LISA GOLDSTEIN

DOWN THE FOOL’S ROAD

And then they were all around her, surrounding her, five

or six or thirteen of

them. Lights like candles were coming on against the dusk; the

darkening street

was set out before her like a banquet. “What?” Amanda said. “Who — ?”

“Come

on,” one of them said, laughing. “Come follow us.”

“Come on, come follow,” they said. They

fell about her like autumn leaves.

“But who are you?” she asked.

“Oh, you don’t know us,”

said one.

“We assure you,” said another.

“Don’t know us.”

“I have to get —” she said.

“— to

work,” said one. “We know. We know. Come follow.”

She worked at night, in a gleaming tower

that shone like a beacon from a mile

away. Phones jangled, printers whirred, fax machines

chuckled softly to

themselves. In the morning someone she had never met would come and

collect the

work she had done. “I can’t just —” Amanda said.

“You can. Say yes.”

“No, I need

the money —”

“We’ll give you countless riches,” said one.

“Lemony gold,” said another.

“Silver like fishes’ scales. Sapphires as blue as

the skin of strangled men. Say yes.”

“I

don’t believe you,” she said.

“No, no, don’t believe us. We’re terrible liars.”

“Dreadful.”

“We’re lying right now, in fact.”

She laughed, a little despairingly. “Then why should I

come with you?”

“No reason at all, really.”

The men and women ringed about her, pressed in

close. They were short, and

dressed in rags and ribbons of green and brown and gold. Their

faces were narrow

and fetal, their ears pointed. Their eyes gleamed. She tried to back away

but

they surrounded her, their eyes as sharp as swords.

One or two of them smiled. Suddenly

it was like the end of a magic trick, the

watch restored to its rightful owner, the woman

sawn in two made whole again. No

one with a grin that wide could possibly mean her any

harm. “All right,” she

said. “Yes.”

And then they were running down the street with her in

the middle, laughing for

no reason she could give. Trees scattered their leaves around

them. Dogs barked.

Overhead the moon lay drowned in a great river of cloud.

They came to a

doorway and darted inside. She must have passed this building a

dozen times, a hundred, on

her way to work, but she had never known what it was.

Crowds of people moved through a

room; dim tattered murals covered the distant

walls. The light was the color of old coins.

A man slipped in after them,

carrying a furled umbrella against his chest like a regimental

rifle.

“What is this place?” Amanda asked.

“Hush,” one of them said.

One of the men nudged

the woman next to him. “Look,” he said. And, “Look,” she

said to the person next to her.

A woman was coming in through the door, sheathed like a knife in a dress of shot

silk. A

double strand of pearls grinned at her throat like a second set of

teeth. “Who is she?”

“Hush.”

The woman pushed forward into the room, walking on high stiletto heels, and

stopped to talk

to the man with the umbrella. They were both carrying drinks;

the woman’s was green as

poison. Some of the tattered crowd Amanda had come with

were holding drinks as well, but

she couldn’t see where they had gotten them.

“They’re here,” whispered a man next to her.

And, “Here,” echoed another.

Some of the wild band clambered up on one of the tables and

started dancing in

circles. More joined them, and then more; they spun faster and faster,

laughing

and singing. The woman with the pearls headed toward Amanda, her staccato heels

clattering against the floor.

“They’ve brought you, then,” the woman said. “Hello, Amanda.”

“What do you mean?” Amanda said. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

Two or three of

the dancers spilled off the edge of the table. Then they all

tumbled to the floor, laughing

and cursing. A small man, his red hair curling

upward like a flame, pushed his way out of

the tangle and saw Amanda.

“Stars and narwhals!” he said to the woman next to him. “You

were supposed to be

keeping an eye on her!”

“I?” the woman said. “Who gave me the

responsibility?”

“Well, look what you’ve gone and done,” he said. “Who knows what they’ve

been

telling her? Come along,” he said, going over to Amanda. “It’s time to go.”

“Go?”

Amanda said. “But we just got here.”

“We’ve got to go,” the small man said. He grasped her

by the hand and pulled her

along behind him, out into the street.

The sky had grown darker

while they were inside. The moon was higher and

smaller, a white stone tossed up against

the black sky. The band ran on ahead.

