Miss Landon and Aubranael (Tales of Aylfenhame Book 1) Read online

  The company halted as one, and four small faces stared up at her in blank incomprehension. The murmur of voices continued, but she could plainly see that the mutterings were not coming from any of her companions.

  ‘But who is speaking?’ she said, staring all around herself in puzzlement. ‘I see no one.’

  A shriek of laughter split the air, muffled as if reaching her ears from some distance away. The sound resonated in her memory: she had heard it before, and not very long since. When she had journeyed through the Outwoods before, on her way to see Hidenory, she had heard just the same style of conversation: low mutterings, a babble of voices all talking at once, and an occasional cackling laugh that raised the hairs on her arms.

  ‘Where is that coming from?’ she said, frowning.

  Her companions began to hear it, too, for their faces echoed her confusion—and curiosity. They rambled through the trees in a scattered way, Tara-Tat with Tut-Gut, Pinket with Pinch, and Graen following Sophy herself, all searching for the source of the noise.

  At length a shout went up. ‘Here!’ carolled Pinch, and Sophy heard the rustling crash of a small person hurling himself into the undergrowth. He kept up the shout, like a rider leading the hunt as he barrelled away through the trees. Sophy followed.

  She soon saw what had attracted Pinch’s attention. As she covered the ground with her long strides—never quite catching up with Pinch in spite of her much superior height—she glimpsed a long table through the trees, with a gaggle of fae seated around it. The table was very long indeed, she realised: it stretched on and on through the forest, and while she could see the head of the table she could not see the other end.

  It was undoubtedly the same table she had seen before.

  A tall, velvet-upholstered chair stood at the head of the peculiar table, and in it sat an Ayliri girl, her skin and hair as dark as Aubranael’s, her build lithe and youthful. Sophy could make out very little else, for the lady was slumped over onto the tablecloth, her face resting on her folded arms. She appeared to be asleep.

  Some manner of party was in merry progress around her, none of the guests seeming to notice their slumbering hostess. Sophy saw brownies like Thundigle, hobgoblins like Tut-Gut, elves and flower-fae like Pinch and Graen, knobbly-kneed goblins, a troll almost as large as Balligumph taking up three places all by himself, and even an assortment of hatted-and-coated woodland creatures sitting up at the table. They were all drinking tea, but not in the refined way Sophy was used to. Each guest had an enormous tea cup set before them and they were guzzling tea at a mighty rate, pausing frequently in the midst of their chatter to refill their giant cups from one of the teapots that were clustered atop the table.

  And there were a great many of these, all in different sizes and decorated in riotous colours. As far as Sophy could see, they were never empty, no matter how many times the tea cups were refilled.

  Pinch drew up and stopped near the sleeping hostess, his whole body registering a mixture of surprise and glee. He began to bounce on his toes, and as Sophy came up behind him she heard him say: ‘The Teapot Society! What felicity!’

  ‘But what is that?’ Sophy asked, gasping for breath after her headlong dash through the trees. As she stood taking in the strange sight, Tut-Gut and Tara-Tat and Graen and Pinket appeared beside her and stared too.

  ‘A tea party that never ends!’ Pinch said, beaming up at her. ‘Each pot contains a different kind of tea, and they will pour forever. Imagine it! Lavender and honey! Jasmine and cream! Thyme, moonflower, honeysuckle, white ginger, sunblossom, sweet and sour apple, lemon and sage!’

  Sophy noticed that, in between bouts of tea-drinking, the guests were also eating. There were little coloured boxes nestling between the teapots, though she could not see what they contained. ‘What are they eating?’ she asked Pinch.

  His eyes rolled up in an expression of acute ecstasy. ‘Only the very best cakes in Aylfenhame!’

  ‘And I suppose the cakes never run out, either,’ Sophy surmised.

  Pinch shook his head gleefully. ‘An empty chair!’ he shouted in delight, and ran towards it. The chair in question looked placed especially for him, Sophy realised, for it was tall enough to allow him to reach the table, just wide enough to accommodate his tiny frame, and three tiny teapots with matching cake-boxes were set out ready.

  Sophy began to wonder whether there might be a chair for her, too, but she had barely begun her search when something very strange happened.

