by Julie Hearn
Be still, I told myself. Be calm. She mustn’t know.
And she didn’t know. She didn’t guess. For I could have been a lumpy old bolster or a warming brick gone cold overnight for all she cared as she slipped beneath the coverlet, some few moments after me, and smiled herself to sleep.
But I—I lay awake long past cockcrow, wondering what to do. Father was away, as he so often was, on the Lord’s business. But he would be home in time for the Sunday sermon. Should I tell him? He loathed frolickers with a particular vengeance and would have whipped Grace for sure. And the lad, whoever he was—Father would have whipped the skin right off him and hung it up in church like a stained sheet.
By the time I rose to begin my chores, I had decided to do nothing for the moment; to keep my sister’s secret as securely hidden as the emerald frog beneath our mattress, and to bide my time.
Perhaps, I thought, she will tire of her sweetheart or come to her senses before Father returns. You must remember, I loved my sister and did not want to see her in the worst kind of trouble. I would follow her, I decided. Just to be close at hand, should she fall over in the darkness or find herself in danger and call for help.
After a few weeks I started to enjoy being out in the night.
My eyes by then were getting used to the gloom, and the moon was ripening. I knew, also, how much time I had before Grace left off steeping herself in sin and returned home. It was several hours at least—long enough, any way, for me to ramble as far from her as I dared and to know the exhilaration of being as free and as wild as a weasel.
I had no wish, anymore, to waste time spying. Nor was I curious to discover precisely who was dallying with my sister. Just thinking about that made me feel hot and uncomfortable in a way I neither liked nor understood.
I knew frolicking was a sin, but what it involved went beyond my understanding. The word itself put me in mind of lambs, jumping and leaping and butting heads in a meadow, but the other words crowding my head—words like “harlot” and “fornication,” “lewdness” and “abomination”—were frightening to me. I understood them least of all.
Fortunately my imagination saved me. What a sweet and powerful force it was. What a friend! In my black cloak, with the hood pulled up, I could have been anyone. I could have been a beggar, an enchantress, or a small thief. Certainly there was much I should have feared. There were vagrants and rebel soldiers up in the hills—rough men who would slip into villages like ours, under cover of darkness, to steal chickens or hay. And there were piskies in the ditches, so I’d heard, capable of all kinds of mischief—particularly at night. I could have had my neck wrung or my senses spellbound at any time. But my imagination wrapped me around as snug as any cloak, and I believed myself untouchable—invisible, even—as I skirted the lanes, haunted the edges of the wood, and watched the moon grow.
The night I met the Devil was one of the hottest of the year, and the moon was as round and pale as a dish. My cloak that night seemed to smother me, so I took it off and left it folded beneath a stone. I felt lighter without it. Daintier. It didn’t worry me that I could be spotted more easily, flitting about in a white nightgown. Perhaps I was moonstruck. Perhaps the Devil was already calling from across the moor. Certainly all was not right, for I had a yearning suddenly for something to happen—something outside my own imaginings, which seemed for the first time as stale as old crusts and of no particular comfort.
My usual haunts left me restless. The woods held no mystery, and the narrow lanes hemmed me in. Foxgloves curved like pink scythes from the hedges, shedding pollen into my hair as I pushed them up and away. Over everything lay a thick scent of woodbine, cloying and sweet.
It was a beautiful night, I remember that. It made me want to leap and sing praises. It put me in mind of Solomon’s song: “I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished and the pomegranates budded.”
There were no pomegranates in this village, though. Only apples and corn.
I had always stayed close to the village before. This time I felt drawn, as if by magic, away from there, along the path that led to the orchard. Perhaps, I thought, I will meet a vagrant. Or see a piskie. Perhaps I will help a rebel soldier steal a chicken—or, better still, a horse!
I was thinking exactly that—about stealing a horse—when I heard the muffled thud of hoof beats approaching from the west. I was next to the orchard and could have taken cover easily enough beneath the trees. I didn’t, though. I stayed exactly where I was, beside the stile, my heart drumming in time with whatever I was about to encounter, and my very ears tingling with excitement.
