The notes of a violin cut across the tumult and, to Helewise’s surprise, all of the bejewelled folk ceased speaking at once. They stilled abruptly, almost as though they were frozen in place, and their heads turned to gaze, expectantly, at the far side of the square from where Maud and Helewise stood.
In strode the fiddler, a man with rich brown hair tied back in a tail and a many-coloured coat. He moved with the assurance of power, his consequence increased by an entourage of seven men and women in rainbow-shaded cloaks. He took up a station in the centre of the square and let his bow still upon the strings. As the piercing notes faded he began to speak, and though Helewise could no more understand him than she had the rest of the bejewelled folk, the import of his words was clear enough. Whatever they sought was not to be found here.
The motley people began, regretfully, to leave, their anger draining out of them under the force of the fiddler’s speech. Without the energy of their fury, they seemed to Helewise as beaten and weary as the pallid lady, and her heart stirred with pity for them.
Maud spoke. ‘There is a man who knows what’s afoot.’
‘Yes,’ said Helewise. She gathered her resolve, stepped away from her flowers, and marched in the direction of the fiddler. Maud came following behind.
‘These people,’ she said as she reached him. ‘They are all sick. Aren’t they?’ She realised belatedly that she ought to have offered some manner of greeting first; politeness dictated such. But it was too late now, so she stood her ground and waited, grateful for the silent but supportive presence of Maud beside her.
The fiddler was taller than she, though only by a little. Nonetheless, he contrived to stare down at her in a fashion that made her feel much smaller indeed.
Helewise thought of Ambrose, and lifted her chin.
‘How did you come to know that?’ said the fiddler. His accent was strange, but he formed the words of her language precisely and with confidence, and Helewise’s heart eased a little. At least she would be able to talk with this one.
‘I cannot say,’ she replied honestly. ‘It is merely an impression I have received.’
‘You are observant.’ He threw his violin and his bow into the air with a negligent flick of his wrists. They vanished into the mist, and did not come down again. ‘Helewise Dale,’ said he next, with an enlightened widening of his eyes. ‘I understand.’
‘How come you to know me?’ said Helewise, too surprised to be civil.
‘The earth knows you,’ said he cryptically. ‘And the bees speak of your husband.’
Helewise was too bemused by these pronouncements to muster a reply. She was stung to perceive a flicker of amusement in the fiddler’s black eyes.
‘What is the alorin they are all asking for?’ Maud interjected. ‘They have driven us fair to distraction all the morning with their asking and asking.’
‘And it seems they have not found it,’ added Helewise. If the word referred to some common or ordinary thing that was customarily grown in Berrie, they would have discovered it by now, and gone away satisfied.
The fiddler did not seem disposed to make any reply. He looked from Maud to Helewise, his expression unreadable. ‘How fares Ambrose?’ he said, as though Maud had not spoken at all.
‘He is well,’ said Helewise, for though Ambrose’s pallor might disturb her, she had not yet discerned any other symptoms to cause alarm.
‘Is he,’ said he thoughtfully, and his mind clearly wandered far from them.
He remained lost in reverie for some moments, in spite of Helewise’s attempts to regain his attention. When his thinking was done, he did not see fit to share the results of his ruminations with Helewise or Maud. Instead he merely fixed the former with a swift, penetrating stare, then turned his back upon them both and walked away, his steps brisk. His entourage fell in behind him, soon blocking him from Helewise’s sight.
‘How rude a man,’ said Maud.
‘And how puzzling.’ Helewise gazed after him, half hoping he might return. But he did not. His departure appeared to operate as some manner of signal to the rest of the market’s outlandish visitors, for they trailed away in his wake in twos and threes, and before long the square was empty once more of anybody save those who lived in the town.
Chapter Four
The bees were leaving Sevenleaf, and Ambrose was heartbroken.
He stood in the circle of his hives and watched, helpless, as they streamed away from him. It was no swarm, or in no way that he recognised. They simply drifted away, a few at a time, vanishing beyond the borders of his gardens and into the streets of Berrie.
