The Faerie Path

by Frewin Jones

  Anita turned the page.

  And at dawn the next day, the day that should have been his wedding day, the youthful Lord Drake knelt before King Oberon and made a vow that he would not cease searching for his lost love, even if his quest took him seven times seventy years.

  And that was it. The story stopped dead halfway down the page. Anita turned the next page, and the next, and the next, but there was nothing else. The rest of the book was blank. She read the last paragraph again, wondering if she’d missed something.

  She looked up in surprise. A soft male voice had started to speak the words aloud as she was reading them. A gentle, murmuring voice that seemed to be coming from very close to her head.

  But there was no one there.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  There was no reply.

  “What’s happening?”

  Silence.

  “I’m not scared,” Anita said to the empty air. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

  A voice echoed her words. “What’s going on?”

  But it wasn’t the man’s voice; it was a brisk, lowered female voice, and it came from beyond the curtains that surrounded Anita’s bed.

  “I don’t know, Sister. He was there a few minutes ago.” Anita recognized the second voice as the nurse who had picked her up off the bathroom floor.

  “I’ll check the men’s bathroom,” the first voice said. “He can’t have gone far.”

  Anita heard footsteps moving rapidly out of the room. She put down her book and slipped out from between the sheets. She drew open the curtains. The night nurse was standing at the foot of Evan’s bed.

  The covers had been thrown back.

  The bed was empty.

  Anita felt a sudden rush of joy. Evan had woken up! He was all right. The relief made her feel dizzy.

  She padded over to where the nurse was standing.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  The nurse looked at her. “Quiet, now. We don’t want to wake everyone up,” she said. “And you shouldn’t be out of bed at this hour.”

  “I want to see Evan,” Anita said. She looked around, expecting him to be standing somewhere nearby. “Where is he?”

  Before the nurse had the time to reply, there was the sharp click of heels along the floor. The Ward Sister approached them. “He’s not in the bathroom,” she reported. “I’ll stay on the ward, nurse. You go and find him—quickly, please. We can’t have patients wandering around the hospital unattended.”

  The nurse nodded and vanished into the shadowy corridor.

  Anita stared at the Ward Sister. Where was Evan?

  “We’ll find him, don’t you worry,” the Ward Sister said. “Meanwhile, I think you’d be better off back in bed.”

  Anita allowed herself to be shepherded across the room, but she was too excited to sleep, or even to lie down.

  She leaned against her pillows, fingering her amber pendant and waiting for the moment when Evan would appear at her bedside and everything would be all right again.

  Anita was sitting up in her bed, staring at the far wall, her fist tightly clutching the amber pendant.

  It was three hours later. Evan had not been found.

  The Irish nurse sat on the edge of the bed, holding Anita’s free hand in both of hers.

  “Where is he?” Anita murmured. She gazed bewildered at the nurse. “Where could he have gone?”

  “Don’t worry,” the nurse said. “He couldn’t have gone far. None of his clothes are missing.”

  “But he could be lying unconscious somewhere,” Anita said. “He could be hurt.”

  “Don’t start imagining the worst,” the nurse chided her. “I expect he woke up feeling a bit disorientated and wandered off in a daze. The police have been told to keep a lookout for him just in case he got out of the building. If he’s tottering about the streets in a hospital gown, he’ll soon be found and brought back.”

  Anita bit her lip. “I hope so.”

  The nurse stood up, slipping her hand out of Anita’s. She smiled. “They’ll find him, don’t you worry.”

  Anita gazed after her as she walked out of the room, trying not to imagine Evan wandering the corridors confused and in pain, his head throbbing so much that he couldn’t think straight.

  She turned her head to stare out of the window at the far end of the ward.

  It was a bright, sunny day out there.

  It was a bright, sunny day and Evan was stumbling around after a serious accident. He could fall and injure himself. He could walk in front of a car.

  Anita shook her head. She had to keep believing that Evan would be found safe and sound, that he would be brought back to her and everything would be all right.

  She closed her eyes and saw the bleached image of the window floating on the inside of her eyelids.

  She leaned back into the pillows, watching the drifting white stain behind her closed eyes.

  She frowned. Instead of blurring and fading, the fuzzy light-stain seemed to be shrinking and altering and taking on a definite shape.

  It became the white silhouette of a person hovering behind her eyelids. It was featureless and two-dimensional, but it was definitely the outline of a human being—a man.

  Evan?

  As she watched, the figure walked forward and reached out a hand to her.

  With a gasp, Anita opened her eyes.

  It wasn’t Evan.

  The man stood about twenty feet away from her, dressed in the sort of clothes they would be using for the school play, clothes from the time of Elizabeth I—a long, black fur-lined cloak, a doublet and hose of dark red material, and knee-high leather boots. He smiled and gave a slight bow. He was handsome, with high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and dark hair drawn back off his face. Anita could see that he was only a few years older than she was.

  But there was still something wrong with the image. He was grainy and slightly out of focus like a poorly recorded video, and Anita could see the walls through him.

