by Zen Cho
Prunella sat back. She was grateful for Mrs. Daubeney’s ready supply of conversation, for it gave her the space she needed to put away her disappointment. Still, she was not quite natural when she spoke.
“Indeed, no!” she said, her voice quavering. She cleared her throat. “How could we? She is coming out now.”
Sure enough, Cawley came, lurching out from the vestibule where Prunella had left the bundle of old linens in preparation. Cawley’s gait was imperfect, but it grew steadier as she walked, and she ascended the step to the chaise with hardly a wobble. By the time they reached London, thought Prunella, no one would ever tell what she had been before.
10
THE BORDER WITH Fairyland was not much to look at, being marked by nothing more than a hedgerow straggling along the outskirts of Fobdown Purlieu. The village had been known in former times for its peculiarly magical quality: its visions of hunters and black dogs, its rains of frogs and the regular addition to its population of changelings, who grew into fey children and vanished in various outlandish ways.
Such oddities had fallen off in recent times, however. There was now little to distinguish Fobdown Purlieu from any other village in England, save the curious, pretty customs conducted at christenings and funerals to prevent fairies’ stealing the souls of the newly living and the freshly dead.
The border itself had shrunk in proportion to the Fairy Court’s affection for Britain, so that though the hedgerow ran along the whole length of the field in which Zacharias stood, the border itself only covered a section no more than twelve feet wide. To those with the sight to see it, the border appeared as a bilious green shimmer above the hedgerow, rippling gently like a sheet caught by a breeze.
“Of course, Fairclough calculated that there were three hundred and seventeen paths to Fairy,” said Sir Stephen. “But I do not know that one can rely upon Fairclough’s arithmetic. A man of great parts, but if he could tell you he had ten fingers and ten toes that was quite as much as he was capable of.”
“Certainly his method has its flaws, but having attempted the calculations myself, I should not have thought there were any fewer than two hundred and fifty ways into the Other Realm,” said Zacharias. He shaded his eyes as he looked up, the light of the border imbuing his aspect with an eerie green glow, so that he looked no less the spectre than Sir Stephen. “It is a pity we have not discovered more of them.”
This twelve-foot stretch of wavering light was the only formal border between Britain and Fairyland, and one of the few portals to that land English thaumaturgy had discovered. In days past there had been considerable traffic across the border: adventurous villagers and ambitious thaumaturges alike had made regular visits to Fairy, while a continuous flow of familiars had rushed in from the opposite direction, seeking novelty and excitement in the mortal world.
It had used to be that a magician seeking elevation need only scramble across the border and inveigle a magical creature into entering his service, and he would return a sorcerer, covered in glory. Reading of such exploits in his youth, Zacharias had admired their daring, but Sir Stephen had pooh-poohed all this:
“Yes, they believed themselves vastly clever, I do not doubt! I suppose they thought their familiars went with them out of pure good nature, but you may be sure they were disabused of that notion quickly enough. There is a reason sorcerers look such glum fellows in their portraits. And they were not the only ones to be punished for their folly. As if one could rob one’s neighbour time and again, and still expect to be invited to dinner! Everyone suffered from their rapacity, in the end.”
The days when a thaumaturge could make his career by a single visit were long over—which accounted, in some measure, for the poisonous resentment of Zacharias among his peers. The Fairy Queen and King had in time found their numbers so reduced—so many of their most agreeable courtiers kidnapped (for it was invariably the most amiable that succumbed to the thaumaturges’ importunities)—that they had instituted a ban upon mortals’ crossing the border from England, unless they did so with a special invitation from the Court.
Such invitations were not precisely uncommon: they were granted to a few goodly young men in each generation, for the Queen could never do without a handsome young mortal or three in her retinue. But the invitations were hardly an unalloyed honour. An invitation from the Queen of Elfland could not be refused, and one’s prospects of ever going home again were unpromising. Geoffrey Midsomer was unusual in having returned.
