The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  “Too late for any of them, Anna,” he said as if reading her mind. “Malas propas.”

  She lifted her chin. Twisting the ring on her left hand, she remembered what Mother Alta had said to her when she had given Jenna the ring: The time of endings is at hand. In that instance she made up her mind. “We go with the Grenna.”

  “But, Jenna …” Jareth began.

  Petra touched his shoulder. “We go quietly for we are few and they are many.”

  “They be many,” Jareth said, “but they be small. Smaller than I. I have a knife. I be not afraid to die for Anna.”

  “I have a sword,” Catrona said. “And I have never been afraid to die for my sisters.” She purposely drew the sword from its sheath in such a way that it made a loud, angry scraping sound.

  “We go with Sorrel,” Jenna said, “into his circle. I would have none of you die for me. Sorrel called me sister and queen. And he promises strength. We need great strength for the coming days. I trust him.”

  “For how long?” Jareth whispered hoarsely. “For how long be you trusting him, Jenna? A day? A year? Or all ways? Or until another be speaking from out his circle?”

  “I trust him until this thing is done, however long it takes,” Jenna said. “Are you with me, Jareth? If so, speak.”

  He was silent, but Marek and Sandor answered as one.

  “We be with you, Anna.”

  “And I, regens,” said Petra.

  After a moment Catrona added, her voice so soft Jenna had to strain to hear it, “And I.” She did not sheathe her sword.

  At last Jareth sighed heavily. “I be going only because you be asking, Jenna. You—not them.” He gestured over his shoulder at the circle of green mannikins.

  Jenna nodded and turned to her horse. Slipping the reins over Duty’s head, she pulled the mare along, grateful that the beast gave her no argument. She followed the green of Sorrel’s back, wondering that she did not lose it in the myriad of greens in the forest. She could hear the others following close behind, the sound of their footsteps like an echo repeating “Too late to help.…”

  THE TALE:

  There was once a girl named Jenny who was walking behind her sheep over the grassy lea. When the sheep stopped to graze, young Jenny braided a crown of daisies and placed it upon her head. But thinking the daisies too plain, she plucked a single wild rose and was about to twine it into the crown as well when there was a shock of lightning without there being clouds.

  Jenny leaped to her feet. Before her stood a handsome young man dressed in green.

  “Who be ye?” she cried.

  “I be the king of the lea,” he said. “I have come at your call.”

  “But I called you not,” said she.

  “You plucked the rose, and that is the sign that calls me out from the green land.”

  He took her by the hand, his all green and cold, and led her under the hillside. There they sang and danced until the dawn turned dark and the stars fell like snow behind them and Jenny cried out, “I must go back to my sheep.”

  He let her go and she made her way back, across the long lea. But her sheep were all scattered and gone.

  Sadly she made her way down the hillside to her home to report the loss. But when she got there, the village was changed beyond her knowing it. She stopped at the first house and knocked on the door.

  “Who be ye?” cried the old man who answered.

  “I be Jenny, daughter of Dougal and Ardeen. Be they here?” she asked.

  “Alas,” cried the ancient, “I be Dougal’s only descendent. And as for Jenny, that poor lass be her mother’s death. Ardeen died of sorrow when her Jenny never came home with her sheep. A hundred year or more it’s been.”

  Jenny shook her head and cried:

  “The King of the Lea, the King of the Lea,

  A hundred years he married me.

  A hundred years in but a day

  I’ve sang and danced my life away.”

  Then she disappeared back over the hill and was never seen again.

  This tale is from the Whilem Valley. Twenty-seven variants have been collected.

  THE STORY:

  They trailed the Grenna for long hours, until the sun went down and even the shadows seemed green. No one spoke. It was as if the forest drained them of words. Except for the words in Jenna’s head, which kept repeating, “Too late … too late for any of them.”

