Crystine fumed, but what could she do now to get her bracelet back? Besides, the poor fool was still entrapped within the web of white strands.
‘So you’ve made a fool of me,’ she admitted, ‘but will you now please release my friend?’
‘Your friend?’ He glanced about himself as if looking for this mysterious ‘friend’.
‘You know who I mea–’
Her growl of anger was cut short as, with a twirl of a hand, the KingFisher produced a gleaming knife, as if out of nowhere.
Crystine stepped back, her gaze never leaving the threateningly held blade.
With a grim chuckle, the KingFisher tossed the knife onto the straw bed.
The air in the room briefly regained a strangely viscous fluidity: and the KingFisher was abruptly a crow, flying towards the shuttered window.
‘The deal! You haven’t released him!’
Crystine was so furious that she almost flew after him.
The crow landed on and clung to the top of the shutters.
He said, ‘Whatever do you think the knife’s for?’
Then the KingFisher transformed into a beetle, flying out through the small gap between shutter and window.
*
Chapter 23
That was all it took to release the fool?
A knife?
And she’d given away her Golden Apple and cloak of feathers for that!
She’d have been better exchanging them for the doctor’s strange crystal.
Now, she had nothing.
The knife cut through the woven strands as easily as if they were nothing but straw.
As more of the severed strands fell to the floor, suddenly the whole weave abruptly gave way: and the fool continued on his headlong lurch across the room, as if he had never, ever been interrupted.
Pitching forward, he grabbed at the darkened chair, it’s body of discarded clothes. He wrestled it to the ground, briefly tussling with it before bewildering realising it had no substance.
‘What? Where did he go?’ he asked, completely mystified.
He glanced everywhere about himself in an obvious state of shock.
Seeing Crystine standing close by, he also added with a similar air of complete bafflement, ‘How did you get out of bed so quickly?’
‘I…’
I’m tired, Crystine suddenly realised. Too tired to try and explain everything that has happened tonight.
‘Can’t it wait?’ she pleaded, carefully making her way over towards him. She didn’t want to disturb the sheet she was using to cover herself. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine, fine!’ he declared happily, just about leaping back up onto his feet in his excitement. ‘I mean, yes, it’s a shame he managed to get away from me: but it just shows what a fool I’ve been to fear him all this time! And all for absolutely no reason at all!’
‘What do you mean?’
Crystine wasn’t quite sure if she had misunderstood whatever it was he was trying to say.
‘The KingFisher, of course! Didn’t you see him? Of course, it was dark: perhaps you didn’t see everything – but I almost had him!’
‘It was just my clothes that–’
‘No, no! Not just now!’ the fool insisted, a touch irritated that Crystine thought he was such a fool he’d confused the clothes with the KingFisher.
He tossed Crystine’s blouse aside, as if to demonstrate his recognition of the difference.
‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to–’
He realised it was too late; he had already contemptuously flung it across the floor.
‘When then?’ Crystine asked, politely ignoring the fact that her blouse probably needed a good clean now.
‘Earlier! Before when, I know, he just seemed to vanish, didn’t it? Until then, though I’d had him beat! That was the only way he could escape; by using magic to disappear!’
‘He didn’t just disappear!’
‘That’s what I mean; it was a hard fight he’d put up, I’ll give him that!’
‘You were tied up, with all those strands–’
She tried to draw his attention to the severed strands she’d let fall across the floor. But all there was there now were pieces of straw, as if she’d scattered her bed about the room.
The fool observed her quizzically.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked concernedly.
*
The knife!
Crystine thought that the knife the KingFisher had given her would prove her version of events.
But all she held in her hand was an old card, a knavish looking Joker.
Not surprisingly, then, the fool didn’t accept any of Crystine’s many attempts to offer an explanation of what had really happened.
‘It must have just been a terrible nightmare,’ the fool pointed out when she began to explain how the KingFisher had turned into an octopus, a crow, a beetle.
‘Don’t you see how important all this is to me, to the princes– the queen?’ he persisted. ‘I’ve shown that all these supposed powers of this KingFisher are nothing more than a myth! We can head back; you can meet the April Queen, Crystine!’
‘But my bracelet–’
‘You’ve lost a bracelet in the dark: and picked up some old card as you’ve sleepily searched for it. Or maybe he just snatched it as you slept!’
‘I know what I saw!
‘But so do I, Crystine! I’ve even got the bruises to prove I fought him; and would have won against him, if he hadn’t cheated and scuttled off like the coward he is!’
‘Bracelets don’t just disappear!’
‘Necklaces do, remember?’
Even in the darkened room, Crystine recognised a slight hesitation in the fool’s voice.
‘Disappear?’ Crystine repeated challengingly. ‘Isn’t the tale told that it was probably stolen – by the KingFisher?’
‘Well, I…’
‘Well I what?’
‘I have an admission to make,’ he announced ashamedly.
*
Chapter 24
‘The night she lost it; I saw her that night…when she lost it.’
