The Wonder Tales

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Helewise loaded her baskets as heavily with glass jars as she was able to bear, and set forth to market. She packed the delicate containers in straw, the better to preserve their precious contents, and walked as slowly and as carefully as she could contrive. In spite of her efforts, the jars sometimes fell against one another with an unpromising clink and she winced, petrified that one might break and waste the strange, beautiful treasure housed within.

She could not have said why it seemed of such paramount importance to her, to preserve every drop of the honey. Perhaps because the production of it had engulfed all of the town, as though nothing Berrie contained was of such significance as the starflowers and the bees and the sweet, sticky, starlit substance the two together created. Perhaps because the plight of the motley folk continued to trouble her, particularly that of the frail, pallid woman who had gazed at her so sadly and drifted listlessly away.

Was this the alorin they spoke of? It seemed both curious enough and precious enough to be of great value to such people, though she did not understand why. Well, if honey was what they sought, she was happy to provide it. Ambrose’s labours had furnished Sevenleaf with a great deal of it to sell, and with the loss of their regular crops of flowers, their livelihood depended upon it.

The heavy baskets made her arms ache, and she wished she had been able to recruit Ambrose to assist her. But he was absent this morning; gone again to the bridge, she suspected, and the orchard that lay somewhere beyond.

‘The trees are fruiting,’ he had said that morning, with an urgency of tone that did not seem to match the import of his statement.

Helewise did not question it. She had ceased to question a great many things, for fear of losing her sanity entirely.

The town of Berrie, in which she had lived for all of her life, was changed beyond recognition. The buildings remained where they had always been, and the streets did not alter. But the brick-and-stonework of the cottages and shops had half-vanished beneath the hillsides in which they were now partially engulfed, their windows permitting light into dwellings now half underground. The familiar grasses and wildflowers persisted still, but they struggled for space in the midst of the carpeting starflowers and motley rosebushes tangling the hedgerows by the roadsides. Her fellow citizens were likewise changed, some far more so than others.

Helewise felt sometimes that she had wandered into a dream, and thus far failed to wake.

The morning air was crisp and the roads quiet, and Helewise would have enjoyed the walk were it not for the burden she carried. She trudged along in peace, her senses delighting in the rose fragrance scenting the air and the cheerful melodies of birdsong that reached her ears. The trees here were beginning to bear a harvest, too; long branches hung over the roads at intervals, each clustered with blossoms and the beginning buds of burgeoning fruits. Helewise could not tell what manner of fruits they would grow to be, for they did not appear in any way uniform; even those growing upon the same branch could differ vastly in shape, size and colour.

As she turned the corner around Heatherberry Spinney, a pale figure came into view, hastening towards her at such a rapid pace she felt it immediately incumbent upon her to step aside, and clear the way.

But as soon as the woman saw Helewise, she gave a cry of triumph and relief and directed her steps towards the spot where Helewise stood waiting patiently to proceed. She spoke a few words in an incomprehensible language, and soon closed the distance between them.

It was the pallid lady from the market, the one whose delicacy and obvious ill-health had so unsettled Helewise. How she had mustered the energy to move so quickly, Helewise could scarcely imagine, for she seemed thinner and weaker than ever. The effort had cost her much, for when she caught up to Helewise she stood for some moments, breathing hard and trembling so violently Helewise thought she might swoon. Even as she gasped for breath, she tried to speak.

‘Do, please, take a moment,’ Helewise begged. ‘You are ill, and must take more care.’

The lady shook her head impatiently. Then she noticed the baskets Helewise had placed behind herself for safekeeping, and she fell upon them with a glad cry. She spoke another word Helewise did not understand, and then changed to Helewise’s own tongue with a visible effort.

‘You come with… you… thank you!’

Helewise blinked. ‘You are welcome,’ she said doubtfully, very much at a loss.

But the lady’s delight soon turned to dismay. She sorted through the contents of Helewise’s two baskets and, finding only more honey, began to grow upset. ‘Where is the…’ she muttered. ‘Where is the other? The rest?’

‘The rest of what?’ said Helewise, dismayed. ‘I do not know what you mean.’

The woman stared up at her in an agony of despair. Helewise noticed that the faint green hue had now faded from both of her eyes; there was barely a wisp of colour anywhere about her. Even her prominent veins had paled from blue to a dull silver. Her skin looked dry and lifeless and unnaturally smooth, as though she were a carved statue brought to life more than a living woman.

‘It is too late,’ she said, her voice the faintest whisper. She barely breathed.

‘Anything I may do for you, I will,’ said Helewise desperately, for she could not help feeling alarmed and concerned and oddly… guilty, as though she had personally failed.

