Salome and other Decadent Fantasies, page 20
“It may not have much melody,” said Chanterelle, “but I never heard a song so plaintive.”
“If it is a nightingale,” said Handsel, “I can’t begin to understand why the old man in the story thought the secret of making them sing by day so very precious.”
“I can,” whispered Chanterelle.
When she finally fell asleep, Chanterelle dreamed that an old man was chasing her through the forest, determined to make her sing again even if he had to do to her what the old man in the story had done—first to the nightingales, and in the end to Luscignole. Usually, such nightmares continued until she woke in alarm, but this one was different. In this one, just as the old man was about to catch her, a she-wolf jumped on his back and knocked him down—and then set about devouring him while Chanterelle looked on, her anxious heart slowing all the while, as her terror ebbed away.
When the wolf had finished with the bloody mess that had been the old man, she looked at Chanterelle, and said: “You were right about the mushrooms. They’d been spoiled by fairies of the worst kind. You’ll have a hard job rescuing your brother, but it might be done, if only you have the heart and the voice.”
“Mother?” said Chanterelle, fearfully. “Have you become a werewolf, then? Is grandfather a werewolf too?”
“It’s not so bad,” said the she-wolf, “but grandfather was wrong to think he’d find the solace of unselfconsciousness in the world of bears and wolves. Remember, Chanterelle—don’t eat the mushrooms.”
Having said that, the she-wolf ran away into the forest—and Chanterelle awoke.
* * * *
Handsel was already up and about, and he had gathered more mushrooms ready for them to eat. He seemed much fitter than he had been the previous day, and he was much more cheerful than before, but he seemed to have lost his voice entirely. When he spoke to Chanterelle it was in a hoarse and grating whisper.
“You must eat something, Chanterelle,” he told her. “We must keep our strength up. The red-capped mushrooms are perfectly safe, as you can see. I’ve suffered no harm.”
Had Chanterelle not had the dream she might have believed him, after some hesitation, but the dream made her determined to let the red-capped mushrooms alone.
“Did you dream last night?” Chanterelle asked her brother.
“Yes I did,” he croaked, “and rather frightening dreams they were—but they turned out all right in the end.”
“Was there a wolf in your dream?”
“No. There were other monsters, but no wolves.”
“I can’t eat the mushrooms,” Chanterelle told him. “I just can’t.”
“You will,” he said, his voice hardly more than a gasp “when you’re hungry enough. You’ll need all your strength, I fear, because I can’t shout any more. I must have overdone it yesterday, and now I can’t raise my voice at all. It’s up to you now. You have to sing out loud and clear.”
“I can’t do that either,” said Chanterelle, her voice falling to a whisper almost as sepulchral as his. She was afraid that he would become angry, but he didn’t. He was still her brother, even if he had eaten mushrooms enslimed by naughty fairies.
“In that case,” he said, “we’ll have to hunt for mother without calling out.”
That was what they did, all morning and all afternoon. The forest was so gloomy now that even the noonday hours hardly seemed daylit at all. The dark-clad branches of the pines and spruces were so dense and so extensive that it was difficult to catch the merest glimpse of blue sky—and where the sun’s rays did creep through the canopy they were reduced to slender shafts, more silver than golden.
Chanterelle grew hungrier and hungrier, and she hunted everywhere for mushrooms of the kind she had already eaten safely, but there were none to be found hereabouts. In the meantime, Handsel continued to pick and eat the other kind, growing bolder and happier all the while. If his voice had recovered its strength he might have made more effort to persuade Chanterelle to eat, but without the power to argue he had to be content with his earlier judgment that she would eat when she was hungry enough.
For four days they had wandered without catching sight of any predator more dangerous than a wildcat, although they had seen a number of roe deer and plenty of mice. That afternoon, however, they were confronted by a bear.
It was not a huge bear, and its thinning coat was showing distinct traces of mange, but it was a great deal bigger than they were and its ill-health only made it more anxious to make a meal of them. No sooner had it caught sight of them than it loped towards them, snuffling and snarling with excitement and showing all of its yellow teeth.
