“Oh, hell,” said Jones, “what is the use of this? I should have known. You are as stubborn and bone-headed as the rest of them.”
“Then explain yourself,” said Cornwall. “You keep telling me what you’re not. Now tell me what you are.”
“Then, listen. Once there was, as you say, only one world. I do not know how long ago that was. Ten thousand years ago, a hundred thousand years ago—there is no way of knowing. Then one day something happened. I don’t know what it was; we may never know exactly what it was or how it came about. But on that day one man did a certain thing—it would have to have been one man, for this thing he did was so unique that there was no chance of more than one man doing it. But, anyhow, he did it, or he spoke it, or he thought it, whatever it might be, and from that day forward there were two worlds, not one—or at least the possibility of two worlds, not one. The distinction, to start with, would have been shadowy, the two worlds perhaps not too far apart, shading into one another so that you might have thought they were still one world, but becoming solider and drawing further apart until there could be no doubt that there were two worlds. To start with, they would not have been greatly different, but as time went on, the differences hardened and the worlds diverged. They had to diverge because they were irreconcilable. They, or the people in them, were following different paths. One world to begin with, then splitting into two worlds. Don’t ask me how it happened or what physical or metaphysical laws were responsible for the splitting, for I don’t know, nor is there anyone who knows. In my world there are no more than a handful of people who know even that it happened. All the rest of them, all the other millions of them, do not admit it happened, will not admit it happened, may never have heard the rumor that it happened.”
“Magic,” said Cornwall firmly. “That is how it happened.”
“Goddamn it. There you go again. Come up against something you can’t understand and out pops that word again. You are an educated man. You’ve spent years at your studies …”
“Six,” said Cornwall. “Six back-breaking, poverty-ridden years.”
“Then you should know that magic—”
“I know more of magic, sir, than you do. I have studied magic. At Wyalusing you have to study magic. The subject is required.”
“But the Church …”
“The Church has no quarrel with magic. Only magic wrongly used.”
Jones sat down limply on the bed. “I guess there’s no way,” he said, “for you and me to talk with one another. I tell you about technology and you say it’s magic. The trail bike is a dragon; the camera is an evil eye. Jones, why don’t you just give up?”
“I don’t know,” said Cornwall, “what you’re talking about.”
“No,” said Jones, “I don’t suppose you do.”
“You say that the world divided,” said Cornwall. “That there was one world and it split apart and then there were two worlds.”
Jones nodded. “That’s the way of it. It has to be that way. Here is your world. It has no technology, no machines. Oh, I know you say machines—your siege engines and your water mills, and I suppose they are machines, but not what my world thinks of as machines. But in the last five hundred years, for more than five hundred years, for almost a thousand, you’ve not advanced technologically. You don’t even know the word. There have been certain common happenings, of course. The rise of Christianity, for example. How this could come about, I have no idea. But the crux of the whole thing is that there has been no Renaissance, no Reformation, no Industrial Revolution …”
“You use terms I do not understand.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jones. “I got carried away. I beg your pardon. None of the events I mentioned have happened here, none of the great turning points of history. And something else as well. Here you have retained your magic and the people of the old folklore—the actual living creatures that in our time are no more than folklore. In my world we have lost the magic, and there are none of these creatures, and it seems to me that we are the poorer for it.”
Cornwall sat down on the bed beside him.
“You seek some insight into the splitting of the world,” he said. “Not for a moment that I accept this mad tale you tell me, although I must admit I am puzzled by the strange machines you use.…”
“Let’s not argue about them further,” said Jones. “Let us simply agree we are two honest men who differ in certain philosophic matters. And, yes, I would welcome an insight into the divergence of our worlds, although I have not come here to seek it. I doubt it still exists. I think the evidence is gone.”
“It might exist,” said Cornwall. “There is just a chance it could. Mad as it may sound …”
“What are you talking about?” asked Jones.
