The Wonder Tales

Chapter Four-1

Chapter Four

Considering the nature of the portal, Hattie expected to find another town on the other side, or at least somewhere that might naturally be supposed to have a stone-built wall somewhere in its environs. She also assumed that the hour in Brewer’s Yard would largely reflect that of Faerie Proper.

Instead, she and Theodosius stepped into a deep twilight. After the bright sunlight of the courtyard, Hattie’s eyes took a little time to adjust, and she almost walked into a tree before she realised that she stood in the midst of an arbour of some kind.

‘Trees, Theo!’ she warned, though a muffled ouch from behind her suggested that her helpful warning had come slightly too late.

‘Thank you, Hat,’ grumbled Theodosius.

Hattie took a moment to look around. The dark silhouettes of contorted trees loomed in all directions, branches hanging so low she would have to take care not to brain herself upon them in passing. Once her eyes had adjusted to the lower light, the sky no longer appeared fully dark, but rather a serene, deep blue. There was even a ruddy glow somewhere in the distance, the dying light of a setting sun.

‘Let’s go that way,’ Hattie decided, and set out with a confident stride. She did her utmost to navigate the woodland without crashing into trees, tripping over tree roots, bumping her head upon low-hanging boughs or otherwise disgracing herself, and for the most part she contrived very well. Until, that is, the ground abruptly vanished from beneath her feet and she fell, with an indignant shriek, into a swift-rushing flow of cold water.

She might have been swept away at once if not for the quickness of Theodosius, who caught the back of her coat before she could disappear beyond his reach.

‘Well done, Hat,’ he complimented her. ‘I believe you have found a river!’

‘Clever of me,’ Hattie agreed, shivering. ‘But if you would be so obliging as to pull me out of it again, I shall be more than a little bit grateful.’

Theodosius granted this request forthwith, and the procedure was performed with only a little complaining on his side, and only a little cursing on Hattie’s. Afterwards she lay in a sodden heap in the grass, staring up at the intertwined branches above her head and hurling imprecations at her Boots.

‘I do not know what is the point of them if they are so faithless as to walk me into a river!’ she complained.

‘I believe you walked yourself into the river,’ said Theodosius without sympathy.

‘They might have prevented me! Instead of standing idly by while I blunder straight over the bank. And what is worse, Theo? I do believe the wretched things are laughing at me.’ It was not easy to determine the degree of mirth experienced by a pair of Boots but Hattie could swear that her toes wriggled with a most ungenerous giggle.

‘Never mind that,’ said Theodosius — who, despite his appalling lack of sympathy, had at least got her out of the water and refrained from laughing at her. Brothers were good for something, Hattie thought grudgingly. ‘Is it the right river?’

Hattie sat up, shivering. ‘I do not see how I am expected to know,’ she muttered. ‘It is as cold and unpleasant as any river I have known. I may have measured my length in it but I have no more idea than you as to whether or not it qualifies as aqua pura faerie. But I should think it highly unlikely. If the river were so close as all that, would not the fae of Brewer’s Yard have come for it themselves? They spoke as though it were a bit of a journey.’

‘It is,’ came a new voice out of the darkness.

Hattie shot up at once, alarmed, for who could say what manner of person or creature might be encountered in Faerie? She did not even know where in Faerie they were.

Theodosius, however, demonstrably did not share her alarm. On the contrary he appeared to be delighted. ‘Tobias!’ he exclaimed. ‘Gracious, man, we have been wishing for your return this age.’

Tobias? Hattie could discern little save a tall, rather hulking figure and could not by any means feel certain that it was indeed Tobias Dwerryhouse. Theodosius had no such concerns, for he hurled himself upon said hulking figure and hugged it exuberantly.

‘You found the key, then, Theo?’ said Tobias.

‘Hattie did.’

‘And the fruit? The good ones?’

‘They’re at Brewer’s Yard.’

‘Thank goodness.’ Tobias sounded much relieved.

A lantern lit up moments later — held, not by Tobias, but by a woman with yellow hair and a fine woven shawl which Hattie recognised as her own work.

‘Why, Clarimond!’ said she. ‘Are we, then, in Southtown? But how wonderful!’

‘Not quite,’ said Tobias — and it was indeed he, she could now conclude, for his dark hair and beard and dark, friendly gaze were illuminated by the lantern his betrothed held. ‘This orchard was never truly of Berrie, though it crossed over with the rest of the town in my great-grandfather’s day.’

‘What have you been about all this time?’ demanded Theodosius. ‘Do you realise that John Quartermane has taken over the Mist? You are sorely wanted, for he is an atrocious barkeep.’

Tobias smiled faintly. ‘Better that he should than that the Mist goes untended,’ he said placidly enough. ‘Though I shall take the greatest pleasure in turning him out of it again upon my return, I assure you.’

‘You do, then, mean to return,’ said Theo in relief. ‘I am glad to hear it. And you, Mistress Honeysett?’

Clarimond looked different, Hattie thought. Oh, she was recognisable beyond doubt, and at first it was difficult to identify what precisely had changed about her. She was dressed in the same modest, respectable fashion as always, though her green gown, black coat and half-boots were not, perhaps, as neat as they might once have been. Her hair had tumbled out of its pins and been permitted to remain in its disordered state, which was a little out of the ordinary.

