The Children's Book (33 page)

“Do you think—do you think”—Dorothy asked—“it’s a self-portrait, so to speak?”

She had left brown clay fingerprints where she had clasped it.

“You’ll have to wash it,” she said to Elsie, and collapsed again into laughter.

“Give it me,” said Philip. “I’ll run it under the tap. And then Elsie shall put it quickly back where she found it.”

His fingers recognised just how well it had been made, how its maker’s fingers had felt it out, and followed its swelling veins.

When they had given up laughing, they did not know what to say to each other, and yet felt very close. Dorothy said she had better be off. She asked if Philip would give her another lesson. She asked Elsie, in a voice still thick with laughter, if Elsie made pots.

“Aye,” said Elsie. “Tiny little ’uns, when there’s no one watching. I like ’em thin and small.”

“You never told me that,” said Philip.

“You never asked,” said Elsie.

Olive rewrote the beginning of Tom’s story yet again.

TOM UNDERGROUND

T WAS A CURIOUS FACT
that when the young prince was a small child, with a sunny nature, and a normal quantity of childish curiosity and naughtiness, the absence of his shadow appeared more to amuse and enchant those who noticed it, than to cause them any alarm. But as he grew older, and began to show the first signs that he must put childhood behind him, his family and courtiers began to murmur when they thought he was not listening, and to consult wise men, without his knowledge, about what the meaning of this singularity was. They began to cover mirrors in rooms where he was, as though he might become aware of his absence, or partial absence, at the least. The boy himself noticed other people’s shadows, which he studied intently as they fell across courtyards, or were suspended on walls, stretching and contracting, visible human-shaped intangible nothings. He could not see his own shadow, and for some time assumed that no one could see his own shadow, but only other people’s shadows. Then he saw a little girl, playing a laughing game of making her shadow climb a wall, and making shadow-rabbits with her fingers against a light. There were no rabbits and no dragons in his fingers, or if there were, they were invisible. He did not know who to ask about this problem. He felt his parents would have spoken to him, if they wanted to, or were able
.

He took to going for long walks in the grounds of the palace, which were extensive. He was not allowed to ride out of the gates because of the fear of kidnapping, by lawless bandits, or foreign schemers. But there were little woods, within the walls, and pretty semi-wild clearings, and long rides, overhung with trees. He noticed he was going out more and more either in grey weather, when everything was the same colour as the shadows
,
or at noon on bright days, when nothing cast a shadow, under the high sun
.

He had a favourite place, where a clump of birch trees surrounded a small mound, where he would sit, and watch the busy insects going in and out of their holes under the earth, or read a book, or look at the sky through the leaves. He called it a magic place, in his mind, and always felt that the air had a different quality there, was full of movement and sparkles, in the stillness
.

There was a stone bench, but he didn’t sit on it. He sat on the turf, which was warm, in summer, and cool in the autumn
.

Sometimes he dozed. He must have been dozing, for he found his eyes were closed, and there was a sound of very faint bells ringing, very large numbers of very small bells, as though the trees were full of them. And there was a sound of rushing, as though a large bird were alighting in the clearing. He was reluctant to open his eyes. The bells became still, and he felt he must look up, or time would be suspended
.

There was a fine lady, on a white horse, in the clearing, where no one and nothing had been. The horse was both creamy and silvery: it had ivory-coloured hooves, and a proudly arched neck, with a flowing, heavy mane of fine hairs, into which were woven myriads of tiny silver bells, on crimson threads, that glinted in the sunlight like raindrops, and rang when the horse tossed its head, or turned to look at Thomas. Its saddle was crimson leather, and the sweeping skirt of its rider was grass-green velvet, with a sheen on it like a green field of tall grasses, rippling in the light. She had fine green leather boots, and silver spurs, and he lifted his eyes upwards and finally took in her face, which was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It was fine and pale and pointed, with high cheekbones, and a sharp mouth. The lady had a mass of pale gold hair, which was caught in a silver snood under her brave cap with a curling green feather from no bird he had ever seen or imagined. She had long gloved fingers, and carried a little whip, with an ebony stock and a silver pommel. Her eyes were green. They were green like a great, watchful cat, not like any woman, or any man he knew. She looked neither kind nor unkind, and it occurred to him that perhaps she could not see him, perhaps she was in some other world that had become briefly visible in his. He saw, then, that neither she nor the lovely horse cast any shadow. They rippled with lights and light, from the
bells and the gleaming coat of the horse, and the lady’s hair and her velvet skirt, but they cast no shadow
.

She looked down on him, and smiled, neither kindly nor unkindly. He stood up, and gave a little formal bow, which seemed the right thing, and stood shadowless next to the shadowless pair. He meant to say something like “Greetings,” or “My lady,” but he said

“You have no shadow.”

It was, he realised, the first time that word had crossed his lips
.

“I am an Elf,” said the lady. Her voice was like fragments of fine ice in the wind, like the silver bells in the horse’s mane. “I am the Queen of Elfland, and we cast no shadows. You are True Thomas, a human, and you should cast a shadow, and do not.”

“It seemed a small thing,” he said, “at first. A curiosity. But now it is not so amusing.”

“You were not born without a shadow,” said the Elf Queen. “It was taken from you, in your cradle, by a great rat, who cut it away with his sharp teeth, and carried it carefully down a rathole. There are ratholes everywhere, even in palaces, and they lead underground, underground, into the world of shadows, where the queen of the Dark Elves weaves them into webs, to trap mortals and other beings. Your shadow is folded away in a chest in her dark house, where the rat took it, running through tunnels and corridors, clutching it softly in his sharp teeth. He is her friend and servant. They can use a human shadow to trap the man or woman to whom it belongs, to snare them in darkness and use them to work their will. All this kingdom, when you are king, can be ruled by them, through the manipulation of your shadow in the shadows. Bit by bit they can draw the whole land into the shadows and take it from under the sun.”