It was only at the last second, when it was too late to run and too late to hide, that I fell on my knees and began to pray.
JUNE 1645
The knock comes, as the cunning woman knew it would, in the dead of a night so humid that the whole of nature seems poised on the brink of ripening, melting, or expiring before dawn.
Nell is the first to hear it. Three sharp raps of a silver hammer—bang, bang, bang—on the door. The fairies, she tells herself, jerking bolt upright. The fairies have sent their messenger!
“Granny!” she hisses. “It’s him. It must be. Go answer it.”
The cunning woman moves faster than she has done in a long while. Down the ladder she goes, joints clicking, dreams and spells unraveling in her head. On the bottom rung she pauses and calls up a final warning:
“Remember, girl, be not beguiled. Do your job and come straight home. Eat nothing. Drink nothing. And if you hear music, however sweet, do not follow it. All will not be as it seems. Remember that.”
Yes, yes, thinks Nell. A plum will turn to slurry in my mouth. A sip of nectar will shrivel my tongue. And even one or two notes, played on a fiddle, will draw me so deep into the fairy labyrinth, if I let them, that there will be no getting out this side of doomsday.
“Do you hear me?” her granny calls. “You’re a Merrybegot, don’t forget. A child sacred to nature. That makes you extra special. They’ll keep you if they can.”
“I hear you, Granny,” Nell calls back. “And I’ll be careful. So don’t worry.”
Still, her fingers tremble as she hurries into her clothes and unhooks a linen bag from the rafters. Does she have all she needs? Is she ready? The things in the bag are the size of marbles, seeds, and toothpicks. Small, magical things for bringing a small, magical being into the world.
Nell takes a deep breath and lets it out. Inside she is terrified. What if she can’t get home? What if the fairies manage to trick her after all?
Don’t dwell on it, she scolds herself. You have a job to do.
Leaving the roof space, she lets her eyes rest for a moment on familiar objects: a turnip-shaped hole in the thatch … a basin of rose water for washing in … the rough pallet where she has slept beside her granny since she was little more than a badly jangled pot lid.
I’ll be back, she tells these things. I wont let no fairy fruit beguile me. Nor no fairy minstrel, neither. Not me.
The cunning woman is waiting at the foot of the ladder, looking up. To Nell, looking down, that wise, wizened face is the most familiar object of all, and the best loved. The old arms fly out now, like a couple of hinged sticks, ready to wrap her in a bony hug.
“Don’t be fussing,” Nell grumbles gently as she reaches the ground. “You’ll squash the bag. And look … Just look at that daft chicken.”
The dun chicken is two flaps away from the open door, lit up in a shaft of moonlight, like a fat, feathery performer about to burst into song. All fluffed up it is, like a brushed wig; skittering and bobbing and stretching its silly neck toward the visitor waiting outside.
“Hah!” scolds the cunning woman. “Beguile my chicken, would you? I don’t think so.”
And she blows her nose, briskly, between finger and thumb, then positions herself between her bird and the cottage door. Nell edges round the cauldron and peers out into the silvery gloom. She i
s ready now. Ready to go.
But, oh … Is that really a horse, sidestepping neatly on the path? It looks like a horse, and a very fine one too—as black as pitch, with rippling muscles and a flowing mane. But the breath flaring from its nostrils twinkles in the air, like powdered stars, and its hooves are striking sparks from the earth.
On its back sits a man, no bigger than a three-year-old child. He wears breeches—nothing else—and his skin gleams, phosphorescent as the scales of a fish. His face, Nell notes, is beautiful. But there is no warmth in it as he leans across the horse’s neck to beckon her forward.
“Be thou the Merrybegot?”
Nell nods and hastens her step. She knows what’s expected. Jump up quick and be gone. No time for chitchat. No time to check again her midwifery bag or pick a flower for luck. The piskies—who loathe all fairies and would attack on sight—are being kept at bay by the sheer force of her grandmother’s will. And her grandmother’s will, Nell knows, is not what it used to be.
