by Laura Briggs
"That's because I probably couldn't, even if I tried," I laughed. "He's a modern genius with subtext and symbolism — I'm just an ordinary writer who wants to entertain people. If I put something of value and something of me into what I write, I couldn't really ask for more."
"Have you tried?" Dean asked, bluntly. I felt Sidney glance my direction, as if curious to hear the reply. We'd never talked about what I didn't write, or why, after all, for no particular reason other than it never came up.
"Once or twice, I guess," I said. "I wrote some short stories in college, and worked on part of a realistic novel while I was mentoring with the author." I played with my pencil, doodling another little flower before I shut the notebook. "I don't think any of them were badly written, but none of those compositions were brilliant or even terribly original. It's just not my gift."
"Do you regret that?" Even though the question was blunt, Dean's tone was soft. He was genuinely asking me, and not necessarily to judge me. At least that's what I assumed.
"When I was younger, I saw Sullivan's Travels," I said. "I remember thinking that's what writing is all about. People sometimes need a world to escape to, one that touches a part of them. Like the cartoon in the movie — everybody watching it connected with its world, even though it was just a silly one. And everybody watching came from vastly different worlds, too."
"I vaguely recall that film," said Dean. "The escapades of disillusioned director of 'B-grade' films lead to his false imprisonment, making him vastly appreciate his former life. Correct?"
"That's the essence of the plot," I said. "The point of it is how Sullivan realizes that what he did before did matter to others. It had value, because the point of art, the point of storytelling, is the same as the point of life — to touch somebody. Otherwise it's just —"
"— self aggrandizing," finished Dean. "Which, some might suggest, is what Alistair Davies achieved with the fame of his modern drama, which you find so complex."
I remembered thinking once before that Dean wasn't a fan of Davies' novels. I wondered if I had been right after all.
"Alistair Davies did far more than that," I retorted, in defense of my favorite novel. "He writes about our flaws and private tragedies, about imperfections and prejudices in a microcosm, in a way that gives them humanity. He writes about the search for hope that keeps us going in a mixed-up world." It was hard to put into words, but fortunately for me, I knew Dean had read it firsthand ... or had it read to him ... even if he hadn't been fond of it. "It isn't just his style or his mastery of the craft that makes his books great."
"I hardly think that disqualifies him from flaunting his so-called brilliance." Dean's laugh was born of sharp-edged humor.
"No." I shook my head. "It's not the same. I wish I could explain it better. I had always wanted to be a writer, but when I read A Dark and Glorious House, I understood why I wanted to be one. The reason that went all the way to the core of my heart. Does that make sense?"
It didn't in the least, and if it wasn't for the breeze and the splash of a frog among the water lilies, I might have expected a chorus of crickets from one of the aforementioned cartoons.
"Perfectly," Dean answered, quietly. He smiled. He was probably thinking it was rather silly, but it was true.
"It sounds crazy to say that I don't want to be that brilliant, and that isn't exactly what I mean," I said. "It's just that I've accepted that even as my skills grow, I probably won't turn into the next great American novelist or anything. But even when I figured that out, it didn't matter. I still had to write." Had to write was expressed like an essential function in life.
"Like breathing, else you die," said Dean, teasing me — darkly, but not meanly.
"Close," I said, being playful in return. "It just ... became how I see the world." I grew serious without meaning to. "How I knew the world. We all live in our own stories, and write them in our heads, real or fantasy — I just found putting mine down on paper was something I needed." I laughed, trying to break the mood. "B-grade fantasy and all."
Sidney had been listening to our exchange without saying anything, which didn't surprise me given his recorded feelings on Alistair Davies. He stirred from his place on the grass, but instead of fitting the paintbrush back in Dean's holder, he crouched down across from me, face to face.
"You are as good at what you do as Alistair Davies, Maisie," he said. "Because you do it for the same reasons he does."
The smile that followed, solemn and earnest, disarmed me so completely that I couldn't make the case for the very real differences between myself and the great writer, which everyone here already knew. Sidney wasn't talking about style, subtext, or the manner of human expression on the page. His words were countering Dean's remarks about Davies' gift, and I almost believed he meant them to. No teasing manner to counter them, no gleam of mischief in that clear gaze to dispel the effect it had on me.
"You make it sound as if I was insulting her again," said Dean.
Sidney glanced at him over his shoulder. "You were insulting Alistair Davies, which you once told me is nearly as bad," he replied.
"Touche," remarked Dean. "If Maisie feels insulted, then I apologize. In no way did I mean to malign her talents — she is aware that I would speak with equally-mocking condescension to even the great Alistair Davies with his Pulitzer."
"I know you meant it kindly," I said. "Even if your bark still has bite."
"Insult duly accepted." He closed his eyes, as near as he could come to bowing his head. "I think, since Sidney has allowed the paint to cake on the brush's bristles during our discussion, that I've painted enough for one day. Besides, the light has changed too much to suit the canvas. Sidney, if you would take it to the cottage, you could put on the kettle for tea."
"As you wish. Biscuits would have a calming effect after so much stimulating conversation." Sidney carefully removed the painting, and began folding the easel.
