Peter Beagle - The Folk Of The Air

Farrrell laughed in disbelief, but Julie stepped in front of him. “My lord Garth, it is Julie Tanikawa and a friend.” Her own voice was clear and buoyant, and close to singing. The sword whined back into its scabbard, and the sentinel came toward them, squinting through the darkness, his gait something between a mince and a prowl.

“The Lady Murasaki?” His tone heaved itself up into Elizabethan heartiness. “Now in Jesu’s name, give you thrice good den, shield-may. We had not looked to see you soon at these our revels.”

Julie dropped him a quick curtsy, a movement altogether marvelous and warning to Farrell. She said, “In truth, my lord, I’d no mind to come dancing this night, but it pleased my fancy to show my friend how we of the fellowship do disport ourselves at whiles.” She took hold of Farrell’s arm and drew him beside her.

The sentinel bowed slightly to Farrell. He had a narrow, knuckly, intelligent face beneath a feathered cap, and he wore a stiff crewelworked doublet that, with its huge shoulders and waistless line, made him look a good deal like a jack of diamonds. The tips of his stringy mustache were each waxed and curled into a full circle, so that he seemed to have fixed a pair of steel-rimmed pince-nez upside down on his upper lip. It was the only thing about him that Farrell liked at all. He said, “I am called the Lord Seneschal Garth de Montfaucon.”

Heeding Julie’s glance, Farrell groped randomly through a pale litter of paladins, wizards, and Canterbury pilgrims; then fell back on the Celtic twilight. “Good sir, there is a geas upon me. A taboo.” Garth nodded, looking nearly as offended by the footnote as Farrell could have wished. Farrell said carefully, “I am forbidden to reveal my name between moonrise and dawn, save to a king’s daughter. Pardon me, therefore, till we meet by daylight, if you will.” He thought it was a very good geas, considering the short notice.

Beyond Garth de Montfaucon, other cloaked and kirtled figures were passing in and out of the dark pavilion’s shadow, or standing still in torchlight. Garth said slowly, “A king’s daughter.”

“Aye, and a maiden.” What the hell, if you’re going to have a geas, have a geas .

“Say you so?” Garth frowned down his nose, seemingly sighting myopically in on Farrell through the foolish mustache. Farrell said, “In sooth,” and Julie giggled. “And not until we two—we twain—have danced a galliard together.” Garth looked away to hail another arriving couple, and Julie drew Farrell quickly past him toward the trees and the music. Farrell could see the musicians now, four men and a woman standing together on a low wooden dais. The men all wore the ruffled white shirts and overstuffed breeches of Rembrandt burghers; but the woman, who tapped strongly with her fingers on a small drum, wore a plain, almost colorless gown that made her look like a chess queen. Farrell stood still to watch them playing the old music for dancers he could not see.

“Be welcome, then.” The bleak little voice of the Lord Seneschal carried clearly after them from the meadow. “Dance well, Lady Murasaki, with your nameless follower.” Julie blew out her breath softly and showed her teeth.

“His name is Darrell Sloat,” she said evenly. “He teaches remedial reading at Hiram Johnson Junior High School. I say it to myself whenever he manages to make me angry.”

A huge man in Tudor dress, all crimson velvet, gold chains, and great slabs of pinkish-yellow jowl, pushed between them like a wave of meat, wheezing winy apologies, the basket hilt of his sword bruising Farrell’s ribs. Farrell said grandly, “Nay, doth he bug you, sweet chuck? I’fackins, I’ll sock him right in the eye. No, I’ll challenge him, by God, I’ll call him out.” He stopped, because Julie was gripping his wrist tightly, and her hand was cold.

“Don’t even joke about that,” she said. “I’m serious, Joe, stay away from him.”

The pavane came to a languishingly dissonant resolution, and Farrell saw the musicians bow, the men comic in their conga-drum pantaloons, the woman making a curtsy like a silk dress falling to the floor. He began to ask Julie why he should beware of Garth de Montfaucon; but then he said, “Oh my,” as they came around the pavilion and he saw the dancers.

There were some forty or fifty of them—perhaps less, but they shone like more under the trees. The last flourish of the pavane had set their hands free to balance above them in the night, and the torchlight—Coleman lanterns hung from branches—made their rings and their jeweled gloves splash fire, scattering tiny green and violet and silver flames like largesse to the musicians. Farrell could not find any faces in that first wonder of brightness and velvet, cloaks and gold and brocade—only the beautiful clothes glittering in a great circle, moving as though they were inhabited, not by human heaviness, but by marshlights and the wind. The folk of the air , he thought. These are surely the folk of the air .

“What is it?” Julie asked, and he realized that he had pulled away from her and taken a step forward. Ben was standing beyond the far side of the circle, half-hidden by the vast crimson Tudor. He wore a blue, full-sleeved tunic under a black mantle lined with white, and a helmet with a wild boar’s muzzle for a crest. Bronze ornaments glinted at his throat, a short axe in his wide copper belt. As Farrell stared, taking another step, Ben turned his scarred shield of a face and saw him, and did not know him.

Farrell called and waved, but the harsh dark gaze passed over him without returning. A group of young girls, all clad in Disney-fairy gauze, bounded by, hand in hand. When Farrell could see across the clearing again, Ben was gone. The red Tudor stared back at him out of the faraway secrecy of an old bull.

Julie said, “He doesn’t usually come to the dances.” Farrell spluttered at her. She said, “I didn’t know who he was. There are people here whose real names I haven’t learned in two years. They don’t tell anybody.”

“What’s his play name, then?” He knew her answer before he heard it.

“He calls himself Egil Eyvindsson.” The musicians began to play a coranto, and there was a stir of nervous, challenging laughter. Julie said, “He comes to the tilts, always, and I see him at the crafts fairs sometimes. Mostly he goes where there’s fighting.” She spoke slowly, watching his face. “He happens to be the best with weapons I’ve ever seen, your friend Ben. Broadsword, greatsword, maul—in the War of the Queen Mother’s Boots, they said it was like having five extra knights and a gorilla. He could be king any time he wanted to be.”

“I have no doubt of it,” Farrell said. “None. I’m sure he could make Holy Roman Emperor if he’d just take the civil service exam. With his grades. Are you going to turn out to be crazy?”

“Dance,” Julie said calmly; and without another word, she slipped off into the tootling rush of the coranto, dancing away with little sharp steps, springing sweetly from one foot to the other, knuckles on her hips and her head cocked sideways. Two couples hopped between them as Farrell stared after her, the men bowing courteously to him, making it a curve of the dance, and the women calling. “Welcome, Lady Murasaki!” Julie laughed back at them, greeting them by strange names.

Where the noises are . The crumhorns pattered on the small moonlit breeze, and all around him, boots, sandals, and soft, loose slippers trod down the wiry grass, skipping and heeling through the same paces that the dancing queen of England had loved once. Scabbards clacked against belts, trailing gowns sighed in the leaves, small bells tingled at hems and wrists. People who bumped into Farrell said, “A thousand pardons, fair sir.” He could not find Ben anywhere, but he saw Julie sauntering back to him, walking the music like a cat on a fence, saying again, “Dance. Dance, Joe.”