INTRODUCTIONS

I considered a whole list of ‘adventurous’ names—from Matthew Stark to Matthew Parker, even Matt Danger—and, being a grown man still, under my new skin, quickly rejected them all.

Inspiration finally struck as I recalled a class on folklore I’d taken long ago—to satisfy a college English requirement—in which we’d read an ancient Scottish ballad about a man kidnapped by the queen of fairy, who, as I recalled, was quite smitten with him. I grinned at the idea, wondering if my hosts here would be familiar enough with our silly fairy tales, as Piper had called them, to recognize the name I’d chosen—and what The Lady would make of my choice if they did. Not that I cared, of course. I would be entertained. That’s what mattered.

“Matthew Rhymer.” I liked the sound of it. “Matt Rhymer…” Unusual enough not to scream ‘placeholder,’ and obscure enough to avoid sounding dated or hokey—a riddle hidden in a private joke embedded in my very name; the perfect choice for my new life. I was going to be such a kick-ass teenager this time around.

Evening seemed to come on suddenly here. The world outside my windows had gone from pale twilight to moonlit darkness in less than half an hour. I was wondering if even time itself might be ‘artfully’ tweaked here, when the sudden, soft crunch of footsteps on the pathway outside preceded a quiet knock at my door.

I opened it to find Rain turned out very fashionably in an elegant long black coat over a dark, asymmetrical vest and forest green dress shirt like those my guards had worn earlier that day—except that his was of satin brocade, and sported ruffles at the neck and wrists. My assessment of his remarkable attire must have been less than discreet.

“Affair of state,” he said, almost defensively.

I looked down at my own rumpled clothing. “They gonna let me in to a state dinner looking like this?”

“Introducing Mikayl to a newly dislocated, teenaged Andinol refugee dressed as a member of The Lady’s court would, I believe, engender all the wrong sort of questions,” he said dryly. “You are perfectly attired just as you are. Have you been reviewing your story?”

I nodded.

“Good. So then, what happened to bring you here?”

I took a second to recall the basics, then said, “My parents died in a car wreck, and I was sent to live with my uncle, who didn’t like—”

“Wrong,” he cut in.

“What? How? I’ve barely even—”

“What is the first rule of your current story?” he asked.

I thought back on everything we’d discussed, and…had no idea. “What did I do wrong?”

“You answered the question,” he said, leaning in for emphasis.

“…What?”

He straightened again, looking truly disappointed in me. “Did we not agree that whatever brought you to this circumstance was so traumatic that you can’t remember most of it, and don’t wish to discuss it at all—ever—with anyone?”

“Oh.”

“And that you would tell this story only to yourself—relentlessly—until it is so completely internalized that you’d never even think of answering anyone who asked you about it?” He shook his head wearily. “The first rule of this story is never tell anyone this story.”

“Okay,” I sighed, “but that’s entrapment. You’re the one who worked all this out with me—just a couple hours ago! It’s not like you don’t already know. I just thought you wanted to be sure I—”

“Did I? Entrap you? Poor boy. Do you suppose Anselm and his henchmen will politely refrain from such underhanded tactics?” He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, and nudged past me, heading for the cottage’s little table. “Come sit down for a moment, will you?”

I followed and slumped into the chair across from him.

“What I want,” he said, with exaggerated patience, “what we both need, in fact, if everyone is to survive this transition, is for you to believe the story we agreed upon this afternoon. I want you to inhabit it so fully that if even I ask where you’ve come from, you will shut down like a sprung mousetrap without so much as pausing to think about what rules apply to me—or to the situation. Questions about when or how the story’s rules apply can only be asked at all from outside the story. From this moment on, you must never step outside of your story again—for any reason—no matter who you’re talking to—including Piper, or even The Lady.” He leaned back in his chair. “Is that clearer?”

I looked down sullenly. Piper was right. He was very good at making people feel…small. “I guess. …But it may take more than a couple hours to internalize my new life as a mute cipher that completely.”

“Oh, buck up,” he said. “It’s not that bad. The story’s just your starting place. You can move forward from it in whatever direction you wish. Become anything you choose to. You must simply never visit anything before this moment again. That prohibition must become reflexive. The rest, however, is entirely up to you.” I doubted that somehow—severely. “So, Matthew, what’s brought you to us?”

“I’d…prefer not to discuss it, if you don’t mind.”

“Better. Now try once more, as a teenage boy this time, not a grown man talking with his attorney.”

“I don’t…like talkin’ about it,” I said with growing impatience.

“Oh,” Rain said. “Sure, I get it. I’ve been through some tough things too. But sometimes talking about things helps. Letting it out a little, you know? You sure you wouldn’t like—”

“I said, back off, dickwad!”

