Little, Big Part 52

"I had been given consciousness, you see. I didn't know that it was not my own but another's, and only loaned to me, or rather given or hidden in me for safe-keeping. I, I the stork, thoughta"well, it's very distressing to think of, but I thought that I was not a stork at all; I believed myself to be a human woman, who by the malice of someone, I didn't know whom, had been transformed into a stork, or imprisoned in one. I had no memory of the human woman I had been, because of course she retained that life and its memories, and went gaily on living it. I was left to puzzle it out.

"Well, I flew far, and learned much; I pa.s.sed through doors no stork before had ever pa.s.sed through. I made a living; I raised younga"yes, at Edgewood oncea"and I had other employments, well, no need to speak of them; storks, you know a Anyway, among the things I learned, or was told, was that a great King was returning, or re-awaking; and that after his liberation would come my own, and that then I would truly be a human woman."

She paused in her tale, and stood staring; Alice, not knowing whether storks can weep or not, looked closely at her, and though no drop fell from her pinkish eye Alice thought that in some storkish sense she did weep.

"And so I am," she said at length. "And so I am, now, that human woman. At last. And still only, and for always, the real stork I always and only was." She lowered her head before Alice in sorrowful confession. "Alice, you do know me," she said. "I am, or was, or we were, or will be, your cousin Ariel Hawksquill."

Alice blinked. She had promised herself to be surprised by nothing here; and indeed, after she had contemplated the stork, or Hawksquill, for an astonished moment, it did seem that she had heard this tale before, or to have known that it would happen, or had happened. "But," she said, "where, I mean how, where is a"

"Dead," said the stork. "Dead, spoilt, ruined. Murdered. I really, she really, had no place else to go." She opened her red beak, and clacked it shut again, a sort of sigh. "Well. No matter. Only it will take time to get used to. Her disappointment, the stork's I mean. My newa"body." She raised a wing and looked at it. "Fly," she said. "Well. Perhaps."

"I'm sure," Alice said, putting her hand on the stork's soft shoulder. "And I should think you could share, I mean share it with Ariel, I mean share it with the stork. You can accommodate." She smiled; it was like arbitrating a dispute between two of her children.

The stork stepped on in silence a time. Alice's hand on her shoulder seemed to soothe her, she had stopped her irritable fluffing. "Perhaps," she said at length. "Onlya"well. Forever and ever." There was a catch in her throat; Alice could see the long apple move. "It does seem hard."

"I know," Alice said. "It never comes out like you think it will; or even like you thought they said it would, though maybe it does. You learn to live with it," she said. "That's all."

"I'm sorry now," Ariel Hawksquill said, "of course too late, that I didn't accept your invitation of that night, to go with you. I should have."

"Well," Alice said.

"I thought I was separate from this fate. But I've been in this Tale all along, haven't I? With all the rest."

"I suppose," Alice said. "I suppose you have, if here you are now. Tell me though," she added, "whatever became of the cards?"

"Oh dear," said Hawksquill, turning her red beak away in shame. "I do have a lot to make up for, don't I?"

"It doesn't matter," Alice said. They were coming to the end of the forest glades; beyond lay a land of a different sort. Alice stopped. "I'm sure you can. Make up for it, I mean. For not coming and all." She looked out over the land she must now travel. So big, so big. "You can be a help to me, I think. I hope."

"I'm sure of it," Hawksquill said with conviction. "Sure."

"Because I'll need help," Alice said. There somewhere, beyond those hedges, over those green waves of earth where the new-risen gra.s.s-sea turned silver in the sunlight, Alice remembered or foresaw the knoll to be, on which there stood an oak tree and a thorn in deep embrace; and, if you knew the way, there was a small house there built underside, and a round door with a bra.s.s knocker; but there would be no need to knock, for the door would stand open, and the house would anyway be empty. And there would be knitting to take up, and duties, duties so large, so newa . "I'll need help," she said again. "I will."

"I'll help," said her cousin. "I can help."

Somewhere there, beyond those blue hills, how far? An open door, and a small house big enough to hold all this spinning earth; a chair to rock away the years, and an old broom in the corner to sweep away winter.

"Come along," the stork said. "We'll get used to it. It'll be all right."

"Yes," said Alice. There would be help, there must be; she couldn't do it all alone. It would be all right. Still she didn't take the first step beyond the woods' edge; she stood a long time, feeling the asking breezes on her face, remembering or forgetting many things.

More, Much More Smoky Barnable, in the warm glow of many electric lights, sat down in his library to turn over once again the pages of the last edition of the Architecture of Country Houses. All the windows had been opened, and a cool fresh May night came and went unhindered as he read. The last of winter had been swept away as by a new broom.

