Peter Beagle - The Folk Of The Air

He was dressed with casual richness in red and black trunk-hose, puffed like pumpkins at the hips, a short darkred doublet over a plain white shirt, suede half-boots, and a high-crowned black hat that looked exactly like a soft upside-down flower pot. The angle of the narrow brim hid his eyes. Joshua still wore his ice-cream-white wedding suit, along with the space helmet that had apparently been the price of his performance. He lasted through the remodeling of the curtain wall, but fell asleep while the moat and causeway were being added. Nicholas Bonner laughed gently, almost without a trace of the greedy, prowling sweetness that Farrell remembered, and picked him up so carefully that the boy never stirred. Farrell stepped back instinctively as the golden face turned toward him, but Nicholas was looking down at Joshua and his eyes were still in shadow. Someone across the room was telling someone else how and when to buy silver. Nicholas Bonner began to hum very softly.

A muscular little tail whipped once against Farrell’s foot and he whirled, Sir Mordred’s ambushes having left him more than a trifle gun-shy. But the Siamese was after wilder game, ignoring Farrell as he stalked past him to move in boldly and openly on Nicholas Bonner’s long, graceful legs in their tempting trunk-hose. Far from erupting all over them, clinging like Greek fire for a moment, then leaping away to safety, Sir Mordred sized up his prey in the leisurely manner of a much older cat, taking all the time necessary to unsheathe his claws, blow on them, adjust for windage and elevation, and finally reach out to draw them daintily down Nicholas’ left leg from calf to ankle, like a bear marking a tree. And he looked upon his work, saw that it was good—four neat slits in the red hose, and scratched skin showing through—and he sat back, deeply content, and said, “ Rao .”

Nicholas Bonner never stopped humming. He neither flinched nor turned, but continued to cradle the sleeping Joshua. When he raised his head at last— oh, dear Jesus, what could a little kid ever make of those eyes ?—the champagne stare fixed itself on a point beyond Farrell’s right shoulder. Farrell heard a snuffling snicker and knew that Aiffe was there.

She was wearing the blue houppelande that she had worn at the Revels and a sort of gauzy wimple, bulging like a mail sack with her hair. The last time Farrell had seen her close for more than a moment, she had been slumped in Nicholas’ arms, as vulnerable as Joshua and far more helpless. Now she was bouncing on her toes, grinning and shivering urgently, the toneless skin truly radiant with something better than health. “Oh, let me,” she said like a lover. Nicholas made no response, but Farrell felt a freezing permission pass between them, grazing his cheek like a flung stone. Aiffe pointed at Sir Mordred, now placidly grooming himself, and crooned, “Bad kitty, you bad kitty,” in a voice as soft as Nicholas Bonner’s lullaby. Farrell heard them both in his sleep from that night on.

Sir Mordred looked up in blue-eyed complacency from the technical challenge of washing the back of his neck. Apparently dismissing Aiffe as easily as Farrell, he rolled over and started in on his white-butter stomach. Abruptly his jaws snapped in the damp fur, and he uttered a tiny cry of astonishment and hurt. He licked the place rapidly for a moment; then—with a stilted, uncatlike movement, as though his face were being forced into a bowl of milk—he bit his belly again and again, each time yowling more loudly.

The silver expert said sympathetically, “Ah, poor Puss, poor wretch, truly I’ve not seen a year the like of this one for vermin. Anyway, you always buy when it falls below that price.”

Joshua mumbled, “Postern,” burrowing against Nicholas Bonner’s shoulder.

She can’t be making him, they can’t be . Sir Mordred was biting and scratching himself frantically now, his cries muffled by his own flesh. Aiffe came to kneel beside him, stroking him and murmuring so gently that her lips barely moved, and Farrell could not hear her at all. But he knew what she was saying; he could feel the words in fire almost as surely and terribly as Sir Mordred, bad kitty bad kitty bad kitty . The Siamese fell onto his side, writhing in a circle. Aiffe said aloud, “I guess it’s fleas. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

Farrell started forward, but Nicholas Bonner looked straight at him for the first time, and it seemed very clear to Farrell that to take another step was to fall off the edge of everything forever, never dying, just falling. Is this the way Ben feels ?

Then it was over, quite suddenly, because the Lady Alisoun came in looking for her nephew, and Nicholas put him into her arms. Joshua half woke for a moment, clinging sweatily to Nicholas and complaining that he wanted to finish the castle. Aiffe jumped up lightly and went to join them. She stroked Joshua’s dangling leg, exactly as she had petted Sir Mordred, and retied his loose shoelaces.

Sir Mordred climbed slowly to his feet, shook himself, and sneezed. He appeared undamaged, but there was blood on his mouth and the blue eyes were dazed and mad. When Farrell tried to pick him up, the kitten bit his hand savagely and ran off, wobbling and tucking his tail like a dog. Farrell watched the group around Joshua until they left the room together. Aiffe looked back at him, grinned until her upper lip disappeared, and stuck out her pink tongue.

Outside in the garden, there were crickets and a big, soft, droopy-looking moon and some bird whistling as if it had human lips and teeth, but there was no sign of Julie. Farrell stood still for a while, breathing the jasmine-slow air and nursing his chewed hand. Then he wandered thoughtfully toward the boxwood maze, which had been designed to represent two linked and initialed hearts, in the Tudor style. It had lately been allowed to go untended until its original shape was as blurred as a cloud formation, but the path into its scrolled center was still open, and someone had pushed through the invading overgrowth before him. Farrell followed the track of broken brambles, letting the lute strings sound loudly, so Julie would know who it was.

She was standing with her back to him, looking up at the silhouettes of gargoyles on the turret roofs. When Farrell put his hands on her shoulders, she said, without turning, “I was coming in”; and then, as the sharp, monotonous cry made them both start, “I hate that stupid bird. I always think it’s somebody signaling to somebody else.”

“That’s your California surfing bird,” Farrell said gravely. “Not too usual this far north, but common as dirt, you get down around Santa Cruz. That one’s just trying to talk some other birds into coming night-surfing with it. They hate going out alone, because of the elephant seals.”

Julie turned, stared at him expressionlessly for a moment, then suddenly began tickling his ribs, fiercely enough to make him yelp and duck away. “Damn you, I believed you,” she gasped. “Right up to the damn seals, I believed you, I still fall for it.” Her fingers were digging into him painfully, almost clawing.

Farrell saw her eyes in the moonlight, forgot his care for the lute and simply put his arms around her, holding her as tightly as he could until she quieted against him. “Tell me,” he said. She felt as astonishingly hot as a sleeping child, and he thought, it could have been Joshua, it could just as easily have been Joshua as that cat . “Love,” he said. “Jewel. Please tell me.”

When she looked at him again, her eyes were dry, and her voice was perfectly level, even teasing. She said, “Just sad. All at once, all over, just sad for no reason. The American ailment, it goes away. Now you tell me how you had fun.”