The Faerie Path

by Frewin Jones

  But no matter how fast she ran, no matter how far she went, she couldn’t outdistance her dream, and the whole vivid world of Faerie kept pace with her until at last she tripped and fell sprawling onto her face.

  The shock cleared her mind a little—that, and the fact that her hands had splashed into water. She pulled herself up onto her hands and knees and drew the curtain of reeds aside. She found herself staring out over a wide lake. Swifts swooped and darted over the still water. All around her she heard the chirrup of grasshoppers. Insects hovered above the burnished surface.

  On the far side of the lake she saw thin white spires rising out of tall trees.

  It was the building she had seen from the tower earlier that day; the lonely white building with the slender spires.

  She got up and made her way back through the trampled reeds, coming out into the open and walking around the lake toward the building. She felt strangely calm, as if the effort of all that running had drained the confusion and anxiety out of her. All she could think of was reaching that solitary building.

  She walked in under the trees and the white structure appeared ahead of her, surrounded by slender silver birch trees. It stood on a plinth of shining white marble. Polished stone steps led up to a massive covered entrance with a roof supported by white pillars. Above the trees, the spires pierced the sky like needles.

  Anita’s heart began to beat fast as she mounted the steps. The mausoleum towered forty or fifty feet into the sky, dwarfing her. She walked toward an immense open doorway four times her own height. She paused, staring up at the lintel. Words were carved into the white stone.

  TITANIA. BELOVED WIFE.

  BELOVED MOTHER. BELOVED QUEEN.

  Now she knew what this lonely building was—it was the mausoleum that Sancha and Zara had told her about in Mistress Mirrlees’s workroom. The great mausoleum that the King had built in memory of his drowned wife.

  It was the empty tomb of the woman who, in this dream world, was Anita’s dead mother.

  Trembling, Anita made her way into the silent building. The statue of a woman stood directly in front of her—life-size and painted in colors that made it seem almost alive.

  The woman was wearing a long, light blue gown picked out with white patterns. She was smiling, standing with her arms outstretched in welcome. She had a heart-shaped face with a wide red-lipped mouth and high slanted cheekbones. In her long, flowing red hair, she wore a crystal coronet set with jewels. Her eyes were a smoky green.

  Anita came closer, staring up into that familiar face—staring into those eyes.

  Her heart missed a beat.

  Time stopped.

  The green eyes had golden flecks in them.

  “No!”

  Anita backed away.

  She remembered the words that Oberon had said to her that first day, on the barge: “You are as I remembered—the very image and reflection of your mother.”

  The face of the statue could have been her own face.

  “This is insane!” Anita shouted, and her voice came echoing back to her. Insane. Insane. Insane. “I’m not your daughter!” Daughter. Daughter. Daughter.

  She stumbled away from the statue, unable to tear her eyes from that gentle face, but desperate to get out of there.

  She was suddenly aware of empty air under her foot. She snatched her head around, realizing too late that she had come to the top of the long stone stairway. She clawed at the air as she plunged backward and fell helplessly down the marble steps.

  Her head throbbed. She could feel an intense pain in her shoulder and her ribs, and more pain driving up her right leg and into her hip.

  There was light beyond her closed eyelids.

  She groaned. The pain was real, there was no doubt about it—as real as the pain she had felt when she had first woken up after the accident on the Thames.

  “At last!” She forced open her eyes, convinced that she would find herself in her hospital bed.

  A cloudless blue sky stretched above her. She felt grass under her fingers.

  “Oh, please, no!”

  “Hush, my sister,” came a mellow, soothing voice. A face swam into sight. It was Hopie, her brown hair falling across her cheeks as she bent over Anita. Her hand felt cool as she rested it on Anita’s forehead.

  Anita brought her hands up to cover her face. “I’m still here,” she breathed. “How can I still be here?”

  “Is she badly hurt?” It was Cordelia’s voice.

  “There are no broken bones,” Hopie said. “It was a long fall, but it could have been much worse. What was she doing here?”

