The Underwater Ballroom Society

The Queen of Life

Once upon a time there was a band that was bigger than big, louder than bombs. This was back in the glorious days of the Old Regime, long before the Waking World fell at last fast asleep. Long ago fabulous days, when the Voivode of Shingleton swam the poisonous Winnequah Sea for a five diva bet, and died not long after of an agonizing skin ailment, smug with accomplishment to the end. When the great singer Lotta Peachblossom, in the role of Joleta, sang el dugüello at the Porkopolis Opera House, shattering all the glass within a twenty-mile radius and giving every spectator a migraine that lasted for two weeks. When the lift took three hours to get to the top of Porkopolis’ tallest building, The Gaudy Pikestaff, and served snacks on the way and had velvet couches to nap upon. When Drusilla Van Hofferan tricked ice elementals into freezing her rooftop pool and hosted an ice skating party there—in the middle of the inferno summer. When the dancer called Lady Grinning Soul was fined ten thousand divas for walking a were-lion down the Munificent Mile during rush hour. When Puppy Blake and the diarist Xi Hoon conducted a duel to the death entirely with bon mots while standing at the bar in Brennen’s Hotel drinking pink gins.

A glorious time, full of glorious people, and this band, Love’s Secret Domain, the most of glorious of all. Everyone in the Waking World knew Love’s Secret Domain. They knew the band’s singer, the incandescent Sylvanna de Godervya, who kept that incandescence, her fans whispered, by bathing in donkey’s milk and faery ichor. They knew Merrick, the drummer, who had been a pig changeling in Faery until he had been released by Titania in exchange for a jar of thick-cut tawny marmalade. By then, Merrick had been a pig so long that he couldn’t change back to human entirely, but his trotters were more formidable strikers than the hardest drumsticks. (The tabloids said that his drumskins were made from his own sloughed pigskin, but that rumour was completely unverified.) (And yet one hundred percent true.) And Litacia, the bassist, whose skin crawled with tattoos of every note of her bass lines, and who, it was said, was handfasted to a percussion demon from the fourth level of Erebus.

And the guitarist: Robert Mynwar.

O Robert Mynwar! That iconic portrait, guitar slung to his knees, white doves in flight over his sun-kissed, wind-blown, blonde locks, hung on thousands of walls, sighed over by thousands of day-dreaming fans. The glittering blue eyes; the oh-so-very-tight kilt, slung so low over that taut belly, the fantastically muscled calves. They said that the Muse of Music taught Robert Mynwar to play: that She made his guitar, the Queen of Life, with Her own hands, carved the guitar’s body from Her own shin bone, strung the neck with strands of Her own hair, and made the pearlescent inlays on the fretboard with teeth plucked from Her own mouth. When Robert Mynwar’s long elegant fingers blurred along the neck of the Queen of Life, the sound he coaxed from her made the Waking World fall silent. Birds dropped from the sky, so struck by the melodious rhythm that they forgot to fly; rabid dogs lay down peacefully in the street, foaming no more; crying children found their tears had turned to diamonds. Newly-made spouses left their partners at the altar to hear Robert Mynwar play; babies came early; the dead left their graves to dance.

Perhaps somewhere there were a few people who had never heard of Love’s Secret Domain—hermits, castaways, cat-ladies—but by the time the band was midway through the Horses of Instruction Tour, those people were few and far-between. Word of their musical prowess had spread beyond the Waking World, into Faery, into Elsewhere—and beyond.

The Horses of Instruction tour was massive; each show more legendary than the last. The show where Sylvanna’s and Robert’s voices entwined into a summoning of the Muse of Music Herself, who stayed to play an encore that left the delirious audience’s ears permanently ringing with the final lick of The Crystal Cabinet. The show where the stage slowly rolled forward during the band’s biggest hit, A Tender Curb, crushing twenty-five ecstatic fans into jelly. The show where the son of financier Sookie Kodos flung himself onto Robert Mynwar, hoping to clip a lock of that sunshine hair; instead, Sylvanna beat him around the head with her mandolin before the bodyguards dragged him offstage. The show where Robert’s guitar solo ignited the roof of Oaktown Ballyhoo on fire, and the rest of the show had to be canceled much to the fans’ dismay, who would have been happy to be burned alive if they could do so while listening to the pulverizing roar of The Crystal Cabinet. The show where a glade of aspens uprooted themselves from their hillside, and, lured by the thundering bass line to Pity, A Human Face, tried to storm the Ticonderoga Gaiety Music Hall only to be repelled in a pitched battle with an enormous murder of crows, who had been following the band from town to town for weeks.

Then one day, towards the end of this triumphant tour, Oberon himself left his palace under the Hill, stepped out of Faery into the Waking World, to hear Love’s Secret Domain play. He stood in the front row, halting the mosh pit’s churn with his presence, and though Sylvanna de Godervya’s voice that night was sweeter than honey, it was Robert Mynwar’s guitar that made his black eyes glow green. Faeries, as you know, love music but they cannot make it themselves, being as inherently tuneless as the night air. As the last bars of The Crystal Cabinet fell away, Oberon stepped through the ear-splitting roar of the crowd, over the heads of eager fans who had pushed forward in a desperate attempt to reach their idol, up onto the stage. As the twinkle of thousands of lighters sparked the darkened bowl of the amphitheater, Oberon enfolded the surprised sweaty guitarist into a swirl of crimson cape.

