The Folk Of The Air Read online

  The Folk Of The Air

  Peter S Beagle

  They were playing at time and magic, but time is tricky and magic is dangerous!

  When Farrell returned to Avicenna after years away, he found his oldest friend Ben living with an unattractive older woman named Sia. Ben and Farrell’s girlfriend, Julie, were also mixed up with the League for Archaic Pleasures—a group that playacted the events and manners of medieval chivalry, sometimes too seriously.

  Nothing was quite as it seemed. Sia’s ancient house developed rooms that impossibly appeared and disappeared. Apparently helpless, Sia still had enormous powers that no human could defy when she chose to exert her will. And some members of the League were not playacting—they were the medieval characters they portrayed. Even mild-mannered Ben was sometimes possessed by a Ninth Century viking, driven to madness by the modern world he could not understand.

  Attending a League revel with Julie, Farrell was amused by the claim of fifteen-year-old Aiffe that she was a witch. But later he saw her, attempting to summon a demon, conjure out of air the form of Nicholas Bonner, who had been sent to limbo five centuries before!

  With Bonner’s skills added to Aiffe’s talents, the pair soon made chaos of the League’s annual mock war. But Bonner’s real goal was the defeat of Sia, with whom he seemed to have a mysterious connection.

  Gradually, Farrell realized that Bonner represented a growing evil such as the Twentieth Century had never known. Only Sia’s powers stood against it. But Sia had retreated into a room that could not exist, hiding in illusion.

  Here in his first fantasy novel since The Last Unicorn was published in 1968, Peter Beagle again proves his mastery in a tale of magic, illusion, and delusion, mixed with a cast of human characters only he could create.

  THE FOLK OF THE AIR

  by Peter S. Beagle

  For Colleen J. McElroy

  without whose aid, advice, comfort, cocoa at midnight, and maddening refusal to understand that some books just don’t get finished, this book would never have been finished.

  Chapter 1

  Ferrell arrived in Avicenna at four-thirty in the morning, driving a very old Volkswagen bus named Madame Schumann-Heink. The rain had just stopped. Two blocks from the freeway, on Gonzales, he pulled to the curb and leaned his elbows on the steering wheel. His passenger woke up with a sad little cry and grabbed his knee.

  “It’s all right,” Farrell said. “We’re here.”

  “Here?” his passenger asked, still dazed, peering ahead down the street at railroad tracks and truck bodies. He was nineteen or twenty, brown-haired and pink-cheeked, neat as a new ice-cream cone. Farrell had picked him up in Arizona, near Pima, taking the sight of a V-neck pullover, tobacco-tan loafers and white Exeter windbreaker hitchhiking across the San Carlos Indian Reservation as an unquestionable sign from heaven. After two days and nights of more or less continuous driving, the boy was no whit damper or grubbier than before, and Farrell was no nearer to remembering whether his name was Pierce Harlow or Harlow Pierce. He called Farrell mister with remoreseless courtesy and kept asking him earnestly what it had been like to hear Eleanor Rigby and Day Tripper for the first time.

  “Avicenna, California,” Farrell announced, grinning at him. “Museum of my twisted youth, vault of my dearest and most disgusting memories.” He rolled down his window and yawned happily. “That good stink, smell it, that’s the Bay. Must be low tide.”

  Pierce/Harlow sniffed as instructed. “Uh-huh. Yes, I see. Really nice.” He ran his hands through his hair, which promptly sprang back into one sculpted piece, polished and seamless. “How long did you say it’s been?”

  “Nine years,” Farrell said. “Almost ten. Since I made the mistake of actually graduating. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking of that morning. Just got careless, I guess.”

  The boy chuckled politely, turning away to rummage in his Eddie Bauer knapsack. “I’ve got the address of the place I’m supposed to go in here somewhere. It’s right up near the campus. I can just wait.” In the smudgy pre-dawn light, the nape of his neck looked as thin and vulnerable as a child’s.

  The sky was the color of mercury, mushy as a bruise. Farrell said, “Usually you can see the whole north campus from here, the bell tower and everything. I don’t remember it getting this foggy.” He stretched until he ached, locking his hands behind his head and feeling stiff muscles crackle and sigh and mumble to themselves. “Well, I can’t go rouse up my buddy yet, it’s way too early. Might find ourselves some breakfast—there used to be an all-night place on Gould.” One bright little sparkle of pain remained when he relaxed, and he glanced down to see Pierce/Harlow smiling diffidently and holding a switchblade knife against his side, just above the belt.

