Graynelore

by Stephen Moore

  I let them go, and looked again towards the seething crowds.

  It seemed an open competition, for no two bands of revellers were moving in quite the same direction. Back and forth they danced and back again. This way and that way – at cross purposes. Some threaded their way towards the banks of the River Winding. (There is nowhere upon Graynelore where some part of its watery fingers have not stretched; great or small.) Others were seeking out the market square, or a particular outcrop of rock, or else a particular area of open green. Each human string, each family grayne was making its own way, regardless of the direction of the greater crowd, heading for its own favourite place of gathering where they could finish their dance, and complete their Faerie Rings.

  Would I have joined the throng? Perhaps, upon another day, only I was more curious than I was enthralled by the unfolding events.

  Wycken-on-the-Mire; here was the very place where the Faerie Isle was supposed to have floundered. Ha!

  Well, there was not one Faerie isle here. No. I could see dozens of them, at least! No two quite alike and all of them make-believe. How so? The townspeople had built them for the purpose out of gathered windfall, dry grasses, broken wooden furniture and household rubbish. And they had set many of them upon make shift carts that they wheeled before them. I knew the children’s tales; the Beggar Bards held that eight true faeries were needed to complete a Faerie Ring…a Ring of Eight. But not here! Not in Wycken-on-the-Mire, on the first day of winter. For certain, every faerie dancer among them held hands and joined in. Even as I watched, people began to set their wooden Isles alight, one after the other, raising huge bonfires. Roaring flames quickly reached up into the sky (scaring off the gathered crows). And the brave, or the foolhardy, or the drunks among them tried to keep the carts moving as they burned. The heat scorched their hair, the flames licked at their hands and faces, caught hold of their ribbons, set fire to their clothes. Until they were forced to let go and roll upon the ground to put the flames out before they were badly hurt. Abandoned, the burning carts ran to a standstill. Though more than one toppled over, spilling burning embers into the throng of people that surrounded it: and far too close to the wooden houses for safety.

  The fires were symbolic of what the Beggar Bards called The Raising of the Faerie Isle. A time when the Faerie Isle would be restored to its rightful place upon the Great Sea, when all things faerie would return again into the world, to make it complete: as it had been on the very first day of its creation. Of course, that was just another foolish children’s tale. It was a story to delight the babbies. More to the point, I think, the great bonfires kept the Wycken revellers warm on a cold winter’s day.

  All the while the fires burned the people danced and played. The market traders came and set out their stalls and bartered their wares. In a drunken haze, the local Headmen – who, no doubt, fashioned themselves Graynelords – held their private courts, renewed old alliances and resolved old differences. In hidden corners, beyond the firelight, star-crossed lovers kept their secret trysts.

  As for Rogrig Wishard, I confess I was now at something of a loss. Standing among this sham, I felt like a ruddy fool at a fool’s parade. Had I really made poor Dandy suffer so, for this? Had I gone against my grayne?

  It was only then, through the fake trappings of the make-believe faeries, through the crowds of bawdy players, the dancers and the singers, against the light of the burning bonfires, I began to see them for real. Faeries that is:

  Aye, Faeries…

  Chapter Thirteen

  Faeries

  Faeries… My madness was complete. I felt myself lost within a living dream and I could not wake up from it. In that moment they appeared quite vivid and clear, while the people around them became the shadows and grew dim and grew vague. Intriguingly, none of them looked remotely like the dressed-up versions with their fake wings, their painted faces, and gaudy ribbons. What can I say? Faeries –The real thing looked a lot less spectacular (even to the eyes of an enamoured madman). And yet, somehow they were more real than reality, more normal, more ordinary even than the ordinary.

  In truth, there were not that many of them. I could count them upon my fingers. I tried for six, gave up at five (it seems they would not stand still long enough to be counted). They were transient creatures. But believe me; they were there, all the same.

  What was my proof of their pedigree? I did not have any – none that you would recognize, my friend. Nor did I need any. Let Beggar Bards do tricks, let wizards cast spells. Fey creatures are what they are. Does a wolf need to tear out the throat of a fell beast before you recognize a dangerous wild animal? Does a dog need to hear another dog bark before it recognizes its fellow?