“You say we are two honest men who differ. We are something else as well. The both of us are scholars …”
“That is right. What are you getting at?”
“In this land of mine,” said Cornwall, “scholars are members of an unspoken guild, a spectral brotherhood …”
Jones shook his head. “With some notable exceptions, I suppose the same is true of my world. Scholars, as a rule, are honorable.”
“Then, perhaps,” said Cornwall, “I can tell you something that is not really mine to tell.…”
“We are from different cultures,” said Jones. “Our viewpoints may differ. I would be uncomfortable if you were to tell me secrets that should be kept from me. I have no wish to cause you embarrassment, either now or later.”
“Yet,” said Cornwall, “we both are scholars. We share a common ethic.”
“All right,” said Jones, “what is this thing you wish to tell me?”
“There is a university,” said Cornwall, “somewhere in this Wasteland. I had heard of it and thought of it as legend, but now I find it is not a legend, but that it actually exists. There are old writings there.…”
Outside the music stopped, and the sudden silence was almost like a sound. Jones froze, and Cornwall took a step toward the tent flap, then halted, listening. A new sound came, far off, but there was no mistaking what it was—a screaming, an abandoned, hopeless screaming.
“Oh, my God,” Jones whispered, “it’s not over yet. They have not let him go.”
Cornwall moved quickly through the tent flap, Jones close upon his heels. The band of dancers had drawn back from the road and stood in a huddled mass about the table. They were looking up the road. None of them spoke; they seemed to hold their breaths. The cooking fires still streamed columns of wispy smoke into the moonlit sky.
Coming down the road was a naked man. He stumbled as he walked and it was he who screamed, a senseless, endless screaming that rose and fell, but never broke, his head thrown back as he screamed against the sky. Pacing behind him and to either side of him was a pack of Hellhounds, black and evil in the night, some going on four feet, others shambling erect, with their bodies thrust forward, stooping, not as a man would walk, and their long arms swinging loosely. Their short, bushy tails twitched back and forth in excitement and anticipation, and their terrible fangs gleamed white against the blackness of their snouts.
Oliver broke from the crowd around the table and scurried up to Cornwall. “It’s Beckett,” he screamed. “It’s Beckett that they have.”
The man and the pack of Hellhounds came steadily down the road, the screaming never ending. And now they were closer, there was another sound, heard as a sort of bass accompaniment to the terrible screaming—the snuffling of the Hellhounds.
Cornwall strode forward to take his place beside Gib and Hal, who were standing at the edge of the huddled crowd. Cornwall tried to speak, but found he couldn’t. A cold trembling had seized him, and he had to clamp his mouth tight shut to keep his teeth from chattering. Oliver was pulling at him. “That’s Beckett,” he was saying. “That’s Beckett. I’d know him anywhere. I have often seen him.”
As Beckett came opposite the camp he suddenly ceased his screaming and, stumbling as
he turned, shuffled around to face the crowd. He threw out his arms in an attitude of pleading.
“Kill me, please,” he babbled. “For the love of Mary, kill me. If there be a man among you, kill me, for the love of God.”
Hal, bringing up his bow, reached quickly for an arrow. Sniveley flung himself at the bow and dragged it down. “Are you mad?” he shouted. “Even make a motion and they’ll be on us, too. Before you have an arrow nocked, they’ll be at your throat.”
Cornwall strode forward, his hand reaching for the sword. Jones moved quickly to block him.
“Out of my way,” growled Cornwall.
Jones said nothing. His arm, starting back and low, came up. The fist caught Cornwall on the chin, and at the impact he fell like a cut-down tree, crashing to the ground.
