Tales from the Tower, Volume 2, Page 3

  One of the creatures, as though sensing my presence, glanced towards the door, and somehow, despite the transformation, I knew him for who he was. Had he recognised me too?

  A sudden hush fell on the gathering.

  I had been frightened before, but not to that extent. This fear pierced me like a thin steel blade. Scooping up my bag, I turned and ran off into the strengthening dawn. Behind me, the door crashed open, but I didn’t look back. Leaping into the buggy, I lashed the rump of the old horse until he broke into a stumbling gallop, and I didn’t let up until I could hear his wheezing breaths and feel the newly risen sun warm on my neck.

  Then and only then did I look behind. The road, streaked with morning shadow, lay empty. There was neither sign nor sound of pursuit. Yet still I sensed something not quite right. More calm now, less blinded by fear, I surveyed my surroundings . . . and immediately wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before! The sky was far bluer than it had ever been; the grass and trees more vividly green; the whole scene shot through by a suggestion of golden light – the same transfiguring light I had glimpsed in the hovel. It was as if, in peering into that forbidden place, I had passed through the doorway itself, into a magically altered world from which there was no return.

  I blinked my one good eye, just to be sure, but this newer, brighter world remained. Even my own hands, still gripping the reins, appeared wondrous to me now. As did the steaming coat of the old horse. And leaning back into the padded seat of the buggy – the horrors of the night and my recent fear both momentarily forgotten – I laughed out loud.

  I could hardly wait to get home. Gretel, I felt certain, was the one person capable of understanding what had happened to me, for in all likelihood it had happened to her too. Abandoning the buggy at the front gate, I ran indoors and took the stairs two at a time.

  But when I burst into the room and called her name, there was no response. A fly buzzed busily at the window, and that was all. As for Gretel herself, she lay stark and still in the wooden bed, both eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

  ‘Dear God!’ I breathed, and in the first rush of grief I bent to kiss her.

  What prevented me were those staring eyes – one dull and unseeing, as you would expect; the other as bright and unclouded as ever.

  For a moment I thought I’d been mistaken. She was alive after all! Except that when I grasped her hand, the flesh felt chill.

  I blinked away tears, too upset to fathom the simple truth.

  ‘Gretel?’ I whispered uncertainly, and when she failed to stir, I touched the tip of my finger to the brighter of her eyes. It felt weirdly familiar: rock-hard and unyielding. More intently now – the truth at last beginning to dawn – I pressed my fingers into the surrounding flesh, gently at first, and then more firmly, until the eye eased itself free. It was exactly like my own, a thing of glass and ceramic!

  I sat down on the bedside chair with a thump. Here in my hand lay an explanation for her habit of turning her head aside, which had merely been her way of hiding the fact that her eyes did not move in unison. Yet in solving one puzzle, I had raised other, more pressing questions. Had she, perhaps, only chosen me as an assistant because of our shared handicap? And if so, why? It seemed an odd, even self-indulgent reason for making such a choice and didn’t gel with what I knew of her.

  Not without some sense of guilt, I went to her desk and rummaged through the drawers. In the lowest of them, which I had to force open with a paperknife, I found a copy of my file, including my medical records. A single item in those records had been asterisked and heavily underlined. It read: Suffered a severe physical trauma at age six which resulted in the loss of an eye. A prosthetic eye successfully fitted.

  So! I had been chosen for my handicap, but still I didn’t understand why. It seemed too petty a motive for someone as generous as Gretel, too out of character.

  However, when a loved one has just died, it is impossible to sit around wondering, or even to give way to grief. There are too many things to be done: the body to be washed and dressed; the funeral to be arranged; food to be prepared for the reception afterwards.

  I set about these tasks with a heavy heart, but also an inner sense of elation. Because here is the curious thing: my sudden clarity of sight – or whatever it was that had happened to me back at the hovel – didn’t fade with the passing hours. It persisted. The world at large retained its unnatural vividness. The interior of the cottage, my brush and comb, the utensils I used in the kitchen, all seemed shot through with golden light. And when I woke each morning, the gift remained. It was the one thing that made my sombre duties bearable, and kept at bay my lingering fear of the creatures (whoever they were) who lived at the end of the valley.

