until just”-Camille glanced at her stave-“some eighty-two days past.”
“Nay, mademoiselle,” said the man. “You have mistaken us for someone else. We have lived in Lis for nigh seventeen years, as time would be measured in the mortal realm, and have never been elsewhere in all those days.”
“Then you are twins to those I know,” declared Camille.
The woman’s eyes widened. “Oh, ma’amselle, is it true? Twins? We did not know.” She turned to the smith. “Oh, Georges, mayhap we have kith after all.”
“How can you not know whether you have kindred?” asked Camille.
A horn sounded. Camille stepped to the opening and looked toward the inn. Passengers were boarding.
“ Chpp! ” chirped Scruff, as if to call Camille’s attention to the coach.
The man sighed. “We have no memory beyond our village life here.”
Camille frowned. “No memory?”
The woman’s dark blue eyes filled with sadness. “It is as Georges has said, for it seems that one day some sixteen years past we were simply here. Neither of us knew how we had come, or where from, or even who we were-”
Again the horn sounded, and again Scruff chirped in response.
“-only that we were man and wife. And so I took the name Clarisse”-she turned toward the man, and smiled into his eyes of brown-“and he, a master smith, it seems, took the name Georges. But in truth, as anyone in Lis will attest, we have not set one foot from this town in all the days following, and so, ma’amselle, you are mistaken in thinking we are those who we clearly are not. But if we have twins at Summerwood Manor, mayhap ’tis a link to our unknown past. We should go, Georges, to wherever this Summerwood Manor lies.”
The horn sounded for the third time, and the red coach began to roll.
“I am sorry to tell you this,” said Camille, “but a trip to the manor will gain you nought, for no one lives there now; they have all gone missing.”
“Missing?” said the woman, her face falling.
The man, the smith, looked at Camille’s rucksack and stave and waterskin and bedroll and said, “Mademoiselle, if you are to go on that coach…” He gestured.
Groaning in frustration, Camille turned and stepped into the road and held up an arm to the oncoming coach. It slowed.
“I am searching for my love,” said Camille over her shoulder to the pair, “somewhere east of the sun and west of the moon. When I find him, together we will seek all the others, those who vanished as well. And when we find them, then perhaps we will resolve the dilemma of exactly who you are.”
The red coach rolled to a stop. One of the lads jumped down and opened the near-side door and lowered the drop-step. “Ma’amselle.”
Camille looked up at the driver, and held up a golden coin and two silvers. “The lad will take it,” said Louis. “Your luggage, too.”
Camille gave the footman the coins and her bedroll and rucksack. He tossed the goods up to the lad atop, then handed her into the coach and closed the door after. Once inside, Camille turned and leaned out the door window. “I shall return, I promise.-And, oh, do you know of a place east of the sun and west of the moon, or know you a bard named Rondalo?”
The woman who called herself Clarisse and the man who named himself Georges shook their heads Non, then each raised a hand in au revoir, the smith calling out, “Bon voyage, and may you find what you seek.”
With a chrk of tongue and a crack of whip, Louis urged the eight horses forward, and the red coach surged into motion.
Inside, even as the passengers stared at this fille with a sparrow on her shoulder, Camille found a place among them. Judging that Camille was a bona fide passenger, the others introduced themselves, though Camille remembered not a single name, for her thoughts were quite occupied o’er the paradox of Blanche and Renaud.
Of a sudden Lisane’s words came back to her: “Here is the two of cups upright; it indicates harmony between two souls… its position in the array seems to point to two souls you do know, yet mayhap in truth do not… your intuition, or mayhap your first thought, may be wrong.”
How did Lisane know? Rather, how did the cards know? Yet I would swear those two are indeed Blanche and Renaud, for I could not mistake them-each of the same shape, the same hair, the same eye “Non!” Camille blurted aloud. “Not the same eyes! Hers were dark blue, not black! His were brown, not grey! They are truly not my dear Blanche and Renaud.”
At her outburst, the other passengers looked at Camille as if she had gone quite mad. But one, a rather gaunt and pasty-complexioned man, made a sacramental gesture and said, “Mithras knows, my dear, the eyes are the windows of the soul.”
And toward distant walls of twilight the red coach rolled on and on.
25
Forty-two days altogether did Camille and Scruff spend in the company of the red coach, forty-two days and six twilight crossings to go from the village of Lis to the city of Les Iles. Two of those days had been lost because of broken wheels, and another day while waiting for a fresh team. An additional handful of days were lost owing to a daylong drenching downpour that had turned the road into a mire, and the horses had been hard-pressed to go but a mile or two to reach the very next town. There did Louis lay over until the road had dried out enough to press on.
All along the way-from Lis to Les Iles-Louis had often stopped to water and feed the horses and to allow the passengers and coachmen alike to stretch their legs and relieve themselves among the trees or within thickets or beyond rock outcroppings. At times on steep slopes to lighten the load and ease the haul, Louis had called for the passengers and footmen-Girard and Thoreau, both fourteen, both quite skinny, both madly smitten with Camille-to disembark and walk up the long hills, at other times to walk down; when this had occurred, Gautier, the obnoxious stout man-the one who had invited Camille to his bedchamber-complained that he had not spent good coin to slog all the way to Les Iles; and while the others had suffered his diatribes in silence, Scruff had chattered scoldingly, as if telling him to move along, and quietly, if you please.
They had passed through a succession of woodland hamlets and small towns, where they had taken meals and spent overnight in a variety of lodgings-from quaint to primitive to homelike. At each of the those stops, Gautier would imbibe entirely too much wine, and would then single out Camille and make quite lewd remarks; she had found ways to avoid him, though occasionally she was then afflicted with Eudes, the gaunt, pasty-faced man; he would find her and expound upon the evils besetting the world-mortal and Fey alike-and call for rigorous abstinence in all things, for surely that’s the way Mithras meant it to be, except, of course, for the purpose of bearing young, which no doubt Mithras desired. Much of the time in these various towns Camille had gone about and had spoken with the elders and others, but none knew of the place she sought, nor knew of the bard she named, and none had any maps whatsoever of Faery and in fact thought the notion quite odd. The red coach would leave next morn and press onward, and Camille’s spirits had fallen with each day, for nought would stay the withered blossom vanishing from the stave.
As to the other passengers, in general they had been pleasant, though at times they had complained of the jolting, or one or two had debated long and at times loudly with the pasty-faced disciple of Mithras over Truth and Devotion and the Meaning of Life.
Occasionally, Louis had told the passengers that there would be no town to stop in for a midday meal, and that he planned on pausing somewhere along the road for such, and he had bidden each of them to arrange for a small luncheon to carry on board. Gautier had always managed to acquire a bottle of wine to imbibe during these pauses, and then only the glares of all the passengers had quelled his lascivious remarks.
Along the route, some passengers had reached their destinations, and they had alighted and gone on their way with hardly a fare-thee-well. Occasionally new passengers had gotten on the red coach to travel the road to a
