The Wonder Tales

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

‘You have grown paler, Ambrose,’ said Maud Redthorn, with a sharp, narrow-eyed look into his face. She was preparing a glass of rosehip cordial for him, mixing glossy crimson syrup with honey and clear water. She forgot this endeavour for a moment, so intent was she upon her scrutiny of his looks.

‘Am I?’ said he in surprise. ‘I feel very well, I assure you.’ But he could not deny the truth of her words, for a glance at his own hands proved the point: so pale was he that his veins stood out starkly, shockingly blue.

‘Oh, you look it,’ said Maud, frowning down at the goblet she held. She stirred its contents with a silver spoon and then handed it to him, her frown deepening.

‘That must be considered an advantage, must it not?’ said Ambrose with a smile. He lifted the goblet to his lips and sipped the sweet drink with relish, for it was a prime favourite of his.

‘Ordinarily,’ Maud allowed, carrying her own goblet to her favourite rocking chair. ‘Within reason.’

‘I am not so very different, am I?’ Excepting his unusual pallor, Ambrose saw little changed about himself when he gazed into a mirror. His hair had always been too long and rather untidy, and it had been greyish for many years. His eyes were still blue, his skin still patterned with the wrinkles of a long life well-lived.

‘Paler,’ repeated Maud. ‘Much paler.’

Ambrose had no notion what to say. He glanced at his hands, found them to be much the same as they were yesterday, and returned to savouring his cordial.

He had brought a fresh supply of honey to Maud’s cottage, as he did towards the end of every season. He had brought two large baskets laden down with jars for Maud’s pantry. She in turn baked it into bread, cakes and pastries for Goldwyne’s Bakery, and to Ambrose’s gratification she had always declined to employ any honey but his, naming it by far the most superior in Berrie. They had grown close over the years and regularly shared a cordial in her tiny, colourful parlour. He appreciated her plain-speaking and practicality, and she seemed to find his calm manner agreeable.

‘It is not just you,’ said Maud, rocking slowly in her chair. ‘Ferdinand looks stranger by the day, though not in a bad way either. I cannot describe it. And the Aelfwines! If they grow any thinner I swear they will blow away with the next gust of wind. But they are not frail. Not in the least.’

‘I have not noticed,’ Ambrose confessed. His friendship with Maud was a rarity, for he was never much inclined for company. He took his flowers to market once every week, enduring the bustle for the sake of his livelihood. Then he was well contented to return to Sevenleaf and the peaceful company of his wife.

He had noticed other changes, however. There was no escaping the mist; he could not remember so heavy or so pervasive a fog in all his life. It never lifted, shrouding every familiar thing in a heavy pall of white. Southtown had abandoned all expectation that it would soon disperse; the streetlamps were left alight all day as well as during the night, in a mostly vain attempt to lighten the fog-wreathed paths.

‘Does it seem to you that…’ Ambrose hesitated, unsure whether practical Maud would think him mad.

But she looked steadily back at him, and he felt that she knew what he was going to say.

‘Helewise saw a tree in our parlour,’ he said. ‘A fine birch growing in the corner, its branches spread all across the ceiling.’

Maud nodded.

‘I saw a stream in our garden,’ Ambrose continued. ‘Between the sweetpea grove and the rose arbour. Its waters flowed blue, and the stream-bed was all quartz. Its banks were grown over with moss.’

‘Is it still there?’

Ambrose shook his head. ‘That was yesterday. When I returned this morning it was gone. And Helewise never saw it at all.’

‘I saw a door,’ said Maud. ‘In my kitchen, where there was never a door before. It was painted red, like wine, and it had a great bronze handle in the centre.’ She took a sip of cordial, her eyes narrowing. ‘I caught but a glimpse of it, and then it was gone. And then there is Ferdinand’s cottage.’ She got out of her chair and went to the window, but soon turned away from it with a shake of her head. ‘This morning it looked twice its usual size, and it had coloured glass in the windows. Now it is as it ever was.’

A moment later, Ferdinand Crowther himself appeared at the open window, with a suddenness that startled both Ambrose and Maud. ‘Maud,’ he said, his eyes glinting eerily jewel-green. ‘What is it that you’re burning?’

‘Nothing,’ said Maud. ‘It is too warm for a fire.’

Ferdinand blinked. ‘But there is smoke pouring from your chimney.’

‘Is there.’ Maud said the words flatly, her gaze turning towards the ceiling.

‘It is purple,’ said Ferdinand.

One of Maud’s eyebrows went up. ‘The smoke, or the chimney?’

‘The smoke.’ He paused, and then added, ‘The chimney is, um…’

Maud’s other eyebrow went up. ‘What? My chimney is what?’

‘It is difficult to describe,’ said Ferdinand. ‘You ought to see for yourself.’

Maud went outside at once, and Ambrose followed. They stood in the middle of the lane, and through the cloaking mist they could discern a stream of purple smoke rising from the roof of Maud’s cottage. The chimney itself seemed to be expelling it, for its sides swelled and contracted as though it breathed.

Maud took a long look this oddity, then stalked back inside and curled up once more in her rocking chair.

‘Strange,’ said Ambrose unnecessarily.

‘I am growing used to strange,’ said Maud with a faint smile. ‘Normality will seem sadly flat, whenever it returns.’

