Eccentric Circles

Rebecca Lickiss

Chapter Three

Aelvarim stopped her just as they reached the back door. He spoke very seriously. "The doors to this house can open on either world. Whenever you leave you must think of the world you want to enter. It's very important. You must remember."

"I'll remember," Piper assured him breezily. "I promise."

He opened the door and stepped out into the yard, holding the door gallantly for her. The backyard looked almost as Piper remembered it. The winter brown lawn showed much neglect, with the overgrown and broken, brittle brown grass dotted with dried weeds. The rosebushes by the house looked like bare brown sticks; only by looking closely could you see the buds that would develop into leaves beginning to turn green. A flagstone path wound through the yard past the old, unpainted, leaning, graying wooden gazebo. The surrounding pines – impressive Colorado blue spruce, tall and green and vibrant, with heavy lower branches sweeping the ground like old-fashioned hoop skirts – blocked any view of the suburbs around them.

The brilliant Colorado sunshine was missing. Piper looked up. The sky appeared to be a darker blue, with light gray clouds floating through it. She shrugged off an ambiguous feeling of something gone awry. It was springtime in the Rockies; April was a wet, cold, snowy, icy month. The sun didn't shine every day.

Aelvarim started walking down the flagstone path. Piper watched him walk away, realizing for the first time that he carried a quiver slung across his back, over his cape. That explained why the cape covered only one shoulder. She could see several arrows sticking out, and something else. She couldn't tell what it was. A small harp hung from his belt, bouncing off his hip as he walked. The Complete Renaissance Man. Piper couldn't help smiling.

He looked back when he reached the gazebo and motioned her to follow. Once she started, he resumed walking. She stopped at the gazebo. He'd left the flagstone path, which ended at Grandma's empty vegetable garden, and reached the edge of the trees. He stood, smiling, waiting for her.

How crazy was he? Was he luring her to her death? In the forest? Piper almost laughed at herself. There was no forest left here. The suburbs had taken over. On the other side of those trees were three-bedroom, two-car-garage, middle-management dream houses. She joined him and plunged into the shadows between the trees.

The majestic blue spruces gave way to scrawnier, scragglier pines, whose branches weren't as weighted with leaves. The rough pine bark showed through their horizontal branches. The ground was littered with discarded pine needles, making little trails through the trees.

When they hadn't emerged into someone's backyard or the end of a cul-de-sac after a few minutes, Piper's uneasiness grew. Suppose Grandma's house backed not onto another part of the suburb, but onto some still-undeveloped land, or park or something. No, that couldn't be right. She'd seen a map at her parents’ house; the suburb surrounded Grandma's house. Even so, the trees should have thinned or given over to open space.

It was awfully warm. Even without her coat, which she usually wore this time of year, she was beginning to overheat in her sweater. The air felt wetter than normal, as if it were raining. She stopped and looked around, unsure of her ability to find her way home.

"This way. Not much farther," Aelvarim said, glancing back as he headed down the rise they had been climbing.

Come into my parlor ... She was surely condemned now. Fleeing didn't appear to be an option. Piper couldn't tell which way they'd come, or even which direction was which. She couldn't see the mountains through the trees. Perhaps he was a gallant, even chivalrous sort of crazy. Until his other personality came out.

Piper shivered, but followed.

The pines finally thinned. A rolling meadow spread out beyond them. The brilliant green grass was just on the verge of needing a good mow, and a burbling brook meandered through on the left-hand side. It seemed remarkably green for the time of year and altitude, almost picturesquely pastoral. Except for the lack of fluffy white sheep dotting the hills, and the presence of the large stone tower rising at the center.

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore," Piper quoted, looking nervously at the meadow.

Aelvarim looked at her curiously. "Kansas? I thought Grandmother Dickerson's house was in Colorado."

"Figure of speech." She stared out at the tower. Made of square gray-and-brown blocks, with a crenellated top, arrow slits for windows, and metal-bound wooden door, it appeared to be a perfect storybook tower. Home, possibly, for some wicked witch or imprisoned maiden. "This is your home?"

"Oh, no. This is Larkingtower's spire." Aelvarim stroked the strings of his harp, apparently lost in thought for a moment. "He's ..."

"What have you done now?" a querulous voice shouted. The wooden door opened outward, to hit against the stone with a resounding crack. A tall, wizened old man, with snow-white hair and flowing beard, stalked out to them. He carried a long staff, seeming to hold it more as a prop than to use it. He wore what appeared to be three layers of long ground-sweeping robes, all but the last cinched at his waist with a length of rope. A tall, dark, pointed hat decorated with glitter rode on his head.

"The wizard, Larkingtower," Aelvarim said, motioning to the old man with his hand. "This is Piper Pied, Grandmother Dickerson's great-granddaughter. She inherited Grandmother Dickerson's house."

