Faerie Fruit by Charlotte E English

Author:Charlotte E English [English, Charlotte E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: faerie tales, faerie realm, fairy tale adventure, fables and fairy tales, faerie fantasy, faerie king, fae magic
Publisher: Charlotte E. English
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

How Hattie Strangewayes came to be worn by a pair of Boots, and Theodosius Penderglass Gave Chase to a Mystery.

Chapter One

When Hattie Penderglass, weaver of fine silks, joined her house with that of Jeremiah Strangewayes, tailor, it was with no expectation that he would someday vanish from Berrie Wynweald, and leave her quite alone.

He was a good man and a steady husband, so she would do him the justice to suppose that he had not intended to be parted from his wife. But by poor luck and ill fortune, he had crossed the Wynspan into Southtown on the morning of its vanishment, there to deliver a completed tunic and waistcoat to the house of Nathaniel Roseberry. He had not returned.

Three months afterwards, when the mists of autumn had settled over Berrie North and the mornings grown chill, the Wynspan terminated still in the midst of the strange velvet moor and Hattie Strangewayes remained alone.

The disappearance of Southtown had also heralded the retreat of the tangled orchards. The trees had returned to their former stations upon the edges of people’s gardens, and amidst the birches and the rowans and the oaks of Berrie’s copses. They were brittle and sere and quiescent once more, and had ceased to bear the strangely coloured fruits with which they had been so uncharacteristically abundant.

Hattie had not been obliged to return to the use of her spectacles, to her delight, for her mended eyes did not again weaken. But she remained the owner of seven pairs of boots of which she was in no way in need, her pockets considerably lighter by consequence. To her great dismay, she was plagued by a periodic compulsion to acquire still more. She was forced to ban herself entirely from Verity Wilkin’s shop, and from the shoemaker’s company as well.

Long in the habit of paying regular visits to her brother’s bookbindery, Hattie had taken to walking thither more often, for little else was so effective at alleviating her solitude. There came a morning upon which her spirits, customarily brisk, were unusually weighed down, and she felt in immediate need of a remedying dose of Theodosius’s enlivening wit and kind consideration.

She resolved upon setting off at once, and collected her hat and her warmest shawl in readiness to encounter the clinging mists of the morning. But when it came time to don her shoes, she found that her favourite and most comfortable boots had finally resigned all claim to further duty. There could almost be some manner of complicity suspected between the pair, she thought upon surveying them, for the heel of her left boot had detached itself from the sole, and the toe of the right had worn through. When both boots had been perfectly useable only the day before, the circumstance struck her as unlucky indeed, and she set them aside with a sigh.

Her shoe-cupboard, typically only minimally filled, was swollen with new pairs. But these she had hidden away on a bottom shelf and never touched, for

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