Fool on the Hill

by Matt Ruff

  Just as well, though, that the community believe the killer to be still at large. Undoubtedly there would be pressures on the department to solve the case as soon as possible, but the news might also make people more careful. A positive side effect indeed, since if logic and rationality could be suspended once, there was no reason why they shouldn’t be suspended again, and soon.

  II.

  Hobart was alive.

  Two sprites riding squirrelback from the Beebe Lake celebration to their homes had discovered him by chance, half-buried in a snowbank and frozen just as near to death as one can get without passing over. Neither magic nor medicine had been able to revive him; taken to a warm healing warren within the walls of the Straight, he slept in coma.

  The wreckage of Puck’s biplane was discovered at first light. The surviving Rats, following Rasferret’s orders, had disposed of the bodies of their fallen comrades, and the sprites were left to conclude that the crash had come about through simple misadventure. A more careful examination of the hangar, the biplane, or the wound in Hobart’s shoulder might have suggested another possibility, but the Little People are not given to detective work.

  Hobart’s survival was considered a miracle. Puck’s chances were thought to be slim indeed, and of course if he had faded there would be no corpse. In accordance with custom, then, a search of seven days would be conducted, and if he had not been located by the end of that time he would be officially given up as dead. Unofficially, in the minds of those closest to him, he might remain alive a good deal longer; loved ones of the deceased had been known to keep hoping for years, even decades. Such was the burden of a race whose bodies did not remain to rot.

  Zephyr divided her time evenly that day between search duty and attending Hobart’s bedside. She kept remarkable control of herself throughout the morning and afternoon, but broke down shortly after sundown, laying her head across her Grandfather’s chest in a sudden outburst of sobs. The intensity of her emotion seemed to reach him, and he stirred the slightest bit, uttering one word before drifting back into comatose slumber.

  “What Hobart?” Zephyr half begged of him. “What did you say?”

  She thought the word on his lips had been eyes, whatever that might mean, but she was wrong. Hobart, or whatever prophecy spoke through him, had referred to a time.

  Ides, he had said. Ides.

  AN EYE TO THE IDES

  The three Architects, vacationing Cornellians all, met to conspire in a Greenwich Village café on the sixth of January. The name of the place was Fischer’s Angry Serpent, only too appropriate since the Architects were conspiring about this year’s Green Dragon Parade, more specifically the Parade’s main attraction, the Dragon itself. Larretta Stodges, the Mastermind, held in her hand the August Sun editorial mocking last year’s Dragon, which had collapsed miserably not ten yards from its starting point. Larretta eyed her companions solemnly.

  “This year,” Larretta said to them, “this March, we’re going to blow their plebian journalist minds. Our class is going to have the best, most exciting, most talked-about Dragon in the history of the event.”

  “History?” queried Curlowski, the lowly one. “Who cares about history?”

  “Think about it,” Larretta appealed to him. “The greatest success following on the heels of the greatest failure. Redemption for the College, immortality for us. We’ll be like gods. Just think about it.”

  Curlowski thought about it; it still did not impress him. This was only to be expected, for Curlowski was very much like a tack, sharp but not terribly deep. Concepts on the level of immortality and godhood were beyond him, though when it came to calculating the stress on load-bearing members, he had no peer.

  Modine, the third Architect, was not like a tack. He was, like, a total sex maniac. Beneath the table he had a hand on Larretta’s thigh, stroking. She let the hand stay but rapped it sharply across the knuckles with a steel T-square any time it strayed too close to an erogenous zone. It was all right; Modine had extremely resilient finger joints.

  “So . . .” Modine said, after a particularly nasty knuckle-rap. “What this uber-Dragon going to be like, ‘Retta baby?”

  “Call me that again and you die,” answered Larretta. “Now I figure first off we want a big Dragon, huge, hulking, blot-out-the-sun kind of big . . .”

