The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘Hooray!’ said Rhys, hopping up and down, splashing drops everywhere.

  ‘Be still, child,’ warned Nimriel ‘or you will shatter the images.’

  The boy obeyed, and as the ripples vanished another episode unfolded.

  A cottage stood on the banks of a fast-running stream, its stone walls overgrown with honeysuckle, its roof thatched with heather. The garden burgeoned with foxgloves, pansies and marigolds. Children played by the front gate, whistling tunes on white dead-nettle stalks, or skipping with ropes of marram grass. On the porch sat an elderly man, weaving a withy-basket.

  As twilight drew in a faceless figure came riding past the cottage on a wide plank carried along by two burly men. He was dressed in old clothes stuck all over with burdock burrs so that not a particle of fabric showed. A burry mask obscured his face and a flower-covered hat topped his head. He carried two staves, one in each hand. From these staves flapped two flags, the Royal Standard of Eldaraigne and the Empire Jack, and spring flowers decorated the handles. The disguised villager stopped at the front gate to collect small coins, flowers and food from the occupants, after which they joined his procession, the children singing songs and shrieking.

  Ashalind realised what she was witnessing. ‘It is Flench Ridings Night at Appleton Thorn,’ she said in wonderment. ‘The villagers are on their way to the inn.’

  ‘And that house,’ said Nimriel, ‘is the home of the Arbalisters.’

  ‘The Arbalisters? But Tully told us that the sons of the Arbalisters left their home on the Churrachan and sailed across the ocean, where he could not follow. He said the cottage had fallen into ruin.’

  ‘The great-great-grandsons will return to Ishkiliath,’ said Nimriel. ‘They will rebuild the cottage. Take note!’

  Now that the cottage was empty of human beings, a small figure could be seen busying itself about the place. It emerged from the front door, carried a pail of cinders into the garden and emptied it carefully around the base of the pear tree. After bustling indoors it reappeared with a mop and bucket, filled the bucket from the well and trotted inside again. The creature had a face and torso and arms like a man’s, but legs like a goat. Horns protruded from his shaggy head. It was obvious, by the movement of his lips, that he was singing as he worked.

  ‘Is that Tully?’ asked Rhys.

  ‘It is indeed!’ Ashalind said, beaming. ‘He looks as happy as a lark.’

  ‘Happy to be doing housework?’ her brother grimaced.

  ‘He is an urisk. They are, by nature, helpful wights, like bruneys.’

  ‘Observe another who is happy,’ said the Lady of the Lake, sketching a symbol on the water.

  They looked.

  In a forest glade a small grey horse was standing in a pond. Pleated water-leaves like thin, green ribbons twined in its glossy mane and in its tail, which curled up over its back like a half-wheel. Water lapped around the horse’s long, sculptured legs as it bent its neck—proudly arched—and dipped its nose into the pond After jerking its head in a tearing motion the creature came up with a mouthful of waterweeds, which it chewed, wearing a look of deep contentment on its long face.

  ‘Happy Tighnacomaire!’ cried Ashalind. ‘Dear friend!’

  Shadows dimmed the Lady’s mirage. In the lake stars pricked out, one by one. The final spectacle showed another familiar figure. It was Pod, the clubfooted servant boy from Isse Tower. All alone, he was lying on his back in some remote spot, gazing at the moon. Or perhaps not entirely alone, because a white owl swooped past, silent as a spectre. As the watchers gazed Pod turned his head towards them, and Ashalind uttered a startled cry. For it had seemed to her that he winked at them before he turned away.

  The image evaporated.

  ‘I do believe Pod could actually see us.’ Ashalind said in astonishment.

  Nimriel smiled. ‘That is not impossible,’ she replied.

  ‘My Lady, your visions have lightened my heart,’ said Ashalind. ‘For that I am profoundly grateful.’

  But Nimriel inclined her head, saying, ‘It was my delight.’

  After the discussions about Ashalind’s story had concluded, a feast of welcome was held, which continued for days. As soon as it was over Angavar convened a meeting with the highest of his lords and ladies, announcing that he would make Ashalind his queen—a circumstance they had all guessed in any case—and if there was any resentment on the part of the Faêran, it was not displayed. They were so overjoyed that their High King Angavar Iolaire was back in their midst and grateful to Ashalind for the part she played in returning him to them, that they honoured her as if she were not Erith-born, but one of themselves.

