The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [59]
It was beautiful. It was a hall, with a bright gathering of people, some all earth-brown, like the woman he had followed, but some all gold with bright hair and yellow garments of a very old-fashioned kind, and some all silver, with moony-white hair and dresses with glancing lights in them. They were all very busy—some cooking at a bright hearth, some weaving on tiny elegant looms, some playing with tiny children the size of ants or beetles. The whole room was brown, with brown tables and brown velvet chairs and hangings, but there were gold and silver plates and cups on the tables, and little lamps burned in silver lampholders in crannies and on shelves.
“Oh!” said Pig. “How I wish I could come in.”
There was a shrill chattering sound, like a flock of disturbed starlings, and all the brown and gold and silver faces were turned up to him, and everyone froze motionless.
Then a slender man, one of the gold people, with a gold jerkin, and pointed gold shoes, came to the foot of the tunnel, down which Pig was peering. He wore a most lovely cloak, made of the soft blue and soot-black and lemon-yellow feathers of blue-tits and great-tits, and a kind of high-crowned hat, with a feather in its ribbon.
“You can come in,” he said. “You are welcome.”
“I am too big,” said Pig, who had always been too small for anything he tried to do.
“You must eat fernseed,” said the little man. “Do you know where it is to be found?”
“Underneath the leaves’ fingers,” said Pig, who was observant. He looked about him, and there were pale ferns, glimmering in the shadow of the thornbush. He was an impulsive child. He did not think, is this safe? Or, how will I get back if this works? He picked a fernleaf, and scratched the seeds from underneath the fronds, and put two or three on his tongue, and swallowed them. Then he turned back to the tunnel under the roots and picked up his stone and looked through.
It is very difficult to describe his sensations during the next few moments. He was, at exactly the same time, looking at a small mousehole, or wormhole, into which two of his plump fingers might have fitted with difficulty, and balancing himself on a kind of ledge above a broad, deep, rough stairway with huge steps cut in mud and leading steeply down. Worse, his lovely stone was at the same time fitted as it always was into his little fist, and become as heavy as a tombstone.
“Courage, Pucan,” said the voice of the little man, whom he could not see, for the tunnel had grown very long and was full of a kind of mist.
“My name is Perkin,” said Pig.
“Amongst us, it will be Pucan. Everything is different here.”
There was a moment when Pig, or Pucan, thought of drawing back.
But his body felt full of the mist which was in the earthy hole, and he could hear the little voices calling through the mist, and the fair folk leaping and singing, like tiny musical hammers on glass. So he lifted a foot, which was at the same time as heavy as lead and as light as a feather, and dragged it over the rim of the hole. And when that was done, there he was, a tiny manikin, lithe and wiry, running easily down and down into the hall. And when he made his way into it, there was the golden man, now taller than Pucan was, and a silver lady, and they welcomed him ceremoniously and with laughter. They said they were the king and queen of the Portunes, Huron and Ailsa, and he was welcome to their midst. And everyone joined in a circular, mazy dance, capering and pointing their toes, and Pig found that he knew the step as well as the next dancer, and that he could sing the tunes with the best of them.
In the world outside it was getting dark,