She hurried after them until she was breathless,

until trees and telephone

poles, cracked walls and windowpanes, blurred around her. They

passed streets

she had never seen before, River Road, Forest Drive, Moon Crescent. Endless

Street, Darkness Road, Way of the Dead. “Wait,” she called out. “Wait!”

Terror gave her

speed; she ran until she was safely in the midst of them again,

surrounded by them. “Where

are we?” she asked.

“Don’t you know?” a woman asked. Her smile reached nearly to her ears.

“Who was that woman with the pearls?”

“Never you mind.” The woman grasped her roughly by

the shoulder. “Come along.”

They turned down Fool’s Road. There were trees all around them

now, their

branches clasping hands overhead in the darkness, their leaves whispering

secrets.

Ahead of them a light shone through the forest.

“Is this wise?” one of the little men

asked. “Who knows what might happen

there?”

“Hush,” a woman said. “It’s the best place,

under the circumstances.”

“Circumstance,” someone said. “Circumscribe,” said someone else,

and

“Circumvent” added another.

“Hush,” the woman said again.

“Circumspect,” someone

whispered loudly, and several of them snickered.

They rounded a bend in the forest. A

castle stood ahead of them, glowing like a

rind of moon. The small band marched forward

openly, not noticing, or not

caring, how hopelessly out of place they looked in their red

and russet fox’s

colors. As they came closer the walls of the castle loomed high above

them;

stars stood like sentinels on the battlements.

One of the woman knocked boldly at the

door. “Come in, come in,” a man said,

opening the door to them. “We’ve been expecting you.”

“Expecting us?” the woman who had knocked asked. “What does that mean ?”

“Go on, go on,”

the red-haired man said, pushing her forward. “It means nothing.

Go in.”

They stepped into

the entryway. The floor was patterned in black and silver

tiles. The man who came to meet

them wore livery of checkered black and silver

squares; he seemed a moving, living part of

the floor. “Welcome, welcome,” he

said. “The festivities are this way.”

“Festivities,”

someone said, nodding. They followed him into the next room.

The room was huge, with a

vaulted ceiling several stories high. A consort played

in one comer; in another four or

five jugglers tossed knives and burning brands.

A group of people sat around a table by an

open fireplace, eating a roasted pig.

The band scattered, some to dance to the music,

others to grab handfuls of food.

An orange cat scuttled across the floor, its ears flat

against its head, a

cooked pigeon clutched in its mouth.

A small fat woman came over to

Amanda. She was dressed in brown, with a high

pointed brown hat nearly as tall as she was.

“A riddle,” she said. “You lie in

her, she lies in me. Who am I?”

“What?” Amanda asked.

“Maleficent

malachite moons!” someone shouted from across the room. He hurried

over to them, still

holding a haunch of pig in one hand. “What are you doing?

Don’t talk to her!”

“Who can I

talk to, then?” Amanda said, annoyed. “You’re always hurrying me

away.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,”

the man said fretfully. “This is worse than I thought. Come

on, let’s go.”

“No,” Amanda

said.

“What? Trust me — You don’t want to stay here.”

The man was right; she didn’t want to

stay. A cold dread had come over her,

enveloping her. She wanted to run, to dance, to spin

along the roads like

leaves. And yet the woman’s words were important: she knew that

somehow.

“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the fat woman asked.

“No,” Amanda said. The man

tugged at her hand anxiously. “What’s the answer?”

The woman laughed. “Come— I don’t tell

you the answer,” she said. “You tell

me.”

“I don’t know,” Amanda said.

“Let’s go,” the man

said. Others in the hand joined them, crowded around her.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” they said.

“You don’t want to know,” a woman said.

“To know, to know,” they echoed. “Let’s go, let’s

go.”

They pushed and prodded her toward the door. The woman with the pearl necklace

and the

man with the umbrella were coming into the room. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh

dear,” said the man

holding her hand. He looked around him uncertainly, caught

between the newcomers and the

small brown woman.

“What now?” a woman asked.

“Oh dear,” the man said again.

“Upstairs,” the

woman said decisively. “Come on.”

They moved toward the stairs, walking quickly and then

running. Amanda looked

back; the fat woman was watching them with level brown eyes.

The

stairs curved upward, white as bone. They hurried on. A few did handstands

up the stairs;

one moved toward the banister as if to slide down it and was

pulled back roughly by his

companions.

