Black Heart, Ivory Bones

Chanterelle BRIAN STABLEFORD

Brian Stableford lives in Reading, England, and is the author of more than forty novels including Empire of Fear, Young Blood, and Inheritors of Earth. His most recent publications include Teach Yourself Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction, Yesterday’s Bestsellers, Glorious Perversity: The Decline and Fall of Literary Decadence, The Dictionary of Science Fiction Places, and the novel The Black Blood of the Dead. His short stories have been published in Interzone, OMNI Internet, and Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers. Stableford is also the editor of The Dedalus Book of Decadence (Moral Ruins), Tales of the Wandering Jew, and The Dedalus Book of Femme Fatales.

There was once a music-loving carpenter named Alastor, who fell in love with Catriona, the daughter of a foundryman who lived in a Highland village near to the town of his birth. Catriona was known in the village as the Nightingale, because she had a beautiful singing voice. Alastor loved to play for her, and it was while she sang to his accompaniment that she fell in love with him.

When Alastor and Catriona were married, they left the Highlands for the Lowlands, taking up residence in the nation’s capital city, where Alastor was determined to make a living as a maker of musical instruments. Their first child, a son, was born on the first Monday after New Year’s Day, which is known throughout Christendom as Handsel Monday.

A handsel is a gift made to celebrate a new beginning, as a coin might be placed in the pocket of a freshly tailored coat. Alastor knew that his son might be seen as exactly such a gift, bestowed upon his marriage, and he was determined to make the most of him.

“Should we call him Handsel, do you think?” Alastor asked Catriona.

“It is a good name,” she said.

Every choice that is made narrows the range of further choices, and when the couple’s second child was due, Alastor said to Catriona: “If our second-born is a girl, we must not call her Gretel. There is a tale in which two children so-named are abandoned in the wild forest by their father, a poor woodcutter, at the behest of their stepmother. The tale ends happily enough for the children, but we should not take chances.”

“You are not a woodcutter, my love,” Catriona replied, “and we live in the city. We left the wild forest behind us when we left the Highlands, and I am not sure that we should carry its legacy of stories and superstitions with us.”

“I think we should,” said Alastor. “There is a wealth of wisdom in that legacy. We may be far away from the haunts of the fairy-folk, but we are Highlanders still. There have been those in both our families who have had the second sight, and we have no guarantee that our children will be spared its curse. We should be careful in naming them, and we must take care that they hear all the stories we know, for whatever their guidance might be worth.”

“Here in the city,” said Catriona, “it is said that children must make their way in the real world, and that stories will only fill their heads with unreasonable expectations.”

“They say that,” admitted Alastor, “but the city-dwellers have merely devised a new armory of stories, which seem more appropriate to the order and discipline of city life. I would rather our children heard what we had to tell — for they are, after all, our children.”

“What name did you have in mind?” Catriona asked him.

“I hope that our son might choose to follow me in working with his hands,” Alastor said. “I would like him to master the grain of the wood, in order that he might make pipes, harps, fiddles, and lutes. I hope that our daughter might complement his achievements with a singing voice the equal of your own. Let us give her a name which would suit a songstress.”

“Ever since I was a girl,” said Catriona, “I have been nicknamed Nightingale — but if you mean what you say about the wisdom of stories, we should not wish that name upon our daughter. No sooner had it been bestowed upon me than I was forced to listen to the tale of the little girl who fell into the care of a wicked man who knew the secret of training nightingales to sing by day. Even today I shudder when I think of it.”

“She was imprisoned in a cage by a prince, was she not?” said Alastor. “She was set to sing in the depths of the wild forest, but suffered misfortune enough to break her heart, and she refused to sing again, until she fell into the clutches of her former master, who—”

“Please don’t,” begged Catriona.

“Well,” said Alastor, “we must certainly avoid the name that was given to that girl — which was Luscignole, if I remember rightly. I wonder if we might call our daughter — if indeed the child you are carrying should turn out to be a daughter — Chanterelle, after the highest string of a musical instrument?”

“Chanterelle is an excellent choice,” said Catriona. “I never heard a story about a girl named Chanterelle. But what if the baby is a boy?”

There is no need to record the rest of the conversation, for the child was a girl, and she was named Chanterelle.

When Handsel and Chanterelle were old enough to hear stories, Catriona was careful to tell them the tales that were popular in the city as well as those she remembered from her own childhood in the Highlands, but it was the Highland tales that they liked better. Although there was not the faintest trace of the fairy-folk to be found in the city, it was the fairy-folk of whom the children loved to hear tell.

Handsel, as might be expected, was particularly fond of the tale of Handsel and Gretel. Chanterelle, on the other hand, preferred to hear the tale of the foundryman who was lured away from his family by a fairy, until he was called back by the tolling of a church bell he had made, which had fallen into a lake. Catriona told that story to help her children understand the kind of work her father did, although she assured them that he was not at all the kind of man to be seduced by a fairy, but it was Alastor who told them the story of the little girl whose wicked guardian knew the secret of making nightingales sing by day. Catriona could not tell that story without shuddering, and she did not altogether approve when her husband told the fascinated children that she had once been nicknamed Nightingale, even though she had always been able to sing by day.

“In actual fact,” Catriona told her children — using a phrase she had picked up in the city—“nightingales are not very good singers at all. It is the mere fact of their singing by night that is remarkable, not the quality of their performance.”

“Why can we not hear them?” Handsel asked. “I have never heard any bird sing by night.”

