The Tales of Aylfenhame Compendium

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

A number of days wandered lazily by in Aylfenhame, and Aubranael wandered with them: through the streets of Grenlowe, over its surrounding meadows, and far beyond. His only companion was the cat, Felebre.

‘I think something is wrong with me, Fel,’ confided Aubranael on the fifth such wandering day. ‘All the world seems dull and drear. I can take no pleasure in anything. Exploring? Pfeh. Let the hills sleep in peace. Food? Hmph. It tastes of nothing. I no longer care what lies beyond the next rise; it will not be Tilby, and therefore it is of no interest to me.’

Felebre was a feline of taciturn nature. She rarely made any reply to Aubranael’s musings, and she made none now.

Aubranael sighed. He was leaning on the gated entryway to Ahrimir Wood, some way from the town of Grenlowe; now he leaned his ruined face on it, too, so he would no longer be troubled with the effort of holding up his head. ‘This is the problem with you,’ he said to the cat, who had somehow balanced her considerable bulk along the top of the fence. ‘There is no finer companion in all of Aylfenhame, I am sure, but I do wish you might be a little more communicative.’

Felebre twitched the tip of her long, shining tail and closed her shining golden eyes.

‘Yes; perhaps sleep is the best idea,’ he agreed. But he could not sleep, any more than he could eat. His thoughts were too busy, too confused, too troubled.

It was not the first time Aubranael had longed for a talkative companion. He had done so without pause ever since his childhood, and the incident that had destroyed his face. He had lost his best and only friend and his beautiful Ayliri visage at the same time; down all the many years since that day, he had been an outcast.

For some, his repulsive appearance was deterrent enough. The Faerie of Aylfenhame loved beauty, and deplored ugliness. The latter category certainly included Aubranael.

But if he had ever expected a different attitude from others among Faerie—the awkward and ungainly hobs, for instance, or the decidedly malformed goblins—his hopes had long since died, for they loved beauty, too. Some tried to curry favour with the beautiful by mimicking their behaviour, and rejecting those whom they rejected; others considered Aubranael unlucky to be close to, as if his particular, unique form of ugliness might in some fashion infect them.

Whatever the reason, Aubranael had grown used to being alone.

Until the strange lady from Tilby had arrived. Fortune had, for once, favoured him: his hair had hidden his features, and he had been granted a few precious minutes to talk in the way that real, whole, unblemished people do.

Even when she had discovered his true face, she had been kind. He blushed to remember the look of surprised horror in her eyes when the winds and Felebre had conspired to reveal him; but he quickly suppressed the memory. She had been kind. Even when relief and fear and hope had rendered him flamboyant, garrulous and absurd, she had still been kind. She had treated him as though even his appalling aspect might hide a mind worth knowing. If she had been pretending, well… she had done so with skill.

Perhaps she had not been pretending. Perhaps, in faraway England, people were not so fixated upon beauty as the folk of Aylfenhame. Perhaps they ignored faces altogether! Could it not be true?

No; absurd. The horror in Miss Landon’s eyes told him that much.

He was glad, then, that he had resisted the wild impulse to fly after her, and try his fortune in England instead.

But he continued to think of her. It was her smile, he thought, that attracted him so; for it was sunny and warm, full of a simple delight in life and—perhaps he flattered himself—his company. There was something in that merry, half-dimpled smile that reminded him of Lihyaen… a very little. But he hurriedly dismissed that reflection from his mind. He had made many a pact with himself, all down the lonely years, that he would not dwell upon the past.

A few more days slipped by, and Aubranael began to regret the curious chance that had thrown him in the way of the Tilby lady. Until that day, he had lived in blissful ignorance of how much he missed real companionship. And now? He felt that he would never know peace again.

It was Felebre, surprisingly, who resolved his difficulties. By way of a tilted head, lashing tail and prowling in circles, she gave him to understand that she wished for him to follow her. He did so without argument; indeed, without even particularly noticing that he was doing so, and for some time he merely followed in a daze as she led him across meadows, over bridges and through dense woodlands.

Only once was he distracted from his internal reflections. He and Felebre were in the midst of a deep, dark forest when a wholly unexpected sound split the air: a shriek of high-pitched laughter, which rang and rang until, finally, it ended in a snort. The sound was repeated moments later, and Aubranael began to look around for the source.

Felebre had led him into the Outwoods, he realised; it was one of the largest forests in Aylfenhame, so dark and dense as to be almost impenetrable in places, and many avoided it altogether. Aubranael had no fear of it, however, for he and Felebre had spent many long days exploring it. He had heard many tales of its dangers, but little had ever threatened him here.

