“But I’ve never learned it--why should I understand it?”
“Because the language of elves is born with elves,” he said, as his finger moved upon the yellowed page like a creature distinct from himself. “Such is the virtue of our tongue that, unlike man who must be taught his language and learn to speak it, haltingly, as we learn to walk, step by step, elves are born knowing how to read and write their language.” Now he looked up, his dark eyes amused, a slight curl to his pale lips indicating, if not a smile, then a willingness to smile. “It might not be conscious language, and an elf raised away from her kind might not know she has such knowledge, but it will come to the mind when she hears or reads it, as water long buried, finding an opening in the ground, will bubble to the surface.”
Miranda blinked. The symbols still seemed vaguely disquieting to her. Something to her heart, some certain part of her soul, thought that letters should not be alive nor should they insinuate themselves into her mind with language she’d never known she possessed.
Still, she squinted and made an effort at reading the book, as Proteus turned the page.
And there, on the page next to last, she found she could read a row of symbols that translated as a spell to start a fire.
Proteus turned the page with a peevish gesture, and upon the next page — the last one in the ponderous leather-bound volume, Miranda read, Spell for transporting of humans to various parts of fairyland.
She sighed and shaped her lips for an apology, sure that now Proteus would close the book and turn on her in just indignation, asking why she’d brought the wrong book and accusing her of some childish mistake.
But Proteus moved not. His finger had stopped upon that first line of text, his eyes wide and intent on the words.
Curiosity warred in Miranda’s heart with a strange, undefined dread.
Transporting humans to fairyland? Why would one do so? What would justify it? She’d read enough tales, sung enough ballads — furnished to her by her loving adopted father — to know that by ancient law, by millenary decree, the two worlds should be kept separate, else tragedy resulted.
And why would Proteus want to transport a human to fairyland?
The thought warred in her heart with her desire to keep still and not bother Proteus at his reading. Her restraint finally overpowered, the question flew through her lips, like a sigh. “Milord,” she said. “Milord — I thought you needed a spell to fight the wicked tyrant. What can a mortal have with our spells? Why? And which mortal?”
“A child,” Proteus said. Without looking up, he spoke while his long finger ran along the lines of characters. “Quicksilver, the tyrant loved once, you see.”
“He loved a child?” Miranda asked, startled, as her opinions of the creature shifted. She couldn’t imagine seeing him as she saw the Hunter — a fearsome creature of darkness, but one who could love and care for something as helpless as a child. Maybe her uncle wasn’t as bad as Proteus said. And yet, he’d killed her father, had he not? He’d killed Proteus's father, had he not?
How could such a creature be anything less than a monster?
Proteus shook his head at her question. “No, not loved a child, but he loved the child’s father.” Proteus looked up and, for just a moment, a sneer disfigured his beautiful features. “When Quicksilver gave his heart it was not, as befits immortal elf, to honor or truth, to the hill, or even to another elf, his equal, but to a gross mortal, a creature base and fleeting.”
A strange, feral smile distorted Proteus's face. “While this man is too wily to fall into our traps, the creature has three children, one of them a son and prized higher than both the other two.” He looked not at Miranda but at the air above her left shoulder, as though there he saw, arrayed, an army disposed for his command. “If we take the human’s child, the human shall go mewling and complaining to your uncle’s throne. And your uncle, who still can deny him nothing, will come after the child. Here, in this isolated place, we can then kill him. Then will you be Queen of fairyland and rule by my side over the glittering hill.”
All of a sudden, as though only then noticing her, Proteus extended hands to Miranda. “Oh, Miranda, how fair you’ll look, wearing the jewels of the ancient hill and leading the dance by my side.”
The prospect was so dear to Miranda’s heart, the shine in Proteus's eyes so strong, so full of that soft radiance of love and hearth and home that for a moment, as though entranced by it — as though she, an elf, were pixie-led — she gave her hands to Proteus and allowed his dream of a large court, of her own majesty at the head of it, to keep her from thinking of what they’d be doing to get there.
But little by little thought intruded. The sovereign of fairyland had more than his share of power with which he’d been born, that share of power that Proteus told her was so large in her also.
The king of fairyland, by ancient law, held in him the power and strength of all his subjects. With such power and such strength, he was stronger, more vital, better protected than any of his subjects — stronger than Proteus. Perhaps, even, stronger than Miranda.
Miranda felt a shiver of cold up her spine. “Milord, you say you’ll bring the king here and we’ll overpower him. But he is king. So how will we do that?”
A smile, more beautiful than an angel’s, gilded Proteus's features as he let go of Miranda’s hands and reached into his black velvet doublet, pulling out... something.
It was a net, but to say so would only be to prove the inadequacy of words for their purpose. It was a golden net, spun of air and magic, a thing glittering and perfect, like distant stars in a summer sky.
“Oh,” Miranda said. She reached for it.
Proteus pulled it back, held it away.
“Touch it not,” he said. “Touch it not, for it is a magic net. With this net Circe caught the spirit of the hero Ulysses and kept him in her thrall for years. With this net did Medea bespell Jason and lead him to marry her. With this net shall we catch the tyrant’s magic. And when he’s thus unable to defend himself, we shall have revenge. Your power is enough to protect us if he’s immobilized.”