“There are no nightingales in the city,” she told them. “They are rare even in the forests above the village where I was born.”

“As rare as the fairy-folk?” asked Chanterelle.

“Even rarer, alas,” said Catriona. “Had more of my neighbors heard one, they might have been content with my given name, which comes from katharos, or purity.”

As Alastor had hoped, Handsel soon showed an aptitude for woodwork, and he eventually joined his father in the workshop. He showed an aptitude for music too, and was soon able to produce a tune of sorts out of any instrument he came across. Chanterelle was no disappointment either; she proved to have a lovely voice. She sang by day and she sang by night, and on Sundays she sang in the choir at the church that Alastor and Catriona now attended.

All was well — until the plague came.

“It is not so terrible a plague as some,” Alastor said to Catriona, when Handsel was the first of them to fall ill. “It is not as rapacious as the one in the story of the great black spider — the one which terrified and blighted a Highland village, infecting the inhabitants with fevers that sucked the blood and the life from every last one. This is a disease which the strong and the lucky may resist, if only fortune favors them.”

“We must do what we can to help fortune,” Catriona said. “We must pray, and we must nurse the child as best we can. He is strong.”

The instrument-maker and his wife prayed, and they nursed poor Handsel as best they could — but within a week, Chanterelle had caught the fever too.

Alastor and Catriona redoubled their efforts, praying and nursing, fighting with every fiber of flesh and conviction of spirit for the lives of their children. Fortune favored them, at least to the extent of granting their most fervent wishes. Handsel recovered from the fever, and so did Chanterelle — but Catriona fell ill, and so did Alastor.

The roles were now reversed; it was the turn of Handsel and Chanterelle to play nurse. They tended the fire, boiled the water, picked the vegetables, and cooked the meat. They ran hither and yon in search of bread and blankets, candles and cough-mixture, and they prayed with all the fervor of their little hearts and high voices.

Catriona recovered in due course, but Alastor died.

“I was not strong enough,” Handsel lamented. “My hands were not clever enough to do what needed to be done.”

“My voice was not sweet enough,” mourned Chanterelle. “My prayers were not lovely enough for Heaven to hear.”

“You must not think that,” Catriona said to them. “Neither of you is at fault.”

They assured her that they understood — and it seemed that Handsel, perhaps because he was the elder, really did understand. But from that day forward, Chanterelle refused to sing. She would not join in with the choir in church, nor would she sing at home, by day or by night, no matter how hard Handsel tried to seduce her voice with his tunes.

Catriona and Handsel tried to complete the instruments that Alastor had left unfinished. They even tried to begin more — but Handsel’s hands were only half grown and his skills less than half trained, and Catriona’s full-grown hands had no woodworking skill at all. In the end, Catriona and her children had no alternative but to sell the shop and their home with it. They had no place to go but the Highland village where Catriona’s parents lived.

The journey to the Highlands was long and by no means easy, but their arrival in the village brought no relief. The plague had left the highest parts of the Highlands untouched, for no fever likes to visit places that are too high on a hill, but it had insinuated itself into the valleys, descended on the villages with unusual ferocity. When the exhausted Catriona and her children finally presented themselves at the foundry, they found it closed, and the house beside it was dark and deserted.

Neighbors told Catriona that her mother had died, and her mother’s sister, and her father’s brother, and her father’s brother’s wife, and both their sons, her only cousins.

The catalogue of catastrophe was so extended that Catriona did not notice, at first, that her father’s name was not included in it — but when she did, the flicker of hope that burst forth in her frightened mind was quenched within a minute.

“Your father,” the neighbors said, “was driven mad by loss and grief. He fled into the wild forest, determined to live like a bear or a wolf — for only bears and wolves, he said, know the true joy of unselfconsciousness. Before he went he cast the bell that he had made for our church into the tarn, declaring that the spirits of the lake were welcome to roll it back and forth, so that its echoes would toll within his heart like the knell of doom. He had heard a story, it seems, about another founder of bells who went to dwell in the wild forest, among the fairy-folk.”

“He told me the story half a hundred times, when I was a child,” Catriona admitted. “But that was a tale of vaulting ambition, about a man who sought unprecedented glory in the mountain heights because he was seduced by a fairy. If what you say is true, my father has been stolen rather than seduced, by demons and not by fairies.”

“We are good Christians,” the neighbors said piously. “We know that there is no difference between demons and fairies, no matter what those with the second sight may say. The house is yours now, by right of inheritance, and the foundry too — you are welcome to make what use of them you will.” Perhaps that was honest generosity, or perhaps the villagers thought that the foundry and house were both accursed by virtue of the death and madness to which they had played host. In either case, the donation was useless; if Catriona and Handsel could not run a workshop in the city, they certainly could not run an iron-foundry in a Highland village.

“There is only one thing to be done,” Catriona told the children. “I must go into the wild forest to search for my father. If only I can find him, I might make him see sense. At least I can show him that he is not alone. Pray that the idea of meeting his grandchildren for the first time will persuade him that it is better to live as a human than run wild as a bear or a wolf.”

“Will he not be a werewolf, if he has been away too long?” Handsel asked. “There is a story, is there not …?”

“You are thinking of the tale in which an abandoned boy became king of the bears,” Catriona told him, firmly, although she knew that he was thinking of another bloodcurdling tale of Alastor’s. “He called upon their aid to reclaim his inheritance, if you remember, and they obliged. What I must do is help my father to reclaim his heritage.”