  “Come to me.”

  It was the same low, melodic voice that she had heard reading aloud from her book.

  “Who are you?” she breathed.

  “Come to me and all will be revealed.” The young man’s image flickered and faded for a moment and a new note of urgency entered his voice. “There is little time, my lady. You must come to me.”

  Convinced that she was dreaming again, Anita got out of bed.

  She walked toward him, but although his legs didn’t move, he drifted away from her.

  Now he was holding both hands out toward her.

  She padded across the cold floor, but again, he floated back.

  She followed him to the end of the ward, to a door that led to a television lounge. He passed right through the closed door.

  “Come to me.”

  “I’m trying.”

  She opened the door to the lounge. A few people looked up at her without interest. But none of them looked at the man, even though he was standing right in front of the television.

  The man glided backward to an outer door that led onto a small balcony.

  Anita opened the door and stepped outside into the bright sunshine. There were a few armchairs pulled up to small plastic tables, but there were no other patients out there.

  The beckoning figure was even harder to see now.

  “Attend me closely, my lady.” His voice was just a murmur. “You have the power. You must reach for me. Dismiss from your mind all other thoughts. Reach out and touch my hand. Think of nothing else.”

  Anita concentrated hard on his outstretched hand. She moved toward him, and this time he did not drift away from her. She came closer, staring at his hand.

  None of this is real, she told herself.

  It was nothing as exciting as her flying dream, but all the same, there was something intriguing about the handsome young man, and she wanted to know where he was taking her.

  Only a couple of feet separated them now.
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br />   “Come, my lady,” he urged again.

  He was leaning forward, his arm stretched to its full length, his fingers straining toward her.

  With a final effort, she lunged at him.

  Their hands touched.

  He gave a triumphant shout and his eyes flashed. His long fingers closed around her wrist and he pulled hard.

  Anita let out a yelp of pain as she was jerked off her feet.

  And as she stumbled forward, the hospital balcony and the nearby buildings and the blue sky and the white sun all evaporated in front of her eyes and she was plunged into a deep, velvet darkness.

  “Where am I?” Anita’s voice echoed in her ears.

  “Home, my lady,” said the man, draping his cloak around her shoulders to cover her pajamas. “Your long exile is at an end.”

  Anita turned to him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Who exactly do you think I am?”

  “You are Princess Tania, seventh daughter of King Oberon and Queen Titania,” he announced.

  She smiled crookedly. Either this was the most vivid dream she had ever experienced, or she was going completely crazy.

  “I see,” she said. “And you would be…?”

  He bowed low. “I am Gabriel Drake, the Duke of Weir.”

  The leather-bound book! She was inside the fairy tale! Gabriel Drake was the man who had been going to marry the lost princess.

  “This is cool,” Anita said. “What a shame that I’m going to wake up back in hospital any moment now.”

  “You are not asleep.” He took her by the elbow and gently turned her around. “Behold your birth-place—behold the Royal Palace of Faerie.”

  They were standing on a wooden wharf that jutted out over a wide, dark river. On the far banks, under a blue-gray sky draped with a lacework of stars, lay a vast palace that stretched as far as she could see in both directions. Every room, every tower, every wall was adorned with lights—thousands of lights, throwing their dancing reflections onto the river.

  The river was filled with boats, festooned with bobbing lanterns. Music drifted across the water, the sound of harps and flutes and rattling tambourines accompanied by singing and laughter.

  Rising in a long, slender span to their left was an ornate bridge of white stone with tall towers at either end. The bridge was lit with flickering torches along its whole length, so that its arc was mirrored in the rippling black water.

  Anita knew where she was in an instant. It was the same river and castle that she had seen in her flight the previous night, except that now it was whole and filled with life.

  Just as she remembered.

  “Yes!” she breathed. “That’s what it should look like!”

  “Permit me to escort you, my lady.” Gabriel Drake offered his hand to her. She took it and he led her toward the bridge.

  They climbed a set of stone steps onto the bridge. She walked across the river, hand in hand with the young lord, breathing in the smell of flowers that hung in baskets all along the bridge. She knew some of the aromas—her mother was a keen gardener and often filled the house with fresh-cut flowers. Among other, stranger perfumes, she recognized night-scented stock and evening primrose and moonflower.

  She glanced at Gabriel Drake’s face. He was very good-looking, she thought, although his deep-set silver eyes were a bit disconcerting. She wondered for a moment why he looked so very happy—then it struck her that it must be because he thought he’d found his long-lost bride.

  She hesitated, wondering where this astounding dream would take her next. Not to the altar, she hoped. She wasn’t too keen on the idea of getting married to a total stranger—even if he was strikingly attractive and this was only a dream.

  “What do I call you?” she asked him. “Duke? Your Lordship? Mr. Drake?”

  He raised his eyebrows very slightly. “You may name me your most devoted servant.”

  “I can hardly call you that all the time.”

  “Once, you called me beloved,” he said.

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think I can call you that, either, if you don’t mind. I’m a princess, right?”