Handsel and Chanterelle ran away, as fast as they could go—but Chanterelle was smaller than Handsel, and much weaker. Before they had gone a hundred yards she was too tired to run any further, and her legs simply gave way. She fell, and shut her eyes tight, waiting for the snuffling, snarling bear to put an end to her with its rotten teeth. She felt its fetid breath upon her back as it reached her and paused—but then it yelped, and yelped again, and the force of its breath was abruptly relieved.
When Chanterelle opened her eyes she saw that Handsel had stopped running. He was snatching up cones that had fallen from the trees, and stones that had lodged in the crevices of their spreading roots. He was throwing these missiles as quickly as he could, hurling them into the face of the astonished bear—and the bear was retreating before the assault!
In fact, the bear was running away. It had conceded defeat.
“He wasn’t hungry enough,” Handsel whispered, gratingly, when the bear had gone. “Are you hungry enough yet, Chanterelle?”
“No,” said Chanterelle, and tried to get up--but she had twisted her ankle, and couldn’t walk on it.
“It’ll be all right soon,” she said, faintly. “Tomorrow, we can go on.”
“If the bear doesn’t come back,” Handsel said, very hoarsely indeed. “When it’s hungry enough, it might. If we can’t search any longer, you really ought to sing. A song might be heard where shouting wouldn’t.”
“I can’t sing,” said Chanterelle—and wondered, as her brother looked down at her, whether he was thinking about the way in which the old man in the story had forced Luscignole to sing again, as if she were a nightingale.
Handsel said no more. Instead, he went to gather red-capped mushrooms. When he came back, his shirt was bulging under the burden of a full two dozen—but all he had in his hands was a tiny wooden pipe.
“I found this,” he murmured. “It couldn’t have been hollowed out without a proper tool, and the finger-holes are very neat. Mother had nothing like it, but I suppose it might be grandfather’s. Perhaps father made it for him long ago, and gave it to him as a parting gift when he took mother away to the town. If it’s not grandfather’s, it’s the first real sign we’ve found of the fairy-folk. Will you eat the mushrooms now?”
“I can’t, said Chanterelle.
“I haven’t voice enough to shout,” croaked Handsel, “but I have breath enough to play. Perhaps, if you have a tune to follow, you’ll be able to sing.”
So saying, Handsel sat down beside his sister and began to play on the little pipe. He had no difficulty at all producing a tune, but it was as faint as his voice if not as scratchy. It was pitched higher than any tune she had ever heard from flute or piccolo.
“It must be a fairy flute,” said Chanterelle, anxiously. “All the stories say that humans must beware of playing elfin music, lest they be captured by the fairy-folk.”
Handsel stopped playing and inspected the pipe. “I could have made it myself,” he croaked. “Smaller hands than mine might have made it as easily, I suppose.”
“Elfin music loosens the bonds of time, in the tales that mother used to tell,” said Chanterelle, “and time untied has weight for no man....whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
“I think it means that while a fairy flute plays a single song, years may pass in villages and towns,” said Handsel, very faintly indeed. “I only wanted to help you sing, Chanterelle—but now the dusk is falling, and the darkness is deepening. I couldn’t see a bear by night, Chanterelle. I couldn’t hurt his nose and eyes with pine-cones. If the bear comes back, it will gobble us up. Are you sure you cannot sing, even if I play a tune?”
“Even if you play a tune, dear Handsel,” Chanterelle told him, “I could not sing a note. Even if you were to do what the man in the story did....”
“I never understood how that would work,” Handsel said, his voice like wind-stirred grass. “On nightingales, perhaps—but how could it work on the luckless Luscignole, unless she were a nightingale herself? Will you eat some mushrooms, Chanterelle? I fear for your life if you won’t.”
“A she-wolf warned me against them,” said Chanterelle. “I dare not—unless she comes to me again by night and tells me that I may.”
Handsel would not press her. He set about his own meal quietly--but he was careful to show her that he had only eaten half the mushrooms he had gathered, and would save the rest for her.
