Enchantment

20

Summer Vacation

The school year was over in Tantalus. Children threw papers out of bus windows and ran shouting over the lawns and meadows. But none of them was happier than Matt, Steven, Luke, and Little Esther Smetski, who knew that something more than mere summer vacation awaited them.

Father and Mother already had their bags packed—but there weren't many, only a few days' worth of clothes, just enough for the visit they always had with Uncle Marek and Aunt Sophia. Father always spent some time in Kiev, because he was the hero of the literary community there, having discovered the most amazing trove of ancient writings in Saint Kirill's own hand, on parchment which had been filled by another ancient, anonymous writer, who recorded the earliest known versions of the folktales of the Russian people. In America, he was respected at the university and among colleagues, but in Kiev, he was known to the people on the street. Indeed, there was a street named after him, one which had once been called by the name of a Russian Communist who slaughtered millions of Ukrainian kulaks, but now was named for the scholar who had opened up the Ukrainian past.

But what did that matter to the children? Father had his fans—he'd be busy with them for a while. What mattered to Matt, Steven, Luke, and Little Esther—or, as they were called all summer, Matfei, Sergei, Lukas, and Tila—was the other place, the faraway place, the place they never spoke of to their friends. The land where they were princes and princess, where Mother was queen, where Father was king and counselor to her.

Matfei was old enough to be learning history in school, but he had to laugh when he read about kings. He knew what kings and queens were. In at least one kingdom, nestled up against the eastern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains, there was a kingdom once where a queen ruled over her people, while her bookish husband played with his children, worked alongside the people, argued questions of philosophy with the priests, and gave whatever counsel his wife might want. He was a foreigner there, but with only a trace of an accent, and the people loved him, partly because Queen Katerina loved him, but mostly for himself.

It was the children they adored. But when it seemed they might be pampered to death, Mother and Father always drew them back, put things in perspective, reminded them that it was the kingdom-in-them that the people loved, and that they had to learn to become worthy of the devotion of the people. "It's not yours by right, this power," said Mother. "It is earned, by service, by loyalty, by sacrifice." Just one of the many lessons, the thousands of lessons that they had to learn. Of kingship, soldiering, farming. This year, Matfei and Sergei would be taken along to Kiev to be presented before the high king and have their first lessons in political maneuvering. They could see that Mother and Father feared this more than anything, but that only made it more exciting for Matt and Steven to look forward to.

Grandma and Grandpa came along with them to the airport in Syracuse, so they could drive the minivan back, as they did every summer. Grandma, as always, had a new charm for them to wear. Luke begged her to teach him how to make such things, but Grandma wouldn't do it. "The need for magic isn't so great anymore," she said, "and besides, the power that sustained it all is fading. It was the old gods who were behind it, and as their power weakens from the unbelief of the people, their power also fades." Luke had no idea what she was talking about, but Matt and Steven did. They knew how the people of Taina came to their mother for healing, and how she was able to do less and less for them, and how it grieved her. What they didn't understand was Mother's and Father's refusal to take modern ideas back with them. "Why not find the penicillium mold and use it to fight infections?" Matfei asked Father once.

"Because it isn't time yet," he said.

"But people will die from simple cuts and injuries," said Matfei.

"People all die eventually," said Father, sounding utterly heartless. But then he hugged his son. "I love your compassion, Matt. But here's the thing. In our own time, after just a few generations of using antibiotics, the bacteria are developing resistance to them all. If penicillin were put into use in 905, what would happen then? The whole history of the world would change, and we don't know how, and so it would be wrong of us to change it."

"But you took gunpowder back, Father. And alcohol."

"I kept the secret of gunpowder from the others," said Father. "A few know the ingredients, and they've promised not to pass the information on. I did it because the need was great. Because that was what I was sent to do. But we haven't needed it since."

"What about when I'm king, Father? What if I need it then? Will you tell me?"

"No," said Father. "And if you haven't the heart to rule without it, if you need the modern world, then you don't have to stay here. You don't have to be king. One of your brothers will, or your sister. Or none of them, and the people can elect another, or the high king will take the land. History will move on, whatever you decide. You don't have to take the burden on you."

