It was a fragment of heaven, being with her like this. For the moment he could almost believe she was his. When they danced apart, she was a marvel of motion and symmetry; when they danced together, she was absolute de-light. Now he wished this dance could go on forever, keeping his dream alive.
But then Neysa brought her harmonica melody to a close, and the dance ended. The Sidhe applauded. “Aye, she can dance!” Thistlepuff agreed ruefully. “Mayhap she has some inkling of Faerie blood in her ancestry after all. Thou hast shamed us, and we must make amend. Come to our village this night.”
“We dare not decline their hospitality,” the Lady Blue murmured in his ear. She was glowing with her effort of the dance, and he wished he could embrace her and kiss her. But this was one blunder he knew better than to make.
Now the steep bank of a ridge opened in a door. There was light inside, and warmth. The passage into the hill was broad enough for the steeds, and these were of course welcome. They walked into the Faerie village. Inside it was amazingly large. This was technically a cave, but it seemed more like a clearing in a deep wood at night, the walls invisible in their blackness. A cheery fire blazed in the center. Already a feast was being laid out: a keg of liqueur, many delicious-smelling breadstuffs, fresh vegetables, pots of roasted potatoes and buckets of milk and honey and dew. For the animals there was copious grain and fragrant hay and a sparkling stream. Then Stile remembered something from his childhood readings. “If a human being partakes of Faerie food, is he not doomed to live among them forever? We have business elsewhere—“
Thistlepuff laughed with the sound of rain spattering into a quiet pond. “Thou really art not of our kind, then! How canst thou believe that myth? Thou hast it backwards: if ever one of the Sidhe forsakes his own and consumes mundane food, he is doomed to become mortal. That is the true tragedy.”
Stile looked at Neysa, embarrassed. She blew a positive note—no danger here. Thistlepuff had spoken the truth, or close enough to it to eliminate his concern. So he had blundered again, but not seriously; the Sidhe were amused. Now they ate, and it was an excellent repast. After-wards, pleasantly sated, they availed themselves of the Faerie sanitary facilities, which were concealed in a thick bed of toadstools, then accepted invisible hammocks in lieu of beds. Stile was so comfortable that he fell almost instantly to sleep, and remained in blissful repose until a beam of sunlight struck his face in the morning. Startled, he looked about. He was lying in a bed of fem in a niche in the gully. No cave, no invisible hammock, no Faerie village! The Lady Blue was up before him; she had already fetched fruit from some neighboring tree. Neysa and Hinblue were grazing.
Stile was abashed. “Last night—what I remember—the Sidhe—did I dream—?”
The Lady Blue presented him with a pomegranate. “Of dancing with the Faerie-folk? Sharing their food? Consuming too much of their nefarious dew so that thou didst sleep like a rock forever in their invisible hammock? It must have been a dream, for I remember it not.” There was a musical, mirthful snort from Neysa.
“Even so,” Stile agreed, concentrating on the fruit. Was his face as red as its juice? The Sidhe had had some sport with him after all. But how glad he was to note that the Lady’s heavy mood had lifted.
“Yet dost thou dance divinely in thy dreams.” The Lady was for a moment pensive, then reverted briskly to business. “If thou dost not get thy lazy bones aloft, never shall we locate the Platinum Elves in time for thee to go divert thyself at thy next otherframe game with thy mechanical paramour.”
Barbed wit, there! The Proton Tourney was no fun diversion, but a matter of life or nonlife on that planet. Stile rose with alacrity. “One more day, one more night—that’s all the time I have until I have to report for Round Two of the Tourney.”
Soon they were on their way again. It had been a good night; human and equine beings had extra vigor. Neysa and Hinblue stepped out briskly, hurdling the ridges and gullies and hummocks. Neysa, conscious of the equine limitations of the natural horse, did not push the pace too fast, but miles were traversed swiftly. The Lady Blue, of course, rode expertly. Stile might be the best rider in Phaze, but she was the second best.
After an hour Stile became aware of something fleeting. “Hold,” he murmured. Neysa, feeling his bodily reaction, was already turning around.
“Is aught amiss?” the Lady Blue inquired, elevating an eyebrow prettily.
“The curtain,” Stile said. “We just passed it. I need to note where it is, as a matter of future reference. There may be good places to cross it to Proton, if only I can locate them.”
“There are times when I wish I could cross that curtain,” she said wistfully. “But hardly can I even perceive it.”
“Ah—here it is,” Stile said. “Proceeding northeast/ southwest, angling up from the Purple Mountains. Of course it may curve about, in between reference points, but—“
The Lady waved a hand. “Cross it, my lord, and see where it leads. Only forget not to return, lest I abscond with thy steed.”
Stile laughed, then spelled himself through. The other side was hot and bleak. The ubiquitous cloud of pollution was thinner here, but the haze still shrouded a distant force-field dome. This was not a good place to cross; he needed a section within a dome, or very close to one. Ah, well—it had been worth checking. He released his held breath and willed himself back into Phaze as he stepped back across the faint scintillation.
It was a great relief to see the lush greenery form around him. What a mess the Citizens had made of the surface of their planet, in the name of progress! “I’m satisfied. Let’s go”
“Yet if I could cross, it would mean there would be no one for Hulk,” the Lady concluded.
By midmorning they had reached the fringe of the Platinum Demesnes; Elven warner-markers so informed them. Now Stile uncorked the Yellow Adept’s gift-potion and applied it liberally to his face and hands. He offered some to the Lady, but she demurred; she did not care to smell like an elf. Since she was obviously no threat to anyone, Stile trusted it would be all right.
The Platinum Demesnes were in the Purple Mountains proper. The access-pass was marked by a neat wooden sign: PT78. Stile smiled, recognizing the scientific symbol and atomic number of platinum; surely some crossover from the frame of Proton, here. Evidently these Little People had a sense of unity or of humor.
They rode up the narrow trail. The mountain slopes rose up steeply on either side, becoming almost vertical. It would be very easy for someone to roll boulders down; the stones would flatten anyone misfortunate enough to be in their way. Except an ogre or an Adept. Stile kept his hand on his harmonica and his mind on a boulder-repulsion spell he had devised. He did not want to use magic here, but he wanted even less to suffer death by stoning. Then they encountered a hanging bridge. It crossed a deep, dark chasm too wide for Neysa to leap, but the bridge was too narrow and fragile to support equine weight. Neysa could change form and cross, but that would not help Hinblue. Stile considered casting a spell to transport the horse across, but vetoed it himself; the Platinum Elves could be watching. So—they would have to cross the hard way, by navigating the chasm manually. Perhaps this was a deliberate hurdle to test the nature of intruders, separating the natural from the supernatural—or, more likely, the Elven folk did not want mounted visitors charging into their Demesnes.
There was a precarious path down into the chasm, and another rising on the far side. Probably the two connected, below. Stile and the Lady started down, riding, because the steeds did not trust the people’s ability to navigate such a pass safely alone. But Stile kept his hand on the harmonica.