Asimov, Isaac - Magical Worlds of Fantasy - Faeries

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ISAAC ASIMOV'S
Magical Worlds of Fantasy
FAERIES
Copyright © 1991 by Nightfall, Inc., Martin Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh.
This edition published by
Barnes & Noble, Inc., by arrangement with Tekno-Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written
permission of the Publisher.
2000 Barnes & Noble Books
ISBN 0-7607-2369-9 paperback
Printed and bound in the United States of America
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BVG
CONTENTS
Introduction: Fairyland
by Isaac Asimov 1
How the Fairies Came to Ireland
by Herminie Templeton 4
The Manor of Roses
by Thomas Burnett Swann 15
The Fairy Prince
by H. C. Bailey 79
The Ugly Unicorn
by Jessica Amanda Salmonson 93
The Brownie of the Black Haggs
by James Hogg 105
The Dream of Akinosuké
by Lafadio Hearn 121
Elfinland
by Johann Ludwig Tieck 128
Darby O'Gill and the Good People
by Herminie Templeton 148
No Man's Land
by John Buchan 161
The Prism
by Mary E. Wilkins 208
The Kith of the Elf-Folk
by Lord Dunsany 220
The Secret Place
by Richard McKenna 235
The King of the Elves
by Philip K. Dick 252
Flying Pan
by Robert F. Young 274
My Father, the Cat
by Henry Slesar 284
Kid Stuff
by Isaac Asimov 292
The Long Night of Waiting
by Andre Norton 307
The Queen of Air and Darkness
by Poul Anderson 325
FAIRYLAND
Isaac Asimov
Fantasies or folk tales thought to be suitable for children are often called "fairy tales," partly because
the most famous of these stories involve entities of more-than-human powers, called fairies.
The most famous of all, for instance, is the "fairy godmother" who conies to the rescue of poor,
persecuted Cinderella. This is a story that has filled countless children with the vague desire and the
perceived need for a fairy godmother of their own. There are also evil fairies, such as the spiteful one
who wasn't invited (through a mere oversight) to a princess's christening and who placed her
under a curse that led her to becoming the Sleeping Beauty.
The result is that we have many pictures of fairies, some of them drawn from Disney cartoons.
The good fairies look like kindly and rather bumbling housewives; the bad fairies like ugly crones,
indistinguishable from witches. We have the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio and Titania in A Midsummer
Night's Dream who look like beautiful actresses, as well as Titania's husband Oberon, who is a
powerful (but fundamentally good-hearted) monarch. Most of all, we have a modern conception of
fairies as tiny creatures, no bigger than a thumb, with gauzy little butterfly-wings, like Tinkerbell in
Peter Pan. So strong is this particular version that earlier in this century some mischievous girls made
paper representations of such diminutive fairies, took photographs of them, and fooled Arthur Conan
Doyle into believing them to be authentic. (Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories, but
Isaac Asimov
his hold on reality, at least in later life, was not very strong.)
But what are fairies? How did they get started?
To begin with, the original word had a form that was closest to our modern "fay." This word, fay,
derives from Latin words meaning "faith" or "fate," so it bears a strong mystical connotation. We
still say that someone is "fey" when they seem to have sense perceptions beyond the ordinary.
The land of the fays, the region in which they live, is "faerie," the "-rie" suffix being an archaic way of
saying "land of." Because "faerie" has dropped out of consciousness these days, it has become
"fairy." Nevertheless, this collection of stories is called Faeries because many of them are deliberately
written in archaic fashion, and because "fairy" has gained a slang meaning these days that is far
removed from what we are talking about.
Of course, "fairy" does not have any form that indicates it is referring to the place in which fays
live; therefore it has become synonymous with fay, and the region in which fays, or fairies, live is
now called "fairyland." This gives us two suffixes meaning the same thing, but we're stuck with that.
And what gave us the idea that fairies exist? The least dramatic explanation (and, therefore, the one
most likely to be true) is that they are a holdover from the old nature spirits that filled the woods and
fields—the nymphs and satyrs who represented the procreative powers of nature. In their place, we
now have fairies, elves, brownies, trolls, kobolds, gnomes and other spirits that appear in various
cultures and with powers and characteristics that vary from storyteller to storyteller.
