The Wonder Tales

Chapter Three-1

Chapter Three

Hattie’s feet were coming up in blisters. A hundred at least, she was sure, and she could hardly walk for the pain. How wretched of her shoes, first to force her to choose them and then to so punish her obedience! She hobbled home as carefully as she was able and took them off at once, hurling them into a corner with some vehemence.

‘I call that a shocking betrayal!’ she informed them, an admonishment they took meekly enough, for they ventured no reply.

She would have to choose another pair, and the thought made her sigh, for the rest were far too lively of hue for wandering about the town. But she had not time to visit Verity Wilkin’s shop for a more sober set, and she did not dare to trust herself there besides, for who could tell what manner of concoction she would end up bringing home?

‘Which of you shall it be?’ Hattie asked her shoes, scrutinising them all with an exacting and unsatisfied eye. She selected the indigo pair, but they felt heavy in her hands and she quickly discarded them. The coquelicot shoes were flimsy, the violet boots too high in the heel. She abandoned pair after pair until only one remained: a pair of boots which laced all up to the knee, clad in amber velvet, their pointed toes shining silver and their soles brilliant gold.

‘Goodness,’ murmured she, picking them up with grave misgivings. But they felt perfect in her hands, and when she put them on they fitted her poor, battered feet exactly.

Perhaps she had been mistaken about the number of blisters, for when she took a few, experimental steps, she managed them in complete comfort. Smiling in relief, Hattie directed her gaze determinedly away from the inappropriate colours and ventured forth.

She was on her way to Theodosius’s shop to reclaim her trinket, but to her own surprise she marched straight past his door without even slowing her steps. On she strode at an uncompromising pace, in a tearing hurry to get to who-knew-where, and Hattie’s heart sank a little. ‘Oh, no,’ she sighed, for her boots had got hold of her again, and flatly refused to be dissuaded from wherever they were intent upon going. The best she could do was swerve as necessary to avoid bumping into passersby, for her boots merely adopted a straight line down the street and proceeded with blithe unconcern, either for her wellbeing or that of anybody she encountered. She hastened down Tinder Street and all the way to Gloster Lane without slowing, and arrived at the Moss and Mist feeling somewhat out of breath.

Why, thought Hattie, have my boots brought me to the Mist?

But they had not. They appeared to have brought her to the expanse of wall next to the Mist, a construct which did not seem to belong either to the inn or the shop next to it. In fact, Hattie thought that her boots had conceived so violent a hatred for her person that they could not be satisfied with anything less than her instant demise, for she walked straight at the wall, and at a pace which must dash her to pieces against it. She had time only to raise her arms in a futile defence before her, a shriek of dismay torn from her lips as her boots hurled her at the wall.

Hattie had instinctively closed her eyes against the impact, and it took a few moments for her to realise that she had emerged remarkably unscathed from her encounter.

Hattie opened her eyes.

The street, the Mist, Sebastian Scrivener’s silver smithy — everything she expected to see before her was conspicuously absent. She stood instead inside a walled courtyard she was very sure she had never seen before. It was lined with tiny cottages on three sides, ancient-looking dwellings of timber and whitewash with crooked doors and walls that leaned at the top. Neat paving stones covered the space in between, though they were not especially well-kept, for tufts of grass and wildflowers grew all over.

What was perhaps most puzzling was that it appeared to be summer there, when it had certainly been autumn when Hattie had walked through the wall.

‘Hello,’ she said uncertainly, for the courtyard was not empty. Chairs were set outside every door, the rocking kind built from sturdy oak and woven with willow withies. Every one of them had an occupant, a man or woman with flyaway hair and boots as exuberantly coloured as Hattie’s own. Each sat under a cloud of billowing, pungent smoke, emanating from the carved birchwood pipes they held to their lips. They regarded Hattie with remarkable placidity considering the manner of her arrival.

‘It is long since we had a visitor from Town,’ said one, a woman who appeared older than the rest. She sat comfortably huddled in an old sage-green shawl, her white hair caught up in flowered pins.

Hattie did not know how this observation could in any way elucidate the means by which she had found their hideaway, but everybody looked closely at her wayward boots. Heads nodded in comprehension.

‘Ah,’ said a wheat-haired woman, examining Hattie closely with her colourless white eyes.

‘Welcome,’ said a youngish man with skin the colour of acorns, and hair like spun bronze.

‘Thank you!’ Hattie felt so relieved at this single word of kindness, brief and distant though it was, she feared she may have overdone her enthusiasm. But she smiled upon them all anyway, and sought for some way to explain her appearance. ‘It is the boots, you see,’ she said, and hoped they would understand, for she could hardly elaborate.

‘Yes, yes,’ said the old woman, setting down her pipe with great care. It continued to smoke though she did not touch it again, expelling coiling wisps which formed vague flower shapes in the air. ‘You are in Brewer’s Yard,’ she continued. ‘The shoes would not think to tell you that, I suppose? Rude creatures.’

‘Ah,’ said Hattie carefully, unsure whether it would be wise to express her total incomprehension. Brewer’s Yard? Was she supposed to recognise the name?

The man with the bronze hair laughed. ‘It was Brewer’s Yard,’ he corrected. ‘When there was anything at all to brew.’

‘There may be again,’ said the old woman. ‘If the Boots are here, something stirs in Town.’