A gust of wind parted the thick canopy overhead, and a shaft of sunlight shone briefly upon Aubranael. And he saw ahead of him one end of a large dining table sitting incongruously among the trees, its sides lined with high-backed chairs. Each chair was occupied: he caught glimpses of hobs and goblins and brownies and other fae all talking loudly together. The table-top was covered in tea-things.

Intrigued, Aubranael changed course and set off in the direction of the peculiar picnic in the woods. But the faster he chased the table, the further away it seemed to be; and at last it faded away altogether, leaving him puzzled and panting in a silent, empty clearing in the Outwoods.

A gentle bite on his ankle recalled him to himself. He scowled down at Felebre, who stood gazing up at him with an air of irritation.

‘Well, I am sorry. But you must admit it was the strangest thing!’

Felebre made no such concession.

‘I have never seen or heard of that before, have you?’ Aubranael tried.

Felebre stared at him with unblinking eyes.

‘I suppose not,’ he sighed. ‘Very well; on we go.’

And on they went through the endless Outwoods. The table soon faded from Aubranael’s thoughts, and he returned to the contemplation of his own troubles, scarcely noticing the route they were taking or any feature of the landscape around him.

When at length they finally stopped, Aubranael blinked as if waking from a long sleep. Felebre sat watching him with her tail wrapped neatly around her paws.

‘What’s this, Fel?’ A glance around revealed nothing of obvious interest, except for the fact that he had never been to this place before. They stood at the bottom of a wide valley, in a little hollow clear of trees. Everything else around them was thickly forested; trees marched in clustered rows up, up and away over the steep sloping sides of the valley, crowded so thickly together that they blocked much of the sunlight. Or moonlight, in fact, for Aubranael realised with some surprise that it was now deep twilight.

He could see nothing that might explain Felebre’s choice of this exact spot, and he said so.

Felebre blinked her enormous eyes, as golden as the rising sun, and said nothing.

Aubranael was about to say something more; something a little bit irate, perhaps, since they had undertaken a great deal of walking to no obvious effect, and he was cold and tired; but a voice much more powerful than his own interrupted him.

‘Who is at my door!’

It wasn’t so much a question as a statement, redolent with the suggestion that whoever it was would shortly be suffering no end of punishments for their unauthorised proximity. Aubranael jumped, his straining eyes searching for the source and finding nothing.

‘I… am called Aubranael,’ he said, trying to sound confident. He defeated all efforts to the purpose when he added, ‘And I do not know why I am at your door.’

There was silence for a long moment. Aubranael spent the time nervously awaiting smiting, cursing, pulverising or any other variety of retribution, and searching without success for any sign of the disputed door. No retribution came, however; there was only the creak of a door opening, and then a space appeared ahead of him.

The door had no business being there at all, he thought with obscure irritation, for it appeared to be opening in the middle of a tree. Beyond it, a gleaming light showed him no tree trunk but a perfectly ordinary room, and a large one at that.

A figure appeared in the doorway. From the timbre of her voice he judged it to be a she, but nothing about the figure encouraged any such conclusion. So swathed in layers of cloth was this probable she that he could not even discern what manner of creature she was.

‘Felebre,’ said the figure. ‘Brought me another one, have you? Hmph.’ She nudged the cat with her toe, none too gently. Fel bore this interference with untouched serenity.

‘Come in, then,’ she said. ‘And quickly; the night grows cold.’

Aubranael followed the lady inside, judging that a regular acquaintance of Fel’s must be a safe person to visit. He hoped that the shiver in his limbs was not leading his wits astray. Inside the peculiar chamber he found a crackling fire; a great quantity of light provided by a number of floating glass lamps; and a heady aroma like the pure essence of summer, rich with nectar and sunshine and a warm evening breeze. He inhaled deeply, and smiled.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ said his host, as though he had spoken his appreciative thoughts aloud. ‘I do like to keep it pleasant.’

He turned to discover that she had thrown off the robes that had shrouded her figure before. He could think of no conceivable reason why she should conceal herself, for the sight that met his eye was one of blazing, shocking beauty. She was almost as of a height with him, and in possession of the most perfect figure he had ever beheld. Her face was perfectly shaped, her skin smooth as silk and unmarred by the smallest blemish. Her soft lips were red, her eyes a glorious blue, and these were fixed upon him with an expression of amusement. A wealth of tumbling golden locks completed her perfect visage, and he swallowed, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable indeed.

‘You approve of my art, then,’ said the beauty, gesturing at her face. ‘Tis a pity it is not real; but then, few are troubled by such minor matters as reality and fakery, are they?’ She flashed a brilliant smile.

He blinked at her stupidly as his mind struggled to focus on her words instead of her face. ‘I beg your pardon? Not real?’

She shook her head, smiling, as her eyes changed from summer-sky blue to a dazzling emerald green. ‘Such a simple trick, beauty, and yet it holds remarkable powers, does it not?’