“But what shall we do,” Chanterelle asked, in the whisper that was now her voice, “if you are lost, and cannot return? What shall we do if the fairy-folk take you away, or if the werewolves eat you? What will become of us then?”

“I will return,” said Catriona, even more firmly than before. “Neither fairy nor werewolf shall prevent me.” She knew even as she spoke, however, that there were too many stories in which such promises were made and never kept — and so did Chanterelle.

Handsel had sense enough to hold his tongue, and wish his mother well, but Chanterelle was too frightened to do anything but beg her not to go. Handsel had enough of the city in him to know that stories were not always to be taken literally, but Chanterelle — perhaps because she was younger — did not. Catriona could not comfort her, no matter how hard she tried.

Catriona realized that when she had been a child she had known the reality of the wild woods as well as the stories that were told about them, while Chanterelle knew only what she had heard in stories. Alastor had overlooked that point of difference when he had insisted that the children must be told the stories that he had known when he was a boy.

“Please don’t be afraid, Chanterelle,” Catriona said, when she finally set out. “The fairy-folk never harmed me before.”

“But they will not remember you,” said Chanterelle. “You’re a stranger now. Don’t go.”

“I must,” said Catriona. “What earthly use is an iron-foundry without an iron-master?”

The two children found that the charity of their new neighbors lasted a full week. At first they were able to go from door to door, saying: “We are the grandchildren of the village iron-master and our mother has gone to search for him in the wild forest. Could you spare us a loaf of bread and a little cheese, or perhaps an egg or two, until our mother returns?”

As the days went by, however, the women who came to the door when they knocked began to say: “We have fed you once; it is someone else’s turn”—and when the children pointed out that everyone in the village who was willing had taken a turn, the women said: “We have no guarantee that your mother will ever return, and even if she does, she has no means to repay us. The parish has its own poor; you are strangers. We have done all that we must, and all that we can.”

When ten days had gone by without any sign of their mother, Handsel and Chanterelle went to the village church and said to the priest: “Advise us, please, as to what we should do. We have prayed long and hard, but our prayers have not been answered.”

“I am not surprised, alas,” said the priest. “Your grandfather was a good man once, but in casting the bell intended for our church into the dark waters of the tarn he committed an act of sacrilege as well as an act of folly. There is a story, you see, about an iron-master who was seduced away from faith and family when a church-bell he had founded was lost in a lake. Your grandfather was knowingly putting himself in that man’s place, asking for damnation. It is good of you to pray for his return, but if he does not ask forgiveness for himself, one can hardly expect Heaven to grant it, and even then—”

“Yes,” said Handsel, “we understand all that. But what shall we do?”

“There is no living for you here, alas,” said the priest with a sigh. “You must go into the forest in search of your mother, and pray with all the might of your little hearts that she can still be found. It is possible, after all, that she is still alive. The forest is full of food, for those bold enough to risk its hazards. It is the season for hazelnuts, and bramble-berries, and there are always mushrooms. It is time to commit yourself to the charity of Heaven, my little darlings. I know that Heaven will not let you down, if you have virtue enough to match your courage. There is a story about a boy named Handsel, as I recall, and his little sister, which ended happily enough — not that I, a priest, can approve of the pagan taint which such stories invariably have. In the final analysis, there is only one true story, and it is the story of the world.”

“That isn’t so, sir,” said Chanterelle. “There are hundreds of true stories — perhaps thousands. I only know a few, but my grandfather must be old enough to know far more.”

“You are only a child,” the priest said tolerantly. “When you are older, you will know what I mean. If your grandfather can recover his lost wits, he will be wise to forget all the stories he ever knew, except for the one which holds the promise of our salvation. I wish you all the luck in the world, little Gretel, and I am sure that if you deserve it, Heaven will serve you well.”

“My name is Chanterelle, not Gretel,” Chanterelle corrected him.

“Of course,” said the priest serenely, “and you can sing like a nightingale, Chanterelle, as your mother could when she was young and lovely?”

“My mother is lovely still,” Chanterelle replied, with unusual dignity in one so young, “and she can still sing — but I have never heard a nightingale, so I don’t know which of them is better.”

“When we say that a human sings like a nightingale,” the priest said, with a slightly impatient smile, “we do not mean it literally. That is to say, we do not mean it exactly.”

“Thank you,” said Handsel, taking his sister’s hand. “We shall take your excellent advice.” Even Chanterelle could tell by the way he said “excellent” that he did not mean it exactly—but the advice was taken nevertheless. On the morning of the next day, Handsel and Chanterelle set off into the wild forest to search for their mother. Their new neighbors waved goodbye to them as they went.

The priest had told them the truth, at least about the season. There were indeed hazelnuts on the hazel-trees and ripe brambleberries on the brambles. The only problems were that hazel-trees were not easy to find among all the other trees, none of which bore any edible nuts, and that brambles were equipped with ferocious thorns that snagged their clothing and left bloody trails on their hands and arms.

There were mushrooms too, but at first the two children were afraid to touch them.

“Some mushrooms are poisonous,” Handsel told his sister. “There are death-caps and destroying angels, and I do not know how to tell them apart from the ones which are safe to eat. I heard a story once which said that fairies love to squat on the heads of mushrooms, and that although those which the good fairies use remain perfectly safe to eat, those which are favored by naughty fairies become coated with an invisible poisonous slime.”

