Once Upon an Autumn Eve (2 page)

And thank you, Christine J. McDowell, for your help with the French language. (I would add, though, that any errors in usage are entirely mine. Of course, the errors in English are mine as well.)

Foreword

If you have read the forewords of the first two tales of my Faery series—
Once Upon a Winter’s Night
and
Once Upon a Summer Day
—you will know my thesis is that once upon a time many (if not most) fairy tales were epics of love and seduction and copious sex and bloody fights and knights and witches and dragons and ogres and giants and other fantastic beings all scattered throughout the scope of the tale as the hero or heroine struggled on.

Bardic sagas were these, but as the minstrels and troubadours and sonneteers and tale-spinners and bards and other such dwindled, and common folks took up the task of entertaining one another with these well-loved sagas, I believe bits were omitted—fell by the wayside—and the stories grew shorter, or fragmented into several stories, or changed to fit the current culture or religion or whatever other agendas the tale-tellers might have had.

And so, if I’m right, the grand and sweeping tales bards used to keep their royal audiences enthralled for hours on end became less and less as the tales were spread from mouth to mouth.

As the years went on, the stories continued to dwindle, until they became what the collectors of those tales—Andrew Lang, the Grimm brothers, and others—finally recorded and produced for others to read . . . or so it is I contend—

—pale reflections of what they once were—

—mere fragments—

—holding a small portion of the essence—

—and so on.

But guess what: they still hold audiences rapt.

They still charm.

They still are much admired by many, and certainly I am among those.

Even so, I would really like to hear some of these stories such as I have imagined them once to have been: long, gripping, romantic, perilous epics of love and hatred and loss and redemption and revenge and forgiveness and life and death and other such grand themes.

But told as a fairy tale.

Especially a favorite fairy tale.

Expanded to include all the above.

With
Once Upon an Autumn Eve
again I take a favorite of mine (in fact several favorites of mine woven together) to tell the tale as it once might have been told—as an epic, a saga, a story of length.

As with my other stories, since it is a romance in addition to being an adventure, once more you will find French words sprinkled throughout, for French is well suited to tales of love.

By the bye, the best-known version of the central story is but a few pages long. Once again, I thought that much too brief, and, as is apparent, I did lengthen it a bit. But then again, I claim that I am telling the “real” story, and who is to say I am not?

I hope it holds you enthralled.

 

Dennis L. McKiernan
Tucson, Arizona, 2004

1

S
eparated from the mortal world by looming walls of twilight is a wondrous place called Faery. It is now quite difficult a to find, though once upon a time is it wasn’t. Faery is a place of marvel and adventure and magic and peril, populated by mythical and mystical creatures and uncommon beings . . . along with ordinary folks—if anyone who lives in Faery can be said to be ordinary. Yet the creatures and beings of Faery aren’t the only things of enchantment, for there are items of magic within—grimoires, amulets, swords, rings, cloaks, helms, and the like, most of them quite rare. Even the lands of Faery are numinous, for Faery itself is composed of many mystical realms, rather like an enormous and strange jigsaw puzzle, the individual domains all separated from one another by great tenebrous walls of twilight. And like a mystifying riddle, some of the realms touch upon many others, while some touch upon but few. Caution must be taken when stepping through these dusky walls in going from one place to another, else one might end up somewhere altogether different from where one intended. Too, directions in Faery do not seem to be constant; there may be no true east, south, west, and north, though occasionally those compass points are ascribed by some therein, for when one goes from realm to realm, bearings seem to shift. Instead it may be more accurate to say that east, south, west, and north respectively align with sunup or dawnwise, sunwise, sundown or duskwise, and starwise. Whether or not this jigsaw puzzle makes an overall coherent picture is questionable, for each of the pieces, each of the domains, seems unique; after all, ’tis Faery, an endless place, with uncounted realms all separated from one another by looming walls of shadowlight, and with Faery itself separated from the common world by twilight as well.

