Orfeia Read online

  ‘Here. Try one,’ said Alberon, handing his cigarette to Fay.

  She started to refuse – she had not smoked for twenty-two years – and yet the contact was welcome. She took a drag of the cigarette – it didn’t taste of tobacco at all, but of something like oak moss, and acorn wine, and honey, and fresh popcorn. And it gave her an immediate buzz – a warm and sleepy feeling that seemed to wrap around her like a coat lined with thistledown.

  Alberon smiled. ‘Feel better?’

  Fay nodded, and in that moment, she realized she actually did: that the iron-grey mist that had swallowed her life had somehow gently lifted. For how long, she could not say, but for now the sensation was new and wildly exhilarating. She glanced up at the moon, and it looked so large that it might have been a hot-air balloon landing over Eros.

  ‘That isn’t really Eros, you know,’ she said, through a mouthful of sweet-scented smoke. ‘That’s his twin brother, Anteros, the god of selfless love. They look just the same, except that Eros’s wings are like a bird’s, and Anteros’s like a butterfly.’

  Alberon smiled again. ‘Is that so?’ Fay was surprised she had spoken aloud. The words danced around her like butterflies on tiny little golden wings. Butterfly is a golden word, she thought. It smells of honeycomb.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said Alberon. ‘You’re not used to madcap. It won’t do you any harm, but it might make you see things differently.’

  Fay looked at the cigarette in her hand. Madcap? she thought. What on earth’s that? A cloud of golden butterflies rose from the fire in the galvanized pail and crackled across the face of the moon like a spray of fireworks. A scent came with them; a rich, sweet scent like roses steeped in honey. A little cascade of tumbling notes unrolled and dispersed into the air. Fay looked around and realized that Peronelle was singing.

  The elphin knight sits on yon hill,

  Bay, bay, bay, lily, bay

  He blows his horn both loud and shrill.

  The wind hath blown my plaid away.

  The song was unfamiliar, the words so heavily accented that she struggled to find their meaning, and yet something in Fay responded to them in a deep and instinctive way. The little notes blew like dandelion seeds, tumbling into the golden air, and to her surprise she found herself laughing aloud in simple joy.

  ‘Every sage grows merry in time,’ said Alberon, still smiling. ‘Madcap is as madcap does, my Lady, Queen Orfeia.’

  ‘What did you call me?’ Fay tried to say, but the madcap, or whatever it was, was really starting to take effect. She could feel the smoke in her mouth turning into musical notes; brittle little quavers and crystalline semiquavers taking flight like fireflies.

  ‘Sing with us,’ said Alberon. ‘Sing with us, and all will be well.’

  It would have felt so good to sing again, even for such an audience – and yet she found she could not. Even under the madcap’s spell, something kept her silent: the notes that fluttered on her lips were as soundless as falling snow. Peronelle continued to sing: a tune Fay almost felt she knew:

  Queen Orfeia crossed the bay,

  Bay, bay, lily, bay

  Cross’d the sea to Norroway

  The wind hath blown my plaid away.

  The others joined in: she could see their words; Alberon’s dark and heavy as ink; Mabs’ like a ladder of silver thread; the other three, little dabs of light against the coral darkness. But even now, when she could see the notes and feel the harmonies, Fay still could not find her voice. And so instead she danced; first alone and then, when Alberon reached out, within the circle of his arms.

  ‘I would so love to hear you sing,’ he said in his low and pleasant voice. ‘Music and madness are lovers, my Queen. And memory – who needs her?’

  Fay smiled. ‘Memory is a mother,’ she said. ‘I could no more give up my memories than I could lose my shadow.’

  The madcap had reached a kind of multisensory climax. Music blended with colour and light; scent and taste with movement. Mabs was dancing with the smoke, the skirts of her long coat carding the air. The moonlight was singing in shades of marshmallow and violet; the motes from the fire were like little bells. Alberon’s hand was at her waist, the other was cool at the nape of her neck. And they danced like lovers in the smoke, which smelt of rose and sandalwood, of cardamom and clove, until at last the music stopped, and the song came to an end.

