“Why, this?” Father Al sang, improvising a Gregorian chant. “ ‘Tis nought but the coverall all Cathodeans wear, which warms me in winter, and never doth tear.” He went back to whistling, turning his cassock inside-out.
The Abbot’s voice took on a definite tone of menace. “What dost thou mean by this turning of thy coat? Dost thou seek to signify that thou’It side with the King against me?”
Interesting; Father Al hadn’t known the old Church-State conflict was cropping up here. “Why, nay. It means only that…” (he put the monk’s robe on again, wrong side out, and wrapped it about him) “…that I wish to see things as they truly are.”
And before his eyes, the form of the abbot wavered, thinned, and faded, leaving only a stocky, two-foot-high man with a pug-nosed, berry-brown face, large eyes, brown jerkin, green hose, green cap with a red feather, and a smoldering expression. “Who ha’ told thee, priest?” he growled. His gaze shifted to the witch-girl. “Not thou, surely! The witch-folk ever were my friends!”
The girl shook her head, opening her lips to answer, but Father Al forestalled her. “Nay, hobgoblin. ‘Tis books have taught me, that to dispel glamour, one hath but to whistle or sing, and turn thy coat.”
“Thou’rt remarkably schooled in elfin ways, for one who follows the Crucified one,” the elf said, with grudging respect. “Indeed, I thought that thee and thy fellows scarce did acknowledge our existence!”
“Nor did I.” In fact, Father Al felt rather dizzy—in spite of what Yorick had told him; he was frantically trying to reevaluate all his fundamental assumptions. “Yet did tales of thee and thy kind all fascinate me, so that I strove to learn all that I could, of worlds other than the one I knew.”
“ ‘Worlds?’ ” The elf’s pointed ears pricked up. “Strange turn of phrase; what priest would think that any world existed, but this one about us?”
Somehow, Father Al was sure he’d made a slip. “In Philosophic’s far realms…”
“There is not one word said of things like me, that do defy all reason,” the elf snapped. “Tell me, priest—what is a star?”
“Why, a great, hot ball of gas, that doth…” Father Al caught himself. “Uh, dost thou see, there is writing of seven spheres of crystal that surround the Earth…”
“ ‘Earth?’ Strange term, when thou most assuredly dost mean ‘world.’ Nay, thou didst speak thy true thought at the first, surprised to hear such a question from one like me—and, I doubt not, thou couldst tell me also of other worlds, that do swing about the stars, and heavenly cars that sail between them. Is it not so? I charge thee, priest, to answer truly, by thy cloth—dost thou not believe a lie to be a sin? ”
“Why, so I do,” Father Al admitted, “and therefore must I needs acknowledge the truth whereof thou speakest; I could indeed tell thee of such wonders. But…”
“And didst thou not ride hither in just such a car, from such another world?” The elf watched him keenly.
Father Al stared at him.
The elf waited.
“Indeed I did.” Father Al’s brows pulled down. “How would an elf know of such matters? Hast thy High Warlock told thee of them?”
It was the elf’s turn to be taken aback. “Nay, what knowest thou of Rod Gallowglass?”
“That he is, to thee, indeed a puissant warlock—though he would deny it, had he any honesty within him—and doth come, as I do, from a world beyond the sky. Indeed, he doth serve the same Government of Many Stars that governs me, and came, as I did, in a ship that sails the void between the stars.”
“ ‘Tis even as thou sayest, including his denial of his powers.” The elf regarded him narrowly. “Dost thou know him, then?”
“We never have met,” Father Al evaded. “Now, since that I have told thee what thou didst wish to know, wilt thou not oblige me in return, and say to me how it can be that elves exist?”
“Why,” the elf said craftily, “why not the way that witches do? Thou hast no difficulty understanding why she lives.” He nodded toward the witch-girl.
“That is known to me; she is like to any other lass, excepting that God gave to her at birth some gifts of powers in her mind; and I can see that, when first her ancestors did come to this world, those who chose to come had each within him some little germ of such-like powers. Thus, as generations passed, and married one another again and yet again, that germ of power grew, until some few were born who had it in good measure.”
“ ‘Tis even as Rod Gallowglass did guess,” the elf mused. “Nay, thou art certainly from the realm that birthed him. But tell me, then, if such a marrying within a nation might produce a witch, why might it not produce an elf?”
“It might; it might indeed.” Father Al nodded thoughtfully. “Yet were it so, my whistling, and the turning of my coat, would not dispel thy glamour, as was told in Terran legend. Nay, there is something more than mortal’s magic in thee. How didst thou come to be?”
“Thou dost see too well for easy liking,” the elf sighed, “and I do owe thee truth for truth. I do know that elves are born of forest and of earth, of Oak, and Ash, and Thorn; for we have been here as long as they. And well ought I to know it, for I am myself the oldest of all Old Things!”
The phrase triggered memories, and Puck of Pook’s Hill came flooding back to Father Al’s mind from his childhood. “Why, thou’rt Robin Goodfellow!”
“Thou speakest aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night.” The elf grinned, swelling a little with pride. “Nay, am I so famous, then, that all beyond the stars do know of me?”
“Well, all worth knowing.” Father Al silently admitted to a bit of bias within himself. “For surely, all who know the Puck must be good fellows.”
“Dost thou mean that I should trust thee, then?” Puck grinned mischievously. “Nay, not so—for some have known me to their own misfortune. Yet I will own thou dost not have the semblance of a villain. Nay, turn thy coat aright, and tell me wherefore thou dost seek Rod Gallowglass.”
“Why… ‘tis thus…” Father Al took off his robe, and turned it right side out again, getting his thoughts in order. He pulled it on, and began, “A wizard of a bygone age foresaw that, in our present time, a change would come to thy High Warlock, a transformation that could make him a mighty force, for ill or good—a force so mighty as to cast his shadow over all the worlds that mortal folk inhabit. This ancient wizard wrote this vision down, and sealed it in a letter, so that in our present time, it might be opened and read, and we could learn, in time to aid Rod Gallowglass.”
“And bend him toward the good, if thou canst?” Puck demanded. “Which means, certes, thy notion of the ‘good.’ ”
“And canst thou fault it?” Father Al stuck out his chin and locked gazes with Puck, hoping against hope as he remembered the long hostility between Christian clergy and faery-folk, and the diminishing of the faeries’ influence as that of the Christ had grown. And Puck glared back at him, no doubt remembering all that, too, but also reassessing the values the clergy preached.
“Nay, in truth, I cannot,” the elf sighed finally, “when thou dost live by what thou preachest. Nor do I doubt thy good intention; and elves have something of an instinct, in the knowing of the goodness of a mortal.”
Father Al let out a long-held breath. “Then wilt thou lead me to thy Warlock?”
“I would I could,” the elf said grimly, “but he hath quite disappeared, and none know where.”
Father Al just stared at him, while panic surged up within him. He stood stock-still against it, fighting for calm, silently reeling off a prayer from rote; and eventually the panic faded, leaving him charged for otherworldly battle. “Admit me to his wife and bairns, then; mayhap they hold a clue they know not of.”
But Puck shook his head. “They have vanished with him, friar—all but one, and he’s so young he cannot speak, nor even think in words.”