  “I’m really sorry, sir,” Pierce/Harlow said. “Please don’t do anything dumb.”

  Farrell stared at him so long and so blankly that the boy began to fidget, tensing every time a car hissed by. “Just put your wallet down on the seat and get out. I don’t want any trouble.”

  “I guess we can assume you didn’t go to Exeter,” Farrell said at last. Pierce/Harlow shook his head. Farrell said, “No point even asking about the programmer trainee job.”

  “Mr. Farrell,” Pierce/Harlow said in a flat, gentle voice, “you think I won’t really hurt you. Please don’t think that.” On the last word the knife dug harder into Farrell’s side, twisting through his shirt.

  Farrell sighed and drew in his legs, still resting one arm on the wheel as he reached slowly for his wallet. “Shit, this is embarrassing. You know, I’ve never been held up before. All those years in New York, walking around at night, everywhere, taking the subway, and I never got robbed.” Not in New York, at any rate, and not by an amateur who doesn’t even know where you’re supposed to hold the knife. He made himself breathe as deeply and quietly as he could.

  Pierce/Harlow smiled again, beckoning graciously with his free hand. “Well, you were due then, weren’t you? It’s just an occupational hazard, no big deal.”

  Farrell had the wallet out now, his upper body turned to face the boy, feeling the knife’s pressure lessen slightly. He said, “You should have pulled this back in Arizona, you realize. I had more money then. Not having had to buy meals for two people up to that point.”

  “I hate driving a stick shift,” Pierce/Harlow said cheerfully. “Anyway, come on, I bought gas a couple of times.”

  “Seven dollars’ worth in Flagstaff,” Farrell snorted. “Be still, my heart.”

  “Hey, don’t, don’t get snotty with me.” Pierce/Harlow was suddenly trembling alarmingly, blushing in the dimness, stuttering wet-lipped, crisp consonants turning mealy. “What about all that gas I bought in Barstow? What about that?”

  Halfway down the block a young couple came jogging toward them, perfectly matched in their jouncing plumpness, their green sweat suits, and their huffing clockwork pace. Farrell said, “No, you didn’t. Barstow? You sure?” Is this a clever plan? What do we do if this is not a clever plan?

  “Damn right, I’m sure,” Pierce/Harlow snapped. He sat up very straight, the knife licking snaky ellipses in the air between them. Farrell stared over his shoulder, hoping to catch the woman’s attention without angering him any further. She did turn her head in passing and actually halted, holding her companion’s arm. Farrell widened his eyes and flared his nostrils discreetly, trying earnestly to look distressed. The couple looked at each other and huffed on past the bus, out of step for only an instant. Pierce/Harlow said, “And it was nine-eighty-three in Flagstaff. Just so we have that clear, Mr. Farrell.” He snapped his fingers for the wallet.

  Farrell shrugged resignedly. “Dumb argument, anyway.” Oh lord, here goes baby. He tossed the wallet so th
at it bounced off Pierce/Harlow’s right knee, falling between the seat and the door. The boy reached for it instinctively, his concentration flickering just for a moment, and in that moment Farrell struck. That was, at least, the verb he preferred to remember, although lunged, clawed, and scrabbled also presented themselves. He had been sighting on the knife wrist, but got the hand instead as Pierce/Harlow pulled away, crushing the boy’s fingers against the switchblade’s rough bone handle. Pierce/Harlow gasped and snarled and kicked Farrell’s shin, yanking his hand free. Farrell let go as soon as he felt the blade sliding moon-cold through his own fingers, then heard it worrying his shirtsleeve far away. There was no pain, no blood, only coldness and Pierce/Harlow’s mouth opening and closing. This was not a clever plan.

  Unfortunately, it was the only one he had. His natural gift for fallback positions and emergency exits never showed up for work before seven o’clock; absolutely all he could think of at this hour was to duck away from Pierce/Harlow’s frantically menacing flourish of the knife and throw Madame Schumann-Heink into gear, with some vague vision of driving her into an all-night laundromat on the corner. As an afterthought, he also screamed “Kreegaaahh!” at the top of his lungs, for the first time since he was eleven years old, jumping off his parents’ bed, which was the bank of the Limpopo River, onto his cousin Mary Margaret Louise, who was a crocodile.