  Therefore, witnessed by all, Ashalind and Angavar pledged themselves to one another and it was done.

  Then there would have been a betrothal feast, but Angavar wished to dispense with any further time-consuming matters and get straight to the wedding, and Ashalind was of one mind with him, so preparations began immediately. And such preparations! It was to be a celebration the like of which had never been seen in Aia; a wedding that that could only have taken place in the Land Beyond the Stars. The denizens of Faêrie put forth their inventiveness to please their King and his betrothed, and the first stage, the Attiring of the Bride unfolded like some fabulous saga.

  Attended by Oswyn and Meganwy, Ashalind shed her garments and bathed in a limpid pool edged with mosses and ferns, where crisp, creamy-petalled water-lilies stood up like cupped hands. It was a lively water, lacking the grave serenity of the colonnaded lake by which the people of Hythe Mellyn had paused in meditation. Piquant breezes ruffled the ferns, a series of silvery cascades emptied into the pool from the surrounding embankments, and the sky hung down in blue banners from the great arch of a rainbow.

  Green-haired mermaids waited upon Ashalind, sometimes singing weird and lovely ocean-songs, at other times pausing to let song-birds give voice to their wild melodies; blackbird and magpie, grey shrike-thrush and currawong. The sea-girls untangled Ashalind’s golden tresses with their coralline combs, and the Gwragged Annwn, the lake-maidens, anointed her with dewy unguents. Mild-tempered silkies and other water-wights ministered to her as well, but Leodogran’s daughter would not have wicked ones near her, especially none of the fuathan. The fuathan, a motley assortment of unseelie grotesqueries, had never been kind to Ashalind. Her restored memories included vivid recollections of such fuathan as the murderous woman-goat thing she and her friends had fended off in Lallillir, with its fence of teeth as long and pointed as stakes, yellow as old parchment, and stained slime-green. Such encounters, to Ashalind’s relief, were safely behind her and not worth dwelling on. As Angavar’s queen, nothing could harm her in the Fair Realm; nonetheless she did not like to be reminded of the terrors of bygone days.

  When at last she rose from her bath, with water running off her body like cords of raw silk and sliding pearls, she felt that all the travails and sorrows of the past had been rinsed away.

  The fragile water-damsels called asrai came swimming to clothe her in an improbable chemise made from thin membranes of transparent water ceaselessly pouring; a fabric as rare and opalescent as the wings of dragonflies. Lake-maidens dressed Oswyn and Meganwy in gowns of Spring-green leaves overlaid with a fine mesh of leaf-skeletons, crowning them with garlands of newly-budded ivy. All three mortals were placed in a boat draped with rich folds of silk, which glided on its own across the water.

  ‘Are you to be wed in see-through, Ashalind?’ Oswyn wondered. ‘Is that the custom here? After all the marvels I have seen, nothing would surprise me.’

  Ashalind laughed. ‘The asrai murmured as they put it on me, this is an undergarment.’

  ‘How does it feel,’ asked Meganwy, ‘to wear pouring water?’

  ‘Not wet at all. It feels dry to the touch, like silk, only your fingers go right through it. See?’ Ashalind lifted the hem of the garments and showed it to her companions. ‘How it can be handled at all it is a miracle. This stuff is like nothing I have ever
known.’

  The boat beached itself amidst banks burgeoning with spring blossoms. Swanmaidens waited in those gardens, with their long dark hair sluicing down over their cloaks of inky feathers and a long red jewel shining, bright as fresh blood, on the brow of each. They loved Ashalind, deeming her exceptional among mortals, and vied with one another to tie forget-me-nots in her hair, giving her a petticoat sewn from magnolia petals to wear over the implausible chemise. Ashalind glimpsed her reflection mirrored in still water, and wondered greatly, believing for a heartbeat that she beheld someone else.

  Clouds of pollen hovered like gold scintillants, and the air of the garden was flooded with a fragrance of hyacinths, heady as opium. Leodogran’s daughter walked amidst fanfares of daffodils, carillons of lily-of-the-valley and salutations of sword-irises, her handmaidens flanking her. Oswyn and Meganwy were as enchanted with the proceedings as she, and exclaimed at every new turn of events until, intoxicated with gorgeousness, they became lost for utterances.

