Graynelore

by Stephen Moore

  ‘Pah! Speak again with this cautious man, if you would,’ said Wily Cockatrice. ‘Tell him a little of what you can. He tries my patience too far.’ She passed a meaningful look between us and withdrew to find herself a temporary seat among the fallen stones. ‘Just be quick about it. We will wait here but a short while.’ Her pipe was instantly between her lips. A great plume of black smoke rose up to engulf her.

  Only a tempered sigh from Lowly Crows broke a prolonged silence.

  It was I who spoke first, if in thin whispers. ‘Give me a sword. I can tell you what to do with that. But this, this vagary – where are the answers here?’

  ‘We all desire answers, Rogrig,’ said Lowly Crows, her black eyes still shining. ‘Only we pussyfoot…and dare not put a name to our dilemma, though we all understand it well enough, I fear.’

  ‘Not I!’ I said; again I spoke more sharply than I had intended.

  ‘No?’ She looked at me balefully. Then, considered a moment. ‘And there are others.’

  ‘Others?’

  ‘Others, who are the same as us…Like us. Just like us,’ she said. ‘They are close by.’

  ‘How so?’ I said.

  ‘You are a stubborn man, Rogrig Wishard. You will not easily let yourself see what your own eyes are showing you. You will not allow yourself to believe what you know in your heart is true.’

  If she wanted a stubborn man, I would show her one. ‘And do you pretend to know me so very well, then: though we are hardly met at all?’

  ‘Who is pretending now? I know myself and I know my own kindred,’ she said. ‘I have followed after you for long enough. Be honest with yourself. We are not so very different.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No…’ she hesitated. Her look was become close to anger. Though she was inwardly annoyed; as if she was uncomfortable with what she was about to say, and I was solely to blame for it; had given her no choice but to reveal herself and offer up her private testimony.

  ‘As a young child, when Lowly Crows was Lucia Hogspur, I always loved to dress up as a faerie. What little girl does not?’ She let her voice drift lightly with her words, although there was something in her tone that hinted at disguise…or perhaps, regret. ‘On the first day of winter I always wore my faerie gown – homemade from rags and tatters – just like my mother before me. I braided my hair with bright ribbons and dressed it with wild flowers. I loved the processions and the storytelling, the singing and the dancing, making Faerie Rings; burning the great bonfires in the pretence of raising the Faerie Isle…’ She paused, with a sigh. Then she took a short breath as if to steel herself, before continuing.

  ‘But a childhood soon ends. We must all stop believing in faerie tales and grow up. Or at least, that is the way it is supposed to be. Only, not for me; for Lucia Hogspur it was very different. I stopped believing in childish things when I discovered, to my horror…they are real. I saw them – faeries – if only glimpses at first. Tantalising glimpses…Fleeting moments when I recognized them for what they were. I saw through the Glamour that hid their true selves. It was like seeing a mask slip out of place, watching it hurriedly readjusted.

  ‘Worse, I came to realize…this gifted sight was mine alone. Among my whole family it was only I who possessed it. In all honesty, what innocent child can carry such a weight? And why me—? Why did I see them when no one else did? Not even Martha, my dearest cousin. No one! That would have made what I knew to be true, bearable…acceptable even. But no…what I had seen had only been revealed to me.

  ‘In the end, it was the wind brought about the revelation…’ Lowly Crows paused again, looked at me to gain my reaction to this seemingly odd statement. When I gave none, she continued. ‘When I was still quite small, the wind began to carry voices to me – the voices of the birds, that is. It carried their whispered secrets all the way to my ear. And I, without reason, fully understood their meaning.

  ‘Upon a day, I was out walking with my mother and my cousin. The voices of the birds came to me upon the wind and quietly warned me of a change in the weather: rain was coming (though there was not yet a cloud in the sky). It was such a simple thing, especially to a child. I thought nothing of it and so I told my mother what I had heard. Surely everyone could hear the voices of the birds in the wind? It did not make a changeling of me, did it? My mother and my cousin did not want to get caught out in a rainstorm, did they? Moments later the rain began to fall in earnest…’

  There was another marked silence before she would continue.

