Crawling Between Heaven And Earth (22 page)

Behind the King and Queen, other elves appeared—pages dressed in the gaudy color of the butterfly wing, maids who'd called on all the jewels of the earth for their adornment.

Many, many, many, they came in, crowding behind their sovereigns and pushing, till the room seemed alive with them and no space there was in which they weren't.

"How do you know who they are and what life would be like?" Edmund asked, his voice high and shrill. "Know you everything? Tried you everything ahead of me? Must I get my whole life as a stale thing, received second hand from my all-knowing brother?"

Will hardly felt Edmund's blows, but the words stung him as much as blows might have. Had he ever thus imposed on his brother? Had he ever told his brother how to live and what to do?

Try as he might, he could not recall a single instance. No, never, save maybe from that natural desire to safeguard his brother from the pitfalls Will had experienced.

"If it was done at all," he whispered. "It was done out of love."

"Love?" Edmund asked. His eyes, for once clear and bright and falcon-sharp, gazed up at his brother, as Edmund half turned. "Love? Oh, vile, servile submission. If this is love, brother, give me hate. You say their life is no life, and yet what have I had here? What but the pale shadow of the life you've lead, which like stale remains of another man's meal satisfy the hunger but not the palate?"

In the momentary pain of his surprise, Will trembled and Edmund all but wriggled free, crawling towards the light and the creatures in it.

"Let him come," the elf king boomed. "Let him come, Master Shakespeare. It is not your choice to make."

"No, never," Will said, holding tight. "No, I never will." And he held so tight, and he held so fierce that despite the lilac smell that made his head swim, despite Edmund's half-strangled cries for freedom and his pleading to be allowed to go, yet Will's grip was so strong, that the sovereign of elves quit laughing.

He looked to his wife and said, "Come my dear, for midnight passes nigh, and we must ride on."

The golden nymph climbed her white horse, and turned a saddened face towards Edmund, and seemed to mouth adieu through her tear-moistened lips.

Slowly moving, as if a road led them through the narrow space between wall and desk, the elves rode on, towards the far distant wall that now glimmered and which a bridge formed of rays of light now appeared, leading on to a land beyond—a land of golden fruits and virgin forest, a land such as no land in man's mortal world.

Edmund ceased his struggle, and his body went limp in Will's arms. "Is it fair my brother, that you keep me? Out of love, you say, but love or hate, why should you make the decision on my life? I would with them go, with them be happy."

"You'd not be yourself."

"And have I ever been myself?" Edmund asked. "Or a pale shadow that followed your glory where you went? I do not remember a single time in my life, where I wanted to be other but Will. Is that what you want me, then, brother, a pale puppet of your greater play?"

The King and Queen of elves were almost to the wall, almost to the entrance to the bridge and Will remembered Edmund following him down garden paths. Edmund learning to read that he might decipher the secrets of his brother's great genius. Edmund with great, adoring eyes, looking at his older brother and saying, "when I grow up, an' I shall be like you."

A pale puppet? What else had all this bought? Oh, it was flattering, and Will had dreamed that their paths would ever run parallel. He'd never thought that Edmund was not on a parallel path, but trailing him along a well beaten path, reluctantly trailing him like a boy who drags his book as he follows the schoolmaster.

Was that where this bitterness hailed from? The thrust of envy, the sting of discontent?

The faerie court was now mid-bridge, and the queen turned back to look at Edmund.

And yet Will knew that Edmund would be lost forever, if he let him go. And yet, hadn't Will lost Edmund already, by holding too tight?

Had he ever known Edmund, or just doted on a reflection of himself and, like Narcissus, almost died of such idolatry.

And Edmund with him.

Will forced his arms to open. It hurt as if he were doing it against the weight of years, the hopes of centuries.

But little by little, me made his arms open, as though they were the heavy door of a jail that must be defeated. Whose prison, he did not know.

He whispered, "Go then. Go, and be yourself."

Edmund hesitated but one moment. The space of a breath, he looked up at his brother, as if asking if he had indeed his consent.

And then he was gone, running nimble past most of the fairy court, to hold the flower-decked reins of the queen's horse and smile, warmly, at him.

King Boadag laughed.

On the bed stayed something—who knows what? It looked like Edmund. Waxen, pale Edmund, dead as clay.

It must be a stock, Will thought, an enchantment left behind to prefigure the person taken by fairyland.

It must be a stock, for had Will not seen his brother run forward and, happy, join the fairy troop?

But the light was gone from the room, and the smell of lilac.

The walls had, once more, become solid.

From outside came the rustle of wind. A dog howled in the distance.

Will collapsed on his chair and covered his face with his hands, and found the accustomed words of confession coming to his lips in a trembling whisper, "for all we've done, and all we've failed to do . . ." And yet he knew not which had been the sin, and which the redemption.

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