  “I do not know,” Cordelia said. “She ran from me. I followed, but she was like a wild thing. The hounds found her as you see her, at the foot of the steps. I could not make her wake. I left the hounds to protect her and ran to fetch you.”

  “Tania? Can you stand?”

  “Leave me alone.” Anita moaned.

  “Sister!” Hopie’s voice took a hard edge. “Come now! You are not seriously hurt. Cordelia and I will support you. We must take you to my chamber. There are herbs and potions in my workroom that will give you ease.”

  “Go away,” Anita breathed, but she felt strong hands on her, lifting her from the grass. She tested her feet under her. The pain still throbbed in her shoulder, ribs, and leg, but she could stand, as long as Hopie’s hand was at her elbow.

  “Now, then,” Hopie said. “Lean on us as you walk. Be brave now, Tania. All will be well.”

  It seemed an age before Anita was finally able to stretch out on cool sheets in Hopie’s bedchamber. A warm hand stroked her forehead.

  “Hopie will be here in a moment,” Cordelia said. “She has medicaments and unguents that will take away the pain.”

  Anita lay with one arm thrown over her eyes. She was too exhausted and in too much pain to reply.

  She was vaguely aware of someone coming into the room, but she didn’t open her eyes.

  “How does she fare?” Hopie’s voice.

  “As you see,” Cordelia replied.

  “Hmm. Help her to sit up. She must drink this.”

  “Get off me!” Anita groaned as she was hoisted up into a sitting position. “I don’t want anything.”

  Hopie’s voice was stern. “Drink!”

  Anita felt the wooden rim of a dish pressed against her lower lip. She opened her mouth and something was spooned in. It tasted bitter. She tried to spit it out. “Swallow!” Hopie ordered. Anita swallowed the nasty, slimy stuff. She opened her eyes. The thick mixture in the bowl was green-gray, like pond scum.

  “What is that?” she croaked, gagging at the smell.

  “White willow and elder to ease the pain,” Hopie said. “Gentian root and witch hazel to ward off infection. And sprigs of meadowsweet and myrtle steeped in bergamot oil to lessen the bruising.”

  “It tastes foul!”

  “It is medicine,” Hopie said. “I did not mix it to taste pleasant. You will feel the benefit shortly.”

  “I should go and tend the hounds,” Cordelia said.

  “Yes,” Hopie said. “Go. There is nothing more that you can do here.”

  Cordelia leaned over and touched Anita’s cheek with her fingers. “My poor sister,” she said. “I wish you well.”

  “Thanks,” Anita mumbled.

  Cordelia left the room.

  Hopie sat on the edge of the bed, her hand resting on Anita’s forehead. “How is the pain?”

  “Painful,” Anita growled. She glared at Hopie. “I don’t want to be here anymore,” she said. “I want to go home.”

  Hopie looked at her, her sky-colored eyes sympathetic though her voice was firm. “You are a daughter of the Royal House of Faerie,” she said. “You have a duty to your family and to this Realm. This is your home, Tania, not the Mortal World. We have already suffered five hundred years of darkness because of your foolishness.”

  “No!” Anita said angrily. “That wasn’t my fault. That was because Titania drowned. Y
ou can’t blame me for that.”

  “Indeed not?” Hopie raised her eyebrows. “Had our father not already been stricken to the heart by your disappearance, then his despair at the death of our mother would not have been so deep.” She raised a warning finger. “Be assured, sister, it is only your presence here that makes the sun turn in the sky once more. And you wish to return to the Mortal World and plunge us once more into eternal twilight? How can you be so selfish?”

  Anita opened her mouth to reply, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Hopie stood up. “How is the pain now?”

  “Better,” she admitted.

  “Good. I will leave the potion at the bedside. Take more if needs be.” She frowned. “I have other duties to perform. Call for me if the pain is not gone by cockshut time.”

  Anita stared after her as she left the room, too bewildered to ask what “cockshut time” might be. She felt her shoulder, surprised by how quickly the pain was receding.

