The Wonder Tales

Chapter Five-3

‘To this place?’ Clarimond tore her gaze away from the orchards to stare instead at him, her eyes wide with wonder.

‘To Faerie.’ And he reached into the pocket of his coat and took out a strange key, wrought from glass and faintly aglow. He knew it to be the same key used by the bearded man, and was thus enlightened as to how it had come into his possession. ‘This was left to me by my father,’ he said. ‘It took me ten years to learn what it was for and how to use it. Use it, I did. And having done so, I needed another ten to find my way back.’

The words streamed from his lips and he felt a relief at speaking them aloud at last. His heart eased, unburdened of secrets, though they be dangerous in the telling.

‘Is that, then, your father?’ Clarimond whispered.

Tobias watched as the bearded man and his love wandered beneath the trees of the ethereal orchard, both too full of wonder to speak. ‘My great-grandfather, I think,’ he murmured in reply. ‘Cornelius Dwerryhouse. A widower by now, my grandfather already a young man.’ He watched sadly as Cornelius captured the hand of his love and laid a tender kiss upon it, whispering something to her which Tobias could not hear. ‘I did not know that he ever had notions of marrying again.’

Cornelius and Rosamund roused themselves from their enchanted daze, seeming to remember at last their purpose in entering Faerie. Swiftly they moved, and each plucked an armful of fruit. Cornelius took delicate pears, which glimmered in his calloused hands like droplets of moonlit water. And Rosamund chose a cluster of apples, round and bright like motes of pure sunlight.

But as the two made their way back to the bridge, laden down with their glittering harvest, Tobias felt something amiss: a change in the air, a dimming of the light, an alteration in the abundant flow of the river. The river’s sparkling waters rose, its rich colour paling until it ran as clear and colourless as the rivers beyond Faerie.

A tremor ran through the earth, setting the bridge swaying beneath his feet. The ethereal lambency faded out of the fruits of Faerie, leaving them muted and dull. They withered and fell, and the star-shaped leaves of the bejewelled trees fell with them. Tobias received the impression that time ran at a hastened rate, hours flying away at the rate of seconds, and the orchard decayed before his eyes.

Cornelius and Rosamund fled back towards the bridge, where the shades of Tobias and Clarimond still stood. Behind them, the light bled out of the silvered moon and the setting sun turned cold and dark. Only the stars stood fast, their distant glimmer a mournful echo of the beauty so lately lost.

Cornelius and Rosamund reached the bridge, each clutching their stolen prize close. In the faces of both, Tobias saw a horror to match his own; though not, perhaps, an answering surprise. Rosamund vanished through the door, Cornelius following after.

The clear waters flowed in pursuit, bearing down upon Tobias and Clarimond in a relentless flood. An instant longer they lingered, a moment of paralysed, enlightened dismay at the wreck of the radiant orchard.

‘Tobias!’ cried Clarimond. ‘We go!’

He gathered his scattered wits, and as she darted back through the door to Faerie he stumbled after, his key clutched in his hand. Impulse guided his steps as he strove to close the glittering portal, but to no avail; a shade was he, lost in a vision of the past, and his incorporeal hands could find no purchase upon the door.

Tobias abandoned the endeavour, and retreated up the bank of the ravine with Clarimond. They could only watch as the rushing waters of the once-golden river poured out of Faerie and into the dried-out bed of a lost stream, filling it to the brim and overflowing. A mighty torrent it was; all in its path was swept away, and the quiet street with its whitewashed buildings and orchard trees was lost forever.

The simple wooden bridge did not long withstand the flow before it shattered into pieces, its sundered planks carried rapidly out of sight by the current. In its place a new structure rose: grander, taller, more finely arched, a twin to the bridge in Faerie upon which Tobias had so lately stood.

Tobias had not seen what had become of Cornelius and Rosamund, but perhaps he did not need to. He knew that they had carried home their hard-won fruits and planted the seeds: apples in the gardens at Thistledown House and pears at the Moss and Mist. What had afterwards become of those Faerie trees, he could not guess; nor what had been the ultimate fate of Cornelius Dwerryhouse and Rosamund.

Old Berrie shimmered around him and melted silently away, once again becoming the Berrie he knew. Berrie-on-the-Wyn, sundered into two by the wide river now flowing through its heart.

But the town had changed again during the time of his absence, for little of Southtown remained. Only a few houses lingered on the southern riverbank, and the clinging mists of Faerie wreathed about their roofs.

The notes of a piper’s song reached Tobias’s ears, and he turned to see Pippin Greensleeves seated cross-legged in the centre of the bridge.

Tobias cast him a darkling look, but Greensleeves was unmoved. ‘Much has been lost,’ he said. ‘You cannot know the destruction wrought across Faerie by the events of that day.’

‘Do you claim it was caused by my ancestor’s actions?’ said Tobias in indignation. ‘I do not believe he had aught to do with what occurred.’

‘Not a whit, nor a bit,’ said Greensleeves. ‘And yet.’

‘And Southtown?’ demanded Clarimond. ‘Do you take it in reparation?’

Pippin Greensleeves looked long upon her, his black eyes deep and dark. ‘No,’ said he. ‘I take it in hope.’

Tobias exchanged a look with Clarimond, and saw his own resolve reflected in her face. Together they turned to Pippin Greensleeves, hands joined and fingers intertwined.

‘Can the harm be mended?’ asked he.

‘Can Berrie be saved?’ said she.

‘Perhaps,’ said Greensleeves. ‘Do you offer yourselves? I have need of such as you.’

‘We do.’ So spoke both together, and not a flicker of doubt marred the certainty of their words.

Pippin Greensleeves bowed low, his long, dagged sleeves brushing the floor. ‘It is meet,’ said he, and his words rang with a finality which set Tobias’s heart to thumping and weakened his knees with fear.

But Clarimond stepped forward, undaunted, her chin held high. Tobias matched her, step for step, ignoring the way his legs trembled and his breath caught in his chest. Long had he promised himself: never would he return to Faerie, nor even speak of it. But faerie apples had loosened his tongue, and now Faerie itself had risen up and swept away his world, and come to claim him.

Pippin Greensleeves raised his pipes and began, again, to play. The music shrouded Tobias’s senses, lulling his fears and quieting the frenzied pounding of his heart. The world fell away, lost behind the drifting mists that came to answer the piper’s call.

Tobias recollected himself just long enough to remember the key tucked still in the pocket of his coat. His hand moved, deft and quick; the key fell into the dust of the road.

And then they were gone, vanished out of Berrie upon a gust of fragrant wind. Where the bridge had once linked Berrie North and South, it now terminated in the side of a dappled moss-grown hill. On one side of the Wyn, Northtown lingered still; on the other lay the velvet dale, all quartz and feathered grasses as far as the horizon.

The tangled orchards retreated from the streets of Berrie North. The fruits of Faerie fell from their ancient boughs and were not renewed.

The effects of that faerie harvest tarried longer, both the good and the ill. At length, however, all was as it had ever been; save that Southtown did not return, and neither did Tobias or Clarimond.