"I will, though," said Matfei.

"If you do, then that will be good, it will be the life you chose. But if you don't, it won't mean that you failed. You're a child of both worlds. With any luck, the choice won't be forced upon you too soon."

Father and Mother could be so inscrutable sometimes, full of mysterious wisdom. Didn't they know how much children were able to guess? How much they could understand if only someone would explain it to them? When we're parents, the children told each other, we'll tell our children everything.

They got to the airport, they kissed Grandpa and Grandma good-bye, they flew to Kennedy, then on to Vienna, then to Kiev. There were the days at Uncle Marek's farm. And then at last it was time to cross the bridge.

They never took the same way twice, for fear of making a path. The clearing opened before them. The chasm yawned. Then all joined hands and the bridges both appeared. They crossed to the middle and stopped, for this was a tradition that they never broke. There on the pedestal in the middle of the moat, Father and Mother sat on the slab where Mother had slept the deep enchanted sleep of centuries, and he kissed her, once, a sweet and simple kiss.

This time it was Little Esther's turn to finally understand. "Mama!" she said. "You're Sleeping Beauty!" Her brothers laughed and praised her for figuring it out. Mother and Father hugged her and let her lie on the slab herself. She closed her eyes and then said, "Kiss me, somebody, and wake me up!" And her father knelt down, and bent over her, and kissed her, while Matt and Steven and Luke all growled and roared like bears.

Then they joined hands again, the bridges appeared, and they crossed into Taina.

No one waited for them—that was what they asked for, not so much for privacy as because the day of their arrival was never certain, for the calendars of the two places fit together unpredictably. Why should someone waste his life waiting and watching for a queen and king who could find their own way through the woods?

This time, though, they didn't rush away from the chasm. The children were told to play—"But stay away from the edge!"—while Mother and Father stood beside the pit and talked.

"What if one of us dies?" Ivan said to her. "A car crash. An accident at harvest time. Everyone will be stranded then, on whatever side of the bridge we're on."

"If only the children had been born with the power to use both bridges."

"But they can't use either of them without us, and they need both of us to cross at all. We can't leave this to chance, can we? Don't we want the children to be free to choose?"

"They're too young to divide the family."

"I don't want to divide us either," said Ivan. "I want us to live to be a hundred. But life is fragile."

"Someday we'll make them choose, and settle them on whichever side they want, and then we'll choose ourselves, and stay together in the world we want to grow old in. But not yet."

"So if one of us dies..."

"We plan what we plan, and if it doesn't work out, then that's the way life will be. What else can we do? Divide the family now, and guarantee unhappiness, for fear of a different misery later?"

"You're right," said Ivan. "You're right, of course. But having children makes a man afraid."

"Afraid, yes, and also very brave."

"Did we really do the things the stories say?" asked Ivan.

"We did."

"And tell me, Sleeping Beauty, are you living happily ever after?"

"Yes, I am."

They called the children then, and as they made the trek through the wood, Matfei joked that Father ought to take his clothes off so people would recognize him when he arrived. "We should never have let people tell those stories to the children," Ivan said to Katerina.

They got to the village and the cheering started, the crowds following them, the parade. They sat down to a feast and heard tales of the winter past, and who had babies, who died, who got married.

It was nearly dark before Ivan and Katerina slipped away and went to the church, where Bishop Sergei was waiting for them, greeting them with a kiss and an embrace. Together they walked into the graveyard, where King Matfei's body had been buried five winters before, and where Father Lukas had a little shrine. "He'll never be a saint," said Sergei ruefully, "and in truth he didn't deserve it. But he was a hero all the same."

"And a great missionary," said Katerina.

"So are the children Jews or Christians?" asked Sergei.

"In Ivan's country, they are Jews," said Katerina. "And here they're Christians. Two worlds. Two lives. Someday they'll decide. Or God will decide for them."

"Doctrinally, there are problems with that," said Sergei. Then he laughed. "But I'm glad you're here."