  She wondered if he meant too late to warn them or too late to help them; if he meant too late for the older sisters who would die unmourned or for the younger sisters carried away; if he meant only all the sisters in Wilma’s Crossing or all the sisters in the land. But she did not ask him. She was afraid to know the answer. Not to know is bad, but not to wish to know is worse. She was tired of such wisdoms invented when need was smallest. She was tired of cryptic omens and signs to be read on the slant. She wanted only the wind in her hair again and … and Carum’s mouth on hers. She closed her eyes and stumbled along into the gathering dark hoping that she had chosen the right way.

  “Jenna!”

  Her name recalled her to the woods. Opening her eyes, she looked around. They had come to a great black hole that led right into a cliff-side. A pair of round, oaken doors stood ajar, looking like barrel covers cut in half.

  “Jenna, look at the doors!” It was Petra who had spoken.

  Jenna looked.

  The doors were intricately carved: river, apple, berries, flower, stone, bird, crescent moon, rainbow, tree, fish. All familiar signs. Jenna touched each one in turn.

  “Eye-Mind,” she whispered.

  Catrona’s voice echoed hers, adding, “Why here?”

  The circle of the Grenna were gone through the doors, leaving only shadows behind. Duty whickered softly and the sound seemed to go past the doors and into the black, stopping abruptly, as if cut off by an ax.

  Jenna and Catrona hesitated at the gaping doors and the others gathered around them.

  “We could be turning back,” Jareth whispered. “You and Catrona and Petra could be riding for the Hame. Marek and Sandor and I could be holding the doors shut.”

  The other two boys nodded.

  “For how long?” Catrona asked mockingly. “For a day? A year? Or all ways, Jareth?”

  He made no answer, but his mouth twisted and he glared furiously at her.

  “Old Cat!” Marek whispered to Sandor, approval in his voice.

  “Malas propas,” Petra said, her voice low. “That is what Sorrel said: malas propas. It means too late. But it also means unfavorable, inauspicious, bad luck.”

  “We must make our own luck,” Catrona said. “And three unseasoned boys have neither the luck nor strength to hold two doors against such as the Greenfolk. Besides, we do not know if there are other doors to this hole. They might be like ferrets. Close them here, they boil out there.” She pointed to the right of the doors. “Or there.” She pointed to the left.

  Jenna slowly touched each of them in turn: Petra on the cheek, Catrona on the shoulder, Marek and Sandor on the top of the head, and Jareth on the hand. She let her fingers linger on his for a long moment. He smiled up at her.

  “All we have is one another,” she said. “We do not dare separate now. Are we afraid to trust? Are we afraid of the dark? Come, give me your hands. We will go down into this black hole together and gather great strength from the journey. So the Grenna have promised.”

  Catrona placed her hand directly on Jenna’s. Petra’s came next. Last Marek’s and Sandor’s. Jenna felt the pressure of those hands and their comfort. She took a deep breath and passed the comfort down to Jareth’s hand that still lay beneath hers. Then hands together, warmed by the touch, they moved as one into the dark.

  It was not a black dark but a green one; what light there was came from phosphorescent patches on the rock walls. For a long time there was no choice to the direction they were to travel. There was only one tunnel and it led inexorably down, too narrow to allow them to change their minds a
nd turn the horses.

  No one spoke; the close dark precluded conversation. Even the horses were silenced except for the dull thud-thud of their hooves on the rock floor. Jenna took some small comfort in the regularity of the sound; it was like a heartbeat.

  All of a sudden the single narrow tunnel branched into three wider ones. Confused, Jenna and Catrona stopped and the others behind them stopped as well. They whispered together hurriedly, their words sounding a peculiar swee-swashing in the echoing space, making understanding difficult.

  Finally Catrona pointed to the right. “Only that one has the green patches,” she said.

  In silent agreement they turned, following the right-hand path as it continued in an ever-steepening descent.

