Once upon a Summer Day

14

“Zut! Zut! Zut!” cursed Borel, hammering his fist into the ground. “How could I have been so stupid?” “Stupid, my lord?” The Sprite sat nearby sorting through plucked blossoms and buds. Beside him were several small piles of mosses and herbs.

“Ah, Flic, you told me to concentrate on seeing daggers so that I would know that I was in a dream, and I simply fell asleep without doing so.”

“Do not chastise yourself overly, Prince Borel. I understand it takes several tries… or so I was told.”

Borel growled a response and then groaned to his feet and stumped away to relieve himself. Then he hobbled to the river and drank deeply. Upon returning to the camp, as he placed more wood on the fire he said, “What are you doing, Flic, this sorting of flowers by moonlight?”

“My lord, you need to treat your injuries, else the going will be slow. The herbs are for a paste to rub into your bruises, the juice of the moss for your scrapes, and can we think of a way, the blossoms to make a tisane to treat your soreness. We should make the tisane first.”

“A tisane? A drink for my aches and pains?”

“Aye,” said the Sprite.

“Then we’ll brew it in my hat,” said Borel, pointing to the tricorn.

“Your hat, my lord?”

“Indeed,” said Borel, groaning back down onto his grassy bed. “On morrow morn. But for now, I need rest.”

“As you wish,” said Flic.

In moments, the prince fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

When Borel awoke in the early light of dawn, he had stiffened up in the night, and he was slow to rise. Once on his feet, he looked to see Flic asleep and curled on the leaf next to Buzzer. The bee, however, was awake, yet she remained still by her ward.

Moving with difficulty, Borel added more branches to the yet-glowing coals of the fire, and blew up a blaze, and when the flames were well caught, he took up his tricorn and hobbled to the river and scooped up a hatful of water and drank his fill. He then selected a number of rounded river rocks, all nigh the size of a chicken egg. These he took back to the fire and placed them among the burning branches. Back to the river he stumped and again filled the tricorn with water, and back to the camp he limped.

Then he groaned down with his back to a tree and ate leftover rabbit, while with his flint knife he scraped away at the coney skin and waited for Flic to awaken.

As the sun rose, so did the Sprite. “We’ll need two washed-clean, fairly flat rocks,” said Flic, “though if you can find two slightly hollowed, that would be even better. One on which to crush the moss to paste; the other to squeeze the juice from the herbs. We’ll also need a couple of rounded river rocks to do the crushing. But as to making the tisane, we’ll need water and a way to heat it.”

“The water is in my hat,” said Borel, “and the way to heat it is in the fire.”

Flic glanced at the fire. “Ah, I see. But how will you fetch them out from the flames?”

Borel hefted his flint knife and pointed at a nearby young tree. “I’ll cut a forked branch.”

“Then, my lord, while Buzzer and I break fast, you gather what we need.”

After cutting the branch from the limb and trimming it to suit his purpose, Borel took up his quiver and the scraped rabbit skin and hobbled down to the river, where he thoroughly wetted down the hide and rolled it tightly and dropped it into the quiver. Then he found two flat rocks slightly hollowed to act as mortars and two round ones to act as pestles. As he limped back to the camp, Flic flew alongside and pointed and said, “Buzzer has found a stand of viburnum at the base of that steep hillside just across the field.”

“Splendid,” said Borel and, gritting his teeth, he hobbled on, while Flic sped back to the blossoming field to continue his breakfast.

When Flic and Buzzer returned to camp, Borel donned one of his gloves and slid the fork of the cut branch under a hot rock and dropped it into the water in his hat. Shortly, with his gloved hand he fished that rock out and put it back into the fire, and scooped another one in. In less than a quarter candlemark the water was bubbling, and Flic said, “There is too much. Pour a bit out… say, half.”

After Borel had done so, the Sprite dropped a selection of different blossoms into the liquid.

“Stir it, my lord.”

Borel used his forked stick to stir the blossoms ’round and ’round and under. After long moments of doing so, Flic said, “Let me see.”

Borel stopped, and the Sprite stuck in a finger and tasted. “A bit more stirring, Prince.”

Twice more Borel stirred and twice did Flic taste, and at last he said, “Drink it all, Lord Borel, in one gulp if you can.”

The tisane was quite bitter, the heat of the liquid making it even more so, but Borel squinched up his face and swallowed the whole of it.

Borel shuddered with the aftertaste and set the tricorn aside, and Flic grinned at him and said, “Now for the moss and herbs.”

With Flic working on the places Borel could not see or easily reach, they washed his scrapes with the juice of the herbs and smeared a thin film of moss pulp over his bruises. As Borel eased back into his silks and leathers, Flic said, “We’ll do this every morning for a threeday, and then you should be quite well.”

“Three days, that’s all? After the beating I took?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I need your recipes, Flic. There are many who can benefit from this.”

“I’m afraid, Prince Borel, they are not my recipes to give. You will have to ask my queen.”

“You have a queen?”

“Indeed.”

“Hmm. I never knew. Regardless, when the time comes, I will ask her. But for now we have a demoiselle to find.” He glanced at the bumblebee. “Does Buzzer know of Lord Roulan’s gardens?”

“Please, if you would, smooth out a patch of ground, my lord, a place not too close to the fire. One the size of your hand will do.”

Borel squatted at the edge of the cleared ground and smoothed over the loam.

