Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson Read online

  “How then of Mistherd and Shadow-of-a-Dream who were stripped of their lives and driven back into the unwelcoming arms of humankind? What of them whose lives you ruined, Black-Hearted Starling Boy?”

  The pooka was hopping back and forth from one clawed foot to the other, and his short forearms were gesturing in anger and frustration. Jimmy looked at him and did not know what to say. He had done nothing to banish the lovers; they had left on their own, persuaded by Sherrinford they were living a lie and needed to go.

  “What happened to them?” he asked tentatively.

  Ayoch made a trilling sound and went still as stone. “The cities swallowed them.”

  “I did not knowingly cause this.”

  “But caused it nevertheless, I think.”

  “Who was it who stole me from my mother? Who was it who brought me to Cloudmoor?”

  Ayoch started to make response, but then cocked his head and wheeled away. “Enow, this! She comes. Lady Sky walks the night. Bow you down, Witling.”

  Jimmy took the bottle from Barraboo’s lips and handed it back to Ben, instinctively cradling his daughter closer as the air before him assumed fresh darkness. He was not afraid. He was clear-headed and steady. The drugs had left his body, and the need for finding what he had come to find had taken their place.

  Ayoch knelt, wings folded against his body, half-human face lowered in deference to her approach. Ben had wrapped the reins about the handle of the wagon brake and now his head was inclined, as well. Jimmy did not hesitate to do the same, feeling the presence of her coming envelop him with perfume of night lilies and cool whispers. His head dipped in recognition of Fey royalty, his strength of will surrendered.

  “Welcome home, Shadow Walker,” she whispered.

  She was very tall and wrapped in starlight and flower shadow, her hair long and flowing and her face aglow with an inner light. She moved out of the darkness as if afloat, her feet not touching the earth, her robes trailing behind her in rippling folds, the Queen of Air and Darkness become. All around her, the world seemed to find fresh light, newly woken and wafting on the winterbirth breeze.

  “Do you remember the name I gave you?” she asked.

  Jimmy could not reply. He could not speak. He had so much to say, but in her presence he was struck dumb and left helpless and fragile. He knew she spoke to him, knew the name by which she called him, knew indeed it had been given him long ago and knew also he had forgotten it until now. Shadow Walker. He took a deep breath of the sweet night air and exhaled his relief and joy. She had come to collect him, to give him what he so desperately sought; she had come to take him home with her.

  In response, he opened the blanket that swaddled Barraboo and held the baby forth. The Queen stood silently and looked upon the child for a long time before she turned to him again.

  “You were that baby once, and just by being so and nothing more brought upon the Dwellers such misery.”

  “I am sorry. But I did not intend any of it. I was a child.” He was crying suddenly, unable to help himself, overwhelmed by memories and emotions. “I would take it all back, if I could.”

  “Sometimes being a child is enough to stir up madness.”

  He felt his insides collapsing under the weight of failure’s dark promise. “Please. If you would take me back, I wish you to take her, too. I wish her to have a home here with me. I have nowhere else for her to go. I am so afraid for her.”

  “A changeling child to become,” the Queen replied. She went silent again, lost in thought, her perfect features still and composed. “Be it so, then. All must come to Worund’s Barrow. All of the Dwellers of Carheddin and beyond. Bring them, Ayoch. Gather them together. We will sing and dance and celebrate winterbirth’s gifts.”

  Ayoch bowed lower still, eyes averted.

  She turned away, fading back into the darkness. “And there, Shadow Walker, we will wait for those who are certain to follow. But not as before, not as once we might have. See to it, Ayoch.”

  Her voice died away into the wind’s gentle whisper and the night’s soft folding.

  “Yes, Moon Mistress,” the pooka answered, never lifting his feathered head. But when she was well and truly gone, he stood erect and did a little dance.

  “I leave you here,” Ben announced abruptly, taking up the reins and switch again. “Climb down and go with the pooka, Jimmy Cullen that once you were.”

