The Radiant Road (7 page)

How could something so Strange feel so strong and sure and home?

Slowly, by the faint and many-colored lights, she began to make out details of the old tree: its skinned-knee pinkness, its hard and curling roots.

Wait: she looked more closely at the roots. Nestled in the crook of the roots was something—she leaned in closer—was . . . the world? She laughed out loud. It couldn't be. But more than the world—the universe, a tiny doll universe, starry and fiery, green and stone, curled inside a root's curling arm. A forest rose up and died in one slow breath, out and in. A mountain range heaved up like a jagged wave, then softened, lost its shape, and melted away beneath the wind and rain. At her feet, a distant star blossomed from a burning bud, shone full and yellow-white, swelled up red, withered into darkness.

“Good girl yourself,” said a voice in her ear. “You came.”

Finn was beside her.
How is there room for him in this tree?
But this was Clare's home now, fitted to her, she fitted to it. This was always her home, only she'd forgotten. And Finn and Clare had always fit here together.

“You can see the whole world and sky in here,” Clare said. “You see them so slow, though. Or maybe I mean so fast.”

“Because this tree stands between our worlds, yours and mine, and has roots deep, deep into both,” he said.

“Your world,” Clare repeated. This was the question that had haunted her all day. “Are you . . . ?” No. Not that word. “Do you come from . . . the Strange?”

He laughed, a startling sound in the firefly-lit silence. “I call
your
world the Strange one. We call our world Timeless. Timeless, for it is great with beauty, my world. And the beauty is perfect, and never changes. Nothing changes there.” Something odd in his voice there, but Clare pushed on.

“But so, all my life, those fairy-makings—wait, do you know what I mean by fairy-makings?”

“I do indeed.” A fish threaded with light passed between their faces, so that his gray-blue eyes were bright for a moment, then shadowed again.

“Was that you? Was it you making them?”

He smiled, and turned his face away as if to hide it. “Some I did,” he said.

A sudden, troubling thought. “But did you make—did you make the one from a couple nights ago, with the fireflies and stars, that made the terrible sort of . . . face?”

“I did not,” said Finn. “But not only I make them. We all make those makings, in your world. We make more than that, much more. We made your home, my girl.”

Clare forgot the firefly face, turning this thought in her mind.
My house was built by fairies?

Clare didn't believe in fairies. But it is hard not to believe in someone sitting beside you, arm in rough wool coat pressed against your own, while fireflies and glowing fish swim in the air between you. It is hard not to believe the memories that come tumbling back every hour you're here.

“I don't really believe in fairies,” she said aloud, doubtfully, as if testing the sound.

He laughed, a sharp and husky sound. His breath was like the breath of wild herbs after a rain. “Do not call us fairies, then,” he said, “if it's only the word in the way.”

They were quiet a long time, arm touching arm, as the lights of the universe breathed and pulsed, arose and died away around them.

Clare, who had had no real friends, had of course no boy friends, either. A featherless fledgling who hides herself doesn't talk much with anyone, let alone boys. She knew, or she thought she knew, that boys came in three kinds: the ones raucous as a pack of dogs, all vulgar jokes and savagery; the mute ones, their faces shuttered up, as stubbornly unproddable as a pile of wet towels; and then the third kind, the boys with intelligent eyes and bitter jokes, and a sadness at the edges that she thought might match her own.

There was one boy like that, a year older, who worked in her favorite coffee shop in Midland. She liked his floppy dark hair and
sad, skeptical brown eyes. They exchanged a few words now and then, and shared ironic glances at overheard conversations.

She saw him once or twice a month for a year; had said maybe a hundred words to him; did not know his name. He was the closest thing she had to a boy friend.

Now she sat pressed arm to arm with a dark boy, a Strange boy, an intelligent boy with sadness around the edges. And to sit pressed arm to arm with this boy seemed like coming home, and how, how could that be?

“You and me were friends,” she tried softly. “When we were babies, when we were small.” The words were wrong and not enough for all she felt.

“We were,” said Finn. “We slept and played together, here in the in-between. The two worlds, human and Timeless, like two eggs inside one nest, this nest, our nest.”

She held up her hand, and watched the fireflies bob and dance around it. “Do other people come here? To this place, I mean, to the in-between. Do other . . . people of Timeless, or whatever?”

“Ah,” said Finn. He held his own hand up, and the fireflies wove a glowing thread between them. “No. This place is our place, only ours. Well: and the lights. Whatever makes light may pass through our yew. But people, mine or yours, no. No one can visit the in-between, but Clare and Finn.”

This was the most beautiful answer in the world. Clare's heart rang like church bells.

“It is a great joy to me you've returned,” said Finn, and the bells rang higher still. “Because this tree has much missed its guardian.”

The bells clanked a bit. “Its
guardian
?”

Finn paused, pulled back. “Do you not know about yourself and this tree?” said Finn. He seemed incredulous. “Your mother must have taught you
something
?”

Clare stiffened. “My mother's dead, and if she taught me stuff when I was
five
, I've forgotten it.” (Not all, though, not all:
We leave it open so the fairies can come through
.) “I heard this tree was one of the landmarks of the fairy road, if that's what you mean.”

Finn smiled, and fireflies bobbed around his face, blinking him dark and light. “Oh—the
fairy
road is it, after all?” he asked. Clare made a face—all
right
—and he continued. “You may call them landmarks, but we call them gates, which is what they are, gates between our worlds. Long ago, the two worlds were one. At least, that is what we say, or how we say it.