Out in the road the Hellhounds closed in on Beckett with a rush, not knocking him down, allowing him to stand, but leaping at him with slashing teeth, then falling back. Half his face was gone and blood streamed down across his cheek. His teeth showed through where the cheek had been sheared away. His tongue moved in agony, and the scream bubbled in his throat. Teeth flashed again and his genitals were torn away. Almost as if by reflex action, he bent forward to clutch at the area where they had been. Snapping fangs tore off half a buttock and he straightened, his arms going up in a flailing motion, and all the time the scream gurgled in his throat. Then he was down, writhing and twisting in the dust, gurgling and whimpering. The Hellhounds drew back and sat in a circle, regarding him with benevolent interest. Slowly the moaning ceased, slowly he drew his knees beneath him and wobbled to his feet. He seemed whole again. His face was whole, the buttock was unmarred, the genitals in place. The Hellhounds rose leisurely. One of them butted him, almost affectionately, with its nose, and Beckett went on down the road, resuming his senseless screaming.
Cornwall rose to a sitting position, shaking his head, his hand groping for the sword.
He gazed up at Jones, saying to him out of the fog that filled his brain, “You hit me. You hit me with your fist. A peasant way of fighting.”
“Keep your hand off that toad-stabber of yours,” said Jones, “or I’ll cream you once again. All I did, my friend, was save your precious life.”
22
When Cornwall knocked, the witch opened the door.
“Ai,” she said to Mary, “so you came back again. I always knew you would. Since the day I took you down that road, I knew you’d come back to us. I took you down the road into the Borderland, and I patted you on your little fanny and told you to go on. And you went on, without ever looking back, but you didn’t fool me none. I knew you would be back once you’d growed a little, for there was something fey about you, and you would not fit into the world of humans. You could never fool Old Granny.…”
“I was only three years old,” said Mary, “maybe less than that. And you are not my granny. You never were my granny. I never till right now laid my eyes upon you.”
“You were too young to know,” said the witch, “or knowing, to remember. I would have kept you here, but the times were parlous and unsettled, and it seemed best to take you from enchanted ground. Although it wrenched my heart to do so, for I loved you, child.”
“This is all untrue,” Mary said to Cornwall. “I have no memory of her. She was not my granny. She was not …”
“But,” said the witch, “I did take you down the road into the Borderland. I took your trusting little hand in mine and as I hobbled down the road, being much crippled with arthritis at the time, you skipped along beside me and you chattered all the way.”
“I could not have chattered,” Mary said. “I never was a chatterer.”
The house was as Mary had described it, an old and rambling house set upon its knoll, and below the knoll, a brook that rambled laughing down the valley, with a stone bridge that spanned its gleaming water. A clump of birch grew at one corner of the house, and down the hill was a lilac hedge, an interrupted hedge that started and ended with no apparent purpose, a hedge that hedged in nothing. Beyond the lilacs a clump of boulders lay and in the land across the creek was a marshy pool.
The rest of the party waited by the stone bridge, looking up the hill toward the porch, where Mary and Cornwall stood before the open door.
“You always were a perverse child,” said the witch. “Always in the way of playing nasty tricks, although that was just a childish way that many children have, and no flaw in character. You pestered the poor ogre almost unendurably, popping sticks and stones and clods down into his burrow so that the poor thing got scarcely any sleep. You may be surprised to know that he remembers you rather more kindly than you have the right to deserve. When he heard you were on your way, he expressed the hope of seeing you. Although, being an ogre with great dignity, he cannot bring himself to come calling on you; if you want to see him, you must wait upon him.”
“I remember the ogre,” said Mary, “and how we threw stuff down into his den. I don’t think I ever saw him, although I may have. I’ve often thought about him and at times have wondered if there really were an ogre. People said there was, but I never saw him, so I couldn’t know.”
“Indeed, there is an ogre,” said the witch, “and most agreeable. But I forget myself. I was so overcome with seeing you again, my dear, that I fear I have been impolite. I have left you standing here when I should have invited you in to tea. And I have not addressed one word of welcome to this handsome gallant who serves as your escort. Although,” she said, addressing Cornwall, “I do not know who you are, there have been marvelous tales about you and the members of your company. And you as well,” she said to Mary. “I see you no longer have the horn of the unicorn. Don’t tell me you lost it.”