Even Chanterelle did not suppose that this story was entirely trustworthy, but she agreed with Handsel that they ought to avoid eating mushrooms, at least until the two of them became desperate with hunger. By the end of the first day they were certainly hungry, but by no means desperate, and it was not until they had been searching for a second day that desperation and its cousin despair began to set in. On their first night they had slept long and deep, but even though they were exhausted they found it more difficult to sleep on the second night. When they finally did go to sleep, they slept fitfully, and they woke up as tired as they had been when they settled down.

Unfortunately, the wild forest was not consistent in its nature. Although the lower slopes were host to hazel-trees and brambles, such plants became increasingly scarce as the two children went higher and higher. Their third day of searching brought them into a region where all the trees seemed to be dressed in dark, needlelike leaves and there was nothing at all to eat except for mushrooms. They had not yet found the slightest sign of their mother, their grandfather, or any other human soul, even though Handsel had shouted himself hoarse calling out to them.

“Well,” said Handsel as they settled down to spend a third night in the forest, bedded down on a mattress of leaf-litter, “I suppose Heaven must be on our side, else we’d have been eaten by wolves or bears before now. If we’re to eat at all tonight we must trust our luck to guide us to the most nourishing mushrooms and keep us safe from the worst.”

“I suppose so,” said Chanterelle, who had been keeping watch on all the mushrooms they passed, hoping to catch a glimpse of a fairy at rest. She had seen none as yet, but that did not make her any happier while they made their first meal of mushrooms, washed down with water from a spring. They found it difficult to sleep again, and tried to comfort one another by telling stories — but they found the stories comfortless and they slept badly.

They made another meal of white mushrooms, which settled their hunger after a fashion and caused their stomachs no considerable upset. As the day’s journey went higher and deeper into the forest, however, they found fewer and fewer of that kind.

Handsel continued to shout occasionally, but his throat was raw and his voice echoed mockingly back at him, as if the trees were taunting him with the uselessness of his attempts to be heard. Chanterelle helped as best she could, but her voice had never been as strong as it was sweet, even when she sang with the choir, and it seemed much feebler now.

When darkness began to fall yet again, and the two of them were badly in need of a meal, Handsel proposed that they try the red mushrooms with white patches, which were much commoner in this region than the white ones they had gathered on the lower slopes. Chanterelle did not like the look of them at all and said that she would rather go hungry.

“Oh well,” said Handsel, “I suppose the sensible thing to do would be for one of us to try them, so that their safety can be put to the proof.”

Again they found it difficult to go to sleep, but they decided to suffer in silence rather than tell discomfiting stories. The forest, of course, refused to respect their silence by falling silent itself; the wind stirred the branches of the trees restlessly — but tonight, for the first time, they heard another sound.

“Is that a nightingale?” Chanterelle asked her brother.

“I suppose so,” Handsel replied. “I never heard of any other bird that sings at night — but it’s not as sweet a singer as the birds that were kept in cages by people in the city. They had at least a hint of melody about their songs.”

“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. He appeared 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. 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, but the dream made her determined to leave 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, “when you’re hungry enough. You’ll need all your strength, I fear, because 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,” she 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. 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 toward them, snuffling and snarling with excitement and showing all of its yellow teeth.

Handsel and Chanterelle ran away as fast as they could — but Chanterelle was smaller than Handsel, and much weaker. Before they had gone a hundred yards she was too tired to run any farther, 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 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 hoarsely. “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,” said Chanterelle.

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. I think 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. “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 pinecones. 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 old man in the story did—”

“I never understood how that was supposed to work,” Handsel said, his voice like wind-stirred grass. “On nightingales, perhaps — but what good would it do to run red hot needles into poor Luscignole’s eyes? 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 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 which 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 bloodred 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 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 birdhouse 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 to reach.

“Misfortune and too much shouting have weakened our voices,” Handsel explained. “Have you bread, perchance — my sister will not eat the mushrooms which grow hereabouts, because she fears they have been poisoned by the fairies.”

“Those old wives’ tales are best forgotten,” the lady said, “but 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 will 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. 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 bloodred 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 it. 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, 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 drafty 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 sewn 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 gray 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 real 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 wheaten bread, and the milk had neither the color nor the viscosity of cow’s milk.

“I can’t,” said Chanterelle weakly.

“Of course you can,” said Handsel.

“It’s not poison,” said the lady Amanita — but Chanterelle did not believe her.

“You’re a bad fairy,” said Chanterelle to Amanita.

“You’re a silly fool,” said Amanita to Chanterelle.

“This is pointless,” said Handsel, to no one in particular. “We can’t go on like this — and if we don’t go on, how will we ever find our mother?”

“You won’t,” said Amanita. “This isn’t like one of your stories, you know. This is the real world. Your mother never had the slightest hope of finding your grandfather, and you don’t have the slightest hope of finding your mother. They’ll both be dead by now — and you ought to count yourselves very lucky that you’re not dead yourselves. You will be, Chanterelle, if you won’t eat.”

“Poor Chanterelle,” said Handsel, who seemed even fitter and bolder today than he had when he drove off the bewildered bear, and was in far better voice. “Can’t eat, can’t walk, can’t sing, can’t do anything at all. How can we save you, little sister?”

“Find Mother,” Chanterelle replied. “Leave me, if you must, but find Mother.”

“Handsel won’t go on without you, Chanterelle,” said Amanita. “If you won’t get better, he’ll stay with you until you die.” And after that, she didn’t add, he’ll stay with me.