‘How?’ Crystine asked in response to the fool’s admission. ‘Wasn’t her bedroom supposed to be locked?’
‘Room? Well, yes; of course – I suppose so.’
He seemed strangely puzzled by Crystine’s statement, as if his memories of the event were far from clear, as if he were trying desperately to make sense of things that didn’t – when he tried to think about them in any detail – make any sense at all.
‘Being a princess, I suppose there must also have been guards on the outside of her room too, of course!’ the fool said, as if trying to persuade himself that this must be true, frowning once again as he tried to recall things more accurately.
‘Then…did she…?’
‘No, no; I wasn’t invited in! It was a dream, it must have been – or at least, I’d thought I was having a dream. At least, until the next morning, when I discovered what I’d seen was true!’
Crystine was disappointed. A dream? That's all he was describing?
But hadn't her own dreams of the Hag Queen turned out to have a basis in this bizarre new reality she found herself caught up within?
‘What had you seen exactly?’ she asked. ‘That the princess wasn’t wearing her necklace?’
‘No, as I said: I saw her when she lost it! As she lost it, I mean. When I first saw her, asleep in her bed, she was still wearing it. She looked so content, smiling as she slept! But then…’
He paused, as if he were trying to remember everything accurately.
‘…then, almost in an instant, she wasn’t! It had…gone!’
‘It seems more than ever that some form of magic was involved then!’
‘Yes, I suppose…so,’ the fool began unsurely, only to suddenly readily agree, almost with poorly disguised relief, ‘Yes, yes; that must be it, mustn’t it? There was definitely magic involved!’
‘That
may also explain why you saw it all happening in your dream; there was a connection between you and the princess, obviously – and the use of magic briefly strengthened that connection!’
As she confidently made this assertion, Crystine was naturally thinking of the weirdly strong connection that she had sensed existed between herself and the crystal.
‘That’s right,’ the fool elatedly agreed. ‘Earlier in the day, she’d told me she was so happy: she seemed almost blissful, as if every care had vanished from her mind. And I’d felt that way too, because it was like we’d sensed this deep – yes, as you said – connection between us, like we were meant to be together!’
‘So,’ Crystine continued excitedly, trying to make sense of all the confusing tales and events that she had recently heard or experienced, ‘the KingFisher took the necklace; then gave it to the elves – to give to me!’
‘No, the elves gave the necklace to the Queen of The Fall,’ the fool pointed out, correcting her. ‘And that was long before my love lost her own necklace.’
‘Yes, yes; that’s right. But the elves also gave me–’
‘No, Crystine! Not the elves! Surely you didn’t–’
‘Of course I didn’t! What must you think of me? I simply promised them I wouldn't tell anyone that I’d seen them in my world!’
‘Your world?’
‘Yes, you know: the world beyond this one!’
‘The fool frowned, puzzled.
‘You mean…the world of the dead?’ he asked hesitantly.
‘No, no – I didn’t mean beyond…I meant: meant it’s another world – one completely different to this one!’
‘Ahh,’ the fool said, sounding like he was having difficulty taking all this in, as if it were a struggle for him to accept what Crystine was saying to him.
Seeing his confusion, Crystine instantly realised the mistake she’d made; not everyone here seemed to be aware of her world.
‘I know it sounds ridiculous…’
‘No, not at all,’ the fool surprisingly replied. ‘Although, yes, when I’d first heard of the existence of this other world, I must admit I was shocked – doubtful. It didn’t fit with anything I’d been told about our world; unless you included the childish myths of a time when we used to trade the jewellery made by our queens with another world, long since vanished.’
‘When you’d first heard of this world?’ Crystine repeated uncertainly, wondering if she had heard him right, or simply misinterpreted what he had meant to say. ‘When was that?’
‘When the doctor–’
‘The doctor? He knows of this other world?’
‘Like you, Crystine, he claims to have come from it! Of course, I didn’t believe him; but now you’re saying virtually the same thing, then…well, what am I supposed to believe, but that there must be some truth in it all!’
‘Look, look,’ Crystine said exasperatedly, ‘I’m sorry I keep repeating what you’ve just said, but this is so important to me to get the details right: what do you mean when you say virtually the same thing?’
‘Why, the elves, of course; giving him the crystal he blames for bringing him here!’
‘How did it bring him here?’
‘That’s when it gets really crazy: he says he was supposed to return the crystal to the elves. But instead of going down the stairs from where he’d been, he found himself heading up – towards a large room than opened up into here, into our world!’
‘Off course!’ Crystine exhaled jubilantly. ‘The crystal! That’s why I felt a connection with it! Like the necklace, it’s a link between our two worlds! It might help me get back there!’
‘Get back there?’ the fool said sadly. ‘But…but…’
He seemed to choke a little, as if a piece of apple he’d been eating had briefly caught in his throat.
‘But I don’t understand why the elves had to give you this necklace!’ he said firmly. ‘It’s not as if you need it: you’re already…already…well, you know – beautiful!’
Crystine felt oddly flattered yet also embarrassed by his nervous outburst.
