The Wonder Tales

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

The annals of the Kings and Queens of Faerie: Upon the Matter of Berrie Wynweald.

The loss of Berrie Wynweald was a grave one to Faerie, for it took away with it yet another of our rivers, the best and most vibrant of our trees, and the produce upon which we had long relied for our good health. Ah, the very heart of Faerie! The garden of Sun and Moon, our celestial orchard, for which there can be no replacement. That I should reign over such decline! That I, Pippin Greensleeves, in all my arts and magics, should be so powerless to prevent its loss, or to compel its return!

Why does Faerie diminish? Once, it is said, it was Mortal Lands which shifted into Faerie, there to remain. In time, those stolen lands reverted back to their mortal roots, forsaking Faerie forever. As was right.

But others followed. Our towns, our woodlands, our meadows, lands which had always been of Faerie, had never known mortalkind. One by one, as the centuries passed, they were wrested from us — or perhaps they fled. The Faerie over which I reign is sadly diminished, and still we lose. Still we do not understand what draws our villages and forests away from us. I leaf through the pages of this volume, noting anew the successive losses diligently recorded by myself or my predecessors, and my heart grieves.

It took much from me, to recall half of Berrie Wynweald, and it was beyond my power to compel the River. The people of Berrie have forgotten their heritage entirely. Faerie blood lingers there still; this, the fruit confirmed in its effects upon their constitutions. But the fruits are not what they once were. It is as I feared: without the light and the air and the water of Faerie, even those trees seeded and grown in Faerie of Old can produce only strange, twisted, mischievous things, beautiful but wrong.

Before his death, Cornelius Dwerryhouse made to me a confession. He and his beloved had once stolen into the heart of Faerie, and carried away some few of its celestial fruits. Rosamund had kept these, had planted their seeds in her own gardens and those of her friends, and nurtured them to adulthood — though their failure to produce such fruits as had spawned them always disappointed her. I readily forgave all this, for had he and Rosamund not themselves developed the tincture which healed our complaints and restored health to my people? They need not have crept into Faerie. Gladly would I have bestowed such things upon them, and far more.

He did not confess everything to me. He did not tell me that he had not given all the fruits to Rosamund; that he had hoarded some for himself, in a box wrought from Faerie wood, and never told a soul of their existence. This I discovered at last by way of his descendent, a man not unknown to Faerie. It was the saving of us, for his avarice and his secretiveness gave us the means to recreate the alorin. I bless the tonic which restores to us the light and the water that we need, however temporarily. And I bless Cornelius Dwerryhouse and Rosamund Dale, for their development of the tincture, and for the theft which restored it to us so long after their deaths.

Is it ironic, that we should owe our deliverance to the very mortal traits which seem, to us, most difficult to understand? For Moon is restored! And while Her return owes much to the ethereal magics of my lands and my people, it owes as much to the stubborn, unwearying, interfering, curious practicality of those whose mortal blood outweighs any other heritage. The temerity of a Hattie Strangewayes! Would my people ever act as she did? Never. But can I deny that, without her gumption and her gall, we would linger still in sickness, Moon as absent as ever from our skies? I cannot.

The return of Berrie South can be but temporary. Alas, I cannot deny that either, for it fights me, every waking minute, to rejoin itself with its severed half. Someday, it will be beyond my power to prevent it, and sorely do I lament that inescapable fact. For have I not proved that, mortal and prosaic as its citizens appear, as dimmed as their colours may be, they are many of them still Fae? Has their desire for faerie fruit not proved unaltered? Their minds have forgotten their heritage, but their bodies, their spirits, have not. They pine for Faerie, as Faerie pines for them.

It gives me hope, that the same might be said for all our lost lands: that though they are gone from us, Faerie lingers still within them, all the long ages through. There is hope. Hope, that someday the means to halt the decline may yet be found; perhaps even to reverse it. It is to this hope that I dedicate the future of my reign, armed now with a new knowledge: sometimes, the Mortal world needs a dose of Faerie magic. And once in a while, the people of Faerie benefit from a little mortal pragmatism.