"I'll pack up the paints," I offered.
I removed the remote-operated paintbrush holder and began wiping it clean. There was a smudge of gray along Dean's cheek and I daubed it away with the cleanest corner of the rag.
He cleared his throat. "You didn't take my insults seriously, I hope," he said. "If I don't apologize sincerely, I'll have Sidney's gimlet eye on me for the rest of the afternoon."
I smiled. "I've grown used to it," I said. "The bitterness stings, but I don't mind the bluntness — I think somehow you were always that way. Sidney says you were honest to a fault." I glanced behind me, witnessing the glint in Sidney's eyes for this remark before he set off with the canvas in one hand and the easel tucked under his arm.
"Despite my ill manner of expressing it, I was truly interested in knowing those answers, and not to make light of what you do. I should have put it more charmingly — the way Sidney undoubtedly would have if he'd asked."
"He never asked those questions, so I wouldn't know." Dean had an inkling that Sidney and I were essentially 'Sidney and I,' although we had not talked about it since our rift. But he had guessed my feelings long ago, and probably realized just how many things I told Sidney that were personal.
"He intuits those things. Whereas I rely on direct questions since I've decided to retreat from the world," Dean replied. "He knows you better than I do, naturally."
"You're not doing so badly these days," I said, as I tucked his paints into their case.
"Thank you. At this rate, we might become true friends. Maybe with enough encouragement I can steal you away from him. Marry me for my money, Maisie," he said. "We'd make a pleasant couple — I'll insult and berate, whilst you smile and placate."
"What of Sidney?" I teased back.
"You wouldn't marry him for his money, I suspect," Dean said.
"I can make twenty quid on my own, without robbing him of all his worldly funds," I answered. I thought of Sidney's offer to buy me dinner and wondered if twenty quid would cover much more than appetizers and drinks in the Penmarrow's dining room
. I was willing to settle for a tin of biscuits.
I tossed the rags that Sidney had used to clean the brush into the art case, and fastened it closed.
"You haven't asked me any more questions about his past," said Dean.
"I haven't," I agreed. My fingers played with one of the latches, which felt stuck.
"Either he gave you the missing details, or you decided to live without them," said Dean. "It must be the latter, because I know him well enough to be sure that there would be a change if he had finally opened the subject you've both avoided in turns."
"I took your advice," I said. "I decided to trust him. After all, whatever he was or did can't be undone, and like you said, he's worth it. The risk, the time it takes to learn the good and the bad." I lifted the case, and met Dean's gaze as I turned around.
"That's kind of you," he said, softly. "Very few people have that patience or that faith in another."
"Spoken like a true agnostic," I said.
He laughed — this time, without bitterness. "I told you that you give me too much credit for niceness," he answered, his finger touching the lever and wheeling the chair towards the cottage. "Tolerant is a much more apt description of my manners these days."
I caught up with him, the art case banging gently against my skirts as I walked. The tall weeds had returned in Dean's garden, building their peculiar downy seed heads that would be perched on dry and crackly stalks by late autumn, and the few summer flowers that bloomed here were peeking out from the unkempt beds.
"I was thinking about what you said about the character Sullivan," said Dean. "In some ways, he is more your authorial hero than Alistair Davies. Perhaps you should think about admitting to the change."
"I've never met a real-life Sullivan who had such a profound epiphany about life, much less literature," I quipped.
"Haven't you?" Dean couldn't glance my way, but his voice carried all the meaning of a shrewd glance.
Through the windows, I could see Sidney putting a record on Dean's hi-fi. He was whistling, the sound inaudible outside the parlor's windows, but even with the glass's reflection I could see the paint flecks on his hands and arms, and the disarray of cropped honey-blond curls in need of combing.
The specter of Sidney's past came between us in my head, of the man who rose from the wreckage of a troubled boy's past in Oxford. If Dean was making that comparison, I could understand it. Alistair Davies had faded from life, leaving only a novel and a crazy young writer's faded idealism. Sidney was present, warm, real, and had no illusions of grandeur about life and its opportunities, only optimism for what might be.
Beneath the record player's needle, the soft hiss of vinyl and the voice of Norah Jones, the ill-received gift of Sidney to Dean sometime in the past. As we entered, Sidney was propping the canvas on the easel in its corner.
"Custard tarts or biscuits?" he asked us, without turning around.
"Tarts. The cupboard is bare of biscuits, presently," said Dean.
"Mrs. Graves very thoughtfully sent some oatmeal cranberry chews." I knew the look in Sidney's eyes, the wicked glint that would be there, even without him turning around.
"Must you try to make us ill?" Dean asked, with disgust.
____________________
The longer they talked, the longer they were spared from facing the fairies' decree. Janet knew his mind must have found the same place to hide as her own.
"What will they do to you if you don't obey them?" She couldn't help her bitterness. "If you won't —" She left it unfinished.
He made no reply at first. "I'll tell you, if that's what you want," he said. "If you feel you have to know. But it's better not to. If I'm to face it, I'd rather it be something you knew nothing about." He fought something within. It brought the blanch of pain to his face.
