During the day, India is a mild-mannered librarian (and if you believe that librarians are mild-mannered, I have a nice bridge to Brooklyn for sale, cheap); by night, she dons the garb of a writer (a J. Peterman caftan) and produces fantasy short stories and historical novels. Her historical novel, Queenmaker, tells the story of King David through the eyes of his queen; her second, Wisdom's Daughter, retells the story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. A resident of the beautiful Mid-Hudson Valley, India also owns far too many books about far too many subjects.
It's a parking lot now, but in its heyday it was one of the most famous places to grab a donut and a cup of joe in the world. Nine million cups of coffee—that's the figure I read, somewhere. That's how many cups of coffee the Hollywood Canteen served to almost four million servicemen. Men on their way to war, sent off with a coffee, and a donut, and a smile from a movie star.
Men? Boys, many of them. Boys from all over America, from the rocky coast of Maine to the shores of California; from chicken farms and banks, ranches and gas stations. From every high school in the nation they came, lying about their age, eager to join the fight against evil.
My brother was one of them. Does that surprise you? It shouldn't. My family has dwelt here since before the Pilgrims set foot on that slippery rock at new Plymouth. My brother and I grew up running through vast fields of poppies golden as the sun, walking hills that reached behind us eastward to the snow-bright mountains, sloped down before us to the endless blue of the western sea. We grew up in California before it became popular. Before, in fact, it was even California.
Our race is long-lived, and my brother and I watched the conquistadors come, and enjoyed the hospitality of the great ranchos that their successors built. Once we rode our moon-silver horses down El Camino Real from San Diego de Alcalá to San Francisco Solano, stopping at each mission upon the way to marvel at the monks and their strange devotion to a stranger god.
We stood upon a balcony overlooking the grand square of the City of Our Lady of the Angels as the brash new men called Americans rode in and claimed California Territory as their own. And when the magic word "gold" was shouted across the world, and men—and women, too—sold all they had to travel to San Francisco in hope of attaining for themselves some of that fantastic wealth, we only laughed.
"Perhaps Sutter has found the lost hoard of Dracainiel," my brother said, and I answered, "Perhaps he has. Wasn't that treasure cursed?"
"Aren't they all?" he asked.
And we watched as the gold drew more men, and still more, to the land we had long considered our own. Cities rose upon that precious foundation, cities built upon golden sand and unsound rock. But mortals are prolific as rabbits and tenacious as badgers, and even the fall of the Golden City when the earth slid and the city burned did not stop them. They only rebuilt, and the city rose higher and spread broader than before. We rode our own paths from the City of Angels to the City of Gold to see it with our own eyes, and were shocked at what had happened there. The city that once had curled small upon the shore of the bay now pushed itself outward, and buildings soared where once I had seen the masts of ships. . . .
"Wasn't the bay twice that size, when last we came this way?" I asked, and my brother stared, and said at last, "Yes. Men have built upon water. And used no magic to do so."
We rode away from there silent and thoughtful. And by tacit consent, neither of us spoke of what we had seen. What happened in the north was the concern of those who dwelt in the northern groves—nor were Dinendal and I supposed to travel there in the first place. We took shameless advantage of our position as the only children in Elfhame Goldengrove.
And it was still quiet, in the south.
But that too changed—slowly at first, and then, as if some sorcerer had set the years spinning faster, the land changed more and more swiftly. The sprawling ranchos transmuted into orange groves. The haciendas were reborn as health farms, sanitariums, and hotels.
And then the movies came to California.
My brother and I were sitting upon the branch of an ancient oak tree when we saw our first movie being filmed. "Flickers" they called movies then. The men who made the flickers were neither artists nor dreamers. They were hard-headed businessmen desperate to succeed in the New World to which most of them had but lately come. At first movies had been filmed in the East, in places with names like Brooklyn, and Astoria, and New Jersey. But the movie men had learned that in California the sun always shone and the weather moved to a rhythm as set and certain as a pavane. And so they followed the sun, and moved West.
We had seen flickers, of course. My brother and I would slip away from our elders and their courtly protocols and ride the trolley into Los Angeles, where our nickels—one coin was easily kenned into as many as we needed—spent as well as any human's did. We would sit in the dark and watch the black-and-silver ghosts upon the screen, while the organ music boomed and crashed and wept until our senses spun. And afterward we would buy a bag of peanuts, or a box of Cracker Jacks—just the one, to share. My brother always let me hold the crisp striped bag or the bright box as we rode the trolley back to the end of the line. From the last stop, we walked, slowly, and each of us would take a bite and then hand the forbidden treat to the other. Once—once only, we were not utterly foolish—we had dared buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, had drunk it, sip by sip, as we walked toward home.
