“Max, I don’t know if I’ve ever properly thanked you, but… you’ve done so much for me. You took a chance on an unknown blonde girl with faster than average typing five years ago and gave me a career… a girl who had just recently come to the States from Europe, who needed a start in something, and…”
Max had put on his coat and stood up at this point, placing some money on the table to pay for lunch. He raised a hand in gallant acceptance, but broke in before Lorewyn could finish.
“You’re the genuine article, Ariel Archer,” he stated. “Don’t you ever forget that. I saw that the moment we met at Goldberg’s. What you did in that office last month in front of the old man? You were right. It was costly, but you were right. Sometimes doing right means paying a price. If you can continue to afford it, keep paying the price, and keep doing right. I’m gonna miss you, kid.”
He gave her an affectionate wink and left the delicatessen. Lorewyn sat there a while longer, a tear coming to her eye and remembering another mentor of hers she once knew long ago, before getting up and leaving as well.
“I’ll miss you too, Max,” she whispered to herself.
Max’s prediction came true. Lorewyn was hired on the spot at the Graphic and went to work adapting her keen editing and proofing skills to the somewhat more mendacious world of tabloid journalism.
Being what it was, the business drew in some characters that wouldn’t normally be found in other areas of publishing. She found herself in an arena with some young male writers, trying to make a name for themselves in the booming media landscape of New York… writers like Walter Winchell, Louis Sobol, and even less flamboyant more salt of the earth types like sports columnist Ed Sullivan. Lorewyn was the only woman in the office and at times a target for misogynistic grenades. But she knew what she was getting into and held her own with remarkable poise and clever wit, leaving her venting to Rhianyn when she came home at night or saw her wife at the Back Room for an occasional performance. She had to make Rhianyn promise not to show up at the Graphic and drag their writing staff, especially Winchell, out to the alley and beat the pulp out of them or run them through with her Defender based on some of the comments she relayed to her.
Just as Macfadden quickly realized that Lorewyn was indeed “the genuine article” and offered more and better opportunities at the paper (with increased pay), the owners of the Back Room likewise figured out that they were sitting on a gold mine with Quoth the Raven and starting promoting Rhianyn’s act with partnering clubs in the city. This created some actual “back room” deals that for a time put Frank Costello, the club’s primary, at odds with Lucky Luciano. In 1927, Rhianyn and Lorewyn had a brief run-in with Luciano and his men, but came out in one piece… the only fragments to speak of being fragmented minds as a result of some needed memory wipes.
“You know what occurred to me the other day, Blackbird? We don’t have birthdays. I mean, yes, we have birthdays in that there was a specific day in which we were both born, but… oh, I don’t know if I’m making sense. These past seven years we’ve been in America, I’ve been to quite a few office birthday parties. I know you’ve been involved in birthday events at the club. People here like to celebrate birthdays.”
She and Rhianyn had been reviewing their financial portfolio together when Lorewyn had brought it up. One of the regulars at the Back Room had tipped Rhianyn to some stock market information. Rhianyn wasn’t that familiar with Wall Street but picked up stock trading and talked with Lorewyn about investing some of their money into the rapidly growing and increasingly profitable market. 1928 had been a very good year for them so far, their portfolio doubling, then tripling in value in a short time.
“It’s like a growing Dragon treasure hoard!” Rhianyn had commented once. “Except the Dragon’s off somewhere busy finding even more treasure to add!” And Rhianyn certainly had past experience with Dragon treasure hoards.
Rhianyn considered Lorewyn’s birthday observations. “True,” she agreed. “Yes, I see what you’re getting at, Yellowfeather. I have no idea how the New Sylestian Calendar would convert to the calendar we use now in this realm, especially since the NSC hasn’t even been in existence for a long time, not since Cordysia ended. How would we even know what day our birthdays are?”
“I was thinking we could just estimate and pick dates,” Lorewyn suggested. “Like, I was born in the spring in New Sylestia, a little over a fortnight after the Equinox. So, I could pick a day, approximately… perhaps April 9th? That could be close.”