It was more her manner, though, that struck Hattie. Something in her posture, her movements, the expression of her eyes, suggested that she was no longer the same Mistress Honeysett that Southtown had once known.

‘I do not know what I shall do,’ said Clarimond. ‘I should wish to return to my home, of course! But my house is lost in Faerie with Southtown, and so the matter is a little more complicated for me than it is for Tobias.’

‘What have you been doing?’ said Hattie curiously. ‘And how has it happened to bring you here?’

‘On which topic,’ interjected Theodosius, ‘Where is here, exactly?’

‘Some say it used to be the very centre of Faerie,’ answered Tobias. ‘Long centuries ago, before the diminishing began. It was an orchard of great beauty, fruits grown under the purest light of Faerie. Moon and Sun reigned jointly over the skies, and coaxed forth their own particular favourites from the trees below: golden apples on the eastern bank of the river, and silver pears upon the west.’

Hattie’s ears pricked up at those words, and Theodosius was clearly as much struck as she. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘I will have a word or two to speak to you about that, Tobias.’

Clarimond took up the tale. ‘But when the orchard crossed over, something changed. Moon is gone and Sun grieves and the orchard has not fruited in many, many years. Without their light, Faerie sickens and fades. Ironically, the things required to cure that sickness are the very things which no longer grow under the failing light. We have lingered because we are trying to help.’

‘Cornelius’s tincture!’ said Hattie. ‘That is also why we are here. But, oh dear. If the river we want is so far away, I do not know how we are to contrive to reach it in time!’

‘We have already undertaken the journey,’ said Tobias, ‘and brought back some of its waters. I have been there before, as a younger man, and had no difficulty remembering the way.’

‘We are here in search of a way into Brewer’s Yard,’ said Clarimond, ‘which Greensleeves assures us is somewhere here about.’

Hattie opened her mouth to assist, before realising with dismay that she had no notion which tree they had emerged out of.

‘It is that way,’ said Theodosius, pointing behind Tobias. ‘I tied my cravat around a branch.’

‘But do you have Boots?’ Hattie looked at Tobias’s feet and Clarimond’s, but could not tell whether they were furnished with sufficiently obliging footwear.

‘The way will open for us,’ said Clarimond.

‘Well, Hat, it seems we are not needed,’ said Theodosius.

But Hattie had no intention of being dragged back to Northtown so soon. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘What do you mean, Moon is gone and Sun grieves?’

Clarimond pointed up at the darkening sky, wherein the barest sliver of a crescent moon hung. ‘Moon neither waxes nor wanes over Faerie any longer. She has been that way for a century.’

She. Both Tobias and Clarimond had spoken of the two heavenly bodies as though they were people, and why should they not be, in Faerie? Things were different here.

‘You mean to say that Sun has been grieving for the loss of Moon for a whole century, and because she no longer shines the whole land is fading away?’ Hattie felt a wave of indignation. ‘Why, how selfish!’

‘They are sisters,’ said Clarimond softly. ‘And close. Or they were, before the death of Moon.’

Hattie was unmoved. ‘What rot! If Theo were to jaunt off someplace and forget to come back, is it to be imagined that I would be so absorbed by my own sorrows as to leave a whole land languishing in sickness because of it? It is not to be borne.’

‘There is nothing to be done about it, Hat,’ said Theodosius — glancing nervously in the direction of the dying sun as he spoke, as though she might hear and be mortally offended.

‘Of course there is.’ Hattie glanced towards the west, too, and bethought herself of an obstacle. ‘There is a bridge somewhere hereabouts, I suppose?’

Tobias pointed back in the direction from which he and Clarimond had arrived.

‘Thank you.’ Hattie and her Boots turned about and marched away, muttering something about self-absorption and absurdity between themselves as they went.

‘Hat!’ called Theodosius, and she heard the sounds of a furious rushing-through-undergrowth behind her as he hurried to catch up. ‘Hattie? What are you planning to do?’

‘Why, I am going to go and talk to her, of course!’ Hattie cried. ‘Somebody needs to pull the blankets off slug-a-bed!’ Tobias protested, of course, and raised a number of objections which no doubt appeared perfectly reasonable to him. Hattie let them all pass, and walked on.

It took her a little time, and considerable effort, to find the bridge Tobias had pointed out. She arrived there at last, scratched and overheated and more than a little bit cross, but before she could set foot upon the bridge itself she realised that, once again, she and Theo were not alone. Two figures stood before her, reasonably well illuminated by the light of a pair of lanterns. One of them was an elderly man with a mane of pale hair and watery blue eyes: Ambrose Dale, from whom Hattie had bought flowers every week for as long as she could remember.

‘Why, Mistress Strangewayes,’ he said in his mild way. ‘What good fortune. And Mr. Penderglass!’

Hattie did not need to ask him why he considered her appearance good fortune, because of course the person with him was Jeremiah and she was too busy hurling herself at her errant husband to make any reply.

‘Jerry,’ she gasped, too tightly enfolded in his embrace to have much breath for talking.

‘Hattie.’ He bestowed a few kisses, too, which Hattie graciously accepted. When at last he released his bone-crushing grip upon her ribs, Hattie gathered herself and said, only a trifle breathlessly: ‘If it is not too much to ask, husband of mine. Where exactly have you been all this time?!’

Jeremiah looked around, frowning. ‘Here,’ he said, with a stupendous unhelpfulness which made Hattie want to smack him.