Starflower

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  What a creature this mortal maid was. What a spirit, bigger than life itself!

  There had been no sign of the Beast as Eanrin made his way into the low country. He wondered if perhaps the Path of the Lumil Eliasul that Imraldera followed was imperceptible to the master of this demesne. That would be a bit of luck! If such were the case, Eanrin could take all the time he needed to search for that child and that dragon-bitten dog.

  Crossing the rivers was the worst part. When he came to those, he was obliged to take his man’s shape and, under cover of night, climb down into the gorge. There were forests in these gorges through which the rivers ran. To his surprise, when he inspected them, he discovered they were part of the Wood Between. How strange that the mortal realm would be so close to the Between and yet remain so hidden and separate from all other worlds.

  But then he sniffed the rivers and realized: They were barriers. They were enchanted waters set in place long ago to serve as protection. While those within the Land could pass into the Wood and become lost, creatures of the Wood could not come out. Not so long as these rivers were in place.

  He wondered how the Beast had gotten in. The rivers should have prevented his crossing into the world. But from the smell of the earth, the Beast had been here for centuries. Perhaps he had come before these waters flowed. Who could say?

  Eanrin found canoes tethered to the shores of these rivers and, though he was no waterman, managed to cross through calmer waters and climb the gorges to the tablelands above. In this way he crossed all four rivers and came to the place where the soil was red.

  So it was that an orange cat with a plumy tail strolled into Redclay at noon one day, head high like a reigning monarch surveying new territory. Other mangy toms gave him dirty looks, and one or two offered to fight. But he was much larger than any of these and soon sent them running. Queen cats hissed and hid from him. He didn’t smell quite right. They were no fools; they knew a true cat when they smelled one. This one was certainly a cat, but he was so much more, and this they did not like.

  But the people of the village ignored him. To them, he was just another cat. So he passed as though unseen through their midst, searching for a child with a dog.

  The difficulty was, there were many ragged little urchins living in Redclay, and more than a few of them had great watchdogs standing guard while their mothers worked. How could one particular girl be picked out of all of these? The cat sat awhile in the village center, pondering this question.

  Then he realized: None of the girl children, mute as frightened rabbits, had dogs. Only the boys.

  That should narrow his search, he decided. Imraldera had been quite clear on the subject. The girl he sought had a dog. Also, that girl lived up a hill.

  Eanrin turned to gaze up at the house on the hill overlooking the village. It was impossible to think of it as the house of a king or princess. It was little more than a glorified hut as far as he was concerned, larger than the rest of the huts making up the village to be sure, but a hut no less. He trotted up the hill to investigate more closely.

  He halted halfway. He smelled the Beast.

  The smell was intense, that contrast of immortality against all the mortal surroundings. Not the immortality of Rudiobus, of Bebo and Iubdan; no, this was a different scent altogether. It was full of the blood of this stolen demesne.

  The cat’s ears flattened and his tail bushed to twice its size. Growling in his throat, he backed down the hill, staring at the house as though any moment he expected the Beast to emerge. He was just another Faerie. Not a queen or a king. But this Faerie had been drinking in the fear of enslaved subjects for generations, and this had made him powerful. Eanrin crawled back down the hill and took shelter in the shadows cast by the nearest hut. He disliked the notion of meeting this self-styled god face-to-face.

  “How did you get caught up in this wretched affair?” he muttered to himself. “And for what purpose? None of this is your business. The girl is nothing—”

  But that wasn’t true. Eanrin closed his eyes, and across his memory flashed the light of a silver lantern in a dark place, and the deep eyes of the Hound. He cursed and tried to shake the images away, to smother them back.

  How long he crouched there debating his next course of action he could not guess. But suddenly his nose twitched as he caught a familiar scent. “Imraldera?” he whispered, sitting upright, his fear of the Beast momentarily forgotten. Was it her scent? No, it couldn’t be! She had remained in the mountains, far from here. It was dangerous for her to come so near to the Beast. Paths of the Lumil Eliasul aside, he was sure to sense her!