Are there more dramatic explanations? Of course.
By and large, these spirits, whatever they are called, and we might as well lump them all together
as fairies, are viewed as smaller than ordinary human beings, as hidden and elusive, as generally
malignant, and frequently, as having longings to be human.
History is full of cases in which conquering invaders attack the natives of a region (sometimes of
smaller size than the newcomers) and force them back into mountain fastnesses or hidden regions. In
this way, the Celts beat
FAIRYLAND 3
back the Picts in Scotland, the Saxons beat back the Welsh, the Indo-Europeans beat back the
Basques of Spain, and so on. There would be a dim memory of the time when the defeated people
were not yet completely eradicated; when they engaged in guerrilla activity, and raided isolated
outposts of the conquerors. The stories of the "little people" arose and, of course, were fantasized
out of all recognition as time went on. Undoubtedly, Americans of European descent would have
had similar stories to tell about Native Americans, if the persecution and eradication of the latter had
not happened so recently, and, so to speak, in the full glare of written history.
Perhaps the most dramatic version of this theory (and, therefore, the least likely to be true) is
that the tales of fairies hark all the way back to the elimination of Neanderthal man by "modern
man," some thirty to fifty thousand years ago. Neanderthals were smaller than ourselves in height but
stronger in musculature, and perhaps that is the source of the "little people" with their frightening
power.
In any case, it is important to remember that the best-known fairies of modern times are sanitized
ones prepared for our children. Unlike these kindly fairy godmothers and flitting little Tinkerbells,
fairies, in their original conception, were dangerous and frightening entities, and faerie, or fairyland,
was a place that mingled wonder, awe, and terror in equal quantities.
Some of the stories in this collection are humorous; notably the two by Kavanaugh and the one by
Philip K. Dick. Others are sentimental. Most, however, are grimly powerful in their portrayal of
different and fundamentally hostile cultures. I call your attention particularly to Swann's "The Manor
of Roses," which is the longest story in the book and, in my opinion, the most riveting. It is a
medieval tale of authentic atmosphere, and its description of the "mandrakes" is almost science
fictional in its intensity. Though I enjoyed that story the most, I can say that each story offers to
the reader rewards of its own.
HOW THE FAIRIES CAME TO IRELAND
Herminie Templeton
The most lonesome bridle-path in all Ireland leads from Tom Healy's cottage down the sides of the
hills, along the edge of the valley, till it raiches the highroad that skirts the great mountain, Sleive-
na-mon.
One blusthering, unaisy night, Father Cassidy, on his way home from a sick call, rode over that
same path. It wasn't strange that the priest, as his horse ambled along, should be thinking of that other
night in Darby O'Gill's kitchen—the night when he met with the Good People; for there, off to the
left, towered and threatened Sleive-na-mon, the home of the fairies.
The dismal ould mountain glowered toward his River-ence, its dark look saying, plain as spoken
words:
"How dare ye come here; how dare ye?"
"I wondher," says Father Cassidy to himself, looking up at the black hill, "if the Good People
are fallen angels, as some do be saying.
"Why were they banished from heaven? It must have been a great sin entirely they committed, at
any rate, for at the same time they were banished the power to make a prayer was taken from them.
That's why to say a pious word to a fairy is like trowing scalding wather on him. 'Tis a hard
pinnance that's put on the poor crachures. I wisht I knew what 'twas for," he says.
He was goin' on pondherin' in that way, while Terror was picking his steps, narvous, among the
stones of the road, whin suddenly a frowning, ugly rock seemed to jump up and stand ferninst
them at a turn of the path.
Terror shied at it, stumbled wild, and thin the most
4
HOW THE FAIRIES CAME TO IRELAND 5
aggrewating of all bothersome things happened—the horse cast a shoe and wint stone lame.
In a second the priest had leaped to the ground and picked up the horseshoe.
"Wirra! Wirra!" says he, lifting the lame foot, "why did you do it, allannah? 'Tis five miles to a
smith an' seven miles to your own warm stable."
The horse, for answer, raiched down an' touched with his soft nose the priest's cheek; but the good
man looked rayproachful into the big brown eyes that turned sorrowful to his own.
With the shoe in his hand the priest was standin' fretting and helpless on the lonesome hillside,
wondhering what he'd do at all at all, whin a sudden voice spoke up from somewhere near Terror's
knees.