We did not get home until the next dawn; became giddy and drunk upon the bubbly sweet-dark drink and lay in the nearest field and stared up at the stars, trying to force the Great Bear to turn and bite his own tail. We lay there as the stars wheeled overhead and the darkness fled before the rising sun. The bliss conferred by the honey-poison of the cola slipped away as the stars faded. By daylight, we were ill beyond belief; we walked home very slowly, hoping our pounding headaches would fade before we had to pass before our elders' eyes. The pain of the price for sipping the forbidden substance warned us against seeking again the fantastical intoxication of the senses the liquid bestowed. We continued to go to the movies, but we drank no more Coca-Cola.
The first of the great wars was easy enough to ignore, at least in California. Our kind sat safe in our New World, and awaited the end of the mad affair. As half the world churned itself into a sea of blood and mud, the Elfhames remained aloof—or at least, that is what we were told. In the Holds of the West, in America, it was easy to believe. The country my kin had chosen to dwell in came late to that first battle-fair of the bright new century; if any elf chose to take part, he went to the mortals' war from another hold than Goldengrove. But then, the Elfhame in which I dwelt never willingly chose action over delay. Nor did Nicanaordil, Lord of Elfhame Goldengrove, wish to draw the attention of the great Elfhames to our small one. Goldengrove existed upon sufferance, and a courteous blindness—and on the fact that Elfhame Misthold lay far to the north, in San Francisco, and had no knowledge of our small Holding in the southern hills.
For Nicanaordil had led his clan out of Europe long before any other Sidhe had even begun to trouble themselves over the encroaching mortals. The incursion of William of Normandy's troops into England had prompted Nicanaordil to remove himself and his kin from a land so overrun with contentious mortals. Goldengrove settled itself in southern California, and engaged in no further converse with other Elfhames. Nicanaordil was restraint incarnate; slow to anger and slower still to take action.
And so when Sun-Descending arrived and laid claim to the City of Angels, in the days when the Spanish ruled the human land, Lord Nicanaordil paid no heed to this encroachment upon his domain. After all, the city then was little more than a gathering place for dust, fleas, and dealers in hides that stank so badly even humans preferred to stay far upwind of the masses of stacked uncured cattle skin.
Nicanaordil observed Sun-Descending over the decades, watched and waited as the City of Angels prospered and grew—and Sun-Descending's Sidhe became troublesome. My brother and I overheard our elders whispering that Lord Nicanaordil had almost made the decision to confront Sun-Descending and banish its Sidhe from Goldengrove's lands, when Sun-Descending ceased to trouble our city. Once again Nicanaordil's masterful control had proved wise. Sun-Descending's Sidhe had vanished; no action need be taken.
The other Elfhame that intruded upon California's golden land was Misthold. But Misthold lay far to the north, its Nexus anchored in the hills ringing San Francisco Bay. Lord Nicanaordil had begun to consider what to do about Elfhame Misthold; in the fullness of time, he would come to a decision. Until then, Misthold could be ignored. Perhaps time itself would resolve the question, as it had the matter of Elfhame Sun-Descending.
And just as other Elfhames were ignored, so were the petty affairs of mortals. No Sidhe of any Elfhame would have dreamed of interfering in the mortal war raging through the muddy trenches of Europe. Certainly no one from Elfhame Goldengrove committed the utter folly of taking sides in a mortal quarrel. America might at last enter the Great War, but the Sidhe saw no need to do so.
Then the war ended and for a time the future shone bright as the poppies that flowed over the hills like living gold. Bright and brief as the lives of those flowers; by the time mortal infants born the year the first conflagration ended grew into men and women, the peace bought with human blood had shattered beyond repair. A dark lord rose to lead mankind along the iron road to destruction. A mortal lord, one with no powers save those belonging to mortal men.
"That frightens me more than all else," my brother said, as we sat beneath a bent and ancient oak—our new resting place, on the road home from our illicit excursions into the city. Los Angeles grew endlessly; to find a quiet spot well past the city where we could stop and study recently acquired treasures, could safely banish the glamourie that ensured mortals saw us only as prosaically mundane as they themselves, we had to travel farther and farther from what had once been a city square of hard-packed earth. However, we had achieved a change-place at last, and now my brother stared at the headlines on the first page of the Los Angeles Times we had bought at the bus stop.
"Let me see it again, Din." I held out my hand, and my brother Dinendal surrendered the newspaper. I spread it out on the ground before me and stared at a photograph of German troops rolling through the streets of Vienna. Crowds of Austrians lined the road; the men and women smiled, waved flags and flowers. An overnight, bloodless annexation and Chancellor Hitler had proclaimed Austria to be rightfully a part of the German Fatherland.
"The Austrians seem happy to see them," I said as I gazed at the photograph, and Dinendal replied, "That is what frightens me."
"It's nothing to do with us." Only what any Sidhe would say. Mortal quarrels were meaningless to the Sidhe. What men did to one another in the World Above was not our concern.
"No? I hope you're right, sister dear." Dinendal reached out. "Give it back; I want to read the rest of the story."