  The most immediate thing that happened was that his worn sneaker slipped off the clutch pedal. The second was that the rearview mirror fell into his lap, as Madame Schumann-Heink rose up on her back wheels and danced ponderously into the middle of Gonzales Avenue before she came down again with a smash that threw Pierce/Harlow face-first against the dashboard. The switchblade sagged in his fingers.

  Farrell had no chance to take advantage of the moment; he was half-stunned himself, and Madame Schumann-Heink was frisking in second gear toward the left-hand curb, heading straight for a parked van with MOBILE IMMENSE GRACE UFO MINISTRY stenciled neatly on its sides. Farrell hauled desperately on the wheel and found himself veering under the nose of a garbage truck that bore down on him like a ferryboat through the fog, glowing and hooting. Madame Schumann-Heink spun in a surprisingly agile U-turn and scurried before the truck, rocking cripplingly on dead shocks, her tail pipe farting in tin-can bursts and something Farrell didn’t want to think about dragging just back of her front axle. He pounded on the horn and kept howling.

  Beside him Pierce/Harlow, sand-pale with shock and rage, knuckled blindly at his mouth, sputtering blood. “Bit my tongue,” he mumbled. “Christ, I bit my tongue.”

  “I did that once,” Farrell said sympathetically. “It’s a real bear, isn’t it? Try to put your head back a bit.” Without turning, he began walking his hand shyly toward the knife lying forgotten on Pierce/Harlow’s lap. But his peripheral vision was also sleeping in this morning; when he struck a second time, Pierce/Harlow made a sound that was all inhale, snatched up the switchblade, and missed medical immortality by cringing inches, getting the seat cover instead. Farrell swung Madame Schumann-Heink hard to the left, cutting in front of a bellowing semi, and careened down a side street lined with office furniture warehouses and bail bondsmen’s establishments. He heard everything loose in back go booming from one side of the bus to the other and thought oh, sweet Jesus, the lute, sonofabitch. The new worry kept him from noticing for two blocks that such traffic as there was was all coming toward him.

  “Well, shit,” Farrell said sadly. “Wouldn’t you know?”

  Pierce/Harlow crouched on the seat, elbows flapping absurdly as he tried to brace himself against everything, including Farrell. “Pull over or I’ll cut you. Right here, I’ll do it.” He was almost crying, and color was puddling grotesquely under his cheekbones.

  A Winnebago the size of a rural airport filled the windshield. Farrell whimpered softly himself, hung a fishtailing right turn on the wet pavement, and bucked Madame Schumann-Heink up a parking-lot driveway. At the top of the ramp, two important things happened: Pierce/Harlow grabbed him around the neck, and Madame Schumann-Heink popped blithely out of gear—her oldest trick, always most judiciously employed—and began to roll back down. Farrell bit Pierce/Harlow’s forearm, somehow contriving while chewing to wrench the Volkswagen into reverse and send her shooting back out into the street, well in the wake of the motor home, but squirting like a marble straight through a sawhorse barricade around a pothole. The lute, oh please, goddamn. A taillight exploded, and Pierce/Harlow and Farrell let go of each other and screamed. Madame Schumann-Heink popped into neutral again. Farrell pushed Pierce/Harlow away, fumbled for second gear, which was never quite where he had left it, and stood on the accelerator.

  Madame Schumann-Heink, who normally required a tail wind and two days’ notice to get up to fifty miles an hour, was doing sixty by the time she hit Gonzales. Pierce/Harlow chose that moment to try another frontal assault, which was unfortunate, because Farrell took the corner, and a “Swingers Exchange” vending machine along with it, on the far side of two wheels. Pierce/Harlow ended up on Farrell’s lap, with the knife curiously snuggled into his own armpit.

  “I think you should have taken that computer job,” Farrell said. They were tearing back down Gonzales, nearing the freeway. Pierce/Harlow disentangled himself, wiped his bleeding mouth, and got the knife pointed the right way. “I’ll cut you,” he said hopelessly. “I swear to God.”