“Find Grandfather,” whispered Chanterelle. “Please leave me, Handsel. Find Grandfather, because he can’t find himself. The bell in the tarn can’t toll, you see. Its chimes can’t echo in his heart like the chimes of conscience, drawing him back to his hearth and home. Find Mother, before she loses herself entirely. Find them both, I beg of you. If you love me, go.”

“You’ll regret it if you do,” said Amanita to Handsel.

Handsel seemed to agree with her; he shook his head.

“One more day, Handsel,” whispered Chanterelle. “If you’ll search for just one more day, I’ll eat something. That’s a promise. Even if you fail, I’ll eat — but you have to try.”

That argument worked, as Chanterelle had known it would. “If you’re sure you’ll be all right,” Handsel said dubiously, “I’ll go.” Even as he said it, though, he looked at Amanita. It was as if he were asking her permission.

Amanita shrugged her shoulders, whose narrowness was evident now that she was no longer wearing the speckled cape. “You might as well,” she said, “although I’m sure that there’s nothing to find. I’ll lend you Verna and Virosa if you like. If there’s anything out there, they’ll track it down — but you’ll have to be strong if you’re to hold on to them.”

“No,” said Chanterelle quickly. “Don’t take the dogs. Don’t take that little pipe either. Your voice will be enough, now that you’ve got it back. Search hard—you have to find them today, if they’re to be found at all.”

Again Handsel looked at Amanita, as if for permission. Again Amanita shrugged her narrow shoulders.

“Look after my sister,” Handsel said to the white-clad lady. “If anything were to happen to her—”

“Nothing will,” said Amanita. “She’s safe here. Nothing can hurt her, if she doesn’t hurt herself — but if she won’t eat—”

“She will,” said Handsel firmly. “She will, if I keep my part of the bargain.” And having said that, he left.

When the door closed behind him, Amanita looked down at Chanterelle for a full half minute before she put the bread that wasn’t wheaten bread and the milk that wasn’t cow’s milk on the three-legged table. Then she sat down in the rocking-chair, tilting it back so that when she released it she moved gently to and fro. She never took her eyes off Chanterelle, and her brown eyes were exactly as piercing now as they had seemed by tricky lantern-light.

“That was very brave of you, my dear,” the lady said at last, “if you really believe what you said about my being a bad fairy.”

“I do,” said Chanterelle, “and I’m not a silly fool.”

“That,” said the lady, “remains to be seen.”

Chanterelle tested her injured ankle by stretching the toes and turning it to the left and the right. The pain she felt made it evident that she still wasn’t able to walk, and wouldn’t be able to for quite some time. The pain nearly brought tears to her eyes — but the anguish wasn’t entirely unwelcome, because it distracted her attention from the awful hunger that felt as if it were hollowing out her belly with a fork.

The fake bread and the fake milk were beginning to seem attractive, in spite of the fact that they were not what they seemed to be. Handsel had obviously eaten them, just as he had eaten the red-capped mushrooms, but Chanterelle couldn’t be certain that Handsel was still what he seemed to be.

“I wish you would eat, my dear,” said Amanita after a long silence. “If you don’t eat, you’ll never recover your strength. If you do, you might even recover your voice. You mustn’t let stories make you afraid — and in any case, you can see readily enough that my house isn’t made of gingerbread.”

Chanterelle put out a hand to touch the wall beside the bed. It was softer than she had expected, and warmer. It had a curious texture unlike any wall she’d ever felt before. It wasn’t brick or stone, and it wasn’t wood or wattle-and-daub.

“It’s a mushroom,” whispered Chanterelle. “The whole house is a gigantic mushroom. How did it grow so big? It must be magic—black magic.”

“Magic is neither black nor white, my dear,” said Amanita. “Magic either is or isn’t.”

“The witch in the house of gingerbread tried to fatten Handsel for the cooking-pot,” Chanterelle observed. “She wanted to eat him. Bad fairies and witches are much of a muchness, in all the stories I ever heard.”

“Did the witch succeed?” asked Amanita.

“No,” said Chanterelle. “Gretel — Handsel’s sister, in the story — put an old stick in the witch’s hand every time she reached into the cage to see whether Handsel was plump enough to eat yet. The witch was nearsighted, and couldn’t tell that it wasn’t Handsel’s arm. When the witch finally grew impatient and tried to cook Gretel instead, Handsel pushed her into her own oven and cooked her. Then the children took the witch’s hoard of gold and jewels back to their father, so that they would never be poor again.”

“I see,” said Amanita. “I fear, dear child, that I am not nearsighted. Were I what you suspect me to be, you’d have no chance at all of escaping me. In any case, it would do you no good if you did bundle me into my own oven. I have no hoard of gold and jewels, and you have no father. Your brother told me another story, about a little girl with a marvelous singing voice, who lost the will to sing when her heart was broken — but she was found by the old man who’d kept her when she was a child, who knew the secret of making nightingales sing by day. You know that story, of course.”

“I know,” whispered Chanterelle fearfully.

“Well,” said Amanita, “that’s nonsense too. All you need to set your voice free is a little bread and milk.”

“The bread isn’t wheaten bread and the milk isn’t cow’s milk,” said Chanterelle. “The bread is baked from mushrooms and the milk is squeezed from mushroom flesh.”

“That’s true, as it happens,” admitted Amanita. “As you’ve observed yourself, there’s not much food fit for children growing wild in this part of the forest. There are insects a-plenty, and animals which eat insects, and animals which eat animals, but children can’t hunt. Fortunately, the mushrooms with the red caps do make nourishing food. Handsel is as bold and strong as he ever was, don’t you think? He isn’t afraid to eat my bread and drink my milk.”