"Not until I read the funny pages," I said, and paged through until I found the pages printed with the adventures of such stalwart heroes as Prince Valiant, Tarzan, and Krazy Kat. Feeling the pressure of my brother's eyes, I sighed and looked up, to find him regarding me with eyes that seemed, suddenly, to burn blood and fire. For a breath I thought he Saw, Scryed out a future in my face. Then I realized I saw only the setting sun mirrored in his gem-bright eyes.
"What?" I asked, and after a moment Dinendal said, "By all means, my dear sister, finish the funny pages first. It's only what the rest of the country is doing, after all."
I let that pass, more interested in the escapades of the denizens of Dogpatch than in politics—particularly mortal politics. Sidhe politics were best avoided; mortal politics were mere trivia, best ignored. That was a vital part of Goldengrove's creed, and as yet I had no reason to examine that belief.
Nor did there seem any reason to trouble myself over events so far away, when so many fascinating things happened here in my own domain: Hollywood.
"The Dream Factory," it was called, and it really was. Without one touch of magick, using only their own wits and hands, mortals created movies. Dreams made visible. There was no better place to be, for Elvenborn or for mortal man and maid, than the movie theaters studding the City of Angels like diamonds.
Palaces, many of them were named, and palaces they truly were, ornate and costly as any High King's dwelling. Within their gilded walls, mortals slipped away from the day's toil, grief, or heat. Enter the Palace of Dreams and forget all else while film scrolled through projector and images danced down a beam of light onto the screen spread before you. Silver holds magic; perhaps that explains the sorcery the movies wove. Silver created the film that stored enchantment forever. Silver created gold, for Hollywood's movies were one of America's treasures, a product demanded across the world, a product generating millions of dollars for those who owned the means to create such magic.
It was less than even a human lifetime since the first flickers had wavered across tiny screens in darkened rooms. An infant born the year Sortie des usines Lumière drew an audience of thirty-three curiosity-seekers into its orbit was only forty-four years old during that brief span of mortal time that came to be called, by those who love the movies, "The Wonder Year."
1939.
The year the Dream Factory produced more great films than it ever had before or ever would again.
Ninotchka and Stagecoach. Destry Rides Again and Midnight. Gunga Din and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The Women, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights.
Gone With the Wind.
The movies must have held magick; how else explain the lure the silver screen held even for me? Pure High Court Sidhe, born and bred in the cool world that dwelt Underhill, I should have been immune to the tawdry temptations of the World Above.
But I was not immune, nor was my brother. Perhaps, as the only two who had been born in Goldengrove itself, we were bound to the New World and its ways as our elders were not.
Or perhaps we were simply the first to be raised when the mortals' toys at last became too enticing for even Elvenborn to ignore.
So, 1939—the year I spent uncounted hours gazing at images sliding across a movie screen. Nor did I realize, then, just how prophetic a path that year's movies blazed. Looking over their titles, now, they seem to bid farewell to the past and foretell the moral struggles the world faced. The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Of Mice and Men. The Four Feathers. Beau Geste. Dark Victory. On Borrowed Time. Only Angels Have Wings.
When Atlanta burned, and the gates that had once guarded Kong Island fell into fiery ruin behind the small struggling figures of Rhett and Scarlett, it later seemed that fire took everything of the past down into those flames.
Much later.
In December 1939, I simply sat, mesmerized by the spectacle that had been called—before the first box office receipts were counted—Selznick's Folly. I didn't realize that each watcher gleaned different gems from the same film. My brother saw different things in movies than I did. It was the glorious studio films that drew me; they were the reason I sat through the antics of cartoon mice, the pious instruction in geography, the marching newsreels. For my brother, my mirror, it was the clutter filling the screen before the features that entranced him now.
Dinendal had been claimed by a drug more dangerous than chocolate or caffeine.
An interest in mortal affairs.
We had just sat—again—through a showing of Gone with the Wind, and decided to walk all the way back through Los Angeles rather than taking trolley or bus or taxi. Rather, Dinendal decided we would walk home through the vivid neon city and then under the gem-bright stars. He wanted to talk—and not about the movie.
Dinendal wanted to talk about mortal politics.
At first, as he began speaking of treaties and troop movements, I thought he was talking about a film. "That's odd," I said, interrupting something about Polish hussars. "War films are box office poison."
"War film— Don't you realize what's going on in Europe?" my brother asked, and I stared at him.
"Mortal quarrels," I said. "Don't you realize there's an advance screening of the new Carole Lombard movie in Glenwood tomorrow? Shall we go—" I stopped, for Dinendal was looking at me as if I were a very small and very foolish creature. A squirrel, perhaps, or a particularly scatterbrained Low Court Sidhe.
"Tomorrow I'm leaving for England," Dinendal said, and I will always remember that when he said that, I laughed.
"And how will you get there? On an iron boat? Don't be foolish, Din."
"I'm riding Daydream." That was Din's elvensteed, named after Sir Percy Blakeney's yacht.