* * * *
When night fell, Chanterelle tried to sleep. She wanted to see her mother again, even if her mother had to come to her in the guise of a wolf. Alas, she could not sleep. Hunger gnawed at her stomach, so painfully that she soon became convinced that the bear could have done no worse. She tried to fight the pain, but the only way she could do that was to call up a tune within her head and the only tune she could summon was the tune that Handsel had begun to play on the wooden pipe that had somehow been left for him to find.
It was an old tune, perfectly familiar, but she had never heard it played so high. Chanterelle was afraid that it might be the key in which a tune was played that made it into elfin music, rather than the tune itself. At first, when the tune went round and round and round in her sleepless mind there was nothing but the sound of the pipe to be “heard”, but as it went on and on it was gradually joined by a singing voice: a voice that was not her own.
Eventually, Chanterelle realized that although the sound of the pipe was in her head, conjured up by her own imagination, the voice was not. The voice was real, growing in strength because the singer was growing closer—but how could it be, she wondered, that the imaginary pipe and the real voice were keeping such perfect harmony?
Chanterelle sat up, and began to shake her sleeping brother, who responded to her urging with manifest reluctance.
“Let me sleep!” he muttered. “For the love of Heaven, let me sleep!”
“Someone is coming,” she hissed in his ear. “Either we are saved, at least for a while, or lost forever. Can you not hear her song?”
The singer was indeed a female, and when she came in view—lit by the lantern she bore aloft—Chanterelle was somewhat reassured, for she was taller by far than the fairy-folk were said to be. The newcomer wore a long white dress and a very curious cape made from blood-red fur, flecked with large white sequins. She had two dogs with her, both straining at the leash. They were like no dogs Chanterelle had ever seen: lean and white, like huge spectral greyhounds, each with a stride so vast that it could have out-sprinted any greyhound in the world.
“Bad dogs,” said the lady, who had stopped singing as soon as her lantern had revealed the two children to the inspection of her pale and penetrating eyes. “This is not the prey for which you were set to search. These are children, lost in the wilderness. Were you abandoned here, my lovelies?” As she spoke she looked down at Chanterelle. Her eyes seemed strangely piercing; it was as if she could look into the inner chambers of a person’s heart. Chanterelle hoped that it was a trick of the lantern-light.
“We came in search of our mother,” said Chanterelle. “Have you seen her?”
“I’ve seen no one, child,” the lady replied. “I’m hunting a she-wolf, which has plundered my bird-house once too often. I thought that Verna and Virosa had her scent, but it seems not. What are your names?”
“I’m Chanterelle, and this is my brother Handsel.”
“Why are you whispering, child?” the lady asked, although her own voice was low, and her singing had been soft, in spite of the notes she had been required to reach.
“We have no voices left,” croaked Handsel. “Misfortune and too much shouting have taken them both away. Have you bread, perchance—my sister will not eat the mushrooms that grow hereabouts, because she fears that they have been poisoned by the fairies.”
“It is not so,” the lady said. “These old wives’ tales do a deal of damage, and are best forgotten. I have bread at home, and meat too, if you can walk as far as my house.”
“I can.” whispered Handsel, “but Chanterelle cannot. She twisted her ankle while fleeing from a bear.”
“Well,” said the lady, without much enthusiasm, “I suppose I can carry her, if you can hold the lantern and my dogs—but you’ll have to be strong, for they can pull like the Devil when they’re of a mind to do so.”
“I can do that,” said Handsel.
The lady gave the lantern and the two leashes to Handsel, and bent to take Chanterelle in her arms. For a fleeting instant the warmth of her breath reminded Chanterelle of the bear, but it was sweeter by far—and the lady’s slender arms were surprisingly strong.
“Who are you?” Chanterelle asked, as she was borne aloft.
“My name is Amanita,” the lady said, turning around to follow the dogs, which had already set off for home with Handsel in tow.
“I hope your house is not made of gingerbread,” murmured Chanterelle.
“What a thing to say!” the woman exclaimed. “Indeed it is not. Whatever made you think it might be?”
