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I

Posted on Wednesday, 7 May 2008

“They’re trooping at Netherfield again,” Mrs. Bennet told her esteemed spouse over breakfast one fine Spring morning.

Mr. Bennet, engrossed in the perusal of the – only one day late – London news looked over the corner of his paper, an amused expression on his face. “Who are they my dear?” he asked. “I do not have the pleasure of understanding you.”

“Why, the Good Neighbors . Everyone knows that they used to haunt the mound in Netherfield Park.”

The paper rustled. “You must indulge my ignorance, but who is everyone? And who are these Good Neighbors? I would say all our neighbors are good.”

For just a moment, Mrs. Bennet was speechless, an occasion rare enough that it caused the rest of the table to fall silent and the titter of her youngest daughter, Lydia, seated at the other end, to echo unnaturally loud. Jane, the oldest daughter, and Elizabeth, the second oldest, directed looks of reproach at their sister, and Lydia clasped her hands over her mouth to keep herself silent. The next youngest, Kitty, hid her own laughter behind a cough. And Mary, the middle daughter, looked at them over her glasses, with the puzzled expression of a person awakened from a dream – or in this case from the book, hid on her lap, half-under the table.

“The... Good Neighbors!” Mrs. Bennet finally exploded. “You know. The Fair Folk.”

Before Mr. Bennet could open his mouth to tease his spouse further, Mary interjected, “We are to understand that the local people – prey to the most vile superstition – believe that there are creatures who inhabit old mounds. They call them the Good Neighbors or the Fair Folk to avoid calling them fairies or elves. All nonsense of course. Fordyce’s makes it very clear that no such creatures exist, nor...”

“Thank you Mary,” Mr. Bennet said, in repressive accents. “You have enlightened us all.” Then turning to his wife. “From hence do you have this... fairy tale, Mrs. Bennet?”

“Why my sister Phillips says she saw them with her own eyes, riding their prancing steeds over the dark fields at midnight. All arrayed in cloth like spider-webs, and wearing bells.”

“It seems to me they’d catch their death of chill, if they’re riding in spider-webs in the moonlight. And besides, what was your sister Phillips doing up at that time?”

“Well... I daresay she could not sleep. She has nerves, you know, though I’m sure she doesn’t suffer like I do.”

“No one suffers like you do, my dear, but all the same... How do you know your sister Phillips didn’t dream the whole? And if she didn’t, what should it matter to us if the elves come back to their mound? You said they’ve been there before.”

“But not for a good fifty years Mr. Bennet. As for what it matters, I think it should be obvious. It is very likely, you know, that they’ll kidnap one of our daughters.”

“Is that their purpose, then? In coming to this region? To kidnap one of our daughters?”

“Their purpose! Don’t be ridiculous. But they are likely to see one of them and enchant her, and then how are we to recover her? We shall be ruined. And turned out to starve in the hedgerows.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mr. Bennet said, looking over his paper. “With five daughters to marry and my estate entailed away from the female line, we can’t be choosy, can we? Anything that comes in shape of a son-in-law must be accepted.” He grinned at his daughters, over the paper, “What say you, Lizzy, would you like to marry an elf?”

“Indeed, no, Papa,” his second-oldest daughter, who had a lively sense of humor said, with every semblance of propriety. “Too grand by far for me. And I prefer to take my walks in the daytime.”

“I see,” Mr. Bennet said. “This is what I suggest, Mrs. Bennet. We should send all our daughters – and perhaps you, yourself since you’re as handsome as any of them – walking around the mound in the dark of night. I’ll send a note with you saying the elf can take whichever he pleases and then–”

“Oh, Mr. Bennet,” his spouse interrupted. “I pray you will not tease me so. It is very ill to joke about these subjects. Indeed it is.”

“Mama is right, Papa,” Mary said.

“But why, if you just said it is all superstition?” He rose from the table. “Recommend our sister Phillips not to eat lobster patties before bed, my dear,” he told his spouse. “And you’ll see that the elves vanish altogether.”

“Do you think there are such things as elves, Lizzy?” Jane asked in the bedroom they shared that evening. She was the oldest in the family, a blond beauty with perfectly regular features set in an oval face. In her white linen nightgown, her knees drawn up and her arms around her knees, she looked like an angel.

