Land of Unreason (5 page)

            He came to a halt on a
landing opposite a brown door, and as the other two took the circuit that
carried them out of sight, yanked out a key and pressed it into Barber's hand.
"So, and nimbly," he whispered, then bounded up the stairs after the
Queen.

            There seemed no lock or even
latch on the door. Wondering why he had been given the key, Barber pushed. He
found himself in a kind of sitting room with tapestry-covered benches along the
walls wherever they were not cut by archways. Each of the latter led to another
room on a different level, some up, some down. He raced from door to door,
seeing nothing promising till he reached one that gave on a room in which an
elaborate gold-and-damask four-poster bed was visible, with another door
beyond. That ought to be it. Barber leaped down a step, past the bed, and tried
the door. No soap.

            The key? But this door was
as innocent of keyholes as that on the stairway. Perhaps it was bolted on the
other side. He knocked. The wood emitted a dull sound, indicative of solidity,
but there was no answer. Using the metal key to make the noise louder, he knocked
again. Instantly the door swung open and he found himself looking across a wide
apartment at an extremely pretty girl in a thin dress, seated before a mirror
and winding something starry into her hair. She had wings.

            At the sound of Barber's
entry she turned a startled face in his direction. "The Queen!" he
said. "Oberon says for you to clear out."

            The girl's mouth fell open,
and as it did so there was the sound of another door somewhere among the
labyrinth of rooms, accompanied by Titania's penetrating voice.

            The girl leaped from her
stool and dashed to a closet. In a matter of seconds she was out with an armful
of silky garments and a wad of fancy shoes in one hand, scooting past Barber as
he held the door for her. He pulled it to behind them.

            "Lock, quickly!"
she said. "You have the key?"

            Barber gazed
uncomprehendingly from the lockless door to the instrument he still held
clutched in his hand.

            "Ah, stupid!" she
cried, and snatching it from his hand, passed it through the loop-shaped
handle, muttering something meanwhile, and turned to examine him from top to
toe. "A changeling babe, I'll warrant," she said finally, "else
you had not been so ignorant of means. Even shapings alter not these."

            Barber felt a surge of
irritation over these continual references to his babyhood. "I suppose you
could call me a changeling," he replied, a trifle coldly, "but I'm
not a baby—by any means. Permit me to present myself. I am Fred Barber,
of—" He took a step backward to bow as he made the formal introduction. As
he did so the pit of his knee touched the edge of a chair and he went down into
it, with no damage but complete loss of dignity.

            An expression of surprise
flashed over her face and she gave a tittering laugh. "Oh, la, Sir
Changeling," she said, "to take advantage of a poor girl so! No babe
indeed, but a very Don Cupid. Well—" she put her head on one side and
surveyed him brightly, like a bird—"I've played pat-lips with less lovely
lords, so let's on."

            "Huh?"

            The girl dropped her armful of
clothes, took two quick steps, and was on Barber's lap, with both arms round
his neck. " 'Ware my wings," she said. Her hair had a faint perfume.

            "Hey!" said
Barber, though not at all displeased by the sensations he was experiencing.
"What have I done to deserve this?"

            Her eyes widened. "Is't
possible you are so ignorant, sweet simpleton? Yet I forget—you are a stranger.
Why, then, you took a single chair, not a bench nor the floor, nor offered me a
place to sit, and we're alone. In the exact custom of our realm, that is to say
you wish to play loblolly—oh, shame! And I thought you meant id" Her face
flushed.

            There was a knock at the
inner door.

            "That's Oberon,"
said Barber. "I really mean it, but—"

            "Ho, Barber!" came
the King's voice muffled by the door.

            "Alack for
might-have-been," said the girl, and kissed him.

            "Ha, Barber fellow!
Open!" came from the door. The girl slid to her feet, gathered her gowns
and slippers with a single motion, danced over to the window and leaped lightly
to the sill. Barber jumped to his feet, but before he could reach the window
she was gone, her gauzy wings glittering on the downbeat in the moonlight. He
returned to the door and tapped it with the key. It opened to reveal Oberon
talking amicably with Titania and Gosh. "So, a good day, then my
love," said the King, "and goodhap."

            He bowed, came through and
closed the door after him, then clapped Barber lustily on the back. "Well
and wisely done, fellow! You have our royal favor. But, hist, take an older
man's advice—if you must make merry with our Fairyland doxies, choose one
without wings."

            "Why?" asked
Barber, wondering how much Oberon knew about the incident in the chair, and how
he could know.

            "Take thought, man.
Merely imagine."

            "Oh."

            "Now then, to the next
matter—your garb. It's not fit for the court. Stand here before me."

