Roseberry Faire (Paperback)

No winter-loving creature, this ouphe. They called her Summerthorn, for though the frost curled her toes in her boots the colour of violets, and the snow turned her pale as the moon, came the sun and she blossomed like a daffodil, and the roses came out in her cheeks.

She was prickly, too, like the tips of holly leaves. Sharp were her nose and her fingers and her chin; sharp were her eyes and her tongue, too, for she missed nothing, and never suffered fools. She lived in a bower of ivy under a mossy stone bridge, the stream it had once spanned long since drained away. The villagers of Wyld Court built it, long ago, but their cottages now lie in tumbled ruins, and a rambling woodland covers them. Only Summerthorn is left.

She has a garden plot, fragrant with herbs: thyme and frilled parsley, glossy bayleaf, blue bergamot, and pennyroyal. Long purple tubers twist through the damp earth there, topped with amber-coloured fronds; Summerthorn tends them carefully, harvests them sparingly, in the cold seasons. She dines on wild berries, when she can get them, and honey from the woodland hives, and she always has earth under her fingernails, and in her hair.

She lives alone, not being fond of other folk. Still, a deer path wanders through the old ash trees, and passes over the Wyld Court bridge. It brings a visitor, sometimes.

Summerthorn was planting beans on the west side of her bower, lost in thought, and half asleep. She was but lately emerged from her caverns under the earth, a dark womb lit with fungi like a carpet of daisies. She’d pull succulent roots out of the earth overhead and eat them raw; they’d sustain, but couldn’t please, not all the winterlong. Beans she wanted, and beans she would have, crisp and fresh in their long pods; she had sprout powders to feed them with, and pure lake water, they would flourish soon enough. A fledgling sun warmed the pallor out of her skin, her dagged skirts caught up in swags, out of the way of her feet; she was whistling. When the clamour started up, she didn’t hear it, not at first.

Hooves came a-clattering over the Wyldwood Bridge: a well-shod little animal with bells on its bridles. Someone came along with it, calling: ‘Hoy, Thornling! Wake, and come out!’

Summerthorn knew the voice, and the hoofbeats, too. This pleased her about as much as the tubers did, though interest stirred, faintly; ‘Hoy,’ she groused, and set down her rusting trowel. ‘Think you to find me still slug-a-bed, Wort? I’m awake.’

‘Then, faith, you’ll like my news,’ answered Wort cheerily. ‘And the contents of Ragamuff’s saddle bags, too.’ Wort was no ouphe like Summerthorn, those were gone from the Wyld. He was dwarfish, shorter than the Thorn, and prettier, though his butter-yellow locks and cornflower eyes did nothing for him with her: she scowled.

‘Don’t tarry, then, if you must disturb,’ she told him, hefting her trug; it was filled with sprouted beans. ‘The planting waits for no one, as you know.’

Wort swung down from Ragamuff’s back, and produced a tuber for the tatter-steed, a purple one. Welcome to it, and gladly, Thorn could have offered twenty more—but not the sprouts. ‘What will you have first?’ said Wort, as Ragamuff crunched. ‘The news, or something else?’

Summerthorn eyed him. Pleased as punch with himself, he was: suspicious. ‘Have you spices?’

‘Not a bit.’

‘Apples or pins?’

‘Nary a one.’

‘Shoe leather or chestnut pies?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Then I’m not interested.’

‘The news, at least?’ offered Wort, faintly pleading.

‘Shall I care for it?’ asked Summerthorn, brushing knots out of her eyes: it wanted cutting, the tangled hedge of her hair.

‘You shall!’ Wort said it grandly, as though he’d brought her a pot full of gold.

‘And what must I give you for it?’

Wort had tickled her interest: his eyes brightened. ‘A fresh pod, with the beans still in it.’

Summerthorn glanced at her muddied trug, overflowing with greenling sprouts. ‘Done.’

Ragamuff ambled away, bridle jingling: there were shoots to be had elsewhere. Wort let the steed be, saddle-bags forgotten. ‘It’s the Faire,’ he said at once. ‘It’s coming.’

Summerthorn dropped her trug; sproutlings scattered. ‘That nugget’s worth more than beans, if it’s true,’ she said. ‘You should have haggled.’

‘It is true,’ he answered, injured. ‘I had it from Od of Inglewood, not a sennight past.’

‘Od said it?’

‘Aye.’

Summerthorn scrambled after her sprouts, and didn’t answer, not at once. ‘And what do you think I’m to do about it, then?’ she said, having collected her beans and her thoughts, both.

Wort’s flower face shone with surprise, maybe glee. ‘There hasn’t been a Faire in... oh, ever so many ages! You are like to go, aren’t you?’

‘To trade or to buy?’

‘Both, of course.’ Wort smiled.

Aye, there was his reason. He’d got a good, sprouting bean out of the business already, one of her best. He thought to get a go at her treasures, too, later.

He might, at that. ‘We’ve to find it first,’ she pointed out.

That sobered him. ‘Good Thornling, I had hopes you might help with that.’

‘What makes you think I can?’

‘If anyone can, it must be you.’ He didn’t say why, and she didn’t need to ask. They both knew what lay in the earth under their feet.

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