Among the many remarkable domains within this mystical place are the Forests of the Seasons. In one of these four woodlands eternal autumn lies upon the land; here it is that crops afield remain ever for the reaping, and vines are overburdened with their largesse, and trees bear an abundance ripe for the plucking, and the ground holds rootstock and tubers for the taking. Yet no matter how often a harvest is gathered, when one isn’t looking the bounty somehow replaces itself. How such a place can be—endless autumn—is quite mysterious; nevertheless it is so.

On one side of this magical realm and separated from it by a great wall of twilight is another equally enigmatic province, a domain graced by eternal summer, and it is a region of forests and fields, of vales and clearings, of streams and rivers and other such ’scapes, where soft summer breezes flow across the weald, though occasionally towering thunderstorms fill the afternoon skies and rain sweeps o’er all.

Likewise, on a different side of the autumnal realm, beyond another great wall of half-light, there stands a land of eternal winter, where snow ever lies on the ground, and ice clads the sleeping trees and covers the still meres or, in thin sheets, encroaches upon the edges of swift-running streams, and the stars at night glimmer in crystalline skies.

And farther on and past yet another twilight border lies a place of eternal springtime, where everlasting meltwater trickles across the soil, and trees are abud and blossoms abloom, where birds call for mates and beetles crawl through decaying leaves and mushrooms push up through soft loam, and where other such signs of a world coming awake manifest themselves in the gentle, cool breezes and delicate rains.

These four provinces are the Autumnwood and Summerwood and Winterwood and Springwood, four of the many magical domains in the twilit world of Faery.

And as to these four regions, a prince or a princess rules each—Liaze, Alain, Borel, and Celeste—siblings all: the sisters Liaze and Celeste, respectively having reign o’er the Autumn- and Springwoods; their brothers Alain and Borel respectively the Summer- and Winterwoods.

They loved one another, these siblings, and seldom did trouble come their way. Oh, there was that strangeness with Borel and his dagger-filled dreams, yet he had managed to successfully deal with that perilous episode. And earlier, there was that difficulty with the disappearance of King Valeray and Queen Saissa, and the two curses leveled upon Prince Alain, but Camille had come along to resolve those trials.

After Borel’s harrowing ordeal, everything seemed quite well, though the Fates would have it that there yet loomed a portent of darker days to come. But at that time joy lay upon the land, for Camille and Alain were newlyweds, and Borel and his truelove Michelle had gone off immediately after those nuptials to see Chelle’s sire and dam, after which the banns would be posted and preparations for another wedding would get underway.

Yes, at that time all was well in these Forests of the Seasons, or so it seemed.

But then . . .

... Once upon an autumn eve . . .

 

Sss . . .
the arrow sped true to—
thock!
—strike the silhouette, fair spitting the heart of the Goblin. Again and again Liaze winged shafts into the ebon shape, while off to one side Handmaiden Zoé marveled at the skill of her tall and lithe auburn-haired mistress. And even though the sun was nigh gone, still in the long shadows lying across the sward the princess did not miss.

Finally all the arrows were spent, and as Liaze stepped to the standing haycock and retrieved her shafts, Zoé glanced at the disappearing limb of the setting sun and then at Autumnwood Manor and said, “My lady, the dinner mark approaches. Would you have me draw a bath and lay out a gown?”

Liaze sighed and stood a moment, then peered up at the waxing half-moon and said, “I think this eve I will bathe in the pool.”

“The pool?”

“
Oui.
I feel the need for solitude.”

“Oh, my lady, that place is”—her brown eyes filled with trepidation, Zoé looked toward the cluster of great willows among which the pool lay, hidden by the drooping branches reaching all the way down to the ground, their autumn gold leaves ablaze in the last rays of sunlight—“is, well, I don’t know, dark in some manner, I would say.”

“Dark?” said Liaze. “But Zoé, how can you think of it being dark among all those bright leaves?”

“I don’t know,” said Zoé. “Perhaps instead of ‘dark’ I mean it feels, umm, ‘closed in,’ as if . . . as if—Oh, it’s just that you can’t see out or in, and things can come creeping through the branches unseen. Regardless, my lady, instead of seeking solitude, I think you need cheerful company about.”