Her slightly darker sister, Lizzy, whose face was more impish than beautiful, turned back from where she’d been hanging her clothes. “Ah, Jane. You know better than to believe fairytales. You are almost two and twenty, after all.”

“But... Wouldn’t it be lovely...” She trailed off.

“Wouldn’t what be lovely?” Lizzy asked, gently. Jane was a kind soul, determined to go through the world thinking the best of everyone who crossed her path. To casual observers, she might appear superficial or not very smart, but her sister knew that there was a dreaming, romantic nature beneath the smiling face.

“Oh... just to think that there is a world where dowries and connections do not matter – where... where it’s all moonlight and shadows and...”

“I’m sure,” Lizzy said. “That if there were such a world, the dowries and wealth would matter too. It might be fairy gold, but no doubt, we’d need to amass a quantity of it before we could marry an elf of birth and substance. And then,” she said. “Imagine how their nobility and gentry would look down on us. You want to marry a mortal? How shocking."

“Stop it, Lizzy,” Jane said, giggling. “Do you never take anything seriously?”

“Very little,” Lizzy confessed, rounding on her sister with a smiling face. “Being one of five daughters, with no dowry and no connections, I can choose to go through life crying or laughing. And I dearly love to laugh.” As she spoke, she was opening their window to let in some of the still cool but refreshing spring air.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful, though,” Jane said. “If we were to meet someone who loved us for ourselves?”

“Very wonderful,” Lizzy said. “As in a rare wonder which I don’t expect to see– Oh!”

The oh was rung from her, seemingly all unwilling, erupting with force from her lips.

“What is it?” her sister asked, rising to look over Lizzy’s shoulder.

“Nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing,” Lizzy said recovering. “Just some lights in the little wilderness next to the park, which–” She stopped.

She stopped because under the moonlight, the lights that had been coiling through the little wilderness next to their house – a train of lights, really, a very odd phenomenon – resolved itself into ... a group of riders in the moonlight.

There were two ladies and three gentlemen, riding in the silvery glow of the full moon. At the front, mounted on chestnut steeds of a grace and elegance such as Elizabeth had never seen, were two men – one dark and one blond. The dark one looked slightly taller than the other, and rode slightly ahead. As he turned his face to say something to his companion, the moonlight hit his face in full – displaying a straight nose, a square chin, full lips. Something to his expression attracted Lizzy, and she leaned forward, from her window, captivated.

But he never looked at her. He wore antiquated clothing, of the sort that men wore in portraits from a few hundred years ago. Short breeches displayed a length of stocking-encased leg, ending in ankle boots. A doublet outlined broad shoulders and a waist that could not be as small as it looked. On his head was a green cap, with a green feather. His hair, tied back, flowed behind him as he rode. “Oh,” Lizzy said, wondering if she was seeing a ghost. For who else would ride in that strange a costume through the neighborhood at night?

But if she was seeing a ghost, then so was Jane, whose hand clenched on her arm, as the riders below pointed in the direction of Netherfield, turned that way and... vanished into the night.

Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Dreaming. I must be dreaming.”

“Oh no,” Jane said. “We saw them. They were... I’m sure they’re elves.”

“More likely London gentlemen and ladies playing a prank,” Lizzy said.

Jane hesitated, but at last said, “I daresay you’re right. People have such lively senses of humor.”

But later, when they were both in bed, Jane spoke, in the dark, “Lizzy? Did you see the... the blond gentleman? I daresay it was the most pleasant face I’ve ever beheld.”

II

Posted on Wednesday, 14 May 2008

Through the great hall at Netherfield, Lord Darcy came striding. Though the palace at Netherfield – ancient and honored – was the seat of his friend Duke Carolus Bingley, it was now hosting the most high court of Fairyland and the Elven Realms of Avalon. As such, its great hall had been outfitted with the twin thrones of the king and queen of the elven realms in these isles, and – because the kingdom was in danger – filled with every great Lord and Lady, every prince, every duke, every mere baron that held land and magic in the kingdom.

Lord Darcy entered, without bothering to change out of his riding attire. The silver spurs on the well polished boots that encased his legs up to the knees, struck sparks from the polished marble floors. The court parted, like clouds when the sun appears. The ladies lined, on either side of the path he strode through, and knelt one after the other, as he passed, turning to him their flower-like countenances which sparkled with admiration of his fine figure, his glossy black locks and the grey eyes which shone as though bits of silver had got caught deep within.