"The top of the avinin' to your Riverence," it said; "I'm sorry for your bad luck," says the voice.
Looking down, Father Cassidy saw a little cloaked figure, and caught the glint of a goold crown.
'Twas Brian Connors, the king of the fairies, himself, that was in it.
His words had so friendly a ring in them that the clar-gyman smiled in answering, "Why, thin, good
fortune to you, King Brian Connors," says the good man, "an' save you kindly. What wind brought
you here?" he says.
The king spoke back free an' pleasant. "The boys tould me you were comin' down the mountainy
way, and I came up just in time to see your misfortune. I've sent for Shaun Rhue, our own
farrier—there's no betther in Ireland; he'll be here in a minute, so don't worry," says the king.
The priest came so near saying "God bless ye," that the king's hair riz on his head. But Father
Cassidy stopped in the nick of time, changed his coorse, an' steered as near a blessing as he could
without hurting the Master of the Good People.
"Well, may you never hear of trouble," he says, "till you're wanted to its wake," says he.
"There's no trouble to-night at any rate," says the king, "for while Shaun is fixing the baste we'll
sit in the shelter of that rock yonder; there we'll light our pipes and divart our minds with pleasant
discoorsin' and wise convarsaytion."
6Hermime Templeton
While the king spoke, two green-cloaked little men were making a fire for the smith out of twigs.
So quick did they work, that by the time the priest and the fairy man could walk over to the stone
and sit themselves in the shelther, a thousand goold sparks were dancin' in the wind, and the glimmer
of a foine blaze fought with the darkness.
Almost as soon, clear and purty, rang the cheerful sound of an anvil, and through the swaying
shadows a dozen busy little figures were working about the horse. Some wore leather aprons and hilt
up the horse's hoof whilst Shaun fitted the red hot shoe; others blew the bellows or piled fresh sticks
on the fire; all joking, laughing, singing, or thrickin'; one couldn't tell whether 'twas playing or
workin' they were.
Afther lighting their pipes and paying aich other an armful of complayments, the Master of
Sleive-na-mon and the clargyman began a sayrious discoorse about the deloights of fox hunting,
which led to the consideration of the wondherful wisdom of racing horses and the disgraceful day-ter-
ray-roar-ation of the Skibberbeg hounds.
Father Cassidy related how whin Ned Blaze's stee-plechasin' horse had been entered for the
Connemarra Cup, an' found out at the last minute that Ned feared to lay a bet on him, the horse felt
himself so stabbed to the heart with shame by his master's disthrust, that he trew his jockey, jumped
the wall, an', head in the air, galloped home.
The king then tould how at a great hunting meet, whin three magistrates an' two head excises
officers were in the chase, that thief of the worruld, Let-Erin-Ray-mimber, the chief hound of the
Skibberbeg pack, instead of follying the fox, led the whole hunt up over the mountain to Patrick
McCaffrey's private still. The entire counthryside were dhry for a fornit afther.
Their talk in that way dhrifted from one pleasant subject to another, till Father Cassidy, the sly man,
says aisy an' careless, "I've been tould," says he, "that before the Good People were banished from
heaven yez were all angels," he says.
The king blew a long thin cloud from be wixt his lips, felt his whuskers thoughtful for a minute,
and said:
HOW THE FAIRIES CAME TO IRELAND 7
"No," he says, "we were not exactly what you might call angels. A rale angel is taller nor your
chapel."
"Will you tell me what they're like?" axed Father Cas-sidy, very curious.
"I'll give you an idee be comparison what they're like," the king says. "They're not like a
chapel, and they're not like a three, an' they're not like the ocean," says he. "They're different from a
goint—a great dale different—and they're dissembler to an aygle; in fact you'd not mistake one of
them for anything you'd ever seen before in your whole life. Now you have a purty good ideeah
what they're like," says he.
"While I think of it," says the fairy man, a vexed frown wrinkling over his forehead, "there's three
young bachelors in your own parish that have a foolish habit of callin' their colleens angels whin they's
not the laste likeness— not the laste. If I were you, I'd preach ag'in it," says he.
