“There is ravishment of that kind,” said Elladine, dispassionately. “And then there is rape.”
Constanzia nodded. “I know. Daddy has grown insensitive and mulish with the centuries. He wishes some great apotheosis.”
“I, on the other hand,” said Elladine, “merely wish to get home to Ylles.”
“Ylles,” mused Constanzia. “Ylles. I have heard of Ylles. It is mentioned in The Diaries. It is here, in the continuum, part of a larger creation, not far away.”
“Roland told me it was an unachievable distance away. Surely he would not lie?”
“Nonsense. A chaperone wouldn’t know the truth if it waved its wings at him.” Constanzia patted my mother’s shoulder. “Never mind. I’ll find Ylles for you. When we get home, I’ll look it up in the great encyclopedia, if you will only tell me how to spell it.”
“Wy,” I said to her. “Double el, ee, ess.”
“How did you know?” Mama asked me.
“I have seen reference to the place in certain family papers,” I replied cunningly. “In Westfaire. My home.”
“Westfaire,” brooded Elladine. “I remember Westfaire. Then you … you must be …”
“Your daughter,” I answered softly, watching her face.
She gave me a long look, a troubling look. As though she could not believe who I was. At last her lips trembled open, and her eyes lit with … was it love? Was it something else?
“Beauty,” she cried. “You got my letter!”
Constanzia watched in amazement as we embraced. The embrace itself was not what I expected. It was awkward, a little embarrassing. Mother did not cling. She gave me a brief, almost perfunctory hug, and then stood away from me, looking intently at me, as though trying to find in me some resemblance she had expected. Perhaps our meeting would have seemed more natural if Mama had appeared to be only a little older. Almost at once Constanzia increased my embarrassment by commenting upon Mama’s youthful appearance.
“She’s a fairy,” I told Constanzia. “I imagine she’ll always look that way. On the other hand, I am only half fairy. I’m already older than she is.” I smiled fondly at Mama. At least, it began as a fond smile. Mama’s reaction to it was to turn abruptly away from me with a sigh. Something was not as I had planned or hoped, but I didn’t wish to consider what it might be at that moment.
“You’re very lovely,” said Constanzia, patting me upon my cheek. “You couldn’t be prettier even if you were only twenty-three.”
Since I thought I was only nineteen or twenty, at least as I counted elapsed time, her words did not greatly cheer me. And, though I considered myself only nineteen or twenty, there were unmistakeable signs about the eyes that I might actually be somewhat older, which reminded me suddenly of what Mama had said in her letter to me. The bit about coming in haste, before I got any older.
My mother reached out a hand to touch me, felt of my breast with her fingertips, drew her hand away as though burned. Perhaps she had felt the mysterious fire within me. Perhaps she could tell me what it was!
Before I could ask her, she spoke, almost abruptly, to Constanzia. “I simply cannot figure out what I am doing here! I had returned to Ylles, I remember quite distinctly. Then something came up, some necessary journey back to Westfaire. I think I was with Aunt Joyeause. Then we were returning to Ylles once more, and suddenly I was caught up, as in some whirling vortex of wind, and deposited on a small, uncomfortable outcropping in the middle of a jungle.”
I started to tell her why she had gone back to Westfaire, then realized that would require lengthy explanation. I was saved from saying anything by Constanzia.
“It might have been Daddy who trapped you there,” she said. “He’s been making black magic to summon a virgin with a difference for years. He may have hit upon something that worked.”
I thought this exceedingly unlikely. The Viceroy had not struck me as a competent sorcerer. The spell had been cast by Carabosse, to catch and hold my mother here, to bring me here to join her, to keep me safe. Why was my safety so important?
“But why? Why this obsession …?” my mother asked.
This was a safer subject than the other, and I had been thinking about the matter ever since we left Nacifia. I had come to certain conclusions, and in order not to think about other things, I shared them with Constanzia and my mother.
“Ambrosius Pomposus had only the compass of his own mind to invest in his creation. Each of the beings he placed here in Chinanga partook of his sensitivity and his feeling, and each is, therefore, similar to every other, or if not similar to, at least totally comprehensible by. There are no foreign thoughts, no strangenesses entering from outside. The mystery of the exotic is lacking. The lure of the peculiar, the alien, the inexplicable, all are missing.
“Even in the clownery, which I visited during a stop in Nacifia, the patients are not truly insane within the totality which is Chinanga. The actions of one are offset by the actions of another; what one creates, another destroys, precisely as errant thoughts in one’s own mind are corrected by other thoughts until they result in a personality which, though undoubtedly unique, is entirely familiar to itself. It occurs to me that after long time, all of Chinanga must feel that it knows itself far too well, that it exists as one entity, bound about with invisible and inexorable ties of familiarity, alone, without contrast, in solitary confinement for endless time.”
“Years of solitude,” Constanzia murmured, nodding in agreement. “Mother has often commented upon it. Endless solitude.”
“I first thought of this,” I continued, “when I saw how delighted Mrs. Gallimar was to meet me and how little surprised she was about virtually anything else. Everything that can happen in Chinanga must have happened before.” I
