The real problem was the dog.
Aiffe turned out never to have left the Whalemas Tourney at all, but to have accompanied her father to the traditional feast and dance which followed it. Any number of League members could vouch for her presence there, as well as for the fact that she had led the dances all night long, come down with flu the next day, and remained bedridden, feverish and quarantined. Farrell asked Julie, “Do simulacra get the flu? Then who was it who stayed in that room with Sia?” Julie answered only, “She said she’d do what she could do.”
In the following days—every one astonishingly warm and lingeringly generous, as early fall often is in Avicenna—a number of small things happened. Madame Schumann-Heink got a new engine, new windows, and her first paint job in a decade, all more or less acquired in a graveyard at midnight. Julie’s BSA got two new forks, and Farrell’s lute got an entire set of strings and gut frets as the price of its sojourn in a place that was not good for stringed instruments. Farrell himself got Briseis.
That part happened later, just after he resigned from the League for Archaic Pleasures. A certain amount of regret was expressed, mostly by the members of Basilisk and the Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Hamid ibn Shanfara and Lovita Bird were sympathetic and slightly awkward, since they had not resigned after all. Lovita told him, “Honey, you have no idea just how much weird shit I will endure for the sake of having someplace to dress up. I’m sorry, I got to be somebody besides that damn bus driver now and again.”
Hamid said wryly, “Little bit addictive, the griot business. Down at the post office, they don’t have much room for a person wants to be an entire group memory all by himself.”
Farrell said, “Individuals have memories. Groups have forgetteries.”
Hamid laughed outright. “Tell me the difference. There’s no law against anything that child did, there’s no way to prove anything we saw, and there is damn sure no undoing any of it. Might just as well make up a poem about how old Crof Grant died in battle with ten million trolls, tell stories about Prester John getting taken up to heaven by St. Whale. Just as likely as what really happened, and it sings better.”
“But everybody knows the truth,” Farrell said. He felt mired in priggishness, and Lovita’s dimple did not help him.
Hamid said, “That’s why there’s the League, babe.”
Sia’s lawyer—a short, dashing woman with a few too many pointed white teeth—called Ben and Farrell to her office to read them Sia’s will. It had been drawn up several years before Ben ever met her, spoke nowhere of her death, but only of a possible disappearance, and left everything to him, with the exception of Briseis. Not only was the dog left specifically in Farrell’s care, but a remarkable number of clauses went into making it clear that, if Farrell refused to accept Briseis or attempted to get rid of her at any time, the entire bequest to Ben was to revert to a trust administered for the purpose of feeding the ducks in Barton Park. Farrell yielded without a struggle, but with curious misgivings. “She could see the future,” he said to Ben. “If you can see the future, you don’t just do things.”
“She saw part of the future part of the time,” Ben said. “I think she liked it that way.”
Farrell had spent the first days after Sia’s departure hovering around Ben like a Gray Lady, trying to help him deal with a loss that Farrell could neither share nor truly imagine. But in fact, as the fall passed, Ben went about his life with a quiet decisiveness, teaching his classes, keeping office hours, going dutifully to faculty meetings when no escape offered itself, working on his overdue skaldic poetry book on weekends, and even going swimming with Farrell once or twice a week. He spoke of Sia from time to time, gently and with affection, as if remembering an old lover now safely married to an eye doctor. Farrell knew just enough about grieving to be alarmed.
They walked all the way home from campus one evening, taking advantage of the last softness in the air, cheerfully debating aspects of the class struggle involved in the coming World Series between Seattle and Atlanta. Ben interrupted the argument to ask abruptly, “Why do you keep looking at me the way you do? Is something falling off?”
“Nothing,” Farrell said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was staring.”
“Every damn minute, weeks now. This isn’t the Island of Dr. Moreau. I’m not going to revert, start running on all fours.”
“I know that, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just waiting for you to start breaking furniture.” They walked on in silence for some time, meeting no one, listening to music from lighted windows, until Farrell said, “In the end, it’s none of my business—”
“Of course it’s your business; who else’s damn business is it? Don’t get all humilified on me.” He paused, and then said in a quieter tone, “Do you remember when she realized that she couldn’t save Nicholas Bonner? I mean that one exact moment?”
“When she opened her mouth and I thought she was going to cry everything to pieces, just shout all of it down. But she never made a sound.”
“No, not a sound. If she had, if she’d let even the least little bit of that sorrow out, we’d have been lucky to go mad. Most likely, we’d have turned into something that could endure to hear her—stones, air. She ate that pain to save us. That’s what destroyed her, you know.”
“I don’t know that. I don’t know anything about her, except that she’s a goddess and immortal, and you’re not. You’re supposed to scream.”
“Oh, I will. But not for a while yet.” He smiled at Farrell then and touched his shoulder. “You do know how it is with really little kids, when they get hurt or really upset? That long, awful moment before the howl?” Farrell nodded. “That’s where I am right now. I can’t even get my breath to cry, but I still have to live.”
