“Afoot? It is too far. Shall I bring your boat?”
“I own a boat?”
“You are the Swan Knight, the son of the Swan Knight. Of course you own a boat. Have I your leave to fetch it? Otherwise, you will be late for your beheading.”
“You have my leave.”
And the swan slowly drifted away.
3. Afloat
Midmorning came and went, and there was no sign of the swan or the boat she had gone to fetch. In the distance he saw a deserted brown shack.
His stomach rumbled with hunger, and Gil sternly told it to shut up.
His power to talk to animals evidently did not extend to the beast called hunger. He went to the shack to see if there were anyone there who might give him a drink or a morsel, but the place was empty, a barn-like place with a dirt floor and dusty rafters. No one was within save spiders, who, learning his name, asked him if he knew the famous spider of North Carolina whose unbreakable webs were yards wide? One offered him fat flies to quench his thirst.
When Gil returned to the shore, he saw there a small boat, no larger than his couch back home. It was painted bright red, and the gunwale was gilded with gold leaf, and the bowsprit was carved in the image of Cupid flourishing his bow.
Here also were a dozen swans arranged two by two in a harness made of vines and flowers like a team of horses, and two long strands of silk thread were the reins.
There were two swans in collars of gold leading the others. The one on the left-hand side said, “We are here, my lord.”
Gil said, “Who do you work for?”
“For you, my lord.”
Gil said, “Were you the boat, ah, steeds of the first Swan Knight?”
“Are not we the very grandchildren of those who drew him?”
Gil asked, “How did he bind you to his service?”
“He sang and spoke, and his singing was very fine, and his words very fair, and the long lost authority of Adam was in his words, and the glamour of elfin song. He told our grandfathers that he sailed to the rescue of Ygraine the Wise, of whom we do not speak, and what swan would not aid a Swanmay or the son of a Swanmay?”
Gil thought to himself that, for once, he was not going to ask any birds why they did not talk about his mother. “And how are you bound to my service?”
The two lead swans arched their necks and flapped their white wings, and one on the right said, “Swans mate for life. We forget no oaths. Shall we serve the father and not the son?”
“My father—is he man or elf?”
The right-hand one said, “How shall we know this?”
“Why are you here?”
“Do you not need us to carry you to your beheading?”
“Do you answer every question with a question?”
The two swans in the front of the harness looked at each other again in surprise. “Do we?”
“I see where my mother gets it from.”
Gil sighed and stepped into the boat. Despite the small size, the boat did not move under his footstep. Before he seated himself (there was a thwart amidships smaller than a camp stool), the boat was drawn into motion by the swans, but it rolled and pitched no more than a steady and massive yacht would have, and Gil was amazed.
To judge from the wind in his face, the little red boat seemed to be moving as slowly and serenely as a swimming swan, but each time he looked at the shore and judged his speed based on the landmarks passing, the pace was as swift as a speedboat.
The elf boat passed slowly and swiftly across the face of the waters with barely a sound, as smoothly as a glass ball rolling along a marble floor, and two white lines of wake trailed away behind.
4. Afoot
Gil followed the sailing instructions of the green steed. Days passed, but from time to time he went ashore to seek food.
Once for his supper he hunted rabbits with a sling and then forbore when the chief of the warren came out of the long grass and turned over a criminal to him for execution. That rabbit, whose only crime was not agreeing with sufficient enthusiasm at whatever the warren was enthused about that week, begged for its life and offered to provide Gil a feast better than coney. Gil agreed and was surprised to find the next morning a perfectly fine heap of asparagus, clovers, chickweed, and pennycress and a bunch of carrots piled near his head. He boiled the leafy mass in his helmet, yet it was not only edible but tasty.
A second time, days later, he went ashore, but headless men in long, dark coats, carrying lanterns from which their eyes peered, hunted him silently through the silent, leafless trees of Monogheia National Park.
A day and night and another day passed as they hunted him. Gil tried ever to return to the river, but the headless creatures were always before him.
