To the eyes of most, the pale rose horizon and dusty gray zenith would not have seemed different. But to Michael, who did not look with his eyes, the changes were obvious.
For one thing, there had been less violence around the Earth during the night. Strife between humans and Sidhe had decreased markedly in the past few months; now, he could see a decline in strife between humans and humans. He was pleased; there was good reason to believe he was responsible.
For weeks he had worked to lift a mental haze that had lain over the Earth for thousands of centuries. The accumulation of discarded dreams, lost memories, cast-off fragments of personalities from the migrating human dead—the general miasma of a mental environment gone ages without cleansing—had created a mind-muffling “smog.” The smog was now largely gone.
His people could think more clearly. Their passions did not magnify and distort, and they were less quick to destructive anger.
If he did nothing for the rest of his life—however long that was—then his creation of the overlay and cleansing of the mental environment would be sufficient, he thought.
But he did not intend to stop. He had other responsibilities.
Kristine slept beside him, a large, very pregnant pale shape in the bedroom’s dawn-lit obscurity. They had moved into the Waltiri house just after their return; John had made new furniture for them to replace what had been ruined by the birds.
Michael seldom slept. Night was the time he surfed outward on a spreading wave of perception and kept track of his Earth. On such nights, there seemed to be ineffable rustlings in the world, sounds of growth and change, flowers thrusting from buds.
When Kristine had become round-bellied and big-breasted, she had told him, “I don’t know who’s more pregnant, you or I. At least on you, it doesn’t show.”
The Earth turned beneath him, a remarkable pearl covered with rock and soil and oceans, people and clouds and sky. Much had changed since the Sidhe migrations and the death of the Realm, and much had remained the same. Sidhe, for the most part, avoided human cities and human machines and usually chose desolate parts of the land and sea to rebuild their own communities. So it was that Sidhe now lived among the hills and cinder cones of Death Valley, and in the sandy wastes of the Sahara and the Gobi and scattered across the outback of Australia, where they could work their magic and adjust their ways in relative peace.
There were exceptions. A large Sidhe community now existed in Ireland, mostly Faer and Amorphals; a thousand Sidhe had settled in the heart of London, a thousand more in Jerusalem and several hundred in Peking.
Life went on. In Los Angeles, cars still crowded the freeways and power still pulsed through wires across the country. The Sidhe would have to adapt to these things.
Pelagals prevented all killing of cetaceans and other marine mammals and regulated fishing. Humans would have to adapt to this.
Riverines harried rafters on the Colorado River. Apparently, both humans and Sidhe took this as a kind of sport. Firm friendships had been made.
Airline pilots sometimes found their craft inhabited by Amorphals. There had been no air disasters since.
Sidhe horses and riders, under tough restrictions, were grudgingly accepted in equine competitions.
And on the negative side—
Sidhe tribal sorcerers in the Middle East had been called upon by radical Moslems to raise the dead of past wars, that they might fight the Jews again. Human dead could not be literally resurrected, but the Sidhe had obliged by raising shadows and dreams of ancestors, breathing a kind of life back into the ghostly residues. These “dead” promptly occupied Arab villages, driving out the living and refusing to fight or do much of anything else. The Moslems had sworn vengeance. There was little Michael could do about such travesties.
The five thousand human captives of the Sidhe had been repatriated. Their presence so far had not made much difference in the arts, but less than a year had passed...
The mage of the Cledar and his retinue moved to jungles in Mexico for the time being, to establish an enclave where they would wait until a way could be found to return them to their ancestral forms. Michael spoke with him frequently, traveling sometimes to Mexico or sometimes just conversing by thought.
Michael spent much of his time consulting with Sidhe and with the deep cetacean minds of the Spryggla and the scattered, tragically fractured cockroach minds of the Urges.
Their time was coming again. Much had been lost, but there was grudging cooperation between the races now. The sundering was done with. Years, perhaps centuries, would pass before most things could be set right, but that was a short time indeed.
