I know my nephew hasn't been following the story--at this point he isn't even conscious--but I don't care. I am telling it to myself rather than to him. We go back indoors. My sister isn't there. Ka-Re is.
"Then what happened?" she asks after I've recovered from the shock of finding a tall, hooded personage where I expected my sister to be.
"What are you doing here?" I demand. "And where's --" As I ask I see the note left on the kitchen counter: "Out getting dinner--back soon." "What are you doing here?" I ask again.
She sweeps her arm around, indicating the high ceilings, the brass lamps, the bulky fireplace. "Doesn't this look like the sort of place where I'd be?"
"You can't expect me to come up with a sensible answer to certain problems if you keep popping into reality like this," I retort. "I'll start questioning my sanity, and I need to be quite sure of my sanity before delving into anything more serious."
"I'm not in reality. You're imagining me again." Was she telling the truth? Kahtah told me she never lied, but Ka-Re made no such claim. "Let the baby sleep and tell me the rest of the story."
I grunt my reluctance but unhook the carrier and lay its cargo down on the bed, Snuggli and all. Because this is a large studio apartment by New York standards, it takes me five whole steps to walk from there to the refrigerator, where I pour myself a glass of the vanilla-enriched rice milk. I hold up another glass in Ka-Re's direction. "Would you like--"
"I'm not here."
"Sorry. Just habit, I guess." My head hurts. I try to shake the muddle out, but it doesn't work.
Ka-Re is perched on the corner of the bed with the light behind her; it is difficult to look at her face as she speaks. "You were telling him that I was like my sister but not like enough to be what she was, and what it took to find my own place in the world long after everyone else had taken theirs."
I smile despite myself. "Today was the first day I noticed it, you know, after telling the story over and over so many years. I never realized how connected it was to how I felt toward my own brothers and sisters." My gaze lands on the dresser, strewn with notes from an Italian opera agent and a collection of exotic earrings. I sigh. "Like when my mom was showing off a family photo--I couldn't have been more than twelve--and listing what everyone did. I couldn't understand why there wasn't a description behind my name."
Ka-Re's voice is soft, musing. "And when it was time for me to find my own place, I was not ugly but plain, and no one noticed me...Is this your feeling too?"
"It is how things are," I mutter. "For anyone. I don't know if it's due to looks or charisma or what, but some people are noticed and some people aren't. That's just the truth. Not being noticed--no, worse, speaking and not being heard; that's what I've--" My breath catches in my throat. I have to start again. "I had this dream the other night that I was trying to tell someone something very important but he would not listen. I tried again and again but he just waved me aside. By the end I was screaming. When I woke up and thought back on it I was a scared of the vehemence involved. I'd been tapping into a violence I didn't realize was inside me." I fall silent for a moment, remembering. "My biggest fear is that I'll be ignored."
"Your biggest fear?" Ka-Re echoes.
"Well, aside from nuclear war," I say lightheartedly.
"So." My visitor draws in a breath and adopts an air of changing the subject. "In the story I have come to a house, and this house I take as my kingdom. It can be reached from any world if one is in a particular sort of danger, and so I take assisting those who are in this danger as my task. I work against the black crow who draws many to despair."
"And once you have your kingdom, you can take your hawk shape again and speak to your Grandmother Sun again," I finish.
"So," she says once more, leaning forward. "Tell me of my sword."
She hasn't changed the subject at all, and we both know it. "You got it from the Fairy Queen."
Ka-Re stands and brushes at her skirt. "Shall we stage this scene the way you used to stage all these stories?"
My mouth drops open.
"I'll be me, you can be the Fairy Queen," she says before noticing my look. "What?" she asks innocently.
I shake my head slow and then fast. "How much more surreal is this going to get? You want to stage a dialogue between you, a person who's not really here, and me, pretending to be someone I'm not?"
She frowns as if this is an objection she doesn't understand. I try a different protest.
"What if my sister walks in?"
"She won't," Ka-Re assures me.
Best just to surrender to the inevitable, I think. "Right, okay. I'm the Fairy Queen." I close my eyes in concentration while I mentally adapt myself to the role. There is one word to describe the Fairy Queen's character, and that word is "amoral." She has no compass for her actions, except perhaps self-interest, and that is no reliable guide because what interests her most is pursuing her whims. How I act, what I say, has to fit through that filter if I am to play her part.
"The scene is the first time the Fairy Queen comes to see me," Ka-Re prompts.
I open my eyes. "So you are Ka-Re, Phoenix-child and Phoenix-twin," I say, honeying the words. "What a delight it is to meet you. And this is the home you have chosen for yourself? What an interesting choice."