‘To be honest, I wasn’t always so, well, beautiful, I must admit, so – wait!’
Her eyes widened as something dawned on her, as she attempted to recollect everything that had so far been revealed to her.
‘I just realised something really odd: the Hag Queen told me a story, how the Queen of The Fall had been tricked into giving the necklace to the KingFisher…’
She paused, allowing the fool to take in what might possibly be new information to him. His eyes narrowed as he began to shuffle this in amongst the many cards of his other memories, bringing some to the top, discarding others as presently unnecessary.
Crystine decided she would have to give him a little more help.
‘…so why did he have to then steal it from your princess – sorry, from the April Queen?’
Now the expressions of the poor fool signalled that his mind was a whirl: and Crystine immediately regretted mentioning the Hag Queen’s story.
‘No, no,’ she blurted out hurriedly. ‘I think I might know what you’re thinking here, but–’
‘No, it’s not your fault!’ the fool snapped irately. ‘It’s mine! Yes, I have heard these stories at some point – I remember that now! I’d hidden them away, hadn’t I? Put them to the back of my mind where, hopefully, I’d forget them!’
Crystine reached out towards him concernedly.
‘We can’t say for sure that–’
‘How did my love come by the necklace, if it was in the possession of the KingFisher?’
He pronounced love bitterly.
‘A man who we now know delivers his gifts using the dark elves!’
‘We don’t know that this is how–’
‘Huh, only a fool would believe that this KingFisher would just give her this wondrous necklace out of the goodness of his heart!’
‘Can’t you see that there are too many holes in what we know?’ Crystine protested. ‘There’s just so much information missing that we–’
‘So you’ve got things missing too, have you?’
The blunt interruption came from the doorway. The half-dressed landlord was standing there, alongside a similarly dishevelled landlady.
She was holding a lamp. He was holding a raised sword.
‘But as he came with you,’ the landlady declared sternly, glaring unforgivingly at them both, ‘it’s beholden on you, I believe, to pay us recompense for what your friend’s stolen!’
*
Chapter 25
‘Ah well, at least we know what happened to your bracelet now,’ the fool said brightly, observing with a satisfied grin the severed strands of cotton that had previously held three of his jacket’s pearls in place.
That had been the price demanded by the irate landlord and his family on finding that the doctor had fled their establishment in the middle of the night. He had taken with him a number of expensive items he’d helped himself to as he’d quietly flitted through most of the inn’s many rooms.
Now the fool and Crystine were out on the road once more, the eyes of both of them locked on the far horizon; which was fortunate for the fool, as otherwise he might have witnessed his companion’s furious scowl.
‘I’ve told you what happened to my brace–’
‘A dream, like mine, that’s all. Come, you have to admit it makes far more sense that it was stolen by the doctor; along with all the other things taken from that poor family?’
In the cold light of day, nothing of what she’d seen the previous night made any sense; a man who transformed not only into a crow, not only into a beetle, but also into some kind of octopus, using the air as if it were as fluid and manipulatable as any patch of water.
Worse still, she thought she might have found her way home when she’d learned that the doctor was not only from there too, but also had a crystal linking the two worlds.
And now he and the crystal had gone. Vanished in the night.
If only, as the doctor had suggested, she’d traded her bracelet for the far more valuable crystal!
Or even traded her necklace for it, if she could have removed the damn thing!
They might have both been made by the elves, but at the moment the crystal sounded like it would be of far more use to her than the necklace.
But if they’d both been made by the elves; then that meant, surely, that the elves knew how to create links between the two worlds!
After all, they were also the ones who had come through to her world on at least two occasions that she knew of.
‘The elves; we have to visit the elves!’ she suddenly blurted out to an extremely surprised fool.
*
‘Why would anyone wish to visit such odious creatures?’ the fool stated sourly. ‘Unless...no, not you as well, Crystine?’
‘No, no: of course not! Haven’t I already said I’m not like that? I mean, I just need to ask them how to get back to my own world!’
‘Back to your world?’ the fool repeated a touch miserably, brightening up a little as he added, ‘But, of course, thankfully it isn’t so easy to just visit the elves, is it?’
‘Isn’t it?’
Even as she said this, Crystine recalled how the Hag Queen’s story had mentioned giants and ogres giving directions. But surely that was all just some sort of poetic licence?
‘Well,’ the fool replied with a grin, ‘I don’t know which version of the tale you heard, but it’s not just a question of finding the elves: the Mountains that Overlook the World would take months to reach. Unless you happen to have the queen’s magical cloak, of course!’
‘Oh yeah, of course,’ Crystine murmured gloomily.
*
Despite Crystine’s many attempts to persuade the fool to give her directions to the elves, he refused each time with some excuse or another.
‘Besides,’ the fool said bitterly after giving yet another reason not to visit the elves, ‘they can’t be trusted.’
‘Look,’ Crystine snapped in exasperation, ‘you can’t believe everything you read in a story! Because, yes, I’m not stupid: I know all these excuses all come down to you being upset with your April Queen possibly meeting these elves!’