  Footsteps drew near, bare feet treading softly on the dirt. She was coming this way! Did she think to climb the hill? Did she think to face the Beast here, in the center of his realm? No!

  The cat leapt out of hiding, springing into the middle of the road, his back arched and his ears back. A gray dog, its face whitened with age, snarled at him, but he hissed and darted at it with his claws. It drew back, surprised.

  A girl stood just behind the dog. She looked down on the cat, one eyebrow raised, then put a gentle hand on the dog’s back. “Shhh,” she murmured, though in her muteness she could scarcely make the sound.

  Eanrin stared. This girl was not Imraldera. But she was the same age and the same height, and she looked enough like Imraldera to be her . . .

  “Lights Above us!” the cat swore, though to the girl and the dog, it sounded like a growl. The dog showed its teeth, its ears back.

  “Shhh,” said the girl one more time, gently patting the dog’s shoulder. Then she proceeded on her way, carrying a heavy skin of water up the path to the house on the hill. The dog gave Eanrin a last snarl, then fell into place behind the girl, moving arthritically, for it was old.

  “A girl and her dog,” Eanrin said, watching them go. “How strangely Time moves here in the mortal world.”

  Keeping his body low and straining every sense for any warning sign of the Beast, he followed the girl up the hill. He found her around the side of the house, emptying her waterskin into a large trough. It was uncanny how closely she resembled Imraldera! The same cheekbones, the same nose. The mouth was different, though. It had a distinctly downward turn, as though she had never smiled and perhaps did not know how. And her brows were drawn together in a line that looked as though it would never soften.

  Imraldera, though run-down and worn to the bone with fear and sorrows, was free in her heart and spirit. This girl was a slave through and through.

  She drew a sharp breath and looked up, her frown deepening. A shadowed form appeared in the doorway. The smell of immortality was stronger than ever, and Eanrin saw the Beast for the first time.

  He wore a man’s shape, but his wolf nature was impossible to disguise. It was in his face, in the way he moved, in every breath he took. Rapacious and wild, but cunning as well. His eyes were sharp as ice but yellow as fire. They were familiar eyes. Eanrin shuddered as he recognized the Black Dogs in that face. The resemblance was remarkable. But while the Black Dogs were mindless save to obedience, this man—this wolf—was a master of many fates.

  He stepped from the house and approached the girl as she finished emptying her skin. “Fairbird,” he said, and Eanrin saw the girl tremble. “I enjoy watching you as you work. Does this bother you, child?”

  What could she answer? This man was her god. But, Eanrin wondered, did she know? Did she realize that this person was the Beast holding the land captive? Or had the Faerie kept his true self secret? After all, mortal eyes do not penetrate so far. She might not be able to recognize the wolf in that face.

  She could not answer in words. She bowed her head, finished her task, and set the skin aside. Then, as though wishing to pretend the man did not exist, she turned to go about her next task. But the Beast stepped forward and blocked her way.

  “I look forward to this time,” he said, his voice low. The dog near the girl’s feet growled, but he ignored it. “I look forward to your visits
at my house. Do you know, I asked that you be sent to fetch my water and prepare my meals. I could have had any girl in the village. I asked for you.”

  She would not look at him but stared at her feet. Her dog pressed against her thigh, still growling. What a pitiful creature it looked, so old and decrepit standing in the presence of ageless power. But it growled in the face of that power and did not back down. The Beast bared his teeth at the dog. “Brute animal,” he snarled and raised his hand to strike.

  The girl, however, threw herself on her knees and wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck. Eanrin was surprised. He hadn’t thought the little maid capable of demonstrating such passion. But she clung to the dog, burying her face in its gray fur, waiting as though she expected the Beast’s blow to fall on her instead.

  But the Faerie stepped back, a smooth mask hiding the anger on his face. “Fairbird, Fairbird,” he crooned. “Sometimes I fear that you are little more than a mouse. But you have some spark in you after all! Not as she did, though. Not as she did . . .”