  “On no,” Curlowski interrupted. “Size was one of the major factors in last year’s fiasco; they built it too big, and that threw off the balance.”

  “Which is exactly why we have to have an even bigger Dragon,” she explained to him. “Your job is going to be to see to it that the suspension and balance are just right this time, while still giving us the maximum size possible. That’s how you impress people, Curlowski, by succeeding and superseding where others have failed miserably.”

  “All right, I get the picture. What else are you planning to include in the structural design?”

  “Wings,” said Larretta, raising her arms. “Huge green wings that really move instead of just hanging there.”

  “No, wings are a bad idea. Wings catch the wind, that rocks the whole structure, and you’ve got another balance problem on your hands.”

  “You’ll deal with it, Curlowski.”

  “I’ll deal with it. Right.”

  “One more thing, the most important of all: our Dragon is going to breathe fire.”

  Curlowski dropped his glasses: “Fire?”

  “Fire?” echoed Modine, actually withdrawing his hand. “Just a minute, isn’t the fire bit supposed to wait until the end of the Parade, when they torch the whole monster?”

  “It’ll be great,” said Larretta. “The Dragon will be rolling along East Avenue toward the Engineering Quad, engineers all lined up to throw snowballs or mudballs, and all of a sudden, foom!"

  “I think foom! violates the Campus Code of Conduct,” Modine warned.

  “Not to mention the rules of practicality,” added Curlowski. “You’re talking about a construct of wood, canvas, and papier-mâché. How is that supposed to breathe fire without igniting itself?”

  Larretta Stodges shrugged. “Gentlemen,” she said, “I really don’t know. But we have until mid-March to figure it out . . . right?”

  Modine nodded, looking a little nervous. After a brief hesitation, so did Curlowski.

  In the end, they figured it out just fine.

  BOHEMIAN REQUIEM

  I.

  Preacher’s body was flown back to Brooklyn for burial. Of the Bohemians, only Lion-Heart, Myoko, and Ragnarok were in attendance at the funeral. They had gotten a phone call at the lakeside chalet and come down, the two men looking stiff and uncomfortable in rented suits. After the ceremony Ragnarok gave his condolences to Preacher’s parents, the closest thing to a family he had had since his exodus from the South. But there was little enough he could say, and he was haunted throughout by the vague memory of some dream he’d had, blue sparks glowing against a field of darkness.

  The tombstone was a ghastly irony, though there was no one who could have made the connection. Rather than purchase a huge, extravagant monolith, Preacher’s father opted in this one instance for simplicity, almost humility. The stone lay flat against the ground, and bore only a name, date of birth, date of death, and simple epitaph ("Here will I set up my everlasting rest"). It was square, without decoration, and carved of white marble.

  Ragnarok, who watched the burial crew bring the stone to the graveside, did not much care for the color.

  II.

  George and Aurora heard the news five days before their scheduled departure from Wisconsin; Lion-Heart got the Smiths’ number after some poking around and phoned long-distance from SoHo. He told them as much as he knew—which was still not very much—about what had happened on New Year’s Eve, and then, speaking to George, made a formal request on behalf of Bohemia: he hoped that the storyteller would come to Preacher’s wake, which would be held on the twenty-second, and read something.

  Now a wake traditionally invol
ves the body of the deceased, and takes place before the funeral, not after, but that the Bohemians would break tradition especially where a friend was concerned came as no surprise. George gave his word that he would attend, and promised to start work on a story for the occasion as soon as possible.

  It made a crashing end to what had started out as the best Christmas vacation that either Aurora or George had ever known. Things had begun to go downhill with the disappearance of Luther. They had spent days searching, but whether he had been run down in some lonely place or simply run off, they found no sign. George in particular felt badly, for it had been his idea to take the dog from The Hill in the first place; he could only hope that the animal would make out well, whatever happened to it.

