The Wonder Tales

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

In which Helewise Dale revives a star.

The starflowers and the bees and the honey had occupied Helewise’s time so well, their withdrawal from her everyday concerns left her feeling bereft. The time came where Southtown had completed its transformation into the Wynweald, and more than sufficient starflowers carpeted the dales. The bees of Sevenleaf and Thistledown and beyond had performed their work diligently, producing more than ample honey even to meet the exacting standards of Pippin Greensleeves. The alorin was made, by what means Helewise knew not. She no longer saw many of the motley folk at market, and those who still came were different from before: no longer frail and fraught and froward but stronger, more vibrant and much more at ease. She saw nothing of the King of Faerie.

She took Ambrose to the market early on, to ensure he received his own share of the tincture. It operated swiftly upon him, to her relief, and the creeping colourlessness and debility which had been assailing him gradually faded away. He was her own, dear Ambrose again, his eyes bright and blue, his limbs restored to their former vigour.

Helewise blessed the tincture that held back the fading of Ambrose’s vibrancy, though it could not ease her concerns entirely. How long would the alorin last, and when would it again run out, as it had clearly done before? Was Ambrose beyond the reach of renewed debilitation, or would it plague him as long as he remained in Faerie? For she had no reason to imagine that Greensleeves would soon release Southtown back into the mortal kingdoms.

Helewise’s days were spent clearing parts of her garden of the starflowers, in preparation for the spring plantings. They made for such a beautiful array, it hurt her heart a little to root them up and throw them away. But Sevenleaf had lost so many of the flower gardens that had formed the Dales’ livelihood down the decades; she had no choice but to restore them as she could, or at least to try. Some of her arbours and groves had taken many years to grow, and the knowledge that these could never in her lifetime be replaced grieved her deeply.

Other changes came, mostly for the better. The stifling cloak of fog began, at last, to shift and stir and drift away, and Helewise received a clearer view of her gardens than she had enjoyed in many weeks. Light filtered through, a clearer light than she had dreamed possible in Faerie. Though it remained weak and tricky and all too brief, its effects soon began to be felt. Those of Helewise’s roses which had not been lost threw off their gloom and smiled again, their petals blushing in all the hues of the rainbow. Even the starflowers, lustrous enough though they had been, flourished still more under the sun’s gentle glow, and Helewise began to fear that she was next to lose her house to their boisterous exuberance.

It was somewhere in the middle of the second week that she remembered the colourless woman she had once met near Heatherberry Spinney.

Helewise paused, arrested, in the middle of fertilising a rose bush, her thoughts flying far. She had, perhaps, assumed that the alorin would have reached the pallid lady by now, but was she right to conclude such? Did anybody save she know of the woman’s fate, or her resting place? Was it even possible to revive her now, or was she lost forever?

Once the idea had occurred, Helewise found she could no longer concentrate upon her mundane tasks. She thought of nothing but the few words the woman had spoken prior to her demise; her desperation and despair; the chilling sight of her hopeless face, frozen forever in cold marble.

She did not know if anything could now be done for the pallid lady, but she had to try.

This resolution made, she did not immediately know where to begin. She could return to the Spinney and determine whether the lady was still there, and indeed she would have to before long. But it was of no use to establish that the woman required aid when she had no means with which to provide it. So, first she must secure her own supply of alorin. If it proved unnecessary, she would keep it for Ambrose.

That meant she needed to see Pippin Greensleeves, but how did one summon up the King of Faerie, if he did not wish to show himself? Where did such an august personage reside?

All she could do was ask, Helewise decided. She left Sevenleaf, donning her warmest garments and taking with her a basket of provisions, for she could not say how long her errand would take. Lately she had been blessed with sights which had never before occurred during her weeks in Faerie: glimpses of wild creatures darting through the ever-present starflower plants and nesting in the branches of the trees, filling her world with the soft sounds of their vibrant little lives. She greeted each of these as she passed, and asked the same question: Do you know where the King of Faerie lives?

Many responses did she receive, all of them vague and many contradictory. Why, he lives over the next hill! said a rabbit she encountered in Willowingle Lane. But he was not there, of course, and Helewise wondered how a rabbit’s sense of distance compared to her own. He lives past the third morning star, a nightingale gravely informed her. Two laps beyond and veer south-west. As Helewise could not fly, it did not much matter to her whether this information was accurate or not, as she could make no use of it. Seven fathoms below, said a mole at Fox’s Yard. Seven and four-thirds, to be most precise, and mind you take the left fork at Scrump Corner and not the right, for the right one takes you past Mottle Dasky’s hole and around Iggin Niggin’s burrow and that is quite the wrong way. Now, when you reach Tromp Taggle’s place you want to veer just a wee bit southerly—

Helewise thanked him hastily and moved on, assuring the mole that she could very well find her way from his excellent and meticulous instructions.