  “Verily.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Anita said. “In that case, I’ll call you Gabriel.” She frowned. “This is incredible,” she said. “I mean, look at this place! Who’d have thought my imagination would come up with all this?”

  “The realm and dominion of your gracious father has lasted for eternity, my lady,” Gabriel said.

  “If you say so.”

  At the end of the bridge, a long tongue of white flagstones led to an archway in a high wall. Beyond the arch was a square courtyard. A hundred windows cast light onto them as they crossed the courtyard, Gabriel’s boots ringing on the cobbles. He led her up a short flight of stairs and through an arched doorway.

  They walked along a candlelit corridor with oak-paneled walls and tall, mullioned windows. Paintings hung on the walls—portraits of beautiful people in fabulous clothes. Anita noticed that the children in these pictures had fine shining wings, just like the wings she had in her other dream. The adults were all wingless.

  Beyond closed doors, she could hear the sound of tinkling music and of voices, but the corridor itself was empty.

  They passed through a series of rooms lit by candelabras and filled with such a display of ornate furniture and elegant statuary and exquisite tapestries and artworks that it was like walking through a museum.

  “If I’d known I was capable of dreaming up stuff like this, I’d have spent a lot more time in bed,” Anita said. She looked at Gabriel. “Where are we going?”

  “To the Great Hall, my lady.”

  He drew her through a low doorway that led to a narrow spiral staircase. At the top there was another door. Through it, Anita could hear the sound of more laughter and of bright, chiming music that came from stringed instruments.

  “Sounds like someone’s having a party,” she said.

  “It is the feast of the White Hart.”

  Gabriel threw open the door and the noise suddenly became much louder. He ushered her onto a high gallery overlooking a huge hall with a high, elaborately vaulted wooden roof and dark-paneled walls hung with tapestries. Flickering yellow candles set in sconces between the tapestries and two chandeliers, also lit with candles, hung from the ceiling. Anita gazed down over the balustrade. The hall was full of people, all dressed in dazzling Elizabethan clothes. At the far end of the hall was a long, wide table filled with trays and bowls and dishes of food. Anita could smell the roast meat. And she could see a small band of musicians gathered in a corner, playing curious, old-fashioned instruments. At the center of the table were two thrones under a scarlet awning. Seated side by side on the thrones were a man and a woman.

  The man was dressed in a fur-trimmed black doublet, which was covered in white embroidery and had puffed sleeves that were slashed to show flashes of a white lining. There was a white ruff at his neck and a simple white crown on his golden hair, encrusted with black jewels. He had a close-cut beard and mustache; high, slanted cheekbones; and deep, piercingly blue eyes.

  The woman was wearing a pale blue dress with a lacework of white embroidery over the bodice and the long, slashed sleeves. She had a high ruff that sparkled as if there were white jewels sewn into it. She had bright, wide-set green eyes, snow white skin, and vividly red lips. Set among the curls of her up-drawn red hair was a sapphire-colored coronet set with black stones that flashed in the candlelight.

  As Anita gazed down at them, she felt as if she was teetering on the brink of a great dark ocean of memories.

  A few others sat at the table, but most of the people were dancing. The steps of the dance were slow and intricate; the men and women weaving in and out of one another in an elaborate pattern that never faltered.

  There was a huge stone fireplace, but the fire was not lit and the hearth was filled with vases of flowers.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

  But then a soli
tary, unmoving figure caught her attention.

  He was sitting on a stool beside the fireplace. His elbows were on his knees and his head was in his hands, as if he was unaware of the revelries going on all around him. He had long golden hair and he was wearing a green doublet and hose trimmed with yellow thread. But there was something about him—something in the way his hair curled, something in his posture—that Anita felt sure she recognized.

  “Who’s that?” she asked, pulling her hand away from Gabriel’s as she leaned farther out over the banister rail. “I know him.”

  The moment she let go of Gabriel’s hand, everything changed.

  The hall was plunged into a yellowish half-light. The dancers all dissolved away. The music stopped abruptly. The scent of roasted meat was gone. The long table was bare and the chairs and the two thrones were empty. A coldness wafted up from the hall, along with the musty smell of damp decay.

  The only remaining light came from a few yellow candles set on the mantelpiece.

  The only person left in the hall was the man in green.

  As Anita stared down at him, he lifted his head out of his hands and looked up at her, and in the flickering light she saw his face.

  It was Evan.

  IV

  For a few moments, Anita gazed down in sheer astonishment. Then a relieved smile spread across her face.

  She’d found Evan and he was perfectly safe.

  “Evan!” she called. “Where have you been? Everyone’s looking for you.”

  He glanced up at her for a moment, his face totally expressionless. Then he looked away again.

  Puzzled, Anita turned to Gabriel. He was standing beside her, one hand on the polished wooden banister, looking down at Evan with a faint smile on his face.

  Evan’s voice came up to them. “Well met, my lord.”

  “Our enterprise has met with success, Edric,” Gabriel said. “The lost one has been found, due in no small part to your endeavors.”