  He said no more. The girl got to her feet and, still without looking at him, motioned her dog to follow and fairly fled down the hill. Whatever tasks she had meant to complete were forgotten now in her desire to get away. And the Beast did not stop her. He watched her instead, and the look on his face was hungry indeed, but also frustrated.

  As lovely as Fairbird was, she was not her sister.

  Eanrin, his body flattened to the ground just out of sight, watched the scene and trembled at what he saw. Imraldera had made him promise to do as she asked. First, he was to find the child with the dog. He had done that.

  Then he was to tell the Beast that she waited for him at the Place of the Teeth.

  But how could he do that? He saw the look on that monster’s face, and he knew what it meant. He knew what fate awaited Imraldera should the Beast set on her trail again. He would run her down for sure! His was the nature from which the Black Dogs inherited their hunting instincts. And if those mindless beasts were lethal, surely their father was worse by far!

  “She travels the Paths of the Lumil Eliasul,” Eanrin whispered to himself. But would it be enough? Perhaps if he gave the Beast his message and then fled with all speed across the Land. If he reached Imraldera first and gave her fair warning. Her plan was suicidal. But what other choice did they have?

  He didn’t have to tell her.

  His tail lashed at the thought. He could return to her up in the mountains and tell her the child was dead. He could tell her there was no point in continuing this madness because it was too late. Then they could run away together, back into the Wood! She need never revisit this dreadful land, never face that monster again.

  Eanrin felt sick inside. He hated himself in that moment, he who had never before thought of himself without love and self-satisfaction.

  “It would be useless anyway,” he muttered. “The Black Dogs would get her. Hri Sora wants to see this creature destroyed even more than Imraldera does. She will have given them orders to kill the girl should she fail her task.”

  As soon as he said it, he knew it was true. There was no going back. Forward was the only option, forward into an uncertain future. They had trod the Path of Death already. They would tread it again together.

  The Beast had vanished inside the hut. Eanrin, still a cat, crept to the doorway and crouched there, listening to the breathing of the wolf shaped like a man. Suddenly that breathing caught short.

  “I smell you,” said Wolf Tongue. “I smell you, Faerie man.”

  Eanrin swallowed hard. Then he spoke in his brightest, merriest voice. “What-ho, my wolfish friend! Well met, I say, in these odd mortal lands! How came a chap like you to be among this riffraff?”

  The answering growl was thunderous. “This is my demesne,” said the Beast. “How dare you come here? This is my land and has been these many centuries now! How did you pass the rivers?”

  “Oh, you know, I have my ways,” said Eanrin. His cat’s eyes could just discern the creature’s shadowy form moving toward him in the darkness. He backed away, ready to bolt, feeling safer in the open sunshine. “Secret ways to and fro. I’m known for my guile, even as you, my lord, are known for your thievery.”

  “Cat.” The Beast spat the word like a curse. He appeared in the doorway, still a man, and stared down at Eanrin where he crouched. “You are not welcome here.”

  “No more are you, I imagine,” Eanrin replied with a careless flick of his ears, though his heart raced madly. “Unless you want to try and tell me that these mortals asked you to come and steal their land.”

  “What business is it of yours?” Wolf Tongue cried. He would have liked to snap up the cat in a single bite and be rid of him. But he dared not. Not if there was a breach in his land allowing Faerie folk through. He must learn the source of that breach, and soon, if he was to close it and secure his territory once more. “Why should you care what I do with these maggots?”

  “I find myself caught up in all sorts of business not my own these days,” said the cat, smiling. “But curiosity always was my downfall, you know.”

  “It will be in the end, I have no doubt,” said Wolf Tongue. He took a menacing step out of the house. Eanrin crawled back a few paces. “How did you break those protections and infiltrate my realm?”

  The cat said nothing.

  “The rivers keep all Faerie kind out,” said the Beast, “save those brought in by a man of this land. Thus was I given admittance. A young man making his rite of passage came upon me in the Wood. I convinced him that if he took me back into his world, I would make him a king among his people. He agreed and led me back, and so I crossed the river gates that would otherwise have held me at bay. And I did indeed make him master of his people . . . and I became his god! So have I worked to make this realm my own, to make myself a power as great as any Faerie king or queen.