Briseis met them halfway down the block, ignoring Ben entirely to dance and yap around Farrell as if she were a much smaller dog, running between his legs and all but snapping at his ankles. Ben said, “Well, somebody sure knows an authority figure when she sees one.”
“It’s not funny. Don’t encourage her. Ever since we told her about the will, she’s been getting nutsier by the minute. Knock it off, Briseis,” he ordered, as the dog leaped up to him. “See that? That’s not fawning, she never licks my face, she just looks at me as if I know where all her puppies are. Wake up in the night, and she’s standing right by the bed, waiting. I hate to tell you, but if she keeps this up, the ducks are going to get your house. Briseis, God damn it!”
They stood outside the house for a few minutes, watching timers turn lamps on and off. Ben said finally, “You still talk about Sia in the present tense. I always notice.”
“I think of her like that. Hell, I dream about her most nights. The strange thing about that is, we’re always out of the house, going shopping, working in the garden, just walking down Parnell. Don’t you have dreams about her?”
Ben shook his head. “I can’t afford to, Joe. Sometimes I think she’s really dead, sometimes she’s just gone somewhere I don’t know how to imagine. But it doesn’t make any difference, it can’t. Where she is, she’s done with me, the same way she’s done with Nicholas Bonner. He was the real reason she hung around the human shape, he was her responsibility, but he’s gone, and she’s done with all of us, she meant what she said. And I still have to live.”
Farrell’s unease deepened with the autumn, putting him at vague but constant odds with everything. His dreams of Sia persisted, companionable and undemanding in themselves, but more and more leaving him angrily bereft each time he woke to look up into Briseis’ foolish, urgent eyes. The dog took to following him to work, which was bad enough but manageable; the people at the auto restoration shop liked her and fed her bits of their lunches. But the second time she dragged the blankets off him in Julie’s house at three in the morning, he came up reaching for her throat, and it took all of Julie’s efforts to make him stop yelling and throttling Briseis. It took a good deal longer for him to stop trembling, even when Julie held him.
“I wouldn’t say this to everybody,” she said, “but I suspect you’re getting a message.” Farrell huddled in a chair, glowering across the bedroom at Briseis. Julie said, “I think our friend wants to talk to you.”
“Not me. Definitely not me. Ben’s her man, and you’re her friend, practically a second cousin. I’m the straight man, the dummy—I’m Briseis, when you get down to it. You don’t make long-distance calls to Briseis.”
“We’re all her Briseises. What else could we be to her? Tenth-rate material, cheap styrofoam, meant for packing cartons, not to be depended on by a goddess. But she didn’t have any choice, she was stuck with us and, damn it, she could have done a lot worse for familiars. Maybe we couldn’t be much help, but we must have been some, because she’s sending for you again. And if she wants you, you have to go.”
“Go? Go where?” Farrell sat up, and Briseis ran into the bathroom, rousing the white cat Mushy, who won the ensuing two-rounder by a TKO. Farrell said, “Jewel, I couldn’t even guess if she’s on the bloody planet anymore. And it’s not just where, it’s what. She could come back as the Pocatello National Bank or a manhole cover in Kuala Lumpur, I would not know.”
“Briseis would. She left her to you for a reason.” Farrell snarled. “So would your ring, probably. Look at the way it’s shining right now.”
“It just does that. It’s not any good for anything, it’s just supposed to remind me of her.” Julie smiled and spread her hands. Farrell said heavily. “Even if. Even if I quit the job and pile my stuff in the bus one more time, and sit Briseis on the dashboard so she can point where she wants me to go. Even if I’m that crazy. What happens to us?”
“What always happens to us,” Julie said. “It just took longer this time. I’m very glad it did.” She patted the edge of the bed, and Farrell came and sat next to her. They were quiet together for a long time. She said, “I told you before, we’ll always be together because we’ve shared something we’ll never be able to share with anyone else, and our other lovers will always be jealous. But neither of us wants to live with anyone. You know that’s true, Joe. It happens to be one of the big things we have in common.”
Farrell said, “We waited too late. There were times for us long ago, I remember them. We could have been an old couple by now.”
“An immortal is summoning you on a quest, and you’re sitting here mumbling domestic fantasies. I’m going back to bed.”
Farrell put his arms around her. “When they bust me for vagrancy and mumbling in Pocatello, will you come and get me?”
“As long as you tell me when you find Sia. You will find her, old buddy. Nobody else could, but you will.”
The morning that he set out was glass-crisp, not rounded off with fog but sharp-cornered, making him sneeze when he inhaled deeply. Ben helped him pack the last of his belongings into Madame Schumann-Heink, where Briseis had insisted on spending the night. He said very little, and Farrell was the one who volunteered, “This is lonely. Leaving’s never been lonely for me before. I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you a lot,” Ben said. “I know you’re going on my quest, and it feels really strange. But I can’t go with you.”
“Of course you can’t. You’ve got your work, you’ve got a whole life to keep together, like Julie. She sent for me because I’m the one who’s still just messing around.”