"Oh, I dunno about that!" says Father Cassidy, fitting a live coal on his pipe. "The crachures must
say thim things. If a young bachelor only talks sensible to a sensible colleen he has a good chanst to
stay a bachelor. An thin ag'in, a gossoon who'll talk to his sweetheart about the size of the petatie
crop'll maybe bate her whin they're both married. But this has nothing to do with your historical
obserwaytions. Go on, King," he says.
"Well, I hate foolishness, wherever it is," says the fairy. "Howsumever, as I was saying, up there
in heaven they called us the Little People," he says; "millions of us flocked together, and I was the
king of them all. We were happy with one another as birds of the same nest, till the ruction came on
betwixt the black and the white
"How it all started I never rightly knew, nor wouldn't ask for fear of getting implicayted. I bade all
the Little People keep to themselves thin, because we had plenty of friends in both parties, and
wanted throuble with nayther of them.
"I knew ould Nick well; a civiler, pleasanter spoken sowl you couldn't wish to meet—a little too
sweet in his ways, maybe. He gave a thousand favors and civilities to my subjects, and now that he's
down, the devil a word I'll say ag'in him."
8Herminie Templeton
"I'm ag'in him," says Father Cassidy, looking very stern; "I'm ag'in him an' all his pumps an'
worruks. I'll go bail that in the ind he hurt yez more than he helped yez."
"Only one thing I blame him for," says the king; "he sajooced from the Little People my comrade
and best friend, one Thaddeus Flynn be name. And the way that it was, was this. Thaddeus was a
warm-hearted little man, but monsthrous high-spirited as well as quick-tempered. I can shut me eyes
now, and in me mind see him thripping along, his head bent, his pipe in his mouth, his hands behind
his back. He never wore a waistcoat, but kept always his green body-coat buttoned. A tall caubeen
was set on the back of his head, with a sprig of green shamrock in the band. There was a thin rim of
black whiskers undher his chin."
Father Cassidy, liftin' both hands in wondher, said: "If I hadn't baptized him, and buried his good
father before him, I'd swear 'twas Michael Pether McGilligan of this parish you were dayscribin',"
says he.
"The McGilligans ain't dacint enough, nor rayfined enough, nor proud enough to be fairies," says
the king, wavin' his pipe scornful. "But to raysume and to continue," he says.
"Thaddeus and I used to frayquint a place they called the battlements or parypets—which was a
great goold wall about the edge of heaven, and which had wide steps down on the outside face, where
one could sit, pleasant avenings, and hang his feet over, or where one'd stand before going to take a
fly in the fresh air for himself.
"Well, agra, the night before the great battle, Thady and I were sitting on the lowest step, looking
down into league upon league of nothing, and talking about the world, which was suxty thousand
miles below, and hell, which was tunty thousand miles below that ag'in, when who should come
blusthering over us, his black wings hiding the sky, and a long streak of lightning for a spear in his
fist, but Ould Nick.
" 'Brian Connors, how long are you going to be downthrodden and thrajooced and looked down
upon— you and your subjects?' says he.
HOW THE FAIRIES CAME TO IRELAND 9
" 'Faix, thin, who's doing that to us?' asks Thady, standing up and growing excited.
" 'Why,' says Ould Nick, 'were you made little pigmies to be the laugh and the scorn and the mock of
the whole world?' he says, very mad; 'why weren't you made into angels, like the rest of us?' he says.
" 'Musha,' cries Thady, 'I never thought of that.'
" 'Are you a man or a mouse; will you fight for your rights?' says Sattin. 'If so, come with me and
be one of us. For we'll bate them black and blue to-morrow,' he says. Thady needed no second
axing.
" 'I'll go with ye, Sattin, me dacent man,' cried he. 'Wirra! Wirra! To think of how downthrodden
we are!' And with one spring Thady was on Ould Nick's chowld-ers, and the two flew away like a
humming-bird riding on the back of an aygle.
" 'Take care of yerself, Brian,' says Thady, 'and come over to see the fight; I'm to be in it, and I
extind you the inwitation,' he says.
"In the morning the battle opened; one line of black angels stretched clear across heaven, and
faced another line of white angels, with a walley between.
