Any Man So Daring

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  “Misguided?” Miranda said. His voice was so sad, so full of remorse that she had no trouble at all calling a smile upon her face. “How can Proteus be misguided when he loves Miranda? Isn’t loving Miranda the fact and essence of sanity, the measure of good taste, the exactness of fashion?”

  Proteus smiled, in answer to her smile, but his smile was wan and half-hearted, the sickly wince of a patient who tries to forget his pain. “Oh, how kind my lady, who yet saw her lord act worse than any villain and attack, again and again, a man who sought to do him no harm.

  “Look here, these wounds.” He moved the tattered bits of his suit, to uncover a red gash upon his leg, and yet another upon his arm. “These wounds I got when I tempted that poor king, my uncle, beyond his endurance.” Tears appeared in Proteus's eyes, making them shine brightly with something like a light of remorse. “He, who could have killed me where I stood, only did this harm to me and no more.”

  Miranda, her heart clenching at the sight of those piteous wounds, those tears upon Proteus's fair, smooth skin, thought that Quicksilver might very well have forbore from inflicting even those wounds upon her love.

  “You’ve changed your mind about your uncle, then?” she said. “You do not wish to kill him?”

  Proteus shook his head. “Aye me, no. Long life and prosperity to the king of fairyland.” He squeezed her hands hard again. “I’m not saying he always acted right, but the quarrel was between him and my father. And my father being dead, who I am to carry it forth? If Quicksilver would not kill me — me, who had attacked him — even while I lay unconscious upon the sand of this supernatural place, then surely, surely, he cannot be evil. All will be understood when I speak to him, for I’m sure he meant no ill to me. Know you where my uncle Quicksilver lies, that I might be reconciled?”

  Miranda shook her head and congratulated herself on Proteus's excellent head, his great mind, that he was already ready to forgive Quicksilver, to believe the best of him.

  And if Miranda now doubted Quicksilver’s peaceful intentions — if she thought that perhaps, just perhaps, the villain had faked peaceful behavior for the sake of winning Miranda’s support away from Proteus — if she doubted Quicksilver, yet it was good that Proteus was willing to consider all angles of this.

  It was good that rage no longer blinded her Lord.

  Proteus had an excellent wit, she decided, and their life would be such as fairy legends promised at their end — a happy, ever after for the whole of eternity.

  “I know not where my uncle is,” she said. “But I have thought myself on a greater responsibility.”

  Proteus frowned on her, puzzled. “Responsibility?” he asked.

  “That child,” she said. “Whom we—"

  “Of course,” Proteus said, and his eyes softened with eager gentleness. “That child, that poor creature of mankind that we lured to the crux with our black arts. He must be allowed from hence, to his mother’s side, where he’ll be safe. We must go,” he said, and picked up her hand and pulled her towards the forest. “We must go to the castle at the center of the crux. Can you feel the true path? I cannot. The battle and the exhaustion from it,” he said. He put his free hand on his forehead as though cooling a raging fever. “My ill-conceived attack on my cousin, and his just response, have left me too tired to find the magical feeling of the true path.”

  “The path is this way,” Miranda said. “And I will guide you if you desire it of me.” What sort of an attack could Quicksilver have inflicted on him that would make him blind to the feel of the path? She looked at Proteus's pale face and felt dull resentment at Quicksilver.

  Justice need not to be reckless.

  Holding his hand, she led him tenderly to the edge of the forest and set Proteus’s feet upon the path that would take them both to the heart of fairyland, the castle in the crux.

  She looked back and saw his smile and smiled at it.

  “Where is that net that you took from me?” Proteus asked. “The magical net?”

  Miranda’s smile faltered. Why did he ask about the ill-omened object?

  What did he mean to do with it?

  And how would he react when Miranda told him it was wholly lost?

  Scene Twenty Two

  The misty clearing where Will stands before the Lady Silver who, naked and unashamed, looks at him.