‘Too late,’ repeated the lady. She cast one despairing look at the skies, obscured though they were by the fog, and Helewise wondered to what she was appealing — or what, perhaps, she was reproaching.

Then she sank her face in her hands, and never again did she move.

Helewise thought, at first, that she was merely exhausted, but at length it occurred to her that the woman’s tremors had ceased entirely. So had her breathing. She was as still as death.

‘My lady?’ Helewise reached out a tentative hand and touched the woman’s face, then snatched back her hand in horror, for the skin beneath her fingers was smooth and chill and too unyielding to be flesh any longer.

She recalled her musings of a few moments before and shuddered. As though she were a carved statue brought to life more than a living woman.

The woman had turned to marble before Helewise’s eyes. She knelt in a posture of despair, naught but lifeless stone.

Helewise backed away, speechless with horror. She averted her eyes from the statue and stooped to collect her baskets, but her hands were shaking so much she could barely grip their handles. She managed as best she could and hastened away down the road, unwilling to leave the lady alone yet unable to bear the sight an instant longer. She did not look back, not until she had turned a corner twice and could do so with no expectation of glimpsing the forlorn statue again.

The road was empty, and nobody followed behind. If she had nurtured any hopes that she dreamt, that the woman lived still and would come in pursuit, she could cherish them no longer.

Helewise stumbled on towards the market, too numb with distress to think clearly. She arrived to find herself late, the market already in full swing despite the fact that the square had opted to be a hawthorn-ringed valley today. The market had adapted to fit the environment remarkably well, and might always have been thus.

The motley folk had returned. They thronged the little valley in a state of high energy or perhaps urgency, though they were neither so numerous nor so colourful as they had been before. Helewise noted uneasily that many of them appeared faded now, like curtains hung too long in a sunny window. The blush and vibrancy of life was draining away from every one of them, and now that she knew what the eventual consequence might be, she was appalled at the sight.

The man in the many-coloured coat stood in the centre of the gathering, playing frantically upon his silver pipes. Helewise felt at once that he was the reason for the burden she carried, and she went to him without further delay.

The trees about her were not all hawthorn. Some were the same, unidentifiable orchard arbours she had passed upon the roads, bearing a similar crop of immature fruits. These burgeoned as Helewise approached, visibly swelling and maturing before her eyes, and she knew that it was the music which brought them forth.

Several ripened and dropped, joining a litter of similar fruits already strewn over the grass. They were as motley as the piper’s people: apples, pears, peaches and plums all grown upon the same trees, each a chaotic mess of riotous colours. They did not please he who drew them forth, for the piper played on with blackening brow, faster and faster, until the grass was almost obscured beneath a blanket of bright, ripe fruits.

When the piper saw Helewise, he threw down his pipes with palpable disgust and briefly sunk his face into his hands. His posture so nearly resembled that of the poor, pallid lady that Helewise was badly alarmed; but he had yet to fade, as his people were so rapidly doing. He was all life and vibrancy.

Today, Helewise noticed something that had escaped her attention before. Hanging around his neck upon a long length of ribbon was a glass phial, inside which a pale golden liquid shimmered. The pendant caught her eye, for its contents resembled the very same starlit honey Ambrose had harvested, and which she had laboriously carried here herself. It was not the same, for it was paler than honey and as fluid as water. But she could not doubt that the hard-won starflower honey was a component somewhere therein.

‘Is that alorin?’ she asked, pointing an accusing finger at the necklace.

That won a deeper, darkling frown in response, and the pendant vanished from sight. ‘It is,’ he said shortly, scowling at Helewise as though her question had offended him.

When Helewise thought of the fate of the woman she had passed on the road, a choking indignation rose in her. ‘It is some manner of cure, is it not? For the wasting illness that afflicts these poor souls! How is it that you are hiding it from them, if you have the means to help?’

‘Because,’ said he, scowling more blackly than ever at her accusing words, ‘I carry all that remains, and it is enough to cure but one. And as you can no doubt deduce, we are in need of a great deal more.’

Helewise looked at the discarded fruits that lay scattered around them, and at last it seemed that something shifted in her mind; a fog lifted, confusion faded. ‘Starflower honey,’ she said. ‘And faerie fruit.’

‘Fruit nurtured under the light of a faerie sun and moon,’ he corrected. ‘Fed by the mists and the rivers and the rains of Faerie, wrought of clear skies and music and magic.’ His lips twisted in disgust as he stared at the fruits he had brought forth. ‘But our light is faded, our rivers are diminished and our music is no longer enough. They are not supposed to be like this.’

