"Where shall we go next?"
"There is one place..." Miriam licks the last of her chocolate pudding off her spoon.
"Where?"
"The Dragon's Restaurant."
"Are you insane?"
"Lots of people go there."
"Lots of people die there, as well."
"We could just go and look."
"I bet everyone says that."
Collunda's right: there are eyes watching the Dragon's Restaurant day and night. People and creatures who said to each other, "we'll just go and look". Eyes, eyes, eyes reflecting the moonlight, peering from every ledge and cranny all the way up the cliff that faces the Restaurant windows. Arialda licks her lips and glares.
"Watch me, will you?" All the eyes snap shut and disappear. Except for the ones that are already dead. In the copse where Dobbin's hooves have become home to a million creatures with their hungers and battles and parliaments Miriam squeezes her eyes shut and grips Collunda's arm.
"Did she see us?"
"Shhh!"
"We're in so much trouble. I'm a Princess, I'm supposed to be good! I'm supposed to survive and grow up and be queen!" Collunda snorts,
"No-one will see us."
A twig cracks behind them.
"Not entirely true. I can see a Princess and," Arialda sniffs and a wind rushes past them into her huge nostrils, "A little faery. How tasty!"
Collunda starts to lift a hand to make the gesture that will create a toadstool ring but Miriam steps forward,
"We are conducting investigations, O Chef, into the Restaurant facilities in Our future kingdom. We wish to appoint a Royal Restaurant." The gigantic head tilts to one side. Collunda holds her hand still.
"By appointment to Her Royal Highness, Queen Miriam," says Miriam. "Has a ring to it, doncha think?"
"Would there be gold, putative potentate?"
"Mayhap," says Miriam, "if Our palate is satisfied."
"Then bring that palate inside for a little tasting, questing queenlet." Arialda sets fire to a tree, lighting the way for the girls to half-run along the crazy paving and through the Restaurant's open door.
The meal is very good. The prawns are sweet and crunchy, the sauce is hot and spicy, the chicken is roasted to perfection, the vegetables are crisp and the gravy sweetly redolent of wine and blood. They finish with tart lemon sorbets and a mini cheese platter.
"Most excellent! We are sated to perfection." Their waiter bows low, the girls stand up. Arialda's head drops down into the dining room.
"A little matter of payment, O saporous scholars."
"Indeed," says Miriam blinking frantically at Collunda.
"Where's the bill?" says Collunda. "How much is it?"
Silence.
"You p-pay what it's worth," says the waiter.
"But...don't you decide that?" The girls have experience of restaurants in several worlds. Arialda gives a frustrated whuff that knocks over three tables.
"How, future fillet of faery, could I possibly know what something is worth to you?"
Miriam wrinkles her nose. They have been studying economics. She has a fair grasp of the concepts.
"Well, tis a matter, surely, of the cost to you of your labour and ingredients and so forth and then Our desire for the meal and...and what another of the same meal would cost in another restaurant."
This time the dragon roars her irritation,
"You dare compare me to any of those inedible, bargain-basement, snack bar failures? You DARE?!"
"Alright!" Collunda holds up a hand to stop the roaring. "What do you want us to pay?"
"What could you possibly have that I might want?"
Collunda looks sideways at Miriam.
"I intend to appoint thee Our preferred Restaurant. By appointment to her majesty Princess Miriam of Tara. Our Royal Herald and Royal Signwriter shall prepare a plaque the very day I ascend the throne."
"Good enough," Arialda turns her attention to Collunda. "And you?"
Collunda narrows her eyes.
"Isn't that enough for both of us?"
"Think about it, faery fondant. How much do I want to eat you and how much do you want to be eaten by me?"
Collunda looks down at the floor – slate tiles on concrete which is not a surface likely to grow a fast escape route. She shrugs and digs deep into one of her many pockets to pull out a cloth-wrapped parcel. It sits small in the palm of her hand.
"What's that?"
Collunda smiles.
"Try some. It's best in tea. You'll really enjoy it."
An apprentice brings a dish of tea. Collunda sprinkles a few grains. The dragon dips her tongue into the brew.
"Delicious! Piquant and yet earthy. Something new."
"See how very, very much you are enjoying it. And now let us go. And never threaten either of us again. And let us come here as often as we like. Because you need us to bring you more of that." Collunda says, her grin almost splitting her face.