  “Do this once thing for me, Will,” the Lady asked, her voice soft and gentle. “If ever my love meant aught to you, do this one thing for me and I shall never ask another.”

  He felt too sorry for her, in whose voice there still echoed the remnants of tears so recently cried, to tell her no. Yet, knowing the creature, he could not say yes before she told him what the favor was that she requested.

  For it might well be his love, or his attention, or his lifelong faithfulness.

  Silver smiled on him, an apologetic smile, as though guessing his hesitation and forgiving it. “If you see my Lord Quicksilver -- my brother, my spouse, the other half of my soul born with me in a single birth -- tell him that I crave his company, I crave being whole with him once again.

  “But he kept us apart when I would have rejoined him, and now it is he who must accept me, call me back. It is he who must want me to be a part of him once more — want it with every fiber of his body. And he must call to me, and tell me so.

  “Then will I come back to him and, reunited, shall our flesh be one once more, shall we be saved....” She looked at Will and sighed, and fresh tears rose to the fountain of her glimmering eyes. “But I fear it is all for nothing, and he won’t wish it intensely enough; he won’t truly want me part of him again. At least not before the division is irreversible, both halves of the soul scarred over where they split, each one lonely and on its own forever.”

  Will shook his head, bewildered. “If I see him, I’ll tell him, but why should the king of elves listen to me?”

  Silver smiled, revealing a row of small and very sharp teeth that made her look, for a moment, wholly feral and all without mercy. “The king of elves listens to no one,” she said. “It was to stop listening to me that he divided us. He wanted his attention given only to cheerless duty and aching toil and all must be done according to the way of his revered ancestors. Nothing more.” She sighed again. “And yet, if he listens to someone, it will be to Will, whom he loves despite his own wishes.”

  “But how will I overtake him, Lady? I know not where he’s gone. And more, yet, I came here to rescue my son that was trapped by an elf – by whom, I neither know nor care. I want to rescue my son and nothing more.

  “If I chance upon Quicksilver I will tell him your message, but surely my first duty is to my son.”

  Here the lady smiled, a tear-streaked, weak, tremulous smile. “Aye, Will, but so will Quicksilver also view it as his duty to rescue your son. He’ll see it as his duty as a king, his duty as the man who first introduced you to fairyland, to rescue your son and restore him to you. So, in rescuing your son shall your paths meet. Only you try to find your son, and sooner or later you shall find Quicksilver.”

  “And how to find my son, Lady?” Will asked. He remembered his lonesome walk out there, in the shifting path, amid the tree roots. “How to find my son in this land where even the trees have thinking life and all shifts and changes beneath my feet at every moment?”

  Silver frowned--not a frown of disapproval, but a frown of thinking, the expression of someone remembering long-ago heard lore. “There is a path,” she said. “A true path. There always is one through magical forests.

  “Could I but go with you, I would gladly lead you. But you see that I am this ethereal creature, chained to this point of great magic for my only existence, now that Quicksilver has cut me loose from his magic and the magic of the hill.”

  She frowned more intensely. Her small, pale fingers drummed upon her white, naked thigh, a gesture that would have looked natural were she drumming upon the silk of a court dress.

  “Take you a twig,” she said, pointing at
a tree nearby. “Cut one from that tree, and bring it here.”

  Will stepped towards the tree and reached his hand up for the thinnest twig.

  A scream, like a wounded child’s sounded, growing till it seemed to fill the whole isle. Will froze, quivering, his hand half-raised towards the tree.

  “Take it,” the Lady said. She sounded tired, forceful, like an adult controlling a child’s foolishness. “It will no more hurt it than paring your nails hurts you. It is being a coward and quaking only at what it doesn’t know. The trees in the crux have never been broken or put to the ax, and thus they fear what they have never felt.” She sighed. “As I fear eternal separation and all-engrossing death.”

  Gingerly Will reached for the twig at the end of the branch nearest him, a twig to which only two leaves and one bud clung.

