The King answered her: “You have called it Faerieland. We have no name for it; it is our home.”
There was a long, long silence, or perhaps it only seemed so because of the way it sounded in her ears, like the heavy air of a long-closed cavern, that seems to thunder in the skull. At last she said, and her words echoed as though reflected off harsh dark walls of stone, “I must go back. I am the only one there is.” And as she said only one there is, she felt them all move away from her, as if she were a thief; and another sigh passed over the crowd, but this one was like the rising wind before a storm, moaning and uneasy and warning of things to come.
Perhaps it was only the tears in her eyes that made the golden ribbons heave and tumble and finally fall to the earth, where they lay as still as death, dimming like the scales of a landed fish. She did not know for certain because she turned away as they fell the last way from the hands that had proudly held them high so short a time before; and she put one foot out, and lowered it again till it touched the ground—then the other foot. This land she had determined to leave seemed to fall away from her with even her first unwilling step; it fled so fast it burned her eyes even while she tried not to see. She clasped her empty hands, and heard the last echo of her words flash around her: the only one there is.
Two steps gone when she heard his voice, saying, “Wait.” She could not help it. Perhaps she meant to, but she could not. She waited.
He took the two steps after her so that he was beside her again, looking down at the bent dark head with its golden tracery, and he said, “I will come with you.” He took a piece of the golden net in his fingers and gently stripped it away from his love; and she felt it lift away with surprise, for she had forgotten that she wore it. But when he let go of it, it was too light to fall, and hung like a golden cloud between the two of them and his parents and his people; and so he took his farewell of them with his eyes and their faces glinting with gold; but his mother’s tears may have been gold anyway.
“No,” said Linadel—“oh no, you cannot.” But she could not stop herself from looking at his face one last time, so she looked up as she spoke and what she saw made her silent, for she saw at once that he was changed, changed so that he might go with her, changed so that he must. And she wondered if he too had shed something that had held him as it had held her; or whether he was now caught who had been free before. She shivered as she looked at him, and the golden cloud shivered a little in the air behind them.
The King and Queen held each other’s hands as they watched the son they were losing; but they said nothing, and made no move to stop him. Perhaps they understood: perhaps they had seen the change come over him, or known that it must come. They understood at least that there was nothing to say; the King’s face had never been so grave. But just before Donathor turned away for the very last time, his father lifted his hand in a sad sketch of the royal blessing; and a little serenity slipped back to his mother’s face among the golden tears, and she almost smiled.
Then Donathor turned away and found Linadel’s hand once again, and they walked through the opposite arch in the hedge, the one farthest from that through which the golden ribbons had passed. This arch was low and green, and almost shaggy with drooping leaves, and it seemed very far away.
Neither of them had any idea of where they were going; they each knew that their direction was away, and that they were together, and for the moment that was enough. They had won through much to be together, and they had earned the right to rest in that knowledge for a little while. Each recalled that last look on the other’s face before they had turned toward the arch in the hedge; and while their eyes remained on the path before them and their feet carried them away, one unconsidered step after another, they saw and thought only of each other.
It was Linadel who had the first separate thought, and that thought was: “I wonder if away is enough? I’ve never heard that Faerieland begins anywhere. Or ends,” the thought went on, “or that anyone from … my side ever crosses that border more than once.” She could not feel lost with Donathor beside her, but her thoughts carried her forward like her feet until she met the worst one of all: “I have forced my choice on him.” This thought grew and towered over all the rest until it almost blotted out that last look on his face; and then a new little one slipped out from the shadows and confronted her: “Could I have left, him? At last … would I have gone?”
She stopped with the whispers of this last thought in her ears, and he stopped too, and looked down at her, and read in her eyes what she was thinking. He smiled a little sadly, and after a moment he said: “We have my parents’ blessing. We mustn’t linger now; we seek yours.”