‘What is amiss with them?’

‘They heal,’ he snarled. ‘But they also harm. They are twisted, mischievous. Oh, more beautiful than ever! But they cannot help us. They will not.’

Helewise began to grow impatient with his obscure and nonsensical pronouncements. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘And what do you want with Berrie? Why have you brought this problem to us?’ A realisation struck her as she spoke, and she gasped. ‘But you have not, have you? You have brought us to the problem. We are in Faerie.’

‘I am Pippin Greensleeves,’ he said, his anger fading. He sighed deeply, and stared at his pipes as though the instrument, too, had betrayed him. ‘King of Faerie, such as it is. The mortal realms breathe and flourish and grow all around us, but our lands forsake us, and ever we diminish. Even the heavens have turned their faces against us; Moon is gone, and Sun will speak to us no longer. We sicken. If our alorin — our hope — cannot be restored, we will fade beyond revival.’

King of Faerie. Helewise, struck speechless, felt that perhaps she ought to bow, or in some other manner demonstrate her respect. But he did not much resemble a king. His coat was stained at the hem with mud, the same dirt which caked his otherwise fine boots, and his manner was not regal so much as weary. His words, though, resonated with her, and all at once she understood what he had not said. ‘Berrie was once Fae?’

He looked around at the valley that used to be Southtown’s market square. The lanterns flickered eerily in the dense, white mist, and the circling hawthorns creaked in the wind. ‘Once,’ he said. ‘Your “Northtown” crossed over into mortal lands many long years ago, and then the south followed, taking one of our precious rivers with it. And our hope, for nowhere else do the silver starflowers grow.’ He reached up and plucked a fruit from above his head: a glorious crimson peach, its skin furred with burnished bronze. ‘And not even Berrie can produce our maeolon now.’

Helewise did not have time to ask what he meant by that, for he had already spun a glamour in the air before her. Gold-threaded lights rippled to life and wove themselves together, tracing the outline of a perfect, sunlit apple. A pear followed, its contours coloured the bright, pure silver of moonlit clouds. They could hardly be more different from the motley mess spread before her, and it was not merely their hues which differed. Helewise could not have said what made the illusory fruits so superior to the rest, but she felt it clearly nonetheless: they were simply right.

The beautiful glamour faded, and Helewise felt oddly bereft.

‘These,’ said Pippin Greensleeves, and he spoke now of the peach he held, ‘affect the fae deeply indeed, but mortals barely at all. And mortals are likewise immune to the sickness that so plagues my people. You are not woven of our light and our waters, and you do not need them in order to thrive.’

‘Is that why you need me?’ said Helewise. She thought of Ambrose: so much affected by the fruit he had eaten, where she had taken barely any harm from them at all. And he sickened under the light and the mists of Faerie, whereas she was as strong as ever.

Ambrose was fae. Many of her neighbours were fae, though they knew it not. Not entirely fae, in all likelihood; some mixture of fae and mortal blood. Enough of the latter to thrive in Berrie, provided it lay in mortal lands. Enough of the former to sicken, when reclaimed by a Faerie forsaken by the light of its faded heavens.

‘It is why I need Berrie Wynweald,’ said Greensleeves. ‘Already you have aided us greatly.’

‘At great cost,’ Helewise reminded him sharply. Now that her mind was freed of whatever enchantment had befuddled and confounded it, she was sorely troubled. Half the town recalled to Faerie, and divided from the other! And Northtown had no more idea of what had become of the lost half than those of Southtown, she would wager.

Pippin Greensleeves bowed his apology. ‘All will be put right,’ he promised. ‘The Dales of Sevenleaf have restored to us the nectar of the stars. It will fall to another of your people to bring to us the maeolon, and then a cure shall once again be brewed.’

‘How?’ demanded Helewise. ‘You have said that even Berrie can no longer produce it.’

‘I do not know.’ Greensleeves fixed her with a dark stare, and she shivered under the strange light in his eyes. ‘I only know that it will be.’

Helewise shook her head. ‘So be it, and I hope it will prove true. But it is a poor solution at best, is it not? Shall you not continue to sicken? Shall your trees ever thrive again? How may any of it be mended?’ Remembering the despair in the eyes of the pallid fae woman as she faded and died, Helewise felt at that moment that she would gladly have given much to mend such a sickness.

And Ambrose. Would Ambrose be condemned to the same, horrifying end? Would his mortal blood be enough to save him, or would he fade?

But the King of Faerie only shook his head. ‘No man or woman alive can answer that question now,’ he said softly. ‘Neither of mortal, nor of fae. Without Moon, without Sun, without clear Fae water, we are lost.’