Gloaming

by Charlotte E. English

  ‘I believe,’ said Sylvaine around a dry throat, her voice a little hoarse, ‘that we expressed an interest in asking things of the wind.’

  ‘Why, so we did,’ said Margot in wonder. ‘And here he is! Shall we be visited by the rain and the Night, next, do you think?’

  ‘Or the Sun and moon?’ said Sylvaine faintly. ‘The skies and the rose…’

  ‘I am Mistral,’ said the wind.

  ‘That makes sense,’ said Sylvaine.

  He smiled. ‘I do not think the rain or the Night will answer, nor the Sun or moon, for they are outside the borders of this land of yours, and beyond the reach of your song. But the rose! She, perhaps, we may encounter.’

  Margot wondered how it was that the wind had troubled himself to come down upon request, and stand patiently by, awaiting their questions (if they could muster themselves enough to make any of him). But it occurred to her that he was as entranced by them as they were by him, and overflowing with curiosity. He looked about at the darkened, star-drenched meadows, the dusty dirt-road upon which he stood, the clouds overhead and the looming presence of Landricourt behind, and said: ‘It is not so very bad, is it? Quite drained, they did say, and a misery to visit. But I am pleasantly surprised.’

  ‘It is not usually like this,’ Margot felt it necessary to explain. ‘These are the Gloaming hours, and much more potently so than is usually the case.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mistral, and it seemed to Margot that he really did see, far more distinctly than she could herself.

  ‘I have a question,’ said Sylvaine.

  Mistral tilted his head, and fixed all the energy of his attention upon her.

  ‘Why does the mist come down in the deep twilight?’

  ‘And for that matter,’ added Margot, ‘why does the Gloaming come, and swallow up the afternoon?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Mistral with a smile.

  Sylvaine was disappointed. ‘But the song said to ask you!’

  ‘I did not make the song,’ Mistral reminded her gently.

  ‘Neither did we, exactly.’

  ‘Your questions are perhaps too literal,’ Mistral suggested. ‘Or too exact. Try another.’

  ‘What do you know of Argantel?’ Margot said.

  Mistral gazed at her. ‘I know that it was once another place,’ he said softly. ‘They called it Arganthael, and it was a place of great wonder. Laendricourt stood at its centre, and from within those walls issued forth articles of irreplaceable value to the world.’

  ‘Like the moth-wing coat,’ said Margot, with a sudden flash of understanding.

  Mistral looked long at the coat Sylvaine wore, as though he had only just taken particular note of it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’ prompted Sylvaine. ‘What became of it?’

  ‘Of Arganthael? It was broken.’

  He did not seem disposed to say more. ‘Broken?’ repeated Margot. ‘How?’

  ‘Sundered into two, and none of the mirrors have ever been right again since.’

  This could not be made sense of, no matter how Margot tried. ‘What have mirrors got to do with anything?’

  ‘We sang about mirrors,’ Sylvaine reminded Margot. ‘We said that they drift.’

  ‘Oh, they do!’ Mistral supplied, with a smile of childlike delight. ‘It is quite the puzzle, for they are never where they are supposed to be.’

  Sylvaine folded her arms, and looked hard at Mistral. ‘Perhaps we could talk to the rose? She might make better sense.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt it.’

  ‘That we could talk to her, or that she might make better sense?’

  ‘The second of those.’ Mistral smiled. ‘Words are not to be faulted, if their import should fail to be understood.’

  Sylvaine visibly gave up. ‘I am going to find my father,’ she announced, and set off again towards Landricourt.

  ‘Thank you,’ Margot said to Mistral, in some little haste. ‘I am sorry that we are unable to understand the answers you’ve been so kind as to give us.’

  ‘You will soon,’ said Mistral, with a serene confidence which silenced Margot.

  She hesitated, doubting, and then set off after Sylvaine, who strode ahead with her silver-stitched coat flapping behind her.

  Margot soon caught up, and they went into Landricourt together. Shadows raced up the great hall’s walls as they threw open the doors, letting the starlight in; and it flowed in all in a rush, carpeting the floor with the semblance of thick frost. It covered Margot’s feet, too, though it did not chill her. It felt warm, if anything, and tickled her feet with a faint hum of energy. There was mist everywhere, and someone was singing below.

