Land of Unreason (23 page)

            "No!" came
Arvicola's frantic stage-whisper. "It is forbidden!" But in the
flickering moment before the glow faded Barber had just time to see what it was
had moved.

            It was his own reflection in
a big mirror; and beneath that mirror on a little shelf lay Titania's
crook-handled wand.

            He released the worm, which
went slithering off into the water, back and forth, and snatched for the wand.
As his hand touched it, the glow from Arvi-cola's light just permitted him to
notice what he had not seen before—some lettering, so deeply engrailed into the
glass as to be part of its structure. He shoved his face close and read:

-

"On
the pathway you trace

The
face that you face

Is
the median place."

-

           
"Come—oh,
quick!" said the vole's voice close in his ear; her hand gripped his wrist
urgently. The thought struck him that here was another of those mysterious
shrines like that in the Kobold Caverns, and he pulled loose, turned, reaching
for the mirror with the tip of the wand.

            A violent electric shock ran
up his arm and all through him, but before he could analyze it or even think of
it, there was a clank of armor. He caught the flickering reflection of Acravis'
blade, heard him pant with effort once. Then he vanished. In the place where he
had been, in the glow of the swimming worm, was a new, deeper darkness; a
shapeless something that almost filled that side of the chamber, with two
expressionless eyes that reflected.

            At that same instant there
came to Barber's ears a deafening gurgle of water; stinging wetness in his eyes
and nostrils, crushing pressure on his chest. He saw only vaguely that Arvicola
was flashing past, heard her shout, "Fred—oh, Fred!" in a voice that trailed
off into an agonized scream as the blackness wrapped round her. He tried to
swing the anlace, opened his mouth to shout, found it suddenly filled with
water and himself strangling, choking, desperate for air; struck out
frantically, and felt himself rising, up—up, toward a pinpoint of light above.
The last glimpse was of Sir Lacomar, hewing away two-handed in the direction of
those lidless eyes, and then he was swimming.

            His head broke surface. He
tried to take a deep breath and burst into a violent spasm of coughing that
brought up a pint of water before he got, at long last, his precious gulp of
air. Too weak to do more than dog-paddle, he propelled himself feebly toward
the shore.

            The bright moon of Fairyland
was above, picking out around him a little river that wound among tree-lined
banks. The scene was cousin-german to that he had left, how long ago?—for the
dive that had turned him into a frog. He was no frog now. As a frog you did not
choke in water, you could really swim. No; frog, man, or whatever he was, he
could forget that half-formed thought of diving back to Arvicola's rescue. He
had gone through another metamorphosis, a shaping as these Fairylanders called
it, no turning back ever.

            Something was attached to
his back, hampering him grievously. His knee bumped bottom, and he almost
sprawled, but managed to crawl the rest of the way, dripping and surprised as
he touched dry earth to find he was still holding Titania's wand. He almost
collapsed, but the thing attached to his back brought him up and made him look
over his shoulder.

            The bumps that had been on
his back at Oberon's palace and had grown so astonishingly in the Kobold
Caverns had sprouted full. He had a well-developed pair of wings, springing
from the lower ends of his shoulder blades. And the effort to stretch one of
them out for inspection told him that he also possessed the necessary structure
of bone and muscle to work them. The effort ended in a gasp as the wings stood
fully spread and revealed.

            They were bat wings.

-

            The wand was still clutched
in his hand. For a moment or two he gazed at it, only half comprehending its
import in the wave of revulsion and self-hatred that swept over him. Bat wings;
that explained it. He had turned, or turned himself, into some kind of
willy-nilly devil, condemned to bring evil to everyone he touched.

            For that was the only
possible explanation of the chain of disasters that followed his actions. If it
had not been for his willful insistence on venturing to Hirudia, Arvicola might
have lived out her carefree existence—and the doughty but dimwitted
crawfish-knights ... They might have come through then, but for his
carelessness with the light. He thought again of the girl's appeal for help,
which he had so ill answered, and for one wild moment contemplated diving into
the pool again. Dead leeches were afloat on its surface, unpleasantly breaking
the moonlight ripple. No; down there he would be a man again, and they crawfish
and leech and vole. He had gone through the metamorphosis, another change as
radical as the one that had brought him to this world. Perhaps there would be
no escape from it but along the route of an endless series of such unsought
adventurings. He was a god to the water-world now, and like most gods, of
limited and negative powers, without capacity for helping those he liked. One
could only carry on .

            Toward disaster for the
other inhabitants of this unreasonable world. He thought of Noah Fawcett and
his declining stock of iron tools; had brought the kobolds to ruin too, though
they probably deserved it. Even the woodsprite, Malacea—

            "I knew, I knew,"
said a voice. "Who dares say I cannot see tomorrow? Even beneath that
great beard I knew."