“All right then,” Rhianyn nodded, smiling. “April 9th it is. We’ll celebrate your birthday each year then. Wait, that was only a week ago! We just missed it!”
“It’s okay,” Lorewyn laughed. “We’ll celebrate next year. What about you? I know your date of birth was in the summer. Only a few days after the Midsummer Festival, right? I remember that… We’d always have two trips to Sacred Lake right around that time, one for the Festival, then another shortly after because you always liked to go to the lake with me for your birthday.” She suddenly felt a wave of nostalgia and found herself siding up to her wife, leaning against her. “I miss those days.”
“June 29th,” Rhianyn said, receiving Lorewyn’s spontaneous snuggle. “That’ll be my birthday.” She leaned over and gave her wife a kiss.
“You sound very sure,” Lorewyn mused. “How did you calculate that?”
“Well, it wasn’t a serious calculation,” Rhianyn explained. “But you’re right, I was born a few days after the Festival. My mother liked to joke with me that I was the reason she missed the Festival the year I was born, the only Festival she ever missed while she was alive. She was just days away from delivering me and was so uncomfortable moving around that she didn’t feel up to going to Sacred Lake with my father and the others. So… June 29th is about a week after the Summer Solstice here, and a good estimate. Besides… that date has another special significance for us.”
“Oh?” Lorewyn asked, trying to remember back the past millennium and a half of their time on Earth, trying to remember if anything important happened to them on June 29th. “What’s the significance?”
Rhianyn just smirked and flicked Lorewyn’s hair playfully with her finger. “You’re such a S’trysthyl… you’ve forgotten already? It’s the day the ship landed on Ellis Island. It’s the day we arrived in New York, the day we started our new lives here in America.”
Lorewyn grinned sheepishly, surprised she hadn’t made that connection. But Rhianyn was right! “That is a special day indeed,” she exclaimed. “June 29th it is.”
“So,” Rhianyn stated, taking the papers they were examining and placing them back in their folder, “how do you want to calculate the anniversary of our exile here by the Mother Elements? Or better yet, our joining anniversary?”
Lorewyn was in the middle of drinking a cup of tea when she snort-laughed, spewing what she had in her mouth out. It was only due to Rhianyn’s amazingly fast reflexes that the folder didn’t get spewed on!
Lorewyn set the cup down, wiping her mouth, and turned to face her wife, her laughter slowly ebbing, but the love in her eyes still a blazing hazel green fire.
“Blackbird, I celebrate my joining with you each and every day,” she responded, embracing Rhianyn tenderly.
They bought their first car in June of 1928, a new Ford Model A. The market was still riding high, and Lorewyn and Rhianyn were doing exceedingly well in the finances department, their stock portfolio climbing and both of their jobs lucrative and stable. They had been talking about it for a few weeks, but Lorewyn was insistent that they buy it before the month ended. She wouldn’t offer specifics.
“I can’t tell you the reason,” was all she said to Rhianyn. “But we need to have a car by the first days of summer. Trust me.”
So, they bought the Model A. Rhianyn was a natural and picked up driving within a day. Lorewyn was a bit clumsier when it came to working the clutch and needed some practice. But Rhianyn coached her through it, and withi
n a week Lorewyn had it mastered. Friday June 29th came and Rhianyn got a call from the Back Room saying that she wouldn’t be needed for that weekend. Puzzled, she checked in with Lorewyn when her wife came home from work that afternoon… somewhat early.
“I guess we have my birthday weekend to ourselves,” she explained. “The club gave me the next couple days off.”
“Good, they got my message,” Lorewyn beamed, pointing to a suitcase she had prepared already. “Now follow me.”
Lorewyn grabbed the suitcase and took Rhianyn out to the car. Rhianyn was even more puzzled. “Where are we going?” she asked. “And why the suitcase?”
“Just get in,” Lorewyn replied in satisfaction. “It’s a surprise.”
Rhianyn just looked at her curiously, but got in the passenger side. Lorewyn started the car up and drove away, toward the Williamsburg Bridge.
