A Company of Heroes Book Two: The Fabulist (12 page)

What Bronwyn sees next is with her own eyes, and not the eyes of her imagination, though it is some time before she realizes that.

The swirling patterns of returning consciousness coalesce into what appear to be an opalescent sky in which the twin moons still float. At about this same time she realizes that neither moon is normally a pale violet, she also realizes that neither are they moons, but rather a pair of large, luminous eyes staring into her own. The amethyst irises are set in optics that are sharply pointed almonds and steeply slanted. They are wide-spaced, perhaps twice as far apart as would be considered normal. These eyes, in turn, are in a face narrow and slender, as pale and milkily luminous as a moonstone, with a slender nose that is barely a ridge in the smooth surface and a wide, thin-lipped mouth that is set, at the moment, in a slightly sardonic curve. The ears are smallish, but long and pointed. The peat-colored hair is neither short nor long, but floated weightlessly around the head as though constantly stirred by a private breeze. A widow’s peak splits the broad forehead in two. From either arch of the brow extends a slender, flexible antenna or feeler.

It is an indication that Bronwyn still has not entire possession of her wits that she does not immediately find any of this unusual. It doesn’t take long, though, for her brain to catch up to the sensory input and she sits suddenly bolt upright.

“Oh!” she squeaks.

The figure who had been examining her makes a graceful hop backward. It, he, rather, since its sex is more than a little obvious, perhaps even startlingly so, was an elongated version of a human being, apparently as tall and thin as Professor Wittenoom, but neither skinny nor bony. Instead, he looks more like a tall, well-proportioned, rather muscular man reflected in a cylindrical mirror. A man made of taffy. Though long and thin, everything about his body seems nevertheless perfect. His skin is without blemish and as translucent as a candle; it is faintly phosphorescent and the veins, when she looks closely, appear like fine golden wires. He neither wears nor needs any clothing; she decides he is sufficient unto himself, clothed in perfection and light. Bronwyn thinks he is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen and she is probably right.

She then notices that when he had taken the backward hop he had not been touching the ground, nor is he yet. Behind him slowly beats a pair of enormous butterfly’s wings, like matched stained-glass windows, their colors shifting and shimmering as their infinitesimal scales catch and refract the light.

“Holy Musrum,” she breath. “It’s . . . you’re a
faerie?
”

The sardonic grin changes to a sardonic smile, and the answer comes not in a voice, but in a soft, musical tinkling, like wind chimes, that she can understand, though she can’t understand why. “Welcome to Um-be-clippe, Princess. I am Spikenard and I am humbly at your service.”

“Welcome to
what
? Where am l?”

“Be still, Princess. Do not stir yourself unduly as yet, you are still not strong.
This
is Um-be-clippe.” A long, thin arm makes a circle in the air encompassing the speaker, Bronwyn and everything.

“All right, then,
what
is Um-be-whatever?”

“My kingdom!”

“Your
kingdom
? You’re a king?”

“Oh, yes!” The wings blur and Spikenard rises into the air
en pointe.
He settles back to Bronwyn’s level and executes a neat, if sardonic, bow at the waist, not taking his enormous eyes from her own. “Oh, yes! King, prince, emperor, whatever you please. You are my very honored guest!”

“Thank you . . . ah . . . your Highness . . .”

“No! No! Please! Spikenard, if you will! You are my guest; we must be friends.”

“Ah, well, thank you. And I suspect that it’s you whom I must thank for saving my life?”

“Entirely my pleasure, Princess. If I had not, how could I ever enjoy your charming company?”

“My friends? Where are they?”

“They are well. Do not disturb yourself about them, Princess.” This is no answer, but Bronwyn accepts it.

“Please. If you’re a prince or a king and insist on being called by your given name, then please use mine as well.”

“May I? May I,
Bronwyn
?” Her name bubbles and thrums around her, like an extended note on a cello. It has become music.

“I like it when you say my name.”

“Do you, Bronwyn? Do you
really
? That pleases me.”

“I think I can stand. I feel quite well; much better than I remember.”

“Please. Try.”

Steadying herself by grasping the narrow stalk against which she had been leaning, Bronwyn raises herself to her feet. There is a moment while everything goes black; then her vision clears. For the first time, she looks at her surroundings, a strange, misty, vaguely insubstantial landscape or garden of enormous gossamer ferns, moss as thick and abundant as the pelt of a buffalo, flowers the size of cartwheels, the stalk that is supporting her is topped by a blossom as big as an umbrella, and, hovering before her, a faerie with a sardonic smile on his face.

