Faerie Fruit

by Charlotte E. English

  ‘Why, Mistress Strangewayes,’ he said in his mild way. ‘What good fortune. And Mr. Penderglass!’

  Hattie did not need to ask him why he considered her appearance good fortune, because of course the person with him was Jeremiah and she was too busy hurling herself at her errant husband to make any reply.

  ‘Jerry,’ she gasped, too tightly enfolded in his embrace to have much breath for talking.

  ‘Hattie.’ He bestowed a few kisses, too, which Hattie graciously accepted. When at last he released his bone-crushing grip upon her ribs, Hattie gathered herself and said, only a trifle breathlessly: ‘If it is not too much to ask, husband of mine. Where exactly have you been all this time?!’

  Jeremiah looked around, frowning. ‘Here,’ he said, with a stupendous unhelpfulness which made Hattie want to smack him.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, nodding sagely. ‘Which is far preferable to being at home, I quite see that.’ She sniffed the air. ‘It may be a little rude of me, but I cannot help noticing that you look and most definitely smell like you have been sleeping under a bridge.’

  Jeremiah grinned and adjusted his hat. ‘I have,’ he admitted. ‘Sometimes on this side, sometimes on the other.’

  Hattie nodded politely. ‘It is most comfortable, I am sure.’

  ‘Southtown was thieved, Hat!’ Jeremiah protested. ‘We have been cut off from Northtown and could not get back.’

  Hattie was about to protest that if she could find her way from Northtown into Southtown, she did not altogether see why he could not have contrived to do so in reverse. But then she remembered that he most probably did not have Boots as she did, and had not been chosen for Adventure. And then there was the wretched state of him, for he clearly had not been eating properly in addition to his disreputable new habit of sleeping under bridges, and after all she was rather happy to see him and she did not know how it came about that her cheeks were damp but there it was.

  ‘Well, Jerry,’ she said stoutly, when she had regained her composure and her dignity. ‘I cannot linger just at present, for I am on my way to talk to Sun and it is quite urgent.’ She hesitated, and added: ‘I suppose you will still be here when I come back?’

  ‘No, Hat, for I shall go along with you. I believe I can spare the time.’ He accompanied his words with a grin, and Hattie beamed back.

  ‘I, too, shall go,’ said Ambrose. ‘If I may.’

  Secretly, Hattie was pleased to have the company. She thought that Sun might be more inclined to listen were she greeted with a delegation, rather than merely one mortal woman all alone. So she set off once more with Theodosius, Jeremiah and Ambrose, renewed in her determination to make Sun see a little sense.

  She explained her errand along the way, and found both Jeremiah and Ambrose to be surprisingly accepting of her logic. Perhaps it was due to their long sojourn among the mists of Faerie, for Theodosius remained disappointingly sceptical and would insist upon raising his doubts at every juncture and attacking her with aggravating logic such as the whole point of a horizon, Hat, is that it cannot be reached. You do realise that? And later he said: Even supposing it possible to walk to the house where Sun lives, it could take us years. And there was If Sun will not even consent to rise these days, why do you think she will agree to talk to you?

  She knew that Theodosius intended only to help, and sought not to discourage her but to inspire a flow of more reasonable ideas. But Hattie felt strongly that reasonable was the wrong way to approach this particular set of problems, and for once in her life she felt better equipped to manage the situation than Theo in all his logic.

  Brothers, she thought in disgust while Theodosius rattled on and on with his questions. Hattie let them pass, and soldiered on through the tangled trees undeterred. She kept the ruddy light of the eternally setting sun ahead of her as she walked, and privately hoped that Theodosius would prove to be wrong in one particular, if not in all: that it would not take years to find wherever it was that Sun lived.

  It did begin to seem, after a time, that they had been stumbling through the largely featureless, darkened orchard for about twelve years, and Hattie began at last to feel daunted. The light in the sky really did not seem to be drawing any closer, and she was growing tired. Theodosius’s questions had turned more into grumbles, Ambrose was clearly flagging, and even Jeremiah had ceased to be so supportive of her mad venture as he had been at first.

  ‘Right,’ said Hattie at last, stopping beside a particularly contorted tree. ‘This is hopeless.’