She received similarly muddling and impossible answers from a butterfly, a sparrow, a weasel, a pair of foxes (who could not at all agree), a dormouse, two herons and a number of creatures of full strange appearance to whom she could give no name whatsoever. At length she despaired, for it was clear that none of them knew where the King of Faerie lived, though each believed stoutly that they did.

Helewise sat down upon the trunk of a fallen tree, and took out the pie she had packed for her luncheon. She ate slowly and in silence, searching fruitlessly through all the information she had received for some useful, comprehensible clue. Nothing presented itself, and she thought in some despair that she had set herself an impossible task.

And then she was no longer alone, for beside her upon the tree sat a man in motley coat and mulberry trousers, cross-legged and intent upon the devouring of a pie identical to her own. He was seated just far enough behind her that she had not noticed his arrival — nor heard it either, for not a sound out of place had reached her ears.

‘It is very good pie,’ he informed her around a mouthful of pastry.

‘Thank you,’ said Helewise. ‘I have been looking for you.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You made a great deal of noise about it.’

‘It is important.’ Helewise tried not to sound apologetic, for her cause was more than just enough to warrant his attention. She was not altogether sure that she succeeded.

‘Let me have it, then.’ The King of Faerie finished the last bite of his pie and brushed the crumbs off his long, thin fingers. He sat, looking nothing like royalty in his relaxed posture and odd attire, waiting for her to speak.

‘There is… a lady,’ Helewise began, and hesitated, unsure how to proceed. Had she truly seen the pallid lady turn into marble? What if it had been merely a vision of some kind, as had happened before in Faerie? What if she was mad?

The King of Faerie blinked. ‘It will take you a long time to come to the point at this rate,’ he observed.

‘She was one of your people,’ Helewise said, mustering her confidence. ‘I am almost sure of it. She was sick, fading away. I saw her first at Market, and when I saw her again there was no colour about her at all.’

Pippin Greensleeves’ eyebrows went up at that. ‘And?’ he said, and his tone was no longer bored or indulgent.

‘She was desperate for alorin. She begged me for it, but of course I could not help her. And then it was too late, for she… died.’

‘Died?’ said Greensleeves sharply.

‘In a manner of speaking. She became a statue before my eyes, all turned to white stone like marble—’

Helewise got no further, for the effect of these words upon the King of Faerie was profound. He stared, his black eyes intense with some emotion she could not name. Then he leapt off the tree and pulled Helewise to her feet without ceremony. ‘Take me to wherever she is,’ he ordered.

Half relieved and half alarmed by this urgency, Helewise was glad enough to obey. She hastened to Heatherberry Spinney as quickly as she could go, regretting, now, that she had not after all begun by ensuring that the poor woman was still there. What if she had troubled the King for nothing?

These fears melted away upon rounding the southern corner of the Spinney, for there was the pallid lady, almost exactly as Helewise had last seen her. Spiders had wreathed her hair in cobwebs; morning dew sparkled upon them like diamonds upon a silken hairnet.

‘Mallinerla,’ said the King of Faerie, and Helewise realised it was her name. He bent to examine her, all tender concern where Helewise had known only horror and pity. ‘It is not yet too late,’ he decided. ‘But it will be difficult. Will you stay?’

This last was directed to Helewise, to her surprise, for she could not imagine herself vital to whatever magics might be required to revive Mallinerla. But she agreed at once, more than willing to assist if she could.

‘She will be weak, when she wakes,’ he told Helewise. ‘She may require aid.’

Helewise assured him that she was at his disposal, and positioned herself a safe distance away. She watched, her heart beating quick, as Pippin Greensleeves took up the phial of liquid that hung around his neck and removed its stopper. She thought he would bathe Mallinerla in it, or perhaps incite her to drink it, but he did neither. He let the phial drop again until it hung once more around his neck, and then he took up his silver pipes.

The melody he played was as nothing Helewise had ever heard before. It was melancholy and lively by turns, first tearing at her heart and then filling her soul with a joyous buoyancy. As he played, the golden liquid poured forth from his pendant in a fine aurulent mist which filled the air around all three of them. It clung to the marble contours of Mallinerla’s inert form; she glittered with it, and Helewise held her breath, watching closely for any sign of revival.

The marble lips parted, and Mallinerla breathed. The change that came over her was so gradual, and so subtle, Helewise could not have said when precisely it was that she knew she was looking once again at a living woman — pale as marble but flesh once more, breathing, her heart beating.

Mallinerla’s ice-white eyes fixed upon the King of Faerie, and she took in a great, shuddering breath of air. ‘Pippin,’ said she. ‘Where is my mother?’

