Blackberry Blue Page 2

  Prince Just ran after her. There was a trail of flower petals and he followed them. As before, he reached the great brambly bush, but here the petals stopped, and there was no sign of the girl he was looking for.

  Suddenly, out of the trees, a snarling grey wolf sprang upon him and tried to tear him to pieces. As the prince struggled to fend it off, a cloaked creature leaped out from the bramble patch, and a brambly cloak came down over the back of the wolf, wrapping thorny arms around it. The wolf immediately fell away, howling in pain and covered in prickles, and disappeared into the woods.

  The prince lay as if dead. Desperately, Blackberry Blue tended her dear, wounded prince and her tears fell upon his face. She dabbed him with herbs and ointments, and gave him a sip of blackberry juice. Then, clasping him in her arms, she dragged him onto a nearby track, and secretly guarded him until he was discovered.

  When Prince Just was found and carried back to the palace, he mumbled wildly about being saved by a brambly bush. Yet he hadn’t a single mark on him, whereas Prince Wolf was seen limping around covered in scratches.

  When Blackberry Blue returned to the kitchens, the castle was seething with rumours. Although Prince Just had been rescued in the woods without a scratch, he had now fallen ill and was lying in his chamber with a fever. Some people whispered that he had been poisoned by the wicked queen. Every night, the queen ordered a bowl of soup to be sent to the prince, and every morning he was a little worse.

  Three months passed by, and now it was time for the Autumn Ball, but no one’s heart was in it as Prince Just was still ailing.

  The old king, who had watched his son getting weaker by the day, was heartbroken. ‘My son, my son – who can cure my son? Is it right to be holding a ball when my son might be dying?’ he asked.

  But his wicked queen said, ‘Of course it is. It will make him feel better. Besides, it’s Prince Wolf ’s birthday, and Prince Just wouldn’t want to spoil his celebrations, would he? And I’m hoping that my son, at least, will choose a bride for himself.’

  And so the ball was arranged for a week’s time.

  Blackberry Blue was in the kitchen. All day she had been baking blackberry pies, and she set aside a special platter for Prince Just. A maid was about to take up the soup for the bed-ridden prince, crying, ‘Oh, isn’t it sad! Prince Just is dying. Is there nothing that can save him?’

  Blackberry Blue said, ‘Let me take the soup to him. I have baked him his favourite blackberry pies and they contain a remedy that might make him better.’

  So Blackberry Blue pattered through the palace corridors and up the staircase until she reached the prince’s chamber. When she entered, she found him lying there, so pale and listless, with his eyes closed, and his brow damp with fever.

  She placed the tray by his bed, and whispered in his ear, ‘It is I, Blackberry Blue. I work in the kitchens and I’ve brought you some blackberry pies. But first, dear Prince, do not drink the soup. I fear the queen poisons it. Pretend to get worse, even though you will soon get better. I have put special curative herbs in my pies, so only eat them when she has gone.’ Then she hurried away.

  The queen swished into the bedroom, and stood in front of Prince Just’s bed, blocking his view so that he didn’t see her drop something into his soup. Then she came round to the other side, and handed him the bowl. ‘Come, dear boy! Drink up. We need you to get better,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Dear Madam!’ murmured the prince weakly. ‘Is the window open? I feel a chill.’

  When the queen went to check, the prince hastily tipped his soup into a potted plant nearby.

  ‘My, that was quick!’ she remarked when she came back to his bedside and saw, with satisfaction, the empty bowl.

  The day of the third ball arrived. This time, Blackberry Blue’s mother had made her a dress of autumn leaves: red, yellow, gold and purple, edged with red berries and small white winter roses. When Blackberry Blue had braided her hair with holly and ivy, she looked more beautiful than ever. She covered herself with her brambly cloak and went to the palace kitchens.

  As before, she cooked and baked hour after hour, and finally, when all the maids and cooks excitedly went up to the ballroom, Blackberry Blue flung off her brambly cloak and ascended the front steps of the palace.

  Every head turned when she entered the ballroom. The musicians nearly stopped playing, they were so entranced by her beauty.

  Prince Wolf immediately bounded towards her and took her arm in a vice-like grip. ‘So you’re back, my dear,’ he whispered. ‘This time I shall not let you go.’

