Wonders of the Invisible World

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Where does it belong?”

  “To a gnarly old warthog of a witch who put a spell on me when I accidentally let her greyling out.”

  Fitch grunted, watching the sparkles sail past his nose. “Funny light. Doesn’t seem to do much, does it?”

  “No. And it smells odd. Like—”

  “Vanilla.”

  Averil shook her head, puzzled. “Bizarre... ”

  “Do you want me to help you take it back?”

  She considered that, tempted, then shook her head again; no sense in introducing the witch to more opportunities for mischief. “No. It’s my problem...but now you won’t be able to get back into the school.”

  She saw his slanted smile again. “I have my ways.”

  “Really?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “No,” she said, amazed. “I always follow all the rules. At least at school.”

  “Well, of course, there’s something to be said for that.” He paused; she waited. “I just said it.”

  “You made a joke,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t even know you could smile, before.” She took the greyling’s skinny wrist out of his hold, wondering suddenly what else went on in that obscure realm under Fitch’s untidy hair. “I always get perfect grades. How can you know things I don’t?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re brilliant. Everyone notices what you do. So you have to watch yourself. I get to do things nobody notices.”

  She mulled that over, while the greyling tried to run circles around her. “Maybe we could talk?” she suggested. “Some time soon?”

  He blushed again, but not so much. “I’d like that.”

  “I think I would, too.” The greyling nearly spun her off her feet, then tangled itself around the foot she stuck in its path. “I’d better finish what I started with the witch,” she said grimly, hauling the greyling up. “Thanks for helping me. That was really nice of you.”

  “You’re sure—” Fitch said doubtfully, walking backward away from her.

  “I’d like to think all my studying is worth something.”

  “Okay, then. Good luck with the witch.”

  “Thanks,” she said between her teeth, and dragged the furious greyling the opposite direction.

  The greyling finally stopped struggling when the door to the apartment building closed behind them. It trudged upstairs quietly beside Averil, only muttering a little now and then, its ribbony arm dangling limply in her hold. She scarcely heard it; she was trying to figure out how Fitch was getting back into school without being caught. Did he already know how to turn invisible? What other things might he have learned on his own, while she was only learning what was required? Would breaking rules make him a better wizard? Better than, say, Griffith, who would surely have skipped his Naming Day to come and help her, if he had been able to see her. Or would he? More likely, he would have done the practical thing and simply told one of their teachers that she seemed to be in trouble. Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine Griffith missing his Naming to sneak out of school and help her catch some witch’s demented familiar.

  She was thinking so intently that she had opened the door of her own apartment out of habit. Her mother, sitting on the couch and reading, lifted her head to smile at Averil, who remembered, horrified, what she was holding.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said hastily, backing out before she had to explain the greyling. “Oops. I’ll just be a—”

  “Thanks, Averil,” her mother sighed. “That’s the most peaceful morning I’ve had in years.”

  The greyling broke free of Averil, ran to the couch, and climbed up beside their mother. “I’m tired,” Felix groaned, falling sideways onto her lap. “Really, really, really—”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful, sweetie.”

  Averil, frozen in the doorway, remembered finally how to breathe. Her eyes felt gritty, as though fairy dust had blown into them. With great effort, she swiveled them toward the witch’s wand in her hand.

  Wooden mixing spoon.

  “Mom—” Her voice croaked like a frog; she still couldn’t move. “How did you—how could you—?”

  “Well, you saw what I was turning into. Nobody was listening to me.”

  “But how—”

  “I learned a few things at the school before I left to have you.” She stroked Felix’s hair gently; he was already asleep. “Peace,” she breathed contentedly.

  “Mom. It was my Naming Day.”

  Her mother just looked at her. Averil saw the witch in her eyes, then, shadowy, shrewd, filled with remnants of magic. “And did you finally choose a name?”

  Averil looked back at the Averil who had been so blithely trying on lovely names and discarding them just that morning. She moved finally, closing the door behind her. She dropped down on the couch next to Felix.

