Charles

  “To understand my designs for this country,” Elestrine begins, “you must understand something of the past—of Faerie and the peoples who have lived there.

  “Our civilization is, by your standards, fantastically old; a precise reckoning is impossible, but to give some idea, humans had not yet left Africa during our first Great Age—this now being the third. And while there have been any number of empires, kingdoms, and principalities throughout our long history, our way of life has remained ever the same.”

  I sit quietly as she speaks; right now, she has my complete attention.

  She looks directly at me. “You see, quite apart from the humans of Earth, we are a people without need. Magic has always been sufficient to provide for our most basic requirements—you may imagine how your own history might differ if anyone could prepare a meal for themselves at any time out of any old rubbish they found lying around—and we neither age nor naturally die.”

  “Then how did you form states in the first place?” I interrupt, getting at something that has been passively bugging me since Awyrel taught me to make apples. Elestrine looks at me quizzically, so I elaborate. “On Earth, states could only come into being through food shortages because people needed to cooperate.” I mentally add: or because some people forced others to work the land for them so they’d have free time to become rich and powerful. But I don’t give Elestrine the satisfaction of voicing that part out loud.

  She smiles. “I am coming to that, my love. The other point that must be understood is that our oaths, once given, are broken only at great cost. Our magic is based upon our personal honour—and we do have honour, Charles, whatever our other vices—and to lose it is to blacken your name in all future dealings. So, our states need not the threat of starvation to coerce their subjects; an oath of fealty is quite sufficient. Our laws tend to be simpler. Perhaps somewhat more arbitrary, but much more stringently observed than your own.”

  “Yet you manage to have wars and armies and imperialism nonetheless, eh?”

  “Oh, but you misjudge us!” Elestrine declares. “For most of our history, such wars were—well—a game!”

  “A game,” I echo. “So people didn’t die or—”

  “Of course they died, my love! At least insomuch as anything can die in Faerie. And that is what makes the game appealing! When you live an immortal life with no material wants, boredom becomes the greatest threat. Testing your skill against a cunning opponent for stakes that truly matter, navigating a web of allegiances and enmities to derive your own advantage…it is all great fun, Charles!”

  “War as a thing to do when you’re bored,” I say, not bothering to hide my revulsion. “And I suppose the people actually dying were delighted that a bunch of kings and aristocrats found the whole thing so amusing.”

  “Are we really so different?”

  I glare at her.

  “We passed the time in other ways too,” she continues. “Things of which even you might approve. Art is popular—oh, but you should see Awyrel’s paintings! Another time, perhaps. Sex. Music. Sport. Horticulture. World enough and time for any living soul to pursue their passions as far as they could go! Trace each obscure obsession to the very ends of the world! Fate had bequeathed us an infinite puzzle box, and we played with it throughout the millennia—”

  “I notice you’re using past tense here.”

  “Indeed,” she replies. “Those days are behind us now, and we—as a civilization—are perhaps not entirely blameless.”

  “What happened?”

  “Certain people,” she intones, “took the game entirely too seriously.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “Among the many cadres of our society, there was one whose chief obsession lay in expanding the remit of magic—learning to manipulate reality at ever-more-fundamental levels. And the magics they produced were…potent.”

  “Potent?”

  “The details are unimportant,” she says. “Suffice to say that they were much in demand in the courts of the land and could significantly augment the wealth and power of anyone employing them. Indeed, such was the advantage that no single crowned head of Faerie could suffer their realm to be without a practitioner of such magics; they rapidly became universal.”

  “Keeping up with the Joneses,” I summarize.

  “‘Joneses’?”

  “It’s an expression,” I reply. “It means that…people don’t want their neighbours to be better than them.”

  “Hah! Quite so. But there was an especial problem in this case, for it turned out such magics were not without their price. They awoke…something fearsome, nested deeply within reality itself. A sort of fundamental chaos. The more they were used, the less stable existence became.” A shadow seems to pass over her face. “And although this was long known…no one was willing to surrender the advantages.”

  I grunt knowingly. “Let me guess: every so often, your heads of state would get together to pledge to stop using advanced magic and set a bunch of lofty goals for how much they planned to cut back, only to just make the absolute most cosmetic—”

  “Indeed not,” Elestrine interrupts. “Pledges are binding in Faerie, so they never even reached that stage—do pay attention, Charles. In any case, the issue rapidly became moot; one day, the practitioners of this magic simply vanished.”

  “They just up and disappeared?” I demand incredulously.

  “Together with the surrounding countryside, yes.”

