From Fairies and Creatures of the Night, Guard Me

by Emily de Courcy

  Olympia thought of her own glass eyes.

  “And what would I see if I were to look into one? My eyes are not real.”

  Kestrel laughed, though not at her. “Things that make you forget, and others that make you remember, though these come at a high price.”

  Some of the old, stained paint-brushes will make you obsessed with dreadful things and will keep you awake nights at the canvas, feverish and desperate, painting and crying until your tears mix with the paint, and you have painted a window into another world.

  Or maybe you will paint a beloved face where everyone else will see a mess of oils and jagged brush strokes. It doesn’t matter if you don’t quite know what you’re looking for,, or if you only came there in search of a bit of magic.

  “Not everyone at the Market is very nice of course, or very good or gracious,” said the wizard idly, examining a clump of toadstools as they lingered in a wood.

  “People are rarely any of those things all the time,” Olympia murmured, watching him curiously.

  His mouth quirked. “Quite.”

  There are those whose trade lies in the way of spilt blood and ruined lives, and stolen souls, naturally. There are murderers for leisure and murderers for hire, and you have to know where you’re stepping, lest you should step off a ledge you don’t know is right under your feet.

  Some only ever visit the Market once, and find what they want. Some come back week after week, years after year, searching and picking...

  Then, they were suddenly at a market, in a dingy part of a town Olympia didn’t recognise, where people wore peculiar bright clothes and no one had a hat or a pair of gloves between them. It was as though Kestrel had talked them through space and time with his story.

  Nearby, there was a family, the children pointing excitedly at a young woman dressed up as a princess. Her tin tiara looked sparkly, colourful and unlikely next to the old, dusty things no one seemed to notice.

  Olympia found herself wandering past them, towards the stall of broken swords of destiny, ignoring the merchant who winked at her. In a bright plate, she caught her own reflection: her skin was pale and her hair dark, as it had ever been. But her eyes seemed different somehow: less dull, perhaps.

  Her movements were still mechanical and precise, accompanied by a slight whirring, and the young man accompanying her sometimes drifted away in a mist or turned into things, but no one else seemed to notice that either, as he flowed in and out of the air, and paged impatiently through books of spells. Olympia didn’t mind because she had other things to occupy her mind. Her reflection looked vaguely lost but this was not a matter of geography.

  She was thinking again of humanity, of love, and of the other things of which Nathanael had spoken to her before she’d had any words of her own. Olympia wondered if he had been excessively foolish to have fallen in love with an automaton: or, indeed, if he had loved her at all.

  She had words now and she had glimpsed too many worlds to recall, but still the question of soul and love evaded her. She was not truly flesh and blood, no matter how convincing the illusion: just a product of tinkering mechanics. And surely one had to be human to love?

  She had heard so many stories of snow babies growing up to human joy and ducks that turned into women, as well as women that sometimes turned into ducks, who seemed as a rule to marry younger sons and make whole castles spring out of the verge. Yet she was still uncertain whether a soul really constituted the sum of all earthly happiness.

  She did not envy the mortals exactly, for Kestrel, who wasn’t mortal either, had pointed out that their lives were extinguished very quickly and easily, while she remained waxy and unchanged. They were like the unenchanted candles she’d known at the professor’s house.

  Perplexed, she watched a group of passing witches, who were swathed in an air of strangely ragged elegance. Their veils turned to ravens and music as she watched.

  Olympia had a bag slung across her back, tinkling with little potion bottles, green and dark brown, and other things they had picked up along the way.

  Berlin seemed a different world to her now. In between their wanderings through the Market, they took rooms at a coach house and Olympia wondered what it would be like to sleep. She always left her windows open at night, because she didn’t like to be surrounded by glass: it reminded her of the future that had almost been hers at some royal court.

  The next day, she paused to look at the swords of destiny again, and the fox-like owner asked if she wouldn’t rather have a basket of apples, or a nice apron, such a pale slight thing as she was. Where there were apples, he said with a wink, heroes were sure to follow. He gestured to a woven reed basket behind him and she laughed because the last thing she wanted was apples or aprons. Olympia had only just learned to laugh and it was a new and wondrous thing.

  She explained politely that she had no need of fruit or frippery. No, what she really needed was a soul of her very own or a sword of destiny. She was quite sure, thank you, that she needed it much more than she did some noble peer or ancient hero. She glanced at Kestrel, who was listening to them curiously. The man behind the stall nodded gravely and pointed far down the row towards an ancient woman with skin like tree bark.

  Kestrel shrugged and led the way.

  That woman brewed love potions out of honey, apples and last year’s strawberry jam. Olympia was a little confused: for she had no use for love potions, and friendship, she was beginning to learn, wasn’t as easy to bottle.

  A rook with shrewd eyes watched the proceedings from a thick green and brown hedge that kept the Market permanently separate from other worlds.

  “And what will you have?” asked the woman in a voice like time.

  Olympia thought about this, while Kestrel picked up a snow globe off the table and shook it, peering in.

  She hesitated. “I think that I am looking for a soul.”