  “No,” she admitted, twirling the spoon handle through her hair. “And now, nothing seems to fit me.”

  Her mother said after a moment, “I have a name that I haven’t used since I left Oglesby, until today. You can have it, if you want.”

  “Really?” Averil studied her mother, suddenly curious. “What is it?”

  Her mother leaned over Felix, whispered it into Averil’s ear. The name seemed to flow through her like air and light. Her eyes grew wide; visions and enchantments swirled in her head. “Mom, that’s brilliant,” she exclaimed, straightening with a bounce. “That’s amazing!” Felix stirred; they both patted him until he quieted. “How did you think of it?” Averil whispered.

  “It was just there, when I looked for it. Do you want it?”

  “Are you sure? You really want me to have it?”

  Her mother smiled wryly. “I really don’t want to be tempted to use magic on my children again. Anyway, ever since you became interested in the wizardly arts, I dreamed of giving it to you. Of it meaning all the wonderful things you could do.” She paused, shifted a strand of Averil’s shining hair back from her face. “Lately, I haven’t been sure that you’d want it.”

  “I want it,” Averil said softly. “I want it more than any other name. I never would have thought of it, but it’s perfect. It feels like me.”

  “Good.” Her mother rose then, took the spoon from her. “I’m glad you brought this back; it’s my favorite mixing spoon.”

  “You didn’t give me much choice.” Averil watched her walk into the kitchen to drop the spoon into the utensils jar. “You made a pretty fierce witch.”

  “Thanks, sweetie. Are you hungry? Do you want a sandwich before you go back to school?”

  “You know they won’t let me in after First Bell.”

  “That’s what they say,” her mother said with a chuckle. “But once you find your way in, they always let you stay.”

  Averil stared at her. She glimpsed something then, in the corner of her mind’s eye; it grew clearer as she turned her thoughts to contemplate it. Her mother, giving up all the knowledge she had acquired at Oglesby, all that potential, just to go and have Averil and take care of her. And now that incredible name...

  She drew a sudden breath, whispered, “I didn’t miss it.”

  Her mother, who had stuck her head in the refrigerator and was searching through jars, said, “What?”

  “My Naming. You just named me.”

  Her mother turned, embracing mayonnaise, mustard, pickles, cold cuts and a head of lettuce. “What, sweetie? I didn’t hear you.”

  “Never mind,” Averil said, and summoned all her powers to speak words of most arduous and dire magic. “I’ll-watch-Felix-for-the-rest-of-the-day-if-you-want-to-go-out.”

  Her mother heard that just fine.

  Byndley

  The Wizard Reck wandered into Byndley almost by accident. He had been told so many ways to get to it that he had nearly missed it entirely. Over a meadow, across a bridge, through a rowan wood, left at a crossroads, right at an old inn that had been shut tight for decades except for the rooks. And so on. By twilight he had followed every direction twice
, he thought, and gotten nowhere. He was trudging over thick oak slabs built into a nicely rounded arc above a stream when the lacy willow branches across the road ahead parted to reveal the thatched roofs and chimneys of a village. Byndley, said the sign on the old post leaning toward the water at the end of the bridge. That was all. But the wizard saw the mysterious dark behind the village that flowed on to meet the dusk and he felt his own magic quicken in answer.

  “You want to know what?” had been the most common response to the question he asked along his journey. An incredulous snort of laughter usually followed.

  How to get back again, how to get elsewhere, how to get there....

  “But why?” they asked, time and again. “No one goes looking for it. You’re lured, you’re tricked there, you don’t come back, and if you do, it’s not to the same world.”

  I went there, he thought. I came back.

  But he never explained, only intimated that he was doing the king’s bidding. Then they straightened their spines a bit—the innkeepers, the soldiers, those who had been about the world or heard travelers’ tales—and adjusted their expressions. Nobody said the word aloud; everyone danced around it; they all knew what he meant, though none had ever been there. That, Reck thought, was the strangest thing of all about the realm of Faerie: no one had seen, no one had been, no one said the word. But everyone knew.

