Wonders of the Invisible World

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “No, of course not,” Sarah said with another tremor—of laughter, or surprise, or fear, Jenny couldn’t tell. “What Jenny asked. Why Psyche could not tell, even in the dark, if her husband was not human.”

  “I assure you, you will find me entirely human,” Mr. Woolidge promised. “You will not have to guess.”

  “I’m sure I won’t,” Sarah answered faintly.

  Mr. Woolidge took a great bite out of his meat pie, his eyes on Sarah as he chewed. Jenny, disregarded, rose and slipped away from her father’s critical eyes. She glimpsed Miss Lake watching her from the next table, beginning to gesture, but Jenny pretended not to see. Wandering through the apple trees with a meat pie in her hand, free to explore her own thoughts, she came across the artist’s daughter under a tree with one of the village boys.

  Jenny stopped uncertainly. Mama would have considered the boy unsuitable company, even for an artist’s daughter, and would have instructed Jenny to greet them kindly and politely as she moved away. But she didn’t move, and Alexa waved to her.

  “Come and sit with us. Will’s been telling me country stories.”

  Jenny glanced around; Miss Lake was safely hidden behind the apple leaves. She edged under the tree and sat, looking curiously at Will. Something about him reminded her of a bird. He was very thin, with flighty golden hair and long, fine bones too near the surface of his skin. His eyes looked golden, like his hair. They seemed secretive, looking back at her, but not showing what they thought. He was perhaps her age, she guessed, though something subtle in his expression made him seem older.

  He was chewing an apple from the tree; a napkin with crumbs of bread and cheese on it lay near him on the grass. Politely, he swallowed his bite and waited for Jenny to speak to him first. Jenny glanced questioningly at Alexa, whose own mouth was full.

  She said finally, tentatively, “Country tales?”

  “It was the lantern, miss.” His voice was deep yet soft, with a faint country burr in it, like a bee buzzing in his throat, that was not unpleasant. “It reminded me of Jack.”

  “Jack?”

  “O’Lantern. He carries a light across the marshes at night and teases you into following it, thinking it will lead you to fairyland, or treasure, or just safely across the ground. Then he puts the light out, and there you are, stranded in the dark in the middle of a marsh. Some call it elf fire, or fox fire.”

  “Or—?” Alexa prompted, with a sudden, teasing smile. The golden eyes slid to her, answering the smile.

  “Will,” he said. “Will o’ the Wisp.”

  He bit into the apple again; Jenny sat motionless, listening to the crisp, solid crunch, almost tasting the sweet, cool juices. But these apples were half-wild, her eye told her, misshapen and probably wormy; you shouldn’t just pick them out of the long grass or off the branch and eat them...

  “My father painted a picture of us following the marsh fire,” Alexa said. “Will held a lantern in the dark; I was with him as his sister. My father called the painting Jack O’Lantern.”

  “What were you doing in the dark?” Jenny asked fuzzily, trying to untangle the real from the story.

  “My father told us we were poor children, sent out to cut peat for a fire on a cruel winter’s dusk. Dark came too fast; we got lost, and followed the Jack O’Lantern sprite, thinking it was someone who knew the path back.”

  “And what happened?”

  Alexa shrugged slightly. “That’s the thing about paintings. They only show you one moment of the tale; you have to guess at the rest of it. Do you want to see it? My father asked me to find a lantern for you in his studio; he won’t mind if you come with me.”

  Jenny saw Miss Lake drifting about with a plate at the far end of the garden, glancing here and there, most likely for her charge. She stopped to speak to Sarah. Jenny swallowed the last of her meat pie.

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “I’d like that.” It sounded wild and romantic, visiting an artist’s studio, a place where paint turned into flame, and flame into the magic of fairyland. It was, her mother would have said, no place for a well-brought-up young girl, who might chance upon the disreputable, unsavory things that went on between artists and their models. Jenny couldn’t imagine the distinguished Mr. Ryme doing unsavory things in his studio. But perhaps she could catch a glimpse there of what nebulous goings-on her mother was talking about when she said the word.

  “You come, too, Will,” Alexa added to him. “You don’t often get a chance to see it.”

