by Susan Price
“Erlf-Yett air lukket.”
Joe thankfully slid down over the horse’s backside—and then had to hop and jump away as it kicked out at him. But he was glad to feel his feet smack the ground. Then, belatedly, he understood Wat—or thought he did, while hoping he was wrong. The Elf-Gate was locked?
28
21st Side: “I Have No Wings”
Gobby wrapped the fingers of his big right hand about Andrea’s arm and wouldn’t let go. He dragged her about with him as he posted guards about the Tube’s control room, and even if she could have thought of something to say, she didn’t think she would have dared speak to him.
From the other side of the building, drifting over the rooftop, they heard the thumping hooves, the whoops and cries of the ride. There were other cries too, with a harsher edge—cries of fear. As Andrea listened, her hands clenched and she bit her lip, her imagination showing her atrocities and slaughters—showing her Per killing and being killed. It was miserable, not knowing for certain what was happening.
Small bands of Sterkarms returned on foot, bringing with them curtains, cushions, framed pictures, small coffee tables, coats and umbrellas. One pushed along a large, wheeled office chair. All the booty was carried up the ramp to the mouth of the Tube. Some men, despite being told that the Gate was closed, ventured inside and found that the road led only to another platform above the lawn at the rear of the control room.
“Tell them to stay out of it,” Andrea begged Gobby. No one had been in the control room when the Tube had suddenly come home, so she suspected that it was running on a preset program. It might have been set to go traveling again in thirty minutes’ time, or an hour—and what would happen if the Tube traveled while curious Sterkarms were poking about inside it? She had no idea. Would their very molecules be scrambled, reassembling them as parts of the cushions and coffeepots they carried? Or would they just vanish into the cracks between dimensions? She wouldn’t have risked the life of a laboratory rat to find out.
Gobby said, “Quiet, woman!”
From the other side of the Hall came a wailing, a screaming. Gobby, alarmed, and with no idea of what the noise was, squeezed her arm painfully hard. Andrea, who did know what it was, was probably more alarmed. Police sirens. And blows and bangs, resounding on metal, and smashing glass. The Sterkarms recognized the explosions as gunfire before Andrea did. While she was still gaping in shock, they were jerking to attention, hefting their pikes, sickles, axes, even running a few steps toward the noise.
“Stand!” Gobby bellowed, his yell numbing Andrea’s ears. The Sterkarms fell back into their places, their hands gripping their weapons, glowering at Gobby or staring in the direction of the gunfire.
And then the ride returned, a hurly-burly of racing horses and stamping hooves, of lances and yells and running men. There was Toorkild, clutching at his own ribs, and leaning far forward in his saddle, with Sweet Milk riding close beside him on one side, and his nephew Wat on the other. Gobby let go of Andrea’s arm to go forward and help his brother from the saddle.
Andrea, clutching at her bruised arm, looked for Per and couldn’t see him. She tried to make her way through the gathering Sterkarms, now being shoulder charged and nearly knocked down by a man on foot—“Watch thysen, Honey!”—and now almost stumbling under the hooves of a horse.
She reached the edge of the crowd and saw, just at the corner of the Hall, a horse being turned in the center of the broad gravel path, its rider looking back. For a moment she thought the rider was Per—it looked like him—and then she saw that it was the youngest of Per’s cousins, Ingram.
Another horse and rider appeared, pelting for the Gate, and Ingram fell in with it. Per was the rider of the second horse, and someone was clinging to his waist and jolting about on the horse behind him. As the horses came nearer, she saw it was Joe.
Waving, she turned and ran alongside the horse, though they soon overtook her. Per saw her, laughed, and kissed his hand. Then they were past her, and Per was reining in beside Wat, and Joe was awkwardly sliding down over the horse’s tail.
She saw Per drop down from his horse, but instead of looking for her, he pushed into the crowd of Sterkarms, his reins looped over his arm and his horse following him. When she found him, he had his arms around his father. “Winded,” Toorkild was saying, patting Per’s chest. “Take more than a fall off hoss to finish me!”