  Just as Pinch swung himself up over the arm of his chosen chair, the sleeping hostess awoke. She sat up abruptly, stared in horror at Pinch and screamed: ‘NO! You must not sit down!’

  It was too late, for Pinch was already comfortably ensconced in the chair and reaching for the first cake-box. Sophy realised that Graen had also found a seat, and Tut-Gut and Tara-Tat were sharing one further down the table. Only she and Pinket remained aloof.

  The babble of conversation had stopped instantly at the hostess’s shout, and all of the tea-drinkers were staring at her.

  ‘Why must they not be seated?’ Sophy said into the silence.

  The Ayliri woman fixed her enormous eyes on Sophy. They were dark gold in colour, like antique bronze, and filled with a vast sadness. ‘It is too late,’ she said softly, and three fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Sophy could not even begin to guess what the girl’s behaviour meant, but it was alarming her. She was tired of feeling alarmed, tired of trouble and danger, and that tiredness made her short of patience. ‘What is it?’ she repeated. ‘Explain yourself, if you please!’

  But the girl closed her eyes and slowly sank back down onto the table. ‘I am so very sorry,’ she whispered before, apparently, falling asleep once more. The guests appeared to take this as the signal to resume their merriment, for the low roar of mingled voices picked up immediately.

  Sophy sighed. ‘Pinch,’ she called. ‘Tut-Gut? Tara? I believe we had better depart at once.’

  Pinch did not appear to hear her, and neither did the hobs. She called their names and Graen’s once more, quite loudly, but to no effect. Even when she stood at Pinch’s elbow and spoke directly into his ear, he made no sign of having heard but continued guzzling tea and stuffing cakes into his mouth. He was talking all the while to the guests on either side of him, laughing frequently as if he was having the very best time of his life.

  Tut-Gut and Tara-Tut and Graen were behaving in exactly the same way, and were equally oblivious to her attempts to communicate with them. It was as though they had slipped sideways into a different world, and though Sophy could see and hear them, they could not see or hear her.

  Sophy’s alarm blossomed into fear and dismay. She stared for a long moment at her lost friends, then at Pinket who still bobbed at her shoulder.

  ‘I do not like the look of this at all,’ she told him. ‘What do you think?’

  Pinket began weaving about in the air and spinning around her head. Taking this as a sign of disquiet, she nodded. ‘Something must be done,’ she said firmly.

  Marching up to the head of the table, she addressed the hostess once more. After all, the sleeping lady appeared to be the only one who could hear her. ‘Please wake up,’ Sophy begged. ‘My friends cannot hear me; something appears to be terribly amiss.’

  The lady turned her head to face Sophy, though she neither opened her eyes nor sat up. ‘They will never hear you again,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I am very sorry.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Sophy said, frightened. She stared down the long, long length of the table, at the many, many creatures merrily stuffing themselves, and felt a deep sense of foreboding. What were they all doing here? Had they all happened upon the tea-table, like Pinch, and cheerfully joined in? Where was the end of the table? How many creatures were sitting here, talking and laughing and eating cake, and how long had they been at the party?

  ‘So many years…’ whispered the lady. ‘You had better leave them. There is nothing to be done for them.�
� At last she pushed herself upright, her arms shaking with the effort, and propped her chin on her hands. Staring hopelessly down the length of the table, she sighed and said: ‘But they are enjoying themselves so much, are they not? That is something.’

  Sophy quickly grew tired of these mysterious pronouncements and began to feel like shaking the girl until she spoke a little more clearly. ‘What is the Teapot Society?’ she said, employing a firm tone to show that she expected a clear answer. ‘Why are you all here? What is this about?’

  ‘You had better leave them,’ the young lady repeated, with the faintest of smiles at Sophy. ‘I know it is hard, but you must be grateful that you were spared. Go at once! And whatever you do, do not take a chair!’

  ‘I am not leaving without my companions,’ Sophy said, fixing the maddening Ayliri with a cool stare.

  ‘Then you are not leaving at all,’ came the reply, ‘and you may as well take a chair after all. There, I see a comfortable one near to me. It is perfect for you. You will find your favourite tea in the first teapot, your true love’s favourite in the next, and in the third, something entirely new.’

