“We're near the border,” Wiuyo announced. “I like to go there to immerse myself in liminality. The outside defines the inside and an egg won't ever be a falcon; the falcon is the falcon and the shell is its castle. I want to be the falcon, but I'm starting to think I've been outside all along while the audience guards its egg from me.”
Each branch of philosophy has its enthusiasts. The problems of identity and art meant nothing to an engineer who specialized in road and bridge construction, and so the hospitable terrain, dismayed by the discomfort of its guests, provided a spectacle better suited to his interests. A long line of obstructions, not wholly straight in the fashion of a reputable wall, made of piles comprising some beige, almost bronze material reached perhaps ten Adabans high before them. “What then is this?”
“We'll skip this too. Huddle up. Those aren't even real bones. A fairy spent six hundred years forging them all. Somebody else wrote a song about it before I did. Come closer, that's right. Blang!”
“Those were supposed to be bones? Of what?” As intriguing a subject as that promised to be, Taomenk submitted to the necessity of hurrying up so as not to be left behind, and his attempt to resume the inquiry later won as much cooperation as he expected. Wiuyo had already started through the detour zone, another cavity which contained yet more remnants of a long-departed age. Perhaps that once had been a district of a city called Blang, though more likely she was employing nomenclature from musical theory devised by practitioners to keep their blangs distinct from their blings.
That particular underground district compared unfavorably with the previous in an economic sense to judge by the relative size and density of the dwellings there, lower in the one parameter and far higher in the other. Some of them, four or five stories high, may once have been populated by a dozen or more separate families and individual renters compelled by pecuniary considerations to endure a single, thin-walled room. Never before then had the purely human aspect of Ertith affected Dirant so strongly.
While he lost himself in a mist of reminiscence, Taomenk noticed something of contemporary significance. “Some source is producing light. I will learn if I cannot figure out what. Not moss, not lamps, not a miniature sun constructed as a model . . .”
“Fairies.” That made the second time in a row that Wiuyo answered a question the Adabans posed. If their acquaintance continued, soon she might unfold the entire history of her kind as passed down in lyrical tradition. Aside from that, the possibility of meeting other fairies was startling, momentous, and possibly dangerous. Wiuyo's friendly deportment, in addition to possibly being feigned, might not be shared by other common fairies, let alone the lords, kings, and queens of legend.
Taomenk and Dirant would have deliberated on their most productive approach had not Wiuyo decided the issue by swaggering forward in the manner of an especially eminent bard. Perhaps she was such or else wished to appear to be so. Either way, Dirant caught up with her and attempted to be as unobtrusive as possible by behaving exactly as he did before. Mr. Taomenk for his part pretended to be grumpy and therefore difficult to approach in conversation, also by behaving exactly as he did before.
Again the two Adabans heard a song. In a fortunate contrast, nothing about it encouraged them to ignore the downsides of long falls. It hardly seemed fay at all. The lyrics, clear, easy to comprehend, and boisterously sung, dealt with the typical subjects of work and intoxication, the conclusion being that the former necessitated the latter. A social reformer who listened to that would declare the gap between humans and fairies to be at an end and universal fraternity established.
The next sound they heard join the merry vocals was not a guitar, a piano, or even a lyre, whatever that is. It was not musical at all except in the most experimental sense. The fairies worked even as they complained, and the tools they wielded against rock and earth competed with their voices in volume, particularly when dropped. Eight fairies were digging a tunnel, and directing them was Doltandon Yurvitas.
“Pick up a spade,” he ordered Taomenk. Addressing Dirant, “You can't do much with a spade, but do you see that shovel? I see that you do. Move this pile out of the way.” Examining Wiuyo's arms which were suitable for carrying a guitar and nothing more laborious, he sighed. “Another spade, but stay out of the way.”
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“It is just as invigorating for us to find you safe, Mr. Doltandon. Further, your industry is remarkable. Ah, and now I must say that this opportunity is a blessing for me. Wiuyo the bard, a friend of ours.”
