The Wonder Tales

Chapter One

Chapter One

Southtown lay dreaming under a blanket of mist, and Helewise Dale dreamed with it.

She dreamed that she went about her daily business as usual, those familiar duties and tasks unchanged, though nothing that she attempted was quite as it had been.

The changes were not unsatisfactory, all told. When she cut sweetpeas and cornflowers from the gardens of Sevenleaf House, her joints did not set up their customary ache, and she was able to wield the shears for far longer than she was accustomed to. When she hefted the cans of water to feed her precious blooms, they did not seem to weigh as much as they ought. She did not tire as swiftly as usual, and was able to labour in the flower fields later into the afternoon. This last advantage she greeted with particular satisfaction, considering her husband’s indisposition. He remained unable to venture into the gardens without losing his composure to a great fit of sneezing, and so the labours of Sevenleaf fell heavily upon her.

The late summer sun did not affect her as it ought, of course; the shrouding mists over Sevenleaf muted its fierce rays, dampening it into a thin, pale glow. This alteration she could not welcome, for it robbed her flowers of the light upon which they thrived. When the roses began to wilt, Helewise grew concerned.

As far as she was able to feel concerned, for her own wits were as dulled as the sunlight, her sensations as muted as the sluggish whispers of breeze that barely stirred the mists. Sevenleaf drifted languidly in a befogged daze and Helewise floated with it, half lost in a dream.

At times she felt that her home of forty years was not as it had been either, and nor were her precious gardens. Sometimes she saw things which were not there, or ought not to be: the trunk of a mighty birch in the corner of her parlour, glimpsed between one blink and the next; a carpet of moss grown over the flagstones of the kitchen floor; an ancient woodland where her cornflowers ought to be, draped in ivy and honeysuckle, dappled with golden sunlight like new honey.

When she wandered abroad, she saw stranger visions still. The Aelfwines’ cottage was become a warren, dug into a hillside which had never before been there. Its doors and windows were unchanged, but its cut stone walls were now grass-grown slopes, and a path of polished quartz marked the way up to the door. The market square was as it had ever been, stone-paved and airy and crowded with stalls — until it was not, and became instead a low-dipping valley ringed in hawthorn trees, white-twinkling lanterns hung from overhanging boughs.

Her neighbours had not all escaped the tide of change. Maud Redthorn was as unalterable as the tides, but Bellerose Woodbriar’s hair had grown silver-white and wispy, though she was by no means aged. Lavender Blackwood was as dark and as merry as ever, but Ferdinand Crowther had grown taller, and there was a new, fey quality about his green-glinting eyes. Helewise stood sometimes before a mirror and examined her own face, unable to decide whether she was hoping for or fearing a similar alteration in herself. Whatever her feelings, she discerned nothing; her skin was as lined with advancing years as ever, her once-golden hair now mostly white.

Her husband, however, was a different matter.

Finding himself barred from the gardens in which he had laboured all of his life, Ambrose had come to devote all of his attention to the Sevenleaf bees. Their hives were located at just such a distance from the flowers they harvested to suit Ambrose’s new and lamented susceptibility, if he did not so very much mind a little sneezing. And he was more than willing to bear the affliction, for the sake of both the bees and the rare honeys they produced.

He seemed unaware of those aspects of himself which were not as they had been. How his hair grew whiter by the day, his skin paling to brittle paper-white. How this suggestion of frailty was belied by the cessation of his arthritic complaints, and the youthful energy which strengthened his limbs. Helewise sensed a subdued restlessness about him, an impression of sleeping vigour only held in check by the soporific mists. She wondered, in her more alert moments, what might become of him were the blanketing fog to lift, taking its disordering influence with it.

One languid morning, a dawning fractionally lighter and brighter than all the others that came before, Helewise’s drowsing mind fixed upon the wreathing mists with a focus that had become unusual for her, and she lost full half an hour in admiring the faint glimmer that stirred within its depths. It occurred to her, in a distant way, to wonder where it had come from, and why it was so difficult to think while it flowed over Sevenleaf House and swirled within the corners of her gardens. It had not always been so, she was distantly aware, but her mind refused to clearly recall those sunnier times, and she soon lost interest in the matter of the fog. It was always there, and neither she nor her beloved flowers could thrive beneath it. But no solution could she find, when her mind slid away from the questions, and could maintain no sense of urgency about the problem.

