In Which Clarice Goes to a Farmers' Market

Clarice feet were wet. The rain seeped insidiously over the top of her pumps (Bargainshoes.com, £12.99) as she trailed after the bundle of ribbons and thigh-high orange pleather boots which constituted her live-in landlord. The sky was flat and as grey as the concrete surrounding her without even the benefit of London’s irrepressible dandelions to break it up—the same colour as the chain-link fence plinking merrily at her in the rain, the same colour as the dull Ford Focus rusting guiltily on the double-yellow lines, the same colour as the city itself.

“Hurry up,” Sage insisted still striding down the street. Her luminescent green hair clashed horribly with the highlighter pink blazer she had worn today, the one with a dozen different swimming badges lovingly hand-sewn on. “Move those stumpy little legs of yours.”

Clarice scowled after her, but did her best to obey.

She hadn’t even wanted to come. Clarice had always thought that there was something depressing about Farmers’ Markets. It was the way they lied, she thought, selling the nebulous promise of idyllic gingham-and-wicker Sunday afternoons that inevitably fell short. It never stopped the crowds from cramming in like cattle, wheezing through each other’s second-hand air though, and today was no different. The entrance to the car park was rammed with pedestrians, who stared at them both as they approached the end of the entrance line. Sage didn’t seem to notice the muttering and the stares. She was probably used to it by now.

Before she had met Sage, Clarice had always assumed elves were ethereal, but Sage always looked like a charity shop had thrown up on her. A less ethereal person was hard to imagine. Still, at least, while they were staring at Sage, they weren’t looking at Clarice, that was something, she supposed.

They huddled up in the rain as they shuffled through the puddles, still plinking with raindrops. The olde worlde charm of the farmers’ market was spoiled somewhat by the chain-link fence hemming in the car park and the I.D. scanners meticulously tracking the visitors’ movements. The scanner buzzed, the turnstile clacked, the apathetic drizzle pattered off the pavement. Somewhere above Clarice’s head, a drone buzzed with bumblebee-like aimlessness. Its red light blinked mournfully at her as she shuffled through the dregs of the afternoon. A bedraggled raven hopped along the top of the chain-link fence, watching the would-be shoppers with curious, beady eyes.

“Nevermore?” It croaked at her questioningly, its head cocked up to one side, fixing her with its onyx gaze, ruffling its feathers in the rain. “Nevermore?”

Everybody ignored it.

Like just about everything else, talking birds were amazing six years ago. After a month, the novelty had worn off, though, and after a year they had been just another irritation in the over-crowded city. They were worse than the club-footed pigeons congregating at train stations and outside kebab shops. At least the pigeons were quiet.

Clarice sighed again.

Despite binge-watching Youtube Guru, Paradise Solstice Nirvana-Jones’ vlogs on Mindful Gratitude, Clarice was struggling to turn over a new mental leaf and Practice Positivity. The world is a circle. Breathe out hopelessness, breathe in light. All other things are illusionatory™. All whilst wearing the branded merch, sponsored by Squarespace. The queue inched forwards another step and Clarice found herself standing in a puddle. It didn’t feel illusionatory™. It felt wet.

Together, they edged their way past the smilingly diverse poster for the Government’s Fabula Inclusion Scheme (Morbus, Famis, Bellum, Nox—For every business and every job!) whose message was undercut rather by the profane graffiti scrawled across it and the “Think Drought! Think Smart! Think SmartWater.Gov!” signed strapped optimistically to the chain-link fence beside it. It had been here proclaiming its jaunty, exclamation-point clad message with the fervent optimism of a street preacher for the past few months now. Given that the Government had upped the drought warning to level two again last week, it was not having any effect. Clarice splashed through another puddle morosely. Still, the bright yellow and black sign at least served as the last waymark before the single working turnstile, struggling valiantly besides its fallen, yellow-tape comrades, so perhaps it was not entirely useless. The turnstile buzzed belligerently when Clarice proffered her I.D. card.

