by Ryk E. Spoor
“Polychrome Glory of the Rainbow, do you come here to marry this Mortal Man, Erik Medon?”
The most perfect voice in the world answered, “I do.”
“And you do this without doubt, without reservation, without question, knowing that once this bond is made your lives and souls are bound for all eternity?”
“Without doubt, without reservation, without hesitation, yes, Father.”
His eyes turned to me. “Erik Medon, of the Mortal World, do you come here to marry Polychrome Glory, Princess of the Rainbow Kingdom?”
“I do.” My voice was slightly hoarse with the tension of the moment.
“And you do this without doubt, without reservation, without question, knowing that once made, the bond between you shall remain for all eternity, in life and beyond?”
“Without doubt, reservation, or question, with all joy and willingness, Iris Mirabilis.”
He smiled. “It is well.” He turned to the assembled crowds. There I saw all our companions, the masses of the Rainbow Kingdom — many of whom I recognized, for after a year I had come to know them — and others of the Faerie realms. Jack Pumpkinhead stood near Ozma, his creator, and nearby was Dorothy, Trot, Betsy, and I grinned as I saw the eternal Lost Boy Button-Bright, and nearby the Shaggy Man; he was one of those who looked exactly as Neill had painted him, curling shags and all. Kaliko was there, and to my surprise I saw that Zenga stood with her mother and father and brother, with old Rin Ki-Tin and Inkarbleu, and a dozen dozen others from the surrounding countries. The Rainbow must have been busy.
“If there be any reason, if any question exists, as to whether these two shall be wed this day, then I command — as Lord of the Rainbow Realm and as one of the Children of the Above itself — that you shall speak now, or never.”
And to my shock, Polychrome spoke. “Father…there is…one thing.”
I turned, my heart feeling as though it was turning to ice, and even Iris looked shocked and pale. But it was part of an ancient ritual, and he spoke his part, even as he gazed at each of us in surprise. “Then speak, Polychrome.”
She turned to me, and her eyes were filled with tears. “Erik… Erik, my love…there is something I have to say, something you must know, before you marry me, for it is something I’m ashamed of, and…” she took a deep breath, “… and once you know it, you may change your mind about marrying me.”
I blinked. “Poly, I…”
She shook her head. “When I saw you to be sacrificed, when you stood in that circle and Amanita was readying her knife for your heart, it was then that I knew. I knew why Father had seemed so distant from you at first, I knew what he had to have been hiding. And I understood, oh, my love, I finally understood what you were saying to me all the time we had known each other.”
“Yes, I know, Poly, but –”
“Please! I have to finish.” She swallowed. “I knew, then, you were in love with me. And I knew — by the Prophecy and its riddles — how it was possible that you could be bathed in your heart’s blood and still speak, how you could be sealed into your promise for that ritual and still fight, how all we hoped for could be achieved.
“I knew that you had to lose me. And so I made sure that you would.” Tears were pouring down her cheeks now as I stared. “Do you understand, Erik? I made that decision just like Father, I knew what it would do to you, and I knew that it had to be done in exactly that way. I didn’t fling myself in front of that blade just because I loved you, I did it because it was the one way to save Oz, save Faerie, save…my father and our friends, and that one way was to make you into the weapon we needed to destroy our enemies. And even when we said our goodbyes,” I heard a choked sob, realized it was my own, as the agony of that moment echoed back to me, “even then, Erik, yes, even then I was speaking those words and choosing them oh, so very carefully, to make sure you would be the pure and unstoppable avenger that we needed.”
She bowed her head, and waited.
I stared at her. She planned that speech? Her own sacrifice? To make sure I…berserked? Had no doubts, no hesitation in using that power even if I burned my soul to nothing?
I understood why she felt shame. But at the same time I felt a smile on my face. “Poly,” I said, and her eyes looked up, even though her head stayed down, eyes afraid and ashamed. “Polychrome Glory, I need to know only one thing.
