Faerie Fruit

by Charlotte E. English

  Hattie’s feet were coming up in blisters. A hundred at least, she was sure, and she could hardly walk for the pain. How wretched of her shoes, first to force her to choose them and then to so punish her obedience! She hobbled home as carefully as she was able and took them off at once, hurling them into a corner with some vehemence.

  ‘I call that a shocking betrayal!’ she informed them, an admonishment they took meekly enough, for they ventured no reply.

  She would have to choose another pair, and the thought made her sigh, for the rest were far too lively of hue for wandering about the town. But she had not time to visit Verity Wilkin’s shop for a more sober set, and she did not dare to trust herself there besides, for who could tell what manner of concoction she would end up bringing home?

  ‘Which of you shall it be?’ Hattie asked her shoes, scrutinising them all with an exacting and unsatisfied eye. She selected the indigo pair, but they felt heavy in her hands and she quickly discarded them. The coquelicot shoes were flimsy, the violet boots too high in the heel. She abandoned pair after pair until only one remained: a pair of boots which laced all up to the knee, clad in amber velvet, their pointed toes shining silver and their soles brilliant gold.

  ‘Goodness,’ murmured she, picking them up with grave misgivings. But they felt perfect in her hands, and when she put them on they fitted her poor, battered feet exactly.

  Perhaps she had been mistaken about the number of blisters, for when she took a few, experimental steps, she managed them in complete comfort. Smiling in relief, Hattie directed her gaze determinedly away from the inappropriate colours and ventured forth.

  She was on her way to Theodosius’s shop to reclaim her trinket, but to her own surprise she marched straight past his door without even slowing her steps. On she strode at an uncompromising pace, in a tearing hurry to get to who-knew-where, and Hattie’s heart sank a little. ‘Oh, no,’ she sighed, for her boots had got hold of her again, and flatly refused to be dissuaded from wherever they were intent upon going. The best she could do was swerve as necessary to avoid bumping into passersby, for her boots merely adopted a straight line down the street and proceeded with blithe unconcern, either for her wellbeing or that of anybody she encountered. She hastened down Tinder Street and all the way to Gloster Lane without slowing, and arrived at the Moss and Mist feeling somewhat out of breath.

  Why, thought Hattie, have my boots brought me to the Mist?

  But they had not. They appeared to have brought her to the expanse of wall next to the Mist, a construct which did not seem to belong either to the inn or the shop next to it. In fact, Hattie thought that her boots had conceived so violent a hatred for her person that they could not be satisfied with anything less than her instant demise, for she walked straight at the wall, and at a pace which must dash her to pieces against it. She had time only to raise her arms in a futile defence before her, a shriek of dismay torn from her lips as her boots hurled her at the wall.

  Hattie had instinctively closed her eyes against the impact, and it took a few moments for her to realise that she had emerged remarkably unscathed from her encounter.

  Hattie opened her eyes.

  The street, the Mist, Sebastian Scrivener’s silver smithy — everything she expected to see before her was conspicuously absent. She stood instead inside a walled courtyard she was very sure she had never seen before. It was lined with tiny cottages on three sides, ancient-looking dwellings of timber and whitewash with crooked doors and walls that leaned at the top. Neat paving stones covered the space in between, though they were not especially well-kept, for tufts of grass and wildflowers grew all over.

  What was perhaps most puzzling was that it appeared to be summer there, when it had certainly been autumn when Hattie had walked through the wall.

  ‘Hello,’ she said uncertainly, for the courtyard was not empty. Chairs were set outside every door, the rocking kind built from sturdy oak and woven with willow withies. Every one of them had an occupant, a man or woman with flyaway hair and boots as exuberantly coloured as Hattie’s own. Each sat under a cloud of billowing, pungent smoke, emanating from the carved birchwood pipes they held to their lips. They regarded Hattie with remarkable placidity considering the manner of her arrival.

  ‘It is long since we had a visitor from Town,’ said one, a woman who appeared older than the rest. She sat comfortably huddled in an old sage-green shawl, her white hair caught up in flowered pins.

  Hattie did not know how this observation could in any way elucidate the means by which she had found their hideaway, but everybody looked closely at her wayward boots. Heads nodded in comprehension.

  ‘Ah,’ said a wheat-haired woman, examining Hattie closely with her colourless white eyes.