Not that they could strictly be termed streets any longer. The starflowers had grown at an astonishing rate and now carpeted the roadsides, shining blue during the day and silver beneath the moonlight. They had swept across the gardens of all of the houses and taken root, and no efforts to discourage their growth had resulted in the slightest thinning of their number. Now they were creeping into the roads themselves, and there they thrived, resisting the passage of passersby both mounted and on foot with serene insouciance.
The visions of tree and groves and streams, initially but briefly glimpsed, were becoming more persistent, too — solid, in some instances. Maud reported that the door in the wall of her cottage had made up its mind to remain, though it opened upon nothing but air. And her purple-belching chimney had made itself comfortable, and was disinclined to accept Maud’s repeated invitations to take itself off.
The Aelfwines’ cottage, among the first of the town’s buildings to manifest an altered façade, had now settled into its new proportions entirely. The Aelfwines seemed remarkably unperturbed at finding themselves warren-dwellers, though perhaps it was only the heaviness in the air, and the fog, and the lassitude of the town that dampened their surprise.
The market square now more frequently resembled a lantern-lit glade.
The Berrie Ambrose knew was fading away, and some new place was emerging. He could make no sense of it, but as long as Sevenleaf had remained largely untouched, it had not unduly concerned him.
But now the bees were leaving.
It was not only his own bees, he realised as he wandered the starflower-strewn pathways of Berrie. He sensed others: from the copse behind Maud Redthorn’s cottage, from the gardens at Thistledown House, from Heatherberry Spinney. They were spreading out, building new hives in the boughs of those aged trees which had appeared, so inexplicably, from nowhere. Beneath them spread thick carpets of starflowers, and Ambrose was reminded of the glimpse he had received of a changed Sevenleaf.
He did not think it could be long before his domain, too, was altered beyond recognition.
At least the starflowers did not make him sneeze, though he had no explanation for that phenomenon either. He wandered abroad all afternoon long, following the paths of his bees, until he happened upon a corner of the town he did not recall visiting before. A channel ran through the earth, a way for a river, perhaps, but it was empty. Arcing above was a broken fragment of a bridge, an elegant structure, and Ambrose felt a moment’s regret at seeing its loveliness so sadly curtailed.
Who would build a bridge over nothing? Perhaps the water had dried up, and the remainder of the structure had crumbled with age. But what was there shone pristine, displaying no signs of incipient decrepitude. Ambrose saw no tumble of stones beneath where the rest had fallen into the grass; what had become of it?
The matter intrigued him, and he studied the problem for some minutes. It was as he was thus engaged that he realised he was not alone.
He had walked over the empty riverbed (if riverbed it was) and come to view the bridge from its other side. In so doing, he discerned that the lee side of the structure had been pressed into service as a shelter, and a ragged figure huddled beneath.
‘Good day,’ said Ambrose, startled. The bridge-dweller did not appear gratified to see him, and Ambrose took a step back. ‘My apologies. I did not mean to alarm you.’
He received in res
ponse only a blank stare, followed by a cough.
Ambrose began to feel that he knew the man. That crowning shock of black hair was familiar, though it appeared disordered to an uncharacteristic degree.
When the man spoke, Ambrose knew.
‘Dale?’ The man stared at Ambrose in surprise, as though he was the last person expected.
‘Strangewayes?’ replied Ambrose. ‘Jeremiah?’ He felt a similar shock upon recognition, though he did not know why, for it was only natural to run into one’s fellow citizens from time to time.
Admittedly, one did not usually find them living under bridges. That he was indeed living there was indubitable, for he had set up as much of a dwelling as he could manage. Walls of painstakingly-woven sticks shakily repelled some of the more inclement weather, and a blanket had been brought from somewhere to cover the floor.
‘Jeremiah,’ repeated Strangewayes. ‘Yes, that is me.’