Rain’s brows shot up as he leaned away in surprise—then smiled, almost gleefully. “That was very good!” He shrugged. “See? Not so hard.”

He was right. The flash of irritation had been particularly easy to ape. “Maybe we should try flash cards.”

“Very encouraging. But go softer on the tone with Mikayl. We need him to feel sympathy for you, so, you’ll need to seem likeable tonight.”

“Likeable, but mute?”

“You make those sound contradictory. You’re clear on your job at dinner?”

I shrugged. “I’m to be seen and not heard—like any likeable teenager.”

“That would be safest, yes. Unless you’re asked a question, of course, in which case, the simplest, most direct answer without tangents, questions or embellishments of any kind, please. The Lady and I are there to explain you, and do any other talking necessary. You are there to break Mikayl’s generous heart in silence, and listen very carefully. Nothing more, if it can be avoided. Any questions you may have will be answered fully afterward. Agreed?”

“I still get to eat, right? And not just from the kiddy buffet?”

“Anything to keep your mouth occupied.” He offered me an amicable grin. “Ready to go?”

“Yup.” I stood, and followed him out into the cool, cricket-song-filled night.

Fireflies twinkled in and out of existence in the foliage, drifting out above the meadow like blinking green snowflakes. I heard an owl hoot somewhere further off. A beautifully detailed ‘dream’ of an archetypal forest night, I thought, recalling Piper’s indecipherable assertions about what all this really was. Made of our dreams, somehow?

As we started up the moon-dappled path, Rain said, “So, I hear you’ve seen The Tree.”

“Yes.” Was I in trouble for this too?

“Has that experience affected your feelings about us in any way?” He glanced back at me as we walked. “You may, of course, decline to answer if the question seems uncomfortable. I’m merely rather curious about what such an experience meant to someone…so new to all of this.”

You mean, do I trust you more now? I wondered suddenly if that been the excursion’s real point: to win me over by showing me what a lovely ‘soul’ these people have? Or was he really just wondering whether their Tree could mean anything at all to a tribal toddler like myself?

Or…did he, maybe, mean just what he’d asked: What does an Andinol visitor make of our…Tree? I realized how prone to snarky remarks and responses I’d become since getting here. It had been such a long, exhausting day. I was so much further out of my depth than I had ever imagined it might be possible to get. But this had clearly been a crisis for them too. Why should only I be prone to irritation and suspicion? The fact that they understood what was going on better than I could didn’t necessarily make it easy for them. …you inspire ill treatment! Piper had snapped. Was she right? Was that what I’d been doing all this time? With Rain too?

I needed these people. And they’d certainly not abandoned me—yet. Maybe I should try harder just to work with them. To trust them some—like Piper kept asking me to. Why not try giving Rain something other than the barbed, adversarial replies he doubtless expected by now?

Rain looked back again when I failed to answer. “Have I…made you uncomfortable?”

“No, sorry. I’m just thinking.”

He nodded, and continued walking.

Still trying to formulate some adequate answer, I began to realize how much easier snarky replies were to come up with than honest ones. “I guess…it made me even more aware of how much I don’t understand about…anything,” I said at last.

“Well said,” he replied, sounding quietly surprised. “The Tree leaves me feeling that way too, sometimes. Most of the time, really.” He looked back with an almost sheepish grin. “I find it useful exercise to contemplate how much still lies beyond my understanding.”

“I see your point, but I’ve gotta say, I’m feeling a little over-exercised lately.”

“Well…yes,” he sighed. “Piper also tells me that you had quite a few very understandable questions this afternoon, which she felt…uncomfortable answering.”

“I did. …I do. She seemed to think you’d be a better person to ask.”

“But you didn’t think I’d answer,” he said in the same strangely subdued way. “Or do you just find me too…uncomfortable to approach?”

“Well…you aren’t…the easiest guy to talk with…sometimes,” I conceded, wondering where all this was going. “Did she tell you anything about what my questions were?”

“You want to know what threat Anselm and his following pose your people,” Rain said, without slowing. “And how pretty much everything else in our world works, from what I gather.” He gave a brief, quiet, not unkindly chuckle. “The latter is a bit ambitious to undertake—even for me; but when our time with Mikayl is finished tonight, I will do what I can to clarify the nature of our dispute with Anselm, as well as how and why that matters to you and your people.” We walked a short way in silence. “I’m sorry I’ve been…difficult to talk with. Truly, Matthew, no one here wishes you ill. Least of all myself.”

I found no ready reply. This time, it was not his fault that I felt a little like a heel.

“Piper was right, though,” Rain added a moment later, “in thinking I would not want you coming to this evening’s dinner with a head full of such revelations. It would be better, in some ways, if you came to know us more before meeting…our darker sides.”

