“Let me,” I suggested in a bleak voice. “I know their language.”
Mama nodded. Carabosse snorted, sitting still upon her donkey. Puck sat down cross-legged and waited to see what I would do.
“This sequence,” I said loudly, “is expected to complete the documentary on the last fairies.”
Bill spun toward me, then Janice and Alice. The machine sat a short distance away, like a great stone tub. Martin stood up from the place he’d been kneeling behind a stone, watching the host pass below. Jaybee turned slowly, letting the camera rest on me. Carabosse did something with one hand, and he cursed, taking the camera off his shoulder.
“Damned lens fogged,” he snarled.
“You are filming the departure of magic from the world. However, your premise is false.” I was determined to say it, no matter whether it was true or not. Mama was there, and she needed to hear it. “This host, it is true, will leave the world, but magic will return.”
“The hell it will,” said Janice. “This is the beginning of the end.” She laughed, shortly. “From here on out, it’s all downhill. Magic is gone. From here on out, it’s religion, then romance, then horror, then the end!”
“Whatever comes when,” I said, fixing Jaybee with a loathing glare, “you film nothing here today. Nothing at all.”
He had the lens wiped off and raised it to his eye once more, only to curse once more, taking it down to stare at it. Carabosse had evidently fixed it so that he could not get a picture.
“Give it up,” I told them. “Go home. We’re not going to let you do it.”
Jaybee got up and stalked toward Carabosse, violence obviously in his mind. When he got there, she wasn’t there. She was a hundred feet away, sitting on her donkey. “No,” she said firmly, “you’ll not show anyone what happened here tonight. No one at all.”
“You have no right,” blustered Martin. “People have a right to …”
“Know only what others choose to let them know about private matters,” finished Mama. “These are private matters.”
“… a right to know,” he concluded.
“No, they do not,” Puck said. “People have no right to crash private parties, pornographer. And this party is private.”
Jaybee sputtered.
“You won’t get a picture,” I said. “Even if we go away, which we’re about to do. You just won’t get a picture, that’s all. We have decided the world will never see this.”
And we rode down the hill to the road, leaving them fuming behind us. Bill hadn’t argued. He had just looked at me, stared at me, listening to every word that was said, as though he recognized me. This trip had happened the day after I got to the twenty-first. I remembered his returning from it, angry that we hadn’t let them finish. His superiors must have been annoyed with him, laying the fault at his door. Well, the fault was not his, but there would never be a documentary on the last of the fairies. The last whales, the last dog, the last tree, the last radish, yes. No last fairy. Not yet.
We came back into the ride farther forward in the column. We passed the cross I remembered from last time. It was not long after that we came to the great cavern, the one with the door. Some of the Sidhe had already built a fire. Others were watching the eastern horizon. Evidently the door opened at moonrise, whether the Dark Lord would or no. When it opened, they planned to go through.
Mama shivered, and I got down from the horse and went to her. “You’re cold,” I said, idiotically. We were all cold. The night was crisp and chill. A winter’s night. “Take my coat.”
She shook her head. “You have nothing heavy enough to warm this chill. I know what’s down there.”
I stepped away, staring at the fire and at the door behind it. I was the only one who did know what was behind that door, though I had told Mama and she had tried to describe it to anyone who would listen.
“Father Raymond used to say, ‘Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem,’ ” I told her. “It means that victory can come out of hopelessness.” She smiled, only a little.
Israfel came riding back through the quiet host, looking for me. When he saw me, he turned his horse and came straight toward me, bowing to Mama, to Carabosse, even to Puck as he came. When he reached me, he held out a hand and pulled me up onto his horse, then rode a short distance away. We both got down and stood together, looking at the assembled multitude. He was very quiet.
“I want you to have this,” he said, taking a scarf from around his neck and putting it about mine. It was crimson silk, with bands of silver and gold at the edges. “It is real, not enchanted. I wove it, with my own hands. When we go in, put on your boots and your cloak and go home, back to Westfaire.”
“To Westfaire? But Carabosse said he would look there.”
Israfel kissed me gently. “He would have. Oh, yes, my love, he would have looked there. But now, we believe he won’t have time.”
“I can’t let you go in there alone,” I said. In that instant he was Giles, he was Bill, he was anyone who had ever cared for me. I could not let him go.
“We aren’t alone,” he said. “Nor are you. And you have something to do yet,