And then they were both gone.

That was the last show Love’s Secret Domain ever played.

Robert Mynwar was never again seen in the Waking World and though Oberon, or Titania, might be seen from time to time, hunting humans through the forest on Crimble, or shopping at the Porkopolis Prada, Robert Mynwar stayed beneath the Hill. Sometimes news came of him, but always gossip unverified. A few months after his abduction, a changeling staggered out of Faery, and told The Porkopolis Music News he had seen Robert Mynwar and Oberon walking hand-in-hand through a pleached alley of hornbeams in the garden of Castle Fare-thee-Well. A year or so later, a hedgewitch claimed she’d been gathering green melancholy from a faery field when she had spied Robert Mynwar standing on a cliff above the Heart’s End Sea, sobbing into a spidersilk handkerchief. Five years after that, a beggar who stumbled into a faery ring on New Year’s Day and spent ten years (ten minutes) in Faery before being expelled by Mab, the Faery Seneschal, for drunkenness, said that when he was taken before the Faery court, he saw Robert Mynwar, bound to Oberon’s throne with a chain twisted from ivy and his own hair. Twenty years gone, a milkmaid from Monona, who had seen Love’s Secret Domain play one hundred and fifty-six times, said she had a vision of the great guitarist in a bucket of milk she’d squeezed from a blue-tinged cow; he was sitting in Titania’s solar on a tussock of green moss, playing a guitar with no strings.

After that, nothing.

And Robert Mynwar, already a legend, became legendary.

A boy stands at a crossroads. It doesn’t matter which crossroads, or where. Above, a wolf moon sails up the curve of the sky, round as an eye. The crossed arms of the two roadways stretching away from him shine white as silk. The trees that surround the crossroads whistle in the night breeze; every leaf, every branch exposed in the moon’s glare. A spire of smoke drifts upward from the cigarillo the boy smokes. The smell of cloves mingles with the spicy scent of eucalyptus, and the boy’s perfume, which is the loamy fragrance of dirt.

After a time, a month, a year, an eternity, the moon reaches its height, directly over the center of the crossroads. The moon should begin its majestic descent downward, towards its set, but instead it pauses. The wind ceases; the moonlight becomes thick and still as paint. The cigarillo smoke hangs motionless in the air, like tree moss. The boy drops the cigarillo and steps on the red ember eye, crushing it.

A long black vehicle is coming down one of the roads; its headlamps cut through the darkness like searching antennae. Illuminating the boy, they pin him into place in the center of the crossroads. The limo is going fast, too fast; it’s going to mow him down if he doesn’t move. But instead of jumping out of the way, the boy extends his arm, extends his thumb. Brakes screeching, puffing black smoke, the limo barely stops in time. Its front bumper brushes the boy’s knees. Despite the garish glow of the headlights, the boy’s features remain sunk in shadow. He walks to the side of the limo, opens the door, and climbs inside.

The boy is greeted with excited yapping; the fox-faced corgi sitting on the jump seat has leapt up on its stubby legs and is alarming loudly. He gives the corgi a firm look, and the dog collapses into a furry pillow, tongue derping. In the middle of the back seat, Sylvanna de Godervya is sunk into a pile of white fur, so thick and deep that only her face is visible. A black guitar case sits next to her. Time has taken the sharp edge of her jaw, the smooth line of her cheek and forehead and the raven-black hair is now tarnished silver. But she’s still incandescent and those violet eyes are still deep enough to drown in.

“You took your time,” Sylvanna says. That famously rough voice is even raspier now, but lovelier too, its cragginess evoking weary experience and heartbreak.

“I’ve been busy,” the boy says, settling into the seat opposite. The corgi tries to worm onto his lap, whacking at his hand with a fat paw. He scratches its pointy ears.

“When I wanted you, you didn’t come.”

“Don’t be silly. You were busy too,” the boy says. “Songs to write, shows, children, grandchildren, the recording label, this fat little baby here.”

Her lip curls, as though to dismiss all those things. “I didn’t expect you to look so—handsome—so frivolous. Like a groupie.”

The boy grins, shakes his curly head, and crosses his legs, sheathed in trousers so tight it’s a wonder they don’t split at the motion. The plunging neckline on his flowing shirts shows off a muscular chest; his wrists are wreathed in turquoise and silver; more silver chains dangle from his neck. The heels on his red leather boots are five inches high. The clothes have been unfashionable for at least sixty years. “I take the form I think most pleasing; it makes things easier. More pleasant. More familiar.”

“You missed my mark,” Sylvanna says, but the smile quirking around her lips says he hit it most exactly. “Anyway, you should take your gorgeous ass and sashay out of my limo. I’m not ready. I’m on my way to the Were-Flamingo Gala. I’m the guest of honor. They are expecting me.” The purple eyes glitter fiercely. “I have things to do.”

“I’m sorry, honey, but it’s time. You’ve been wavering for months. Your heart…”

“My heart died long ago. That’s nothing to do with my health.” Then she sighs, her voice crumpling. “I suppose there is no fighting Death. I will go with you if you tell me that one day I shall see him again. But you won’t, because it’s not true. They live forever in Faery. I’ll never see him again.”