  The day of the funeral arrived. The graveside ceremony, I need hardly add, was well attended. News of Gretel’s death had spread like wildfire through Little Earth, and the local families turned out in force – hardly surprising, given how she had touched their lives. Most came on to the reception, and by midday the cottage was full to overflowing, with people spilling out over the porch and down into the garden.

  I was kept busy consoling those who grieved, organising the children, and passing around platters of food. As I bustled to and fro, it never occurred to me that the tinkers might appear. Hadn’t their leader stressed how different they were from the people of the valley? How set apart? Hadn’t I witnessed for myself what that difference entailed when I’d peered through the crack in the door? No, I felt confident that they’d stay away. They would have been out of place there.

  Yet when I carried food and drink out to the garden, I spotted them immediately, down amongst the poplars, their presence signalled by a shimmer of golden light. The leader, as magnificent as when I had last seen him through the door, detached himself from the rest and approached me across the lawn. None of the farming folk made way: to them he was a common tinker. But to me, his savage splendour appeared all the more dazzling amongst so many drab, black-clad figures.

  As absurd as it may sound, I dipped my head and dropped him a formal curtsey.

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ I said, taking care not to meet his gaze.

  He responded with what I took to be a form of reassurance: ‘We are here only to honour her.’

  ‘Then let me thank you on her behalf,’ I said, relieved, though still with my eyes cast down.

  He clicked his tongue softly, in disapproval, that sound alone sending a jolt of fear through me.

  ‘Come, girl,’ he whispered, ‘look at me when you speak.’

  I couldn’t help but obey. Slowly, I raised my head, and as our eyes met, I knew instantly that I had given myself away.

  ‘Ah,’ he sighed. ‘So you did see past our dimming.’

  I nodded.

  ‘And now?’

  ‘It’s not just you,’ I confessed. ‘Everything else has changed too.’

  He regarded me in silence for some moments. ‘This presents us with a problem,’ he said finally.

  ‘A problem?’ I echoed him, the fear audible in my voice.

  But there, on that crowded lawn, he was reluctant to explain. ‘You will tell no one about us, you understand,’ he said by way of warning. Then, as he turned back towards his people: ‘We will meet again later.’

  I hated the sound of that word ‘later’. It weighed heavily on me through the remainder of the afternoon; and that evening, as a precaution, I barricaded the front and back doors before going to bed. But he didn’t come. Not on that night, nor the next, nor in the weeks that followed. I thought to begin with that he was watching to see if I was trustworthy, testing me perhaps; but as the weeks stretched into months I began to relax, even to hope. Until one day I woke without any feelings of dread, and decided:

  It’s over. He’s forgotten.

  I was twenty-three years old by then, and had been officially appointed as the resident midwife of Little Earth. Pretty soon, people began looking up to me as they had once looked up to Gretel. Out of sympathy fo
r my single state, they even invited me to their homes, and to services at their church. I knew all along that I could never be one of them – our religious differences were too great – but that didn’t stop me envying their close family life. Like everyone else, I had no desire to live alone forever, so I suppose it was inevitable that before too long I again began seeing a young farmer – or ‘walking out’ with him as they called it in the valley.

  Whether it would ever have come to anything I can’t say, because we weren’t really given a chance. I remember our last evening. We had been out together, walking arm in arm in the starlight as lovers do, and on our return to the cottage I found a message pinned to the door. It was from a neighbouring farm, where a woman had gone into premature labour.

  While I collected my bag, he hitched up the old horse. Then we kissed a hasty goodbye, neither of us dreaming we would never meet like that again. As I drove off, my only concern was for the woman who had summoned me.

  In fact, it turned out that she was in no danger, and nor was her child, despite being premature. She had had several children already, and with a little help from me she soon produced another healthy babe. Even so, the night was well advanced before I left her.