  ‘Welcome,’ said a youngish man with skin the colour of acorns, and hair like spun bronze.

  ‘Thank you!’ Hattie felt so relieved at this single word of kindness, brief and distant though it was, she feared she may have overdone her enthusiasm. But she smiled upon them all anyway, and sought for some way to explain her appearance. ‘It is the boots, you see,’ she said, and hoped they would understand, for she could hardly elaborate.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the old woman, setting down her pipe with great care. It continued to smoke though she did not touch it again, expelling coiling wisps which formed vague flower shapes in the air. ‘You are in Brewer’s Yard,’ she continued. ‘The shoes would not think to tell you that, I suppose? Rude creatures.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hattie carefully, unsure whether it would be wise to express her total incomprehension. Brewer’s Yard? Was she supposed to recognise the name?

  The man with the bronze hair laughed. ‘It was Brewer’s Yard,’ he corrected. ‘When there was anything at all to brew.’

  ‘There may be again,’ said the old woman. ‘If the Boots are here, something stirs in Town.’

  Hattie did not much enjoy being spoken about as though her Boots were wearing her, rather than the other way around. ‘Do excuse me,’ she said, ‘But I wonder if somebody could explain what I am doing here? I have tried asking my Boots but it is as you say, they are shockingly uncommunicative.’

  ‘You are in Berrie Fae,’ said the old woman. ‘Not but what it was all Berrie Fae at one time, but we will leave that little matter alone for the present.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said somebody else in an aggrieved tone, and a few others muttered grumbling words Hattie could not hear.

  ‘You have brought everything with you, I trust?’ said the bronze-haired man, fixing Hattie with an expectant look.

  ‘What, pray, was I supposed to bring?’ said Hattie politely. Berrie Fae? thought she. What manner of madness is this? ‘My instructions have been rather lacking, I am sorry to say.’

  ‘The key,’ he replied.

  ‘The recipe,’ said the old woman.

  ‘Melaeon,’ said a woman with a storm-weathered face and hair like winter fog.

  ‘Starlight distilled and aqua pura faerie,’ added the bronze-haired man.

  Hattie patted vaguely at her pockets, briefly and futilely entertaining the faint hope that any one of these curious-sounding objects might have spontaneously transferred themselves to her person at some point during the day.

  ‘I do not have any such things in my possession,’ she apologised, feeling an abject failure. To think! The Boots had chosen her, Hattie Strangewayes, for the oddest adventure she had ever heard of, and here she stood with nothing to offer and no understanding whatsoever of what they sought!

  ‘You do not?’ The old woman seemed unreasonably chagrined by Hattie’s admission. ‘What, then, have you done with it?’

  ‘With what?’ said Hattie politely.

  ‘With the key!’

  ‘I do not—’

  ‘Go and retrieve it at once! There is no time at all to lose!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Go!’

  Hattie opened her mouth to protest, once more, that she had seen nothing that in any way resemb
led a key. Her Boots, however, clearly considered the interview at an end, for they turned her about and walked her away — disconcertingly, the route back into Northtown was, once again, straight through a wall.

  ‘Well!’ grumbled Hattie, standing once again on the street outside the Moss and Mist. ‘I call that highly unreasonable! I did not even get chance to tell them about the glass trinket.’

  The Boots did not appear to have any further plans for her, which left Hattie feeling obscurely rejected. ‘Very well!’ she told them. ‘I do not need you anyway!’ And she stormed off back towards Theodosius’s shop.

  She had seemingly spent more time in Brewer’s Yard than she had realised, for night was falling back in Berrie Proper. The moon had not yet risen, but the sky was darkening quickly. The abrupt change in the light gave some credence to the old woman’s claims, and Hattie felt both disconcerted and oddly full of hope. Berrie Fae! How odd an idea, that Berrie had once been of Faerie, and none now remembered any such time. But perhaps it was so! And perhaps, after all, that was where Southtown had jaunted off to!

  ‘It grew homesick, I daresay,’ said Hattie aloud. ‘And I shouldn’t wonder. How shocking, to be torn from your home after all the long ages through, and stranded in this horridly dull mortal place!’ A new thought struck her, and she stopped in the street. ‘Gracious! Shall Northtown return as well? I wonder how I should like becoming a faerie.’ She walked on, her thoughts turning to Jeremiah. If she was right, then he was already in Faerie, and had been for some weeks now. She must find the key for the brewers-who-weren’t, and the melaeon or whatever it had been, and all the other things. Perhaps if she pleased them, they would help her to find Jeremiah.

