holli

Not to self: Don't re-read Stardust right before you have to work on your short fiction portfolio.

On the other hand, I do like this story a lot. It feels a little rushed towards the end, though.

Stol’n Away

In the country where this story takes place, there are a great many superstitions about the people who hail from the lands beyond the mortal world. Some are silly, spinning gossamer about friendly little shoemakers or fluttering nymphs. Others are wiser, and have deeper roots. They tell stories of a people who go by a great many names: the Fair Folk, the Lords and Ladies, the Sidhe, as many names as they have moods, and they are often fickle. The oldest stories warn against losing your heart to them, for their hearts are made of glass and crystal, of beech-wood and copper, and they do not understand how easily wounded a heart of flesh can be. Mothers do not speak of them over the cradles of their infants, fearing they might steal the babe away, and those with a talent for music do not sing of the Lands Beyond too often, lest they draw the attention of those who can make little music of their own.

It is agreed, by very nearly one and all, that the lands of Faerie are beautiful, and terrible, and too great a temptation for mortals to ever resist. The stories all agree that, should you ever find yourself among the Fair Folk, you should keep to yourself. You should not look too closely at them, or listen too long, and if they invite you to their table, do not join them. Despite the rudeness of it, refuse all food and drink they offer, for the essence of those lands will be in it, and should you take the merest bite, you will be lost to the mortal world forever.

There would not be so many warnings and admonitions against dealing with the Fair Folk if there were not still some trade between their lands and ours. Many towns in this country remember a strange convoy of merchants who arrived one day to sell wondrous goods; in the fishing villages along the coast, the oldest sailors tell of the day, in their grandfather’s time or before, when a ship with bright sails appeared on the horizon. These stories have a great many things in common, but the most important are these: when the traders left, they took with them things the villagers later came to realize they should not have given up. And none of them were ever visited again.

***
The Painted Wagon is an inn, a fine sturdy house with a good reputation, which it stands at a crossroads in a wood, further from the village than commerce would deem wise. It’s an old, old place; some say there’s been a Painted Wagon since the days before the magic went out of the world, and though it has been shored up and added onto and rebuilt a great many times, there is still a strangeness in it, an odd flickering in its great hearth when the wind blows from the East. Were it not for the reassuring presence of the innkeeper-- a stolid, steady man like his father and grandfather before him, and their fathers and grandfathers, time out of mind-- the inn might not be such a fixture, a bulwark against the changing world. But a bulwark it is, and as such it has always played host to the caravan of merchants for which it is named.

As I have said, it is not so very unusual for the Fair Folk to come visiting in mortal lands, though the bulk of these encounters lie beyond the bounds of living memory. The Painted Wagon is exceptional only in that its guests return, every seven years, for seven days, to hold a market between one world and t’other. It is a tradition that has outlasted a great many things, and it rests, as it has always rested, on the rock-hard common sense of the innkeeper's and the townsfolk of the village, and in the disinclination of the traders to the sort of mischief their kind is famous for.

So on the occasion of their next return, the villagers greeted the return of the traders calmly, without great fear or excitement. It was outsiders and young folk, for the most, who made a great fuss over the market. Though it was not well-known, in the traditional sense, news of the market traveled far and wide in certain circles, and every seven years, the Painted Wagon found itself filled with guests from every corner of the mortal world, seeking all manner of things. The villagers regarded these strange travelers with as much wonderment as they did the traders themselves, for they were not wanderers by their nature, and rarely went far enough afield to see different fields and forests from the ones they had known all their lives. They had little interest in traveling.

Oh, the young people dreamed, but young dreamers become old blacksmiths soon enough, and for the most part they had little interest in what the market had to offer. It was a fine event, to be sure, filled with wonders and miraculous things, but there was not a miracle nor a wonder yet could milk a cow or till a field. The villagers were happy to go to market, to see what was for sale and even buy a few things if the cost was not too dear, but they knew there was little they could bring back that could make the next seven years different from the last.

The caravan always arrived at twilight, from the East, the carriages and wagons rumbling out of the wood in a slow procession to the door of the inn. It was no different this time. The inn was rather fuller than usual, between the foreign guests and the curious townsfolk, who came because, while they held they Fair Folk in no high regard, neither were they completely disinterested; it was, as I have said, a small town, and there was little to do on a summer night more exciting than this. So when the knock came at the door, and the innkeeper took off his apron and came out from behind the bar in his Sunday best, he had a rapt audience indeed.