Then Linadel realized what he had known since the first shadow fell upon her and she turned away from the golden ribbons: they were going into exile. Her parents would have to give them up as his had; it was too late for any other choice to be made. For the reasons that the Crown Prince of the immortals loved the Crown Princess of the last mortal land, and she him, the shining things they had seen in each other’s faces and read in each other’s hearts as they danced together; even for the reasons that neither of them had found someone to marry before, they were bound to each other forever. That was done, past; and thus when she remembered that she belonged to a world other than his, he could no longer belong fully to his own. And no one can belong to two worlds.
No one, mortal, immortal, or creatures beyond the knowledge of either, can belong to two worlds. This was the change she had seen in him when he came after her.
And so, when they had her parents’ blessing—and she knew now that they would receive it, for it would be the last thing her dear parents would be able to do for their daughter—they would look for a new world. Perhaps it would be a world like the minstrel’s she had seen, striding over green hills that were always the same and always different. “How did you find me?” she thought, and he answered: “I saw you in the water of the rivers that flow from your lands to ours; I heard you in the wind that blew in your window before it blew in mine.” “But you did not know my world,” she thought. “No,” his reply came; “I knew nothing of your world.”
They walked on until it grew dark; and Linadel, at last, realized she was tired, and had to stop. By the last rays of the sun they found a tree whose branches hung low under the weight of round yellow fruit; and a stream ran beside the tree. Linadel sat down with a sigh, and they ate the sweet fruit and drank the cold water, and watched the sky over the trees turn rosy, and fade to amber touched with grey; and then black at last, and when Linadel turned her head she could see his profile against the dark trees only because she could remember how it went. She fell asleep sitting up, while he, not accustomed to sleep or the need for it, thought about how he had lived till now, and what would come to him next, and how Linadel had always been a part of everything. Her head nodded forward, and he caught her in his arms as she crumpled to the grass.
When Alora awoke at last, Gilvan saw with a relief that made his knees bend that she was still Alora: her gaze was weak but clear, and she looked around for him at once, knowing that he would be there. He sat down abruptly on the edge of their bed, and when she felt for his hand it was as cold and strengthless as hers. They felt each other’s blood begin to flow again in the touching palms; but with the blood came tears: Linadel, their Linadel, was gone.
“We will look for her,” Alora said at last. “We must look for her. No one has ever thought to look.”
Gilvan thought about this; in the long narrow well of their grief, it seemed perfectly reasonable, and that no one had ever sought a faerie-stolen child before was irrelevant. “Where shall we begin?”
Alora sat up. “I will show you. Where are my clothes?”
Her ladies-in-waiting, then the gentlemen of the King’s Inner Chambers, then the courtiers, ministers, special ambassadors, Lords of the King’s Outer Chambers, Ladies of the Royal Robes and Seals, visiting noblemen and their families—who were a little slower than the r
est to hear about anything that happened since they were unfamiliar with palace routine—and at last even the pageboys, the downstairs servants, and the entire kitchen staff, none of whom had ever thought to question their monarchs in the slightest detail hitherto—all protested vehemently, desperately, when the King and Queen emerged from their private bedroom and, pale but composed, declared that they were going in search of their daughter.
They were dressed as though they might be a woodcutter and his wife, except that each wore the gold chain of office that a king or queen was expected to wear (except in the bath) until the day each retired. The Keepers of the Wardrobe, even through their sorrow, were startled that the King and Queen could even find such plain clothes to put on.
“No good will come of this,” all wailed at them, forgetting in their grief that they were daring to disagree, even hysterically disagree, with their sovereigns. “No good will come of anything that has to do with the faeries,” all said, weeping and pulling their hair and patting at the Queen’s skirts and the King’s knees. “What if we lose you too?” The last was at first a murmur, since these people, like people everywhere, believed that bad luck—which in this land meant faeries—may come to investigate discussions of bad luck; but it took hold, and more and more of the grief-mad palace residents gave up, and spoke it aloud, and it swelled till it might have become a panic.