  I reached home at the first hint of dawn. Having un- harnessed and fed the horse, I trudged up the path to the back porch . . . and he was there, waiting by the door, his splendour shrouded in a heavy woollen cloak. In the burgeoning light he looked more inhuman than ever, like some mythical creature risen from the past.

  ‘You have heeded my warning?’ he asked abruptly.

  I shrank back. ‘I’ve told no one, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘What about that young man of yours? Haven’t you been tempted to whisper our truth to him? Pillow talk, I believe you people call it. Things confessed in passion.’

  ‘If that’s why you’ve come,’ I said, ‘then you have nothing to fear, because I’ve told him nothing either.’

  He moved forward threateningly, his gleaming features looming above me. ‘Yes, but what of the future? When you two have grown closer? Won’t you be tempted then?’

  ‘Never!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ll always keep your secret safe, I swear.’ I edged nearer to the door. ‘Now I’m sorry, but I need to sleep. I’ve been up all night and I’m too tired for more questions.’ With a brief nod of apology, I reached for the latch.

  Straightaway he grabbed me by the hair and forced me roughly to my knees. His face close to mine, his breath as rank as any animal’s, he hissed: ‘Would you have me tear out your tongue?’

  I shook my head, too scared to speak.

  ‘Then answer me this. When you visited us last, how exactly did you come to see past our dimming? And tell me no lies!’

  ‘There was a . . . a crack in the front door,’ I stuttered out. ‘I peered through it and . . . and . . .’

  He didn’t wait for me to finish. ‘Which eye was it that betrayed us? Which eye stole from us our glory, and enjoys it still?’

  It came to me then – in the midst of my terror – the truth about Gretel.

  ‘So you were the one who blinded Gretel!’ I blurted out. ‘But why? She’d already seen you! Who you really are! How could taking her eye change that?’

  ‘She had to learn what we are capable of,’ he snarled, tugging at my hair. ‘You must too. How else can I guarantee your silence? So I repeat, which eye? Or would you have me take them both?’

  I had just enough presence of mind to point to my false eye. The rest – the drawing of the knife, the downward plunge – happened too quickly for me to follow. Yet his reflexes were quicker still. Even as the knife-point clinked against the surface of my eye, he stayed his hand. I felt the faintest jolt, that was all.

  He flung me to the porch floor, unable to mask his surprise. ‘You lied to me!’ he rasped out. ‘You have no sight in that thing you call an eye!’

  ‘It happened when I was a child,’ I confessed, beginning to cry.

  He nudged at me with his foot. ‘Tears won’t help you, woman. The price must still be paid.’

  I crawled forward and clutched him around the knees. ‘Please!’ I sobbed. ‘Don’t blind me completely! Take my hand, my arm . . . anything! Not my other eye!’

  He gazed down as you would at an insect scurrying for its life, his face inscrutable. ‘The price,’ he repeated, ‘must be paid. It’s the only way of keeping my people safe.’

  ‘Didn’t I help one of your women?’ I implored him through my tears. ‘Didn’t I come to your house and save her? Surely that counts for something. A life for a life – isn’t that fair?’

  Ironically, it wasn’t my pleading that moved him. It was the tears that seeped from my blind socket. He reached down wonderingly and scooped them from my cheek with one pointed nail, then licked at them, like some mythical beast drinking at the stream of life.

  ‘There may be another way,’ he conceded.

  ‘Take it . . . !’ I began.

  But the knife had already descended, carving a path down my cheek and paring the flesh to the bone.

  I clamped my hand to the wound, felt hot blood spurt between my fingers, saw how it splashed crimson-black upon the planking in the dawn light.

  He crouched close beside me. ‘Hear what I tell you and remember,’ he murmured. ‘You will not stitch that wound. Nor bind it closed. Nor seek help from anyone. You’ll let it scar over as it pleases.’

  ‘What if it disfigures me?’ I moaned, crying from pain now.