  Peronelle started to clap – not entirely approvingly, Fay thought. ‘Brava, Queen Orfeia!’

  That name again. ‘I’m Fay,’ she said.

  ‘Of course you are,’ sang Peronelle. ‘Fay and fey as Fae can be.’

  Madcap as the Queen of May;

  Heartless as the harvest moon.

  Thankless as the thistle-tree,

  The wind has blown my plaid away.

  ‘What does that even mean?’ Fay tried to stand, and found her legs unreliable. She threw out her hand to steady herself, and just then she saw a light shine out from under a broken paving stone; a yellow strip of brightness like the light from under a door. No sooner had she noticed it, it went out. She imagined people behind the door, watching, hiding; breathing in the dark.

  She pulled away from Alberon’s grasp and turned to Peronelle. ‘What was that?’

  Peronelle laughed. ‘That’s madcap for you.’

  ‘There was light under the pavement. A light.’ As Fay’s anxiety mounted, she sensed the madcap responding. The feeling of delirium was gone; now her skin was all prickles and thorns. She felt as if she was on the verge of awakening from an ominous dream; as if all the colours in the world were draining into the ground, one by one. Peronelle went on singing, in a voice that was sweet and mocking:

  Merry as the marigold

  Careless as the columbine

  Faithless as the foxglove fair

  My lady, Queen Orfeia.

  Alberon said: ‘That’s quite enough.’ He put his hand on Fay’s shoulder. ‘Don’t mind Peronelle, my Queen. It’s the madcap talking.’

  He turned towards Peronelle and made a gesture of dismissal. ‘Leave us. Let’s have no more talk. Queen Orfeia and I have private business to discuss.’

  Peronelle pulled a spiteful face. For a second Fay saw their outline shimmer, as if caught in a heat-haze. Then they dispersed into a cloud of tiny dancing butterflies that rose into the bonfire smoke and vanished in the moonlight. The butterflies were luminous, and all the same shade of purple as Peronelle’s hair. Alberon made the same gesture of dismissal to Cobweb and Moth, and both of them vanished in the same way, Cobweb into an emerald cloud, Moth into a silvery one. The butterflies rose out of sight, briefly covering the moon, then they were gone, and only he and Mabs remained beside the dying fire.

  Fay looked down the street, and saw the bar of light had reappeared. The warm glow beneath the stones was back: cheery and enticing, like the light from around a secret door where a riotous party was going on. She stood up, feeling less disoriented. The last of the madcap had given her a reckless kind of determination, and though Alberon’s hand tightened on her arm, she pulled away from him, towards the glowing paving stone.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said Alberon gently. ‘You’re safe here, for the moment. But step off the path again and there’s no knowing where in the Worlds you’ll end up.’

  But Fay was already crossing the road towards the bright crack in the pavement. The darkened shop windows reflected the moon in silent silver panels. She half-expected the light to go out again as she reached it, but this time it stayed, shining out between the slabs of heavy London stone.

  Fay knelt to look more closely, putting her face to the crack in the ground. It was no more than half an inch wide, but the light was so brilliant that she had trouble focusing. And yet, as her eyes adjusted, a scene emerged, far away below her, but still as clear and bright as a child’s snow-globe. She saw a clearing in a wood, a clearing surrounded by hawthorn trees. Their blossom was as white as snow, and fluttered like confetti. Within the clearing itself, the groun
d was covered with bluebells – their sleepy scent reached her faintly through the crack in the pavement. And there, asleep in the bluebells, was a girl all dressed in white, under a blanket of wild rose—

  For a moment there was no air in the air she was breathing. Her throat was tight; her mouth was numb; her heart was a burning ball of wire…

  ‘Daisy?’ she said.

  The girl slept on. Far under the streets of London, she slept, cocooned in the scent of bluebells.

