Miss Landon and Aubranael (Tales of Aylfenhame Book 1) (5 page)

Sophy accepted readily enough, feeling slightly uncomfortable. Truthfully, she
was
delighted with him and did not at all enjoy the prospect of her imminent departure; she may never see him again. He had been far more agreeable than the other young men she knew, who saw only her lack of fortune, her lack of connections or her faults of face and figure, and offered her politeness as a mere matter of form.

But it would not be at all proper to say so, and besides, she could not find the words. So she walked along in distracted silence as Aubranael toured her back through the market square—now much more peaceful than before—and showed her street after street of eccentric, jumbled up houses, shops and gardens.

Sophy was struck by the weird beauty of everything she saw. The buildings might be irregular and outlandish in design, but they were painted and decorated and hung with all manner of adornments in a display of good cheer which warmed her heart. Gardens overflowed with peculiar blooms in hundreds of colours; fruit trees stretched over the paths, laden with many-coloured produce Sophy had never seen before; she saw metals, wood and sparkling stones that would fetch a great price in England, lovingly set into doorways and window-sills, walls, roofs and garden paths. The riot of colour would probably offend the people she knew in Tilby, especially those of higher status: pale hues, regular structures and relative simplicity of design were considered much more the thing. But to Sophy, the golden afternoon sun softly illuminating this feast of colour warmed her heart and lifted her spirits.

She was disappointed when Aubranael stopped at the Grenlowe gate. Beyond it she could see the verdant meadow she had passed through on her arrival, and the bell-bedecked trees, and beyond all this the promise of a great forest to explore.

‘If it is your wish to return, you need merely touch the gate,’ Aubranael told her.

Sophy stretched out her hand, then paused. Did she truly wish to leave this vibrant, exciting place? Much was said of the dangers of Aylfenhame, or Faerie; she had heard many such stories ever since her infancy. But she had seen nothing of danger. She had seen only colour and life and beauty, and met with kindness and considerable charm.

She hesitated.

But if she stayed, where would she go? What would she do? She had no home here, and could hardly expect anybody to provide her with one. And what of her father? Had she forgotten him? Her cheeks flushed warm with mortification at the idea, and she berated herself for her selfishness. Who would look after him if she did not?

‘I thank you, sir, for your kindness,’ she said to Aubranael. ‘I have been most happily detained, and I cannot think when I have enjoyed an afternoon more. But I must return home.’

She thought she saw a flicker of regret in Aubranael’s dark eyes, but he beamed at her and swept an extravagant bow—taking notes, she thought, from Thundigle. ‘Very well, fair lady! Well met and I wish you health and prosperity and joy and, indeed, anything else good you can think of.’

His grin was irresistible; though his words suggested a belief that they would not meet again, she could not help smiling back.

‘I wish you the same, tenfold,’ she said. Then, quickly before she could change her mind, she gathered up Thundigle and pressed her palm flat against the cool stone of the gate. In a trice, the meadow and the gate faded as her vision blurred. She blinked rapidly to restore her sight, and found herself looking instead at the familiar fields of Tilby.

She stood near Balligumph’s bridge, but she did not wish to summon him, for her thoughts were too busy and her heart too heavy for conversation. But as she crossed the bridge, she trailed her fingers over the cold stone and whispered, ‘Thank you, you sly old troll.’

She thought she heard an answering chuckle from somewhere under the bridge, but Balligumph did not appear. Sophy turned her steps towards home and her father, leaving the wonders of Aylfenhame behind.

Now, dunnot look at me that way! I did naught amiss. Ye’re as bad as that meddlin’ brownie. Made her unhappy with her own world, that’s what he said. I made her long fer summat out o’ her reach. But did I? What if Miss Sophy is made fer different things?

Well, it weren’t so simple as either of us expected, that’s the truth. An’ if ye’ll allow me, I’ll go right ahead an’ explain why.

Chapter Three

A number of days wandered lazily by in Aylfenhame, and Aubranael wandered with them: through the streets of Grenlowe, over its surrounding meadows, and far beyond. His only companion was the cat, Felebre.

