Fool on the Hill

by Matt Ruff

  “Skippy!” Luther called out mentally, “Skippy, look over here!”

  “Hi, Luther!” Skippy replied, turning and racing alongside the car. “Hey, what are you doing in that thing? Huh? Huh?”

  “Listen to me!” the mongrel said urgently. “I need you to take a message to Blackjack.”

  “Why can’t you take it to him? You going somewhere, Luther? Huh? Huh? Where are you going? Huh? H—”

  Running at top speed to keep pace with the car, Skippy suffered an abrupt face-first encounter with a mailbox. A resounding whap! marked the interruption of his curiosity.

  “Listen to me!” Luther called back to the dazed Beagle as he receded into the distance. “Please get this! Tell Blackjack that I got invited to Heaven. Tell him I’ll come back. Tell him I promise to come back. Have you got that?”

  But Skippy was too far and too befuddled to answer, if indeed he’d gotten it. Luther settled down in the back seat, already wondering if he’d made the wrong choice.

  I’ll come back and see you, Blackjack. I promise.

  III.

  But of course reunions are notoriously chancy things. Often it seems as if the most likely meetings are those least desired; the unwelcome guest always comes back for seconds.

  The storm struck Ithaca that night at quarter past ten, bringing misfortune as well as snow and ice. The Messenger found a perch in the high branches of a dark oak, the same oak into which a fair Lady’s hand had hurled an ancient spearhead.

  Strengthened by the cold, the Messenger kept a tireless watch on a hole that the recent earth tremor had opened in the ground. The white marble square, unmoved for more than a century, had fallen into this hole and lay in pieces at the bottom, beside another long-undisturbed object.

  The object was a box, a cube no more than half a foot to a side, composed of black iron. Once the box might have been used to safe-keep jewelry, coins, any number of harmless things. But someone had shut it up tight, sealing its seams and cracks most carefully, wrapping the whole with a special silver band that remained untarnished after decade upon decade of burial.

  The packed soil had served as an effective warden for many years. Now the earth had opened, exposing Pandora’s Box to any and all who might happen by. The whirling snow would re-cover it, briefly, but all that really remained to be done was for some unlucky soul to break the seals and lift the hinged lid, unleashing the real storm.

  It wasn’t long before someone did just that.

  Book Three

  PANDORA’S BOX

  1866—INSIDE THE BONE ORCHARD

  It is in the north end of The Bone Orchard that the Plot really begins to come together for Mr. Sunshine. He crouches over the site of Ithaca’s only live burial, a spot marked only by a ring of seven round white stones—enchanted stones, he senses. The other, more conventional markers surrounding the site lean away like the petals of a budding grey flower, but their lean is not nearly so pronounced as it will be a century from now.

  Mr. Sunshine places his palm against the damp earth, understanding what it is that lies beneath. Its presence here is wholly fortuitous, nothing to do with any of his previous Meddlings on Earth, but—as much an opportunist as an originator, like all storytellers—he immediately sees its potential uses for the Plot he is weaving.

  “Animation,” he says. “Animation, that’s wonderful, I can have some good times with that. And if . . .”

  He trails off thinking: Stephen Titus George. St. George. And animation. Hmmm . . .

  Standing behind him like an impatient valet, Ezra Cornell clears his throat several times.

  “Getting a bit late,” Cornell hints, wondering what in hell he is doing here in the first place. “Getting a bit cold, too.”

  “Hold this,” Mr. Sunshine says, handing him the lantern. Cornell takes it obediently and waits while the Greek Original bends low over the site and does something Meddlesome with his hands.

  “Better,” Mr. Sunshine says a moment later, standing and taking the lantern again. “More appropriate, considering.”

  “Heh-em,” Cornell throat-clears once more. “I really think . . ."

  “Onward and upward,” Mr. Sunshine interrupts him. He pats Ezra on the shoulder companionably. “You like climbing The Hill, I know you do. Good for the circulation, good for the lungs. I’d wager your middle name is Sisyphus, you love climbing so much.”