  ‘Theodosius!’ she thundered as she stamped through his door. ‘Something strange has happened!’

  ‘I am persuaded that strange is become normal, and nothing mundane shall ever occur again,’ said Theo, perfectly unimpressed. ‘Behold, for example, your pretty trinket there. Is that not interesting? And strange?’

  It hung in the window, in the same place as before. The sunlight was gone and now only wan moonlight shone through; Theo had not lit any of the lamps in the shop. In spite of this, the trinket continued to cast the same wavering patterns over the floor, their colours unaltered.

  In its centre, however, there was no longer a sunlit golden apple. Instead, an ethereal pear had taken form, silvery-cloudy and very pretty indeed. ‘Delightful!’ said she.

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Theo. ‘Also I cannot help noticing that it resembles those pears that grew in Tobias’s garden for a little while, at the end of the summer. Do you recall? Barnaby Longstaff ate one, and could never afterwards keep down a drink.’

  Hattie turned delighted eyes upon her brother. ‘But that is marvellous!’ she exclaimed.

  Theodosius blinked at her in blank incomprehension. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes! Because if everything is connected to everything, Theo, then we may solve this mystery after all! And I have not yet told you what has happened to me this afternoon.’ She lost no further time in explaining her adventure, and expressing her full disgust with her importunate Boots at the same time. ‘But you see it is terrible,’ she finished, ‘because I do not have a key of any kind, nor any of the other things either, and I do not know what is to be done about it!’

  Theodosius did not answer in words. He merely pointed one long finger at the glass ornament, and smiled with catlike satisfaction at Hattie.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Hattie agreed. ‘I did rather think that if these are fae people then they might be interested in my trinket. But I had no chance to tell them of it! These wretched Boots whisked me too quickly away.’

  ‘That is a key,’ said Theodosius. And he told her of his discoveries, of the strongbox at the Moss and Mist and the fruits inside, and of the contents of the book.

  ‘A key to a strongbox!’ Hattie said when he had done. ‘Very well! I admit it seems a little disappointing as an explanation, after so much was made of it. I was expecting a key into Faerie, at the least.’

  ‘But here is another connection to please you, Hattie,’ Theo answered. ‘Inside the strongbox were a few of those mad-coloured fruits that all of us were stuffing our faces with a few weeks ago. I shouldn’t think they are of any great importance, should you? But underneath those were several others.’ He paused, and Hattie felt like shaking him. How like Theo to get carried away, and insist upon heightening the drama!

  ‘Golden apples!’ said he in triumph. ‘Pure as a sunny afternoon, I assure you, and quite fresh!’

  ‘And the others!’ said Hattie in excitement. ‘Were there silver pears, Theo?’

  ‘Exactly like that one,’ said Theodosius, pointing again at the trinket. ‘More so, in fact, than the ones Tobias briefly had, for they were a little mottled with some other hue, and not perfect silver at all. These look like woven moonlight.’

  ‘And you did not bring them to show me! I call that very shabby.’

  ‘I think they are preserved by the box, Hat, and I did not like to remove them. How awful if I were to do so and they promptly rotted away.’

  Hattie could not but concede the justice of this concern. ‘What of the melaeon, and all the rest? The recipe you have found, clever Theo, but what about starlight distilled and aqua pura faerie? Faerie water! If they have not got any of that, then I do not know why they are expecting us to produce it.’

  ‘Aqua pura faerie,’ Theodosius repeated, laying a heavy emphasis on the second word. ‘Pure water of Faerie, and by Tobias’s account there is not much left of that. All the rivers are tainted.’

  ‘True,’ said Hattie thoughtfully. ‘If Brewer’s Yard is truly Berrie Fae, ‘tis adrift in the middle of muddy mortaldom, and can hardly be expected to qualify. But there is one pure river left, did he not say? Good, Theo! We must simply go into Faerie and find it.’