‘Glamour,’ Aubranael croaked. ‘You are a witch.’

‘One of the very best,’ she said modestly. ‘And you are here because you are in need of my help, yes? Or so Felebre tells me.’

Aubranael glanced at the cat, who had followed them inside and now lay stretched in front of the fire. ‘I don’t understand. We have been friends for years; why would she now decide that I am in need of help?’

‘Something has changed recently, perhaps,’ suggested the witch.

‘So it has,’ he agreed, thinking of a smiling face framed in fair curls. ‘But who are you?’

‘I am called Hidenory,’ she answered. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Why do you conceal yourself behind this facade? What is your real form?’ Aubranael asked the questions with beating heart, anticipating a story somewhat like his own, but she dashed his hopes with a mysterious smile.

‘It is far too soon to be asking such personal questions,’ she chided. ‘But then, I must ask some of you, must I not? Isn’t life unfair sometimes?’

Aubranael had no idea what to say.

Hidenory sighed a little, sat down in a large rocking chair and began to gently rock herself back and forth. ‘Very well, let us get on with it. What is it that you wish for?’

A vision flashed through Aubranael’s mind in an instant: himself with a face, a proper one, like everyone else’s. What would he look like? Would he be handsome? Perhaps he would have regular features! An arched nose, a strong chin. Perhaps he would even be beautiful.

The thought prompted a curious thickening in his throat and a dampening of his eyes; unable to speak his wish aloud, he gestured at his face, hoping she would understand.

She did, but with understanding came a look of regret and Aubranael’s heart sank lower than ever. ‘I cannot,’ she said. ‘Glamour is my art, glamour and illusion. I cannot change reality, only hide it behind something else. And only temporarily, at that.’

Aubranael nodded, looking at the floor. He could muster no reply. Though he had enjoyed only a few seconds of hope, he felt utterly crushed in the aftermath.

‘Come, now,’ Hidenory said. ‘You have endured this misfortune for some years, I collect; there must be a reason why Felebre has brought you to me today. What is it that you truly want? What is it that you would hope to gain, with a mended face?’

He swallowed, thinking of Miss Landon. Slowly and in a low voice, he told Hidenory the story of his meeting with the merry English lady and why it had mattered so much. The witch heard him speak without interruption, and when he had finished he was heartened to see that a smile had returned to her face.

‘You wish to follow this creature! There is nothing simpler, I assure you. The journey may be a little unpleasant, but worth the enduring, I am sure? Do you wish to go at once?’

Aubranael stared at her, his head spinning. Go at once? Right away? His heart sped up and a smile tugged at his lips—and quickly died away. Go at once? As he was?

A succession of images flashed through his brain: of Miss Landon’s face once she had seen his; of himself adrift in England, subjected to revulsion and humiliation anew as strangers caught sight of his features; of Miss Landon’s inevitable rejection of him, once she grew tired of being kind.

He looked at Hidenory’s beautiful face and saw his own transformed into handsomeness. People would like him—love him, even! Miss Landon would not be repulsed; she would not have to be kind. She would want his company.

‘Can you… glamour me?’ He asked. ‘Give me a face like yours. A beautiful face.’

Hidenory gave him a long, measuring stare. He waited, heart pounding. ‘I can,’ she said, ‘but only for a time. Glamour is a flimsy, ethereal thing. It wears away, and the truth inevitably shines through.’

Aubranael nodded, undaunted. If he could have just a little time to convince her of his worth…

‘Tell me something,’ Hidenory said. ‘Do you intend to tell this Miss Landon your true identity?’

He thought about this for a moment, then shook his head. If she knew right away, her perception of him would be coloured by her memories of his true face, and much of the effect would be destroyed. He would present himself to her all bright and new, as a congenial stranger; they had got along so splendidly before, why should they not do so again? But still better, this time, with his perfect new face.

Hidenory’s eyes narrowed and she stared at him as though she was reading his mind. Perhaps she was. ‘One month,’ she said. ‘That is what I can offer you. But there is a condition.’

Aubranael waited, breathless, hoping it would not be beyond his power to accept.

‘I will participate in your deception, but only to a degree. At the end of your month, you must tell her the truth. Do you agree?’

Aubranael’s imagination helpfully offered him vision after vision of the probable outcome of that, none of them good. But he agreed. Of course he agreed! He would agree to anything, now.

But one further matter remained unresolved. ‘Wh…how much will it cost?’ he asked.

‘I have yet to decide.’ She eyed him speculatively. ‘I will consider the matter. For now, shall we say that you will owe me a good turn?’

‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Anything!’

Hidenory smiled wickedly. ‘Anything? Well, now. You should be careful of unlimited promises to witches. If I were not such a fair and generous soul… but, no matter. Let us begin.’