“I understand,” I said. “But…though I may look like a child, and know less than your children do about how things work here, I am grown enough to trust with the truth. I more or less asked her to tell you that—that trusting me would only make it easier for me to trust you. Did she convey that message too?”

“She did,” he said, still not looking back as we walked. “And I’ve come to see the truth in it. A truth she had already seen, I believe, before I stumbled upon the two of you this morning. I was too quick to criticize her, too slow to listen—and not for the first time. I have not made today any easier for her. Or for you, I fear.”

Whatever I’d imagined about this evening, it had not included an apology from Rain. “She…admires you quite a bit,” I said, unsure of what other response might be safe to voice.

“And wonders about my regard for her?” he asked softly. “You needn’t respond to that,” he added. “I know the answer. But…I fail sometimes to…equate the best interests of those I serve with sufficient regard for their…feelings, I suppose. Piper is wiser than I in that regard as well. …Dangerous wisdom, perhaps, for a future queen.”

This was no Rain I’d met yet, or imagined. I wondered just what kind of dressing down Piper had given him after our hike to The Tree.

We both fell silent for a while. With only cricket song, the occasional hooting of that owl somewhere, and the hushed, ever-present rush of distant falling water to distract me, the darkened forest started drawing more of my attention, and began to seem…different, somehow. Not just darker, but…more lush…almost tropical. The mushrooms and shelf fungi seemed more numerous than they’d been that morning, many of them casting pale light of various colors. Tree trunks were more richly carpeted in moss and ferns than I remembered too, though I supposed these things might just be more noticeable in the darkness than they’d been by daylight.  

A moment later, our path bent steeply right, climbing up a gentle ridgeline silhouetted against what I mistook for lingering twilight. As we reached the ridge’s crest, however, my mouth fell open at the sight of an enormous moon rising from behind what, at first glance, I took for The Lady’s mansion, its bright windows gleaming golden through the trees. As we drew closer, though, and my view grew less obstructed, even the house seemed… More than a little off.

“Where are we?” I asked, thinking that we must have taken a different path to some new place I’d never been.

Rain looked back, seeming nonplussed. “At The Lady’s house, of course.”

“She has more than one?”

“No.” He looked further confused. “Is something wrong?”

“This is…not the building I remember. Even these woods are…different.”

“Oh! I see. I…was given the impression Piper had discussed this with you. The house…” he seemed to cast about for words. “It changes. From time to time, according to the Lady’s mood or purpose. As do the woods around it. They are…as much an expression of herself as anything else.”

Despite everything Piper had already told me, I shook my head in disbelief. “So, this whole building is…just part of your dream?”

He gave me a quizzical look. “That’s a good way to put it. A very good way.”

I shrugged. “Piper’s words, not mine.”

“Ah. Well, the whole building’s not just a dream, any more than The Lady’s woods are. But much of its appearance is…malleable. Come to think of it, Mikayl is extremely partial to the imagery of your Japanese woodblock artists.” He gestured toward the house, which, I realized, did look rather Asian now. “This may all be meant to amuse him.”

“So…it doesn’t surprise you—at all?” I asked. “To get here and find some completely new building all the time?”

He was silent for a moment, seeming to think about it—or about me, perhaps—then shook his head. “No. Neither this house nor its occupant are much defined by physical appearance. Few things are for us.”

“But…if appearance means so little to you, then why is everything you people make…so beautiful?”

His brows arched. “Why, thank you. But I didn’t mean—or say—that beauty doesn’t matter to us. It clearly does. I just said that appearances are not the standard by which things are defined here.”

Every question I asked here just left me with three more. I was never, ever, going to figure anything about these people out.

“This is a rather fascinating conversation, actually,” said Rain. “You seem to generate those at an astonishing rate. But they are waiting. I’m afraid we’d better go.”

As we walked into the clearing around The Lady’s re-imagined mansion, Rain said, “I have no idea what may have passed between them in my absence, or what—if anything—The Lady may already have explained to Mikayl. So, when we arrive, offer him no greeting but a smile. If he seems curious, let us respond to that. Even if he speaks to you, please say nothing unless I or The Lady clearly signal that you may. That will likely feel very strange to you, but remember your story. Even at the best of times, the boy you are now would be very reticent to speak—to anyone, much less a stranger in unfamiliar and intimidating surroundings. Anything and everything might frighten such a boy, so such unresponsive behavior from you will only reinforce our claims about what you are and why his help is needed.” As we approached the house’s well lit entrance, he stopped and turned to face me. “If you have any urgent questions, ask them now.”

I felt a million of them circling in my head, but couldn’t isolate one from the flock. So, I just shrugged.

“Very well,” he said. “Inhabit your story. Don’t step out of it—for anything—remember?”

I nodded, wishing he would stop with all this coaching. It was just making me nervous. 

