Another World
THIS REALM, WHEREIN MAGIC YET FLOWS: Chapter Seventeen
THIS, THAT & THE OTHER
PART TWO: THIS REALM,
WHEREIN MAGIC YET FLOWS
Over hill, over dale,
Through bush, through brier,
Over park, over pale,
Through flood, through fire,
I do wander everywhere.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1605)
There was a flash of golden light followed by the strange sensation of slowly falling into deep darkness. It was as if they had jumped into something like water but thicker and at body temperature so they could hardly feel it. For a moment, the girls’ grip on each other’s hands slipped and they were alone. Panicking. Falling. Unable to see anyone or anything else. An infinite black void. Not even able to see their own limbs flailing in so solid a darkness. The emptiness carried no sound, so their screams were silent.
Spinning and reaching out they found each other again, only inches apart, and each flung their arms around the other. Then the void lurched like an elevator suddenly slowing… An instant of weightlessness before they landed heavily, flat on their backs, the jolt knocking the breath out of them.
They had both screwed their eyes shut against the utter darkness and now a rich crimson light glowed through their eyelids. Their eyes opened wide and so did their mouths as they gulped in cool, deliciously fresh air.
They were on their backs, looking up at the leaf-laden branches of a great tree, an oak. Shafts of sunlight slanted through like searchlights. Birdsong and the lazy buzz of insects drifted from all around.
“You OK?” they both asked, and answered, “I think so.”
“I think it worked…” said Rietta incredulously.
Carla sprang to her feet, saying, “Oh yes, it worked…”
Rietta took Carla’s hand and pulled herself into a sitting position to take in their new surroundings. “…most definitely…” she affirmed, letting her rucksack slip from her back.
Around them, a carpet of tall bluebells broke through the dry leaves of the forest floor, scenting the air strongly and sweetly. They were in the midst of a lush woodland, shaded by the great oak which, by the girth of its mighty trunk they knew must be truly ancient, perhaps older than a thousand years – and it was not alone. They were surrounded by trees of equal stature, with moss covered trunks standing like pillars of some vast natural cathedral. The woodland floor was a contrasting patchwork of great ragged shady patches and pools of sunlight, glaring with the greens of shrubs and their neon-bright, multi-coloured blooms.
Rietta’s sketchbook was laying in the leaf litter at her side, she picked it up and her smile of wonder faltered, “Where’s the mokrok?”
Carla shrugged, still scanning their surroundings for any sign of him. Her gaze came to rest on a fallen bough, festooned with clusters of ivory white mushrooms, which lay nearby. A bird was perched upon it, regarding them with shiny black eyes. It looked like a bluetit, but it was closer to the size of a chicken. It hopped down and tossed dry leaves about as it moved closer, tilting its head one way then the other to peer at them with each beady eye in turn. With a flutter of wings, it perched onto Rietta’s rucksack and chirped surprisingly loudly, then, more surprisingly still, it spoke, “Crumbs? Crackers? Cheese?” it chirruped, “You have seeds?”
The girls were dumbfounded for a moment, until Carla managed to say, “Hello – we have some sandwiches…”
“Are you our new guide?” asked Rietta, hopefully.
The bird flicked its wings and bobbed up and down a couple of times before singing a series of tuneful, chirpy tweets.
“Was that your name?” she asked.
The bird bobbed again in a way that seemed to be a ‘yes’.
“Well, I’m Rietta,” she said with a wide smile, “and this is –”
“– Carla,” she crouched down and politely offered her hand in greeting, “Pleased to meet you, Chirpy!”
The bird hopped off the rucksack to inspect the hand more closely, obviously expecting to find food in it.
“Sand-witch-yes?” it cheeped.
“Can you take us to the Fair Ones?” asked Rietta, earnestly.
“Here I am,” stated the bird, simply, as it hopped around them, “Home here. I eat seeds. Eat nuts. You have? Seeds?”
Rietta gestured to the abundance of flowers and gleaming forest fruits they could see around them, “Looks like plenty more seeds on the way right here.”
“Seeds?” the bird said again, recognising the word and sounding very hopeful.
Carla grinned and glanced across to Rietta and whispered, “I don’t think he’s our guide.”
