Fair Peril

by Nancy Springer

  LeeVon had not thought there could be anything more difficult to confess than this: because I want someone to love me. But there was one thing more difficult. And even more deeply true.

  He got his wide, slimy mouth moving and said it.

  LeeVon said, “Because I will love you.” He thought of Adamus, of how Adamus felt about Emily as he said it, and he knew he had reached the bottom line. Seemingly on their own, his sticky, splay-fingered hands lifted, reaching toward the other, though not presuming to touch. Hoarsely he said, “Because I will adore you and cherish you. Maybe you won’t care for me; it won’t matter. I’ll love you like a mother. Take it or leave it.”

  His could-be true love gawked at him, mouth softening again, this time in astonishment. And terror. Understandably terror. Either it would happen—or he would go out the door into the night and LeeVon would never see him again. It was up to him.

  I don’t even know his name.

  LeeVon lowered his tacky green hands and waited.

  Buffy did not think she had moved, but there was no longer any Pony Ride. No LeeVon, no cute blond guy, and no men, cute or otherwise, dancing in suggestive clothing. Neither was there any court this time, with lambent men dancing in tights. No lute music, no courtiers, no Prince Adamus to help out. No golden orbs of light, no lavender walls, no up and no down. Just scared self and the Queen—alight with incandescent rage.

  “You stood me up!”

  “No. I—Majesty, I beg your pardon.” I plead your pardon, I grovel your pardon, I toady your pardon. Buffy actually attempted a curtsy, which in a black place of no up and no down necessarily failed. She babbled, “I was just running a little late.”

  “You—stood—me—up!”

  “I had to keep a promise, your Majesty! I had to help a friend!”

  “Friend? You dare to speak to me of a friend? What of me? What of your daughter?” The curled white hand lifted to do God knew what to her, maybe send her into orbit, and even though she knew that the Queen’s outraged concern for Emily was wholly a convenience of the moment, Buffy felt terrible. For just that moment she felt guilty enough to accept her punishment.

  She had no thoughts of escape; she felt only a strange empathy. In utter submission she whispered, “Once upon a time there was a cold old queen.”

  The white hand hovered in black-ice nothingness. Buffy watched the hand, the white, angry face—yet it was not that cold old Queen of Fair Peril of whom she spoke.

  “There was a cold old queen who had a warm young daughter,” she said. “The queen loved her daughter as well as she was able, which was not very well. And the queen said to her daughter, Come, let us go down to the river, let us catch a shining fish for you.

  “The daughter loved her mother the cold old queen as well as she was able, which was not very well. She loved other things more. She loved the leaping of deer and she loved the flying of birds and she loved animals, all animals. Still, because she loved her mother as well as she was able, she walked with her mother down to the river to catch a shining fish.”

  The Queen of Fair Peril had lowered her hand. Out of her porcelain face her golden eyes steadily watched the story unfolding on Buffy’s face and on the storm-colored air.

  “At the edge of the river a frog sat waiting with his heart pulsing in his throat. The queen’s stare upon him made him unable to leap away. A few steps, then the queen crouched and imprisoned him in her hand. Now, she said to her daughter, with this fat frog as bait we shall catch you the greatest of shining fish. She stood up, and in her other hand she seized the fishhook and prepared to thrust it through the frog.

  “No, the daughter cried, don’t. Don’t use the frog so.

  “But we are going to catch you a shining fish.

  “I don’t want a shining fish! Please, let the frog go. Thus the warm young daughter begged for the life of the frog. But the queen was stubborn in her cold old heart and would not grant it to her. My frog, the queen said. She readied the hook again, and seeing it coming, the frog screamed like a human child. So the daughter snatched the frog out of her mother’s hands and ran away.

  “Because she had disobeyed her mother, she ran far, far away with the frog in her hands. She ran across the river and into the other kingdom.

  “Then the frog said to her, Princess, thank you for saving me. For in the other kingdom the frog could speak to her. I will grant you three wishes, the frog told her. For in the other kingdom the frog had that power.

  “Now, the princess was warm of heart, but she was also young and foolish. So she wished for a golden star on her forehead and a garland of golden roses around her neck and for the frog to be her playmate and companion and love her forever.”

  Buffy closed her eyes and waited for the rest of the story to come to her. She had to trust that the Queen would wait with her. The blackness around her reminded her of having been buried and made her sweat. Closing her eyes let her think better. Less black.