  ‘Simply go into Faerie,’ agreed Theodosius in a bland tone. ‘Nothing could be easier. You do not happen to know of a way in to Faerie, do you, Hat? I only ask because it would be of passing convenience, but do not trouble yourself overmuch.’

  ‘I do not, but I am sure they do.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The fae people at Brewer’s Yard. The ones with the fog for hair and the Boots like mine.’ Hattie felt cross at Theodosius’s naysaying attitude, and did not scruple to tell him so. She marched over to the window, retrieved her key, and stowed it safely in a pocket of her coat. ‘Are you coming with me, Theo? I am going at once.’

  ‘To Faerie?’

  ‘So I hope, because there can be little doubt I will find Jeremiah there! But to Brewer’s Yard, first. Bring the book!’

  ‘I see I have no choice!’ Theodosius got up at once and collected his own coat and hat, packing Cornelius’s book into a pocket of the former. When he was ready he bowed to Hattie, an irrepressible grin curving his lips. ‘Lead on, Madam Adventure!’

  Hattie’s Boots were almost as excited as she was, for as she walked back to the Moss and Mist they insisted upon throwing an occasional, joyous little skip into her step. It might have been delightful, Hattie reflected, if they had not almost managed to throw her into the river with one particularly buoyant hop. ‘Behave yourselves,’ she admonished them, and stamped her feet a little by way of emphasising her point.

  The Boots settled down.

  Hattie went straight through the wall without hesitation, being by now an old hand at the process. ‘I have brought the key!’ she announced. ‘And my brother has brought the recipe.’

  Her declaration did not produce much response, which disappointed her a little. The fae brewers merely looked at her, and then behind her, in silence.

  ‘What brother?’ said the fog-haired woman.

  Hattie looked round, and saw a distinct lack of Theo. ‘Oh, bother,’ she sighed. ‘What can he be thinking?’

  ‘He hath not the Boots,’ the woman pointed out.

  ‘Hm,’ said Hattie, and went back through the wall.

 
; Theodosius stood on the other side, looking bemused. ‘You know, Hat, I was half inclined to think you a little mad. Walking through walls, indeed! But I beg your pardon, for I cannot deny that you have contrived to do exactly that.’

  ‘And you have not! What can you mean by standing around out here when I need you in there?’

  Theodosius coughed slightly. ‘I did try, I promise you.’ He rubbed at his nose and winced.

  Hattie looked at his feet. His boots were perfectly serviceable, but they were also sadly ordinary. ‘They are nowhere near magnificent enough for walking through walls,’ she informed him. ‘But we will not let that stop us.’ Before Theo could object, she grabbed his hand and walked straight at the wall again, dragging him mercilessly behind her.

  The process was more difficult this time. She was obliged to force poor Theodosius through with more ruthlessness than she preferred to show to her beloved brother. But Jeremiah’s fate, and that of the whole of Southtown, depended upon his being a brave soul, and putting up with a little pain.

  ‘This brother,’ she said, once they had shoved and squeezed their way through into the courtyard.

  ‘Ow,’ said Theodosius faintly.

  ‘Don’t complain, Theo,’ said Hattie. ‘This is the finest adventure anybody has ever had and you ought to be grateful to me for sharing it with you.’

  ‘Oh, I am,’ Theo replied, but he spoke with such a lack of conviction that Hattie did not believe him at all.

  ‘The key!’ said the oldest of the women, and Hattie took it to her. ‘Ahh,’ she said as she held it up. ‘At last.’ Then, to Hattie’s astonishment and dismay, she threw it up into the air.

  ‘But no!’ Hattie gasped. ‘It must shatter, when it comes down!’

  It did not come down. It flew up two or three feet and then hovered there, some way over Hattie’s head. It turned slowly, around and around, casting a haze of colour over the stone courtyard below. Hattie watched in fascination, for it seemed that with each rotation the blurred patterns became slightly clearer, and a picture began to emerge.

  ‘It is a map!’ said she in delight, though that was not precisely correct. It was not like the maps she had seen in Theodosius’s books, all pale parchment and black lines and little else. It was more of a living image of a landscape, as though viewed from far above. Hattie watched, spellbound, as valleys and forests and hills came into focus, laced with rivers and streams and dotted with villages and towns. The colours were myriad and splendid; the image looked far more vibrantly alive, to Hattie’s wondering eye, than anything she saw around her.