“You say you did these things knowing what they would accomplish, knowing that your death and your words would make me the weapon that would break the Usurpers.”
She nodded, wordlessly.
“What I need to know, then, is whether you lied to me — in deed or word — in those moments, or if every action and word also came from your heart.”
Her head came up then. “I have never lied to you, Erik.”
I smiled then, my heart beginning to beat again. “Then there is nothing to forgive, Polychrome, my first and truest love. There is no shame at all in finding that deep and cold policy must be followed…if it is also in accord with your heart. And…” I shook my head, and heard my voice almost break, “and it would not matter to me in any case, so long as you have told the truth when you have said you loved me. I was ready to die for the fact that you existed, Polychrome; for the very idea that you could care for me, that you could love me? There is nothing I would not do, and nothing you could do that I could not forgive so long as you were still…who you are.”
“Oh…” she reached out and took my hand and I almost forgot where we were, looking into those violet-stormy eyes.
Iris Mirabilis’ voice brought us back to facing him. “Then as no objections exist, Erik Medon, Polychrome Glory, give me your hands.”
His huge hands swallowed ours, but held them gently. “May the Will and Wisdom of the Above watch over us all. Erik Medon and Polychrome Glory, be you now joined together, not as one, but as two who are now made greater by each other. May your bond exalt you in triumph, support you in trial, comfort you in loss, ease your pains, and echo your love and belief in one another for all eternity. May the Above, in whatever guise you may see it, bestow upon you their ineffable and sacred blessing, that in the day when your time in this world has ended you shall not pass into the Void or be taken Below, but instead shall walk together, for all eternity, in the realm which cannot perish and in which you shall be as you were, and more besides.”
He placed our hands together, and about them twined two golden chains. “The chains of gold are as imperishable as the binding of your souls, and so long as you are true to each other, never shall they fade or break. Do you, Erik Medon, take Polychrome Glory to be your wife? Will you pledge to her your body, your breath, your blood, your mind, your will, by Earth, by Air, by Water, by Fire, and by Spirit?”
I could barely speak. “I will.”
“And do you, Polychrome Glory, take Erik Medon to be your husband? Will you pledge to him your body, your breath, your blood, your mind, your will, by Earth, by Air, by Water, by Fire, and by Spirit?”
She looked into my eyes, and there was nothing else in the universe to me. “Oh, yes, I will.”
“Then the chains are bound, and by the power of the Rainbow and the Above that bond now sets you free of all others. Let no power attempt to separate you, for none shall avail against you,” and here I saw him smile, and knew he was adding his own words, “any more than any have done so in life.
“It is done.”
We looked to him as he spoke; and in that moment — for just an instant — I saw beyond him the great golden city, and the shining figures within, and one that stood above them all, whose piercing blue eye met mine.
There was approval there, and a blessing, and a fierce and undeniable feeling of command. And as the vision faded, a warrior’s smile.
And then it was over, and another vision was before me, and I was kissing Polychrome Glory, First Daughter of the Rainbow, our hands still entwined by the golden chain of our marriage.
Chapter 59.
I looked up as
the door of the Throne Room opened, and the others entered. “Ozma, Ruggedo, Zenga, Ugu — thank you for coming.” I glanced behind me and higher, to Iris. “And thank you for waiting.”
“I admit to a bit of impatience, Erik,” Iris said with some humor, and Nimbus echoed his smile. “But that is perhaps foolish. After all, you shall always be here, now.”
I glanced at Polychrome, who raised her eyebrow and smiled at me; we had already talked some about this. “That… is not entirely correct, Iris,” I said.
“I would expect that both he and Polychrome will be visiting Oz,” pointed out Ozma with a smile, “for they are of course most welcome, and if I do not mistake him, Erik would very much enjoy seeing Oz from the point of view of a guest and not an invader or a sacrifice.”