"Of course, heroines of my heart! You are always welcome! The welcomest of welcome! Hear me O apprentices! These two eat here forever and free and foremost among friendly fast-food fans." The dragon's head wobbles and withdraws into the roof. They hear giggling and then a hiccup and then snoring. The waiter stares bug-eyed at the dish of tea. Collunda picks up the bundle and drops it back into her pocket. The girls saunter out.
"How long will that last?" says Miriam. Collunda shrugs and conjures a toadstool ring on the grass. Behind them a roar rips through the night then subsides into snorting laughter and hiccups.
"The Moleystool? I don't know. It don't matter though, she gave her word." Laughing, they step through the ring.
#
"Close your eyes," says Collunda. "And hold my hand." Miriam looks at her friend doubtfully but closes her eyes and catches the cool faery hand in her warm one. Collunda concentrates. Purple stalks wriggle out of the ground, then spread into delicate violet umbrellas. The world takes a breath. Strange things stir in our metaphorical potato patch. "Welcome to my home," says Collunda. Miriam opens her eyes.
"Where are we?"
They are standing in a field surrounded by thick hedgerows. It's mid-afternoon, the sun is warm, birds are chirping, bees are humming. The soft grass is knee-deep and full of flowers: blue and red and gold. Miriam looks around and says again, "Where are we?"
"This is my home," says Collunda and skips off through the grass to the hedge. Miriam follows slowly, squinting at the hedge, waiting for some sign of walls and windows, something recognisable as "Home". Instead, they sit on logs in a sort of living cave. "See?" says Collunda. "Isn't it a nice hedge? Thick and tall, it hardly leaks at all."
"This is terrible!" says Miriam. "Anyone could just come in here and take your things."
"Like what?" says Collunda.
"That's just it," says Miriam. "Living like this you can't have things, can you?"
"But..." Collunda spreads her arms wide. "We all live like this. I mean, sometimes we make burrows. You know, if we want to be in the dark."
"What about privacy?" Miriam lowers her voice. "Where do you pee?"
"Out in the field, o’ course." Says Collunda. "This is Side. There's no such thing as privacy."
#
It's not Side. Not really. Side is like...maybe an onion. Or paint. It exists in layers. This layer is where Collunda likes to live. Or, to better describe it, how she likes to live. She has had a long fascination with humans and her chosen experience of Side is a very human one. Lots of faeries spend time in a layer like this. Sometimes, if she needs a particular plant to grow in the hedge she can change her mind and slide into another layer where all the faeries tending all the plants are visible. Further in and she can see the faeries that are the building blocks of the plants themselves. And further in, the faeries that are the parts of the faeries and then the faeries that are the parts of the microbes of the faeries. It’s fractal. The more you look, the more you see. Side grows itself as you walk into it. The more you travel, the more there is.
"When I am Queen," says Miriam, "I shall have a little brick cottage built for you. Somewhere warm and cosy."
"Where will you build that then?" says Collunda.
"I shall be fabulously wealthy," says Miriam. "I shall build you one here and one near the palace in Tara and one anywhere else you want to be."
"But I can go anywhere," objects Collunda. "Anywhere there's a hedge or a thick shrub or a hole in the ground."
Miriam huffs a big sigh. "They do tell," says Collunda, "Old stories of pixies that live inside toadstools."
"You couldn't grow one big enough!" says Miriam. "Surely."
"Wanta bet?" says Collunda.
"My green glass beads," says Miriam, spitting on her hand and holding it out.
"Dinner in Switzerland!" Collunda spits on her hand and they shake on the deal.
#
The very next day, Collunda walks away from the school into the forest muttering about spores. When she comes back that evening, she is followed by something with four legs. It is taller than her and dark purple. The four legs grow out of a purple blob. They have big strong muscles and are dark purple with claws like a chicken. A big chicken. A dinosaur. Miriam has been watching from the library window and rushes out to her friend.
"What is it?"
"It's going to be a house," says Collunda proudly. "A house made of all sorts of fungus and birds and plants."
Something rustles in the grass. All four legs tense and spring into the air. In different directions. Then there is only shredded fungus lying in the grass. Miriam puts an arm around Collunda's shoulders.