"Every one had a spaking trumpet in his hand, like you see in the pictures, and they called aich
other hard names across the walley. As the white angels couldn't swear or use bad langwidge, Ould
Nick's army had at first in that way a great advantage. But when it came to hurling hills and shying
tunderbolts at aich other, the black angels were bate from the first.
"Poor little Thaddeus Flynn stood amongst his own, in the dust and the crash and the roar, brave as
a lion. He couldn't hurl mountains, nor was he much at flinging lightning bolts, but at calling hard
names he was ayquil to the best.
"I saw him take off his coat, trow it on the ground, and shake his pipe at a thraymendous angel. 'You
owdacious villain,' he cried. 'I dare you to come half way over,' he says."
"My, oh my, whin the armies met together in the rale handy grips, it must have been an illigent
sight," says Father Cassidy. " 'Tis a wondher you kep' out of it," says he.
10 Herminie Templeton
"I always belayved," says the king, "that if he can help it, no one should fight whin he's sure to
get hurted, onless it's his juty to fight. To fight for the mere sport of it, when a throuncin' is
sartin, is wasting your time and hurtin' your repitation. I know there's plenty thinks different," he
says, p'inting his pipe. "I may be wrong, an' I won't argyfy the matther. 'Twould have been bet-ther
for myself that day if I had acted on the other principle.
"Howsumever, be the time that everybody was sidestepping mountains and dodging tunderbolts, I
says to myself, says I, 'This is no place fer you or the likes of you.' So I took all me own people out
to the battlements and hid them out of the way on the lower steps. We'd no sooner got placed
whin—whish! a black angel shot through the air over our heads, and began falling down, down, and
down, till he was out of sight. Then a score of his friends came tumbling over the battlements; imagetly
hundreds of others came whirling, and purty soon it was raining black wings down into the gulf.
"In the midst of the turmile, who should come jumping down to me, all out of breath, but Thady.
" 'It's all over, Brian; we're bate scandalous,' he says, swinging his arms for a spring and balancing
himself up and down on the edge of the steps. 'Maybe you wouldn't think it of me, Brian Connors;
but I'm a fallen angel,' says he.
" 'Wait a bit, Thaddeus Flynn!' says I. 'Don't jump,' I says.
" 'I must jump,' he says, 'or I'll be trun,' says he.
"The next thing I knew he was swirling and darting and shooting a mile below me.
"And I know," says the king, wiping his eyes with his cloak, "that when the Day of Judgment
comes I'll have at laste one friend waiting for me below to show me the coolest spots and the
pleasant places.
"The next minute up came the white army with pres-ners—angels, black and white, who had taken
no side in the battle, but had stood apart like ourselves.
" 'A man,' says the Angel Gabriel, 'who, for fear of his skin, won't stand for the right when the
right is in danger, may not desarve hell, but he's not fit for heaven.
HOW THE FAIRIES CAME TO IRELAND 11
Fill up the stars with these cowards and throw the lavin's into the say,' he ordhered.
"With that he swung a lad in the air, and gave him a fling that sent him ten miles out intil the sky.
Every other good angel follyed shuit, and I watched thousands go, till they faded like a stretch of
black smoke a hundred miles below.
"The Angel Gabriel turned and saw me, and I must confess I shivered.
" 'Well, King Brian Connors,' says he, 'I hope you see that there's such a thing as being too wise
and too cute and too ticklish of yourself. I can't send you to the stars, bekase they're full, and I won't
send you to the bottomless pit so long as I can help it. I'll send yez all down to the world. We're
going to put human beans on it purty soon, though they're going to turn out to be blaggards, and at
last we'll have to burn the place up. Afther that, if you're still there, you and yours must go to
purdition, for it's the only place left for you.
" 'You're too hard on the little man,' says the Angel Michael, coming up—St. Michael was ever the
outspoken, friendly person—'sure what harm, or what hurt, or what good could he have done us?
And can you blame the poor little crachures for not interfering?'
" 'Maybe I was too harsh,' says the Angel Gabriel, 'but being saints, when we say a thing we
must stick to it. Howsumever, I'll let him settle in any part of the world he likes, and I'll send
there the kind of human beans he'd wish most for. Now, give your ordher,' he says to me, taking
out his book and pencil, 'and I'll make for you the kind of people you'd like to live among.'
" 'Well,' says I, 'I'd like the men honest and brave, and the women good.'
