Harvest of Changelings (44 page)

“I see a land more fair than any I ever saw. Its hills are clothed with trees and I see shining rivers between broad meadows, and high places where the wind blows. Beautiful is the rippling of grass on these high places, and the running of the deer there. Very beautiful are the mountains with the light upon them, and the flowering valleys, beautiful white waves upon the shore. Surely there is no music like the music of those waves.”

I could just hear the music of those waves from the top of the city wall, the wall facing the sea. It drops straight down, a sheer rock face, to a jumble of boulders at its base, a rocky beach that gradually becomes faintly glowing white sand and there is the sea. These sea gulls—am I imagining that their cries are somehow more melodic than the ones on the North Carolina coast? They look to be exactly the same and Larissa tells me many of the beasts are the same—more or less. Faerie changes those who come, whether on two feet or four or on wing or claw or hoof.

I memorized that quote. I think it is from a book by MacCana, but I'm not sure. Whoever wrote had to have been here some way or another.

The sea, the sea, the sea. Green and blue and silver and white. The smell, the air, the white waves on that white beach.

 

Faerie is changing me. I don't know how, but it is. Will I be something other than human, the fourth-born, the last-comers? I don't think so, nor would I wish it so. We have our gifts as well. I guess I will have to wait and see what happens.

 

I brought my son and those to whom he has bonded—his tetrad—here. I saved my son's life; I had to do that or die trying. I kept my promise to Valeria; I kept my promise to Jack. All of us, Here and There, have managed, for a time, to defeat the Dark. I don't imagine for one minute that the victory is permanent. I am tempted to write: and they lived happily ever after, and close this book and not write again, but I know that it wouldn't be true if I did either. Hazel was as happy as the boys were to see the ocean, but she is not yet truly happy to be here. I don't know how she will sort herself out. Russell's shadow has only begun to lift; he has only begun to know who he is and the knowing is going to be painful for him. Jeff has his own shadow, his own ghost, to put to rest. The two of them are going to learn a great deal about themselves and each other as they grow up here. Malachi, of all of them, is the most whole, yet even he has to grow up, sort out his magic. I do not know when I will tell them what Larissa told me as we walked: the juvenile tetrad, formed at puberty, isn't permanent. There will be a second tetrad formation when they become adults, and reformation of the juvenile tetrad is rare. And since the war, some adult tetrads never formed—earth did not find fire, air did not find water. Couples and triads instead. She told me Valeria was the only survivor of her tetrad: fire. If she had lived, would we be looking for two more? Could I have shared her? Third tetrads, Larissa said, are rare and difficult.

So, Valeria wasn't whole, either. Neither am I. No, Alex is the most whole.

They stood together, the four of them, set slightly apart from the four adults. Larissa and Ben stood to one side; Roth and Thorfin, to the other. The four children stood in between, leaning into the white lip of the wall of the White City, looking down at the sea. Alex, his front paws on the white lip, stood between the children and the centaurs, but only for a short while. He sat down and began to wash,
starting with his paws, so that he could wash his head. A barely visible current passed in and around and through the four of them, crackling in the salt air, like the last kernels to be popped. For a long time, or so it seemed, no one spoke. They all were content to smell the air, feel the sun, listen to the singing of the gulls, and the faint, faraway sound of the waves on the sand, and to watch the sea. Malachi saw the dolphins first, leaping, white-silver flashes above the water. Jeff saw the swimmers, in dark counterpoint to the dolphins' flashes. Russell was sure he recognized the dolphins. And farther out, Hazel saw a dragon, its wings at full-spread, over the water.

No one could tell, later, just whose idea it was, perhaps, it was the idea of all four—something Larissa told them would happen more and more. But it was Malachi who first floated a few feet up from the wall's stones, the others drifting up with him, until they were just above the wall. Then, as if blown by a sudden wind, they dropped, then dove down and out, out, and out, and down again, swooping down the grey rock face that grew into the white walls, and out, over the rocks at the bottom, and out again, over the white sand, over the waves, over the sea.