Once she wandered the pathways from Sevenleaf all the way through the town, pausing only when she reached the farmost border. Her journey was slow and winding, so lost was she in admiration of the rambling, wild rose bushes wreathing the roadsides in colour. It seemed to her that the flurry of blooms had not always been there, and if they had, she could not remember their ever having encompassed such a number of hues. Was it possible for a single bush to put forth blossoms of six or seven distinct colours all at once? Certainly she had never achieved such an effect, and nor had Ambrose. The colours were not strong, but faded as they were they still delighted her eyes.

She followed the roses past the market square and on, walking winding paths until the way ended at a bridge. It began promisingly enough: a wide, elegant structure shining faintly in the pale sunlight, curving upwards in a graceful arc. But it ended abruptly before ever it achieved its apex, naught but a fragment remaining. Helewise could see little beyond, for the mists grew thicker there, white and fully opaque.

No water ran beneath. Helewise noted this fact with some confusion, for a distant memory stirred: a bridge like this one, whole and intact, the strong currents of a wide river flowing underneath. It seemed impossibly far away, and the memory faded as she clutched at it.

Around the base of the bridge, clusters of borage grew in a profusion of blue, star-shaped flowers. The sight soothed Helewise, for they were familiar; she and Ambrose had cultivated the blossoms at Sevenleaf for thirty years. She plucked a few and ate them, savouring the sweet honey taste. The starflowers lined both sides of a pathway she had not yet taken, and she turned her steps that way.

It seemed to her as she walked that the light subtly altered. The pallid sunlight, already weak, faded further still, its golden tints paling to silver. Was it yet day, or had she wandered into the night? Moonlight turned the pathway white under her feet, and beneath its gentler rays the starflowers shifted from rich blue to silver.

That fact filtered but slowly through to Helewise’s fogged mind, and she frowned. Moonglow ought only to fade the borage’s natural blue; silver was no hue she would expect to see. But silver they undoubtedly were. She plucked one and brought it near to her face, and was further puzzled to discern a mote of clear light caught in the flower’s heart, like a bead of starlight.

The mists swirled about her, chill and clinging, raising the hairs upon her arms. The fog muffled all sound as well as vision, and she could not be certain that she truly heard the distant, haunting notes of a pipe drifting upon the breeze.

Then it was over. The mists receded, a little, and the sun returned. Golden light sparkled briefly upon the blue — or was it silver? — petals of the starflowers, and then they faded away altogether. Helewise turned in an astonished circle, but not a glimpse did she receive of the borage plants which had clustered so thickly by the wayside moments before.

And yet, the honeyed taste of starflower nectar lingered upon her tongue.

When Helewise returned to Sevenleaf, she went immediately into the gardens. There she was relieved to find her meadow of starflowers as flourishing as ever and as blue, and reassuringly solid. She would have to await the coming of night to determine whether the touch of moonlight would affect these familiar flowers in the same way, turning their blue petals silver. For now, Helewise returned to the house and went into her storeroom. She took packets of starflower seed from her neat wooden chest-of-drawers and packed them into her favourite trug. Her hands moved quickly, transferring a stream of paper-wrapped bundles into her basket until none were left in the drawer.

When she turned, Ambrose stood in the doorway looking in upon her.

‘Helewise?’ he said, looking from her face to the laden trug over her arm. ‘What are you about?’

Helewise blinked. ‘I must sow starflowers by the waysides,’ she explained.

Ambrose nodded as though this made sense to him. Perhaps it did. ‘Good,’ he said softly. ‘The bees have been asking for them.’

Helewise nodded as though this made sense to her, and perhaps it did. ‘Will you help me?’ she asked.

Ambrose agreed and they left Sevenleaf together, tearing open the bundles of dried seeds. They traversed the roads of Southtown with measured, purposeful steps, scattering starflower seed into the grasses by the side of every pathway. Wisps of a warm, summer wind caught each handful of seeds as Helewise released them, spreading them farther than she could throw them unaided. She felt the air shift around her as she walked, a sense of welcome in the winds. The roses opened their blooms wide as Ambrose and Helewise passed, scenting the air with their heady perfume, and Helewise felt a deep satisfaction she had never before known.

They walked the ways of Southtown late into the night, and returned at last to Sevenleaf under the faint light of a waxing moon. Helewise stepped into the gardens alone, and there she saw her meadow of starflowers, their faces turned up to the moonlight. Their perfect petals blushed silver under the silvery glow, and motes of starlight winked at the heart of every flower.