like? Don’t be ridiculous, of course I—"

  Another shock, the third and last, making the circuit complete. Four months. Calliope’s face had hovered within inches of his own, above, below, all around, until it seemed etched forever into memory. But now . . . now that he tried to recall it, the memory blurred like a running watercolor. Of course he had a general impression of her, could have described her easily enough. But as far as summoning up a distinct image of her in his mind—this he could not do, and it shook him.

  “Her picture!” he cried suddenly. “I have her picture in my wallet. Over there!” He pointed to the closet where his clothes had been stored after his transfer into a white hospital robe. “Quick, check my left front pants pocket!”

  Aurora did as he requested, retrieving the wallet and handing it to him. He searched through it frantically and came up with a photograph . . . of a sunlit tree.

  “No!” George nearly screamed; the grad student stirred at last from his catatonia to glance over at the raving madman. “No, no, that’s not right at all! She was standing right there, right in front . . . ah, shit!” He tore the photo in half and hurled the pieces to the floor, disgusted. “Great! Just great! First I lose her, then my
memory goes. What’s next?”

  “Come home with me,” Aurora suggested, softly.

  “To Balch?”

  “To Wisconsin.”

  “Wisconsin?"

  “Brian was supposed to drive me home,” she explained, “but now I don’t suppose he’ll want to. I know you don’t own a car, but you could rent one pretty easily. Come home with me; we’ll have breakfast together, just like in my dream.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  Aurora nodded. “Scary, too. Especially since I don’t know what happens after. But she said it would be the right thing to do, and for some reason I trust her . . . even if she’s only a dream.”

  George shook his head and moaned. “Oh man, oh man, when did I start living inside one of my own stories? Crazy, crazy, crazy . . .”

  “It’s crazy, George. But will you do it?”

  His answer was a long time coming, but this time neither of them were at all surprised.

  “I’ll come. Do you really think I have a choice?”

  IV.

  The clouds had departed, and the air lay still once more. The Messenger came to a rough but not ungraceful landing in The Boneyard. It had flown a terribly long way in a terribly short time, but it had not tired; tired was not something it could be.

  It came to earth in the center of the ring of leaning tombstones. And, having come to rest, bent immediately to tap its glacial beak against the ground, once, twice.

  The earth tremor traveled outward from The Boneyard to a radius of about one mile, causing buildings to shudder, panicking animals, and making small objects dance with false life. Sneaking out of Gannett through a side exit, George and Aurora clutched each other in fear feeling personally threatened; nor were they just being paranoid.

  It did not last long. Indeed, the earthquake ceased almost as quickly as it had begun. Collecting themselves, the man and woman stepped outside arm in arm and walked beneath the stars, filled with a new foreboding.

  BEFORE THE STORM

  I.

  Ragnarok dropped by Risley on the twenty-first of December, the first true day of winter (and the last day of final exams). The campus had been emptying steadily over the past week, becoming almost completely deserted by now, and as the Bohemian Minister of Defense drove up to the dorm unannounced he would not have been surprised to find everyone gone. But it so happened that the Queen of the Grey Ladies had had a particularly late neuro-bio final, and she and Lion-Heart were out on the front lawn just saddling up to leave.

  “Ragnarok!” Myoko cried happily as he drove into view.

  Lion-Heart, remembering a certain tumble down a flight of steps, took a more restrained tone: “So, you’re back, eh?”

  “Had some thinking to do,” Ragnarok said, killing the bike’s engine and dismounting.

  “Had some moping to do, you mean,” Lion-Heart responded. “Almost two months’ worth, by my count. You could have at least dropped word once in a while that you were still alive.”

  Ragnarok tried to shrug off this dig. “I could have, but I didn’t. So are you guys all that’s left, or is somebody else still around?”

  “Now who might you be wondering about?” mused the Bohemian King. “The Top left days ago. Panhandle, Aphrodite, and Woodstock are gone too; I think they were going to check out Atlantic City. And Fujiko’s over at Tolkien House for the duration. That what you wanted to know?”

  “Stop it,” Myoko warned. Then to Ragnarok she said: “Preacher moved downtown almost a week ago. He’ll be in Ithaca housewatching for a professor for most of vacation.”

  “Is Jinsei staying with him?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose she might be.”

  Ragnarok nodded. “You have an address, or a phone number?”

  “No,” said Myoko. “I’m really sorry. If you’d only come by a few days sooner . . .”

  “Right.” He turned back toward his bike. “Guess I’ll have to do some searching around downtown.”

  The Grey Queen caught his arm. “Wait,” she said. “Why don’t you come with us, instead? Lion-Heart and I rented a chalet up the Lake a bit, and I’m sure we’d both love to have you spend Christmas with us. Wouldn’t we, Li?”

  “It’d be a trip and a half, I’m sure,” said Lion-Heart. “What the hell, Rag, she’s probably got a point. There’s bound to be tension at least for a while even if you do find Preacher. The chalet’s only about ten miles away; you come along and have a good Christmas, and Preacher’ll have a good Christmas, and then if you can’t wait you can always drive down and look for him after New Year’s.”