Lycestra Li was waiting for them just within the gates and she very loudly didn’t say that they were ten minutes late. Cleanliness might be next to Godliness in Lycestra’s book, but Good-Time-Keeping came sprinting over the finishing line a close third. She was wearing wedges (red, adding another six inches to her six foot three height) with a perfectly colour-matched umbrella (red, striped) propped up above her head and a summer dress (red, halter-necked) even though it was unseasonably cold for May. Everyone else was bundled up in cardigans and rain coats, and she drew almost as many scandalous stares as Sage did, though a lot more surreptitiously. Lycestra had the kind of muscle tone that was a badge of membership for the My-Body-is-a-Temple Brigade.

Still, she smiled as they approached and waved a brown paper packet at them both. She looked tired underneath her immaculate make-up, Clarice could not help but notice. Of course. It was the full-moon tonight, wasn’t it?

“Here you are, Clarice. I bought some croissants whilst I was waiting for you.” Lycestra had a perfect 1950s Wireless voice and her Received Pronunciation grew even more clipped when she was irritated. You could have cut diamonds with her consonants today. “They were warm when I bought them, but they’re probably cold by now.”

“You didn’t buy any for me?” Sage protested, offended, but Lycestra jabbed a hand towards Sage’s luminescent green and photosynthesising hair.

“Fabula Famis, remember?”

“That only means I don’t have to eat. It doesn’t mean I might not like to,” she sniffed. Sage took a consolation sip of Hibiscus Tea from her travel-mug instead. The Thermos logo had been lovingly plastered over with an ever-growing collection of shiny foil cat-stickers from Poundsaver. Lycestra rolled her eyes so hard, Clarice thought she might pull a muscle doing it, but she did not rise to the baiting.

“Where to first?” she asked instead.

“I thought we’d start with the second hand book stall.”

“You don’t have room for any more books. Your flat is a fire hazard.”

“Well you don’t live there anymore, so what does it matter to you?”

Clarice trailed morosely after them, munching her lukewarm croissant. It was one of the fancy kinds with almond flakes on top. It was buttery and soft and perhaps, just perhaps, today was not going to be as bad as she dreaded.

Up ahead of her, Lycestra and Sage were still bickering as they wended their way through the Chartley Borough Marketplace. It was a funny mix. It’s organisers had clearly intended it to be an upmarket affair, and indeed, there were a selection of stalls featuring artisanal cheeses, fresh squid-ink and beetroot pasta, goats’ milk ice-creams and so on. But they were hemmed in by less middle class booths; a gardening stall which sold cheap geraniums, cornflowers and forget-me-nots in plastic pots; a charity stall which sold garish knitted dolls and teddies for the British Heart Foundation; a knick-knack stall which had 50p price labels on everything, which Sage lingered at longingly until Lycestra pulled her away. There were several second-hand book tables, even a DVD table, though Clarice wasn’t sure anybody still watched DVDs. But as they strayed round the corner of the flapping tarpaulins and fold-down tables, all attempts at normality disappeared.

Clarice certainly wasn’t the only human here, but she was clearly in the minority. She found herself speeding up, walking closer to Sage and Lycestra who were blissfully unaware of her discomfort. Her mother would have a fit if she knew Clarice was drifting into a Fabula Market Place, Clarice thought distantly. A stray drone hovered overhead, trying to blend in with a crowd of swooping ravens.

Near the entrance to this section, there was a table of cages, squawking with tiny iridescent birds which kept flickering in and out of sight, ruffling their feathers into invisibility and then popping back with a chirrup. One of the cages had a horse in it—a real horse!—who shook its mane and whinnied at her, no bigger than her thumb! She was just about to lean in for a closer look when Lycestra grabbed her and pulled her forcefully forwards.

“Don’t linger,” she whispered, “Don’t stop to look.”

Clarice tried, but it was hard. The sellers sang out enticingly, siren-songs which wound around her. A clockwork tea-pot whistled and jangled its lid, puffing out belches of purple smoke, a pocket-watch was ticking backwards and wisps of silks and gauze danced in the breezeless air. It was like she had fallen into a dream, an eerie, unsettling, beautiful dream.