  They whirled around the ballroom for dance after dance, till Blackberry Blue felt sick and dizzy. But suddenly, the music ceased abruptly mid-phrase. Everyone stopped dancing and looked in amazement, for there, at the top of the staircase, a happy, smiling king had appeared, and beside him stood Prince Just, looking fit and well. Cheers and laughter swept through the hall. How pleased they were to see their beloved prince.

  ‘First I was saved from a wolf by a mysterious girl in the woods,’ he cried. ‘Then I was saved from poisoning by one of my maids, who brought me blackberry pies filled with a magical cure. She warned me not to drink my stepmother’s soup. I was too weak to open my eyes, so I never saw her face. But because of her, I am safe and well, and I have vowed only to marry the girl who saved me – and I think I know her.’

  Prince Just strode across the ballroom floor, and politely bowed before his stepbrother, Prince Wolf. ‘The next dance with the princess will be mine,’ he said.

  Prince Wolf snarled. He looked over at his mother, the queen, as if to say, ‘What’s this? I thought Prince Just was dying?’ The queen turned green and looked at the king.

  ‘Guards, guards! Take her away,’ ordered the king, ‘and her evil son too.’

  ‘No!’ The wicked queen screeched and swooped across the ballroom floor, transforming into a cawing raven. With beating wings and outstretched neck, she pecked and clawed at Prince Just as if she would rip him to pieces.

  ‘No!’ spat Prince Wolf, changing into the fierce, slavering grey wolf that had attacked Prince Just in the forest.

  Everyone screamed and scattered. The dawn-grey sky turned as red as blood. Blackberry Blue’s beautiful dress turned to thorns. As the wolf was about to spring on Prince Just, she snatched up her brambly cloak and tossed it into the air. It floated there like a strange dark cloud; then dropped down, enveloping the pouncing wolf. With a shriek of fury, the raven queen flapped her wings and tried to fly out of the window. But Prince Just fitted an arrow to his bow and, with swift and accurate aim, loosed it; the dreadful creature plunged to the ground, dead.

  As the guards dragged away the howling wolf, Prince Just took Blackberry Blue in his arms. He looked into her glistening black, blackberry eyes. ‘It was you, wasn’t it, who sold me the blackberry pies, who saved me from the wolf, and who cured me?’

  A soft, rosy dawn flooded through the ballroom, bathing everyone in a pink glow, and the prince asked Blackberry Blue to marry him.

  ‘Yes, yes!’ she replied joyfully.

  At that moment a footman announced the arrival of a late guest. A strangely beautiful woman whose skin was as black as night, dressed in the dark purply-black of blackberries, entered the ballroom.

  When Blackberry Blue looked at her, she knew that this was her brambly mother.

  ‘Now that the wicked raven queen is dead, the spell she cast on me is broken,’ said the woman. She held out her arms. ‘My daughter, my daughter!’

  And Blackberry Blue rushed into her mother’s embrace.

  Prince Just and Blackberry Blue were married after the winter was over, just before spring became summer, and she wore a dress her mother made for her of poppies, lilacs, honeysuckle and orange blossom.

  She looked as beautiful as a summer’s day, and everyone was as happy as happy can be, especially the king.

  But Blackberry Blue never forgot the woodcutter and his wife, who had been a mother and father to her
when she was growing up, and she never forgot who had taught her to make blackberry pies. Every blackberry season, she took a basket and went to pick blackberries at the brambly patch, and when, in due course, she gave birth to a daughter, she took her too.

  THE PURPLE LADY

  If something precious is lost, then the search must never end until it is found. But sometimes it means paying a high price to win back what has been taken away.

  The last of the snow was brown and sludgy; spindly branches clawed an ice-blue sky; nameless birds crouched silently in black silhouette on naked branches, and the air was drifting with crystals. He rubbed a small circle on the steamy, grimy window through which he could observe this alien world. His search had begun.

  Abu had caught the bus to the city.

  ‘Where do you want to get off?’ the bus driver had demanded.

  Abu didn’t know what to say. ‘At the end of the line,’ he replied finally, and sat at the back by himself. He noticed that whereas his fellow passengers had at first looked out greedily at the new spring-green countryside as if they would never see it again, when they reached the outskirts of the city, with its chimneys, factories and apartment blocks, its roads seething with traffic, they now slumped back wearily, as if dreading their day at work.