  Between Luther’s exit and Lion-Heart’s phone call, Brian Garroway had done his own little bit to undermine the holiday mood. Twice he left long letters for Aurora, and three times came by to yell at her in person; Walter Smith was secretly quite pleased to act as bouncer on these occasions. Finally, though, Aurora took herself over to Brian’s, and after a discussion/argument that lasted hours, managed to form a shaky peace and an understanding between the two of them. The effort wearied her, though; George could see it on her face when she at last came home.

  The last half-week of vacation George divided his time evenly between Aurora and Preacher’s wake-story, which came to be titled “The Crossing.” The tale came easily to him; if there was one thing that served better as inspiration than unrequited low, it was death.

  III.

  The wake was held in the Risley Dining Hall, in design the closest thing to a medieval feast hall that The Hill had to offer. Starlight and a bright moon shone in through windows set high up along the walls, for outside the sky was clear, the air frozen. Within, warmth was provided by an open hearth, and, more mundanely, by the basement furnace. Rectangular tables arranged in two rows ran the length of the Hall. A Head Table had been set up perpendicular to the rows, and at it sat Lion-Heart, Myoko, Jinsei, and Ragnarok. A fifth, empty chair was set up in honor of Preacher. The other Bohemians and Grey Ladies took places at the long tables, and with them select members of Tolkien House and the Blue Zebras. George was given a seat of honor very near the Head Table, and Aurora beside him; she looked every inch the Princess that night.

  Lion-Heart clapped his hands and the wake began. Food was brought out (Panhandle and Aphrodite had commandeered the Risley kitchen): a clutch of roast chickens, fresh baked bread, pears, apples, an assortment of cheeses, and a hot spiced drink that took ginger brandy as its main ingredient. They feasted in desperate fashion, the drink disappearing as quickly as it could be mixed. Some of those assembled blinked back tears, some grew angrily drunk, and some emptied their plates and began to dance frenziedly as though their own lives might depend on it.

  Ragnarok sat in an uncomfortable silence beside Jinsei. Since his return to Ithaca they had exchanged words but not actually talked; that event seemed to be waiting on a catalyst, one which had not shown its face yet. He ate sparingly and drank heavily, and midway through the meal got up to stand by the hearth. There he remained for a good long time, jabbing at the fire with a metal poker that was not really a poker at all, but Christopher Robin’s lost lightning rod.

  The food lasted a good two hours, and this against surprisingly fierce appetites. When the pace began to flag, Lion-Heart clapped his hands again. The music was shut off; the dancers and other drifters returned to their scats, except for Ragnarok, who kept his vigil by the hearth. Lion-Heart nodded to George, who advanced to the center of the hall, story in hand. The assembled mourners grew still; Ragnarok poked at the coals; George cleared his throat.

  “There was once a fisherman,” he began unsteadily, “who left home and family to make a long journey across the sea. He had no choice in the matter; it was not his decision to leave, but another’s . . . .”

  IV.

  A great white bird of ice cut the air above The Hill in its flight. Rasferret the Grub, his magic and his Rat troops more than replenished in the three weeks since the New Year, sat safe in his hideaway, his face set in a semi-trance; he saw through the eyes of the Messenger as it flew alone across Fall Creek Gorge toward Risley.

  Tonight was a momentous occasion. Tonight Rasferret would finally get a glimpse of his opponent, the human he was obliged to defeat if he was to keep his newfound power. The Messenger knew just where and when to go; with its own vision it would show him what he needed to be shown. Now the wide brick-faced building, so much like a castle, grew larger in the Messenger’s sight, and Rasferret was suddenly afraid, for he had not ceased to be a coward in his heart. What might this enemy look like? he wondered. A giant, huge even among the Big People, who were gigantic enough to begin with? Or something more subtly terrifying? The Grub’s imagination played havoc with him in the brief time it had.

  Then the Messenger landed on a ledge outside one of the high-set windows of the dining hall. It Swept the room with its gaze, and Rasferret’s fright trebled at the sight of the Bohemians, some of whom might easily have been sorcerers. But when the bird fixed on George, all fear dissipated.