  ‘I will wait until I reach home for a cup of my favourite tea, thank you, and I do not have a true love.’

  ‘Why, of course you do,’ said the lady, staring at her in surprise. ‘For there is the teapot, as sure as my name is Lihyaen.’

  Sophy began to think that the woman was soft in her wits. And no wonder, if she had been sitting here for years as she had implied. ‘Are you keeping the guests here?’ she demanded. ‘Have you some form of enchantment upon them?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said the girl faintly. She was beginning to sway with weariness, wilting slowly but inexorably back onto the table.

  ‘Then you must remove it!’ Sophy cried, aghast. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’

  ‘It is not of my making,’ whispered the girl. And then she began to snore.

  Sophy stared at her helplessly. Then she stared down the table at Pinch, Tut-Gut, Tara-Tat and Graen, who were still laughing uproariously and quaffing tea. What could she possibly do for them? She was hopelessly out of her depth; her knowledge of curses and enchantments was limited indeed, for they were rare in England.

  She stood for several long minutes, paralysed with indecision, her thoughts racing but her mind blank of inspiration. She tried shaking the sleeping lady again, but this time she did not wake up, and nothing Sophy did could distract Pinch and the others from their repast.

  Then several things happened at once.

  The first thing was the appearance of Felebre. The great purple cat came galloping into the tea-party clearing, leapt up onto the table with extraordinary grace and raced up to the head of it. There she sat, and proceeded to lick the sleeping girl’s face all over. Nor did she ignore Sophy, for she rubbed her long body against Sophy’s hip on her way past.

  ‘Felebre!’ Sophy cried in relief. Then she questioned her own feelings, for had not Felebre been responsible for leading her to Hidenory? The cat was in some measure responsible for Sophy’s current predicament, so she ought not be pleased to see her. But the cat’s behaviour towards the sleeping girl—and Sophy herself—was strange: gone was her quiet dignity, and in its place she displayed a kind of bounding joyousness, like a gambolling kitten. Sophy noticed, with faint unease, that Felebre’s eyes and Lihyaen’s were almost the same colour.

  She was not given a great deal of time to consider these points, for a great howling reached her ears, distant but growing rapidly closer. It sounded as though a pack of hunting dogs was approaching through the trees; and why not? Plenty of stranger things had happened. But they were moving impossibly fast; barely had she had time to register the sound before the dogs swept through the trees and crashed over the table.

  They were incorporeal, mere hound-shapes sketched in the air, but they made enough noise for five hunting-packs together. Goblins crouched low over their backs—solid creatures, these, with ferocious grins wreathing their pointed faces. They came at her at a dead run and swarmed over her, howling and yipping and bellowing as they rode victorious circles around her.

  Sophy barely had time to feel afraid—yet again—before another thing happened. A tall figure appeared in the wake of the goblin hunters; tall and lithe and brown-skinned, with long dark hair flying everywhere in the wind. She caught the briefest glimpse of his disfigured face before she found herself swept up in a fierce embrace and held very closely indeed against a hard male body.

  ‘Miss Landon, I am so relieved…’ he was saying into her ear. ‘I have never been so afraid in all my life!’

  ‘Aubranael?’ she said in confusion. ‘How came you to be here?’ And how came he to recognise her in her hag-form? But when she glanced down at her own hands, they were smooth and young once more. Hidenory’s enchantment had worn off, she supposed, or it had retreated in the face of some greater power. She did not much care which; she was only relieved to be restored to herself.

  But… Aubranael. His embrace confused and embarrassed her—and prompted some other feelings as well, to which she could not precisely put a name. But she was so relieved to see him, too, that for one very shocking instant she melted against him and allowed herself to be held, and hang the impropriety.

  Aubranael smiled into her face and made as if to kiss her. Shocked, Sophy pulled away.

  ‘I forgot,’ he said, his face registering some manner of sudden realisation. ‘I apologise. There is much to explain.’

