Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper

anything?"
    They looked at one another and shrugged. It was the kind of question I couldn't expect them to answer. In fact, the only one who might be able to answer it was Father Raymond.
    "Never mind," I said as I turned and left them. I found Father Raymond at last, sitting in the orchard close. I remember the bees making such a sound when I asked him if he knew. He gave me and my boy's clothes a long look, maybe wondering how I'd escaped, but then he smiled. Father Raymond sometimes had a very gentle smile for such an old, creased face, like a sweet stalk of sunshine growing through rough clouds.
    "Yes, Beauty, I knew your mama was a fairy," he told me. "She didn't tell me before she married your papa, because she didn't remember. Later, she did tell me, when the matter of your christening came up. I intended to discuss it further with her after the ceremony, just to set her mind at rest, but Duke Phillip had her locked away before I had the chance."
    "Why did Mama object to my being baptized?" I asked.
    He pursed his lips and made the hmming noise in his nose that he makes before he answers complicated questions. "I've always understood that fairies were made when the angels were. Long before men, at any rate. There has been conjecture that there's been some mixing, since. It's said that Cain's wife was a fairy. Since the Scriptures give us no account of God creating him a human wife, it stands to reason he must have married something else, and it's unlikely an angel would have lowered herself so. On the other hand, if people have inherited fairy blood, it would explain the fascination ... " He looked off into the distance. "Your mother had some other objection. She said something to me about the church stealing her birthright ... " Mama had said that in her letter, though I did not know what she meant. "What about my baptism?" I reminded him.
    "Oh. Well, fairies, being separately created, were not tainted by the original sin of our first parents, so baptism-for them-wouldn't be necessary. So much of what the Lady Elladine had to say was correct. On the other hand, if the duke is your father, and I have no real doubt of that," he blushed, obviously remembering that Papa seemed to have sired half the children in Westfaire village, "you are half mortal, and that half needed to be baptized, which your Mama had not considered, and it was properly done."
    "Holy water and the white cloth around my head and everything?"
    "Exactly so. Exorcised, annointed, and the chrisom bound round your head."
    "Are they Christians?" I asked him. "F ... that is, my mother's people? Or are they infidels?"
    "Well now," he wrinkled his brow at me. "I don't think that question would mean much to ah ... them. If they are immortal, then they don't die. If they don't die, they don't fear hell. If they don't fear hell, then they aren't stained by sin. If they aren't stained by sin, why would they need to be Christians? Or you can argue it frontwards to the same effect. The question of their being infidels doesn't apply, does it?"
    Which just shows you that even though Father Raymond was old and a little dithery he was still capable of reasoned argument.
     
    [Which just goes to show you how much sheer fantasy exists even outside Faery.]
     
    "Then Mama wasn't trying to keep me from being a Christian?" I asked. "When she told Papa it wasn't necessary?" There was more to this than he had told me, but I had no idea what it was. Mama had seemed to blame religion for something to do with her people, and nothing Father Raymond had said had explained that.
    "I think it more likely she just made a oversight in theology," Father Raymond said. "She thought it wasn't necessary, forgetting you were half mortal. We can't blame her, after all. I don't imagine fairies spend much time studying catechism. In any case, I was there and I heard your fairy aunts giving you some very nice gifts, and you've always been a very good girl, so don't worry your head about