Once, when they were close on his trail, Gil hid in a scum-coated leafy bog of freezing water; he saw them close at hand: two cloaked headless men and a headless child on a horse. The men were dressed like dandies, in fine black fabric, with lace adorning their neck stumps. The child carried his head, laughing and hallooing, at the end of a long spear, tied by his hair to the blade. The men would lower the lantern-shaped boxes in which their heads were carried. Gil heard the sniffing and snuffling along the path as they passed him by, seeking his scent. Gil feared the headless men, but he feared the child more.
He slept for two days in a cave above the snowline, beyond where the hunt ranged, eating only nuts a friendly squirrel brought him. The next day, he followed the squirrel’s lead and found a high, clear, swift-running mountain stream. He waded in the freezing water, hoping to mask his scent and then came suddenly upon his red boat with the white swans, waiting serenely.
He continued north. Each day he was hungrier, but with the days lost to the headless men, now there was no time to tarry.
It was in the darkness before dawn when Gilberec Moth came to Lake Erie. He looked at the fading stars, saw the date, and realized that no time remained. Perhaps he was too late already to reach Walpole Island by Christmas Eve.
But again he took the silken reins in hand and called out to the swans, urging them to their greatest speed. The birds moved with what seemed slow serenity, but, once again, they passed by the landmarks with deceptive quickness.
5. Aboard
When the sun was at noon, the waters of Lake Erie were clear, and Gil could see to a great depth. He took off his helm to peer closer. He saw a slender, curvaceous shape in a skintight black suit, her black hair caught in a glittering net whose pearls and gems winked in the shimmering underwater sunlight. When she looked up, her eyes were hidden behind the mirrored disks of her sunglasses.
Gil held aloft the locket of her hair he wore at his neck and waved his hand.
Nerea arose and leaped, more graceful than a dolphin, into the air, over the boat, over Gil’s head, and into the other side, splashing him. The December water was cold.
She swam down again, and then up, and then leaped again. This time Gil was ready and caught her in his arms. She was surprisingly warm and slippery.
She struggled for a moment and looked exasperated. Gil said, “Welcome aboard. Like my boat? Have a seat. It is the only seat on the whole boat.”
He sat on the gunwale in the bow, facing her. She seated herself daintily, and crossed her long legs, and pushed her sunglasses back to the top of her head, which made Gil laugh.
“You mock and sport with me!” she pouted.
“Not at all, miss,” he said. “It is just that when a pearl diver comes to the surface, she will push her scuba goggles back on her head just like that. I thought it was funny how it looked the same. You know, because you are… uh… a mermaid. I cannot get over how your glasses don’t fall off.”
“Inanimate objects hate mortal men,” she said, “All carpenters and electricians know that. But they do not hate us. Besides, you cannot call me ‘miss.’ It is not right.”
“What do I call you?” asked Gil, surprised.
“My lady.”
“Eh? I mean, beg pardon??
??
“You must call me my lady so that your unspoken feelings for me will urge you to live through combat, when otherwise your pain and grief would have you give up the ghost.” She pointed at the locket winking on his chest. “Is that not the meaning of asking me for my token?”
Gil was too embarrassed to say that it had been Ruff’s idea, and then he realized it was an idea he really liked, and he was also too embarrassed to say that. He felt warmth in his face and a burning sensation in the tips of his ears.
He said, “Yes, my lady. That is exactly what it means.” And because of the drop of monstrous blood that had touched his tongue, he could hear the honesty in his own voice, and he knew he spoke the truth.
6. Abandoned
Greatly daring, he put his hands on her delicate, black-clad shoulders and leaned down to kiss her, but she ducked under his arm and dived over the gunwale into the water. She smote cleanly into the surface with hardly a splash. The boat, which had seemed so steady and sturdy before, now pitched under his feet, and he stumbled and grabbed the gunwale.
“Hey!” he shouted, feeling foolish.