“Handsel will find Mother today,” whispered Chanterelle, “and Grandfather too. Then we shall all go home.”

“Go home to what?” asked Amanita. She stopped the chair rocking and leaned forward to stare at Chanterelle even more intently than before. “To an empty foundry, which had failed long before the plague came and your grandfather tipped the unfinished church-bell into the tarn? Do you know why no one can hear it tolling in the dark current, least of all its maker? Because it has no tongue! It cannot ring, dear child, any more than you can sing.”

“Mother will know what to do,” said Chanterelle, so faintly that she could hardly hear herself.

“When Handsel returns,” Amanita told her coldly, “you’ll understand how foolish you are. Remember your promise, Chanterelle. When Handsel returns, you must eat and drink.”

Having said that, Amanita got up and stalked out of the room, her white skirt swirling about her. The rocking-chair was thrown into violent motion by the abruptness of Amanita’s abandonment, and it continued rocking back and forth for what must have been at least an hour.

Chanterelle tried to stay awake, but she was too weak. When she drifted off to sleep, however, the pain in her ankle made it difficult for her to sleep deeply. She remained suspended between consciousness and oblivion, lost in a wilderness of broken dreams.

She dreamed of mournful she-wolves and decrepit bears, of ghostly hunting-dogs which bounded through the forest like malevolent angels, of sweet-smelling loaves of bread which broke to reveal horrid masses of blue-green fungus, of cups of milk infested with tiny worms, of long ranks of club-headed mushrooms which served as cushioned seats for excited fairies, and of wizened old men who knew the secret of making nightingales sing by day.

When she woke again, the room was nearly dark. The patch of blue sky that had been visible through the latticed window had turned to velvet black, but the stars were out and the moon must have been full, for the room was not entirely cloaked in shadows.

At first Chanterelle couldn’t tell what it was that had awakened her — but then she realized that the door had creaked as it began to open. She watched it move inward, her heart fluttering in dread because she expected to see Amanita.

When she saw that the person coming into the room was Handsel, not Amanita, Chanterelle felt a thrill of relief, which almost turned to joy when she saw the excited expression on his face. For one delicious moment she read that excitement as a sign that he must have found their mother — but when he came closer, she realized that it was something else.

“Oh, Chanterelle!” Handsel whispered as he knelt down beside the bed and put his head on the pillow beside hers. “You’ve no idea what a day I’ve had.”

“Are you hoarse from shouting,” she whispered back, “or are you afraid of waking Amanita?”

“Amanita’s not here,” Handsel said in a slightly louder voice. “She must have gone out again with those dogs of hers to hunt the she-wolf. I shouted myself hoarse all morning, as I knew I must, but no one answered. Then I stopped to pick and eat more mushrooms. Then I began to shout again, but it was no use at all. I had lost my voice—but I had gained my sight!”

“You never lost your sight,” said Chanterelle faintly.

“I never had my sight, dear sister. I always thought that I could see, but now I know that I never saw clearly before today. I had never seen the trees, or the earth, or the air, or the sun.

“Today, for the first time, I saw the life of the trees, the richness of the earth, the color of the air and the might of the sun. Today, for the first time, I saw the world as it truly is. I saw the fairy-folk about their daily business. I saw dryads drawing water from the depths and breathing for the trees. I saw kobolds churning the soil to make it fertile. I saw sylphs sweeping the sky and ondines bubbling the springs.

“Oh Chanterelle, you were right about the mushrooms — and yet so very wrong! The fairy-folk swarm about them, hungry for pleasure, and make them grow tall and red, but there’s no poison in them. There’s only nourishment, for the mind as well as the body. Those who eat of the mushrooms tended by the fairy-folk may learn to see as well as growing strong. You must not be afraid of eating, Chanterelle. You must not starve yourself of light and life.”

“I am afraid,” said Chanterelle, and shut her eyes for a moment. She knew that the sight Handsel had discovered must be the second sight of which the stories told, which was sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse. She had always thought that if either of them turned out to have the second sight, it would be her, and she felt a sharp pang of jealousy. She, after all, was the one who could sing — or had been able to sing, before grief took the melody out of her voice.

When she opened her eyes again, Handsel was no longer there — or, if he was, he was no longer Handsel. Kneeling beside her bed was the strangest creature she had ever seen. It was part human, having human legs and human arms, but it was also part insect, having the wings and head of a hawk-moth. Where the human and insect flesh met and fused, in the trunk from neck to hip, there was a soft carapace mottled with white stars. Even in the dim light, Chanterelle could see that the color of the carapace was crimson, exactly like Amanita’s cape.

The huge compound eyes looked at Chanterelle with what might have been tenderness. The principal part of the creature’s mouth was a pipelike structure coiled like a fern-leaf, which gradually uncoiled and stiffened, so that the tip reached out to caress her face.

When the creature spoke to her, its words sounded as if they were notes produced by some kind of flute, and every sentence was a delicate musical phrase.

“The sweetest nectar of all is fairy blood,” the monster informed her, “but the fairy-folk offer it willingly. Human blood is bitter, spoiled as anything is spoiled that is kept for far too long. Iron bells are hard and cold, and their voices are the tyrants of time. The bells of forest flowers are soft and beautiful, and their voices can unloose the bonds of the hours and the days. When humans go mad, they usually become bears or wolves, but find neither solace nor liberation. The fairy-folk are forever mad, forever joyous, forever free. Children may still be changelings if they choose. While the true sight has not quite withered away, children may find the one true path. While the true voice is not yet lost, children may soar on wings of song.”