  Once Jenna put her hand to the tunnel wall, but it was slippery and cold. She did not like the feel of it, like the insides of something dead, a fish or a snake or an eft. She had tried to eat an eft once, on an overnight in the woods with Pynt near their Hame when they were young. It had not been a pleasant meal. Shuddering, she wiped her hand on her sleeve. But even after she could feel the damp wall as if it had impressed itself on her palm, as if it had left a mark she would have forever.

  Suddenly one of the horses snorted, a sound so loud in the confines of the tunnel that they all let out little squeaks of dismay, except for Catrona who humphed through her nose, sounding just like her mare. For a moment the explosion of sound and the echoes nearly deafened them. Then Jenna shushed them, pointing.

  Ahead the tunnel dipped down and then ascended steeply, widening at the end into a strange light green glow.

  “I will go first,” Catrona whispered. “Petra, hold my reins.”

  Before Jenna could tell her no, she advanced on silent feet, down into the dip and then up to the very edge of the green light, her sword in her hand. They saw her quite clearly silhouetted by the light, an even paler green haloing her body. She raised her sword, in challenge or in greeting, and then in an instant she was gone. Not jumped over the edge or killed by a sword or fallen—just gone.

  “Catrona!” Marek and Sandor cried out together. The walls sent her name back to them a hundredfold. They called out again but could not seem to move.

  It was Jareth, shouting as he ran, who followed Catrona into the green light, one minute haloed at the edge and the next minute vanished into a million particles of light.

  “Wait!” Jenna said, her voice less an authority than a plea. “Wait.” She put her hand out to the rest of them. “We must think.”

  But one by one, Petra, Marek, and Sandor, leading the horses, moved toward the light as if drawn by it. One by one by one, as Jenna watched, they were translated into little brilliant green dust motes that were swallowed by the whole.

  Jenna put her hand on Duty’s nose. She blew into the mare’s nostrils. “My Duty,” she said. “My duty is with all of them. I cannot command you to follow when I do not know where it is I go.” She turned and walked toward the light.

  As she neared the edge, she heard a fine, high singing in her head. The light dazzled her. Vaguely she heard the horse’s hoofsteps behind her but she could not bring herself to look away and warn the mare off. There was only the calling light, pulling her forward; it seemed to her that there was nowhere else in the world that she wanted to be. And then she reached the top of the climb. She teetered there for a moment, with her toes curling over the ledge, and was suddenly enveloped in the light. It was warm and cool at once; soft and crystalline; smelling of sweet flowers and the pungent cabbage of the swamp. She closed her eyes to savor it all, and when she opened them again, she was hovering over a bright green grassy meadow pied with lilybells and daisies and dotted around the edges with the blood-red of trillium. Hovering.

  Then she was down in the soft grass on her hands and knees, jarred as if she had just fallen from a high place. When she turned around, Duty was beside her, grazing contentedly. There was no high ledge, no cave, no borders to be seen. Only a rolling meadow stretching to a hill on the far horizon, and broken sporadically by small stands of trees, a land of elegant, timeless peace.

  From the closest copse a thin spiral of smoke threaded its way up against a blue-green sky. She stood and walked toward the trees, slowly, as if traveling through a dreamscape.

  When she reached the first trees, she saw Petra and Catrona on the right, the boys on the left, all waiting to enter.

  “You be going first, Anna,” Marek said.

  “We be going after,” Sandor added.

  She nodded and started in.

  There were trees of every kind in that small grove, as if each had been planted singly: aspen and birch, larch, poplar, hawthorn, rowan, ash, willow, and oak. The trees stood tall, like pillars in a great hall, and Jenna was reminded of the Song of the Trees which she had sung so often as a child in the Hame, a song it was said Great Alta herself had composed, with its chorus:

  Of all in green jerkin and all in green gown

  The trees in the forest they all bear the crown,

  The trees in the forest are cradle and hall,

  The trees in the forest are fairest of all.

  with the long alphabet of trees for the verse.

  She picked out each tree as she walked, surprised to find they matched the song completely. If this was a dream, she told herself …

  and then stopped for, from the center of the grove, where the single line of smoke had emerged, someone was singing the same song in a low, lyrical voice.