There was a tradition to this, one the innkeeper had learned watching his father greet their guests as a child, and that went back further than he could name his grandfathers. He waited for the knock, rather than waiting at the open door, his wife and son in their Sunday bests beside him; he bowed politely and was greeted in turn by the head of the traders. Once they had been paid, up front, for seven days and night of bed and board for all the trader’s people, the innkeeper’s wife curtsied to them and led the procession up the stairs to their rooms. There were more of them, the innkeeper noticed, than there had been the last time, but they were silent as they always were, the only sound in the place the rustling of silks and the chiming of beads.

As soon as the last of them disappeared up the stairs, the innkeeper fished out a coin from the purse he’d been given, and touched it to the iron horseshoe over the bar. When it did not disappear, or turn into an acorn or a pebble, the whole room released a breath it had not known it had been holding. This, too, was part of the tradition; the innkeeper had seen his father do it, and the horseshoe itself was older than anyone in the village.

“Well, that’s that, then,” said the innkeeper. “Make sure you bring up wood for the fires in their rooms.” This he said to his son, whose eyes were wide and bright with excitement. The boy had been only nine the last time the traders came, and the innkeeper knew he had been keeping track of the days until they returned on a slate in his room.

“Did you see the two girls who came in behind the headman?” he asked his father, beaming. “They looked near about my age.”

The innkeeper shook his head. “I hope I’ve taught you better than that, lad,” he said. “They’ll be leaving in seven days’ time, and you’ll be staying here. Leave them to their business, and keep to your own.”

“All right,” said the boy, but the innkeeper didn’t think he meant it.

***

The innkeeper’s son rose at dawn the next day, to watch the market take shape. The traders had brought their carriages and wagons around the back of the inn, to the wide meadow that stretched from the road to the edge of the woods. He sat on the kitchen steps, elbows on knees and head in hands, wearing his second-best suit, and watched as the traders unloaded their cargo onto long tables and the shelves of booths that sprung up as the morning progressed. Nearest to him were the two girls he’d seen the night before. One was laying glass flowers out on a green velvet cloth, while the other unpacked books from a chest with a carved knight fighting a wooden dragon on the lid.

“May I ask where the flowers come from?” he called over to the closer of the girls. She had black hair, blue-black, even, and green eyes and red lips and pale skin; he though she was the loveliest creature he had ever seen, but she did not answer him, only shook out another length of green velvet with a sharp snap.

The other, who watched this from over a stack of heavy tomes, laughed, and the innkeeper’s son realized that she was the loveliest creature he had ever seen as well, and with the loveliest laugh besides. “Sister, you are unkind to him. The flowers,” she said, now addressing him directly, and under her gaze he felt himself turn a little pale, “grow in the foothills of the Glass Mountain, which a king made long ago so his daughter could not be reached by her suitors.”

“Did it work?” asked the innkeeper's son, and made her laugh again. He was a handsome boy, the innkeeper's son, though he did not know it, and all innocent had captured the heart of many a girl in his village. Were these young ladies village girls, they would be half-charmed by him already, with his dark curls and his wide gray eyes, but the hearts of the Fair Folk are much harder to ensnare. He did not know this, of course, and had no intentions on any hearts at all, but he was curious, and the market had drawn him out of his habitual shyness.

“It did not work,” said the girl, whose hair put him in mind of the story of the man who spun straw into gold-- after the spinning part, of course-- and whose eyes would make cornflowers drop their petals out of shame. “Such things rarely do, but it never seems to stop anyone from trying.” She set the last of the books on their shelf, and pushed them into place with a final thump. “Is this the first market you have been to?”

It took a moment for the innkeeper’s son to realize that she was, in fact, speaking to him, and not to her sister or the books or the glass flowers, or anyone else more likely to be addressed by one so beautiful as she. “Oh-- no,” he said, stammering a little and trying not to blush, “I was there for the last one. My father’s the innkeeper,” he added, indicating the building behind him with a proprietary gesture. “You weren’t here, the last time-- were you?”

“I was not,” she said gravely, and came around the table to walk towards him. He sprung to his feet, not wanting to chance the slightest rudeness, and she smiled at him. “My sister and I have never been out of our family’s lands before. I would very much like to see more of this part of the world, for I only know of it from stories, and have seen very little on our journey thus far.” Her sister, still laying out flowers, looked entirely shocked; the innkeeper’s son suspected his expression was quite similar.

