CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Recondita armonia di bellezze diverse!

È bruna Floria, l'ardente amante mia,

E te, beltade ignota

Cinta di chiome bionde!

Tu azzuro hai l'occhio

Tosca ha l'occhio nero!

L'arte nel suo mistero

le diverse bellezze insiem confonde...

(translation)

Hidden harmony of different beauties!

My passionate lover is a brunette

And you, unknown beauty,

Are framed by fair hair,

You have blue eyes.

My love has dark eyes.

The mysterious art

Mixes the different beauties together...

— Recondita Armonia

From the opera "Tosca" by Giacomo Puccini

A violent storm from the Arctic swept over Lazytown one evening, and Deverhill Manor collapsed.

Sunlight struggled to return during the next afternoon, bursting through irregular patterns of still heavy clouds. Níu stared at the great hilltop ruin of wood and stone impassively. Ignatius was at peace, although he had left his lover and son to prowl the earth as hungry ghosts.

The old hero was completely unsurprised when Robbie passed through the rusty front gate, standing beside him as he took in the sight of the rubble.

"You win," the half-elf growled softly.

Níu shook his head. "This was not my doing, lad."

"I don't mean this," he replied, indicating the fallen palace. "Iceland spat me out. The Huldufólk don't want me. Either they didn't recognise me, or they were determined to discard the last half-breed spawn of their tearaway daughter. For whatever reason, my doom lies here."

Níu stared at him, absorbing this bleak self-prophecy. A feeling of disgust ran through him. He shook his head.

"You truly are lazy. Blessed as you are with charm, talent and beauty… You waste it all on crafting for yourself a disaster far more dramatic than any of those ill-fated heroines staged by your mother."

Robbie could not look back at him. Soon, he stalked away, hoping that he could shut out the echo of those words by returning to his discarded lair.

**

Sunset finally saw off the dismal overcast sky. Tendrils of reddened sunbeams poured through the town, the last smattering of clouds glowing at the edges. Sportacus, who had been still and morose for a maddening length of dim days and sleepless nights, was springing across the damp emerald grass. He lighted on the patch of lawn before Stephanie's window, the kaleidoscope sky flickering in his eyes.

He looked into her room, beholding the little girl hunched over on her bed, staring down at her rose-coloured pendant. It had not been out of her sight since it had first been placed about her shoulders.

"Stephanie!"

Her head snapped up.

"Robbie's back!"

A few moments later, two wisps of pink and blue were flying through the tranquil streets, heading for a weathered old billboard.

**

He had clenched his eyes shut, blankly studying the swirling patterns in the dark.

He started. There was a clanking and lilting echo bouncing down from the hatchway. It took barely a second to recognise their voices. Oh, this was painful. He was surprised that the novelty those two lively little pixies held for him had not yet worn off. He would have to indulge their superficial interest patiently. He no longer had the heart to ridicule them.

"Robbie!!" Stephanie launched herself onto him. Her hugs could strangle a bear.

Sportacus watched the two of them, brimming over with relief. As this morning had rolled in, he had begun to consider searching for Robbie, terrified at what he might have found. Seeing that his companion had returned home without doing himself any noticeable harm was a comfort beyond words. His new aim, as he had outlined to Stephanie, was to do everything in his power to assure Robbie that in this town, he was wanted, cared for, irreplacable.

Robbie gently pushed Stephanie back onto her feet, patting her shoulder. The elf took this opportunity to approach him, but his attention was ignored. Robbie strode purposefully across the floor and up the stairs.

"Where are you going?"

"Just out to the store, while it's still open." His voice was low and hoarse. "I'm dying for a nip of something strong and warming. You guys want anything?"

Stephanie put in an enthusiastic order for fruit juice, and Sportacus made him promise to return quickly.

The little girl hopped into the recliner as the door clanged shut, enjoying the feel of the soft, fluffy fabric. "I'm going to bake him another cake to begin with," she mused to her friend.

Sportacus was a little distracted. "He seemed really depressed… we're all going to have to make a real effort to cheer him up."

Stephanie nodded. Suddenly the two were listless again, and silence followed.

"Hey…" he whispered, his moustache twitching.

"What?"

"Try and catch me!"

In a hearbeat, the elf had leapt up and was tearing across the floor. Stephanie's squeal was partly glee, and partly reprimand. She could not trust her friend not to topple over any of the delicate machinery.

"SPORTACUS, GET BACK HERE!" She cried, puffing after him as fast as she could.

After days of sitting around in his airship and worrying, the feeling of his legs pumping vigourously, reminding him that he was a living, breathing animal, had been too delicious. He leapt over the steel catwalks, wheeling about gracefully when he met with walls and corners. All across the massive chamber he dashed, his young protégé following his winding path.

"Don't… we'll get in trouble…!" She panted.