  Fay tried to prise up the paving stone with the tips of her fingers, but the slab was unmoveable. She felt a fingernail tear to the quick; but the pain came to her from a distance, like something that happened to someone else, far away and long ago. From a distance, she could hear the sound of voices behind her: Alberon and Mabs were having an argument.

  ‘Let her be, for pity’s sake,’ said Mabs. ‘What good can you do her now?’

  ‘I will not lose her,’ said Alberon. ‘Not after all we’ve been through. Queen Orfeia…’ He raised his voice. ‘Your Daisy cannot hear you. She sleeps in the hall of the Hallowe’en King, and nothing you do here can wake her.’

  But Fay was only aware of him as part of a background of white noise. Once more she called her daughter’s name, ringing it off the concrete and glass and stone of Piccadilly. The madcap must still have been working, because her call took shape in the air, rocketing into the sky and coming down in a shower of stars.

  Through the crack in the pavement, the sleeping girl turned over and sighed.

  Mabs said: ‘It’s pointless. You’ve lost her.’

  Fay shouted, ‘Daisy! It’s me! I’m here!’ and hammered her fists against the stone, but only managed to bruise her hands.

  Below her, the sleeping girl slept on.

  Alberon sighed and said: ‘We’ll find her again in London Beyond. That is, if she gets that far.’

  And at that he and Mabs disappeared silently into the smoke, he into a cloud of black butterflies, she into a cloud of silver ones, and if Fay had been watching them, she might have noticed that as they stood together in the moonlight, neither the man nor the woman had cast even the smallest shadow.

  As it was, she barely saw them go. Instead she screamed and wept and clawed at the luminous crack in the ground that shone with such a fugitive gleam. But just as her fingers could not lift the stone, her voice seemed to bounce off the pavement, like fireworks hitting the ground. And then the light went out as suddenly as it had appeared, and Fay was left in darkness, alone, under an emptiness of stars.

  Four

  She must have slept, she told herself. How that could be, she did not know. Perhaps it was the madcap. In any case, when she awoke it was light, and the sky was blue, and she was wrapped in a blanket, with her backpack as a pillow, at the bottom of the steps under the statue of Anteros.

  For a moment she was disoriented. Her muscles ached and her mouth was dry. She looked at her Fitbit. Seven-fifteen. She had spent the whole night here. It took her a moment to realize that there was no one else around. This went beyond the unusual, she thought, into the realms of fantasy. A deserted Piccadilly at night was already strange enough, but by seven in the morning, the streets should have been filled with commuters, and retail workers, and street-sweepers, and taxicabs, and delivery vans, and garbage men, and junkies, and joggers, and tourists. All the same, the streets were bare, both of vehicles and pedestrians. There were no people leaving the Tube; no rough sleepers by the entrance.

  Something must have gone wrong, she thought. Maybe there had been a crime. Perhaps the square had been cordoned off by the police, and somehow she had slept through it. She stood up, automatically rolling up the blanket. It was blue, with silver stars, and some part of her mind seemed to recognize it, although she had no memory of bringing it with her on her run. But it was small, and she managed to fit it into her backpack along with the few things she always carried on her night-time runs: a bottle of water; some cereal bars; a purse containing emergency cash; a hoodie in case the night turned cold; her phone; a small first-aid kit; her keys on a key ring shaped like a tiny notebook. She looked down Shaftesbury Avenue, then across the square towards Regent Street. There was no one to be seen, not even where Alberon and his friends had had their fire at the mouth of the Tube. She walked to the spot where the fire-pail had been, but there was nothing left but a little pile of ash and a circle scorched against the stone.

  The fire was real, said Fay to herself. That means it wasn’t all a dream. The idea that she might have invented Alberon and his friends – perhaps as part of some fugue state – had occurred to her. She looked around for more traces. But the Tube entrance was closed again; the ornamental gates bolted shut, and, looking down into the dark, Fay thought she could see some kind of creeper – bindweed, or bramble, or Russian vine – growing across the stairway. And there was something else too, deep in the tangle of creeper – Cobweb’s discarded wheelchair, at the foot of the stairwell.

