Joe nodded, and they moved through the opening to the crossroads and turned left.
“I wonder what that guy considers a problem?” Irving asked no one in particular.
CHAPTER 4
ON CHANGES AND UNCHANGES
Fairy flesh is essentially immortal (except under Sections 7 and 16 and provisos in Volumes IV and VI as amended) and, once fixed, can never be changed in its character. It is outside the purview of magic.
The road to Terindell kept getting creepier and creepier as they went.
The road was in excellent shape, and obviously was well maintained, but the landscape quickly became a jungle, with huge trees rising almost too high to see the tops of them, so close together that they tended to block out much of the light and form almost a rooflike canopy over them.
“So this is home sweet home?” Irving asked, looking nervously around. He could believe zombies or almost anything in this place.
“Marquewood’s a huge country, one of the largest in Husaquahr,” Tiana told him. “There are rolling hills and beautiful glades and mountains and river valleys and just about anything you can think of. It’s just that this area, for the next twenty-five miles or so, is swamp and rain forest.”
“Yeah, but it hadn’t occurred to me that we’d be on this route,” Joe said a bit nervously. “I’m never gonna be really thrilled with this region again.”
Tiana dropped back and said to Irv, in a low tone, “It was elsewhere in this region that Sugasto had an encampment. Our souls were snatched from our bodies and taken here and stored there. The changeling Marge was a key to them finding us, but there was no way to tell who was who.”
“Yeah, you told me that. Around here!”
“Farther south, but the same sort of place. What he’d never tell you was that he was placed in the body of a wood nymph and bound by her Rules. It took powerful magic much later to restore him.”
Irv suppressed a loud laugh. “Dad? A girl?”
“Worse. A wood nymph. They are compulsive hussies with the brains of a banana peel. There’s no real memory of our time in the bottles, but he still has nightmares about his time as a nymph. Don’t rub it in.”
Irving felt a shiver creep up his spine. “Man! I hope that don’t happen to me! I don’t never wanna be no girl!”
She stared at him. “Why not? I happen to like it just fine.”
“Yeah? Would you like to be a man instead? Really?”
“No! I like it the way I am!”
“See?”
“What’re you two whispering about?” Joe asked, turning.
“I just filled him in on why you really want to get even with Sugasto,” she told him. At his expression, she added, “He had a right to know.”
Joe shrugged, but he was clearly angry at her for doing it. He was just realistic enough to know that you couldn’t undo something once done.
Irving thought it would be a good idea to change the subject.
“Hey—back there you said you was Dad’s mistress and slave, even. You’re his wife, ain’t you? Why the other line?”
“Not only under the Rules, but under the law, we’re not married anymore,” she explained. “We just consider ourselves married. The one who married him is different from me. Officially, legally, and under the Rules, I’m somebody else. So is he, for that matter. That dizzy nymph ran off in his old body and this one, which looks the way he originally looked, was actually a magical transformation. Under the Rules, I’m of the underclass—the class of the masses, like the people in those towns, and serfs, and slaves. I was not married within my class in proper fashion, but instead I am a dancer who dances before crowds for money. That places me in the same category as a trained animal who performs in the square for coppers for its owner. An animal has no rights at all, let alone the right to marry. An animal can only be wild or owned.”
“Yeah, but—slave! You ain’t no animal! You’re just a person bein’ treated like an animal!”
“Joe has explained to me how terrible that idea is to you, which is one reason we never brought it up, but it is like the thing we discussed about women’s dress here. This is not only a different world, it exists stuck in a different, earlier time and way of thinking.”
“But keepin’ slaves is wrong! It’s evil!”
“There is a lot of evil in both our worlds, some practiced by very good people. You must learn to think differently. There will be no revolutions here to change things like this. Not ever. Things can only become worse. Now that you know, you should be aware that I will be telling everyone here that I am Joe’s slave. It is vital to me that I do so. Being someone’s property is the only protection I have here.”
“Come again?”
“Otherwise, you see, I am nothing at all, without status or position of any sort, and, therefore, anyone could do anything with and to me that they felt like. As his slave, I am protected under law and the Rules because of his property rights.”
This kind of thinking made Irv dizzy. Still, it suddenly occurred to him that this put her indiscretions of the night before in this new light. “But, if he gets mad at you or somethin’ he could sell you or even just give you away!”
“That is so,” she admitted, “but we are married in our own minds, and I think I know him better than that.”
“Couldn’t he just give you your freedom?”
“No, that’s not permitted. If he freed me, renounced me, or sent me away, I would still be without status and unable to be anything other than I am. I can only survive as someone’s property. It is the only way I get some measure of independence.”
“Come again?”
“He is my owner, not my puppeteer. I am as independent as I can get away with.”
This was too much for the boy. If they weren’t married anymore, then she wasn’t cheating on him last night, and, likewise, he could have all the flings he wanted and not be cheating on her. But he still didn’t like it. Slavery was evil; when it was the good guys who kept slaves, what did it take to be a bad guy? He had been with them many months now, and he was only discovering what they already knew.
“What was that bit about a nose ring?” he asked her.
“He means a small ring that would be inserted through my nose, of course,” she told him. “Each nation has its own unique alloy for making them, all done by fairy folk, of course. In addition, it carries a spell which identifies the owner and all previous owners. They’re usually not worn unless ownership is transferred—sort of a bill of sale, as it were. You notice how the guardsman barely questioned the two of you but went to some length to determine I really was of Marquewood?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Because I had no ring, he wanted to make certain that Joe wasn’t smuggling me in. I hadn’t even thought of it before, but I’m very glad he was so easy on us. A stickler for the law might well have confiscated me!”
“You gonna get one of them rings put in?”
“I’d rather not,” she replied honestly, “but I think I’ll have to. I don’t want to take a risk like that again. I tried not to think about getting one, since the idea of having something in my nose sends chills through me, but, all of a sudden, I keep thinking about all the nasty possibilities without one. Without Joe around, I have nothing to prove that I am his. Slavers could steal me and sell me to anyone with impunity! And the law would back them up!”