…or, Way Down Upon The Swanny River
Iolana was screaming her head off next to me. In fairness, I’d just stopped screaming myself. The wagon was bobbing high on the water, like it was made out of cork. The surface of the river rippled like diamonds. The sky blazed golden overhead. There was no sun. Or maybe it was all sun. The trees on the banks of the river were taller than elven heartwoods, and wilder. Their branches spiraled and zig-zagged like no real tree. The leaves were huge.
The girl sat on the edge of the wagon. She’d grown taller—much taller—and thinner, and her hair was long and dark blue. Shimmering wings opened and closed on her back, like a butterfly was perching there. She smiled placidly. Iolana’s death grip on the side of the wagon loosened and she stopped screaming. She put a hand over her mouth, like she was embarrassed.
“You have good lungs,” the sidhe girl said.
“Who are you?” Iolana asked.
“You tell me,” she said.
“It’s the girl from the farm,” I said.
She nodded.
“Your world diminishes us,” she said. “I think it’s because it’s such a small and cramped place, we have to be small to fit into it.”
“If you can come back here, why do you hang out around the farm?” Iolana asked her.
“I’m bound,” she said. “Do you want to stay here?”
“Not really,” Iolana said. “I want to go back to school.”
“Then I can’t stay here, either,” the girl said.
“Don’t eat anything, don’t drink anything, don’t accept anything,” I told Iolana. I had no way of knowing what the sidhe girl’s intentions were, but if she wanted to bind Iolana in her world in order to stay, there were ways she could do it. “In fact, let’s not get out of the wagon.”
“Suit yourselves,” the sidhe girl said. “I thought you might want to look around a little.”
“The forest is dangerous enough in our world,” I said. “I’m not keen on finding out what it’s like here.”
“But I could introduce you to the green men.”
“We have those,” I said. “I’ve ‘met’ them.”
“Oh, not the things you call ‘green men’,” she said. “I’ve seen those, too. I mean the real ones.”
“Yeah? What’s the difference?” I asked.
“It’s similar to the difference between those trees,” she said, waving her hand towards the bank, “and the ones we left behind. Or the difference between me and you.”
“Yeah, I think we’ll skip meeting anyone,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” she said again. “Really, though, you’re turning your backs on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“I’d like to live long enough to have the opportunity again,” I said.
She stood up, balancing on spindle-legs while walking along the edge of the wagon’s side.
“You know, it cost me a lot to bring you here,” she said.
“A lot of what?” I asked
She paused, like she was searching for a word. Then she shrugged.
“It’s just not something I can do all the time,” she said. “I think maybe we ought to do at least something interesting before we go back, don’t you?”
“Don’t you think that just seeing this place is interesting enough?” Iolana asked.
“What, really?” the girl said. “Just a boring old stretch of river?”
“It’s not like any river I’ve seen,” Iolana said. “Anyway, didn’t you want to see the university?”
“Are you saying your university is more interesting than this?”
“You’re the one who called the river boring,” I said. “If you’ve never seen the university, maybe it’ll be interesting to you.”
“Well, maybe,” she said. “But that’s why I brought you here, for the sake of fairness. So we both get to see something new and interesting.”
“Then you should listen when we say that the river is interesting enough,” I said.
“What he means is, you’ve done enough already by showing us a glimpse of your world,” Iolana said. “Like you said, our world is small and cramped compared to it. Just a tiny slice of yours is more than enough for us.”
“Well, when you put it that way, you do have a point,” the girl said. “But maybe I’m just feeling generous.”
She tapped her foot three times and then jumped up. Her wings caught the air and she bobbed up and down just over the wagon, which was shifting and changing. The sides bent, pulling inwards at the corners and curving like the sides of a boat. The front end narrowed and lifted up. A tall prow raised itself from the water, forming into a graceful neck and what looked from the back like the head of a swan.
“Onward!” the girl declared, then let out a whoop.
She zipped forward, and we suddenly picked up speed. Iolana and I both jolted backwards. The bottom of the boat came up beneath us, forming a pair of seats that moved us into a position side-by-side as the swan boat shrank around us. A pair of wings reached around over my shoulders, folding down and holding me in place. The boat stopped shrinking when it was a cozy size for two passengers.
“What the fuck?” I said, pulling on the wooden limbs.
“Just thinking of your safety,” the girl said. “Mortals are so, well, mortal. You might want to hold on extra-tight for this next part.”
“What next part?” Iolana asked, raising her voice to be heard over the whipping wind and the crashing sound of falling water.
Falling water.
The river was so wild to begin with that it was hard to spot the drop-off before we were there. The boat shot off over the top of the waterfall, hanging in the air. When I realized our trajectory wasn’t at all downward, I chanced a look over the side.
“The falls sure kick up a lot of mist,” Iolana said.
“I think those are clouds,” I said when I caught a glimpse of the ground far below a break in the whiteness.
She let out a yelp. The girl, flying beside us, laughed.
“I thought you’d been in an airship before,” she said.
“It was a little bigger,” Iolana said. “With railing and room to walk around, and cabins inside.”
“I could give you room to walk around.”
“No, that’s okay. Oh, wow,” Iolana said. “Jamie, look ahead.”
Just coming into view was the edge of a towering cliff split by another immense—but oddly placid—waterfall. I thought the side of it was mossy or something until we got closer. Then I could see that I was looking at the tops of trees that were growing sideways out of it, a whole perpendicular forest as vast as the one that was far below us. We had a better view of it than the one on the ground, in fact. There were breaks in it, large clearings. In one of them there was a village of thatch-roofed cottages. Another one had a big glossy lake.
“Is that river flowing up?” Iolana asked, pointing at the waterfall.
“No, just straight ahead,” the girl said as we rushed closer. We seemed to be slowing down the closer we got. It was obvious now that the boat was on a path to smoothly join with the river, possibly the same one that we’d left behind. “This part might get a little bumpy,” the girl said. “I’m afraid I don’t know exactly how it’s going to go.”
“How what’s going to go?” I asked.
“This,” she said, as suddenly whatever was supporting the little craft fell away, and we did, too.
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