  “But I will not permit others of our kind to enter here and contest my rule! So I ask you again, and I will not ask a third time: How did you pass the rivers?”

  “I come,” said Eanrin quietly, “on behalf of Maid Imraldera.”

  Wolf Tongue stared at him. “Imraldera,” he breathed, the name rolling slowly off his tongue. “Imral . . . the star . . .” A slow, terrible smile spread across his face, and he was more wolfish now than when he ran upon four feet. “You come on behalf of the Starflower.” His look was ravenous and he gnashed his teeth. “How I loved her!”

  “Loved her?” Eanrin stood upright as a man. He cut a small figure beside the towering Wolf Tongue, and his bright shock of hair contrasted against the darkness of that other. “You say you loved her?” He shook his head, grimacing. “You have never loved anyone but yourself all your life!”

  Wolf Tongue’s smile grew. “And you have?”

  Eanrin stared into that terrible face, and he saw his own reflected there. A beast. An immortal beast. His voice shook, but he spoke his next words loudly, flinging them in Wolf Tongue’s face as a challenge.

  “The Starflower has returned to her land!” he cried. “She has returned to finish her business with the god of her people. She waits for you even now at the Place of the Teeth!”

  With those words, Eanrin spun about and ran. Taking his cat’s form, he hurled himself down the hill, streaking like lightning. And only just fast enough! No sooner had those words crossed his tongue than the Beast lunged for him. He felt the brush of teeth against his skin. He felt the heat of breath upon his fur. Had he hesitated even an instant, those jaws would have closed upon his spine and snapped him in two.

  He hurtled through the village, a bright orange streak, darting for the nearest Faerie Path he could find and praying it did not belong to the Beast. Howls filled the air behind him, and he knew that Wolf Tongue had taken his true form.

  The race was on.

  5

  IMRALDERA STOOD ON THE EDGE of the Place of the Teeth, watching the landscape far below. She understood many things that she could not have begun to imagine th
e last time she came to this place. She knew what lay beyond the Circle of Faces. She knew that the Void was no Void but in fact held worlds far greater than the world she had always known and found sufficient.

  She gazed upon the Land of her people, the Land that belonged to the Beast. The naming of things had always come easy to her. The night her mother died and Fairbird drew her first crying breath, Imraldera had studied her sister until she discovered her true name, and wondered then if perhaps she had known it all along. Later, she had gazed into Frostbite’s snarling face and known what the dog had been intended to be, not what it was. Even the Black Dogs, waiting now just beyond the ring of mountains . . . even they had names, though their souls were suppressed to the point of extinction.

  The name of this land was Sorrow. But what, she wondered, was the true name of its master?

  “When you hold the name of a Faerie Lord, you hold power indeed.”

  So had the Dragonwitch said. And she had given Imraldera, as though bestowing a gift, the name by which the Beast was known in the worlds beyond.

  Amarok. Imraldera rolled the word around in her mind. Though the language was foreign to her, the meaning translated itself: Ravenous. Cunning. Cruel. How could Wolf Tongue have any other name? It was too accurate to be doubted. She had gazed into his eyes. She had seen the desire. She had watched through all the years of her life how he feasted upon the fat of her land and grew strong, and she knew he had been at this feast since long before she was born.

  Amarok. Her hands tried to form the word, to make the signs. There was no word quite like it in her vocabulary. She signed hungry. That wasn’t true. She signed brutal. That too was incorrect. She frowned. The shadow cast by the central stone fell across her face. But her hands could not form the name.

  “Say his name,” Hri Sora had said, “and he will do your bidding.”

  Imraldera clenched her fists and drew a long breath. She stood in the middle of a bloodstain, whether human or animal she could not know. In her mind’s eye, she gazed upon her future, the path she must follow. She saw only death. Her death, perhaps. Perhaps the death of her enemy. But death, one way or the other. Could such an end be right? Could such an end be pure? Or was holiness always bloody?