He was so mixed up in his feelings he didn’t know quite what to do, so he went back to his horse, sat down on a rock, and just waited. Finally, he got so bored he dozed off, and only woke up when he heard another horse neigh. He jerked himself awake and saw her out there getting on her horse and turning it back toward him. He might have beaten her back to camp if he wanted to risk the ride, but the questions inside him forced him to wait.
She was startled to see him, but instantly she knew the whole story without his saying a word.
“Well,” she sighed, “I could say it was the Rules for me, and I think it might well be the truth, because I really do love your father deeply and yet I have no guilt or shame about this at all. It might also be something inside me wanting to get even with him.”
“Huh? He cheated on you?”
“Many times, when we were ruling together. It was nearly impossible for him to keep his hands off all those pretty young things who are attracted to strength and power, and with all the scheduling demands it wasn’t that hard for him, either. I’m not so sure that wasn’t one reason I wanted to end that phase of our life.”
“But you never cheated on him—then?”
“Eventually. Not right away, but, after a while, I started playing the same kind of games, partly in revenge, partly because he was getting such a workout with them he had little energy left for me. The difference was, I knew not only that he cheated, but with whom and when. He didn’t know about me. His male ego wouldn’t let him in any case unless he caught me in bed with somebody, and I was much too discreet for that. After a while, I got to like it. The variety, no complications, that kind of thing. But I was always, as you say, hung up with others then. I’m not any more. The other thing is, as I discovered tonight, I can’t just give it away, except to him. That’s some Rule someplace, no question.”
“You been doin’ this all along since we got here, then?”
“No, I’m in full control of myself. This was the first time. I’m not so sure about him, though, although he’s probably been good because you’re with us. I’m just sorry you had to find out, particularly like this. I guess I must not seem much of a change to you, and certainly not a good example. That I feel bad about.”
“Well, I dunno… What if he finds out?”
“He probably will someday, and then I’ll pull the Rules on him—everybody does it because nobody knows what the Rules really say—and he’ll feel free and that’ll be that. But I’d just as soon not right now. I don’t plan on this as a regular habit unless he forces me. I did it for just one good reason—pure practicality.”
“You did it for money.”
She nodded, holding out a hand. He reached out and into his outstretched palm dropped two gold and two silver pieces. “Jeez!” he said. “That’s two and a quarter horses! Was that all of them or are you really that good?”
“Never mind, smartass. Let’s get back and get some sleep. Tomorrow you can find the extra pieces you didn’t notice, maybe hidden away in a fold of the bag or whatever.” She grew very serious. “Look, it’s important to me that you understand this. I love your father. I would never leave him, and I wouldn’t want to be with any other man like this. I don’t know what happened between him and your mother because he never talks about it except in vague terms, but if we split up, it’ll be him taking the walk out of male ego, not me. I’m sorry, but the situation’s just different here.”
“All right, I’ll shut up about it,” he assured her, “but only this once. You keep sneakin’ off with these strangers in strange places with no backup and sooner or later somebody’s gonna get you good. People just ain’t that different over here as you like to think they are.”
Not too different at all, he thought, as they rode back in silence, except that these folks have a ready excuse for the wrong things they do. Except that at least these two cared what he felt, and that was something. Something he very much needed, and didn’t want to lose.
When Irving had asked what sort of fairies ran the ferry, the man had told him to wait and see. Now, as it came in, he still wasn’t quite sure. It was a big thing, flat but raised up, with a real hull, and there was a huge single sail on a mast in the center controlled by some kind of rope-and-pulley system that extended to the sides of the ship and seemed to go down into the water. There seemed to be lots of some sort of large fish, maybe dolphins, ahead of it in the water as if scouting the way, but, aboard, there appeared to be no wheel, no wheelhouse, and no apparent crew!
As it drew closer, it was clear that the big fish or whatever they were in front were on lines, like a team of horses attached to a big wagon, and that they were in fact steering the boat that way, although the main propulsion came from the manipulations of the single sail. And there was someone, or something, atop the lead fish, almost invisible from any distance because the creature’s coloration seemed to match or reflect the water.
Now the boat was angled so that the current would take it into shore, the sail slowly folded inward so that it was no longer driving.the boat, and, for a moment, the rider was against the dark background of the boat hull rather than the water. The outline was of an impossibly beautiful girl, almost a cartoon of a sexy girl, only her skin seemed weird, as if she were somehow made of glass or plastic and filled with water.
“A water nymph!” Joe exclaimed. “I never knew they did any work they didn’t have to!”
Tiana nodded. “But what’s pulling and steering? Mermaids?”
At that moment the “fish” team, freed of its tension for a moment, sounded as one, and from the water emerged the ugliest, most fearsome, monstrous heads Irving had ever seen, almost a cross between a lion’s head and maybe the Creature from the Black Lagoon. They roared with a terrible sound that more than fit their horrible visage.
“Hippogryphs!” Joe exclaimed. “Nymphs who never did anything in their lives riding and guiding a beast that I never knew could be tamed! They’ve got to be tame, though. She wouldn’t have the strength to guide them against their wills!”
The water nymph stood atop the lead beast, reins in hand, like a performer in some big water show, pulling this rein and that until the beasts were to one side, out of the way of the boat, which then passed them. The team moved in and started nudging the boat into the landing.
There was no dock as such; just a mud flat that went gently down into and under the water. The boat ran right up on the flat and seemed to dig a little trench as it stuck fast in the shallow mud. Now a couple of human boys, maybe eight or nine years old, who had been sitting on a piece of wood, ran up and started unfastening the front end of the boat, which dropped with a crash onto the mud and created a ramp from the exterior. As soon as the people, horses, and carts inside started to come off, all sorts of adults seemed to pop up from all over the place hawking just about everything and keeping an incessant set of pleas to buy this or that or, “You’ll need this,” as the travelers disembarked.