That is the path of wickedness, Though some call it the road to heaven.

And see ye not that bonny road, That winds about the fernie brae?

That is the road to fair Elfland, Where thou and I this night maun gae."

It began with the fairy caught in the tree.

I had never seen a fairy before, so I examined it closely. The spindle-shaped body was covered with thick green fur, topped by feathery antennae and six eyes laid out in a pair of triangles. Its thin waist had snagged in a cleft branch of the Eildon tree, and four wings the size and color of the Eildon's leaves beat frantically to pull it free. A dozen stick-thin legs trailed from its torso; half of them clutched struggling beetles.

I gently bent the branch and freed it, and it buzzed off in the direction of the high meadow as the twilight deepened. I followed at a distance, burning with the curiosity of the young. Three days before my lady love had jilted me, and I felt as sad and as free as air. My father had decided that my destiny lay as a good-for-nothing scoundrel, and had told me to begin looking for other lodgings. Hunting was my excuse for wandering the hills, but I had brought my harp as well, for a new ballad would be worth more to me than a deer. I knew forty-seven ballads, nine of them of my own making, and when I was in my cups I would sing them to the applause of my friends, proudly off-key. I was a fortnight shy of my seventeenth year on earth.

In the meadow was a hill where no hill had stood before, towering high as Stirling Castle rock. The fairies had scorched a circle around it, and scores of them, large and small, were going and coming through the holes set into the hill's side, all of them dancing to the deep bass fiddle-sounds of their humming wings. I saw spirals and patterns more intricate than the most lordly roundel, leaps and starts more graceful than an estampie. The entire pattern seemed chaos, but wherever my eye rested, there was order.

I heard a noise behind me and turned. Three fairies, wingless, large as cattle and with crab claws the size of baskets, were almost upon me. Even as they attacked, my excitement outweighed my fear, for I knew that if I ever returned to Erceldoune, I could write a ballad to end all ballads. I had my father's knife with me, but I did not draw it, for they were beautiful, and I did not wish to harm them. My harp fell and broke against a stone. They spat webs of sticky rope around me and carried me into the hill.

"I have a laef here in my lap, Likewise a bottle of clarry wine; And now, ere we go farther on, We'll rest a while, and ye may dine."

The room where they took me must have been near the surface, for I could see the sun through the ceiling dimly, as through a sheet of wax. I knew the ballads of Faerie, and knew that above all else I must not eat the food or drink the wine. But I had little choice, for a sweet cloudy liquid was poured in my mouth as I lay bound, until I choked and swallowed. My tongue went numb, and my eyes filled with mists.

Then I felt as if I were floating above my body, watching it from a distance as one would watch a child playing with a doll. I felt nothing as they swarmed in, dozens of them, probing the doll with pincers and flippers and long thin tongues, dissolving the bonds with more of their spit. I felt nothing when a swordlike foreleg sliced a hole beneath my tongue, and another slipped a waxy yellow coin inside. I felt nothing when they slid pink ribbons into my nostrils, or red beads into holes they drilled in my skull, or when they peeled the skin off my hands as I once saw a bishop remove his gloves, and did something to the skin and slid it back on again.

Then they forced more honey between my lips, and as two of the largest ones picked me up and carried me into the heart of the hill, I could feel my senses slowly returning. There was no pain, but I smelt my blood behind me on the floor.

"Harp and carp, Thomas," she said; "Harp and carp along wi' me; And if ye dare to kiss my lips, Sure of your body I will be."

The chamber they took me to was larger than St. Giles kirk. It was lit by hand-sized fairies glowing brighter than fireflies, perched on ledges or flitting about. As high as one could see, the walls were pocketed with chambers tiny and large. Many were filled with large leathery bags, or grub-like creatures that pulsed behind waxy walls. But other cells held things even stranger: a frozen fountain made of silver, a mushroom twelve hands tall, a unicorn's skull, a blob that smelt like calf's-foot jelly but pulsed and moved. I wondered how it was that I could smell the thing from across the room, and then I realized that the air was full of scents I had never known before, and that each one could speak to me and tell me exactly what it meant, if I cared to read its message.