“This appears to be my fault, but I have done nothing,” cried Thomas
.

“Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm.”

“What must I do?” asked Thomas, for he saw clearly that the Elf Queen had come to tell him to do something
.

“They cannot use your shadow until you, and he, are men, and not boys. So you must go underground, now, whilst you are still a boy, and the shadow is harmless, and find it, and bring it back to the upper air.”

“How can I do that?”

“I will take you some of the way. You must mount behind me.”

“I am not ready,” said Thomas, thinking of his life in the palace, the things in his room, his books, his games, his anxious mother and father, his old nurse
.

“You are as ready as you will ever be,” said the Elf, and bent low, and held out her hand, with the whip in it
.

He had the thought—he was a canny boy, even if honourable and straightforward—that she might herself be a malign force, come to do him harm
.

“If you do not trust me, this will be the worst day of your life,” she said, and he seemed to know, inside himself, that this was so. So he stretched up, and took her hand, which was cool and dry, and swung easily into the saddle behind her, and put his arms around her fine waist, and bent his face towards the velvet gown
.

“Now,” she said, “we ride, with the wind, into the waste lands.”

And the horse leaped out of the mound, and went like a wind (there are creatures that do move like the wind) towards the high wall that surrounded the palace. There it collected itself, and stood back on its haunches, and rose, and leaped, and cleared the wall with space to spare, and the green cloak flying, and the wind in Thomas’s hair
.

And they rode away fast, across that kingdom, and into strange lands, and stopped for a while by the gate of an orchard. The Elf Queen told Thomas he must not pluck the fruits, which hung invitingly on the boughs, because they looked fair, and were foul, and would poison him. But she gave him a milky cake from a bag at the saddle-bow, and a flask of clear water to drink. And the sky began to darken, not as it did at home, but as though a curtain was being pulled over it, or they were entering an invisible cave
.

“This is the border of Elfland,” said the Queen. “This is a shadowland where the shadowless travel.” The rocks, and the grass, were grey, and a little river that ran beside the track was grey, and thickets they passed were grey, rat-grey, shadow-grey, and there was a sound of rushing and roaring, like breakers on the beach. And the grey stream went faster over the grey pebbles, breaking with little crests of grey foam. The skirt of the lady still shone green, and the coat of the horse still gleamed ghostly-white, and
Thomas’s own hands were still pink with the human blood that circled under his skin
.

The river opened out onto a pebbly strand, where a tide of water lapped, and rose and fell, quietly enough, a pink and grey frill. Thomas could not see the other side of the tide, whose surface shimmered endlessly before him, but he did see that it was not grey, but red, like blood, or perhaps was blood. There were neither sun nor moon in that evenly slate-grey overarching roof. The horse stepped forward without hesitation into the bloody tide and walked on, lifting its proud feet delicately. And soon it was in knee-deep, and occasionally breast-deep. And Thomas saw that the blood appeared to stain the white coat, and then dripped off fetlock and silver hoof, leaving no permanent mark. And they went on in this way for what seemed to Thomas not hours, nor days, but weeks, with a sullen water-roaring in his ears, and flat grey and crimson ripples before his eyes
.

They came to another strand, in the end (or I should have no further tale to tell) and the horse stepped out on the fine sand. It shone golden, and before Thomas’s eyes was a long beach, and cliffs of white chalk, covered with fine green turf, and white gulls swooping and crying, and a few woolly sheep balanced on the cliff-edge, munching the low bushes that grew there. The cliff-walls were riddled with caverns, out of some of which little rivulets ran, cutting edged tracks in the sand, meandering round pebbles. Thomas looked back, and there, a space out at sea, was a red line which was the edge of the blood, and a great wall, like a looming sea-fret, which was the edge of the grey world, through and beyond which nothing could be seen at all
.

“This is my own country,” said the Elf, dismounting and helping down Thomas. “And here we must part, for although I live under the hill, I cannot go with you underground, where you must now go. I will give you my satchel of food, and the water bottle which was filled at the spring in my orchard, where I hope in time you will come. The right way in—one of the ways in, for there are many—is through the central one of those three slits you see in the cliff-face. You must wind your way in and down, in and down to where the Dark Elf and the rat are waiting. The way is long—walking, scrambling, climbing, crawling. The mine-tunnels down there are populated with all sorts of creatures, human and inhuman, ancient and
very young and lost. You will find help and companions—so much I can see—and you will meet dangerous things, and wild things, some of which She will have sent, and some of which have their own concerns, nothing to do with Elves, or rats, or shadows. You will do well to travel with others, but you must choose your companions wisely for there are wicked things down there that seem reasonable and friendly at first sight
.

“I have three gifts for you. The first is a light which will shine in the darkness—it is made of elvish fireflies, enclosed in a glass, which will spin into flaring brightness, briefly, if you shake them and whisper to them the words ‘Alfer Light.’ I advise you most earnestly to let no one know that you have this glass—or any of these things. The second is an imperfect map of the tunnels that lead to the dark court. It has been made by Light Elves, many of whom perished in the passages, and we do not know—for no one has survived who knows—how accurate it is, or how many major branches are not recorded. If you could mark on it where it goes wrong, and where it is of help, other later travellers will be grateful
.