"But why?" I was baffled; Sidhe did not interfere in mortal affairs.
"Because they need every man they can get."
"You'll never be granted permission to go," I said, still puzzled, still half convinced this was one of Din's jokes.
"I know. That's why I'm not asking permission." He set his hands upon my shoulders and made me look into his eyes. "I don't expect you to understand, Helainesse, although I'd hoped you would. It's a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done."
I couldn't imagine why he was quoting Ronald Colman's last words in A Tale of Two Cities. "But how will I get news of you? How will I know if you're all right?"
"I'll write you a letter," Dinendal said. "You know, those things that are always getting lost in the movies, or falling into the wrong hands and causing incredible problems?"
"This isn't a movie, Din," I said. "You aren't Captain Blood or—or Robin Hood."
"No, this isn't a movie. This is real life. That's—"
"But it's not our real life. It's mortal life. What does it matter what they do to one another?"
"Helainesse, haven't you learned anything from all the hours we've spent watching the movie shows? Hasn't what's happening in Europe made any impression on you at all?"
"It's a war," I said. "There was a mortal war over there before, and you didn't think you had to go fight in that one."
"That was different," Dinendal said, and something in his voice sounded soft and familiar; wistful. Only later, when he was gone, did I realize my brother had spoken with the elegiac self-knowledge of the characters portrayed by Din's favorite actor, Leslie Howard. The Scarlet Pimpernel; Professor Higgins; Ashley Wilkes.
"I don't see why it's different."
"Because of why and how it is being fought. The Nazis will never stop, they must fight or die. And they destroy all who are not as they would have them be. The Jews were only the first on Hitler's list. It doesn't stop with his ethnic prejudices. Writers, painters, scientists—the great minds of Europe. Think of the imaginations lost, if the Nazis emerge victorious. And sooner or later, if they are not stopped, they will turn their attention to the Sidhe."
"Mortals don't know about us," I declared, and Dinendal laughed.
"Herr Schicklgrüber does, or will. He—"
"Who?"
My brother sighed. "Hitler. Don't you know he's obsessed with 'the Occult?' He seeks the Spear of Longinus, the Cauldron of Cerridwen, the Holy Grail. Should his armies win this war, he will certainly seek until he either finds us or drives us Underhill for so long as his Reich endures. So don't say this isn't our fight, Helainesse. This is everybody's fight."
For a time, neither of us spoke. At last I said, "But what will you do?"
"Whatever I can. Against darkness, we all do what we must, little sister. Here, take this—it's the key to your post office box. Farewell."
We had reached our outpost oak, and Daydream stood waiting. Dinendal handed me a small brass key, and kissed my forehead before he mounted Daydream.
That was the last time I saw Dinendal, as he rode off into his short future. For Sidhe are long-lived, but we can be killed, if someone tries hard enough. And someone did.
Much, much later I pieced enough of Dinendal's life in the SOE together to produce a story that held a certain coherent plausibility, an iron logic.
In London, Din met with Sainemelar, leader of the rogue Elfhame Moonfleet. Sainemelar's mission was to recruit Sidhe to aid the Allies; even before the war had truly begun, Sainemelar had foreseen what would come to pass, and begun to spin plots of his own. Perhaps Sainemelar, like Dinendal, had watched too many movies, been infected by their insidious sweet venom. Human honor should have meant nothing to either of them.
For the first time in centuries, a Sidhe returned to England, founded an Elfhame there. Sainemelar sent messages to all the Elfhames, seeking those willing to aid the beleaguered Allies against the iron might of the Axis. Sidhe who had accepted the belief that the war against Nazi Germany was everyone's war left their own hames and swore fealty to Moonfleet. It was Sainemelar who introduced Din to William Stephenson, the man code-named "Intrepid."
A complete pragmatist, William Stephenson accepted the knowledge that elves existed and wished to enlist in the struggle to free Europe from the evil engulfing it with one simple question: "What powers do you have?" Upon learning that Sidhe could set a glamourie upon beings and objects, ken one item into many, force others to see what the Sidhe wished them to see, Stephenson promptly accepted Moonfleet's offer. The fact that Sidhe never slept delighted him. What wonders could an agent who never needed sleep not accomplish?
That Sidhe could not touch iron, and so found it difficult, if not impossible, to ride in cars or airplanes, was a drawback. An even greater drawback was their inability to handle guns or knives. But SOE circumvented this problem, producing guns and blades made of new materials. Iron was no longer a necessity. As for the problem of transport by plane—that the Sidhe themselves circumvented.
Upon the next moonless night, the first cell of Moonfleet operatives rode their elvensteeds across the Channel to Occupied France.
My brother Dinendal was one of them.
There's an old adage that says no battle plan survives its first contact with the enemy. In the case of the Moonfleet brigade, the original plan would have worked, except for the lack of one fatal piece of information.
The Unseleighe Court had decided to play too.
