The sound of a great horn came thrilling over the meadow, that horn which is said to be Huon’s horn, given to Oberon as a token of friendship. And the ride began.
It was so vast, that host, that the Long Lost had reached the world of men before the last of the Sidhe left the meadow. We rode at the tail, Mama and I, with Puck holding to my stirrups and loping beside us. Not far behind I saw Carabosse on a donkey, picking her way along as though going to a fair. Quick though we rode, she kept close behind, though the donkey never went faster than a walk. She waved her stick at me, and I waved in return.
Mama said, “Did you make it up with Aunt Carabosse, then?” And I suddenly recalled that Mama knew nothing of my long association with Carabosse. Nor could I tell her, now.
“She says she never cursed me to death, but only to a sleep. It was Aunt Joyeause who made that up.”
Mama nodded thoughtfully. “Joyeause has never cared for truth much. She says whatever comes into her head. I never doubted her at the time, though.”
“Once I thought all fairies were wise,” I confessed to her as I had to Carabosse.
“Oh, no,” Mama said. “Wisdom is not a great thing among the Sidhe. I have heard a legend about that.” She settled herself in the saddle and told me the story.
“It is said that the Holy One, Blessed be He, first created mankind as he created the Sidhe, marvelously fair, and he set the first of them in a garden much like Faery except that day and night came there, spring and fall, warm and cool, dry and wet, and every animal which has ever been, and every bird and every fish.”
“I think I’ve heard this tale,” I said, remembering Father Raymond.
“Very likely. The story is very old. And it continues that He set in the middle of the garden the tree of the hunger for wisdom, and He told them what it was. ‘Eat of it or not,’ He said, ‘as you choose. Except, you eat of it, you must leave the garden of ever-life, for wisdom brings a terrible price, the price of pain and death and loneliness. But if you will be immortal, do not eat of it, and you may live here forever in peace.”
And she went on to tell me the whole story of Eden, as though she were reading it out of the Bible, as Father Raymond had used to read it to me.
“Until the first woman could bear it no more,” said Mama, “and she went to the tree of the hunger for wisdom and picked a fruit from it and ate it. Then she sat down beneath the tree and cried, for all the questions of the world percolated about in her head, like fish she could not catch, and she knew herself and all her children forever would be adrift in mystery, that as soon as one thing was found out another would present itself to be discovered.
“And the man found her there. When she told him what she had done, he took the core of the fruit she had eaten and tasted it and put the seeds in his pocket. ‘For,’ he said, ‘if you must leave the garden, so will I. And if you must die, so will I. I will go with you wherever you go, leaving all the garden behind. And of the tree of knowledge you have given up paradise for, we will take the seeds to plant in every land we come to, and we will find the fruit bitter and we will find the fruit sweet.”
Mama sighed. “And that is why man was cast out to be no better than a beast, dirty and itchy and covered by smuts from the fire. And it is why he creates, and why he may grow wise, and why he is numerous. Though it is said among the Sidhe that both wisdom and children are the burden of men, we have desired only children. We have not much valued wisdom, for we considered it less valuable than the immortality man gave up for it. Which is why I gave you the hank of thread, child. To sew a cap of wisdom if you liked, for you are half mortal and might care about such things.”
A thinking cap! Oh, I should have known. Of course. What else could it have been?
We had come to the road which wound among the dun hills. I could see the moonlight on the lances far ahead, for the host was strung out for miles. Here and there I noticed huddled human forms, their faces in their hands, trying hard not to see us. We must have seemed very terrible indeed, awesome and fell. I wondered what stories those people would tell their children about the night they had seen the Fairy Ride, going out in their thousands from the lands below.
Something itched at me. Something I had seen, or thought I had seen. A flicker, perhaps, along the route we were taking. Something or someone upon the hills. I searched, seeing nothing. Mama’s eyes were better than mine, and so were Puck’s. “Look,” I told them. “Along the hills. Is there something there that shouldn’t be?”
Both of them scanned the horizon. At first they saw nothing, but then Mama stiffened and pointed. Then Puck saw it, too, and then I did. The gleam of moonlight on metal, high upon a hilltop overlooking the road we were taking. I knew what it was.
“The television crew,” I told them both, barking unamused laughter. “Here to film the end of Faery.”
“They may be here to film it,” said Puck, angrily, “but it will not be filmed.”