  “The cold old queen cried out for her daughter,” she said slowly. “She cried out, I have been a fool. She cried out, I have made my daughter run away from me. I must find my warm young princess daughter. And she followed her. She followed the princess across the river of shining fish into the other kingdom.

  “She searched for her beautiful daughter who had run away with a frog. She searched for fair hair and wide eyes and a winsome face and a sweet voice. She had caught no shining fish, so she went hungry. She asked the hedgehogs, Have you seen my beautiful daughter? But they only looked at her with their silly faces and shook their heads. She asked the deer, Have you seen her? But the deer only flagged their white tails at her and leaped away. She asked the parrots in the trees, Have you seen my beautiful daughter? And the parrots told her, Look down. She looked down, and at her feet was a puddle of muck, and there in the mud sat a slimy, potbellied frog with a golden star on its forehead and a wreath of golden roses around its neck. The frog looked at her with sullied golden eyes and cried out to her, Mama. Mama! I only wanted him to love me.

  “The queen looked down and felt her cold old heart catch fire with sorrow. Then the queen crouched and picked up the little mud-brown frog tenderly in her hands and kissed it. With its slime on her hands and its stench in her face, she kissed it again and again. Little by little, her kisses gave her princess daughter back to her. And she hugged her and kissed her yet again and took her home across the river.”

  Buffy opened her eyes and ended the story there and was silent. The Queen of Fair Peril looked silently back at her, floating on—no longer blackness. The two of them seemed to be drifting in the midst of a fiery magenta sunrise.

  “I understand most of it,” the Queen said judiciously, “but what were the shining fish?”

  In Fair Peril, everything was itself and also something else—but that did not mean Buffy had to understand. Besides, floating without footing was making her queasy. And irritable. “I have no idea, your Majesty.”

  “Huh.” The Queen gave her a measuring look. “I suppose you don’t understand soul cake, either.”

  “Sorry, no, I don’t.”

  “You storytellers, you are foolhardy, you tell tales the way angels sing, without understanding. Do you at least understand that the river is a form of the Pool?”

  “Uh, yes.” Buffy was ashamed to admit otherwise. Anyway, there was something about water, something linking all waters. She had sensed that.

  “Very well.” The Queen’s steady eyes held no more expression than a pair of golden rings through which the black depths of the universe showed. The Queen said, “It is a good story. The Queen said, “If you go to the white snake and bespeak it nicely this time, perchance it will tell you where Emily is.”

  “Look, I swear to God,” the young man was begging the attendant on duty in the wacky ward, “you gotta give me back my uniform and let me out of here. It really was a six-foot frog. It really did come up out of the fountain. Why would I be saying something that crazy if it wasn’t true?”

/>   The attendant did not want to listen to this. The attendant was sweating. The attendant just wanted this guy, this cop, probably an ex-cop now, to take his soap and his towel and shut up.

  But he didn’t shut up. He pleaded with great sincerity. “Listen, you got to give me back my uniform and my gun. Maybe it’s some kind of alien invasion, and I’m the only one who can do anything about it because I’m the only one who goddamn believes me.”

  The attendant said, “Look, just save it for the doc and get in the shower.” He didn’t say it too hard, because he had a neurotic respect for authority and it wasn’t a good idea to make a cop mad, not even a stripped-down cop who was probably never going to work again, a cop who had spent the night in the loopy room. The attendant was sweating and starting to shake, not because the cop was gaga but because he was afraid the cop was going to say “frog” again and he bloody hated that word “frog.” He hated the word, he hated Kermit, cartoon frogs, T-shirts with pictures of frogs on them, pocket frogs, frogs that went a-courtin’, fairy-tale frogs, real frogs, frogs inclusive. HEHATEDFROGS HEHATEDHEHATED HEHATEDFROGS! The cop better by damn not say “frog” anymore. Aside from that, the attendant was sweating and shaking because they had put the cop in the wacky ward and he, the attendant, felt pretty sure that the cop was as sane as he was. Either they were the only two compos mentis people in a crazy world or they were both over a green, croaking edge they hadn’t even seen coming. The only difference between him and this cop was that he, the attendant, didn’t have the guts to say anything.

  And it had better stay that way. So the cop had better not say “frog” again.