My brother and his comrades rode over the Narrow Sea; rode the River Seine through the heart of Occupied France to Paris. Moonfleet One remained there, to work with the Paris Underground. The others journeyed on, east to the heart of the growing darkness.
To Berlin.
Dinendal rode with Moonfleet Two. No mortal eyes saw lords of the Sidhe pass by; those clever enough to notice them at all saw S.S. officers trotting past on horses black as the uniforms their riders wore. Horses were still used as a mode of transport, even then—and no one but the Gestapo would dare hinder or question the Death's Heads.
Outside Berlin, Moonfleet Two slowed, slipping into the world's time once more. Unlike their comrades who had stopped in Paris, they did not change the glamour they wore. Sidhe pride and beauty made a good foundation for the disguise—and in wartime Berlin, S.S. officers were a privileged class. Watched by passersby with both envy and fear, my brother and his comrades rode up Unter den Linden to the Brandenburg Gate.
There they were to disperse, head for their individual assignments. A squad of S.S. officers on horseback would ride through the broad gate; lowly civilians on bicycles and soldiers on foot would emerge on the other side. Dinendal, in the seeming of a head clerk, was to go to Gestapo Headquarters. Din had studied the man's photographs carefully, practiced assuming the man's features swiftly and accurately. The others had similar assignments. And once within whatever bureau or department they had been allotted, they would gather information when and how they could. Troop movements, factory outputs. Train schedules.
And whenever the time and place seemed propitious, they were to assume the seeming of the Leader himself. That Hitler had many doubles to confuse enemies as to his true whereabouts was an open secret. Now that ruse could be turned against him.
No one would question the presence of Der Führer—no matter where he chose to appear. No one would question Der Führer's order—no matter how bizarre that order might seem to be.
But that brilliant play was never made. My brother's group reached the Brandenburg Gate, and passed through it. And as they walked through, their glamouries shimmered, faded like mist from a chilled mirror. They emerged to face a smiling Lord of the Unseleighe Court clad in Gestapo grey, and a squad of S.S. men who opened fire with machine guns.
Half of Moonfleet Two fell then; iron bullets will kill anything. They were the fortunate ones. The rest were taken prisoner, trapped by Unseleighe magic and held by nets of iron chain.
Dinendal had been the last to ride through the Brandenburg Gate. He had a heartbeat's warning; just enough to let him turn Daydream and flee back through the massive gate, to send his elvensteed into Underhill, beyond the Unseleighe spell. Knowing he had but one chance, Din rode, not to Paris where Moonfleet One worked in ignorance of this new threat, but back across the Channel to England. His elvensteed turned to stone when at last they stopped; an Unseleighe elf-dart had struck Daydream before the leap into Underhill, and the dart's poison had spread too far for even magick to cure. And by the time SOE got on the radio to warn the Paris Underground, half Moonfleet One had been taken and the rest had scattered across France. But Din got the news to Intrepid that the Unseleighe Court played the Germans' game.
And then he went back.
This time a wooden fishing boat carried Din across the choppy waters of the English Channel. His elvensteed was dead, so he must travel at mortal pace. And no matter what enemies waited across the water, Occupied Europe needed Din's Sidhe-born skills.
He lasted thirteen weeks, and in that span of time, he and the Resistance cell he worked with destroyed half a dozen truck convoys, twenty miles of railroad tracks, and stole back the da Vinci painting that was on its way to Karinhall at the personal "request" of Reichsmarschall Goering. Din's group also blew up the engine of a train whose boxcars carried cheese, wine, and ammunition to the troops on the Russian front. The last car held even more precious cargo: a hundred Jewish children destined for the camps. Din had saved their lives; all knew that Death lay to the east.
It was from one of the children, later, that I learned how my brother had lived his last days. She had been twelve, old enough to understand, and to remember. Liberated from the death car, she remained with Din's group; as they were less likely to be stopped by the increasingly suspicious Germans, children were useful as messengers and go-betweens.
"He talked to me," Rosa told me many years afterward. "Talked as if I were his sister, or his—his diary. He told me everything, and sometimes he made me repeat it back, to make sure I really remembered what he'd said."
"Did he tell you he was—"
"An elf?" she finished, and smiled. "Yes, toward the end he told me that. He didn't need to; we all knew he was—" she paused, and then settled on "—a strange one. Some of the group thought he might be an angel sent from Heaven. Some thought he might be a vampire. And some thought British Intelligence had created some sort of superman, using captured German technology. But you know what? As long as he helped us beat the Germans, we didn't really care what he was."
Din evaded the Germans for three months before the Unseleighe Court slammed the weight of its malice down upon him like a tiger's paw. Aided by the S.S.'s willingness to exchange human blood for Unseleighe magicks, the Unseleighe Court flung a geas over the city in which Dinendal and his group operated. A simple magical command: Show your true self.