  What truly was become of Rogrig Wishard? It seems I had travelled so much further than the physical miles that separated Dingly Dell from Wycken-on-the-Mire. So much was gone behind. Fleetingly, I recalled the face of the dead girl upon the Elfwych killing fields; the look in Norda’s eye when we were first met; the exchange that had left me a man no longer balanced. I saw again the silhouetted figure of a woman become a flight of birds. I heard the whispers of the unspoken voices, the shadow-tongues beseeching…that were certain to be calling to me still if only I would listen out for them.

  Those faerie creatures, now before me, were no less flesh and blood than you or I, my friend.

  Among them, there was an ancient grotesque…a crone. She held a long wooden pipe to her mouth that burned badly. Its intermittent flame singed her wiry grey hair. She blew draughts of smoke out through her nose. There was a young boy, or rather, a fat youth. There was a pair of young women, strikingly elegant, beautiful, who held each other’s hands coquettishly, tossed their hair in the way of manes. And there was a black bird (of course there was)…a single black crow.

  No matter where I looked within the crowds they seemed to be always there. Though, I swear to you, I never saw them move from one place to the next. There was an odd, worried-yet-startled look upon each of their faces.

  The crone was suddenly in front of me, at nose length (and still blowing smoke). It was I who turned away, looked deeper into the throng; only to find her there again.

  I first saw the fat youth sitting upon a fence, and then again, in between two frolicking babbies. He seemed far too heavily dressed. He was draped in reams of raw linen. He had a face like a half-cooked pudding and skin as soft as river clarts. While the crow kept flitting between the branches of trees and the gables of houses and gate posts. Oddly, I felt I knew it best of all.

  And if I had suddenly noticed them, I was just as certain they were all aware of me. They were watching me, in an obvious rather clumsy way, I thought. There was no secret, no threat either. Rather, they looked at me longingly, as if they were expecting something from me, a response or an answer to an unasked question. Or was it simple recognition? Eh?

  Now that I knew them to be there, there was no mistaking them. They were the image of each other. By that, I do not mean they looked alike. No. Indeed, they could not have looked less alike! Nor, if I am to be truthful, less like I ever imagined true faeries! Forgive the paradox. I fear there never were two quite physically the same. Rather, it was something else they shared between them. They all possessed it. There was an aura about them. There was an intense, a profound sense of self: a deep shared knowledge; an understanding that was greater than simple truth. It gave them stature, a distinct presence, whatever their physical size or form; whatever they looked like.

  In essence then, plain and ordinary was their make-up, their disguise. It was part of their faerie Glamour; a mask to shield them from common men, no doubt. They were all of them in hiding, hiding in full view of the world. And yet I had found them out there. And they knew it. And they in their turn had found me out, it seems. Perhaps that had always been their intention…or mine?

  They continued to move self-consciously among the crowds; never together, not as one, but always aware. It occurred to me, they were behaving shyly, almost
as if they were as much strangers to each other as I was to them. I had been lured to Wycken-on-the-Mire, drawn there by an overwhelming desire I was still at a loss to explain. Was it the same for them? Was it? That same desire drew me towards them now, and so fervently, with such emotional force that the attraction – it was an attraction – physically hurt. It took my breath away. Even if I still refused to understand what it meant. Again, forgive your narrator’s infuriating reticence.

  I began to feel a desperate urge: I wanted to go to them, to be among them. Only I hesitated. I was still just this ordinary man; this Rogrig Wishard. And they were…they were real.

  Left to me, the reluctant standoff between us might have gone on forever unresolved.

  Someone was suddenly at my side, asking questions of me.

  ‘Sir, we are strangers, I think? And yet, do I not know you, my Lord?’ The introduction, the flattery, was clumsy at best. My lowly rank was obvious enough. I was, after all, dressed in a crudely armoured peasant’s jack, and no doubt smelled of mire and fields, fighting irons and…the stale blood of dead horses, and men.