Ka-Re lowers her head. "I am honored that you visit it, your majesty."
"Please--call me Titania. Of the many names I've been given it is the one I prefer." If I were very good at acting, my laugh at this point would sound like the ringing of tiny silver bells. Instead, I laugh my own way and move about the apartment as though inspecting Ka-Re's home.
In a little while Ka-Re breaks the silence. "Do you know my sister well, Titania?"
"Only the Phoenix knows the Phoenix, Ka-Re. Except--now you do, I suppose." I look at her and suddenly smile. "Oh, you must be wondering what occasioned this visit. I am sorry; I hadn't meant to be mysterious, but I am very bad at the idle chatter of social occasions. Do forgive me."
"No need to apologize, Titania. Tell me what is on your mind."
"I suppose you might call it a favor," I say carefully. "Is it true that you and your sister may cross at will the border separating us from your old home?"
"It was never my home."
"The Phoenix's home, then."
"You mean the world of Egypt and China and Arabia?"
"You seem reluctant to speak of it."
"The body of the old Phoenix, wrapped in the nest of incense and spices, is always taken by the new Phoenix to an altar at Heliopolis. So as long as there is a Phoenix she must be able to journey to that world, yes, and so, yes, the border is open to my sister and myself. We journeyed there together to bury our mother."
"I remind you of the pain of loss by mentioning it," I note. My tone is of curiosity rather than concern. It is not like the Fairy Queen to show empathy.
"I am wondering why you ask about this, Titania, that is all."
"It used to be that it was easy to cross between my world and that one," I say. "The doors between are fewer now--I know one or two that are left. The favor I wish to ask you is that you help me get back and forth from that world to my own."
I fix my gaze on her. She knows I--or rather the Fairy Queen--would not make a good enemy, and fear clouds her expression for an instant. Then she takes a gulp of air and says,
"I am sorry, but I cannot help you. The doors, as you say, are almost all closed now; they must surely be closed for a reason. I do not plan to go into that world again myself. I think if we were to journey back and forth now, it would prove to be a dangerous interference. I mean no insult to you. I just don't think journeys like that would be right."
I draw myself up to stand a little taller and keep my expression perfectly neutral for a time. Then I allow a slow smile to land on my face. "You may be right, Phoenix-child. It may have been good for you to refuse me. We may never know that for certain, of course." I laugh again, brightly, cheerfully, but I notice Ka-Re cringes at the sound. "I admire your intelligence. It is no small matter to be so young in the world and already know the borders must stay closed, when in my ages and ages of life I never guessed. I will see you again soon, I hope." I turn and take some steps away.
"Well played, Angela," Ka-Re compliments. "We have time for another, I think. Make this one about the sword."
So I walk back again as the Fairy Queen, imagining the little cocktail sword in my hand as I speak. "Look what I have brought, Ka-Re. The fairies crafted it from a single sapphire. Isn't it a marvel?"
"It is certainly beautiful," she answers hesitantly.
"You've no idea. Take it," I coax, stepping in closer to her. "See what happens when it is in your hand." I stand just behind her at her left, so near I catch her scent. It is startling how she seems so real now she could have a smell. I wonder if I had once associated her with a fragrance and had since forgotten. And then I remember. "Myrrh," I say in the Fairy Queen's voice. "One of the resins the Phoenix uses in her final nest. Strange that you would carry with you the scent of your own mortality."
She takes the imagined sword from my hand. In her hand it is the size a sword should be, but still as transparent blue as the northern sky.
"That is a bit of my magic," I say proudly. "Distortion. I can make things become what they were not."
"Can one fight with a sapphire sword?" she asks.
"You certainly can fight with that one. I have placed a further magic on it. That sword is unbeatable."
Ka-Re slants her eyes from the sword to me. "What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I said. If you wield that sword you will win any battle you fight. And it is my gift to you."
"I-I cannot accept such a gift. It is too much."
"It is too late," I reply, my tone just slightly mocking. "You have accepted it. The sword went from my hand to yours when I offered it. By our law, it is an accepted gift. And an accepted gift from the Fairy Queen may not be returned."
"But--it is so dangerous. I can never, ever use it. To fight with it would be wrong."
"My, you're quite the one for deciding right and wrong around me, aren't you?" I grin as I say it. "What is so dangerous about it? Surely it's what every warrior wants."
"But, by definition, what only one warrior can have. Titania, listen--"
"I think, at present, I shall prefer 'your majesty,'" I interrupt.
