The Land of the Silver Apples - Farmer Nancy (читать книги онлайн без txt) 📗

Jack awoke with sunlight shining on his face. He blinked and found that it didn’t hurt his eyes. It was gentle, like the sun on days when peat fires veiled it.

The forest was no longer silver, but a lively green. Drifts of flowers covered the meadow, and the deer were cropping the grass. “Isn’t it nice?” said Pega. She’d been up awhile, for she had gathered a heap of apples. They were large and golden, and—Jack soon discovered—honey-sweet.

Thorgil fingered her knife and watched the deer. “I know,” she said. “I mustn’t hunt them. But wouldn’t they taste good roasted over coals?”

“Let’s find out who owns them first,” said Jack. They watched the birds as they ate. Some were green with long, rose-colored tail feathers. Others were a blue so perfectly matched to the sky that they disappeared when they flew. Their voices filled the air with joyous music.

“What are they saying?” Pega asked Thorgil.

The shield maiden shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s only noise.”

“Nice noise,” commented Pega.

“Yes, but I should be able to understand them.”

“Do you know what else is strange?” said Jack. “There’s not one single honeybee.”

“There’re butterflies,” observed Thorgil, and indeed, the meadow thronged with them. They were so large and magnificently colored, it was difficult to tell them apart from the flowers.

“My mother keeps bees,” Jack said. He knew this, and yet, when he tried to picture the farm and its hives, he couldn’t. It was as though a mist had risen up in his memories. “Mother says bees carry the life force from plant to plant.”

“That’s interesting,” said Pega, not sounding interested at all. She was making a wreath of flowers, her clever fingers weaving them into a kind of crown. Jack saw, with a trickle of fear, that none of the blossoms were familiar. They were beautiful—everything here was—but strange. Almost daisies, near marigolds, could-be buttercups, much-too-large larkspurs covered the meadow.

Jack reached for his staff, willing the tremor of power into his hand. There was nothing. It is dead, like the whirlpool.“This place isn’t real!” he cried.

“It feels real,” Pega said, pulling up some of the grass.

“This is the glamour Mr. Blewit was talking about.”

“Who?” murmured Thorgil.

“You know. The guy with those blobby creatures who threw us into the whirlpool.” Yet even as Jack thought it, the memory came apart. As he struggled to pull it back, he heard the most wonderful sound in the distance. It was a thrilling, clear-voiced hunting horn. And with it came the baying of hounds, if you could compare that ecstatic noise with the racket ordinary dogs made. It was a celebration of summer, green trees, and running. It was pure joy. And just when Jack thought it couldn’t get any better, he heard the voices.

There was no describing them.Jack was intensely musical.

He had one of the finest voices in Middle Earth, but he was nothing compared to the elves. They weren’t even singing. Their ordinary speech was more melodious than any earthly song.

Deer burst from the trees. The horn sounded again, and appearing from the green darkness came a mob of beaters. They ran before a band of horsemen, thrashing the bushes with sticks to drive the prey. They were small men, naked except for loincloths. They were covered in swirling designs like the shadows of the forest so that it was hard to tell them apart from the trees.

They were Picts.

These weren’t the peddlers who roamed the roads of Middle Earth, selling metalware and pots. These were the Old Ones who inhabited Jack’s nightmares, the ones who had bargained for Lucy and who conducted secret ceremonies under the moon.

The Picts halted, uttering loud hisses. The horsemen pulled up their steeds and called to their hounds. “What have we here?” cried a glorious voice. Jack looked up into the fairest face he had ever seen. The man’s golden hair was bound by a silver crown. His tunic was the green of beech leaves and his cloak the deeper shade of ivy. A broad-chested Pict with a shaggy beard and drooping eyebrows grasped his horse’s bridle as the animal tossed its head.

“Leave off, Brude. You’re frightening him,” said the horseman. “Well, strangers! What are you doing in our realm? To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?” He smiled, a flash of perfect teeth that made Jack feel unaccountably happy. Behind him jostled other riders. Their steeds were nothing like the sturdy battle horse John the Fletcher owned. These were no broad-hoofed animals with shaggy coats and tails cut short to avoid burrs. They were as graceful as deer. Their eyes were intelligent, and their manes and tails shone like silver.

Elf-horses,thought Jack with a shiver of recognition. Olaf One-Brow had looted one during the destruction of Gizur Thumb-Crusher’s village.

As for the riders, Jack hardly dared lift his eyes to them. Their beauty was dazzling. Both men and women rode in the company, dressed in varying hues of green, and all were without the blemishes that plagued mortal men. Here were no crooked teeth or flawed faces, no marks of illness, accident, or famine. Suddenly, Jack saw his companions in the light of these perfect beings. Thorgil was coarse, and Pega—poor Pega!—scarcely seemed human. As for his own looks, Jack had no illusions.

“Has the cat stolen your tongues?” the huntsman cried merrily.

“Do not mock them, Gowrie,” said one of the women. “They are but newly arrived from Middle Earth, though I wonder at the small one. She has the look of the changelings.”

“She is human, dear Ethne,” replied the huntsman. “I detect the stench of mortality.”

“Then they must be brought to our halls,” declared Ethne. “The queen will surely want to see them.”

The company rode off with a winding of horns and crying of hounds. Brude and the Picts remained behind. “You commmme,” Brude hissed, as though human speech came to him with difficulty. His followers grasped their beating sticks and formed a guard around Jack and his companions.

Chapter Thirty-one

THE DARK RIVER

It should have been frightening, but Jack was too enchanted to worry. The forest through which they were passing was lovelier than anything he’d ever seen. Each tree was perfect in its own way yet different from every other tree. Each opening revealed an unexpected delight. A waterfall poured over a white cliff, a pool was dotted with flowers big enough to sit on, a field of daffodils—or something like daffodils—stood as tall as your head. Jack looked eagerly for the next revelation. He scarcely noticed the sullen band of Picts or that he wasn’t free to wander.

An eagle took to the air from a distant cliff. Its wingspan dwarfed any bird of Middle Earth and its claws could easily have carried off an elk. It screamed a challenge, yet even this cry was delightful and not alarming.

“It’s as large as a Jotunheim eagle,” Jack murmured.

“But different,” added Thorgil, sounding half asleep.

“Browner. Bigger.” Jack found it difficult to describe what set the eagle apart.

“Like something from Yggdrassil.”

Jack was jolted awake. The eagle was nothing like a bird that would perch on the Great Tree. It was too perfect. It would never drop a feather or get its feet covered in mud. Yggdrassil’s creatures were awe-inspiring but not immune to change. Nothing living was. Jack felt a whisper of the fear he had experienced in the whirlpool.

“What’s wrong?” said Pega.

The whisper went away. Jack willed it to go away. “Just a stomachache. Must have eaten too many apples,” he said, smiling.

A Pict nudged him with a stick, and he moved on. They passed a tree entirely covered with butterflies and another hung with vines so delicate, they were like shreds of mist.

The forest ended, and everything suddenly changed. Before them was a dark river—or perhaps it was a long, thin lake, because the water didn’t move at all. The path vanished underneath it and reappeared on the other side. It actually did disappear. You couldn’t see into the water, nor did it reflect the sky or shore. It was simply a band of darkness blocking their way.