  That stuff might taste and smell like something that had been scooped out of a drain, but it certainly did the trick.

  She looked around. The walls and ceiling of Hopie’s bedchamber were paneled in rich, dark wood, carved to resemble trees and ferns and tall brittle grasses. Polished wood vines climbed the posts of the bed and spread out under the canopy, hanging with bunches of wooden grapes and large flowers carved in the shape of stars.

  As Anita stared up, a small movement caught her eye. A bumblebee was busy at one of the flowers. It was the same deep brown color as the carved wood, but it was moving. As she gazed at it, the wooden bee took to the air and hovered for a moment before flying ponderously along under the canopy of vines to another wooden flower.

  She remembered what Zara had told her yesterday when she had asked about the living paintings in her bedchamber: “Hopie’s chamber is a dark woodland.”

  She sat up, her pain almost forgotten. All around her, the paneled walls rippled with subtle movement. The carved trees swayed in a breeze that she could neither hear nor feel. Blades of grass moved as small creatures passed by in the undergrowth. A deer peered out from behind a brown trunk for an instant and then was gone without a sound, its short tail flicking away into the carved shades.

  Enthralled by the gentle charm of the room, she looked at a chest-of-drawers carved so that it resembled the stump of a great, felled tree. She noticed a hand mirror lying on the polished surface of tightly coiled tree rings.

  She remembered how eerie it had been to look into the face of the statue of Titania in the mausoleum.

  Were they really so very similar?

  She swung off the bed and limped across to the chest-of-drawers. She was brought up with a gasp as a wooden dragonfly emerged from the forested wall, startling her, hanging for a moment in front of her, then darting back into the trees.

  She picked up the hand mirror and went back to sit on the bed.

  She stared into the glass.

  “If this is a dream and the pain was just part of the dream, then why did it hurt so much?” she said aloud to her reflection. “And if the pain was real, why didn’t it wake me up?”

  Her face gazed back at her.

  Queen Titania’s face.

  Her face.

  They were one and the same.

  Anita brought the mirror closer so that only her eyes were reflected.

  Smoky green, flecked with gold; widening with a sudden, overwhelming understanding.

  This wasn’t a dream.

  She was the daughter of Queen Titania and King Oberon. She was a Princess of the eternal Realm of Faerie.

  Stunned, she made herself say the words aloud:

  “I am not Anita…I am Tania!”

  Part Two: Tania

  IX

  Tania awoke with a start. She remembered returning to her own chamber, exhausted and bewildered, throwing herself fully-clothed onto the bedcovers and falling immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  She felt strangely refreshed and alert, although at first she couldn’t think why. Then she realized that the pain of her fall was all but gone. There was a vague, faraway thunder in her head and a twinge or two in her shoulder and leg, but otherwise she felt fine.

  She sat up. Golden sunlight raked across her room from left to right, making the wood paneling glow and lighting up the colors of the tapestries. Beams of sunlight picked out the deep red of the bed curtains and made the glass bottles on the chest-of-drawers glint and sparkle.

  She got off the bed, gingerly testing her leg on the floor. No pain. She slipped out of her gown and, dressed only in her shift, went over to the washstand. She picked up the jug and splashed water into the basin. Holding her hair back, she plunged her face into the cool water.

  Toweling her face, she gazed at the tapestry that hung in front of her eyes.

  She let out a low gasp. The embroidered panel showed distant mountains just as it had always done, high and wild and achingly beautiful. But now Tania was aware of a tiny slender shape picked out in the very finest black stitch work, and the shape was moving, flying across the blue needlework sky. She watched in wonder as the thin shape glided toward her in a long, lazy curve.

  “An eagle!” she breathed. Now she could make out the wide span of the up-curved wings, the ragged feather-ends spread out like black fingers. She could see the white head and the magnificent curved beak. As the bird came closer and closer, she found herself gazing into its bright black eye. The beak opened as though the bird was calling. Tania stepped back, alarmed that the eagle was going to fly right out of the tapestry. But at the last second, it wheeled to one side and soared away, making slow circles as it descended into a purple valley.

