Trilda was a congenial seat for intensive study. The air smelled fresh of foliage. The sun shone by day, the moon and stars by night. Solitude was near-absolute; ordinary folk seldom ventured so deep into the forest. Trilda had been built by Hilario, a minor magician of many quaint fancies. The rooms were seldom square and overlooked Lally Meadow through bay windows of many sizes and shapes. The steep roof, in addition to six chimneys, disposed itself in innumerable dormers, gables, ridges; and the highest verge supported a black iron weathercock, which served in double stead as a ghost-chaser.
Murgen had dammed the brook to create a pond; the overflow turned a wheel beside the workroom, where it powered a dozen different machines, including a lathe and a bellows for his hot-fire.
Halflings occasionally came to the edge of the forest to watch Shimrod when he went out on the meadow, but otherwise ignored him for fear of his magic.
The seasons passed; autumn turned to winter. Flakes of snow drifted down from the sky to shroud the meadow in silence. Shimrod kept his fires crackling and began an intensive study of Balberry's Abstracts and Excerpts, a vast compendium of exercises, methods, forms and patterns inscribed in antique or even imaginary languages. Using a lens fashioned from a sandestin's eye, Shimrod read these inscriptions as if they were plain tongue.
Shimrod took his meals from a cloth of bounty, which, when spread on a table, produced a toothsome feast. For entertainment he schooled himself in the use of the lute, a skill appreciated by fairies of Tuddifot Shee, at the opposite end of Lally Meadow, who loved music, though no doubt for the wrong reasons. Fairies constructed viols, guitars and grass-pipes of fine quality, but their music at best was a plaintive undisciplined sweetness, like the sound of distant windchimes. At worst they made a clangor of unrelated stridencies, which they could not distinguish from their best. Withal, they were the vainest of the vain. Fairy musicians, discovering that a human passerby had chanced to hear them, invariably inquired how he had enjoyed the music, and woe betide the graceless churl who spoke his mind, for then he was set to dancing for a period comprising a week, a day, an hour, a minute and a second, without pause. However, should the listener declare himself enraptured he might well be rewarded by the vain and gloating halfling. Often, when Shimrod played his lute, he found fairy creatures, large and small,* sitting on the fence, bundled in green coats with red scarves and peaked hats. If he acknowledged their presence, they offered fulsome approbation and asked for more music. On certain occasions fairy horn-players asked to play along with him; each time Shimrod made polite refusal; if he allowed such a duet he might find himself playing forever: by day, by night, across the meadow, in the treetops, higgledy-piggledy through thorn and thicket, across the moors, underground in the shees.• The secret, so Shimrod knew, was never to accept the fairies' terms, but always to close the deal on one's own stipulations, otherwise the bargain was sure to turn sour.
*Fairies maintain no specific size indefinitely. When dealing with men they often appear the size of children, seldom larger. When caught unawares, they seem on occasion only four inches to a foot tall. The fairies themselves take no heed of size.
See Glossary II.
•Fairies share with humans the qualities of malice, spite, treachery, envy and ruthlessness; they lack the equally human traits of clemency kindness, pity. The fairy sense of humor never amuses its victim.
One of those who listened as Shimrod played was a beautiful fairy maiden with flowing nut-brown hair. Shimrod tried to lure her into his house with the offer of sweetmeats. One day she approached and stood looking at him, mouth curved, eyes glinting with mischief.
"And why would you wish me inside that great house of yours?"
"Shall I be truthful? I would hope to make love to you."
"Ah! But that is sweetness you should never try to taste, for you might become mad, and follow me forever making vain entreaties."
"'Vain', always and always? And you would cruelly deny me?"
"Perhaps."
"What if you discovered that warm human love was more pleasing than your birdlike fairy couplings? Then who would beseech and who would follow whom forever, making the vain entreaties of a lovesick fairy maid?"
The fairy screwed up her face in puzzlement. "That concept has never occurred to me."
"Then come inside and we shall see. First I will pour you wine of pomegranates. Then we will slip from our clothes and warm our skins by firelight."
"And then?"
"Then we will make the test to learn whose love is the warmer."
The fairy maiden pulled her mouth together in a pout of mockoutrage.
"I should not flaunt before a stranger."
"But I am no stranger. Even now, when you look at me, you melt with love."
"I am frightened." Quickly she retreated and Shimrod saw her no more.
Spring arrived; the snows melted and flowers bedizened the meadow.
One sunny morning Shimrod left his manse and wandered the meadow rejoicing in the flowers, the bright green foliage, the bird calls. He discovered a track leading north into the forest which he never before had noticed.
Under the oaks, thick-boled with sprawling branches, he followed the traiclass="underline" back, forth, over a hillock, down into a dark glen, then up and through a clearing, walled with tall silver birches, sprinkled with blue corn-flowers. The way led up over an outcrop of black rocks, and now, through the forest, Shimrod heard laments and outcries, punctuated by a reverberant thudding sound. Shimrod ran light-footed through the woods, to discover among the rocks a tarn of black-green water. To the side a long-bearded troll, with an extravagantly large cudgel, beat a lank furry creature hanging like a rug on a line between a pair of trees. With every blow the creature cried out for mercy: 'Stop! No more! You are breaking my bones! Have you no pity? You have mistaken me; this is clear! My name is Grofinet! No more! Use logic and reason!"
Shimrod moved forward. "Stop the blows!"
The troll, five feet tall and burly, jumped around in surprise. He lacked a neck; his head rested directly on the shoulders. He wore a dirty jerkin and trousers; a leather cod-piece encased a set of very large genitals.
Shimrod sauntered forward. "Why must you beat poor Grofinet?"
"Why does one do anything?" growled the troll. "From a sense of purpose! For the sake of a job well done!"
"That is a good response, but it leaves many questions unanswered," said Shimrod.
"Possibly so, but no matter. Be off with you. I wish to thrash this bastard hybrid of two bad dreams."
"It is all a mistake!" bawled Grofinet. "It must be resolved before damage is done! Lower me to the ground, where we can talk calmly, without prejudice."
The troll struck out with his cudgel. "Silence!"
In a frantic spasm Grofinet won free of the bonds. He scrambled about the clearing on long big-footed legs, hopping and dodging, while the troll chased after with his cudgel. Shimrod stepped forward and pushed the troll into the tarn. A few oily bubbles rose to the surface and the tarn was once more smooth.
"Sir, that was a deft act," said Grofinet. "I am in your debt!"
Shimrod spoke modestly: "Truly, no great matter."
"I regret that I must differ with you."
"Quite rightly," said Shimrod. "I spoke without thinking, and now I will bid you good day."
"One moment, sir. May I ask as to whom I am indebted?"
"I am Shimrod; I live at Trilda, a mile or so through the forest."
"Surprising! Few men of the human race visit these parts alone."
"I am a magician of sorts," said Shimrod. "The halflings avoid me." He looked Grofinet up and down. "I must say that I have never seen another like you. What is your sort?"
Grofinet replied in a rather lofty manner. "That is a topic which gentle-folk seldom see fit to discuss."