Aubranael was startled to notice a great silver cauldron where none had been before. It was full of water, and an image slowly bled across the surface.

A gentleman of England stood there. He was tall and handsome, with thick dark hair and a strong chin. He was dressed in clothes of a type Aubranael had never seen: long pale trousers, a coat with tails, and a tall hat. He stood leaning elegantly on a polished wooden cane, surveying his surroundings (whatever they were) with the self-satisfied smile of a man who has everything he could possibly wish for.

Aubranael had never smiled that way.

‘Is this what you had in your thoughts?’ Hidenory enquired.

Aubranael could only nod dumbly. He couldn’t articulate the longing he felt on beholding this piece of perfection; there were not words enough.

‘Very good. That’s easy enough,’ said the witch, and her prosaic tone broke his reverie. He stood watching her, scarcely breathing, as he awaited the transformation.

‘What are you staring at me for?’ Hidenory said. ‘Behold your own face.’ She gestured at the cauldron.

He looked down to find that the stylish gentleman had gone. The water was now as clear as a mirror, and in it he could see his own reflection.

The sight stole his breath and brought tears to his eyes. Gone was the ruined face he had for so long despised. In its place he saw chiselled features; an aristocratic nose; the strong chin he had admired on Hidenory’s image; clear brown eyes and a smiling mouth. His hair had not changed in colour, but it had been considerably shortened. Looking down at himself, he saw that he was wearing the strange costume of the English gentleman.

He stood a little straighter, rolling back his shoulders. A wide smile made its way onto his fine new mouth, and refused to be repressed.

Hidenory was laughing at him. ‘It will suit you admirably, that I can see,’ she said. ‘Do not grow too used to it, mind. You have but a single month.’

Even this sobering reflection did little to dampen Aubranael’s spirits. A month seemed a veritable age! What could he not accomplish in so generous a span of time!

He made his kind benefactress a low, grateful bow, and his fine shiny hat promptly fell off onto the floor and rolled away.

‘Hm,’ said Hidenory as he scrambled after it. ‘You will need a little more help, methinks.’

Aubranael caught the hat and rammed it back onto his head. ‘Never mind, dear lady,’ he said, beaming at her. ‘I shall soon grow used to it, I am sure.’

‘I am not nearly so sure,’ she answered dryly. ‘Certainly not in one month. Besides, it is not enough merely to look the part of a gentleman; more will be required of you.’

He looked down at his beautiful new garments—sneaking another glance at his beautiful new face along the way—and said: ‘What more could I possibly need?’

‘A name. A house. Carriages, horses, considerably more clothes, ready money, and… friends.’

Aubranael blinked at her. ‘A formidable list.’

‘Quite, and beyond my power to provide.’

He began to feel dismayed, but she held up a cautionary hand and smiled. ‘I know just the person to assist you. If you would be so good as to step through the door, it will all be arranged in a trice.’

What door? He thought, but as the words formed in his mind he noticed an oddly-shaped door fading into view in the wall directly behind Hidenory. It was round and jaunty in style, and painted in at least twelve different colours.

‘Grunewald is a glamourist, like myself, and very well able to assist you,’ Hidenory continued. ‘You will, of course, convey my very best regards.’

Aubranael paused on his way to the door, searching for a suitable way to thank her.

Hidenory grinned at him. ‘No need; I know all that you wish to say.’ She studied his face for a moment, and a wicked gleam entered her eye. ‘Grant me one small trifle by way of gratitude: a kiss. Seldom have I been so pleased with my own artistry!’

His cheeks warmed with both pleasure and embarrassment. Would this be the outcome of his new appearance? Ladies would be desirous of kissing him? How magnificent! And yet, how difficult, for he had never kissed a woman before—nor, indeed, any other creature. As Hidenory pressed her pretty lips to his, he hoped she would not notice his lack of experience.

This meeting of lips was not, as it turned out, all there was to the business of kissing. A great deal more happened, involving other parts of his mouth and body, and it went on for some time. When at last Hidenory released him and stepped away, she did not seem at all displeased.

Neither, he found, was he.

‘Excellent,’ she said, eyeing him. ‘Excellent,’ she said again, the word emerging a trifle breathlessly. ‘Are you sure it is Tilby you wish to visit? You do not wish to extend your visit to me?’

Aubranael shook his head, and then nodded, confused as to which part of the question he was answering. ‘Yes—that is—I wish to go.’

Hidenory sighed gustily, but her eyes twinkled as she said: ‘Ah well. I may always create another one, of course. Off with you!’ She pointed imperiously at the door, and Aubranael stepped through it.

‘You take care, now!’ she called after him. ‘And mind you listen to Grunewald!’