  “You mean…they blew themselves up? Left smoking holes in the ground”

  “There is not even a ground left for there to be a hole, my love. There were once two villages on either side of their citadel; today those villages are neighbours. The distance between, and the citadel upon it, have disappeared.”

  I pause. I could ask how that was possible, but I can guess that the answer will be some variant on “magic”. So instead, I say, “That’s…awfully convenient.”

  “One might think so. But, whatever the agency behind this disappearance, it was too little, too late to stop the chaos these magics had unleashed. And this chaos grew even in their absence; year by year, more of Faerie slipped into madness, becoming perilous, unfit for habitation, unusable for magic.”

  “You’re describing an ecological catastrophe.”

  “An ontological catastrophe, my love! The unravelling of reality itself! And as the corruption spread, millions fled and naturally were not always welcomed. Wars that had, for so long, been a mere amusing diversion suddenly became serious; and for the first time in history, the people of Faerie knew true desperation, true want…and, for many, true sorrow—that state of pure despair into which one slips only after having one’s future stolen away. For most, though, there was only the grim acceptance that a hundred thousand years of Faerie civilization were coming to an end, that our immortal lives were to be cut cruelly short—”

  She smiles and looks directly at me. “And then you appeared,” she declares, giving my nose a tap.

  “Humans, you mean.”

  “Your entire plane of existence, in fact! We had, of course, seen Earth before; we’d even tried to settle here during the First Great Age, before the link between our worlds became inconstant. But your emergence into our reality, this Shift… This was wholly unexpected. Our Seers were at first disbelieving and then altogether embarrassed when it was realized that the old pathways had suddenly reopened. But your appearance was like that of rope to a drowning man! A whole new world, already divvied up and governed by laws and customs—it could scarcely be more inviting.”

  “You’re going to settle here,” I realize, sitting upright. “All of you. Your entire national population.”

  “The worthies of every Fairy nation—or at least those having claimed territory here. Please understand, this is not our preference. In Faerie at its height, you would recognize beauty such as would leave you embarrassed by the humbleness of your own world, and we greatly rue the necessity of leaving. But this world—unspoiled or despoiled in ways easily mended—is our race’s only chance of survival.”

  “Elestrine…” I begin, mentally weighing her revelation. I’d always assumed the conquest was motivated by the same things that motivated colonialism here on Earth—greed, mostly. But if what she said was true… “If you’d just…told us about the crisis before resorting to war—”

  “You would have had us come before you as refugees, Charles?” she asks bitterly. “Would your people have welcomed us with open arms? Granted us land? Allowed us to live, in our multitudes, amongst you?”

  Stolen story; please report.

  I sigh, remembering the tooth-pulling necessary to get Parliament to accept even a few tens of thousands of Syrians a few years ago—and they had been human. “No,” I admit. “I don’t suppose we would have.”

  “So, you see our predicament, my love. And tell me, if the roles had been reversed—if it had been Faerie falling into Earth’s realm whilst you were threatened by climate change or one of your other catastrophes, if you had found an entire unspoiled world, populated by people who had suddenly become weak and helpless for want of magic—what would you have done?”

  “I would have tried to work out a treaty,” I insist. “Maybe…some kind of exchange? Technological aid in return for land.”

  Elestrine looks at me skeptically. “And humanity as a whole would go along with that?”

  I frown, recognizing the truth. “Humanity,” I admit, “probably would have done the exact thing you did.”

  She lays a hand upon my shoulder. “You needn’t be ashamed,” she says. “It is the nature of the strong to dominate the weak.”

  I shrug off her hand. “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “Conscience again, Charles? Have you considered having it removed?”

  I don’t rise to her taunts. “So why keep us alive at all if you need our planet and don’t give a shit about morality?”

  “Because we need you,” Elestrine replies, rising to her feet. “Your world is newly reborn unto magic—a billion, billion souls of every description just now waking up. It would be chaos were it not for humankind’s well-worn mental habits imposing, however passively, some measure of order. So, there must be humans. Or at least—until we can get that sorted.”

  I glare at her. “You promised there’d be no cull.”

  “And there will not,” she replies. “I merely present you with the situation as it exists. Humanity, to us, is both a necessity and a liability; because, weak though you are, we cannot trust your loyalty oaths and there are so, so many of you. But I have given my word about the people of Canada, and I shall keep it.”

  “And what about other countries?” I demand. “Are they being ‘culled’?”

  “Oh, some of them most likely,” Elestrine dismisses. She notices my anger and adds: “though if it will set your mind at ease, Charles, I should note that Everglace is more immediately threatened by catastrophe than is any other kingdom in Faerie. Most of the others will have time to assimilate their subjects in due course.”