That was the end, for Din. Agents, spies, should be inconspicuous, their faces so bland they might be anyone, or no one. Sidhe are not bland, nor are we inconspicuous. Unable to hide behind a glamourie, to appear to seeking eyes as no more than an average Frenchman, my brother knew he had little time left.
He might have left Paris. He could have slipped away, traveled until he could disguise himself once more. Instead, Din set himself up as a target, a lure to entice the Germans away from the men and women of the Resistance. As a result, the elaborate trap set by Unseleighe and Gestapo closed upon only one, rather than upon many. The Gestapo took Dinendal.
But they never did make him talk.
"We got news from one of the janitors who cleaned Gestapo headquarters," Rosa told me. "The Germans thought the man a collaborator, but he was one of us, and his German was excellent. He told us that your brother never broke, never said a word, no matter—" She paused, plainly trying to think of a tactful way to finish what she had begun. We both knew there wasn't one.
"No matter what they did to him," I said at last, and she nodded.
My brother died there, in Gestapo Headquarters in Paris. The Germans shot him, Rosa told me; he died bravely. He died quickly. Perhaps she was telling the truth.
"He saved all our lives, and the lives of many others," she said. "I—we all loved him. We would have died for him, if it would have helped." She hesitated, and then reached into her handbag and pulled out a postcard. "He gave me this, to give to you, if I lived to do it. A thing not certain in those days—"
The postcard was stained and smudged; the message had been written in pencil and could hardly be seen now. Having wonderful time, the message read, glad you're not here. Your skills are needed at home. That was all. No salutation, no signature, nothing to reveal anything about the writer or the recipient. I turned the card over and stared at a picture of the Eiffel Tower.
"If I may ask—" Rosa spoke hesitantly now; taking my silence for assent, she went on, "Of course I have read it, read it many times. It was the last thing he wrote. It has meaning for you?"
"Yes," I said, "And as you may see him again before I do, tell him that he was right. They were."
Before Dinendal went away, he had gone to the Hollywood Post Office, and purchased the use of a post office box. It was small, just big enough to hold letters, and I wrapped the key he had given me the night he left in green silk and wore it in a silver locket on a silver chain about my neck.
At first, I received a letter a week from Din, long, chatty, amusing missives that said, when I read them over closely, almost nothing. He was well; England was a green and pleasant land; the food was called things like toad-in-the-hole and the beer was served warm as soup. About the Sidhe of England, or about what he was doing, he wrote, If all goes well, Helainesse, I'll tell you about it afterwards.
The letters from Din became less frequent, after that, and at last stopped altogether. I still visited the post office box each week, but I no longer expected to see an envelope from England waiting for me there.
The Japanese bombed a naval base in Hawaii called Pearl Harbor, and America entered the war openly. Men rushed to join the Army, the Navy, the Marines. Suddenly when I walked through the streets of Los Angeles or Hollywood, I was surrounded by men in uniforms so new they seemed polished. Rationing was instituted, too, but that certainly did not affect the Sidhe of Goldengrove. Nothing about the war did, really; I was the only one who troubled to read newspapers. I still hoped to find a hint of where Dinendal was, and what he was up to.
A few months after Pearl Harbor, I walked to the post office and opened my mailbox. Two envelopes waited inside. For a moment I couldn't move; it had been so long since Din had written that now I hardly knew how to react. Then I drew a deep breath and pulled the letters out of the mailbox.
One envelope was a flimsy, lightweight thing addressed to me in Din's unmistakable elegant scrawl. The other bore a return address in New York City; my name and address were typed. Suddenly cold, I opened that one first.
My dear Miss Goldengrove, It is with the deepest regret that I must inform you that your brother is missing in action and must be presumed dead . . . heroic dedication . . . line of duty . . . highest tradition of the service . . . The words seemed to slip, to fade; I could barely read them.
I felt arms around me; the postmistress had come out from behind the counter and held me tight. "I hate those letters," she said. "I got one twenty years ago. I hate those letters. You go ahead and cry, honey. You need to."
I read nothing more then, and I don't remember how I got to our private stopping-place on the road home to Goldengrove. Somehow I was sitting there beneath our oak, reading the letter from Stephenson again. I read it three times, and it still said the same thing. Dinendal was lost forever.
At last I summoned the strength to slit open the other letter, the letter from Din. I spread the thin paper over my knees and forced my eyes to remain clear as I read.
Fair Sister, I have just returned from Berlin, where I and my comrades were ambushed by the Unseleighe Court, which has joined its fortunes to those of the Third Reich. You must warn Underhill. I cannot; I am going back across the Channel as soon as possible; my skills are needed desperately now. Your skills, too, are needed. Help as you can. We all do what we can, these days. And warn Underhill!
I tried, but Lord Nicanaordil had little interest even in Sidhe affairs, and none at all in those of mortals. The Unseleighe Court might do as it would; Germany was far away. In my grief and anger, I swore I would leave Goldengrove, join the ranks of Moonfleet as Dinendal had done and hunt down the Unseleighe Court myself.
