Chapter Twenty-Two

Now this was Fair Folk magic.

And what magic it was - breathtaking in its scope, fascinating in its detail, marvelous in its complexity. Everywhere she looked, as they traveled through the underground realm, it twinkled at her mysteriously, an otherworldly signature that she knew she could never decipher, not if she studied it all her life. It was a language no mortal could speak, beautiful and potent, but eerie. She did not trust it.

Over their heads the roof of the caverns soared impossibly high, studded with jewels that shone with their own ethereal light, illuminating the interior as brightly as any sun. They traveled through lands neatly and richly cultivated, studded with low stone cottages whose roofs were green with lichen and covered in flowers. Strange plants, many of them luminous, nodded at the borders of the path they trod, where, scattered carelessly as pebbles, jewels glimmered, the ownership of any one of which would be enough to prompt a war in the world above.

As they passed a tall stalk covered in what appeared to be winged insects, the stem quivered, and the winged creatures popped off and fluttered around them, squeaking. Fflewddur yelped and ducked in surprise, and Gurgi leapt in circles, snapping at them in vain. Taran, startled, raised his hand to swat at one that flew into his face, only to have one of their dwarf guides give a bark of warning. "Don't! They're just ellies. Pesky things, but pay them no mind and they'll leave you be. If you go hurting one the whole swarm'll be after you in a moment."

"Ellies?" Eilonwy paused, and tried to look closer. A few of the winged things still clung to the stem they had passed, and she bent toward them. It was odd - like the stars you can only see from the corner of your eye. When she looked directly at one, it disappeared, but she managed, by quickly darting her eyes to the side, to get a sense of a tiny human-like figure flanked by fluttering iridescent wings. "Oh," she gasped in revelation. "Ellyllon!"

The dwarf favored her with a slightly more respectful glance. Taran and Fflewddur both crowded around, murmuring in wonder. "I didn't think they really existed," Taran breathed, squinting from the side, as the little creatures began to settle back onto their plant. "What are they doing?"

"Molting," the guide explained. "It makes them fidgety and they're good for nothing 'till they finish." At a nod from him the procession continued, but it was difficult for Eilonwy to tear herself away from examining the ellyllon. The breeze from the fluttering of their wings almost shimmered with visible magic, and it bore the scent of every flower that ever bloomed. It was a heady contrast with the cold stone-and-mineral smell of the dwarfs' power.

Reluctantly she followed her companions, thinking over every bit of faery lore she'd ever read. So far none of it had quite captured the real thing, but then there didn't seem to be any words sufficient to describe it. Given the well-known glamorous effects of Fair Folk magic upon mortal minds, it might even be that nothing they saw about them was real, but it was impossible to tell. And therein lay her discomfort, despite the apparent harmless intent of their guides.

She was sure the Folk would have no qualms about hoodwinking them, not after the behavior of their king. Somehow she had liked him. But the denizens of his realm were something else again. She felt eyes upon them from every direction, not all of them friendly. There was even one dwarf within the troop guiding them who made the hair on her arms raise - smaller than the others, strangely dark; his eyes were dead black with no discernible pupil. His edges seemed blurred when she looked at him, and when he caught her staring he grinned at her in a way that made a shiver run down her back.

Around another bend in the road, a lilt of merry music caught their ears, and they emerged from a cluster of silver-edged trees to behold a troupe of creatures dancing in a circle. There were squatty brown things, with skin like tree bark and patches of mossy fur, tall graceful women with floating long hair whose feet never seemed to touch the ground - and who wore nearly nothing, she noted - and odd combinations of beasts: mice with frog legs, things like winged lizards, and many more that defied description. All were whirling around in a fashion so wild she could not decide if the dance were impossibly complex or just plain chaotic. It was mesmerizing, a tempting, sensuous swirl of sound and color, and she could not look away...

A barking sound suddenly intruded upon her thoughts and something large, warm and solid struck her. A whimpering sound; then a warning flame suddenly flared in her eyes. She stopped in surprise and blinked, feeling as though she were waking up; her bauble was clutched in her hand, but she did not remember touching it. Its light was blazing almost painfully bright. Gurgi was circling her, whining in terror; it was his furry bulk that had nearly knocked her over. She blinked at him confusedly and he rose up to paw at her shoulders.

"The great lords must not go to the lights and the noisesome frolickings!" he panted frantically. "Gurgi smells strong magics and he is afraid. And the great lords cannot hear his warnings! Noble lady's light can help them. Wake them up with lightness and brightness!"

Slightly in front of her, Taran and Fflewddur were walking, slowly, as though in a trance. She whirled to look behind them, and saw they had all strayed from the path without even realizing it. A few paces behind her, the strange dark dwarf was following, watching them.

She stared at him in consternation. In the clear light of her bauble, the vague fuzziness of his appearance gave way to sharp clarity and she realized he wasn't a dwarf at all. He was small-bodied but long limbed, brown as a nut, with sharp features and great glossy black eyes that twinkled maliciously.

Eilonwy gasped, and frowned at him. "You're a pwca."

His smirk twisted in disappointment, without quite becoming a scowl. The black eyes narrowed. "Which eye can you see me with?"

She knew better than to answer that, and anxiously whirled around to her companions. To her alarm, Taran and Fflewddur were nearly upon the ring of dancers. She rushed forward, holding her bauble high, shouting to them, Gurgi at her heels.

Neither seemed to hear her at all until she grabbed each by the arm. Then both of them startled, like she had, as though waking from sleep, and looked at her in a daze as though they did not know where they were.

"Come away," she gasped. "If you join the ring you'll never get out again. They'll dance you to death."

"Yes, yes!" Gurgi yelped. "Wicked dancings are not for great lords! Come back, come back!"