“Per!” Andrea said, and was glad to see him turn to her, though for a moment she was shocked by his bruises, his closed eye and swollen nose and mouth. No one, seeing him then, would think of calling him “May.” She put her arms around him, and felt his arms tighten across her back. “Oh, thank—I thought tha’d been shot!”
Per laughed. “So thought we!”
Joe was behind Per. “Police,” he said to Andrea. “Fast-response units. Marksmen.”
“Oh God!” she said, and Per, still holding her, said, “Vah?”
Joe said, “The Elf-Gate’s locked?”
Andrea was looking toward the corners of the Hall, but couldn’t see any sign of armed policemen. Perhaps they’d gone inside the building, to aim their high-powered rifles from windows overlooking the Sterkarms. Absently, she said, “It closed down.”
“Oh, great!” Joe said. “Just—” A whirring rapidly rose to a whine, grew shriller, rising to a scream. Everyone turned to look at the Gate.
Andrea leaned close to Per’s ear and yelled against the noise, “When that light turns green …” She pointed to the warning lights near the Tube’s entrance. The scream abruptly stopped as it passed beyond hearing, leaving her shouting in silence. “That light, there. When it turns green, gan! Gan through!” The lights changed. “Gan on! Quick! It be open now—gan!”
Gobby lifted his lance above his head, pointed and bellowed. The Sterkarms moved. Footmen scrambled up the ramp and into the Tube, shouldering pikes and lugging curtains between them. One man carried a coffee table over his helmet, clutching a table leg and a sickle in one hand. Horses were led up the ramp and into the Tube, and across the horses’ backs were slung curtains and rugs and coats.
Toorkild trudged up the ramp slowly, one hand on his ribs. Joe was close behind him. Per, holding his horse’s reins in one hand and Andrea’s hand in the other, started up the ramp. “Wait!” Andrea said, and pulled back against his hand.
Per looked around and stopped. Other people, on foot or mounted, some leading horses, passed them by. “Entraya, we must gan.”
Looking over her shoulder, Andrea saw a policeman look around the corner of the Hall and then quickly withdraw. The sight made her want to shove Per ahead of her up the ramp and hurry after him—but her heart seemed to be a weight of iron inside her, holding her back. “Nay. Nay. Wait.”
Ingram stood beside Per, waiting for him, and holding the reins of his own horse. Per handed him his reins too. “Gan. Grammie, gan. Gan!” Ingram led both horses up the ramp, and Per turned to face Andrea, taking both her hands, and trying to pull her along.
“Per, nay. I no ken … I can no …”
“Tha must!” Only a few Sterkarms were left at the foot of the ramp, and they were climbing it fast, passing them. From the top of the ramp, Gobby shouted, “Per!”
Andrea’s mind was in a panic. She had so much to decide, and she had to decide immediately. She couldn’t think in words, only in a whirl of images. The warmth and darkness of her bower, with Per in the bed beside her, his smell and touch and laugh, and the rain dripping from the thatch outside the shutters, was replaced by the picture of her mother and father sitting together in their little house, with the radiator keeping them warm and the television crooning to them, and if she went with Per, she might never see them again … But if she went with Per, she’d be the lady of the tower, and an Elf-May, with more power over the people around her, and more respect from them, than she could ever have 21st side, and she’d have Per … And, after all, if she went to w
ork at the other end of the country, or in America, she wouldn’t see her parents either …
Per dragged her a few steps farther up the ramp. They were nearly at the top, and there stood Gobby, glowering. Joining the Sterkarms again wouldn’t be easy: Most of them must believe her a traitor, and not all of them would be willing to believe her account. Could she live among them, all alone? If they chose, when Per was absent, or when she and Per fell out, they could make her life miserable …
“Per! Kom!”
“Entraya! Be kind, be so kind—”
An explosion—a shot fired from a rifle—set their hearts banging, and they ran, hand in hand, up the ramp and into the Tube. But once inside, Andrea stopped and dragged Per to a halt too. “I can no!”
Gobby gripped Per’s upper arm and dragged at him. “Kom!”