  “Is there a back door?” Jenny asked, her eye on Miss Lake, and Alexa flung her a mischievous glance.

  “There is, indeed. Come this way.”

  They went around the apple trees, away from the noisy tables, where lanterns and torches, lit against insects and the dark, illumined faces against the shadowy nightfall, making even the villagers look mysterious, unpredictable. Alexa, carrying a candle, led them up a back staircase in the house. Jenny kept slowing to examine paintings hung along the stairs. In the flickering light, they were too vague to be seen: faces that looked not quite human, risings of stone that might have been high craggy peaks, or the ruined towers of an ancient castle.

  Will stopped beside one of the small, ambiguous landscapes. “That’s Perdu Castle,” he said. He sounded surprised. “On the other side of the marshes. There’s stories about it, too: that it shifts around and you never find it if you’re looking for it, only if you’re not.”

  “Is that true?” Jenny demanded.

  “True as elf fire,” he answered gravely, looking at her out of his still eyes in a way that was neither familiar nor rude. As though, Jenny thought, he were simply interested in what she might be thinking. He was nicer than Sylvester, she realized suddenly, for all his dirty fingernails and patched trousers.

  “When you saw it, were you looking for it?”

  “Bit of both,” he admitted. “I was pretending not to while I searched for it. But I was surprised when I found it. I wonder if Mr. Ryme knew it was there before he painted it.”

  “Of course he did,” Alexa said with a laugh. “Great heaps of stone don’t shift themselves around; it’s people who get lost. My father paints romantic visions, but there’s nothing romantic about carrying a paint box for miles, or having to swat flies all afternoon while you search. He’d want to know exactly where he was going.”

  She opened a door at the top of the stairs, lighting more candles and a couple of lamps as Jenny and Will entered. Paintings leaped into light everywhere in the room, sitting on easels, hanging in frames, leaning in unframed stacks against the walls. The studio took up the entire top floor of the house; windows overlooked meadow, marsh, the smudges of distant trees, the village disappearing into night. Richly colored carpets lay underfoot; odd costumes and wraps hung on hooks and coatracks. A peculiar collection of things littered shelves along the walls: seashells, hats, boxes, a scepter, crowns of tinsel and gold leaf, chunks of crystals, shoe buckles, necklaces, swords, pieces of armor, ribbons, a gilded bit and bridle. From among this jumble, Alexa produced a lamp and studied it doubtfully. One end was pointed, the other scrolled into a handle. Gleaming brass with colorful lozenges of enamel decorated the sides. It looked, Jenny thought, like the lamp Aladdin might have rubbed to summon the genie within. Alexa put it back, rummaged farther along the shelves.

  Will caught Jenny’s eye then, gazing silently at a painting propped against the wall. She joined him, and saw his face in the painting, peering anxiously into a wild darkness dimly lit by the lantern in his hand. Alexa, a lock of red hair blowing out of the threadbare shawl over her head, stood very close to him, pointing toward the faint light across murky ground and windblown grasses. Her face, pinched and worried, seemed to belong more to a ghostly twin of the lovely, confident, easily smiling girl searching for a lamp behind them.

  Something flashed above the painting. Jenny raised her eyes to the open window, saw the pale light in the dense twilight beyond the house and gardens. Someone out there, she thought c
uriously. The light went out, and her breath caught. She stepped around the painting, stuck her head out the window.

  “Did you see that?”

  “What?” Alexa asked absently.

  “That light. Just like the one in the painting...”

  She felt Will close beside her, staring out, heard his breath slowly loosed. Behind them, Alexa murmured, “Oh, here it is... A plain clay lantern Psyche might have used; no magic in this one. What are you looking at?”

  “Jenny!”

  She started, bumped her head on the window frame. Miss Lake stood below, staring up at them. Will drew back quickly; Jenny sighed.

  “Yes, Miss Lake?”

  “What are you doing up there?”

  “I’m—”

  “Come down, please; don’t make me shout.”

  “Yes, Miss Lake. I’m helping Alexa. I’ll come down in a moment.”

  “Surely you’re not in Mr. Ryme’s studio! And was that one of the village boys up there with you?”