“
Where am I?”
she asks once more, this time a quavering prelude to hysteria coloring her tone. Then, in half a whisper: “How . . . how
big
am I?”

“Just the right size, Bronwyn!”

“That’s no answer.”

“Bronwyn,” Spikenard says, his voice like soft music on the piccolo, “Bronwyn, there is nothing to worry you, nothing to concern you. I see you are confused . . . I see you are a little frightened. May l?”

Before she can protest, or assent, or say anything, Spikenard reaches toward her with a long, long arm. His fingers, graceful as willow fronds, embraces her face. Their touch is as soft as a mouse’s breath. Her apprehensions pass from her . . . she can feel them draining away, replaced by a feeling of calm and trust.

And with her fears passes her will.

“Bronwyn,
Bronwyn
,” he continues singing her name, “Bronwyn, there is nothing to concern you here. All is pleasant, my beautiful, beautiful human.”

“Spikenard.”

“You brought us Gyven to save us from the machines. My kingdom owes you much for that. You brought me yourself, and I owe you much for that, too. You must allow my kingdom to express its gratitude, and you must allow me to express mine.”

“No, I don’t want to be rude.”

“First you must want something to eat and something to wear . . .”

She realizes for the first time since awakening that she is nude, a fact that somehow seems of little importance or even of much interest. She does notice, however, with some surprise, that her bruises have become faded yellow stains.
How long does that take?

“ . . . my queens,” Spikenard continues, “will help you with anything you need.”

“Queens?”

“Yes. Here they are, now.”

Five butterflies with silken wings and luminous bodies flutter into the shining glade, leaving trails like the afterimages of meteors. Five exquisite women hover in a semicircle around Bronwyn and the faerie king, their wings glowing like rose windows or parhelia. Except for slight differences in coloring the five figures are virtually identical, at least Bronwyn can not at first distinguish them. Their porcelain bodies are sleeker than Spikenard’s; their breasts are like pearls. Slender and lucid as wax tapers, or sculptures blown in fluid crystal, they make Bronwyn feel coarse and carnal.

“Allow me to introduce my wives,” trills Spikenard, and the queens curtsy as their names are mentioned, never taking their jeweled eyes from the princess, their enigmatic smiles never wavering.

Seremonth has obsidian eyes and hair like petroleum, Queach has eyes of moonstone and a cloud of ivory down surrounds her head like a dandelion, Thepes has malachite eyes and curly fronds of green fern, Yeather has ruby eyes that burn like drops of blood and her hair is like molten copper, Woodweel’s eyes are matched pearls and her hair is silver.

They are as graceful as a thread falling through the air or a curl of smoke from a freshly extinguished candle.

“Trust yourself to them; they will bring you to me when you are ready.”

His expression might have made her feel as though he had just ordered a meal, had her mind been entirely her own. But whatever strange reverie Spikenard had placed her in still remains, and she allows herself to be led as docilely as a sleepy child. She is bathed in a few drops of chilly, fragrant dew that has gathered in the hollow of a poppy; forty slender, gentle fingers, ten less because dark Seremonth stands aside, lift her, dry her, powder her with a moth’s wing and scented pollen; her hair is combed with a beetle’s antenna and oiled with a single sesame seed until it shines with a ruddy light of its own, framing her pale face and shoulders like an ember consuming an ivory egg. Bronwyn’s long body has acquired its own iridescence, and her olivine eyes are clinquant in the shimmering radiation of the queens.

The queens cloak the princess in a cobweb, sequined with drops of amber that glint like spiders’ eyes.

She is taken to the faerie court, where Spikenard await. This is a vast amphitheatre, vast at least in proportion to Bronwyn’s new scale, made entirely of flowers, more than the princess can possibly have named (including but not limited to petronels, nuns-in-buckets, both pink and blue rubatos, blacksmith’s mouths, Dreedner’s bun-flowers, fish-eyes, double-gaited wertroots, winkle peter-in-beds, Walmsley’s cowlicks, crazy kittys, knee-action violets, slap-ups, oafoons, and twitchy dingles) in tiers set back like the concentric rows of a coliseum, their bright colors reduced by the moonlight to a soapy opalescence. The mismatched moons hover in the iron circle of the sky, their nacreous light funneling into the mossy arena, like a drizzle of blue mother’s milk.