  The Grub, quite frankly, was not impressed. Compared to some of the others in the hall, this human appeared positively harmless. He certainly didn’t seem magical. Physically George was not all that impressive either; most assuredly he was no giant.

  He is weak, the Grub told himself. Yes, weak.

  With that thought came an inspiration, an idea born of opportunity but also of lingering cowardice. Standing alone at the hall’s center, George looked, more than anything else, vulnerable. The Messenger’s angle of view only added to this perception. And so it occurred to Rasferret that he might save himself a good deal of effort—and perhaps personal risk—if he ended the thing now.

  From his distant hiding place, from his comfort and safety, the Grub sent out a mental command: Kill him.

  “What!?” Mr. Sunshine exclaimed at his Writing Desk, and the Messenger hesitated. “What’s this? Not till the Ides, that’s the deal, you were told, you don’t touch him until the Ides!”

  And the Messenger tried to warn Rasferret: Not yet, not yet.

  Kill him, the Grub repeated, already obsessed with his own notion of how the deed should be done. Still the Messenger held back, and Mr. Sunshine could have changed Rasferret’s mind as easily as a mortal writer changes a sentence, but he was fuming at the mutiny.

  “You arrogant little bastard,” he said. “After I dig you up, let you have magic, free rein except for this one thing . . . ought to give you ass’s ears just to teach you, but it’d probably be an improvement. But OK, fine, I know just what to do. . . .”

  KILL HIM, the Grub insisted, all too impatient. And the Messenger, suddenly freed from hesitancy, gathered itself up and propelled itself through the window in a cacophony of shattering glass.

  V.

  George had them spellbound.

  If the storyteller seemed unmagical-looking from outside, then those gathered in the hall took quite a different view. Whether natural or enhanced by the emotion of the moment, his delivery and tone of voice were perfect, drawing. But it was the tale itself that truly captivated them: a proper tale for the occasion, well crafted, it did what all good stories should do, made its audience forget that they were hearing a story at all. They heard instead the rush of wind and water and the flapping of sails that George described to them.

  “Now when I talk about the swell of the waves,” intoned the storyteller, “you don’t really understand me, because we who spend our lives on land think only of waves’ ending, a crash of white foam against the coastline or against the bow of some great ship. But to the fisherman, so far on his journey that the coastline was a dream forgotten long ago, his boat not large enough to make even a scratch on the skin of the sea, these waves were like smooth hills, rising and falling on a plain of dark glass, and if some of them did peak and foam then it was of their own volition; no ship bled them. And the water’s
depths were black.

  “Utterly alone on this shifting seascape, the fisherman remembered those he had left behind, and wondered if they sometimes still thought of him. Dozing, he imagined he saw his friends and loved ones coming across the waves toward him, but when he raised his head their images dissolved; they were only gulls, wheeling above the surface of the water, crying aloud in what seemed almost human voices. Then the gulls were gone too, vanished back among the hills of the sea, and he was once again alone. . . .”

  The Bohemians and their guests were absolutely silent; even Ragnarok had ceased to stir the fire and set aside the lightening rod to listen. The allegory made its point; rather than dwell on their own loss the mourners now considered Preacher’s journey beyond death, even those who did not ordinarily believe in such journeys. And here was the real magic: some of them forgot their grief, if only for a brief span of time.

  Even when the Messenger exploded into the hall in a burst of glass and winter air, they did not immediately jolt out of their reverie. They looked up and saw the white bird, so much like one of the fisherman’s gulls. For a moment it seemed as though the intruder might simply fly the length of the hall and exit, a heartbeat later, out into the cold night again, and if it had, George’s story might very well have continued uninterrupted. But it didn’t. The Messenger banked and dove at George with its wings swept back and its crystalline beak extended like the tip of a spear; it meant to run clean through him, and very nearly succeeded.