The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood (20 page)

At mid-morning on Saturday, at Belle Green, where he lived with Mr. and Mrs. Crook, Rascal received a caller: the badger boy Thorn, who handed him a roll of paper and a note from Bosworth Badger. Bosworth wrote that he had searched the
History
and found several entries recorded by his grandfather, documenting the location of a fairy village on the bank of Fern Vale Tarn. He could not, of course, be sure that the village still existed and he rather thought that it had actually been occupied by a family of dwelves, which were a different and more problematic sort of creature than the conventional Oak Folk. But he hoped that the map would be of some use to Rascal and the children, and wished them every success in their expedition.

“Dwelves?”
wondered Rascal, who had never heard the word. It suggested its own meaning, of course. A dwelf must be something between a dwarf and an elf—although what the badger meant by “problematic,” he couldn’t guess. Still, he supposed it didn’t matter what they were, at least as far as the children were concerned. A fairy was a fairy, be he elf, dwarf, dwelf, Folk, goblin, or any of the myriad nature spirits who occupied the Land between the Lakes long before humans came on the scene.

“You’ll stop for a bite of something?”
Rascal asked the badger boy politely.

Thorn shook his head.
“I’ve another errand,”
he said, and grinned.
“Good luck!”

When Thorn had gone, Rascal unfolded the map and studied it until he had all the details by heart—not having any pockets, he couldn’t take it along. On the map, Fern Vale Tarn, a smallish lake, lay cupped in a hollow near the top of Claife Heights, not far below Raven Hall. This was the darkest, oldest part of Cuckoo Brow Wood, which was itself the oldest and darkest forest in the area, a remnant of the old, dark forests that had once covered all of the Land between the Lakes. The path leading to the tarn began from just beneath Holly How. It forked several times, with branches shooting off in different directions, but Rascal thought he could make out the way to the tarn. Badger had drawn an X at the south end of the small lake, and printed
Supposed site, Fern Vale Village
beneath.

Well, thought Rascal, as he folded up the map, this was quite encouraging. The Folk or dwelves or whatever they were might not live there any longer, but at least he knew that they had lived there, once upon a time.

The drizzle was just ending when the group met at the gate at the bottom of the Tidmarsh Manor garden, after Lady Longford had gone off to the Raven Hall reception. When Rascal joined them, Deirdre was distributing a handful of herbs and flowers.

“Rue, yarrow, lavender, thyme, primrose, and rosemary,” she said. “We won’t be needin’ these herbs today, for we’re not likely t’ see fairies in daylight. But it won’t hurt to have them with us. We can always leave them as an off ’ring, when we get to a place where we think fairies might live.”

Jeremy poked a blue-green sprig of rue into his buttonhole. “Where’d you find all this?”

Privately, Jeremy was thinking that believing in fairies was not going to be enough to stave off the inevitable. Just this morning, Dr. Butters had dropped in to talk with Aunt Jane about the Hawkshead apothecary, Mr. Higgens, who wanted an apprentice. The doctor believed the apothecary to be a man of good character, and Aunt Jane thought that working in a shop would be more pleasant than working in a joinery.

But within himself Jeremy could feel the resentment seething, like a boiling kettle. He didn’t want to work in either place. He wanted to go to school at Kelsick. But that was impossible. And no matter how much he wanted things to be different, they weren’t. So he had tried to smile—Aunt Jane was watching him with such concern—and said he would do whatever they thought best.

“It’s agreed, then,” Dr. Butters had said, with a sympathetic look at Jeremy. He promised to bring the indenture papers the following week, and he and Jeremy would go to the Justice of the Peace, where the indenture would be signed, witnessed, and sealed. It was final and inevitable, and Jeremy had to resign himself. He would be grown up shortly, and go to work as a man. So his last, or nearly last, expedition as a boy might as well be in search of fairies. And if by some magic a fairy happened to pop out of a tree or a bush, he thought bleakly, he knew exactly what he would wish for.

“I brought the rosemary from the Manor garden,” Caroline said, in answer to Jeremy’s question.

