RIDDLES

I halted just inside the doorway in amazement. The age-darkened, wood-slat walls and ceiling of what seemed a large, oddly shaped attic were encrusted in a virtual fur of ornamental oddments. A starburst of beams and joists descending from the ceiling’s apex were draped in delicate garlands of bright, folded paper. Tacked to or dangling from almost every other inch of wall or ceiling was a mind-boggling clutter: feathers and dried leaves, brightly enameled bells, jeweled pendants, small leather pouches, baroque skeleton keys, bird skulls, butterflies, tinsel ornaments and pinwheels, photographs and tiny paintings, scraps of colored paper covered in calligraphy, elaborate masks, painted egg shells, tiny harps and rattles, drums and whistles, seashells or strung flowers… The inventory went on and on. It looked rather like the sort of thrift store one might find in fairyland.

At the room’s far side, three mullioned windows stretched nearly floor to ceiling, just as densely hung with ornaments of stained glass, crystal prisms, delicate hand-blown bottles and fishing floats—a virtual shower of things made to catch the light attractively.

Beyond this bizarre skin of artifacts, however, the room was nearly empty. Its polished hardwood floor was covered by an immense carpet woven in intricate foliage designs of green, burgundy and gold. Several huge, upholstered pillows lay before the windows. Just right of the entrance were a small round table, two chairs, a small sink set into a short stone counter mounted over shelves, under a bank of dark, hardwood cupboards on the wall.

While I gawked at the room, Piper went straight into this ‘kitchenette,’ and pulled four eggs and a zucchini from a cupboard, then a knife and cutting board from under the counter.

“What is all this?” I asked, waving at the bizarrely decorated room.

“This is…well, its name would be meaningless to you,” she said, “and you are not supposed to be here, really, so let’s just call it ‘this place’ for now, okay?” She gave me a tight, apologetic little smile, reaching into another cupboard for a tall, narrow bottle of amber-colored oil and some spice jars. “As I’m sure you must have guessed by now, your kind is not supposed to know we even exist. That’s one of our most basic laws of life—though after what my mother’s done, I can’t see how we’re supposed to go on hiding from you.”

She reached under the countertop again for a frying pan, two bowls and some more utensils. “So,” she sighed, “if you’ve got questions that pertain to your situation, we might as well get started.”

If…I had questions?

Had my previous body been remodeled, or had I been ‘transplanted’ into some new one somehow? How had either one been possible? Would I grow up again, or just stay like this for good? Where was I supposed to go now? How was I supposed to live? Would her kind help me any further, or was I on my own now that my wish had been granted?

But even these were rapidly shoved aside before an expanding swarm of equally urgent questions about her kind. If they weren’t exactly human like I was, then what, exactly, were they? How many other impossible things could they do, and were these powers consistent, in any way, with the ‘science’ I’d been taught? How many of her kind were there? Where had they come from? How long had they been here? Why were they hiding? … Why should wolves hide from beagles at all? But she’d just as good as told me that we weren’t allowed to talk about them. So…was I even allowed to ask?

Then a really good one elbowed its way forward.

“Should I be afraid of you?”

“Of me?” she asked, her brows arching in surprise as she began slicing up the zucchini. “Why would I harm you?”

“Of your kind,” I clarified. “The wolves.”

She rolled her eyes and pointed at the squash. “We’re having eggs and zucchini for breakfast, Mr. Beagle. Most of us don’t even eat meat more evolved than fish. Wolves and beagles was just a casual metaphor—a careless one perhaps.”

“There’s nothing casual about any of this,” I said. “Not for me. And I wasn’t just asking if you’d eat me. Your kind can do this,” I waved at my body, “and make doors invisible. Why shouldn’t I fear people who can do such things?”

“Why shouldn’t you fear your own kind?” she asked.

“It’s hardly the same question.”

“Isn’t it?” She turned to pour some oil in the pan. “I mean you no harm at all.” She dropped two handfuls of chopped zucchini into the pan, and I was startled to hear them sizzle in hot oil even though the pan still sat on the countertop over no burner I could see. She sprinkled a white powder into the mix from one of her spice bottles. “Asking if you ought to fear any of our faction would be somewhat offensive if I thought you half understood things.” She broke four eggs into a second bowl and beat them lightly with a fork. “Anselm, on the other hand, you should definitely fear—as many of us do. He and his faction are no friends of yours.” She sprinkled some darker herb into the bowl of beaten egg, and turned back to look at me. “We are not all just one mind, or one agenda, Matthew, any more than your kind are. A little fear is wise in any situation, among any kind of people. Even you must be old enough to understand that.” She turned away again to pull a bowl of pale, coarsely grated cheese from a cupboard. “So I guess the answer to your first question can only be yes and no.”

