Once upon a Summer Day fs-1

by Dennis McKiernan

Of a sudden, Chelle raised her head in alarm. “Ssst!” she shushed. Then she whispered, “ ’Ware, Borel, peril is nigh.”

  Borel raised his own head and listened. Beyond the thorn grove stealthy paws padded. He reached for his bow and said, “Chelle, you must leave.”

  “No, I will stay.”

  Borel growled, but set arrow to bowstring, and then faced out into the dark. And there he saw three pairs of smoldering red eyes above bared fangs adrip.

  And beside him Chelle cried, “Wake up, my love, wake up!” and Borel — awakened to see in the dim glow of his low-burning fire the peril of his dream had come, for there in the shadows three pairs of eyes glowed crimson above slavering jaws as three dark-blotched creatures pushed through the thorns and toward his small encampment.

  38

  Caravan

  Borel leapt to his feet and kicked up the fire. He grabbed a sputtering brand and waved it in the air, and flames burst out anew.

  But still the three large doglike creatures came onward. They had big heads and lengthy necks and long, muscular forelegs and short hind legs, and they stood some three feet at the shoulder; formidable teeth filled powerful jaws that could easily crush bones. And the brutes shifted this way and that as they eased past long, sharp thorns on their way inward, their glowing red eyes reflecting firelight, their gazes never leaving their intended prey.

  “Yahhh!” cried Borel, and he lunged forward, thrusting the flames at them.

  Startled awake, Flic leapt up, epee in hand.

  Even as Flic took to wing, his silver weapon glittering in the torchlight, “Yahhh!” cried Borel again, snatching up another brand, and with fire in each hand, once more he leapt forward, but this time he also snarled a word enwrapped in a growl.

  Faced with an alert foe wielding flames, a foe who spoke in a tongue akin to that of the wild dog packs of the savanna, the spotted beasts turned and fled, crying out in agony as thorns pierced their flesh in the haste to get away.

  Flic flew up and over the acacia grove and waved his sword and shouted at the creatures even as they ran, then returned to camp. As he sheathed his epee he said, “Well, I guess we put the rout to them, now didn’t we?”

  An eyebrow arched, Borel looked at Flic.

  “What?” said the Sprite.

  In that moment, in the predawn dark, there came the sound of insane giggling from afar.

  Borel broke into laughter and threw more branches into the fire.

  “Goodness,” said Flic, his gaze turned toward the veldt, “who’s the madman out there running about?”

  Still smiling, Borel shrugged and took up his waterskin. “Perhaps it’s one of those spotted beasts we routed, eh, Flic? — Drink?”

  Flic turned and said, “Indeed. All this fighting makes me thirsty.”

  Neither Flic nor Borel felt the least bit sleepy, and in the nearing dawn they sat quietly by the fire. After a moment Flic said, “Say, I thought I saw you playing echecs with someone in a mask, or mayhap I merely dreamed it.”

  “I did play echecs in my own dream,” said Borel. “Yet it is strange that you would see it as well.”

  “The one in the mask was Chelle?”

  Borel nodded. “But it was not a mask you saw; rather it’s some strange shadow across her eyes.”

  They sat without speaking for a while, and then Borel said, “There is more to Chelle’s dreaming than we suspect, for I am able to share that dream, and now it seems you are able to share it, too.”

  “Not until this night,” said Flic. “Even then it’s as if I were asleep on my leaf and only awakened a bit to see you two at play.”

  “Oh,” said Borel, his eyes widening. “Perhaps it’s because I brought Chelle here to the thorn grove for our echecs game, and I imagined this place just as it was when I last saw it, with you and Buzzer asleep yon and the fire burning brightly. It might be that those I involve in our shared dream become involved as well.”

  “I think Chelle is in a magique sleep,” said Flic. “And the magie affects all who share it.”

  “Yes!” said Borel, clenching a fist. “That is what I’ve been missing all along. You must be right, Flic. Rhensibe is a sorciere, and Chelle is held prisoner in a sleep of enchantement.” Borel looked at the Sprite. “Thank you, my friend, for your keen insight.”

  Flic frowned a moment, for his thoughts had not run that way at all, but then he straightened up and threw out his chest and said, “Think nothing of it, my lord.”