  But Sophy had not time for his explanations just at that moment, for her attention was distracted by the sight of Mr. Balligumph stamping mightily through the trees and bearing down upon the tea-table at great speed. ‘Balligumph?’ she said incredulously. Behind the troll came Isabel Ellerby carrying Thundigle, and Charles Ellerby carrying another brownie. Behind them came poor Mary, staggering as though her feet pained her very much. They caught sight of Sophy, and their faces lit up with delight and relief. Sophy’s own heart thumped weirdly with a mixture of emotions she could not immediately put a name to. Had all of these people come here—into the heart of Aylfenhame—in order to find her? For a moment she was so overcome with love and gratitude and relief that she could not speak.

  Then she saw Anne. Her young friend had found a seat at the table and was already in the thick of the party, with three teapots set before her and three matching cake-boxes. ‘Oh, no,’ Sophy groaned. ‘Anne would be the first to sit down!’

  The next half-hour was a mess of pure chaos. Her attempts to extricate Anne from the never-ending tea party were as unsuccessful as her attempts to free Pinch, Graen and the others, but that did not keep her from trying. But then the gathering was greatly augmented when fully half of the goblin hunt-riders found seats and began to gorge themselves; the rest might have followed suit, but a barked command from—inexplicably—Mr. Green recalled them before they could commit themselves. How came Mr. Green to be here? And how was it that he commanded such unthinking obedience from a small army of goblins? Sophy wanted to ask, but she could find no opportunity amidst the chaos.

  When Isabel and Charles Ellerby began to drift towards the table, Sophy did her best to intercept them, but she was too late. Soon they, too, were honoured guests at the sleeping girl’s party, sitting either side of Anne and joining with her in every gaiety. Felebre took up a position near the strange hostess’s head and lay there, watching the festivities with an unreadable expression, her tail twitching at the tip. Balligumph attempted to reach Sophy with some manner of message for her, if she was reading his gestures correctly; but his bulk was against him, and he could not find a path between the trees and the table, and past the remnants of Mr. Green’s goblins.

  And then there was Hidenory, of whom Sophy was powerfully aware. The witch kept to one side, watching the proceedings with an inscrutable expression on her face. Twilight was rapidly approaching; she would soon be restored to her youth and beauty, and then what would she do? For Sophy read a degree of resolve in her
pose and in the set of her withered old lips. But she could not guess what the witch might be planning; she could only keep a part of her attention fixed upon her, in the hopes that she might be able to protect herself—and if necessary, her friends—from any further interference.

  Aubranael left her side; for a moment she panicked that he had succumbed to the lure of the table, but she spotted him bending solicitously over the sleeping girl. He began talking to her, words which were lost amidst the roar of merriment. Sophy considered following him, but quickly changed her mind. She wanted to speak to Balligumph; he was always the voice of reason, the source of exactly the piece of information one needed. If anybody knew how to resolve the problem of the Teapot Society, it would be he.

  She began to force her way through the hound-riders, past the haphazardly-placed chairs at the tea-table and between the slender trees that arched over the tea-drinkers. Balligumph saw her intent and planted himself firmly, looking as immoveable as a small tree, or perhaps a very large rock. She had almost reached him when Mary bustled past her, making her way towards the table. Sophy saw an empty chair nearby.

  ‘No!’ she cried, catching at Mary’s wrist. ‘Mary, you must not! You see the consequences before you.’

  Mary clucked her disapproval, and gently—but firmly—withdrew her arm from Sophy’s grip. ‘What a thing to say! I would think my Sophy would remember that I was never a tea-drinker. I had far rather drink washing-up water.’ She picked up one of the discarded tea cups and, to Sophy’s mild amazement, began to tidy up. ‘Such a shocking mess,’ she was muttering. ‘I cannot think too well of any lady who permits such a ruckus as this at her own table.’

  Sophy’s astonishment grew when the red-capped hob who had previously owned the tea cup in question looked directly at Mary, his face a picture of horror. He swiped at the cups she was holding, but Mary was too fast for him. ‘Fear not, little master! I will bring them back, fresh and new, in a trice.’

  She continued to tidy with the efficiency of long years of practice: polishing soiled teapots, collecting tea-stained cups and wiping up cake crumbs. While they had ignored—or been oblivious to—Sophy’s presence entirely, the tea-drinkers watched Mary’s progress with full comprehension, and no small amount of anger.