"Your majesty, please listen. Going into battle is a serious step. It should only be done when one believes her cause is so just she is willing to lay her life down for it. If I know in advance I will win every battle I join, what is to keep me from joining battles where I have no place? What would stop me from imposing my view of the world on anyone I meet?"
"I do not know, Ka-Re. But you will have a chance to find out. Enjoy your gift." I turn and begin to walk away again. Then I stop and remark over my shoulder, as if just remembering it, "The sapphire was mined from Kahtah's land by my fairies, as you might have guessed--an element of despair being necessary in the manufacture of an unbeatable weapon. So you may find the Battle Crow to be of the opinion that the sword is rightfully hers. Of course she is mistaken. You took that sword from my hand as my gift to you. It is yours." I resume walking.
The baby whimpers on the bed and I hear a key in the lock. I turn back to comfort my nephew and Ka-Re is already gone. But there is an echo of her voice inside me--no, it is not like an echo, it is like she has written the words into me: "You need to learn about both Kahtah and the sword. Neither one are going away; both are true. What is your biggest fear?"
---
I take the train to Boston. I have appropriate music in my Discman--as the train picks up speed out of the station, solemn organ notes blend together and crescendo. I'm looking out at blue sky, vibrantly hued New England forests and leaves swirling past the windows in clouds thick as swallow flocks. I am profoundly moved. A strange mood I'd been feeling of dissatisfaction and unease is lifted at once.
This side trip is one of the reasons I agreed to go to New York. I wanted to get to the East Coast because I had a chance to sell some of my Marc Connors books in Boston. Marc Connors--now there is someone with myth wrapped around him. A singer who died long before his time, someone who possessed what I continue to insist was the most beautiful voice of his generation. When he died I was fifteen and that death shook me as few events have. I remember afterward writing maudlin poetry, as teenagers do, only my maudlin poetry was about golden roses. When I was growing up we had a Children's Book of Saints, and I read in it the story of a young girl facing martyrdom in Rome. She was teased by her guards about the paradise she believed she would soon enter, a place where golden apples grew from the trees and golden roses bloomed in the gardens. "Pick the fruit and flowers for me," one guard said. After she died she appeared to him in a vision, and she held out to him a golden apple and a golden rose.
In Boston, with my friend Renee who has come to meet me, the talk turns to witches. It is not because I mention Kahtah or my peculiar quest. It is because Salem is just up the road. "Salem is incredible," she says. "There are lots of witches. It's like they're out of the closet."
---
I have a day to wander around the city. Since I am no longer in New York, the place where I thought I'd meet what I was afraid of, my mind isn't on Kahtah. I cross Copley Square to Trinity Church because Renee said it was beautiful. It is a small Romanesque building with an empty plaza out front. Businessmen and women in suits stride across the square as I trundle along dragging my bag of books. Just in front of the entrance there is a twelve-pointed star set in the concrete, something like a large compass roase. It seems to serve no purpose but decoration, but a circle of white stones has been placed around it--bright white, like quartz, and each the size of a fist. Strange to be confronted by something so pagan-looking in front of an Episcopalian church. The businessmen and women don't seem to notice it, but none step inside the circle.
Later in the day I walk along a row of shops on a street Renee promised was "eclectic." I go in and out of several record stores, making the unhappy discovery that the piles of CDs by bands I don't know no longer excite me as vistas of new possibilities; they just look like piles of CDs which I lack the time and funds and interest to sift through. I see soap bubbles further up the street--they come from a bubble machine in front of a fairy store (they advertise they carry mermaids too). I stop in and buy cards for the fantasyphiles in my circle. A quote on the wall talks about the boundary between worlds and how the boundary lines blur sometimes. Yes, I think. That's true. But there is nothing in the shop that fits what I'm searching for, whatever that might be. I'm not sure what it is; I perceive only the lack of it and leave.
Further up the street, past Mayan Imports and Tibetan Imports, a Welsh flag catches my eye. It hands on a door by a sign advertising "The Gargoyle Shop and le galerie d'ame"--the Gallery of the Soul. I walk in and another odd mood comes over me. The interior is very strange and somehow ominous, and I nearly walk right back out again. But then I see this T.S. Eliot quote on the wall:
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
I am trying to arrive at what I do not know, and there is much in this place which is unfamiliar to me. I walk around it and burn the details in my memory.