  The woman nodded. “You are made of clockwork. I can always tell. It’s a new-fangled magic and I do not much care for it: distilling time. That old book is a perilous thing and shouldn’t be left unattended.” She looked pointedly at the wizard who gave a chagrined smile. “But the problem with such complex workings is that things tend to slip in when the alchemist isn’t not looking. I cannot sell you what you seek, because there are no potions or incantations than can contain the essence of being, whatever name you wish to give it. But perhaps you have no real need of it?”

  “Oh, I do!” Olympia exclaimed, feeling a thing that she hadn’t recognised as hope drain out of her.

  The woman shook her head. “You are disappointed: that in itself is worth considering, my dear. I could give you a vial of coloured water or chant some gibberish and throw a handful of shimmering dust in your eyes, but I think you found what you were looking for a long time before you set foot here. Your own kind of magic, quilted together piece by piece – perhaps that is a better way to acquire humanity. So you understand my position? Now off you go and don’t forget your wizard – before he breaks one of my snow globes and sets off an apocalypse. Those are very nasty to clean up, you know.”

  “Then we have come all this way for nothing?” whispered Olympia over the slight whirring of clocks within her as they walked away.

  “For nothing!” Kestrel looked astonished. “But don’t you think it’s better this way? Anybody can have a soul from birth. That’s hardly an achievement. But surely it counts for much more if you have one by choice? Now, let’s go see about some lavender wine…”

  Olympia had never had wine before. Or a friend. She felt her face shift into a smile. Perhaps he was right.

  “Alright then. I own, I’ve never yet had occasion to try wine.”

  Hildegarde

  “Are you going to Scarborough Fair?” Hildegarde sang quietly to herself as she walked. She wondered whether Scarborough was a kind or market, or if perhaps the song just meant that it was a particularly handsome place to visit. And in that case, what was so very handsome about it? The lyrics didn’t r
eally say.

  Hildegarde wasn’t a very good singer – at least not of these sorts of ditties. Dwarfish music traditionally tended towards brawny epic pieces with lots of brass and percussion, and required the kind of lungs that could single-handedly keep a galleon sailing against the wind. But dwarf songs didn’t make for very good walking accompaniment and she probably wouldn’t ever get aboard any galleons either.

  Trailing unhurriedly through an apple orchard, she wondered idly if she knew any apple songs.

  Dwarf songs were about memories, and Hildegarde preferred more whimsical airs – especially if they happened to have come over from the mortal side. She also quite liked morning songs, though her grandmother and mother had both deeply disapproved of the inappropriate subject matter. Trysts and jealous husbands were not what respectable dwarfs ought to be singing about, they would say, frowning.

  Music was for memories, and their memories lay in stone and earth, in gems, minerals and ore. Hildegarde thought that this principle applied perfectly well to dwarfish medicine, which was all about herbs and minerals, but certainly it couldn’t apply to music, which was supposed to be about everything, and anything. Including flowers and scandal. She was also fond of the one about summer and cuckoos, which always made her cheerful, but you needed more than one person to sing that one properly.

  So Hildegarde took full advantage of her solitary walk to sing it without being scoffed at, and to swing her reed basket in a way that wasn’t decorous of well brought-up dwarfs either. She would never get to sing it at a royal hall or an auditorium in the city, of course, but given the sorts of sinister things she’d heard about the dowager Queen Asdis that was probably for the best. The queen was said to have a very particular ear, and a very permanent way of dismissing second-rate musicians.

  Besides, Hildegarde had spent many years training as a healer and it would have been a shame if all of that were to go to waste. She quite liked medicine – unlocking the secrets of herbs and minerals was a little like finding ancient treasure, and dwarfish medicine left a lot of room for experimentation. She hoped one day to move to the city and have her own laboratory in the medicine quarter.

  Medicine was in the family. Her mother, Helma, was a healer in the college of bards – which she said was probably where Hildegarde had picked up her inexplicable fascination with ridiculously non-genealogical music. Hilde had certainly enjoyed visiting there as a child and looking at all the legendary instruments in glass cases.

  But these visits had usually been reserved as a special treat. Her favourite memory was from when she had recovered from a dreadful cold and some of the students had let her hit the big drum in the grand auditorium. It had made a tremendous racket, much to her utter delight – and surely such little memories were just as worth keeping as tales of heroic dwarfs dead on nigh a millennium?

  The keeping of memories was very important. Her grandmother, Wilfrida, had spent many tireless hours making a great lumpy patchwork quilt from scraps of fabric collected over a somewhat colourful lifetime for Hilde’s mother’s trousseau.

  There were bits of velvet and sarcenet, and even a scrap of pure silk, dresses and scarves and bits of a purple wedding gown three hundred years out of fashion. It captured a dozen colours, some extremely exquisite: the azures and reds and flower prints had almost seemed to glow in the warm firelight. The quilt was a way of tying lifetimes one into another.

  Memories were passed along at birthdays, marriages and funerals. Every child of a dwarfish family would receive something – and there were often a great many children in a single clan. Hilde had a somewhat unromantic eye when it came to creating memorabilia and remembering what belonged where – but she liked songs, so she had no trouble remembering all of those.

