The discovery of the portal saved the shipwrecked families, for while the barren island couldn't feed them, the world beyond the pillars certainly could. Since they were seedspeople, they already knew a lot about plants and even introduced a few new species from the Realm of Faerie, using seeds they'd managed to save from the shipwreck.
'Which ones?' Fogarty asked.
'Bluebells… foxgloves… most of the flowers with bells came from my realm.'
In the early months, Landsman made regular trips through the pillars in the hope of spotting a passing ship that would rescue them, but, as time went by, he did this less and less. Eventually he left a written record of their experience somewhere on the island where it would be safe from weather and painted a large notice on a rock near the pillars explaining where this record could be found. He hoped if anybody ever landed on the island, they'd find the diary and follow his family into the Analogue World to bring them home.
Nobody ever did. Landsman updated the record every six months at first, but this dropped to once a year, then every few years. Eventually he stopped updating altogether. By now he was middle aged and little Arana a full-grown woman. The younger members of the families were intermarrying and producing winged children of their own on the far side of the pillars. The new generations had never experienced the Realm of Faerie (beyond that tiny patch of barren island) and had little interest in it. Their home was among the plants and flowers of the Analogue World.
It was nearly four hundred years before anyone else landed on that remote little island. But it was eventually visited by a wizard named Arion, who was experiencing some problems with the engine of his fishing boat.
'You have wizards in the Realm of Faerie?' Henry asked eagerly.
Pyrgus blinked at him. 'They're just people who can make things work. Like Mr Fogarty here.'
'Get on with it,' growled Mr Fogarty.
Arion found the notice on the rock, faded but still readable. He followed the directions and rescued Landsman's record, which had survived rather well. But search as he might, he couldn't find the basalt pillars with the fire between them or any sign of the original shipwreck. He decided the record was a hoax, but since it was a centuries-old hoax it had curiosity value, and he donated the documents to the library of the Wizards' Guild.
'You have a Wizards' Guild?' Henry interrupted again, but Mr Fogarty shushed him.
Landsman's record lay unnoticed for a further sixty years before it was taken up by an adventurous nobleman named Urticae. Pyrgus called Urticae a Faerie of the Night without explaining what that meant.
'You have nobles?'
'Shut it, Henry!' Fogarty growled.
With nothing better to do, Urticae managed to find the original island. He couldn't locate the basalt pillars either, but he did discover evidence of an ancient earthquake that might have toppled them. Before long he'd convinced himself that the portal had really existed and sensed that an entrance to another realm could have important political and military possibilities. He also decided that the portal must have had something to do with natural conditions on the island. To the amusement of his family and friends, he spent the next three years visiting active volcanic sites in the hope of finding another one. The day after his thirty-third birthday he did.
The new portal, only the second ever discovered in the Realm of Faerie, was on property owned – but never visited – by another noble, a Faerie of the Light named Iris. Urticae tried to buy the site, but Iris became suspicious and wouldn't sell. Urticae's House launched an attack on House Iris, thus beginning a conflict between Faeries of the Night and Faeries of the Light that was to cause trouble right to the present day.
House Iris won the war and it was only after Urticae's forces were defeated that Iris himself found out what the fuss was all about. He searched the disputed property and eventually stumbled on the natural portal. Although he didn't recognise it for what it was, investigation soon enlightened him. His discovery was to lay the foundations of the vast power and wealth that eventually accrued to his family.
Fogarty leaned forward. 'You mean there's just one portal between our two worlds now?'
Pyrgus shook his head. 'No, eighteen have been discovered altogether. But they don't stay open. Some of them get buried, like they think happened to the first one. Some of them just stop working, nobody really knows why. New ones are found from time to time. There are about five known now, including the Purp – ' Pyrgus stopped himself, then went on, ' – including the one Urticae lost to Iris.'
Fogarty's hard old features were expressionless, but there was a curious glint in his eyes. 'How come that one lasted so long?' he asked. 'Way you tell it, it must be thousands of years old.'
Pyrgus hesitated, then said, 'That one was… modified.'
Fogarty waited for him to go on and, when he didn't, asked, 'Modified how?'
'The Imp – the, ah, some wizards made a study. I mean, this was before I was born. The portal was just an ordinary portal for, you know, centuries, but House Iris eventually built machines to stabilise it and change the way it worked. The other portals just lead to one place each and two of them aren't even useful. One opens underwater near the bed of some ocean and one opens inside an active volcano. That's the only place they go. They're sort of just there in both worlds. But you can aim the House Iris portal so it opens up anywhere you want it to.'
'That's the one you came through, isn't it?'
Pyrgus nodded. 'How did you know?'
'I think I'd have noticed a portal that was always just there at the bottom of my garden,' Fogarty said drily. 'It had to be one that opened up specially for the occasion. Why did you want to come here?'
Pyrgus hesitated. 'I didn't. I wasn't supposed to come here at all. Or shrink to this size. Or grow wings. There's a filter on the House Iris portal that stops you shrinking when you translate, but it didn't work for some reason.'
Fogarty sniffed. 'Sounds to me like you were sabotaged,' he said.
Nine
'How much of that did you believe?' asked Mr Fogarty.
Henry blinked. He'd believed it all. 'Don't you think he's telling the truth?'
'Not much,' Fogarty said. 'All that business about shrinking and growing wings…?'
'But he's small and he does have wings!' Henry protested.
'I know,' Fogarty said. 'But that doesn't mean he's shrunk or just grown them. He may have always been that way.'
They were together in Mr Fogarty's cluttered living room, having left the fairy Pyrgus Malvae in the kitchen eating a potato crisp that was nearly as big as he was.
'Why would he say he did if he didn't?'
'To keep us off our guard,' Fogarty told him soberly. 'What could be more innocent than a sweet little fairy with butterfly wings… in trouble?'
'Keep us off guard about what'}' Henry asked.
Fogarty pursed his lips, leaned forward and dropped his voice. 'The alien invasion.'
'Alien invasion?' Henry echoed. 'Alien invasion?'
'Well, you can drop that attitude for a start,' Fogarty said crossly. 'You know how many Americans got abducted by aliens last year? Six million!'
'Mr Fog – '
'And that's just America. You think what it's like world-wide. Believe me, there's something going on and this may be a part of it. He's already admitted he comes from a parallel universe. What do you think that makes him – a teddy bear? How far do you think you'd trust him if he was green with tentacles? Or that thing that came out of John Hurt's chest in Alien?'