I laughed. “You are completely correct, Princess. Yet I speak of something far more serious.” I turned to Ugu. “Ugu the Unbowed, you mentioned certain questions that remained to you, and that while you abhor your methods you do not entirely repudiate your prior feelings. In this, you are entirely correct.”
Ozma looked at me closely, and Iris leaned down; to have both looking at me that intensely was, to be honest, slightly intimidating. Maybe I was mostly mortal still, but some lingering touch of Faerie gave me the ability to sense the vast power in Ozma; I didn’t see a delicate little girl, really, but rather I saw something more like Iris Mirabilis in a female guise.
“How do you mean, this, Erik Medon?” Ozma said finally.
“First, let me speak of what I’ve learned here — and what I’ve guessed. Which will require me to confirm some things I’ve guessed, in order to go onward. Iris, long ago — even by some Faerie standards — your people, your world was one with ours, and it then began to separate. I believe this was no accident; it was according to a directive of what you call the Above. Am I right?”
Iris nodded. “You are.”
“And the purpose of this was to allow humanity to follow the path it had begun, one of self-determination, and to prevent the presence of the Gods and the Faerie from being either too great a help, or too great a hindrance, in that development.”
That surprised him, and he sat back in his throne. “Now by my Father, how did you know that? For I shall take an oath that not a hint of that is written anywhere in the Hall of Records.”
I smiled my favorite sharp grin. “Don’t underestimate us mortals, Lord Iris. That kind of thing is an old, old idea, and one that makes sense with the timing of events.
“But the problem of course was, and is, that the Above — the Gods, if you will, and the Faerie — were, and are, connected to humanity, and we are connected to them. The worship and belief, the faith and will, the strength of our spirits connects somehow to your very essence, and the battles and triumphs, the hopes and fears, of this world are echoed, even across the great gap separating us, into my own. Thus many of the things we have remarked upon — how things that I could not have known still seemed to be true, from the voice of a ruler I had never known to the ways of magic that had been lost to my world.” I turned back to Ozma.
“My Lady — your Majesty, you must forgive me for what I am about to say, but you made a terrible and grave mistake in your rulership. An understandable one, even a laudable one — but a terrible one with grave consequences nonetheless.”
For a moment she looked affronted — and then her coal-black eyes closed, and opened again with a rueful sparkle. “Speak, then, Erik Medon. We would still be imprisoned, and our realm enslaved, were it not for you and your imagination. We would be both ungrateful, and dangerously foolish, to disregard your insight now.”
I sighed with relief. Whew. I hoped she’d be reasonable about this, but there was always the risk… “You sought to make Oz as close to a paradise as there has ever been. Seeing the evil done with magic in the wrong hands — having suffered a terrible transformation and violation of your own body and mind as a child,” and I saw both acknowledgement of that wound, and thanks that I had chosen not to bring the Wizard into this discussion, “you determined that none would practice magic without your direct leave. More, you sought ever and ever to replace argument with negotiation, anger with peace, any pain with joy, through the power of your Above-mandated position as Ruler of Oz, the very heart of Faerie.”
She nodded slowly. “This is true. Even the books speak of these things — though of course not so clearly or directly.”
“But in doing this you created your own destruction — and perhaps that of my own people as well,” I said quietly.
“What?” Iris’ voice was shocked. “What can you mean by that?”
“Your citizens are human beings, Ozma. Perhaps with a trace of Faerie blood, perhaps a bit more, some animals touched by the magic of the realm, but in the end not that much different than those of my world. They feel anger, they feel hatred, they feel love and pain and fear and joy and all the other things that I do or that I could feel. By exerting your will to make these things less and less common, you fought the very nature of what people are. That…darker essence could not be destroyed, not here in Faerie, where the metaphysical is as real as the physical. But you rejected it, and your people with you. All of Faerie, in fact, for the most part, because when you make a decision — as the Ruler of Oz — it is not just a simple command, a directive like those a mortal might make. By your very nature and the position you hold, your will becomes manifest throughout all Faerie, and calls upon its power to make your will into truth. Only those of the meanest and most savage natures — or those with the strongest wills and — perhaps — most selfish and self-justified reasons for their negative emotions — were able to hold on to them. The rest…went elsewhere.”