  They sat quietly for long moments, long enough for Flic to slump back down, and then the Sprite said, “But from what you have told me, my lord, she does not know she sleeps and dreams.”

  Borel shook his head. “Flic, just as she did when I was in the Troll dungeon, and now here in the thorn grove, she cried for me to wake up, hence on some level she knows it is a shared dream and she is one of the dreamers.”

  Flic slowly nodded then said, “Perhaps, my lord, it is only when peril comes that she realizes such.”

  Dawn came, and the trio broke fast. Borel then asked Flic to find the nearest water, and when the Sprite returned and said there was a shallow lakelet nearby, Borel drowned his fire and packed away his goods and strapped his rucksack to his back. With his bow strung and his quiver at hand, he worked his way out from the thorn grove.

  When Borel’s waterskin had been replenished, Buzzer spiralled up and took a bearing, then flew away, heading for the place where the sun would set that day, and Borel, with Flic atop the tricorn, loped after.

  Long did he run throughout the morn, occasionally passing through herds of tan grazers and those of dark brown, and now and again seeing dark-maned hunters and that very swift spotted cat. He saw a small pack of round-eared, doglike animals, and a few of the heavy-boned creatures of the kind that had tried to invade the camp.

  On he ran and on, pausing occasionally for a drink of water, offering some to Buzzer and Flic as well. As for Buzzer, she had finally learned how fast-or rather how slow-Borel loped, and so she flew but a twenty-five or so of his paces in the lead, and she seemed less impatient with him.

  As was their wont, they stopped in the noontide to take a meal, and they sat in the shade of a strange tree, with a fat trunk that narrowed the higher it went, with no limbs up its length except at the very top, and that’s where all of the branches were, and they spread out in a flat, circular manner, rather like the roots of an oak, only these were where leaves grew.

  “In shape, it looks somewhat upside down,” said Flic, licking honey from his finger, then dipping it again into the bit Borel had dribbled into the jar lid. “Rather like a carrot, roots and all, turned on its head,” added Flic.

  Borel laughed around his mouthful of jerky and glanced at the tree above. “I agree, Flic: upside down it is.”

  With their noontide meal done, they were on the move again, Buzzer showing the way.

  And as the sun slid across and down the sky, in the distance ahead Borel could see a trace of dust in the air. “It does not appear to be a stampeding herd,” he said.

  “Shall I fly forward and look?” asked Flic.

  “Not yet, Flic. I think it will resolve itself soon.”

  And onward Borel loped.

  Another league went by, and now Borel could make out what was raising the dust: “I ween it’s a caravan.”

  And as they drew closer, indeed they could see it was a slow-moving train of trudging camels and horses awalk and men afoot and “What in Faery is that?” asked Flic.

  “Though I’ve not seen one before, ’tis a tusker, I think,” said Borel, for in the mid of the long line a ponderous grey creature plodded.

  “It looks to have a small tent riding upon its back,” called Flic.

  “ ’Tis a seat of sorts,” said Borel. “Or so the tales tell.”

  “A what?”

  “A seat fitted with a canopy and railing, and some have curtains all ’round.”

  On flew Buzzer and on trotted Borel, slowly overtaking the procession, the
caravan travelling on nearly the identical heading that Buzzer flew. If both maintained course, Borel would pass on the right some twenty paces wide of the long file.

  A half candlemark went by, and another league receded behind Borel as he slowly closed with the unhurried procession.

  At last Borel came alongside a tassel-bedecked camel at the rear of the train. Borel called out to the rider, a black man, “Know you where the Endless Sands lie?” The man shrugged and called back that he didn’t know.

  To the next rider he came, and he shouted out the same question, with the same result.

  Camel riders he passed, and those upon horses, and guards afoot, and riders and walkers alike were all black men. And they wore loose-fitting, colorful silks and turbans with face-veils lightly fastened ’round, and wellcrafted boots shod their feet. They were armed with bows and scimitars and lances, and their mounts were gaily caparisoned, tassels and ribbons swinging with each stride.