  The cop was so frustrated he was attacking the bed now, pounding it with his fists. The attendant pulled out his keys to lock the door on him for the time being. The attendant tightly gripped his keys, because keys were sanity. Keys were the only thing that kept him from being the same as the cop.

  Pounding the bed, the cop yelled, “Fricking frog!” The cop yelled, “Fricking fracking freaking big FROG!”

  The attendant threw the keys at him. The attendant screamed. Screamed. They were coming, the authority figures, the white-coated doctors on duty, he could hear the running feet, but he could not see anything except green, and he could not stop screaming.

  The Queen of Fair Peril lifted her white hand in a gesture of dismissal, and that was the last Buffy saw of her. Magenta sunrise spun around and she felt herself falling through a distance much greater than she liked. Her arms shot out in a monkeylike reflex and her mouth opened to scream, but she sputtered instead. Soaked, drenched, soggy, sopping wet, wet, wet. She was goddamn underwater. Kicking hard, she surfaced and discovered that she was drippily back in the Mall freaking Tifarious. The Queen had plunged her into one of the fountains.

  Except it was not a fountain, of course. Deep. A pool. She was in Fair Peril, and from rocks at the edge, a bearcat’s round, fuzzy face peered at her.

  Laboriously, struggling to stay afloat in her waterlogged clothing, Buffy swam toward shore. But as soon as she got within six feet of the edge, the bearcat lifted its adorable whiskers and snarled at her.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Treading water, Buffy studied the bearcat uncertainly. Bearcats, plural. Several of them. They were cute animals, but big. Like her, cute and big, right? And look at all the damage she had done. Buffy swiveled and tried for shore in a different direction.

  Just as her hand reached for the rocks, an excessively large hedgehog appeared upon them with an expression of great decision upon its geeky concave face. It swelled to a sudden forbidding prickliness, and Buffy retreated.

  She was beginning to get it. “Guys,” she pleaded, “I need to get out of here! I’m not a goddamn amphibian; I’ll—blub!” Already, getting tired, she was going under. Was the Queen trying to drown her? Panic gave her kick enough to surface again and hastily slough off her sneakers; the socks went with them. Panting, then holding her breath as she ducked beneath the surface of the water, she wrestled with her heavy jeans and got them off. Her waterlogged shirtsleeves dragged at her arms. She yanked the shirt open, ripping buttons, and got rid of it.

  Trapped in deep water, naked except for cotton panties (probably with stains on them or holes in them, a disgrace and a scandal, just as her mother had always feared) and industrial-strength bra, half-naked and vulnerable, all wet, Buffy felt—not frantic, as would have seemed appropriate, but suddenly and illogically light and lucid and free.

  Free. It was like those times way back when she was a little girl and took off her dress and ran around the neighborhood. Or took everything off and sat in the grass and sang. Back before anybody had yet succeeded in making her ashamed of her body, though already poor Mama was working on it.

  Mama. Back before anything, there was Mother. Cradled in the watery embrace of the pool, Buffy did not care that the bearcat had snarled at her; she could swim forever, and she wanted to. Lolling at her ease, she smiled up at the lavender sky.

  All in due time she rolled over, put her face in the water, and looked for a shining fish.

  It was wonderful down there. The deep, limpid water magnified the round coppery pebbles seeming to swim on the bottom, the waverings of lime-green, feathery waterweed, the flickerings of minnows. Snails clustered on boulders, pewter spirals that left pewter squiggles of slime. A turtle lazed past, bubbles trailing off the yellow-rimmed scales of its shell. The turtle had ponderous clawed feet that paddled lightly for such a heavy thing. Wonderful, that something so shelly, lumbering, cumbersome, could swim so—so much like a certain middle-aged woman. Or a fat bearcat, or a seal. Heavy and lumbering on land, lithe in water, free of the weight of self.

  Her clothes were not down there anywhere. Sneakers, jeans, shirt had simply disappeared. Buffy didn’t care. They would have looked all wrong smothering the plumy green waterweed, clunked down amid the shimmering pebbles and the snails.

  Buffy came up for air and noticed the feathery waverings of reflected forest on the pool’s surface, the silver flickerings of ripples. Again she put her face beneath the rumpled surface of the water. This time she saw a shining fish. She saw tadpoles clustered in a belly of sunlight. She saw the yellow-footed underside of a duck. She saw the hair on her own arms white and wavering and feathery with bubbles. Lifting her head for air again, she saw in the scintillations on the water the white snake wrinkling away from her.