  Theodosius sighed. ‘I have been trying to tell you, Hat. You cannot just—’

  Hattie threw him an exasperated look. ‘Stop, Theo,’ she said crossly. ‘I have been trying to tell you: your logic has no place in Faerie.’

  ‘But—’

  Hattie put her hand over his mouth and kept it there, ignoring the muffled protests Theodosius attempted to voice behind the obstruction of her fingers. ‘Jerry?’ she said. ‘Ambrose? Are you still with me?’

  ‘Of course, Hat,’ said Jerry.

  Ambrose bowed. ‘Certainly, Mistress Strangewayes.’

  ‘Then Theo may remain here if he wishes,’ she said ruthlessly, and removed her hand.

  Theodosius had sense enough to confine his indignation to a few incoherent spluttering sounds.

  Hattie dismissed them all from her notice and focused her attention upon her feet. ‘Right, Boots,’ she said. ‘You and your fantastically-coloured friends have walked me about at will for days now, and made me a fine puppet to your whims! And I mean no reproach, for I do not at all mind being chosen for an adventure and I consider it a fine score over Theo. But I do feel that, having been so obliging as to go along with your every wish — and without the smallest complaint, I beg you to remember! — that it is perhaps just a little bit my turn now.

  ‘So,’ she concluded, with a beaming and hopefully persuasive smile, ‘If you would be so fabulously, deliciously helpful as to walk me to the house where Sun lives, and preferably without the smallest delay, I should consider us quits entirely, and the very best of friends besides.’

  ‘Masterful, Hattie,’ murmured Jeremiah, upon whom she instantly turned her dazzlingly winsome smile by way of approval.

  Her Boots, however, did not seem nearly so impressed. There was no response. No promising tap of the toes, no shuffle of imminent departure. There was not even a twitch of acknowledgement, and Hattie’s heart sank.

  ‘Is it so much to ask, after all?’ she sighed. ‘Well, I suppose I ought to have known. Theo is right! Not even the greatest boots in Faerie could walk all the way to Sun’s house. It was shocking of me to ask so ridiculous a thing, and I hope you will overlook my ignorance.’

  Hattie’s left toe began to tap. It was an unmistakeably irritated movement which she made no move to counter, but stood tapping her toe and smiling and waiting.

  When the Boots set off, it was suddenly, and with such speed that Hattie almost fell straight upon her face. ‘Keep up, gentlemen!’ she cried, exhilarated. ‘We will be at Sun’s house in a trice!’

  The right pair of shoes really could make all the difference, thought Hattie, as with a surging run up a tree-forested slope, there it was before her: Sun’s house. The thick tree cover ended at the lip of a low valley and suddenly all was sky, flaring in an array of ruddy orange, blazing crimson, dazzling gold. Sun slept, and yet so bright was the light here that Hattie’s eyes watered and streamed.

  Upon a promontory in the centre of the valley rose a structure resembling a greenhouse, albeit a far stranger, more complex example than she could ever have imagined. As Hattie drew closer and her eyes marginally adjusted to the light, she saw that the hundreds or thousands of panes of glass which made up its eccentrically curving walls were not glass at all, but clear white light intricately webbed. Clambering vines bedecked in flourishing leaves wreathed the walls and these, too, were wrought of woven light, gentler upon the eye than the flare of brightness in the sky. Ten thousand flowers bejewelled the clambering
vines but their petals were closed and their heads drooped, for they were as fast asleep as the figure that lay stretched forlornly upon the floor below them.

  ‘Thank you, Boots,’ said Hattie smugly. ‘You did a wonderful job.’

  She chose to interpret the toe-twitch that followed as a gesture of approval.

  Theodosius sighed. ‘All right, Hat,’ he said grudgingly. ‘I apologise.’

  Hattie beamed at him. ‘I will still be reminding you of this when we are ninety.’

  ‘That’s only fair.’

  Hattie went down into the valley and walked right up to the greenhouse, hoping that Sun would hear her approach and wake. But soon Hattie and all three of her companions stood around the sleeping form of Sun in a circle, nonplussed, for not only had the noise of their footsteps failed to wake her, so had every other effort.

  ‘The deep slumber of grief,’ said Ambrose impressively.