  ‘Who can that be?’ said Margot. By habit, her mind had supplied the name of Adelaide, but it could not be her. She had departed the house at the onset of the Gloaming, with all the rest of the winemakers. Margot had been the last to leave, excepting only Maewen, who never sang.

  ‘Not my father,’ said Sylvaine with a twitch of her lips, and it certainly was not he, for the voice was female. But she walked nonetheless in the general direction of the song, intrigued.

  ‘It is coming from the cellars,’ said Margot, and thither they went, stealing softly down cold stone stairs into the deeper darkness below. Much was changed along the way. The roses were always abundant under the Gloaming, and it was not much to Margot’s surprise to see that they were growing faster and more thickly than ever. They had taken over the doorways and the floors, and seemed intent upon claiming the stairs, too, and venturing deeper than they had ever done before. She was more surprised to see that they had given up their ethereal colour, and blazed forth instead in a host of different hues.

  The work of Rozebaiel, Margot realised; but what did it mean?

  It was Rozebaiel who sang. She was in the largest of the winemakers’ storerooms, humming her lilting, wordless ditties to herself in high enjoyment. The chamber was devoted to the products of last season’s labours, wine just a year old, and ready for drinking. Much of it had already been taken away and sold, but many jars and bottles were left. Rozebaiel had opened them all and was dancing between them; with flicks of her thin fingers and puffs of her own breath, she sent flurries of rose-petals streaming into the top of each bottle and jar, whereupon they promptly dissipated. The wine, as always, was silver-pale, but the petals were crimson and indigo and amber and gold, vibrant with life and magic. The wine looked wan in comparison, and pallid, but flushes of strong colour shot through the liquid with each flicker of Rozebaiel’s fingers, until the bottles were filled with wines as blood-red or amber-gold as the flowers she commanded.

  ‘What are you doing to the wine?’ blurted Margot, and Rozebaiel’s singing abruptly stopped.

  ‘I am mending it,’ she said, without looking up, or pausing in her work. ‘Don’t you see how much better it is? Though it still misses something.’ She completed her transformation of the last few jars, and then stood back to survey them, a critical frown creasing her flower-face.

  ‘Much better,’ came Mistral’s voice, making Margot jump, for she had not realised he had followed them. ‘But the final touch lies beyond your power, Rose. Shall I assist you?’

  Rozebaiel greeted Mistral’s entrance with overpowering eagerness, and all but fell upon him in her joy. ‘I knew you would come!’ she cried. ‘I knew you would not leave me here alone!’

  ‘No, no, I never would,’ said Mistral gently, bearing all the ferocity of her love with gentle patience. ‘I am late, I fear, for I had to await an opportunity; the mirrors do not lightly bend to my will, any more. But I am come, little Rose. Shall we finish your work? Then perhaps we may both go home.’

  ‘Home,’ repeated Rozebaiel. ‘It is so very dull here, my Mistral! Everything sleeps! They are all excessively stupid, and it is tiring labour to wake them up again.’

  ‘But you have done fine work,’ said he soothingly. ‘I admired it when I came down. How alive everything looks!’

  ‘It is not that I mind, exactly,�
�� Rozebaiel said — perhaps less than truthfully, considering the extent of her indignation before. ‘It is wearying for them to keep up the proper raiment, when there is hardly a scrap of magic to be had anywhere. And they are not so very dull in that whitish garb, are they? There is even something likeable about it, and perhaps I shall keep a few, when I go home. But so weak and watery! And this wine, the same! Intolerable.’

  Mistral dipped the tip of one long, thin finger into the neck of the nearest bottle. A soft wind blew up, making a flurry of Rozebaiel’s fallen rose-petals underfoot. When he withdrew his hand, the wine in the bottle had taken up a similar flow and swirled in lazy circles, shot through with the same starry mists that pervaded the rest of Argantel.

  ‘I miss Walkelin’s assistance,’ admitted Mistral, examining the breath-taking effect he had just created with a dissatisfied air. ‘He had always the knack for making a neater weave. But it will suffice, will it not?’

  ‘It is perfect,’ breathed Rozebaiel, and she clapped her hands with childish enthusiasm. ‘Now do the rest!’