He cartwheeled through a steel archway into a dark, wide recess lined with doors. He ricocheted off one door, the harsh metallic sound ringing through the underground. The blue blur swept across the length of this half-enclosed space, unthinking.

He barged through the doorway sitting opposite, and stopped.

**

The room was crowded with stools and desks, the desks were crowded with a variety of tools and materials. Out in the open centre of the area, upon the floor, sat a canvas tarp. Upon that tarp was a drift of white, powdery filament. In the centre of that filament was Sportacus' mirror image.

He knew it was some kind of stone, but it looked as if it should be anything but. The sculpture was smooth and sleek, a spirit captured in liquid form and line, silky, undulating, limber.

This second Sportacus was leaping off of a rock bordered by clouds of little flowers. His cloth hat was escaping off of a mop of fine, loose curls flying in the backdraft. Eyes that were still and sightless smiled in a moment of pure joy. The living Sportacus recognised his little crows' feet and the very slight curve in his nose.

He noticed the way the musculature of his arms was flexing subtly. He noticed the way the grass beneath his boot had been flattened. He noticed the slight quiver in his smile, an almost invisible trace of fear.

Spellbound, he reached out to touch the gleaming white masterpiece, and at once felt the ghost of the loving hands that had brought it to life.

He backed away slowly, wanting to take in the whole sculpture at once. He started as the back of his thigh met one of the desks. Turning around, he was astounded further by the mess of journals and loose paper sheets, each and every one filled with prepatory sketches. Some were quite mathematical— gridded blueprints calculating weight distribution and dimensions. Others were freer, more lucid. They recreated his movement, his physique, his smile, his spirit.

Sportacus picked one of these drawings up. It was a pencil study of his portrait, head turned and eyes cast mischeviously out to the side. In the corner of the page, in the same nervous, loopy writing Robbie had used to contact the elf in his airship, was written:

"Would you seize and fix and capture

All his evanescent rapture?

Bind him fast in golden curls,

Fetter with a chain of pearls?

Would you catch him in a net,

Like a white moth prankt with jet.

Clutch him and his bloomy wing

Turns a dead, discoloured thing!

Pluck him like a rosebud red,

And he leaves a thorn instead;

Let him go without a care,

And he follows unaware.

Love, oh Love's a dainty sweeting,

Wooing now, and now retreating;

Lightly come and lightly gone,

Lost when most securely won!"

"Sportacus, you shouldn't be in here."
Stephanie's face was grim. She wasted no time in seizing his arm and trying to haul him out of the room. For the first time ever, she was unable to make him move.

"Sportacus, come on!..."

All he could do was stare down at the paper in his hand.

As the seconds ticked dangerously by, Stephanie's struggling became more frantic. She whimpered, trying and failing to remain composed. The elf remained as motionless as his marble likeness.

From out in the main chamber, the sound of a bag full of glass bottles could be heard falling and smashing upon the floor.

Within seconds a shadow fell over Sportacus and Stephanie, blocking out the light that filtered in from the larger room.

Neither of them could make out the expression on Robbie's darkened face.

They heard his breath, deep and slow.

"Well, Stephanie," he said at length. "You broke your promise."

She shook her head madly. "Robbie, I swear, no, I'm so sorry…" she stammered.

Swiftly and viciously, he grabbed her arm.

"WERE YOU JUST WAITING FOR THE RIGHT MOMENT TO SHATTER ME!?"

She cried out in distress. This was enough to stir the elf.

"Robbie!" He pounced, tearing a spidery white hand off of a soft little arm. He stood between the two, shielding the child.

The light from outside fell on him. His face was perfectly stern, his voice calm and flat.

"I wandered in here by myself. Don't you dare accuse her. She warned me, she tried to keep this promise you talked about."

The tightness in Robbie's posture flew away. He fell limp under Sportacus' fierce gaze.

"So be it," he growled miserably. "Go and share your disgust with the others. Awaken their loathing of me again."

He flung an arm out towards the marble sculpture.

"This is disgusting, is it not, Sportacus!?"

The hurt in his voice softened the elf instantly.

"Robbie—"

"What a crime against nature this is!" His tone was suddenly playful and callous. "The devil has broken the worst taboo of them all! He has allowed something as repulsive as love to trickle into his evil soul! How strange that something with no heart should feel heartbreak!" An angry, ironical laugh roared its way out of him.

Sportacus choked on his unreleased tears, unable to approach him. Stephanie clung to the elf desperately.

"Well? What are you little cherubs waiting for? Go and tell them! Go and and declare my unforgivable offense to the world!"

The stars were twinkling sweetly when they reached the surface once more. Having to leave the lion alone in his dark den, thorn still lodged deep in his paw, was more painful than anything either Sportacus or Stephanie could remember.

**