The boy shrugs. Never is a long time—to her at least. To him, there’s no never, only the inevitable. He draws on his clove cigarillo, exhales. Sylvanna closes her eyes, breathes the waft of smoke in. “That smell. I haven’t smelled that smell in years. It always reminds me of him. Those foul cigarillos he smoked. Spicy, dark. You aren’t as pretty as he was. What a god. That hair, like spun gold, that ass, tight as a drum. When our voices came together, they said our harmony was a stairway to heaven.”

When the boy doesn’t reply, she says, “I looked for him everywhere. Faery-rings and sunsets. Hollow trees and elf-steeds. Solstice and Beltane. The Valley of Evermore and the vales of Kashmir. But I never found the way under the Hill.”

“Few mortals do, my dear,” the boy says. “And think of the songs you wrote in your sorrow. In a thousand years, those songs will still be sung. Heartbreak, sorrow, love.”

“His songs. Songs about him. I wrote other songs but no one cared about them.”

“Your songs,” he says gently. “But anyway, it doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters to me,” Sylvanna says. “It still matters to me.”

The boy sighs. “When it is your time, you must come. That is how it works. How it’s always worked. The natural order of things.”

“For humans, that is. But not for faeries. And not for humans in Faery. Doesn’t that bother you, that you, who hold sway over everything in this world, are barred from theirs? And that they may come and steal your subjects, take them beyond your reach, and you can do nothing?”

This does bother him; she’s got him there. He has a tidy nature; there are rules and he follows them. The rules must be followed else there would be chaos. But faeries don’t follow the rules; they love chaos, and when they steal a human, they upset his books, ruin his reckonings, leave an empty space in his ledger that he might never be able to fill. It is very annoying.

“You, so powerful, and against them powerless,” she jeers. Then, more gently: “Tell me, if he hadn’t been taken, would he be with you now? Would I be alone now anyway? It doesn’t hurt to tell me; it would be a great comfort to know.” Her eyes are soft and welling—the color of a bruise. Even the boy is not immune to such eyes; besides, Love’s Secret Domain is his favorite band.

He says: “In a crash, at the end of the Horses of Instruction tour, at the age of thirty-five. Driving too fast on a backroad; a farmer misses the yield sign. ”

“Instantly?”

“Instantly.”

“Ah…” Sylvanna says, and those eyes close for a second, and the lines of pain around her mouth smooth away. “Thank you. Now, humor an old lady. Open that case there.”

The boy lifts the case and opens it. Inside lies a guitar, as curvy as a woman, glossy and plump. He lays it across her lap. She pats the fretboard with a claw-like hand: “The Queen of Life, Bobby’s guitar. He left her behind—Oberon couldn’t take her, you see—Bobby always said her strings were made from strands of the Muse’s hair, but that’s not true. Just ordinary guitar strings. But they have iron in them and faeries loathe iron.”

The boy takes her in his arms, cradling her head against his broad chest, caressing her face. The corgi crouches on the seat opposite, tongue derping, watching. “Give me a puff of that nasty thing. Ah, so sweet… so sweet…” But if she means the cigarillo, or the guitar, or him, or some far-off memory, he doesn’t know. She closes her eyes, leaning into him, and they sit in comfortable silence for a while; eventually her eyes close and her breathing grows light.

“I hear horses’ thunder…” she whispers, and he presses his lips to hers, catching one breath, then two, and the final third… But there’s a fourth—this is odd, there should never be a fourth breath—the third breath should be her last. Her hands, now surprisingly strong, have him in a grip that is not letting go. He finds himself dwindling; his corporeal form dissolving until he is nothing but his own pure essence; his kiss is supposed to draw her out, out of her body, into death, but instead, he is being drawn into her. Within seconds he is trapped within her mouth. She bends to the guitar, as though to kiss it, and puffs a writhing ball of violet light into the small void in the guitar’s belly.

“Well,” says Sylvie to the corgi, “Lady Nimue was right. They are so eager to trap you that they don’t notice when you are trapping them.” She pats the Queen of Life’s swollen belly. “Don’t worry. I shan’t keep you long. And you shall thank me in the end.”

Back in the case goes the Queen of Life. Sylvie shrugs off the white furs; underneath she drips with green velvet and white lace, her suede boots are the color of dawn. Age still limns her, but all trace of infirmity is gone. She’s as graceful now as she was at twenty, perhaps even more so, because now that grace is seasoned by comfort in her own skin. At twenty, she still wondered who she was. At eighty-two she knows. She says gaily to the corgi: “Off we go then, over the hills and far away, to embrace the gloom…”

She exits the limo, taking the guitar-case with her, and the corgi, too, tucked under her arm like a furry purse. As soon as she lets the corgi down, it takes off like a shot, down the westerly road, pausing briefly to look back at her, starry-eyed and eager.

Sylvie pulls her velvet hood up over her hair and, slinging the Queen of Life over her shoulder, follows the corgi down the road.