“Huppa-la!” cries the fairymanchild, in a voice that could shatter glass. And are those roses Nell sees in the bushes as she is whisked off her feet? Newly opened white roses already going brown around their centers? Or a cluster of piskie buttocks raised in outrage as the fairyhorse rears onto its hind legs, peppers the path with a whinny of glitter, and takes off, away from the village?
It takes both seconds and forever to get to where they are going. There is no saddle on the fairyhorse, no stirrups, bridle, or reins; and at first Nell clings like grim death to the sides of the fairymanchild’s breeches, digs both her knobbly knees so hard into the horse’s flanks that they ache, and silently begs every single Power of earth, air, fire, and water to keep her from falling off.
After a while she realizes that falling is probably the one and only thing she doesn’t have to worry about. For although the horse is galloping at breakneck speed, the sensation is more like gliding … gliding smoothly, without a bump or a jolt. Like sailing through the air on the back of a thumping great arrow.
“Wheee!” she whoops in the fairymanchild’s ear, by way of conversation. “Be we there nearly?”
No answer. Fairymenchildren speak only if necessary, when circumstances force them aboveground. This one’s wings are folded so tight against his back, to keep them out of the way, that they look fit to split, like larvae. He is three times his normal size—as big as a fairy gets, when duty calls—but his skin and wings itch from being stretched, and all he wants is to deliver this ugly bug of a mortal to the birthing chamber, shrink into his slippers, and get paralytic on fermented berries.
In something of a temper, he leans into the horse’s neck and urges it on.
Loosening her grip on him, just a little, and unscrewing her eyes, Nell senses, rather than sees, trees, hedges, and standing stones zipping past in a dizzying blur of shapes and shadows. They are traveling too fast for her to notice anything in particular.
Until they reach the hill.
The cunning woman has prepared her as thoroughly as possible to face the hill. Fairy magic will get her physically through and in, but to remain self-possessed and unafraid, she must believe, absolutely, that entering solid earth is as natural as stepping from one room into another. This is how:
A SPELL TO ENTER A HILL AS IF IT WERE MADE OF MIST
Thrice daily, for seven days, and again in the minute before impact, call upon the Powers of the east: “Air whistle, air blow, turn the wheel of magic so. Wrap me round, from head to toe, as into the unknown I go.” Visualise every bone in thy body as lighter than the merest wisps of matter. As light as a sigh, thou art, yet strong, still, and sharper, in thy mind, than any digging implement. Know thyself as much a part of nature as the highest mound of earth and grass, and as capable as any mole of entering or leaving it at will. So mote it be.
This is easier said than done. Particularly in the minute before impact. And as the hill looms larger, then larger still, a shriek as loud as a whistle rises up in Nell’s gullet and is out, streaming behind her, before she can stop it. Nor can she keep her eyes wide open as her granny bade her. It is too hard. Too terrifying. Only her mind remains focused—enough, at least, to stop her leaping from the horse and breaking all the bones she is supposed to be thinking of as wisps. And in her mind the words turn frantically: Oh, Powers of air, please be here now. Please be here now. Please be here now …
Please …
BEEEEeeeeeeeeeeee heyeaaaaaaaaaaaaar.
Ohstopstopstop. OhPowersofbogginganywhereatall
This is …
Oh!
It is done.
She is through.
In the end it was a bit like diving into a haystack—a headlong rush into something that prickled and clogged, pressed heavily down, but gave way enough to let her in. In the end it was no trickier than cutting into a green pie. She is through. The horse and its rider have vanished, and she must wait now to be taken farther.
Come, come, come …
The inside of the hill resembles a cave. A great, yawning cave, with stalagmites jutting up and stalactites hanging down, each one wreathed around by roots and shining with the same luminescence as fairy skin. From close by comes the sound of splashing, only with a chime to it. At first Nell thinks it is waterfalls making that noise. Then she realizes that the foam cascading down the hill’s innards is made up of thousands of tiny white flowers and … and faces. Perfect little faces with budlike mouths calling, Come, come, come … The urgency and resonance of it is like the tinkling of bells summoning small sinners to an illusionary church.