  ‘Er…no,’ I answered lamely. Only then did I look towards my inquisitor.

  I thought I had found my sixth faerie.

  It was a young woman who stood there. She was looking at me in earnest, as if to put more weight into the meaning of her first words, and yet her face was flushed. She was obviously embarrassed by the pretence in her approach. That: or else she was simply unpractised at the common tongue.

  ‘Yes, I do think I know you…’ she said. Even as she spoke she took a deliberate step backwards, which left her standing in the shadows of a tree; as if, even now she was not quite ready to reveal herself fully to me. Around us, fires burned and the bright, childish processions of make-believe faeries continued to flow past.

  I could see her clearly enough. She was tall and lithe, handsome rather than beautiful, and stood rather in the way of a man; without swagger but assured and capable. She was dressed completely in black – Everything about her was black. From her black pointed shoes, made of soft black leather, to her black skin-tight breeches that accentuated her bony hips and slightly bowed legs. Her woollen jerkin was black, with its sleeves pulled down over her hands and loose threads hanging wistfully from the ends (as if her fingers had deliberately unpicked them). Her face was flawed ebony. She had thin, slightly vague, black lips that were always wet. Long dark eyelashes, that hid her never more than half open black eyes. She left me with the same impression the other faeries had given me: she was trying to hide herself in full view of everyone. Everything was about hiding.

  ‘Who…who are you?’ I asked. I was being deliberately slow-witted. For I had no doubt now; it was she I had first encountered upon the mire. However improbable, this strange woman, this fey creature, had saved my life. I had seen no transformation, yet I knew if I was to look about me now to search out the crow I would not find it there.

  ‘You do not recognize me yet?’ she said. She spoke thoughtfully, with no hint of impatience. ‘If you are in want of a name, I have two. Which one would you prefer? Indeed, which one would you believe? I am both Lucia Hogspur and I am Lowly Crows…And you…?’ She began a clumsy unpractised bow, when she found herself rudely interrupted.

  ‘And you will be Rogrig Wishard, if I am not mistaken. And I never am.’ This was a statement not a question. The stubborn old crone had reappeared and stepped between us.

  ‘And how is it that you know my name?’ I asked rudely, in my turn.

  ‘Well, you look like Rogrig Wishard,’ said the crone, dismissively. She took a deep suck on her pipe and blew out an extravagant plume of blue-grey smoke.

  ‘Our Wily Cockatrice can, see… She sees…’ said Lowly Crows, drawing out the repeated word, wincing slightly at the awkwardness of her explanation (and finishing her bow). ‘She knows something of us all…Sometimes better than I would like, if I am truly honest.’

  I saw the faint beginnings of a smile forming at the corner of her mouth, only for it to disappear.

  ‘Now please. We must speak together,’ she said, again in earnest. ‘We are in need of your close confidence. It is important…but cannot be done here. I think you understand?’

  There were still crowds of dancers in the street. There were drummers. There were pipers. People were singing nonsense songs. There was a juggler, drunken men reeling, and a throng of babbies dressed as impish faeries. There was nothing to stop me from simply moving in among them and walking away.

  Only I was not certain I wanted to walk away. (I was not certain of anything.)

  ‘So, what is it to be, are you coming with us or not?’ The old crone, who Lowly Crows had called Wily Cockatrice, spoke abruptly, yet softly now. ‘You must make up your own mind…One way or the other. Yes or no?’ Her words were an inquiry not a threat, but the implication in her tone was clear enough. She was the ancient grotesque and I the battle-worn reiver. Yet it was I who had reason to be wary of her; not the other way around. A thin wisp of white smoke escaped her nose.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I will come with you.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Joining the Dance

  Wily Cockatrice made us take a hold of each other’s hands, as if we were to play some frivolous game, deliberately leading us into the throng of Wycken revellers. She snatched at a tail of fluttering ribbons hanging from the backside of a passing drunk, and began to dance a kind of reckless jig behind him. We could only follow after her and joined his reeling procession. It struck me, these were real faeries: among a masquerade. Real faeries: pretending to be pretend faeries. (Though, I did not regard myself among their number.) In fact it was all quite ridiculous. I tried to feign enthusiasm for the dance, but each foolish, prancing step we took was badly placed and ever mistimed. The crowds were actually laughing at our lame attempts. Among it all, my leather poke, complete with its oddly assorted contents, disappeared. It was swiftly lifted from my person by some clever unseen hand. And there were random insults, if spoken in jest and not badly meant.