"It's al-"
"Not alright," snaps Collunda.
"No," says Miriam. "It's not."
Sadly, they watch the fungus legs shrivel under the sunlight until there is nothing much left. Collunda sniffs and rubs at her nose.
"I will do it," she says.
"I know you will," says Miriam stoutly.
#
Back in Tara, our young soldier boy, Ritchie and Little Whimmie are becoming BFFs as well. It's often said that youth is wasted on the young. Not on these two. They are only just blossoming into young adulthood, Ritchie's voice has broken and Little Whimmie is developing a chest that will make calling her Little Whimmie a bit of a joke, but they have travelled far ahead of their years. Thanks to her apprenticeship with her midwife mother, Little Whimmie knows more than is good for her about gynaecology and soldier-boy Ritchie is learning anatomy on the battleground and life lessons at the feet of Tara's finest. They are graduates in the school of Pleasure and Pain. They spend their leisure hours in the haybarn, in the long soft marsh grasses or in a loft above the palace nursery depending on the season. Not a shed, not a stable, not a dungeon or a cellar goes unsullied by their explorations of each other's limits. They diddle in the dairy, fiddle on the fenestrations, sigh in the stables and take liberties in the larder. Not-so-Little Whimmie teaches our soldier boy the many ways of love that won't turn into a baby and in return she learns how to immobilise a man with one hand and where to stick a hat pin for maximum effect. By the time they emerge from their flushed and sweaty teens they are two of the most dangerous people in the palace.
As a reward Little Whimmie replaces her mother as nurse and drops the “Little” and our boy is promoted to sergeant and sent off to the border with Horst to teach new recruits how to gut bandits without throwing up.
Back from the battlefield our soldier boy looks at Whimmie with new eyes polished from other women, other loving. Whimmie seems the same but...
But...
But Whimmie is midwife to the whole Palace. She has brought life into the world and on occasion ended it. Locked away in a rural palace we expect lives to be simple but Whimmie consorts with alchemists and librarians and herbalists and horse doctors. Our young soldier for his part works every day to refine his skills in killing, leading, organising and he consorts or learns from or hires the most evil and complex tacticians he can find.
Whimmie and Ritchie can stand in a crowded room and just look at each other and exude a greasy seduction that will empty that room in seconds. Then Ritchie smiles, Whimmie giggles and the real fun can begin.
But their marriage is forbidden.
They stand before King Philip, Midwife Whimmie with her hands folded and modest eyes cast down, Sergeant Ritchie at attention. King Philip looks them over and frowns,
"No, no. That would never do."
They are ushered out of the Presence without a word of explanation.
#
It's a sunny afternoon and our favourite Best Friends Forever are lolling at a table in the Dragon's Restaurant; Miriam leaning sideways on a window-seat, Collunda in a wooden chair opposite her. Above them in her roost, Arialda is lying on her back purring. Collunda has Moleystool production down to a fine art. For this batch she has added cornflower petals and Arialda is experiencing life as a harvest mouse.
This has become their favourite restaurant across the Three Kingdoms of Tara, Bannix and Horst. Magical travelling is strictly forbidden which causes neither girl any qualms but here they are unlikely to encounter anyone who knows them. Their final year of school finishes in three months.
"I'm going to be Queen of Tara, of course, when Mummy and Daddy die."
"What about Aurelia?"
Aurelia is Miriam's younger sister and hated rival.
"Oh, she's in love with some prince. Julian, you know, from Bannix. She'll go off and marry him and then I just have to wait for the olds to pop off."
"Hm," Collunda sips honey and cinnamon tea from an earthenware mug. She believes Miriam is just as callous as she sounds. Dig as deep as she can all she's ever found in the Garden of Miriam is rock. No soft soil where True Love could grow.
"Do they tell you you're special?" she asks now.
"Who?"
"Your parents."
Miriam considers. She has seen her parents, of course and has regularly been summoned to the Solar to be informed of parental decisions but most often during her childhood she saw them waving bye-bye over the shoulder of Nurse Whimper or smiling proudly, or at least pridefully, over the heads of a sea of maids, ladies-in-waiting and other henchpeople.
"I don't think so."
"People say that to me."