Relief flowed over Miranda and for a moment masked something else — a twinge of worry, a fear — no, not fear. She realized that she felt guilty, scared of what they were going to do and of how it might stain her mind. “But killing him by stealth is dishonorable,” she said. She remembered her father — her adopted father — explaining to her the crimes he punished, and this sounded like base murder, which was one of them.
Proteus's eyes widened in surprise, as though he’d never expected her to protest any of his decisions. Then he shrugged.
“The king of the hill is such a creature, with such magical power at his disposal, that we kill him by stealth or not at all.” He shook his head. “I knew we’d need this from the beginning. We’d heard of it, my father and I, from the centaurs of the south that serve us. There were tales of their ancestors that told of this net. Yet my father thought that he could win by mere force. I searched for the net alone, but it lay near the base of Vesuvius, covered in so many spells and incantations that it took me all my magic, all my effort, to find it, to penetrate its shields, to acquire it.” He looked into the middle distance again, and his eyes slowly filled with glittering tears. “While I was thus occupied, Quicksilver won the war and imprisoned my father. He had my father condemned to death. To save my own life, I had to forswear my father and my claim on the kingship of the hill. I did it so I could live to avenge my father’s death. Lady, I promised then that, if it took my last breath, I would ensure that the net would be used and would help me slay the tyrant.” His eyes filled with tears and he looked at her, a picture of resolute tragedy, a picture of grief and courage so mated that one could not be pulled from the other.
Miranda knew not what to say. For once her quick wit fed no words to her still tongue.
But then she thought on the child they would kidnap, steal from his mother and the safety of his hearth. The child’s father might b
e the beloved of Quicksilver, but what had the child done to deserve being enmeshed in the battles of immortal elves?
Yet the father of this boy had been loved by the tyrant. How good could a mortal be whose heart knit such an evil creature as Quicksilver to him?
No. No. The boy might well be evil, a dark thing.
“Show me the child,” she said. “The child we would steal.”
Proteus looked oddly at her. “The child? Why, my lady? He is a mere mortal.”
His words failed to reassure her, rather spurred her sense of guilt to frantic exasperation. Proteus cared not for the innocent creature.
Why felt it she, so keenly?
Mayhap because she, herself, had been raised as a foundling, far from her own people and those to whom she belonged.
Imagining removing a child from his parents made her head pound and her heart clench in shame.
“Show me the child,” she said.
Proteus sighed and rolled his eyes, as though signifying that the madness of elf princesses must be indulged.
Absently, he traced cabalistic symbols mid air.
Something like a window opened in the clear air in front of Miranda’s eyes.
Through that window, she beheld a forest, but not a forest as this one that she knew so well.
These trees were smaller, their trunks more embraceable, their tops not reaching so far into the distant sky.
Amid the trees, a boy scrambled.
He was a mortal boy, with brown hair, roughly cut, in a round cut short about his ears. His rough suit of once-good cut and material showed wear at knees and elbows, as if he’d scraped it against too many trees.
His eyes, as wide and golden as those of a falcon intent upon the chase, looked fixedly and feverishly ahead of him, as he rushed, tripping, into the forest.
It was as though the boy followed an alluring phantom or a glittering vision that would not tarry for him, and that rushed deep amid the trees, ever out of reach.
Pixie-led, Miranda thought, remembering legends she had heard of mortals lured by illusions into fairyland snares.
She looked at the boy’s wide, golden eyes and felt an odd sense of identity — as if the boy were a part of her and she, herself, were thus being tricked into some unimaginable trap.
A shiver ran up her spine.
Pixie-led.
Scene Eight
The Witch’s cottage, where Shakespeare stands, his hand — which trembles — holding his knife at the witch’s throat. Nearby stands Marlowe’s ghost looking like a live man save for the gore and blood that drip, continuous and seemingly unnoticed, from his eye.
Could Will cut the woman? Kill the woman?
He looked to the cradle in the corner, moving still in tiny movements. From it a mewling sound emerged, as of a young baby starting to waken.
Could Will kill the baby’s mother?
Faith, Will did not know and hence his hand trembled. But he commanded his voice to be firm and in as false a firm voice as had ever rang across stage, he said, “Give me some potion, woman. Or perform some spell, as will from hence take me to my son’s side, not passing mortal land or ever covering the lengthy distance weary mortal feet must walk. For I must go to him, in all haste.”
“You fool,” Marlowe’s ghost wailed. “You poor wretched fool. You know not what you do. Put up your knife.”
But Will shook his head. “What know you, Marlowe? What know you, spirit that was Marlowe’s soul? What know you of a father’s care?
“Your fathering of a boy was only of such kind as any may do, late one night, gorged with drink, at a tavern.
“What know you of a father’s heart?”
