Soon he could go on: “I barely saw them, understand. Glimpses, hints, a
highlight, a translucency, a tracing of shadow… Think of starlit mists
in a mild whirlwind, while somewhere, softly, something sings what could
be by Bach or Mozart at their dearest and loveliest… Half-seen,
slender female figures, if that wasn’t simply the way my imagination was
bound to render them. Long, flowing hair, long flowing draperies, wings,
maybe, a face that was–oh, elfin or, or I don’t know–”
He stopped again. When he hadn’t spoken for a minute or two, I ventured,
“They sound to me like traditional–you know, medieval–ideas of the
Fair Folk. Not the sort that name was a euphemism for, who lived in Elf
Hill or a sidhe mound or a dolmen and could bring mortals to grief. No,
innocent spirits of the woodlands and waterfalls, who came out after
dark to rejoice. I recall a picture I saw as a child, in a fairy tale
book–a log laid over a stone, and half a dozen of them playing
teeter-totter with a nisse but not weighing enough to counterbalance
him. Like airy, free-wandering nymphs, with no power to talk of, but
also without sin, maybe a free gift of God to put some extra happiness
and beauty into the world.”
Will nodded. He grew fairly matter-of-fact: “That’s what I’ve since
thought is likeliest. It fits with the folklore I’ve studied and with
what the specterscope has revealed, though as you know, there are
nine-and-ninety contending notions about what that is. If they were what
you and I suspect, then the implications–
“Look.” He leaned forward, his gaze searching mine. “Imagine these
harmless, once gladsome Beings as they came Awake when the
electromagnetic inhibition of rheatic forces dwindled to an end. It was
to a transformed world, a world of railroads, steamships, machine shops,
huge cities, farmlands across hundreds of square miles, glaring lights,
wilderness reduced to a few enclaves. Above all, perhaps, a world where
the dominant culture was pragmatic, capitalistic, scientific-minded,
where goetics was essentially a new set of technologies, where the
different kinds of Awakened creatures had to seek and struggle for
whatever niches they could find– What might spirits as gentle as these
do? Try to become pets, playthings, tourist attractions? Or try for
freedom?
“I think they fled to the moon.”
The idea that the lunar population consisted of refugees wasn’t
altogether new to me. It’d been kicked around a little ever since Will
reported his first discoveries. However, I hadn’t heard it in just this
form before. Also, he needed to talk. “Uh-huh,” I said.
“Probably they’d always gone to and fro. The folk tales suggest as much.
They’re ethereal; they can fly on the changeable streams of gravity, of
space-time. But if they can’t endure direct sunlight, they can only take
that route through shadow–that is, during a lunar or solar eclipse. I
think they got together and made the great migration, oh, decades ago.
They don’t mind vacuum. They can take shelter from day, whether by going
underground or by flitting around as the moon rotates–and a night there
is two weeks long, you know. They can create their own insubstantial,
invisible-to-us dwellings, gardens, pools, fountains, shrines… But I
think they always long back to their old haunts. Or they have unfinished
business here, or contacts they want to keep up, or– Anyhow, whenever
they can, some of them return, and stay on Earth till the next
opportunity to cross space. One of those visitations came on me.”
“And?” I asked after a while, softly.
He shrugged and half smiled. “The eclipse ended, the moon brightened. I
was lost in their nearness. Toward dawn they left for woodlands or caves
that would hide them from the sun. Perhaps they laid sleep on me, or
perhaps I collapsed, exhausted. When I woke and crawled home, hours
later, my parents gave me billy hell. I didn’t want to talk about what
had happened. How could I, really? The folks may or may not have
believed the story I cobbled together. They were wise and didn’t pursue
the matter. But from then on, my course in life was set.”
The faerie touch. “Could they have had that in mind when they appeared