“Well-- well. I would be honored,” and at this he bowed, a courtly gesture somewhat spoiled by his forgetting to take off his bowler hat, which nearly fell off, “honored, that is, to be your escort. For, for the duration of your visit.” He looked up at her, still half-bowing, from under the brim of his hat. She was still smiling, which he dearly hoped was a good sign.

“That would be very kind of you,” she said. “Perhaps we could meet here, after the noon meal? I shall not be needed then, and will be free to wander.” He agreed that that would be perfectly suitable, though he likely would have done so no matter what prior demands on his time existed. It was very lucky for him, then, that there were none such conflicts.

***

The innkeeper's son met the girl where he had seen her last, and led her to the stable, where he had the cart ready to take her into town. “I’m afraid it’s not as fine as your carriage,” he said, “but then, I doubt there’s very much that could be.” She smiled at him, and said the cart would be fine, for she had never ridden in one before. “I must warn you, though, that the horse has a terrible temper, and he’s quite likely to stop short on a sudden whim,” he said, and smiled to show that he was mostly joking.

“It’s all right,” said the girl. “He reminds me of a unicorn I saw once, when I was small.” Off his look, which was frankly disbelieving, she explained, “Most unicorns are not especially beautiful, I am afraid. They tend to be temperamental, except for the ones that gallop down from the Moon, which are much nicer.”

“Oh,” said the innkeeper’s son. “Well, that makes me feel a lot better about this horrible old nag, then.” He twitched at the reins, shouted “Giddap!” at the old horse, and they set off down the road to the sounds of hooves and the girl’s chiming laughter.

On the second day of the market, the innkeeper's son took the girl to the orchard by the river, which was full of apple trees nearing ripeness, and the smell of fruit. “We have orchards at home,” she said, “but they bear golden apples, which force those who eat them to tell the truth, or silver apples which make you sleep for a hundred years.”

“These are just green, and a bit sour still,” said the innkeeper's son, “because they’re not really ripe.” On an impulse, he clambered up into the branches of the nearest tree, and filled his bowler hat with fruit. “Mother will make these into a pie,” he said. “She’s quite good at pie. If she offers you the stew, though, I’d advise you not to try it.” He dropped from the branch with a flourish and a rather spectacular landing, which made the girl gasp.

On the way back to the inn, they passed the henhouses of the farmer who owned the property alongside the inn, and the girl insisted they go inside and have a look. “But your dress,” the innkeeper’s son pointed out. “Henhouses are filthy. The smell alone-- I couldn’t let you. It would be churlish of me.”

“But I want to see,” the girl protested. “We have hens and geese at home, but I suspect that they are not the same as these.”

“What, do they lay emeralds and rubies instead of eggs?” he asked.

“Yes, actually,” she said. “And sometimes eggs, but golden ones.”

“My goodness,” he said. “Then what do you eat for breakfast?”

They passed the week thus, spending their days in the countryside, where the innkeeper's son explained that most fish, when you catch them, do not offer you three wishes in exchange for their lives, and at the market, where the girl showed him how to operate a storm-in-a-bottle, and they watched an old phoenix burn up into a rather sooty egg. Her sister looked more and more disapproving every time she saw them, but the girl airily ignored her, saying “She is much more concerned with form and appearance than I, for she is older than me by a minute or two, and my family’s responsibilities largely fall to her.”

“I understand how that is,” said the innkeeper’s son. “I’ll own the Wagon, someday, and my father tries to teach me how to run it. I’m afraid I’m rather hopeless at it, so, far, but I think when the time comes, I’ll be ready.” He nodded to himself, pursing his lips, as if doing so would make what he said true, and the girl found herself charmed by the little expression, the surety of it, the flash of confidence. He was only a silly mortal boy, she knew, but he had unexpected depths. This whole world did; it was not so bright or beautiful as her home, it plodded dully along for the most part, but there was something appealing to it, and to him.

Quite suddenly she leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek. He turned pale, and then red, and finally he said, “I should appreciate it if you warned me, the next time you did that.”

She laughed at him, and said, “But how do you know I will do it again?”

“I don’t,” he said. “I can only hope.”

***

On the seventh and final night of the market, the innkeeper’s son sat on the inn’s back stair forlornly, half an apple dangling forgotten from his gloomy hand. His shoulders slumped, his head hung, and his manner was altogether miserable, but this is not surprising, for he was seventeen and in love. Anyone who has experienced this condition knows it is unendurable, and has no cure but growing up. So, quite naturally, the innkeeper's son felt entitled to his misery, and planned to spend a lot of time with it in the days to come.

