World's End by Will Elliott

UNDER MY ROOF. NO MAGIC COMES HERE WITHOUT MY KNOWING WHO MAKES IT. I DON’T CARE IF IT’S A DRAGON THE CAUSE OF IT! A PINCH AND STING HE’LL GET, SQUASH MEOR NOT.’ She yanked on the same wooden boots Loup recalled her wearing when she’d chased Anfen’s group from her yard. In one hand she grabbed a mallet no man would’ve been able to lift with two. ‘COME!’ she boomed, setting off towards the trees.
    â€˜Easy, Faul,’ said Loup, hurrying after her with Case in tow. ‘None of us knows what done all that. Could be things we never heard of. Or you may be right and it’s a dragon. Best leave it.’ He and Lut hurried in pursuit of her across the brittle yard. The birds near the house scattered and went back to the trees. More of their song came from there, the same place Loup had heard it earlier. Faul headed that way, but before leaving her yard she came over a rise in the ground and paused. The other two caught her up. All three of them stared at some kind of mirage which had sprung up between where they stood and the trees.
    There was a fountain, fashioned like a bird with a long neck, made of polished white stuff which gently glowed. Water trickled from its beak to a bowl at its base. Lut went closer to run his hand down its curved neck. He dipped one hand in the pool of liquid, flung water from it off to the side. Where each drop landed, things sprang into being as if the drops had given them life: a winding bunch of flowers, growing from an upwards-thrusting ivy-green vine, its stem catching light as would stained glass. Where another flung drop fell, there appeared part of a garden. A footpath made of polished gold wound through a riot of colours and shades. The way these things appeared was as if shreds of a veil had been pulled from the rough, stony yard to reveal the true beauty hidden beneath it all the while.
    More such sights sprang wherever the drops landed. Lut,wonderingly, dipped his hand back into the bird-fountain’s liquid, and splashed the waters in the other direction. More wondrous beautiful things came into being: flowers whose long petals were like carved amethyst curls; leaves and vines which glimmered into a vast new set of shades when viewed from the slightest change of angle. Each colourful thing was spellbinding in its own right. As a chorus, it was irresistible, a riot of beauty. Into the air trickled the sound of a brook – though they could not see it – splashing its gentle waters over stones. The birdsong came again, more quiet and soothing this time, gentle lullabies promising dreams, promising all would be well.
    â€˜NO MORE!’ Faul boomed as Lut’s hand reached to dip back into the fountain’s waters. She gazed suspiciously around at it all. ‘PRETTY, I’LL GRANT IT,’ she said. ‘BUT I NEVER MINDED THE OLD YARD, COARSE AND HONEST AS SHE IS. HERE ARE GIFTS GIVEN BY ONE WE CANNOT SEE. WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?’ She looked at Loup for explanation.
    He shrugged, flashed his gums, longing for a chance to fling some of the bird-fountain’s water on the brittle turf and see what it might create. Loup’s only thought was that a Spirit must be behind it, but which? Deeds like this were in no tales of the gods he’d heard before.
    A human voice gently worked its way in among the chorus of birdsong. Faul shook herself, grunted, as if to resist being calmed. Then they saw him, dancing through the garden, barefoot, one flank exposed, a slender white hand flinging drops from a bowl held under the other arm. It was Vous. Loup recalled in a flash the glimpse, as he’d flown over the woods, of this very figure standing by a stream.
    Vous appeared then vanished with progressive steps of his dance, in and out of the garden of which they could see onlypart. Loup found his movements hypnotic, simply because of how much pleasure they gave to behold: he was sure the human form had never held itself