Chris Adrian - The Great Night

He wasn’t thinking at all in those terms, that day on the breakwater, but he did notice how solid everything looked and felt, the water sloshing heavily against the rocks and the heavy pressure of Bobby’s hand in his. He didn’t think about whether or not he was afraid of the real world, or worry if he was ever going to find a way to live in it, but he did appreciate how far away California and his mother seemed, and he appreciated how being with Bobby felt like something he didn’t deserve to have and wasn’t supposed to have which had come to him anyway, by oversight or charity or blind dumb luck.

“I like it here,” he said to Bobby again. “I mean, I like it here with—” He stopped walking and listed toward the left, though the slab they were on was quite flat. The odd solidity of things intensified, and he felt a little nauseated all of a sudden. He wanted to shield his face from the water and the sky, from the moss and the mussels on the stones, and he wanted to shield his face from Bobby’s face, but he didn’t. “I really like it,” he started again. “With you, here. I—”

Bobby stared at him, letting him fumble for a few moments before he cut him off. “I love you too,” he said.

I t finally occurred to Will to wonder about his sanity when the girl ran away in a bitter huff. He supposed it was possible that he had suffered a psychotic break on the way to Jordan Sasscock’s party, that the prospect of seeing Carolina was too much to bear, and that now he was lying on his belly somewhere in the real Buena Vista Park, gnawing on tree roots and eating dirt, or else locked up in the ER at CPMC down at the foot of the hill, drooling and babbling while some social worker tried to get him to tell her his name. It was possible, but hardly seemed worth thinking about — the heft of the little bunny boy when he had leaped into Will’s arms, the texture of the golden leaves on the cousin of Carolina’s tree, and the chill bite of the air in his nose were enough to make everything seem undeniably real, and he was secure enough in his sanity to think that when something seemingly fantastical appeared his first assumption should be that the problem was with the world and not with his mind. And he considered, walking after a man who looked like a tree into the secret darkness under the hill, that this catastrophe, if that’s what it was, got him off the hook, in a way, with Carolina, and maybe that was ultimately why he didn’t care to question whether or not it was real. As much as the lady in the tree had terrified him, and as much as he was frightened by the talk about being killed, he was in some sense as relieved as he was agitated by the crisis, because his first thought was how it would change things with Carolina. He had all sorts of reasons now to break their silence. Faeries and monsters and a tree that looked just like hers: one had to talk about such things, and the other had to listen, no matter how vile a history of transgression lay between them. And while the existence of faeries and monsters was no reason for him to be forgiven, it had the potential to distract her enormously from the memory of his crimes, and the existence of magic, monsters, and faeries brooked other impossibilities — getting back together with her seemed much less impossible than what he’d seen this evening. So thank goodness there existed in San Francisco a boy with a real bunny tail (Will had pulled it shortly after Oak had intercepted him in the park and led him to the door in the hill) growing out of his bottom, and thank goodness a monster in the shape of a middle-aged divorcée with a bad face-lift was threatening to do something atrocious to the faeries and to Will and that girl and Henry, who had lost his pants. Thank God Henry had lost his pants, however it had happened, and thank God the girl was such an anxious bitch. It had all happened just as it had to for Will to find Carolina in the morning and say, “You’re not going to believe this!” And maybe, he thought, somewhere under this hill there was a sapling, a baby golden oak that he could bring back to her, evidence of the impossible and proof that they could start over.

“Where are we going, exactly?” he asked Lyon. They had passed from the brightly lit hall into shadow, and walked until the room narrowed around them into a dimly lit corridor. There was a brighter light in the back behind them, and another up ahead, and Lyon raised an arm and hand to point toward one.

“Down, and deeper,” he said. Will looked at his arm, resisting the urge to pluck off one of the little threads that were sticking up off his rough skin.

“And there’s a way out, farther down and deeper in?”

“Eventually,” Lyon said, and sighed. “Probably.”

“Probably?” Will said.

“There is a general trend toward a door being at the bottom of the hill as well as at the top of the hill. More than that, I can’t really say.”

Will stopped and put a hand on Lyon’s shoulder. “I’d really like a straight answer about this,” he said.

“Of course you would,” Lyon said. “Mortals always do.” Henry yelled just then, and when Will turned to look he saw him heave himself to the side. The chair tumbled off Fell’s back, and Henry tumbled from the chair, and Oak tumbled out of his lap.

“I told you not to touch me!” Henry said. When he got up he started walking back the way they had come.

“Hey,” Will said. “Hey, don’t do that, man!” Fell and Oak and Lyon watched him walking away and then calmly followed after him. “What are you doing?” Will asked. “That’s the wrong way.”

“It’s become less wrong,” said Lyon, “in the interim.”

“I’m about to give up on you making sense,” Will said. “And it’s pissing me off.”

“Giving up on that would be best,” Lyon said, not breaking his stride as he turned his head around one hundred and eighty degrees to give Will a look that seemed both pitying and dismissive. “Piss away, mortal. Piss on me, if you please. Just because I’m saving your life doesn’t mean I care about you, or care about your narrow little discomfitures, or have ever had the time, even in an eternity of ageless life, to explain things to you. Will you see the Redcap or the Bloody Falls before Under-the-Hill shows you a door? Who knows? I am not King under this hill, I only serve him, and I cannot straighten the paths you make crooked with your dreams. You mock me with your questions and should be careful, or I shall piss on you. ”

“I wasn’t trying to …” Will began, meaning to tell him that he wasn’t trying to mock him, and he didn’t see how his perfectly sensible questions added up to a mockery, but then Lyon swiveled his head back around, and that was so disconcerting that Will fell silent. It would probably be perceived as a mockery, he supposed, to ask him how he did that, or to ask to examine his neck a little more closely, or to ask for a bit of the moss growing under his arms to look at later under a microscope. Will hurried up, passing Lyon, meaning to catch up with Henry and talk to him instead. The hallway was brightening, and the walls were opening up. By the time Will caught up with Henry he was standing by a set of doors other than the ones through which they had come in. Henry was standing before one of two statues on either side of the doors, a seven-foot-tall naked woman. A male statue stood on the other side of the doors, which were ajar. Will looked back, then forward, then all around, not bothering to say that he didn’t understand what was happening. Oak ran forward and fell to his knees in front of the male statue.

“Master!” he said. “Put forth your hand. Save us!” The other two made flourishing bows to the statue but did not speak to it. Henry was cocking his head back and forth at the lady and the man.