  This must be a dream, she told herself. I dreamed, and am still sleeping. And yet she could feel the strap of her backpack against her shoulder; the ache of her sore calves; the dryness at the back of her throat. She could still smell woodsmoke on her clothes, and the residual scent of madcap. What had it been? Some new strain of marijuana? Whatever it was, she felt sober now. She found her water bottle in the pocket of her backpack and drank. The water was cool against her throat, and she felt a little better.

  It must have been a fugue state, she thought. That would explain the things she had seen, and her mind had merely attempted to fit them into her reality. But now she felt completely awake, completely sober, and yet this was still not the London she knew. She wanted to go home, but the Tube was closed on both sides of the square. So she started to walk along Piccadilly, conscious of the sound of her feet on the silent pavement, and as she did she remembered the scene she had glimpsed through the paving-crack; and how real it had seemed. How much more real than any dream.

  She looked at her reflection in a nearby shop window, seeing herself in the darkened glass, her backpack over one shoulder. Her hair stood out in crazy spikes; her face was smudged with woodsmoke. She came a little closer and saw that, behind the glass, the window display was overrun with the same vegetation she had seen at the Tube entrance; brambles, and bindweed, and Russian vine, and something that might have been hawthorn. Some kind of a Hallowe’en display, thought Fay, seeing rose hips and blackberries growing against the dusty glass. Maybe some kind of conceptual art installation. Maybe it was Fashion Week, and this was some new way of selling clothes. She looked closer and saw that among the vines, there was indeed an array of evening wear, but the dresses looked old and neglected, and there were cobwebs in the lace; a layer of dust on the sequins.

  She moved to the next shop window, which seemed to be a jeweller’s. But here, too, there were creepers and vines growing up against the glass; there was dust on the display cases and the velvet lining, and the necklaces, bracelets and rings were all but obscured by sprays of bramble and autumn leaves.

  Fay moved past the jeweller’s shop, feeling her heartbeat quicken. Every shop she passed was the same; overgrown with creepers and vines, or branches bearing hips and haws, or thorny clusters of dust-grey sloes. She started to run. Her feeling of dread and her aching muscles drove her to it, and as she ran past the darkened shops – Waterstones, its display of books scattered like heaps of fallen leaves; Fortnum’s, its display of gilded biscuit tins and bottles and chocolates all tangled with briars and foxgloves and rose – she saw that all the shops were the same; their windows dark and overgrown, gleefully bursting with baleful life. Some had broken windows, with scattered fragments of glass on the ground, allowing the creepers and brambles and vines to cascade out into the street. Fay saw a cluster of blackberries growing from a crack in a wall, picked one, popped it in her mouth. The taste was sharp and wild and strong, nothing like the blackberries she bought in shops.

  She remembered a snatch of folklore; that at
Michaelmas, the Devil spits on autumn’s last crop of blackberries, making them bitter and poisonous. Even so, she took another handful of berries. They were not exactly good, and yet the taste of them was compelling. They tasted of smoke, and Bonfire Night, and cheap wine, and burned sugar. And they tasted real – more real than anything else on that silent street. Reaching Bond Street Station at last, Fay noticed that it too was closed off – and here too there were creepers and vines growing out of the entrance.

  That decided it, she thought. Whatever had happened to the Tube, the road was still there, and she knew the way home. She turned back and started to run, slowly at first, then settling into a faster pace. At first her muscles were stiff from a night spent on the London streets, but she soon found her natural rhythm, and the pavement felt good against her feet. Back along Piccadilly she ran, then across the deserted square and up Shaftesbury Avenue. The autumn leaves that papered the ground made brittle, desperate sounds as she passed. Otherwise, it was eerily still. No sound of traffic, no sirens, no voices, no taxis, no passers-by – and now as she ran she realized that apart from the leaves, there was no litter on the road; not even a sweet wrapper. Running past the theatres she saw that the lights were still out on the billboards, and the posters and fliers were faded and torn, and that here and there were creepers and vines growing out of the doorways.