“Company?” Liaze frowned, puzzlement in her amber—some would say “golden-brown”—eyes. “Why so?”

Zoé turned up a noncommittal hand. “Well, for these past three weeks, ever since the wedding—on the journey from Summerwood Manor all the way here and in the days since—you seem . . . um, how shall I say . . . morose? Oui, morose.”

Liaze slipped the last of the arrows into the quiver. “Morose?”

“Saddened, somehow,” said Zoé, brushing away a stray lock of her own brown hair.

Liaze shook her head. “No, Zoé. Not saddened. Reflective instead.”

“Reflective?”

Liaze took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Yes, reflective. I have been pondering the ways of love and the way I would have things be. My brothers, you see, have found their heart mates, whereas Celeste and I . . .” Her words fell to silence.

“Ah, pishposh,” said Zoé. “You are so beautiful, my lady, and one day the right man will come along and—”

Liaze held up a hand to stop the flow of Zoé’s words. “One day, you say? Well, Zoé, for all of my life these one days have flown by and still he hasn’t appeared.”

“Oh, Princess, do not be dejected. Perhaps this is the very day, or tomorrow, or the next—”

“Hush, Zoé, and leave me to my reflections. I shall bathe at the pool and treasure my solitude.”

“As you wish, my lady. Shall I ready a change of clothes? One of your splendid gowns should cheer you up.”

Liaze looked down at her hunting leathers and sighed and then turned to Zoé and forced a smile and said, “The pale green one. I’ll come in a candlemark or so.”

As Zoé walked toward Autumnwood Manor, Liaze unstrung her bow and then set out for the stand of willows, where she pushed aside the dangling branches and made her way inward, the gold of the leaves fading to bronze in the deepening twilight. As she passed through curtains of foliage and among the great boles, behind her the swaying branches of her passage swept the ground, as if to eliminate her track. Finally she came to the very center of the grove, where the trees gave way to a small open glade, and there, among great, flat white stones, lay a broad, deep pool, limpid and welling with spring-fed water, a rill flowing out from one end to dance and sing between mossy banks on its journey to a distant sea.

Liaze strode past a small stand of cattails and to one of the horizontal slabs, where she set down her bow and unslung her quiver, and then quickly doffed her boots and hunting leathers and the silken undergarments ’neath.

And in the silvery light of the half-moon above, she stepped to the edge of the pool and stood a moment, her reflection in the slow-welling water that of an athletic woman, trim and tall with auburn hair and firm, high breasts, her roseate nipples erect in the crisp autumn air, her narrow waist flaring into slim hips and down into long, sleek legs, a reddish triangle captured between.

And then she dived into the pool, her entry smooth with little splash, and she swam down and through the crystalline water and across, the moonlight from above illumining the lucid depths below, where more large, flat white stones scattered upon the bottom with white sand between brightened the whole of the basin.

To the other end she swam and up, and surfaced, blowing, the chill water bracing, invigorating. She stroked to a large rock at the verge, the pool deep at its edge, and with her arms and a kick or two, she levered herself up onto the brink of the slab, and twisted about to sit with her feet in the water.

And that’s when she heard the sound of pounding hooves, and the nearby call of a silver clarion, answered by distant blares of horns less precious.

And even as she stood and turned, an ebon horse bearing a rider came pounding through the golden willow branches and up the rill, water splatting aside. And it hammered to the rim of the pool, where it skidded to a halt, the horse squatting on its haunches to stop, spray flying.

And the rider, a broken sword in hand, blood streaming down his face, fell from his horse as if slain.

And the raucous blats of following horns drew nearer.

2

With the blare of horns drawing closer, Liaze glanced across the pool to where lay her bow, and then at the fallen rider and the dark horse at his side, the steed blowing and snorting, its eyes rolling, whites flaring in the moonlight. Making up her mind, she stepped toward the downed man, but the ears of the black flattened, and it bared its teeth.