Far upstairs, as silently as the stars it modeled, the orrery turned, pa.s.sing its tiny but unresistable motion through many oiled bra.s.s gears to give impetus to the twenty-four-handed fly-wheel, shut up once again in its black case but delivering its own force to generators, which in turn fed the house with light and power, and would go on doing so until all the jewelled bearings, all the best-quality nylon and leather belts, all the hardened-steel points themselves wore away: years and years, Smoky supposed. The house, his house, as though from the effects of a tonic, had perked up, refreshed and strengthened; its bas.e.m.e.nts had dried, its attics were ventilated; the dust that had filled it had been sucked up by a potent and ancient whole-house vacuum-cleaner whose existence in the walls of the house Smoky had vaguely known about but which no one had thought would ever work again; even the crack in the music-room ceiling seemed on the way to healing, though why was a mystery to Smoky. The old stocks of h.o.a.rded light-bulbs were brought out, and Smoky's house alone, the only one for miles, was lit up continuously, like a beacon or the entrance to a ballroom. Not out of pride, not really, though he had been very proud of his arrangements, but because he found it easier to expend the limitless energy than to store it (why store it, anyway?) or to disengage the machine.

And besides, lit up, the house might be easier to find: easier for someone lost, or gone off, who might be returning on a moonless night, to find in the darkness.

He turned a heavy page.

Here was a horrid idea of some vindictive spiritualist's. There is, of course, no h.e.l.l after death, only a progress through higher and higher Levels. No eternal suffering, though there might be a difficult, or at least lengthy, Re-education for recalcitrant or stupid souls. Generous: but this had apparently not been enough coals to heap on the heads of sceptics, so the idea was conceived that those who refuse to see the light in this life will refuse to see it, or be blind to it, in the next as well; they will stagger alone eternally in cold darkness, believing that this is all there is, while all around them unbeknown the happy bustle of the communion of saints goes on, fountains and flowers and whirling spheres and the striving souls of the great departed.

Alone.

It was clear that he could not go where all of them were summoned unless his desire were as strong as faith. But how could he desire another world than this one? He studied again and again the descriptions in the Architecture, but he found nowhere anything to convince him that There he would find a world anything like as rich, as deeply strange yet just as deeply familiar, as this one he lived in.

Always Spring there: but he wanted winter too, gray days and rain. He wanted it all, nothing left out; he wanted his fire, his long memories and what started them in his soul, his small comforts, his troubles even. He wanted the death he had often lately contemplated, and a place beside the others he had dug places for.

He looked up. Amid the constellation of the library's lamps reflected in the windows the moon had risen. It was just crescent, fragile and white. When it was full, Midsummer Day, they would depart.

Paradise. A world elsewhere.

He didn't really mind that there was a long Tale being told, didn't even object any longer that he had been put to its uses; he only wanted it to continue, not to stop, to go on being muttered out endlessly by whatever powers they were who spun it, putting him to sleep with its half-heard anecdotes and going on still while he slept in his grave. He didn't want it to s.n.a.t.c.h him up in this way, startle him with high, sad, harrowing conclusions he wasn't equal to. He didn't want it to have taken his wife from him.

He didn't want to be marched off to another world he couldn't imagine; a little world that couldn't be as big as this one.

Yet it is, said the breezes that pa.s.sed his ears.

It couldn't contain all seasons in their fullness, all happinesses, all griefs. It couldn't contain the history of his five senses and all that they had known.

But it does, said the breezes.

Not all of that, which was his world; and then more too.

Oh more, said the Breezes; more, much more.

Smoky looked up. The drapes at the window moved. "Alice?" he said.

He got up, pushing the heavy book to the floor. He went to the tall window and looked out. The walled garden was a dark vestibule; the door open in the wall led to moonlit turf and misty evening.

She's far, she's there, a Little Breeze said.

"Alice?"

She's near, she's here, said another; but whatever it was that seemed to proceed toward him through the windy darkness and the garden, he didn't recognize it. He stood a long time looking into the night as into a face, as though it might converse with him, and explain many things: he thought it could, but all he heard it say, or himself say, was a name.

The moon rose out of sight above the house. Smoky climbed slowly up to his bed. About the time the moon set, pale horns indicating the place where the sleepy sun would soon rise, Smoky awoke, feeling he hadn't been asleep for a moment, as imsomniacs do; he dressed himself in an old frayed dressing gown with braided edges around the cuffs and pockets, and climbed up to the top of the house, turning on as he went the hall-sconces that some thoughtless person had left off.

Lit by planetshine and daybreak, the sleepless system didn't seem to move, any more than the morning star outside the round window seemed to: and yet it did move. Smoky watched it, thinking of the night when by lamplight he had read out from the Ephemeris the degrees, minutes and seconds of the stars' ascensions, and felt, when he had set the last moon of Jupiter, the infinitesimal shudder of its quickening. And heard the first steel croquet-ball fall otherwise unaided into the waiting hand of the absurd overbalancing wheel. Saved. He remembered the feeling.