  Now different music wafted to their ears; the melodies of the Faêran themselves, played upon harps and lutes and other stringed instruments. A small following of feminine wights collected in their wake; miniature folk such as grigs and siofra, all giggling, and bearing rosebuds in their minute hands. Ashalind wondered if they were to make a bouquet for her, but the bouquet, when it arrived later, came from another source.

  The Faêran next led the three mortals through a Summer meadow overgrown by tawny grasses, redolent with the smell of new-mown hay. Here Ashalind received an astonishing overskirt of some rippling gauze shot with iridescence, apparently fashioned from real flames that blazed but could not cause harm, much as the water of the chemise poured continually and never flooded or dried up. Unburning sparks settled in her hair, and sweet-throated trumpets sounded. Oswyn tried to catch some sparks but they evaded her flailing hands, like wary insects.

  Faêran hands held up a mirror of polished bronze, but Ashalind hardly recognised herself. Small trow-boys joined her wightish following, solemn and clearly awe-struck. The birds of Summer flitted everywhere, especially honeyeaters. She spied a certain hummingbird that had a familiar look, and welcomed the idea that her lover had taken care of everything, down to the last detail.

  Once she fancied she glimpsed the swooping shape of a large black bird, or the shadow of one, somehow ominous—no songster, she was certain—and, lost as she was in her delirium of happiness, she experienced a mild curiosity at spying a creature that seemed somehow out of place. Now that it came to mind, she recalled having seen that same bird in the Spring garden, but had scarcely heeded it.

  Throughout the Fair Realm the wind was rising. Further Ashalind progressed with her companions, and as they entered an Autumnal woodland her excitement grew, for this was the next-to-last halt before she reached the place where the ceremony was to be held.

  Haughty little princes of the siofra, belted with swords the size of toothpicks, raced between the blowing trees on saddled mice, while pint-sized queens and kings went bowling along in hollow-pumpkin carriages drawn by prettily-caparisoned rats. How the wheels of such small conveyances could plough through the deep carpet of leaf-litter was anyone’s guess. Pheasants foraged in the undergrowth, and ptarmigan, and peacocks, and other splendidly-plumaged fowl whose discarded feathers were snatched away by the gusts. The sudden tympanic roar of thunder blended with the cry of the wind, skilfully orchestrated—perhaps by Cierndanel, perhaps by Angavar himself—to create a resounding, stirring anthem; a paean in praise of all those who had ever struggled to triumph over hardship.

  ‘Such music!’ Oswyn cried exuberantly, reaching her hands towards the heavens. Scooping up handfuls of leaves as bright as dyed paper scraps, the high-spirited damsels flung them at one another as if they were children mock-warring with snowballs.

  The wind swept through Ashalind’s hair, adorning it with fireflies. Their glow was soft azure, in contrast to the hard ruby and topaz of the unburning sparks, and when she gazed into a looking glass the Faêran placed in front of her, she imagined that a thousand diminutive jewelled lamps had become snagged in her locks. Contrary to all expectation, there was no strident clash of colours, no garishness. The denizens of the Fair Realm were too artful to allow that. Even when the forest wind let out another cinnamon breath, attiring Ashalind in an ethereal dress made of sunset-tinted leaves, or of the ghosts of those leaves, there was no gaudiness; for nature is the most artistic designer of all, and the Faêran worked according to her ways.

  Meganwy flinched and cried out, then brushed her hand across her eyes. ‘I thought for an instant I was blinded and deafened by a seething of wings,’ she said, recovering her composure. ‘A murther of crows, it seemed … but it was nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’ echoed Ashalind.

  ‘No. Nothing at all. Be of good cheer!’

  Gradually the thunder drummed its way into the distance and faded. Leaves continued to spiral through the air, wind-stripped from the trees. The further the swelling bridal procession travelled through the woodland, the barer became the branches, until all trees stood leafless, their twigs forming starkly elegant traceries against the clouds. Sooty wings rushed through the boughs and flapped away with slow pulses. A harsh cry overrode the wind’s music and the susurrus of the leaves; or perhaps it was merely the rubbing together of two creaking limbs …

  Belatedly, Ashalind wondered whether Morragan, the Raven Prince was nearby; and she felt astonished that she had not considered the possibility before. A disturbing seed took hold inside her; a seed of what, she could not say.

