The Wonder Tales

2

2

The house of Oriane seemed, somehow, darker and emptier than it had before, and it held an air of stillness, as though its owner had been gone for far longer than a day or two. Florian felt his skin shiver as he and Margot walked into the little kitchen, he holding high the lamp borrowed from the jade parlour at Landricourt. ‘Where was it that we found the coat?’ he asked Margot.

Margot went straight to the rocking-chair by the hearth. The gauzy garment was still there, its delicate embroidery shining over-bright in the soft lamplight. Margot picked it up, handling it as though it might fall to pieces under the force of a single exhalation — and it looked as though it might. She laid it over one arm, carefully, carefully, and turned back to Florian.

But he was not where she had left him, for he had wandered off to the table in the middle of the room. There in the centre of its simple blue table-cloth stood the glass bottle of pale, golden liquid from Chanteraine’s Emporium, and the tiny peacock-coloured book.

‘It is a shame Oriane never received those,’ said Margot frowningly, ‘Though I suppose she is not in need of the elixir, after all.’

Florian did not reply, for his eye had been drawn more to the book than the bottle. He had not looked closely at it before, for his master was always putting some odd thing or another into his hands and dispatching both him and it upon this or that errand. He knew his duty: to deliver, not to pry. But a faint glimmer caught his attention. Though the book’s cover was plain — a rich blue silk, unadorned, and with no name or title printed upon it — it did have a length of violet ribbon slipped between its pages. Florian had taken it to be a page marker, and had not given it a second glance. But something glimmered there, the way the moth-wing coat glistered under lamplight.

He picked it up. So tiny, the delicate thing, and lightweight, though it held many pages between its bindings. His master’s work, he thought, of a surety; Seigneur Chanteraine had bound books before, often with silken covers like this one.

He opened it, carefully, at the page marked by the length of ribbon. Light glittered, a soft light like distant stars, and he realised it was not ribbon at all — not the satin kind, that might be bought by the yard at Valentin’s Haberdashers. It was finely woven, like the moth-wing coat, and embroidered in the same way.

The marked page held no words, only a printed image. It was a painting of Landricourt: the ballroom, he might have said, for the shape and proportions of the room looked the same, and there was the familiar profusion of roses. But this ballroom was not ruined, so why were the roses there? And why were they red and purple and amber, not moon-white? Moreover, its decor was entirely different. The marble floor was no longer pale and serene; it was painted in a wash of colour, jade-green and sage and a soft sky-blue, and several other shades besides. The walls held their usual complement of murals, all vibrant with a freshness their living counterparts no longer displayed. But he did not recognise the images there, half-glimpsed beneath the rose bowers. They were of unfamiliar plants and trees he had never seen, either in life or in paintings, and equally peculiar creatures crouched among the grasses. He thought that there was some sort of glade depicted, lined with trees on one side, but he could not see enough of the mural to be sure; the artist had painted over much of it with roses.

Margot had come up behind him, and stood staring at the print with the same awed silence as he himself. ‘Did Seigneur Chanteraine paint that?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. I never saw him paint, but… he is full of talents.’

‘And mysteries.’

‘Always those, too, yes. I am quite sure that he made the book, but the painting?’ Florian shrugged, and carefully turned a page. The next print was also of Landricourt, the jade parlour this time, though this, too, was altered: its walls were painted with soft gold and ivory and pearly-white as well as jade, and a thick mossy carpet covered the floor (was it a carpet indeed, or was it that moss itself had somehow grown from wall to wall?). A low table, perhaps for tea, stood in the centre of the room, though its design was curious: it had five curved, twisting legs, and it appeared to be made from smoky glass. A chaise longue of pearly velvet stood behind it. Roses covered the ceiling and hung from the walls, though these, too, were not silver-pale; they were rich amber and gold and blood-red, like Rozebaiel’s skirts.

Page after page he turned, and each held the same thing: paintings of every room in Landricourt, printed in vivid inks, and each decidedly altered from its present composition.

‘It is Landricourt as it was,’ said Margot. ‘Before it was ruined.’

But Florian could not agree. ‘Landricourt never looked like this. Have the paintings on the walls all changed, with the passage of time? And though there isn’t much furniture left there, none of it looks like this.’

Margot frowned. ‘But it is Landricourt. Do you not agree?’