“There is a story about a boy named Handsel, who was lost with his sister in a wild forest,” Chanterelle told her. “They found a house of gingerbread, and began to eat it—but the witch who owned it caught them, and put them in a cage.”
“It’s exactly as I said,” the lady observed. “Old wives’ tales are full of nonsense, and mischief too. I never heard of such a thing. Do you think I’m a witch?”
“You were singing a song,” said Chanterelle, uneasily. “I was remembering a tune, and your song fitted the tune. If that’s not witchcraft, what is?”
“You poor thing,” said the lady, clutching Chanterelle more tightly to her, so that Chanterelle could feel the warmth of the blood-red fur from which her cape was made. “You’ve been sorely confused, I fear. Don’t you see, dear child, that it must have been my song that started the tune in your head? Your ears must have caught it before your mind did, so that when your mind caught up it seemed that the tune had been there before. But you’re right, of course; if there’s no witchcraft there, there’s no witchcraft anywhere, and that’s the truth.”
Chanterelle knew better than to believe that. She had heard too many stories in her time to think the world devoid of magic. She knew that she would have to beware of the lady Amanita, whatever her house turned out to be made of.
* * * *
The sleep that Chanterelle had been unable to find while she lay on the bare ground, fearful of the bear’s return, came readily enough now that she was clasped in Amanita’s arms. The lady did not carry her quite as tenderly as her mother would have done, but the warmth of the red cape seemed to soak into Chanterelle’s enfeebled flesh, relaxing her mind. In addition, the lady began to sing again, albeit wordlessly, and the rhythm of her voice was lullaby-gentle and lullaby-sweet.
In such circumstances, Chanterelle might have expected sweeter dreams, but it was not to be. This time, she found herself alone by night in a vast and draughty church—vaster by far than any church in the town where she had lived, let alone the village whose priest had advised them to search for their mother in the forest. Its wooden pews formed a great shadowy maze and Chanterelle was searching that maze for a likely hiding place—but whenever she found one she would hear ominous footsteps coming closer and closer, until they came so horribly close that she could not help but slip away, scurrying like a mouse in search of some deeper and darker hidey-hole. She never saw her pursuer, but she knew well enough who he must be, and what he must be holding in his gnarled and arthritic hand. She knew, too, that no she-wolf could come to her aid in such a place as this—for werewolves cannot set foot on consecrated ground, no matter how noble their purpose might be, nor how diabolical the schemes they might seek to interrupt.
When Chanterelle awoke, she realized that she was in a bed with linen sheets. When she opened her eyes she saw that the bed had a quilt as red as Amanita’s cape, patterned with white diamonds as neatly sown as any she had ever seen. It was obvious that the lady Amanita was an excellent seamstress—which meant, of course, that she must possess a sharp, sleek and polished needle.
Bright daylight shone through a single latticed window the shape and size of a wagon-wheel. Handsel was already up and about, as he had been the morning before. As soon as he saw that his sister was astir he rushed to her bedside.
“Isn’t this wonderful?” he said, gesturing with his arm to indicate the room in which they had been placed. As well as the bed on which Chanterelle lay it had a number of chairs, one of them a rocking-chair; it also had a huge wooden wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a wooden trunk and a tiny three-legged table. The walls were exceptionally smooth, but their grey surfaces were dappled with black and the curiously ragged shelves set into them were an offensive shade of orange.
“No gingerbread at all?” Chanterelle whispered.
“None,” said Handsel, who had obviously recovered the full use of his voice during the night. “I’ll bring you some bread. It’s freshly baked.”
Handsel left the room—passing through a doorway that was far from being a perfect rectangle, although the door fit snugly enough—before Chanterelle could ask where a woman who lived alone in the remotest regions of the Highland forest could buy flour to bake into bread. When he returned a few minutes later Amanita was with him, carrying a tray that bore a plate of what looked like neatly-sliced bread and a cup of what looked like milk.
Alas, the bread had neither the odor nor the color of real bread, and the milk had neither the color nor the viscosity of real milk.