Supposing it does, thought Ambrose, though he did not say it aloud.

He left Maud soon afterwards and walked back to Sevenleaf, his mind settling back into the comfortable haze in which it usually rested. He watched the fog as he walked, mesmerised by the silvery glitter of droplets upon the air, enchanted by the graceful coils of mist which wreathed the streetlamps and clung to the roadsides.

The bees called to him the moment he came within sight of home. He felt their collective voice swell with approval at his near approach, a comforting hum at the back of his mind.

They had never spoken to him before, that he could remember. Not until the mists had rolled in and life had become smaller, quieter — and stranger. But it seemed natural to Ambrose. He was less inclined to consider it another oddity, than to wonder at his never having noticed their songs before.

He went straight out to the hives. Helewise would be somewhere deeper in the gardens, hard at work, and he wished that he could join her as of old. But the farther he ventured into the flower fields, the harder he sneezed, and the more his eyes and nose watered and ran. He was not safe from it even here, close to the house; before he reached his hives, he was obliged to retrieve the ever-present handkerchief from his pocket and mop up a succession of sneezes.

Ambrose blotted at his eyes and sneezed a little more, and so preoccupied was he with this that he did not immediately notice the stranger who stood in the centre of his circle of hives. When the motley-dressed man at last caught his attention, his first thought was a bemused impression that the bees ought not to be greeting this stranger with the same warm approval they showed to Ambrose and Helewise.

Nonetheless, they were. More than that: they were humming in concert with one another, singing a thrumming, soothing melody for the stranger’s entertainment.

‘Good day,’ said Ambrose, unable at that moment to remember — or discern — whether it was morning or afternoon.

The man executed a graceful turn and swept straight into a fluid bow, rising with a smile. ‘Ambrose Dale?’ he said, his black eyes scrutinising Ambrose with alert attention. He wore mulberry trousers and a many-coloured coat, and he carried a set of silver pipes in his hand.

‘I am,’ said Ambrose, returning the scrutiny with a frown. ‘You are at Sevenleaf House, sir, which I regret to inform you is a private garden. May I be of assistance?’

The man smiled, and tucked his silver pipes into a pocket of his coat. ‘I apologise for the intrusion. I was drawn here by the bees, you see, and we were delighted to see one another.’

Ambrose nodded doubtfully. ‘Normally they only sing so to me,’ he said. ‘Or to my wife.’ Which was not strictly true, as he had never heard them sing precisely like this before.

‘All creatures sing to Pippin Greensleeves,’ said the man with a crooked smile. ‘He is the only one who sings back, you see.’

Ambrose could not imagine himself singing to his bees, not least because he was a poor singer, and could not maintain a melody no matter how he tried. He opened his mouth to invite the stranger — Greensleeves, if that was his name — to depart, but closed it again without speaking, for yet another oddity caught his attention. He kept the circle of hives largely clear of plants, partly out of a sense of neatness and partly by design. But the flagstones were no longer pristine, for in between each grew a profusion of borage plants, fully mature and already budding. Ambrose could almost see them growing, for they seemed to swell with every breath Greensleeves took.

‘Curious,’ said he with a frown.

Pippin Greensleeves glanced down at the plants near his feet, and a flurry of buds opened into vivid blue starflowers. ‘They used to be predominant, in these parts.’

‘When?’ Ambrose was intrigued by the words, for how could Greensleeves know more of Sevenleaf and its environs than he did himself? The Dales had owned the land hereabouts for generations, and Ambrose had grown up in the old stone house he still called home. He could not remember a time when borage had been profuse; he had coaxed his present stocks forth from a mere few, straggling plants, and they had been slow to thrive.

‘Long ago,’ said Greensleeves. ‘Before your time, or your father’s either.’ His brows drew together, and he surveyed the tiny, bright flowers with as much disfavour as satisfaction. ‘They were not blue, then,’ he added.

Ambrose remembered the long, rambling walk he had taken with Helewise a day or two before, and the seeds they had strewn by the waysides. ‘Soon they will be prevalent again,’ he suggested.

Greensleeves nodded with a catlike smile. ‘It is right that they should.’ He drew forth his pipes once more and played a swift, lilting tune, and another flurry of buds opened. ‘I thank you for your hospitality,’ he said, which puzzled Ambrose considering he had offered none. ‘I will be on my way.’ He bowed, a salutation which Ambrose barely had chance to return before Greensleeves was away, striding through the starflowers with jaunty step. More blossoms opened as he passed, releasing wisps of sweet fragrance into the air.

Ambrose sneezed, and sneezed again.

His eyes streamed water, and as he raised his handkerchief once more to his face, he thought he saw a vision of Sevenleaf far different from any he had ever glimpsed before. His tidy fences and neat borders were gone; his lavender shrubs, the rose arbour and honeysuckle bower, the distant sweetpea and cornflower groves, all vanished. Instead he saw a woodland of ancient trees sparsely grown, the ground beneath their verdant branches carpeted in starflowers. Beehives hung from every bough, and the scent of floral honey hung heavy upon the air.

The flowers were not the rich blue he was accustomed to, but a bright, delicate silver.

Ambrose blinked, and the vision was gone in an instant. He saw again the wooden hives he had constructed with his own hands, and the tidy proportions of the garden he knew.