The Realms Thereunder

CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Faerie Fayre
1

Now . . .

Daniel awoke just as the sky-where he could see it between the billows of the smoking woodpiles-was just starting to lighten and the stars had begun to fade. Finally his body was adjusting to the incredibly long days.

During the night, the collier had extinguished the fires and was breaking open the first mound. He had paused in his task and was resting his hands on his shovel, his lips moving as if he were talking to someone. As Daniel watched him, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he thought he saw a shadow standing before the collier, which was roughly the size of a person.

The collier stood as if listening now, and then inclined his head and raised his arm in a farewell. The shadow evaporated and the collier turned back to his work.

Daniel sipped some water from a bowl taken from the cistern and relieved himself behind the hut. After taking a sip from the breakfast bottle and ignoring the gnawing pit of hunger in his stomach, he picked up a shovel and went to join the collier.

They shared a “good morning” nod.

“My wife will be here, perhaps this afternoon,” the collier announced. Daniel was surprised; he hadn’t considered that the collier might be married.

“Is that who you were talking to?” Daniel asked. “Where is she now?”

“Not far off. I instructed her to bring food, and she says she has managed to find some.”

“Oh, thank you so much. If she was closer, would she have been clearer?”

“You could not see her clearly? Discern her features?”

“No, she just looked like a shadow to me.”

The collier grunted. “Little matter,” he said after a time. “Are you ready now to help sort?”

“Ready and willing,” Daniel said with a smile.

They worked in silence. During one of their breaks towards noon, the collier’s wife arrived. She was leading a horse and cart and seemed, to Daniel, to be fairly old, with grey hair and a graciously wrinkled face. But her eyes and skin gleamed with a youthful sheen, her movements quick and graceful. She was willow-thin, and dressed in a bodice and skirt made up of many different layers of thin, coloured cloth. Her hair was braided around the crown in a crescent shape and cascaded down her back to her waist. As the sunlight filtered into the clearing, Daniel thought it almost glowed.

“Hello, husband,” she said, dropping the horse’s rein and dashing up to him. He gathered her in his long, knotty arms and held her close. “I’ve missed you.”

The collier’s wife’s eyes then swept over Daniel. “Who is your new helper?” she asked.

“I do not know his name,” the collier said, “but I have known him to be a good worker this past ten day. The young Marrey lad sent him.”

“Tch!” the woman said in a chiding tone, still looking at Daniel.

“Imagine not knowing a fellow worker’s name in all that time. But that’s my K?yle.”

Daniel shot the collier-K?yle-an inquisitive look.

“And you haven’t told him yours it seems. I’ll never understand men, though I live to be a hundred thousand. My name is Pettyl,” she said, giving a slight curtsey.

“I’m Daniel.” He explained where he had come from and that he was trying to get back.

“So,” Pettyl said when he had finished, “why don’t you two work a spell longer, and I’ll fix lunch.”

Daniel and K?yle returned to the first pile and continued sifting and sorting into the barrels. Lunch for Daniel was the food that Pettyl had brought with her-fresh fruits and nuts that Daniel had never seen before. He tried not to eat too much too quickly and stopped when he felt his stomach start to ache. The fruit he enjoyed most was purple and curved like a banana but wider and flatter with a thin skin that could be eaten and soft, juicy flesh, like a grapefruit. He thanked Pettyl profusely afterwards.

They toiled late into the evening and with Pettyl’s help they managed to finish packing the charcoal. K?yle announced that they would depart for the market at the break of the next day.

Daniel ate a hearty supper of more fruits and nuts and fell asleep with the satisfaction of a hard job finished.

He awoke the next morning, aching as he always did since coming to Elfland, but still exhausted, unrefreshed by his sleep- which was odd, since he had slept the entire night through.

The horses had already been hitched to Pettyl’s cart, which was larger than the one the collier used for moving wood around, and, K?yle had loaded the barrels of charcoal, stacking them two high, lashing them to the sides of the cart with rope.

The sky was still not fully bright when they were ready to start off. K?yle and Pettyl sat in the front of the cart on the driving seat; Daniel made a place next to the provisions box and atop the bundle of cloth that would become their trade tent. When everyone was settled, K?yle announced, “I will ask the forest for a good road to the market.”

K?yle faced the forest and began to sing.

It was a song with no words, or at least none that Daniel understood. It started low in K?yle’s chest and grew into a reverberation that came from nowhere and everywhere. Then his call began to rise and fall in soaring major notes and falling minors, before eventually settling into a repetitious melody. The trees before K?yle swayed and shifted, making way for the cart in a way that made Daniel’s head spin-they seemed to be moving, but not moving, like they were shifting place into somewhere they had always been. Finally the tune began to break down, devolving into disparate notes and phrases that were common to the piece. And then it was over.

Dumb with awe, Daniel leaned back against a barrel as K?yle took his seat and with a snap of the reins, the cart jerked off. It felt as if his insides were still quivering like chords on a harp that still held their notes. Daniel remained in this dream-like state for a long time into their journey before realising that the road that was stretching out behind him was very wide, level, and straight. It must have been a pretty good song.