The Wonder Tales

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

In which a Brother and a Sister turn to Botany.

Barren was the house where Moon no longer lived. The pool of water before it had probably once been clear and serene; now it was dank and dark and overgrown with weed, no longer reflecting the light of the stars above. The house itself, once a vision of ethereal light, was dark and broken and silent. Nothing stirred save a mournful wisp of night-time breeze, rustling through the discarded leaves which drifted about the ground.

Hattie Strangewayes stood in the middle of the empty promontory, surveying the place with frowning brow. Theodosius stood with her, wielding a lantern with worthy intent, though its pale glow did little but make the clinging shadows appear deeper than ever.

The light of two more lanterns wavered bravely in the darkness: one held by Tobias Dwerryhouse and the other by Clarimond Honeysett. The four of them had explored the place thoroughly, but discovered little of any use to tell them where — or why — Moon had gone.

‘It needs a good sweeping out,’ said Hattie decisively. Leaves had piled up in the corners of the house and dirt lay everywhere; the place was a disgrace. ‘I shouldn’t wonder she does not wish to come home, if this is what she has to look forward to!’

‘I cannot suppose she knows what state it is in,’ said Clarimond. ‘If she has been here at all in the past hundred years, why would she not stay?’

‘Perhaps she was bored with lighting the skies, and wanted an adventure.’ This did not seem unreasonable to Hattie, though perhaps Moon could be said to have carried her point a little too far.

‘Not for a hundred years,’ said Tobias, and Theodosius agreed. ‘Not at the expense of all of Faerie, surely.’

‘Some ill luck must have befallen her,’ said Clarimond. ‘If she still lives at all, and Sun does not believe it can be so.’

‘Sun is in despair,’ said Tobias. ‘And Greensleeves thinks as she does. I cannot think it likely that Moon is not dead.’

Clarimond sighed. ‘If she is not, how is she ever to be discovered?’

Hattie had no answer to any of these questions, so she devoted herself to the one thing she could do, and that was cleaning. She set herself to clearing out the piles of leaves from the corners of Moon’s greenhouse, and harangued Theodosius until he deigned to assist her. Once that was done, she surveyed the panes of glass that made up the delicate walls, but soon abandoned all thought of cleaning them, for like Sun’s greenhouse this one was ethereal and indistinct, its walls not glass at all but woven light. Unlike Sun’s house, these were muted and dull and they scarcely shone at all.

Hattie let them be. She turned her attention to the pool, where the thickly-grown weeds stubbornly resisted her attempts to clear them from the surface of the water.

‘You had better let be, Hat,’ said Theodosius, eyeing the expanse before them in dismay. ‘We will never manage it, not even with the four of us.’

For once, Hattie had to accept the justice of Theo’s doubts, for though her efforts had left her sweating and winded she had succeeded in clearing a space only a few feet across. The water stretched much farther than that.

Tobias had something in the pocket of his coat. Hattie knew this because he kept returning his hand there, and fidgeting with whatever it was. Finally he drew it out, and gazed into the palm of his hand as though he held a great treasure there.

Perhaps he did. Hattie stole over, consumed by curiosity, and observed that he held not one but two items in the palm of his large hand: a pair of seeds. They were tiny and brown and curled at the ends and she did not at all see why he stared at them as though they were the answer to all problems.

‘What are they?’ she said, and sighed when he merely answered, ‘Seeds.’

‘Important seeds?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Potentially.’ He was frustratingly disinclined to elaborate, and Hattie considered thumping him before concluding, with regret, that this was unlikely to encourage him to take her into his confidence.

Clarimond came up beside them, and held out her hand. To Hattie’s indignation, Tobias transferred one of the seeds into her possession without a word of complaint, and Clarimond wandered away again. Hattie was left only to watch as the two of them crossed to opposite ends of the shattered greenhouse and bent to plant their separate seeds in the ground.

Then Clarimond took a flask from her own pockets and, to Hattie’s excitement, approached her with it. ‘You are fixed here a while, Hattie?’ she enquired.

‘I suppose so, for I do not think I will soon restore this place to order.’

Clarimond nodded. ‘We are bidden to Northtown, to reclaim the Moss and Mist. Will you stay, and nurture the seeds we’ve planted?’

Hattie brightened at once. ‘I will!’ she agreed at once. ‘Though I hope you are going to tell me what they are.’

‘They came from the silver pears that long resided in Tobias’s strongbox,’ Clarimond answered. ‘We do not know if they will grow, but we… hope.’ With which words she put the flask into Hattie’s hands. ‘I suggest watering them from the pool here, and when you do, add a dash of this.’

Hattie opened the flask and sniffed. The contents smelt deliciously of honey and fruit and who knew what else wonderful, and she could easily have drunk the contents straight down.

‘It smells like magic,’ she decided.

‘It is. With that, and a very little of Sun’s light, I have some hope that they will thrive. Perhaps just enough.’

Away they went soon afterwards, leaving Hattie alone save for Theodosius, but since he was lost in one of his lengthy daydreams he hardly counted.

Hattie fell to with alacrity, and soon had the new seeds watered according to instruction. She returned to her task of cleaning the greenhouse, aware that it would take her many days to render it respectable.

It did not take many days for the seeds to sprout. Upon a rainy evening but two days later, Hattie bent to examine her charges and saw a spindly shoot poking free of the earth, a silvery leaf unfurling upon its tip.

‘Theo!’ she shouted in excitement. ‘You must instantly come and see this!’

But Theodosius would not, and when she turned to express the intensity of her disappointment with him, she saw him crouched down at the other end of the greenhouse, examining the earth with an intent attention to match hers. ‘Is it a sprout?’ he called.

‘It is!’ replied she.

‘I have another!’

Hattie ran to look. The second seedling resembled the first, only it was bigger and stouter and looked in every way likely to exceed its sibling’s efforts.

She felt it was unfair that Theodosius’s charge should outstrip hers, for she had taken by far the best care. How trying that all her diligence should be so repaid! The seedlings had got it entirely the wrong way around.

Hattie gave more magic, and more love and more care, and watched with smug satisfaction as they grew and grew at an impossible rate — and her own particular charge became undoubtedly the mightier of the two.

‘That’s better,’ she told it, lovingly caressing its bright, strong leaves. The little tree now came up to her shoulder, and to her puzzlement it failed to grow any further. Instead it devoted itself to the production of flowers, and put out hundreds of them over the course of a single night. The day after that, the flowers withered and dropped and fruits began to form.

Theodosius’s tree was the first to produce a fully-formed pear.

‘That is outrageous!’ Hattie declared, and would not soon be pacified.

‘But see, Hat, your tree is eager to please,’ said Theodosius, and Hattie whirled to find that her doughty little pear tree was putting out fruits as she watched. Soon both the trees were so weighed down with fruit that they sagged sideways, and Hattie set about divesting them of their harvest. She stored the proceeds in a makeshift sack wrought from her largest shawl, and gloated over them in delight.

‘How pretty they are,’ she sighed, and they really were, for their skins were purest silver and each miniature pear was perfectly formed.

‘Lovely,’ agreed Theodosius. ‘What do we do with them?’

This question was soon answered, for Clarimond returned — without Tobias, this time — and took them all away.

‘May I not keep just one?’ said Hattie in dismay, for the eager little tree had not produced a second harvest, and she could not feel fully confident that it would.

‘One indeed,’ said Clarimond, and returned one each to Hattie and Theodosius. Hattie kept hers tucked safely into her pocket, and polished up its silvery skin faithfully each day.