The older faeries in Side are kind to Collunda. In that way that people are kind to strange little girls. Then they pull an "oh dear" face behind her back and agree, in Collunda’s case at least, that if she worked on it she could be pretty but if she can't be bothered to be pretty she is at least clever and should be taken out of the faery nursery and given some other educational opportunities.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"Opportunities!" Collunda spits on the floor.
"They've found me a prince."
Collunda stares. Miriam blushes and holds out a tiny painting. She is prettier than Collunda but could never be described as a Classic Beauty like her mother and sister. Blond and slightly bug-eyed she has those pale, plump good looks so often described as English. Collunda looks up from the miniature. Prince George could best be described as "solid".
"He's fat."
"So?"
"Isn't your story supposed to be that he's a Handsome Prince who'll sweep you off your feet and carry you away to have adventures and battles and orgies?"
Miriam shrugs,
"He seems...quite nice."
"You've met him?"
"Not yet, he’s written letters though and he's, um, staying with us at the moment."
"What?"
Miriam takes a deep breath,
"Until the wedding." She fishes in her pocket and pulls out a battered envelope. "You will come, won't you?"
Collunda puts down her mug. Hands shaking, she carefully peels open the envelope.
"Their Majesties King Philip and Queen Beatrix of Tara
Hereby request the presence of,
Collunda, of the Faer
To celebrate the connubial union of,
Our Daughter, Her Royal Highness Princess Miriam
To,
His Royal Highness Prince George of Frentia, soon to be Our beloved son-in-law."
There are dates and other details.
"An invitation," breathes Collunda.
"You will come? I've been afraid to give it to you. I thought you might not-"
Collunda drags her eyes away from the card and up to meet Miriam's.
"An invitation! You invited me!"
"Of course, I did! You're my friend."
Collunda starts to cry.
In the exchanges between faeries and humans there have always been misunderstandings usually resulting in tortuous legal battles or appalling slaughter. Avalon has now decreed some strict guidelines: Because human desire can cause the brightest of the faer to fail (consider Ariel, driven by a magician's whims or Merlin, beguiled by Nimue) the relationships are now closely policed. In becoming friends with Miriam, Collunda has been sailing close to the edge of a reef full of the Rocks of Remorse and the Pinnacles of Punishment including the possibility of polite, icy conversations with Someone Wise from the Apple Isle in Side. But now she has,
"An invitation! A proper, righty-tighty, not-so-flighty invitation!"
Now her friendship with Miriam is legal and formalized. She is bound to Miriam as long as they both shall live; and Miriam is bound to her. Under Avalon's Guidelines they must stay close, provide mutual aid, not do anything to endanger the other and always, always invite each other to Life's Important Events.
Miriam has no idea about any of this. She has that human ability to assume that every culture and every species is identical to her own. She believes that under that green skin lives just another human and to be fair, Collunda has worked hard to give her that impression. They are about to discover the terrible things that can happen when the divide between species is glossed over. Miriam smiles smugly and casually says,
"You're my BFF, I'll always invite you, to everything, forever."
Up in the rafters where she has been spying on Collunda, Tinkerbell downs her thimble of mead and heads back over the misty border into Side to report to Avalon. While the Lady won't be pleased at least the mistake isn't on the Faery side.
"Mortals!" she mutters zipping out of the window in a trail of pixie dust.
Collunda is still crying.
"I'll wear my greenest grassiest leafiest green dress and my tallest hilliest most mountainous pointy hat and my newest bestest mouldiest mushroom earrings that grew themselves. I'll cheer the loudest of loud and eat more cake than anyone. I'll grow you the bestest wedding present what anyone could have. You'll be the gladdest of glad that you invited me!"
Miriam grabs Collunda's hands.
"Come and stay with me. Until the wedding."
#
And so we find them, a little while later: Two best friends rambling through the stone corridors of the Palace at Tara.
"How does it stay up?"
"Oh," Miriam flaps a vague hand. "Mortar or something." Collunda presses the palm of one hand against a stone block. Nothing. No grumbling, no squabbling.
"An amazin' raisin'"
"What?"
Miram is looking around for sultanas. Collunda chuckles.
"Raisin' up. Raised up rock. A pretty pile. Crack bang whoosh!" Collunda frowns slightly. There is something there. A wholeness, a...personality. Every building has one. Just close your eyes, rest your palms on a wall and slow down, down, down to house-speed. Collunda does this now, pressing both palms flat against the wall, hardly breathing.