If only the monster had chosen its words more carefully, Chanterelle thought, it might have contrived a melody of sorts — but she had heard the songs of the skylarks and thrushes that the city-dwellers kept in cages, and she knew full well that even they had little enough talent for melody. Nightingales, for all their fame, were merely plaintive.

Chanterelle shut her eyes again and counted to ten. When she opened them, the monster was gone and Handsel was himself again.

“What did you say?” asked Chanterelle, in a voice as faint as faint could be.

“I said that we might be safe and happy here,” murmured Handsel, in a voice that was not quite lost. “If we can only persuade Amanita to take us in, we might live here forever. She must be lonely, must she not? She has no husband, and no children of her own. She might accept us as her children, if we promise to be good. Wouldn’t you like to live in an enchanted forest, sister dear?”

“I would rather find my mother,” said Chanterelle.

“We have tried and failed,” said Handsel sadly, “and must make the best of things. Would you rather starve than eat? Would you rather go down to the valley, where no charity waits us, than stay in the wild forest and live as the fairy-folk live? You promised, did you not, that you would eat Amanita’s bread and drink her milk if I could not find our mother or our grandfather in one more day of searching? I have tried, and failed; I have lost my voice, but I can see. Will you eat, dear sister, and live — or will you break your promise, and die?”

“I will eat and drink in the morning,” whispered Chanterelle. “If Mother has not found us by then, I will eat Amanita’s mushroom-bread and drink her mushroom-milk.”

Handsel stood up and turned toward the door.

“Don’t go!” said Chanterelle.

“I have my own room now,” said Handsel, “and my own bed.”

No sooner was Chanterelle alone than the room grew noticeably darker. A cloud must have drifted across the face of the moon. Chanterelle moved her injured foot from left to right and back again, and then she stretched her toes. The result was agony — but it was the kind of agony that chased sleep away, and delirium too. Her mind had never been sharper.

Because she had no voice, Chanterelle cried out silently for her mother and her grandfather. If you don’t come by morning, she thought with all the fervor she could muster, you will come too late. If you don’t come by morning, I shall be lost.

In stories, she knew, such silent cries sometimes brought results. In stories, panic was sometimes as powerful as prayer. She prayed as well, though, in the hope that even if her mother and her grandfather could not help her, Heaven might.

As before, the pain could not keep sleep at bay indefinitely, but the sleep to which Chanterelle was delivered was shallow and turbulent.

She dreamed that she was running through the forest yet again, still pursued by an old man who carried a long needle in each hand. All night long his footsteps grew closer and closer, until at last she sank exhausted to the ground and waited for the inevitable.

The old man had no chance to use the needles; he was knocked flying by the paw of a bear, which then limped away into the forest with its ancient head held low. When the old man attempted to rise again, he was confronted by a she-wolf whose gray coat was flecked with blood. For a moment or two it seemed that he might try to defy the she-wolf, which was limping almost as badly as the bear, but when she showed her bright white teeth, he thought better of it and ran off, taking his needles with him.

“Thank you,” Chanterelle whispered to the she-wolf.

“Don’t thank me,” said the wolf, sinking down beside her. “I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself.” The wolf began licking at her wounds. Both her hind legs had been bitten, and her belly too. It was obvious that the hounds had almost brought her down.

“Who will help me if you cannot?” asked Chanterelle. “Must I trust in Heaven?”

The she-wolf stopped licking long enough to say: “Heaven is a poor ally to those still on Earth, else plague would have no power to consign us to damnation. Had you kept your promises, you’d be beyond help already — and those who are less than honest can hardly look to Heaven for salvation.”

“Then what will become of me?” asked Chanterelle.

The wolf was too busy feeding on its own blood to give her an immediate answer, but when her fur was clean again she looked the child full in the face with sorrowful eyes.

“I wish I knew,” the wolf said. “I can’t even tell you the answer to your other question.”

“What other question?” asked Chanterelle.

“Why the girl sang again when she was captured for a second time by the man who knew the secret of making nightingales sing by day. I don’t know the answer. All I know is that there’s no more joy in being a wolf than there is in being a bear. I have to go away now. If I stay in this part of the forest, the hounds will have me for sure — and a wolf shouldn’t have to live on mice while there are sheep in the valleys.”

“Please don’t go,” begged Chanterelle. “If only you could save me, I think I might be able to sing again.”

“It’s too late,” said the wolf as she disappeared into the darkness of the forest.

“It’s too late,” said Amanita, as Chanterelle woke to morning daylight. “You must eat now, or it will be too late.”

Amanita was sitting no more than an arm’s reach away from Chanterelle’s head, having drawn a chair to the side of the bed — not the rocking-chair, but one of the others. The white-clad woman was holding a bowl full of steaming soup, which had the most delicious scent. The soup was thick and creamy, with solid pieces of a darker hue half submerged beneath the surface.

“Mushroom soup,” said Chanterelle very faintly.

“The best mushroom soup in the world,” said Amanita. “Not all mushrooms are alike, you know. These are the very best. They’re called chanterelles — did you know you had a mushroom’s name, my dear? I had to hunt far and wide to find them for you, but I knew that I’d have to find them even if it took all night. Luckily, the moon was full. Only eat this, and you’ll be yourself again — or perhaps for the first time ever.”