Not much light. From hidden speakers tremble slow piano notes, no discernible melody, continuing and continuing and never reaching resolution. Walls covered in paintings of faint color, little dots of eyes and out of focus faces. The surfaces of the paintings cracked like they are ancient, the faces emerging from the surfaces like drowned men seen underwater. Stained glass windows, not art glass in rectangular frames but real stained glass windows, perhaps from fallen churches. Religious statuary piled in corners, facing random directions. Broken pieces of glass hanging on wires round the necks of plaster angels or suspended like a chandelier over the head of a plaster St. Teresa (nearly my height, with a crack down the length of her face forming what could be the path of a tear). A white plaster bishop with blue eyes. A chain mail shirt. None of this merchandise has a price tag. In the back where it gets darker, in a coffin, a mummy demon or perhaps vampire--grey skin, pointy ears, misshapen teeth, talon hands. And gargoyles, big and little, stashed up on shelves or blocking the aisles, and spread over a table massive prints of old photographs of the gargoyles hanging off the roof of Notre Dame.
I cannot, cannot get my bearings in this place. The word "evil" flickers through my head but then I start reading words written in careful script on a poster near the Eliot poem. It begins "It's time to get serious." As I read I experience the strange slow creep of remembrance, of familiarity. I know the words very well but I do not know why. By the end, when credit is given to a character in the Wim Wenders movie "Wings of Desire," I nod and smile. It's one of my favorite movies, and the soliloquy I've just read contains some of my favorite lines. Finding them out of context confused me for a time but now I feel better about this whole store. Anyone who will quote Wim Wenders can't be all bad. Right?
Still--the unbalancing piano music, still--the vacant eyes in the paintings looking out through fog or shrouds, still--the demon mummy vampire. I walk circuit after circuit, weaving between the statues, hunting for clues, anything definitive. I keep my ears open.
"What's this?" a young woman in a linen suit asks the shopkeeper. He is my height, with a gentle face, kind eyes, and a Paul McCartney-esque floppy cuteness. The customer has picked up a palm-sized creature sitting on its haunches. It has a pensive expression.
"That's Irving," the shopkeeper says. He has a quiet voice but an animated way of speaking. His words tumble out almost too quickly to follow. "He's the defender of truth, justice, and the Gothic way. The Gothic way is simply attention to detail. You see, the Gothic revival was all about reacquainting ourselves with what may seem insignificant but is really of utmost importance. God is in the details. In that size"--the little fellow is flanked by cousins twice or thrice his height--"Irving's your personal protection. And he does a good job, too. He's named for Irving Street in New York, where he sits on top of a building near 14th. And you'll notice that after the terrorist attacks, what was south of 14th was hit hard, but everything north of 14th was unaffected."
His linen-suited customer buys herself an Irving and leaves. I take another circuit through the shop, which is small but so crammed with--well, whatever all this is, I hesitate to call it merchandise--that every time I circle round I catch sight of something new. This time what I see makes me stop and makes my mouth open in shock.
On the floor is a pieta, Mary with the dead Jesus sprawled on her lap; it's about one-sixth the size of the pietas I've seen in churches. This is not what shocks me. What shocks me are the nearby flowers. Longstemmed, many-petalled, almost throwing off light with their metallic sheen. Golden roses. Someone dipped living roses in gold. I hesitate to pick one up. I have an old superstition that if I want something very badly and I take hold of it, I will have to get it. So for the moment I content myself with staring at them.
The shopkeeper is talking to another young woman holding an Irving. "He fights for truth, justice, and the Gothic way, and the Gothic way is attention to detail." He recites the rest of his speech while she looks at him with wide eyes.
"Wow. So what's a gargoyle for, anyway?"
They get rainwater off a cathedral, I answer in my head. The water runs out of their mouths, hence "gargoyle" is related to "gargle." To my surprise, the shopkeeper says no such thing. "They're a symbol of chthonic power--"
"I'm sorry, what power?"
"Chthonic. Deep underground stuff that can push its way up into the everyday world. Like volcanoes. Just like what happened with the World Trade Center is a chthonic power." He doesn't elaborate, and she doesn't ask him to.
She buys an Irving and as she puts her wallet away she asks him, "Can you write that down for me, what you said about truth, justice, and some kind of way?"
"The Gothic way."
"Right."
Instead of writing it, he repeats his speech once more. "Say it after I've said it."
"But I can't remember all that!" she complains.
"Whatever you remember from what I said will be better than what I said."
She takes a hesitating try at a couple of phrases, and he beams. "See? You said it a lot better than I did."
She leaves. He looks over at me and smiles. I'm unsure of what I want to say. I have this sudden urge to attempt to be profound, but I don't know where to begin, so I'm tongue-tied.