Planting his staff firmly into the ground, Larkingtower peered down at her in obvious disgust. "A woman? She left her house to a woman?" He suddenly leaned down to squint at her, his knobby nose nearly touching hers. He straightened up and stepped back, nearly jumping away from her. Pointing a crooked, arthritic finger at her, he accused, "She's a mortal."

"Yes, sir," Aelvarim said blandly. "I went to speak to her about Grandmother Dickerson's murder. She didn't seem to believe in Fairy, so I thought I'd show her."

"You brought her here deliberately!" Larkingtower turned his wrath on Aelvarim. "You brought a mortal into this realm to prove a point?"

"As you see." Aelvarim didn't appear the least alarmed at the fact that smoke was curling off of Larkingtower's staff and out through the folds of his robes. "I need her help to track down the murderer, complete the story, and heal the rift."

"Fool!" Larkingtower waved his arms out wide, nearly striking Piper with his staff. "She will vex your every waking moment and torment your sleep. She will cloud your vision until you could never find the murderer. She is patently incapable of completing any story. This will not heal the rift." The smoke thickened and enveloped him. When it dissipated, Larkingtower was gone.

"I've finished every story I've ever started," Piper said.

"That went better than I expected." Aelvarim sighed, and smiled down on her. "Of course you finish what you start. I'm certain I can rely on you."

"What's with him?" she asked, motioning to the tower.

"Oh, just his magic tomes, some candles, and other arcane paraphernalia cluttering up the place, his personal effects." Aelvarim looked at the tower and shook his head. "There's really not that much to his spire. I think he prefers it that way. He seems to stick mostly to his magic. I'm not sure he has any other interests."

Piper decided not to attempt the question again, realizing it was better just to move on. "Who is he to you?"

"A mentor mostly. Someone older and wiser I can take my questions to. He's really not so bad, once you get to know him." Aelvarim pointed to a little hillock on the other side of the brook. "Our path is over there."

Following close behind him, Piper wondered about her sanity. Hallucination, perhaps? Had he slipped something into her breakfast? Maybe she'd only dreamed she woke up, and this was all a dream. Yes, that had to be it. She eyed his long dark red hair, curling on his broad shoulders. As dreams went, this was not bad, not bad at all, except that his cape hid the rest of him as he walked in front of her.

He led her to a quaint little arched wooden bridge over the burbling brook. It seemed rather pointless, stretching over an area more than four times the width of the brook. Piper figured she could have jumped over the brook without even a running start.

"The first bridge." He turned around to face her, walking backwards a few steps. "We call it the three bridges path."

"We?" Piper asked.

"Larkingtower, Malraux, and I." He passed over the bridge in three clomping steps. Piper followed quietly. He glanced back over his shoulder at her. "Be careful, there's usually fairies by the streams."

No sooner had he turned around than something whizzed past her nose. It buzzed like a fly, circling her head. It flew in front of her, hovering at eye level, just beyond her reach. It looked like a miniature man, dressed in strange green clothing, with gossamer – almost insectoid – wings. The little man winked at her, holding a finger to his lips.

He flew down, to catch a corner of Aelvarim's cape. Lightning fast, he flew up, bringing the corner of the cape with him, to pull it over Aelvarim's head.

Aelvarim swiftly grabbed the harp at his hip, before lifting the cape from his head. He turned in a circle, looking for his tormentor. "Who is it?"

"I don't know," Piper said, shrugging her shoulders.

He looked at her, as if just remembering her presence. His cheeks colored. "Actually I was asking him. But, what did he look like?"

"About like you described." Piper held her hands about six inches apart. "Green clothes. See-through wings, like a bee's."

"What color was his hair?"

Piper frowned, trying to remember. "Brown, I think."

"Figwort," he said with an authoritative air.

The miniature flying man appeared again, buzzing around Aelvarim's head. He laughed, a surprisingly low-pitched laugh. "Aelvarim, come to sing for us?"

"No," Aelvarim said quellingly. Motioning for Piper to hurry, he turned and began walking away.

The fairy flew to stand on Aelvarim's quiver, grabbed two thick locks of Aelvarim's hair, and yanked back on them, shouting, "Whoa!"

Aelvarim stopped. Piper couldn't see his face, but his voice was thick with false patience when he said, "Let go of my hair."

Four more fairies joined Figwort, flying around an irritated Aelvarim. A miniature woman, with large blue butterfly wings and a matching blue gossamer dress, flew back to examine Piper. She flitted in circles around Piper, stopping to examine and tug at Piper's trouser leg, hand, sweater hem, and neckline. She made a final sweep through Piper's hair, to examine Piper's right ear. She flew back to Aelvarim, inquiring sweetly, "Aren't you going to introduce us to your new lady friend?"