  Farrell slowed down slightly, gesturing toward the approaching overpass. “You see that pillar coming up, with the sign? Yes? Well, I was just wondering, do you think you can throw your knife out the window before I hit it?” He smiled a shut-mouth crescent smile, which he hoped suggested a syphilitic picking up weather reports from Alpha Centauri on his bridgework, and added in a serene singsong, “Her tires are all bald, her brakes suck, and you are about to become sticky stuff on the seat.”

  The knife actually bounced off the pillar as Farrell swerved away from it, the wheel slugging and whipping like a game fish in his hands, the back tires keening coldly. With the rearview mirror gone, the old green convertible was a sudden clubbing blow out of nowhere, yawing wildly under the window, fighting for traction, sliding sideways into the bus like an asteroid being slowly raped by the pitiless mass of a larger planet. There was a moment for Farrell in which nothing existed but the underwater languor of the driver’s face, rippling and folding silently with terror beneath his great oil-drum helmet, the heavy golden chains and ornaments cascading down the rather pink body of the woman beside him, the rosette of rust around a door handle, and the broadsword in the hand of the young black man in the back seat, who seemed to be casually fending Madame Schumann-Heink away with it as she hung above him. Then Farrell had sprawled across the wheel and was dragging the bus to the right with all his strength, tucking her into a squealing circle around another pillar, finally slamming to a stop almost behind the convertible as it righted itself and gunned ahead toward the Bay. Farrell saw the black man waving his sword like a conqueror in the mist until the car vanished up a ramp onto the freeway.

  Farrell exhaled. He became aware that Pierce/Harlow had been screaming for some time, piled haphazardly on the floor, rocking convulsively. Farrell cut the engine and said, “Knock it off, there’s a cop car.” He was shivering himself and wondered distantly if he were going to throw up.

  There was no patrol car coming, but Pierce/Harlow did stop wailing, as abruptly as a child might, with a gulp and a sleeve rubbed across his face. “You’re insane. I mean, you are really insane.” His voice was a snuffly, aggrieved hiccup.

  “Keep it in mind,” Farrell said heavily. “You try to get out and find your knife and I’ll run you over.” Pierce/Harlow jerked his hand back from the door and stared at him. Farrell ignored him, letting his vision swim and his body shake itself still. Then he started Madame Schumann-Heink up again and turned her slowly, peering anxiously in every direction. Pierce/Harlow drew breath to protest, but Farrell forestalled him. “Be quiet. I’m tired of you. Just be quiet.�
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  “Where are you going?” Pierce/Harlow demanded. “If you think you’re taking me to the police—”

  “I’m too damn beat,” Farrell said. “My first morning here in ten years, I’m not about to spend it in a station house with you. Just stay cool and I’ll drop you off at a hospital. You can get that tongue looked at.”

  Pierce/Harlow hesitated, then sank back, touching his mouth and looking at his fingers. He said accusingly, “I’m probably going to need stitches.”

  Farrell was driving in low gear, listening intently to new scraping sounds under the bus. “With any luck. I’m counting on rabies shots, myself.”

  “I don’t have any health insurance,” Pierce/Harlow said. Farrell decided that he couldn’t reasonably be expected to reply and turned sharply left on Paige Street, suddenly recalling the clinic somewhere around there and the soft, rainy night much like this one when he had dragged Clawhammer Perry Brown into Emergency, crying with the certainty that he could feel Perry’s body chilling every moment on his shoulder. Skinny old Clawhammer. Car thief, great banjo player, and the first serious pillhead I ever met. And Wendy in the back seat, bitching all the way because he’d gotten into her stash again, telling him the wedding was off. Ah, lord, them days, them days. He reminded himself to tell Ben about Perry Brown when he got where he was going. He got fat later on, somebody said.

  By the time he pulled up in front of the clinic, the sky was showing a runny, gray-mustard stain off behind one pewter corner. A stranger would have missed it, but Farrell still knew an Avicenna dawn when he saw one. He turned to Pierce/Harlow, who was slouched against the door, eyes closed, fingers in his mouth, and said, “Well, it’s been real.”

  Pierce/Harlow sat up, blinking from Farrell to the clinic and back. His mouth was badly swollen, but his style was already beginning to regenerate itself, spinning pink-and-white self-assurance before Farrell’s eyes, as a lizard grows new limbs. He said, “I’m going to look pretty silly, coming in for a chewed-up tongue, for God’s sake.”