“There is nothing to suggest that you are going to,” said the King, patiently, or at least nearly so; and the Queen, who perhaps understood despair a little better than her husband, said, “Those who are so upset at the idea that they can’t stay home may come with us; but only on the condition that they will be quiet.”
Gilvan gave his wife only one brief weary look at this, but he could follow the sense behind it, so he said merely: “You will have a very long walk of it, anyone who does come.”
But the King’s patience and the Queen’s tenderness, which were perhaps a little obviously delivered as to a crowd of foolish children, had their effect. There was a pause as everyone looked at everyone else, and Alora and Gilvan resignedly overlooked them all. “Let me at least make you some sandwiches,” said the Chief Cook, at last; and she wiped her eyes on her white apron and disappeared below. Most of her undercooks and assistants slowly detached themselves from the crowd and followed her; and those who remained sat down, and most of them put their heads in their hands. A few spoke to their particular friends in low tones, and several went to the kitchens themselves to ask that they be provided with sandwiches too. A great many of these were made at last, and put in knapsacks with apples and other food that might reasonably survive being banged about in pockets and on shoulders; and some clever person suggested that everybody should bring a blanket—and when the King and Queen finally set out, about twenty of their court, all of whom were excellent walkers, went with them. Alora and Gilvan carried their own bundles, and such was the morale of the party that no one dared try to seek that honor for themselves.
Alora led them to the meadow where she and Linadel had seen the small blue flowers years ago. They startled a small herd of aradel, which fled silently, eyes wide and tails high, veering away from the forest directly ahead of them and entering the trees at the royal party’s right hand. Alora stood at the center of the meadow and turned her head first one way and then the other as if she were listening; Gilvan stood near her, hands in pockets, staring at the sky and squinting, but more, it seemed, at his thoughts than at the sunlight. “This way,” she said at last, and led the royal herd into the forest also; but not the way the aradel had gone.
They were deep in the woods when the light began to fail them, and they made a camp of blankets and addressed themselves to the sandwiches. There was a tiny stream that twisted through the trees near where they lay; the water was sweet, and with patience one could fill a water-bottle. The King himself built a fire and lit it—and it burnt. Everybody was impressed, which did not please Gilvan: he knew perfectly well he could build a proper fire that would burn, and continue to burn, and not splutter and smoke, even if he was a king. Somebody produced some packets of tea, and somebody’s friend turned out to be wearing a tin pot, suitable for boiling water in, under his curiously shaped hat.
The King and Queen retired a little apart, cupping their hands around the warmth of the tea; the fire was flickering and subsiding into embers, and everybody was choosing a tree to lean against, and roots to get comfortable among, if possible, and dropping off to sleep.
“This is the right way,” said Alora. “I think.”
Gilvan nodded.
“You think so too, then?”
“Not exactly. I feel as though I could tell if it was the wrong one. But I wish I knew where our right way was leading us.”
“So do I.” Alora sounded so young and woebegone that Gilvan told her almost sharply to finish up her tea and go to sleep. They both lay down and each regulated his or her breathing to make the other one think he or she was asleep; but each lay awake for a long time.
It was Gilvan who woke first, in the first thin and hesitant light of dawn; he started another fire with only a very little mumbling under his breath, by which time a sleepy courtier had stumbled up to fetch the water-boiling pot and gone off to the stream to fill it.
Alora was still asleep. Gilvan looked down at her for a moment, then looked up to watch the only-slightly-more-awake-now courtier set up the pot full of water in a fashion that would give it a fair chance of coming to a boil. He succeeded at last, and sat back on his heels to watch that it didn’t change its mind and topple over on him. It would take three potfuls to make tea for everybody; he sighed. He had rubbed his face and eyes with the cold water of the stream, but it only made his skin tingle. His brain was still asleep.
