by Marcy Wilson-Cales

Yet, at the same time, he could not help but be secretly proud of his newest accomplishment...as long as he didn't have to FLY. But Julia and Willie both had assured him that enough people had the fear (and reasonable that fear was) of that mode that his refusal would brook no questions.

Thinking of Julia reminded him of his reason for traveling in late December, and he straightened the high collar of his coat. Snow was filtering down from the night sky; it crunched faintly under his soles, and added to the slowly spreading frost at the temples of his dark brown hair.

He strolled down a street made of hand-fitted brick that stood to outlast the crumbling asphalt paving outside of the historical district.

The slim row of iron streetlamps caught him as he walked under their globes; a tall man, his steps paced and never hurried, but too thin for his height and build. His eyes were as dark as they were haunted, and occasionally, he paused to peer at a sullen pocket of shadow as if he expected something to be hiding in it.

He paused under the last lamp on the corner, shook snow out of his bangs and eyes, and returned to his map. He was facing a pedestrian street, too narrow for motored traffic, and lined with triangles of raised earth jutting from the sidewalks to harbor slim crabapples. Their red and yellow fruits still hung like bells on the branches in a clear case of ice. Vinalia was a small town, built outside Philadelphia proper, and although the train went through it--it did not stop there. Such idiocies of this time was a never-ending source of frustration to him. If progress was indeed meant to serve mankind, it clearly did so at the sacrifice of some. He doubted THAT would ever change, no matter what the philosophers said.

If this confusing maze of construction was correct, Julia--if she was indeed here--would not be far away. He hoped she was, but knew from Julia's assistant at Wyndcliffe, WHY that might not be the case.

At any rate, he thought, feeling cold fingers of fatigue creeping into his body beyond the abilities of constant coffee to fight it of, I must find out tonight, if no more time is to be wasted.

With that in mind, he stepped into the street with the idea of avoiding the still-unsanded sidewalks. Now that he had noticed how very tired he was, it was growing distracting. Not paying real attention to else, he concentrated on rubbing his eyes to keep them awake and stimulated. He finished the short span of the block, blinking and wincing against the painful cold, and turned the corner.

To be approached by a waking dream.

They moved slowly, the first row stately even though half were turning backwards and skipping and whirling like tops. They were dressed in motley, and no two were even vaguely the same. Rags and tags and velvet gowns, bearded or clean-shaven, long-haired or short, and painted in terrific colors and fashions that were limited only by their imagination and the ability of the material to obey. Feathers, rags and fur, they shambled, hopped, walked, marched, cantered, skipped and shuffled. Torches of fatwood pine blazed in hands next to enormous candles and flickering lamps filled with colored oil. Burning pine resin released a hot, thick smoke redolent of forest fires. A candle smells of applewood. Lush sprigs of rosemary and bay hung, preserved forever, inside a globe of clear lamp oil with a glassed wick. Staffs hung above heads, crossed with poles and layered with rainbow ribbons, bells, and wooden clappers. They bobbed over the crowd, the owners shaking the music from them...Flutes conjured music from blue lips and white fingers. A burly man strode forward, banging a drum that was normal in size, but with perfectly formed sticks over three feet long. Guitars, dulcimers, a small harp; a sobbing oboe and mandolins.

He stood, bespelled, bound by the spell of what he was seeing. They made no acknowledgment of his astonishment, merely parted enough to pass him by, open up and swallow him in.

And they were chanting.

From deep voices and high, low or clear, man and woman, all were united.

Barnabas had never heard anything like it.

The men spoke first:

"Zarwendad, the son of Artaban.
Homisdad, the son of Sitaruk.
Gushnasph, the son of Gundaphar.
Arshakh, the son of Miharok..."

And as one, the women answered:

"These four brought gold..."

A man passed Barnabas, clad in a robe of black cloth torn into long strips that waved and shivered with each step. He turned to nod an apology--or perhaps an acknowledgment. Instead of a man, Barnabas met the face of a carved wooden mask--an ooser--horsehair dyed red made the mask-man's hair and beard; the faces from rural England that looked so much like the False Faces of the Seneca, and created for the same reason. Barnabas had been a boy when the councils forbade the wearing of masks in Collinsport. His reaction upon seeing a ghost of the past was understandable. The man perhaps chuckled underneath the layer of wood, and vanished in the throng...

"Zarwandad, the son of Warzad.
Iryaho, the son of Kesro.
Artahshesht, the son of Holiti.
Ashtonabodan, the son of Shishron."

A woman dressed in iced silk, head to toe, glittering with frost and her hair white, spoke with the other women. He heard them perfectly:

"These four brought myrrh."

Two men slipped by: one clad in green all over, young and fresh-faced. His companion was an older, burly man with frost in his beard. The snow was falling lightly on his costume of still-furred animals hides. Robin the Green and the Sheriff of Winter. In Robin's hat, a spray of green and a pheasant's tailfeather. In the Sheriff's, the antlers of a stag and the red tail of a fox.

Barnabas' eyes were wide. His height was no advantage in this thickness of humanity with high hats, headdresses, and platforms--he saw revelers in stilts--DANCING in stilts--he had to get off the street and collect his bearings--

"Meharok, the son of Hunam.
Ashiresh, the son of Hasban.
Sardilah, the son of Baladan.
Merodach, the son of Beldaran."

"...these four brought frankincense..."

Madmen and mummers flowed, swirled, logjammed and extracted themselves to new places in the human tide; a dark green forest devil with a ruff of ivy around his neck swept by, laughing with a tiny woman red with berries. A hobby horse swept up; its head the skull of a large stallion. The eyesockets were painted black as the craters of the moon, and lit from within by tiny lights. Colored ribbons created its mane, which it tossed and tossed in shivering ripples in the night air; the jaw was hinged, and it swooped, snapping as if to eat a thatch of hay tied to another reveler's broad hat. People shrieked. A concertina played with Irish pipes in similar, peaking hysteria.

And then they were gone.

Barnabas was alone on the ghostly street, alone but for the footfalls that stamped the snow out of the ancient bricks.

He was almost convinced his experience had been an hallucination...but for he could still hear threads and snatches of the weird parade, continuing its fey way through the night of silent and swiftly-collecting snow...

To Be Continued

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