‘Oh, I agree. But it is some artist’s impression of the place, very fanciful. I wonder why Mr. Chanteraine sent it to Oriane.’ He went back to the beginning of the book, and found a few more prints showing the grounds at the great house, well-kept instead of a rambling mess, and (perhaps oddly) almost devoid of the roses which colonised the building itself. But some of the plants which grew in these imagined gardens were the same as those of the imagined murals, and the flowers were quite bizarre: trumpets and bells and flutes of soft, curling petals, many the same silver-pale as the roses at the real Landricourt.

‘I don’t understand it,’ he decided at last, and carefully closed the book. ‘My master found them somewhere, I dare say, and thinking them a pleasing oddity bound them up for Oriane.’

‘I can well imagine that she would like them,’ said Margot, and Florian detected a touch of envy in her voice. She obviously liked them very well indeed. The winemakers, he supposed, were far more familiar with Landricourt than he; probably they loved the old place as a second home.

He gave her the book. ‘We had better not leave these just lying here. Anything might happen to them.’

‘You mean, I suppose, that well-meaning souls might come in with many a good intention, and walk out again with moth-wing coats and books and elixirs stuffed into their pockets?’

‘Exactly,’ said Florian gravely. ‘We cannot be too careful with Oriane’s things. My master would insist upon it.’ And he would, in point of fact, for all that Florian was jesting. These things were clearly important somehow, though Florian could not say why.

Margot tucked the book into a pocket of her dress. ‘And the elixir, what of that?’

Florian was, by this time, deeply interested in the elixir. Mr. Chanteraine had called it “restorative”, and perhaps that was all it was: a tonic to make her well again, supposing she had been ill. But he had never seen bottles like these in his master’s storerooms, or elixirs like that. He picked it up, took out the stopper, and inhaled.

Immediately he passed it under Margot’s nose. ‘What do you smell?’

‘Rose,’ she said promptly. ‘Rosewater?’

Florian thought of the heavy jars of rosewater he and Margot had so lately hauled down from Landricourt to the emporium. Was this what his master had done with all his stock, that he needed more?

Florian took another sniff. ‘Rosewater,’ he agreed, ‘and wine, too, I think. Your wine.’ He was not often given rosehip wine to drink, but its sweet, autumnal aroma was impossible to mistake.

‘A restorative made from rosewater, and rosehip wine?’ Margot gazed at the bottle as though it might give up its secrets, if only she were to entreat it hard enough. ‘And why, then, is it gold? There must be some other things in there.’

‘One way to find out.’ Florian tipped up the bottle and took a sip.

‘Florian!’ Margot protested. ‘I cannot think it’s right for you to do that.’

Florian ignored this, for how were they ever to find anything out otherwise? ‘It tastes of…’ he paused, and took a second sip. ‘Sunlight and oranges, with a trace of evening mist.’

Margot stared blankly.

‘I don’t know,’ Florian explained, shrugging. ‘I can’t determine anything else, except maybe for the oranges. That part might be true.’

He blinked, for he thought suddenly of a moonlit arbour in a garden somewhere — at Landricourt, again? The place was ringed with small, ancient trees, boughs swaying in the wind. Where had he seen this place, and how could he have forgotten it? But he blinked again and the thought faded, and there was only Margot looking at him like he was mad.

‘Try it,’ he said, and offered her the bottle.

She declined. ‘I can’t think that I would do a better job at guess-the-ingredients than you.’

‘You’re afraid of what my master would think.’

Margot looked ready to deny it, but decided otherwise. ‘All right, yes, I am a little.’

Florian grinned, and tucked the bottle into the crook of his arm. ‘He is not so imposing really, once you get to know him.’

‘Are you sure?’ Margot looked dubious.

‘He’s a good man.’ But Florian could not go so far as to say that the master of the Emporium would not be angry, if he knew that they had sampled the elixir concocted for Oriane alone. So he hastily set the subject aside, saying instead, ‘Away we go. We had better get to the emporium before the Chanteraines leave.’

Margot gave him one of her suspicious looks, and he knew he would wilt under that gaze if he suffered it for too long. So he strode to the door and held it for the lady, bowing slightly as she passed through it. ‘After you, ma’am.’

‘Too kind.’ Her tone was haughty, but a smile followed, so he knew it was all right.

