Peter Beagle - The Folk Of The Air

A yappy giggle, and Aiffe said beside him, “Hey, you talked first. A new era in the relationship.” She wore a velvet gown that was brown at the first look, and afterwards more and more charged with shifting foxy goldenness as the breeze quickened and the light changed. There were lilies and vineleaves traced in gold on her gown, and a golden girdle circled her just below her breasts. Her hair was piled demurely over her temples, dressed in a little net with white beads.

“Maybe he got good this summer,” she said. “Maybe it was a thousand years ago, doing Zen stuff in the moutains in Japan. You don’t know.” Farrell stared at her. “Well, you don’t,” she said. “You can’t tell for sure if that’s really him behind that dorky thing he’s got on. He could be anybody. He could be one of mine, even.”

The Ronin Benkei was looking slowly around the lists to choose another opponent, as was his right under the laws of the Whalemas Tourney. His glance halted briefly first on the tense face of Garth de Montfaucon, and then on King Bohemond, who nodded and half rose from his seat, while Queen Leonora looked down, gripping her thighs. But the Ronin Benkei only slid his sword back into its shining scabbard, bowed quite deeply to the King and Queen, and walked out of the lists. Farrell saw him enter a small pavilion that flew neither banner nor pennon.

“I know who you are, anyway,” he said to Aiffe. “You’re Rosanna Berry and you have to take algebra over this year and you had too many cuts in P.E. and you still break out if you eat one candy bar and you still bite your nails. And a man is dead because of you, and you really think you’re magic.”

Her eyes changed color. They had been tranquil enough blue-green as she spoke, with tiny darknesses; but now a red gold grew in them, as in her gown, brighter and brighter, though the skin around them went tight and bloodless. She said in a whisper, “You are so fucking right, I’m magic. You wait, okay, you wait, you’ll see how magic I am.” She bit her finger and ran, and he saw her stand beside her father, who was in the act of challenging the Spanish knight Don Claudio. The breeze furled Garth’s short blue cloak hard about his body and then whipped it loose again, so that his chain mail flashed on and off in the sunlight like running water.

Farrell made his rendezvous with Ben, and they moved through the Tourney together, trying to keep unobtrusive track of Aiffe and Nicholas Bonner’s own movements. This proved extremely difficult, since Aiffe and Nicholas—plainly by design—hardly crossed each other’s paths all afternoon. Ben’s civilian dress left him free of spectators’ attentions; but Farrell was forever being waylaid and posed with Mr. and Mrs. Bringle of Highland Park, Michigan, and being asked if little Stacy could hold the lute, just for a moment. By the time he broke away, he would have lost Ben as well as their quarry and have to go lurking after any number of plumed hats and tawny velvet gowns before he glimpsed them again. Nicholas Bonner had come in the guise of a juggler and could sometimes be tracked by following children, who came spilling after him as he wandered, weaving four oranges back and forth before his face. Diamonds were painted on his cheeks, and tiny daggers under his eyes.

In the lists, the combats surged one after the other, rolling up and down amid cheers, laughter, the ceaseless clacking of weapons, and the ringing thump of armored bodies falling to earth. Five squires attained knighthood that day; one broke a rib in a greatsword match, and the Irish Lord Mathgamhain broke his right hand in defeating the Tuscan Duke Cesare il Diavolo. Several knights of varying renown challenged King Bohemond; and Farrell was only one of many surprised then, for he rose from the throne each time, handed his crown to Leonora, and fought like a wolverine, swollen with desperation. He cut down not only Raoul of Carcassonne but Duke Benedictis as well, leaping at them almost before they had their feet planted, giving them no time to understand his frenzy of courage. Queen Leonora looked on with her eyes full of tears, as if she faced into a great wind.

The Ronin Benkei never challenged him. He went in and out of his little pavilion like an ancient clock figure and he fought with nobles and squires at seeming random, winning each time. Ben and Farrell nibbled at Cornish pasties, St. Ives beefy buns, and pot herb pie, forgetting themselves in watching two lugger falcons sailing above the highest towers of the hotel, now and then swinging grandly down and away again over the Tourney. Time passed as they did, in gentle, rustling slices.

In the end, it was Garth de Montfaucon who brought King Bohemond down. The combat was brief and unmemorable, except for the fact that Bohemond clearly went into it with no hope at all. Aiffe and Nicholas Bonner were raucously prominent on the sidelines, cheering Garth on, and Bohemond seemed to have his attention fixed more on them than on his contemptuously nimble opponent. When he struck sadly at Garth, Farrell saw what Lovita had been talking about, for the wooden blade turned on the air and Garth was away, laughing. The same thing happened again and again, until the final bustle of swords that sent King Bohemond’s helm flying from his shoulders as he toppled slowly to sprawl on his side. When he rose, he bowed to Garth, wearily but graciously, and took Garth’s hand between his own in token of fealty.

The roar of acclaim had barely begun before Aiffe was at the throne, snatching the crown from the hands of Queen Leonora and turning to cry, as pitilessly joyous as if the words were literally true, “The king is dead—long live the king! Long live King Garth de Montfaucon!”

As long as he lived, Farrell held that strange moment motionless in his head—a stained-glass window in which a transfigured, bride-faced Aiffe forever leaned down to crown her father, as the falcons banked low above them and Leonora supported her defeated lord. In the background, the nobles of the League for Archaic Pleasures swayed close, painted in forgotten colors and looking on with unreadable, obsolete expressions. It was his last vision of many people he never saw again.

The Ronin Benkei did not fit into the window-world at all. He stood outside, an intruder from another art form altogether in his dragon armor, and he pointed his long, slightly curved sword straight across the composition at the barely crowned King Garth. No one noticed him for some little while; and then there was an immense furor and much archaic swearing, since no new king had ever been challenged within minutes of his accession. Garth’s supporters demanded an ad hoc meeting of the College of Heralds, but a surprising opposition jeered so lustily at this that Garth himself stepped splendidly forward to announce his acceptance of the match. He waved the crown back into Aiffe’s hands, settled his famous black helm once again, and was hardly in the lists when the Ronin Benkei screeched like train wheels and came at him.

Julie’s hand was unmistakable in Farrell’s, the right forefinger and thumb lightly calloused from years of drawing, the palm as broad as his own, strong and cool. Farrell said, “Where’s Micah?” without turning his head.

“Fishing. He’s recognized three more people this week, and today they all came and took him out on the Bay. I think he’s almost all the way back.”

“That’s nice.” She dug her nails hard into the back of his hand, saying, “I thought you were done being snotty. I came looking for you because I thought you could use some help. Whatever Aiffe’s been working up in the lab, the Whalemas Tourney is where she tries it out, always. This one is not over yet.”

At Farrell’s shoulder, Ben said very quietly, “Damn right, it isn’t over. What the hell is happening here?”