Batting at the other fairies, who were swooping down to pull his hair, Aelvarim just muttered something Piper couldn't hear. The fairies darted away from him as if pushed. Laughing, in what sounded to Piper to be a perfect chord, the fairies soared up into the sky, only to dart back down around her.

"What's your name?" the blue-winged fairy asked.

Piper held her hand out, palm down, for the fairy to land on. "Piper Pied. You have very beautiful wings. What's your name."

The little woman preened and fluffed out her wings. "Meadowsweet." She sailed off, dragging another of the laughing fairies back, to present to Piper. "This is Horsemint." Another. "This is Bearberry." Another. "Pasqueflower." The last. "Figwort."

"I believe we've met," Piper said, winking at Figwort.

Aelvarim cleared his throat. "We have to be going now. We must see Malraux." He walked off.

Smiling, Piper shrugged and followed him.

Figwort swooped down in front of Aelvarim. "Where did you find the pretty lady?"

When Aelvarim ignored him, Figwort fetched the other fairies. All five dived to catch the hem of Aelvarim's cape. They flew up and around Aelvarim, dragging the cape not over his head this time, but around his neck, so that it hung in front, rather than behind him. Aelvarim choked and reached for his neck.

Perforce pausing, Aelvarim muttered something again, causing the fairies to dart away from him. He pulled the quiver off, over his head, and began turning his cape around. Piper noticed that his left hand remained clutching the harp on his hip.

She tried to step forward to help him, but she couldn't lift her feet from the ground. Looking down she found some sort of creeper vine entwined around her ankles. The vine waved its tiny white flowers as it wrapped itself tighter.

"Ack!" Piper reached down, but the vine attempted to catch her hand in its coils. She heard the perfectly pitched fairy laughter, and straightened up.

"Need help?" Horsemint asked.

"I suppose," she said. The unreality of the situation prevented her from fearing any real problems, and Piper ended up smiling. Aelvarim had finished putting his cape and quiver back.

Horsemint flitted to him. "She needs help. Kiss her, and we'll let her go."

Aelvarim recoiled, in dismay.

In an attempt to aid him, Piper said, "Now that's not fair. He shouldn't have to pay my penalty."

Horsemint's flight back to Piper was interrupted by Meadowsweet, who caught hold of Horsemint's feet, to swing him around. "I want a lock of her hair."

Pasqueflower took exception to this, and soon all five fairies were engaged in an aerial dogfight.

Aelvarim approached Piper, but not so close that he'd get entangled in the vine. "If she gets a lock of your hair, she might use it to entangle you in a spell."

"So, if she doesn't get a lock of my hair, she can't entangle me in a spell?" Piper asked.

"Well, no. She still could."

"So what's the difference? What else could she do with it?"

He ducked to avoid a swooping fairy. "She could do anything with it: weave a floor mat, braid a rope, make a spell. Though, the way you put it, I suppose it doesn't make any difference." He pulled a knife from his boot and handed it to her hilt first.

Piper cut a small lock of plain brown hair from close to the nape of her neck, handed the knife back to Aelvarim, and held the lock of hair up in the air.

Meadowsweet flew past, snatching the lock of hair, and Piper felt her ankles freed. Aelvarim took off running into a forest beyond the meadow, with Piper at his heels.

He slowed only after they'd put several rises between them and the fairies. "Nasty vermin."

"They're not so bad," Piper said. She noticed he'd finally let go of his harp.

Aelvarim led her to another brook, this one larger than the first, with a solid, moss-covered, stone bridge. On the other side was a small rock-strewn glade, surrounded thickly by forest, with tree stumps dotting the glade. It almost seemed to Piper as if the brown rocks and weather worn tree stumps were stationed about as seats. A thick layer of moss and tree leaves carpeted the floor of the glade. At the opposite side, the path continued up a green, grass and tree-covered, hill. A large black arch cut into the side of the hill.

The fanciful carvings on the rock of the cavern entrance made what might have been a forbidding maw into a welcoming inlet. Somehow Piper couldn't be afraid of a place with carved baby birds at the opening. Aelvarim ducked down to enter the cavern. Piper paused to examine one of the carvings, a very cute baby robin with half-closed sleepy eyes, then hunched over and stepped in.

Unable to see, and not brave enough to stand up in case she might hit her head, she stretched her hand out and smacked into a face at about the level of her waist. "I'm sorry."

"Quite all right," an unfamiliar male voice said. A small hand caught hers. "Your eyes will adjust in a moment. If you'll follow me, there's more light farther in."

The size of the hand didn't fit with the adult voice, but the hand itself was heavily callused and rough. The voice was smooth, cultured, intelligent, and lightly accented, though Piper couldn't place the accent. He guided her through the descending tunnel, and helped her negotiate two almost-180-degree turns; after the first turn the light increased. The second was the entrance to a cavern chamber, larger than a normal room, with a high ceiling.