He did not sound altogether certain. ‘What are you doing here?’ said Ambrose, indicating the camp of withy walls with a wave of one hand. Jeremiah Strangewayes was a tailor, and usually dapper with it. Ambrose had purchased most of his better garments from him. It was strange indeed to see him so reduced.
Jeremiah looked confused, and hardly knew how to answer the question. ‘This is where I live,’ he explained.
‘No. You have a shop, and premises above. Do you not recall?’
Jeremiah looked hard at Ambrose. ‘Do I? Where?’
Ambrose opened his mouth to give more minute directions, but closed it again when he realised that he could not remember. He gathered his thoughts with some effort, and tried again. ‘Why, it is… no more than a half-hour’s walk from Sevenleaf! Of that I am certain.’
By way of reply, Jeremiah merely lifted one grubby arm and pointed behind Ambrose. But when Ambrose turned, he could see nothing there; nothing save the ever-present mist swirling in sleepy, wisping coils.
‘I do not understand you,’ said Ambrose.
‘My home is that way,’ explained Jeremiah. ‘Somewhere.’
‘Then why do you not go?’
‘Step into the mist, and you will soon discover why.’ Jeremiah folded his hands inside the sleeves of his tattered coat and composed himself comfortably.
Ambrose looked doubtfully at the wall of fog. He could see nothing at all within the dense cloud, and did not like to venture where he could receive no impression of the terrain. But he did not think Jeremiah would invite him to go where he was likely to encounter danger.
He walked forwards, choosing each step with care. He had not gone very far, however, before he was forced to stop, for a sheer stone surface barred the way. He could see little of it, but his outstretched hands discerned rough, uncut stone in an unbroken expanse — a cliff of some kind, he concluded, and he stood at the bottom.
Ambrose spent some little time walking back and forth, attempting to discover the dimensions of the obstruction. But there appeared to be no end readily within reach, and he began to fear losing his way back to the bridge. So he abandoned the endeavour, and returned to Strangewayes.
‘It is impassable, I suppose?’ he asked of Jeremiah.
‘Absolutely so.’
And the place made even less sense to Ambrose, for why build a bridge over a non-existent river if there was naught on the other side but the bottom of an unclimbable cliff? ‘How is it that your home comes to be that way? Is it at the top?’
Jeremiah shrugged. ‘I cannot tell you. I only feel that there somewhere is the place I ought to be, but there I cannot go. So I remain here.’
Ambrose stared at the bridge. The combination of that broken structure soaring into nothingness, the encounter with Jeremiah and the tailor’s curious declarations were having an odd effect upon him. He could not quite remember Jeremiah’s shop, for all that he had spoken of it… no! He could. He saw the neat establishment in his mind’s eye, with its coats and waistcoats displayed in the windows.
Then the memory dissipated like smoke on the wind, and he sighed.
‘I am certain it is possible to walk to your shop from Sevenleaf,’ said Ambrose in frustration. ‘And without tackling any insurmountable obstacles in the process. But I do not any longer know how it is to be done. How can that be?’
Other thoughts drifted through his mind: a spruce, dark-haired woman kneeling to take the measurements of his feet, and the fine brown leather boots that had resulted from the consultation; a sweeping curve of a street lined with tall, narrow houses, so familiar, yet no place he had lately seen; a busy common room crowded with people, Jeremiah Strangewayes among them; a tall, well-built man behind the bar, dark and bearded.
‘Do you never leave the bridge?’ said Ambrose.
‘I sometimes go into the orchard.’
‘The… the orchard? I have not seen any such place.’
‘That,’ said Jeremiah as he got to his feet, ‘is because it is not here, precisely.’
‘Then where is it?’
Jeremiah looked around in confusion, and shook his head. ‘Somewhere else.’ He walked a circle that brought him out into the path and then back under the bridge.
‘How do you get there?’ said Ambrose, but Jeremiah had vanished.