  Hattie sighed. ‘SUN!’ she bellowed, bending down to shout directly into the sleeping figure’s ear. ‘I WOULD HAVE CONVERSATION WITH THEE.’

  ‘Good, Hat!’ said Theodosius. ‘Throw in a little more archaic speech. That is sure to work.’

  ‘Shout louder,’ recommended Jeremiah.

  But Ambrose sat down beside the sleeping woman and took her hand. ‘Have a little compassion,’ he chided gently, and patted her hand with tender, fatherly concern.

  Sun opened her eyes, and all her thousands of flowers sprang awake and opened their petals at once. ‘Oh!’ she said, and burst into tears.

  Hattie watched, bemused, as Ambrose devoted himself to comforting the weeping woman — if woman she was. She appeared as such, though frail and fey and not very much like the women of Berrie at all. She was ageless, neither young nor old, her skin a polished, gleaming black; and, rather uncomfortably, she did not appear to find clothing necessary. It was fortunate, thought Hattie, that she had unusually abundant hair. It looked as though it had not been cut for a hundred years, which it most likely had not. Sun lay largely buried beneath it, weeping copiously into Ambrose’s shoulder, and her hair changed its colour with every third or fourth breath that she took.

  Hattie tried to wait patiently while Ambrose patted Sun’s hands, murmured vague, soothing things into her ears and bore the soaking of his coat with admirable forbearance. At length, however, she began to feel that Sun would weep forever if given the opportunity; and since she had, presumably, been weeping and sleeping without cease for a century already, it was high time that somebody broke in upon it.

  She began, delicately enough, with a little cough. When this failed to attract anybody’s attention — not even Jeremiah’s, who was watching Ambrose’s efforts with an odd fascination — Hattie coughed rather more loudly.

  When this, too, provoked no response whatsoever, she leaned over and tapped Sun on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘But I have to ask. You do know that all of Faerie is withering into nothing without you?’

  Sun looked up, blinking her swimming eyes in Hattie’s general direction. They were odd eyes indeed, easily thirty-five colours at once and sparking with fire somewhere within. For the first time, Hattie felt a little afraid.

  That will never do, she thought with considerable self-disgust, and straightened her shoulders.

  ‘What care they for me?’ said Sun miserably. ‘Not one of them has ever come to visit! Not once!’

  ‘How wretched of them!’ said Hattie in full indignation. ‘I shouldn’t wonder that you do not want to shine! But they are ill, you know, and I suppose that is a distracting state to be in. I am sure they did not mean to be neglectful.’

  ‘They revere me,’ said Sun sadly.

  Hattie did not wonder that she was sad, for with a flash of insight she saw the problem at once. An idol could not require company, after all; a great power needed no friends. And who would presume to pity the Sun? Who of Faerie would dare to ask anything of her, or to imagine they could help her? It required the presumption and pragmatism of a mortal — of a Hattie Strangewayes. ‘If you were to shine again,’ she said coaxingly, ‘they would soon be mended and then I am sure many of them would come to see you!’ They would certainly do so, Hattie vowed, for she would give them no peace until they did.

  ‘How can I shine without Moon?’ said Sun in a soft, hopeless voice, and fiery tears ran down her cheeks.

  ‘Very easily, I should say!’ said Hattie stoutly. ‘Why, you are doing it now, a little.’

  ‘And you need not shine such a great deal more,’ said Theodosius coaxingly. ‘Not all day, if you do not wish it! How should you feel about venturing into the heavens for, say, half a day at a time?’

  ‘The heavens!’ echoed Sun, casting a half-mournful, half-angry look up into the skies. ‘So empty, now! Even the stars fall! And so empty below. Have you ever known such loneliness?’

  Hattie was grateful to think that she had not; not even when Jeremiah was stranded on one side of the broken bridge, and she upon the other. ‘You have company now,’ she said in what she hoped was an encouraging tone. ‘We could stay, for a time.’

  ‘Oh, certainly!’ said Ambrose.

  A faint flicker of interest registered in Sun’s fiery eyes. ‘Would you?’