  Now Borel passed the giant grey creature lumbering serenely along; its massive head-with its broad, flapping ears and lengthy trunk-had great curving tusks, the long ivories each capped with a golden ball. A man with a hook on a staff walked alongside.

  And as Borel trotted past and called out his question, a slender black hand drew aside the silken curtain of the canopied seat atop the tusker, and a dusky maiden of incredible beauty peered out, and she gasped at the sight of the handsome runner and the Sprite riding atop the man’s hat.

  But Borel did not pause, for none knew the answer to his question, though they did understand Common. And so he jogged on, and soon he had passed beyond the plodding train, and he ran on and on, until he was out of sight.

  And the black princess called unto the nearest guard, and swiftly he came running. “What did they want?” said the princess.

  “He asked after the Endless Sands, Princess.”

  “How odd,” she replied.

  “Indeed, my lady, yet even odder, he seemed to be chasing a bee.”

  Long did she laugh, and on the spot made up a tale of the handsome fool-with his wee companion riding atop his hat-who ran across the Endless Sands pursuing a bee… the fool a third son of a potentate, once rich but now poverty-stricken because of an evil djinn. Naturally, in the end the fool succeeded where his two sneering older brothers along with others had miserably failed, and, of course, having triumphed, this most handsome and clever third son married a most wise and demure and beautiful princess, much like she herself was.

  Even as the sun was setting, Borel and Flic and Buzzer came to a twilight border, and as they stepped through, they came into stony green highlands with a tang of salt in the cool air, and in the distance leftward came the undulating boom of rollers breaking hard upon vertical cliffs.

  39

  Arrows

  After making camp within a wind-twisted cedar grove down in a dip in the land, Borel left Flic on guard and in the twilight strode toward the sound of the waves. Within a furlong or two he reached the brim of high stone cliffs stretching away for miles, and they loomed above a darkling sea. The ocean itself was tumultuous, as if a violent storm raged somewhere beyond the horizon, one so powerful that its effects were being felt even here. Borel scanned the waters to the limit of his vision in the failing light, and he saw only luminous whitecaps rolling in, and no ships of any kind asail. He breathed in the bracing air laden with salt of the sea, and he reveled in the tang of it, for not often did he come to the tempestuous oceans of Faery. Finally he turned and as he did so, far to the right along the cliffs Borel could just make out a pile of stones, perhaps the remains of a tumbled-down tower, a remnant of elder days, perhaps to keep watch on the sea. Borel briefly considered walking there to see, but night was upon him, and morning would be soon enough. And so, instead, he made his way back toward the cedars, reaching there as darkness fell absolute… but for light from the stars above and the tiny campfire within.

  Flic was yet awake by the small blaze and finishing off the last of the honey from the jar lid. Buzzer was adoze on a nearby green-needled branch. Borel dropped down by the earthen-ringed fire, and he fished about in his rucksack for jerky and hardtack.

  “Have you ever seen the wild waters of Faery?” he asked.

  Flic looked up. “Do you mean the ocean?”

  “Oui.”

  “Non,” said Flic.

  “Well, my wee Sprite, they lie not two furlongs yon. You might want to take them in.”

  “In the morning,” said Flic, yawning. “All this travel makes me weary.”

  “What?” said Borel as if taken aback. “With you aride on my hat?”

  Flic grinned but then sobered and morosely said, “You know what I mean.”

  Borel shook his head and frowned. “Just what do you mean, my friend?”

  Flic shrugged. “I don’t know. Or perhaps I do. It just seems that nothing happens.”

  “Nothing happens?” said Borel, wide-eyed in astonishment. “I suppose you mean nothing happened when we escaped the Trolls and wrecked the raft, or when we freed Hegwith the Gnome from the crack, or when the unseen creature of the swamp came, or when we found Roulan’s vale turned to stone, or when we came across Lady Wyrd, or when you met Fleurette, tracked the Pooka and found three hairs, got your epee, helped subdue the Pooka, met the Riders Who Cannot Dismount, shared a dream, routed the spotted beasts, and saw a caravan with a great tusker. Is that the ‘nothing happens’ you meant?”

  Flic sniffed. “Well, I didn’t really meet the Riders Who Cannot Dismount. They bore iron, if you recall.”

  “But you saw them.”