‘She is gone,’ he replied. ‘Gone this century and more. Is that what has brought you among us?’

Mallinerla did not immediately reply. She looked searchingly into Pippin Greensleeves’s face and shook her head slowly. When she rose from her kneeling posture, she did so with an enviable grace only slightly marred by a stiffness in her limbs. She walked a circle, paying no heed to the bedraggled state of her clothing nor to anything she saw around her.

‘She is gone,’ she said. ‘But not forever, Pippin. Long have I believed her lost, and for always, but something has changed.’ She looked around herself with more attention than before. ‘This place. It is in Faerie?’

The King said nothing, so Helewise answered. ‘You are in Berrie,’ she said. ‘It is of Faerie now, though it was not so before. Not until recently.’

At these words, Mallinerla grew inexplicably excited. ‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘That is what it was! It must be. She has been here, Pippin! Her feet have walked this very road. I thought her gone for always and ever — we all did. We grieved and we sickened and faded. But then I felt… something of her. An echo, a dream, I hardly know what. Down I came at once! But too late. I did not find her, and I was lost.’

This rambling speech puzzled Helewise considerably, but the questioning looks she directed at both Mallinerla and Pippin Greensleeves went unacknowledged.

‘Berrie?’ said the King of Faerie. ‘You think she was lost in Berrie?’

But Mallinerla was growing visibly confused. ‘But no, that cannot be, for she is nowhere in Faerie. I would swear it. She has been here and gone again, and now I will never find her.’

Mallinerla appeared to be on the verge of falling into despair, and Helewise reflected that she was of somewhat volatile disposition. ‘This is only half of Berrie,’ she ventured by way of encouragement.

The pale, woeful visage changed again and at once. Mallinerla stared at Helewise, electrified, and crisply ordered: ‘Explain further!’

Helewise blinked, but before she could speak, Pippin Greensleeves interjected.

‘Berrie was Berrie Wynweald, when it was of Faerie. Do you recall that name?’

Mallinerla shook her head wordlessly.

‘The northern half crossed into the mortal kingdoms, many long years ago, and Southtown much later. It came to be called simply Berrie, or Berrie-on-the-Wyn. And so it has remained for some time: a mortal town.’

‘Until recently,’ said Helewise with some asperity. ‘When our long-barren trees bore the strangest apples imaginable and wrought great mischief upon us. And the King of Faerie stole back half of Berrie Wynweald into Faerie.’

‘Berrie Wynweald?’ echoed Mallinerla.

‘Berrie-on-the-Wyn,’ Helewise explained.

To her surprise, Mallinerla grabbed at her arm and clutched her with a painful grip. ‘The Wyn!’ she cried. ‘Is it a river?’

‘Why, yes,’ said Helewise in confusion.

‘When did the river cross into mortal lands?’

‘It crossed with Southtown,’ said Greensleeves. ‘A century or so ago, in mortal years.’

Mallinerla squeezed Helewise’s arm still harder. ‘Take me to it!’ she cried. ‘Oh, my foolish, unlucky mother!’

‘Peace, Mallinerla,’ admonished the King of Faerie. ‘You are hurting the lady.’

But Mallinerla was not listening. ‘Did you know of her habits, Pippin? Oh, how she loved the rivers of Faerie! Once in each of her cycles, down she came to bathe. No harm did it ever do her, and when she returned she glowed more brightly than ever.

‘But perhaps she did not know that the Wyn was lost! Down she came to bathe, and found herself in mortal waters.’

‘Iron-tainted,’ said the King of Faerie, his eyes wide. ‘But why did she not return? Why did she send no word for aid, if it is as you say, and she was not killed?’

Mallinerla did not engage with these questions. ‘Take me to this river,’ she begged of Helewise.

‘I cannot, for the way is shut. The river is not in Faerie now, and the bridge that used to span it is broken.’ Helewise glared at Pippin Greensleeves, who received her silent condemnation with a frown.

‘It would never do, to leave a door gaping open into Faerie,’ he told her. ‘Nor to reclaim a tainted river.’

‘I think you should reconsider,’ said Helewise. She took hold of Mallinerla’s hand and pulled it, gently but firmly, away from her arm. ‘I will take you there,’ she said. ‘Though I do not at all understand who you are, or for whom you seek.’

‘I am Moon’s Daughter,’ said Mallinerla, which only puzzled Helewise more.

‘A star, as you would think of it,’ said the King of Faerie. ‘Like Faerie itself, they do not thrive without the light of Moon and Sun.’

Helewise absorbed this in silence. ‘I will take you there,’ she repeated. ‘And the King of Faerie will open the way.’ She looked steadily at Pippin Greensleeves until he bowed.

‘Very well, Helewise Dale,’ he said. ‘It shall be as you say.’