Chris Adrian: The Great Night

“It will be faster if you help,” he told her, as he squinted to chop up a mote-sized carrot. So she picked up a bag the size of her thumb, emptied out the beans from them, and began to snap. The boy kept trying to eat things raw at first, but Oberon slapped his hand away and told him to be patient, and eventually he helped as well, twisting the heads off the little chickens when Oberon handed them to him, and laughing when they danced a few seconds in his palm. It took a long time to prepare the feast, though they had more and more help, as more faeries popped up in the room, some of whom were sized better for the work. Still more of them gathered round in an audience, stuck to the walls, crowding the shelves, perched on the lintel, all of them muttering opinions as the preparation went on, that they would have baked the fish, not seared it, and salted the cabbage but not the asparagus, and chosen caramel over fudge for the cake.

When it was done the boy ate the whole thing and did not share a morsel, which was exactly as it was supposed to be. Aside from the size of it, there was nothing magical about the food. It shouldn’t have sated him any more than half a dozen peanuts, but even the aroma calmed him down as they were cooking, and by the time he had finished off the last tack-sized pastry and dime-sized cake, he was very quiet again. He looked around the bed and around the room, as if for more food, so when he opened his mouth wide Titania thought he was going to shout or cry. But he burped instead, a tiny little noise, commensurate with what he had eaten.

She had lost him once, just for a little while. He liked to hide but didn’t do it very well, too giggly ever to make his location a secret. But she woke one morning to find him gone from his customary place underneath her arm, and she couldn’t find him in the usual places, in a lump under the covers at the foot of the bed, or on the floor next to the bed, or even under the bed. “Is this a game?” she asked her husband, shaking him awake, and she demanded, “Where have you hidden the boy?”

He had not hidden him anywhere, and no faerie had made off with him or used his parts in a spell or put him in a pie to eat. But all through the early part of the evening he was nowhere to be found, though she commanded the whole host to search for him under the hill. She began to suspect that his mortal mother had stolen him back and not even done her the courtesy of returning the little hobgoblin that had been left in his place. Oberon could not convince her of how extremely unlikely this would be, so she strapped on her armor, greave by greave. For a while Oberon was able to get it off her as fast as she could put it on, nuzzling her and speaking ever so soothingly about how the boy would be found, but eventually she outstripped him. She placed her helm on her head and called the host to war, and all the peace-loving faeries of Buena Vista Park reluctantly put on their silver mail and took up their ruby-tipped spears and made ready to stream out into the Mission to slay the woman who had stolen their Mistress’s child. But Doorknob found him before they could march out of the woods. He was under a cupboard, sound asleep, and one had only to sniff at him to understand that he had wandered thirsty from bed to the kitchen, drunk at length from the wine bowl instead of the water bowl, and perhaps had had a solitary toddling drunken party all his own before hiding himself away to sleep. Titania wanted to kiss him and hold him, of course, but it occurred to her that there were other things she could do right then as well, shrink him down enough to carry him around in her mouth, or make him a hump on her back, or chain him to her, foot to foot. He woke as she was considering these things, and blinked at her and then at the faeries all attired for war, and turned on his side, and went back to sleep.

“What a terrible gift you have given me,” she said to her husband. They were sitting at the boy’s bedside, not holding hands, but their knees were touching. There had been bad news, and then worse news, and then the worst news yet. The bad cells were back in his blood, and he had a fever, and there was an infection in the bones of his face. Dr. Blork said a fungus was growing there and had admitted that this news was in fact bad, and he had looked both awkward and grave as he sat with them, twisting his stethoscope around in his hands and apologizing for the turn of events, though not exactly accepting responsibility for the failures of the treatment. Oberon had said that mushrooms were some of the friendliest creatures he knew, and he could not understand how they could possibly represent a threat to anyone, but Dr. Blork shook his head, and said that this fungus was nobody’s friend, and further explained that the presence of the new infection compromised the doctors’ ability to poison him anymore, and that for that reason the leukemia cells were having a sort of holiday.

The boy was sleeping. They had brought back the morphine for his pain, so he was rarely awake and not very happy when he was. Titania moved from her chair to the bed and took his hand. Even asleep he pulled it away. “A terrible gift,” she said.

“Don’t say such things,” Oberon said.

“Terrible,” she said. “Terrible, terrible.” She sat on the bed, taking the boy’s hand over and over again as he pulled it away, and told her husband she was afraid that when the boy died he would take away with him not just all the love she felt for him but all the love she felt for Oberon too, and all the love she had felt for anything or anyone in the world. He would draw it after him, as if by decree of some natural law that magic could not violate, and then she would be left with nothing.

“Do not speak of such things, my love,” her husband said, and he kissed her. She let him do that. And she let him put his hands inside her dress, and let him draw her over to the narrow little couch where they were supposed to sleep at night. She tried to pretend that it was any other night under the hill, when they would roll and wrestle with each other while the boy slept next to them oblivious. They were walked in upon a number of times. But everyone who walked in saw something different, and no one remembered what they had seen after they turned and fled the room. The night nurse, coming in to change some IV fluids, saw two blankets striking and grappling with each other on the couch. A nursing assistant saw a mass of snakes and cats twisting over one another, sighing and hissing. Dr. Beadle actually managed to perceive Oberon’s mighty thrusting bottom and went stumbling back out into the hall, temporarily blinded.

One evening Dr. Beadle came in alone, Blorkless, and sat down on the bed, where the boy was sweating and sleeping, dreaming, Titania could tell, of something unpleasant. “I think it’s time to talk about our goals for Brad,” he said, and put a hand on the Beastie over the boy’s foot, and wiggled the foot back and forth as he talked, asking them whether they were really doing the best thing for the boy, whether they should continue with a treatment that was not making him better.

“What else would we do?” Titania asked him, not understanding what he was saying but suddenly not wanting him in the room, or on the bed, or touching the boy.

“We would make him comfortable,” he said.

“Isn’t he comfortable?” Titania asked. “Isn’t he sleeping?”

“Not … finally,” Dr. Beadle said. “We could be doing more and less. We could stop doing what isn’t helping, and not do anything that would prolong … the suffering.” Then Oberon, who had been eyeing the man warily from the couch, leaped up, shouting, “Smotherer! Smother-doctor! Get back to Hell!”

“You don’t understand,” Dr. Beadle said. “I don’t mean that at all. Not at all !” He looked at Titania with an odd combination of pleading and pity. “Do you understand?” he asked her. In reply she drew herself up, and shook off every drop of the disguising glamour, and stood there entirely revealed to him. He seemed to shrink and fell off the bed, and while he was not kneeling purposefully in front of her, he happened to end up on his knees. She leaned over him and spoke very slowly.