“May I have it?” I asked her.
She was astonished when I told her why, but she smiled and told me I might have it if I liked.
Then she was gone. I wept a time for Mama and for Israfel, but weeping does no good, does it? Sitting down and weeping is what women have done for centuries, and it has done no good at all. Nor praying. God has given us the earth. He is not waiting in the next room, ready to fix it for us if we ruin it. If we do not care for it, no one will. On other worlds, other races of men perhaps do better than we have done. He cares for us, but he does not control what we do.
So. So. I called Fenoderee, and he was there, with Puck, and a dozen other Bogles as well. I told them what Sariel had said.
“We know,” said Puck. “We heard.”
“Baskarone won’t last. Faery is gone. Mortal men will trash all life by the end of the twenty-first. That means …”
“It means this is the only hope,” said Puck. “We know. We’ve come to help.”
And so they have. They have brought beetles and butterflies and moths. Orchids and hibiscus and frangipani. Tropical fruits and desert plants. Things that fly and crawl. They bring them all to sleep in my gardens, my orchards, my stables, my hallways. Every sconce is hung with spiders. The moat is filled with fish, there are mice in Papa’s pockets and moles under Father Raymond’s skirts.
The library is littered with great buildings made small, with bridges and monuments, all those from Baskarone, made small. We could not bring the gardens or the forests, so we have settled for seeds.
On two of their return trips, I asked Giles and Puck to take Weasel-Rabbit and her mama out into the world once more. They are doing no good here; they would not be good breeding stock; and we desperately need the space.
Days go by, and they shuttle back and forth. My grandson with them, they alone, they in pairs or triplets, coming and going. The grounds of Westfaire are capacious, but they are beginning to fill up. Sleeping bodies are everywhere, perched, sprawled, flopped. Bats and sloths are hanging upside down in the buttery. I put the koalas in my tower bedroom, clinging to the bedpost, and four kinds of foxes are curled at the foot of my bed, next to the Taj Mahal.
Giles Edward has emptied the fountain and filled it with saltwater from the sea. It took all of them to bring the whales, though when they arrived they were no larger than goldfish. Sperm whales and right whales and blue whales and white whales. Killer whales and dolphins. Gray whales and pilot fish. Sharks. I thought perhaps we could leave sharks out, them and mosquitoes, but Puck said no, the Holy One made it beautiful in its entirety, and it had to be all or nothing. I sit on the edge of the fountain and watch the whales sleeping on the water, blowing spray from their blowholes and dreaming of the songs they will sing. Perhaps. Someday.
Grumpkin IV is on my bed. Or perhaps he is Grumpkin V or VI. He sleeps on his back with his paws curled over his belly. His wife is curled on my pillow, with the kittens. Such pretty kittens.
And at last it is all done. There is not a species alive between year one of mankind and the twentieth that they have not found and brought here, alive or in seed. Mammoths and mastodons and all. There is not a creation Israfel and his kinfolk included in Baskarone which is not here. And beneath my breastbone the seed of beauty burns and burns and burns, stronger with each thing that comes. It will not burn out. It will never burn out.
Now is only the last bit.
“Where will you go?” I asked Puck.
“Here,” he said. “A few of us are going to stay here. If the time ever comes, you’ll need help with this lot.”
“Grandmother,” said Giles Edward, a youth worn and tired from his long effort, “I can stay, too.”
I shook my head at him. “Oh, child, of course not. There’s Beloved up there in the tower all this long time, waiting for her prince. We can’t let her go on sleeping forever. That wasn’t the idea at all.”
“But …”
“But me no buts, child. No. Tonight we will all have a celebratory dinner. Ham and cheese and ale and wine, and fresh baked bread—Fenoderee has someone to do that—and we will sing songs and laugh. And then you will take Beloved out with you, well away from here, and kiss her awake.” Once out of Westfaire, she would wake on her own, but why shouldn’t he have the pleasure.
“And then?”
“And then you will apply all your alphabet of industry and intelligence to living a long, prolific, and pleasant life.” God grant that it is so.
“And then? What will happen here?”
I shook my head at him again. Who knows for sure?
I was getting ready for our celebration when Carabosse showed up, suddenly, sidling out of nothing.
“So here you are,” she said.
I mumbled something at her, something about how hard I’d been working and everything we’d done, and offered to take her about the place and show her.
She looked at the animals in the corners and the bats hanging from the wardrobe door and laughed. She toured the stables and the gardens. Then she sat down in a corner and laughed, the tears running out of her eyes.
“I thought you knew,” she said. “I thought you had guessed.”
“Knew what?” I asked her. “Guessed what?”
“All this. This,” she said, pointing at all of it, animals, fish, birds, Baskarone shrunken to tiny size. “You didn’t need to do this. We already did it.”
“You …?” I couldn’t figure out what
