by Glen L. Hall
Finishing its small speech, the creature turned towards the wooden bridge. It did not cross, but stood beside it without moving, then without warning it leaped across the span, almost without touching the wooden boards.
From the other side, it beckoned Drust and Brennus across, but Drust put his arm out, stopping Brennus from setting foot on the bridge.
‘There’s magic at work here.’
‘It is safe,’ said the creature impatiently. ‘That’s why I tested it. The Faeries’ magic has gone from this place. You must hurry.’
It turned its back on them and set off across a grassy meadow.
‘What is it, Drust? Has the Faeries’ magic gone?’ Brennus asked anxiously.
‘Not entirely.’ Drust was standing with a hand on the bridge. ‘It still resides in the wood, and perhaps the water, but it is only a hint of what it once was. I fear for them.’
They stepped onto the bridge together and could feel a gentle vibration pass through them, but it was weak. The river’s waters momentarily twisted and raised a gentle spray, but it did nothing other than cover them in a fine mist.
They entered a valley of tall grasses moving slightly in the breeze. Here the raw wildness was replaced by something far gentler. On either side of them the hills were no longer bald, but full of trees, bushes and autumn flowers. There was a freshness to the air and even the river’s flow seemed to soften as it wound its way towards the distant hill with its strange wooded cloak. Brennus felt his legs regain some of their strength, as the valley’s floor was flat.
They followed the river’s course until the creature stopped in the shade of some trees.
‘You must stay close to me. We need to go through this wood.’
‘Shouldn’t we go round it?’
The creature shook its feathered head. ‘There is no other way to reach the Underland.’
‘I still don’t see why we need to go there,’ Brennus said. ‘Our path is to Bamburgh and then on to Holy Island. Can’t we just continue?’
‘You cannot outrun the Shadow Ruins,’ the creature explained, with a slightly exasperated air. ‘They have been sent to kill each and every one of you. The most powerful of the Ruin’s servants came through the Dead Water eight days ago. It broke the Dagda’s spell and our mistress awoke. Be glad that she did, or the Druidae would be no more. Now follow me!’
Without waiting for a response, it plunged into the trees, leaving Brennus and Drust standing beside the river staring at each other.
‘I know you don’t want to go to the Underland,’ said Drust softly, ‘and neither do I, but we have no option but to follow. We are hunted, and I know what by.’
Seeing the fear in his eyes, Brennus shuddered. He took a final look back the way they had just come, but it seemed that the hills themselves had closed the path. He could no longer see Ravens Knowe and wondered whether they were back in the Otherland.
Then two dark specks appeared on the horizon. Brennus rubbed his eyes, but when he opened them again, they were still there. It seemed the Shadow Ruins had found them.
Falling Leaves
Darkness was all around them. Only a thin line separated the sea from the sky. The estuary had dropped over the horizon and the Celtic Flow was rising and falling with the incoming tide. Eagan fell forwards, exhausted, his legs burning and his arms heavy with fatigue. It seemed hours since they had left the crow-men and silver-haired archers behind. They sat in the heaving boat, traumatised, wondering when the madness would end.
Emily was cold and the boat’s motion was making her feel sick. ‘You can’t just stop rowing and leave us in the middle of nowhere.’
She suddenly felt very small and very afraid. In the darkness she couldn’t even be certain which way was the shoreline and which way was the open sea. The sooner they were on dry land, the better.
Eagan sat up, nodding, but it was clear he was spent.
‘What happened back there?’ asked Sam. His T-shirt was still covered in blood, although his dazed look had finally left him.
‘What happened back there?’ Emily repeated through clenched teeth. ‘Well, we went to the Red Lion and the letter said we were in grave danger and warned you about a Grim-Witch and said we could only escape Alnmouth by boat. So then somehow the Celtic Flow turned up with the man in the tapestry with Oscar. You know, Sam, Oscar, the man who visited you in Oxford who happens to be dead.’