"Hello pretty palace? Anyone there four-square?"
And under her attention, something coalesces, a huge gathering together like a long breath drawn in from the rat-runs in its deepest, foulest dungeons to the sparrow perched proud on a glittering weathervane above the Keep. Collunda looks at the Palace. The Palace is alive and looking right back at Collunda.
"Oh my my," she breathes.
A complex thing is a palace. It exists to showcase greatness, a stage for the antics of its inhabitants as they perform aristocracy. But it also has kitchens, servants quarters, guard houses and battlements. It likes to think of itself as a picture frame for gold and silk and authority. It has to include King Philip frowning over the cavalry budget as well as Molly sobbing in the attic because Cook didn't want her singing while she peeled potatoes and all Molly wants to do is sing. A palace could get confused with all those lives happening inside it. Palaces are built to overawe and yet pot boys know their smallest and most intimate passageways. Most Palaces suffer from a suffer from a severe case of Imposter Syndrome. That first day, Collunda pats the wall and tells it it's beautiful. Every day, she wakes up, leans on a wall and admires the Palace some more. The two girls spend their evenings feasting with the Royal Family and household and then curl up by the fire in Miriam's bedroom planning their futures. All around them the Palace purrs.
#
The Lady of Avalon regards Tinkerbell steadily.
"An invitation, you say?"
"Yes, Lady. All writ on special paper and gold around the edge."
"Hmm." They are in the Lady's Office. It's a pleasant sunny room whose limestone walls are lined with shelves stacked with books, scrolls, papers and nick-nacks. The limestone floor is covered with rush-matting. The Lady herself is clothed in a long-sleeved dress of midnight blue that sometimes seems to move independently of its wearer, jerking her arm or twisting her body to make her look at something.
"These short-lived mortals – it's difficult to know them. What does this Miriam intend do you think?"
Thinkerbell shrugs. She is tired from the long flight to Avalon.
"Dunno."
The Lady's eyes snap. She doesn't like laziness. She doesn't understand it. She sees the patterns of the Universe swimming all around her and can see what must be done. There is no room for indolence when the fate of the Universe hangs in the balance. She lives with a nagging anxiety about Tara. Some people think it's beautiful. It nestles in a fold of space partway between the human world and Side, the faery world. Magic works in Tara but magic is a wave form travelling on wishes, emotions and hot desire; focus on it too closely and it collapses into the nearest particle with "nearest" being more to do with chemically closest than closest in space. "Let the Periodic Table be your guide," murmurs the lady and steps into that dreamy focus of half-awakeness, almost sleeping that lets her watch Tara sideways so that the magic doesn't notice she's looking.
Too many odd little events piling up around Tara. Dragons don't open restaurants. Kings and Queens don't send their children away to boarding school. Ragged boys from the town can't usually insinuate themselves into a palace.
"Tink?"
"Hmm?"
Tinkerbell swings around to hang upside down from a rafter. She's eating a mango. The juice drips into her hair.
"I need someone to watch Tara."
"Oooh, who can we send?"
"No, I meant I want you to-"
"Look out there!"
The Lady’s dress twists her to look out of the window. The apple orchards spread all around the College and down to the sea. It is trees as far as she can see with a glimpse of waves in the distance. The sisterhood move between the trees tending to their needs. They are walking and teaching and learning. A small group of students follows each sister. One group has a straggler: a lanky young man with bowed shoulders.
"Berren!" says the Lady.
"Who? Oh, him!" says Tinkerbell.
"Yes, we will send Berren to watch them."
The Isle of Avalon - the Glass Isle - is surrounded by tidal marshes. When you are rowed out from Avalon in one of their flat-bottomed boats you look back and see the low-lying orchards, then the slope of Chalice Hill and above that the distinctive hump of the Tor with its earth-carved maze circling around and around. Look forward to the prow of the boat and you see water and a wall of mist. It's a sunny day in Avalon, birds are calling and the air is heavy with the scent of apple-blossom.
"Why me?" wonders Berren as his boat is swallowed up by the mist. "I must have done something right. I must have been noticed. I must be brilliant!"