He was interrupted, however, by the opening of the door at the top of the stair, and the voice that called down to him. “I think that we must speak, before I go,” said his love. “I do not want to leave you so unhappy.”

“I’m afraid you have no choice,” he said, not turning around, “for you are leaving, after all, and I can’t be anything else but unhappy.”

“Turn around,” she said. “Look at me.” He did, he could not help it, and she stood above him on the narrow stair, framed in the open doorway by the light of the hall behind her. The innkeeper’s son realized, then, that the word “breathtaking” was not at all adequate to the experience of having one’s breath taken away.

“Would you come with me tomorrow, if I asked you to?” she asked him.

“I would want to, very much,” he said, “but I would not. This inn has been my family’s for longer than your people have been coming here. It was not always called the Painted Wagon, you know. It will be mine, someday, and I couldn’t leave it. Even for love.” He did not know what he looked like, sitting there, with the candlelight from the hall catching at his hair, and his gray eyes bright with unhappiness and love, and his voice full of sorrow. If he had known, he might not have been so surprised at what happened next.

“If you had said that you would come with me,” began the girl, speaking slowly, “if you had thrown away all thought of duty to your family, and sworn to forget them for my sake, I would have left tomorrow without you, and never given you another thought. And I doubt we would have returned in seven years, and I doubt you would have had a happy life, for I know what my people do to mortal hearts. But you would give up what you want for what you ought to do, and I find-- I find that I am not strong enough to do that. So I will stay here, and someday you shall be the innkeeper, and I shall be the innkeeper’s wife.” And with that, she kissed him, and his lips were sticky with the taste of apples, sharp and sweet.

***

Six years and three hundred and fifty-eight days from the end of the last market, the caravan rumbled out of the wood in a slow procession to the door of the inn, just as it always had. This time, however, there was no need to knock at the door of the Painted Wagon, for the innkeeper and his wife and children were waiting there already, all in their Sunday best. The head of the traders stepped out of the first carriage. She was a young woman, pale, with long black hair and green eyes and red lips, and the innkeeper took off his hat and bowed courteously to her. She curtsied back, and the innkeeper's wife, who’d had quite enough formality, said, “Wouldn’t you like me to introduce you?”

The head of the traders smiled at her sister, who laid a hand on the chestnut curls of the little girl who stood next to her. “This is Sylvia, who we named for the Lady of the Wood.” Sylvia bobbed a little curtsey, moved aside, and clung to her father’s leg. Behind her was a little blond boy, her twin. “And this is William, who we named for my husband’s uncle.” She urged William forward, but he was shy, and his sister pulled him over into the corner of the doorway. “And this one,” the innkeeper’s wife finished, nodding at the baby on her hip, “I call Aiofe and he calls Louisa, and we shall see what she decides upon when she is grown.”

“It is good to see you again, sister,” said the head of the traders who come from the Lands Beyond.

“And you, sister,” said the innkeeper’s wife. “Now, come in, for we have much to talk about, and there will be a market in the morning.”

That night, the innkeeper’s wife and her sister sat by the kitchen hearth, watching the baby play with a set of blocks her aunt had brought her, which had, painted on them, little figures who moved and flickered in the firelight.

“Our brothers are well,” said the head of the traders, “and they miss you. You could still come back, you know.” She wore a gown finer than the one the innkeeper’s wife had been married in, and sparkling jewels, and she looked very beautiful there by the fire, with her midnight hair and her moonlight skin. “I wish you would come back.”

“I know you do,” said the innkeeper’s wife, who was still the most beautiful woman in the village, though her hair was only yellow, now, and her eyes were only blue. “But I will not go.”

“Have you seen the-- oh,” said the innkeeper, stopping short as he entered the room. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s all right, dear,” said his wife. Her sister saw the way she looked at him, how much like the way she had looked at the last market it was, and how different, and knew she would be returning to her lands alone.

***

We warn our children that the country of the Fair Folk is enticing, that it has a wildness and a beauty that our world will never see again. But they tell stories, too, though they do not have the talent for it that is natural to mortals, and they warn that we have subtler charms, less obvious but all the more likely to ensnare. For though they are born with hearts of crystal, of oak, of river stone, they come from lands where transformation is not uncommon, and they know, from long experience, how very easily their hearts may be changed to fragile flesh.

So that, with the 3 pager I have done already, makes 15 pages out of 25. On to the superhero story, then!