  Mr. Ryme appeared then, glanced up at Jenny, and said something apparently soothing to Miss Lake, who put a hand to her cheek and gave a faint laugh. Jenny wondered if he’d offered to paint her. They strolled away together. Jenny pushed back out the window, and there it was again, stronger this time in the swiftly gathering dark: a pulse of greeny-pale light that shimmered, wavered, almost went out, pulsed strong again.

  “Oh...”

  “What is it?” Alexa demanded beside her, then went silent; she didn’t even breathe.

  Behind them, Will said softly, briefly, “Jack O’Lantern.”

  “Oh,” Jenny said again, sucking air into her lungs, along with twilight, and the scents of marsh and grass. She spun abruptly. “Let’s follow it! I want to see it!”

  “But, Jenny,” Alexa protested, “it’s not real. I mean it’s real, but it’s only—oh, how did my father put it? The spontaneous combustion of decayed vegetation.”

  “What?”

  “Exploding grass.”

  Jenny stared at her. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It is, a bit, when you think about it,” Alexa admitted.

  “He obviously told you a tale to make you stay out of the marshes.” Her eyes went to the window, where the frail elfin light danced in the night. “I have to go,” she whispered. “This may be my only chance in life to see real magic before I must become what Mama and Miss Lake and Papa think I should be...”

  She started for the door, heard Will say quickly, “She can’t go alone.”

  “Oh, all right,” Alexa said. Her cool voice sounded tense, as though even she, her father’s bright and rational daughter who could see beneath the paint, had gotten swept up in Jenny’s excitement. “Will, take that lantern—”

  Will put a candle in an old iron lantern; Jenny was out the door before he finished lighting it. “Hurry!” she pleaded, taking the stairs in an unladylike clatter.

  “Wait for us!” Alexa cried. “Jenny! They’ll see you!”

  That stopped her at the bottom of the stairs. Alexa moved past her toward the apple trees; Will followed, trying to hide the light with his vest. As they snuck through the trees, away from the tables, Jenny heard somebody play a pipe, someone else begin a song. Then Alexa led them through a gap in the wall, over a crumbled litter of stones, and they were out in the warm, restless, redolent dark.

  The light still beckoned across the night, now vague, hardly visible, now glowing steadily, marking one certain point in the shifting world. They ran, the lantern Will carried showing them tangled tussocks of grass on a flat ground that swept changelessly around them, except for a silvery murk now and then where water pooled. Jenny, her eyes on the pale fire, felt wind at her back, pushing, tumbling over her, racing ahead. Above them, cloud kept chasing the sliver of moon, could never quite catch it.

  “Hurry—” Jenny panted. The light seemed closer now, brilliant, constantly reshaped by the wind. “I think we’re almost there—”

  “Oh, what is it?” Alexa cried. “What can it be? It can’t be—Can it? Be real?”

  “Real exploding grass, you mean?” Will wondered. The lantern handle creaked as it bounced in his hold. “Or real magic?”

  “Real magic,” Alexa gasped, and came down hard with one foot into a pool. Water exploded into a rain of light, streaking the air; she laughed. Jenny, turning, felt warm drops fall, bright as moon tears on her face.

  She laughed, too, at the ephemeral magic that wasn’t, or was it? Then something happened to the lantern; its light came from a crazy angle on a tussock. She felt her shoulders seized. Something warm came down over her mouth. Lips, she realized dimly, pulling at her mouth, drinking out of her. A taste like grass and apple. She pushed back at it, recognizing the apple, wanting a bigger bite. And in that moment, it was gone, leaving her wanting.

  She heard a splash, a thump, a cry from Alexa. Then she saw the light burning in Will’s hand, not the lantern, but a strange, silvery glow that his eyes mirrored just before he laughed and vanished.

  Jenny stood blinking at Alexa, who was sitting open-mouthed in a pool of water. Her eyes sought Jenny’s. Beyond that, neither moved; they could only stare at each other, stunned.

  Alexa said finally, a trifle sourly, “Will.”

  Jenny moved to help her up. Alexa’s face changed, then; she laughed suddenly, breathlessly, and so did Jenny, feeling the silvery glow of magic in her heart, well worth the kiss snatched by the passing Will o’ the Wisp.

