Peter Beagle - The Folk Of The Air

“Ben was right, how nice,” she said. “It takes serious work to get you angry, but it’s very rewarding.” She gripped his upper arms, not laughing now. “In the first place, I see nothing from that window or that chair but what anyone else might see. That is the exact truth—and bloody annoying it is too, I can tell you. As for mysteries, visitations—” And here she drew her mouth impossibly down until she looked like Winston Churchill burlesquing the Mask of Tragedy. “—I regret, the gods have not dropped me so much as a postcard in a long time. Perhaps they lost my forwarding address.” She gave him a gentle shake, grinning with her small white teeth, turning her face as though to bring every scored slackness into the cruelest light for him, like a beaten wolf exposing its throat to trigger automatic mercy. She said, “I am an old woman with a young lover and I don’t know where he is. That is all the story, Joe. I told you that the first morning we met.”

Standing this close, she smelled of the bitter coffee that she drank continually, and more faintly of the fire-smoke in her hair and the musky madroña slickness on her hands. Farrell asked, “How long has he been doing it? Running around in the woods, playing he’s Egil Eyvindsson sacking monasteries.”

The mocking, wholehearted smile bent like a broken leg. “If you mean the League, he has only been with them for a year or so, going to their little wars, fighting in their tournaments.” Her tone was flat and dismissive whenever she spoke of the League. “But Egil is another matter. Egil is much older than all that.” Abruptly she let go of him and stepped away, stumbling over Briseis dozing under the chess table. Briseis uttered the scream she had been saving for an earthquake, scuttled to Farrell, sat on his foot, and went back to sleep. Sia never took her eyes off Farrell.

“And Egil is real,” she said softly and clearly. Farrell felt his stomach chill with the familiar apprehension of unpleasant knowledge bearing down on him. Sia said, “Ben—our Ben—would have known you. Egil Eyvindsson doesn’t know anyone in this world.”

Oh, dear God, I have done it again. The gift is absolutely intact, I’ve done it again . He concentrated intensely on scratching Briseis’ ears, hearing himself mumble, “I believe it, I mean, we were in a play together one time, The Three Sisters , and Ben just vanished into his part, Tusenbach, didn’t break character for weeks, I mean even after the play. Tusenbach can be a real pain in the ass at a party.” What is it with me and weirdness, how do we find each other? Damn, you’d think one of us would grow out of it .

“Come and sit down, Joe.” It was a command, though her voice remained low. She took his hand and led him to the couch, while he added hopelessly, “I was Chebutykin. The old guy.” Sia pushed him down firmly and sat across from him on a footstool, shoulders hunched and her hands hanging between her thighs. Except for the bright regard, gray as the moon, she looked like a sexless peasant sullenly working up to the effort of spitting into the fire. Maybe it’s Egil Eyvindsson who sleeps with her. Ben probably doesn’t have the least idea .

“How far they go back together, I cannot tell you,” she said. “You know more than I do. Did Ben speak of him, do you remember him saying the name, even once?” Farrell was shaking his head, but she went on. “You played games, you used to make up voices, imaginary people; I have seen you do it. There was never a voice that could have been Egil?”

“Lord, no,” Farrell said. “We did silly stuff, bus-ride routines, something to do waiting for the subway at two in the morning. You’re talking about multiple personalities, you’re talking about some kind of possession. It’s not the same thing.”

“What do you know about possession?” Her tone was suddenly so quick and blunt that he was sure he had angered her.

He answered placatingly, “Not much. I’ve never seen any devils come out of people’s mouths, but I did know a Chinese guy in Hawaii who died, and his spirit went into a jeep.” Sia growled softly, and Farrell corrected himself. “Actually, I really knew his nephew, it was his nephew’s jeep. And I met a man back in New York who used to get taken over by Jane Austen twice a week. Mondays and Thursdays, I think it was. He’d call me up at all hours and read me whole chunks of this novel she was writing through him. Really sounded a lot like Jane Austen.”

After a long moment the growl turned into a harsh chuckle, and she said, “I believe you. Those stories are so incredibly stupid that I must believe you completely. But I would be much more interested if your friend had been the one to possess Jane Austen, so that she began to write like him. Did you ever hear of anything like that?”

“No, of course not.” He was strangely disconcerted by the idea; it made him physically giddy to think about it. “You can’t have backward possession, retroactive possession; that’s just silly, it couldn’t work like that. You couldn’t have it…

“Tell Ben,” she said, and it was at that moment that Briseis, sprawled absurdly on her back before the fire, eyes shut tight and one foreleg pointing straight up at the ceiling, began to make the most terrifying sound that Farrell had ever heard an animal make. So high and cold and distant as hardly to be a cry of flesh at all, it was almost visible to Farrell—a petal-thin wire, coated and edged with powdered glass, like the strings of Asian fighting kites, spinning out of the dog’s intestines to haul her, step by agonizedly mincing step, toward the front door, as if the other end were in the grip of the darkness beyond. Her neck was wrenched sideways and back, and she stared unbelievingly at Sia as she howled.

Sia was on her feet before Farrell had finished saying, “Jesus, what the hell?” Facing the door, she uttered a wordless cry of her own, raw and piercing enough to make the living room windows buzz and the old spears murmur hoarsely together in their wicker basket. There was no answer from outside, but Briseis abruptly gasped and toppled over, scrambling up instantly to vanish into the broom closet, where she remained for the next twenty-four hours. Sia never looked after her; rather, she raised her left hand slowly to her breast in a gesture of silent-movie shock and wonder. She stood unsteadily, rocking very slightly.

“You,” she said, softly but very clearly. “ Thou .” She shook her head once and said something in a language full of creaking, snapping sounds. In English she added, “You cannot come in here. You still cannot come in.” The doorbell chimed while she was speaking, followed by Aiffe’s unmistakable splintery giggle. “Special delivery. Hey, somebody has to sign for this package.” Something heavy thumped against the door, then slid partway down.

Without moving or turning her head, Sia motioned Farrell to the door. He could hear Aiffe snickering impatiently as he crossed the room and, under that, the little shivery rustle of a desperate voice talking to itself. The words were impossible to distinguish, but Farrell did not need to.

When he opened the door, Ben fell across his feet, curling up convulsively as he did so. The crested helmet was gone, along with the belt-axe and the copper ornaments, and the torn black mantle was as mud-caked as his hair. Farrell crouched beside him, feeling for bruises and worse, relieved to find that the blood drying on Ben’s face came only from a couple of long bramble scratches. Ben opened his eyes, and Farrell drew back momentarily from the helplessly murderous gaze of a mad stranger. Then it went out, as suddenly as whatever held Briseis had released her, and Ben said calmly, “The birds were freezing,” just before he threw up a weak orange trickle over Farrell’s shoes and fainted.