They came to a landing and scurried off in several directions down the

corridor.

One pulled open a door and stood as if transfixed by what he saw. Amanda moved

behind him, looking over his head.

There was a pedestal in the center of the room, and on

the pedestal a purse made

of silver rings that glistened like a waterfall. She jerked back

as if the sight

had hurt her. Someone had once had a purse like that, but who….

The next

room held nothing but a scent, lemons and something more elusive,

something sweet. Someone

had once worn a scent like that….

In the third room a woman was singing a wordless melody

like a lullaby. Someone

had once sung a tune like that….

She turned and ran for the

stairs. Four or five of the wild band stood there,

blocking her way. “No no no no no,” one

said. “You can’t go there.”

She pulled away from them. “I’m not staying here,” she said.

“No, of course not. Come follow, come follow.”

They hurried toward the end of the corridor,

some of them turning cartwheels

along the way. A stained glass window stood at the end of

the hall, showing a

stately woman dressed in folds of reds and purples. A darker figure

loomed

behind her, a beast or a shadow. They hurtled through the window, shattering it

into

a thousand pieces, and fell outside.

She jumped after them. They landed together in the

tangled branches of a tree, a

rain of ruby and topaz glass pattering all around them. They

looked at each

other, wide-eyed, a gaggle of birds from no earthly bestiary, and then they

laughed and plucked the branches from their clothing. Carefully they climbed to

the forest

floor, helping Amanda as they went.

And then they were all running away from the castle,

darting among the boles of

the trees, calling to one another as they ran. Their voices grew

fainter,

farther apart. “Wait!” someone shouted. “Stop! We’re lost!”

They drew closer

together, looking anxiously at the confusion of branches above

them. An owl screeched in

the distance. In the dim light Amanda saw that their

clothes were fiddled with holes.

“This

way,” one said. “Toward the light.”

“The light is the castle, you porridge.”

“Toward the

darkness, then.”

“It’s all darkness, except the castle.”

They stood uncertainly. The owl’s

call sounded closer, and then the small brown

woman appeared before them. To Amanda it

seemed as if she had been transformed

from the owl.

“I’ll guide you out,” she said. Her

voice was soft and low. “But you must answer

my riddle first.”

They looked at Amanda as if

awaiting her decision. She shook her head. She

didn’t know the answer; more, she didn’t

want to know. She felt the cold dread

again, and took a step back, away from the woman.

“You’ll

stay here, then,” the woman said. “In the darkness, forever.”

“But I don’t know —”

“You lie

in her, she lies in me,” the woman said again. “Who am I?”

Amanda shivered as the answer

came to her. “No,” she said, taking another step

back. “No.”

“Tell me,” the woman said.

“Earth,”

Amanda whispered. “You’re Earth. And she is — she is—”

“Go on,” the woman said. She

sounded infinitely kind.

“She’s my mother. I lay in her, before I was born. And now she —

She’s going to

die, isn’t she?”

The brown woman nodded.

No one said anything for several

seconds. “Come on, come follow,” one of the

small band said, but it was clear his heart

wasn’t in it.

Her mother. The woman who wore the purse, and smelled of lemons, and sang the

wordless lullaby. The woman in the stained glass window, tall and regal as

death. Her

mother couldn’t die. What would she do, how would she live, without

her mother’s ancient

love and protection?

She wanted to run, to lose herself within the forest and never come

out. Could

she do that, could she stay in the darkness forever, as the brown woman had

said?

Or could she find the courage to face the thing she had been running from,

running not just

for a night but for the last several years, ever since that

dreadful diagnosis?

She turned

to the tattered band surrounding her. “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks

for songs and the

laughter, the trees and the stars. For all the distractions.

But I can’t run any longer.

I’ve got to go now.”

“To work?” one of them said hopefully.

She laughed in spite of herself.

“To visit my mother,” she said.

And then it was morning, and she was walking up the

sidewalk in front of her

mother’s apartment building, the small fat brown woman leading the

way. As she

approached she saw the man with the umbrella and the woman with the pearls

coming

out the door. “I’m too late, aren’t I?” Amanda said.

“No,” the brown woman said. “They

haven’t taken her yet — you have one last

chance. Go make it count.”

“Thank you,” Amanda

said, and went to knock on her mother’s door.

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