She should listen and obey that request. With just a little time and silence, she knew that he would spare her everything. It would almost seem as if there was no punishment at all for her mistake.
Her tongue dragged itself against leaden fear. "Tell me," she said. "I have to know." Her tongue tried to hold back those words but failed.
It was a long silence which followed. Then he did as she asked, with words that seemed pulled from his chest. She understood why before he finished. It was nothing any human should ever know of, much less endure. There would be no survival, and death would be welcome long before it came.
Regret mounted. Knowing this, she couldn't go through with begging him to save her. She could tell that he had hidden part of the truth from her, even though he spoke of it in a distant way, as if they were not talking of his fate. In these many hours, she knew him well enough to sense a lie from him already.
My word processor jumped a few pages as I read, with my brain fast forwarding through the various scenes of my latest chapter. Tam attempting to smuggle Janet to escape through a secret path. The misty bog where the fairies trapped Janet in a marsh pit and threatened to drown her until Tam surrendered to their power. The verdict of the fairy queen's minister delivered in the Midnight Court of the Moon.
"I would still take the price on myself." Tam's voice rattled with fury and helplessness. "But I can't bear what they'll do to you. I can't bear that price — all because you took a desperate chance that anybody would —"
She shut her ears. The cold decree from the queen's court rang out in her memory once more, where it echoed through her head every few seconds. Cruel, he had called them before, when she hadn't fully believed him. But that sentence was crueler than anything she had expected.
If it has to be done ..." he drew another breath, harshly, "If they have to have a price from you ... I would be gentler than them." His voice filled with disgust for this truth. She knew it was disgust for himself, for what he was as the fairies' slave.
She wanted to hide her ears. She remembered his words from before: "They can be kind when they want to be, sometimes. But they know how to be more terrible than anybody else can imagine."
Even Tam's coat could not stop her shivering. The damp, the drafts between the cell's stones, and everything that had happened these past hours, was shaking her like a storm. All of it was terrible. Having no choice, no escape.
He took a bottle and a cup from the stone shelf, and filled the cup to the brim with liquid which looked as velvety black as currant wine. It trembled in his grip. He placed it before her.
"It will make it easier," he said. His voice trembled also, shaking as badly as her own body. "There is enough for two."
"What is it?"
"The draught of wakeful dreams," he said. It was a struggle for him to keep speaking. "It keeps us from resisting when we fall under its power. It forces humans to carry out their bidding. The memory of what we do under its influence will be dimmed."
He had tasted it before, Janet understood. This must be the means the fairies employed to make him carry out their orders before.
Slowly, she touched the cup. Her heart was pounding the toll of doom. So fast, so terrible, it was all about to be a horrible dream that would be buried deep in her mind. Her eyes shut tightly.
"Drink it, Janet." Desperation strengthened his voice. "I wish to remember you as you are. I want you to remember me the same way."
She opened her eyes for the boy's pleading. The candles flickered in the draft, the light of the dying flames and their shadows falling on the bed of leaves piled in the corner.
She felt his hand taking hers in a careful hold. "It makes no difference to them that we do it this way. They laugh at what happens," he said.
So grave and serious, she could see the frustration in his eyes. His smile, which had helped kindle her courage before the marshes, had been banished someplace dark inside himself. He was dreading her shame and helplessness, and how he was visiting the fairies' consequences upon her, with no chance of escape.
"What if I ask you not to do this?" she whispered. As if he still had the power to take the punishment on himself, although the fairies had decree
d otherwise.
Grief tightened his lips. He turned away.
Janet closed her eyes again. "I speak of the cup," she said. "Not the price, Tam."
When she opened them, she could see his confusion. She pushed aside the draught. "I ask that you remember it, as I will," she said. "We will pay the price together. They cannot take what I give freely."
My mouse highlighted the worst of the cliches and the sentence structure I least liked, then skipped ahead to the next page to do the same, where I lingered for a little reading time.
"I would pledge myself to you. Give you my vow, as if I were yours alone," she said. "And you were the same to me."
He rested his face against the hand in his hold, the one which had been lying against his chest. He stayed that way when she was done speaking. Janet felt as if his heart was breaking as he fought the power of her request, while her own was racing with strength.
"For you, I would," he said. "But I can't keep any promise while I'm in their power, Janet. No matter how much I want to."
"I know," she said.
"What would you remember of me?" he asked. "After — if I —" She could tell he dared not hope her answer would be better than the worst one he could imagine.
"You tried to save me, Tam," she said. "They would have killed you for it, if the queen had not spared your life. You bear regrets, but I've seen kindness and selflessness in you. What you would have done for me —" the words caught in her throat at the memory of the punishment he had tried to face for her, and the risk he took trying to help her escape the woods. "How could I not think of you without remembering?"
A strange light entered his eyes, before clouds of emotion hid it again. "How could you not regret it still?" he asked, quietly. "What I — what we would do?"
"Because I cling to what little good is given. I will not let the darkness take it," she answered. "However little, I choose it. Even when the shadows would take it all."