“An’ I got the yarrow an’ rue an’ lavender from Miss Potter’s garden,” Deirdre added, kneeling down to weave lavender and thyme into Rascal’s leather collar. “It’s the queerest thing, but she felt like a friend. I asked her t’ go with us on May Eve.” She straightened and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “She told me a poem she’s written about a fairy lady, and gave me a primrose. I know she’s a grownup, but she’s diff ’rent from the others. I think she believes.”

“Of course she does,”
Rascal yipped.

“I hope she said yes,” Caroline remarked, tucking a yarrow leaf behind one ear and trying not to think about the difficulty of getting out of the house on May Eve.

Caroline glanced at Jeremy to see if he was feeling silly about looking for fairies, but if he was, he didn’t show it. Deirdre, of course, didn’t seem to feel silly at all. She obviously believed wholeheartedly. Although, Caroline reflected, if you thought you had the gift of seeing fairies, you’d have to believe in fairies, or you couldn’t believe in your gift. And once you had the gift (or thought you did), you’d surely want to hang on to it as long as possible, which meant that you had to keep on seeing and believing, whether you actually did or not.

“I wouldn’t agree to any of the other grownups going with us,” Jeremy remarked, “but Miss Potter’s a bit of all right. Did she say yes?”

“Only if you agreed,” Deirdre said, and smiled. “I’ll tell her, then. I’m glad.” She looked at Jeremy. “Any idea where we should go? Caroline said you’d know the best places to look.” She paused and added wistfully, “I ain’t seen a fairy since me mother died, y’know. I’m hopin’ we’ll find where they live, so we can go back on May Eve an’ see ’em.”

“From everything I’ve read,” Jeremy said, “they like old trees, and moss and clear water, and ferns. I think we should go to the top of Claife Heights.”

“I’ll show you!”
Rascal barked authoritatively, and trotted off, glancing back over his shoulder and barking again, as if to be sure that they were coming after.

“Looks like he knows where he’s going,” Caroline said.

“He probably does,” said Jeremy. “He runs all over these woods.” He grinned. “And if we’re to believe in fairies, we might as well believe in a dog who knows where to find ’em.”

“Then let’s follow,” Deirdre said. She tossed her braids over her shoulder and set out after Rascal.

So the children followed the terrier, who headed at first for the foot of Holly How, then turned to the right up a narrow ravine, and when they reached the top, took a fork in the path that led them up another steep climb and deeper into Cuckoo Brow Wood. The little dog seemed to feel confident that he was taking the right path, even though it branched out in a great many confusing directions.

But as far as Caroline was concerned, the direction itself didn’t matter, as long as it was
away.
The earlier rain had stopped and the gray mist that trailed like wisps of tulle through the trees seemed to wreathe the woods in an ancient mystery. It was easy to pretend that she was worlds away from her normal existence, from lessons and etiquette and Grandmama telling her what to do, even though they had come only a little way up the hill from Tidmarsh Manor. In fact, if she turned and looked back, she’d see the roofs of the manor house and barns not far below—except that when she tried it, she found to her surprise that she couldn’t, for the pearly mist had fallen like a curtain, and everything behind them had disappeared. They might have been journeying through a completely unknown land, somewhere back at the beginning of time, with nobody else around them for hundreds of miles—and hundreds of years.

It was a thought that made the goose bumps rise on Caroline’s arms. When she had suggested today’s fairy-hunting adventure, it had been as a lark, really, a sort of playacting that might take Deirdre’s mind off her troubles. Now, she had her own reason for going. Her grandmother had asked her what she intended to do that afternoon, and she had answered truthfully: she and Jeremy and Deirdre—the girl who helped at the Suttons’—were going to walk into Cuckoo Brow Wood.

But Grandmama, who could sometimes be cruelly imperative, had ordered her to stay home. “It’s time you began behaving like a young lady,” she said with a scowl. “Young ladies don’t go wandering through the woods with dirty village urchins. You are to stay in your room and read or work on your embroidery.”

Caroline had a willful streak and occasionally did things she knew her grandmother wouldn’t approve, but this was the first time she had ever disobeyed a direct order. She couldn’t quite explain why, but going into the woods today—and on May Eve, if she could somehow manage it—had become very important. The longer she thought about it, the more it seemed that these mysterious woods were full of hidden secrets begging to be uncovered and age-old tales longing to be heard. There were no rules in the woods, and it was not a place where ladies went. And now that the rest of the world had vanished into the mists behind them, there was nothing to do but go in search of the secrets, and nowhere to go but straight ahead, following the little dog who seemed so full of confident authority, as though he were carrying a map in his head.