  A head-scarved woman got on and sat next to Abu as the bus churned along a busy avenue. The pavement streamed with people bundled up in bulky coats, gloves and boots of greys and browns, like the detritus of a slow-moving muddy river.

  A figure in purple caught his eye; an in determinate blur at first – visible, then invisible among the heaving throng, rising and falling as if riding on the crest of a wave, coming closer. It could have been a mystical animal from a bestiary, for there was nothing but the swirl of a cloak of purple fur which enveloped the figure from head to foot, the face lost in the secretive depths of a hood. If anyone on the bus noticed, they didn’t show it. On the contrary, they dropped their gaze; some put on dark glasses, turned their heads away from the windows, and huddled closer together as if in earnest conversation. Most of all, they held their children tight.

  Behind the figure, a pack of wild dogs broke up the rhythm of the crowds; grey wolf-like forms threaded their predatory way along the pavement like bodyguards and stopped in front of some tall, purple iron-wrought gates.

  The figure paused, motionless, staring through the railings, its purple cloak quivering as if, like an alert animal, its fur was about to stand on end.

  Abu couldn’t see anything on the other side; only a swirling mist that shrouded everything, but as the bus edged forward Abu turned his head and saw a woman’s hand emerge from the cloak. A thin grey hound wound about her knees like a serpent. Briefly, she tossed back her head, and he was sure he heard a thin animal-like howl. Then both woman and hound were on the other side of the locked gates, as if, like a coil of mist, they had simply slipped through the bars.

  The bus moved on.

  ‘What is that place?’ Abu whispered to the woman next to him, who clutched a basket on her knees.

  She bowed her head, and looked steadfastly at her bony fingers clutching her basket. ‘You shouldn’t ask; you shouldn’t look,’ she muttered. ‘Don’t you know what happens to anyone who catches the eye of the Purple Lady? Even to look into the eyes of her hounds is to be damned.’

  ‘You mean these are the gates to the kingdom of the Purple Lady?’

  ‘Ssssh!’ The woman shuddered. ‘You should never take this route into town. It is a cursed place. My daughter was kidnapped by the Purple Lady. Every week I take this bus, and hope that maybe one day I’ll see her again. But I’m a coward,’ she wept. ‘Every time we near those dreadful gates, I dare not look. Yet I know my daughter is somewhere inside those grounds. All of us on this bus have lost someone. See? None of them is looking.’

  Abu glanced around: one lady had drawn her veil across her eyes, a man buried his face in his scarf, and another held up a newspaper so that it touched his nose.

  Abu felt his body go hot and cold in turn with terror and excitement. So it was true: there was a Purple Lady, and this was where she lived. Had he at last found the place where his sister Leyla was being held prisoner?

  Leyla was one of the most loved girls in the village. Not only was she beautiful – her skin like polished bronze, her hair shining like horse chestnuts; her eyes, though deep and dark as stars in a midnight sky, could glint with gold as if full of sunshine. But it was her sweet nature that made everyone wish she was their daughter, their sister, their wife. No one had ever heard her complain, or say a nasty word to any of her friends, or ever reproach her parents. Abu was proud to be her brother, and as they were growing up, thought her the bravest and funniest and most daring of all his friends.

  Leyla had a cat called Miskouri. She wasn’t a glamorous cat, a pedigree cat, a valuable cat or an exotic cat; she was just a common-or-garden cat; a mixture of this, that and the other. But never was an animal more loving and loyal to her mistress than Miskouri. Wherever Leyla went, Miskouri went too; the cat followed her everywhere, waiting for her while she worked, then accompanying her back home, as if she were her most faithful guardian.

  And everyone – even the animals - loved to hear Leyla singing. She sang when she milked the cows, fed the chickens or went to help in the fields. They felt that so long as her voice rang around the countryside as she went about her work on the farm, then all must be well with the world.

  Everyone had heard rumours about a Purple Lady who came from the big city. They said she drove around the villages in a purple limousine with blacked-out windows, and that every time she appeared a young person would vanish. But no one in Abu’s village knew if these were just stories to show children that they should be wary of strangers. They warned that the Purple Lady collected the youth and souls of girls and boys so that she could stay young for ever. Worst of all, anyone who looked into her eyes lost all memory. It was true that many a person had returned to their village with their minds stripped, emptied of all memory after a fruitless search for a loved one. Yet no one had seen the lady’s face and been able to describe what they saw.