  He brushed the hair from my face in a sudden gesture of pity. ‘That’s part of our price,’ he went on. ‘The other part is this. Even if some man looks past your disfigurement or loves you in spite of it, you’ll reject him. You’ll live alone for the rest of your days. In exchange, I leave you with the gift of seeing, which you stole from us that night – more than just an eye. Are we agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ I whispered, and felt for his hand, but he had already gone.

  Alone in the cottage I cleaned and staunched the bleeding wound, though that was all. In the clear morning light I could see that he’d done his work well. It was a fearsome cut, as fearsome in its way as his undimmed presence, and I took it as the threat he had intended it to be. Under the guise of suffering from some contagious disorder, I holed up in the cottage for several weeks, allowing the open wound to heal in its own good time.

  It left behind a broad, disfiguring scar, as I had guessed it would, a scar that distorted my whole face and more or less ensured that my days of romance were over – soon replaced, in fact, by pitying glances. Strange to say, I didn’t overly care. I was alive! What else mattered? And free! Free to relish the gift he had left with me. What had he called it? The gift of seeing. Yes, that was it: the ability to view the world as he might view it. Actually to live within the faerie glow I had dreamed of as a child. It is no ordinary gift, believe me. It brought a real joy into my daily life, which more than made up for my damaged face.

  As peculiar as it may sound, I felt grateful to him.

  I didn’t see him again for some time after that, nor any of his people. Months must have passed before our paths crossed again. Fittingly, given our first meeting, it was at the market, where he and his clan were busy trading horses.

  He spotted me within moments, and I can only assume that he read the happiness in my face because he soon came striding over, a great golden creature passing unnoticed through the gathered farmers and their families.

  ‘I see you have kept your part of the bargain,’ he said.

  ‘It was a good trade,’ I replied, and laughed.

  He laughed too, a booming sound, also unnoticed, that rang out across the market. Only the singing birds in their cages seemed aware of it, beating their wings against the bars and trilling loudly.

  ‘You have more than a little of Gretel in you,’ he observed.

  I dropped him another curtsey, but in a playful, half-mocking way. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ I said.

  And so we fell into
conversation – of the kind that takes place between old friends whose paths have diverged, but who once went through testing times together.

  Right at the end I asked: ‘So what am I to call your people? You must surely have a name I could use. Between ourselves, I mean, not out there.’ I gestured towards the rest of the market.

  He considered the question, and while he did so, one of the women sidled up and eased herself into the crook of his arm. She too was a wondrous creature, more fabulous than real, and yet something about her reminded me of the gap-toothed woman I had attended at the hovel.

  ‘We are an ancient people,’ he said at last, ‘and have answered to many names, but mostly we’ve been referred to as the Faerie. It’s a magical word, special to us.’

  ‘Ah, the Faerie,’ the woman crooned in delight. ‘I love the sound of it.’

  So did I, for it put me in mind of my grandmother’s stories and somehow stitched together the two separate parts of my life – bound them far more tightly than the ragged edges of this wound of mine.

  ‘Yes, I like it too,’ I said. ‘The Faerie.’ I paused to savour the word. ‘That’s how I’ll think of you from this point on.’

  He gave me his hand in a burning grip. ‘Let it seal our pact,’ he said.

  ‘Gladly,’ I said, and glanced down at my flesh-and-blood hand locked in his golden fist – an unlikely link between alien worlds, severed the moment we drew apart.

  We have met frequently since then: sometimes at the market, sometimes on the open road, occasionally at the far end of the valley, when he sends for me. I still find those visits to the hovel hard to endure, and so I’m sure do the women involved. There is no altering the way things are, however; I’ve learned that much. Whether I approve or not, the faerie women will go on reaching across the gulf that divides us, and our young men will return their passionate embrace; but like our brief handshake – his and mine – the bond can never hold. Always and for ever, it dissolves in the dawn light and leaves behind only the monstrous offspring of a mutual yearning.