  “You won’t come with us?” Jimmy asked, suddenly troubled by the idea. “After coming so far already?”

  “Where you go is not meant for me. I’ve limits to what I can do for the Fey and limits to what they want me to do. I am done with you now and have others that need me. Ask about it, Shadow Walker. Ask her how her rule goes these days. You should know your address before you settle in for the duration.”

  He waited patiently until Jimmy had descended the sway-spring wagon seat for the solidity of the ground, Barraboo in arms, and then he jiggled the lines, clucked at the reindeer and turned the wagon about. In moments, he had disappeared into the darkness.

  “Now we must skitter on, Shadow Walker.” Ayoch was already looking off in the direction the Queen had gone.

  “I’m ready,” he answered, arms cradling Barraboo, soft and warm, against him.

  “I wonder about that,” the pooka said.

  They set out on foot, crossing the countryside through the darkness and shimmering white starlight, the twin moons already down or new—he could no longer remember which. Yet the air was not cold, and he found his travel comforting and pleasant. Barraboo had fallen back asleep, sated from her feeding. She was so light she was almost not there. Now and again, he had to look down to make sure he still held her.

  Flitteries darted through the brok in small flashes, and kiss-me-never glimmered whitely in the starglow. Once he saw a crownbuck, majestic as it stood statue-still and watched him from a rise. He was surprised and pleased that he could remember names of things he hadn’t seen in more than thirty years, things he had forgotten existed. Those names had all come back to him this night as he traveled into the Outway, and he could not help but think that it was a favorable sign. He was meant to be here. Coming with Barraboo, returning to where he had been happiest, finding his way towards a measure of sanity and health.

  The sheeting of dark mist he had seen earlier while riding with the old man (what was his name again?) reappeared suddenly beside him. It floated there for a moment, and then the particles of darkness took form and Pearl was standing beside him, reborn into the world, clean and fresh and young.

  He caught his breath and sobbed. “But you’re dead, Pearl. You’re not really here.”

  She laughed, a laugh he had so seldom heard her give when they were in the cities, and touched his arm. “Do you feel my fingers? Do you see how they hold you? I am real enough, Jimmy.”

  “But is it Fey magic . . . ”

  She leaned over and kissed him quickly on his cheek, and all doubts and fears vanished. “Let me see little Barraboo,” she begged, taking a corner of the blanket in which the baby was wrapped and pulling it back. “Oh, such a wee thing. Look at her smile! You’ve taken such good care of her, Jimmy.”

  “I’ve missed you so much.” He could barely see her for his tears. “Can you stay with me?”

  “For awhile, but not forever. I can come back to you, though. I can visit you now and then.”

  “That would be enough,” he managed. “Even if I know, even if I remember you aren’t really . . . ”

  But she was already gone back into the ether, a skein of darkness dissipating in the wind.

  A word came to him, unbidden. Wraith.

  “There is nothing for you in the cities of men,” Ayoch declared suddenly. He was bounding along, hopping and skipping, a very energetic pooka. “You’ve found that out for yourself, haven’t you? Better the dreams of our world than the nightmares of your own.”

  “Better,” he echoed.

  “Though I have never gone to your world. Not for me
the dreariness of such places. I know what it does from what I see in the eyes of those who live there when they happen out our way. They come to us, you know. So many, too. More all the time. Like you, they seek escape from what kills them. Slow or fast, it kills them all the same.”

  “It killed Pearl,” he said.

  The Pooka shrugged. “All in the past now for her.”

  They passed through Cloudmoor’s rolling hills and leafy forests until all at once the pooka crowed loudly and said, “Hoah, I forget me! I must do as Lady Sky has bidden and gather the others for the celebration.” He wheeled away, spread his wings wide and took to the air. “Farewell now, Shadow Walker!”

  Jimmy blanched in terror. “Wait! How am I to find where I . . . ?”

  “By walking!” Ayoch chirped, and then he was gone.