The lamps were lit at the emporium, so it came as a surprise to Florian to find it empty when he and Margot arrived. He went from room to room, but neither Chanteraine nor his daughter were to be found; not in the storeroom, not on the shop floor, and not in the workshops upstairs. The door to Chanteraine’s private chamber was shut, as always; it was the one room Florian was forbidden to enter. He tapped upon the door, but no response came, and no light glimmered around the door.

It was odd of them to go away during opening hours, and leave the shop unattended. But Mr. Chanteraine had realised that Florian would soon return, no doubt, and consented to be called away.

He’d left Margot kicking her heels in the storeroom. When he clattered his way back down the narrow wooden stairs, he found her eyeing the rows of coloured-glass bottles lined up upon the shelves. ‘What is in all these?’ she asked.

‘Cordials,’ said Florian. ‘Tinctures, elixirs, assorted refreshing beverages.’

Margot turned to him, her eyes alight, but he could read the question in them without waiting for her to speak. He chose to forestall it. ‘Seigneur does not share the recipes, except with Syl— with Demoiselle Chanteraine, of course.’ He did not add that he knew where the recipes were to be found. His master kept a book, one he had bound himself in crimson leather. It went everywhere with him, and he referred to it constantly — especially when he was in one of the workshops upstairs, brewing up batches of some cordial or another or fashioning one of the trinkets, jewel-pieces or toys that were so popular with the townspeople. Florian did not doubt that all his recipes were written therein, but he had never had the chance to peek at its contents. He was not sure that he would, if such an opportunity materialised. He was as curious as Margot — probably more so — but to steal such knowledge could not sit well with him.

He’d had hopes, once. He had begun work as the emporium’s shop boy years before, at the age of fifteen; the Chanteraines had taken pity on him, for his mother and father were gone and he’d had two younger siblings to provide for. He had dreamed of a future as the Chanteraines’ apprentice; perhaps they wanted help with creating the strange and wonderful things that were sold in the shop, and he would be taught to assist. But years had passed, his brother and sister had grown beyond his help, and here he still was: a shop boy, bound to keep counter at his master’s need, responsible for the storeroom, and otherwise employed to fetch and carry and make deliveries.

He had buried those disappointments long ago.

‘You had better go home, hadn’t you? Shall I walk you?’ Florian made himself say. He liked seeing Margot there, wandering the storeroom in all her colours, her face alight with wonder and curiosity. He liked that he had been the means of giving her the chance to explore; it made him feel, just a little bit, important. But he could not keep her there, not merely for his own satisfaction. She was weary, and probably hungry, and there was no food to offer her except the various eatables that were sold. He would not plunder those without permission, and anyway, they would make a poor meal. Tiny bite-sized cakes made from clouds and sunlight, as far as Florian could tell from their appearance and texture; pungent sweetmeats wrapped in sugar-veined leaves; bonbons and comfits and pearl-jellies… delicious, in all probability, but not at all sustaining.

‘I’ll find my way,’ said Margot, with that ironic curl to her smile that he never knew how to interpret. He only bowed. She hesitated over the coat, still draped upon one arm. ‘I will leave this here, but where shall it be safe?’

Florian found her an empty store-box to pack the coat into, and she laid it inside with tender care and some regret. It was a pretty thing, but Florian had not previously realised that she cared for fripperies; the skirts and bodices she favoured were colourful but always plain and sensible, devoid of the frills and lace and ribbons that decked the clothing of many other women. She wore her leaf-coloured hair bound up, though it did work rather hard to escape, and he did not remember ever seeing any jewellery on her. But perhaps her choices were driven by necessity, for she spent all the hours of her days engaged in some form of labour.

He tucked the idea away.

Margot added Rozebaiel’s ribbon and the book, and Florian contributed the mist-trinket, the bottle with the elixir, and the neckcloth. They closed the lid on this collection of oddities, and stacked the box with the others.

Then Margot smiled upon him, the first time she had done so — properly done so — all day. ‘Will you be all right here alone?’

Unused to such care, Florian did not know what to say. He hoped it was not a motherly sort of concern she was expressing, and he hoped that the blush he could feel rising in his cheeks did not show too much on his face. ‘Of course!’ he said stoutly, and busied himself with making certain that the lid of their store-box was properly closed.