“No, I have not lost it,” said Mary. “But it was an awkward thing to carry. It seemed so much like bragging to carry it all the time. I left it with the others who are waiting at the bridge.”
“Ah, well,” said the witch, “I’ll see it later on. Once I’d heard of it, I had counted so much on the sight of it. You’ll show it to me, won’t you?”
“Of course I will,” said Mary.
The old crone tittered. “I have never seen the horn of a unicorn,” she said, “and strange as it may seem, I have never seen a unicorn. The beasts are very rare, even in this land. But let us now go in and sit us down to tea. Just the three of us, I think. It’ll be so much cozier with just the three of us. I’ll send a basket of cakes down to those waiting at the bridge. The kind of cakes, my dear, that you always liked—the ones with seeds in them.”
She opened the door wider and made a motion with her hand, signaling them to come in. The entry hall was dark, and there was a dankness in it.
Mary halted. “It doesn’t feel the same,” she said. “Not the way I remember it. This house once was bright and full of light and laughter.”
“It’s your imagination,” the witch said sharply. “You always were the one with imagination. You were the one who dreamed up the games you played with that silly troll who lived underneath the bridge and that daffy Fiddlefingers.” She cackled with remembering. “You could talk them into anything. They hated mud-pie making, but they made mud pies for you. And they were scared striped of the ogre, but when you threw stones down into his burrow, they went along and threw their share of stones. You say that I’m a witch, with my humped back and my arthritic hobble and my long and crooked nose, but you are a witch as well, my darling, and a better one than I am.”
“Hold there,” said Cornwall, his hand going to the sword hilt. “Milady’s not a witch.”
The old crone reached out a bony hand and laid it gently on his arm. “It’s a compliment I pay her, noble sir. There is nothing better said of any woman than that she’s a witch.”
Grumbling, Cornwall let his arm drop. “Watch your tongue,” he said.
She smiled at them with snaggled teeth and led the way down the dark, damp, and musty hall into a small room carpeted with an old and faded rug. Against one wall stood
a tiny fireplace blackened by the smoke of many fires. Sunlight poured through wide windows to illuminate the shabbiness of the place. A row of beaten-up houseplants stood on a narrow shelf below the windowsill. In the center of the room stood a magnificently carved table covered by a scarf, and on the scarf was a silver tea service.
She motioned them to chairs, then sat down behind the steaming teapot.
Reaching for a cup, she said, “Now we may talk of many things, of the olden days and how times have changed and what you might be doing here.”
“What I want to talk about,” said Mary, “are my parents. I know nothing of them. I want to know who they were and why they were here and what happened to them.”
“They were good people,” said the witch, “but very, very strange. Not like other humans. They did not look down their noses at the people of the Wasteland. They had no evil in them, but a great depth of understanding. They would talk with everyone they met. And the questions they could ask—oh, land sake, the questions they could ask. I often wondered why they might be here, for they seemed to have no business. A vacation, they told me, but it is ridiculous to think that sophisticated people such as they should come to a place like this for their vacation. If it was a vacation, it was a very long one; they were here almost a year. Doing nothing all that time but walking around the countryside and being nice to everyone they met. I can remember the day they came walking down the road and across the bridge, the two of them, my dear, with you between them, toddling along, with each of them holding one of your hands, as if you might need their help, although you never needed any help, then or any other time. Imagine the nerve of them and the innocence of them, two humans walking calmly down a Wasteland road, with their baby toddling between them, walking as if they were out for a stroll of an April afternoon. If there were anyone here in all this land who might have done them any harm, they would have been so shook up by the innocent, trusting arrogance of them that they would have stayed their hand. I can remember them coming up to this house and knocking on the door, asking if they might stay with me and I, of course, good-hearted creature that I am, who finds it hard to say no to anyone …”