Michael pressed his thigh against Kristine’s and she sighed, adjusting her bulky abdomen without waking. He smiled and felt a love for her beyond expression, and with that love came not fear but apprehension.
What stability the Earth had now, as always, was very fragile. At any moment, his magehood could topple into singing shards. There was no final security, no certainty. He could not see the future. Yet he was not afraid. Fear would only paralyze him.
Michael lay his head gently on her stomach and listened, smiling. She stirred again but did not awaken.
Michael and Kristine arrived just before opening time at the front door of the trendy little Nicaraguan restaurant on Pico. Bert Cantor came down the street with Olive’s arm in the crook of his own and saw the pair. Olive responded to his elbow-nudge, focused on them and smiled broadly.
“I know you,” Bert said brusquely, shaking Michael’s hand. “Didn’t you used to work here or something? But who’s this?” Bert eyed Kristine’s obvious condition.
“This is Kristine Pendeers. Kristine, Bert and Olive Cantor.”
“Very pleased to meet you,” Olive said, smiling with delight. “When are you due?”
“Three weeks, roughly,” Kristine replied, resting her arms on her abdomen and smiling with anticipation of relief.
“Men. They just don’t know, do they?” Olive sympathized, clucking and urging Bert to open the door.
Kristine agreed to be polite, but her glance at Michael was sufficient. He knew what her pregnancy felt like. Sometimes he even read the child’s burgeoning, liquid-dreaming thoughts and conveyed them to her.
“You know, you have a lot of explaining to do,” Bert said, slipping his key into the lock. “I read things in the newspaper that are nothing like what we used to read in the newspaper.” He sighed and held the door open for them. “Not good newspapers.”
“Not everything’s perfect,” Michael conceded.
Jesus shouted “¡Hola!” from the kitchen, and Michael waved back with a big grin.
“The beautiful lady, she’s your girlfriend?” Jesus asked, twirling a plastic bag full of dried black beans.
“She’s my wife,” Michael said proudly.
“Eh! Wait until Juanita hears. Juanita, the brujo has a bruja.”
“Such talk,” 0live said, waving both hands at the kitchen. “Your folks, how are they? And why didn’t you invite us to the wedding?”
“They’re fine,” Michael said.
“It was a small ceremony,” Kristine explained.
“You’ve told her all about...?” Bert asked, raising his brows and corrugating his forehead.
“I have,” Michael says.
“And she married you anyway!” Bert marveled.
“I would have, too,” Olive said, casting a defiant look at her bemused husband. “Bert and I, we think...we know you had something to do with what’s been happening.”
“Yeah, a hypothesis, call it,” Bert said. “How things got so much worse, then better, though all confused. You were the only one who knew anything...I admit, though, you sounded quite...” He twirled one finger around his ear, then glanced at the front windows and door and said, “Business hasn’t been worth much lately. Oh, what the hell, let’s close today and celebrate. And talk. You have to fill us in.”
And Michael did, Kristine helping him with certain parts
he left out. Jesus fixed black-bean tortillas, Juanita served, and everybody ate as Michael spoke in a quiet voice of what had happened. He told very few people these things; there was no pride in him now, only practicality, and he knew not many would believe, and most of those he did not want to deal with.
Juanita crossed herself several times.
“No more meat? Not beef or chicken?” Ben asked at one point.
Michael shook his head. “Plants are growing that will replace meat,” he said. The changeover, like everything else, would take time, but at least the groundwork was laid.
“What about the people?” Olive asked. “How will we get along with all these others here now—the faeries and such?”
“Not eating meat’s part of the way we’ll get along better,” Kristine said. “They can’t stand it.”
“Oh, don’t we know!” Bert said, shaking his head vigorously. “Had a few of them walking up the street a month ago, out of place, dressed like they dress, acting like tourists, and they came in here... Such looks! Made me feel ashamed, somehow, and mad, too. No worse than going around in black coats and wide-brim hats, I suppose, and frowning at the gentiles—but still...”