Every inhabitant of the faerie king’s realm appears to be in attendance: every branch, frond, twig, stalk, leaf and petal sags under the bright crowds. The glade would have been illuminated even without the moons in the mushroom glow of faeries by the hundreds. The elongated bodies, with a gracefulness more sexual than their nudity; the child-like, ancient, jeweled faces, innocent and sensual, guiltless and carnal; the murmuring hum of the combined beat of a thousand wings . . . all combine to stir the already turbid wits of the odified princess.

The queens leave Bronwyn standing in the center of the mossy circle, in the focus of the strange moonlight that seems to coat her with mother-of-pearl, as though she were an irritant to some supramundane oyster. The faerie queens retire, all except Seremonth, who settles to the ground not far away, her face surpassing beauty in its rage, her black eyes sparking like flints from the iron blow of Bronwyn’s presence.

A curtain of ferns part and Spikenard enter the forum. He sits astride the head of a piebald snail, his long muscular legs hooked around each short horn, like a mahout atop his elephant. He is accompanied by his princes and princesses who ride field mice shaking and timid with stage fright, and his court who sails past and around him on dragonflies or beetles, or bound in upon lumbering green frogs. There is the sound of bells, flutes and pipes, quickly absorbed and amended by the rush of music from the faerie spectators, like a complex, sustained chord on an organ, rising until the thousand globes of dew around Bronwyn’s feet burst like Prince Rupert’s drops.

Spikenard rises on his glimmering wings, blurring them into rainbows, and hovers just before the princess,
en pointe
as before, his feet never quite touching the ground. He fans her hair and it sweeps away from her face like the smoky flame of burning oil; the breeze caresses the invisibly fine down of her skin, making her aware of her exposure and vulnerability.

As Spikenard watches, Bronwyn slipped the transparent cloak from her shoulders; it falls with a whisper. She lets her hands drop to her sides; she pulls her shoulders back and stands erect, feet slightly apart, legs straight.

“You are quite beautiful, Princess Bronwyn,” Spikenard sings, with his sardonic grin and eyes as violet and hard as amethysts.

“Your body is halfway between earth and dream, neither magic nor elemental, neither animal nor spirit.”

His long fingers reach toward her face, brush her eyelids, follow the contours of her cheekbones and jaw, down her neck, like curious, touch the sharp ridges of her collarbones, the hollow at the base of her throat, circle her domed breasts like moths orbiting a pair of glowing lamps.

The glade has grown dark, a resonant iron-blackness filled with swarming fireflies and luminous eyes, curious constellations that form and reform, focusing on their center of gravity, the binary star at the center of their universe: Bronwyn and Spikenard.

Spikenard shines like a bar of silver at a blue heat, he shines so that he gives off sparks. He circles Bronwyn like a pinwheel, a comet, cocooning her in his lambent trail. Bronwyn too, has become luminous, glowing like an ingot of iron in a blacksmith’s forge. The faerie king speaks to her but all she hears is music and his scent fills her head like a wineskin. Her nerves resonate in symphony and her body sway and turns with his orbits, like a compass following a magnet. Her mouth and tongue are as dry as flannel; they burn like a furnace, yet her body is beaded with sweat like a glass of cold wine. The beads coalesce and run down her arms and sides, down the groove of her spine, funnel between her breasts, in rivulets that tickle like the lick of a hundred tiny tongues. Sequins of perspiration ring her lips, and her tongue laps at the salty fluid.

Spikenard touches her as he circles, he touches and strokes and caresses as quickly and gently as the lighting of a fly. His long fingers, like Tudela’s tubes of glowing gas, stroke the princess at random, each touch leaving a luminous trail, each touch causing Bronwyn to shudder and gasp, as though she is suffering an electrical shock. His fingers run down her spine and her stomach ripples like a flag, they flutter up her thighs and she convulses and bites her lip, they brush her nipples and she clenches her hands so tightly her nails bite into her palms; they touch her lips and she moans and nips at them, but they have moved on. The long fingers dance on her buttocks and slid down the crease between them, and the muscles of Bronwyn’s legs stood out like hungry anacondas.