King of Morning, Queen of Day (5 page)

So sad, that the great days of the gods and fighting men should have dwindled away to nothing. But when I think about it more, I can see Mummy’s point—perhaps Christianity, in all its arrogance, did not succeed in putting a ring through their noses and leading them down the aisle to kneel before the cross. Perhaps it liberated them from the shapes and characters people had forced upon them, and allowed them to be at last what they wanted to be, free from the cares and responsibilities of the world to hunt and play once again through the endless forests of Otherworld.

If Otherworld was never lost, merely hidden as if it had pulled a sky-coloured cloak around it, then perhaps it may still be attainable to those with the sensitivity to seek it. Perhaps it is close at hand to those who sincerely desire it.

And then, today, confirmation. The woods were smothering: the leaves seemed to trap the heat beneath them in a dense, stifling blanket. Bridestone Wood was filled with a sense of exhausted stillness—not a bird sang, not a leaf stirred. The only motion in the entire wood was the drifting balls of thistledown turning lazily in the still, thick air. There was a spirit in the trees I could not name—not the feeling of watching, nor the electric prickle of something about to happen. A more diffuse sensation of waiting seemed to draw me deeper into the wood until I came at last to a small glade I am quite sure I have never seen before. Bridestone Wood is not a very big wood—a few acres on the side of Ben Bulben—and I was certain I knew its every nook and cranny, but this glade was new and unfamiliar to me. Here the air was so still and heavy it seemed almost that I parted a curtain as I entered the dell. The leaves of the oaks light-dappled the carpet of grass; one shaft of hazy, dusty light illuminated a small mossy stone. On top of the stone I found them—two pairs of wings, like a butterfly’s, though no butterfly ever flew on wings so large, so delicate. Like dragonfly’s wings, they seemed, like lace, finer than the finest Kenmare needlepoint, and the precise colour of oil on water.

Faery wings. I imagined a tiny figure, no larger than my hand, climb up on this rock, drop a pair of old, used-up wings to the moss; imagined the new, crumpled buds of new wings unfolding from her shoulders, opening, drying in the sun as she sat there, waiting, fluttering them from time to time until they were strong enough that, with a soft whirr, she would leap from the stone and be carried away into the leaf-dapple.

I carried them home and pressed them between the pages of a botany book. I pondered about whether to tell Mummy. She had been brought frequently to Craigdarragh as a child—her mother and Daddy’s mother were cousins. I wonder, did she ever see things in the woods—strange, wonderful things, things from a world not ours at all, but altogether more wonderful and magical. I think this because when I read her poetry, I can see the magic in it—I can hear the faraway horns and hear the baying of the hounds of the Wild Hunt. I think Mummy must have experienced something, but like the old standing stones she told me about, her childhood glimpses of Otherworld must have become overlain with the trappings and ornaments of this world. That is why she writes about them in her poems and books; only there can she hear the horns of Elfland blowing from faraway.

I
PAUSE HERE IN
my records of Project Pharos (which is proceeding to my complete satisfaction, though I have not yet received replies to one-tenth of the invitations I have sent to prominent members of the astronomical community to witness the greatest event of this, or, dare I say? any other age: the establishment of communications with a race from another world) to comment upon a lesser matter, of a personal nature, which is causing me not inconsiderable distraction. I refer, of course, to the increasingly irrational behaviour of my daughter Emily. Since her return from Dublin she has floated around Craigdarragh as if in a daydream, paying only the scantest attention to her father and his epochal work, her head filled rather with fantastic notions about faeries and mythological creatures haunting Bridestone Wood. I can not comprehend, much less tolerate, my daughter’s absolute insistence upon the objective truth of these fantastical notions. And as if this were not enough, she has now intimated to me that she wishes to borrow one of my portable cameras with which I am charting the progress of the Altairii vessel to take a series of photographs of these “faery folk” at play in the woods around the demesne. Is she doing this out of spite for me and my rational, scientific philosophy of life in a pique of adolescent rebellion? We had the most fearful row, Emily insisting that she was not a little girl any longer, that she was a woman and that I treat her accordingly; I arguing with gentle persuasiveness and calm rationality that to be treated like a woman, she cannot revel in childish hysteria. Alas, nothing was resolved, and I fear that, as in every other decision regarding our daughter, Caroline will refuse to support me and side with Emily.