  “Yes,” Cornell agrees, eyes glazing for a moment. “Yes, I love it.”

  “Good.” Mr. Sunshine nods. “Double-time, then.”

  “Double-time. Yes . . .”

  They move off, and now the scene has changed. The center of the budding grey flower is no longer a ring of stones, but a solitary, still-enchanted

  marker. A white marble square bearing a single, appropriate word:

  PANDORA

  HOBART VISITS THE BONEYARD

  I.

  The hangar doors slid open silently, moved by a set of rollers and counterweights finer than anything human hands could have designed. Snow whipped into the hangar as if seeking targets, yet Hobart stood right at the opening, enduring the cold, looking down from the very pinnacle of the Tower. Outside chaos reigned: with the setting of the sun visibility had dropped almost to zero, and now the air currents goaded each other to greater feats of abandon. Foolish to tempt Fate by venturing out on such a night, but out he must go. Hobart’s nightmares had gotten progressively worse, and he could no longer suppress the feeling that something terrible had happened in The Boneyard.

  He walked back to the rear of the hangar where the gossamer glider waited and climbed into the sling-seat. His pinsword was in his belt, but he did not bother arming himself with a crossbow, for if he ran into trouble he doubted it would be much use to him. Instead he had gone to a secret place in the lower part of the Tower and obtained a tiny sackful of a very special dust. The dust was silver, a special alloy also beyond the ability of human craft; precious and rare, it might prove his only salvation in a true emergency.

  Hobart gave the command, and the glider arose and hurled itself out into the storm. Once past the hangar doors, Hobart’s trip took on a decidedly different character than Zephyr’s months-ago chase after George: far from a smooth glide, the first turbulence threatened to break the aircraft in two, and at one point it seemed to actually be bouncing up and down rather than moving forward. Hobart petitioned the wind to be gentler, after which it eased off some—but a human being would still have compared the glide down the Slope to a roller coaster ride, without the usual reassurance of a safe stop at the end of the trip.

  Hobart was frightened by the violence of the storm, yet he hoped very shortly to be made even more afraid. He would pass perilously low over The Boneyard, to check whether a particular ring of seven white stones was still intact—a ring specially enchanted to discourage overly curious animals and sprites from disturbing what lay beneath it. He could not possibly hope to see the stones what with all the snow, but if they were there he would feel it, feel the dread and desire to flee that they would project into him. And if, in flying over the old burial site, Hobart felt no fear except that which he brought with him . . . well, in that case, fear itself would hardly be enough.

  II.

  The glider made an almost reluctant dip as it passed over the chain-link fence that enclosed the upper ‘Yard. Where up to this point a scattering of streetlamps like lesser stars had cast a feeble glow over the sprite’s route, darkness now conspired with the snow to obscure even the most obvious landmarks. Hobart was forced to fly by instinct alone, instinct augmented by memory.

  Memory proved a surprisingly sharp ally, and a bitter one as well. Though frost and night covered all, the hidden earth seemed to cry out to him, speaking of another fearsome eve when rain had crashed down in a deluge to hamper the advance of a sprite army traveling on foot rather than in the air. Here Rosencrantz and three others slipped into a mud runnel and drowned Memory whispered beneath the howl of the wind. The great unseen mass just ahe
ad is the tree where Rasferret the Grub’s troops waited in ambush. Directly below lies the tombstone beside which Miranda and Ariel were slaughtered, fighting back to back against an unrelenting enemy.

  He thought of the story he had told at the Halloween party, the death story that Laertes had been so anxious to hear: Hecate led the larger of two contingents on an assault against The Boneyard. A second, smaller group, led by Eldest Julius, would sneak in and attempt to kill Rasferret . . . of that second group, I alone survive to tell the tale . . . .

