Luna couldn’t go back without Rouger. Surely she would soon find some clue that would at least give her an idea as to where the Fay Queen (presuming, of course, that it was indeed her) must have taken him?
The wood rapidly became darker and darker, partly because the trees grew ever closer together in this part of the wood, but also because it was growing later and later in the day. The sun was dropping lower in the sky, its rays hardly penetrating the thick web of branches and limbs, only a blood-red glow shining like a scarlet vein through the densely packed trees.
Bathed in the last rays of the dying sun, Luna continued to plunge ever deeper into the wood. Around her now it was the berries of the hawthorn that sparkled. Like so many fairy hearts, they blazed in a way that reminded Luna of Rouger’s hair, his uncountable freckles.
At last, Luna could no longer hold herself back from crying. Her tears fell, glittering like spilt blood in the red light. They poured from her, from the wounds of her eyes.
The drops fell into the short grass by her feet, glistening as if they themselves were fallen berries, the comforting green grass like the bed of leaves they had left behind.
There was also something white there, something of the purest white.
It shone like the tiniest of moons, as if a mistletoe berry had become mixed amongst the hawthorn-berry tears.
Luna bent down to see what it could be, hoping it might be something the Fay Queen had dropped.
She picked it up.
It was a key. The smallest key Luna had ever seen.
*
Using a single finger, Luna turned the key around in the palm of her hand, inspecting it.
It certainly looked like something that the Fay Queen could have dropped.
It was intricately, beautifully made. It glowed, as if with its own light.
It was also bizarrely soft and malleable, as if the most useless key ever made.
As if, if you weren’t incredibly careful, it might be crushed and transformed into something entirely different. Or, indeed, anything you wanted it to be.
It was so minute, Luna was worried that she might lose it if she simply slipped it into her pocket. It could wedge itself into a corner, and never be found again.
Was there a door around here, a small door leading to the fairy kingdom that the key might open?
She could search for it, seek out this small door, she realised. But what if the key had nothing to do with the Fay Queen? What if any door it opened wasn’t anywhere near here anyway?
While she searched for the door, the Fay Queen would be riding farther and farther away.
She needed help.
If only Rouger were here: he’d know what to do.
*
Chapter 10
Angry and frustrated, Luna reached out for and grabbed a clump of the glistening hawthorn berries, relishing the sense of warmth and pleasure that flooded through her as she effortlessly crushed them in her ever-tightening hand.
The juice ran down from her hand, gushing like blood, as if her hand had been punctured by an evilly barbed nail.
The key!
It was so small, so unbelievably weightless, that she had forgotten she was still holding it in her palm when she had reached out for the berries.
Had she already lost the fairy key?
Urgently withdrawing her hand, turning it palm upwards in the same move, she hoped that the key hadn’t dropped from it at any time. She began to hurriedly run her finger through the small pool of crushed juice and berry pulp staining her skin.
She felt something soft; but then, the berry pulp was soft.
She saw something glistening; but then, the berry juice glistened too.
She gasped with relief – there it was!
It shone white and pure, like a cellular moon against the red streams of a dying sun. It glowed, even seemed to move, as if made of quicksilver. And as it moved, it appeared to mingle with the juice, quickening that too.
The juice pulsed in her hand.
She sensed that it had a steady beat, like that of a pumping heart.
Was the pulse merely her own, her excitement and hope making the veins of her palm surge and flow?
Was the beat only that of her own heart, its own steady rhythm quickened?
With her empty hand, she grabbed another thick clump of berries, once again crushing the life from them. She brought their pulped juices together with that she already held in her hand, the quickened merging with the dead. The resulting mix jumped and flowed in her cupped hands.
There was no mistake to be made now; something was coming to life in her hands.
*
If all this were the beginnings of a whole new life, Luna wondered, could she make it her own? That is, could she be the one who determined what form it would take?
Grabbing more and more berries, crushing them and evermore quickeningly bringing them to the mix already created, Luna formed an increasingly larger clump of the now red clay-like material.
She moulded it deftly in her hands even as she created the material itself. Thinking, as she did so, only of Rouger. Of the many happy memories she had of him, of his admirable qualities.
Even a close semblance of Rouger might be able to help her find the real Rouger.
She worked urgently, swiftly, letting her love for him, rather than any conscious thought, dictate the caressing of her hands.
In this way – if not as purely in this way as she would have hoped, for it was hard to completely control her thoughts – she allowed herself to flow into this new creation, hopefully granting it the life it would otherwise have lacked.
When she believed she had finished, she stood back to admire her work – only to sadly admit there was nothing to admire at all.
It looked nothing like Rouger.
It looked nothing like a boy.
It was a small mound of red clay, in a passably human form.
There was no detailing to make it appear as a particular human. Nothing that could possibly set it apart from any other rudely formed clay model of a human.
And, of course, it displayed absolutely no signs of life.
It didn’t think for itself.
It didn’t talk.
It didn’t walk.
It didn’t even move. Not even in the slightest way.
