Peter Beagle - The Folk Of The Air

Farrell bowed without answering. Her nose was as bony as that of a much older woman; her mouth was flat and muscular, her pointed chin as abrupt as an elbow, and the tanned skin bore faint swirls and granulations of acne. But her eyes were green and blue and gray, with the pupil shading imperceptibly into the iris, so that looking into them was like lying on his back, watching clouds in the late afternoon. The lids were arched and full in the center, narrowing quickly to the corners, giving her eyes the shape of tapestry diamonds or spearheads.

“What’s your name?” she asked. “Are you a professional? I mean, do you play somewhere? On, this is my friend Nick Bonner.” She paid no attention at all to Julie.

Farrell had never seen anyone as beautiful as Nicholas Bonner. The nearest thing to it was his memory of a battered stone head in a New York gallery—a fist-sized fragment, supposedly a North Indian image of Alexander the Great, with a face that smiled straight into Farrell’s skull, as Nicholas did now. The statue’s complexion had been scarred and smudgy, while Nicholas Bonner’s skin was as perfect as water, and its clump of chipped gray curls would have looked like fossilized mange beside the boy’s absurdly glorious golden crest; but he might have modeled for the fullness of the high cheeks, the mouth’s drowsy suggestion of a lift at one corner, and the entire air of soft knowing, so sensuous as to be almost sexless. But the stone eyes were the more human. Nicholas Bonner’s eyes were the color of champagne, the color of lightning, and to meet them was to look through a summer window into the ravenous old nothing of a black hole. Farrell thought with an odd unexpected sympathy, Oh, he probably never could do anything about the eyes . Nicholas Bonner said, in his light, happy, courteous young voice, “I have great joy of our meeting, good my lord.”

Does he know that I saw him ? Farrell’s heart was hiccuping painfully, and he could not make himself look into Nicholas Bonner’s eyes again. “I am a poor thumping tunester, no more,” he answered Aiffe, “playing everywhere for a night, and nowhere for two.” Nicholas Bonner smiled at the moon, continuing to sway from foot to foot, never quite letting go of the pavane. Well, if I hadn’t danced in as long as I guess he hasn’t danced . He squeezed Julie’s hand gently and winked at her.

Aiffe’s teeth were thin and sharp, fish teeth. She made a prim face, lowering her glance and murmuring in the League talk over joined hands, “Sir troubadour, I am called Aiffe of Scotland, Aiffe of the North, and this night my soul is given altogether to dancing. Tell me now truly who you are, and what estate you claim in your own country, and then, of your kindness, come and partner me a little while. I am Aiffe.”

“My lady, there is a geas,” he began but she interrupted him swiftly. “Nay, what are such tinpot forbiddances to Aiffe? Be assured, you will come to no harm in revealing your name to me, but only great good.” And she ran the tip of her pale tongue deliberately over her slightly chapped lips.

Julie’s hand tightened on Farrell’s, and he remembered, not only her fierce warning, “Names mean something here,” but Hamid the Saracen saying, “You don’t even let the gods know your right name.” On a strange small impulse, he replied carefully, “Alas, the spell was cast by the mighty wizard-emperor Prester John himself, and who shall defy such a ban? I pray you therefore, ask me no more, or I may well yield to your grace, and I would not have you mourn that you called my doom upon me.” In alley and playground football, his specialty had always been broken-field running.

If the name of Prester John provoked any reaction, he did not know how to read it. Nicholas Bonner laughed outright— if you heard that sound enough times, some damn thing would break, maybe not your heart, but something —while Aiffe blushed in patches like poison oak. The Lady Criseyde began tapping her drum lightly, and Aiffe took hold of Farrell’s free hand. “Well, we can dance anyway,” she said. Her hand felt hard and sticky—long fingers bunched around a tiny hot palm. She said, “They will play the Earl of March’s Galliard next. Do you know the turns?”

Farrell said, “I think so.” Beside him Nicholas Bonner was bowing to Julie, offering his arm. She accepted him calmly, showing no fear and not looking back at Farrell as Aiffe pulled him away. Nicholas Bonner did, though, and the angelic mouth twitched once, like the tail-tip of a hunting cat.

Dancing with Aiffe was neither a sinister experience nor a particularly exciting one. She was a deft and meticulous dancer, executing her ruades , her springing cadences, her fleurets, and her high-kicking greves without a flaw or a variation, easily matching her steps to Farrell’s less practiced ones. But her brief interest in him seemed to have lapsed completely: she did not speak or smile, and if she did anything further with her tongue, it must have happened while he was trying to watch Nicholas Bonner with Julie, envying, even as it terrified him, the climate of devouring happiness that accompanied the yellow-haired boy. He said to Aiffe, “Speaking of Prester John. He asks to be remembered.”

She blinked vaguely at him—a long-jawed adolescent, plain as an adult, almost embarrassing in her stark lack of the menace and mystery for which she was prepared to badger hell. It was only during the last strain of the galliard that she spun violently away from him into a jagged, blazing scurry of half-steps that carried her as far as the dais—himself three floundering beats behind her—then wheeling back to end with a high jump like a cry of rage, and a reverence so dazzlingly scornful that Farrell stood flat-footed, feeling as if every woman he had ever known, beginning with his mother, were laughing at him in the curve of her arm.

The music ended, but no one ever bowed to thank the musicians for that playing of the Earl of March’s Galliard, for Aiffe shook her dust-colored hair and cried out, “Now is the geas fulfilled, and now are you free to speak your name to me. For I am a king’s daughter and a maiden, and behold, we have danced a galliard together.” The pupils of her eyes had gone oval, and there was a faint, pulsing corona of yellow-green around each one.

In the clearing, the bright voices were guttering and going out, two and three at a time. The dancers stared and murmured and sidled closer, most moving heavily now in tunics veined with sweat and gowns too damp to rustle. Farrell looked for Julie, but Nicholas Bonner hid her from him. Aiffe flung one arm wide, without turning, and Garth de Montfaucon prowled to her side, left hand on his sword hilt, right hand fretting with a wilting end of his pince-nez mustache. Farrell said, “Sweet Jesus in the underbrush. He’s your father?”

“Aye, indeed,” Aiffe answered clearly. “King Garth that was and will be, first ruler of Huy Braseal and still the longest-reigning.” Farrell liked her just then, for the pride in her voice. He gazed around among the dancers, wondering numbly who her mother might be. Maybe the kid’s a changeling. Maybe he is. Why didn’t Julie tell me ?

“My daughter is a princess of many realms,” Garth de Montfaucon said quietly, “whether I am king or no.” Aiffe put her arm through his, and they stood like that, smiling the same long, supple smile at Farrell. It made him think of Briseis’ habit of laying her head alongside Sia’s head, so that they could look at everything together.

“Now we will have your name.” She spoke with the toneless cheer of a clubwoman at a reception filling out gummed lapel tags. Farrell was certain that he could challenge her on a technicality— Garth’s grandchildren will be terrific with animals and metal futures —and knew equally well that he had neither the courage nor the meanness for it. Turning, he saw Nicholas Bonner looking on, all golden wonder, and he felt a sudden deep vertigo teasing him to let go of his real name, announcing loudly as he fell, “It’s Joseph Malachi Lope de Vega Farrell, Rosanna, you want to make something of it?” Names don’t get stolen, for God’s sake, credit cards get stolen. Why should I play by their rules ?