Her answer left me feeling played, and not only because of its ambiguity. I sensed some sleight of hand in its very delivery. But the amazing smell rising from her pan tugged my attention from this suspicion before I could follow it anywhere. How could a few vegetables in oil smell so mouthwatering? “What did you just season that with?” I asked.

“Garlic salt.” She pulled more dishes from under the counter and came to set the little table, then walked back to pour the contents of the sizzling pan into one bowl before pouring the beaten eggs into the pan and scrambling them with a wooden spoon.

Garlic salt…could smell like that? “Okay,” I said. “But, if I’ve got so little to fear, why’d you tell me to go on hiding my real name even from you?”

“Ah.” She poured the cooked zucchini back into the scrambled eggs, and stirred them together. “Well, a name is just sounds, of course. But the sound you’re called before you’ve even learned to talk resonates very powerfully at extremely primal levels. Someone who knows how to pluck that sound in just the right way can cause lots of other things to sing along with it.” And there it was again. Something…shifting sideways in her very speech… “That gives such people far more power over you than is safe, unless you know them very well, and trust them deeply.”

She poured the eggs and squash out of the pan into our bowls, threw a handful of the grated cheese into each, and stirred them one last time, then brought them to the table with a pitcher of cold water. The smell was intoxicating. “Our time here really must be brief,” she said, waving me forward to sit down. “We should move on to whatever questions are most important to you.” Her tone reminded me of a grade school teacher I’d once suffered.

And suddenly I knew what had been bothering me.

“You don’t sound much like a kid anymore.” My attention hung halfway between realization and salivation. “You did, at first. But now…you speak awfully well for a teenager.”

Her face seemed suddenly to harden, like a mask, except for the color rising in her cheeks. “I’ve had a very thorough education,” she said stiffly.

Despite the compelling tug of breakfast, I set down my spoon, certain now that I was not the only well-disguised adult at this table. “How old are you—really?”

“That depends on what you mean by ‘old,’” she said.

“Do your kind ever just give simple answers?”

“No,” she said crossly. “We see things less simply than your kind does, so simple answers leap less often from our mouths.” She looked down as if embarrassed by her outburst, picked up her spoon, then set it down, and said, “For centuries we’ve lived in hiding to a degree you cannot imagine. That fact shapes everything about us. From the cradle we are taught never to speak or act without leaving ourselves room to change direction or withdraw. It’s a matter of pure reflex by the time we’re two. Our meaning is clear enough to anyone trained to parse the riddles it comes wrapped in. All others are left uncertain by design.” She looked up at me. “Are you any good at riddles, Matthew?”

“I … don’t know,” I said, nonplussed. “I do crosswords sometimes.”

She heaved a sigh.

“Okay, so you people like talking in riddles,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind. But, for now, could you simply answer me? You’re not really a teenager either, are you.”

“Well, yes and no.”

“Good god!” I growled. “Can’t you just give me a simple number?”

“Forty-seven!” she snapped. “Whatever you think that tells you.”

My mouth fell open. She didn’t look a day past sixteen, if that. “Is this … retrofitting I’ve undergone something you all do, then?” I tried to imagine a life where aging meant so little.

She looked confused, astonished, then offended in rapid succession. “We age more slowly than you do,” she snorted. “But this ‘retrofitting,’ as you put it, is an extravagance beyond imagining, which I can’t see any of us wishing for even if it were conscionable to consider! You really do have no idea what my mother’s given—”

“No! I don’t!” I cut in, raising my hands in placation. “If the question was offensive, I apologize. Offensive is the last thing I wish to be.”

She spent a moment gathering herself. “No, of course. You couldn’t know. I’m sorry.” Her manner, however, became formal to the point of frosty.

“Among my kind, I am very much a teenager. A particularly reckless, selfish, stupid one, or you would not be here now.” She shook her head in apparent self-disgust. “Our kind often live for centuries. It’s an effort sometimes to remember which era we’re currently in, or even which language we are supposed to speak at present. That I forgot to sound like a girl in your presence is just more proof of my immaturity.” She looked sullenly down at her bowl again. “It’s rude to keep someone as hungry as you must be from eating, and this will be awful if it gets cold. Please.” She gestured at my bowl.

My attention returned to the curls of fragrant steam wafting from my bowl. The food was even beautiful to look at: light jade disks, ringed in darker green, scattered artfully through a fluffy yellow mound of dark-flecked eggs, woven through with melted strands of ivory cheese. I put a spoonful in my mouth, and groaned in amazement. “What did you put in these?” I asked as soon as I had swallowed.

“Oregano, garlic salt, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese. Not very fancy fare for wolves, but filling.”

“That’s it?” I asked, shoveling in a second, larger mouthful. “It’s amazing!”

“You’ve just eaten crap for too long,” she insisted. “And probably not enough of that these past few days. I think the spice you’re tasting is called hunger.”