  Her heart thumping, Tania ran from tapestry to tapestry. The perfect mirrored image of the icebergs rippled in the cobalt sea. A polar bear lumbered across an ice floe and dived ponderously into the water. In another of the tapestries, a thunderstorm was raging over the bowed heads of granite gray hills. A jagged strand of sewn lightning snapped at the hills, the needlework hills flaring for a moment into a frenzied blaze of white thread. The black and swollen clouds rolled. Stitches of slanting white rain fell onto a small horse-drawn wagon that fought its way along a narrow path.

  Thrilled, she ran to another tapestry, a seascape of serene blue water. She gave a laugh of pure joy as she saw flying fish break the calm surface, their sleek scales catching the sunlight and mirroring it back in turquoise and emerald and sapphire thread before they slipped back again under the smooth skin of the embroidered sea.

  Her room had come alive.

  She ran to the window and threw the casement wide open. The light of the fading day was rich and heavy, casting long rich shadows and bathing the gardens in warm golden air. She leaned out of a window. The western horizon was banded with sun-drenched yellows and purples and reds. The scents of buddleia and honeysuckle drifted up to her. She breathed deeply, filling her head with the flowery perfume.

  “I’m Tania!” she called into the air. “I really am a princess!”

  She felt as if she had awoken after a long illness to find herself miraculously cured. And while she had slept, the enchantments of Faerie had come flooding back into her room, awakening her tapestries and filling them with life and movement.

  But why now? Why had they been so still and lifeless before?

  She knew the answer without having to think about it.

  Because she had finally accepted that the Realm of Faerie was real.

  For a long time, she wandered around the room, drinking in the wonder and the beauty of her living tapestries, trying to come to terms with what it all meant. From schoolgirl to princess. From London to a Faerie Palace. From Anita to Tania.

  It dawned on her that she was still dressed only in her shift. She walked over to her wardrobe and opened the door. She chose a simple white gown; she was still lacing the bodice when there was a gentle tapping at her door.

  “Come in.”

  A servant girl entered
. “By your leave, my lady, the King awaits you in the Privy Dining Room.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know where that is,” Tania admitted.

  “I will guide you, my lady.”

  Tania finished lacing her gown and smoothed down the skirts. “Lead on, then,” she said. “I haven’t had a thing since breakfast. I could eat a horse.” Eyeing her with alarm, the puzzled-looking maid led her out of the room.

  One of the problems with being a princess, Tania realized as they walked down a wide flight of stairs, was that ordinary people were kind of scared of you. She had tried to engage the maid in conversation, but the nervous girl answered only in monosyllables with “my lady” added on, and soon Tania gave up.

  The Privy Dining Room was relatively small and inviting, although it had the same kind of high, ornate ceiling as all the other royal chambers, and rich, wood-paneled walls. Tall windows had been thrown open to give a view over the ornamental gardens. Dusk was coming and torches had been lit along the paths, casting a warm, soft glow over the stones. The room was dominated by a long dark wood table to which servants were ferrying dishes and platters and bowls. Tania sniffed appreciatively at the delicious smells of the waiting food.

  The aromas that filled her head were of roast meat and fresh-baked pies and of steaming vegetables glazed with yellow butter, and of loaves of bread that still smelled of the oven.

  The King sat at one end of the table. Ranged around him were most of Tania’s sisters and a couple of lords and ladies that she half recognized. Gabriel was sitting at his right-hand side.

  Oberon and the other men rose as Tania entered.

  “Come, sit by me, Tania,” said the King. “Are you recovered from your fall?”

  “Yes, I’m much better now, thank you,” Tania said, making her way around the table. Zara looked up at her anxiously and reached out a hand as she passed. Tania squeezed her fingers. “I’m all right, really,” she said. She leaned in close to her sister’s head. “My tapestries have come to life,” she whispered.