“I don’t want it,” whispered Chanterelle.

“But you don’t have any choice,” said Amanita. “You promised Handsel that you’d eat if your mother and grandfather were still lost. You don’t understand what’s happening here. You don’t understand who and what you are. When your father named you Chanterelle, he thought it was a safe name for a nightingale, but he forgot the other meanings of the word. He knew that the highest string of a musical instrument was a chanterelle, but he should have known that a chanterelle is the most delicious kind of edible mushroom, and an imitation bird used to draw others into traps. Fate plays these little tricks all the time, you see. You thought you were supposed to be a singer, but you never knew how to find your voice, or how to use it, until you came to me. All children are kin to the fairy-folk, dear Chanterelle, but only a few have the chance to cross over, to see the world as we see it, with the second sight. You have that chance, but you must seize it. You must welcome it, because the cost of refusal will be more terrible than you imagine.”

“Where’s Handsel?” asked Chanterelle. “I must see Handsel.”

“In the hope that he can seize me and throw me in my own oven, to burn me alive? In the hope that you and he can run away, laden down with gold and gems? Handsel can see now, my darling. Handsel will be my lover now, my darling boy, the sweetest of the sweet.”

“I must see Handsel,” whispered Chanterelle.

Amanita called out to Handsel to come and see his sister — and Handsel came. He stood beside Amanita, with his arm about her shoulder and his cheek next to hers.

“You must eat, Chanterelle,” he said. “If you can’t eat, you’ll never sing.”

“Can’t you see that she’s a wicked fairy?” Chanterelle asked in a voice so faint as hardly to be there at all.

“I can see,” said Handsel. “I never could before, but now I can. I never want to be blind again. I couldn’t stand it.”

“The poor girl thinks that she’s a nightingale,” said Amanita, softly and sadly. “She can’t believe what she really is, and she’s starving herself to death because of it. But you know — don’t you, darling Handsel? — how nightingales can be taught to sing by day. Tell me what the secret is, darling Handsel.”

“The old man trained the nightingales to sing by day by running hot needles into their eyes,” Handsel said calmly. “Afterward, they thought eternal night had come, and that was their idea of Heaven — so they sang, and sang, and sang in celebration. When Luscignole first saw what the old man did, she ran away, but that was because she didn’t understand her true nature and her true destiny. She lost her voice when her heart broke, and the only way she could find it again was to find Heaven where she had never been able to look before: in eternal darkness.”

“We don’t need to do anything nearly as unkind as that,” said Amanita. “Chanterelle will find her voice if she’ll only eat the chanterelles. Eat, dear child, and discover what you truly are!”

Chanterelle could not believe that what was being done to her was any kinder than what had been done to Luscignole. She opened her mouth and tried to scream, but no scream came out. Instead, a spoon went in, bearing a full load of the impossibly delicious soup.

Chanterelle would have swallowed the soup if she had not gagged and choked, but the reflex saved her, and sprayed the contents of the spoon all over the bosom of Amanita’s white dress, flecking it with gray and brown. So astonished was Amanita that she dropped the bowl and howled with anguish as the hot liquid flooded the thin fabric of her skirt.

Chanterelle, fearful for her very life, threw back the crimson coverlet that had kept her warm for two nights and a day and made her bid for freedom. She flew across the room to the open window, beating her wings with all the force and skill of long-frustrated instinct, and soared into the welcoming sky.

Some months later, on the first Monday after New Year’s Day, Handsel and Amanita were walking in the wild forest by the light of the full moon. Their two ghostly hunting-dogs were beside them, neither needing a leash.

Amanita wore her favorite cape of bloodred fur, flecked with silver sequins. Handsel wore a fur cloak cut from the hide of a brown bear, trimmed along the edges with the silkier fur of a gray she-wolf. The body of the fur was a trifle mangy in places but the cape was warm in spite of the spoiled patches.

“How beautiful the sylphs are as they dance on the moonbeams,” Handsel said, “freshening the air with their agility.”

“Indeed they are, my love,” said Amanita.

“I like the dryads even more,” said Handsel. ‘“They know the very best of elfin music, and they love to play their pipes when the wind blows. I was a piper myself once, and a plucker too, but I was never very good. One should leave the exercise of such arts to those who know them best.”

“Indeed one should, my darling,” said Amanita.

“There is another song in the air tonight, is there not?” said Handsel, pausing suddenly and cocking his ear. “There is another voice, even more distant and more plaintive than the dryad pipes. I have heard it before, but never by day and always very faint. What is it?”

“It is the song of a nightingale,” said Amanita. “There is a way to make one sing by day, if you remember — but you would have to snare it first, and hold it very still. Would you like me to do that, Handsel? I think I can sing a song which will tempt it from the tree, if you wish. Birds are silly creatures, easily lured by artifice.”

Handsel remained where he was for a moment longer, considering this proposition. He frowned as he listened to the plaintive voice, redolent with loss. It seemed, somehow, to be trying to lure him away from Amanita — but he was not the kind of creature who could be tempted by a song.

“What would be the point?” he said. “The poor thing cannot hold a melody at all.”

Brian Stableford started with the story structure of “Hansel and Gretel,” incorporating significant embellishments borrowed from two modern “art fairy tales”: the novella “Luscignole” by Catulle Mendes, and the play “The Sunken Bell” by Gerhardt Hauptmann. The link between fairies and magic mushrooms was appropriated from Maureen Duffy’s book on The Erotic World of Faery.