Flic flew down to the bare patch, Buzzer following. Flic looked at Borel and said, “Shamrock with pink blossoms, white roses with a pink blush, and blackberries, right?”

Borel shrugged but nodded.

Flic sank to his knees and somehow spoke to the bee, and Buzzer began a peculiar wiggling, buzzing dance, Flic paying rapt attention. Back and forth in a straight line the bee wriggled, pausing now and again to thrum her wings. And then Buzzer began dancing in a different direction, and again and again she buzzed and wriggled and paused. Once more and again and several times thereafter she changed the course of the dance, each on a separate tack. Finally, Flic turned to Borel. “Buzzer knows of a number of places with all three things, some closer than others, but all of them quite far. Is there ought else you can tell me? Other flowers? The lay of the land? An orchard? A lake? Anything?”

“The manor with its gardens sits in a dell along with a small lake,” replied Borel. “A league or so beyond the mouth of the vale a river flows, a town upon its banks.”

Again Flic conversed with the bee, and Buzzer took up the dance once more, now wriggling and buzzing and pausing, this time in a single direction.

“Good,” said Flic. “She has it narrowed down to a definite place, though it is across several marges of twilight. Still, it may be that this is not Lord Roulan’s estate, but one very much alike.”

“It isn’t as if we have another choice,” said Borel, groaning to his feet.

Using his hat and river water, Borel quenched the fire, and made certain it was out. He then placed the various work rocks, the shards of flint, the arrowheads, the moss, and finally the blossoms into his quiver, all cushioned from one another by layers of grass. He slung his bow by its carrying thong, and slipped the quiver over his head and across one shoulder and said, “Let us first stop by the arrowwood and then be on our way.”

Borel cut and trimmed some ten shafts from the viburnum stand and shimmied them down through the layers of grass and blossoms and moss and skin and flint and rocks. He looked at Flic and nodded.

Flic spoke to Buzzer, and the bee flew up and ’round.

Flic said, “She’s sighting on the sun.”

How the Sprite could tell was a mystery to Borel, yet the prince did not question Flic’s word.

And then Buzzer took off in a beeline, heading straight up the steep hill.

Borel groaned, but followed after, Flic no longer flying but riding on the prow of the tricorn. By the time the prince had limped to the top, Buzzer had flown back to see if anyone were truly following.

The way was rough and the going slow and often did the bee return to make certain the prince was yet on course, and it seemed Buzzer was somewhat impatient and vexed. Flic assured the bee that indeed they really meant to go to the place Buzzer had remembered. And then Flic laughed and said to Borel, “Buzzer says that we could go much swifter if you would simply give up this walking and fly instead.”

Yet at times they came to an obstacle Borel would have to go around-a bluff, a ravine, or the like-the prince cursing all rocks and his bruises and soreness, saying that were he in better health these barriers would be but minor impediments. At these places Flic would take to wing and find a place Borel could manage, and whenever such a detour took them significantly off course, Buzzer would take a new sighting and then streak away.

Occasionally they would cross a glade wherein flowers bloomed, and at these places they would pause while Buzzer gathered nectar. “Flying takes a good deal of vigor,” said Flic, “hence, much nectar is needed.”

During several of these pauses and with his flint knife, Borel fashioned his arrows: trimming the shaft to length, nocking one end, notching the other; cutting a thin strip of rabbit hide. And when they came to a stream, he wetted the thong and stretched it taut, and then set the base of the flint arrowhead in the notch of the shaft, and tightly wrapped the thong about shaft and base both.

Flic looked on with interest. “Why do you wet and stretch it, Lord Borel?”

“It will shrink when it dries, Flic, and thereby strongly clinch the head to the shaft,” said Borel, grunting as he forcefully tied off the thong. “Too, the sun will cure it a bit as it dries.”

When that one was well cinched, Borel took one more arrowhead and set it in the notch of a shaft, and as he wrapped another thong about, he said, “Tell me, Flic: this dance that Buzzer did, how does it speak of flowers and directions and distances?”

Flic grinned. “It is something I learned from honeybees and taught to Buzzer. You see, when scout honeybees find a source of nectar and pollen, they return to the nest and use the dance and buzzing to tell other members of their colony which way and how far to go.”

Borel grunted and then said, “The dance the direction, the buzzing the distance?”

Flic clapped his hands. “Exactly so: direction with respect to the sun; distance with respect to the hive, or, in this case, from where the dancer dances.”

As Borel cinched tight the thong, he said, “You tell me you taught this to Buzzer, yet didn’t she already know?”

“No, my lord. Except for Buzzer, bumblebees do not use the dance at all. But when I explained it to her, she adopted it right away.”

In that moment Buzzer came flying back, and they took up the journey again.

Taking advantage of these pauses for Buzzer to feed, by the time twilight fell, Borel had trimmed out all of his shafts, but only three had arrowheads. Those three had silken tails instead of fletching to aid them in flying true.

And with one of these new-made shafts, Borel had brought down a grouse to dress out for his meal.

As the sun set and the day came to an end, they set camp in sight of a twilight border lying ahead. Yet, battered as Borel was, they had gone but some fifteen miles altogether throughout the whole of the day, much to Buzzer’s disgust.

Even so, even though it was well short of Prince Borel’s usual pace, still it was fifteen miles closer to a vale where grew pink-petaled shamrock and blushing white roses and thorn-laden blackberry vines, a place where a slender young demoiselle would be found…

… Or so did Prince Borel hope.