  Mistral complied, moving between the bottles one by one. Margot, meanwhile, watched this undertaking in silent awe and total incomprehension, Sylvaine as silent a presence by her side. At length, all the bottles and jars of wine that were in the storeroom were winds-wafted and starry and drenched in colour, and the sight so much dazzled Margot’s eyes that they began to water.

  ‘Done!’ declared Rozebaiel, with a final, decisive clap of her hands that seemed to proclaim the business quite finished. She turned upon Mistral then, and said, with a mixture of authoritativeness and beseeching charm, ‘And now home, Mistral, please!’

  Mistral looked uncomfortable. ‘Would that I could whisk us both away, little Rose, and without further ado! But the winds have forgotten the way, or perhaps it is closed against us. We must find the mirror through which we came, and go back that way.’

  ‘Oh, the mirror!’ said Rozebaiel in disgust. ‘Wretched, tricksy objects! It is somewhere here about, I am sure! Sidling from wall to wall, pretending to be this, or that, and laughing at us all the while.’

  ‘It is somewhere here about, indeed,’ echoed Mistral, letting the rest of Rozebaiel’s speech pass. His eye alighted upon Margot and Sylvaine, and he developed an expression of faint surprise, as though he had forgotten they were there. ‘Do you chance to have seen a mirror somewhere about?’ he enquired.

  ‘No,’ said Sylvaine.

  ‘It would not, in all probability, look much like a mirror,’ he offered. ‘At least, not all the time. It might happen to resemble a door, say, or a pool of water, or a window—’

  ‘I saw one turn itself into a vase, once,’ offered Rozebaiel. ‘A horrid glass vase, all splotched about with the most foolish colours, and sadly ugly besides! And it was no use protesting that it would never dream of being so low an object as a mere a vase, for I saw it.’

  Mistral smiled apologetically. ‘It might also have looked like a vase,’ he said to Margot and Sylvaine. He looked upon them with hope. ‘You have not happened to see it, have you?’

  ‘Doors we have seen aplenty,’ said Margot. ‘And a few windows, though whether any of those were mirrors I cannot say. How is it possible to tell?’

  ‘Pools of water and vases?’ said Sylvaine. ‘No! We have seen none of those. But it might also choose to be a chair, I suppose, or a picture-frame, or a bottle?’

  ‘A bottle!’ echoed Rozebaiel, and stared at the many arrayed before her in high suspicion. ‘Are you here, Mirror, you abominable thing?’

  ‘Perhaps it were best not to insult it, if you wish for a favourable response,’ suggested Mistral in his gentle way.

  Rozebaiel merely said: ‘It is quite deserved.’ She fell into thought, or perhaps daydreaming, Margot could not tell which. Drifting vaguely among the bottles, she trailed her fingers through the roiling crimson liquid of the nearest one and then licked them clean of wine, humming something. Her face changed, and she was silent for a moment before saying, ‘Oh, you found my ribbon?’ Her bright gaze swept up and down Margot’s frame until she spotted the article in question, still tied around Margot’s wrist. ‘Yes, there it is. I had not even noticed it was gone.’ She said this placidly, and made no move to reclaim her property.

  ‘How did you know she had got it?’ said Sylvaine, for she, too, had noticed that Rozebaiel’s information had apparently not come from her having noticed Margot wearing it.

  But Margot knew. The look on her face had reminded her of someone: of Florian, when he had drunk a sip of Pharamond’s goldish elixir — the one made from the rosewater and the wine out of Landricourt, and who knew what else besides. Margot had not before been able to account for the odd, distant look on Florian’s face afterwards, as though he had briefly wandered very far from her. But now she knew: he had seen something, and so had Rozebaiel. Something, apparently, that had happened; something true.

  Pharamond had tried to send Oriane a potion that would show her truths, and he had tried to send her a book of paintings of Landricourt as well. Had he known that she would disappear? Had he been trying to prepare her, warn her, equip her for whatever lay ahead?

  He might have. He must have been drinking his own elixirs, too; did they offer visions of future truths, as well as past ones?

  ‘What is the wine?’ she said to Rozebaiel. ‘Why have we always made it here?’

  Rozebaiel did not appear to hear Margot. She had drunk a little more of the stuff, and her eyes had gone vacant again.

  But Mistral said, ‘It knows.’

  ‘Knows what?’ Margot prompted, when he did not elaborate.