  This does nothing to reassure me. “Assimilate?”

  “A word freighted with connotations. But we are coming to that.

  “My mother’s original plan,” she continues, “was to expedite the normal course of nature. Surely, you’re aware that your population was only sustainable through technology that no longer functions? By imposing an early winter, we could bring your deficiencies to the forefront. A few would survive of course: those clever enough to produce their own sustenance, and the children in particular, whom we could then raise as we saw fit, free of any backwards human ideas.”

  “Starve the parents, steal the children,” I say with disgust.

  “Yes, not unlike some episodes in your own history, or so I’m given to understand. But my mother cares little about humans and understands them even less. How your resentment would blight the country, and how much more useful you could be alive. And so, I—in…consultation with my advisor—opted for a new policy.”

  “Which was?”

  “Why, we fed you, of course.”

  I force myself not to roll my eyes. “That’s not what—”

  Suddenly, I remember my conversation with Jacques, the accountant-turned-lumberjack, who had refused the rations. Elestrine smiles.

  “The food was the plan,” I say, feeling my heart sink. “Good God.”

  “Yes, a clever twist, I daresay. In a way, it let both of us have what we wanted.”

  “What did you do?” I demand. “Enchant the food somehow? Control people’s minds?”

  She laughs. “Nothing so sordid! No enchantments are necessary, I assure you. That your people are willing to accept the Winter Queen’s sovereignty before each meal is quite enough.”

  “You mean that stupid ritual you say before dishing out picnic baskets? But those are just words; we’re not bound by oaths; we’re not like…” My voice trails off. “Not like you.”

  “Not yet.”

  I feel a tremble as the magnitude of what she’s saying occurs to me.

  “Oh, but you must have guessed!” she insists. “Each day, your people accept food as the Winter Queen’s gift to her subjects. Right now, that ritual is mere words; but with each day, they will incorporate more of the substance of Faerie into their bodies. And a loyalty oath that starts as empty words gradually becomes binding, just as your people themselves gradually become—”

  “Yours.”

  She smiles. “An elegant solution, if I do say so myself. This is a country of humans; if we are to survive, it must become a country of Fae. And so it shall, bite by bite—”

  “You said the food wasn’t enchanted!” I erupt.

  “Oh, I assure you that every morsel dispensed to your people is made of honest Canadian dirt and snow—albeit rearranged into a slightly more palatable configuration.” She lays a hand on my wrist. “Now…the food dispensed to you, on the other hand—”

  I start from my chair so violently that it crashes to the floor behind me.

  “Oh, Charles,” she giggles. “You see, I simply knew you would react this way!”

  “How does…” The muscles in my face twitch involuntarily; my hands tremble so badly I need to ball them into fists. “What will poisoning me accomplish!?”

  “I’m not poisoning you, my love,” she insists. “Indeed, you may very well live forever! And if your use of glamour is any indication, your facility with magic has already improved—as one might expect when taking one’s meals direct from Faerie.”

  Memories of red cherries and nectar insinuate themselves into my mind. I feel sick to my stomach—like the old joke about finding half a worm in an apple, but a hundred times worse.

  “As for what it will accomplish,” she goes on, “well, you are the key to this country; I have made sure of that! I’ve made you a folk hero, Charles, a tribune of the people. You are a proxy for the nation as a whole—”

  “Oh, bullshit!” I exclaim. “I’m one guy—one white, Anglo, working-class guy from Saskatchewan! You think I speak for forty million people?”

  “Perhaps not,” she concedes. “But they do know that you’re to thank for their food. Call it a ‘nation-building’ exercise: you’ve become a symbol.”

  “So, I’m Ronald fucking McDonald. Whoop-de-doo.”

  “Symbols,” Elestrine cuts in, “are nothing to be sneered at. There is an intrinsic sympathy between them and that which they represent. As far as you are concerned, you may be just ‘a guy’. As far as your subjects are concerned, however—”

  “I do not have subjects!” I spit.

  “As far as your subjects are concerned, you are the salt of the earth and the founder of the feast.

  “Now,” she fixes me with a look, “what happens to the Earth when its ‘salt’ is supplanted by that of Faerie? And what happens to the feast when its ‘founder’ becomes—”

  “It’s never going to happen.”

  “Oh no?”

  “No.” I declare coldly. “I’ll make my own food—grow -it even, now that winter’s ending.” I gather up the fallen papers of my newly signed bill and brandish them in triumph. “I’ve won, Elestrine.”

