Epilogue
Sylvaine had always had wild and unusual hair, but this was something else entirely.
‘Is it fire?’ she said in a hoarse whisper, her eyes huge with fright. She lifted one hand as though to touch her head, but it hovered a few inches from her hair, and would not be coaxed any nearer.
‘N-no,’ said Margot, trying to soothe. ‘Not precisely. It is more like— like—’
‘Thunder,’ said Florian. ‘If thunder had physical form. With a bit of lightning in it.’
Sylvaine looked down at herself. Her comfortable old boots were gone, as were the rest of her clothes. She wore a gown of roiling clouds instead, motes of lightning blazing in the depths.
‘I think you are Storms,’ said Florian.
Sylvaine said nothing for some time. ‘Well,’ she said at last, rather heavily, ‘That is fitting.’ And her lips quirked in her old, wry smile, though they wobbled a bit in the attempt.
Margot had not yet grown accustomed to her new role either. Not a bit of it. Autumn, had said Walkelin, and when Margot had woken up she had soon seen what he meant.
She felt different. She felt, oddly, as though she had no body, though she could see perfectly well that she did. She was too light, her limbs too ethereal; she thought she could float right off the ground if she wanted to, and immediately scared herself half to death by doing so. From her new position twelve inches off the floor, she was in no great state to receive several other realisations equally startling.
Her hair rustled when she turned her head. This was because it was full of leaves, the crisp, russet kind freshly fallen from a waning tree. When she put up a hand to poke gingerly at this unfamiliar mass, she found berries, too. Growing there. In her hair.
Her own garments were fruits and late-blooming flowers wreathed all about in fog, and she smelled fresh earth and herbs and pungent spices wherever she stepped.
Margot swallowed hard.
‘Oh, dear…’ she sighed, and when Walkelin gave her an encouraging smile she was torn between a desire to cling to this vision of kindliness and wisdom, and a desire to smack him for having landed her in such a predicament at all.
It took her only an instant to surmise what had become of Florian. ‘Summer,’ she said flatly, and rolled her eyes. ‘How appropriate.’
Florian bestowed upon her his sunniest smile. His hair was still green, though it was now shot through with gold, and it occurred to Margot that it probably was grass, now. He wore his verdant raiment jauntily, as though it had always been his, and did not even appear to mind the haze of nectar that hung about him. Bees followed him everywhere.
‘Was I not made for it?’ he said. Spreading wide his arms, he made Margot a bow, and winked at her.
‘You could very well have been,’ she said thoughtfully, and she was not altogether jesting. ‘You take to it well.’
‘I am still myself. Only a bit more… magical.’
Oriane’s transformation was more puzzling. She had grown grey and pale, which did not seem like her at all. Frost-motes sparkled around her eyes and threaded through her hair, and her gown was a soft flurry of white. She seemed more genuinely cast down by her alteration than the others, for tears shone in her eyes, and she visibly struggled to maintain her composure.
‘Winter?’ said Margot, frowning. ‘That doesn’t seem right.’
‘Snow, I think,’ said Walkelin. ‘Her heart may be heavy today, but it is not frozen. She could never be so cold.’ He went to Oriane and offered her his arm, which she accepted with gratitude. They walked slowly away together.
Moon had exhausted herself. She lay in a spread-eagled heap in the grass, not far from the remains of her pool. There was no water left, only a soggy depression in the ground to mark where it had been. Her eyes were shut, but they flew open again when Margot approached, and she gave her fiendish grin. ‘Autumn!’ she said in high glee, and clapped her hands. ‘It is always nice to have new friends.’
Margot felt briefly like kicking the wretched sprite, but restrained herself. Moon had, in all likelihood, saved Arganthael, and there were worse possible consequences to that than Margot’s having to wear berries in her hair.
‘Is everything well?’ she said. ‘Is all mended?’
‘All better,’ Lunavere smiled, and shut her eyes again. ‘Go and see for yourself.’
Margot gathered up Florian and Sylvaine, and they went.
‘I will never consent to look at another clock in my life!’ said Thandrian later, having taken every single timepiece in the whole of Pharamond’s emporium and piled them into a heap upon one of his work-benches. She climbed up onto the table and began to stamp them into pieces, smiling fiercely all the while. ‘There! Let that be an end to that horrible tick-tocking!’
The explosion had greatly weakened the tangled knot of magic that had long held Thandrian bound, and Moon’s interference had dissolved it altogether. Thandrian had weathered her release from the clock-room well, all things considered. Her hair had gone entirely white, it was true, and she moved with the frailty of one to whom movement had been for too long a rare luxury. But she took such pleasure in it that nobody wanted to stop her, and until she actually injured herself there seemed little hope of her slowing down.
They had all returned to Laendricourt to find everything… changed. The house contained all that had used to be comprised in Laendricourt and Landricourt separately, only now it was merged, and nothing of it was in ruins. The roses retreated, though not altogether, for Rozebaiel would not hear of it. The high walls that used to surround the house and its gardens on the Arganthael side were gone, but beyond their confines lay no dangers; there was only the town of Argantel upon the horizon, just as it ever was.
The Chanteraine Emporium was still in its customary spot, and it had suffered no damage. Later, Margot was to find that her own cottage was just as she had left it, and Florian’s too. Not that she was certain they would either of them return permanently to their old homes; where did the seasons live, after all, especially when it was not their turn to preside? But that was for later. For the present, it was enough to know that the sundering was mended, and that there was just as much magic across the house and the valley and the town as there ought to be — and not a drop more. The clock no longer chimed across the valley every afternoon, and the Gloaming no longer came in.
Sylvaine ignored her new status for as long as she could, and revelled instead in her mother’s return. They closed the shop for some days, and received only those visitors who had endured the chaos of Arganthael along with them. Margot watched with pleasure as the fractured family slowly mended; as Thandrian regained her health and her strength; as Pharamond remembered how to smile, and Sylvaine delighted in it all.
Only Oriane did not return to Argantel. When she left with Walkelin, she was not seen again at Laendricourt for some time. When she arrived at last upon the eve of winter, she came on the arm of the Skies, with starlight in her hair, and she wore her raiment of snow like the regalia of a queen.
It was around this time that Margot stood alone in her cottage of a home, staring sadly at the things that had used to occupy all of her energy and time. She could no longer gather the herbs or flowers of her trades, for they responded oddly to her presence. They grew, or sometimes they withered. They greeted her with such childlike delight that she could not bring herself to pick so much as a single flourishing leaf. What, then, was she to do? Her old life had quietly folded itself up and gone away, and she had no notion what next to do.
It was in such a state that Florian found her. He knocked cheerily upon her door, and upon her answering it he gave her a smile, and one of his particularly florid bows.
And now his smile really was the sun, thought Margot in bemusement.
‘You look bored,’ he said.
‘I am not bored,’ replied Margot indignantly. ‘I am only confused.’
Florian nodded thoughtfully, and she could see that he understood all that she had not said. ‘Want to go paint the sky?’ he said then, and offered her his arm.
‘Paint the—! What, will not Walkelin mind?’
‘Perhaps he might,’ agreed Florian, and his eyes twinkled.
Margot smiled back. ‘Why not, indeed?’ said the Autumn, and accepted the proffered arm.
‘Allow me, ma’am,’ said the Summer, and led her away.
***
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed Gloaming!
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Also by Charlotte E. English:
The Wonder Tales:
Tales of Aylfenhame (Romantic historical fantasy)