  But the Faêran placed Ashalind upon an eldritch horse the colour of purity, whose bridle glittered with little bells like chains of frozen snowdrops. Accompanied by Oswyn and Meganwy on two sorrel steeds, she was led beneath trellises festooned with vines and heavy with bunches of purple grapes. As the wind’s strength began to ebb, twenty-one Faêran ladies joined the cavalcade, dressed in gowns of emerald tissue and mounted on grey steeds. Their voices rang out, combining in fantastic harmonies. Seelie waterhorses gambolled at the fringes of the pageant and, from distant bells, clear chimes pealed out joyously.

  The wedding hour was approaching.

  Winter is hard on warm-blooded creatures in Erith. It can be dismal and ugly also, when leaden plates seem to batten down the sky, when ice turns to slush, and when dead sparrows lie frozen beneath thorn-hedges. Even in the land of mortals, however, the exquisiteness of Winter’s incarnation in the Fair Realm can sometimes be glimpsed; a stand of stately evergreens, their canting foliage heaped with a milky lather; a sunlight morning alight with winking frost-prisms; a window pane patterned with a filigree of icy ferns … The loveliness of Winter was concentrated and magnified a thousandfold in Faêrie.

  The steeds of the three companions set them down in a rolling, snow-mantled landscape. At their backs soared the black fretwork trees of the Autumnal woodland. Before them, a frozen wonderland.

  Lambent daylight, clear and diffuse, seemed to emanate from ground and sky; from everywhere rather than from any particular source. Sugar-cones of spruce, pine, and fir scattered themselves across the scenery, every needle hoarfrost-powdered, as stiff as starched tinsel. Willows gushed like frosted fountains, their tumbling withies daintily etched in sable and ivory and shades of twilight. Flutes and pan-pipes made haunting music. As Ashalind and her friends stood barefoot and warm in the whipped-meringue drifts, the Faêran bestowed the final wedding garments.

  The ornamentations of Erith echo Faêran adornments to the same extent that a painted portrait echoes its living subject. For Angavar’s bride there were no jewels of bloodless stone mimicking the brightness of stars; nor any needlework representations of nature’s ephemerae. The Faêran robed Ashalind in a gathered gown of actual snowflakes-made-watered-satin, attached to a train several yards long. The entire glistening confection was appliquéd with lacework of orb spiderwebs—each filament exquisitely rimed. The skirts were ruched with imperishable sea-foam
and inviolable frost-flowers, and embroidered with living rosebuds that would never wilt. Instead of seed pearls or diamonds, sparkling constellations of ice crystals the size of tears picked out the contours of the bodice. Upon her head they placed a shimmering veil, not of gauze or tulle, but sheets of real mist, translucent, streaming to her ankles, rippling as she moved.

  Then aerial flocks of larks and nightingales came thronging, carrying sprigs in their beaks. The Faêran bridesmaids wove these sprays together, and crowned Ashalind with a circlet of tiny white rosebuds, dew-glinting. The bridal bouquet came to Ashalind borne by a blizzard of doves; a collection of perfect snowy flowers tied up with ribbons—rosebuds, gypsophila, and gardenias; stephanotis, jasmine and wisteria. Living butterflies flitted in and out amongst the blossoms, whose stems trailed to her feet.

  She saw herself mirrored in an ice sheet; her own image in a glimmering haze, all silver and vestal white with a hint of gold, and it came to her abruptly, finally—‘I am his bride!’

  A vanilla-scented cloud lifted up Ashalind and her companions, and carried them through the air. When their feet touched the snow once more, they found themselves among a vast concourse of the Faêran. As ever, their voices musical, modulated, fell like flower-petals on water, ringing like birdsong in the morning. They spoke in a language Ashalind now understood; a tongue as smooth as polished silver, as rich as the jewel-hoards of dragons. Some wore scarlet and gold and amber, like leaping flames, some were clad in green and silver like moonlight on leaves, some in soft grey like curling smoke. Others amongst them appeared to be as naked as needles, graced only with the beauty of their comely forms and their flowing hair, which was threaded with jewels and flowers …

  ‘I am truly to be the Queen of the Faêran!’ Ashalind whispered to herself.

  But it was all too much to comprehend.

  Oswyn and Meganwy arranged the snowflakes-made-watered-satin train of Ashalind’s gown, spreading and smoothing it. Ashalind kissed her friends, whispering, ‘I am glad you are with me!’ and indeed she was, for her heart was pounding at thrice its normal rate. She was grateful for the knowledge that her two staunch friends stood by.