She turned around to see that Sage had bounded up to some kind of pick and mix stall, waving her arms animatedly. The dolly-mixture bowls perfectly matched the polka dot dungarees Sage was wearing, and Sage came back not moments later with a candy striped bag which she offered to Clarice with a mischievous grin.

“Start with a small piece. Most mortals find it quite strong.”

Clarice picked up one of the small, squishy squares inside.

“Turkish Delight?” she ventured, making the Fabulas laugh. The errant thought drifted across her mind that this was all a bit White-Witch-in-Narnia for her. She wondered if a fawn was about to come galloping up to declare her the long lost queen of a wardrobe-world, before she came to her senses. Clarice wasn’t the kind of person to be the long lost queen of a sock drawer.

“It’s called Hush,” Sage corrected her. “Made from fairy venom and about a quarry’s load of sugar.”

“Don’t give her that, Sage. You know what Clarice is like. She’s the worst kind of hypochondriac. It won’t go well.”

Lycestra stretched her own hand out to take some instead, but Sage snatched the bag away.

“Nope. You didn’t get me a croissant, you’re not sharing my sweets.”

Clarice popped the square into her mouth tentatively whilst the other two bickered. It was sweet, but there was a definite after-tang to it, a flavour she couldn’t put her finger on, like rosemary or lavender mixed with cinnamon, all covered over with the sickly stickiness of the icing sugar. She looked up to see the other two were watching her now expectantly.

“Mmmm. It’s good,” she lied. “Thank you.”

Sage just laughed. “Give it a minute,” she said.

It didn’t even take that long. As Sage began to stride away for her next purchase, the world around Clarice began to sway fuzzily. Time turned to treacle about her. Panic, oh so slowly, oozed into her veins, as though even fear itself was drunk and stumbling.

Was she allergic to the Hush? She had never been allergic to anything before—was this what an allergic reaction usually felt like? Should she go to hospital? Her chest began to ache just at the thought of it, until her breathing only came out in oh-so-slow shallow rasps. Surely panic attacks were usually quicker than this?

“I feel a bit strange.” She forced her voice to sound casual but even to her blurry ears (can ears blur? she thought distantly) it sounded high and hysterical.

“It’s just the Hush,” Sage said dismissively, “It’s nothing to worry about. It can’t hurt you.” But her voice sounded distant and blurry too, swimming through fog to find her.

“I don’t like it.”

“It’ll wear off soon,” Lycestra said comfortingly, but Clarice yelped away. Lycestra had a fully fledged wolf’s head, black, tar-like blood dripping from her over-sized fangs. Her hand, still human, was outstretched and Clarice stumbled away.

“Calm down, Clarice.”

“Don’t touch me! Let go! Let go!”

“Clarice stop, you can’t go wandering off on your own out here, especially not hopped up on Hush. Come on, we’ll find a bench, sit down and wait for it to wear off.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!” She batted away Lycestra’s hands and whilst Lycestra looked around, trying to find Sage for back up, Clarice stumbled away.

She had fallen headfirst into a nightmare. The world had gone far too vivid; the colours forcing their way into her mouth and choking her, making her taste-buds thick and cloying. Another elf floated by ethereally, dressed in chiffon and crowned in a garland shimmering in the sunlight and city weeds grew out of her footprints, dandelions and bindweed, forcing themselves through the cracks in the pavement. A pack of werewolves, laughing together with horrid snorts, turned to stare at her as she tripped, still scrabbling at the ensnaring weeds tangling under her feet. She jerked away from them, their bloodied snouts and red, gleaming eyes turning to devour her.

“Are you alright, mortal?” A thing that could only be a harpy, with great talon clad wings, spiked and scaled, unfurling from her back, wearing a Greek toga of all things, grabbed her. She had a human face and arms, with tangled streams of blonde hair, but a bird’s body and feet. Clarice screamed in her face and wrenched her arms away, hard enough that the creature’s claws tore holes in her flesh. She stumbled forwards, the stares and whispers following her, until another pair of arms grabbed her and pulled her into a booth by force.

