how hard it was to be a secret agent, to go in disguise as a member of his own family, trying to so insinuate himself among them that, without his ever asking a question (that would expose him instantly) the truth would be spilled in his presence because they would have no reason to doubt he was already privy to it.
Crows cawed away toward the woods. A voice, blown around the Park with odd alteration, called his name, and announced dinner. He felt, hearing the long-drawn melancholy vowels of his own name, at once sad and hungry.
The Worm Turned
Lilac saw sunset elsewhere.
"Magnificent!" Mrs. Underhill said. "And terrifying. Doesn't it make your heart beat high?"
"But it's all made of cloud," Lilac said.
"Hush, dear," Mrs. Underhill said. "Someone's feelings could be hurt."
Made of sunset was more correct: all of it, the thousand striped war-tents obscured in the wreathing smokes of orange watch' fires, and their curling pennants striped the same in sunset colors; the black lines of horse or foot or both, picked out with silver weaponglint, that receded as far as the eye could see; the bright coats of captains and the dark gray of guns being drawn up under their command against empurpled harricadoes—the whole vast encampment, or was it a great flotilla of galleons, armed and under sail?
"A thousand years," Mrs. Underhill said grimly. "Defeats, retreats, rear-guard actions. But no more. Soon . . ." The knobby stick was under her arm like a commander's baton, her long chin was held high. "See?" she said. "There! Isn't he brave?"
A figure, burdened with armor and with weighty responsibilities, walked the poop, or toured the breastworks; wind stirred his white whiskers as long almost as himself. The Generalissimo of all this. In one hand he held a wand; just then, the sunset altered, the tip of the wand caught fire. He gestured with it toward where the touch-holes on his guns would be, had they been guns, but then thought better of it. He lowered the wand, and it went out. From his broad belt he drew out a folded map, unfolded it, peered nearsightedly at it for some time, then refolded it, replaced it, and took up his heavy tread again.
"The die's cast now," Mrs. Underhill said. "No more retreating. The worm's turned."
"If you don't mind," the stork said, her voice faint between labored pants, "this altitude's too much for me."
"Sorry," Mrs. Underhill said. "All done now."
"Storks," the stork panted, "are accustomed to sit down, once a league or so."
"Don't sit down there," Lilac said. "You'll sink right through."
"Downward then," Mrs. Underhill said. The stork ceased to pump her short wings, and began to descend, with a sigh of relief. The Generalissimo, hands on his gunwales or his machicolated belvedere, stared eagle-eyed into the distance, but failed to see Mrs. Underhill salute him smartly as they passed.
"Oh, well," she said. "He's as brave as they come, and it's a fine show."
"It's a fake," Lilac said. It had already shape-shifted into something even more harmless as they sank.
Curse the child, Mrs. Underhill thought irritably. It was convincing, convincing enough. . . . Well. Perhaps they oughtn't to have entrusted it all to that Prince: he was just too old. But there it is, she thought: we're all old, all too old. Could it be they had waited too long, been too long patient, retreated one final furlong too many? She could only hope that, when the time at last came, the old fool's guns would not all misfire, would at least give heart to their friends and frighten briefly those on whom they were trained.
Too old, too old. For the first time she felt that the outcome of it all, which could not be in doubt, could not, was in doubt. Well, it would all be over soon. Did not this day, this very evening, mark the beginning of the last long vigil, the last watch, before the forces were at last joined? "Now that's the tour I promised you," she said over her shoulder to Lilac. "And now . . ."
"Aw," Lilac said.
"With no complaints . . ."
"Aaaawww . . ."
"We'll take our nap."
Lilac's long-drawn note of complaint altered, surprisingly, in her throat, to something else, a sudden mouth-opening thing that stole over her like a spirit. It went on opening her mouth wider and wider—she hadn't thought it could open so wide—and made her eyes close and water, and sucked a long draft of air into her lungs, which