The Folk Of The Air

Aiffe was on her feet instantly, with the spring of a boxer determined to show that it was a slip and not a knockdown. But the gesture clearly ate up the last of that wild energy that had, in one afternoon, created illusory beings and real storms, hurled thunderbolts, torn rocks and trees to pieces, and broken into a goddess’ sky, where Aiffe had flown as high as any hawk. Now she trudged through stillborn spells on stumbling feet, reduced to picking up handfuls of dirt and hurling them into the air, kicking stones and sand away on all sides. Behind her, Sia materialized slowly—lazily—out of the little showers of earth, the way she arrived out of blood and black stone long ago. She was dancing as she took shape, but it was a different dance this time, and she was different.

“No more,” she said inside Farrell, and with those words the great forest fled, and they were back in the vaguely pleasant little room that Farrell remembered, with the windows full of nothing but Avice

“No more,” Sia said again. Even sitting, she was still dancing, moving only her feet in languid patterns like an alchemist’s equations, as Aiffe moved more and more slowly. Sia’s hands opened to show that she was holding some of the sandy earth Aiffe had thrown aside—powdery bluewhite crystals in her right hand, red-gold in the other. She raised her hands and began to let the crystals drift to the ground. Aiffe screamed, the sound made horrifying by the immobility of her face. Julie started toward her, but Ben barred the way.

Sia smiled. Abruptly she tossed the golden crystals straight up, catching them in her left hand while the bluewhite stones were settling gently into her right. She seemed to be playing casually with the crystals, not juggling them, but allowing them to leap randomly from her hands like dolphins or flames, as they chose. Each time this happened, Aiffe half swayed, half lurched a few steps toward her, and then froze again as if the two were playing some sidewalk game together. Sia was singing once more, and this time Farrell understood every one of the dreadfully gentle words.

With every repetition, the crystals whirled upward, melting together for an emerald instant, just at the height of Aiffe’s eyes, then cascading back into order as unlikely as waterspouts catching fire, not one pebble dropped or in the wrong hand. They were spi

The crystals flared brighter after each tiny, impossible disappearance, and each time Aiffe had dwindled that much more, as if the shining flecks were draining all her substance, emptying her of light and color and will. She was making a sound, nevertheless, a wordless, insect whine that could only have been produced by an adolescent faced with an unimpressed universe. The crystals had begun to form pictures as they flashed back and forth: flickering but distinct visions of horses and beaches, armored men clashing by torchlight—no, those are headlights, they’re fighting under a damn freeway—boxes of breakfast cereal, boxes splitting at the corners with mysterious hand-labeled jars and packets; buses and television commercials; and a loose-leaf school notebook, filled with magical symbols and diagrams drawn in multicolored felt-tip ink. The patterns looked exactly like Aiffe’s dances.

It’s all her life, it’s Rosa