I didn’t believe her even then. I’ve since had other meals prepared by them, and I assure you, it’s true what the old stories say about fairy food. Once you’ve tasted it, you’ll never be free of the desire for more. I still miss it. Terribly.

When every bowl was empty, she gathered her dishes and stood.

“I’ll help clean up,” I said, standing as well.

“No need. Why don’t you just go sit down over there and enjoy the view while I take care of this?”

I acquiesced with a shrug, and wandered toward the cluster of upholstered pillows by the windows across the room. Falling into one, I patted my full belly with satisfaction as my gaze traveled past the window’s array of shiny trinkets to the scene beyond them.

“Holy shit!” I bolted upright in disbelief, then stood and went to press my nose against the glass, but no matter where I looked, or from what angle, the view below me seemed to be authentic. “That’s not possible!” I said, turning back to stare at Piper.

“What is it then?” she asked, without turning from her work at the sink.

“We can’t have climbed more than a couple floors!”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Of course I’m certain! I’d know if we’d walked up all that! … I’m not stupid.”

Her silence was eloquent.

I turned to scrutinize the view again, but, though it had to be a trick, I could find no flaw in it. The city swept off in all directions—at least thirty or forty floors below me, if not farther. I had an unobstructed view from the wooded, hilly suburbs north of town to the river winding through the city’s industrial south side into more housing tracts, then patchy woods and farmland stretching west to the horizon. I looked for familiar buildings, and found them all just where they belonged. Tiny traffic surged and slowed in the miniature streets. Tinier pedestrians moved like ants, in and out of buildings, down the sidewalks, across intersections. A diminutive flock of pigeons was startled briefly into the air far below me to flutter in a circle before resuming their cornice perch. Weather, light, and time of day all seemed just as they should. The illusion was perfect. But…

“So then,” Piper said, suddenly beside me, wiping her hands dry against her pant legs. “You no longer believe your own eyes?”

“I…did until this morning,” I said. “This is an even better trick than the doors.”

“Is it?” she replied.

“We…spent three minutes max walking up here.”

“You’re sure the walk up was as short as you remember, then? Even your kind can induce trance states that can make hours seem like minutes. Couldn’t I have done that to you?”

“I’d have noticed if you’d drugged me or whatever…” I recalled the stairwell’s oddly disorienting route, its musical steps. “Wouldn’t I?” I added anxiously.

“That was a slightly more considered answer,” she said, approvingly. “And yes, you likely would have—afterward, at any rate. But if this view can be false, then who’s to say the climb up here couldn’t have been too? We were in the basement for quite a while. Are you sure that it, or even the staircase, wasn’t some kind of elevator?”

“I’m…pretty sure…”

“So sure that you’d climb out this window right now on a greased rope only four or five flights long?”

“Was the basement an elevator?” I asked doubtfully.

“There!” She smiled. “You just answered me with a simple, unqualified question instead of some unexamined assertion. You may have some potential at riddles after all.”

“Which matters so much to you because…?”

She turned and sat down on one of the large cushions, waving me to do the same. “I sent you over here because this view is what you must learn to deal with now. I’ve been thinking as we ate. I know you have a thousand burning questions, and I did promise to answer at least some of them. But you can’t stay here much longer, and there are a few fundamental things you need to understand about us before you go, if you want to have any chance of navigating your new life without stumbling into even bigger trouble, and dragging lots of us in after you. So, may I just explain a few of them without wasting more time?”

“Isn’t that…what I’ve been asking you to do?”

“Good. I obviously can’t explain the history of the world to you—a very different history than the one you’ve doubtless heard. So, sorry in advance if this just leaves you with more questions. May I assume you understand that your brain has evolved to do a lot of seemingly effortless things that no dog, or even any ape, can remotely conceive of, much less imitate?”

“Yes,” I said wearily. “I am smarter than an ape. I understand that.”

“Some of us would dispute your assertion,” she parried. “But I’m not talking about smarter here. I’m just talking about different. If I ask you to imagine this room painted green with…say, a giant purple tree growing at its center, you’ve done it before you can even refuse to. Yet almost no other animal on this planet can even imagine such imagination. Their brains just aren’t made for it. Our kind has evolved brains that—”

“Wait,” I cut in. “If you’ve evolved differently from us, then…you’re not human?”

“Human is as human does,” she said. “Barring our divergent skill sets, your kind and mine are far more alike than different in almost every way that matters. We can even interbreed. For most of human history, we mingled as comfortably as different peoples ever do. There was a kind of symbiotic benefit between us once. Things about your kind nourished things in us, and we used that nourishment to create things that nourished your kind in return.”

“Like what?”

“Someday, we may have time for that. Right now I’m trying to answer your question about this view.”

“The view?”