Then I saw the Queen. Her height was slightly less than mine, and she rode across the floor to me on the backs of three guards. They set her down before me tenderly.

The fur that covered her body was as green as the sun appears when you swim deep underwater and look upward on a clear day. Twelve wispy arms grew from her slender torso, and a set of furled wings behind. Her waist was even narrower, and hairless: a band of wrinkled brown skin that seemed appallingly naked amidst the downy hair. Her lower body was heavy and pendulous, but compact, like a ripe fruit. Her feathery antennae stroked the air above her like the Eildon's branches. She smelled of honey and roses, and as her scent reached me I seemed to hear Words, and the Words said *Do not be afraid.*

A small flat fairy flew up to her, and she grasped it with her upper arms. She held it up to her mouth, and at first I thought she might devour it. Then her flat mouth opened, but it held no teeth: only a soft, fleshy tube that stretched out until it almost touched the smaller fairy's back. The tube pulsed and narrowed and spread, and out of it fell a single, golden drop that landed on the small fairy's back. The fairy flew and landed before me, and the Word that was the smell of the drop said *Eat of my sweetness.* And I knew that I had gone through too many doors to turn back now, so I scooped up the drop with my finger and ate.

How can I describe the Words of the Queen? Imagine that you are feasting on the finest banquet ever served to a king or pope. It has been prepared by the finest cooks from Ireland to Inde, and they have studied your body until they know your favorite foods better than you know them yourself. Now imagine that, with every bite, you taste every course of the meal at once, but preserve the flavors separately as well, the way five strings of a harp struck together sound sweeter than one string plucked alone.

Now imagine that, with every bite of this banquet, you are also reading a book, whole and entire. And this book is as sacred as the Mass, and as merry as a bawdy jest, and as sad as the saddest ballad, and yet you know that every word in the book is as true as the Word spoken by God when he made the heavens and the earth. And this book is not written by some stranger, but by a person who knows you and understands you and loves you for your own true worth.

The Word opened up rooms in every direction that I could have explored for days, but at its heart there was a question: *By what name shalt thou be called, man of the island?*

I wondered how to answer her, and as I wondered I tasted sweet Language forming beneath my tongue. The Language took form to fit my thoughts, and I spit it onto the back of the fairy before me. My Word was flat-tasting and crudely formed, like a child's first burblings, but it said something like *Hail great Queen.* Then I thought on my name. Thomas had no translation, so I picked a meaningless symbol that felt like Thomas in my mind. But I am also called Rhymer, so I formed a Word that said, *I am He-who-joins-similar-things-together.* When it had both of my Words the fairy flew back to her.

As we spoke back and forth I grew more fluent with her Language, and she asked more and more questions about the world. Many of them were about the ways of men and women, but she seemed equally interested in what I knew of the other creatures of the earth. She seemed fascinated by our breeding of animals, and the way our ships traveled from one land to another. She showed a great curiosity about beetles, a subject about which I could tell her little. I asked her questions about Faerie as well, and what was to become of me, but her only reply was the Word that said *Do not fear.*

We talked for what must have been hours. Then, *Thank you, Thomas-Joiner,* she said at last. *Thou hast performed great service for Life this day, though thy world may not know of it for dozens of dozens of thy years. Now we shall give thee another drink, that shall make all that has passed beneath this hill seem like a dream dimly remembered at waking. But before thou dost return to thy world thou mayst claim one gift of me, and if it be in my power, I shall grant it. I can tell thee where gold is buried, within a day's journey of thy town. Or if any of thy family is ill, I can give thee medicine that shall make a deep cure. Or I can give thee a wallet of honey that will keep thy family and friends fed for a mortal lifetime. Choose, Thomas-Joiner.*

*Lady,* I said in return, the Words dripping golden from my tongue, *In a fortnight I shall be seventeen years upon this earth. My lady love has left me for another, and my family cares but little whether I live or die. And in all the wide world I have traveled, from Berwick to fair Dundee, I have seen nothing as lovely as the room in which we stand, or tasted any food as sweet as your Words. The gift I ask is that you give me no drink of forgetfulness, but that you allow me to stay here in Faerie, and eat of your Words, and learn of your ways.*