Margot was on the point of leaving when the smile fell from her face, and she said in dismay, ‘Oh no! I have left my basket at Landricourt. All my herbs! They will be withered away by the morning.’ She hovered, probably turning over in her mind the importance of the herbs against the time-consuming labour of another long walk to Landricourt and back. ‘Ah, well,’ she sighed, clearly deciding against the latter. ‘I can gather them all again tomorrow. Goodnight, Florian.’

The door clicked softly to behind her, and Florian was left alone in the quiet darkness of the emporium.

He was by no means so averse to returning to Landricourt as she, not least because he had meant to do so anyway. He did not feel that his search of the place was complete, and besides, he had searched only in daylight. What might he notice, under the altered light of the Gloaming, that he had not seen before? And would he find Rozebaiel again, still wandering from room to room in her rosy skirts? With the Chanteraines already gone home, he had little else to do; the storeroom was in order, and the shop, apparently, closed early.

His mind made up, he left at once, pausing only to extinguish the lamps and lock up at the back. The alley behind the emporium shone silvery-grey in the gloom, and he always fancied that it looked quite different, somehow — as though it were not the same alley at all but a similar one, transposed over the top. Slightly wider, slightly airier, paved in silver rather than stone. And did the wind coil and whisper down it in a different way than it did in the daytime, or during the night? Once, Florian had been certain that he heard words folded somewhere within the billowings of the wind, though he had not been able to discern what they were.

He had the lamp with him, that Margot had borrowed from the jade parlour. He would use it while he explored, and return it to its proper place when he left. And he would fetch Margot’s basket of herbs, too, and deliver it to her on his way home.

Florian made his way first to Morel’s bakery, and there he spent two precious copper coins upon a hearty portion of meat and vegetables wrapped in pastry. His evening repast secured — he could drink from one of the clear streams that ran behind Landricourt — he set his back to the town, and ventured westwards.

Landricourt, too, looked different under the Gloaming. No dark, shadowy pile, as it must appear at night, it was a magical display of velvet-dark shadow and silvery light, all set about with stars. Did it always look so? Mist coiled slowly up its gleaming stone walls, eerily pale, and an odd aroma blew upon the wind. There was something of chocolate about that scent, Florian thought, and smoke, and spice, and flowers; a mad mixture of things he could not hope to identify. The afternoon was still warm, Gloaming notwithstanding, but when Florian arrived before the great house, sweating and out of breath, he found it cool and serene — even chilly, for he shivered in his thin shirt and waistcoat.

The front door was open. Did anybody ever close it? His footsteps echoed hollowly upon the silvered-stone floor of the hall, and a mischievous wisp of wind came sailing through the wide-open door and tousled his hair.

He went first into the cellars, his lantern held high, and retrieved Margot’s basket. It was not hard to find, for she had left it with all the other trugs, in the same repository for flowers and rosehips which he had himself so often visited that day. He carried it up to the hall and set it by the door, ready to collect upon his departure.

Was it his imagination, or had starlight winked coyly from a distant doorway as he’d returned to the stairs? He retraced his steps and stopped at the bottom of the stairwell, dimming his lantern with his hand.

Not imaginary. There was a glimmer there, almost lost within the depths of the passage’s shadows. It beckoned.

Florian followed.

He stepped softly along the echoing passage, ignoring door after door in pursuit of the light. Under the archway of a lost door he went, and into a bare chamber of worn stone that he did not recognise. Had he searched this part of the cellars, earlier in the day? He could not remember.

At first, all was dark. And then came the flicker of light, from the far wall: clear white, and silver-laced, and then mellow blue.

Was it a window there, admitting that light from somewhere outside? No; he did not see a window. He did not see anything, until he crossed the room and raised his lantern high.

A mirror. Its surface rippled like water, and reflected in its depths Florian saw nothing of himself. He saw nothing at all, save a thick white mist, and the light winked again from somewhere deep within.

Was it glass at all? Intrigued, Florian stretched out a hand to touch the curious thing — this, surely, would be of interest to his master! But he had cause to regret his fascination, for his fingers sank into the mirror exactly as though it were water after all, and then the rest of him went, too. He fell helplessly, as though he had thrown himself into the cold embrace of the stream behind the house. Panicking, he struggled, and for a moment he thought he might drown, so hard was it to draw breath.

And then the sensation of falling was over, and he was no longer in the echoing cellar room. He did not know where he was, for all around him was broad daylight, and there was no sign of the mirror.