  Jimmy stood bereft. He had never known where to go before coming here. Not ever. But since he had gotten this far and having no choice in the matter, he began to walk. The feel of the wind freshened him and the glow of the moons comforted him, and so he put one foot in front of the other, eager to reach his destination.

  The war machines rumbled over Troll Scarp and into Cloudmoor on the midday, the night still enveloping and pervasive, the land of the Old Folk shadowed and striped with layers of roiling haze. Barbro sat in the first of the pair, next to Stip Quince and right behind the driver. She gave information when she could, but for the most part kept quiet. She remembered so little of this land after thirty years, and what she remembered was uncertain. Flashes of events recalled themselves, but mostly out of context and vague enough she couldn’t trust them. What was hard and certain was the emotional weight of first losing and then finding little Jimmy coupled with her desperate, driving need to find him anew and little Barraboo with him. She was driven by her emotions, ruled by them, and she had set her mind on doing what was needed to regain control.

  But there was room in her feelings for distaste, too. She didn’t like Quince or his men and had to work hard to mask it. She disliked his bluster and arrogance. She disliked his aura of disdain and contempt. He was a hard and bitter veteran of personal and professional wars, and he had no use for people beyond making use of the opportunities they provided him. He was dismissive of her and Jimmy and their sad lives. He sneered openly at the idea of the Old Folk, his faith placed not in myths and shadows but in steel and explosives. He talked little, but when he said anything it was couched in terms of destruction and self-empowerment.

  She regretted she had asked him for transport, and if she could have done so she would have turned him back around. But she could not abandon her search now. To do that now would mean giving up on her son and granddaughter.

  But how will we find them, in any case? There are no signposts or road markers. There are not even roads. And I have no memory of the land. It is a mystery to me.

  Yet Quince seemed undeterred, forging ahead, his machines rolling over firethorn and brok, crushing grasses and flowers, and scaring off birds and animals alike, intruders not equipped to apologize. His confidence in himself and his men and machines was daunting, so she held her tongue and waited to see what would happen.

  When they stopped finally to rest and eat, the darkness enfolding and unbroken by either Roland’s moons or the distant stars, she felt the weight of her life press down on her and wished she had done so many things differently. She ate and drank and then walked away from the men to look out into the forested hills and be alone. She breathed the air and was reminded suddenly of a moment out of the past.

  For there was Jimmy, standing at the edge of the trees, not far away from her, holding his daughter in his arms, smiling. He put a finger to his lips and beckoned her over to him. She glanced back, saw no one paying attention to her, and without further thought went to him.

  “Mrs. Cullen!” she heard Quince call to her as she followed her son into the trees. “Get back here!”

  But she was already gone.

  Stip Quince wasted little time calling his men back to their war machines, closing down the hatches and firing up the engines. Seconds was all it took. The armored ATVs surged forward, giving chase. Quince could not understand what that woman thought she was doing, but it would be the last time she would be allowed more than an arm’s length away. Had she seen something? Had she been summoned and he not heard?

  The war machines pushed into the woods, finding their way between sparse clumps of trees, rocking over ridges and down gullies, pushing ahead. There was no sign of Mrs. Cullen, but Quince had seen where she went and knew they would catch up to her quickly enough.

  Ahead, atop a rise, something moved in the gloom. Figures, all of different sizes and shapes, some huge and lumbering, some ethereal and others winged and crouched over. The ones he was looking for. He smiled and using the intercom, directed the attack. The war machines closed on their targets, weapons loaded and ready. Quince had decided to see how the enemy reacted before opening fire on them. He wanted to scare them off first, hopefully back to wherever they had the woman’s son and granddaughter. In case that failed, he would use the nets to trap one or two and make his prisoners take him to their lair. It wouldn’t be hard once he used the drugs and prods on them.

  Once he had Mrs. Cullen and the son and granddaughter safely in hand, he would decide whether to eradicate these troublesome creatures or simply frighten them badly enough that they would flee the country and all this Old Folk nonsense would be ended.