“But when the spine of the world was split in two, spots of connection were left. These are called gates. And this tree is the living heart of all the gates between the worlds. It roots into the earth with a thousand fingers, and it sends those roots in all directions. This tree's roots run even beneath the sea, where every road begins or ends.”

Who said something like that before?
thought Clare—but Finn was still talking. “When a series of gates falls in a straight line, that makes a fairy road whereby the fairies may travel as a host, leaping from gate to gate, as at certain times of year, fairies must.”

Clare's face looked as if she were tasting something bad. Finn cried, exasperated, “Oh, girl, if you don't like ‘fairy roads,' then you might call them ‘the dreaming roads' or ‘the gates of making.' The name is not important. But each gate, each gate the world over, has a guardian, who must keep it open and flowing. The job is passed down through the generations. Your family has guarded this gate, the most important gate of all, this yew tree, for long, oh, long.”

Every generation, one girl is born into this house.

“My mother guarded it?”

“She did. And your grandmother, and great-gran, they all did, back and back.”

“So, but,” said Clare, something opening in her chest, “so how do I guard it? What do I actually do?” A small fish swam between them, swam as if the air were water, its bones glowing pale blue within translucent skin.

“You
use
it, girl,” said Finn. “You use the gate. With neglect and disuse the gates become rusty and stiff and ruined. You keep it open with use.”

“You mean I go visit . . . go visit your world?” A mixture of disbelief and anxiety. “I don't know about that.”

Finn put his head between his knees and made an unreadable noise. Then he laid his face on his knees and looked at her through one gray eye. “Clare,” he said. “You go there every night, or nearly. Did you not know? You come to my world every night, to dream.”

Clare opened her mouth to scoff, to say no, to say—but she remembered now, oh, she
remembered
now, why his accent was familiar, and his smile.

Her dreams. The smiling people in her dreams, growing bird beaks, elephant trunks, to make her laugh.

The
fairies
.

“But—”

“Dreaming, passing back and forth, to and from our world, keeps the gate well and alive. That's one way. The other way is making—writing, music, dance, invention, anything you create.”

“Why making? Why does that help?”

“Because making and dreaming are the same. Or say: making is a higher form of dreaming. In dreams, most of you wander blind and deaf as babies—making, but blind and deaf. To make awake is a higher thing.
My
people do not sleep,” he added, as if this were a virtue of theirs.

Clare wanted to ask: but if I am making, when I dream, why do my dreams surprise me so much? But Finn was going on. “Making and dreaming tie your world to ours, for we are great makers. Great
makers, indeed.” For a moment he looked curiously wistful and silence fell between them. The green sea at their feet washed silently in and out.

Clare sat awhile digesting this. She felt herself growing sleepy, in the silence. She yawned. Finn laughed.

“So can I ask another question?” she said.

“Oh, ask away and welcome.”

“So if there are all these gates around—”

“Not so ‘all these' nowadays.”

“Still. Why aren't people falling into your world all the time? I mean there are some old stories about it, but you don't hear now about people . . . I mean like that old castle, people must go in there all the time!”

“Oh, ah. But they are gates, you see, and gates lock. And each lock has a key. For the gate's own guardian, it will open. You might say, Clare, that you yourself are the key to this gate, this yew. But it will be locked to any other. The person who wishes to pass through a gate must find it out, the key. Must hear each gate's requirement.”

“So, like a password,” said Clare.

“And each gate has its own. You must find it out, by luck or by thinking.” Finn sat up straighter. “Idea,” he said. “We'll try you tomorrow. Your mother would have done the same, it's time you learned. We'll meet at the castle, for you to try if you can learn its
key. I believe you will be good at key-finding,” he added confidently. “It is much like making, and you were ever a maker-girl.”

Clare felt a chill. “People keep saying that. I'm not really some big maker now, since I'm not, you know, four years old.”

Finn looked surprised. “Never at all? You?”

Clare blushed. “Not never. Sometimes I write, I have little notes about . . . I mean it isn't anything.”

“Bring some tomorrow to show me.”

“I'm not going to
show
you,” said Clare, shocked.

“But why?” He seemed genuinely puzzled.

“Because . . . well, everyone is afraid to show private stuff like that.”

“Everyone,” said Finn, once again closing one eye as if he were sighting her, or drawing her, “is not a maker.” A sudden, slightly dazzling smile. “Tomorrow, then.”

And he was gone.

Back in her room, though dawn was coming on, Clare was too electrified to sleep. First she ran to the tree and kissed one green frond and said, “I will protect you, I always will.” Then she felt silly; then she didn't care. She thought of the old song that went, “I could have danced all night.” She wished she could play music and dance.

Instead, she sat down at the yellow desk and found the
beginnings of her poem, the one about the girl running down the moonlight.

She held two thoughts in her mind, both at once, and both lightly, one in each of her mind's hands: fairies aren't real; and this boy, this earth-rainbow-making boy, this boy of her memories, Timeless boy—he is, he is real. Then, quite easily, she let the first thought spill away into the air. She had been wrong; almost her whole life, she had been wrong about fairies (still, that word, though,
ergh
), had been wrong about what to believe in. It felt hilarious now, to have been so wrong.

With her poem before her, she thought of how her small makings had a big reason: to keep the tree alive, to keep her
connection
alive: to the other world, and to making, and to dreaming.