*Well said,* the Queen's scent told me, and her laughter rang out like a field of wildflowers. *For when there are none to speak to but my own children, it seems betimes as if I am talking to myself. If thou dost truly wish to travel with us, then give thy knife to my chamberlain. We will begin our journey soon, and the forces that will take us on the first step would rip thy knife from thy side and send it tearing through flesh and floor and fairy.*

I drew my father's knife and handed it to the fairy who appeared at my elbow, and he flew upward. *Journey?* I said as he disappeared through one of the holes in the ceiling. *I will not change my resolve, but what journey do we undertake? Are we not already in Faerie?*

*You have much to learn, Thomas-Joiner,* she said, and this time her laughter smelled like strong wine.

O they rode on, and farther on; The steed ga'ed swifter than the wind; Until they reached a desert wide, And living land was left behind.

The Queen's Word for the hill we were in was the same as her word for Home. She put me in a soft couch, and then I felt as if a giant's thumb was pushing me deep into it.

Then, suddenly, I found myself flying without wings. I tried desperately to grab onto the couch or anything stable, but only succeeded in making myself turn slowly in the air, smelling laughter as the Queen flew by me with her wings outspread. Then a sheep-sized fairy with strong wings flew up to me, with one of the Queen's Words on its back.

*Hold on and follow,* said the Word, and so I clutched the fairy and followed the trail of her Language through the air to another room. One wall, or ceiling, or floor was filled with stars and the moon and a great round thing that was green and blue and white.

My questions began flowing beneath my tongue, but she had already made answers that floated in the chamber air. *The great sphere you see is your world,* she said.

*In St. Giles in Edinburgh I have seen a map of the world,* I told her. *Scotland and England and France and Burgundy and Norway, and as far away as Egypt and sacred Jerusalem. I do not know what you mean when you say this is my world.*

*The island of thy birth is there,* she said, *slipping beneath that cloud,* And my eyes went wide, for I knew then that I resembled an ant who has never left the nest, and who believes that the nest is the world.

But soon the blue-green sphere had vanished from the sky, and the sun was nothing but one spark among more stars than I could count.

O they rade on, and farther on, And they waded through rivers aboon the knee, And they saw neither sun nor moon, But they heard the roaring of the sea.

I learned many things during my years in Home.

I had thought that I knew the shape of the universe, and I guessed that the Queen was taking me toward the sphere of stars. I thought that perhaps Heaven was her ultimate destination, or Hell. But she taught me the truth that our sun swims in a sea of stars, like a single stitch in a great tapestry. And I learned the task that the Queen's people have set themselves.

Suppose that there was one person on Earth for every star in our sea of stars.

Now suppose every person on Earth who lived outside of Scotland stood for a star without worlds. The Language of these stars is a thin, high-pitched scream that goes on forever until they have burnt themselves to a cinder or exploded. These stars have no life-imagine that everyone outside Scotland has died. Now take the people from our kingdom and spread them out through all the empty lands.

Now take away everyone but the inhabitants of Berwickshire. This time the vanished ones stand for all the stars whose worlds are nothing but empty rocks, speaking the dry Language of rocks.

Now remove all those of Berwickshire but not of Erceldoune: these are worlds with life, but no more life than the green scum growing in an unused well. Each world has its own Language, true, but with few Words. And if the residents of Erceldoune are worlds with life, perhaps only your own family would stand for worlds with life that can become aware of the Language from which it is made. A handful of people, spread out over the vast lonely Earth; a handful of worlds in the vaster desert of stars. And in between them flies the Queen's race, preserving Language in its cells before the night can snuff it out.

The place called Home was very old, older than some stars, and it carried Language from a dozen dozen worlds back and forth through the desert. Some Language, like that of the silver fountain, was carried inside the creature it belonged to, and some had been translated by past Queens into pure drops stored in the deep vaults. I explored the twisting tunnels of Home as far as I could until they grew too narrow, but still it seemed as if every chamber I entered held a new surprise. I have held trophies that brought the destruction of continents who fought over them, and I have read the poetry of races that were wise while our world was still without form and void, and I have touched the sloping skull of one of my ancestors who lived before the great flood.

