He rose in the air and was gone, lost in the winter dusk.
“Starving, are you?” Gobelet shouted after him. “No worse than I. And you can whisk off on your wings. No limping on a stiff knee for you.” He felt a sudden consuming hatred for the whole fairy race. He took a couple of steps, caught his foot in the snare, and fell, wrenching his knee. It was his good knee. He crawled away on all fours, and made a bracken hut, where he spent a miserable week nursing his knee, changing and unchanging his mind, and listening to the kites mewing in the fog. In the end he decided to go forward. There was nothing to be got by it, but not to finish his wasteful journey would be worse waste. To look at Bourrasque and turn away would clear the score.
The fog lifted and there it was—larger than he remembered, and darker. The gates stood open. A long procession was winding up the hillside, the piper going ahead. The Queen must be dead at last! It was odd that so many wagons, loaded with so much baggage, should be part of the funeral train. But no doubt, freed from her tyranny, the court would bury her and go on to being better fed elsewhere. He watched the procession out of sight, stared at the smokeless chimneys, and renounced Bourrasque, which he had come such a long journey to renounce. As he was turning away, it occurred to him that he owed himself a keepsake, and that one of Lady Fidès’ birds would do. He limped on, and entered the palace by the familiar gully where the waste water flowed away. The east pavilion was stripped bare. He remembered other things he had admired and went in search of them. Some furniture remained in the emptied rooms—gaunt beds with no hangings, cabinets with doors hanging open. Meeting his reflection in a mirror, he started back as if it accused him of trespassing.
He was hurrying away when he saw Grive lying in a corner.
There was time to remember all this during Grive’s convalescence, when the excitement of winning him back to life was over and the triumphs of stealing provisions from the homes of the dead had dulled into routine. He compared Grive’s lot with his own: no one had tended him in his ditch and never for a moment had he supposed it better to be dead than alive. What succour would a dying Grive have got from a dead Gobelet? The comparison was sharpened because the living Gobelet was afraid. The survivors outside the walls railed against the palace people, who had done nothing for them, feasted while they starved, danced while they were dying, deserted them. If this angry remnant invaded the palace—and certainly it would—Grive and he would be done for.
They got away as smoothly as they did in their serial story. It was a clear frosty night, a following wind helped them uphill, and in the morning they took their last look at Bourrasque, where the villagers, small and busy as ants, were dragging corpses to the plague pit.
With that morning Gobelet began the happiest epoch of his life. As nearly as possible, he became a fairy. He lost all sense of virtue and responsibility and lived by pleasures—pell-mell pleasures: a doubled rainbow, roasting a hedgehog. And, as if he shared the hardiness and resilience of those who live for pleasure, he was immune to cold or fatigue, and felt like a man half his age. Grive had made an instant and unashamed recovery. Most of the time he was high overhead, circling while Gobelet walked, sailing on the wind, flying into clouds and reappearing far above them. From time to time he dived down to report what he had seen. There was a morass ahead, so Gobelet must bear to the left. Another storm was coming up, but if Gobelet hurried he would reach a wood in time to take shelter. He had seen a likely farm where Gobelet could beg a meal. He had seen a celandine.
A day later there were a thousand celandines. The swallows would not be long behind them, remarked Gobelet: swallows resort to celandines to clear their eyesight after spending the winter sunk in ponds; they plunge in, all together, and lie under the mud. All together, they emerge. What proves it is that you never see a swallow till the celandines are in bloom. On the contrary, Grive said, swallows fly south and spend the winter in some warmer climate where they have plenty of flies to prey on. This had been one of Lady Fidès’ crazy ideas: no one at Bourrasque credited it, for why should birds fly to a foreign shore and encounter such dangers and hardships on the way when they could winter comfortably in a pond?
Grive and Gobelet were still disputing this when the swallows came back, twirling the net of their shadows over the grass. By then it was hot enough to enjoy shade. They moved away from the uplands, and lived in wooded country, listening to nightingales. Grive had never heard a nightingale. It was like the celandines—the first single nightingale, so near that he saw its eye reflecting the moonlight, and the next day thousands, chorus rivalling chorus; for they sang in bands and, contrary to the poets, by day as well as by night. Fairies, he said, were far inferior to birds. They have no song; nothing comes out of them but words and a few contrived strains of music from professional singers. Birds surpass them in flight, in song, in plumage. They build nests; they rear large families. No fairy drummer could match a woodpecker, no fairy militia manoeuvre like a flock of lapwings, no fairy comedian mimic like a starling.
He spoke with such ardour that it would not do to contradict him, though privately Gobelet thought that if Grive could not sing like a nightingale he could praise as fluently and with more invention. Grive was as much in love with birds as ever Lady Fidès had been, but without the frenzy which made her throw the lark pie out of the window—which was fortunate, as there were many days when the choice of a meal lay between pignuts and an unwary quail spatchcocked. He left provisioning to Gobelet; whether it was begged, stolen, caught, Grive found everything delicious, and sauced by eating it with his fingers. In other respects he was master. It was part of Gobelet’s happiness that this was so.