The Court’s subjects were also prohibited from crossing into England. As sorcerers died, their familiars left for Fairy and did not return. There had not been a new familiar in England in half a century.
Still, despite the uneasy relations between the two kingdoms, the border remained porous, open to the fluxion of magic, if not to the passage of mortals or fairies. From the border flowed magic to the rest of Britain.
It was not such a setting as was likely to forgive any mistake. A fumbled formula or misspoken verse might have grave consequences so close to the border. Zacharias occupied himself for a time with preparing the ground for his enchantments, casting spells of concealment and confusion.
Sir Stephen was nobly silent for a full half hour, but as the light began to change, and their shadows grew long on the grass, his patience wore out.
“What are you about, Zacharias?” he said. “It is getting late, and you know you ought not to be essaying upon perilous new magics on the edge of Fairy at sunset.”
“It would be imprudent to put my plan into effect without taking steps to conceal it. The Fairy Court is unlikely to look kindly upon my endeavours.”
“It is imprudent to implement your plan at all,” said Sir Stephen sharply. “I could wish you had had time to refine your formulae—I do not like how you have cobbled together Bascombe’s declining with Gascoyne’s loop. Since your hand has been forced, however, it is best to get it over with. You will hardly wish to be here as dark falls.”
Everyone knew there were times of the day that were more magical than others: the deep heart of the night, and the times of transition, at sunrise and sunset. Even twenty years ago thaumaturges would avoid casting their spells at the witching time of night, for the surplus of magic at that time, and the attentiveness of ghosts and spirits, lent any enchantment an unsettling volatility.
This was no longer a concern, however. Nowadays magicians anxious to ensure their success might well wake after midnight to take advantage of the thinning boundaries between the worlds. Sunset was not quite so perilous a time—but so near Fairyland, and with untried spells, it was as well to be cautious.
Zacharias sighed. “I suppose I ought to have a look at the other side before I begin.”
“Oh, if that is the reason you have delayed!” said Sir Stephen. “There is no need to be apprehensive. You ought to know the prohibition on entry does not apply to us.”
“In principle,” said Zacharias.
Zacharias had never been able to get to the bottom of why an exemption should apply to the Sorcerer Royal. If the Court so disapproved of English thaumaturgy as to forbid English thaumaturges its demesne, why should it welcome only the chief representative of that despised body? The nearest Zacharias had ever got to the truth was Lady Wythe’s once teasing Sir Stephen about his having made up to the Fairy Queen, and Sir Stephen’s responding with an uncharacteristic blush—and that seemed too absurd an explanation.
Zacharias knew enough thaumaturgical history to be wary of Fairyland, and he would gladly have forgone the check, but it would be foolhardy to embark upon his enchantments without first surveying the other side of the border. If there were anything unexpected—a passing fairy, who by its presence increased the atmospheric magic on the other side, or adverse weather conditions, which in Fairy might take outlandish forms—it might throw his calculations out, and introduce all the instability he feared.
Approaching the border w
arily, he leant through the sheet of light, keeping a firm grasp of the hedge as he did so.
After all his deliberations, the border offered no resistance. Zacharias saw on the other side rolling green fields, not unlike those that surrounded Fobdown Purlieu. A grey sky glowered above. There was a lone harpy flying in the distance, with the weary, single-minded air of a Cit hurrying home from his bank.
So much Zacharias saw before the magic rushed up and slammed him in the face. He was shoved backwards by the force of the blow, and landed heavily on the damp grass of England.
“Good God!” cried Sir Stephen. “What’s amiss?”
To assist Zacharias to rise required a solidity Sir Stephen no longer possessed, and it was clear he felt his impotence. Zacharias was too stunned from his abrupt ejection from Fairy to respond at once, but as soon as Sir Stephen’s anxious countenance had penetrated his consciousness he scrambled up, dusting himself off.