Emily’s voice was getting louder and was now echoing across the empty sea.
‘Now don’t get me wrong, Sam, I was your biggest critic. I thought you were stark raving bonkers last week. But I’ve seen a few things since then. I saw you save Oscar and now I’ve seen you save me.’
Sam found himself swallowing down his shock and embarrassment. It would appear that Emily was intent on winding herself up.
‘Now don’t look like that,’ she went on. ‘You won’t admit to it, will you, but I saw it all for myself.’
She stood up in the middle of the boat.
‘Emily! Sit down!’ said Eagan irritably. ‘Can’t you be quiet?’
‘No! Listen, Sam, you said you could see this Grim-Witch coming. You said you could see her in this flow that everyone keeps going on about.’
Sam gazed at her, his heart thudding. Even in her dirty and damp clothes with her hair sticking up in all directions, she still looked stunning.
‘Is the flow like light?’ she demanded. ‘Because I saw light in your hands outside the Garden of Druids, and when you saved Oscar, and then you turned light into fire to save me from those crow-men.’
Sam was silent. He simply didn’t know what to say.
Emily took a step forwards.
‘Emily! Stop rocking—’
‘Shut up, Eagan! Whether you like it or not, Sam, Oscar came to you that night in Oxford because he thinks you are the heir of the Druids. The Shadow didn’t stop you in Magdalen because it couldn’t, just like it couldn’t stop you in the Garden of Druids.’
Sam felt heat rising from his toes to his head. In the middle of the night, in the middle of the sea, Emily’s voice was ringing out, and she’d still got it all wrong. And he still couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth.
But Eagan had no such reservations. ‘Emily! Sit down and listen to me! The Grim people aren’t searching for Sam!’
His voice cut through the darkness like a knife.
‘Who are they looking for then?!’
Emily sat back down on the boat’s wooden seat.
‘The girl,’ said Eagan flatly.
‘What? Sam…?’
Emily was looking at him again and he knew the game was up.
‘Eagan’s right – we can’t say for certain, but the Grim-were was asking about you the other night and not me.’
‘And just now,’ Eagan added.
‘Thanks a lot, Eagan!’ Emily glared at him before turning back to Sam. ‘But you’re the one with the magic. You’re the one who got into Cherwell and who Oscar came to deliver his message to.’
‘I know,’ he admitted. ‘But they’re looking for you.’
The silence was broken by the Celtic Flow grinding against its oars whilst the sea splashed against its bow.
‘Why me?’ Emily complained.
‘I don’t know,’ confessed Sam, ‘but when Oscar delivered his message, he told me to tell the professors that the girl was safe. Then the Grim-were in the tree-house asked about you and the one outside the Garden of Druids asked about you too. It might have been the same one, actually. I don’t know, but the question was the same.’
‘But I’m just caught up in this because of you!’ Emily was half exasperated, half pleading with Sam to agree.
‘I did think they were after me to begin with,’ he admitted, ‘then I thought perhaps they were searching for Oscar, but when you look at the jigsaw pieces, you have
to be in there somewhere.’
‘No! You have to be wrong! Oscar pretty much said you were the heir of the Druidae.’
‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that.’
They both turned to look at Eagan, who was slumped back over his oars.
‘Why not?’ asked Emily.
‘I think it has to do with all of us.’
‘All of us?’ she repeated.
‘You just have to remember what Alice said. Oscar formed the Fellowship of Druidae. It was a fellowship – they all played their part. Perhaps without knowing it, we’re all part of another fellowship.’
In the darkness, with the Celtic Flow beginning to move with the tide, they looked at each other in silence.
‘What if we don’t like the part we have to play?’ Emily asked grumpily.
‘Do you always have to ask the difficult questions?’ implored Sam.
‘Of course. And I don’t like any of your answers so far. I was minding my own business just over a week ago. Fair enough, I’d not had the easiest summer, but there’d been no shadows, no crow-men, no Forest Reivers, no colleges that didn’t exist and certainly no mad professors until you came to the bookshop, Sam. I thought Brennus and Drust were musicians! Ha, ha!’