The sunlight filtered through the cheap plastic in muggy translucence, making the air dim. The myriad fairy lights and plastic candles did little to help. Decorative crystals and flags were strewn around the place and a pile of cushions, (some embroidered, some velvet, all decadently tasselled) lay negligently in one corner, which Clarice was directed to with gentle firmness. Clarice, fully immersed in a panic attack now, couldn’t run any further. She let herself fall back into the corner of the marquee and collapsed, fighting to breathe.

“First time on Hush?” The woman was a haggard old crone, bent backed and hunched, a wart balancing precariously upon the edge of her hooked nose. Her hair hung down in limp and ragged strands of grey. Her voice was soft, but it echoed. She waved an incense stick slowly through the air, wafting its smoke towards Clarice, who, though her heart was still racing, found that she could at least breathe again. The crone kept her distance, and pushed a glass of clear liquid towards her across the floor.

“Here. Have a drink. It’s just water, I promise. It will help flush your system through more quickly. I know it can be scary when your mind tells you what to see instead of your eyes.” She made to move forwards but Clarice warded her off with a panicked yelp.

“Stay away! Don’t eat me!”

“I haven’t finished with Hansel and Gretel yet,” the woman said wryly. “Close your eyes, you’ll see I’m telling the truth,” she added with a gentle persuasiveness.

Suspiciously, Clarice did … and then leapt up screaming, knocking the glass of water over, sending it soaking through the cushions. The crone gave a long suffering sigh and fetched a tea-towel.

The world had not changed, though Clarice’s eyes were now firmly squeezed shut. It still stood before her in the same vivid details, bright and glowing. She reached her fingers out tentatively towards her shut lids just to make sure they really were closed.

“See?” the witch said. “You clearly picked up on my aura, and, reading me as a witch, you see me as the only witches you’ve ever known, the ones in fairy-tales. Haggard old women who live alone in the forests and have a penchant for poisoning apples and pricking fingers on spindles and so on. Just sit there and wait until the Hush wears off.”

She bustled around the little tent tutting under her breath, whilst Clarice, out of options and energy, folded herself onto a cushion in the corner again. She hugged her knees to her chest, her head buried— the buzzing colours kept trying to seep through the edges but she ignored them as much as possible.

The hag forced another cup into Clarice’s unresisting hands. “Hush won’t hurt you, you can’t overdose on it or anything, but it can be very scary. I never touch the stuff, personally. Some people find it calming, the way the world slows down you know, but I always think its more trouble than its worth. Shouldn’t eat too much of it anyway. It’s awful for your teeth. Your dentist will be after you. Here you go, love, drink this,” she said, pouring out a strong dark liquid from a thermos into a bone-china tea-cup. “I’ll get you another glass of water too. It won’t cure you, there’s nothing to do but wait until it wears off I’m afraid, but it’ll help calm you down. It’s camomile tea,” she added to Clarice’s tearful and suspicious expression.

Clarice was willing to try anything that would alleviate this chaos. It was scalding hot and burnt her tongue, but the pain of it grounded her somewhat. She got her breathing under control.

The hag sat opposite her on the floor, getting down to ground level far more easily than someone her age ought to be able to. Her black eyes glittered.

“Now love, tell me why you’re here on your own.”

“I was with my flatmate and friend, but we got separated.”

The witch frowned disapprovingly. “Mortals too?”

Clarice sniffed and shook her head. “No, a werewolf and an elf.”

“An elf?” She shook her head slowly, frowning at the stupidity of befriending an elf. “You’re not one of those Fabula Fangirls, are you?” she asked with scathing suspicion.

Clarice shook her head. “No, I don’t want anyone to turn me, or anything like that. I’m just trying to, you know, co-inhabit peacefully.”

This seemed to amuse the witch before her. Her broken toothed smile spread wider and her voice warmed at the edges, crinkling upwards like paper in a fire.