“I am not hurt in the least. Pray do not be concerned,” he said.
Sir Stephen’s worn face, translucent in the dying light of the day, went to his heart. He looked away, knowing Sir Stephen would prefer indifference to pity. But Sir Stephen did not lack courage.
“What a mother hen I am become!” he said soberly. “If I were my old self I should not start at every shadow, and be alarmed when you stumble, but one’s anxiety rises in proportion to one’s incapacity to do anything about it. Never outstay your time upon this earth, Zacharias. I am better acquainted with my own weakness now than I ever wished to be.”
Zacharias scarcely knew where to look, or what to say. Affection there had always been between them, whatever their disagreements—and there had been more of these than Zacharias had permitted Sir Stephen to know. But their relationship could never have been mistaken for one of equality while Sir Stephen lived. Wealth, influence, age and obligation had separated them, and while never quite pretending to the rights of a son, Zacharias had regarded Sir Stephen with all the respect due a father, a teacher and the chief of their profession.
With Sir Stephen’s death, however, the gap between them had closed imperceptibly. It was one of the many embarrassments of being attended by his guardian’s spectre, that he should begin to see in the spirit the frailties of the man.
“You could not know what had occurred,” said Zacharias finally. It was out of the question for Sir Stephen to venture across the border himself: it was all too easy for a ghost, under the influence of Fairy, to persuade itself it was a sprite, with deleterious consequences for its hope of salvation. “It is nothing that poses any immediate peril.”
A disturbing certainty was coalescing within him, however, and he returned to the flexible sheet of light shining above the hedgerow. This time he was more cautious, and only put his hand into Fairyland. He yelped and withdrew it at once.
“What is it?” said Sir Stephen.
“Magic,” said Zacharias. “There is a buildup on the other side.”
It was only atmospheric magic, no different from the weak stuff that pervaded Britain’s ether and made Lady Wythe sneeze. The magic on the other side of the border differed in one key respect, however—its concentration. It was only to be expected that the air should have a magical tang to it in Fairyland, but this force was beyond anything Zacharias had expected.
“How extraordinary,” said Sir Stephen. He had not quite recovered from his mother hennish mood. “Ought you to continue your spells now, if merely putting in your head for a look draws such a response? Perhaps it would be better to wait till morning. Indeed, you ought to refrain from doing anything before noon.”
Zacharias cast a levitation spell. The top of the border was too high for him to reach it unaided, and he wished to examine its whole breadth.
“That scheme is exploded, I suspect,” he said grimly. “I do not think I ought to cast my spells at all.”
Sir Stephen had not had the advantage of sensing the magic on the other side, and he was too unnerved to have embarked upon the chain of reasoning that had unfurled in Zacharias’s mind. It was only now, as he calmed down, that the questions began to occur to him, that Zacharias had resolved nearly to his own satisfaction five minutes ago.
“How can the creatures be managing with such an excess of magic?” wondered Sir Stephen. Any surplus of magic in Fairy was wont to be attended by disaster. It lent too potent a stimulus to Fairy’s excitable peoples, giving rise to numberless feuds, burglaries, love affairs and other misadventures. The Court had formerly rather approved of the traffic to England, because it siphoned off excess magic, and kept Fairy’s inhabitants tractable. It was only when the balance began to tilt in Britain’s favour, as a result of the depredations of magicians greedy for glory, that the Court had demurred. “How curious that they should be encountering the opposite difficulty from ours.”
“Or not so very curious,” said Zacharias. “Ha! I have it!”
Sir Stephen floated up to examine the object he had found. It was affixed in a conspicuous position halfway up the sheet of light that marked the border, and had only escaped observation before because it was so small.
“Fairy always delights in an unsubtle jest,” said Sir Stephen, after a pause. “Leofric used to perpetrate the rankest puns.”
“Indeed,” said Zacharias. He tugged at the object, though without much hope of extracting it. It was a cork, firmly lodged in nothing at all.
