“Was there a wolf in your dream?”
“No. There were other monsters, but no wolves.”
“I can’t eat the mushrooms,” Chanterelle told him. “I just can’t.”
“You will,” he said, “when you’re hungry enough. You’ll need all your strength, I fear, because I can’t raise my voice at all. It’s up to you now. You have to sing out loud and clear.”
“I can’t do that either,” said Chanterelle, her voice falling to a whisper almost as sepulchral as his. She was afraid that he would become angry, but he didn’t. He was still her brother, even if he had eaten mushrooms enslimed by naughty fairies.
“In that case,” she said, “we’ll have to hunt for mother without calling out.”
That was what they did, all morning and all afternoon. The forest was so gloomy now that even the noonday hours hardly seemed daylit at all. The dark-clad branches of the pines and spruces were so dense and so extensive that it was difficult to catch the merest glimpse of blue sky — and where the sun’s rays did creep through the canopy they were reduced to slender shafts, more silver than golden. For four days they had wandered without catching sight of any predator more dangerous than a wildcat, although they had seen a number of roe deer and plenty of mice. That afternoon, however, they were confronted by a bear.
It was not a huge bear, and its thinning coat was showing distinct traces of mange, but it was a great deal bigger than they were, and its ill-health only made it more anxious to make a meal of them. No sooner had it caught sight of them than it loped toward them, snuffling and snarling with excitement and showing all of its yellow teeth.
Handsel and Chanterelle ran away as fast as they could — but Chanterelle was smaller than Handsel, and much weaker. Before they had gone a hundred yards she was too tired to run any farther, and her legs simply gave way. She fell, and shut her eyes tight, waiting for the snuffling, snarling bear to put an end to her with its rotten teeth. She felt its fetid breath upon her back as it reached her and paused — but then it yelped, and yelped again, and the force of its breath was abruptly relieved.
When Chanterelle opened her eyes she saw that Handsel had stopped running. He was snatching up cones that had fallen from the trees, and stones that had lodged in the crevices of their spreading roots. He was throwing these missiles as quickly as he could, hurling them into the face of the astonished bear — and the bear was retreating before the assault!
In fact, the bear was running away. It had conceded defeat.
“He wasn’t hungry enough,” Handsel whispered when the bear had gone. “Are you hungry enough yet, Chanterelle?”
“No,” said Chanterelle, and tried to get up — but she had twisted her ankle and couldn’t walk on it. “It’ll be all right soon,” she said faintly. “Tomorrow, we can go on.”
“If the bear doesn’t come back,” Handsel said hoarsely. “When it’s hungry enough, it might. If we can’t search any longer, you really ought to sing. A song might be heard where shouting wouldn’t.”
“I can’t,” said Chanterelle.
Handsel said no more. Instead, he went to gather red-capped mushrooms. When he came back, his shirt was bulging under the burden of a full two dozen — but all he had in his hands was a tiny wooden pipe.
“I found this,” he murmured. “It couldn’t have been hollowed out without a proper tool, and the finger-holes are very neat. Mother had nothing like it, but I suppose it might be Grandfather’s. Perhaps Father made it for him long ago, and gave it to him as a parting gift when he took Mother away to the town. If it’s not Grandfather’s, it’s the first real sign we’ve found of the fairy-folk. I think I have breath enough to play. Perhaps, if you have a tune to follow, you’ll be able to sing.”
So saying, Handsel sat down beside his sister and began to play on the little pipe. He had no difficulty at all producing a tune, but it was as faint as his voice if not as scratchy. It was pitched higher than any tune she had ever heard from flute or piccolo.
“It must be a fairy flute,” said Chanterelle anxiously. “All the stories say that humans must beware of playing elfin music, lest they be captured by the fairy-folk.”
Handsel stopped playing and inspected the pipe. “I could have made it myself,” he croaked. “Smaller hands than mine might have made it as easily, I suppose.”
“Elfin music loosens the bonds of time, in the tales that Mother used to tell,” said Chanterelle, “and time untied has weight for no man … whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
“I think it means that while a fairy flute plays a single song, years may pass in villages and towns,” said Handsel. “I only wanted to help you sing, Chanterelle — but now the dusk is falling and the darkness is deepening. I couldn’t see a bear by night, Chanterelle. I couldn’t hurt his nose and eyes with pinecones. If the bear comes back, it will gobble us up. Are you sure you cannot sing, even if I play a tune?”
“Even if you play a tune, dear Handsel,” Chanterelle told him, “I could not sing a note. Even if you were to do what the old man in the story did—”
“I never understood how that was supposed to work,” Handsel said, his voice like wind-stirred grass. “On nightingales, perhaps — but what good would it do to run red hot needles into poor Luscignole’s eyes? Will you eat some mushrooms, Chanterelle? I fear for your life if you won’t.”
“A she-wolf warned me against them,” said Chanterelle. “I dare not — unless she comes to me again by night and tells me that I may.”
Handsel would not press her. He set about his own meal quietly — but he was careful to show her that he had only eaten half the mushrooms he had gathered, and would save the rest for her.
When night fell, Chanterelle tried to sleep. She wanted to see her mother again, even if her mother had to come to her in the guise of a wolf. Alas, she could not sleep. Hunger gnawed at her stomach so painfully that she soon became convinced the bear could have done no worse. She tried to fight the pain, but the only way she could do that was to call up a tune within her head, and the only tune she could summon was the tune that Handsel had begun to play on the wooden pipe which had somehow been left for him to find.
It was an old tune, perfectly familiar, but she had never heard it played so high. Chanterelle was afraid that it might be the key in which a tune was played that made it into elfin music, rather than the tune itself. At first, when the tune went round and round and round in her sleepless mind, there was nothing but the sound of the pipe to be “heard,” but as it went on and on it was gradually joined by a singing voice: a voice that was not her own.
Eventually, Chanterelle realized that although the sound of the pipe was in her head, conjured up by her own imagination, the voice was not. The voice was real, growing in strength because the singer was growing closer — but how could it be, she wondered, that the imaginary pipe and the real voice were keeping such perfect harmony?
Chanterelle sat up and began to shake her sleeping brother, who responded to her urging with manifest reluctance.
“Let me sleep!” he muttered. “For the love of Heaven, let me sleep!”
“Someone is coming,” she hissed in his ear. “Either we are saved, at least for a while, or lost forever. Can you not hear her song?”
The singer was indeed a female, and when she came in view — lit by the lantern she bore aloft — Chanterelle was somewhat reassured, for she was taller by far than the fairy-folk were said to be. The newcomer wore a long white dress and a very curious cape made from bloodred fur, flecked with large white sequins. She had two dogs with her, both straining at the leash. They were like no dogs Chanterelle had ever seen: lean and white, like huge spectral greyhounds, each with a stride so vast that it could have out-sprinted any greyhound in the world.