But that I had more time to spend with Emily! Maybe then she would not have wandered heedless into these realms of fantasy and whimsy! I fear I have not of late been a proper father to her, but the advent of the star folk of necessity turns all our human relationships on their heads.

Finally, the electrical fluctuations that bedevilled the house at Easter have resumed and are more frequent and of longer duration. I shall have to have words with Mr. Michael Barry of the Sligo, Leitrim, Fermanagh, and South Donegal Electrical Supply Company, and with his dour employee, Mr. MacAteer. The disruptions to my work at this advanced stage of the experiment are bad enough. What is intolerable is that the electrical supply for the pontoon lanterns should be unreliable, and fail at the most inopportune moments!

Finally, and I mean quite finally, as in the proverbial dromedary’s straw, for several weeks the tenant farmers have been complaining of attacks on their poultry runs—as if I were somehow responsible for their domestic security. Well, what do I discover this morning but that the same damn vermin has broken into the Craigdarragh pens, and in an act of sheer, wanton destruction, ripped the heads off five birds. As if my burden were not heavy enough. Alas, I have not the time for a detailed investigation of the distractions; the demands of the Altairii are paramount.

Y
ESTERDAY WAS THE HOTTEST
day yet; it was so unbearable in the gardens that we were forced inside, where it was at least tolerable. Only Daddy seemed unaffected by the heat, bustling around on his funny businesses like it was a cool April morning and not the hottest day of the century (so the
Irish Times
said), while Mummy and I flopped around expiring on sofas, begging Mrs. O’C to bring us
another
jug of iced lemonade.

It was too hot to sleep last night. After what seemed like hours of tossing and turning and trying to force myself to go to sleep (which only makes you all the more awake), I gave up the struggle and got up. There was still light in the sky. Whether it was the light of the sun just set or about to rise I do not know: all the clocks in my room had stopped at different times. There was a bright moon, just past full. I don’t know what made me open the window; perhaps I hoped for a cool and refreshing breeze off the mountains, but if anything, the air outside was heavier and more stifling than in my bedroom. Everything was purple and lilac and silver, and still; so still. It seemed like a midsummer night’s dream come true.

Then it was as if a silent voice had called my name:
Emily.
I had to go out there, into the night. I had to. I remember noticing that the Westminster chimes on the landing had stopped at ten to two. As I tiptoed downstairs and out the french windows in the dining room, I heard the voiceless voice call again:
Emily.
Outside, the air seemed to embrace me. The perfume of flowers was overpowering—gardenias, night-scented stock, honeysuckle, jasmine. Everything was as still and silent as if time itself had stopped, not the Craigdarragh clocks. I crossed the sunken garden and the tennis court. Where clematis, sweet pea, and hollyhock screened off the summerhouse, I stopped. I could feel the compulsion inside me, but I resisted. It was a foolish thing to do, for the more I resisted, the stronger and stronger it grew, until it overwhelmed me. I untied my shoulder bows and stepped out of my nightgown. As I did, it seemed to me that the entire garden had been holding its breath and now released it in a gentle sigh. I did not feel ashamed, or afraid—not then. I felt free, I felt elemental, I felt as if I was not naked at all but wrapped in a cloak of sky.

The voiceless voice called me toward the gazebo, grey and silver and shadow in the moonlight. Under the eaves glowworm lights flocked and buzzed. But these were not glowworms, for glowworm lights are cold green and these were blue and silver and gold. It seems strange now (many things seem strange now about that night, though they seemed as natural as air then), but I was not afraid. The voiceless voice called me forward again, and as I drew closer, the lights swarmed away from the summerhouse eaves and hung in a moving, dancing cloud before me. I gingerly stretched out a hand—not in fear for myself, but rather that I might frighten them away. One detached itself from the flock and settled onto my palm. It allowed me to lift it up in front of my face, and I saw that it was not an insect at all but a tiny, tiny winged girl, no larger than a fly, glowing all over with silvery-blue light. Then she leapt from my hand and the cloud of lights moved away from me, between the screens of hollyhocks, toward the rhododendron garden and the woods beyond. I followed on; I had no doubt that I was being led.