  “I don’t know if I can wait even that long,” Ragnarok told him seriously. “I’ve been having these nightmares . . .”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” said Myoko,·reaching out to stoke his hair, like a mother with a son. “You need some of Lion-Heart’s special eggnog. You’ll sleep just fine then, you’ll see.”

  “No. No, I—”

  “Look, Rag,” Lion-Heart interjected, “I don’t know if you heard the latest weather report, but the queen bitch of snowstorms is on its way down from Maine, right this minute. New Hampshire and Vermont are already getting buried, and the first dusting is due in Tompkins County in about twelve hours. Which is why we’ve really got to move it, because once the heavy stuff starts the roads are going to be locked up tight. You catch that? By sundown it won’t matter whether you're in Ithaca or not, because if Preacher’s smart he won’t be leaving his house for days.”

  “I’ve still got twelve hours . . .”

  “Don’t be silly!” Myoko exclaimed. “If you don’t find him, then what? That place you live in doesn’t even have hot water, does it? Now how am I supposed to have a merry Christmas, knowing that one of my friends is freezing himself to death?”

  By steady degrees they wore him down—Myoko’s arguments were the most convincing, because she kept stroking his hair—and at last he gave in, against his better judgment. Ragnarok’s creams over the past week had left him with a very bad feeling.

  “Don’t worry yourself so,” Myoko chided him. “You’ll see Preacher again soon enough, I promise.”

  In a literal sense, of course, that was absolutely right.

  II.

  George hired a gleaming white Eldorado for the trip, and Aurora drove, as the storyteller had never troubled himself to get a license. They did not leave immediately, but having packed their things into the trunk took a leisurely cruise around The Hill. They ranged from one end of the campus to the other, marveling at familiar and unfamiliar sights alike, enjoying each other’s company throughout. Aurora switched on the radio as they were tooling along the fringes of the Cornell Plantations, and that was how they happened to catch the weather report.

  “Oops,” Aurora said. “We’re going to have to move it if we don’t want to get caught in that.”

  “No rush,” George assured her. “The storm won’t bother us.”

  She looked at him, and he smiled. “You’re positive about that?” she asked.

  “As sure as kites can fly,” he promised.

  Just to play it safe, they struck west immediately, making one last pass through the heart of the campus. As they turned onto East Avenue, George laid a hand on Aurora’s shoulder.

  “Stop the car,” he said.

  She braked and brought the Eldorado to a halt right in front of Day

  Hall. “What is it?”

  “Just want to wish a buddy of mine Merry Christmas. Over there.” He pointed. “That’s the dog that got me out of The Boneyard.”

  Luther turned at the sound of the car door opening, and recognized the storyteller’s scent even before he saw his face. George intended only a meager offering of gratitude, but from the dog’s point of view it was quite a moment, for to him the Eldorado seemed nothing less than a chariot of white fire, reeking with the hills-and-rain smell of Heaven.

  “Hey, hey, good to see you too!” George said, as the dog ran up to him, barking. He stepped out of the car and swept L
uther up into his arms, at which point the mongrel nearly drowned him with sloppy licks.

  “You’re right,” Aurora observed. “He is your buddy.”

  An idea struck him, “Hey,” George asked, “do you think your parents would mind if we brought home an extra guest?”

  “If they don’t mind you they won’t mind him. But what about his owner?”

  “I don’t think he’s got one,” George said. “There’s no collar on him, and besides, he doesn’t act like he has an owner. Know what I mean?”

  “No.” Aurora smiled. “But then I’m not a storyteller, so I’ll trust you. Go ahead, bring him along if he wants to come.”

  George tapped Luther’s nose with a finger. “What about it, dude?” he asked. “Want to come to Wisconsin? It’s a long ride, but when you get there you’ll get to see about six billion cows.”

  Once again Luther relied on empathy rather than actual comprehension, but this time the message was easy enough to fathom: the saint in whose arms he rested was offering to take him up to Heaven in the white chariot. Perhaps it would even be the real Heaven this time. Luther was acutely aware that he might be in for another disappointment, but he also remembered the summoning of the winds. If anyone could take Luther to Heaven, this man could.

  Yet he could not forget about Blackjack. The Manx had been furious enough at being left to struggle out of that snowbank alone, nor had he believed Luther’s explanation later. To just take off now without at least saying good-bye would be terrible, but Luther knew he had no time to waste. Chariots of fire wait for no one—you must ride, or not.

  “What do you say, guy?” George asked, setting Luther down on the ground. “My lady and I have to get going.”

  In a quick decision that he later regretted—but all hard choices bring some regret—Luther leaped aboard the chariot and was suffused by the Heaven scent. George climbed in as well, slammed the door, and they were off.

  Oh Blackjack, Blackjack, I hope you can forgive me . . . .

  But wait, there was something: As the car slowed to turn another corner, Luther spied a familiar Beagle through the Eldorado’s rear window.