Chasing the Bard

by Philippa Ballantine

How now, my flesh, my child! What, makest thou me a dullard in this act?

  Unconsciousness was reluctant to abandon Will, but the whiff of jasmine and evening invaded, demanding that he pay attention. He lay quiet for a moment, savouring the heady smells, unwilling to face whatever reality was waiting. It was not impossible that he might be dead.

  Then strong fingers grasped his shoulder, as if to test how real he was, and somewhere in the near distance came the faint twinkle of bells. It took him another moment to realize that the bells were talking.

  “Is he dead?”

  And then Puck’s familiar voice. “Course not, he’s faking it.”

  “Humans can do that?”

  “Yes, but more often they are pretending they’re alive.”

  Laughter swirled about like a delightful slide of music, and curious despite himself Will opened his eyes.

  He lay on his back beneath a bower of jasmine, and their beauty was something familiar. So too was the Trickster’s face hovering over him, but the origins of the laughter were somewhat stranger.

  At first it looked like a string of tiny lanterns suspended behind Puck’s head, but then Will realized that they were in fact glowing orbs of light, each around a separate tiny winged creature.

  He snapped upright in shock, but some dark force gripped his head, and with a groan he sank back under the flowers.

  “Easy now,” Puck cautioned moments too late, “Stepping through the Veil for the first time is not always a pleasant experience for a mortal.”

  Puck’s winged companions drew closer, their golden light making Will’s head ache even more.

  “He’s awfully ugly.”

  “And grubby,” one chirped.

  “And smelly,” a third held its miniscule nose, drawing in for a closer look.

  Will felt very awkward indeed. The diminutive Puck and his even smaller friends made him feel like a cumbersome giant. He gave the Trickster what he hoped was an appealing look.

  The little people squealed as his friend shooed them away from Will’s face, like a bunch of gnats.

  “Sprites always say what they’re thinking,” his friend grinned. “There’s only room in their head for one thought at a time.”

  Will’s tongue had somehow stuck to the roof of his mouth. Working his jaw a few times helped. “Sive?”

  A shutter pulled behind Puck’s face, and he straightened up. “She’s fine, lad.”

  The flighty creatures darted back around Will, and he couldn’t help but notice their faces bore tiny frowns.

  “Where am I?”

  “The last bastion of the Fey.” Puck helped him to his feet. “The Evening realm, but...”

  “Not to tell, not to tell,” one of the thistledown creatures fluttered between Trickster and mortal. “She wants to see him. You’re not to interfere, she said.”

  Puck waved his hands almost irritably. “Damn sprites... but Sive is waiting for you.”

  Will staggered to his feet. “Where?”

  “Me, me!” the golden sprite hovered a scant yard from his face. “Follow.”

  Puck turned away his narrow shoulders hunched, not offering anymore, and so Will had no choice but to chase after the will-o'-the-wisp form. Levering himself up, he followed his unlikely guide.

  Beyond the bower, the world resolved itself into dim lavender forms in which the rise and fall of the land was a half-seen presence. Will paused for a moment, his guide fluttering near his shoulder, and by this dim light he got his first view of the Fey realm.

  The earth was soft, thick and lush with dewy grass, the warm air heavy with exotic scents he could not place. Will was on a small hill, with all this quiet land falling away, and on distant plains he could make out the darker green of a huge forest. He had no doubt he was no longer in England, nor with the strange but beautiful light could he be anywhere civilized man had been before.

  But Will was not alone in it. Around him, huddled in cloaked and whispering groups, were other creatures, some near human, others not. This was the place humanity recalled in its dreams and nightmares, so he should not be surprised that horse-bodied men or huge wolf eyed women flicking glances crosswise at him. He could not help noticing that they pulled away, shielding themselves from his crude human eyes. Their language, however sweetly it hung in the air, was full of pain and fear.

  Will’s guide lost all patience and fluttered away, and in such a landscape it was the sole light, so he followed, desperate not to get abandoned in this alien place.