  Jenna raised her hand and they all stopped. She cupped her ear, calling them to listen.

  It was Catrona who spoke. “That voice …” then trailed off into silence.

  Jenna turned and gathered them to her. “That is not the voice of a Grenna,” she whispered.

  One by one they nodded.

  “Do you know this song?” Catrona asked Jareth.

  “It be like a lullaby my mother be singing,” he said. “Like—and not like.” He whispered:

  “Of all in green jerkin and all in green gown,

  ’Tis my baby Jareth who carries the crown …

  least my mother be singing Jareth. Another’s might be saying …”

  “Marek,” said Marek. “And Sandor, when he be born.”

  Sandor nodded. “And both when we be sick with the pox together.”

  “What do we do?” Jenna asked Catrona.

  “I know how to fight and how to live in the woods,” Catrona said. “I am a fine blanket companion and a good provider. But this is beyond my knowing. It is priestess-work.”

  Petra shook her head. “I know that song from the Hame. And my Mother Alta taught me the meaning of each tree in the alphabet for so it is written in Alta’s own Book of Light. Ash is for remembrance, birch for recovery, larch for the light, and the rest. But where we are and who is singing, I do not know. Perhaps only the Anna herself knows.”

  “The Anna herself is as puzzled as you,” Jenna said, and muttered, “unless I am not the Anna.”

  “You be,” Jareth said. “Even the Grenna be calling you so.”

  “Then who …?” Jenna bit her lip.

  “There is only one way to find out,” Catrona said, raising her sword.

  Jenna put her hand upon Catrona’s. “Whoever she is, she sings a song known to the sisters and to them as well.” She nodded at Jareth, Marek, and Sandor. “She means to tell us she is both sister and mother to us.”

  “To us all,” Petra added.

  “And who is that but Alta herself,” Jenna said.

  “I said you would know.” Petra smiled.

  “It is a guess. And a poor one at that,” Jenna said. “Let me go first and we will see.”

  “We be going together,” Jareth said.

  And they did, crashing through the underbrush, the horses trailing behind them.

  As they rushed forward, the trees seemed to extend upward till they touched the sky and arched over, their branches laced together in a roof of green through which the sunlight shone in filtered r
ays. The trunks of the trees became mottled pillars of marble with dark green veins running from the top. The ground beneath their feet became a floor upon which the pattern of grass and petal and leaf remained.

  In the very center of the hall was a great hearth with a green cradle standing before it. Rocking the cradle was a woman dressed in a light green silk gown with darker green leaves embroidered on the hem of the skirt and gold vining twined upon the bodice. Her hair was pure white and plaited in two braids. She wore a crown of sweet-briar, a wristlet of wild rose, and a collar of thistle inter-mixed with annulets of gold. Her feet were bare.

  “She … she be your mother, Anna,” whispered Marek.

  “She be having your hair and your eyes,” added Sandor. “And your mouth.”

  Jareth just stared.

  But Petra had already knelt before the woman, offering up her palms which were as yet unincised with the blue priestess sign. Catrona, too, had knelt, placing her sword by the woman’s bare feet.

  Jenna shook her head. “No. No, you are not my mother. I was never cradled in that.” She went to the green crib and tore away the veil of vines.

  The cradle was empty.

  “I was born in blood between the thighs of a Slipskin woman. I was borne off by the midwife and rescued by a sister of Selden Hame. That much I believe. That much I can accept. I killed a man called the Hound more by accident than design. And I cut off the hand of one named the Bull. If that fulfills prophecy, then so be it. But do not ask me to believe this … this counterfeit.” She could feel the skin tighten across her cheekbones. She was too angry to cry.

  The woman smiled slowly, reached down, and raised up both Petra and Catrona. She pulled Petra to stand by her right side and Catrona to stand by her left. Then she looked directly at Jenna.