Лаура Гилман: The Underwater Ballroom Society

Then one day, towards the end of this triumphant tour, Oberon himself left his palace under the Hill, stepped out of Faery into the Waking World, to hear Love’s Secret Domain play. He stood in the front row, halting the mosh pit’s churn with his presence, and though Sylvanna de Godervya’s voice that night was sweeter than honey, it was Robert Mynwar’s guitar that made his black eyes glow green. Faeries, as you know, love music but they cannot make it themselves, being as inherently tuneless as the night air. As the last bars of The Crystal Cabinet fell away, Oberon stepped through the ear-splitting roar of the crowd, over the heads of eager fans who had pushed forward in a desperate attempt to reach their idol, up onto the stage. As the twinkle of thousands of lighters sparked the darkened bowl of the amphitheater, Oberon enfolded the surprised sweaty guitarist into a swirl of crimson cape.

And then they were both gone.

That was the last show Love’s Secret Domain ever played.

Robert Mynwar was never again seen in the Waking World and though Oberon, or Titania, might be seen from time to time, hunting humans through the forest on Crimble, or shopping at the Porkopolis Prada, Robert Mynwar stayed beneath the Hill. Sometimes news came of him, but always gossip unverified. A few months after his abduction, a changeling staggered out of Faery, and told The Porkopolis Music News he had seen Robert Mynwar and Oberon walking hand-in-hand through a pleached alley of hornbeams in the garden of Castle Fare-thee-Well. A year or so later, a hedgewitch claimed she’d been gathering green melancholy from a faery field when she had spied Robert Mynwar standing on a cliff above the Heart’s End Sea, sobbing into a spidersilk handkerchief. Five years after that, a beggar who stumbled into a faery ring on New Year’s Day and spent ten years (ten minutes) in Faery before being expelled by Mab, the Faery Seneschal, for drunkenness, said that when he was taken before the Faery court, he saw Robert Mynwar, bound to Oberon’s throne with a chain twisted from ivy and his own hair. Twenty years gone, a milkmaid from Monona, who had seen Love’s Secret Domain play one hundred and fifty-six times, said she had a vision of the great guitarist in a bucket of milk she’d squeezed from a blue-tinged cow; he was sitting in Titania’s solar on a tussock of green moss, playing a guitar with no strings.

After that, nothing.

And Robert Mynwar, already a legend, became legendary.

A boy stands at a crossroads. It doesn’t matter which crossroads, or where. Above, a wolf moon sails up the curve of the sky, round as an eye. The crossed arms of the two roadways stretching away from him shine white as silk. The trees that surround the crossroads whistle in the night breeze; every leaf, every branch exposed in the moon’s glare. A spire of smoke drifts upward from the cigarillo the boy smokes. The smell of cloves mingles with the spicy scent of eucalyptus, and the boy’s perfume, which is the loamy fragrance of dirt.

After a time, a month, a year, an eternity, the moon reaches its height, directly over the center of the crossroads. The moon should begin its majestic descent downward, towards its set, but instead it pauses. The wind ceases; the moonlight becomes thick and still as paint. The cigarillo smoke hangs motionless in the air, like tree moss. The boy drops the cigarillo and steps on the red ember eye, crushing it.

A long black vehicle is coming down one of the roads; its headlamps cut through the darkness like searching antennae. Illuminating the boy, they pin him into place in the center of the crossroads. The limo is going fast, too fast; it’s going to mow him down if he doesn’t move. But instead of jumping out of the way, the boy extends his arm, extends his thumb. Brakes screeching, puffing black smoke, the limo barely stops in time. Its front bumper brushes the boy’s knees. Despite the garish glow of the headlights, the boy’s features remain sunk in shadow. He walks to the side of the limo, opens the door, and climbs inside.

The boy is greeted with excited yapping; the fox-faced corgi sitting on the jump seat has leapt up on its stubby legs and is alarming loudly. He gives the corgi a firm look, and the dog collapses into a furry pillow, tongue derping. In the middle of the back seat, Sylvanna de Godervya is sunk into a pile of white fur, so thick and deep that only her face is visible. A black guitar case sits next to her. Time has taken the sharp edge of her jaw, the smooth line of her cheek and forehead and the raven-black hair is now tarnished silver. But she’s still incandescent and those violet eyes are still deep enough to drown in.

“You took your time,” Sylvanna says. That famously rough voice is even raspier now, but lovelier too, its cragginess evoking weary experience and heartbreak.

“I’ve been busy,” the boy says, settling into the seat opposite. The corgi tries to worm onto his lap, whacking at his hand with a fat paw. He scratches its pointy ears.

“When I wanted you, you didn’t come.”

“Don’t be silly. You were busy too,” the boy says. “Songs to write, shows, children, grandchildren, the recording label, this fat little baby here.”

Her lip curls, as though to dismiss all those things. “I didn’t expect you to look so—handsome—so frivolous. Like a groupie.”

The boy grins, shakes his curly head, and crosses his legs, sheathed in trousers so tight it’s a wonder they don’t split at the motion. The plunging neckline on his flowing shirts shows off a muscular chest; his wrists are wreathed in turquoise and silver; more silver chains dangle from his neck. The heels on his red leather boots are five inches high. The clothes have been unfashionable for at least sixty years. “I take the form I think most pleasing; it makes things easier. More pleasant. More familiar.”

“You missed my mark,” Sylvanna says, but the smile quirking around her lips says he hit it most exactly. “Anyway, you should take your gorgeous ass and sashay out of my limo. I’m not ready. I’m on my way to the Were-Flamingo Gala. I’m the guest of honor. They are expecting me.” The purple eyes glitter fiercely. “I have things to do.”

“I’m sorry, honey, but it’s time. You’ve been wavering for months. Your heart…”

“My heart died long ago. That’s nothing to do with my health.” Then she sighs, her voice crumpling. “I suppose there is no fighting Death. I will go with you if you tell me that one day I shall see him again. But you won’t, because it’s not true. They live forever in Faery. I’ll never see him again.”

The boy shrugs. Never is a long time—to her at least. To him, there’s no never, only the inevitable. He draws on his clove cigarillo, exhales. Sylvanna closes her eyes, breathes the waft of smoke in. “That smell. I haven’t smelled that smell in years. It always reminds me of him. Those foul cigarillos he smoked. Spicy, dark. You aren’t as pretty as he was. What a god. That hair, like spun gold, that ass, tight as a drum. When our voices came together, they said our harmony was a stairway to heaven.”

When the boy doesn’t reply, she says, “I looked for him everywhere. Faery-rings and sunsets. Hollow trees and elf-steeds. Solstice and Beltane. The Valley of Evermore and the vales of Kashmir. But I never found the way under the Hill.”

“Few mortals do, my dear,” the boy says. “And think of the songs you wrote in your sorrow. In a thousand years, those songs will still be sung. Heartbreak, sorrow, love.”

“ His songs. Songs about him . I wrote other songs but no one cared about them.”

“ Your songs,” he says gently. “But anyway, it doesn’t matter now.”