Andrea tried, in the seconds that she had, to imagine living in her own twenty-first century again, without Per and without any hope of reaching him. She saw, in her mind, a bland, neat landscape, all pastel painted walls and smooth carpets. Warm, safe little boxes of brick and glass. All comfort and convenience, at least for her. Prepackaged food, and buses and trains and telephones. And how lonely and drab and dull it was going to be without Per, without his foxy smell and loud voice, without the comfort of his hugs and self-assurance and readiness to defend her. She ached as if her heart were being dragged out of her. If she took her hands from Per’s and went back down the ramp to the 21st, it felt as if she would leave her heart with him. It was no poetic turn of speech: That was exactly how it felt.
She let him pull her another step or two into the Tube, and a flock of terrors flew from it into her face. Sickness without medicine, accidents without hospitals—Per killed in some skirmish and she left alone and five hundred years from home. “I can’t! I can’t!” She twisted her wrists, trying to break his hold, but his grip was strong. “Per, loose me!”
“Ssh! All be right. Little bird, it will be all right.” He leaned back, pulling her on.
“Per—Per, come thou and live with me!”
Per’s face was aghast, and Gobby said, “Nay!” and clasped one arm around Per, as if he thought Andrea had the strength or power to drag Per away against his will. And from the farther end of the Tube came Toorkild’s voice, shouting Per’s name in alarm.
“Per,” Andrea said, “gan!” The Tube had shut down once, and it might do so again. They shouldn’t be lingering here inside it. But once they parted— But if she went with him— Oh, she hadn’t time to start considering it all over again. Instead of pulling back against his hands, she went toward him suddenly, stretching her neck as she lifted her head to kiss him. He let go of her hands, and she put them around his neck. His arms clasped crushingly tight around her.
“Entraya, Entraya—” She felt his tears on her face.
“Per, we have no time. I can no, I can no. I’d only end by hating thee—” She pushed him away, and he let her go. She turned to go but looked back over her shoulder. “Gan! Run!” Gobby was already dragging Per farther into the Tube. Good. Gobby would see that he went. “Fare well!” she called.
Per called after her, but the ramp was before her, and she pelted down it, hardly keeping her feet, with a great, swelling pain in her chest that was relief and grief. She’d reached the gravel path at the bottom of the ramp before she remembered the police marksmen and raised her hands, feeling foolish, and called out, “Don’t shoot!”
Someone shouted back, “Stand still!”
She stood still and heard, behind her, the screaming that meant the Tube was closing down. Was closing down and might never be opened again. Even if it was, she doubted she’d be going through it. The pain in her chest swelled into her throat, threatening to burst her. She sat down in the gravel, bowed over her knees and sobbed.
As if she were just hearing it, she suddenly heard what Per had called after her as she’d run away from him, back to the 21st. He’d shouted, “I have no wings.”
29
21st and 16th
The day was bright and sunny, and Andrea was glad of the strong breeze that blew her hair behind her and kept her face cool as she climbed the steep hillside. The turf under her feet was thick and a rich dark green. Her boots sank into it, and it sprang back, making it a little like walking on a trampoline.
She reached the ridge of the hill, and the wind freshened, feeling colder and damper on her skin, making a lonely moaning past her ears. Below her the land fell away in a long steep slope into the valley that was still marked on her map as Bedesdale. The little river was still called Bedes Water, but it didn’t run the course she knew. And, now, a narrow gray road ran beside the river, and a small metal sign pointed the way to the tower. It was “a place of historical interest,” a “heritage site.” Americans and Australians, named Stackam and Starkarm and Stairkarm, came to it looking for their ancestral home.
From the ridge she looked out into a wide sky, blue as harebells, and below it the green hills, all running their long spurs down into the valley. Cloud shadows moved over the slopes, which were still green and brown, but there weren’t as many greens, nor were they as vibrant as she remembered. Though the nearest factories and towns were many miles away, still they’d dulled the air.