Gilvan turned away and for no particular reason made his way to the little brook and began walking downstream. He thought he might waste a little time till the water would be hot, and it was easier not to think about Linadel if he kept moving. His eyes were on his feet, and his hands in fists, dug into his pockets, and jingling anything he might find there—an absent-minded habit he had had all his life, which ruined the cut of his trousers and reduced the royal tailors to despair. They had finally stopped making pockets for those trousers where the royal dignity could not bear bulges. Gilvan, in his woodcutter’s rig, was dimly aware of the luxury of having pockets, but even these thoughts he kept carefully suppressed. The stream widened as he walked. He paused at last, thinking he should turn around and go back; and he looked up.
There was a tiny clearing, no more than the space two or three trees would need, beside the stream just ahead of him; and there he saw his daughter, smiling in her sleep, with her head in the lap of a young man. He was looking down at her when Gilvan first saw them; but something caused him to look up: and their eyes met.
Gilvan knew at once what sort of creature it was whose eyes met his. For a moment he stopped breathing, and he felt that his pulse paused in his veins, his hair stopped growing, and he had no sense of the ground pressing against the bottom of his feet, or the sunlight on his shoulders. This was nothing like the sensation he had had once out hunting, when his horse put its foot in a hole and threw him; and he, dazed and full-length on the ground, found that the boar they were chasing had turned and was grinning at him, the foam dripping from its mouth. It was nothing like the feeling he’d had when Alora smiled at him the first time, either; or when he had been alone with his daughter and seen her take her first steps without assistance; or when he was sixteen years old and his favorite godfather died. What he felt now was nothing like any of these, and yet it was those things that he remembered.
He came back from wherever he was and looked again at this young man; only this time he looked beyond the stillness, the pause of time that Gilvan had felt within himself, that had told him what he knew: and he saw the love and tenderness this young man felt for Linadel that he, Gilvan, had interrupted with his presence. And beyond that he saw a flicker of something else, so
mething Gilvan saw was utterly new and strange to this young man: fear. This fear was the oldest fear of mankind, that the present does not last; and with that flicker of fear the stillness wavered too, and a little sense of time, of the passage of days and years, slipped into the gap, and settled on the young man’s face; and Gilvan found himself thinking, “This boy is only a few years older than Linadel.” Then Gilvan understood what this meant; and his awful sympathy for someone first learning of time started his breath again, and his heart, and once again he knew the sunlight was warm. The young man, still deep in his new knowledge, saw the sympathy, though he did not yet understand it; and he made his beloved’s father a shaky smile; and Gilvan took a step forward.
That step made no sound, yet Linadel was awake at once and flew to her father, and they hugged each other till they could hardly breathe. When Gilvan looked up again, the young man stood a few steps away, hesitating; and Gilvan gave him a real smile, and letting his daughter just a little bit loose from the grip in which he still held her, offered his hand. “This is Donathor,” said Linadel to her father’s rough shirt front, and Donathor took the hand; and Gilvan truly meant the welcome, for Linadel’s heart beat as it always had, and yet a little more warmly; and her voice was as clear as it had always been, but there was a new undercurrent of joy in every word. Gilvan her father relaxed and was happy in this present moment that had found him his lost daughter; Gilvan the lover remembered Alora’s first smile to him, and heard its echo in Linadel’s pronouncing the name Donathor, as he had seen it in the young man’s eyes just a little while before; and for this too he was glad for the present, a trembling, precarious, yet peaceful bit of time, because it had saddened him no less than Alora that Linadel should face her life alone, and be resigned to it.
“Linadel,” breathed a voice; and she flung herself from her father’s arms only to turn to her mother’s. Alora smiled at Donathor, and there was understanding in her eyes, but no constraint; and Gilvan thought ruefully that if she had found them first, she would have felt no difficulty at all. “How easily we welcome her back,” he thought, watching his wife’s and daughter’s faces and thinking how much they were alike, and how little; “we hadn’t lived with our grief long enough to believe in it. We were sure we could find her and bring her back.…” He looked again at Donathor and found him watching Alora with a slightly puzzled expression on his face, as if he groped for a recollection he could not quite grasp. “Puzzled?” thought Gilvan, puzzled in his turn.
The Door in the Hedge: And Other Stories Page 5