  Elestrine regards me in silence, long enough that I feel embarrassed despite myself. “I’m curious, Charles,” she says at last. “What do you suppose the future holds?”

  “A negotiating table,” I insist without skipping a beat. “Our peoples meeting as equals.”

  “Oh, Charles,” she says softly. “I have only myself to blame. Very well: let me relate what will actually transpire.

  “In two days’ time, the Winter Queen will come to settle accounts with Audan. Until now, I had been confident she would rule in my favour—but if this problem that you’ve created is not resolved by then, that will certainly not be the case. She will dissolve our marriage—”

  “Fine by me.”

  “—force me to wed Audan, and likely appoint him Viceroy as recompense for my supposed slight.”

  “And then he would be bound by this law just like you are,” I insist.

  “And here is where you’ve misjudged the situation. It is not that my people cannot violate their oaths—only that it is profoundly costly to do so. But we are facing an existential threat. We are desperate, Charles! Desperate enough not only to break the law, but to risk the chaos that would result from simply exterminating your people altogether, and Audan would not hesitate in implementing that policy. It is not a negotiating table that lies in your future, husband, but an abattoir.”

  Her words hang in the air.

  “You seem awfully calm about this,” I say after a moment.

  “Only because I quite strongly suspect that this will not come to pass. You will not let it.”

  “If you think that I am going to go back to calmly eating fairy cherries with you—”

  “Oh, I do like that word! But no, it’s too late for that now. You’ve caused my mother a major inconvenience; it will take a triumph of commensurate size to placate her.”

  I cross my arms over my chest. “…I’m listening.”

  She looks at me meaningfully. “You must make the transformation directly.”

  “No chance.”

  “It’s the only way, Charles! You yourself have seen to that. And it will not take months or years if it can be done without artifice—if you willingly expose your soul to me, the transformation can be made as quickly and as easily as a snowball can be made into an apple or a man can be made into a deer. And then you may swear true allegiance to the Winter Queen. The change will be painless—perfectly painless. But change you must.”

  “No chance,” I repeat. “None at all.”

  “Charles—”

  “No. You listen to me, Elestrine. We’ve given you everything. Everything. We surrendered our country, our liberty; we watched as you turned our democracy into a farce and threw our people into deprivation. We ate your”—my eyeball twitches—“your contaminated food. I even left my own wife and agreed to marry you, Christ have mercy on my soul! But we’re not giving up our humanity as well. Sorry. No dice.”

  “You would scarcely even miss it,” she croons. “Why, I would wager that, not five minutes after your transformation—”

  “I’d rather die.”

  Her expression becomes studiously neutral. “Ah.”

  There’s a pause. “And what about the rest of your people, dear Charles?”

  “You’d have to ask them,” I reply firmly.

  Elestrine sighs. “I wish that I could. But I haven’t the time, my love. My mother is coming in two days, and if I do not present her with some token—”

  “Yeah, yeah, she’ll kill us all. And I’m sure you’ll feel really bad about it too.”

  “Well, it would certainly be a wasted opportunity! This country has much to offer—”

  “Look,” I say, hating myself. “I’m sure you could find…a few thousand power-hungry jerks to volunteer if you looked hard enough. I could probably point out a few. I know it’s a tiny fraction of the population—”

  “Oh, but I do not need a few thousand! I need only one. You.”

  “You already know my answer.”

  “Yes, you’d ‘rather die’,” she sighs. “But have you the right to decide that for your countrymen?”

  “Don’t you dare use that mumbo-jumbo on me, Elestrine,” I snap. “You wouldn’t know ethics if they bit you on the ass!”

  “But you do!” she replies, rising from the bed and advancing toward me. “Am I not triggering pangs of conscience?”

  She runs a finger down the side of my face and speaks softly into my ear. “Your people need not die—they need never die. They may live for a hundred thousand years in peace and prosperity, enjoying freedoms of which you can scarcely conceive. Freedom from want, from death, from reality itself!”

  “From conscience,” I interject.

  “Yes!” she exclaims, grabbing me by the arms. “And would that not be a beautiful gift? To be free from that anger that weighs down your soul? The moral man is always angry, Charles—but you don’t have to be. You could go through eternity light as a feather, never troubling yourself with the burdens of others.”

  “Like you.”

  “Exactly like me,” she replies, smiling broadly. “Your soul shall be the very mirror of my own. What do you say?”

  I look her in the eyes. “Take your hands off of me.”

  She relinquishes her grip, raising her hands in an almost-shrugging motion. I immediately turn toward the door.

  “Feel free to think it over,” she calls after me. “But remember—my mother arrives in two days!”