  The walk into town was a long one, which meant she had a considerable amount of time to sing whatever she pleased, and if this visit was successful, she would soon be able to sing whatever she pleased all the time. Hildegarde was going to meet with an apothecary, for a possible position as a resident healer. It would mean quarters above the shop – a permanent home in town.

  She’d heard from her sister that apprentice healers in town lived lives of high excitement and society parties. Hilde wasn’t quite sure how she felt about such a sudden new start or the society parties, for that matter, but she had never been of a timid disposition, and she had always wanted to live near the sea.

  She’s worn her best healer robes for the walk – still resplendent and new. The crisp white and cobalt blue silk of the garment was easily recognisable anywhere. The robes were a symbol of what she did, of her place in a long line of healers and a society that stretched across the Hinterlands.

  In a way, the robes kept memories too. It was a little like listening for the breakers in a seashell – an echo of all the others who wore, had worn, and would wear these colours. Hilde also had a medallion for official functions but she’d left that at home because it was hideously heavy and really rather unnecessary.

  Stepping onto a little cart track, Hildegarde looked left, then right. The road stretched on in both directions, a dull brown in the afternoon sun, but she almost thought she could smell a salty sea breeze coming from the right. As far as she could see, the world was filled with green grass and golden celandine.

  Shifting her basket, she wondered how long the road went on for, and where else it might lead if she turned and walked the other way. Yet another village perhaps, an enchanted well, or one of those magic huts with the chicken feet. Those were all the rage among witches in her part of the Hinterlands – though this probably meant that they were shockingly out of fashion elsewhere.

  Her grandmother had met a witch once – napping outside her new chicken-legged cottage. She’d gone to consult on some exotic tree pods and ended up sharing a whole bottle of dandelion wine. The witch, she’d told Hilde later, had had a run of dreadful luck when it came to huts.

  There had been one that ran away and another that would not move at all except in great bounding leaps. When it would get moving at last, it would take most of the witch’s magic just to keep the tea in her cup and keep herself from falling over as the house gambolled through the fields and woods.

  Wilfrida would often bring the witch herbs from her cottage, because it was quite impossible to grow herbs when your house was forever running all over the woods.

  Hilde had always wanted to see the hut, though she’d never quite worked up the nerve to ask: witches could be notoriously temperamental and she didn’t want to land herself a curse for being too forward. She thought the huts were a lot more interesting than the towers favoured by wizards, because those were really just ordinary towers, except rather more explosive.

  There were no witch-huts in town, of course, where witches lived in flats, just like everyone else, although probably theirs were rather a bit nicer. Perhaps one day she would meet a witch too – one never knew where a bit of destiny was to be found after all, and Hilde had every intention of getting her hands on all the destiny she could, just as soon as she was living in town. She even had her eye on one of the galleons docked in the bay. She’d never tried sailing.

  But first she had to meet with the apothecary, who couldn’t possibly be more ratchety and stubborn than her grandmother, surely. Having studied with Wilfrida, Hilde doubted very much that she’d find the apothecary intimidating. After years under her grandmother’s aegis, Hilde could make any tincture or tisane the apothecary could possibly name.

  On the way home, she was to pick up some gnomish cheese for her father and stop at the milliner’s for her sister, Annis, who’d ordered some modish new monstrosity featuring both a sprig of flowers and daringly curled firebird plumes. Maybe it would be even uglier than the previous hat, which had prominently featured wax cherries.

  They wore strange things in the capital, Hilde knew. She’d looked through her sister’s newest fashion plates with a horrified kind of fascination before deciding that Wilfrida would never let her have enough spare
time to arrange her hair into artful curls anyway. Annis was very fortunate that she was apprenticed with their mild-tempered aunt and didn’t have to spend all her time pouring over dusty herbals just to keep up.

  Hilde knew the herbals by heart and had even developed a steady hand when it came to surgery.

  She hoped that she wouldn’t actually have to carry Annis’s bonnet back home – mucking about with hat boxes was sure to ruin the whole walk. Especially as she’d quite made up her mind to take the long way home back along the beach, so that she could stare at the galleons in the harbour, and maybe even find a seashell. She thought the clan might like a seashell, once she explained about breakers and memories.

  And it would make for a great memory of the future that she could feel unfolding just a step ahead of her. You couldn’t ever escape memories, no matter how hard you tried.

  Sea-shell hunting would be a perfect end to the afternoon.

  Provided, of course, she didn’t get stuck with the bonnet or set the apothecary on fire.

  The song of Rowland

  Miss Helen Eversley met the King of Elfland while lurking in the lilac shrubs at Mrs Harriet Greene’s ball. He was there masquerading as one of the gentry and she was there avoiding her meddlesome brother Rowland.

  She did not at first know him to be the King of Elfland of course – she supposed him merely to be part of the London company which Mrs Greene’s niece Tabitha had brought with her for her annual country visit. He was dressed in the first stare of fashion, with a cravat arranged in the finest fountain-knot the village of Hillbury had ever been privileged to see.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” Helen said, flushing, when the handsome gentleman appeared next to her in the lilacs. “I was just…” she trailed off because he would surely think her strange for hiding out.