  As the war machines crested the rise, the creatures they pursued already fled into the trees, Quince saw the yawning black chasm directly ahead of them, only yards away, invisible until you were right on top of it. He shouted into the intercom in warning, screaming, “Stop, stop!” But it was too late. The momentum of the vehicles carried both over the edge and into the void.

  The war machines tumbled away and the occupants were consumed by their own dark fears.

  Barbro turned from Jimmy and the baby when she heard the screams, wondering at their source. When she turned back again, they were gone. She looked around wildly, frantic to find them, a tall ethereal figure emerged from the trees. The Queen of Air and Darkness was luminous in her robes of northlights and garlands of snowy kiss-me-never, and a wondrous glow that mimicked the aurora and the rainbows after storms and the dreams of men unrealized and lost shown about her head.

  “Welcome home, Wanderfoot,” she greeted, her voice as soft as kitten fur and a child’s wishes on a star.

  Without knowing why, Barbro inclined her head slightly in recognition that she was in the presence of royalty. “I had forgotten you called me that.”

  “Once I did, when you were asked to stay and fled.”

  She shook her head in despair. “I was frightened. I wanted my child back.”

  The Queen looked off into the distance. “So you took him. But now he is here again.”

  “With Barraboo. My grandchild. I have come for them.”

  “With war machines and weapons and the men who use them. Very like another time.”

  Barbro was crying. “A terrible mistake. I am sorry.”

  Ayoch appeared, knelt and bowed to the Queen. “All finished, Lady Moon. Gone into the void, men and machines and their dark intent.” He glanced at Barbro. “We were not ready for such wickedness last time. But we can learn and we can adapt and we can be what we need to be. Cockatoo!”

  His crowing rattled her further. “I want to see my son and granddaughter. Please let me.”

  “So you can take them away again? So you can return them to lives you believe will be so much better than ours? To drugs that will numb their minds and steal their wits away? To drinks and potions and pills that will give them no relief? To soul-stealing machines that will offer alternative realities both sterile and empty? To links to millions of words spoken by faceless voices in meaningless interactions that will never allow for the touch of flesh and offer only the pretense of true caring? Why, Wanderfoot? So they can be lost in your cities and your teeming numb
ers and never know loving and never live unfettered or experience the bliss of wildflowers and close companionships or escape the futility in everything they do? You would give them air filled with ashes and dust and tar and poison to breathe? You would give them concrete roads and stone block walls that rise up and crush their spirit and steal their hopes? You would see them rot from within and without; you would witness them suffer crushing defeats of rejection and indifference? All that, would you give them, even knowing they would never be made happy and fulfilled in the way they would if they remained here with me!”

  The Queen’s words floated on the air, spoken in a voice absent of disdain and filled only with sadness. “Come hither with me, Wanderfoot,” she whispered. “Come see what you ask your child and grandchild to forgo.”

  She stepped away and Barbro followed obediently, even though aware that what she would be shown was false trickery of the sort that Sherrinford had warned so strongly against.

  Ayoch bounded along beside her, his half-human face wreathed in a smile. “You are so sure in your wrongness. Listen to her!”

  In an emerald glade washed with the glow of firethorn and starlight she found Jimmy and Barraboo. Jimmy had the baby lying on a blanket spread wide, her chubby legs kicking and her curious arms reaching for the kiss-me-never vine he dangled over her. There seemed no pretenses about what she was seeing, no false coloring of the landscape or dressing up of father and daughter, no attempt at recreating fiction to approximate truth. Barbro understood. What she was seeing was real and present. The Queen had learned a few things since last they met.

  “This is what you would take from them,” the Queen declared. “This is what you would steal away.”

  “No,” Barbro whispered. “This is what I would give them back again. This is what I would help them find. You would let them see this, but I would let them live it. You would give them this only in their minds, and I would give them this for real. Or at least I would try. Not all would be good and kind, but much of it would. Better they see life for what it is than for what pretense would make it seem. Here, there is only the latter.”