Gone With The Harp's Echo by Narya

Chapter 2

It happened less as he got older. Once he turned eighteen, he found that the doors between worlds were harder to come by – not that he ever really went looking for them. In the past they had always come to him by accident. He knew in his heart that if he tried to discover them on purpose, they would only grow harder to find.

He was a clever boy, and hard-working. To his mother's pride he won a place at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, reading Classical Archaeology and Ancient History – “a course eminently suited to his curious, dreaming nature”, his head teacher wrote on his final school report – and he buried himself in libraries, in college life, and in the the wending streets and warm, watchful buildings of Oxford herself. If his newfound friends thought his disappearances odd, they did not comment; perhaps there were stranger things in Oxford than a student vanishing for a day or two, and then turning up somewhere unexpected (he had to do some swift talking on one occasion, when he found himself locked inside Codrington Library in the dead of night after stumbling out of a strange, snow-covered land). Or perhaps it was simply that his wanderings between worlds were less frequent now. It was easy enough to explain them away as visits to his mother at home, or bouts of unexpected illness, if anyone ever asked – which they rarely did.

He spent the night of his twenty-first birthday in a Victorian terrace on Museum Road, with his friend May Jones – the same May Jones who had sniffed disapprovingly at his retrieval of Harry Martin's football all those years ago. She had sought him out when she came to St John's College as an undergraduate when Robin was in his second year, and the two of them had quickly grown close. Sometimes Robin wondered if she knew or guessed something about his vanishings, having been present for the very first one, but she never said a word. Instead she became his confidante about all manner of university woes – the tutor who never gave his essays more than a lower second class (“I'm afraid they just don't speak to me”); the tourists appearing in college quads mere hours after students had gone to bed, on one occasion taking photographs of him in his pyjamas; the beautiful Melody Jackson, frighteningly intelligent and utterly unattainable.

“Move on,” May told him frankly, pouring him more wine. “You're too good for her – and besides, you're twenty-one now. You're graduating soon. Time for a new start.”

“The start of what?” he laughed.

“Don't know.” She flashed him a mischievous smile. “Figuring out what you want.”

Perhaps it was musing on those words that triggered it. After Museum Road his feet took him down the Lamb and Flag Passage, and not onto Parks Road, which was his usual route back to Corpus Christi. He wasn't watching where he was going; his mind was far away, on the past and the future at once, and when the air lifted and the night time soundscape of Oxford subsided, he wasn't entirely surprised. The Lamb and Flag passage was gone; instead he walked down an avenue of trees in the green gloom of evening. When he breathed in he tasted deep, still water and the end of the summer. Ahead, somewhere, a kingfisher called.

He was not alone. As was sometimes the way when he left his own world and strayed into others, he gradually became aware of a companion, walking beside him – in this case a tall man with a limp and a crutch.

“It's some time since we've seen you,” the strange man said.

Robin looked at him in surprise. The man was dressed in a cloak of dark green, and a hood overshadowed his face – but from under the hood, grey eyes gleamed, as though reflecting a distant light. This was not a man he would forget. “Forgive me, sir -”

“Alf. Please.”

“Alf,” Robin acknowledged – and a cool weight sat under the word, like an old, smooth jewel from a once-known tale.

“You have not seen me before,” the man smiled, “but I know you. I have watched your wanderings in this land and others.”

This did not worry Robin as it would from a stranger in his own world. “I'm sorry we have not met.”

They had reached the end of the avenue; ahead of them gleamed a great, flat lake. Insects skimmed its surface; lily pads stirred in the scant summer breeze. Alf limped to a boulder at the lake's edge, beside which lay a woollen blanket, and a basket full of bread, wine, cheese and fruit. He drew back his hood, revealing a handsome face that, in Oxford, Robin would have assumed belonged to a man in his late twenties or early thirties. Here, he knew better.

“Will you join me for supper?” his companion asked.

Robin knew the old tales about fairy food, but he had never taken any harm from it before. He sat on the blanket while Alf eased himself onto the boulder, and then poured them each a cup of red wine.

“I probably shouldn't,” Robin smiled wryly. “I've been with my friend May all night. Back in my world, I mean.” It was not dangerous to refer to where he came from; this much he had learned. Creatures from other worlds could almost always tell that he came from elsewhere. “We were drinking there.”

“Yes. It is your birthday, is it not?”

“As far as we know.”

Alf tilted his head. Clear as dawn, Robin felt the words in his soul. Tell me.

“I'm adopted,” Robin explained. “I was very literally left on somebody's doorstep. My birthday is just a best guess.”

His companion nodded. “Have you been unhappy?”

“No!” Startled, Robin looked up. “No, not at all. I have friends, and Oxford is beautiful – and my mother...she's so kind, and so proud of me...”

“Does she know of your gift?”

“No.” He lowered his eyes. “No. At least, I tried to tell her once, but she didn't believe me. And I suppose there's no reason why she should.”

Alf nodded again. “Tell me about her.”

And so as they shared bread and sat beneath the setting sun, Robin told Alf of the long summer days walking in the Dales, the visits to London, the long nights she had sat with him as a child when his nightmares seemed to real, the cups of tea and the quiet support as he prepared to apply for his place at Oxford. He spoke, too, of the aching guilt he felt, knowing that she knew he hid something, and unable to make her understand.

“A difficult thing, love,” Alf said. “A burden, at times.”

“I'm not sure I'd say that.”

Alf smiled, a little sadly this time, and turned his face away.

At dawn he walked back with Robin down the avenue of trees – birches, Robin realised now – and as the way narrowed and the woodland growth thickened, he stopped.

“Go now, young wanderer.” He pressed something cool and metallic into Robin's hands. “A gift for you, should it ever be needed.”

Robin frowned. He had never been given anything to take back to his own world before. Puzzled, he held up the small, footed cup and turned it so it caught the sunlight that peeped through the leaves. It was made of silver, and simply carved, and when he ran his thumb across the rim a high note sounded like the call of a lark far away.

Alf kissed Robin's brow. Warmth bloomed from the place his lips touched. “Farewell.”

Robin closed his eyes, his heart suddenly full of grief for something he only half-knew. When he opened them again Alf was gone, and he, Robin, no longer stood in the strange fairy woods – nor was he in the Lamb and Flag Passage. The day was stirring; the air was cool and fragrant; he was alone in Christ Church Meadow, and the spires of Oxford rose out of the mist.