  “Oui, yet those things you listed, they’re not what I meant when I said ‘nothing happens.’ ”

  “Well, just what did you mean?”

  “That we seem to be no closer to finding Chelle and setting her free.”

  Borel’s features fell, and now his own words were morose. “Believe me, Flic: I am frustrated, too. I would that we were closer than we seem. Yet Lady Wyrd set us on this path, and we simply need to go on, for, given that aid, I am certain that we will succeed. And, as you once said, there yet seems time to do so.” Borel glanced at the spangled sky and said, “A fortnight and three remain ere the moon rises full again.”

  “Well, I would have your lady free now,” said Flic, peevishly.

  “As would I,” declared Borel, and then more softly, “As would I.” Then he sighed and said, “Come, let us sleep. The morrow will see us in better spirits.”

  And so they bedded down, and the wind slowly strengthened, and far out to sea dark clouds crept over the horizon.

  “Ah, Borel,” said Chelle, “you remembered.”

  “My lady?”

  “I see you have brought your bow,” said Chelle. “Have you one for me?”

  “Ah, yes, archery,” said Borel. “And I know just the bow for you.”

  “I could use yours,” said Chelle.

  Borel smiled. “Perhaps, though you might find stringing it difficult and the pull a bit arduous. Yet even if not, my arrows are fitted to my draw, and I think my reach exceeds yours somewhat.”

  He spread his arms wide, and Chelle laughed and did the same and pressed up against him and raised her face toward his and smiled. Clearly his span outreached hers by a good foot, but neither of them was thinking of such.

  Borel swept her up in his arms and kissed her deeply, and she clutched him tightly and returned his kiss with fervor. At last they broke and Borel looked into her face. “My lady, methinks you a Vixen.”

  “And you, Sieur, a Fox,” she replied. But then she grinned and said, “But I would challenge you to a contest: bow and arrow at fifteen paces.”

  “Your paces or mine?” asked Borel.

  “Why, mine, of course,” said Chelle. “-But only if you find me a suitable bow… and, naturally, arrows to fit.”

  “Very well, ma cherie, but I ask you, what be the prize?”

  “Name it, my love.”

  “Ah, a dangerous suggestion, t
hat,” said Borel.

  “It is?” said Chelle, a smile at the corners of her mouth.

  “Indeed,” replied Borel. She knows not that we are in a dream, at least not at the moment, for peril is absent.

  “Where be this contest?” asked Chelle.

  “I have just the place in mind,” said Borel, and he offered her his arm.

  They stepped through the door and — found themselves on the thick, grassy lawn of Summerwood Manor, where stood haycocks with a target pinned to each. And though but a fingernail-thin crescent of a moon and the stars in the slow-turning sky illumed the land below, still they could see that one target bore the outline of a buck, while another haycock held the silhouette of a Redcap Goblin, and the third sported a conventional bull’s-eye.

  “My bow, Sieur?”

  “Here on this bale with your arrows, sweet demoiselle,” said Borel. “ ’Tis the bow used by Lady Saissa-my mother-when she comes to game at Alain’s estate.”

  Chelle took up the bow and strung it and pulled. “The draw suits,” she said. She nocked an arrow to string and again drew. “The arrow fits,” she said, then she turned and let fly at the bull’s-eye target. The shaft struck just inside the center ring.

  “Hmm…” said Borel, reaching for an arrow of his own, “it seems I have my hands full.” The shaft he pulled from his quiver was fitted with a flint point. Borel replaced that arrow and paused a moment in thought, and picked another shaft, this one with a proper head of bronze. He nocked and drew and loosed. His arrow struck just inside of hers.

  “My, do you have Fairy arrows, Borel?” asked Chelle. “ ’Tis not fair if so.”

  “Fairy arrows?”

  “They are magique, my love, and only miss should a greater spell come along to deflect them.”

  “Non, sweet Chelle, my arrows are plain and simple, lacking magie altogether.”

  “Neither Fairy arrows nor those of Elves, you swear, eh?” said Chelle, grinning.

  “Elf arrows?” said Borel. “This is another kind, I take it.”

  “Indeed, Sieur. Have you not heard of being Elf-shot?”