The Wonder Tales

Chapter Three-2

‘That is a key,’ said Theodosius. And he told her of his discoveries, of the strongbox at the Moss and Mist and the fruits inside, and of the contents of the book.

‘A key to a strongbox!’ Hattie said when he had done. ‘Very well! I admit it seems a little disappointing as an explanation, after so much was made of it. I was expecting a key into Faerie, at the least.’

‘But here is another connection to please you, Hattie,’ Theo answered. ‘Inside the strongbox were a few of those mad-coloured fruits that all of us were stuffing our faces with a few weeks ago. I shouldn’t think they are of any great importance, should you? But underneath those were several others.’ He paused, and Hattie felt like shaking him. How like Theo to get carried away, and insist upon heightening the drama!

‘Golden apples!’ said he in triumph. ‘Pure as a sunny afternoon, I assure you, and quite fresh!’

‘And the others!’ said Hattie in excitement. ‘Were there silver pears, Theo?’

‘Exactly like that one,’ said Theodosius, pointing again at the trinket. ‘More so, in fact, than the ones Tobias briefly had, for they were a little mottled with some other hue, and not perfect silver at all. These look like woven moonlight.’

‘And you did not bring them to show me! I call that very shabby.’

‘I think they are preserved by the box, Hat, and I did not like to remove them. How awful if I were to do so and they promptly rotted away.’

Hattie could not but concede the justice of this concern. ‘What of the melaeon, and all the rest? The recipe you have found, clever Theo, but what about starlight distilled and aqua pura faerie? Faerie water! If they have not got any of that, then I do not know why they are expecting us to produce it.’

‘Aqua pura faerie,’ Theodosius repeated, laying a heavy emphasis on the second word. ‘Pure water of Faerie, and by Tobias’s account there is not much left of that. All the rivers are tainted.’

‘True,’ said Hattie thoughtfully. ‘If Brewer’s Yard is truly Berrie Fae, ‘tis adrift in the middle of muddy mortaldom, and can hardly be expected to qualify. But there is one pure river left, did he not say? Good, Theo! We must simply go into Faerie and find it.’

‘Simply go into Faerie,’ agreed Theodosius in a bland tone. ‘Nothing could be easier. You do not happen to know of a way in to Faerie, do you, Hat? I only ask because it would be of passing convenience, but do not trouble yourself overmuch.’

‘I do not, but I am sure they do.’

‘They?’

‘The fae people at Brewer’s Yard. The ones with the fog for hair and the Boots like mine.’ Hattie felt cross at Theodosius’s naysaying attitude, and did not scruple to tell him so. She marched over to the window, retrieved her key, and stowed it safely in a pocket of her coat. ‘Are you coming with me, Theo? I am going at once.’

‘To Faerie?’

‘So I hope, because there can be little doubt I will find Jeremiah there! But to Brewer’s Yard, first. Bring the book!’

‘I see I have no choice!’ Theodosius got up at once and collected his own coat and hat, packing Cornelius’s book into a pocket of the former. When he was ready he bowed to Hattie, an irrepressible grin curving his lips. ‘Lead on, Madam Adventure!’

Hattie’s Boots were almost as excited as she was, for as she walked back to the Moss and Mist they insisted upon throwing an occasional, joyous little skip into her step. It might have been delightful, Hattie reflected, if they had not almost managed to throw her into the river with one particularly buoyant hop. ‘Behave yourselves,’ she admonished them, and stamped her feet a little by way of emphasising her point.

The Boots settled down.

Hattie went straight through the wall without hesitation, being by now an old hand at the process. ‘I have brought the key!’ she announced. ‘And my brother has brought the recipe.’

Her declaration did not produce much response, which disappointed her a little. The fae brewers merely looked at her, and then behind her, in silence.

‘What brother?’ said the fog-haired woman.

Hattie looked round, and saw a distinct lack of Theo. ‘Oh, bother,’ she sighed. ‘What can he be thinking?’

‘He hath not the Boots,’ the woman pointed out.

‘Hm,’ said Hattie, and went back through the wall.

Theodosius stood on the other side, looking bemused. ‘You know, Hat, I was half inclined to think you a little mad. Walking through walls, indeed! But I beg your pardon, for I cannot deny that you have contrived to do exactly that.’

