“Or yer dreamin’ now ye did. But go on wi’ it.”
“He said Lissy couldn’t have been abducted because I was in the same bed, and that she’d gone out for a swim in the morning and drowned. But she could have been abducted, if she had gone out for the swim first. If someone had come for her with a boat. And she wouldn’t have drowned, because she didn’t swim good enough to drown. She was afraid of the water. We went in yesterday, and even with me there, she would hardly go in over her knees. So it was you.”
“Yer right, ye know,” Daniel said. He formed a little steeple of his fingers. “ ’Twas us.”
Tim was recalling stories that had been read to him when he was a child. “Fairies steal babies, don’t they? And brides. Is that why you do it? So we’ll think that’s who you are?”
“Bless ye, ’tis true,” Daniel told him. “ ’Tis the Fair Folk we are. The jinn o’ the desert too, and the saucer riders ye say ye credit, and forty score more. Would ye be likin’ to see me wi’ me goatskin breeches and me panpipe?” He chuckled. “Have ye never wondered why we’re so much alike the world over? Or thought that we don’t always know just which shape’s the best for a place, so the naiads and the dryads might as well be the ladies o’ the Deeny Shee? Do ye know what the folk o’ the Barb’ry Coast call the hell that’s under their sea?”
Tim shook his head.
“Why, ’tis Domdaniel. I wonder why that is, now. Tim, ye say ye want this girl.”
“That’s right.”
“An’ ye say there’ll be trouble and plenty for us if ye don’t have her. But let me tell ye now that if ye don’t get her, wi’ our blessin’ to boot, ye’ll drown—hold your tongue, can’t ye, for ’tis worse than that. If ye don’t get her wi’ our blessin’, ’twill be seen that ye were drownin’ now. Do ye take me meaning?”
“I think so. Close enough.”
“Ah, that’s good, that is. Now here’s me offer. Do ye remember how things stood before we took her?”
“Of course.”
“They’ll stand so again, if ye but do what I tell ye. ’Tis yerself that will remember, Tim Neal, but she’ll remember nothin’. An’ the truth of it is, there’ll be nothin’ to remember, for it’ll all be gone, every stick of it. This policeman ye spoke wi’, for instance. Ye’ve me word that ye will not have done it.”
“What do I have to do?” Tim asked.
“Service. Serve us. Do whatever we ask of ye. We’d sooner have a broth of a girl like yer Lissy than a great hulk of a lad like yerself, but then too, we’d sooner be havin’ one that’s willin’, for the unwillin’ girls are everywhere—I don’t doubt but ye’ve seen it yerself. A hundred years, that’s all we ask of ye. ’Tis short enough, like Doyle’s wife. Will ye do it?”
“And everything will be the same, at the end, as it was before you took Lissy?”
“Not everythin’, I didn’t say that. Ye’ll remember, don’t ye remember me sayin’ so? But for her and all the country round, why ’twill be the same.”
“All right,” Tim said. “I’ll do it.”
“ ’Tis a brave lad ye are. Now I’ll tell ye what I’ll do. I said a hundred years, to which ye agreed—”
Tim nodded.
“—but I’ll have no unwillin’ hands about me boat, nor no ungrateful ones neither. I’ll make it twenty. How’s that? Sure and I couldn’t say fairer, could I?”
Daniel’s figure was beginning to waver and fade; the image of the dark mass Tim had seen first hung about it like a cloud.
“Lay yerself on yer belly, for I must put me foot upon yer head. Then the deal’s done.”
The salt ocean was in his mouth and his eyes. His lungs burst for breath. He revolved in the blue chasm of water, tried to swim, at last exploded gasping into the air.
The king had said he would remember, but the years were fading already. Drudging, dancing, buying, spying, prying, waylaying, and betraying when he walked in the world of men. Serving something that he had never wholly understood. Sailing foggy seas that were sometimes of this earth. Floating among the constellations. The years and the slaps and the kicks were all fading, and with them (and he rejoiced in it) the days when he had begged.
He lifted an arm, trying to regain his old stroke, and found that he was very tired. Perhaps he had never really rested in all those years. Certainly, he could not recall resting. Where was he? He paddled listlessly, not knowing if he was swimming away from land, if he was in the center of an ocean. A wave elevated him, a long, slow swell of blue under the gray sky. A glory—the rising or perhaps the setting sun—shone to his right. He swam toward it, caught sight of a low coast.
He crawled onto the sand and lay there for a time, his back struck by drops of spray like rain. Near his eyes, the beach seemed nearly black. There were bits of charcoal, fragments of half-burned wood. He raised his head, pushing away the earth, and saw an empty bottle of greenish glass nearly buried in the wet sand.
When he was able at last to rise, his limbs were stiff and cold. The dawnlight had become daylight, but there was no warmth in it. The beach cottage stood only about a hundred yards away, one window golden with sunshine that had entered from the other side, the walls in shadow. The red Triumph gleamed beside the road.
At the top of a small dune he turned and looked back out to sea. A black freighter with a red and white stack was visible a mile or two out, but it was only a freighter. For a moment he felt a kind of regret, a longing for a part of his life that he had hated but that was now gone forever. I will never be able to tell her what happened, he thought. And then, Yes I will, if only I let her think I’m just making it up. And then, No wonder so many people tell so many stories. Good-bye to all that.
The steps creaked under his weight, and he wiped the sand from his feet on the coco mat. Lissy was in bed. When she heard the door open she sat up, then drew up the sheet to cover her breasts.
“Big Tim,” she said. “You did come. Tim and I were hoping you would.”
When he did not answer, she added, “He’s out having a swim, I think. He should be around in a minute.”
And when he still said nothing. “We’re—Tim and I—we’re going to be married.”
I had intended to end this collection with “Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?” Vaughne Hansen and Chris Cohen, who market my work from the Virginia Kidd Agency, insisted on my including this.
Which gives me a fine opportunity to explain. You may wonder who selected these stories. Except for this one, I did, choosing my best work to the best of my poor ability. You have every right to disagree, but don’t tell me if you do; it won’t accomplish a thing. Tell Tor Books instead. Name your favorite, and demand that it be included in a second volume.
If enough of you do that, there will be one—chosen by you.