Her head reappeared above the waters, and a set of ripples spread from her neck. Her hair was black and slick and glittered beneath her jeweled snood. Droplets clung to her eyelashes like little gems and twinkled in the sunlight. “A dog I thought was a collie used the mermaid song to call me from the river water, but then his coat was a wig—his whole coat—and he threw it aside, and it was your pooka.
“This is the second time he called. So I watched your boat, knowing you would call her sooner or later. I did not think you would wait so long. I had been planning to cook you a dinner, shrimp and scallop and meat taken from the belly of the sleeping world-serpent—you have to numb the area with jellyfish venom or torpedo fish before cutting a slice of snake steak free, or else there are earthquakes—and I would have plenty of time! But now! Now! I have no time.”
His stomach sent another pang through him. A slice of world serpent steak sounded particularly tasty at the moment. Gil said, “No time for what?”
“You are going off to die!” She shook her head, and the water droplets flew from her eyelashes.
He said, “Yes.”
She said, “I conjure you by that token I have bestowed that you shall not go!”
“The rules of knighthood are very simple, but very hard. This is one of the hard ones. I cannot turn back. I gave my word.”
“Come to my world! I can lend you my mermaid’s cap, and you can breathe the seawater as lightly as air. Come! You can learn a trade and be a shoemaker; we have none of those in Ys.”
Gil crossed his arms. “My lady is supposed to make stronger the fortress of my heart, not sap and undermine it. I am in a battle with temptation. If I lose this battle, no victory on Earth in battles of flesh and blood will matter.”
Nerea sank down slightly in the water so that it touched her bottom lip. “That is a terrible and heavy wisdom. You are too young for such things. Who taught you these terrible things?”
“A man named Lancelot. He won all his earthly battles and lost the only battle that mattered, for he dishonored himself with his queen and broke the Table Round, and its like has never come into the world again.”
She shook her head and wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand, which made her cheeks more wet, not less. “Why can’t you put this off and get yourself beheaded ten years from now, or fifty years?”
Gil said, “Nerea, I want you to urge me forward, not back. I want you to tell me to be fearless. That is the job of a knight’s true lady.”
She looked up at him, and her dark eyes were bright. “Am I your true lady then?”
Gil said, “Are you? It is up to you.”
She raised her hand and touched the gunwale, as if she were about to climb aboard again. But a tremble ran through her body. “The duty of a lady is harder than the duty of a knight, for I shall live and think back on this hour. Do you have some plan, or trick, which will enable you to survive?”
“No. Tricks in battle are allowed. Not tricks with one’s own honor.”
“Oh.” Her hand slipped off the gunwale. She drifted away from the boat by a yard or two.
Gil said, “Perhaps the Green Knight will spare me. He spared Gawain.”
“Who is that?”
“A man from fifteen hundred years ago. A brave man.”
Nerea drifted a little farther away. Now she was ten yards away.
She said wistfully, “Do you think the Green Knight will spare you?”
Gil thought back on the laughter and scorn and insults the Green Knight had spoken during the Christmas feast a year ago.
Gil knew that if he spoke what he did not believe, anyone who heard would know.
He thought of several vaguely worded things he could say, which would not technically be untrue, but then he remembered talking that way to the elfs. Looking down at Nerea’s pale and pretty face surrounded by dark and clinging strands of wet hair, he did not think she was as easy to fool as an elf. He also did not think knights were supposed to try to fool their ladies.
So he simply said, “No. I do not think he will spare me.”
Nerea was over a dozen yards away. He heard the steel in her voice as she forced herself to speak words she did not want to say.
“Go forward, my knight. Face without fear your fate. Die without dishonor. Go forward!”
Nerea’s voice broke into a sob, but he only heard the first half of the sound. Like a dolphin, she reared up halfway out of the water, turned, and dove. Gil saw the water sluicing along her hips and legs and bare feet. She was gone.