The ghost of Marlowe wavered, going gray and dim, then reappearing in full firmness. The effect was that of a mortal staggering under a harsh blow and then recovering. “I know I saw my son grow through the whole seven years of his life, and held him in my lap and told him stories, and marked daily the changes in his countenance as he waxed in wisdom and size,” he said, and smiled. “When last did you hold your son upon your knee, Will? You, who labor in London, so far from your family — what do you know of that son so far away? Know you that often, tired of his house where women prevail, he runs into the forest and there finds solace in solitude? Know you how much he misses you? How he pines for you? And yet you live in London and there pursue your fame. How dare you compare your fatherly love to mine?”
“All I do is in care of him,” Will said. Marlowe’s comparison hurt him more than he dare acknowledge, even to himself. When had he last held Hamnet upon his knee? “I make money that he might wax prosperous. I labor far from him that he might lack for nothing. He is my only son.”
Marlowe raised skeptical eyebrows, made all the more ironical for one being raised above a wounded orbit. “Faith, you have two daughters.” His voice dripped with something like envy. “You have two daughters that, yet, were your son taken up, would remain behind to light your days. How can you say, 'He is my only son, ' and thus make it sound like he is your only child?”
“Daughters,” Will said. His hand that held the knife trembled. “Daughters are their mother’s mirror, her rightful company. My son, him I can guide in the way of men, in the road of learning, in a profession worthy of the name.
“My son wears my surname and he shall crown with pride my waning years. The fairyhill shall not have him.” He turned his attention to the witch once more. “You will transport me wherever he is, that I might protect him.”
“Your heir and not your son you love,” Marlowe said.
“The both are one,” Will said. “The two of them are one, conjoined. My only son is my only true heir.” Will’s head hurt and his eyes stung with tears that he refused to shed before Marlowe’s dead and mocking eye. He pushed the knife closer to the woman’s neck. “Therefore, send me to him.”
He did not see the woman move, but felt as though the air trembled all around him. His eyes stung, as though a cobweb had fallen upon them.
He blinked, and the homey cottage changed. Light dimmed.
It seemed to Will that he stood in a rocky cave, the walls rough and moist, covered in green and crawling things and dripping with lichen from which ran foul, stinking liquid.
The ground underneath his feet, instead of scrubbed oak and clean rushes, turned to bubbling foul mud, from which grayish effluvium climbed to his nose in stinging vapors.
He felt his feet sink slowly into the mud and the cold slime seep into his shoes.
Within the mud creatures crawled, their horror only visible now and then, in a claw surfacing, a many-toothed snout emerging above the ooze, dripping venom from sharp fangs, only to vanish again beneath the mud.
Here a rolling yellow eye with a vertical slit for a pupil peeked in deranged hatred at Will.
There a forked tongue emerged from the mud and lashed itself around Will’s ankle.
Teeth fastened on his foot and pulled him down.
Will screamed, feeling his flesh pierced.
The witch was evil, after all. This was a demonstration of her true powers.
As he thought this, the witch in his arms also appeared to change and writhe into a monstrous black serpent coiling madly against him, her forked tongue licking at his cheek.
This was her mistake.
Will saw the change and the horrid, coiled serpent in his arms. But those same arms felt, against them, the heave of a human bosom. His hand, splayed beneath her chest, felt the rough weave of her apron.
He tightened his grip on her.
“Be still, woman,” he said. “Would you fool me with your childish tricks? I’ve seen better tricks, long ago, in fairyland.”
The witch whimpered and, in a moment, was matronly and soft and human in his arms again.
The space around became, again, a cozy kitchen.
And Will held his knife to the woman’s white throat. “I know you have some potion or some magic which you can give me that will serve my purpose.”
“Do not do it, for it will serve only his death,” Marlowe said. And, with unmistakable fear. “And Quicksilver’s also.”
So the ghost sought yet to preserve Marlowe’s erstwhile beloved, Quicksilver.
With a disdainful smile, Will dismissed all of Marlowe’s prior argument, which he now knew served only to protect Quicksilver.
Quicksilver be damned. Will would save Hamnet.
“Let me have the cure for my ill, woman. And I will make it well worth your while.” At the mention of gain, he felt her tremble, and he pushed his knife towards her throat. “Else, tempt you a desperate man.”
“Such potions have I,” the woman said, her voice fluttering. “But the law, of human and fairy kind both, is death to any that sells them.”
Will cast an eye at the child in the crib. “You have a child who deserves better than an hovel in Shoreditch. A child, I guess, who knows not his father. Who, but you, should provide for your whelp? Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness and fear to die? Famine is in thy cheeks, need and oppression starve in thy eyes, contempt and beggary hang upon your back. The world is not your friend, nor the world’s law. Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.”
He put his knife away and, from his sleeve, pulled out the small but heavy leather purse full of golden coin he’d meant to send to Nan when next he found a trusty messenger.
The woman looked at the purse, her eyes wide, cupidity plainly written in large letters upon her pupils. “But master,” she still protested, though her voice came fainter. “Master, I cannot send you anywhere before your son will be transported. Even now I sense him being taken, not to fairyland but to another place — a place of greater magic and stronger danger.
“Three days in that land and you’ll forever be captive there. And though there even mortal men can perform magic, yet is the magic there so strong that you will not be able to control it. And having used it will you — even if you return — forever be magic in the land of men.”
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