For a short distance, the path had slanted up through an open woods that had the look of a magical garden, so graceful were the larches and willows just going green over their heads and the yellow catkins swinging blithely on the hazels. The narrow path was bordered by delightful spring flowers, cowslips and bluebonnets and nodding harebells, anemones and wild hyacinths and wood spurge, with its red stalks and pale green flowers. In the brighter places, where the spring sun had been able to reach down and stroke the earth, there was heather and bilberry and Jack-by-the-hedge and white stitchwort, which was also called milk maids, and in the boggy places, beds of bitter cress and thick mounds of marsh violets. A little deeper into the shadow of the woods, the green banks were hung with fronds of Hart’s tongue and oak fern, with Herb Robert and ivy-leaved toadflax in flower, with here and there the tidy blooms of white dead nettle. And all around them and over their heads sang the birds, as if they were very glad to have the children’s company in this lovely wood on this gray, misty day: thrushes and chaffinches and robins and the cheery cuckoo, the harbinger of spring.

But as they climbed higher and deeper into the woods, they left the birds behind. The path grew narrower and darker, for the branches of the fir trees were interlocked overhead, arching together like the wooden ribs of a great cathedral, so that the sunlight, if there had been any, which there wasn’t, was entirely shut out. It was chilly here, and even mistier and more mysterious, for the tree trunks were gnarled and twisted, the forest floor was thickly blanketed with brown leaves and needles, and here and there heaps of rocks and clumps of fern emerged out of the mist and then vanished into it again, as if by magic, so that one never quite knew whether one had seen them or not, or whether they were real or imagined. There were odd rustlings, too, and whisperings and scufflings, and shapes that slipped warily from behind trees or rocks or out of holes in the ground, shapes with ears and eyes that stared unblinking as the children passed. Without the sun there were no shadows, and without shadows, it was impossible to tell what time it was, or how long they had been walking, or which was east, west, north, or south. There were only two directions, uphill (the way they were taking) and downhill (the way they had been), and the path had now become so indistinct that it was impossible to tell whether they were actually walking on it or not. Caroline certainly hoped that Rascal, who was trotting some distance ahead of them, knew where he meant to go, for she certainly didn’t.

Rascal, for his part, knew exactly where he was going. For one thing, he was confident in Bosworth’s map, which he had got by heart, and while the path did not always branch or climb or dip exactly as he expected, it was still taking them in the general direction of Fern Vale Tarn. For another thing, his nose was a great deal keener than any of the children’s noses, and for the past several hundred yards, as the three of them labored up a particularly steep bit of hill, he had been ranging quite a distance ahead, lured on by the earthy, exhilarating smell of a lake filled with frogs and tadpoles and water lily pads and decaying ferns and surrounded by fine, damp moss. He couldn’t see it yet, but his nose told him it was somewhere up ahead, and if there was anything in this world that Rascal could trust, it was his nose, which always told him the truth.

And then the path reached the top of a particularly steep place, hesitated, and then plunged down so precipitously that Rascal went right over the brink, tumbling over and over, nose over stubby tail. He barely had time to bark a startled
“Watch your step!”
to the children behind him before he landed on a thick pillow of green moss.

Rascal sat up, rubbed his nose, and checked all four legs to make sure that nothing was broken. Then he gave another warning bark—
“Watch your step, I say!”
—and looked around. He was sitting on a mossy cushion, among the roots of a very large oak tree that spread itself like a green umbrella over a green glade ringed with wood anemones and primulas, their scent intoxicatingly sweet. At the farthest edge of the glade lay a small lake, its surface as smooth and green as a sheet of green glass. It was draped in mist and rimmed with emerald ferns, and the very air itself seemed to shimmer with a green radiance. There was no breeze and everything was very quiet, as if the trees and the lake and the grass and the flowers were all transfixed in the silence of a deep and timeless enchantment. Rascal knew beyond a doubt that they had reached Fern Vale Tarn. And if Bosworth Badger’s grandfather was right, this was the site of the Oak Folk village!