  They walked down the purple hill and climbed the gentle slope of the next one. The mist that clasped it was impenetrable, and Will stumbled across a low stone circle much like those in his own England. These rocks, though, gleamed with a power that the ones in his realm had long given up.

  The tiny sprite guide would go no further with him. She spun about and flew off, her wan light disappearing into the ever-present mist. Now he was alone, until one of the smaller stones moved, and then he could make out two cloaked forms; one laid across the centre most stone, and one standing before it.

  Will would have known her anywhere.

  Though they had shared sighs, caresses, and he hoped love, he was hesitant to approach Sive. The cloaked head was bent, focused on the other body. Will moved as silently as he could towards them until he stood behind her shoulder.

  The King of the Fey looked like death. Auberon’s breath barely disturbed the chill evening air; his eyes stained and closed. Will read the long denied filial bond in the gentle gesture as Sive tucked the cloak laid over him closer to his chin.

  “We never saw eye to eye on anything,” Sive’s voice was rough with grief. “And he was a fool in many ways, but he is my brother. I would have spared him this.” She did not turn to face Will, but the tremble in her shoulders was plain to see.

  Words failed the Bard. That which had always come easy to him fled in the face of uncertainty.

  Sive turned and Will gasped. She was just as he remembered from all those years before by the Avon; the woman he had known in London was gone. Nothing soft or delicate remained. A hard set of jaw replaced the gentle smile that had once curved her lips and branded itself on his memory.

  And yet looking harder she was not the same creature she had been; the eyes betrayed the changes mortal time had wrought. One remained the soft dark eye he had made love in the light of while the other had returned to the alien shining violet he recalled from beside the Avon.

  Sive’s fingers fluttered to her face, but her expression remained frosty. “Do not ask why, Will, I do not have the answer. Perhaps some jest by the Mother, but she has given me back what Mordant took.” She gestured to the tallest standing stone where a bedraggled raven perched watching the whole moment unfold

  Silver light pulsed brighter from Sive’s body, every inch exuding the power she’d hidden in London.

  She raised one perfect brow, reading his thoughts as easily as she had once read his heart. “That is right, Will, I am myself again. I can now afford to be little else. With my brother near death I must be the leader my people need.”

  Could she not see that the end was near for this place; even he with only a little time here could not ignore that reality. Her people knew it why couldn’t she? A half step took Will closer until he was but a hand’s reach away, “We must leave this place, it has the smell of death on it. Come home with me.”

  A fierce look of such brightness nailed him to the spot. “This is my home. I am ruler of the Fey, what little of it remains.”

  Every fibre of him wanted to hold Sive, wanted to say that it was going to be all right, but he was far too truthful for that, and she was no longer the woman he knew. “What do you mean to do?”

  “The only thing that we have left, fight. I will draw on the power of all that remains, so at least we will not die on our knees.”

  Sive drifted closer, wrapping him in her intoxicating scent. “I was wrong about you, mortal. At the Tower you had your moment to become what you should, and
you could not.”

  Will stiffened at the accusation in her voice.

  Human and Fey eyes were weighing his worth to her, perhaps looking for more ways to manipulate him. “But if you join us in this fight, you may redeem yourself in my eyes. Claim your power and do as I say, mortal.”

  Will searched for a hint of the woman he loved, but the words were ice and the title of ‘mortal’ like a whiplash. How quickly Sive reminded him what he was, and precisely how large the gap was between them. If she had only looked at him with his lover’s eyes, Will would have given up his soul for her.

  Suddenly he could not bear the stink of the place; its desperation sunk to the bottom of his stomach and turned it. And yet, he could not say the words either.

  But Sive saw it in him. She spun away with a short laugh. “All the time I thought it was Auberon who was the fool. How blind I was, I should have known better than to trust a weak mortal.”