Between stars, the Queen and I spent months eating one another's Words. She told me that she had been lonely, and that few other races were brave enough to quit their homes for Home. I sang her my ballads, which she dimly sensed through her feathery antennae, and tried to translate them to her Language. She showed me how she mated and grew her children, and how she fed them the Language that would teach them their tasks when they were fully grown. I showed her one or two ways that a human woman can please a man. Her lips were hard, but her hollow tongue was soft and warm. She said that human seed kicked harder and stronger than the seed of her males, with a taste like life on fire. She taught me how to laugh in her Language, and all of Home smelt like honey and like roses.

It was mirk mirk night, and there was nae light, And they waded through red blude to the knee; For a' the blude that's shed on earth Rins through the springs o' that countrie.

My eyes could see nothing on the world where we stood but gray mud tinged with yellow flecks, lying under dark clouds. The air was so foul that the Queen had made us special fairies to blow fresh air into our mouths through a tube. Still, to me the place was beautiful. It smelt like twenty-three flavors of life, and I was there with my Queen.

Her wings were too weak to lift her from the surface of a world. She had dismissed her guards and allowed me to carry her myself. My hands stroked her fur and the wrinkled brown skin of her waist, and her wings quivered against my naked chest.

Life clung to the planet's surface like a climber on the side of a cliff in the midst of a storm. Tiny creatures clustered around pits where hot mud bubbled to the surface, and when the mud cooled they died.

We were giving them new Language. It came from a world whose star had exploded many Queens ago; here it would live again, and teach the creatures to grow new chambers inside themselves that would store food during a drought. The next time the Queen visited there might be a thousand life voices, instead of only twenty-three.

Then I saw what looked like a falling star punch through the clouds, and my world fell apart.

It was another faerie hill, and six males came to us as Emissaries from its Queen. My Queen spoke to them for some time, and then she told me to take her back to Home, and they followed us. When we were back in the place between stars she retired to her central chamber with them, and told me to wait elsewhere. I could not be jealous of her own kind, but I made Words and chewed them in silence.

Finally, she sent for me. The chamber smelt of new things planted and growing.

*Thomas-Joiner,* she said, *the time has come for you to return to your own country.* But I had been speaking her Language for seven of my years now, and I could read more of the volumes that were contained in each of her Words. I knew that she was going to die, and my tongue went dry.

*Do not fear,* said her scent like a reassuring field of grass. I tasted her Words over and over in my mind, and at last I understood. She was old for her people; I had never realized that before. The males had performed a mating flight, so that she could exchange Language with another of her kind. Pulsing somewhere in the deep vaults, tended by its own workers, was the egg of a new Queen.

*When she crawls into this chamber she will eat me,* said the Queen, *eat me and many of my children, and the ones she does not eat will die. Then she will form a cocoon and sleep for a dozen of your years. When she awakens, she will have my memories, my Language.*

*No!* said the smell of my fear. I grabbed the dead body of a crystal creature from its cell and used it to cut my arm, and my blood mingled with my Words and added a Language of its own. *I will not let her do this . . . I will fight . . . I . . .*

*You will go now,* said the Queen's sharp scent. But then she took pity on me, and gave me a last lingering Word as a good-bye, rich as a thousand feasts, deep as a thousand songs. *Thou wouldst die here while the new Queen slept,* she said, *and when she awakens in the place between stars, time will have bent and there will be nothing left of thee but dust in the earth. But she will remember thee, Thomas-Joiner. For of all the Language I have found in the stars, thine was the sweetest.* That was the Word that I carried from Home with me, when Home launched itself back into the stars, and I turned my back because I could not watch; that is the Word I carry in a bottle around my neck, though time has caused its depth to fade. Contained inside its rooms are all the worlds we saw, the Words we spoke, and the memory of her body on mine.

After the hill had gone back into the sky, I found the rusty hilt of an ancient knife in the grass, and the tuning pegs of a harp. It was winter, and the side of the hill was cold.

Syne they came to a garden green, And she pu'd an apple frae a tree- "Take this for thy wages, true Thomas: It will give thee the tongue that can never lee."