They had both lived in Brooklyn for the past seven years, but neither of them had been very far from the city before. New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island… but Lorewyn drove them north of the Bronx, crossed the Hudson River, and kept going. They drove all the way to Albany, then turned west, heading in the direction of the Adirondack Mountains. It was a good six-hour trip, sunset by the time they reached their destination… Raquette Lake.
Lorewyn had reserved and paid for a remote cabin for them for the weekend, right on the shores of the lake. The sun was going down, slipping behind the western peaks of the mountains, casting its final rays of light across the placid surface of the water. Surrounding them was thick forest, only thinning out near the lakeshore. And it was so quiet… a type of quiet that neither of them had heard since their tenure in Europe amongst the arboreal woods of medieval times.
They exited the car and just stood there outside their cabin, watching the dimming sunlight fade in the distance, listening to the sounds of the lake, of the woods nearby, of the warm gentle summer wind caressing their faces. It was as if they were standing once again on the shores of Sacred Lake or near the headwaters of the Faerie River… the ancient arbors of eastern New Sylestia around them, the slopes of the Crescent Mountains within hand’s reach.
“Happy Birthday, my love,” Lorewyn whispered to Rhianyn, wrapping her arms around her wife’s waist from behind and leaning her head on the back of her shoulder, gently kissing a small part of her neck that wasn’t covered by her long raven dark hair.
Rhianyn said nothing for a long time. She just stood there, Lorewyn embracing her, dumbstruck. She then tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Tears began trickling down her cheeks, and a few moments later she slowly turned to face Lorewyn, taking her wife in her arms and holding her tight.
“I love you… so… much, Yellowfeather.” Her voice was a faint cry at this point, but she didn’t care. “This is perfect… this is beautiful… you are so perfect and beautiful… I can’t even…” Words failed her once again.
Lorewyn left the suitcase in the car. She didn’t even enter the cabin yet. She just took Rhianyn by the hand, and the two of them walked to the edge of the lake. They removed their clothing, as well as the magical concealment effects they kept on their ears, and slipped into the slightly chilled but still pleasant water, swimming together, laughing, playing, as if they were simply young Elven girls once again… and the world was their sanctuary of love and innocence.
And they made love that night under the moonlight on the shores of that lake, much like they had once before on the shores of another lake, long ago.
Lorewyn and Rhianyn stayed at Raquette Lake the rest of the weekend, swimming, hiking, exploring, remembering, making new memories, and enjoying being in love. It was a birthday weekend neither one of them would ever forget.
They were driving back to the city on Sunday when Rhianyn made the comment. “You realize you’ve set a precedent for competition, don’t you?”
Lorewyn knew her wife well enough to just laugh and shake her head. “No need. You’re the best birthday present I could ever hope for come April… so no point in trying to out-do this little excursion.” She paused, then added mischievously, “besides, I don’t think you could out-do me, Blackbird. I think this birthday surprise sets the bar about as high as it could possibly go.” She grinned at Rhianyn, expecting what was sure to follow. Rhianyn wasn’t good at ignoring bait such as this!
“Oh really?” she exclaimed. “We’ll just see about that.”
Lorewyn smiled to herself and kept driving, considering what might be in store for her on her next birthday.
***
Walter Winchell quit at the Graphic the following year, something that Lorewyn certainly didn’t lose any reverie over, but in the months that followed she sometimes wondered if he saw something coming that she and others hadn’t predicted.
There were some other interesting omens, although neither Lorewyn nor Rhianyn read into them as such. Rhianyn’s former employer, Antoni Symanski, died in May of 1929, his club the Raven’s Nest burning to the ground on the same night. Although no one could prove it, the burning of the club was suspected arson and Symanski’s death a mob hit. Rhianyn was visibly affected by this.
“He had his issues, but Symanski was the guy who gave me my shot in New York show business,” she told Lorewyn. “Kind of like Max Perkins was for you.”
The other oddity, or mishap more accurately, occurred when the two of them were out on the town one night in late August. They were on 42nd Street attending the premiere of Gold Diggers of Broadway, a full-length talking picture in technicolor, with musical numbers. There had been a lot of hoopla leading up to its release, and Lorewyn and Rhianyn had obtained VIP passes to its opening night. They were coming out of the Times Square Theater with a mass of others who had attended when they looked up in the night sky and saw the Graf Zeppelin.