  There was another story, an extremely ancient folktale in the sprite canon, that concerned a certain Robin Goodfellow, a rascal and Lothario of very much the same timber as Zephyr’s love-errant Puck. Robin Goodfellow actually figured in a number of folktales, but the most popular by far told of his battle with the great Wildebeest of Rangoon. The Wildebeest, a ravenous monster with horribly sharp teeth, could not be killed because of a strong enchantment laid upon it. Despite this, Robin managed to defeat it through trickery, making it catch its head inside a stout earthen pot; unable to bite, it was thus rendered harmless, but did not die. Hobart recited the story of Robin Goodfellow and the Wildebeest more often than any other talc. He seemed truly fascinated by it.

  You killed him, then?

  Of course we killed him, Laertes.

  Memory whispered to him once more as he neared the burial site, whispered of the death of a dear friend done in by a weapon that had come to life in his own hands: Hobart, your crossbow!

  Was it a tear or merely a snowflake that caused Hobart’s eyes to sting? He swiped at them with the back of his hand, briefly letting go of one of the glider’s guide-threads. The wind allowed the nose of the craft to make another unexpected dip, and this saved Hobart’s life.

  The frost-feathered Messenger, roused by Hobart’s intrusion into The Boneyard, shot past like an airborne scythe, talons extended to rip and tear . . . but it had not counted on this last second’s maneuvering. Just the tip of a single claw drew a slit in the gossamer of the glider, which was not immediately disastrous; more damaging, a batting wing of ice twisted the frame of the craft and sent it spiraling downward.

  Caught in a plummeting spin, Hobart didn’t know what had hit him, only that he was in trouble. The wind helped level him out before he struck a snowbank—the glider would likely have buried itself to a depth of several feet—but luck must have lent a hand too, to keep him from smashing up against some obstacle as he hurtled through the darkness barely a breath’s height from the ground.

  Straining his ears for a telltale sound, Hobart began coaxing the glider back up to a safer altitude. A subtle shift in the shrieking of the wind warned him of the Messenger’s second attack as the ice bird swooped in behind him. With no time to think, he raced his craft up toward the creaking tangleweb that was the upper branch-lattice of a dead maple. Straight for it he flew, at the final instant jerking the nose of the glider still higher, pointing at the crown of the sky. Once again the Messenger, with too much momentum for its own good, barely missed the target, passing just beneath to punch a splintering, jattering path through the maple branches.

  “I’m leaving,” Hobart announced, as if to appease his foe, but in the cold dark the Messenger was already wheeling around for yet another run. Banking above the level of the trees now, the sprite set a course for the all-too-distant lights of West Campus and the Slope. He freed one hand from the guide-threads and clutched at the pouch hanging from his belt.

  The Messenger, seeing with magical eyes what would have been invisible to most natural creatures, homed in on the glider and readied itself for a final strike. As it drew closer in the glider’s wake, it prepared to counter any further evasive action: it would dive if Hobart dived, climb if he climbed, chase him in circles if necessary. He would not escape.

  Hobart tugged at the pouch. Against an ordinary predator—a hungry winter owl, say—it would have been useless, but the sprite had already guessed that his pursuer was anything but ordinary. Indeed, Hobart had guessed a great many things in the past few moments, and he had no response to these guesses, save one.

  The pouch did not want to leave his belt. It hung there, the leather cord which held it unwilling to loosen in the midst of the rush and the storm. Desperate, Hobart jammed a finger into the neck of the bag, forcing it open. Directly behind him, ready for the kill, the Messenger let out a screech; Hobart jerked about and the bag came loose from his belt all at once, falling out of his grasp. The wind caught it, held it open, turned it inside out,and silver dust shot out and back like seed from a rainmaker’s airplane.

  It was only dust, but magical, and to the Messenger it was like a brick wall, an invisible fist swinging from nowhere. The bird stopped dead in midair, wings flailing, talons splayed. Then, paralyzed, it was thrown down from the sky; it fell and did not rise again that night. But it did not die, either, for evil things are difficult to kill.

  Hobart, delivered only barely from his own death, retreated in a near panic back up The Hill, the winds that bore him no more gentle than those which had carried him down. The tear in the gossamer began to widen, the glider frame warped drastically, and only an extra whim of good fortune permitted a safe landing back in the Tower pinnacle.