Clutching her bag, Nell steps forward a little way over the rough, sparkling ground. And in a trice they are on her: half a dozen fairyfolk, whirring like dragonflies and tugging at her dress.
Come … come …
Their cold little hands are pulling her toward a crevice between two vast dangling roots.
“You be jesting, surely?”
The crevice is so narrow that only parchment, fairies, and worms could slip through it with ease. But the hands continue to pull and the wings to whirr, and before she can say another word, or even hold in her breath to make herself thinner, Nell feels her whole body contract, slide, then pull itself together again on the other side of the opening.
“Right,” she says, brushing down her apron and blinking rapidly. “I see. I understand.” Granny forgot to warn me of that, she thinks. She left that bit out. She … she hasn’t prepared me properly. Her mind be too spluttery. What else did she forget, I wonder? What else dont I know?
Too late to worry about that now. She is in an earthen antechamber, ducking to keep from bumping her head. And at her feet is a bed of moss with a laboring fairywoman on it. The bed is little bigger than a bird’s nest, and the fairy is thumping it with tiny fists and swearing worse than a pirate. Nearby stands her consort. He shakes his gorgeous head and beckons Nell closer.
“Four years,” he chimes. “You took your time.”
Time means nothing here, Nell reminds herself. It’s all right. It will all be the same when you get home. No one will be any older.
Ignoring him she kneels at the foot of the mossy bed and scrabbles in her bag of bits. The light is bad. She will need more light than this, and says so.
“Huppa-la!” commands the fairywoman’s consort, and the place is lit, suddenly, by umpteen pinpoints of matter—glowworms, fireflies, fallen stars. Nell cannot tell what they are. Their light has a strange greenish tinge, but it will do.
There is a flat rock beside her left knee, draped with a cloth as fine as a web. On it she places the things she will need. Her fingers hover over each minuscule item: the silver hairpins, the snippets of herbs, the pot of ointment, and the precious stone.
“Tell me,” she says to the fairywoman on the bed. “Do you want to twirl this baby out, or shall I use the pincers?”
“**!!!!****”
“Twirling it is, then,” says Nell. “Come on, up you get.”
Standing, the fairywoman
is no taller than a wand and so beautiful that Nell could have wasted valuable moments just staring. She is wearing a gauzy gown that clings to the rippling tennis-ball shape of her belly, and her wings, as she unfurls them, seem made of the same delicate material.
Is she the queen of the fairies? Perhaps she is. Or maybe all fairywomen are this lovely, even the ones who cook the dinners, sweep the halls, and empty the thimble-size chamber pots. Maybe they all have gauzy gowns and consorts.
“Right, then,” Nell tells her. “Start twirling.”
The consort is checking out the bits and pieces on the rock.
“Where’s the icicle?” he says.
Nell feels her stomach lurch.
“What icicle?”
“The icicle. For cutting the cord.”
Playing for time, Nell picks up the precious stone and makes a big show of polishing it on the hem of her apron. Granny, she cries in her mind. I don’t know about no icicle. I don’t know what I’m doing. You didn’t tell me about no bogging icicle!
The stone glows, red as blood, in her lap. Plucked from an eagles nest, it contains another tinier stone, which shakes and sounds within it. Eagles, it is said, will not hatch a single brood without a stone like this lying somewhere among the eggs, like a solid clot. Its magical properties will help draw the fairybaby down and out, when the time comes. But it won’t cut the cord. Nell knows that much for sure.
Carefully, professionally, she puts the stone back, next to the herbs. The consort is glaring up at her, arms folded, one foot tapping the ground.
“Well?” he snaps. “Has it melted? Are you such a beginner and a fool that you can’t even keep an icicle sharp?”
Nell forces herself to meet his look.
“Times are changing,” she tells him. “We midwives don’t use icicles with you lot no more. There be other ways—better ways—of doing things.”
The consort’s eyes glimmer and blink.
“Liar,” he says softly.