  ‘Things that have come to pass, and that are presently true, and that will come to pass in the future. It is a knowledge it will share, sometimes.’

  ‘It has never done so before.’ Margot felt a little disgruntled, for had she not laboured over the rose-wine for season after season, year upon year? Had she not regularly drunk of the fruits of that work, and savoured it, and appreciated it? It had never shared its truths with her.

  ‘It would not,’ mused Mistral, gazing sightlessly into the depths of one of the jars. ‘It is concentrated magic of the purest kind, and you are on the wrong side of the Sundering. Lost all its potency, had it not? A mere flourish of magic at the Gloaming hour can offer little of lasting benefit.’

  Margot withdrew Pharamond’s little glass bottle from her skirt, and held it up to examine it. It was still nearly full of its goldish potion. ‘This is the best your father could manage, I suppose, and not a bad effort either,’ she said to Sylvaine, who heard none of this, for she had followed Rozebaiel’s example and was sampling the wine. ‘Unless it is your work?’

  Sylvaine did not answer. She was not really in the room anymore, at that moment.

  Margot poured half of the contents of the bottle out onto the floor, and then filled it up from a great jar that stood at her elbow. This one’s complement of wind-tossed wine was amber-coloured, and Margot remembered all at once something that Rozebaiel had said a few days before: You make the amberwyne here?

  ‘Amberwyne,’ she mused, swirling the stuff around in the bottle. The two liquids merged into a pleasing orangey-gold concoction, laced with Mistral’s wafts of mist and wind, and Margot gladly took a drink.

  It was some time before Margot’s wandering mind returned into the cellar-room.

  The visions came at once, and so thickly and quickly that Margot struggled to keep up with the frantic flow of them. She saw some things she had seen before: herself picking up Rozebaiel’s discarded ribbon, Adelaide singing, and Florian walking to Landricourt with his odd neckcloth. She saw Maewen Brionnet bending over a vat of half-brewed wine, her aged face creased with sadness, and Pharamond Chanteraine in the workroom Sylvaine had called her own, a paintbrush in his hand, applying the finishing touches to a miniature depiction of a tall clock with too many faces. He, too, looked consumed by sorrow; tears fell from his cheeks and mingled with the paint.

 
She saw something else, then, that set her heart to hammering in her chest, and filled her with a degree of wonder, hope and rage so powerful she hardly knew how to contain them. Her mind soared farther back, much farther, until she saw a tall, spare man, dark-haired and neatly dressed, whose face she had almost forgotten, for she had not set eyes upon it for nearly thirty years. Her father, who had died. But he had not died, she now saw, for there he was in the ballroom of Landricourt, pulling aside a curtain of rose-leaves to reveal a mirror which glowed and glittered in blatant invitation. He touched the cool glass and vanished, and the rose-leaves settled back over a mirror that was no longer there either.

  Finally, she saw Pharamond again, but he was younger — her father’s age. He had a child in his arms, a little girl, and though her hair was not yet the colour of violets and heather, Margot knew the child to be Sylvaine. He was talking to her, his face worn with care, and she clung to him as though frightened.

  Then Margot was back in the cellar-room with Mistral and Rozebaiel and Sylvaine, shaking with shock.

  ‘Pharamond,’ she said, when she had caught her breath, ‘is not of Argantel, is he? What is on the other side of the Sundering?’ She looked rather fiercely at Mistral, who smiled gently.

  ‘Why, Arganthael, and Laendricourt,’ he said.

  ‘What are we, some pale, miserable reflection of that place? How mortifying. And Pharamond came from there! I saw him. He wore magic like a cloak. How he has survived in this sad, magicless vale, I cannot imagine. And my father—’ Margot’s lips trembled upon these words —‘My father is gone there, and not dead at all, and what he has contrived to do in a place of pure, condensed magic I do not know either.’

  Mistral merely nodded. ‘No one ever makes the crossing, but that somebody goes the other way. Some matter of balance, I surmise.’

  ‘So my father went there, and Pharamond was dragged into here, and neither has ever been able to go back the other way.’ Margot spoke with a bitterness which shocked her, and she realised there were tears on her cheeks. Her poor mother! They said it was the consumption which took her away, but she had thought herself abandoned, of course, and died of grief and shame.