            Oberon made a series of
rapid passes with his hands, reciting:

-

"One,
two, three, jour,

Doublet
and hose, such as Huon bore;

Uno',
do', tre', quaro',

Clothe
to warm both flesh and marrow,

Ichi,
ni, san, shi

Garb
him then, as he should be ..."

-

           
Fred Barber felt
a soft impact; looked down, and to his utter horror found himself covered with
a complete suit of tree frogs—hundreds of them, clinging in a continuous layer
by their sucker-toed feet. He yelped and jumped. All the tree frogs jumped too,
cascading over the floor, the furniture and the frenzied King, who was bouncing
with rage.

            "Ten thousand
devils!" he shrieked. "Pox, murrain, plague, disaster upon this
stinking puke-stocking shaping! I'll—"

            Barber recovered first,
bowing amid the leaping batrachians, his diplomatic training asserting itself
enough to make him remember that distraction was the first step in curing a
fury like this. "I beg Your Majesty's pardon for making so much trouble.
But if I may trouble you still further, would you explain to me what this
shaping is? If I am to serve Your Majesty, it seems I ought to know about
it."

            Oberon's rage came to a halt
in mid-flight. He rubbed
his chin.
"The curse of our domain, and
insult to our sovranty, lad. If with your mortal wit you can do aught to alter
them, all favor's yours to the half of the kingdom. Look you—you come from a
land where natural law is immutable as the course of the planets. But in our misfortunate
realm there's nought fixed; the very rules of life change at times, altogether,
without warning and in no certain period ... Oh, fear nothing; we'll have the
royal tailor in to—"

            "And these changes are
called shapings?"

            "Aye; you have hit it.
There's an old prophecy gives us to hope, somewhat about a hero with a red
beard, whose coming will change the laws of these laws, but I'm grown rank
skeptic in the matter. There is this also, that with each shaping things grow
faintly worse, by no more than a mustard seed, d'you understand? Yon fairies in
the Queen's train, when once they began playing, hopped happily all night. Now
they grow tired, need a new stimulus, which accounts for my lady's humor, who
likes joy about her. And here's my great jewel, that before the last shaping
had the property of—Why, where's the bauble?"

            Oberon looked down at the
starry front of his doublet. " 'Tis gone—I know, 'twas that brown fiend,
the Hindu cutpurse. I've been robbed! I—the King-robbed in my
royal
palace!"
Oberon was hopping around the room like one of the tree
frogs. "Devils burn him! Scorpions sting him! Lightning fry him! The
sanguine little cheat, the stinking blackguard!"

            Barber gave up and put his
fingers in his ears. When the torrent had died down a trifle, he removed them
and asked, "Why doesn't Your Majesty tan his hide? Sounds as though he
needed discipline."

            "Discipline him?
Titania dotes on him
in extremis,
and he's her ward. I can do nothing,
though he intends murder most foul, without oversetting what little law remains
in this plagued land. Ah, faugh! Never wear a crown, Barber fellow; 'tis light
enough on the brow, but on mind and heart heavy." He yawned. "To bed;
get you gone, the third arch by the left if the room's still there after this
last foul shaping. An elf will attend you."

            Barber left the king
unlacing his shoes and singing away to himself quite cheerfully:

-

"But
when I came, alas! to wive,

With
hey, ho, the wind and the rain;

By
swaggering could I never thrive,

For
the rain it raineth every day."

-

           
The room was
still there, but with neither glass nor curtains to the windows, and the level
lines of a morning sun streaming across the floor. Apparently the nocturnal
fairies went to sleep as naturally in a glare of sunlight as mortals did in
darkness. Barber wondered if he could do the same. He thought maybe he could,
having been up all night, and turned back the covers of the enormous
silk-covered bed that nearly filled the room. As he lay down it occurred to him
that there was something particularly undreamlike in falling asleep in a dream;
and that going calmly to sleep was hardly in tune with any form of insanity.
This gave him a fine sense of satisfaction in the actuality of the experience
that was registering itself on his senses till he remembered that Oberon had
described the experience itself as utterly lawless. Even the means of getting
back to his own world—if this were the illusion and not that—would presumably
be adventitious. Still trying to unravel the logical difficulties this
involved, he drifted off.

-

            A gentle clearing of the
throat awakened him. The sound went on and on, as diminutive as a mouse's alarm
clock. Barber ignored it till he found he would have to turn over anyway, then
opened his eyes.

            A small, wizened elf with a
leather bag in one hand stood by his bed. "Gweed morrow, young sir,"
said this mannikin. "I'll be the tailor royal. His Radiance bade me attend
ye."

            Barber slid out of bed, his
toes searching futilely for slippers that were not there. The elf whipped a
tape measure, its markings spaced unevenly as though an inch were sometimes one
length, sometimes another.