The faces fell as they saw who followed him – the proud Carola Bingley, his fiancé, who looked at them all as though they were beneath her contempt. Lord Bingley, with his softer features and his vague smile, would have encouraged them to come forward, but Carola was jealous of her position and prerogative.

Ten steps before the throne, Prince Darcy stopped and bowed deeply but did not kneel. The grandson of the king, and his heir – who would be king whenever Oberon should go forth to the isles of the blessed – he was the highest born there, save the sovereigns.

“Speak grandson,” Oberon said, from his throne, his voice deep like thunder and rolling over the court like a wave. “What have you found? The boundaries of our land, are they secure? What signs of the rebels? Is there any magical defiling? Any show of his encroaching?”

Darcy bowed again, a contained gesture. His features froze into somber-seeming stillness, as though he had of a sudden turned to a statue. “Noble Oberon,” he said. “I would not deceive you. Though I found no explicit sign of the rebel, I could taste the flavor of his foul magic, the touch of his followers on hill and glade.” He hesitated. “The home you spoke of, fifty years ago, but three miles hence, is now inhabited by a family and not, as you had said, just a lonely old man. And that family...” He struggled for words while Oberon watched. “That family, oh noble king, has five daughters, all fair virgins of... of distinguished lineage. Far away, and in their mother’s line they are of your own blood, your majesty.”

“Five virgins,” Oberon said, frowning slightly. “Of my blood. The rebel will never resist this. He will come for them.”

“So I thought,” Darcy said. He bit the side of his lip, lost in thought. “And being that though they are mortals, they are of your blood, I think we have only two options...”

The king looked at him and then said, his voice terrible as the thunder that announces a storm. “I see only one,” he said. “We must bring them to us and find them marriages and keep them safe, deep within our palace.”

Something like pride or disdain twisted Darcy’s lips and his eyes flashed. “Bring them within? Oh, no your majesty. For though they are descended from you, many generations of mortals have poured their coarse, impure stuff into their veins. You’d not allow them to thus pollute the shades of fairyland!”

Oberon opened his lips, as though to say something, then closed them. “What do you suggest, then, grandson?”

“Two things we can do and one of them is to wrap them tight in spells so that they won’t consider the intruder or go with him, or even think of him, or of believing his foul lies.”

“And the other?” Oberon said. His lips twisted in turn. It was well known that since the Bard incident he didn’t approve of putting spells on any humans, be they ever the rudest of mechanicals. Besides, Darcy knew, every sense would revolt at the idea of spelling his descendants, no matter how remote.

“The other is that, under some disguise or contravention, dressed as mortals, behaving as they do, we meet them and warn them.”

“I like that idea better,” Oberon said. “It doesn’t do, grandson, no matter your opinions, to treat humans as though they were mere cattle. They are our cousins, in body and in magic, and deserve better treatment than the deer in the forest, whom we bespell to our traps.”

Darcy pressed his lips together but, in public, forbore to argue with his grandfather. Instead, he bowed again. “We have found, through the minds of the sleeping mortals, that an assembly is held every month, in Merryton, the nearby city. That is a ... ball... A dance. Carolus Bingley and I have spoken, and we think the best thing would be for us to arrive in Merryton perhaps a day or two before and to attend this assembly under the guise of mortals. There, we’d talk to the young women – their name is Bennet – under pretext of dancing with them, but... your majesty... if words fail... then we must try spells.”

“If words fail....” the king conceded.

It wasn’t till later, in the receiving room of his private quarters, having changed from his riding attire into a blue velvet suit of doublet and knee breeches that sparkled like the deep summer sky strewn with distant stars, that he turned to Carolus and said, “I believe my grandfather means well, but I don’t see why we can’t just spell the mortals from a distance. To have to mingle with them will make for an unbearable evening.”

Golden haired Carolus Bingley sitting near him, laughed heartily. “It is no so bad, Darcy,” he said. “It will be great amusement. It is years since we dropped in at a mortal feast, since our king disapproves of it. I am sure there will be many pleasant people and many uncommonly pretty girls.”

Darcy smiled at his friend. Though they were very different from each other, the prince and the duke had been friends since childhood. And though he did not agree with Carolus, he couldn’t help being amused by him. “You, Carolus, are ever pleased with your company elf or mortal.”