“Where?” Zenga asked, her voice showing that she was starting to understand the implications.
“To his world,” Ugu said, his deep voice echoing about the throneroom with grim understanding. “We all have heard the tales of the world of men and how it has become increasingly…frenetic, dangerous, dark, strange, alien. And…” his brow furrowed, and he continued slowly, “and…if what he says is true…why, then, this echoes back to us, creating confusion, instability, unrest.”
“Bringing together those who are unaffected or resistant to the effect, yes,” I continued. “Such as yourself and Amanita. Were it not you, it would have been others, I believe.”
The diminutive Ozma stared at me in horror. “Do you mean to say that…that I caused all this to happen?”
“Not willingly. Not planned it. But I believe, very strongly, that this sequence of events has its roots in your attempt to make Oz something it could not truly be — for the best possible motives. Ozma, the fact is that people here really are the same as people from my world, in their most basic essence. The first glimpse we saw of Oz — before you returned — showed just that, a land of great promise, of evil and ugliness and of goodness and beauty. After you returned, it became more and more a place of minimal danger, where even death was reduced or eliminated. At first I’d thought this was just Baum’s choice…but once I came here I started to wonder.”
Iris looked at Ozma, and then down at Polychrome. “My daughter, what have you to say?”
“Father, you know he’s right,” she said bluntly, without hesitation. “Everything…became more…oh, I don’t know… extreme, perhaps… after Ozma became ruler of Oz. And yet somehow none of the great tensions were released while she was there. Then when Oz…fell…”
Iris closed his eyes and nodded. “It was devastation. As though all the unrest of hundreds of years had been unleashed in a matter of hours.”
“An astute interpretation…and an accurate one, I suspect,” Ruggedo said finally. “What do you intend to do about it, then?”
“We’ve mentioned the Above. But the fact is there’s another side that you speak of much more seldom, that you call the Below. They, too, play their part in this. Do you think the disruptions and chaos are unguided? I don’t. They’ve taken this opening and tried their bes
t to cause utter destruction. We’ve averted it…for now. But that won’t last if things continue as they are.”
“What would you have us do?” Ozma asked.
“For Oz? You need to let it be what it truly is — the center of Faerie, a place of high beauty, high adventure, of great danger and great mystery, of the grotesque and horrific as well as the whimsical and heartwarming. Ugu might have been a terrible threat…or, without your directive threatening his family’s tradition, he might never have even become known to you. Magic is part of Oz.” I chuckled. “Hell, look at the books. The most interesting things in them only happen when someone is playing around with magic, so Baum had to rely on either the stories of renegades, or in making up some himself.”
“That, however,” Ugu said, “will hardly reverse the consequences of centuries. Not swiftly, and perhaps not at all, if the Below has chosen to move.”
“And that brings me to the other point. Poly and I won’t always be here, because I have a responsibility for two worlds, not just one — and now that we’re married, so does she.”
Iris shot to his feet, and his height made him three times as intimidating. “It is forbidden!”
I took a deep breath. “I’m un-forbidding it.”
“You would challenge the Above?” He looked at me as though I was insane — and no doubt that possibility was on his mind.
“It’s more that the Above has challenged me,” I answered with a wry grin.
“What do you mean by that?” Ozma asked.
I remembered that moment on Caelorum Sanctorum. “I… saw the Above again, as Poly and I were married. And the look that…well, their leader, not to use any one name, gave me wasn’t just one of congratulation. He was looking at me in a way that said, as clear as if he’d spoken it, that I wasn’t anywhere near done yet.”
Iris stared at me for several moments. Then slowly he reached down and brought up the Pink Bear, and looked down at it. “I am…loath to ask many questions of you, Bear, for too much pain have we endured after the last time, no matter the reasons. Yet I would know if he saw truly.”