Flying to Nowhere: A Tale by John Fuller Page B

apart from the animals in her charge.
    Geoffrey thrilled to see this theatre of cows and descended from the cliff along little brambly rabbit paths to get a better view. The girl continued her dance as if she had not seen him.
    Sometimes she faced them, walking backwards on her toes and directing their movements. Sometimes she ignored them, striding ahead with her arms raised sideways, head down, observing the pad’pad of her feet and the momentary space of her toe prints in the wet sand. Geoffrey cautiously walked up and followed, like a fifth cow.
    The girl spoke:
‘Mulican, Molican, Malen, Mair,
    Dowch adre’r awrhon ar fy ngair.’
    ‘What did you say?’ called Geoffrey from behind the ambling rump of the last cow. But the girl made no answer.
    ‘Are you a fairy?’ he asked, with a respectful grin.
    She darted him a quick, interested, warning glance while at the same time pretending not to have noticed him.
    ‘Where are you taking these cows?’ he called.
    She laughed.
    ‘Into the sea!’
    ‘Do they live in the sea? ’
    She laughed again, and twirled round on one foot.
    ‘Do you live in the sea?’
    At this, she looked directly at him with real amusement. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘At the bottom of the sea.’
    They walked on together in silence, and when she suddenly turned and walked back through the following cows, Geoffrey followed at her side.
    ‘Then you are a fairy,’ he claimed.
    ‘Think so, do,’ she said. ‘And if I were, where would my mother’s daughter be now, then?’
    He shook his head, smiling.
    ‘Why,’ she said, ‘with the Tylwyth Teg themselves. Bound with ropes of gossamer and carried off to live with the fair family. And I to take her place.’
    ‘Is that so?’
    ‘Well, why should fairies drudge? It can’t be so, for the fair family have the bees and creatures to do their small service. Why should they live with folk?’
    ‘So you aren’t a fairy?’
    ‘No more than you are a brother. Or have you come to take orders?’
    ‘Never,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I would rather be out of here, you can be sure of that.’
    ‘The brothers hope for a great reward,’ she said, as if he should consider her information carefully before making such a rash decision as to leave the island. ‘If they are ordained they will live for ever.’
    ‘Do you believe that?’ asked Geoffrey.
    She thought for a moment.
    ‘No,’ she replied. ‘But they must be quite beyond this world, and if you can get quite beyond this world, beyond sleeping and eating and cows and grass and sky and all of it, then...’
    ‘Then what?’ asked Geoffrey.
    ‘Just then,’ said the girl. ‘And if.’
    ‘And what can there be beyond?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
    He looked at her looking at him, all eyes and hair, and the blood drained out of his cheeks and into his ears and he could not imagine at that moment anything at all like beyond, for it was all now, cows and grass and sand and sky and smiling lips.

13
    For days Mrs Ffedderbompau watched the pair from her window, Tetty walking in the orchard, smiling and twisting the ends of her long hair, Geoffrey at her shoulder, talking of something or other. Or the two of them on the hill below the path, outlined against the sea, walking at that slight distance which results from intense conversation.
    She sent Tetty for mushrooms, for which in her broken state and fever she felt a slight craving. When the girl appeared in the orchard with the basket, Geoffrey was as usual with her, walking just behind her, with one arm extended and the hand on her shoulder. The manner of walking, at once proprietorial and tender, stirred echoes within her, but of precisely what, she could not say.
    From that moment she decided that she knew very well that she would not recover. And in that moment of knowing that we must know that we know, or else we might as well not know, there came to her suddenly and blindingly all that she had till then not