“So Fairyland has stoppered the flow of magic into England,” said Sir Stephen. “And this is how the Court has seen fit to inform us. It accounts for a great deal.”
“But leaves much more unexplained,” said Zacharias.
He sighed. The enchantments he had prepared were intended to address a natural decline in England’s magic, not this unnatural stoppage. With the former his spells would have been chancy. With the latter, they were of no use whatsoever. He might as well have stayed in London for all the good his trip had done—and the Spring Ball was in two days’ time.
“There is nothing for it, then,” said Sir Stephen. “You must seek an audience with the Fairy Queen.”
• • •
AT Fobdown Purlieu’s only inn, Prunella was encountering her own difficulties. The innkeeper and his lady seemed curiously inattentive to their business, though they had welcomed Zacharias with warmth when they observed the sorcerer’s silver star pinned to his coat. Mr. Lale had led Prunella and Cawley to a room and abandoned her there with Zacharias’s possessions. It was only when Prunella ventured out to remind her hosts that no provision had been made for her, that she was given a little room of her own.
“Did the Lales strike you as being a trifle eccentric, Cawley?” said Prunella as she unpacked. Cawley, of course, did not answer: Prunella had not quite divined the secret of imparting the spark of life to her creation. “She seemed preoccupied, I thought, and he was scarcely civil! They are an unfriendly people in this part of the country.” Prunella had never travelled so far abroad in her life—at least as far as she could recall—and she was enjoying the novelty of being a visitor in regions unexplored.
“I suppose people will be even worse in London!” she continued. “Everyone is vastly more agreeable in the country than in town, Henrietta says. Yet she longs to be in London, and talks of nothing else when she has left it. The metropolis must lend even the bearishness of one’s neighbours a peculiar charm. Now, let us put you away, Cawley. There is hardly enough room here for two.”
In truth, the effort of maintaining Cawley for the duration of their journey had taken more out of Prunella than she had expected. She had never been compelled to maintain such a sustained outpouring of magic before, and she was glad to leave the folded bundle of linens on her bed when she slipped away to seek her dinner.
There was no one in the dining parlour, and no fire either. Though Prunella rang the bell several times, it seemed a long while that she waited, shivering in a dimming room, befo
re the landlady entered—and then Mrs. Lale started and frowned, as though she were offended by the very sight of Prunella.
“Oh!” said the landlady. Mrs. Lale was a sonsy, comfortable-looking creature, and it seemed as though a smile would better fit her countenance than its angular look of disapprobation. “I had thought perhaps Mr. Wythe had returned.”
“No, it is only me,” said Prunella pleasantly. “But I am just as capable of feeling cold as Mr. Wythe, so I should be obliged if you would send someone to light the fire. There is the matter of dinner, as well. I should very much like some dinner. I fancy Mr. Wythe will require something hearty when he returns, for magic is tiring work, you know.”
She gave Mrs. Lale her best smile, but this enjoyed less success than Prunella was accustomed to having with her smiles. Indeed, it seemed positively to displease Mrs. Lale that Prunella should make so bold as to smile at her.
“And the woman you came with, will she be wanting her dinner as well?” said Mrs. Lale.
“Oh no,” said Prunella, eager to be helpful. They were the only guests at the inn. Perhaps Mrs. Lale had hoped for a peaceful evening, and was put out at having customers to tend to. “Cawley is a little indisposed, and has retired for the evening. She won’t want any dinner.”
“Well, miss, if your companion has retired I think you cannot do better than to join her,” said Mrs. Lale. “We shall have Mr. Wythe’s dinner ready when he comes. But it would look better, and put everyone at their ease, if you did not wait up for him, and I am happy to tell Mr. Wythe I said so.”
Mrs. Lale exited the room while Prunella gaped. She left the door ajar behind her, however, and her voice echoed down the passage, telling a servant to light a fire in the dining parlour.