He put his hand on the wheel's black case, feeling it tick over far more steadily than his own heart; and more patient too, and a hardier thing altogether. He pushed open the round window, letting in a glad rush of birdsong, and looked out over the tiled roofs. Another nice day. What is so rare. You could see a long way south from this height, he noticed; you could see the steeple at Meadowbrook, the roofs of Plainfield. Amid them the greening clumps of woods were misty; beyond the towns the woods thickened into the great Wild Wood on whose edge Edgewood stood, which went on growing always deeper and thicker toward the South far farther than the eye could see.

Only the Brave They came to the heart of the forest, but it was a deserted kingdom. They had come no closer to any Parliament, or any closer either to her whom Auberon sought, whose name he had forgotten.

"How far can you go into the woods?" Fred asked.

Auberon knew the answer to that. "Halfway," he said. "Then you start coming back out again."

"Not this woods though," Fred said. His steps had slowed; he plucked up moss and wormy earth with every footstep. He put his feet down.

"Which way?" Auberon said. But from here all ways were one.

He had seen her: he had seen her more than once: had seen her far off, moving brightly amid the forest's dark dangers, seeming at home there; once standing alone pensive in the tigery shade (he was sure, almost sure, it had been she), once hurrying away, a crowd of small beings at her feet, she hadn't turned to see him though one of those with her had, sharp ears, yellow eyes, a beast's unmeaning smile. Always she seemed to be headed elsewhere, purposefully; and when he followed she wasn't where he went.

He would have called to her, if he hadn't been unable to remember her name. He had sorted through the alphabet to jog his memory, but it had turned to wet leaves, to staghorn, snails' sh.e.l.ls, fauns' feet; it all seemed to spell her, but gave him no name. And then she had escaped, not having noticed him, and he was only deeper in than before.

Now he was at the center, and she wasn't there either, whatever her name was.

Brown b.r.e.a.s.t.s? Brown something. Laurel, or cobweb, something like that; bramble, or something that began with a bee, or a sea.

"Annaway," Fred said. "This looks like as far as I go." His poncho was stiff and tattered, his pant-legs all fray; his toes protruded from the mouths of his ruined galoshes. He tried to raise one foot from the ground, but it wouldn't rise. His toes gripped earth.

"Wait," said Auberon.

"No help for it," Fred said. "Nest of robins in my hair. Nice. Okay."

"But come on," Auberon said. "I can't go on without you."

"Oh, I'm comin'," said Fred, budding. "Still comin', still guidin'. Oney not walkin'." Between his great rooting toes a crowd of brown mushrooms had sprung up. Auberon looked up, up, up at him. His knuckles doubled, tripled, turned to hundreds. "Hey m'man," he said. "Lookin' at G.o.d all day, yunnastan. Gots to catch some rays, scuse me," and his face tilted back disappearing into bole as he reached up toward the treetops with a thousand greening fingers. Auberon gripped his trunk.

"No," he said. "d.a.m.n it now, don't."

He sat down, helpless, at Fred's foot. Now he was lost for sure. What stupid, stupid madness of desire had propelled him here, here where she was not, this princedom of n.o.body's where she had never been, where he was unable to remember anything of her but his desire for her. He put his head in his hands, despairing.

"Hey," said the tree, with a woody voice. "Hey, what's that about. I got counsel. Listen up."

Auberon raised his head.

"Oney the brave," said Fred, "jes' oney the brave deserve the fair."

Auberon stood. Tears made rivulets in his dirty cheeks. "All right," he said. He ran his hands through his hair, combing out dead leaves. He too had grown rank, as though he had lived years in the woods, mould in his cuffs, berry-juice in his beard, caterpillars in his pockets. A derelict.

He would have to start all over again, that's all. Brave he was not, but he had arts. Had he learned nothing at all? He must get a grip on this, he must get power over this. If this were a deserted princedom, then he could install himself in its seat, if he could think how, and then he would be lost no more. How?

Only by reason. He must think. He must make order here where there was none. He must get bearings, make a list, number everything and arrange it all in ranks and orders. He must, first of all, erect in the heart of the forest a place where he knew where he was, and what was what; then he might remember who he was, he who was here at the seat and center; and then what he should do here thereupon. He would, Somehow, have to turn back and start again.

He looked around the place he was, trying to think which of the ways away from it would lead him back.

All would, or none would. Warily he peered down leafy flowered avenues. Whatever way looked most like leading him away would only turn in some subtle way and lead him back, he knew that much. There was an expectant, an ironic silence in the woods, a few brief questions from the birds.

