Work Text:
Great Haywood
Lancashire, England
December 1916
Ronald was having the dreams again, and the pain in his legs had returned. On the doctor’s instructions Edith gave him aspirin, and some cinnamon in warm milk.
“You must wonder why in the world you married me.” He handed her the beaker and smiled, quietly.
“I count myself the luckiest of women.” She kissed his forehead. “Now try to sleep.”
She watched him for a while, stitching the sampler that was to hang over their bed, until his breathing settled and his features softened. In the candle’s soft light she could almost fancy him unchanged from the boy she had met at Mrs. Faulkner’s boarding house on Duchess Road – but the shadows had not sat so deeply in his cheeks then; his skin had lacked this strange almond pallor, and his eyes had still laughed.
He will get better. He has to.
Shortly before midnight her candle guttered. Outside the moon shone clear. It was a fine night, and she was not tired. Ronald always kept paper and pens at his bedside; she wrote him a note and pinned it gently to his pyjamas, so he would see it if he woke, and wouldn’t worry for her. Quietly she put on her coat and stepped into the street.
There was plenty of light to see by, and the slate roof of St Stephen’s Church glittered under the stars. Edith followed her feet along the main road – utterly deserted – and over the railway cutting. She had intended to go as far as the old pack horse bridge and then turn around; the banks of the Trent were heavily wooded, and while she had never heard of any mischief or worse taking place around the village, there was no need to be careless.
But when she reached the river, she stopped. At the far end of the bridge, a light shone in the poplars – not a lamp, or the headlights of a motor car, but a soft glowing circle almost as high as the trees. The sound of laughing voices drifted over the water, and, far in the distance, the whisper of pipes and flutes. Despite her warm coat Edith felt the hairs on her arms lift. The air smelled different out here – it was always fresh and cool by the river, but tonight one could almost taste it: like spices and storm-clouds at once.
Like magic.
And strangest of all, a woman stood in the centre of the bridge – a woman in a long grey dress, with bare shoulders, and hair like spun ink tumbling down her back. Her feet were bare, and around them piled shallow drifts of snow.
Edith turned her palm up to the sky, knowing she would feel nothing. The night was as clear as it had always been.
“Come and join me.” The woman turned and smiled, and Edith’s heart jolted. Were it not for the clothes, and the hair, and the shimmering silvery aura that surrounded the woman, she might have been looking into a mirror.
The stranger’s smile widened. “Don’t be afraid.”
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird…
The words rose in her mind like a spell. Edith’s feet were on the bridge; the woman whose face was so like her own reached out a hand, and Edith went to her as a sleeper drifts through a dream.
“You’ll see them better from here.”
“Them?”
The woman nodded towards the strange light-circle in the trees. Within it, Edith saw the Staffordshire woods and paths and waterways she knew, but bathed in a lilac twilight like a picture from a Lang fairy book. Inside its boundaries danced lithe, gleaming figures, clad in laces and silks of silver and pearl. They laughed, and it sounded merry – and yet beneath it ran skeins of sorrow and regret.
“Where are they?”
“In the land of Tavrobel,” the stranger answered. “Long ago and far away.”
“What are they?”
A melodic, delighted laugh. “They are like you, and like me, and like neither of us. They left their homes, and they suffered. Some returned; many did not.”
Edith took another step forwards, though she did not set foot in the snows that surrounded the stranger. “Are they…” She thought again of Andrew Lang, and the stories Ronald had told her as they drank tea in the Barrow’s stores. “Are they fairies?”
“If you like. A better term might be…oh, how to render it?” The strange woman frowned, and Edith recognised the expression her husband wore when trying to solve some linguistic puzzle. “You might call them lios-alfar.”
“Lios-alfar.” It tasted like ice and sunlight together. “Why can I see them?”
“Strange things happen sometimes, where waters mingle and one road joins another. Especially on certain nights of the year.” The woman tilted her head as though listening to the air. “What day is it where you are?”
“I suppose…” Edith thought. It had been almost midnight when she left the house. “I suppose it would be the twenty-first of December. The solstice.”
“A time of renewal and transition. There, you see: you have your answer.”
Edith watched the spirits – fairies – elves – as they joined hands and danced in a line through the trees. Her companion followed her gaze, at once curious and thoughtful.
“Where are you?” Edith asked eventually – for the snows came to an abrupt halt in the centre of the bridge, as though a wall of glass prevented them from drifting nearer to the village. Wherever the stranger stood, it was not in Edith’s world. “Are you where they are? Long ago and far away?”
Another enchanting smile. “Nearer and yet further. Would you like to see?”
“Is it safe?”
In response, the stranger held out her hands. “I will not hurt you.”
“Who are you?”
The smile darkened like rich wine. “You may call me the Nightingale.”
Ronald was still sleeping when Edith got back to the cottage. There was a delicate furrow between his eyebrows. Edith pressed her fingers to her lips, and lightly touched them to her husband’s cheek and mouth.
He stirred, and quietly murmured, “Geoffrey…”
“No, my love. It’s me.”
“Edith.” His eyes opened. “You left.”
“I went for a walk.”
“Yes. You walked. ’In faery lands forlorn.’”
Her breath lifted. The words sang in her heart and soul. “Perhaps.”
Ronald closed his eyes and slid back into sleep – if, indeed, he had ever left it.