" 'Very well,' he says, writing it down; 'I've got that— go on.'
" 'And I'd like them full of jollity and sport, fond of racing and singing and hunting and fighting,
and all such innocent divarsions.'
'You'll have no complaint about that,' says he.
" 'And,' says I, 'I'd like them poor and parsecuted, bekase when a man gets rich, there's no
more fun in him.'
12 Herminie Templeton
" 'Yes, I'll fix that. Thrue for you,' says the Angel Gabriel, writing.
" 'And I don't want them to be Christians,' says I; 'make them Haythens or Pagans, for
Christians are too much worried about the Day of Judgment.'
" 'Stop there! Say no more! If I make as fine a race of people as that I won't send them to hell to
plaze you, Brian Connors,' says the saint, shutting up the book, 'go your ways; you have enough.'
"I clapped me hands, and all the Little People stood up and bent over the edge, their fingers
pointed like swimmers going to dive. 'One, two, three,' I shouted; and with that we took the leap.
"We were two years and tunty-six days falling before we raiched the world. On the morning of
the next day we began our sarch for a place to live. We thraveled from north to south and from
ayst to west. Some grew tired and dhropped off in Spain, some in France, and others ag'in in
different parts of the world. But the most of us thraveled ever and ever till we came to a lovely
island that glimmered and laughed and sparkled in the middle of the say.
" 'We'll stop here,' I says; 'we needn't sarch farther, and we needn't go back to Italy or
Swizzerland, for of all places on the earth, this island is the nearest like heaven; and in it the
County Clare and the County Tipperary are the purtiest spots of all.' So we hollowed out the great
mountain Sleive-na-mon for our home, and there we are till this day."
The king stopped a while, and sat houldin' his chin in his hands. "That's the thrue story," he says,
sighing pitiful. "We took sides with nobody, we minded our own business, and we got trun out for
it," says he.
So intherested was Father Cassidy in the talk of the king that the singing and hammering had died
out without his knowing, and he hadn't noticed at all how the darkness had thickened in the valley and
how the stillness had spread over the hillside. But now, whin the chief of the fairies stopped, the good
man, half frightened at the silence, jumped to his feet and turned to look for his horse.
Beyond the dull glow of the dying fire a crowd of Little
HOW THE FAIRIES CAME TO IRELAND 13
People stood waiting, patient and quiet, houlding Terror, who champed restless at his bit, and bate
impatient with his hoof on the hard ground.
As the priest looked toward them, two of the little men wearing leather aprons moved out from
the others, leading the baste slow and careful over to where the good man stood beside the rock.
"You've done me a favyer this night," says the clargy-man, gripping with his bridle hand the horse's
mane, "an' all I have to pay it back with'd only harry you, an' make you oncomfortable, so I'll not say
the words," he says.
"No favyer at all," says the king, "but before an hour there'll be lyin' on your own threshold a
favyer in the shape of a bit of as fine bacon as ever laughed happy in the middle of biling turnips.
We borryed it last night from a magisthrate named Blake, who lives up in the County Wexford,"
he says.
The clargyman had swung himself into the saddle.
"I'd be loath to say anything disrayspectful," he says quick, "or to hurt sensitive feelings, but on
account of my soul's sake I couldn't ate anything that was come by dishonest," he says.
"Bother and botheration, look at that now!" says the king. "Every thrade has its drawbacks, but I
never raya-lized before the hardship of being a parish priest. Can't we manage it some way.
Couldn't I put it some place where you might find it, or give it to a friend who'd send it to you?"
"Stop a minute," says Father Cassidy. "Up at Tim
Healy's I think there's more hunger than sickness, more
nade for petaties than for physic. Now, if you sent that
same bit of bacon----- "
"Oh, ho!" says the king, with a dhry cough, "the Healy's have no sowls to save, the same as parish
priests have."
"I'm a poor, wake, miserable sinner," says the priest, hanging his head; "I fall at the first
temptation. Don't send it," says he.
"Since you forbid me, I'll send it," says the king, chucklin'. "I'll not be ruled by you. To-morrow
the Hea-ly's'll have five tinder-hearted heads of cabbage, makin' love in a pot to the finest bit of
bacon in Tipperary—
14 Herminie Templeton
that is, unless you do your juty an' ride back to warn them. Raymember their poor sowls," says he,
"an' don't forget your own," he says.