“So many peoples were transformed into animals,” Michael reminded them.
Bert’s face paled. “I think we’re going to have to come up with new definitions for treif.”
“And what about us?” Olive persisted. “What’s going to happen to us, all the people here? Can we just accept them, accept all the changes?”
“This is the way things are,” Michael said. A finality in his tone made Olive draw her head back and purse her lips, on the edge of disapproval.
“And you’re responsible for all this?” Bert asked, preparing to be astonished again.
“Oh, no,” Michael said. “Not at all.” He laughed, and Kristine laughed with him, thinking it very likely that some of Michael’s advisors were even now hiding out in the garbage behind the restaurant. “Not at all!”
“I knew there would be something different tonight,” Kristine said, weary of attendant marvels. She sat awkwardly on the Morris chair John had dragged onto the patio behind the Perrin house.
“What’s that?” Michael asked.
“The mage hasn’t guessed?” She mocked surprise. She was getting testier as her time narrowed to days. “Your mother. She’s keeping mum, but she’s a nervous wreck. John looks absolutely terrified.”
“So what is it?” Michael persisted.
“Somebody’s joining us for dinner. Somebody not human, I’d say. You’re usually the one responsible for nonhuman guests, but not this time, I take it?”
Michael shook his head, all innocence.
“Who does your mother know that isn’t human?”
Michael’s eyes widened. “She’s never met her in person, but—my great-great-grandmother,” he said.
Salafrance Underhill arrived at seven in the evening, her long red hair tied back in a prim bun, dressed in a cloak the color of autumn leaves. Ruth answered the door herself, saying, “She’s my problem, I mean my guest, really. When she called, I invited her here. I’ll greet her at my own front door.”
For a moment, the two women faced each other over the threshold, and Michael saw his great-great-grandmother for the first time. Side by side, Ruth and Salafrance Underhill looked remarkably alike, but there was no denying Salafrance was a pure Sidhe and Ruth was largely human.
“Great-granddaughter,” Salafrance said, her voice even more beautiful than Ulath’s, almost as entrancing as the voice of the Ban of Hours. “You have dreamed of me. I’ve felt your dreams across the world and beyond.”
“Hello,” Ruth said, struggling to control her shivering.
“Is it customary I should wait out here?”
“No,” Ruth said. “Come in.”
Salafrance drifted through the door, seeming as tall and slender as a tree, her long face and cold eyes difficult to read as she looked from person to person, lingering on Kristine and her improbably wide belly and then turning her full attention to Michael, who stood by the couch in the living room, feeling awkward and young all over again.
“I did not know my love for men would lead to this,” she said. “I followed the way of Elme for five hundred years, but out of an inner perversity, not by plan. Granddaughter, this is your husband?” She indicated John with a nod of her long chin.
“His name is—” Ruth began.
“Yes. I have been watching you all for some time. I hope that does not upset you.”
Ruth swallowed hard but shook her head.
“I have much to apologize for. I did not prepare my children adequately. I am afraid they issued foolish edicts and did not understand who or what they were, and how they must choose mates wisely. You suffered for this, Great-granddaughter.”
Michael could read his mother’s emotions, barely held in check—half an urge to order Salafrance from her house, and half simply to weep. She did neither. Salafrance sat in the living room at Ruth’s invitation and gestured for Kristine to sit beside her.
“Does he read your child for you?” she asked.
“Michael?” Kristine asked, embarrassed. “Yes. He does.”
“And is it a maker, as well?”
“We don’t know,” Michael said.
“Male or female?”
“Female,” Kristine said. “The doctors confirmed it.”
Salafrance smiled ironically. Her almond eyes could have been regarding anybody in the room at any given moment, without the slightest impression of darting about. “Power is carried by the female... Great-granddaughter,” she said, focusing her full attention now on Ruth.
