why I thought so: The fruit was always in season there; their island never suffered winter’s cold or summer’s heat as did the mortal world. Their doors were guarded by dogs of gold and silver, made by Hephaestos. And their ships were magical. They sailed anywhere from any port to any other in a single night of sailing, and they needed no hand at the tiller, no oar nor sail, because the ships knew what their captains desired without a word, and a living spirit moved them. They also left Odysseus on the beach of his country surrounded by gifts, asleep, and stole away without seeing anyone or waking him up. Don’t you think that was strange? I mean, suppose the prince of, I don’t know, Sweden, were stranded on Dover Beach, and Princess Diana found him naked, and brought him to court to get a ride home. Don’t you think, instead of leaving him all alone and asleep, dropped off in a back alley of Oslo, Her Majesty’s Government would at least communicate with the government of Sweden to…”
“Babbling! Babbling!” I said. “Don’t make me make another rule!”
“Well, I am saying that’s why I thought they were fairy folk. They were shy of being seen.”
I said, “And the magic metal dogs didn’t give it away?”
Vanity broke in with a question. “Hey! Was there a range limit?”
Quentin said, “On what?”
“You said their ships could read minds. Did you have to be aboard the ship for it to work?”
Quentin simply smiled at her, and looked proud.
That smile brought a chill to my heart. No, I did not disapprove of what they felt for each other, nothing like that. It was just that I had feelings for Victor. And Victor never looked at me that way. He never looked proud of me.
4.
Vanity spread her hands and shut her eyes. She said aloud, “Ship! Whatever ship Princess Nausicaa once owned, I have forgotten you, but you must remember me, now! Or if any ship wishes the favor of the princess of the land which built you, listen to me! The boundary between…”
She opened one eye.
“Myriagon,” I whispered.
She closed her eye. “…between Myriagon, and this place, must be opened! Sail there, come here, bring my friend Amelia Windrose…”
Quentin said softly, “Phaethusa, daughter of Helion.”
“…Um, who is also known as Phaethusa, daughter of He-lion, her powers. You knew my thought before I asked! Let it be that you set sail two nights ago, so that you already have been to Myriagon, and are even now approaching with your cargo! I conjure thee, I conjure thee, I conjure thee!”
She opened her eyes and looked at us. She smiled.
I said, “Did you feel anything happen?”
Her smile faded. “Was I supposed to feel something?”
Quentin said, “Maybe we should go to the harbor, I mean, if there is a magic ship coming… Ack! Yikes!”
He grabbed Vanity around the waist and picked her up off the table.
She giggled and looked pleased. Does love make people stupid? Meanwhile, I said, “What is wrong?”
“Don’t you see it?” He was staring at the tabletop.
5.
The surface of the table turned translucent green, then leaf green, then clear as crystal. I was looking down a long tube or tunnel of crystal to something far, far below.
It was a head. A severed head, with its neck bones, torn throat-muscles and veins, all showing from beneath the matted tangle of the beard. The black hair was spread out in each direction from the skull, tangled and knotted around the green things growing to each side. It looked like someone had thrown a man’s head into the center of the ring of bushes.
No. Not bushes. Oak trees. Oaks trees set, not in a ring, but in a widening spiral with this head at the center.
I tried to estimate the size of the giant head, if a fully grown oak tree only reached the distance from the back of its skull to its ear, or its cheek.
It opened its dead eyes.
Like brown water in a rusty pipe, a voice, deep, slow, coughing and creaking, rose from far below: “Who trespasses the bounds I watch?”
6.
Suddenly, it seemed to me as if the tunnel of crystal down which I looked was not “down,” nor left nor right, fore nor back, nor any other direction that had a name. It was an opening into subspace, the low-energy direction I called “red.”
Quentin opened his mouth to speak, and then checked himself, looking at Vanity.
Vanity looked at the both of us, spread her hands, and shrugged. Some of the glow from the champagne was leaving us at that moment, and she looked frightened and clouded in her wits, as if she was having trouble concentrating.
She said, “I am not a trespasser.”
The dead mouth spoke again: “Burner of ships, daughter of virtue, I know you, though you do not. You stand with a fallen one born old before he was young, from lifeless seas beyond the seas of life; you stand with an unknown one born before the fall, from dark heavens above the heavens which hold stars. They are the foes of the Green Earth and the Blue Sea, of bright heaven above the world and dark underworld. At your word, I destroy them. Speak, and I let slip the Wild Hunt.”
She said, “These are my friends and I love them. Don’t hurt them.”
The dead face kept its motionless eyes turned toward her, quiet as a statue in a graveyard.
She said, “My friend Amelia is closer than a sister to me. She needs her powers from her home to undo a great wrong. Let her powers pass through to her. If any ship of mine is coming on my errands, let it pass.”
Vanity’s face was shining with sweat. In a cold room in the middle of winter, she was sweating.
Eventually the creaking, slow voice spoke again. “Cromm Cruich the Worm of Mist rose against me, and my songs threw him down. The Sons of Nemed, the Men of the Bolg, the Parthalonians, and the Giants of Fomor attempted these shores, and were driven back to Eire, or driven underground.
“Rome’s eagle stooped here for a time, clawing and tearing at this land, but Caesar lost his sword to Cymbaline, and Constantine called back the haughty legionnaires, departed never to return.
“I breathed a storm upon the Spanish King Philip, whose great Armada sank beneath the sorcery of the Virgin Queen; when the German Caesar sent his flying iron sky-things to hail fire and death upon this Kingdom, I spoke into the place where Arthur still recovers from his wound, and bleeding, he rose up, and drove the Huns away.
“This is my land. Her green hills and mountains, heaths and highlands, forests thick with red deer, rivers running blue into the channel or the iron-gray Northern Sea. The rain, the mist, the fogs are mine. The folk are mine, these proud, cold, silly, solemn folk, in whose bosom the first torch of liberty ever was found again, since the day the venial nobles in Rome allowed Caesar’s bloodstained hands to quench it.
“Crude Chaucer, and Milton most august, alike are mine; angelic John Keats and devilish George Gordon, Lord Byron.