“Think about…the food.” He glanced back and grinned at me as we climbed the short flight of stairs. “The boy you are now would likely have a wolfish appetite—and no great concern for manners. So, no need to hold back.”

From the porch, I could make out rafts of flickering candles through the glass, hanging clustered in chandeliers, and set in artful golden branches on a table piled with elegant dishes full of beautiful foods I could put no names to. My stomach rumbled as I recalled that morning’s exquisitely delicious little ‘snack,’ and wondered how much more a ‘state dinner’ here might have to offer. As Rain raised a hand to knock at the door, I heard The Lady’s musical laughter woven through a deeper chuckling, and when the door was pulled open by The Lady’s little page, I followed Rain inside, suddenly numbed by an unexpected wave of stage fright.

There was the leading lady, dressed in a fiery gown of some reflective, gem-dappled fabric that fell around her like a cascade of living embers just drawn from the cheerful blaze burning in her hearth across the room. Small rubies and citrines flashing from impossibly fine chains of gold woven through her silver hair. When she turned to look at us, and smiled, all the air seemed to leave my lungs. Rain dragged me another step or two through the doorway as the page closed it gently behind us.

“Ah! Here are my other guests, Mikayl.”

The man beside her cut an almost comic figure in comparison. Taller than any of us, and scarecrow lean in his very retro coat and tails, he had a well-tanned, age-chiseled face, framed by two jug-handle ears, and a high forehead from which jet black hair was slicked back with a lacquered sheen. To either side of his eagle’s nose, bright blue eyes twinkled mischief under high shaggy brows. His wide, toothy smile was filled with childlike delight, set in a strong, pointed chin beneath a swooping mustache that Dali would have envied, spiraling at the ends. All together, he seemed a very friendly version of the classic vaudeville villain—but with highly polished, bright red shoes.

“You know my chancellor, of course,” The Lady said, with a gracious nod at Rain. “And this is Matthew, a new friend of ours.”

The man’s attention seemed riveted on me. I took one dazed step forward and reached up to shake his hand. Rain emitted a barely audible huff as the man’s brows rose in apparent surprise, and The Lady’s pleasant smile seemed to freeze in place. Rather than shaking my hand, the tall man bent slightly forward to peer at me as if I were some exotic bug, then straightened, offering an uncertain half smile first to Rain, then to The Lady.

The Lady nodded. “Andinol. I was just about to tell you.”

Mikayl—clearly—gave everyone an even more mystified look, then stepped closer to reach out and, belatedly, shake my hand after all, but very gently, as if worried about breaking me.

“He is, as you see,” said Rain, “still quite new to us, and unversed in our ways.”

I hadn’t spoken. Not a word. Yet I’d clearly done something wrong—already.

Mikayl offered me a reassuring smile, then released my hand as gently as he’d taken it. “Am I correct then, in assuming that tonight’s soirée is not entirely about art after all?”

“My interest in the commission we’ve discussed is entirely sincere,” The Lady said, “but yes, old friend, there are additional matters I am hoping to discuss with you.”

He nodded, turned to glance very pointedly past me at The Lady’s young page, still posted soberly beside the door, before turning back to The Lady with an expression that clearly conveyed some unspoken question.

She nodded sadly. “Not quite the same, but something very similar, I’m afraid.”

Mikayl looked back at me then with such obvious sympathy that I wondered if perhaps I was to be the evening’s sacrificial lamb or something. With an increasingly urgent desire to know what was being discussed around me, I looked back at Rain, who gazed back with no trace of sympathy at all. Oh yeah, I had clearly screwed up big time somehow—not three steps in the door.

“So, Matthew,” said Mikayl, his toothy smile returned at last, “have you a last name?”

I bobbed my head. “It’s Rhymer, sir.”

The Lady’s glance was swift and sharp. I heard the briefest hiss of air between Rain’s teeth, and turned to find his jaw clenched, as if biting down on some retort.

Mikayl looked more amused than concerned as he turned back to The Lady. “Is this a joke, or some astonishing coincidence?”

“That is certainly the question,” Rain said, smiling daggers at me now. “One can never tell how much is true and how much imagined after… the sort of thing he has endured. Perhaps it’s just the product of some suppressed memory from before his mishap, or perhaps it is, as you say, astonishing coincidence. But as it is the name he gives us, and we have no certain cause to doubt him,” he looked at me as if I could expect a beating later, “we use it.”

If there’d been any danger of my seeming too comfortable in their company, it had vanished now completely. Clearly, they did know that ‘silly human fairy tale,’ and found it less silly, for some reason, than Piper’s remarks that morning had led me to believe. Just three minutes into this affair and I was clearly 0 for 2, with no idea why, and wondering how they’d ever imagined I might make it through a single inning here—much less the entire game.