  Will’s teeth clenched together at the bitterness in her voice. This was the heartless goddess that had sent thousands to their deaths in the ages past, and she had always played him for a pawn.

  Unexpected rage sparked, and he could not reply, so choked was his throat with bile.

  Sive the Shining’s voice was now as icy as the wind, howling over the hills. “Puck will return you to your little life, little man. We have no further use of you. Fey will defend Fey as I should have realized all along.”

  What words could there be between them after that? Indeed, the wordsmith could think of none to heal this ragged wound, so, caught between rage and frustration, Will was glad to go.

  His last glimpse of Sive was her ramrod straight back, her pale hand pressed to her brother’s cheek. She could have been another granite stone.

  Will found the Trickster back in the bower, and once again words were redundant. Puck needed no explanation; there was enough history between Will and Sive to make it all plain. The pinched lines about the Trickster’s face compressed even more. “I’ll take you home, lad. Nothing more you can do here.”

  Will was anxious to shake the dark Fey air out of his lungs, so he could only feel relief when Puck opened the Veil. They stepped through into his world. Puck had bought him back to the London he was so familiar with, but now the bustle of the mortal town was rough and ill conceived, compared with the memory of the Fey only a few steps behind him. Despite himself, Will clutched onto all that remained of that nightmarish dream.

  Puck removed Will’s fingers from the cobweb fabric of his Fey attire. “You should appreciate the fact that I have returned you on the evening of our departure. Wouldn’t want you to get in trouble with your friends.” The Trickster was angry.

  “I’m sorry, Puck.” Will smoothed back his hair and tried to gain control of his see-sawing emotions. “I tried my best.”

  “Did you?” A slantwise look suggested he thought otherwise. “It matters little now anyway, Mordant will have the last of us in his jaws soon enough.” He gave a deep sigh and did not meet Will’s eye. “But pray tell, when you have lost the little magics of this realm, what will you do? Who will you blame?”

  Will didn’t understand.

  The Fey gave an odd little smile, bittersweet and simple. “Sometime soon you’ll see, lad. One day the goodwives will forget Robin Goodfellow and his plates of milk, the woods will stop whispering Fey songs to each other, and then the magic will die here too.”

  “I don’t think you can blame me for that,” Will muttered, though his throat choked.

  Puck shrugged and then clasped his chill hands. “It might not be much in the scheme of things, but I want you to know—I loved you in my own way.”

  Will was as low as a common worm, and could think of nothing to make it any better for either of them.

  “Think of us when you can,” Puck’s fingers tightened on his. “Remember us and try to hold fast to what we were.”

  And then with a mere flicker in the air he disappeared. It all could have been a dream, and it left Will standing on the wet London street, feeling as melancholy as any mortal creature ever had—all the worse because of guilt.

  19

  Let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever; We’ll ne’er come there again.

  No matter what had happened, Will’s world was still the same. No one had even missed him, and who would believe of an evening he had been in the land of the Fey. His friends, his career, and his occasional visits home to Stratford all reclaimed him.

  Nothing had changed in the London he had returned to, not even Southampton. The Earl had survived his brush with Mordant, and obviously remembered nothing of that time. All but Will had forgotten those moments above the Bell Tower. Southampton would continue to be the patron the Bard needed, but he would never be his friend.

  Will’s plays were now becoming so popular that between performing, the business of production and the actual writing itself, he was as busy as a bee once the summer had come.

  And yet he could not quite shake the Fey from his thoughts or his blood. More than ever night fears plagued Will, things stalked his sleep in various shades of shadow, and always without fail she was there. He’d awake with a great hollow pit in his stomach.

  Many of his fellow players wondered at the dark shadows beneath their friend’s eyes, but Will brushed off their concerns, and as long as the plays kept coming, there was nothing more to say about it. And the writing did keep coming, in a flow he was unable to control. Sometimes his hand cramped around the quill, until he was afraid that something Fey had possessed him; he couldn’t be sure it had not.