The corgi knows the way to Faery, of course; all corgis do. They were bred long ago to serve as faery steeds, back when the faeries kept small and separate from humans, hidden. This is why corgis are so mischievous; their canine good nature has been leavened with the faery love of chaos. Every corgi knows that though the faeries have chosen to walk among humans for now, and have taken their size, they might someday decide to return to their original state and need the corgis’ service again. So, the corgis keep in touch.

Down the westerly road, the corgi trots, over the hills and far away, and Sylvie follows, through the goblin market at Feetings & Foil and out onto the Benighted Road. They pass through the common towns of Last Week and Next Friday, and punt down the River Wry, through the Mizzle Locks. By then, they have been trekking for many hours and Sylvie is flagging. She’s no spring chicken and the road goes further on and on. At Sleep-Weary on the Wry, they stop for tea with a growly tomte, who the corgi charms with somersaults. They snack on cakes made from spun sugar and plum cheese, sip medlar wine mixed with sour milk. Thus refreshed they forge onward, up the Cragfast Pass, whose stony walls are skith with snow. Then down the rocky Rime Road, clotted with ice, and out onto the Dismal Plain.

The corgi is a bright blot of cheer in the otherwise cheerless landscape; if the fat little dog will not falter, Sylvie won’t either. Through Nightfast Vale and the Forest of Arden they go, the trees as thick as thieves, and a blank black sky overhead, fingers of foxfire scratching at them from the brush. Sylvie’s feet are dragging now, and the Queen of Life is as heavy as a toddler. She’s so weary and footsore, and the vengeful spirits that had started her out have faded into a misery of exhaustion. The corgi nips her ankles, drives her forward, and though she is sleep-weary and her shoulder burns with the weight of the guitar, she continues on, down the Old Plank Road, across the Mewling Marsh, past Sorrow-in-the-Glen, and the ruins of Moonraker Hall. For a while, she sings as she goes, all the old ballads that she and Robert had once sung together: Honey in the Dell, The Princess & the Pig, Let Me Be Your Salty Dog, The Red Cape. But eventually her voice cracks into silence; her throat tastes of sand. Now Sylvie is so bone-cold exhausted that the landscape fades from her vision. All she sees is the pathway plodding on forever under her feet, and the cheerful wink of the fluffy butt bouncing along before her, and that cheerful bounce is all that keeps her going. But at last, after hours, days, months, years, the indefatigable corgi halts.

Blinking the crust from her eyes, Sylvie leans the guitar case against her legs, easing her burning shoulder. A gray wind scuds gray clouds through a gray sky. A featureless drear landscape, bereft of buildings, color, foliage, or comfort. For the first time since they set out, Sylvie, despite the warm velvet cape, shivers. Ahead of them the road vanishes into a squishy bog, punctuated with the skeletal fingers of dead reeds and ragged catkins. Spindly trees, distorted by the wind, straggle along the bog’s edge, surround a wattle hut, crude and disintegrating.

“Home! Home!” the corgi frolics about her feet, and so Sylvie knows that this featureless drear landscape is Faery, for only in Faery can corgis talk.

“What a horrible place,” Sylvie says. “And I don’t see any faeries, either.”

The corgi bounces up on Sylvie’s knees, and squeaks: “Put your sunglasses on!” Humans who come to Faery under the usual circumstances are enchanted; they see only the false glories of Faery, the tempting lies, not the bitter truth. Sylvie, of course, is not under enchantment, and so she sees Faery as the forlorn place it truly is. But years ago, a tarot card reader in Towana Canyon sold her sunglasses—golden frames, pink mirror lenses—that the witch swore would allow the wearer to see as though she were glamoured, and when Sylvie puts them on, they work as promised.

The drear landscape is overlaid by a wide grassy lawn. Above, a coin-like sun sits in a boiled blue sky. The sun in Faery is brilliant but lacks warmth. The air smells stiflingly of flowers; a mélange of roses and lilies too pungent to be agreeable. The colors—celadon grass, emerald trees, azure sky, scarlet flowers—are luscious but lifeless.

“Come come!” the corgi chides. “Every second here is a year in the Waking World. There’s no time to waste!”

“My time in the Waking World is up,” Sylvie says. “So that hardly matters to me.”

“I don’t want to miss the party!” squeaks the corgi, springing at her knees, nipping at her velvet skirts with needle teeth, driving her, laughing, forward. Beyond the grassy lawn is a half-timbered house, sitting by a lake, both surrounded by a dense copse of trees: ash and oak, chestnut and cherry. A pair of swans float upon the lake; their red beaks bright blotches of sangyn against the dull black of their feathers.

A dash of glittering light coalesces before Sylvie and the corgi, becomes a tall woman, draped in spangled cloth: Mab, the Faery Seneschal. Her lips are red as pomegranates and her hair the silvery purple of stardust. At first glance, she’s beautiful, but a second look shows that beauty is tinged with the grotesque. Her mouth is too wide, her eyes too big, her fingers long and insectile, her skin as brittle and slick as porcelain. She’s dressed all in white, a maggoty shade of white that suggests not purity and renewal, but putrescence. When the faeries try to copy human fashions, despite their magic, they always get the subtle details wrong.

The corgi waddles towards the faery woman, fluffy butt wiggling in joy, shrieking: “Mab! Mab!”

Mab scoops the corgi up and allows it to dab at her face with its long tongue. Over its foxy head, she observes Sylvie: “You have grown so old since yesterday.”

