Mad House Page 5
“The House speaks to me now more clearly than ever before, as one that wakes from a fever dream. The House is free now and it sings with freedom.”
I admit, I sort of stopped listening after the bit about house and island. Not out of incomprehension. Certainly not out of disrespect or disinterest. Rather, my mind was bolting down other avenues.
This wasn’t just an island. It was a piece of Atlantis, and that affected everything. This thing John Golly called House, this was a unique entity, the only intersection between the magic of Atlantis and the magic of Europa, and a living one at that. It was a treasure literally beyond all price.
None of that, though, was the strange part. The strange part was this.
I was going to let them go.
John Golly and his talking House. I was going to pretend like I’d never heard of them. I didn’t even know how to get off the wretched island, nor how I was going to explain myself to King Charles, still less how I was going to escape the Order. But I was going to let them go.
Because I was fae, and the island was part of Atlantis. Because the House could so easily be killed, and there were a hundred people I could name who would do it from pure greed. And because John Golly was my comrade.
That last one, most of all.
I spent long hours in the empty courtyard outside the pyramid while John Golly reconnoitered the island. I have to confess my mind was already working on how I would get back inside the Library to steal something. Getting in was not the problem. Getting out again was. Prospects were dim. I was confident I could fool Fat Bernat—I could steal the mustache from under his nose—but the House was another matter entirely. It was likely to notice.
It was near sunset on the first day that John Golly found me there, still thinking.
“The House has a gift for you,” he said.
“Land?”
“Not yet. Something useful, though. You are owed payment. We cannot give you a royal pardon, but this should give you enough money to buy protection.”
He reached into a pouch and opened his big hand. In it lay a ruby as large as a goose egg. It glowed in the sunlight like a heart.
“There is more to it than size and beauty,” he said, as I took it. The stone was strangely light.
“The House says to show it to the dwarves. They will know how to value it.”
I stared at the stone. Anything of value to the dwarves was going to be valuable indeed.
“Thank you,” I said. “Er, thank the House.”
“You are owed payment,” he said, and he would say no more about it.
I explained to John Golly about Atlantis, the floating continent. The island must have broken off from it in the last days. The pixies were right.
“All the fae folk come from Atlantis,” I told him. “We all tell different stories about how we landed in Europa; maybe some of us came on this island. It must have run aground, and the first wizards bound it, so they could use it.”
“Like they bound and used me,” John Golly said in an ursine rumble.
“The House must have figured out what had happened. You said the island was part of the House, right? When I was down there, I could feel some power I’ve never felt before. It was cold and dead and heavy. When I opened the lock, it tried to drag me down.”
“Me also.”
“Maybe that’s why the House wanted that final lock undone. It needed to get loose. Something was coming up from beneath the sea, and getting into the House.”
“I wonder what it was,” John Golly said. “I wonder if it will come up somewhere else.”
I shrugged, and he shrugged in reply.
“We are free of it now, though,” he said. “We are free of it all.” But he was frowning.
He turned and looked out at the western horizon, thinking his slow ogre thoughts.
“Does the island float now, like Atlantis?”
“It doesn’t exactly float, but it does not sink. It sails. With some practice, you may be able to steer it.”
I watched the frown slide away as he turned this over in that deep pool of a mind. A peaceful look spread over his features.
“I can go where I please.”
“Yes, brother.”
“No man owns me.”
“No, brother.”
He set me down a week later on an empty beach on the Galician coast. Neither of us tried to pretend we would meet again.
“Goodbye, Quinn-the-Sprite.”
“Goodbye, brother.”
I crossed the narrow, deep waters, calm blue under a calm sky, and landed on some low rocks. When I turned around, the island was already moving away. A fishing boat appeared, then another, watching but not coming near to this land mass that had not been there in the morning. Despite the onshore breeze the island moved steadily out to sea.
King Charles and the Magistri Miraculorum both assumed Quinn of Clan Five was lost when the island itself was overwhelmed by the storm. That’s what they thought, and I saw no reason to try to inform them otherwise. I did take the stone to the dwarves of Chur. The payment I received is beyond my ability to describe, but I can say that I never again worried about that royal pardon.
Over the years, from time to time and in the oddest places, I hear songs of the Floating Isle and the creature who lives there. I am always glad to hear the stories. I even believe some of them. It strengthens my spirit to think of John Golly standing atop that pyramid tower, riding across calm seas beneath enormous white clouds spread like sails across the sky, talking with his island-house.
Free.
The End
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