"So are we," said Ivan. "We miss our dear friends when we're away."

They left the graveyard then, and returned to the royal house, where they had to speak sternly to the children before they'd finally go to bed. Then they, too, lay down on mattresses stuffed with straw, hearing the music of the flies to buzz them to sleep, holding each other's hands as they dozed, thinking of the miracles by which love works its will in the world.

Acknowledgments

Since this novel is set in milieux that are unfamiliar to me, I have relied on various sources, especially:

Pinhas Sadeh, Jewish Folktales, trans. Hillel Halkin (New York: Anchor, 1989; 441 pp.). For stories and motifs used in Enchantment, especially the story of the Sky, the Rat, and the Well.

Charles Downing, Russian Tales and Legends (H. Z. Walck, 1968; 215 pp.). For stories and motifs used in Enchantment.

Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968; 158 pp.). The pivotal book whose conclusions Ivan is testing.

Hillel Halkin, "Feminizing Jewish Studies," Commentary 105:2 (February 1998, pp. 39-45). For the rhetoric of Jewish feminism.

Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961; 656 pp.). For a rough idea of how the Russian people were governed before the dominance of the Rus'.

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, ed. Russian Traditional Culture: Religion, Gender, and Customary Law (M. E. Sharpe, 1992). Many articles were very helpful in grounding my speculations about religion and law in the imaginary kingdom of Taina.

Bruce Cockburn, for the album Ivan listens to in chapter 14. Sharp-eyed readers will note that The Charity of Night was released in 1997, rather too late for Ivan to listen to it in 1992. But my opinion is that if you can accept the idea of Ivan and Katerina passing back and forth between 1992 and 890, there should be no problem with Cockburn's music traveling only four years back in time. Think of it as the sound track for that scene.

Sam Kinison, whose screaming comedy is sorely missed, died only a few months before the 747 returned from Taina. But this novel is a fantasy, and in that fantasy Kinison is still alive.

Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, trans. James E. Falen (Oxford University Press, 240 pp.). The best of the translations, I found it with the help of Douglas Hofstadter, Le Ton Beau de Marot.

I owe thanks to many individuals for helping me create this novel or prepare it for publication, particularly:

To Derryl Yeager, for the idea of Sleeping Beauty waking up today, and to Nik Gasdik, for putting the story in Russia.

To Krista Maxwell, for details and corrections in my depiction of Russia in several centuries, and for everything in this book that is correct about my use of Old Church Slavonic and proto-Slavonic; the errors that remain are my own, despite Krista's best efforts. Ivan is especially in Krista's debt for the wonderful food Sophia served to him; I had no reason to change Krista's list, so there it stands in her words.

To Linda Bass for the correct spelling of mohel.

To D'Ann Stoddard, for research on making gunpowder.

To Clark and Kathy Kidd and to Mark and Margaret Park, for once more opening their homes to me, and for countless other helps, only some of which can be repaid.

To Kathleen Bellamy, who reads my novels last, to catch those pernicious errors that have evaded all other eyes.

To Scott Allen, who keeps the tools of my trade cleaned and oiled.

To Kristine Card, Kathy Kidd, Peter Johnson, Jay Parry, and Robert Stoddard, who read the chapters as they came along.

To Lisa Collins, for a superb and sympathetic job of copy editing.

To Amy Stout and Kuo-Yu Liang, whose patience passes understanding.

To Barbara Bova, who makes it possible for me to live from the proceeds of this hobby of mine.

To Erin Absher, for Baba Tila's real identity and for being our help in all good things.

And, above all, to Kristine and to our children, Geoffrey, Emily, Charlie Ben, Zina, and Erin Louisa, whose lives are the meaning of my life, and who have made me, not yet a virtuous man, but one who knows what virtue is and yearns for it.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Golden Mountain Music Corp. for permission to reprint excerpts from the lyrics of "Birmingham Shadows," words by Bruce Cockburn. © 1997 Golden Mountain Music Corp. Used by permission.

Copyright © 1999 by Orson Scott Card

ISBN 0-345-41688-0