Chapter XXVIII

             "By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the
                 Golden Apples of the West"


Though it was a relief to have returned to the fresh air of
reality, Master Nathaniel was frightened.  He realized that
he was alone at dead of night in the Elfin Marches.  And the
moon kept playing tricks on him, turning trees and boulders
into goblins and wild beasts; cracking her jokes, true
humourist that she was, with a solemn impassive face.  But,
how was this?  She was a waxing moon, and almost full, while
the night before -- or what he supposed was the night before
-- she had been a half moon on the wane.
   Had he left time behind him in Dorimare?
   Then suddenly, like some winged monster rushing from its
lair, there sprang up a mighty wind.  The pines creaked and
rustled and bent beneath its onslaught, the grasses
whistled, the clouds flocked together and covered the face
of the moon.
   Several times he was nearly lifted from his saddle.  He
drew his cloak closely round him, and longed, with an
unspeakable longing, for his warm bed in Lud; and it flashed
into his mind that what he had so often imagined in that
bed, to enhance his sense of well-being, was now actually
occurring -- he was tired, he was cold, and the wind was
finding the fissures in his doublet.
   Suddenly, as if some hero had slain the monster, the wind
died down, the moon sailed clear of the clouds, and the
pines straightened themselves and once more stood at
attention, silent and motionless.  In spite of this, his
horse grew strangely restive, rearing and jibbing, as if
something was standing before it in the path that frightened
it; and in vain Master Nathaniel tried to quiet and sooth
it.
   Then it shuddered all over and fell heavily to the
ground.
   Fortunately, Master Nathaniel was thrown clear, and was
not hurt, beyond the inevitable bruises entailed by the fall
of a man of his weight.  He struggled to his feet and
hurried to his horse.  It was stone dead.
   For some time he sat beside it... his last link with Lud
and familiar things; as yet too depressed in mind and aching
in body to continue his journey on foot.
   But what were those sudden strains of piercingly sweet
music, and from what strange instrument did they proceed? 
They were too impersonal for a fiddle, too passionate for a
flute, and much too sweet for any pipes or timbrels.  It 
must be a human -- or superhuman -- voice, for now he was
beginning to distinguish the words.
   
"There are windfalls of dreams, there's a wolf in the stars,
       And Life is a nymph who will never be thine,
       With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
                  With sweet-brier,
                     And bon-fire,
                  And strawberry-wire,
                     And columbine."
   
   The voice stopped, and Master Nathaniel buried his face
in his hands and sobbed as if his heart would break.
   In this magically sweet music once more he had heard the
Note.  It held, this time, no menace as to things to come;
but it aroused in his breast an agonizing tumult of remorse
for having allowed something to escape that he would never,
never recapture.  It was as if he had left his beloved with
harsh words, and had returned to find her dead.
   Through his agony he was conscious of a hand laid on his
shoulder: "Why, Chanticleer!  Old John o' Dreams!  What ails
you?  Has the cock's crow become too bittersweet for
Chanticleer?" said a voice, half tender and half mocking, in
his ear.
   He turned round, and by the light of the moon saw
standing behind him -- Duke Aubrey.
   The Duke smiled.  "Well, Chanticleer," he said, "so we
meet at last!  Your family has been dodging me down the
centuries, but some day you were bound to fall into my
snares.  And, though you did not know it, you have been
working for some time past as one of my secret agents.  How
I laughed when you and Ambrose Honeysuckle pledged each
other in words taken from my Mysteries!  And little did you
think, when you stood cursing and swearing at the door of my
tapestry-room, that you had pronounced the most potent charm
in Faerie," and he threw back his head and broke into peal
upon peal of silvery laughter.
   Suddenly his laughter stopped, and his eyes, as he looked
at Master Nathaniel, became wonderfully compassionate.
   "Poor Chanticleer!  Poor John o' Dreams!" he said
gently.  "I have often wished my honey were not so bitter to
the taste.  Believe me, Chanticleer, I fain would find an
antidote to the bitter herb of life, but none grows this
side of the hills -- or the other."
   "And yet... I have never tasted fairy fruit," said Master
Nathaniel in a low broken voice.
   "There are many trees in my orchard, and many and various
are the fruit they bear -- music and dreams and grief and,
sometimes, joy.  All your life, Chanticleer, you have eaten
fairy fruit, and some day, it may be, you will hear the Note
again -- but that I cannot promise.  And now I will grant
your a vision -- they are sometimes sweet to the taste."
   He paused.  And then he said, "Do you you know why it was
that your horse fell down dead?  It was because you had
reached the brink of Fairyland.  The winds of Faerie slew
him.  Come with me, Chanticleer." 
   He took Master Nathaniel's hand and dragged him to his
feet, and they scrambled a few yards further up the
bridle-path and stepped on to a broad plateau.  Beneath them
lay what, in the uncertain moonlight, looked like a stretch
of desolate uplands.
   Then Duke Aubrey raised his arms high above his head and
cried out in a loud voice, "By the Sun, Moon and Stars and
the Golden Apples of the West!"
   At these words the uplands became bathed in a gentle
light and proved to be fair and fertile -- the perpetual
seat of Spring; for there were vivid green patches of young
corn, and pillars of pink and white smoke, which were fruit
trees in blossom, and pillars of blue blossom, which was the
smoke of distant hamlets, and a vast meadow of cornflowers
and daisies, which was the great inland sea of Faerie.  And
everything -- ships, spires, houses -- was small and bright
and delicate, yet real.  It was not unlike Dorimare, or
rather, the transfigured Dorimare he had once seen from the
Fields of Grammary.  And as he gazed he knew that in that
land no winds ever howled at night, and that everything
within its borders had the serenity and stability of trees,
the unchanging peace of pictures.
   Then, suddenly, it all vanished.  Duke Aubrey had
vanished too, and he was standing alone on the edge of a
black abyss, while wafted on the wind came the echo of
light, mocking laughter.
   Was Fairyland, then, a delusion?  Had Ranulph vanished
into nothingness?
   For a second or two he hesitated, and then -- he leaped
down into the abyss.