The mist turns to drizzle, the sunlight fades to grey gloom and when his boat emerges from the mist it slides to a sticky halt in the marshes near Tara. Berren isn't impressed. He glares at the stone keep and the straggle of outbuildings.
"Palace! Huh!" He steps out of the boat into ankle deep mud. Cold mud. He hefts his bundle, nods farewell to the masked and hooded boatman and sets off across the marsh.
"Drains," he mutters skirting a black puddle writhing with mosquito larvae, "Haven't they heard of drains?"
He could walk on the surface of the water but he is pretending to be an ordinary man. He waves wax-sealed letters at the Guards who let him in as far as the Guardhouse. He is charming to King Philip's chief advisor and is invited into a warm study to steam gently by the fire next to a tray of mead and sliced sausage. King Philip is delighted by the contents of those wax-sealed letters and gives Berren the use of part of the old infirmary and a servant to do his bidding. Berren starts by advising Prince George and the engineers about drains, then fortifications, then security and within the month has King Philip's ear and is Prince George's right hand man. He has no title; he just smiles his placating smile and bows low. He has letters of recommendation calling him physician, diplomat, clerk, horse-doctor and portrait painter. He knows about Miriam's friend Collunda and makes sure they never meet.
Months pass and on the night before Miriam's wedding Collunda raises a toadstool ring and transports Miriam and some of their school-friends to their favourite French restaurant for the Hen party. They have clubbed together to buy Miriam some embarrassingly ornate lingerie and a gold-painted cardboard chastity belt. George is even now puzzling over the gold cardboard key he has found in an envelope slipped under his bedroom door. There is a lot of drinking and giggling. Collunda shows off her latest spell making mushrooms sprout out of the tabletop.
"Awesome!" exclaims Miriam. "Thank goodness you choose to use your powers for good!"
Collunda grins and raises her glass,
"Anything you want, BFF, if I can do it fer 'ee, I will!"
Miriam leans forward,
"I want you to find out about someone."
"Who?"
"Papa has a new servant. He's called Berren. I think he's, you know, a faery."
"Berren?" says Collunda. She pokes a dent in the top of one of the mushrooms and stares into the puddle that forms. Something humans have forgotten the name for stretches into Side and tickles another something that laughs open an eye inside Collunda's brain and tastes...Collunda makes a face as though she's eaten something bitter. It takes a while to dredge up memories across the aeons. "Riddle me riddle me rote tote tote, a little wee man in a nasty coat! I remember him. Nasty sneaking little worm! He hid once under the stage at the Eisteddfod and looked up the Fairy Godmother's dress."
Miriam grins,
"As soon as I ascend to the throne, I'll get rid of him."
"What? No, keep him. He'll be perfect for a Spymaster. Just don't trust him."
"Oh. Well, he is being quite useful. I've persuaded mummy and daddy to make a few minor changes around the place."
I doubt if Collunda suspected that Berren was there to spy on her as well as Miriam. Most of us are content to live out the long centuries in Side painting flowers and sunsets and manipulating the activity of mountains and molecules. Only a few of us like to travel between the worlds and play with other species. Miriam's world isn't your world and there is no map, I can't tell you how to travel there. The best I can do is talk about potatoes again: every world starts somehow in the rich humus of space and time. If each world is a potato, it is connected to the other worlds growing from that particular potato plant. Think of it as a giant potato patch and know that I have been one of the gardeners. I used to be able to walk in there and enter any world I chose. You live far below the ground under one particular plant. You could perhaps find an earthworm to help you tunnel your way across to Tara. Perhaps.
If Collunda was a Bad Faery at this point she would have said to Miriam that night,
"You're so pretty!"
Instead she says,
"I think you have the sort of bone structure, y'know, so that you'll grow more and more beautiful as you get older."
See the difference? The first path leads to early ripening and cider if we're lucky, but probably not. The second path will take her from pretty princess to elegant queen to beautiful stately Queen Mother. Miriam pokes at her cheekbones in the reflection in her glass.
"You think?" Their glasses are filled again and the conversation moves on. Trinkets are exchanged with pledges of eternal friendship and when Miriam lands on her bed in a cloud of magic later that night she laughs aloud at how lucky she is.