  He disembarked from the damaged glider, closed the hangar doors, then hurried down the secret staircase, through the open and wind-swept belfry, into the shelter of the drop-shaft where liquor waited. Some time later, deep in stupor, Hobart found himself looking once again into the face of the departed Julius.

  “Why?” Hobart asked him. “Why twice in one lifetime? What could we have done to deserve it?”

  “Justice is a funny thing, old friend,” Julius replied. “It isn’t always a matter of what you deserve, just what they decide to give you.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  Julius raised an eyebrow

  “You ought to be,” he said. “You ought to be.”

  NORTHERN LIGHTS

  I.

  Two days it took them to drive to Wisconsin, two days, both a long and a short time. An outstretched arm of the “queen bitch of snowstorms” (meteorologists used a slightly less colorful phrase) delayed their progress, though at George’s polite request the tempest quickly slacked off and fell behind them.

  Both nights of the journey they spent in roadside motels, lying together in a double bed, Luther curled up contentedly at the foot. They did not make love on these nights; in fact, despite their earlier intimacy in the Garden of Lothlórien and whatever may or may not have happened on Thanksgiving, they hardly thought to touch each other. Instead they talked, and talked; in a novel you would say they “poured out their souls to one another,” although the words they spoke did not pour or gush, they wafted. In calm but earnest tones George escorted Aurora through the vast library he had built up in his mind, shelf upon shelf of unwritten volumes, an army of stories waiting their turn to be told. His greatest fear was that in death he would take some of the best of these stories with him, never having had the time to commit them all to paper; yet this was also his greatest joy, for he knew his work would never be finished, knew the well would not run dry even if he outlived Methuselah. And Aurora—she had no library to reveal, but her dreams, like finely crafted antiques, would have more than filled the rooms of a tall mansion. Long past midnight she whispered to him—as she had never whispered to anyone—of knights and sorcerers, boisterous but cunning dragons, obsidian roads like frozen black rivers. Slowly George came to understand that her desire was not just to think or read about such things, but that she honestly desired to experience a fairy tale.

  This was both more courageous and more difficult an ambition than simple storytelling: yet not so difficult, George realized, as he might once have believed.

  By the time they crossed the Wisconsin border George had fulfilled Aurora’s prediction and fallen as deeply in love with her as she had with him. Somehow the span of two days seemed hardly enough for this to have happened, and afterwards George thou
ght that here he had glimpsed the essence of magic: changes that should take eons, changes that should never happen at all, coming about with a startling suddenness. Back in Ithaca he had first recognized opportunity in Aurora, yet Ached for Calliope; now the Hurt was lost somewhere behind him on the road, and Aurora had eclipsed his recollection of Calliope almost completely. For again, as predicted, the more George loved Aurora the more perfect she became in his sight, and when he tried to think back to that other perfect woman he saw only fair hair and pale skin. All that remained of the dark-eyed Asian was a wrinkle in the memory of his heart, which one day yet might find its way into a story . . . maybe, if he had the time.

  At the moment he was fully occupied getting to know this new perfect woman sitting beside him in the car, beside him in the bed. And her parents, especially her father. It turned out that Walter Smith took an instant liking to George, and why shouldn’t he? George was, after all, the answer to a desperate prayer.

  II.

  They arrived late afternoon on the twenty-third. Walter was waiting out on the front porch as the car drove up. He had a big smile on his face, and it wasn’t just from what he’d been smoking.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Aurora waved, bringing them around and parking. Walter Smith waved back, looking not the least bit surprised at the appearance of the rental car or at George. In fact as they stepped out, it was the dog that Walter most seemed to raise an eyebrow about.

  “Hello there,” Walter said as Luther ran up and barked at him. “This is George, Daddy.” Aurora made a nervous introduction. She was unsure how her father would react to her bringing home a total stranger, although actually she hadn’t.

  “Stephen Titus George,” Walter Smith said, nodding. “I’ve just finished reading your books. Good stuff.”