Once Upon an Autumn Eve
Page 30
Finally, Liaze, yet mounted upon Pied Agile, raised her hands and quiet fell. And she smiled down at her sire and dam and said, “King Valeray, Queen Saissa, I present my betrothed”—Liaze turned and smiled at her beloved—“Comte Luc du Château Bleu dans le Lac de la Rose et Gardien de la Clé.”
Among the crowd, Tutrice Martine gasped and fainted dead away.
That evening there was a grand ball, attended by a king and a queen, a prince and a princess, a comte and the daughter of a duke, as well as the staff entire of the Autumnwood, serving by turns as was the custom at such gatherings.
During a lull in the dancing, Valeray said to Luc, “I knew Amaury, your sire, Luc. He was a fine man, and he aided in the imprisonment of Orbane. He was also a splendid warrior, and a fitting man to be the Keeper of the Key. Guard it well, Luc, for if it comes to either Hradian or Nefasí gaining hold of it, then all of Faery will lie in peril.”
“You know of the key, Father?” asked Liaze.
“Indeed,” said Valeray.
“Hmm . . . would that I had known,” said Liaze. “Mayhap I would have been better prepared for what was to come, mayhap even prepared for Iniquí.”
“I am so glad she is dead,” said Saissa, glancing at Borel and Michelle across the ballroom, talking to the musicians. “It leaves but two of that dreadful sisterhood, two of Orbane’s acolytes, sorcerous witches who would do harm to my brood.”
“Speaking of the brood, Mother,” said Liaze, “where are Celeste and Alain and his Camille?”
“Oh, perhaps wishing they were here,” said Saissa, laughing.
Liaze smiled, and at that moment the music struck up again, and she was whirled out onto the dance floor by the handsome and dashing Luc.
A short while later, under a glitter of stars shimmering against a black night sky, on a balcony outside the chamber, Liaze reached up and took Luc’s face in her hands. “Kiss me, beloved, and I will kiss thee.”
And so they embraced and kissed most deeply, their passion flaring as bright as the wheeling skies above, there in the night, the star-spangled night, under the dark of the moon.
Epilogue Afterthoughts
And thus ends this part of the tale that began eight moons and a fortnight and a sevenday past, when, upon an autumn eve, Princess Liaze of the Autumnwood went for a moonlight swim, and a wounded knight came crashing into her quiet willow grove.
Or perhaps this tale really began some years ere that, when a babe was born to a comtesse, and a twelvemonth after a vicomte decided to do away with the child.
Or perhaps this story began when a dreadful mage was locked in a dark castle from which there seemed to be no escape but by means of a special key.
Or perhaps this story began even farther back when a Keltoi bard spun a tale so enthralling that the gods decided to make it manifest.
Regardless as to when this story began, at heart it is a romance, wherein we find a lonely princess, a noble knight with a wicked stepfather, Goblins and Trolls and a dreadful witch, three Fates, a howling castle, a Brownie, a terrible Wild Hunt, a Pixie with a crowing rooster, and a black glass mountain, and much more, indeed much more, including Sprites and a Ghillie Dhu and Nixies and Satyrs and a Faun and Nymphs and mysterious twilight borders and things unseen and unnamed, some perilous, others not.
That might seem an overabundance of wonder, but that is the way of fairy tales, and the way of Faery as well.
—Oh, and as to the answer to Liaze’s last question, the one where she asked the whereabouts of Celeste and Alain and his Camille, the one where Saissa answered that they were probably wishing they were at the ball, well, Alain and Camille were reading poetry to one another in the great library of Summerwood Manor, but as to Celeste—the Princess of the Springwood—oh, my, she was . . . But wait, that is a different tale.
I thought you but a dream
Afterword
You might think I’ve woven several fairy tales together to form this single story, but to my mind they truly belong in a single tale. Perhaps the original bard who told the tale stepped through a twilight bound, and after he was gone, various parts of the single story were split away to become individual tales. Thank heavens, they are now back together again.
It is true, however, that there is a story that has many of the same elements of my Faery tale: The Glass Mountain. In that fairy tale a boy helps a trapped, somewhat Gnome-like being, setting him free from his cage; in my Faery tale a princess sets free a trapped Brownie from his cage. In the fairy tale, a princess is trapped atop a glass mountain and a knight rides to the rescue; in my Faery tale it is a knight who is trapped and a princess who comes to save him. In the fairy tale, aided by the Gnome, the grown-up boy, who is now a knight, rides a third of the way up the glass mountain on a copper-shod horse, and then two-thirds of the way up on a silver-shod one, and to the very top on a gold-shod horse to come to where the princess is; in my Faery tale, it is the princess who rides up the mountain on bronze (akin to copper), then silver, and finally gold. Of course, Once Upon an Autumn Eve only faintly echoes The Glass Mountain, yet there are parallels. But my tale has witches and Fates and Trolls and Goblins and a wicked stepfather and Pixies and Nixies and other such throughout.
I have cast the story with a French flavor, for, in addition to a magical adventure, this tale is a romance at heart, and French is to my mind perhaps the most romantic language of all.
One other note: throughout this tale, I have relied upon the phases of the moon. I used the earth’s own moon cycles to do so, and I hope they correspond to those in that magical place. But perhaps I am quite mistaken in my assumptions . . . who knows? For, once you cross the twilight borders and enter Faery, strange and wonderful are the ways therein.
Lastly, I enjoyed “restoring” this fairy tale to its proper length by putting back together the separated parts of the much longer story, as well as adding back those things I think should have been there in the first place, but which may have been omitted bit by bit down through the ages. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Dennis L. McKiernan
Tucson, Arizona, 2004
About the Author
Born April 4, 1932, I have spent a great deal of my life looking through twilights and dawns seeking—what? Ah yes, I remember—seeking signs of wonder, searching for pixies and fairies and other such, looking in tree hollows and under snow-laden bushes and behind waterfalls and across wooded, moonlit dells. I did not outgrow that curiosity, that search for the edge of Faery, when I outgrew childhood—not when I was in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, nor in college, nor in graduate school, nor in the thirty-one years I spent in Research and Development at Bell Telephone Laboratories as an engineer and manager on ballistic-missile defense systems and then telephone systems and in think-tank activities. In fact I am still at it, still searching for glimmers and glimpses of wonder in the twilights and the dawns. I am abetted in this curious behavior by Martha Lee, my helpmate, lover, and, as of this publication, my wife of nearly forty-nine years.