The priest sat unaisy in the saddle. "I'll put all the raysponsibility on Terror," he says. "The baste
has no sowl to lose. I'll just drop the reins on his neck; if he turns and goes back to Healy's I'll warn
them; if he goes home let it be on his own conscience."
He dhropped the reins, and the dishonest baste started for home imagetly.
But afther a few steps Father Cassidy dhrew up an' turned in the saddle. Not a sowl was in sight;
there was only the lonely road and the lonesome hillside; the last glimmer of the fairy fire was gone,
and a curtain of soft blackness had fallen betwixt him an' where the blaze had been.
"I bid you good night, Brian Connors," the priest cried. From somewhere out of the darkness
a woice called back to him, "Good night, your Riverence."
THE MANOR OF ROSES
Thomas Burnett Swann
I am thirty-five, a woman of middle years, and yet in this time of pox and plague, of early death
and the dying of beauty before the body dies, it is said that I am still as beautiful as a Byzantine
Madonna, poised in the heaven of a gold mosaic and wearing sorrow like a robe of white petals. But
sorrow is not a gown. It is a nakedness to the searching eye of the curious, to the magpie -tongued
who love to pry out grief: She grieves too long . . . The Manor demands an heir . . . Who will
defend us from the encroaching forest, the thieves and the Mandrake People?
It was eleven years ago, in the year 1202 of Our Lord, that my husband's comrade-in-arms,
Edmund-the-Wolf, rode to me with the news of my husband's death and, as if for compensation, the
riches captured before he had died in battle. Captured? Pillaged, I should say, in the sack of
Constantinople. You see, it is a time when men are boys, rapacious and cruel, as ready to kill a Jew, a
Hungarian, a Greek as an Infidel; happy so long as they wield a sword and claim to serve God. A
time when boys who have not yet grown to their fathers' pride-Crusading, it is called—are the only
true men.
And yet I loved my husband, a red-haired Norman, gay as the men of the South, and not like
most of our stern northern people. I loved him for his gaiety, his hair the color of Roman bricks, and
because he left me a son.
But the Crusader's code, like an evil demon of pox, also possesses children. Only last year in
France and Ger-
15
16 Thomas Burnett Swann
many, Stephen proclaimed his message from Christ, Nicholas piped his irresistible flute, and the
children yearned to them as tides to the moon and flowed in a sea of white immaculate robes
toward the shores of that greater sea, the Mediterranean.
Little of the madness crossed to England. Perhaps our children are not inclined to visions, perhaps
they prefer the hunt to the drafty halls of a church and talks with God. But the madness, missing the
thousands, somehow touched my son. He rode to London, astride his roan palfrey and dressed in a
jerkin of sheepskin dyed to the yellow of gorse, with a leather belt at his waist and a fawn-colored
pouch a-jingle with new-minted pennies. Ready to board a ship for Marseilles and join Stephen. But
Stephen and most of his army were sold as slaves to the Infidel; Nicholas died of the plague before he
reached the sea; and my son of fifteen summers, reaching London, stood on the banks of the Thames
to choose what twin-castled ship would bear him across the channel, and fell to the blade of a common
cut-purse. The Devil, I think, possessed the children, a jest to fling like a gauntlet in the teeth of
God.
God is not blind, however. In less than a year, He sent me those other children, struck with the same
madness: John, a dark-haired Norman; Stephen, a Saxon but named like the boy of France; and
Ruth, whom they called their guardian angel (but no one knew if she came from Heaven or Hell.)
God, I felt, had made me His instrument to preserve them from my own son's ruin. Was He wrong
to trust me with so precious and difficult a task? I tried, Mother of God I tried! I sheltered them from
the Mandrakes of the forest. Loved them, hurt them, and then at the last—
But you shall judge me . . .