  Finally somebody said, “Byndley,” and then he began to hear that word everywhere.

  “Ask over in Byndley; they might know.”

  “Ask at Byndley. They’re always blundering about in magic.”

  “Try Byndley. It’s just that way, half a day at most. Take a left at the crossroads.”

  And there Byndley was, with its firefly windows just beginning to flicker against the night, and the great oak forest beyond it, the border, he suspected, between here and there, already vanishing out of day into dream.

  He stopped at the first tavern he saw and asked for a bed. He wore plain clothes, wool and undyed linen, boots that had walked through better days. He wore his face like his boots, strong and serviceable but nothing that would catch the eye. He didn’t want to be recognized, to be distracted by requests for wizardry. The thing he carried in his pack grew heavier by the day. He had to use power now to lift it, and the sooner he relinquished it the better.

  “My name is Reck,” he told the tavern keeper at the bar as he let the pack slide from his shoulder. “I need a bed for a night or two or maybe—” He stopped, aware of a stentorious commotion as his pack hit the floor. The huge young man standing beside him, half-naked and sweating like a charger, his face flushed as by his own bellows, was rubbing one sandaled foot and snorting. “Did I drop my pack on you?” Reck asked, horrified. “I beg your pardon.”

  “It’s been stepped on by worse,” the man admitted with an effort. “What are you carrying in there, stranger? A load of anvils?” He bent before Reck could answer, hauled the pack off the floor and handed it back. Reck, unprepared, sagged for an instant under the weight. The man’s dark, innocent eye met his through a drift of black, shaggy hair as Reck balanced his thoughts to bear the sudden weight. The man turned his head, puffed one last time at his foot, then slapped the oak bar with his palm.

  “Ale,” he demanded. “One for the stranger, too.”

  “That’s kind of you.”

  “You’ll need it,” the man said, “against the fleas.” He grinned as the tavern keeper’s long gray mustaches fluttered in the air like dandelion seed.

  “There are no fleas,” he protested, “in my establishment. Reck, you said?” He paused, chewing at his mustaches. “Reck. You wouldn’t be the wizard from the court at Chalmercy, would you?”

  “Do I look like it?” Reck asked with wonder.

  “No.”

  Reck left it at that. The tavern keeper drew ale into two mugs. They were all silent, then, watching the foam subside. Reck, listening to the silence, broke it finally.

  “Then what made you ask?”

  The young man gave an astonished grunt. The tavern keeper smiled slowly. His fatuous, egg-shaped face, crowned with a coronet of receding hair, achieved a sudden, endearing dignity.

  “I know a little magic,” he said shyly. “Living so close”—he waved a hand inarticulately toward the wood—“you learn to recognize it. My name is Frayne. On slow nights, I open an odd book or two that came my way and never left. Sometimes I can almost make things happen. This is Tye. The blacksmith, as you might have guessed.”

  “It wasn’t hard,” Reck commented. The smith, who had a broad, pleasant face beneath his wild hair, grinned delightedly as though the wizard had produced some marvel.

  “My brain’s made of iron,” he confessed. “Magic bounces off it. Some, though, like Linnea down the road—she can foresee in water and find anything that’s lost. And Bettony—” He shook his head, rendered speechless by Bettony.

  “Bettony,” the tavern keeper echoed reverently. Then he came down to earth as Reck swallowed ale. “There’s where you should go to find your bed.”

  “I’m here,” Reck protested.

  “Well, you shouldn’t be, a wizard such as you are. She’s as poor as any of us now, but back a ways, before they started disappearing into the wood for decades on end, her family wore silk and washed in perfumed water and rode white horses twice a year to the king’s court at Chalmercy. She’ll give you a finer bed than I’ve got and a tale or two for the asking.”

  “About the wood?”

  The tavern keeper nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Who knows what to believe when talk starts revolving around the wood?” He wiped a drop from the oak with his sleeve, then added tentatively, “You’ve got your own tale, I would guess. Why else would a great wizard come to spend a night or two or maybe more in Byndley?”

