Fairies -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Imaginary places -- Fiction
Then he went on: "But what I'm going to say now is my own idea.
Supposing that everything that happens on the one planet, the planet
that we call Delusion, reacts on the other planet; that is to say, the
world as we choose to see it, the world-in-law? No, no, Ambrose! You
promised to hear me out!" (For it was clear that Master Ambrose was
getting restive.) "Supposing then, that one planet reacts on the other,
but that these reactions are translated, as it were, into the terms of
the other? To take an example, supposing that what on one planet is a
spiritual sin should turn on the other into a felony? That what in the
world of delusion are hands stained with fairy fruit should, in the
world-in-law, turn into hands stained with human blood? In short, that
Endymion Leer should turn into Christopher Pugwalker?"
Master Ambrose's impatience had changed to real alarm. He greatly
feared that Nathaniel's brain had been unhinged by his recent
misfortunes. Master Nathaniel burst out laughing: "I believe you think
I've gone off my head, Brosie--but I've not, I promise you. In plain
language, unless we can find that this fellow Leer has been guilty of
something in the eye of the Law he'll go on triumphing over us and
laughing at us in his sleeve and ruining our country for our children
till, finally, all the Senate, except you and me, follows his funeral
procession, with weeping and wailing, to the Fields of Grammary. It's
our one hope of getting even with him, Brosie. Otherwise, we might as
soon hope to catch a dream and put it in a cage."
"Well, according to your ideas of the Law, Nat, it shouldn't be too
difficult," said Master Ambrose drily. "You seem to consider that in
what you call the world-in-law one does as one likes with facts--launch
a new legal fiction, then, according to which, for your own particular
convenience, Endymion Leer is for the future Christopher Pugwalker."
Master Nathaniel laughed: "I'm in hopes we can prove it without legal
fiction," he said. "The widow Gibberty's trial took place thirty-six
years ago, four years after the great drought, when, as Marigold has
discovered, Leer was in Dorimare, though he has always given us to
understand that he did not arrive till considerably later ... and the
reason would be obvious if he left as Pugwalker, and returned as Leer.
Also, we know that he is intimate with the widow Gibberty. Pugwalker
was a herbalist; so is Leer. And then there is the fright you gave him
with your question, 'Do the dead bleed?' Nothing will make me believe
that that question immediately suggested to him the mock funeral and
the coffin with fairy fruit ... he might think of that on second
thoughts, not right away. No, no, I hope to be able to convince you,
and before very long, that I am right in this matter, as I was in the
other--it's our one hope, Ambrose."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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