Лаура Гилман: The Underwater Ballroom Society

“It matters to me,” Sylvanna says. “It still matters to me.”

The boy sighs. “When it is your time, you must come. That is how it works. How it’s always worked. The natural order of things.”

“For humans, that is. But not for faeries. And not for humans in Faery. Doesn’t that bother you, that you, who hold sway over everything in this world, are barred from theirs? And that they may come and steal your subjects, take them beyond your reach, and you can do nothing?”

This does bother him; she’s got him there. He has a tidy nature; there are rules and he follows them. The rules must be followed else there would be chaos. But faeries don’t follow the rules; they love chaos, and when they steal a human, they upset his books, ruin his reckonings, leave an empty space in his ledger that he might never be able to fill. It is very annoying.

“You, so powerful, and against them powerless,” she jeers. Then, more gently: “Tell me, if he hadn’t been taken, would he be with you now? Would I be alone now anyway? It doesn’t hurt to tell me; it would be a great comfort to know.” Her eyes are soft and welling—the color of a bruise. Even the boy is not immune to such eyes; besides, Love’s Secret Domain is his favorite band.

He says: “In a crash, at the end of the Horses of Instruction tour, at the age of thirty-five. Driving too fast on a backroad; a farmer misses the yield sign. ”

“Instantly?”

“Instantly.”

“Ah…” Sylvanna says, and those eyes close for a second, and the lines of pain around her mouth smooth away. “Thank you. Now, humor an old lady. Open that case there.”

The boy lifts the case and opens it. Inside lies a guitar, as curvy as a woman, glossy and plump. He lays it across her lap. She pats the fretboard with a claw-like hand: “The Queen of Life, Bobby’s guitar. He left her behind—Oberon couldn’t take her, you see—Bobby always said her strings were made from strands of the Muse’s hair, but that’s not true. Just ordinary guitar strings. But they have iron in them and faeries loathe iron.”

The boy takes her in his arms, cradling her head against his broad chest, caressing her face. The corgi crouches on the seat opposite, tongue derping, watching. “Give me a puff of that nasty thing. Ah, so sweet… so sweet…” But if she means the cigarillo, or the guitar, or him, or some far-off memory, he doesn’t know. She closes her eyes, leaning into him, and they sit in comfortable silence for a while; eventually her eyes close and her breathing grows light.

“I hear horses’ thunder…” she whispers, and he presses his lips to hers, catching one breath, then two, and the final third… But there’s a fourth—this is odd, there should never be a fourth breath—the third breath should be her last. Her hands, now surprisingly strong, have him in a grip that is not letting go. He finds himself dwindling; his corporeal form dissolving until he is nothing but his own pure essence; his kiss is supposed to draw her out, out of her body, into death, but instead, he is being drawn into her. Within seconds he is trapped within her mouth. She bends to the guitar, as though to kiss it, and puffs a writhing ball of violet light into the small void in the guitar’s belly.

“Well,” says Sylvie to the corgi, “Lady Nimue was right. They are so eager to trap you that they don’t notice when you are trapping them.” She pats the Queen of Life’s swollen belly. “Don’t worry. I shan’t keep you long. And you shall thank me in the end.”

Back in the case goes the Queen of Life. Sylvie shrugs off the white furs; underneath she drips with green velvet and white lace, her suede boots are the color of dawn. Age still limns her, but all trace of infirmity is gone. She’s as graceful now as she was at twenty, perhaps even more so, because now that grace is seasoned by comfort in her own skin. At twenty, she still wondered who she was. At eighty-two she knows. She says gaily to the corgi: “Off we go then, over the hills and far away, to embrace the gloom…”

She exits the limo, taking the guitar-case with her, and the corgi, too, tucked under her arm like a furry purse. As soon as she lets the corgi down, it takes off like a shot, down the westerly road, pausing briefly to look back at her, starry-eyed and eager.

Sylvie pulls her velvet hood up over her hair and, slinging the Queen of Life over her shoulder, follows the corgi down the road.

The corgi knows the way to Faery, of course; all corgis do. They were bred long ago to serve as faery steeds, back when the faeries kept small and separate from humans, hidden. This is why corgis are so mischievous; their canine good nature has been leavened with the faery love of chaos. Every corgi knows that though the faeries have chosen to walk among humans for now, and have taken their size, they might someday decide to return to their original state and need the corgis’ service again. So, the corgis keep in touch.

Down the westerly road, the corgi trots, over the hills and far away, and Sylvie follows, through the goblin market at Feetings & Foil and out onto the Benighted Road. They pass through the common towns of Last Week and Next Friday, and punt down the River Wry, through the Mizzle Locks. By then, they have been trekking for many hours and Sylvie is flagging. She’s no spring chicken and the road goes further on and on. At Sleep-Weary on the Wry, they stop for tea with a growly tomte, who the corgi charms with somersaults. They snack on cakes made from spun sugar and plum cheese, sip medlar wine mixed with sour milk. Thus refreshed they forge onward, up the Cragfast Pass, whose stony walls are skith with snow. Then down the rocky Rime Road, clotted with ice, and out onto the Dismal Plain.

The corgi is a bright blot of cheer in the otherwise cheerless landscape; if the fat little dog will not falter, Sylvie won’t either. Through Nightfast Vale and the Forest of Arden they go, the trees as thick as thieves, and a blank black sky overhead, fingers of foxfire scratching at them from the brush. Sylvie’s feet are dragging now, and the Queen of Life is as heavy as a toddler. She’s so weary and footsore, and the vengeful spirits that had started her out have faded into a misery of exhaustion. The corgi nips her ankles, drives her forward, and though she is sleep-weary and her shoulder burns with the weight of the guitar, she continues on, down the Old Plank Road, across the Mewling Marsh, past Sorrow-in-the-Glen, and the ruins of Moonraker Hall. For a while, she sings as she goes, all the old ballads that she and Robert had once sung together: Honey in the Dell, The Princess & the Pig, Let Me Be Your Salty Dog , The Red Cape . But eventually her voice cracks into silence; her throat tastes of sand. Now Sylvie is so bone-cold exhausted that the landscape fades from her vision. All she sees is the pathway plodding on forever under her feet, and the cheerful wink of the fluffy butt bouncing along before her, and that cheerful bounce is all that keeps her going. But at last, after hours, days, months, years, the indefatigable corgi halts.

Blinking the crust from her eyes, Sylvie leans the guitar case against her legs, easing her burning shoulder. A gray wind scuds gray clouds through a gray sky. A featureless drear landscape, bereft of buildings, color, foliage, or comfort. For the first time since they set out, Sylvie, despite the warm velvet cape, shivers. Ahead of them the road vanishes into a squishy bog, punctuated with the skeletal fingers of dead reeds and ragged catkins. Spindly trees, distorted by the wind, straggle along the bog’s edge, surround a wattle hut, crude and disintegrating.

“Home! Home!” the corgi frolics about her feet, and so Sylvie knows that this featureless drear landscape is Faery, for only in Faery can corgis talk.