He ran blinded by tears across the heath, startling birds into flight, pheasants and grouse enough
to feast a king. Conies peered from their nests and submerged like frogs in a pond with a dull,
simultaneous plop. Didn't they know that he, timorous John, who had lost his bow in the woods and
scattered the arrows out of his quiver, was not a creature to fear? He had come from the hunt with his
father, lord of Goshawk Castle, and the knights
THE MANOR OF ROSES 17
Robert, Arthur, Edgar and the rest. The names of the knights were different, their features almost
identical. Rough hands, calloused from wielding swords against the Infidel—and their fellow
Englishmen. Cheeks ruddy with mead and not with the English climate. Odorous bodies enveloped by
fur lined surcoats which they pridefully wore even in the flush of summer, instead of imitating the
villeins with their simple breech-clouts or their trousers without tunics. Lank, sweat-dampened hair,
long in the back and cut in a fringe across their- foreheads.
John, the Baron's son, had been allowed the first shot at a stag beleaguered by hounds. He was not
a good bowman, but the stag had been much too close to miss except by design. Once, gathering
chestnuts with his friend Stephen, the shepherd, he had seen the same animal, a splendid beast with
horns like wind-beaten trees along the North Sea.
"He isn't afraid of us," Stephen had whispered.
"Nor has he reason to be," said John. "We would never harm him. He's much too beautiful."
Now, the animal had turned and looked at him with recognition, it seemed, and resignation;
harried by hounds, bemused in a clump of bracken. John had fired his arrow above the antlers. The
stag had escaped, bursting out of the bracken as if the coarse ferns were blades of grass and leveling
three dogs with his adamantine hooves.
"Girl!" his father had shouted, hoarse with rage at losing a feast and a pair of antlers to grace
his barren hall. "I should get you a distaff instead of a bow!"
For punishment John was bladed. After the knights had downed a smaller animal, a young doe,
they had stretched him across the warm, bloody carcass and each man had struck him with the flat of
his sword. Most of the knights had softened their blows. After all, he was their liege-lord's son. But
his father's blow had left him bleeding and biting his tongue to hold back shameful tears.
Then they had left him.
"Go to the kennels and get your friend Stephen to dry your tears," his father had sneered. A
coarse guffaw greeted the taunt. Stephen was said to have lain with
18 Thomas Burnett Swann
every villein's daughter between twelve and twenty, and men without daughters liked to jest: "Girls
weep till Stephen dries their tears."
Alone in the woods, John forgot his shame; he was top frightened. Just turned twelve, he knew of
desperate thieves, sentenced to die by the rope, who had taken refuge among the sycamores which
remembered the Romans, and the oaks which had drunk the blood of Druid sacrifices. As for
animals, there were wolves and bears and long-tusked boars, and amphisbaenas too, the twin-headed
serpents, and griffins with scaly wings. Worst of all, there were the Mandrake People who,
grown like roots, clambered out of the ground to join their kin in acts of cannibalism.
Where could he go? Not to the castle, certainly, where the hunters had doubtless climbed in a
broad wooden tub to scrape the grime of weeks from each other's backs, while kitchen wenches
doused them with buckets of steaming water and ogled their naked brawn. Once, the castle had held
his mother. Its darkness had shone with the whiteness of her samite; its odors were masked with the
cloves and the cinnamon, the mace and the musk of her kitchen; its bailey had bloomed with a
damson tree whose seeds had come from the Holy Land, and delicate shallots, the "Onions of
Ascalon," had reared their tender shoots around the tree, like little guardian gnomes.
"If there must be fruits of war," she had said, "we must see that they are living things, not
dead; sweet things, not bitter; soft things, not hard. The verdure of earth and not the gold from dead
men's coffers."
Six years ago she had died of the pox. Now, when he knelt on the stone floor of the chapel, he
prayed to Father, Son, and Mary, but Mary was Mother.
No, he could not go to the castle. He could but he did not wish to visit the Abbot's cottage and face
another lesson in logic and astrology, Lucan and Aristotle. He was a willing, indeed a brilliant
scholar. But there were times to study and times to look for Stephen. In spite of his father's taunt, it
摘要：

ISAACASIMOV'SMagicalWorldsofFantasyFAERIESCopyright©1991byNightfall,Inc.,MartinGreenberg,andCharlesG.Waugh.ThiseditionpublishedbyBarnes&Noble,Inc.,byarrangementwithTekno-Books.Allrightsreserved.NopartofthisbookmaybeusedorreproducedinanymannerwhatsoeverwithoutwrittenpermissionofthePublisher.2000Barne...

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