Someone had worked to make it into a home. Most of the light came from a large fireplace, carved into the side of the left-hand wall, by which Aelvarim was standing. A kettle hung from a hook over the fire. Rag throw rugs were scattered here and there. A rough wooden table stood near the fireplace, flanked by two benches. The rest of the furniture appeared to be carved from the stone of the cavern. Stalagmites had been made into chairs and table, a whole conversation pit. Along the opposite wall from the entrance a small cubby in the wall had been converted into a bed. Another tunnel opened on the right-hand wall.

Piper looked down and discovered a small, grubby, long-bearded man holding her hand. He wore a sort of durable, dark-colored tunic and pants, with a stout leather apron. A pair of small leather gauntlets peeked out of the apron pocket.

"Piper Pied, meet Malraux. She is Grandmother Dickerson's great-granddaughter."

"Enchanted," Malraux murmured as he kissed her hand.

"The same," Piper said. She looked at Aelvarim. "That's certainly a better reception than the last."

Malraux barked, "Ha. So you've met Larkingtower." He headed for the fireplace. "Don't let him bother you. He hates everybody. Especially women." He stirred the kettle. "I know it's a little early, but lunch is nearly ready. Would you like some stew?"

She looked over his shoulder into the kettle; the stew looked like stew and smelled wonderfully rich. She glanced at Aelvarim. Aelvarim nodded silently. Malraux didn't miss the exchange, but merely cocked an eyebrow at her. She managed a smile. "Sure."

"Ha." Malraux slipped over to the cubby in the far wall, removing his apron and hanging it on a peg beside the cubby. "Aelvarim, why don't you go outside and conjure up some flowers, while we do something useful, like get lunch on."

"I made toast this morning for her," Aelvarim said in a wounded tone. He pulled himself up as tall as he could.

"Without burning it?" Malraux plunged his hands into a cut-off stalagmite. Water slopped out as he washed his hands.

"She has a toaster," Aelvarim said.

"And that keeps you from burning the toast?" Malraux leaned over the stalagmite to splash and scrub his face.

"Not always," Piper said. Aelvarim glanced gratefully at her.

Malraux smiled. "Just go get some flowers. We need to brighten up the place for your guest." Aelvarim hesitated a moment and left. Malraux pulled a clean, white, cloth apron from another hook and put it on. "Don't ever ask him to sing. You'll only embarrass him. And don't mention high elves. Or dark elves." He joined her at the fireplace. "He's a fine young elf, but he's very sensitive about certain subjects. Fetch me three bowls." He pointed to a low shelf with a variety of plates, bowls, and platters.

"He can't sing, hmm?" Piper picked up three bowls. "Why high elves or dark elves?"

"His mother's high elven, from over the water. His father's dark elven. Native, more or less, to here. She came back with him after the last great war." Malraux ladled stew into the bowls she held for him. "Aelvarim wants to be high elven, but he's not blond, not a bard, and not from over the waters." Malraux looked up at Piper to catch her eye. "He has these romantic notions about people and places. If you ask me, the elves over the water are nothing but a bunch of snobs, maintaining their position by belittling others. Unfortunately he believes that idiocy." With the bowls on the table, Malraux reached into another chopped-off stalagmite and pulled out spoons. "Times change, and those that can't keep up will be swept away." He looked in dismay at the table. "I forgot the tablecloth."

"Too late now," Aelvarim said, entering the chamber carrying an armful of flowers. "Where do you want them."

Malraux settled for tying the flowers into a single bundle and laying it in the center of the table. He indicated that Piper should sit by the decorative end and Aelvarim by the cut stems. The bench and table were a bit too low for Piper, but she managed to get her knees under the table without stretching her legs out straight. Aelvarim's feet appeared beside her chair, one ankle crossed over the other.

As Malraux retrieved napkins from another stalagmite, Aelvarim asked, "Do you believe in Fairy yet?"

"I think I'm dreaming." Piper accepted the napkin Malraux extended to her. She wasn't expecting him to pinch her arm, hard. "Ouch."

"You're not dreaming." Malraux offered a napkin to Aelvarim.

"Malraux," Aelvarim scolded. "I brought her here to convince her to help me find Grandmother Dickerson's murderer and save the story, not to be pinched and tormented."

"Got to be the husband or the butler," Malraux said, seating himself beside Aelvarim. "That's traditional."

Aelvarim frowned at him. "Grandmother Dickerson was a widow. And she had no butler."

Piper nodded. "And these days the traditional murderer is a boyfriend or lover."

They both stared at her, eyes wide and jaws slack.

Recovering first, Malraux whispered, "I think she'll do."

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