The friendship between Miriam and Collunda is the colour of a slow city river – dazzling petrol swirls on the surface, reflecting back more than it reveals. It's a high perch stage coach with the horses harnessed unicorn and pulling in all directions. It's a whiff of gardenia where there should be nothing so sweet. It's a huge tree, a weeping willow, you can weave its branches into whatever shape you like and live inside it like a den; It's morning, the bright morning of the world when things are still San-Saens-hopeful. It's the brow of a grassy hill with expectation on the other side. It's a high piping dance tune and a low evil chuckle in the dark.
#
Miriam's wedding is held at a stately and decorous pace in deference to the frailty of their majesties Queen Beatrix and King Philip. The aged couple are seen to hold hands throughout the ceremony and it is remarked upon warmly by the gossips that Beatrix at one point raises a hanky to her eye and murmurs to her husband. It will not be revealed for many years (until the publication of Miriam's memoirs) that what she murmurs is,
"I think I'm having a stroke."
To which her beloved consort replies,
"It is exciting, isn't it?"
And she responds,
"No, dolt, my brain's exploding. I'm dying."
Beatrix survives the day however managing to appear hale and well until collapsing the following week during a hunting expedition. The painting of the wedding shows a united Taran Royal Family wreathed in smiles standing outside the great oak doors of the Keep with a scattering of buildings on either side of them: workshops, servants' cottages, outhouses and barracks. Around the edges of the painting in the style of the day are a series of cartoons depicting daily life: peasants digging ditches, peasants cutting stone, peasants laying foundations. It looks as though some major building work is beginning.
#
Through it all Miriam and my mother remained the very best of friends. Miriam is there in my earliest memories, usually laughing, with George at her side handing out chocolate and pennies and piggyback rides. Collunda needed a friend. Until I was born, no-one dared argue with her. Cricket my brother with his ready knife was wary of her but obedient; Miriam and I were the only ones who ever really stood up to her. Collunda's temper was renowned throughout Side. Flowers wilted and cowered at her passing. Look at her sideways and you could end up a pond-frog. In her teens she was not unusual. Later on there was a definite feeling in the woodland that she should have done some maturing and grown a little more conciliatory.
But why are faeries so bad-tempered? We all are you know. We're pretty little things, we have a job to do in life – painting flower petals, teaching birds to sing – why are we so vicious? Next time your mother starts ironing swimming cossies; or your sister storms out of the half-acre of wardrobe she calls a bedroom screaming, "I've got nothing to wear"; or your brother reveals in a rush of words pitched from tenor to soprano to basso profundo that his spotty face is aglow with love for his maths teacher; next time any of these things happen study events carefully. A flood of hormones can turn the most rational, lovable being into a tantrum on legs and when you consider that a faery of Collunda's race reaches adulthood at around 700 years then you will understand - faery adolescence lasts on average 300 years. Three hundred years of spot cream, lank hair and bad make-up decisions. Hate, jealousy and career choices based on access to or shelter from the opposite sex.
Most faeries don't make it.
There are stabbings and poisonings, burnings and rapes. Collunda believed she was pretty and clever and should be loved by everyone. That's what the adult faeries told her because the adults were exhausted by all those decades of racing around sylvan glades plotting and screaming. They did their best to be kind, sensible and caring. Happy to grant the standard Naming Gifts. Delighted to sprinkle a little fairy dust here, a little moonshine there and a little reassurance to young faeries on the brink of an explosion of angst. Miriam's relatively calm companionship was reassuring. Collunda reveled in the peace she found in the Taran marches, watched over by the Palace. But there was no escape. School was over and her peer group were on the hunt across the worlds, eager to puncture illusions and destroy rivals.
"Study, study, study. Dull, dull, dull. We should call you Dullunda!"
"Dull-Dunder!"
Tilly and Sabrina squeal with delight and clutch at each other.
"Dull-Dunder!"
"At least I do something. You two just hang around the hedgerow combing your hair – you'll do anything for it, won't you? All he has to do is come sniffing around your stupid burrows and it's all 'O Tristram, th'art so hunky' and 'O Tristram, I do so lerve thy cute hair!'"
"At least we don't run away and hidey-hide."
More tittering. It is two against one which is never fair but when are teenage girls ever fair? They all fancy Tristram – the way that lock of blonde hair falls into one eye; the alluring smile; the muscles (O, the muscles!). Tristram doesn't know that any of them exist. All the spot cream in the world isn't going to attract his attention. The only woman he can see is his maths teacher. The two young faeries flounce away and Collunda stalks home to her cottage to rock angrily in her special chair and plot impractical revenge.
