Faerie Fruit
Page 19
The silly white flowers kept blossoming around her feet. Helewise swept the house free of them each morning and evening and made no complaint, perhaps because they were appealing as well as a nuisance. And every night Mallinerla sang that dratted song, and Dorothea went to sleep with the melody echoing through her dreams.
One night, she woke from a dark nightmare to find the hour far advanced. The house was silent.
Dorothea felt, for a heart-pounding moment of panic, that she did not know where she was. And she did not know who she was. The blankets felt heavy enough to suffocate her, and she threw them off. She rose from her bed, stumbled down the stairs, and went barefoot out into the night.
It was mild enough outdoors and she did not notice the seeping damp underfoot, for she drifted half in a dream through the streets of Southtown and ended her wanderings at the bridge. Passing easily through the obscuring mist, she stood in the centre of the Wynspan and stared at the dark waters below.
They beckoned, and Dorothea jumped.
She did not even try to swim, but sank gratefully into the welcoming embrace of the water. She sank and sank until she lay dreaming upon the bottom of the river, and her mind spiralled far, far away.
Ah, youth! All about her was brightness, for she was queen of the skies. Her sister was at rest, but she was not alone, for her children spangled the heavens around her. Gowned in silver-limned clouds and bejewelled with dew, she was beauty incarnate, strong and unbowed, and serene as a placid lake. She lounged upon her crescent throne, rocking gently back and forth, surveying the world spread below with the pardonable smugness of one who reigns over all she sees.
Seven rivers laced the landscape beneath, each one gleaming bright silver under her glimmering light, and beckoning her with the promise of cool, soothing water against her naked skin. One of the seven shone with a special radiance tonight, or so it seemed to her, and she watched it and dreamed until her sister began to stir. As the heavens brightened with Sun’s blazing golden light, Moon abandoned her throne and dived.
Down and down and down she fell, until she hit the sparkling water with a mighty splash.
Immediately, she knew that something was wrong. The water was not balmy-cool but freezing cold, and it felt oily against her shrinking skin — polluted — tainted. When she looked up, she did not see her sister rising from her bed, shaking out her hair and ascending to her heavenly throne. She saw instead only a faint echo, a dull orb hanging sluggishly upon the horizon, its wakening rays an insult to Sun’s dazzling radiance.
She was no longer in Faerie. How had she come to fall into the mortal lands? It did not matter. All that mattered was to leave the water at once and retreat, find the border, hasten unto Faerie before it was too late. Moon did not know what might happen if too late came to pass, and she did not wish to find out.
She swam for the riverbank, but the grimy waters did not bear her up as they used to; she no longer floated upon the surface, light as apple blossom, but sank heavily to the bottom.
Water entered her mouth and her eyes and she breathed it, choking. Consciousness faded.
When at last she emerged from the once-faerie river, she was no longer Moon. An old woman crept, shivering, onto the streets of Berrie North, a woman nameless and homeless and purposeless, a woman without knowledge of her past. She begged her way to clothing and food, settled in a cavern upon the edge of the Lynwood, and waited for destiny to find her once again.
On the bottom of the River Wyn, Dorothea Winthrope returned to herself to find her vision become a reality. Water entered her mouth and her eyes and she breathed it, choking. The sensation was familiar, for had she not experienced it shortly before, when Malachi Amberdrake had hastened to pull her out? She had thanked him, shivering and aggrieved, and refrained from telling him that it had happened many a time before; that she had always been perfectly well, and had not needed his aid.
This time, she died.
Chapter Six
In which all is made Right.
One day a week or so after the Adventure of the Pear Trees (as Hattie liked to think of it), Hattie and Theodosius arrived at Moon’s house to find a naked woman lying upon the floor of the greenhouse.
‘Oh,’ said Theodosius, and stopped.
‘Don’t stare at her,’ Hattie chastened, aghast, and Theo turned around, his ears turning pink.