Taran only looked confused, but Fflewddur glanced from them to the wild dancers in puzzlement, and then suddenly went white. "Great Belin," he gasped. "I didn't even...I ought to have realized." He shook his head, as though a swarm of flies was buzzing around him, and rubbed his eyes.

Taran had turned back to the dancers uncertainly, ignoring her tugs on his arm, and Fflewddur, collecting himself, took the boy's other arm in a firm grasp. "Come, come, my lad," he urged, pulling him around to face the other way, "she's right. That's a dangerous business. A Fflam loves music, but some things aren't fit for mortal ears...or eyes," he added absently, as one of the diaphanously-draped female things fluttered past them, wearing a lascivious smile.

Eilonwy flung her hand holding the blazing bauble into the creature's face. It hissed, the lovely, otherworldly features distorted in anger, and retreated back to the ring, growling. Fflewddur was still gazing after it and she shoved him hard in the back. "Come on! We must get away from them! Back to the path."

"Of course," he muttered hastily, pulling his attention back to her with obvious effort. Between them they half-dragged Taran in the direction from whence they had come. A small troop of dwarfs was fanning out upon the hillside, searching for them; the leader spotted them and came hurrying up, his round face creased with anxiety and irritation.

"What happened? You shouldn't have left the trail! Don't you know anything, you great gawks?"

Fflewddur pointed behind them. "Well, it was the dancers, you see. We all heard the music and..." he glanced around and stopped dead. Eilonwy followed his gaze and felt her heart give a queer sideways jump.

There were no dancers. No strange creatures, no music - hadn't there just been music? Or had it only been in her head? Behind them, an idyllic green field stretched peacefully, dappled in the multicolored light. Butterflies danced over a ring of white toadstools sprouting in the center. From the corner of her eye she saw movement; a small dark figure disappeared behind a tree, and a low, eldritch chuckle prickled her ears.

Taran suddenly came to himself with a start, and shook his arms free. He stared around wildly. "What happened?"

"You were almost trapped here for a hundred years, that's what," Eilonwy snapped, clenching her trembling hands into her skirts. Knowing what they'd barely escaped, she wanted nothing more than to drop onto the mossy ground at their feet and have a good cry. As it was she settled for turning angrily upon their guides.

"You're a fine lot if you can't get a few travelers across a few caves without them being lured off! We'd have done as well finding our own way in the dark. King Eiddileg might have a thing or two to say about this!"

The dwarf leader looked dismayed. "You were right behind us until a moment ago. Why would you go wandering off after a reveling? Even the stupidest mortals know better than that."

"Hmph," Eilonwy huffed, suppressing an urge to pick him up and shake him. "It was one of your own tricked us. Didn't you know there was a pwca in your trail? Gone now, of course, the little-"

A long-fingered hand clapped over her mouth, cutting her off. She glared over it at its owner; Fflewddur shook his head at her warningly. "Our regards to the little fellow," he said crisply, addressing the general air around them. "He's welcome to whatever entertainment we provided, I'm sure."

From the case at his back she heard a string pop and he winced and glared backwards. Apparently the harp could not differentiate between tactful diplomacy and bald-faced lies, but the dwarfs appeared not to notice. The leader looked annoyed, and glanced around the valley suspiciously. "I thought as much. He's supposed to be down in the marshes this season. Eiddileg will have his hide when we catch him. Don't worry - I'll split the troop up before and behind you. We'll make sure none of you wander off again."

The dwarfs fell into place around them as they marched back to the path. Taran was blinking hard and rubbing his head. "I don't understand what's going on. At all."

"Kindly lords were almost taken by wicked spells of tricksome creatures!" Gurgi piped up, frisking around him. "And wise Gurgi smelled the danger with sniffings and whiffings! He woke up the noble lady by the light of her golden winkings!"

"He means this." Eilonwy held up her bauble, and returned it to its pocket. "I don't know how he knew to do it, but he got it into my hand somehow. And it worked. I could see everything more clearly in the light, and I knew at once what they were up to."

"But they're helping us," Taran said, bewildered. "Why would they try to enspell us?"

"It wasn't the dwarfs," she explained. "It was the pwca. And all those other things."

"We've done them no harm," he protested.

"I don't think they meant to harm us," said Ffewddur. "It's just mischief to them, a joke on humans. Didn't Dallben ever warn you about faery rings?"

"No," Taran humphed. "I'd heard of them, but I thought it was just stories."

Fflewddur clucked his tongue. "Stories are the vines that grow from seeds of truth, lad; that's the first thing they teach the bards. You should hear the legends about the trickery of..." he glanced down; one of the dwarfs had looked back at him with a scowl. "Ah...what I mean to say is, the relationship of the Tylwyth Teg and humans has always been on shaky grounds. It's why all our names for them are so pacifying. But you heard Eiddileg. He almost didn't let us go."

"I thought he was bluffing," Taran muttered.

Eilonwy frowned. "I thought so, too, at first, but now I'm not sure. Once he promised us safe passage, he meant it, and he'll be furious at what just happened. But I think he'd have been just as happy to keep us here, if it served his purpose." She looked around at their glittering surroundings, which now seemed too bright, too unnaturally pristine, and shivered. "I'll be glad to get out of it. We don't belong here."

The rounded a corner, and a noise unlike anything she'd ever heard - something between a grunt and a squeal - interrupted her musings. Taran's tension fell from him like a discarded cloak; he gave a glad cry and broke into a run. The rest of them paused to watch as he loped toward a farmhouse, where inside a tidy pen, a large pinkish-white creature was standing with its forelegs propped up on a low railing, making a racket to wake the dead.

Eilonwy stopped short, a grin spreading over her face. So...this was a pig.