‘I think something is wrong with me, Fel,’ confided Aubranael on the fifth such wandering day. ‘All the world seems dull and drear. I can take no pleasure in anything. Exploring? Pfeh. Let the hills sleep in peace. Food? Hmph. It tastes of nothing. I no longer care what lies beyond the next rise; it will not be
Tilby
, and therefore it is of no interest to me.’

Felebre was a feline of taciturn nature. She rarely made any reply to Aubranael’s musings, and she made none now.

Aubranael sighed. He was leaning on the gated entryway to Ahrimir Wood, some way from the town of Grenlowe; now he leaned his ruined face on it, too, so he would no longer be troubled with the effort of holding up his head. ‘This is the problem with you,’ he said to the cat, who had somehow balanced her considerable bulk along the top of the fence. ‘There is no finer companion in all of Aylfenhame, I am sure, but I do wish you might be a little more communicative.’

Felebre twitched the tip of her long, shining tail and closed her shining golden eyes.

‘Yes; perhaps sleep is the best idea,’ he agreed. But he could not sleep, any more than he could eat. His thoughts were too busy, too confused, too troubled.

It was not the first time Aubranael had longed for a talkative companion. He had done so without pause ever since his childhood, and the incident that had destroyed his face. He had lost his best and only friend and his beautiful Ayliri visage at the same time; down all the many years since that day, he had been an outcast.

For some, his repulsive appearance was deterrent enough. The Faerie of Aylfenhame loved beauty, and deplored ugliness. The latter category certainly included Aubranael.

But if he had ever expected a different attitude from others among Faerie—the awkward and ungainly hobs, for instance, or the decidedly malformed goblins—his hopes had long since died, for they loved beauty, too. Some tried to curry favour with the beautiful by mimicking their behaviour, and rejecting those whom they rejected; others considered Aubranael unlucky to be close to, as if his particular, unique form of ugliness might in some fashion infect them.

Whatever the reason, Aubranael had grown used to being alone.

Until the strange lady from Tilby had arrived. Fortune had, for once, favoured him: his hair had hidden his features, and he had been granted a few precious minutes to talk in the way that real, whole, unblemished people do.

Even when she had discovered his true face, she had been kind. He blushed to remember the look of surprised horror in her eyes when the winds and Felebre had conspired to reveal him; but he quickly suppressed the memory. She had been kind. Even when relief and fear and hope had rendered him flamboyant, garrulous and absurd, she had still been kind. She had treated him as though even his appalling aspect might hide a mind worth knowing. If she had been pretending, well… she had done so with skill.

Perhaps she had not been pretending. Perhaps, in faraway England, people were not so fixated upon beauty as the folk of Aylfenhame. Perhaps they ignored faces altogether! Could it not be true?

No; absurd. The horror in Miss Landon’s eyes told him that much.

He was glad, then, that he had resisted the wild impulse to fly after her, and try his fortune in England instead.

But he continued to think of her. It was her smile, he thought, that attracted him so; for it was sunny and warm, full of a simple delight in life and—perhaps he flattered himself—his company. There was something in that merry, half-dimpled smile that reminded him of Lihyaen… a very little. But he hurriedly dismissed
that
reflection from his mind. He had made many a pact with himself, all down the lonely years, that he would not dwell upon the past.

A few more days slipped by, and Aubranael began to regret the curious chance that had thrown him in the way of the Tilby lady. Until that day, he had lived in blissful ignorance of how much he missed real companionship. And now? He felt that he would never know peace again.

It was Felebre, surprisingly, who resolved his difficulties. By way of a tilted head, lashing tail and prowling in circles, she gave him to understand that she wished for him to follow her. He did so without argument; indeed, without even particularly noticing that he was doing so, and for some time he merely followed in a daze as she led him across meadows, over bridges and through dense woodlands.

Only once was he distracted from his internal reflections. He and Felebre were in the midst of a deep, dark forest when a wholly unexpected sound split the air: a shriek of high-pitched laughter, which rang and rang until, finally, it ended in a snort. The sound was repeated moments later, and Aubranael began to look around for the source.