“Yesterday was years ago to me,” Sylvie says.

“It is a terrible fate to be a human, to be young and fair, and then so quickly to decay.”

“A terrible fate indeed: to grow, to learn, to love, to create, to let go. Some say it’s a terrible fate to be a Faery; to stay unchanging and unfeeling for all eternity, to spend one’s time in nothing but frivolity and pleasure-seeking,” Sylvie answers.

The faery woman answers: “Our pleasures are our own. It is well, then, that we each are satisfied with how we are. Did you bring the guitar they call the Queen of Life?”

“I did.”

“Good. He pines, he says he must have it, he sulks for it. They have offered him the most famous guitars in the Waking Worlds: Lucille; Robert Johnson’s 1929 Gibson; Clapton’s Blackie; Page’s double-necked Stratocaster; Brakespeare’s Honeythroat. He wants the Queen of Life—only her. The Lord and Lady have become impatient. Come.”

Mab turns and walks toward the lake, the tails of her white gown slinking behind her like the segments of a worm. Sylvie and the corgi, who Mab had collapsed from her arms onto the ground, follow. The swans have moved to the edge of the lake now, fishing among the catkins. As Mab approaches, they scatter, trailing thin lines of wake behind them. Mab walks off the grass, out onto this wake, the corgi bouncing along behind her. Sylvie hesitates; and the corgi turns back towards her and yaps “Come on! Come on!”

So Sylvie follows, out onto the water, wondering if it will hold her—a human woman—as it does a faery woman. And it does; her footfall is as firm as if she walks on solid ground. The water of the lake is rising up around her; she’s sinking as she walks, an unnerving feeling only leavened by the consolation that since the only death in Faery is the Death she has trapped in the Queen of Life, she surely cannot drown. Though the water is rising around them, they are not getting wet; now the surface of the lake is above their heads, and they are walking down a sloping pathway that leads to—

An immense room, airless and dark, with a ceiling bounded by the lake’s volume, a huge mass of water poised directly above. Thin lances of light pierce the murky water, and darts of gold, black and white—carp easily as big as the fat corgi. Under this watery canopy hundreds of faeries weave and turn among each other, bowing and twirling, pairs coming together, moving apart, in some incomprehensible pattern. They are dancing, Sylvie realizes, their movements jerky, so strangely ungraceful for creatures of such beauty, hopping stiffly, elbows held at strange angles, steps shuffling and awkward. Their headdresses of bone and branch, ash and hawthorn, trailing moss and ivy, bend and sway like a forest in windstorm.

But the ballroom is completely silent, not even the sound of the dancers’ slippers on the floor can be heard. A stage looms above the dance floor and faeries stand upon its height, making motions with strange objects. One clutches a massive rock in each hand, pounding on the skull of a huge horned animal. Another holds a bone to her mouth; another blows on a large shell. A fifth has strung dry leaves on a long stick and shakes the stick like a tambourine. But these facsimile instruments make no noise, no music, no sound at all, or at least no sound that Sylvie can hear. The light shafting through the water wavers, too weak to provide much illumination, so the dancers, their clothes, their hair, seem, even through the enchanted sunglasses, grey and bland. And there on the dais opposite the stage, dark Oberon, with his moonlight hair and his icy eyes. And proud Titania, her rounded shoulders gauzed in heart’s-ease taffetta, a crown of tangled flowers—honeysuckle and heliotrope, yarrow and bluebells—poised on her head. And, lounging between them, Robert Mynwar, bright as the sun. In the Waking World, he glowed; golden hair, golden skin, sapphire eyes. Here, even in the wan watery light, he fairly blazes. Sylvie’s heart catches; she’d forgotten how breathtakingly gorgeous he is, so young and merry. He does not in any way look as sorrowful as the reports had made him out to be. He looks content, and relaxed, albeit a bit petulant; that last expression oh-so-familiar. A small mandolin nestles in his lap, glossy as a lap-dog.

“Proud Oberon, Fierce Titania, King and Queen of all who live Under the Hill,” Mab says. “You bid me send for the guitar called The Queen of Life, and I have done so.”

The corgi makes a sort of bow by settling its stumpy front legs to the floor, wiggles its glorious floof, and Sylvie makes a creaky curtsy. Oberon says: “And you brought a hag, as well, to mar our court, and give us pain to see such ugliness.”

Robert grins at this; he’s looking right at her, but there’s no glimmer of recognition in his eyes. How could there be? He hasn’t seen her in sixty years. But in his mind, it’s been only days; he remembers her, if at all, falsely.

Sylvie says, forcing a quaver in her voice, “Lord and Lady of the Hill, I ask you to pardon me. I come only as the servant to the guitar, the Queen of Life; when it is delivered, I shall withdraw.”

“Oh leave her be, Oberon,” Robert says, “Give me the guitar, granny—” He’s slinking down from the dais now, those supple hips swaying in the way that made all the young kids scream and faint. He thrusts the mandolin at her, takes the guitar-case, clasping it to his chest like a lover, before laying it down on the step.

“Oh you darling,” Robert says, when he opens the lid. “Oh you gorgeous gorgeous girl.”