This in itself wasn’t terribly strange. The Graf Zeppelin was a huge hydrogen-filled airship, German designed. It had departed from a launch-point in New Jersey three weeks earlier on a maiden around-the-world flight, and it was expected to be returning to that same launch point on the night of the film’s premiere. It was big news… all the papers had covered it, including an article in the Graphic speculating that William Randolph Hearst’s enormous investment in the project was going to flop.
There were numerous “ooohhh’s” and “aaaahhh’s” from those coming out of the theater as well as others on the street. Lorewyn had even commented to Rhianyn upon seeing it above, “it is big… but I think Atropos might’ve been bigger.”
Rhianyn had been watching it as well, but her response wasn’t about any comparison, rather a concern regarding the blimp’s trajectory.
“It’s too low,” she exclaimed. “It’s flying over the city too low! They’re starting their descent into Jersey too soon!”
Lorewyn took a second look. Rhianyn had a keen eye when it came to this sort of thing, given her experience flying Pypp in the aerial cavalry once upon a time. Sure enough, the pilot had miscalculated a bit, and the craft was lower than it should’ve been considering the Manhattan skyline and the relative distance from its terminus in New Jersey. The super-tall skyscrapers that would one day dominate New York’s panoramic scenery south of Central Park were still in the future, but there was one significantly tall building close by that posed an obstacle to the Zeppelin’s descent.
The airship was now almost directly overhead and still descending. The pilot had no doubt seen the danger and was trying to correct the blimp’s flight, slowly gaining more altitude. But it wasn’t quite enough. The New York Times Building was only a block away on 43rd Street, its topmost portion in line with the Zeppelin’s path.
There was an ominous scraping and crunching sound as the lower section of the ship brushed up against the side of the building’s mast. Several cries and screams could be heard from below as bits of the tower’s structure came crashing down near Times Square. The Zeppelin itself continued flying, its lower hull apparently not compromised enough to affect it remaining airborne. Its altitude inc
reased sufficiently to avoid any other buildings. No one on the ground appeared to be hurt, people seeming to have avoided the falling pieces successfully.
Lorewyn realized that she had been gripping Rhianyn’s arm and slowly relaxed her hold, breathing a sigh of relief. “That was too close!”
“But not far enough,” Rhianyn observed. “Still some damage. And I’m betting Hearst will take something of a hit from this.”
“At least no one got hurt,” Lorewyn stated, beginning to walk with her wife toward their car. “Humans are taking to the air, Blackbird. It’s a reality. Remember Lindbergh a couple years ago? Machines instead of living mounts… but it’s still happening.”
Rhianyn nodded but didn’t say anything. She was following the continuing path of the Zeppelin in the night sky with her steel grey eyes. Lorewyn saw the way she was looking, and she knew.
“You miss it, don’t you?” she asked gently. “You miss being up there. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? 1,500 years in this realm, and Humans are just now climbing into the heavens with wings of their making.”
Rhianyn smiled at her as they reached their car. “Small steps for us, Yellowfeather. We’ve only had a car for the past year. But yes, some giant leaps for Humankind, no doubt. I’m sure before long I’ll have the chance to leap again as well.”
***
It was a Tuesday morning, two months later. Late October. Lorewyn had taken the subway into Midtown for work at the Graphic. The information she was picking up on the wire from the past week regarding the economy was causing her some concern. But she didn’t see any reason for alarm… yet. Rhianyn had the car that day and would be driving in for rehearsal at the Back Room later.
Lorewyn had only been in the office for a few minutes when she got a call from her Chief Editor. His voice was frantic.
“Archer, get down to Wall Street immediately! Something big is happening! Grab a camera, whatever… just get down there!”
“What on earth is happening that could be so…?” she had started to ask, but her boss had hung up already.
Two Birds, One Feather: The Lives and Times of Lorewyn & Rhianyn in America Page 8