Hattie did not much enjoy being spoken about as though her Boots were wearing her, rather than the other way around. ‘Do excuse me,’ she said, ‘But I wonder if somebody could explain what I am doing here? I have tried asking my Boots but it is as you say, they are shockingly uncommunicative.’

‘You are in Berrie Fae,’ said the old woman. ‘Not but what it was all Berrie Fae at one time, but we will leave that little matter alone for the present.’

‘Quite right,’ said somebody else in an aggrieved tone, and a few others muttered grumbling words Hattie could not hear.

‘You have brought everything with you, I trust?’ said the bronze-haired man, fixing Hattie with an expectant look.

‘What, pray, was I supposed to bring?’ said Hattie politely. Berrie Fae? thought she. What manner of madness is this? ‘My instructions have been rather lacking, I am sorry to say.’

‘The key,’ he replied.

‘The recipe,’ said the old woman.

‘Melaeon,’ said a woman with a storm-weathered face and hair like winter fog.

‘Starlight distilled and aqua pura faerie,’ added the bronze-haired man.

Hattie patted vaguely at her pockets, briefly and futilely entertaining the faint hope that any one of these curious-sounding objects might have spontaneously transferred themselves to her person at some point during the day.

‘I do not have any such things in my possession,’ she apologised, feeling an abject failure. To think! The Boots had chosen her, Hattie Strangewayes, for the oddest adventure she had ever heard of, and here she stood with nothing to offer and no understanding whatsoever of what they sought!

‘You do not?’ The old woman seemed unreasonably chagrined by Hattie’s admission. ‘What, then, have you done with it?’

‘With what?’ said Hattie politely.

‘With the key!’

‘I do not—’

‘Go and retrieve it at once! There is no time at all to lose!’

‘But—’

‘Go!’

Hattie opened her mouth to protest, once more, that she had seen nothing that in any way resembled a key. Her Boots, however, clearly considered the interview at an end, for they turned her about and walked her away — disconcertingly, the route back into Northtown was, once again, straight through a wall.

‘Well!’ grumbled Hattie, standing once again on the street outside the Moss and Mist. ‘I call that highly unreasonable! I did not even get chance to tell them about the glass trinket.’

The Boots did not appear to have any further plans for her, which left Hattie feeling obscurely rejected. ‘Very well!’ she told them. ‘I do not need you anyway!’ And she stormed off back towards Theodosius’s shop.

She had seemingly spent more time in Brewer’s Yard than she had realised, for night was falling back in Berrie Proper. The moon had not yet risen, but the sky was darkening quickly. The abrupt change in the light gave some credence to the old woman’s claims, and Hattie felt both disconcerted and oddly full of hope. Berrie Fae! How odd an idea, that Berrie had once been of Faerie, and none now remembered any such time. But perhaps it was so! And perhaps, after all, that was where Southtown had jaunted off to!

‘It grew homesick, I daresay,’ said Hattie aloud. ‘And I shouldn’t wonder. How shocking, to be torn from your home after all the long ages through, and stranded in this horridly dull mortal place!’ A new thought struck her, and she stopped in the street. ‘Gracious! Shall Northtown return as well? I wonder how I should like becoming a faerie.’ She walked on, her thoughts turning to Jeremiah. If she was right, then he was already in Faerie, and had been for some weeks now. She must find the key for the brewers-who-weren’t, and the melaeon or whatever it had been, and all the other things. Perhaps if she pleased them, they would help her to find Jeremiah.

‘Theodosius!’ she thundered as she stamped through his door. ‘Something strange has happened!’

‘I am persuaded that strange is become normal, and nothing mundane shall ever occur again,’ said Theo, perfectly unimpressed. ‘Behold, for example, your pretty trinket there. Is that not interesting? And strange?’

It hung in the window, in the same place as before. The sunlight was gone and now only wan moonlight shone through; Theo had not lit any of the lamps in the shop. In spite of this, the trinket continued to cast the same wavering patterns over the floor, their colours unaltered.

In its centre, however, there was no longer a sunlit golden apple. Instead, an ethereal pear had taken form, silvery-cloudy and very pretty indeed. ‘Delightful!’ said she.

‘Quite,’ agreed Theo. ‘Also I cannot help noticing that it resembles those pears that grew in Tobias’s garden for a little while, at the end of the summer. Do you recall? Barnaby Longstaff ate one, and could never afterwards keep down a drink.’

Hattie turned delighted eyes upon her brother. ‘But that is marvellous!’ she exclaimed.

Theodosius blinked at her in blank incomprehension. ‘Is it?’

‘Yes! Because if everything is connected to everything, Theo, then we may solve this mystery after all! And I have not yet told you what has happened to me this afternoon.’ She lost no further time in explaining her adventure, and expressing her full disgust with her importunate Boots at the same time. ‘But you see it is terrible,’ she finished, ‘because I do not have a key of any kind, nor any of the other things either, and I do not know what is to be done about it!’

Theodosius did not answer in words. He merely pointed one long finger at the glass ornament, and smiled with catlike satisfaction at Hattie.

‘Well, yes,’ Hattie agreed. ‘I did rather think that if these are fae people then they might be interested in my trinket. But I had no chance to tell them of it! These wretched Boots whisked me too quickly away.’