The Queen told me that time bends when one travels between stars, and I told her that I knew the stories of Faerie. Seven years had passed for me, and over a hundred and fifty in the kingdom of Scotland: No one I had known remained alive. St. Giles kirk in Edinburgh had been torn down and built up again, with slender pillars this time, and pointed arches instead of round ones.

But most things in Erceldoune were the same. I went back to telling my ballads. I translated the old tale of Tristram and Isolde, who drank a love potion and fell in love and destroyed their young lives. I used my Language to read the hearts of men and women, and I spoke the truth. There is no way to lie in the Queen's Language, and I found I had forgotten the trick of it.

Some people are grateful for my words and pay me to speak them, and some fear them and pay me to keep silent, and I survive. I have built myself a tower; I have begun studying beetles. I have grown old. Every night I watch the stars.

The Macdougall is asking his question again. "Well?" ht, says gruffly. "I traveled two days for this! Will my wife be delivered of a boy, or a girl?"

There are truths one needs to hear, as well as the truths one wants In hear."Life," I say, "is the most precious, the most costly, the rarest thing in all the wide desert of stars. That flower you wear on your jerkin could buy worlds; your battered horse in the stable is worth a thousand thousand empty stars. Life that can know love is rarer than a diamond washed into your hand from the sea. How can you judge the value of lives, man of Earth?"

But this is not the truth he came to hear, and his muscles are stiffening with anger. I sigh and set my goblet on the table. I fear it may spill when he strikes me. "I do not know whether your child will be boy or girl," I say, "but it will be your wife's last. If she is brought to childbed, she will die there."

The next instant I am almost drowned in the wave of his feelings: terror, despair, fury at God, fury at me. I dimly hear his shouted curses as his fist smashes into my chin. Then Father and the peg-drinkers pull him away from me and carry him toward the door, still screaming. "Liar," he cries. "You lie, Thomas of Erceldoune!" Then the door slams behind him, and the only thing of his that remains is the salty smell of his tears.

In spite of his words, he believes me. And now at last I can smell his love for her, strong the way the smell of a fruit is strong after you have stabbed it with a knife. Whatever choice he makes, it will be from love.

To me his tears smell like hope, like love that may endure, waiting for me somewhere under the hill, between the stars.

While Father Owens brings me a rag to clean my bloodied lip, I let a drop of blood trickle onto my tongue. It tells me that the organs the Queen put in me are working perfectly, that I am free of disease, that barring accidents or murder I will live for many decades more on this good green world. I reach for my mead and sip it, and I taste the memories of distant bees, a very long way from Home.

PAT MURPHY.

Pat Murphy has published four novels, The Shadow Hunter, The Falling Woman, and The City, Not Long After, and most recently, an historical feminist werewolf novel, titled Nadya: The Wolf Chronicles. A portion of this novel ("An American Childhood," published by Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine as a novelette) was a finalist on the Hugo ballot. She has also published numerous stories, some of which have been collected in Points of Departure. Her second novel, The Falling Woman, won the Nebula for best novel published in 1987 and the same year, her novelette "Rachel in Love" won a Nebula, the Asimov's Readers' Poll, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. More recently, Points of Departure won the 1990 Philip K. Dick Award for best paperback original and her novella "Bones" won the 1991 World Fantasy Award.

"The True Story" departs from its inspiration in almost every respect but will be easily identifiable nonetheless.

THE TRUE STORY.

by Pat Murphy.

when storytellers talk about weddings at the palace, they speak of love and enchantment and living happily ever after. The storytellers are liars: these things have little to do with royal nuptials. Desire plays an important role in a king's marriage plans, but it is generally not desire for his intended. More likely, it is the desire for power.

I was seventeen years old when I married the king. He asked for my hand in marriage because my father's kingdom lay just to the south of his own, because he wanted access to the fine harbor in my father's land, because my father had a powerful army that could oppose the king in his war with the weaker kingdom to the west.

My father agreed to the betrothal because he desired certain trade concessions, because the king was a powerful ally-and rumor had it that my father's cousin was amassing an army and planning an attempt to usurp the throne.