"No, child, you will not." It was a command—a command Nicanaordil enforced with a geas that bound me to go no farther than I had set my feet during the time that had passed between the last full moon and this moment. I was trapped, held as firmly as if bound with chains of iron. If I had not been, my answer to Sir William's next letter, cautiously asking if "Miss Goldengrove" held the same strong views as her brother had; if she would be willing to be of use to the Great Cause, would have been different. At first I thought I would not answer at all. Then I wrote one short line: "I cannot."
My luck held only in that since the last full moon and this moment, I had walked the City of Angels from near to far and back again. It was within that city that I spent my time now, pacing through its streets like a pard mourning its mate. I might be indulging my grief still, had I not bumped into those who needed skills I could provide—literally. Paying little attention to where I walked, I barely noticed a line of men waiting to enter a nondescript white building. Only when forced to halt by the line of bodies did I take the time to see what lay before me. Men in the uniforms of all America's services stood waiting, and when I roused myself to ask what drew them here, the response nearly deafened me as the dozen nearest all tried to explain at once.
The Hollywood Canteen for Service Men read the sign over the door.
And as I read that, I knew I'd found a small task I could do, a way to try and fulfill Dinendal's last request. I could not build airplanes, or manufacture guns, or gather scrap iron. And though I did not realize it that first day, there was a task waiting that only I could do, one for which my skills might have been created.
Almost forgotten now, except as a cobbled-together movie showcasing the stars who worked there, the Hollywood Canteen was one of the Dream Factory's greatest productions. One with a truly all-star cast.
It's said John Garfield thought of it—and more important, thought of casting Bette Davis as its president. She found the location—a former nightclub called The Old Barn because once it had been a livery stable—and went to the unions, asking them to do her bidding. And they did; there was power in those Bette Davis eyes.
The building was remodeled by studio workmen. Cartoonists and artists painted murals on the walls. And on a gala night in October of 1942, The Old Barn became the Hollywood Canteen.
The Canteen was for enlisted men; a star-studded sendoff for our men in uniform. To work there as a hostess, a cook, a dishwasher, was a mark of pride. At the Canteen, the coffee and donuts were beside the point. The chance to dance your night away in a movie star's arms was the real draw.
Everyone still left in Hollywood—for many of the male stars had enlisted, some even before America entered the war—joined together to make the Canteen work. Movie stars alone couldn't do it. The Canteen needed an endless series of hostesses.
Movie stars, debutantes, party girls, girls next door. And one girl from Underhill. I had no trouble at all gaining one of the coveted assignments as a Canteen hostess.
Once I began work at the Canteen, it filled the time that had been spent grieving mindlessly. There was always something that needed doing, if only the dishes. The sultry Hedy Lamarr, unable to cook, washed dishes there; Henry James and his orchestra were just one of the bands that played so servicemen could swing. Studio secretaries, pretty as beauty queens, sat ready to type up letters to home. Nothing too good for our boys.
The stars turned out faithfully to entertain the troops—but even Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner were powerless to create stars that could be everywhere at once. And the night Betty Grable couldn't make her shift, I finally found my own way of doing my bit for the war effort. I saw a burly kid's eyes shine with tears because Betty Grable had been supposed to be there and now he wouldn't see her. "And I'm shipping out tomorrow. This is my last chance. My last chance."
Shipping out tomorrow to the Pacific Theater, to fight in heat and mud and snakes against an enemy fierce as the sharks swarming in warm ocean waters below cold iron ships. And all he wanted was to see Betty Grable before he sailed off—
Help as you can. We all do what we can, these days.
"No it isn't," I said. "I think I see her now. I'll go check." I slipped away through the press of uniformed bodies and walked through the crowd, circling back until I could tap the young soldier on his shoulder.
"Hello," I said as he turned, "I understand you're looking for me?"
He stared into Betty Grable's bright blue eyes; turned red as Flanders poppies as Betty Grable turned on her thousand-watt smile. "Gosh," he said at last, "you sure are glamorous."
"Oh, honey," I said in Betty Grable's famous sweet-tart tones, "you don't know the half of it!"
The kid who had only wanted to see Betty Grable got to dance with her, and hold her real close. In a movie, I'd be able to tell you what happened to him—how he survived the war and I saw him selling movie tickets at Graumman's Chinese; how he died saving his buddies from a Jap ambush, and his last words were "Betty Grable kissed me." But the truth is I don't know. I don't remember his name.
And that night, all I thought was that at least the poor mortal kid would die thinking Betty Grable had kissed him.
Betty Grable kissed a lot of poor mortal kids, after that. So did Marlene Dietrich, Gene Tierney, Greer Garson, Olivia De Havilland, and Hedy Lamarr. No one ever seemed to notice that the stars appeared more often—or even that they might be in two places at once. The Canteen was always so jammed with servicemen it was hard enough to tell who was there under the best of circumstances. The stars were there; I just made sure there were enough stars to shine on as many men as possible.