It is an amazing creation, Collunda's little house: she has finally done it. She has taken spores from a pixie's toadstool and grown a fungal body over a wooden frame. In her less hormonal moments Collunda is proud of her achievement –– she strokes the mildewed walls and whispers kindly to the fungal consciousness that seems to be emerging. She has recently added the legs. It hasn't walked yet but one day she is sure it will. While her sister faeries study flower remedies and sunset-tinting she is breaking new ground and revolutionising faery housing –– no more tree-huts, willow bowers, hedge burrows or faery mounds. This will be a house she can take anywhere!
There's a reason why faeries don't build houses. Here is a faery brick. It looks like any other handmade brick from any world human or faer. Let's find out about it.
"Hello, Brick?"
"'s?"
"How's life as a Brick?"
"'s ok."
"Great! Look, here's another brick. Let's put you two down here next to each other. You're going to be the foundation of a new building, a palace fit for a Qu-"
They're fighting already. Two brick faeries, red-skinned with brittle black hair standing on top of their bricks, yelling.
"Youse a bad brick. A bendy brick. A brittle breakable brick. A briquette!"
"Well youse are nuffink. Youse just good for grindin' into grout. Crunchin' into crackpot. Hammering into horrible hunks for heaving inna hole."
With a tinny roar the first brick faery draws its sword and attacks the second. A quick round of cuts and slashes and they fall apart, panting and bleeding.
"I'm a cornerstone, I am. I'm the rock, the block that takes the shock!"
"Youse a feeble pebble with a bend in yer end."
They clash together again, swords flashing.
I could watch this all day. But you, you're a soft-centred, chewy toffee kind of reader and you reach forward and pull one brick away slightly. An inch, two inches, three...and peace descends.
Faery buildings are just one huge argument. Every stone, every timber, every tile fighting for dominance.
This is why faeries don't build houses.
Collunda hasn't told anyone about her fungus house yet – she wants to explode her secret into the world and impress everyone. Especially Tristram.
Tristram who overheard that conversation about running and hiding and has suddenly realized how very unavailable his maths teacher is bumps into Collunda in the woods near Tara the very next day.
"Oh, hullo, Collunda. I was just hunting for some violets or bluebells. Something pretty, you know. And ... and ..." his face creases with anxiety. He has practiced this line all morning in front of the copper mirror in his faery mound, "and I found you. So, how are you? What are you doing? Having fun?" He meant to stop after "I found you" but of course he can't. Doesn't dare. Collunda is confused. Did he just call her pretty? Or did he mean he had been looking for something pretty and unfortunately found an ugly faery girl?
"Oh well, just walking, you know." Collunda giggles, wishes she hadn't, sighs and looks away. Tristram swallows. Does she like him? Does she think he's boring? Everyone knows Collunda is clever. Does she think he's stupid?
"Oh, look!" He tries to sound surprised as if he hasn't been staring at the same bunch of violets for over an hour waiting for Collunda to wander this way. "Some violets!"" He bends to pick them and holds the delicate, fragrant flowers in his golden-hued hand.
Collunda swallows.
"They're flowers."
Tristram in a moment of extraordinary courage holds them out.
"They're for you."
"But ..." Collunda is lost. This is the most important thing that has ever happened to her. This is her triumph over Tilly and Sabrina and all those sneering girls. This is the moment when she should be quick on her feet. Witty. Instead she is honest: "I don't like flowers much."
This is true enough. She likes fungi. But she is prepared to like anything that Tristram offers her. So she takes them anyway trying not to touch his hand except accidentally and because he is trying to touch her hand at all costs they fumble and drop them and he has to pick them up and give them to her all over again, so then he ends up standing much too close to her and when he bends forward with the flowers she doesn't duck her head back quickly enough and they bump noses and he kisses her and then stands there looking awkward and she says "Thank you" and turns on her heel and flees.
Hormones.
Terrible things.
#
And every so often Collunda disappears into the lovely, deep woods and brews up something dark. The very next day, the two girls ride up the Little Ravine to the dragon's cave and exchange a small packet of moleystool for this week's Special.