He swivels into a sitting position; props the Queen of Life on his lap, caresses her curves, running his fingers over her frets, up and down her glittering strings. His eyes dance; the smile he bestows upon her almost breaks Sylvie’s heart anew. “Thank you, granny, for bringing her to me. Tell me, do they remember me in the Waking World? Or am I long forgotten?”

“Oh, no, you are a legend. Legendary. Not just as a rock star, but one who tempted the King of Faery himself. The greatest guitarist who ever lived. No one shall ever forget Robert Mynwar.”

He grins: “I am glad to hear of it; glad I was right to accept Oberon’s invitation. If I’d stayed in the Waking World I’d be old now—how long has it been?”

“Seventy-three years,” Sylvie says.

He shudders. “I’d be as old as you, older even. Decayed, decrepit. No offense, dear lady. Long ago superseded by someone younger, someone maybe not as talented but flashy. Now, I shall live forever.”

“But here, in Faery. Among the faeries. Where nothing is real.”

“It seems real enough to me, feels real—and if it feels real what else matters? And much less complicated than the Waking World. No love, no jealousy, no fear—”

She says: “Those are things that make a musician great, the emotions that generate creation. To live without turmoil, without passion, to live passively—”

“To live is to grow old, and to grow old is to die, to fade away. Far, far better to burn out, dear lady.”

“And what about the rest of the band? Sylvanna, Merrick, Tashie?” she asks bitterly. Suddenly she feels a fool. Here she thought she was rescuing him from a faery enchantment and it turns out that enchantment was his heart’s desire. Well, bucko, she thinks to herself. Prepare to be disappointed. The party is over.

“Oh, I’m sure they profited nicely from my spectacular exit.”

“And your children?”

“Sangyn? She was a toddler, I’m sure she didn’t even miss me.”

This was quite untrue, but no point in saying so now. Sylvie had been five weeks pregnant when he left; he doesn’t even know that he also has a son. There’s no point in mentioning it now. He’s lost interest in the conversation anyway; she knows that eager look in his eyes. He wants to play.

He says: “Strange, I would expect, after all these years, for the Queen of Life to be out of tune, but she’s not. Richard has taken good care of you, my lovely.”

Sylvie says nothing, but her heart writhes with rage. She had fired Richard, Robert’s roadie and chief crony, two hours after Robert’s abduction. He spent the following years peddling baroquely viscous gossip about the band before choking on his own vomit after a particularly heavy bender. She’s been the Queen of Life’s caretaker all this time. For the first five years or so, she didn’t touch the guitar; even the thought of doing so was too agonizing. But then, as time went on, the guitar became, instead of a painful reminder, a comforting companion. She never played it in public, but all her songs were composed upon it. A guitar that isn’t played, Robert Mynwar often said, grows sour, just as does a woman who isn’t touched. Well, that last hadn’t been a problem for her, but she was still sour.

Titania, bored with this talk, has risen from the divan. She stands over Robert, drops a hand upon his gleaming head.

“Play,” she says. “Play for us.”

“As you will, my lady.” He grins, standing, slinging the guitar-strap over his shoulder. He has to adjust it downward; he always played with the Queen of Life hanging around his knees, but Sylvie had shortened the straps. The faeries part the dance floor for him. He climbs the stairs to the stage; the faery musicians have moved aside. A shaft of brilliant sunlight pierces the gloomy water and pins him in place, like a butterfly spiked to a specimen board.

Sylvie closes her eyes; she can’t bear to watch.

But in her mind’s eye she sees him, as she’s seen him so many times before, those long years ago: the guitar balanced on the outthrust leg, the hopping strut, the left hand flying up and down the fretboard, fingers moving so fast that the individual chords are a blur. The half-smile hidden by the swinging hair, and the sound, the melody like a racing river, snatching one up into its currents, carrying one away…

The memory is so vivid in her mind, that it takes her a moment to realize she doesn’t hear any music.

She opens her eyes.

And there he is, just as she had remembered him, playing furiously, and yet there is no music. It’s not the lack of amplification; the Queen of Life is a charged instrument, she doesn’t need an outside source of galvanism to play. It’s not the new strings; she’d changed them herself. But he is acting as though he hears the song, and, peering through the murk, the other faeries seem to be listening intently. Then she realizes. She’s in Faery. Only faery glamour works here. No other kind of magic holds sway, not even Robert Mynwar’s magick. The sunglasses show the glamour but they can’t make her hear it.

Her heart—already shattered—crumbles even more. Rage collapses into pity. That his music should be reduced to a frivolous glamour in the service of a cold-hearted king and queen seems a travesty, a true horror. Even worse—he does not know it.

One long flourish of his left arm, sending the soundless chord flying up towards the watery ceiling. Robert Mynwar stands, panting, grinning.

“Any requests?” he cries. The Queen of Life purrs a random flourish. Sylvie recognizes the chords, so she can hear the lick in her mind—the opening riff to A Tender Curb.

“The Angel of Avalon,” Sylvie shouts out, before anyone else can do so, and before he can launch further into A Tender Curb.

Robert Mynwar looks surprised. They wrote The Angel of Avalon together, when it was just the two of them, before they formed Love’s Secret Domain. It’s a deep cut; they only played it in concert a few times. Too old-fashioned. Not a heavy enough bass line. But it remains her favorite of all their songs. “That’s an old one,” he says. “Very old. I am surprised you know of it. Are you a fan?”