Even that quickening in the juices she thought she had seen earlier appeared to have been nothing but a figment of her overactive imagination after all.
Luna began to cry once more. This time far more miserably, and for far longer.
She had tried her best.
But her best hadn’t been anywhere near good enough.
*
Chapter 11
When Luna woke up the next morning, she was shivering, uncomfortable, and aching.
She had made herself a reasonably soft bed of leaves and grasses the previous night – realising that it was too dark for her to try and walk back to their farm – but as she’d moved around in her sleep through the night, most of this had been disturbed, gradually revealing the bare soil and stones lying beneath.
Alongside her, her warped creation stood as motionless as if on guard, like a lonely, single piece of the great stone circles we are reliably informed were once knights, petrified by the witch they were attempting to encircle.
She might as well head back home as soon as possible, she told herself, and hope that a grouping of the farmers would be more successful than she had been at tracking down Rouger’s abductor. First, however, she needed a drink, and a wash, to wipe away the coating of dirt she’d accumulated throughout the whole of yesterday and last night. As well, of course, to clean her face clear of the dried tracks of her many tears.
She glanced once again at the incredibly poor effort she’d made of creating a living version of Rouger. What had ever made her think this ugly lump of dried juices could have ever taken on a life of its own? she wondered, drawing closer towards it.
Just as the rays of the d
ying sun had struggled to shine through the tightly gathered trees of the wood, those of a new, rising sun were only just beginning to break through the thick weave of trunks and branches. The strongest beam, however, appeared to have deliberately sought out this facsimile Rouger, for the light lit up the otherwise pathetic figure in a glorious fiery glow. It was already baking the clay-like substance hard, taking away any last semblance of life as everything became set, permanent, unchangeable. The clay was cracking too, taking on the tangled, ribbed texture more akin to the interweaving stems of the hawthorn rather than the more blood-like juices of its berries.
Unless…
Even now, with so many of her hopes having being rudely dashed, Luna couldn’t stop herself from wondering if it were still possible to grant this odd figure life. Were the sun’s rays warming it, as a hen warms her eggs, and the new life springs from the cracking shell?
She pulled away an incredibly small, triangular segment of the figure’s shoulder, and peered inside.
No.
She’d been nothing but a fool once again.
Beyond the sun-dried shell, there was nothing but the undried, unformed pulped-juice clay.
*
The water of the gently flowing stream refreshed her.
She still felt miserable, but at least she felt cleaner.
She had to cut back along the part of the path where she’d slept the previous night, the stream being one that she and Rouger had discovered ages ago, lying that little bit deeper into the wood. She almost didn’t recognise the area where she’d stayed the night, however, for the malformed Rouger was no longer there.
Had it baked so hard it had simply crumbled into nothing? Or had a series of animals all taken away odd pieces of it, perhaps to nibble on later at their leisure?
‘Thank you, Luna!’
It was Rouger! She’d recognise that voice, that chortling cry, no matter where she heard it. And it was coming from high above her, high up in one of the tallest trees.
She peered up into the heavily spreading foliage.
Yes, he was there! Smiling down at her, with his cheeky, lop-sided grin!
He was so well camouflaged, however, it was no surprise at all that she hadn’t spotted him before.
‘Rouger!’ she cried out joyfully. ‘However did you get up there? How did you esc–’
‘I climbed of course,’ he yelled back gleefully as he swiftly scampered back down through the innumerable branches. ‘I wanted to see if I could see where the Fay Queen had taken the real Rouger!’
‘The real Rouger?’ Luna repeated anxiously.
And now, now that he had dropped with a typical Rouger flourish to athletically land alongside her, Luna could indeed see that this wasn’t the real Rouger after all.
He wasn’t a well-camouflaged Rouger.
He was made of hawthorn stems, leaves, berries. All carefully, delicately interwoven to form limbs, a neck, head, even a chin, mouth and eyes.
But there was a small, triangular patch missing from his shoulder.
*
Chapter 12
This new Rouger’s hair was made of shredded stems, died a flame red with berry juice.
His eyes were two whole berries, each resting on a small bed of white blossom. His mouth was a row of split berries, his teeth the hardened crowns of the hawthorn flower. His tongue was a leaf, his nose a conveniently formed, hollowed stem. His blood, of course, was the juice of many berries.
It was miraculous, this living copy of Rouger, made entirely of hawthorn. Yet Luna couldn’t help but still feel disappointed; he wasn’t of flesh, as she had hoped, not even of clay, as she had feared.
‘We must find the real me,’ the boy said, as if taking words from her own mouth.
Which, of course, was probably quite nearly the truth, for of course he’d been partly formed from her very hopes and wishes.
‘But we don’t know where the Fay Queen went,’ Luna pointed out, ‘and we don’t know much about the wood beyond the stream.’
‘I’ve seen a house,’ the boy exclaimed excitedly. ‘I saw it quite clearly when I was at the top of the tree. The people living there might have seen or heard someone passing.’
Luna frowned doubtfully.
‘How could you see a house in these thick woods? Rouger climbed these trees too, and he never saw any house.’