“Ha. Don’t we all? An elf is not a good place to start though, love. And the werewolf definitely should have warned you about the Hush. They don’t sound like very good friends to me.”

Clarice squinted suspiciously at the old crone.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

“I try to be a nice person,” the witch laughed. “It’s probably hard for you to believe that given how I look to you right now, but if we’ve learnt anything in these past six years it must be not to believe your eyes.” She looked appraisingly at Clarice, and Clarice startled as a transformation slowly oozed into life before her very eyes. The hook nose and the wart were still there, and the colours swimming through the incense laden tent were still more vibrant than usual, but very little else about the woman was the same. She was small and plump now, with a myriad of flame-coloured dreadlocks piled up upon her head, dark skin pocked with a map of old and faded acne scars and a strong South London accent. She wore a hooded jumper with a comic-book picture of Thor wielding Mjölnir but dressed up like MC Hammer with “Stop! Hammer Time!” above it. She also wore galaxy style leggings and high topped converse. She smiled as Clarice jumped.

“Oh, it’s wearing off then? That didn’t take so long. You can’t have taken very much of it. What do I look like now?”

“Pretty?” Clarice ventured hesitantly and the witch laughed once more. The wart disappeared with a faint popping noise and her nose straightened into a small, broad little snub.

“I wasn’t fishing for compliments, but I’ll definitely take it. Come on, let’s see if we can find those friends of yours.”

She held out a hand to Clarice who took it tentatively and struggled to her feet. The floor felt uneven and her knees buckled under her as she staggered to the stool behind the table. The witch took a crystal out of a box at the side.

“Now honey, I’m going to need your name and the names of your friends.”

Clarice hesitated and the witch sighed, rolling her eyes.

“You’ve been listening to the propaganda, huh? Listen, names do have power, but not in a magical, put-a-curse-on-you, enslaving-you-to-my-will kind of way. That’s Fae magic. Not that folks think there’s a difference, do they? Lump us all in together. As my Gonggong always says, a coconut is brown and hairy, but it’s no gorilla.” She snorted viciously and Clarice flinched. The witch didn’t seem to notice, still giving her lecture. “If it makes you feel any better, my name is Mordraine, Mordy to my friends. There. Now, won’t you give me yours?” She had not stopped to take a breath this entire time.

Blinking a little dazedly, Clarice murmured, “I’m Clarice, my flatmate is Sage and our friend is Lycestra.”

Mordraine gave her a hard stare worthy of Paddington Bear.

“You’re living with the elf?” she asked sharply. Clarice just shrugged.

It had been a struggle to move out in the first place, to be honest. When Clarice had actually, miraculously, found a flat-share within her meagre budget, her mother had relentlessly parried her daughter’s tentative optimism. Her mum apparently had a dozen different friends who knew someone whose daughter’s boyfriends’ sister’s flatmate turned out to be a serial killer, or identity thief or, in one case, was in the South London branch of the Mafia.

These last two fears could be safely assuaged anyway. Surely no one in the Mafia wore glittery butterfly hair-clips as Sage so regularly did, and no-one in their right mind would want Clarice’s identity. As for the first, well, it was a risk Clarice would take for the freedom to eat Jammy Dodgers without the constant refrain of ‘are you sure you want another?’ If she had to live with an elf to get a bit of freedom, then that was what she would do.

Mordraine stared at her for another half a minute, long enough to make her uncomfortable.

“Well. It’s your choice, I suppose. And what did you say the other was? Lycestra? Now that’s a wolf name, if ever I heard one. The pack gave it to her when she first turned, did they? Which pack does she run with?”

But Clarice only shrugged again. Lycestra didn’t seem to be a ‘pack’ kind of person. Lycestra always said she had enough trouble with Xander. With an X. He was the new wolf who had moved into Lycestra’s house share and with his wolf tattoo, howling wolf t-shirts and long, shaggy hair, Xander was clearly a man who enjoyed a thematic aesthetic.

Mordraine, who was now busying herself unfolding a laminate map out on the table top, didn’t seem to notice her silence. Despite herself, Clarice leaned in to get a closer look.

