[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
brother's eyes, I sighed and looked up, to find him regarding me with eyes that seemed, suddenly, to burn
blood and fire. For a breath I thought he Saw, Scryed out a future in my face. Then I realized I saw only
the setting sun mirrored in his gem-bright eyes.
"What?" I asked, and after a moment Dinendal said, "By all means, my dear sister, finish the funny pages
first. It's only what the rest of the country is doing, after all."
I let that pass, more interested in the escapades of the denizens of Dogpatch than in politics particularly
mortal politics. Sidhe politics were best avoided; mortal politics were mere trivia, best ignored. That was
a vital part of Goldengrove's creed, and as yet I had no reason to examine that belief.
Nor did there seem any reason to trouble myself over events so far away, when so many fascinating
things happened here in my own domain: Hollywood.
"The Dream Factory," it was called, and it really was. Without one touch of magick, using only their own
wits and hands, mortals created movies. Dreams made visible. There was no better place to be, for
Elvenborn or for mortal man and maid, than the movie theaters studding the City of Angels like
diamonds.
Palaces, many of them were named, and palaces they truly were, ornate and costly as any High King's
dwelling. Within their gilded walls, mortals slipped away from the day's toil, grief, or heat. Enter the
Palace of Dreams and forget all else while film scrolled through projector and images danced down a
beam of light onto the screen spread before you. Silver holds magic; perhaps that explains the sorcery the
movies wove. Silver created the film that stored enchantment forever. Silver created gold, for
Hollywood's movies were one of America's treasures, a product demanded across the world, a product
generating millions of dollars for those who owned the means to create such magic.
It was less than even a human lifetime since the first flickers had wavered across tiny screens in darkened
rooms. An infant born the yearSortie des usines Lumière drew an audience of thirty-three
curiosity-seekers into its orbit was only forty-four years old during that brief span of mortal time that
came to be called, by those who love the movies, "The Wonder Year."
1939.
The year the Dream Factory produced more great films than it ever had before or ever would again.
Ninotchka and Stagecoach. Destry Rides Again and Midnight. Gunga Din and Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
The Women, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights.
Gone With the Wind.
The moviesmust have held magick; how else explain the lure the silver screen held even for me? Pure
High Court Sidhe, born and bred in the cool world that dwelt Underhill, I should have been immune to
the tawdry temptations of the World Above.
But I was not immune, nor was my brother. Perhaps, as the only two who had been born in
Goldengrove itself, we were bound to the New World and its ways as our elders were not.
Or perhaps we were simply the first to be raised when the mortals' toys at last became too enticing for
even Elvenborn to ignore.
So, 1939 the year I spent uncounted hours gazing at images sliding across a movie screen. Nor did I
realize, then, just how prophetic a path that year's movies blazed. Looking over their titles, now, they
seem to bid farewell to the past and foretell the moral struggles the world faced.The Hunchback of
Notre Dame. Of Mice and Men. The Four Feathers. Beau Geste. Dark Victory. On Borrowed
Time. Only Angels Have Wings.
When Atlanta burned, and the gates that had once guarded Kong Island fell into fiery ruin behind the
small struggling figures of Rhett and Scarlett, it later seemed that fire took everything of the past down
into those flames.
Much later.
In December 1939, I simply sat, mesmerized by the spectacle that had been called before the first box
office receipts were counted Selznick's Folly. I didn't realize that each watcher gleaned different gems
from the same film. My brother saw different things in movies than I did. It was the glorious studio films
that drew me; they were the reason I sat through the antics of cartoon mice, the pious instruction in
geography, the marching newsreels. For my brother, my mirror, it was the clutter filling the screen before
the features that entranced him now.
Dinendal had been claimed by a drug more dangerous than chocolate or caffeine.
An interest in mortal affairs.
* * *
We had just sat again through a showing ofGone with the Wind , and decided to walk all the way
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]