‘The house towers above most of the wood, because someone’s cleverly built it amongst the branches of the grandest tree I’ve ever seen. A tree the like I never saw before!’
Luna frowned again, this time in bemusement.
Did this new Rouger mean he could remember all the trees the real Rouger had also seen? In which case, this great tree must have magically appeared from nowhere, as the great oak had done. Or did he mean it was the grandest tree he had ever seen because he wasn’t, as yet, even a day old?
Either way, heading towards this towering house seemed a good idea.
At the very least, the house’s owner might allow them to ascend to its uppermost floors, from where they would be able to gaze for great distances across the wood.
*
There wasn’t any path, not even the roughest, most unused track, leading in the direction of the towering house Rouger (it is easier, isn’t it, if we simply call him that for now? Using anything more apt to his nature would only confuse matters) continued to insist he had seen from the top of the tree.
After a while, however, they at last began to glimpse the towering tree every now and again through the odd gap in the otherwise thickly surrounding wood. It was indeed a magnificent tree, even larger by far than the mighty oak that had magically appeared in the clearing. It rose up and up, as if stretching out to reach the very heavens themselves. As if, indeed, it was rooting its branches in the heavens, while its roots supported and held a precariously dangling Earth in place.
A house constructed of a melange of materials – wood, tile, brick, canvas, wattle, stone, iron, hay, and reed – rose up through the branches and stems of this great tree, its innumerable floors connected by bridges, steps, sweeping drives and ladders. But the closer Luna and Rouger drew towards this looming house, the more faults they spotted in its build; for the wood was rotting, bricks were crumbling, stones were slipping apart, iron rusting, and thatch was now home to only squirrels and birds.
Not far from the base of this impressive wreck of a house, someone had built a far simpler and incredibly small cottage. The stonework and mortaring of this small structure, however, were perfectly maintained. The garden, too, was well kept, a place to grow vegetables as well as a variety of jewel-coloured blooms. This was despite the obvious presence of children, for a swing hung from the branch of an apple tree, while a crude seesaw was positioned just by the gate. Only the roof of the house seemed in any way strange, for it was of neither tiles nor thatch, but made completely of the massed leaves of the apple tree, whose branches thickly draped over the stone walls.
Despite the golden glow of a flame that shone through the windows, the house appeared to be empty. There was no smoke coming from the chimney, no signs of life visible in the kitchen, or in the garden itself. Even so, Luna knocked on the door, hoping someone was home who could offer them any information on any strange rider who had passed by yesterday.
No one answered her knocking on the door, yet she did hear an oddly muffled sound, as if someone was trying to talk but their mouth was being held tightly shut.
Puzzled, Luna and Rouger stepped down from the doorsteps they’d been standing on and turned to leave.
‘They’ve all gone to see the midwife; another child on the way!’
The voice was bright and cheerful, but neither Luna nor Rouger had any idea where it could be coming from. It had seemed to come from the house as they’d turned their backs on it. Yet now that they had turned to look at it once more, the door was still firmly shut, and there was no one standing at the windows.
‘Who said that?’ Rouger asked con
cernedly.
‘I did, of course!’ said the house with a chuckle.
The two windows to either side of the door were its eyes, while its mouth was the double doorstep Luna and Rouger had just been standing on. No wonder the voice had originally sounded muffled!
‘Well I’ve never heard of a house that can speak!’ exclaimed Rouger in surprise.
‘Well I’ve never heard of a bush that can speak either!’ the house retorted, a little affronted by Rouger’s disbelieving tone. ‘Haven’t you ever heard it said how a house can speak many things of the people who live there?’
‘No, I’ve never heard that saying!’ Rouger replied testily.
‘Well there you go: I’ve just made it up for you, then.’
‘That’s not how sayings work, is it? You just make one up!’
‘Someone has to make it up in the first place, I’d think, don’t you? A saying doesn’t just appear out of thin air now, does it?’
Luna was surprised at Rouger’s rudeness and belligerence, as well as the way he was wasting time rather than asking if the house had seen the Fay Queen pass.
‘It sounds a perfectly sound saying to me,’ she said quickly, hoping to calm things down between the house and Rouger. ‘Perhaps, though, it’s not so much a saying as an observation?’
‘Yes, yes,’ the house agreed thoughtfully. ‘That’s a good observation that you’ve made, young girl: that what I said is an observation. Yes, yes – I like that!’
‘Then, I wonder,’ Luna continued, ‘with you being so good at observations, did you happen to see a rider pass by here yesterday? One on a white horse, and all dressed in white?’
‘Oh, you mean the Fay Queen!’
‘You saw her?’ Luna asked hopefully.
‘No, no; but I observed, didn’t I, that your description fitted all the tales I’ve heard of the Fay Queen.’
‘Tales? Can you remember any that describe where she lives?’
The house frowned as he pondered this before answering.
‘No, sorry: doesn’t she just live everywhere? She can appear from just about anywhere, anyway: as all the tales warn us! With so many children living here, we’re all well aware that they have to come running home as soon as they know she’s around!’