  She followed.

  Paddling like a turtle, kicking like a frog, splashing like a walrus, she followed to the central island where the tall, empty pedestal stood. Odd; had the island been there before? She hadn’t seen it when she had been thrashing around, about to drown. Not that it would have mattered; there were guardians on the boulders of the island too. A black-crowned night heron stood with swordlike beak at the ready. A badger glowered, flexing its Schwarzenegger shoulders, sharpening its massive claws on the rock. A skunk basked like a black-and-white flower. More animals ringed the place: sable and ermine, an egret, a black jaguarundi. All made way as the white snake glided ashore and passed between them to the base of the pedestal. All watched—and from the water Buffy watched raptly—as the white snake flowed in a milky spiral up the tall wheat-colored shaft and coiled itself into a perfectly symmetrical truncated cone, its head at the apex, atop the plinth.

  Buffy came ashore.

  For the first time in her life sorry that she was wearing Fruit of the Loom instead of Victoria’s Secret, she clambered onto the island, streaming like a porpoise. The guardians let her pass, as she had known they must, for the white snake awaited her. He awaited her, the immaculate serpent on his throne.

  Barefoot, she walked up the rough slope and bowed herself into a properly obsequious lump at the base of the pedestal.

  Conjuror woman. You are supposed to be dead. As before, the dry, black-tongued voice sounded directly inside her head.

  “I know it.” She kept her head down and did not look at him. A breeze blew; snaky sensations tickled her skin. Her bra and pantie
s, she noticed without caring, had grown lustrous watery streamers of silver-gold veiling; she was crouching there in a glittery silk belly-dancing outfit, with her embonpoint billowing out all over it. Lord. What did this snake want from her? Too late she realized that she had sounded abrupt; she should have called him “Your Snakiness” or something. What was the proper mode of address for a supernatural ophidian? She did not know. Good grief, what use was a public school education, anyway?

  You have great power.

  Was he offended? Buffy could not tell from that dry, uninflected, incorporeal voice.

  Where is your stellated gown?

  She lifted her head. “I left it behind.”

  Brave of you. Or foolish.

  “Yes.” Buffy tilted her head far back to look, seeing little but that frightening blunt head atop the white circinate mound of coils, those cold golden eyes. The white snake was much, much bigger than she remembered. She had to force herself to speak. Her voice came out a grainy whisper. “Please tell me, where is my daughter?”

  Why should I?

  He did not deny that he knew. But then again, why should he deny anything?

  How have you deserved my help?

  It was a farce, of course. Buffy had gone to Sunday school; she knew that the idea of praying was not to deserve. The concept of praying, petitioning, begging, pleading, boon-craving, sucking up, was not to earn anything, but to confess oneself undeserving and thereby toady the tyrant, deity, lord, politician, suckee into such spasms of ego gratification that he felt like giving you what you wanted. It was a joke. A game.

  Yet—Buffy felt a chilly sense that in Fair Peril it might not be a game. She whispered, “So far I’ve gotten by on telling stories.”

  Suppose I don’t want to hear a story. Why should I divulge anything to you?

  “Because I need to find Emily.”

  You need? I am not concerned with what you need.

  “But—she might be hungry.…” “Hungry” was the least of Buffy’s fears for her daughter. In all-too-vivid fast-forward sequence, as if watching the movie preview from hell, Buffy imagined Emily starved, imprisoned, abused, molested, tortured, and it was as if a wasp the size of a poodle had stung her—no way could she whisper anymore. She rose up on her hind feet like a rearing stallion. She shouted, “Doesn’t anybody but me goddamn care? She’s just a girl, a child. She might be cold. She might be hurt. She might not be eating right. Her asthma might be acting up. Some cretin might be taking advantage of her.” She knew that this was the white snake, she knew it would be wise to bespeak him softly, but she could not. If her life depended on it, which it very well might, she could not be ladylike any longer. She bellowed, “This is EMILY damn it my DAUGHTER my BABY my CHILD and I want to know, WHERE IS SHE? WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO HER?” Buffy shouted so loud that the guardian birds flew up with craking cries, the otters and bearcats splashed into the water. “IS SHE OKAY? IS SHE HAPPY? WHERE IS MY LITTLE GIRL?”