“Your biggest fan,” she says. “I went to every one of your shows. Never missed a one.”

“I’m honored,” he laughs. “You brought me my girl; I shall give you the song! But I shall have to sing both parts. And it shall be a bit thin without Sylvie’s harmony. Toss me a pick, honey.” Robert Mynwar is a finger-picker; sometimes he’d come off a show with fingertips cut to meat; his guitar solos were flecked with flying drops of blood. But she played lead guitar on The Angel of Avalon (another reason they rarely played it live) and she never saw any reason to be so dramatic with her playing. She uses a pick.

She’s carried the pick all the way from the Waking World nestled in the vee of her breasts; it’s warm from her flesh, and it glints like a tiny black star when she flicks it through the air towards him.

The second the iron pick touches his hand, the enchantment fails. Sylvie knows it fails because she can hear the melody of The Angel of Avalon begin to dance out of the Queen of Life. The familiar notes make her grin with joy; despite herself, she finds her hips, her shoulders, begin to move in time to the song’s pull. It’s a happy song, a song made for dancing, and for love, despite the yearning lyrics. His eyes are closed; he’s so intent on playing he doesn’t see she’s climbed on the stage, doesn’t see her coming towards him.

She sings out:

“Still statue standing

My life is a protection

I’m waiting for a crown, a king—

His voice joins hers now: “That may never come—”

He looks up, and sees her, his face crumbling into bewilderment. His left hand freezes on the fretboard, his right hand lets fall the pick. But the song does not stop, the song has taken on a life of its own, it dances on, chords tumbling over each other, furiously racing out into the faery throng, filling the ballroom with a glorious galloping melody that makes her bones quiver, her organs vibrate, her teeth clatter in her mouth. The lake, above, has churned into a squall.

“Sylvie?” Robert cries. She can’t hear his voice over the frantic music, but she can read her name on his lips. But as she steps towards him, she realizes that he isn’t speaking to her, but to the woman who has appeared before him, released from the prison of the Queen of Life by Robert’s playing. A familiar woman, the girl she used to be so long ago: lion-like mane of black hair, the swirl of lace skirts, the draped black velvet cape, thigh-high platform boots. This girl is young and beautiful, her skin as smooth as wax, her face vapid and doll-like, and it is for her that Robert is reaching. The tempo of the song has turned frantic, like an overwound musicbox, the joyful notes stretching into a high pitched howling. Robert falls into Death’s arms, which curve to catch him, as he sinks to his knees. She bends to kiss him; the Queen of Life trapped between them. Their lips meet. And the music snuffs out so suddenly that Sylvie staggers, almost falls.

The Queen of Life lies abandoned on the floor.

Robert Mynwar and Death are gone.

A blazing black shadow envelops Sylvie, drags her to her feet like a ragdoll, hangs her by her shoulders.

“You have brought Death into Faery!” Oberon roars. With a movement too quick for the human eye to track, he has gone from the dais to the stage, and his eyes are blazes of starfire; horns flare from his forehead.

“So I have,” Sylvie shouts. “You stole my love, and now I have stolen him back!”

“I did not steal him! He came of his own desire. They all do! This talk of abduction is rubbish—they call us, we come, and we offer them everything they desire. No human has ever stayed in Faery save by their own choice!” The tips of his antlers brush her forehead. If he dips his head any lower, she’ll be impaled. She kicks out and catches him in the knee with the tip of her boot.

Wincing, he lets her slide from his grip. She cries: “It’s a false choice, buoyed by false promises!”

“A choice made freely!” Oberon hisses. “You humans long for our glamour and then you balk at the price you must pay! You heard him; he said he wanted nothing to do with your ugly world! You are a fool!ˮ

Oberon is right. She is a fool. Suddenly she wants nothing more than to be a million miles away from Faery. Tucked up in her own bed, with a hot water bottle, a box of chocolates, and the snoring corgi. Oberon is still shouting when Titania, now standing at his side, the corgi held to her shoulder like a baby, says: “You fuss over nothing, my lord. Robert was growing tiresome anyhow, and now he is gone. She should be gone, as well! Toss her out!”

“But she brought Death into Faery!” Oberon says again, and now he sounds peevish, like a whiny child. “That insult cannot go unchallenged.”

Titania answers: “And Death, having gotten what it wanted, is gone. Mab shall see to our security better in the future and make sure that it does not return. But first, Mab, harness the hummingbirds. We shall hunt butterflies on Hawthorne Hill.”

The seneschal bows her stardust head and fades from view. The ballroom has emptied; the other faeries have fled. The lake water remains dark, but it no longer churns. “I want my dinner,” the corgi complains, and Titania hushes it. Oberon’s horns dwindle; green seeps back into his eyes. He says to Sylvie, his voice oozing charm: “You are Sylvanna de Godervya. I saw your solo show at Hammersmith. I loved your last album.” He stretches a long arm towards her, index finger extended. Titania knocks the finger away.

