Four
Time passes differently in Death, if it can be said to pass at all. Fay had no sense of how long it was before she looked back at the Hallowe’en King. He was watching her with a strange expression, and Fay saw that his eyes were wet. His features, too, looked different to her: and she thought the dead side of his face looked no longer hideous, but simply exhausted and very sad.
A gesture of his living hand summoned the woodland scene again, but this time Fay could feel the grass under her feet, and the bluebells gave off a wistful scent. Daisy’s eyes were opening, drowsily, as if from a dream.
Blue. Her eyes are blue, thought Fay. Her eyes are blue, and I love her.
She glanced back at the Hallowe’en King. ‘I don’t understand. What’s happening?’
‘I have released your Daisy,’ he said. ‘The Night Train will take her back to her World, to a time before her accident. She will have no memory of this place, or the Shadowless Man. Her mind will be healed of its trouble, and she will live a long and happy life.’
Fay stared at him. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You won the contest,’ said the King. ‘The Lord of Death concedes defeat.’
‘But how?’ said Fay.
He gave a slow, unhappy smile. ‘I loved you, my Queen,’ he told her, ‘with all the passion of Eros. But yours was the love of Anteros, the love that makes not a single demand, but gives, and gives, and gives, no matter what it loses. And that I cannot equal, not in this, or any World.’
Fay nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘As for you, shadowless as you are, I cannot restore your memory. If I could, I would, but that gift is beyond the power of Death. But if you choose, you are free to return once more to the World of the living. I will not stand in your way, or pursue you any longer.’
Fay closed her eyes and breathed in the lovely scent of the bluebells. It felt as if she were breathing it in for the very first time; the new grass at her feet was soft; the air was bright as butterflies. A marvellous emptiness filled her mind; and with it a deep contentment, as if she had accomplished some gruelling task that she could no longer remember; and with it, a love as vast as the sky; as wide and deep as the ocean.
Blue. Her eyes are blue, she thought.
‘Goodbye. I love you, Daisy.’
And then she smiled at the Hallowe’en King, and reached out to clasp his skeletal hand …
The Hallowe’en Queen
≈
One
They say that the madcap Queen of the Fae once fell in love with a child of the Folk, and brought her back from the Shadowless Land, forsaking her life and her memory.
And sometimes, in her dreams, she caught a fleeting glimpse of what she had lost, and heard the music of days gone by, and awoke with tears in her living eye. And sometimes in her dreams, she ran, endlessly, through London streets, and heard the voice of another woman, calling her from between the Worlds, and almost remembered what she had known, long ago and far away. But still she was content with her choice, for in dreams she remembered her daughter.
Almost every fairy tale begins with the death of the parents. That is how it is meant to be. That is how it has always been. But Death is not the end of the tale; merely another verse of a song. And love is a bird that never dies, but soars through the sky, and sings the song it cannot keep from singing.
For a song can climb higher, live longer, see more than any bird that ever flew. A song can pass from mouth to mouth, changing with the seasons. A song can pass between the Worlds, even to the Kingdom of Death, where the Hallowe’en Queen on her bone-white throne watches the Worlds through her all-seeing Eye, and contemplates the honeycomb.
This is the story of such a song. A song born of a mother’s love, given wings by a mother’s grief. A song of memory, and loss, and of the magic of everyday things. A song of rebirth, and rejoicing; the song of a journey to Death and beyond. And its variations are endless, and the song is never over.
By Joanne M. Harris from Gollancz
Runemarks
Runelight
The Gospel of Loki
The Testament of Loki
A Pocketful of Crows
The Blue Salt Road
Orfeia
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Gollancz
an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
Copyright © Frogspawn Ltd 2020
Illustrations © Bonnie Helen Hawkins 2020
The moral right of Joanne Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (eBook) 978 1 473 22997 6
www.joanne-harris.co.uk
www.gollancz.co.uk
Orfeia Page 11