All this time they were moving eastward. It was in the Haute-Loire that Grive suddenly became aware of bats. As the narrow valley—scarcely wider than the river with its bankside alders—brimmed with dusk, bats were everywhere, flying so fast and so erratically that it was hard to say whether there were innumerable bats or the same bats in a dozen places at once. As birds surpass fairies, he said, bats surpass birds. They were the magicians of flight. With a flick, they could turn at any angle, dart zigzag above the stream, flicker in and out of the trees, be here, be gone, never hesitate, never collide. They were flight itself. Trying to fly among them he was as clumsy as a goose. They did not trouble to scatter before him, they were already gone.
The valley was cold at night, and stones fell out of the hillside. It seemed to Gobelet that wherever he went a fox was watching him. If it had not been for Grive’s delight in the bats, he would have been glad to move on. Instead, he set himself to catch a bat. He had seen it done in his childhood; it was not difficult. He took the bat to Grive. Daylight had meekened it. It let itself be examined, its oiled-silk wings drawn out, its hooked claws scrutinized, its minute weight poised in the hand. It was, said Grive, exactly like Queen Alionde—the same crumpled teats, the same pert face. But verminous, said Gobelet loyally. Grive said that if fairies did not wash they would be verminous; he had read in a book that the fairies of Ireland are renowned for the lice in their long hair.
He looked more closely at the bat, then threw it away. It staggered and vanished under a bush. As though a spell had snapped, he said that they must start at once. He flew ahead, shielding his eyes from the sun to see more clearly. Circling to allow time for Gobelet to catch up, he felt an impatient pity for the old man scrambling up hillsides, gaining a ridge only to see another ridge before him, obstinate as a beetle, and as slow. Gobelet thought he was making fine speed; they had never travelled so fast since the wind blew them uphill on their first morning. It was not till they sat together on the summit of the last ridge that Grive relaxed and became conversational. They sat above a heat haze. Beneath and far away was the glimmer of a wide river. He heard Grive’s wings stir as if he were about to launch himself toward it, but instead he rolled over on the turf and said, “Tonight we will sup on olives.” And he told Gobelet that the river was the Rhône, wide
and turbulent, but crossed by a bridge built by pigeons. All they had to do now was to follow it, and then bear eastward. “Where to?” asked Gobelet. “To the sea.” All Gobelet’s happiness in being mastered (it had been a little jolted by that abrupt departure from the bat valley) flowed back. More than ever before he acknowledged the power and charm of a superior mind.
Later on, when they were walking over the great bridge of Saint-Esprit, he remembered Grive’s statement. It seemed to his common-sense thinking that not even eagles, let alone pigeons, could have carried those huge stones and bedded them so firmly in the bellowing currents. He had to bellow himself to express his doubts. Grive repeated that pigeons had done it; they were the architects and overseers, though for the heavier work they might have employed mortals.
For the work of provisioning their journey he still employed Gobelet. They were now among Provençal speakers, but the beggar’s tune is the same in all languages, theft is speechless, and bargaining can be conducted by signs and grimaces. Gobelet managed pretty well. One evening he begged from a handsome bona roba (light women were always propitious), who laughed at his gibberish, put money in his hand, ogled Grive, and pointed to an inn. They sat down under an awning, the innkeeper brought bread and olives and poured wine into heavy tumblers. Grive had just begun to drink when he leaped up with a scream, dropped the tumbler, and began frantically defending himself with his hands. A sphinx moth had flown in to his face and was fluttering about him. The innkeeper came up with a napkin, smacked the moth to the ground, and trod on it. On second thought, he made the sign of the cross over Grive.
Gobelet was ashamed at this exhibition of terror. Grive, being a fairy, was not. Trying to better things, Gobelet said it was an alarmingly large moth—as big as a bat. Had Grive thought it was a bat?
“An omen!” gasped Grive, as soon as he could unclench his teeth. “An omen!”
That night they slept under a pine tree. The moth hunted Gobelet from dream to dream; the stir of the tree in the dawn wind was like the beating of enormous black wings. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Grive was sleeping like a child, and woke in calm high spirits. After his usual morning flight, when he soared and circled getting his direction, they continued their journey. Of all the regions they had travelled through, this was the pleasantest, because it was the most sweet-smelling. Even in the heat of the day (and it was extremely hot, being late August) they were refreshed by wafts of scent: thyme, wild lavender and marjoram, bay and juniper. There was no need to beg or steal; figs, olives, and walnuts were theirs for the picking. Here and there they saw cities, but they skirted them. Here and there mountains rose sharply from the plain, but there was no need to climb them; they appeared, threatened, and were left behind. The only obstacle they met in these happy days was a fierce torrent, too deep to ford till they came to a pebble reach, where it spread into a dozen channels. It was here that Grive had his adventure with the doves. They were abbatial doves, belonging to a house of monks who lived retired from the world with the noise of the torrent always in their ears. Grive saw the doves sitting demurely on the platforms of their dovecote. He made a quick twirling flight to entertain them, and as he alighted waved his hand toward them. They came tumbling out of their apertures and settled on his raised arm. He stood for a while talking to them, then shook them off. As if they were attached to him by some elastic tether, they flew back and settled again. He cast them off, they returned. He walked on, they rode on him. He flew and they flew after him, and settled on him when he returned to earth. “Make yourself invisible,” said Gobelet. “That will fox them.” He did so. The doves stayed where they were, placidly roocooing. Gobelet clapped his hands, Grive pranced and rolled on the ground; nothing dislodged them, till a bell rang and a monk came out shaking grain in a measure. They looked startled, and flew back to be fed.