  But after that first year he managed, at least on the surface, to forget his Fey love. He stuffed the sweet memory down under a deluge of mundane existence, and a fierce work schedule.

  The second summer after his return, he went on his accustomed trip back to Stratford. Hamnet and Judith, now hovering on the very brink of adult life, ran up to him on happy, hot young feet. They always knew when their father approached.

  As Will smiled into their eager young faces, he realized with a stab time was racing away.

  “I heard you coming father,” Hamnet crowed, making a face at his twin.

  Judith, always the quieter, more hidden, pouted and mumbled, “You did not. I dreamed it last night.”

  Will looked away, “It doesn’t matter, but I am glad to see you both so well.”

  Each claimed a hand, and walked him back to the house. As they went, they regaled him with the latest exploits of home and village. Judith talked of nothing but the burst of flowers she had seen in the meadows, and Hamnet was obsessed with a next-door neighbour’s litter of kittens.

  “May we have one, Father?” he tugged on Will’s fingers. “I don't think White Cat is coming back.”

  The pang of loss went right through him; assailed by bitter sweet memories of his own childhood, Will grumbled, “I think it is better that we leave the kittens where they are Hamnet. There are enough living things at home to contend with.”

  Though he cast down his eyes, his son did not complain, sensitive to his father’s mood. His hair was soft and curly underneath Will’s hand that day, the sun having turned it the shade of liquid honey, and Will would remember that moment long after.

  The Shakespeare house was the bustling refuge that it had always been, bulging at the seams with his siblings, children, and other assorted family. Still, they made themselves scarce whenever he made his first approach to Henley Street. Anne had never exploded about anything, but it was better not to be there, just in case. She met him at the door again though, the young dark-haired Susanna tucked behind her skirts.

  For a moment they stood examining each other, like two strangers sizing each other up. Something like contentment was in her eyes this time.

  But no matter how much money Will sent home, no matter how the Shakespeares rose in the village community, the Anne he had loved had not tarried. Her once wheaten hair was now the colour of idle bone, and she seemed to have forever shut the door on caring
about what Will got up to.

  “Husband.” her voice was neither welcoming nor cold, merely a statement of fact.

  Will embraced her awkwardly, and received a quick peck on the cheek as reward. Her lips were chill and dry. He was another factor taken into consideration. She would move her routine around him, but once he returned to his real life, she would return to hers as well.

  She did not ask how long he would be staying; she knew that it would not be long. Ah Anne, he watched her retreating alien back, I’m sorry.

  Sive would have heard him.

  But still the children revelled in his company. Hamnet was a wild rambunctious boy, perhaps how Will might have been, had he not had the constant ignominy of poverty hovering over him. Hamnet ran with a rough and tumble group of village boys, the one uncontrollable force in his mother’s world.

  The girls were quieter, having absorbed some of their mother’s stillness, and yet he sensed their depth too. Susanna had a quick wit, and a sudden sweet smile that could melt the stoutest heart. Judith, Will suspected, had a touch of her twin’s wildness, but hidden much better, only awaiting the chance to come out.

  On these visits Will would spend every waking hour with his children, trying to absorb their special nature and imprint their love on his memory. Hours he would spend with them, discussing history, or practicing writing. Even his girls would know how to read and write, he determined; he would not shut them off from the magic that he wove.

  Then there were the walks. No child could bear being cooped up inside for hours, so he would walk with them. It was the same route that he and his brother had taken all those years before to Arden wood in search of Robin Hood. Perhaps along the way they would meet their cousins, or other more distant relatives, or perhaps a rainbow might show itself above the hilltops. Whatever day it was, there was always the chance of something exciting they could share together.

  And though the children didn’t know it, she walked with them Sive the Shining, or at least her memory. He would see her leaning against a tree, her night black hair curling against the rough trunk, her pale flesh almost one with it. Or if they went down by the river she was there dabbling her naked feet in the icy water, watching the swans honk amongst the willows.