It seemed to be a seller’s guide, the little stalls numbered to help them find their allocated place, the fire assembly points clearly designated next to the identity scanners which logged everybody in and out. The witch placed the crystal on top of the map and shut her eyes, flicking a stray dreadlock out of her face impatiently as she did so. She muttered something under her breath, and then the crystal started jerking around madly. It span faster and faster, then clattered first one direction and then the other, as though, Clarice thought fancifully, it was a bloodhound sniffing out every corner of the market. Suddenly it stopped, quivering excitedly and Mordraine opened up her eyes.

“Tall, badly dressed elf and an immaculate Chinese werewolf?”

“I think she’s only half Chinese,” Clarice said apologetically. “Her Dad’s side.”

“Excellent. We needn’t go looking for them at all. They’re coming this way.”

*****

Clarice’s panic had almost completely subsided by the time Mordraine let out the sharp whistle which echoed through the incense laden air of the marquee.

“Sage. Lycestra. I have something of yours.”

Lycestra pushed her way underneath the plastic flaps distrustfully, but Sage bounded forwards with the same carelessness she always had.

“Hello, Clarice,” she said. “We wondered where you had got to. And who’s the witch?”

“Mordraine Mavelock.”

Sage raised an eyebrow with an expression of mild interest. “As in daughter of Mordecai Mavelock, the infamous dragon assassin?”

Mordy scowled, but jerked her head in a sharp assent. Sage’s fingers had wandered to the crystal upon the laminate map, but Mordy snatched it crossly from her grasp.

“You should take more care of your humans, elf. Getting her out of her head on Hush and then abandoning her here? It’s a good thing I found her. Anything could have happened.”

“If you’ve finished with our friend, please tell us what we can buy so we can leave.” Even Global Warming couldn’t touch the ice in Lycestra’s tone.

“I do readings,” Mordraine said, her voice equally arctic. “But you can take an incense stick, if you don’t want one.” She gestured to a small mosaic pot with a bundle of incense with “free samples” written in well-practised calligraphy on a brown luggage tag—very vintage chic. “The mortal’s already had tea and water from my hand. She’s good to go.”

“I’ll take a reading.” Sage bounded forwards enthusiastically.

“Sage, no. We haven’t got time. Just take an incense stick and go.”

Sage hushed her.

“We won’t have time to visit the book stall.” Lycestra tried warningly, but Sage had already settled herself down in the red flocked arm-chair, her innumerable earrings and rings jangling quietly, and as Mordraine settled herself at the other side of the table, Lycestra gave in with a bad grace.

“I can do anything,” Mordraine said, her irritation subsiding into a professional demeanour. “Crystals, tea, the ball, palms, anything.”

“Ink?”

“If I’ve got some left. I haven’t used it for a while. Hang on, let me check.”

Mordraine rummaged through her boxes and then pulled out a wide brimmed bowl, a plastic bottle of water and a small bottle of Windsor and Newton Drawing Ink (£6.49, Hobbycraft) with a triumphant little “ah-hah!”. She lit a candle, poured the water in the bowl and handed the ink bottle to Sage.

“Six drops. No more.”

Clarice waited breathlessly, counting them in as the drops spread, exploding through the water trailing sable tentacles behind them, before settling across the surface of the water. Even Lycestra leant in slightly as they all stared into the black, swirling shapes.

Mordraine hummed thoughtfully under her breath and then she tutted.

“Well, that’s put the cat amongst the cat-fish, as my Gonggong says,” she said conversationally, a far cry from the mysticism Clarice was expecting, “You know, I really hate this kind of thing. It’s my own fault for interfering too much; I say to myself, Mordy, you have to stop helping strangers, it’s meddling with Fate, but here I go, helping some mortal hopped up on Hush and now I’m involved.”

“Involved with what?”

Mordraine sighed. “An epic quest, life or death stakes, the world as we know it about to end, intrepid heroes, all that nonsense.” Irritation lined her voice at this minor inconvenience. “The apocalypse is scheduled for the end of the month.”