The faery lights led me over the stile across the demesne wall and into Bridestone Wood. And there the magic, so long anticipated, so deeply desired, was waiting for me. Bridestone Wood was alive as I have never known it before—every twig, every leaf, every blade of grass breathed the old magic of stone and sea and sky. My heart hammered in my breast and my breath faltered, so strong was the call to come away, come away. The lights led me onward, inward. The woods were thick with floating thistledown which brushed softly past my body. The perfume of green growing things was as overpoweringly heady as the flowers in the Craigdarragh gardens. The grass beneath my bare feet sparkled with dew but I did not feel cold—I did not feel anything except the need to penetrate deeper, closer. And the deeper I went into the wood, the faery lights increased in number. There were glowing sparkles in bush and tree and leaf, and more than lights. Half glimpsed in the shadows and the faery flicker, then gone again, I thought I could distinguish faces and forms, half human, half plant—faces like open flowers, like leaves, like patches of silver lichen and wrinkled bark. Onward I went, and inward. I cannot now recall the specific moment when I became aware of their presence; their manifestation must have been gradual—a slow stirring together out of air and moonlight and shadow. At first I thought they were night birds or bats—they were close, but not so close as for me to be able to make them out clearly. Then they were all around me, clinging to the harebells and the brambles and the ivy and the branches of the trees, springing into the air as I pushed past: the faeries.

They were of a size that would stand comfortably in the palm of my hand. All were naked and as innocent as babes in Eden. Of course faeries, like angels, know neither shame nor conscience, though I was surprised to see that they were not all female, as I had always thought. They had both females and males. The males were wild, eldritch little creatures, with pointed ears and teeth; dark slits of eyes, like cats; and a great fierce mane of dark hair. Their wings were like those of bats, as opposed to the sheer gossamer ones of the females. For their small size, they seemed to have disproportionately large genitalia. Also the females, though altogether more delicate and diaphanous, each possessed large pairs of breasts that hung almost to the waist.

In my spellbound state, I did not realise how far I had come—to a place on the side of Ben Bulben where a rock face had, at some distant time in the past, broken and littered the slopes with large, sharp-edged boulders. In the dell at the foot of the cliff, among the moss-covered rocks, the guiding cloud of faery lights dispersed to roost on the branches of the trees, as if a constellation of stars had fallen from heaven and caught there. I looked around, not certain what to expect; then, from afar, I heard the silver notes of a harp. And suddenly, I could see them. All of them, everywhere. Suddenly every flower was a face, every stone a pair of eyes. I saw the leprechaun on his cobbler’s stool amid the cool moss of the dell. I saw the pookahs—creatures the length of my forearm with the body of a boy and the head of a horse—capering agilely through the trees. Among the roots squatted things like tiny fauns, with the legs and horns of a ram and bright, human eyes. In the distance I saw the figures of the woman archer and the blind harper, whose music filled Bridestone Wood, floating like the drifting thistledown through the trees. And beyond them, almost hidden by the moon shadows, were the Lords of the Ever-Living Ones: the antlered helmets of the Wild Hunt, the moon-silvered spearpoints of the Host of Sidhe. The music swelled until the woods rang and I felt my heart would burst. And then there was silence—profound, absolute silence, and stillness. And far off, among the trees, there was a golden glow. It drew nearer, and as it approached, the host of the faeries let out a bubbling murmur of awe. Heads bowed, knees bent, spear points touched the moss. The golden glow entered the clearing and I saw that it was a wheel. It was five-spoked, much as I have always imagined a chariot wheel to be, rolling by its own power. It rolled toward me, enveloping me in its golden glow. I felt an overwhelming need to kneel before it. Inside the light I saw that the wheel was not just one thing, but many things at once: a golden salmon, a spear of light, a swan with a silver chain around its neck, a radiantly beautiful man with the green branch of a tree in his hand. The words of wonder and awe seized in my throat. I reached out a hand to touch the magic and mystery. The golden light blazed up before me… and the next thing I remember, I was back again beside the summerhouse where I had dropped my nightgown, alone and naked and cold. My feet were like two blocks of ice in the heavy dew. It is strange, but I remember feeling guilty and embarrassed as I pulled on my nightgown. The sky was beginning to lighten to the east; dawn would soon be rising over Glencar. I shivered and shuddered in the cold before the rooming.