She said hello to an elderly couple out walking their Yorkshire terrier, and went on remembering two big, loping dogs, like giant, shaggy greyhounds …
The tower stood just below the hill’s ridge, built on a craggy rock pile left behind by a glacier. As she walked, the top of the tower came into view, poking over the ridge, and more and more of it could be seen as she drew nearer. It was in better repair than she’d expected, but the night before, she’d read in her guidebook that the owner of the land in the early nineteenth century had repaired and partly rebuilt the tower, to improve the view from his house.
There was no sign of the wall that had once surrounded the tower, or its gatehouse. All the outbuildings that had crowded the yard were gone. There was nothing but the crag, thickly overgrown. Not even a path led up the crag. To reach the tower, she had to scramble over boulders, and through thornbushes and briers and thickets of nettles.
Once on top of the crag, she was shy of approaching the tower. It never had looked welcoming; now there hung about it a forbidding chill of desolation. Instead, she wandered about the top of the crag, kicking amid the undergrowth, trying to find any trace, just one stone, of the wall or gatehouse or outhouses.
There was nothing. Probably, if she searched the countryside around, she’d find field walls and barns and houses built with stones taken from the tower’s walls.
She went over to the tower. It seemed smaller and more pinched than she remembered. The great door of wood and nails had gone, and so had the iron grids that had once guarded the door and stairs. There was nothing but a dark, square hole in the stonework. The lintel was so low that she had to duck to enter.
Inside, the windowless ground floor was dark. A twisted rectangle of light was thrown onto the floor by the doorway, with her shadow at its center. The light fell on a rubble of broken stone. It was damp in there, and chill, and she felt afraid of going in, but she made herself.
The stairs opened to the right of the doorway, corkscrewing counterclockwise—it was a Sterkarm tower. The plaster had gone from the stone walls, leaving them cold and damp, the gray gritstone streaked with rusty red.
She climbed the narrow staircase, where dampness hung in the air. The chill and darkness made her look quickly over her shoulder, fearing that someone was behind her. No one was. Her heart beat fast, and she was sad.
At the first turn of the stair, she found her way blocked by a wall of modern concrete blocks and had to turn back. There would be no visiting the hall, or the family’s private rooms, or the roof where the watchman had stood guard.
Outside the tower, back in the sunshine, she looked up at the lintel. The keystone over it
was carved. Wind and rain had worn the carving almost away, but she knew what it was. Emblazoned on a shield, an upraised arm, a left arm, brandishing a dagger. The Sterkarm handshake.
She sat on a boulder at the edge of the crag and watched a kestrel as it hung over the valley. Below her, out of sight, a car purred by on the road, followed by a noisier truck.
Among the Sterkarms she’d heard many stories of mortals who’d found their way into Elf-Land. Some had been taken there by the Elves, as willing or unwilling captives. Some blundered unknowingly through the barriers that divide Man’s-Home from Elf-Land. Others, with unwise curiosity, found their way there by exploring some cave in the hillside, by following the sound of ravishingly beautiful music or chasing down a snow-white, red-eared deer.
Most of the stories had ended with the wanderers being forever lost, nothing of them ever seen or heard again. But a few had told of visitors to Elf-Land who returned. They came home thinking they’d been away for no more than three days or three hours, and found that it had been seven years. They came back to a home still familiar, to a welcoming family who still knew them—but they were as lost as those who never returned.
No mortal food could ease their hunger, no drink their thirst. No company could please them, or music soothe them. They could not sleep or rest, and wandered the hills, searching for the door that opened into Elf-Land. These stories often ended with their vanishing again. Let’s hope, the storyteller would say, that they found their way back to the Elf-Land they longed for. But maybe the truth was they’d lain down somewhere in the lonely hills and let the cold take them.
None of the Sterkarms’ stories had told the other side; none told of what happened to Elves who ventured into Man’s-Home and then returned to Elf-Land. If only she could have reached them again, Andrea could have told the Sterkarms that story.
No company pleased her. In a neat, clean flat, with central heating and electric lights to snap on instantly, she longed for the smoke and soot and stink and squalor of Toorkild’s hall, for the dim flickering of candlelight and the reek of burning tallow, for all the difficulty of lighting fires, the throat-catching smoke and the smell of burning peat.