She delved into her bag and produced her Tupperware lunchbox, took out a sandwich and tore it in half, handing part to Rietta. They intended to break off chunks and throw them to the expectant and persistent bird, instead he hopped onto Carla’s knee and took a beakful of bread and cheese directly from her hand, then hopped across to Rietta’s shoulder and took another chunk of what was on offer, chirping, “Cheese, cheese, cheese,” as it did.
The girls laughed at its antics and when it had joyously devoured the sandwich, Rietta suppressed her giggles to ask, “So, any idea which way we should head off?”
“Go find nuts?” He cocked his head quizzically.
“We could do with finding the mokrok,” added Carla, “Have you seen a mokrok?”
“I eat seeds!”
The girls could not help laughing, Rietta managed to say, “We need to find the Fair Ones, or find someone who can help us to find them…”
The bird did another leaf-scattering hop-around, clicking and chirping, “I tell Jack,” and with that fluttered off, its wings flashing through the patchwork of light and shade, disappearing into the woodland deep.
Rietta grinned broadly and said, “It most definitely did work!”
“Absolutely,” agreed Carla, “but what has happened to our mokrok?”
Rietta stood up and offered Carla a helping hand to hoist her from her crouching position, and said, “He must need to find his way, from wherever his stone is… looks like we came through somewhere unexpected.”
“Mmm…” Carla looked around, nodding thoughtfully, “and I don’t see any standing stones round here.”
“Perhaps it’s because the Waystone in our world had been moved out of position.”
“Which means he could be anywhere.”
“And, far as we know, we are anywhere else!”
A butterfly, with dazzling wings the size of dinner plates, fluttered down into a nearby clearing. The incandescent reds, blues and yellows blazed in the sunshine as it alighted on a huge, curving arch of bramble, lazily opening and closing as it enjoyed a warm rest.
The girls both gasped in awe and Rietta said, “Have you seen the size of those blackberries, too!”
“Is everything here super-big? Or, do you think it’s us who are small?”
“You think in this place, we’re all tiny and fairy-sized ourselves?”
“Maybe it works that way,” considered Carla, “– they seem small in our world, but in theirs, it’s the other way around.”
“Well, then, let’s hope we only meet seed-eating birds.”
In silent agreement, they decided to get closer to the resting butterfly for a better look. Taking short, careful steps, they approached the more-than-healthy briar patch. The stems of the brambles were as thick as a big man’s thumb, some as thick as a wrist, with dark, plumb-coloured thorns that gleamed in the shadows crowded with clusters of big shiny black fruit.
They stopped short of the bramble-clogged clearing, transfixed by the beauty of the spectacular butterfly. As they watched, wide-eyed, it took flight again. Their faces dimmed for an instant as its shadow passed over them. It flew so close above their heads that they could feel the draught from its wing beats ruffle their hair. They both made breathily impressed noises and watched it flit a slow spiral up and away towards the sunny sky above the leafy canopy.
Her blue eyes bright with wonder, Rietta turned back to the clearing and saw that a particularly large and shiny specimen of blackberry hung close by, very near the edge of the big briar patch. The middle of the patch was impenetrable, with stems arching well above head-height, but near to the edge they were less than knee-high. Although the thorns were bigger, they were fewer and further apart than those on the brambles that grew in the woods back home. She was sure that she could reach.
With care, she placed her feet into the spaces between the thick stems and in just a couple of steps, the beautiful berry was in arm’s reach. A loud rustling from deep within the patch made her pause mid-reach, her smile of delight faded to a frown of apprehension. Was a jealous wood mouse coming to defend its bounty? Or did those shadows at the centre conceal a spider in proportion to the other creatures they had seen? A spider that was now closing in on her?
“Rietta!” Carla’s voice had an unmistakable edge of panic and, when Rietta turned to quickly hop out from among the brambles, she found herself looking back at her friend through a curtain of twisting stems that had reared up, snake-like, from under the dry leaf-litter.
The whole briar patch was now in motion. Stems passing over stems, weaving a complex curving network of thorny green, rustling and creaking against each other as they rose and surrounded her like a cage. Some of the wrist-thick stems curved over and back down, their huge thorns passing very close to her frightened face.
At times like this, she would expect to scream, but instead a deceptively calm-sounding, “Oh, no…” came from her throat as she was forced to lean back to avoid the moving thorns from catching her flesh…
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