Dirant handled the introduction with such thoroughness that Doltandon Yurvitas considered it unnecessary to add to it, contradict it, or to acknowledge it in any way whatever. He pointed to the shovel. “You Adabans excel at industry when you can look at your gain on paper, but when it comes to something as hard to sum up as your own lives, you lose enthusiasm. Well, I have nothing but my enthusiasm in all this world, and I command you to start digging before we all die down here. Dyai's look! Fairies are faster to listen than an Adaban. I'm going to share my grave with dullards! Pay attention. Pretend I am a dull brown desk if you have to. I know how popular those are with your tribe. Barely did I arrive in an indescribably unpleasant land, an honest challenge to the viewer of it as to whether he can remember anything uglier, than I reduced the first several fairies I met to employees, learned everything there was to know, and was ready to recreate my business here. I've gained simply too much industry among the Adabans. Then, just as I got them in order, here we were in an exit-deprived cave! Life is paved with pebbles of frustration and injustice. I think someone said that, and I will be sure to check as soon as we reach the surface.”
Dirant did not pick up the shovel. “That is a marvelous tale. You have mastered these fairies entirely, or?”
“I have. Why are you smiling like that? And you, Mr. Taomenk. I'd expect you to be in my faction.”
“I am, Mr. Yurvitas, I am.” Concealing their names had become impossible; evidently the mothers of Yean Defiafi told their children different stories. Those children also learned to use family names in preference to the personal for distant acquaintances, but Taomenk belonged to that party which did not believe foreigners unworthy of proper address. “And I think highly of your manpower. I'll finish up my calculations, you can be confident, hand them over, and that's when we'll escape.”
Unsure of his ground yet even less sure why he should be, Mr. Doltandon adopted a more cautious attitude. “I will be glad if I can save you some time by telling you I found all the good tools already. There isn't anything too exciting, not from an uninspired perspective of sheer practicality. A dull perspective as no one needs to be told, but we are under the rule of King Haste, good gentlemen.”
Taomenk shook his head. “A shame about the tools. I did not expect much different, you understand, but a shame. Even so, we may be in a position to show you something you might think exciting, provided Miss Wiuyo agrees.”
“Hold on. I'm composing verses on your joyful reunion. I missed most of what you were talking about, but it wouldn't have fit the tone anyway. I think I have it. Come over, that's right, you too, Yurvitas.”
Out of the dismal cavern and under the sunlight diminished only by immobile clouds overheard, far overhead unlike earlier uncanny realms, Yurvitas blinked a few times and then a few more times. “So that's why you were laughing at me. But gentlemen, is that how we behave toward one another?”
“Not so,” Dirant said. “In Yean Defiafi it is evidently the custom to play the tyrant for the duration of an emergency. Meanwhile, among Adabans the priority is the recognition of danger's source, and therefore we consider it distasteful to tell a man he has been kidnapped while surrounded by his kidnappers. It is not a common circumstance in regular life, but we are among fairies, and therefore worse is to be expected.”
“They should expect worse, I agree.” Even as Mr. Doltandon spoke, his work crew appeared, its members full of grins and empty of remorse. “From now on I'll work you four times as hard!”
“Hurray!” the fairies shouted.
With that resolved, the Survyai and his questionable band decided to accompany the Adabans and their bard, also questionable though solely in regard to whether she had any idea where she was going. Doltandon emphasized as justification the efficacy of his tireless fairies, concerns about discipline notwithstanding, and assured Taomenk that any tunnel he planned, they could make. The engineer in turn promised a short route to the surface, most likely to the ravine, as soon as he gathered enough information. “Not more than a fortnight,” he estimated. “Should be before we starve.”
As much as Dirant and Doltandon have preferred for him to be joking, just as did every manager upon hearing any time estimate, the existence of a workable plan cheered all three humans and soon had them getting along as well as clerks who saw one another as little as possible outside of work hours, not because of any acrimony but from a simple divergence of inclinations. Improbable as it seemed, they discovered a small number of shared experiences along the way.