            Barber jumped a foot, sat
down on the tails of his own wings, jumped up again to flap them and the next
moment found himself scrambling and clinging among the branches overhead. That
sugary accent could belong only to the girl he had just been thinking about. He
looked down; sure enough, there she was, arms outstretched and gazing at him.
He wrapped the wings about him, suddenly conscious of the nudity to which he
had given no attention while a frog, and hunched on the limb like a gargoyle.

            She trilled laughter at him,
then in a breath turned serious: "I crave pardon," she said,
"for forgetting that laughter makes you mortals angry. If it be within
your rules of conduct to forgive the fault without penalty, I beg you, do; if
not, I'll gladly bear whatever you put upon me."

            A reply seemed in order.
"I don't want to put anything on you," said Barber sensibly. "I
want my clothes, to put on me."

            Her eyes narrowed
calculatingly; and she flung up one hand in a sharp gesture. "Stupid that
I am to forget mortals are under no laws compelling conduct but those they
impose on themselves! Yet how am I to serve you in this? I have not hid
them."

            "No, but—" began
Barber, and stopped, embarrassed at showing embarrassment before this child of
nature.

            "But they're near and
you'd be solitary to put them on—is that it? Poor mortal, I suppose that is
your modesty, clinging like a remnant of the world you came from. Discard it;
we are each other's fate, you and I, and in this land of Fairy, hiding from
such fate is presumption."

            She was certainly speaking
the truth, but Barber hoped only the truth as she understood it. The thought of
this full-bosomed and cloying wench after Cola made him shudder. "All the
same, I want my clothes," he said obstinately.

            She spun round, moving her
hands in and out, then fixing like a pointer dog, took a dozen steps and was
stooping at a clump of fern. She lifted something triumphantly—Barber could
make out the flash of color that would be his clothes—but the next instant
staggered back and dropped with a little shriek. "The Metal! It burns! O
lovely mortal, help me!"

            It would have taken an ox to
be impervious to that appeal. Barber spread his wings and parachuted down
beside her, pulling her away from contact with the sword which had caused the
trouble. The cry was no phony on Malacca's part; a six-inch gash with singed
edges showed in the filmy material of her dress, and beneath it the forearm
bore a long, angry welt.

            As Barber looked at it, she
pushed herself up to a sitting posture and flung the other arm around his neck.
"Damn it!" he said, trying to push her away. "Malacea, you're a
woman of one idea."

            "And that idea old. But
not stale; they say the world still has a use for it.

-

"Come
live with me and be my love,

And
we will all the pleasures prove—"

-

           
"I might be
glad to if I didn't have other business and weren't afraid your boy friend the
Plum might find us together again."

            "Oh, you need fear him
no longer."

            "I know it. I ate some
of his fruit."

            "He has escaped that
spell. He gave your wand to some wizard of the Pool—the Base One, the Under One,
I am not sure of his name—and received an enchantment in exchange, to free him
from the power of those who had eaten his fruit. I meant rather that you can
handle the Metal. With that—" she pointed at the sword and he felt her
shudder slightly—"at the door of my place, he can never enter. We can love
nightlong and fearless."

            "And in the day you'd
have to go to your tree. It isn't logical."

            "What does that mean? A
magic word?"

            "No, it means according
to the laws of consistent reasoning. Things equal to the same thing are equal
to each other, nothing can be both true and false, and two and two make
four."

            "A mortal word; and
like most such, not true."

            "Oh, but it is."
Barber disengaged himself and picked up four pebbles, two in each hand.
"Look," he said, "two!" and then opened the other hand to
show the others, "Two!" He clapped the two hands together and opened
them again, "Four!"

            "No," said
Malacea.

            Barber looked and gaped. His
opened hands held five pebbles.

            It might have been an
accident, or she might have dropped one in. He tossed away the extra stone,
shut both hands resolutely, and clapped them together again.

            "Now will you admit
there are four?" he demanded belligerently.

            "No," said
Malacea. She was right. There were eight pebbles, but this time the tree sprite
did not laugh.

            "My love and
fate," she said, laying a hand on his arm, "let me beg you, once for
all, to lay aside those stiff mortal thoughts. There's no living in a country,
or a world, but by its laws. There have been mortals here that could not. They
wander like sad shadows till some accident pitches them back to their sty, or
they turn to mere walking vegetables, like one who keeps a farm near here and
whom you have doubtless seen. But this time it is more than a little important,
and not me alone, though you are my very dear; for we of
the
forest can
often see hidden things, and I swear by my life that of all who have ever come
here you are the nearest to fulfilling the prophecy. If you but hold to the
true line."

            "What prophecy? And
what is the true line?"

            "Why, the prophecy of
the redbeard that shall mean life and grace to us all! Look, you have the wand
and the red beard and the power of Metal! And for the true line, that is no
more than to hold straight to the task in the face of all impediments."

            Barber's hand flew to his
chin. He was aware that his beard had grown since his experience in the
water-world, but the touch showed him how surprisingly it had spread into the
great chest mattress of a nineteenth-century patriarch—and it was red, all
right, the end strands showing a brick color which he never would have believed
his chin capable of producing.