“Westfaire,” he mused. “I thought Westfaire was mythical, like Faery, like Olympus, like …”
“Mythical things frequently aren’t,” I said tartly. “Focus your mind, boy. Grandmama has need of you.”
With Giles Edward Vincent Charming’s assistance along the way—let us be clear, mostly he carried me—I got back into my boots and, holding him firmly around the neck, told them to take us through the roses into Westfaire. Once inside, he let loose my hand and promptly fell asleep, as I should have known he would. I was carrying the cloak and the boots and had the magic cap upon my head. He had nothing to protect him from the spell upon the place. Retaining the cap, I thrust the boots inside his shirt and belted it around him with the belt of my cloak. Thus closely associated with magical influences, he woke once more to stare around him unbelievingly. If anything, the hedge had grown taller since I had last been there. Everything within seemed to glow with a light of its own. The glamour was so thick it seemed buttery.
He carried me upstairs for his first look at Beloved. Once he had seen her, he could not tear his eyes away. He wanted to kiss her, but I would not let him. “No, Giles,” I said. “Not yet. We have some thinking to do.”
He became almost uncontrollable, so I pulled, the cap off my own head and put it on his. He subsided, his mouth falling open as his mental faculties underwent instantaneous enlargement. When he looked completely dazed, I removed the cap and replaced it on my own head. I felt it might take a day or two to explore the full ramifications of the headgear, and I had no time to lose. In passing, I examined Carabosse’s clock and verified that it was almost half-past the fifteenth century. The numbers still ended with twenty-two. Though all of Faery had gone to war, nothing had changed. Or perhaps something had. After I had seen light in the bottom of the pool, she had seen fit to leave Faery and enchant my great-grandson. There had to have been purpose in that.
We went first to the barracks, to get Giles Edward some clothing, and then to the kitchens. He prepared food while I sat and thought and thought and sat. We ate together, ignoring the cooks sprawled across the floor. While we ate, I began to tell him the story of my life, referring from time to time to this book, my book, the book Father Raymond gave me so long ago, to remind me of the sequence of occurrences. So it was I found Carabosse’s addition to my text and marveled over them. As I read, I realized who it was the frog had reminded me of when he talked. It was myself. I had been a loquacious youngster.
When I grew weary, I gave him the book and let him read for himself while I dozed beneath the cap, aroused occasionally by his exclamations as he encountered something strange or unbelievable or patently impossible.
“I know, I know,” I murmured. “But it all happened just as I have said.”
I was not really surprised to find that my account of my time in hell was in the book, as I had imagined setting it down. That kind of thing is, had been, usual in Faery.
When we had eaten, we were weary, so I directed him to Aunt Lavvy’s room where I had slept before. I had forgotten my Giles was there, but it did not matter. I told young Giles who he was, then lay down beside my love. My great-grandson tucked me into a blanket and rolled himself into a quilt upon the floor, asking if there was any danger we would sleep forever. The question was too close to my thoughts for comfort. I assured him we would not, and in a moment his youthful snores echoed in the room.
I dozed. After a time I woke. The very old do not need as much sleep as younger folk, though they need it more frequently. Like cats, we nap and wake, nap and wake. The thought of cats reminded me of Grumpkin, and I missed him. One of the first things I wanted to do was explore the Dower House stables to see if he had left a son.
I felt somewhat stronger, and wanted to look about me a little. I took the boots from my great-grandson’s shirt, replacing them with the cap, and bade them take me to the lakeshore beyond the roses. Instantaneously, I stood there, the cool night wind blowing in my face.
Across the lake were the villages of East and West Moerdyn, where, evidently, they were having carnival time. There were fires on the lakeshore and torches among the trees. All along the lakeshore, from far on my left to far on my right, the little fires flickered and burned and I could hear, as though from another world, voices raised in jollity.
On the surface of the lake, windlessly calm, the reflections of the fires and torches stretched to my feet like a hundred golden roads leading to the edges of the world. I was at the center of a fan of fire, a wheel of golden beams.
I heard, as though in a dream, the voice of Captain Karon saying, “We are at the center of the world.”
I saw myself, once again young and beautiful, at the center of a wheel of light.
All light, all beauty, ends at my feet, I told myself. It comes from everywhere, and ends at my feet. For a time a vision possessed me, a
