Little, Big

come.”

“They?”

Lilac turned up her eyes in mock-stupefaction. “Oh, come on,” she said. “You just have to hurry, that’s all, so as not to be late…”

“Nobody’s going anywhere now,” George said, putting the milk in Lilac’s hands. She looked at it curiously, and put it down. “Now you’re hack, and that’s great, I don’t know from where or how, but you’re here and safe, and we’re staying here.”

‘Oh, but you must come,” Lilac said, taking the sleeve of his dressing gown. “You have to. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise?” George asked.

“It won’t come out right,” Lilac said softly. “The Tale,” she said, even more softly.

“Oho,” George said. “Oho, the Tale. Well.” He stood before her arms akimbo, nodding a skeptical nod but lost for an answer.

Auberon watched them, father and daughter, thinking: It’s not all over, then. That had been the thought he had begun to think as soon as he entered the old kitchen, or rather not to think but to know, to know by the rising of the hair on his nape and the weird swarm of feeling, the feeling that his eyes were crossing and yet seeing more clearly than before. Not all over: he had lived long in a small room, a folding bedroom, and had explored its every corner, had come to know it as he knew his own bowels, and had decided: this is all right, this will do, a sort of life can be lived here, here’s a chair by the fire and a bed to sleep in and a window to look out of; if it was constricted, that was made up for by how much simple sense it made. And now it was as though he had lowered the front of the mirrored wardrobe and found not a bed clothed in patched sheets and an old quilt but a portal, a ship in full sail raising anchor, a windy dawn and an avenue beneath tall trees disappearing far out of sight.

He shut it up, fearful. He’d had his adventure. He’d followed outlandish paths, and hadn’t for no good reason given them up. He got up, and clumped to the window in his rubber boots. Unmilked, the goats bewailed in their apartments.

“No,” he said. “I’m not going, Lilac.”

“But you haven’t even heard the reasons,” Lilac said.

“I don’t care.”

“The War! The Peace!” Lilac said.

“Don’t care.” He’d stick. He wouldn’t miss the whole world if it passed him by on the way there, and it probably would; or perhaps he would miss it, but he’d rather that than take his life in his teeth and pass into that sea again, that sea Desire, now that he’d escaped it, and found a shore. Never.

“Auberon,” Lilac said softly. “Sylvie will be there.”

Never. Never never never.

“Sylvie?” George said.

“Sylvie,” Lilac said.

When there had been no further word from either of them for some time, Lilac said, “She told me to tell you…”

“She didn’t!” Auberon said, turning on her. “She didn’t, it’s a lie! No! I don’t know why you want to fool us, I don’t know why or for what you came, but you’ll say anything, won’t you, won’t you? Anything but the truth! Just like all of them, because it doesn’t matter to you. No, no, you’re just as bad as they are, I know it, just as bad as that Lilac that George blew up, that fake one. No different.”

“Oh, great,” George said, casting his eyes upward. “That’s just great.”

“Blew up?” Lilac said, looking at George.

“It was not my fault,” George said, rifling a furious look at Auberon.

“So that’s what happened to it,” Lilac said thoughtfully. Then she laughed. “Oh, they were mad! When the ashes drifted down. It was hundreds of years old, and the last one they had.” She climbed down from the table, her blue skirt riding up. “I have to go now,” she said, and started toward the door.

“No,” Auberon said. “Wait.”

“Go! No,” George said, and took her arm.

“There’s so much to do,” Lilac said. “And this is all settled here, so… Oh,” she said. “I forgot. Your way is mostly in the forest, so it would be best if you had a guide. Somebody who knows the woods, and can help you along. Bring a coin, for the ferryman; dress warm. There are lots of doors, but some are quicker than others. Don’t be too long, or you’ll miss the banquet!” She was at the door, but rushed back to leap into George’s arms. She circled his neck in her thin golden arms, kissed his lean cheeks, and scrambled down again. “It’s going to be so much fun,” she said; she glanced once at them, smiling a smile of simple sweet wickedness and pleasure, and was gone. They heard the pat of her bare feet on the old linoleum outside, but didn’t hear the street door open, or shut.

George took from a leaning hatrack his overalls and coat, pulled them on, and then his boots; he went to the door, but when he reached it he seemed to forget what he was about, or why he hurried. He looked around himself, found no clue, and went to sit at the table.

Auberon slowly took the chair opposite him, and for a long time they sat silent, sometimes starting, but seeing nothing, while a certain light or meaning was subtracted from the room, returning it to ordinariness, turning it to a kitchen where porridge was made and goat’s milk drunk and two bachelors sat rubber-boot to rubber-boot at the table, with chores still to be done.

And a journey to go: that was left.

“Okay,” George said. “What?” He looked up, but Auberon hadn’t spoken.

“No,” Auberon said.

“She said,” George said, but then couldn’t exactly say what; couldn’t forget what she had said but (what with the goats bawling, what with the snow outside, what with his own heart emptying and filling) couldn’t remember it either.

“Sylvie,” Auberon said.

“A guide,” George said, snapping his fingers.

There were footsteps in the hall.

“A guide,” George said. “She said we’d need a guide.”

They both turned to look at the door, which just then opened.

Fred Savage came in, wearing his rubber boots, and ready for his breakfast.

“Guide?” he said. “Somebody goan someplace?”

Lady with the Alligator Purse

“Is it her?” Sophie asked. She pushed aside the window’s drape further to look.

“It must be,” Alice said.

Not often enough now did headlights turn in at the stone gateposts for it to be very likely anyone else. The long, low car, black in the twilight, swept the house with its brilliant eyes as it bounced up the rutty drive; it pulled around in front of the porch, its lights went out but its impatient burble went on for a while. Then it fell silent.

“George?” Sophie asked. “Auberon?”

“I don’t see them. No one but her.”

“Oh dear.”

“All right,” Alice said. “Her at least.” They turned away from the window to the expectant faces of those gathered in the double drawing room. “She’s here,” Alice said. “We’ll start soon.”

Ariel Hawksquill, after stilling the car’s motor, sat for a moment listening to the new silence. Then she worked her way out of the seat’s grasp. She took from the seat next to her an alligator shoulder bag, and stood in the slight drizzle that was falling; she breathed deeply of the evening air, and thought: Spring.