She was not altogether a beautiful woman, Hattie thought upon approach. Or then again, perhaps she was. It was difficult to tell, for every time Hattie blinked she saw something different: an elderly woman one moment, wrinkled of skin, her tangled hair thinning and grey with age. The next, a lissom, ageless lady, her hair luscious and silvery-white. Hattie could not determine which vision was the true one, if either of them were, but she set the matter aside, for the woman lay like a felled tree and looked distressingly dead.
‘Mistress?’ said Hattie, tentatively prodding the woman in the shoulder.
She was not dead, for she woke in a trice and blinked wide, silver eyes. Those eyes filled with tears an instant later, and she said, ‘Oh,’ as though she had seen something desperately profound and would never be the same again.
Hattie patted her shoulder. ‘There, there,’ she murmured. ‘I am sure it is not so bad as all that.’ She eyed the supine woman surreptitiously, looking for some clue as to her identity, and found nothing.
‘Oh, no!’ said the recumbent woman, with a damp, blissful smile. ‘Everything is perfect.’
She made no move to rise, but lay there beaming dreamily at the skies. Hattie began to wonder if she was entirely in her right mind.
‘Perhaps I can help you in some way?’ she suggested.
The woman sat up at last and combed her fingers through her hair, humming a fey little melody.
It began to seem to Hattie as though she had seen the woman before.
‘Mistress…. Mistress Winthrope?’ said she incredulously. ‘Dorothea?!’
Dorothea Winthrope laughed, and stood up. She moved with all the grace of youth, and perhaps a touch of the hesitancy of advanced age. Her hair was grey, and then silver-white, and grey again. ‘I was for a time,’ she agreed. ‘But I think I shall not be, any more.’
She glanced up into the skies, her smile widening. Then, to Hattie’s immense surprise, she gave a great leap and soared gracefully heavenwards. She caught the tip of her crescent-moon throne and swung herself aboard, collapsing into its welcoming arms with a vast sigh. Hattie felt it as a warm wind which swept through the house, clearing away the last of the dust and dirt and setting the muted panes twinkling.
‘Oh, there she is,’ said Theodosius, as though Moon had merely stepped out for a loaf of bread.
‘There she is!’ agreed Hattie, gazing in delight into the wide night skies, for the stars had all come out to welcome their mother home, and Moon’s silver light blazed across the firmament in response.
Then the news reached Sun, for she rose in a joyful flare of aureate lambency, hailing her sister’s return with such a scintillating aurora that Hattie had to cover her eyes. She stood rapt, listening to the glad chorus of starry voices when the light was too bright to see, and revelling in the sense of all being right with Faerie once again.
‘I suppose we can go home, Hat,’ said Theo after a while. ‘All is well again here, and Jerry’s waiting for you.’
Hattie’s heart sank a little, for the ending of the adventure struck her as rather a blow, however happy the outcome. ‘I will come back and visit?’ she said, half resolution and half question, for who could say how long the bridge would hold, or when Berrie Wynweald would become merely Southtown once again?
‘We will,’ said Theodosius firmly. ‘As long as the way is open.’
Chapter Seven
The annals of the Kings and Queens of Faerie: Upon the Matter of Berrie Wynweald.
The loss of Berrie Wynweald was a grave one to Faerie, for it took away with it yet another of our rivers, the best and most vibrant of our trees, and the prod
uce upon which we had long relied for our good health. Ah, the very heart of Faerie! The garden of Sun and Moon, our celestial orchard, for which there can be no replacement. That I should reign over such decline! That I, Pippin Greensleeves, in all my arts and magics, should be so powerless to prevent its loss, or to compel its return!
Why does Faerie diminish? Once, it is said, it was Mortal Lands which shifted into Faerie, there to remain. In time, those stolen lands reverted back to their mortal roots, forsaking Faerie forever. As was right.