  Reck hesitated; the two tried to watch him without looking at him. He had to ask his way, so they would know eventually, he decided; nothing in this tiny village would be a secret for long. “I took something,” he said at last, “when I was very young, from a place I should not have entered. Now I want to return the thing I stole, but I don’t know how to get back there.” He looked at them helplessly “How can you ever find your way back to that place once you have left it?”

  The tavern keeper, seeing something in his eyes, drew a slow breath through his mouth. “What’s it like?” he pleaded. “Is it that beautiful?”

  “Most things only become that beautiful in memory.”

  “How did you find your way there in the first place?” Tye the blacksmith asked bewilderedly. “Can’t you find the same way back?”

  Reck hesitated. Frayne refilled his empty mug, pushed it in front of the wizard.

  “It’ll go no farther,” he promised, as earnestly as he had promised a bed without fleas. But Reck, feeling himself once more on the border, with his theft weighing like a grindstone on his shoulders, had nothing left to lose.

  “The first time, I was invited in.” Again, his eyes filled with memories, so that the faces of the listening men seemed less real than dreams. “I was walking through an oak wood on king’s business and with nothing more on my mind than that, when the late afternoon light changed.... You know how it does. That moment when you notice how the sunlight you’ve ignored all day lies on the yellow leaves like beaten gold and how threads of gold drift all around you in the air. Cobweb, you think. But you see gold. That’s when I saw her.”

  “Her,” Tye said. His voice caught.

  “The Queen of Faerie. Oh, she was beautiful.” The wizard raised his mug, drank. He lowered it, watched her walking toward him through the gentle rain of golden, dying leaves. “Her hair...” he whispered. “Her eyes... She seemed to take her colors from the wood, as she came toward me, gold threads catching in her hair, her eyes the green of living leaves.... She spoke to me. I scarcely heard a word she said, only the lovely sound of her voice. I must have told her anything she wanted to know, and said yes to anything she asked.... She drew me deep i
nto the wood, so deep that I was lost in it, though I don’t remember moving from that enchanted place....”

  He drank again. As he lowered the mug, the wood around him faded and he saw the rough-hewn walls around him, the rafters black with smoke, the scarred tables and stools. He smelled stale ale and onions. The two faces, still, expressionless, became human once again, one balding and innocuous, one hairy and foolish, and both avid for more.

  Reck drained his mug, set it down. “And that’s how I found my way there,” he said hollowly, “the first time.”

  “But what did you steal?” Tye asked breathlessly. “How did you get free? You can’t just end it—”

  The tavern keeper waved him silent. “Leave him be now; he’s paid for his ale and more already.” He took Reck’s mug and assiduously polished the place on the worn oak where it had stood. “You might come back tomorrow evening. By then the whole village will know what you’re looking for, and anyone with advice will drop by to give it to you.”

  Reck nodded. His shoulder had begun to ache under the weight of the pack despite all his magic. “Thank you,” he said tiredly. “If you won’t give me a bed here, then I’ll take myself to Bettony’s.”

  “You won’t be sorry,” Frayne said. “Keep going down the road to the end of the village and you’ll see the old hall just at the edge of the wood. You can’t miss it. Tell Bettony I sent you.” He raised a hand as the wizard turned. “Tomorrow, then.”

  Reck found the hall easily, though the sun had set by then and near the wood an ancient dark spilled out from the silent trees. Silvery dusk lingered over the rest of Byndley. The hall was small, with windows set hither and yon in the walls, and none matching. Its stone walls, patched in places, looked very old. The main door, a huge slab of weathered oak, stood open. As he neared, Reck heard an ax slam cleanly through wood, and then the clatter of broken kindling. He rounded the hall toward the sound and came upon a sturdy young woman steadying another piece on her block.

  She let go of the wood on the block and swung the ax to split it neatly in two. Then she straightened, wiped her brow with her apron, and turned with a start to the stranger.