  He took hold of it and, in a single movement, broke it from the tree.

  The tree shrieked.

  Shimmering sap sprang from it, like water pouring from a living newborn. It felt hot and sticky on Will’s fingers.

  The shriek ended in the whimper of an injured child.

  Will, feeling cold down his spine, tried to ignore the scream still reverberating in the air and the sap like blood pouring from the stick.

  Quicksilver had told Will that everything Will did in the crux -- everything -- would have an effect on the world of magic and that other world of men — beyond the crux.

  What had Will done just now? Had he perhaps pruned a family tree, taken a son from his mother? A baby from his cradle?

  He thought of the witch’s baby in its humble cradle.

  He closed his eyes and took deep breaths and told himself he would not think on it, but he must have looked guilty as he handed the stick to Silver, for she smiled and said, “Think not on it. You have done no wrong. I promise you that much.”

  But what was her promise worth? She’d deceived him before.

  And if he had done harm, what could he do to remedy it now? It was a necessary evil, was it not? Helping him find his kidnapped son.

  Silver now looked at the stick and a mist formed all along it’s brown length. She stared intently at it, and the mist swirled round and round it.

  She handed it back to Will. The wood felt cold and trembled in his hand. “Go now,” she said. “The stick will pull your feet onto the path. Only, do not forget to tell Quicksilver of my request.”

  Will nodded.

  The twig pulled on him, pulled him out of the clearing.

  As he walked away, he heard Silver call, “Will, wait.”

  He turned to look at her.

  “The love I bear you,” she said, "demands that I warn you. Your son might not look as you expect, when you find him.”

  Will ignored the pull of the stick and held still, staring back at Silver.

  How would Hamnet not look like himself? Was she warning him of those illusions which had been used against him these many years past, when he’d rescued his Nan?

  By the power of elves, she’d been seemingly shifted into fire and serpent and other things, but none of them meant much more than the illusions the witch had cast on Will some days ago.

  “I understand illusions,” he said, calmly. “I will not be frighted.”

  The lady shook her head. Her intent eyes were full of inexpressible sadness. “It won’t be an illusion.” She took a deep breath. “Your son, Will, might be fully grown. A man. For the time in the castle at the heart of the crux, where doubtless your son is, passes a thousand times faster than time here. More than three years does every day count, and most of a day have we already passed.”

  Most of a day. Hamnet had been eleven. Will tried to imagine Hamnet at fourteen.

  The twig in his hand pulled him impatiently towards a path he couldn’t see but that would lead him, insensibly, towards a magical castle where his son was held captive.

  Would his son recognize him? Who had been looking after Hamnet this while? What creature, in this land of dread magic, had served in place of Will in his duty of raising Hamnet? Or had Hamnet, alone in the dread castle, spent his days in solitude?

  And how would Hamnet receive his father?

  Scene Twenty Three

  Night is falling over the crux — a strange night that descends in dark blue tendrils blown about by a lilac-scented wind. In the forest, beside a path, Miranda and Proteus stop, and she sits on a large rock.

  Miranda felt tired. Cold crept from her feet to her legs as though the cold magic of the crux were overtaking her. She looked at Proteus, who bustled about making fire.

  What did he think, and why did he seem so deeply immersed in his thoughts that he was not aware of her?

  As a night such as she’d never seen descended from the sky like the fingers of an evil giant, she thought of her father.

  Not of her elf father, whom she’d never known and who -- Proteus still said -- had been a just and fair gentleman. Much as Miranda wished to believe Proteus's opinion of the late king of fairyland, it was of her adopted father she thought — nay, her real father — the immortal Hunter.

  For how more real could a father be than one who’d raised her with love, though she was no true kin of his?

  When he’d come home to his castle and not found her, what had he thought? What had he thought of his errant daughter? Oh, how could she have returned such loving care with such disobedience?