“No more musicians,” Titania says. “They are far too much trouble. Come, my lord, let us sup before we hunt, and lie together perhaps. You, human, do not come to Faery again. Here—” Titania tosses the corgi at Sylvie; the loaf tumbles towards her, fatty paws scrabbling. Somehow Sylvie manages to catch it. The force of the catch flings her backwards; a rush of wind fills her ears, squints her eyes. Through the sting she catches glimpses of a dizzying whirl of geography, all the landscapes she and the corgi had trudged through to get to Faery, now flashing by like a kaleidoscope. She clutches the quivering corgi to her chest, closes her eyes to the stomach-churning blur, and then it’s over. Stillness surrounds her, and a wet tongue snorgling her ringing ear.

Sylvie opens her eyes. She’s back at the crossroads, and there, engine still purring, waits her limo. The corgi flops out of her arms, and looks upward, barking. Something is spinning down out of dark sky; Sylvie holds out her arms just in time to catch the Queen of Life before it smashes on the ground. A second item pings Sylvie on the head; bounces off the corgi, who yips in pain—the iron pick.

“Well, that was fun. At least we didn’t have to walk all the way back,” Sylvie says to the corgi, and it mlems at her. She takes off her sunshades and chucks them. She is very tired, and her joints burn like fire. A spatter of gentle rain hits her shoulders; then another spatter, much harder. But despite these aches she feels light as a feather. For years she had lived with despair and loss tucked under her heart. Then her heart was full of roaring rage. Now the despair, the loss, the rage: all gone. For the first time in forever, instead of feeling full of him, she feels full of herself. She laughs as she realizes she didn’t free him. She freed herself.

The corgi runs to the limo door and stands there; it doesn’t like its floof to get wet. Syvlie says, “I agree. Let’s go home.”

“Can I catch a ride with you, pretty lady?”

A tall figure steps into the center of the crossroads, turquoise ring flashing on the extended thumb. Jeans as slick as paint and tiny flowered shirt, opened all the way to the ornate silver belt-buckle, slung low on swaying hips. A toss of hip-length golden floss hair, the solar flare smile. The corgi shows its teeth, shark-like, twisting around her feet, and she soothes it with a gentle push of her foot.

“It’s a foul trick,” she says. “To come in that guise. Turn back into the groupie, or I shall imprison you again. And this time I shall not let you out.”

Robert Mynwar laughs: “Don’t be a git, Sylvie. Come on, get in the limo. You’ll catch your death in this rain.”

“I already caught my Death, Bobby,” she says. She opens the door of the limo and the corgi bunny-hops inside.

“Oh, I know. He was quite annoyed, but he says he won’t hold it against you. In fact, he let me come in his place to fetch you. Wasn’t that kind?”

After tucking the Queen of Life into the seat-well next to the corgi, Sylvie turns back to face Robert Mynwar. He’s still grinning, as though the entire last seventy-two years were nothing but a joke. Even in the drizzling rain, he’s glorious. He’ll always be glorious. He may be dead, but he really is going to live forever, the bastard. Well, so will she, on her own terms, and without him. She’ll match his legend, and then some. The woman who stole Robert Mynwar back from the faeries and then gave him away.

“Sorry, Bobby, I can’t give you a lift. I’m late for an engagement.” Sylvie quickly jumps into the limo and slams the door shut. Robert peers through the window; tapping on the glass, and she laughs, thinking of all the times they snuggled together in the back of this limo, staring out at the fans so desperate to get to them. Now he’s the one on the outside, desperate to get to her. The corgi jumps the seat, snuggles into a circle against her, its warmth a welcome ease to the ache in her hip. She tabs the window down a crack: “I’ll see you later, Bobby. Much later.”

“But you have to come with me…” he says, bewildered.

“No, I don’t. Tell Death that he owes me for the favor I did to him in helping him balance his books. I’ll come to him when I’m good and ready but not tonight.”

“Why are you being so mean, Sylvie? I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

“I thought so too, but I was wrong.”

She rolls the window back up before he can respond.

Sylvanna de Godervya raps on the glass divider and the limo shifts into gear. She glances out the back window as the limo rolls away, but the darkness has already swallowed Robert Mynwar.

“Well met by moonlight, proud corgi,” Sylvie says, scritching the corgi’s ears, and it yawns in agreement.

A Note from Ysabeau S. Wilce

Since it’s quite obvious to me that if Oberon had seen Led Zeppelin play in 1974 he would have undoubtedly stolen Robert Plant away to Faery, I can’t believe no one has done the rockstar abducted by faeries story before. But it appears that I might be the first. Clever readers will quickly realize that Love’s Secret Domain is a pastiche of two incendiary 1970s bands, and their song titles are mostly stolen from that rockstar of poets: William Blake, whose famous painting of Oberon and Titania dancing could only have been improved with a Les Paul in the background. The geography of the journey to Faery is indebted to the British writer Robert MacFarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) whose Twitter feed is a fascinating exploration of forgotten British language and landscape, and ever an inspiration to me. I like this conceit enough that I feel the urge to expand it to a novel; so perhaps I shall just do that. Rock stars and faeries seem a match made in… Faeryland.

Many many thanks to Stephanie Burgis and Tiffany Trent for letting me play in their submerged ballroom.

(And if you should ever see a fat corgi waddling urgently down the road, heading west, I urge you not to follow.)