The Girl and the Guardian

by Peter Harris

  Shelley woke again before sunrise, aching from the network of knobbly treeroots which she now noticed under the dead leaves they had been sleeping on. ‘So that’s why I couldn’t get comfortable!’ she groaned, rubbing her arms and shoulders. Korman had heard or seen nothing more of the Werewurriers (if that was what they had heard). Yet they both felt a cold despair seeping into them, colder and darker than the night, and they sat silently until the cheerless dawn.

  In the dim morning, they set off again, bleary-eyed, brushing away the fragments of damp dead leaves from their clothes and hair. But the smell of mould stayed in their nostrils.

  Then Bootnip appeared at the top of Korman’s pack, vomiting. Korman examined the bluish lumps as he wiped them off the outside of his pack. ‘This explains his behaviour last night. Bela gograth! He was hallucinating.’ Korman gave him a little water, but he would not touch the puffballs Shelley offered him, and nipped her hand before retreating into the pack again. ‘Little ingrate!’ said Shelley, nursing her hand, and hoping Bootnip’s saliva didn’t have any of the fungus in it.

  Late in the morning they came upon a darker region, which sloped more steeply down. The ground was damper, too. They saw fragments of puffballs, broken and scattered as if by some animal. ‘Rogavala! Let us hope they have eaten well and are asleep,’ thought Korman. But he said nothing to Shelley.

  After a nerve-wracking march through the brooding silence of this darkest region of the dead forest they were relieved to see some real light ahead, though it hurt their tired eyes after the long dimness. They cut through a layer of creeping thorns and stepped out of the darkness, blinking in clear sunlight beside a narrow, branch-choked river. Shelley was surprised to see that the day was so bright and clear. Thick thorns covered the trees on the far bank, and up and down the river.

  ‘Ah, this must be the Rogrha!’ said Korman. ‘If the map is right, the forest will thin a few miles further on, and we should come out somewhere along the banks of Lake Deadwater. It is a long narrow lake; hopefully we cannot miss it.’

  ‘Hopefully’s hardly the word I’d use!’ said Shelley. The sunlight now seemed only to make her more fearful of returning to the darkness on the other side.

  They found a place where the river was bridged with fallen trunks of once-mighty trees, and edged their way across. Shelley tried not to look into the dingy tea-coloured water below but, half-way across, she did. Swimming lazily upstream, right under the log, was a huge, fat eel. She screamed and slipped. Korman caught her in time, and she pretended not to be frightened of the eel, but Korman felt her shaking, and his heart ached with pity for her. He wished he could turn back and lead her to safety instead of deeper into places of despair and horror.

  On the far bank, they cut a gap in the thorns, took a deep breath and plunged back into the dismal forest. Shelley noticed that Korman seemed wrapped in his own thoughts, and hardly paused to comfort her. She began to imagine he was annoyed at her for nearly falling into the river.

  After what seemed like hours of gloomy thoughts and trudging monotony, Korman broke the silence.

  ‘I think the trees are thinning. We must be cautious.’

  They trod on tiptoes through the dead leaves and fallen branches, keeping to the cover of the tree trunks. Shelley’s spirits began to lift a little. She felt that anything would be preferable to that endless dead forest. Then directly ahead where the light promised liberation, they saw a sight which they had both been dreading. Completely blocking their way was a high, grey-green thorn wall. It was very different from the thorns that were covering the dead forest; these had tendrils which moved of their own accord, the thorn-points were longer, and the wall more impenetrable and much higher. And it creaked.

  ‘This is it. The beginning of the real thorns. The Mother thorns are already on this side of the lake,’ said Korman in a flat voice.

  ‘He looks like I feel,’ Shelley thought. It frightened her to see him so unsure of himself. Usually he was hopeful, almost optimistic, in his quiet way. Something was dragging him down. She felt it too, now that she thought about it; an imprisoning thoughtform seemed to fill the air, enveloping their minds in a smothering hopelessness, herding their thoughts towards the Void, which now seemed the only way out, almost comforting compared with the effort of resisting the thorns.

  Reluctant to move, battling thoughts of despair, they looked out from the relative safety of the dead forest at the thorn wall before them. They saw that it had put out branches which arched outwards onto the trees, slowly, relentlessly pulling at the branches, devouring the lesser thorns which covered them.

  ‘Soon the Mother Thorns will have spread to the whole dead forest, and digested all before them, dead or alive,’ said Korman. ‘Then the only ones who will travel here will be the Thornmen, the Aghmaath themselves, by tunnels and avenues in the thorns which will lead only to their cruel habitations and encampments.’

  ‘What will we do now, Korman?’

  ‘Eat, while we can. And try to make plans.’ Shelley hated to hear the uncertain tone in his voice. ‘It’s not like him,’ she thought, with a churning in her stomach.

  They ate a scanty lunch, augmented with the puffballs (which Shelley finally tried, just to cheer Korman up, and she found she quite liked them). They were sitting just inside the forest, on a great fallen treetrunk in the gloom in a ring of tall trees, long dead and beginning to rot, but somehow still comforting.

  They tried to discuss what to do next, looking out at the thorn wall, its tendrils swaying, sinister even under the midday sun. ‘It all comes down to one thing,’ Shelley said with an effort. ‘Thorn wall or no thorn wall, we still have to find a way down to the lakeside where the Lady is – right?’

  Korman sighed. ‘But if we try to cut a Mother Thorn, it will coil itself around us, and through the Dreamweb, call for the Thornmen. And if we meet a lone Thornman, and strike him down, others will sense it, and come swiftly from every quarter to avenge him…’

  ‘What about… couldn’t we try walking in Faery?’ said Shelley. But her heart sank at the thought of even trying. The very air seemed to resist the thought, make it impossible, unthinkable.

  Korman bowed his head for a time, then looked up, sadly. ‘No, I think not, Shelley, not yet anyway. We are not so far advanced in the ways of the Lady as to be able to find a path through this oppression into the fields of beauty. I had thought we could… but now we are here… the mindwebs about this place…’ He wiped the sweat from his brow.

  ‘So, what chance do we have of getting through?’ asked Shelley, fighting the sick feeling that seemed to drain all the energy from her body and mind.

  ‘I do not know. Not good enough chance… to justify bringing you here…’ His voice sounded far-away, stumbling, muffled. ‘I should have listened to my brother, and tried to go around this place… It was my desire to see the Lady… that ensnared me. I think we – I – have been lured here, deceived by the cunning Dreamcasters, perhaps by Rakmad himself. I think they know we are here. They will be coming for us. Forgive me, Shelley, if you can. I have failed again.’

  Shelley’s insides felt strange, and the heavy, sinking feeling increased, but she made a huge effort to sound cheerful. ‘Of course I forgive you. I’d want to see her again if I were you, after all those years, and try to save her.’

  ‘But now, Korman the Outcast has failed her again, and failed you, and all Aeden.’

  Shelley’s nerve broke, and now she felt as hopeless as Korman sounded. The thorns seemed to emanate despair from each point, piercing her mind with a thousand pains. She heard herself saying, ‘So there’s no way out.’ Then the ground seemed to undulate and she staggered, clutching at the air, and fell to the ground.