  Afterwards, it was said, strange, menacing birds would arrive and settle in the trees, peering down like spies at the village below. Some would strut along the street instilling such fear that people shrank away, dumbstruck, certain that these were servants of the Purple Lady, watching and reporting back. The people from Abu’s village thought they were just stories . . . until it happened to them, and Leyla disappeared.

  It coincided with a purple limousine being seen near the village. How often had Abu imagined it since: a rich car passing Leyla in the lane; a window wound down; a deep, soft voice asking the way; two violet eyes like whirlpools hypnotizing her, drawing her into the soft leathery interior. ‘Won’t you show me the way, my dear?’

  Leyla was so polite, so considerate; a girl who would help anyone. Abu could almost hear her reply: ‘Of course!’ Then she was gone, and Miskouri was gone, seen by no one; there were not even any tyre tracks. Just the fear, the helplessness left behind in the hedgerows and lonely alleyways, in the desperate homes; in tear-soaked pillows. Soon after, a flock of rooks arrived and flew into the trees around the village, chattering their clipped rattat-tat, rattat-tat.

  ‘I’m going to find her,’ Abu had promised his distraught parents. The day before he left home he visited Dorcas, the oldest and wisest woman in his village. At first she warned him not to even try to find his sister: how could he possibly overcome the power of the Purple Lady? But when she saw that he wasn’t going to change his mind, she told Abu that she had an even older, wiser sister called Shasti who lived in the city. ‘Find her. She may be able to advise you.’ And she had pressed an address into his hand. ‘Stay on the bus till it reaches the end, then follow the instructions.’

  One by one, everyone got off the bus. It was moving away from the city centre now, the street-lights giving way to unlit roads and alleyways. It was night when final
ly it reached a huge garage and stopped. ‘End of the line!’ cried the bus driver.

  Wearily, an elderly Sikh gentleman stepped carefully off the bus. Abu followed him. ‘Can you tell me where . . .?’ But the old man had already hurried away.

  Abu pulled out a torch and peered at the piece of paper with the address: 3 Faraway Alley. He looked around for a sign, but there wasn’t one – nor was there a single living soul to ask.

  He jumped, startled: something furry was twining around his ankles. It was a cat. ‘Oh, you gave me a fright!’ He bent down, and gave a cry of astonishment when he saw a common-or-garden cat looking up at him with emerald eyes. ‘Miskouri? Is it you?’ Abu was overjoyed. He scooped her up and covered her with kisses. ‘Miski! Where’s Leyla? Is she here?’

  Miskouri wriggled to be put down. She set off down the road, then stopped, looked round for Abu, and moved on again. He followed, his heart bursting with hope. She turned off the road and slipped into a maze of back alleys with broken fences and paved yards cluttered with dustbins and piles of discarded goods, as though the people in this part of the city had never heard of gardens with flowers and hedges and fruit trees and ponds.

  They came to a passageway so narrow that Abu could stretch out both hands and touch the walls on either side. With his way lit by only the faintest glimmer of moonlight, he followed Leyla’s cat. The alley abruptly ended at a brick wall. Abu halted, filled with despair. The cat leaped up, paused on top of the wall, and looked down at him, her gleaming eyes seeming to say, ‘Come on! Follow me.’

  Abu looked around for an opening, then saw a faded sign on the wall: FARAWAY ALLEY. Miskouri had brought him to the address Shasti had given him. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ he muttered, and flung his rucksack over the wall. Taking a running jump, he leaped and scrambled up to the top.

  Below him was the tiniest of yards surrounded by the backs of buildings with wobbly chimney pots and broken guttering. In just one small upper window he saw a yellow light. He dropped down into the yard and scooped up his rucksack. Miskouri was waiting at the foot of a narrow flight of stone steps ascending into the building. He followed her. It was pitch dark, and he would have seen nothing were it not for Miskouri’s gleaming eyes showing the way. Fumbling and stumbling, he came at last to a door. It was open; a smell of joss sticks coiled into Abu’s nose. The cat slid inside, and he followed. He heard a flapping of wings, and had the impression of some kind of bird fluttering past his face. He shrank backwards, turning to run.