Dennis McKiernan - Once upon a Summer Day

The loss of her touch overwhelmed Borel, and he turned back and reached out and took her hand in his. “Come.”

“We cannot get out that way,” she replied.

Borel looked. Things hovered beyond the sill; things solid and dangerous and in shadows. What they might be, he had no idea, for they were too deep in the dark. Once more a critical thought skittered on the edge of revelation, yet again whatever it was escaped his grasp. “Then, my lady, if we cannot get out that way, we will go down the steps.” He started toward the stairwell, her hand firmly in his.

“No!” The demoiselle gasped and pulled back, and she tried to drag him hindward.

Borel turned and looked at her. “My lady?”

“Oh, my lord, not down the steps. Something dreadful lies below.”

“Something dreadful? What?” Borel reached for his long-knife. It was gone, his scabbard empty.

Of a sudden he was covered with bruises, and he felt as if he had been battered by all the hammers of the Gnomes.

Nevertheless, weaponless, he released her hand and hobbled toward the stairwell.

“No!” cried the demoiselle. “I will not let you go!”

In that moment the chamber vanished, and Borel awakened with a start to find himself lying on a grassy bed, a whisper of distant rapids wafting through the moonlit woodland upon a gentle breeze.

“Zut! Zut! Zut!” cursed Borel, hammering his fist into the ground. “How could I have been so stupid?” “Stupid, my lord?” The Sprite sat nearby sorting through plucked blossoms and buds. Beside him were several small piles of mosses and herbs.

“Ah, Flic, you told me to concentrate on seeing daggers so that I would know that I was in a dream, and I simply fell asleep without doing so.”

“Do not chastise yourself overly, Prince Borel. I understand it takes several tries… or so I was told.”

Borel growled a response and then groaned to his feet and stumped away to relieve himself. Then he hobbled to the river and drank deeply. Upon returning to the camp, as he placed more wood on the fire he said, “What are you doing, Flic, this sorting of flowers by moonlight?”

“My lord, you need to treat your injuries, else the going will be slow. The herbs are for a paste to rub into your bruises, the juice of the moss for your scrapes, and can we think of a way, the blossoms to make a tisane to treat your soreness. We should make the tisane first.”

“A tisane? A drink for my aches and pains?”

“Aye,” said the Sprite.

“Then we’ll brew it in my hat,” said Borel, pointing to the tricorn.

“Your hat, my lord?”

“Indeed,” said Borel, groaning back down onto his grassy bed. “On morrow morn. But for now, I need rest.”

“As you wish,” said Flic.

In moments, the prince fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

When Borel awoke in the early light of dawn, he had stiffened up in the night, and he was slow to rise. Once on his feet, he looked to see Flic asleep and curled on the leaf next to Buzzer. The bee, however, was awake, yet she remained still by her ward.

Moving with difficulty, Borel added more branches to the yet-glowing coals of the fire, and blew up a blaze, and when the flames were well caught, he took up his tricorn and hobbled to the river and scooped up a hatful of water and drank his fill. He then selected a number of rounded river rocks, all nigh the size of a chicken egg. These he took back to the fire and placed them among the burning branches. Back to the river he stumped and again filled the tricorn with water, and back to the camp he limped.

Then he groaned down with his back to a tree and ate leftover rabbit, while with his flint knife he scraped away at the coney skin and waited for Flic to awaken.

As the sun rose, so did the Sprite. “We’ll need two washed-clean, fairly flat rocks,” said Flic, “though if you can find two slightly hollowed, that would be even better. One on which to crush the moss to paste; the other to squeeze the juice from the herbs. We’ll also need a couple of rounded river rocks to do the crushing. But as to making the tisane, we’ll need water and a way to heat it.”

“The water is in my hat,” said Borel, “and the way to heat it is in the fire.”

Flic glanced at the fire. “Ah, I see. But how will you fetch them out from the flames?”

Borel hefted his flint knife and pointed at a nearby young tree. “I’ll cut a forked branch.”

“Then, my lord, while Buzzer and I break fast, you gather what we need.”

After cutting the branch from the limb and trimming it to suit his purpose, Borel took up his quiver and the scraped rabbit skin and hobbled down to the river, where he thoroughly wetted down the hide and rolled it tightly and dropped it into the quiver. Then he found two flat rocks slightly hollowed to act as mortars and two round ones to act as pestles. As he limped back to the camp, Flic flew alongside and pointed and said, “Buzzer has found a stand of viburnum at the base of that steep hillside just across the field.”

“Splendid,” said Borel and, gritting his teeth, he hobbled on, while Flic sped back to the blossoming field to continue his breakfast.

When Flic and Buzzer returned to camp, Borel donned one of his gloves and slid the fork of the cut branch under a hot rock and dropped it into the water in his hat. Shortly, with his gloved hand he fished that rock out and put it back into the fire, and scooped another one in. In less than a quarter candlemark the water was bubbling, and Flic said, “There is too much. Pour a bit out… say, half.”

After Borel had done so, the Sprite dropped a selection of different blossoms into the liquid.

“Stir it, my lord.”

Borel used his forked stick to stir the blossoms ’round and ’round and under. After long moments of doing so, Flic said, “Let me see.”

Borel stopped, and the Sprite stuck in a finger and tasted. “A bit more stirring, Prince.”

Twice more Borel stirred and twice did Flic taste, and at last he said, “Drink it all, Lord Borel, in one gulp if you can.”

The tisane was quite bitter, the heat of the liquid making it even more so, but Borel squinched up his face and swallowed the whole of it.

Borel shuddered with the aftertaste and set the tricorn aside, and Flic grinned at him and said, “Now for the moss and herbs.”

With Flic working on the places Borel could not see or easily reach, they washed his scrapes with the juice of the herbs and smeared a thin film of moss pulp over his bruises. As Borel eased back into his silks and leathers, Flic said, “We’ll do this every morning for a threeday, and then you should be quite well.”

“Three days, that’s all? After the beating I took?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I need your recipes, Flic. There are many who can benefit from this.”

“I’m afraid, Prince Borel, they are not my recipes to give. You will have to ask my queen.”

“You have a queen?”

“Indeed.”

“Hmm. I never knew. Regardless, when the time comes, I will ask her. But for now we have a demoiselle to find.” He glanced at the bumblebee. “Does Buzzer know of Lord Roulan’s gardens?”

“Please, if you would, smooth out a patch of ground, my lord, a place not too close to the fire. One the size of your hand will do.”

Borel squatted at the edge of the cleared ground and smoothed over the loam.

Flic flew down to the bare patch, Buzzer following. Flic looked at Borel and said, “Shamrock with pink blossoms, white roses with a pink blush, and blackberries, right?”

Borel shrugged but nodded.

Flic sank to his knees and somehow spoke to the bee, and Buzzer began a peculiar wiggling, buzzing dance, Flic paying rapt attention. Back and forth in a straight line the bee wriggled, pausing now and again to thrum her wings. And then Buzzer began dancing in a different direction, and again and again she buzzed and wriggled and paused. Once more and again and several times thereafter she changed the course of the dance, each on a separate tack. Finally, Flic turned to Borel. “Buzzer knows of a number of places with all three things, some closer than others, but all of them quite far. Is there ought else you can tell me? Other flowers? The lay of the land? An orchard? A lake? Anything?”