‘And you have not! What can you mean by standing around out here when I need you in there?’

Theodosius coughed slightly. ‘I did try, I promise you.’ He rubbed at his nose and winced.

Hattie looked at his feet. His boots were perfectly serviceable, but they were also sadly ordinary. ‘They are nowhere near magnificent enough for walking through walls,’ she informed him. ‘But we will not let that stop us.’ Before Theo could object, she grabbed his hand and walked straight at the wall again, dragging him mercilessly behind her.

The process was more difficult this time. She was obliged to force poor Theodosius through with more ruthlessness than she preferred to show to her beloved brother. But Jeremiah’s fate, and that of the whole of Southtown, depended upon his being a brave soul, and putting up with a little pain.

‘This brother,’ she said, once they had shoved and squeezed their way through into the courtyard.

‘Ow,’ said Theodosius faintly.

‘Don’t complain, Theo,’ said Hattie. ‘This is the finest adventure anybody has ever had and you ought to be grateful to me for sharing it with you.’

‘Oh, I am,’ Theo replied, but he spoke with such a lack of conviction that Hattie did not believe him at all.

‘The key!’ said the oldest of the women, and Hattie took it to her. ‘Ahh,’ she said as she held it up. ‘At last.’ Then, to Hattie’s astonishment and dismay, she threw it up into the air.

‘But no!’ Hattie gasped. ‘It must shatter, when it comes down!’

It did not come down. It flew up two or three feet and then hovered there, some way over Hattie’s head. It turned slowly, around and around, casting a haze of colour over the stone courtyard below. Hattie watched in fascination, for it seemed that with each rotation the blurred patterns became slightly clearer, and a picture began to emerge.

‘It is a map!’ said she in delight, though that was not precisely correct. It was not like the maps she had seen in Theodosius’s books, all pale parchment and black lines and little else. It was more of a living image of a landscape, as though viewed from far above. Hattie watched, spellbound, as valleys and forests and hills came into focus, laced with rivers and streams and dotted with villages and towns. The colours were myriad and splendid; the image looked far more vibrantly alive, to Hattie’s wondering eye, than anything she saw around her.

When she looked up, she noticed that the central image in the key itself was different from anything she had seen before. Neither the golden apple nor the pear were visible, quite, for they had merged into a seamless melding of the two.

‘What a fine trick,’ she said admiringly. ‘All it really wanted was the right light.’

The old woman looked sharply at Hattie. ‘That is all any of us wants,’ she said, incomprehensibly. She pointed at the map. ‘Look,’ she said to her fellows. ‘There is but one left.’

‘One what?’ said Hattie, for though she knew that the question was not addressed to her, she refused to be left out of the business.

‘One river.’ Hattie’s confusion did not lessen, for she could clearly see seven distinct rivers winding their way through the landscape.

But they were not all alike. Most were ribbons of colourless space, discernible only in contrast with the vivid green-and-blue terrain around them. One end of each waterway disappeared beyond the confines of the image, flowing away into who-knew-where.

Only one was different. The seventh river was a bright band of silver, like a thin stream of moonlight coiling through the land. Both its source and its end could be traced, and Hattie felt at last that she began to understand.

‘This is Faerie!’ she said, pointing at the map.

‘Aqua pura faerie,’ Theodosius said, almost at the same time.

‘This shows the current borders,’ Hattie continued. ‘They have contracted so much, most of the rivers now flow out of Faerie — or they flow in from outside.’

‘Out, beyond the light,’ said the old woman with a sigh. ‘And in, bringing with them the mortal taint of iron. Only one runs true and pure, and who can say how long it will endure?’

Theodosius pointed a finger at the trinket, still hovering in the air above their heads. ‘Those fruits,’ he said. ‘Are they what is meant by melaeon?’

‘They are,’ said the fog-haired woman. ‘Melaeon is why we are here.’

Brewer’s Yard! But a brew made from orchard fruits was…

‘You make cider?’ said Hattie in disbelief. She knew of it; everyone did, though few now living could say that they had ever tasted it. Berrie was once famed for the fruit and the produce created therefrom, though all of that had faded long ago.