Chapter Four: The Knight of the Red Steed
1. The Camp
The small scarlet boat was pulled by the swans swiftly across the lake. They passed up the river to a second lake and then found the mouth of a smaller stream. A leafless oak tree rose on either bank, and their branches commingled overhead, forming a large arch of dry twigs across the stream. Gil saw green balls lodged in the branches, and he wondered if some clumsy children had been playing here. But then the red swan-boat passed under the arch of twigs. Looking up, he saw that the balls were not solid. Rather each was a leafy mass growing in a sphere, green despite the winter season. It was mistletoe.
The stream grew narrower, shallower, and swifter, and for the first time the swans seemed to be straining. Since a dozen swans should not have been able to tow a rowboat at speedboat speeds in any case, Gil hardly blamed them for struggling.
The ground began to slope upward. Ahead rose a cliff like a gray wall. The top of the cliff was fringed with black and leafless bushes. The silver ribbon of a roaring waterfall plunged into a pool beaten into bubbling froth. The rock all around was sprinkled as if with rain drops. This pool was the source of the stream. To either side of the pool rose two more oak trees, dry and leafless in the winter. Here, too, in the midst of the branches were balls of green mistletoe.
The swans beat their wings and pulled the boat ashore. Gil stepped out. Pebbles and dry grass rustled and crunched under his boots. The two lead swans bowed their graceful necks. “No farther we bear you. This cliff, and the higher land it hides, appears on no human maps and in no human eyes nor memories. The Green Chapel is in that high land, but where, no one can say.” So spoke the lead swan on the left.
The lead swan on the right said, “Long ago giants cut a stair into the living rock; it is that white line you see in the distance yonder that climbs in zigs and zags up the gray side. However, oak is strong in this place, and evergreen can no longer shield you. If any elf or Cobweb seeks your ill, it must between this pool and the foot of that stair. Call us again when you have need.”
Gil said, “How?”
The two lead swans bent their graceful necks and stared at each other a moment, as if startled.
The one on the left said, “The next hunting horn you see hanging from a strap around the neck of any sleeping creature, be it beast or man or angel, take it.”
The one on the right said, “It is Roland’s horn, and its voice can be heard from afar, for it has an elfish contempt for time and distance. Stand with one foot on land and one in the water, and blow. We will not ignore the far-famed and wide-reaching voice of that horn. Fare you well, and God speed you.”
And with no more words, the swans pulled the small red boat into the rushing stream, and the current bore them away.
Gil looked. The foot of the cliff was hidden from view because of the rise and fall of the land and the height of the winter trees. It looked like a long hike. Gil glanced down and stared at his empty scabbard.
Gil went to the oak tree growing by the boiling pool, and, finding a long, straight, and likely looking branch, he cut it free with his dirk. As he walked in the pathless wood, keeping the gray cliff ever to his left, he trimmed and whittled the branch to serve him as a hiking stick but also as a quarterstaff.
He came upon a deer path, which he followed to a streamlet no broader than a footstep. But here he saw prints of moccasins in the muddy bank. He jumped over the stream and passed on, but more warily now.
The ground became rougher, rising and falling in step rolls, as if the earth were a brown blanket wrinkled like an unmade bed. The trees on the high slopes were few and sparse, like hairs on a bald man’s head, but the vales between were filled with thorn and brush and had muddy soil at the bottom. This ground there was too rough to push through. Gil walked along the top of one of the ridges away from the cliff, seeking an easier trail but a longer one, trying to avoid the rough ground.
He came suddenly to a place overlooking a wide meadow. Many valleys opened up into a flat and low land of tall grass and few trees. There was water gleaming in the distance on the far side beyond the meadow, no doubt an arm of Lake St. Clair.
On the shore, in the shadow of many tall war poles carved with totems, were canoes of birch bark gathered. In the shadow of the leafless trees were drying racks, wigwams of bark, and tripods of spears and leather shields adorned with feathers, beads, and bright paint. Gil saw the white thin smoke of campfires issuing upward. He was curious, and he grinned, looking for the easiest path he could take to go down and get a closer look. This must have been one of the Indian tribes hidden by the elfs from the eyes of the rest of the world, protected, as it were, from the passage of time.