Grive was pleased but unastonished. It was natural, he said; a matter of affinity. The doves felt his affection flow toward them and had responded. He tried the experiment again, with plovers, with fieldfares. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not. Once he fetched down a kestrel from the height of its tower. It landed on him, screaming with excitement, and drew blood with its talons. Flock after flock of birds streamed overhead, flying high up; but he had no power over these, they were migrants bent on their journey. One morning he came down from his prospecting flight, having caught sight of the sea, lying beyond a territory of marsh and glittering waterways. Travelling east of south they skirted another city, another mountain. There was a change in the quality of the light, and large birds, flying with effortless ease and not going anywhere in particular, swooped over the landscape; and were seagulls.
“When we get to the sea, what shall we do then?”
Gobelet hoped the answer would speak of repose, of sitting and looking around them, as they had done in the spring.
“Find a ship going to Africa. And that reminds me, Gobelet, we must have money for the passage.” He snuffed the air. “That’s the sea. Do you smell it? That’s the sea.” Gobelet smelled only dust and oleanders and a dead lizard. But he had an uninstructed nose; he had read no books to tell him what the sea smelled like.
Two days later he felt he had never smelled anything but the sea, nor would ever smell anything else, and that the smell of the sea was exactly paralleled by the melancholy squawking cry of the seagulls. He sat on a bollard and rubbed his knee. It pained him as much as it did when he was turned out of Bourrasque. Grive had flown so fast that morning, and paused so impatiently, that he had had to run to keep up with him. The port town was noisy, crowded, and lavish, and ended suddenly in the mournfulness of the quays and the towering array of ship beside ship. In all his inland life Gobelet had never seen anything so intimidating. Their hulls were dark and sodden, their slackened sails hung gawkily, they sidled and shifted with the stir of the water. Black and shabby, they were like a row of dead crows dangling from a farmer’s gibbet. At the back of his mind was another comparison: the degraded blackness of the sphinx moth after the innkeeper had smacked it down and trodden on it. In one of these he must be imprisoned and carried to Africa, where there would be black men, and elephants. Yet it depended on him whether they went or no, for he must steal for their passage money. A cold and stealthy sense of power ran through him. And a moment later he saw Grive coming toward him and knew he had no power at all. Grive had found a ship which was sailing to Africa tomorrow at midday. He talked to her captain; everything was arranged. Presently they would take a stroll through the town, prospecting likely places for Gobelet’s thieving. But first Gobelet must come and admire the ship. She was a magnificent ship, the swiftest vessel on the Inland Sea, and for that reason she was called the Sea-Swallow.
“The Sea-Swallow, Gobelet. You and your ponds!”
He walked Gobelet along the quays with an arm round his neck. A swirl of gulls flew up from a heap of fish guts; he held out his other arm and they settled on it, contesting for foothold. He waved them off and they came back again and settled, as determinedly as the doves had done, but not so peaceably as the doves. They squabbled, edged each other away, fell off and clawed their way back. The Sea-Swallow was at the end of the line. The crew was already making ready for departure, coiling ropes, clearing the decks, experimentally raising the tarred sails. With one arm still around Gobelet and the other stretched out under its load of gulls, Grive stood questioning the captain with the arrogant suavity of one bred to court life. With the expression of someone quelled against his reason, the captain answered him with glum civility, and stared at Gobelet. Asserting himself, he said that anyone happening to die during the voyage must not look for Christian burial. He would be dropped in the sea, for no sailors would tolerate a corpse on board; it was certain to bring ill luck. Of course, said Grive. What could be more trouble-saving?
He shook off the seagulls, and they went for a stroll through the town. It wasn’t promising. The wares were mostly cheap and gaudy, sailor�
�s stuff, and the vendors were beady-eyed and alert. Grive continued to say that a gold chain with detachable links would be the most convenient and practical theft. A begging friar stood at a corner, and a well-dressed woman coming out of church paused, opened her purse, and dropped a gold coin into his tray. Grive vanished, and a moment later the coin vanished too. Gobelet felt himself nudged into a side street, where Grive rematerialized.
They had supper at an inn, eating grandly in an upper room, whence they could watch the ship-masts sidling and the gulls floating in the sky. The wine was strong, and Grive became talkative and slightly drunk. Gobelet forgot his fatigue and disillusionment in the pleasure of listening to Grive’s conversation. Much of it was over his head, but he felt he would never forget it, and by thinking it over would understand it later on. The noise of the port died down, voices and footsteps thinned away: the sighing and creaking of the ships took over. They found a garden on the outskirts—garden, or little park, it was too dark to tell—and slept there.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 51