“I just don’t see any reason,” Lord Bingley, Duke of Silver Bells, said, “For going through the world disapproving of everything and everyone.”

But Carola Bingley who sat nearby, admiring her golden beauty on a mirror, turned her passionless eyes to Darcy and said, “I will go with you, milord. I’ll make an unbearable evening perhaps not so terrible.”

Darcy’s gaze flickered onto his fiancé and he said “Yes, that will make it easier.”

“Do you really think we might have to put spells on them?” Bingley asked.

“I very much fear so,” Darcy said. “Mortals are not known for their rationality.” He turned at a sound of soft footsteps behind him. There stood, in the half-light of his sparsely but beautifully furnished domain, a young girl in a flowing green silk dress, her blond hair loosened down her back, her green eyes making her look like something untamed and quite fearful of approaching other creatures.

Prince Darcy’s features split in a wide smile, “Ah Georgiana,” he said, softly. “Come sister. Come and play for us.”

As the young girl sat before the harp, the music poured from her sweetly precise fingertips to fill the entire palace and leak out into the mortal night to enchant unwary passerbye.

Lydia had talked of nothing else all the way to the assembly in the carriage. “And they say there are two gentlemen, and both wearing such fine things and paying with such liberality that, perforce, they must be very wealthy. And...”

But nothing prepared Lizzy for the shock she received when, on entering the assembly, Sir William Lucas begged to make known to the Bennets “Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley.”

There they were, one dark and one blond, but both unmistakably the men she’d seen riding in outlandish costume in the moonlight just a few days before. Were they elves? Or had she dreamed all? Or were they just men of the ton in search of fresh amusement?

III

Posted on Thursday, 12 June 2008

Lord Darcy looked around the room filled with mortals whirling in what he thought he must call dances, though he was not sure at all why he should call them that, since they looked clumsy and slow and not like the dances of fairyland.

He had hoped... He didn’t quite know what he had hoped, except he’d thought he could talk to the girls’ mother. She was an adult and though these creatures lived ridiculously short spaces of time and could barely be called any more than addled juveniles when compared to fairy kind, the older one would have lived much more than the younger and therefore should be able to make decisions.

But it took him no more than two seconds after meeting the Mrs. Bennet creature to realize that he could never make her understand anything. Her eyes were vacuous and she seemed preoccupied only with having him notice her daughters and have them make a good impression on him.

Prince Darcy had run into this before. It was not unusual in fairyland itself. As the only grandchild – the only descendant in fairyland itself – of great Oberon himself, he would one day rule all of fairyland. That day might be very distant – since the life span of fairy kind was so extended – but it would still come, inevitably, and many Lords and Ladies of fairy kind bid fair to present their daughters to him all hoping he would honor them with his heart and his hand. His announced intended alliance with Carola had protected him from a lot of this. In fact, Darcy sometimes thought it had been the intent of his grandfather when he had demanded that Darcy become engaged. For surely, there could be no great hurry in Darcy’s producing heirs. Not when neither Oberon nor Titania would die soon.

He was however grateful that he was no longer under siege by the matchmaking mamas of fairyland. The attitude was not any less off-putting coming from mortals. He ran his gaze, disinterestedly above the heads of all five girls. They were girls, and he supposed they were healthy enough, in the animal way of mortals. He saw little beauty and no breeding. That creatures such as these could have the blood of his ancestors seemed amazing. B ut then, he knew, sometimes people left fairyland and conjoined their blood with mortals. The results were plainly not pretty. It was all he could do not to shudder at the thought.

And meanwhile Carolus Bingley – Carolus, almost as well-born as Darcy himself – was smiling at a blonde, and taking her away with him to the dance floor. What could he be thinking?

Darcy distanced himself, going away a bit towards a wall where no one seemed to be. Carola came after him, always solicitous for his comfort. “Do they have vermin, you think?” she asked, interested. “My father once spent a whole week among mortals, oh, a few hundred years ago, and he said they had lice and fleas and all these creatures that fed on them. He found it very interesting, but then my papa is ever the natural scientist, ready to take an interest in all the lesser species.”