“The one you were so concerned about just seconds ago?”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “But what has all this got to do with—”

“If you’ll stop interrupting, I’ll get to that. Do you think this is easy? Try explaining anything your own kind does to a tribal toddler who had no idea before meeting you that there was anything but more jungle beyond his village.”

“First I’m a beagle. Now I’m a tribal toddler. If your metaphors get any more flattering, I may—”

“Or perhaps we should just go now,” she cut in, rising smoothly from her cushion, “before someone comes, and—”

“No! I’m sorry! I’ll be quiet. Please. Sit down and go on.”

She looked barely mollified, but she sat down again. “As I was saying, our brains have evolved to do a few things yours can’t imagine doing either—which, I wish to stress, doesn’t necessarily make us any smarter. But it does make us able to do things that seem as impossible to you as inventing a blue and yellow beach ball seems to even the most brilliant ape. Follow me?”

I nodded, afraid to say anything that might set her off again.

“Good. As your kind has already discovered, the energy released by a fractured atom can level a city. One thing your kind has happily not discovered yet is how the energies generated and discharged by a few million neurons can also be used. A brain evolved to focus and direct such energy properly can affect certain things beyond itself almost as effortlessly as you can re-imagine this room. The concealed doors downstairs, for instance. Or this view.”

“So, this view is some kind of…what, mental illusion?”

“Let me pose another riddle,” she said, “one at the very heart of everything my people are—and everything you must understand to survive us now. Does it matter whether this view is an illusion?”

“Will I have to climb out on that greased rope?” I asked.

Her smile was radiant. “Why, that’s an almost native response, Matthew.”

“I’m…relieved to hear that, I guess. … So, is this real?”

Her smile vanished.

“You’re still missing the point,” she sighed. “All right, yes, this view is manufactured. Our world is five-sevenths what you would call illusion, Matthew. But knowing that will do you little if any good until you can answer my riddle.”

“About whether it matters?”

“This room is, just as you suppose, only a few floors above the ground,” she said. “But that really is the city, as seen this very moment from the air. Anything you see from here is real, though we are not, in fact, standing at the height implied. So tell me, is this view real or not?”

I wasn’t sure what to say. If we weren’t really forty floors up, then it was a fake, but if everything I saw was true… I was on the verge of saying yes and no, but caught myself in time to deprive her of that satisfaction. “The view is real? The vantage point is an illusion?”

“Good!” she said. “You’re thinking now—dividing the initial question into its components instead of answering as if it were all just a single lump. And you’re questioning your own answers and the assumptions behind them. That’s going to be crucial from now on. In our world, the right questions are likely to help you a lot more than any answers will. You’re a fast learner, Matthew. You may have a chance.”

“A chance…at what?” I asked apprehensively.

“At evading Anselm’s further notice. Or anyone’s, actually. If you want anything like the life I think you were imagining when you convinced my mother to do this for you, you’ll need to make sure none of us ever notices you again. That doesn’t just mean no more exhibitions like the one you staged this morning. It means hiding even more effectively than we do, which seems unlikely if you don’t understand at least a little about what you’re hiding from. That’s what I’m trying to help you understand.”

“First of all,” I said, feeling some of my earlier resentment return, “I didn’t convince your mother to do any of this. Let’s get that much clear, okay? Whatever she’s told you, I had no idea this was even possible until I woke up this way the next morning.”

“Actually…she hasn’t told me all that much,” Piper said. “Only what she’d done, and a little about…things you said that night. She made it clear that I must speak of it with no one else, and then refused to tell me how she even did this—much less why. It’s so unlike her. … I had hoped… Did she say nothing at all to you?”

“About how?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re supposed to explain that to me!”

She shook her head, seeming for once as dismayed as I. “Such a thing should not be possible—even for us. I know it’s not illusion. Anyone could see that much. Which suggests it’s real, but…” She looked very distressed. “Doing this at all violates so many of the deepest rules we have. I don’t think she’s said any more even to Rain, and I dare ask no one else. The trouble this would cause if anybody knew…”

I stared at her, flabbergasted. Not only did it seem that I would not get this thing undone, but now, to learn that it should never have been done to start with—that even Piper didn’t understand how it was possible? … Any hope of understanding—even that small comfort—evaporated as we sat staring at each other.

In our silence, a distant, chirping sort of melody emerged from somewhere. Piper’s head snapped toward the room’s entrance as I recalled the squeaking stairs. “Someone’s gotten in!” she whispered. We both shot up off our cushions. “I’ve got to hide you!” She looked frantically around. “Stand there!” She pointed, nonsensically, at the empty center of the room. “Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t even breathe if you can help it! No matter what happens!”

“Here?” I asked in disbelief, moving to the utterly exposed spot she had indicated. The stairs’ squeaky melody was growing louder. “You want me to hide here?”

“Just shut up and do as I said!” she hissed.