  They returned to find the villagers making their farewells to Mr. Ryme. Mr. Woolidge’s carriage had drawn up to the gate, come to take Sarah and Jenny, Papa and Miss Lake to his house.

  “There you are!” Sarah exclaimed when she saw Jenny. Alexa, staying in the shadows, edged around them quickly toward the house. “Where have you been?”

  “Nowhere. Trying to catch a Will o’ the Wisp.”

  Her father chuckled at her foolishness, said pedantically, “Nothing more, my dear, than the spontaneous combustion—”

  “Of decayed grass. I know.” She added to Mr. Ryme, “You’ll have one less face to paint in the wedding party. Will won’t be coming back.”

  “Why not?” he asked, surprised. His painter’s eyes took in her expression, maybe the lantern glow in her eyes. He started to speak, stopped, said, “Will—” stopped again. He turned abruptly, calling, “Alexa?”

  “She’s in the house,” Jenny told him. “She slipped in a pool.”

  “Oh, heavens, child,” Miss Lake grumbled. “It’s a wonder you didn’t lose yourselves out there in the marsh.”

  “It is, indeed, a wonder,” Jenny agreed.

  She stepped into the carriage, sat close to Sarah, whose chilly fingers sought her hand and held it tightly, even as she turned toward the sound of Mr. Woolidge’s voice raised in some solicitous question.

  Knight of the Well

  The Knights of the Well came last in the royal procession into Luminum. Their barge was pale green and ivory, the colors of the river; their standard was blue and stone gray, for water and for well. Their surcoats were cloth of gold, their cloaks white for foam, for the moon that drove the waters, bid them come and go. Their hoods were black for the secret dark from which the well bubbled out of the earth, also for humility. Their faces were all but invisible. The city folk crowding the banks of the Halcyon River to watch the parade of brightly painted boats carrying Kayne, King of Obelos, and his court to the summer palace in Luminum, cheered and flung flowers at the still, mysterious figures in the last barge. The procession heralded both the beginning of summer and the ritual, old as Luminum, which would honor and placate the waters of the world, most particularly the waters of the Kingdom of Obelos.

  The dozen knights had been standing for hours, it seemed, though the procession had shifted from horses and wagons to boats just outside the city. No one dared move. The small, colorful barge was balanced to a breath, five men on either side plying their gilded oars, the oar master on hi
s narrow perch keeping their time with a brass gong and hammer. The knights were supposed, by the city folk, to be contemplating their awesome function. Most were indeed contemplating water: the last one who had moved impulsively, at the nip of a bloodthirsty insect, had nearly thrown them all into it.

  Mingling with the flow of water, the golden drip of sound from the gong, the drift of voices from the other barges, the distant roil of shouts, cheers, scraps of music from the crowds was the murmur of memory the knights passed to one another, trying, as they always did during this part of the journey, to pinpoint why the water-mage had chosen them.

  “One of my ancestors was found floating among the reeds in a shallow pond just after she had given birth to a child with webs between its fingers... Family lore has it she fell in love with a water sprite.”

  “My grandmother flung herself over a cliff into the sea. Her body was never found, though she left her shoes at the place where she jumped. There were prints in the earth beside them that were not quite human.”

  “There is a lake on our land in south Obelos said to be inhabited by water creatures of a most extraordinary beauty...”

  Garner Slade, who had been a knight of the king’s for three years, and a Knight of the Well since the previous year, recognized most of the hushed voices that came from under the lowered hoods. Not all of the men were knights of the court; a few he only saw at this time of the year: those who left their lands and families at the mage’s bidding. The young man who spoke next, Garner recognized as one of them only because he bore the standard that fluttered over their heads.

  “I drink water,” he said a trifle hollowly. “Sometimes I wash. Sometimes I just stand in a good rain instead. I don’t know how to swim. I don’t even like water. I’m afraid of it. I’d trade this standard for a beer in a moment. So why would the mage have picked me?”

  He had a moment’s sympathy. Summer was no further away than a change of expression on the moon’s face, a richer hue in the gold that fell freely out of the blue. Even now, heat clung to them as heavily as cloth, beading their faces with the sweat that lured the tiny, malignant pests.