Felebre had led him into the Outwoods, he realised; it was one of the largest forests in Aylfenhame, so dark and dense as to be almost impenetrable in places, and many avoided it altogether. Aubranael had no fear of it, however, for he and Felebre had spent many long days exploring it. He had heard many tales of its dangers, but little had ever threatened him here.

A gust of wind parted the thick canopy overhead, and a shaft of sunlight shone briefly upon Aubranael. And he saw ahead of him one end of a large dining table sitting incongruously among the trees, its sides lined with high-backed chairs. Each chair was occupied: he caught glimpses of hobs and goblins and brownies and other fae all talking loudly together. The table-top was covered in tea-things.

Intrigued, Aubranael changed course and set off in the direction of the peculiar picnic in the woods. But the faster he chased the table, the further away it seemed to be; and at last it faded away altogether, leaving him puzzled and panting in a silent, empty clearing in the Outwoods.

A gentle bite on his ankle recalled him to himself. He scowled down at Felebre, who stood gazing up at him with an air of irritation.

‘Well, I am sorry. But you must admit it was the strangest thing!’

Felebre made no such concession.

‘I have never seen or heard of that before, have you?’ Aubranael tried.

Felebre stared at him with unblinking eyes.

‘I suppose not,’ he sighed. ‘Very well; on we go.’

And on they went through the endless Outwoods. The table soon faded from Aubranael’s thoughts, and he returned to the contemplation of his own troubles, scarcely noticing the route they were taking or any feature of the landscape around him.

When at length they finally stopped, Aubranael blinked as if waking from a long sleep. Felebre sat watching him with her tail wrapped neatly around her paws.

‘What’s this, Fel?’ A glance around revealed nothing of obvious interest, except for the fact that he had never been to this place before. They stood at the bottom of a wide valley, in a little hollow clear of trees. Everything else around them was thickly forested; trees marched in clustered rows up, up and away over the steep sloping sides of the valley, crowded so thickly together that they blocked much of the sunlight. Or moonlight, in fact, for Aubranael realised with some surprise that it was now deep twilight.

He could see nothing that might explain Felebre’s choice of this exact spot, and he said so.

Felebre blinked her enormous eyes, as golden as the rising sun, and said nothing.

Aubranael was about to say something more; something a little bit irate, perhaps, since they had undertaken a great deal of walking to no obvious effect, and he was cold and tired; but a voice much more powerful than his own interrupted him.

‘Who is at my door!’

It wasn’t so much a question as a statement, redolent with the suggestion that whoever it was would shortly be suffering no end of punishments for their unauthorised proximity. Aubranael jumped, his straining eyes searching for the source and finding nothing.

‘I… am called Aubranael,’ he said, trying to sound confident. He defeated all efforts to the purpose when he added, ‘And I do not know why I am at your door.’

There was silence for a long moment. Aubranael spent the time nervously awaiting smiting, cursing, pulverising or any other variety of retribution, and searching without success for any sign of the disputed door. No retribution came, however; there was only the creak of a door opening, and then a space appeared ahead of him.

The door had no business being there at all, he thought with obscure irritation, for it appeared to be opening in the middle of a tree. Beyond it, a gleaming light showed him no tree trunk but a perfectly ordinary room, and a large one at that.

A figure appeared in the doorway. From the timbre of her voice he judged it to be a she, but nothing about the figure encouraged any such conclusion. So swathed in layers of cloth was this probable
she
that he could not even discern what manner of creature she was.

‘Felebre,’ said the figure. ‘Brought me another one, have you? Hmph.’ She nudged the cat with her toe, none too gently. Fel bore this interference with untouched serenity.

‘Come in, then,’ she said. ‘And quickly; the night grows cold.’

Aubranael followed the lady inside, judging that a regular acquaintance of Fel’s must be a safe person to visit. He hoped that the shiver in his limbs was not leading his wits astray. Inside the peculiar chamber he found a crackling fire; a great quantity of light provided by a number of floating glass lamps; and a heady aroma like the pure essence of summer, rich with nectar and sunshine and a warm evening breeze. He inhaled deeply, and smiled.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ said his host, as though he had spoken his appreciative thoughts aloud. ‘I do like to keep it pleasant.’