Nonplussed, Ambrose stepped under the bridge after Jeremiah, but all he found was empty space.
Jeremiah reappeared a moment later.
‘It is of no use walking that way,’ he admonished Ambrose, who felt abashed. ‘Widdershins!’
Ambrose turned about and walked the other way. When he returned to the shadowed space beneath the bridge, he found a different view awaiting him. Instead of a fog-drenched road and trees either side, he glimpsed a different array of trees dreaming under a twilight sky. There was no mist at all.
Jeremiah stood a few feet away, on the bank of a wide, rushing river. Ancient trees rose on either side of the water, though if it was an orchard, Ambrose could see little sign of it. Not a single fruit was in evidence anywhere; the trees were withered and brittle and barren.
The sky could not make up its mind as to the time of day. On one side of the firmament, the sun was setting in a blaze of fading gold-and-orange light. The other side was fully dark, the barest sliver of a moon glinting with a wan, sickly white glow.
Ambrose had not lightly thought of the trees as dreaming. There was an air of somnolence about the orchard, the heavy, hushed atmosphere of deep sleep.
‘What is this place?’ Ambrose spoke in a whisper, unwilling to shatter the silence.
‘I do not know.’ Jeremiah barely moved, barely breathed, all his attention fixed upon the divided sky. ‘I found it by chance, when I was seeking a way home. Sometimes I come back.’ He looked far more at ease than he had before; he was even smiling a little.
Ambrose could not feel at peace. It seemed to him that the orchard was trapped in a state of odd suspension; that the trees had fallen asleep because they lacked the vitality to do anything else.
He felt an urge to wake them up again, if only he could imagine how.
He wandered away from Jeremiah, following the left bank of the river. It did not help him, to travel deeper into the grove. He saw the same slumbering arbours everywhere he walked, felt the same oppressive stasis.
By the time he returned to Jeremiah and the bridge, some time had passed. It only belatedly occurred to him that the sky had not altered at all. The sun ought to have sunk below the horizon by now, but he saw the same ruddy glow filtering through the trees.
‘It is always this way,’ said Jeremiah, watching the direction of Ambrose’s gaze. ‘The sun neither sets nor rises.’
‘And the moon?’
Jeremiah gestured at the night-darkened sky, where the slender crescent moon listlessly hung. ‘She is as you see her.’
There were no bees, Ambrose realised. In fact, he doubted whether there were any creatures at all in the desolate place.
‘Does it ever change?’ asked he.
‘Never,’ said Jeremiah.
He found Helewise still at work in the gardens, and greeted her with a trio of sneezes.
‘Ambrose,’ said she with a sympathetic sigh. ‘Let us go indoors.’
There were more starflowers than ever, and the rose arbour had succumbed to the encroachment entirely. ‘Does it seem to you that there will be nothing of Sevenleaf left, soon?’ said Ambrose to his wife.
Helewise looked sadly around at the gardens they had tended together for so many years. ‘Perhaps it will return.’
‘When?’
‘To answer that, I must first know why it has changed.’
He told her of the orchard, and of Jeremiah Strangewayes.
‘You ought to have brought him here,’ said Helewise, her brow creased in disapproval. ‘He ought not to be left sleeping under a broken bridge, poor soul.’
‘I tried. He would not come.’ I wait, Jeremiah had said. Until the way home is open once more.
The lights of the parlour were brighter than the deepening darkness outside. Beneath their steady radiance Helewise paused, and stared long at Ambrose. ‘You are paler than ever,’ said she, ‘and your hair is snow white.’
Ambrose looked at his hands. His veins shone blue, more prominent than ever, and his skin looked parched and papery.
‘Are you ailing?’ said Helewise.
‘I feel well.’ But Ambrose frowned as he spoke, for as he formed the words he knew that he lied. He was conscious of a difference, for each morning he rose with a lingering sensation of weariness that did not leave him through the day. He had little appetite, and he knew that Helewise had noticed.
Faerie Fruit Page 9