  And where was Caliban, whom she’d transported to this place? Where were the centaurs, Proteus's companions? Had they also been transported? And, if so, where were they? In the castle with the boy? Or had their nature, not as innocent as the human boy’s, prevented their access to it?

  She looked up at the blue sky, remembering what Proteus had said about only three nights in the crux making one unable to ever leave it, and she trembled.

  Proteus's strong arms surrounded her; Proteus's gentle embrace held her up. “Fair love, you faint with wondering in the woods,” Proteus said. “We’ll rest us, Miranda, if you think it good, and tarry for the comfort of the day.”

  Miranda started to shake her head but, faith, she could hardly keep her eyes open. And Proteus's arms around her felt warm, as though they restored some of the vital heat that this evil land, this cold landscape, had stolen from her.

  Oh, every fairytale spoke of trials before one reached the castle where the captive pined. But Miranda had never imagined the trial to be just walking through a landscape where no mortal, no immortal, could ever find his way but by magic. Guiding Proteus and herself, both by magic, had consumed her remaining strength.

  Of late, her ears, deceiving her, had given her sounds like hooves stepping cautiously through the undergrowth, the brush, the leaves and mulch on the forest ground -- just out of sight.

  “Be it so, Proteus,” she said and, leaning into him, yet attempted to push him away with her hand, as modesty required, as they stood. She stumbled over to a pile of leaves.

  “Find you a bed.” She attempted to drop onto the moss-and-leaf-covered ground at her feet. “For I, in this bank will rest my head.”

  But Proteus prevented her from lying down, his arms around her as tightly as if their bodies were already conjoined in marital union. “One turf shall serve as a pillow for us both,” he said. “One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.”

  Speaking thus, he set his warm lips on her cold ones and, with infinite tenderness, coaxed a kiss from her.

  He felt so warm. She was so cold. And faith, his love was real. She could feel his tenderness for her in the way his lips traveled, pressing to her cheek, her neck, her shoulder — for which purpose he pulled away the lace and silk of her dress, and reached behind her to unhook the fastenings that held her dress closed.

  They could lie together through the night, and in this strange land they could find comfort, their heads upon one patch of ground, their bodies entwined as their hearts already were.

  For a moment, just a moment, between heartbeat and heartbeat, she leaned into his embrace and
savored the touch of his warm lips upon her cold flesh.

  Then she thought of the Hunter, the Hunter who was in rights and truth, her father and who deserved, from her, obedience. The Hunter who must give consent for her marriage, her having no other relative living save Proteus -- and that King of fairyland that Proteus now said was innocent, but of whose good intentions she was by no means sure.

  Quicksilver had hurt Proteus. Faith, hurt him beyond need.

  Could she trust such a one? Could she ask him blessing? No. When they left the crux with the human boy, she would tell Proteus to take the throne and exile the cruel tyrant Quicksilver. Send Quicksilver right away to where he could not hurt them.

  Therefore, the Hunter remained the only one who could bless her union with Proteus. And the Hunter would know if Proteus and Miranda had taken their pleasure of each other before marriage. He would know it with a look.

  Already having stolen the magical book from her father, already having run from his judgment, Miranda didn’t know how to face the look that would cloud his eyes if she also, without his consent, lay with her chosen partner.

  Besides, she remembered how Proteus had attacked Quicksilver upon the beach. Some of her doubts about him awakened now. How could she trust herself to him without defense when he, but so short a while ago, had behaved as a violent stranger and attacked an unharmed man?

  “Nay, good Proteus,” she said, and feebly pushed him away. “For my sake, my dear, lie further off yet, do not lie so near.”

  But Proteus, who had unhooked the top of her dress, now cupped her small breast in his eager, warm hand. “Oh, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence. Love takes the meaning in love’s conference. I mean that my heart unto yours is knit, so that but one heart we can make of it.” Fervently, he kissed her neck, her hair. “Two bosoms interchained with an oath, so then two bosoms and a single troth. Then by your side, no bedroom me deny, for, lying so, Miranda, I do not lie.”