“That’s not the reason.” Ben petted Briseis, speaking directly to her. “Tell your mistress that I will love her all my life and that I’m as angry as I can be at her for leaving me when I needed her. I know it’s presumptuous and insulting, but you tell her. You tell her I’m angry.” Briseis licked his hand, and Ben said, almost inaudibly, “Tell her I do speak her language to myself.”
Farrell drove Julie to work for the last time. Neither of them spoke at all. They held hands all the way, even when Farrell had to shift gears. When he parked near her office, she got down by herself, walked around to the driver’s side and pulled him halfway through the window to kiss him. “Be careful,” she said. “You’re the only one I’ve ever had.”
“The only one what?” There was no way to avoid asking the question, and they were both laughing when she replied, “Ah, if we only knew that. Wouldn’t we be somewhere then?” She kissed him again and walked away without saying good-bye. Farrell found this oddly hopeful and reassuring, since he had never known Julie to say good-bye, and they had always seen each other again.
“Pilot to navigator,” he announced to Briseis. “Which the hell way?” Briseis bounced her paws on the dashboard and whined in the general direction of the Bay. Farrell waited until Julie was out of sight, then put the bus in gear.
Leaving the campus, he spotted a red-haired man in a three-piece suit who looked like a game-show host, standing next to a hot-pretzel barrow, screaming out his timetable for the arrival of the Antichrist. Farrell said to Briseis, “Look at that. They’re all over the place, preaching to muggers in the rain, converting fire hydrants, absolutely crazy as jaybirds. But they have to do it, they have to tell people what God tells them, they’re all on quests, too. And here I go sliding on by, just as easy and civilized, and nobody knows I’m asking a dog to tell me which turn-off I take to find our goddess. A remarkable thing.”
Passing a high school that looked like a Moorish air-base, he drove slowly, growling at the adolescents who drifted across his path without ever looking up, clearly rendered invulnerable by their Walkmans. Four girls in long skirts were coming toward him, walking abreast, advancing like a curtain of bright rain. One girl was Aiffe. She walked in the middle of the group, giggling and fooling, leaning on one friend to adjust her sandal, on another to yelp with laughter, shoving them with her hips and flinging her arms over their shoulders. Farrell heard her whoop, “But he’s so dorky! He thinks you get hot if he bumps up against you on the lunch line!” The yellow-brown mane flared constantly across the faces of her companions.
Farrell shouted, “Lady Aiffe!” several times, but she did not turn until he tried calling her by her real name. Then she turned, frowned, hesitated, said something to her friends, and crossed the street as he pulled to the curb, blocking a driveway. Briseis whimpered impatiently, but he got out of the bus and stood waiting as the girl approached him.
“Hey,” she said, “The old Knight of Whatever. Ghosts and Dragons.” She might have been a little paler than the child who had changed herself into a bird; otherwise, she looked no different at all. Farrell said, “I heard you got sick after the Whalemas Tourney. Are you okay now?”
Aiffe looked briefly puzzled, then nodded. “I was sick. I’m fine now. I was really sick.” The recognition in her eyes went no further than his face; there was no indication that she connected him with any event beyond the Tourney. “I was pretty delirious,” she said. “I don’t really remember a whole lot.”
“Do you remember Nicholas Bonner?”
Her face went utterly blank, empty past pretense. She had never heard the name before. She said, “Actually, there’s a whole lot of people in the League I don’t know anymore. I’m not as much into that whole thing as I used to be.”
“Your father still is, though.”
She laughed, hugging her book bag and leaning against Madame Schumann-Heink. “Grownups have time for that stuff. They don’t have to do computer science homework and try out for plays. Hey, we’re putting on Arsenic and Old Lace, I’m going to be one of the old ladies.” She chattered on, while her friends fidgeted at the end of the block and Briseis yawned and sighed in the bus. Farrell interrupted her at last.
“I didn’t mean to make you late,” he said. “I just want to ask you one thing.” Aiffe waited, her smile only slightly wary. Farrell asked, “What did she say to you? In that room, putting your mind back together with everything else coming apart, what did she say?” He had meant to keep his voice conversational and unthreatening, but Aiffe took one small step backward. “Come on, you have to remember that much,” he coaxed her. “Even if you don’t remember how you got there, or what was going on, you have to remember being there with her, she must have talked to you. Did she say where she was going, what was happening to her? Will you tell me what she said, God damn you?”
There was a moment when he was absolutely certain that some part of her, some red-gold fleck in her eyes, understood perfectly what he was saying and sat back laughing at him, like Nicholas Bonner in the redwood grove. Then the same eyes were full of bewildered tears and she was lunging away down the street to her friends. Someone uniformed enough to be a security patrol was starting toward Farrell, and he swung back up into the bus and got himself and Briseis out of there. In his last sight of Aiffe, the other three girls were consoling her and hugging her; one was even trying to brush her hair.
The snake ring glimmered against the steering wheel as Madame Schumann-Heink approached the freeway. Briseis had her head out of the window, apparently watching sailboats on the Bay. Farrell said, “Pilot to navigator. South is Mexico, north is Canada. Let’s hear it.” Briseis’ nose and tail indicated the turn-off.