And there were a lot of men—supposedly the Canteen could only hold five hundred, but we served a couple of thousand men a night. We hated to turn anyone away. A hundred thousand servicemen a month came through the Canteen's doors for free coffee, cake, and cigarettes. Two bands played every night.
And I worked there every night from the time I volunteered until the war ended at last. I spent little time Underhill during the war years; there was no service I could offer there.
The war ended in August. The Canteen closed in November. And I returned to Underhill, to find no one and nothing changed.
"Ah, you have returned, child," Nicanaordil said. "Now you see how useless it is to interfere in the affairs of mortals."
"Yes," I said, and thought of Dinendal dying in faraway France for a race not even his own. "Yes, my lord, I see just how useless it is to interfere."
Pleased with my submission, Lord Nicanaordil removed the geas that had bound me to the City of Angels. But it did not matter. With the Canteen gone, my service had ended. I had done as my brother had asked.
We all do what we can.
After the war was over, the Canteen closed, I found myself restless—restless as a mortal. To amuse oneself with a hobby was acceptable behavior; I made mine a study of the movies, and the war, analyzing the interplay between reel and real life. Without the movies, would Dinendal have absorbed the morals of mortals? Did the movies, the stars, create a new form of magick, one even the Sidhe could not resist? I generated lists of facts.
On December 28, 1895, Lumière's Cinematograph sold thirty-three tickets, at a cost of one franc each, to Leaving the Lumière Factory and ten other short filmed scenes. Two weeks later, Sir William Stephenson was born, the man who would head British Intelligence during World War II.
There really didn't seem to be a connection, other than coincidence.
I had another letter from Stephenson, after the war. He had understood my curt reply to his request for my help during the war; understood the difference between "will not" and "cannot." Now he asked if I would be interested in accepting a role in the new Great Game played once more between England and Russia—and America too, now.
But the intricacies and shadows of the Cold War reeked too much of mortal greed; I heard no soundless bugles play. This shadow war was not a thing for movies, or for me. It did not—and here I found myself surprised, for emotion is not something natural to us—it did not move me. I could not imagine Dinendal riding off on Daydream, the elvensteed he had named after the Scarlet Pimpernel's brave yacht, to engage this new inchoate enemy.
So I wrote politely back, and said, No, I will not. And then, to continue my study, I asked Stephenson if my brother had ever met Leslie Howard, during his time in England. The answer came, in the last letter I had from Sir William.
"Yes, they met. They spent an afternoon together at Bletchley. They walked off and stood talking under a tree. I don't know what they talked of. I was glad to be able to introduce them. Your brother was very keen on Howard's films."
So reel and real life had touched, woven together. Which might mean nothing. Still, I found it confirmation of the rumors that Howard had worked for British Intelligence, during the war; that when the commercial plane upon which he had been a passenger during a flight from Lisbon to London had been shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German fighters, it had been Howard who was the target.
The fact that when this news reached Berlin, the Nazi newspaper Der Angriff's headline trumpeted Pimpernel Howard Has Made His Last Trip! showed how deeply the movie magick had corrupted reality. Pimpernel Smith, Howard's last film—about an Englishman who rescued artists and scientists from the Nazis—had deeply offended the Reich's High Command. They had not cared for "Professor Smith's" statement that they were barbarians, and doomed ones at that. But Josef Goebbels, the Reichsminister of Propaganda who had been in charge of the German news media, was half mad at best.
Still, I continued to examine my thesis. I had spent close time with movie stars, and for the most part, they seemed like mere mortals in person. Only on the screen did they glow like gods—or like Sidhe. Some magick unknown to the Sidhe? A trick of the klieg lights and star lenses?
Or something more? Something mortal, and all the more magickal for its fragility?
Recently I read an anecdote about that tragic mortal goddess, Marilyn Monroe. An interviewer walked down a New York City street with her, and she walked unnoticed. When he commented on the lack of interest from the passersby, she said, "Oh, do you want to see me be her?" And within a few steps, all heads were turning and people were coming up to fawn upon Marilyn Monroe.
Magick? Or not?
And why should it matter at all to me? Except that that magick ensorcelled my brother—and, I feared, me as well. When I had read Stephenson's request, there had been a moment when I thought, No. Not now. Not for this. A moment when I cared.
We are not supposed to care, we Sidhe. But Dinendal had cared, and now I knew that I could, too.
There is mortal magick in those tales the movies weave.
I still walk the City of Angels; it is my home, after all. And sometimes, when I pass the parking garage just off Sunset Boulevard on the plot of land where the Hollywood Canteen once stood, I stop, and stare at the ugly structure, and remember being movie magick for mortal men going off to war.
There are things that are worth doing, even for the Sidhe. Someday, if I am unlucky enough, there will be another cause that will make me care, and act.
Until then, there are the movies.
Dreams waiting in the dark.