“Yes?”
“I am proud of you, most proud.”
Ruth smiled. Michael knew that his mother would never come to love or even be comfortable around Salafrance Underhill, but she could now be comfortable within herself.
She had not failed her heritage.
At dinner, as Salafrance picked at rice and vegetables, she asked, “Where is the nectar of mages?”
“I gave it back to my father,” Michael said.
“It’s in the wine-cellar. The closet, actually,” John said.
“It has waited long enough, don’t you think?”
“Sidhe don’t drink, Grandmother,” Michael said quietly.
“Do you know the rule—always forbidden, on occasion mandatory?”
Michael nodded.
“This is such an occasion,” Salafrance decreed.
“I’ll bring it,” John said, pushing his chair back from the table.
“I am told, and I have felt, that you are in control of this world now, of its making and its song,” she said to Michael. “This is so?”
“It is so,” Michael said.
“What sort of mage are you?”
Michael smiled. “That’s a broad question.”
“Are you obvious, dancing with the song at all times, watching the steps of all who dance with you?”
“He doesn’t meddle,” Kristine said defensively. “Hardly anybody knows what he does or who he is.” Michael patted her hand.
“I...don’t want to control everybody or act like a policeman,” he said. “I don’t think I should have any real authority over how people behave or make moral judgments. I won’t impose my will on others. I’m a poet, not a master. I may tune the instruments, but I don’t lay down every note of the song.”
“And if it comes about that the races try to destroy the balance again?”
“I’ll write that bridge when I come to it,” he said, irritated that she should see so quickly what worried him most about the future.
“You are a very young mage,” Salafrance said. John returned with the opaque, time-darkened bottle of wine.
“What is its provenance?” Salafrance asked.
John was puzzled, uncertain how to answer. “Arno Waltiri gave it to us.”
“The human who shared his body with the Cledar mage...?”
> “The same,” Michael said. “He had it from David Clarkham. I’ve heard Clarkham stole it from Adonna.”
“We should all drink...” Salafrance said. “Except for Kristine, who bears perhaps another maker, one who will drink this wine in her own due course.”
“I don’t think I could stomach it anyway,” Kristine said.
The bottle was sealed with a thick slug of wax impressed with a tiny sharp design, two triangles nested like a Star of David. When John cleared the wax plug from the bottle’s neck, working carefully to avoid breaking the ancient glass, an almost palpable aroma filled the room, richer by far than Clarkham’s wines, beyond bouquet, more like a visit to a summer-heated fruit garden.
“Who took this bottle, and when, I do not know, but I know whence it comes,” Salafrance said. “The sigil tells me. It was once in the collection of Aske and Elme themselves. It may be the last bottle of its kind, and it carries special virtue. It is fitting that the first human maker and mage in untold ages should drink of it and be confirmed. That is what Elme would have wished, and Aske would have been proud beyond his time.”
“You knew them?” Ruth asked, awe-struck.
“I am not that old, Great-granddaughter,” Salafrance said, and Michael sensed the depths of her humor. “I have met those who knew them. So has Michael.” Her look was potent with meaning. Michael almost shivered.
“Now that both Councils have dissolved, and new orders are found, and new songs to which we dance, let us toast the new mage in humble surroundings, toast a humble creator who vows not to enslave for order’s sake but to do what he must, and that alone: tend a garden fit for all God’s creatures and weave a lace pleasing to most.”
Not once, in all his time with Sidhe, had Michael ever heard them refer to a god beyond Adonna or Adonna’s Yahweh.
“Which god is this, Grandmother?” Michael asked.
“You feel this God in your blood, do you not?” she asked. She held up her glass, and the others followed suit. “The God that requires only our remembrance in extremis. The gentle, the mature, the ever-young, that demands nothing but our participation and growth. The composer of the Song of Earth and all worlds. Invoke this God, Michael, and be a maker and mage.”