He took a seat on a fallen log. Before him, in the center of the glade, amid the gra.s.ses and violets, he set up a little stone shed or pavilion, facing in four directions, north, south, east and west. On each of its faces he put a season: winter, summer, spring and fall. Radiating away from it were the curving, tricksome ways; he metalled them in gravel, and bordered them with white-painted stones, and led them toward or awsy from statues, an obelisk, a martenhouse on a pole, a little arched bridge, beds of tulips and day-lilies. Around it all he drew a great square of wrought-iron fence studded with arrow-headed posts, and four locked gates to go in and out of.

There. Traffic could be heard, though far off. Carefully he shifted his look: there beyond the fence was a cla.s.sical courthouse, surmounted with statues of lawgivers. A hint of acrid smoke mixed in his nostrils with spring air. Now he needed only to go around the place he had made, to each of its parts in strict order, and demand from each the part of Sylvie he had put there.

The part of whom?

The park trembled in unreality, but he put it back. Don't grasp, don't hurry. The first place first, then the second place. If he didn't do this properly, he would never find out how the story came out: whether he found her, and brought her back (back where?) or lost her for good, or whatever the end was, or would be, or had been. He began again: the first place, then the second place.

No, it was hopeless. How could he ever have thought to have contained her in this place, like a princess in a tower? She had fled, she had arts of her own. And what anyway did his ragbag of memories amount to? Her? No way. They had grown over time even more crushed, faded and tattered than he remembered them being when he had put them here. It was no use. He rose from his park bench, feeling in his pocket for the key that would let him out. The little girls who played jacks along the path looked up at him warily as he chose a gate to go out of.

Locks. That's all this d.a.m.n City is, he thought, inserting his key; locks upon locks. Rows, cl.u.s.ters, bouquets of locks knotted against the edges of doors, and the pocket weighed down as with sin by keys, to open them and lock them up again. He pushed open the heavy gate, swinging it aside like a jail door. On the rusticated red stone gatepost was a plaque: it said Mouse Drinkwater Stone 1900. And from the gate the street stretched out, townhouse-lined for a block, then marching into the brown uptown distance between vague castles, old in power, that sc.r.a.ped the sky, wreathed in smoke and noise.

He walked. People hurried past him, they had destinations, he was aimless and slower. And from a side street ahead of him, a package under her arm, booted feet quick, Sylvie turned on to the avenue and away uptown.

Small, alone but a.s.sured on the hectic street, her kingdom. And his. Her retreating back: she was still on her way away, and he was behind. But he was pointed now, at last, in the right direction. He opened his mouth, and her name came out. It had been on the tip of his tongue.

"Sylvie," he called.

Quite Close She heard that, and it seemed to be a name she knew; her feet slowed, and she partly turned but did not; it had been a name, a name she remembered from somewhere, somewhen. Had a bird called it, calling to its mate? She looked up into the sunshot leaves. Or a chipmunk, calling its friends and relations? She watched one scamper and freeze on the k.n.o.bby knees of an oak, then turn to look at her. She walked on, small, alone but a.s.sured beneath the tall trees, her naked feet falling quick one after the other among the flowers.

She walked far, and fast; the wings she had grown were not wings, yet they bore her; she didn't stop to amuse herself, though pleasures were shown her and many creatures implored her to stay. "Later, later," she said to all, and hurried on, the path unfolding before her night by day as she went.

He's coming, she thought, I know it, he'll be there, he will; maybe he won't remember me, but I'll remind him, he'll see. The present she had for him, chosen after long thought, she held tight under her arm and had let no one else carry, though many had offered.

And if he wasn't there?

No, he would be; there could be no banquet for her if he wasn't present, and a banquet had been promised; everybody would be there, and surely he was one. Yes! The best seat, the choicest morsels, she would feed him by hand just to watch his face, he'd be so surprised! Had he changed? He had, but she'd know him. She was sure.

Night sped her. The moon rose, waxing fat, and winked at her: party! Where was she now? She stopped, and listened to the forest speak. Near, near. She had never been here before, and that was a sign. She didn't like to go further without sure bearings, and some word. Her invitation was clear, and she need defer to none, but. She climbed a tall tree to its tip-top, and looked out over the moon's country.

She was on the forest's edge. Night breezes browsed in the treetops, parting the leaves with their pa.s.sage. Far off, or near, or both, anyway beyond the roofs of that town and that moonlit steeple, she saw a house: a house decked out in lights, every window bright. She was quite close.

Mrs. Underhill on that night looked one last time around her dark and tidy house, and saw that all was as it should be. She went out, and pulled the door shut; she looked up into the moon's Face; she drew from her deep pocket the iron key, and locked the door, and put the key under the mat.