She stood up again in the middle of the boat, adjusting her balance as the Celtic Flow gently rocked backwards and forwards. She pulled her jumper round her and looked forlorn, and Sam just wanted to stand up too and take her in his arms. Instead he had to tell her the whole truth.
‘You were with me the night in Warkworth when the Shadow turned up. Have you ever thought that I might have led it to you?’
His words skimmed across the boat and were quickly swallowed by the dark sea.
Emily continued standing where she was, staring towards the invisible shore. But Eagan sat up.
‘That is a thought,’ he said. He paused. ‘There’s just no knowing whether the Shadow was first in Oxford or in the Garden of Druids,’ he added.
‘It came for you in Oxford, Sam, so it must have started there,’ Emily said. ‘It can’t be anything to do with me.’ She shivered.
‘No,’ replied Sam, ‘it was in Warkworth before that – do you remember that night down by the Coquet? I think Eagan is right – there’s no knowing what came first. And we’re all caught up in this, whether we like it or not. Though I think some more than others.’ His gaze rested on Emily. ‘I don’t know what’s happening, though, because answering one question just seems to open up a dozen more.’
He looked out over the dark waves and hunched down a bit more in the boat.
‘I thought it strange how Oscar said he’d never met me,’ he went on, ‘but now I’ve been thinking and I’ve realised it tells me something about the nature of the Garden of Druids.’
‘Does it?’ exclaimed Emily, still looking bewildered in the middle of the boat.
‘Yes. Professor Stuckley gave a lecture on space and time and what would happen if you removed time. He suggested places without time could exist and that they would exist in more than one place. If time’s arrow didn’t work in these places, then they would never change, only the worlds they were connected to would. I think the Circle of Druidae is in such a place. I think the Druids purposefully sought out such a place to create the Fall – to make the barrier holding back the Ruin an eternal one.’
Eagan was sitting up listening, his exhaustion forgotten. ‘I’ve never thought of it like that. But if that’s the case, then why is the Fall dying? If there is no time where she is, she should live forever.’
‘There are a lot of things I don’t understand,’ admitted Sam, ‘and that’s one of them. Oscar told us that the Fall was created two thousand years ago. And yet it can only have been about twenty years ago that he embarked on his quest with his fellowship. Why? I’ve been thinking about this ever since he delivered his message to me. Was the Fall dying twenty years ago? And if she was, why hasn’t anyone told us what they did to revive her? No one seems to know.’
‘Perhaps the Fall just naturally needs replenishing every so often?’ Emily offered.
‘But why, if there’s no time where she is?’ Eagan persisted.
‘Because that Circle was broken?’ Emily sounded doubtful. ‘That’s what Oscar said, anyway.’
‘But then how was it broken?’
‘I don’t know, Eagan!’
‘I still don’t understand,’ Sam said slowly, ‘why the Faeries and Grim people were at war. That’s how Oscar said the Ruin got in in the first place. From what Alice said, we can presume their lands are connected through the Otherland…’
‘Is one of them the Darkhart?’ asked Emily.
‘I don’t know, but Oscar said that where the Circle was, so I think so,’ said Sam.
‘I think,’ said Eagan wearily, ‘that all this will have to wait until we get ourselves safely ashore.’
He picked up the oars and with a grimace starting slowly pulling the Celtic Flow through the murky waters.
‘Where are we going from here?’ asked Emily.
‘Howick Hall.’
‘Howick Hall?’ Emily looked puzzled. Then, to Sam’s surprise, she smiled. ‘Of course – your Uncle Kenrick.’
Eagan nodded.
‘He’s a steward there,’ Emily explained to Sam. ‘He looks after it when Lord Grey’s away.’
Eagan stopped rowing, then stood and looked around him. He was glad the sea was calm, though it was a bit unsettling not being able to see the shoreline.