“Oh,” Darcy said, not knowing what else to say. The creatures might be stupid and they might be doomed to short lives and disease. But hearing Carola speak like this, Darcy couldn’t help but feel a pang of something. Something he couldn’t quite put a finger on. It wasn’t so much anger at Carola, as an irrational need to defend these creatures whom he held in no esteem at all. “I... they’re not so bad. We must remember they’re similar enough to us that we can have children with them.”

“And what children!” Carola said, waving her fan rapidly. “How could your grandfather.... But on this, it would perhaps be better to be silent.”

And Darcy who both agreed with her on his grandfather’s behavior and who could not but think it would be much, much better to be silent, only inclined his head.

Presently, Carola moved away to dance with a human, no doubt feeling herself very charitable for doing so.

And Carolus descended on Darcy, a huge smile on his good-natured features. The smile alone made Darcy feel queasy. It was just like Carolus. He took these enthusiasms to places and things. Darcy remembered when Bingley had found a particular grove he found beautiful above all others and refused to leave it for weeks, even though there was nothing better to do than watch the fish on the stream. And he remembered the many fairy ladies with whom Bingley had thought he was madly in love for a week or maybe two.

“Come Darcy,” he said. “I must have you dance. You can’t stand about in this stupid manner.”

“I beg your pardon, I have no intention of dancing,” Darcy said. “You know why we came here, and it was not to dance.”

Bingley bowed a little, but laughed. “Indeed, but how can we do anything else if we don’t dance first?”

“Bingley!” Darcy said, exasperated. “Return to your partner, enjoy her smiles.” He didn’t add that his friend would tire of those smiles in a week, but he hoped Bingley knew he was thinking it.

“Oh, Darcy, she is an angel. More beautiful than princess or duchess. She is perfection itself.”

A reluctant look, cast from beneath Darcy’s lashes, registered with some surprise that indeed the blonde girl was indeed beautiful – she had perfect features, eyes of a blue as deep as the summer sky and lips as red and soft as the rose petals in an enchanted garden. But he wasn’t willing to admit to Bingley that he knew the girl was a rare gem. So instead he said, churlishly, “You’re dancing with the only beautiful girl in the room, Bingley.”

“Oh, not so. Her sisters are also very beautiful. Look, there sits one. She is very beautiful too, and I dare say, very pleasant.”

As he spoke, Bingley gestured towards a girl who was sitting in the nearby chairs, clearly one of the creatures who could not find a partner even amid gross mortals. Darcy turned his disdainful eye her way, ready to wither Bingley’s pretensions with a single look. Words about girls who were neglected by other men were on the tip of his tongue.

And stopped. The girl was, it is true, no beauty. Her features had those slight irregularities, those imperfections that could not help but offend eyes trained on the beauties of fairyland.

Her nose was slightly too big. Her eyes were too far apart. No careful hand had shaped her eyebrows which were too straight and far too dark.

But under those eyebrows shone eyes that could blind even immortals – large and golden, like the leaves in autumn when they had just turned, or like the golden throne of fairyland.

Prince Darcy looked, and his gaze was arrested. He looked and felt something – he couldn’t say what.

There was a memory in his mind: a grove of trees, the smell of autumnal leaves and a woman’s voice calling to him.

He did not know where the memory had come from, nor what it meant, nor who the woman might have been. The memory struck him as strange, because the woman didn’t speak the language of fairyland, but the language of these people. How odd. He must ask his grandfather if he’d had a mortal nursemaid.

Somehow he’d approached the girl. He didn’t remember making a decision to, and suddenly he found himself bowing to her, while she appraised him with her cool eyes. There was interest and... suspicion? In them.

“Miss...” He floundered. “Miss Bennet.” That was fairly safe, since that was the family name. “Would you do me the honor of this next dance?”

She seemed shocked. “I...” she said, and floundered in turn, and seemed not to know what to say.

Prince Darcy was not used to having a female hesitate to accept his invitation to dance. Any woman honored with his interest could not but be grateful. He was so surprised, so sure there must be a mistake that, almost without meaning to, he projected a glamoury towards her.

He saw her frown, then sigh, and, suddenly, her brow cleared. “I...” She said. “I thank you, yes.”

He should have felt guilty about tampering with her emotions. He knew that. But he could feel nothing but elation as he led her to the dance space. She felt light as a feather in his arm, and smelled like newly-opened roses.

Prince Darcy could not remember ever having led a more pleasing partner to a dance, not even in fairyland.