The king had been married before, but his queen had died in childbirth the previous year. I met him only twice before our marriage-once when he asked for my hand and once when my father formally accepted the offer. The king was polite to me, but little more. He was twice my age, a brusque soldier not given to courtly ways. But my ladies-in-waiting told me that I would win his affection with my beauty. I was innocent and foolish enough to believe them. After all, I was the fairest in the land.

The organ played stately music as I walked up the aisle toward the altar. The cathedral was crowded with members of the court in all their finery. The air was thick with the scent of incense. The king stood beside the bishop at the altar. He watched me walk up the aisle, watched me and the sweet little girl who scattered flower petals on the carpet before me. I saw a glitter of excitement in his eyes, the excitement of a man who lusts after a woman. In that moment, I thought that he wanted me.

When the bishop pronounced us man and wife, the king kissed me with passion, pressing me against his jewel-encrusted robe. But when I looked up, I saw that he was not looking at me. Though his lips were pressed to mine, he was looking past me, staring at the little flower girl who stood at my side.

Perhaps I should have known then. But I was young, and I was innocent. There were many things I did not know.

At the wedding banquet, noblemen and courtiers offered toasts-to our health, to my beauty, to the king's valor in war, to the glory of the kingdom, and so on. So many toasts. I drank too much wine.

My memories of our wedding night blur and shift, like reflections in a pool where wind has rippled the water. I remember the king led me to my bedchamber. My ladies-in-waiting had gone away, leaving us in privacy. He laid me on the white featherbed and unlaced my gown, his thick fingers fumbling with the delicate fastenings, catching in the lace. Dizzy with drink, I did not resist him; nor did I help him. I lay still and let him undress me as one would undress a child.

I remember lying naked on the white featherbed. I looked up at the king, waiting to see the lust that I had seen on his face when I walked up the aisle toward him. But there was no lust in his eyes. With one rough hand, he casually pinched my nipple.

"I'm not much of a one for lovemaking," he said, his voice low. "But it's our wedding night, and certain things must happen on our wedding night."

I remember the weight of his body on mine, I remember his hands fumbling between my legs, I remember his cock pounding against me, forcing its way into me. I remember crying out in sudden pain. But I was drunk, and the pain seemed far away. When the king rolled off me, I slept, drunk on wine.

And so I became the queen and mother to the king's daughter. I had the tiny princess brought to my chambers the day after the wedding. She was less than a year old.

The peasant woman who was the child's wet nurse let me hold the baby and rock her in my arms. "She's a sweet bairn," the peasant said, her low country accent so thick I could scarcely understand her. "Skin as white as new-fallen snow. Hair as black as coal. The most beautiful baby in all the land. Her mother, the good queen, wished it so."

The woman let me hold the baby, but she stayed close by my side. She did not trust me, I thought. Now that I am older, I understand that good woman better. If I could barely understand her accent, she must have had trouble with mine. The good queen, the mother of the child she held in her arms, was dead, and I was a foreigner, come to take her place. I was the child's stepmother, and in the storytellers' tales, stepmothers are often wicked.

When I gave the baby back, she smiled in relief and rocked the child, cooing nonsense words to make her smile.

The king did not come to my chambers that night. He was planning a new campaign in his war on the kingdom to the west. Just a few days after our wedding, he went off to battle. For my ladies-in-waiting, I made a show of being concerned. I climbed to the high tower to watch his army ride away. But in my heart, I was relieved that he would not be visiting my chambers for a time.

For the next few years, the king was frequently away. He was in the west, conferring with his generals. He was in the south, negotiating trade agreements with my father. He was in the north, subduing the barbarian hordes that left their mountain strongholds in the winter to raid towns in the river valleys.

When the king did return to the court, I did my best to please him. At the advice of my ladies-in-waiting, I powdered my face with talc to make my skin white; I dabbed sweet-smelling oils behind my ears and between my breasts and on the soft skin of my thighs; I wore low-cut gowns and braided my hair in the latest style. But I could have dressed in rags for all it mattered. He came to my chambers occasionally, but only when he was drunk. Then he simply fell asleep, taking up most of the bed and snoring loudly.

I did not have the king's attention, but I had everything else a queen could want: pretty jewels, ladies to wait on me, sweet foods to eat, and a beautiful baby to play with. The child was my pet, my plaything, my darling.