‘Do you know which direction we should be going in?’ Sam asked anxiously.
‘I’m trying to navigate using the constellations,’ Eagan explained. ‘It’s a trick Braden Bow taught me many years ago. It’s a shame the night’s so dark and cloudy, though. I can’t see half of them.’
‘Can you see enough?’ Emily didn’t like the idea of being lost at sea. She wished she hadn’t lost her compass somewhere along the way, but then she remembered it had been no use in Birling Wood anyway.
‘I think we’ll be okay.’ Eagan sat down and resumed rowing.
‘You know we won’t be able to stay in Howick long?’ Emily was always good at getting to the point.
‘We don’t need to – we just need a bed for the rest of the night. We can bring the boat inshore and then there’s a tree-lined path that follows the burn all the way to the house. We’ll get some food, perhaps a bath. It’s only a day’s walk from Howick to Bamburgh.’
‘And once we’re at Bamburgh, is that where the journey ends?’
‘You know I can’t answer that question, Emily.’
Eagan was starting to get into his stroke and the Celtic Flow was beginning to cut through the dim waters, but his expression was grim.
‘I didn’t really expect to have to get out of Alnmouth quite so fast,’ he muttered. ‘And we seem to have forgotten that we haven’t a clue where the Shadow is.’
‘Let’s hope Oscar has it trapped in Oxford,’ said Sam, but he didn’t sound convinced.
Emily sighed. ‘Hasn’t it escaped from there once already?’
The question brought Sam back to the possibility that the Shadow had simply been delayed by all that had happened the night before. Ever since they’d arrived in Alnmouth, he’d been dreading feeling its presence, and not just in his thoughts.
‘It will come again.’ Eagan sounded resigned to the fact.
Emily and Sam turned to him. The sweat was back on his brow as he pulled on the oars.
‘We don’t know that for sure,’ said Sam uncertainly.
‘Yes, we do, Sam, and we have to make sure that when it does come again we are prepared. If there’s a way for my father to meet up with the Forest Reivers, then they will. They’ll know to make for Bamburgh and the Marcher Lords. So—’
There was a loud crunch that threw Emily from her seat
and brought the boat almost to a halt.
‘We’ve hit something!’ cried Eagan, leaping to his feet.
There was a terrifying grating noise as the Celtic Flow came to a stop.
For a second no one spoke. Then Sam felt something chilly seep through his shoes. ‘We’re sinking!’ he shouted. Panic took hold of him as the freezing water began inching its way over his ankles.
Eagan was staring down into the waves, trying to figure out what had happened. Then he realised – in the darkness they had hit a ridge of rock that could only be seen when the waves turned white as they passed over it.
Fear washed over Sam as he remembered surfacing in the Cherwell in complete blackness. What would it be like to be at sea with no light for company, not knowing how far you were from the shore and how much water was beneath you?
‘Sam, you’re going to have to help!’ Eagan shouted at him. He had clambered over the side and was standing there. ‘Get out and help me push!’
It took at moment before Sam realised Eagan was in no more than three feet of water. Taking a deep shuddering breath, he climbed over the other side of the boat and slowly eased himself into the freezing waves, gasping as the cold hit him. He held on tightly to the boat, looking worriedly at the waters moving around him and wondering what strange creatures were swimming beneath their surface.
‘Be careful,’ called Emily.
‘Ready?’ shouted Eagan.
Sam grit his teeth.
He and Eagan set their shoulders against the boat and heaved. There was a horrible grinding noise as the Celtic Flow inched across the shelf.
‘You need to hurry – the water’s still rising!’
Sam could hear the panic in Emily’s voice and feel his legs turning numb in the icy water. He wanted more than anything to feel dry ground beneath his feet. Instead he had to put his weight against the hard wood of the boat and push with Eagan while trying to ignore the grinding noise beneath the boat reaching a crescendo.
‘Are you sure we aren’t damaging the boat?’ he shouted.
‘Just push!’ Eagan shouted back.