  ‘Of course!’ Hope made Hattie expansive. ‘You could shine for a little bit each day, and then come home and visit with us. We could… well…’ Hattie’s words tailed off as she sought uselessly for ways to entertain Sun. What could a group of mere mortals offer such a being?

  ‘I could read to you,’ Theodosius offered, surprising Hattie. ‘I know a great many stories.’

  ‘I will bring you flowers from all over Faerie,’ said Ambrose. ‘If… if you do not mind a little sneezing along the way.’

  ‘Hattie will weave you the most beautiful fabric you can imagine,’ said Jeremiah, with a wink at his wife. ‘And I will make of it a gown for you.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Hattie, energised. ‘It would be of all things the most amusing. Do you have a favourite colour?’

  Sun sat up, releasing her grip upon Ambrose. ‘Perhaps I could shine a little bit more,’ she said, her eyes brightening. ‘For an hour, here and there. Would that do?’

  ‘Maybe even two,’ said Ambrose gently, with his kindliest smile, and Sun smiled tremulously in response.

  ‘Perhaps even two,’ she agreed.

  And so, for the first time in a century Sun rose into the sky and shone her light full upon Faerie. To those below, it was as though a land long sunk in slumber began to stir. The shrouding mists awoke, blinking, and bethought themselves of some urgent errand elsewhere; new leaves unfurled, yawning, and stretched in the pale sunlight; the creatures of Faerie ended their long hibernation, and ventured out of their burrows and nests and hideaways.

  Hattie wove for Sun a bolt of her finest silken cloth, daubed in all the colours of the heavens: Sun’s own fiery hues mingled with her lost sister’s silvery radiance, threaded through a vast indigo sky. When the fabric was done, Jerry really outdid himself, and Hattie could hardly have been prouder. Arrayed in her new finery, Sun glowed brighter than the stars.

  Theodosius sat for hours regaling Sun with the very best of the stories he had collected in all his years of reading. He never tired of it, though Hattie thought that he might; and to her very great surprise and approval, he gave his own favourite volume into Sun’s keeping forever.

  Ambrose was as good as his word, and brought Sun new flowers every day. He brought almost as many fresh sneezes along with them, and these proved to be as much to Sun’s amusement as the blooms. With every visit, he reminded her of the beauty she wrought across Faerie with every hour that she shone, and every day she lingered in the skies just a little longer.

  Others came. Maud Redthorn and Dunstan Goldwyne arrived, bringing with them the best of their pastries and biscuits and cakes. Nathaniel Roseberry brought honeywine and Ferdinand Crowther brought beer, both of which beverages proved to be less to Sun’s benefit but very much to her taste. She ascended, w
obbling, into the skies that day, and dwelt there giggling before sinking back to earth with a mirthful bump. Tobias and Clarimond spent three full days regaling Sun with accounts of their travels across Faerie, and tales of Berrie life.

  When the fae at last began to venture to Sun’s house, Hattie knew that matters were much mended. But not wholly, she could not but admit. Sun’s spirits revived with the attention of her new friends, and she shone more brightly by the day; but she never rose far beyond the horizon, and never lingered very long.

  And despite the best efforts of the displaced residents of Berrie, one half of the sky remained empty. Moon was gone, and naught remained of her presence save the crescent-shaped throne in which she used to sit when she reigned over the firmament of the night.

  PART FOUR

  Chapter One

  In which Dorothea Winthrope fails to drown herself in the River Wyn.

  Dorothea Winthrope had become quite the devotee of honeywine.

  This was worthy of note because she had never been so before; indeed, she had always been famously teetotal. She could not remember, now, how many years it was that she had lived. Her snow-white hair, bowed back, failing eyesight and lameness attested to its being a good many, however, and her adoption of a regular programme of drinking at her advanced age had certainly set Northtown talking.

  Not that she was lame or bowed any longer! The faerie greengages had seen to that (or bluegages, as she tended to think of them, since they were in no way green. She had always been a stickler for precision). A fondness for honeywine seemed a small price to pay for her liberation from these complaints, for she could walk and run and (above all) swim once more and nothing, now, could dim her sunny good temper. Well, excepting the one occasion where she had stupendously overindulged and suffered all the joys of a splitting headache for two days afterwards, not to mention disgracing herself in the gardens behind the Moss and Mist.