  ‘You’ll need steadier legs old mother, and better masks, if you mean to fool the babbies with that display!’ Someone called out to the ancient crone.

  ‘Aye, right enough…!’ added another. ‘Or else you’ll all be slapping your arses against the ground!’

  Lowly Crows and Wily Cockatrice stoutly ignored the rebukes and put on brave faces – which meant them fixing rigid smiles, holding them stiffly in place. Mind, they kept up their unruly stride, unabashed. The fat youth, whose true name was Dogsbeard, only coughed and spluttered as if with some childish complaint. While the pair of coquettes took no mind of the insults at all. The reverse of it! They curtsied regally before our protagonists, and played up to the greater crowd.

  ‘Should we dance for them my, Fortuna?’ asked one of the other.

  ‘Indubitably…! We should dance for them my Sunfast.’ Together, they hitched up their skirts and, encouraged by a sudden spontaneous applause, flung their hair about in a furious abandon.

  For perhaps another hundred clumsy steps the drunkard’s cavorting procession snaked forwards, to the wild beating of drums. Then, on reaching a division in the street, the teetering line gave an awkward lurch and swung abruptly in that new direction, spilling several of its members, losing them to an oncoming crowd as they fell over, tumbling together. Wily Cockatrice saw her chance and, at the same moment, let go the drunken man ahead of her. She turned sharply aside, taking us off that street altogether, and down some crooked covered back lane (only there because the wooden hovels rested shoulder to shoulder at that point, leaving an irregular gap between them on the ground).

  The procession had let us go without a fuss and once out of its sight our company quickly stopped their foolish dancing and fell into a, more or less, steady walk. The drop in pace allowed us all to catch our breath a little – and straighten our faces.

  I remember coming out of the crooked back lane onto a narrow, but widening, cobb
led courtyard – its stones broken and loose – badly kept and overgrown with weeds and mosses. A few thin, ailing willow trees grew up among them. There was a shallow pool of stagnant water. Further in there were greater ruins. Tumbled stone slabs, and the remains of stone arches; all neglected, long abandoned in earlier times, and strangled with creepers. There were no crowds here. No lighted fires. No cheer.

  ‘Where are we going, Lowly Crows?’ I asked, not impatiently. ‘I mean…where does this all lead us?’ I was feeling for the right question.

  ‘You will know soon enough,’ she said.

  ‘I would know now…’ I said, and stopped walking. It brought our company up short. Fortuna and Sunfast drew quickly aside from me, as if startled by my outburst. I had not meant to speak so sharply.

  ‘What? Is this a tender trap then? Is that what you are thinking?’ Wily Cockatrice, quite recovered from the dance it seemed, had turned upon me in an instant and was hissing. The ancient crone was not to be trifled with. ‘Is our Lowly Crows the sweetmeats; a temptress to ensnare you?’

  Beside her, Dogsbeard, the fat youth, sniggered into his hand. ‘Is she luring you away from welcoming company, leading you into the unknown darkness?’

  ‘No, I…I did not mean to…’ I stumbled over my words.

  ‘Understand this, Rogrig Wishard. What we are about is no trivial undertaking. Go back to the prancing parades if you would. Go and warm yourself by its fires. Get drunk; find yourself a whoring woman; plant your worried manhood where you think it safe, and forget us…It is all the same to me.’

  ‘There is not far to go.’

  Lowly Crows had stepped between us. Her black eyes shone coldly, unblinking. Her finger ends picked at the loose threads on the arm of her jerkin in the way of a bird preening. She might have been angry with me. She was certainly ruffled and looked anxiously towards the crone.