After it crossed over from Faerie, Hattie realised.

‘Not anymore,’ said the man with the bronze hair.

‘We are most of the way to a tincture, then,’ said Theodosius, and he told them about the contents of Tobias’s strongbox. ‘Though I do not know how much use you will be able to get out of them, for there are not a great many,’ he finished.

His words electrified the company, for they all began to talk at once, demanding in their various ways that Theodosius bring the fruits here immediately and at once.

‘I dare not remove them!’ said Theo.

‘Then we will bring the box!’ retorted the man with the bronze hair, and he got up out of his rocking chair. Three others followed suit, and they were halfway to the wall before Hattie fully realised what was afoot.

‘But the starlight!’ cried she. ‘What of that?’

‘Greensleeves has it in hand,’ said the oldest of the women, and Hattie was obliged to be contented with that, for she said no more.

Theodosius was all but frogmarched through the wall by the fae, and Hattie hastened after him in some concern. Surely they did not intend to burst into the Moss and Mist without invitation, and carry off Tobias’s treasures!

But they did, for they hesitated not at the door to the tavern, and went in all as a group. Hattie saw at once that John Quartermane had carried through his promise of reopening the establishment that very evening, for it was full of drinkers, and Quartermane himself stood in Tobias’s usual position behind the bar.

The tavern fell silent as the fae stormed in, and Hattie saw a sea of familiar faces all staring in shock.

‘Penderglass?’ demanded John Quartermane. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

He was not answered. Indeed, he was pushed aside by the fae, and none too gently either, for he stood in front of the strongbox and was decidedly in the way. The fae picked up the box with no visible effort, each of the four grasping one of its four corners, and away they went again without so much as glancing at the barkeep.

‘That box belongs to the Mist!’ spluttered Quartermane in impotent indignation. His protestations went as unheeded as his questions, and within moments the door of the Moss and Mist had shut behind the four relentless fae, and Theodosius and Hattie with them.

‘Well!’ said Hattie, and dissolved into laughter. ‘I shall cherish that look on Quartermane’s face for many a year, I should think.’

‘Serves him right for stealing Tobias’s place,’ Theodosius agreed. ‘Hurry now, Hat, or we will be left behind.’

The fae vanished back through the wall, and Hattie and Theodosius squeezed through in their wake.

The strongbox was set down upon the stones of the courtyard and already opened by the time they caught up. The fruits inside shone in the eternal sunlight in a way they had never done before — eternal, Hattie thought, because though it was full dark in the streets of Berrie, not one whit had the light changed here in Brewer’s Yard. It was as though time did not pass there at all, and perhaps that was precisely it; perhaps it did not.

‘Not a great many,’ confirmed the eldest of the women. ‘It will barely suffice, but suffice it will. Quickly, now.’ She took the key from the lid of the strongbox and handed it to Hattie. ‘Aqua pura faerie,’ she instructed. ‘Make haste!’

‘But how can I find the way!’ Hattie protested, alarmed. ‘Shall not one of you go? For you will be far quicker than we.’ In truth she did not at all wish to give up the expedition, but the making of the tincture must be urgent indeed to explain the tearing hurry of the brewers, and she feared to prove herself inadequate for the task.

‘To set foot into Faerie is to sicken,’ said the fog-haired woman. ‘Some fae blood you both must have in you, but there is enough of the mortal to protect you. Only do not linger long! For your own sakes, and for ours.’

‘Where, then, is the way?’ said Hattie, mustering her resolution.

The woman with fog for hair pointed at the far wall, on the opposite side of the courtyard.

‘The young man will require Boots,’ said the eldest of the women, and the bronze-haired man immediately removed his own. They were as blue as peacocks and trimmed in pearl grey, as unsuitable for Theodosius as Hattie could imagine. She watched in delight as her brother discarded his own footwear and pulled on the Boots.

‘They fit very well,’ he said in surprise.

‘Hasten,’ said the eldest. Theodosius abandoned his admiration of his borrowed Boots and made an obedient salute.

‘Onward!’ said Hattie, and strode away. Theodosius followed. They marched at the wall without hesitation, and passed straight through into Faerie.