But others followed. Our towns, our woodlands, our meadows, lands which had always been of Faerie, had never known mortalkind. One by one, as the centuries passed, they were wrested from us — or perhaps they fled. The Faerie over which I reign is sadly diminished, and still we lose. Still we do not understand what draws our villages and forests away from us. I leaf through the pages of this volume, noting anew the successive losses diligently recorded by myself or my predecessors, and my heart grieves.
It took much from me, to recall half of Berrie Wynweald, and it was beyond my power to compel the River. The people of Berrie have forgotten their heritage entirely. Faerie blood lingers there still; this, the fruit confirmed in its effects upon their constitutions. But the fruits are not what they once were. It is as I feared: without the light and the air and the water of Faerie, even those trees seeded and grown in Faerie of Old can produce only strange, twisted, mischievous things, beautiful but wrong.
Before his death, Cornelius Dwerryhouse made to me a confession. He and his beloved had once stolen into the heart of Faerie, and carried away some few of its celestial fruits. Rosamund had kept these, had planted their seeds in her own gardens and those of her friends, and nurtured them to adulthood — though their failure to produce such fruits as had spawned them always disappointed her. I readily forgave all this, for had he and Rosamund not themselves developed the tincture which healed our complaints and restored health to my people? They need not have crept into Faerie. Gladly would I have bestowed such things upon them, and far more.
He did not confess everything to me. He did not tell me that he had not given all the fruits to Rosamund; that he had hoarded some for himself, in a box wrought from Faerie wood, and never told a soul of their existence. This I discovered at last by way of his descendent, a man not unknown to Faerie. It was the saving of us, for his avarice and his secretiveness gave us the means to recreate the alorin. I bless the tonic which restores to us the light and the water that we need, however temporarily. And I bless Cornelius Dwerryhouse and Rosamund Dale, for their development of the tincture, and for the theft which restored it to us so long after their deaths.
Is it ironic, that we should owe our deliverance to the very mortal traits which seem, to us, most difficult to understand? For Moon is restored! And while Her return owes much to the ethereal magics of my lands and my people, it owes as much to the stubborn, unwearying, interfering, curious practicality of those whose mortal blood outweighs any other heritage. The temerity of a Hattie Strangewayes! Would my people ever act as she did? Never. But can I deny that, without her gumption and her gall, we would linger still in sickness, Moon as absent as ever from our skies? I cannot.
The return of Berrie South can be but temporary. Alas, I cannot deny that either, for it fights me, every waking minute, to rejoin itself with its severed half. Someday, it will be beyond my power to prevent it, and sorely do I lament that inescapable fact. For have I not proved that, mortal and prosaic as its citizens appear, as dimmed as their colours may be, they are many of them still Fae? Has their desire for faerie fruit not proved unaltered? Their minds have forgotten their heritage, but their bodies, their spirits, have not. They pine for Faerie, as Faerie pines for them.
It gives me hope, that the same might be said for all our lost lands: that though they are gone from us, Faerie lingers still within them, all the long ages through. There is hope. Hope, that someday the means to halt the decline may yet be found; perhaps even to reverse it. It is to this hope that I dedicate the future of my reign, armed now with a new knowledge: sometimes, the Mortal world needs a dose of Faerie magic. And once in a while, the people of Faerie benefit from a little mortal pragmatism.
Find me online:
Website: www.charlotteenglish.com
Twitter: @charlottenglish
Facebook: www.facebook.com/CharlotteEEnglish
Also by Charlotte E. English:
Tales of Aylfenhame: Regency fairytale fantasy
Miss Landon and Aubranael
Miss Ellerby and the Ferryman
Bessie Bell and the Goblin King
The Draykon Series: Epic fantasy
Draykon
Lokant
Orlind
Llandry
The Lokant Libraries:
Seven Dreams
The Malykant Mysteries: Dark fantasy murder mysteries
The Rostikov Legacy
The Ivanov Diamond
Myrrolen's Ghost Circus
Ghostspeaker
The Drifting Isle Chronicles: Steampunk fantasy
Black Mercury