  ‘I was beaten with a stick for it. I was beaten until my bones were bruised, and the welts upon my skin bled freely. But worse, much worse than this; I was cursed by my own father for the shame of it. Sworn to keep it a secret, threatened with a cut tongue.’ Her face became suddenly tight, as if with pain. ‘In my dreadful loneliness, in my despair, it was not long before I looked again towards the kindly birds. And, as is the way of faerie, thought I saw my own true nature, my own true kindred there…’

  Her eyes stared through me to some far distant place only she could see.

  ‘Is not this Winter Festival a perfect irony, Rogrig? And how it hurts—’ Her voice began to lift with anger. ‘Once a year it is quite the thing for everyone to dress up in their ridiculous outfits and play at make-believe. They can pretend and paint their faces and put on their paper wings and fly. It is considered…normal. Just do not dare say any of it is true. Do not ever say that, whatever your belief. If you do they will only come for you; take you away in the dead of the night. They will hang you for a changeling, a throwback. They will burn you for a wych! They will burn your family too if they have a mind!’ She was glaring at me now, eye to eye.

  I was at a loss. I wanted to say something that might help her, only I could not find the words for it. I held her gaze. It was the best I could do.

  ‘It is better to stay silent,’ she said. ‘What the world at large does not know does not exist. Was it not ever so? Like the true faerie, it is best to hide your reality behind a shaded mask.’

  At this, she ended, turning her eyes away. I was still at something of a loss. Uncertain of what I believed? Or uncertain of what I wanted to believe?

  ‘And this is your tale?’ I tried to speak kindly.

  ‘Enough of it for now…At least, to see me hung upon a gibbet if it reaches the wrong ears…’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ I nodded my understanding. ‘And enough to calm the suspicions of a foolish man?’

  ‘Aye, that too, perhaps…’ she said.

  Almost unnoticed between us, we had begun to walk again. We had caught up with Dogsbeard, and with Wily Cockatrice, who was already on her feet, and with the pair of coquettes who kept a-pace, if still cautiously shy of me. And then, for the very first time, we were all of us talking quite freely, and without embarrassment.

  ‘You know, I thought they were all just stories,’ I said. ‘Make-believe. Faerie tales! I did not think any of it was real. Well, why would I?’

  ‘Indeed, why would you, Rogrig?’ said Wily Cockatrice, without humour.

  ‘We can spend our whole lives alone – so very many of us have – without knowing the truth,’ said Lowly Crows. ‘I worked it out…though it took me long enough. The fey…they can feel each other’s presence. How else might I describe it? On our own we are incomplete, are nothing, in fact; less than nothing, perhaps, when we cannot know our true selves. But once together…when like-minds meet, that is something else. Faerie-kind need their kin. It stirs something within them, rekindles a dormant state. It makes them stronger. More, it breathes new life into a hollow shell. Of course, you know of this already…’

  ‘Eh?’ I turned my head away, found myself unnecessarily distracted by some flying insect that was suddenly a bother to me.

  ‘I hear their inner voices…’ she continued. ‘It is like a distant echo, like a song being sung; only the words are faint and the language is indistinct. Anyway, the point of it is this: there is more than one voice calling, more than one
song. And I know you can hear it too. Surely you must? It gets stronger even now…’

  ‘What are you suggesting, then?’ I said. ‘Are we all to go and live in Faerie-land? Are we to speak to the wild animals and eat flowers for our breakfast?’ I was being deliberately flippant now, trying in desperation to remain the ignorant, common man. ‘We are not going to pretend to be trees, are we? I positively refuse to go and live in a lake…’

  I stopped there. It was only now, distracted by the ludicrous tone I had allowed into our conversation, that I realized where Lowly Crows was leading us.

  We had reached another area of broken stonework. It was as much overgrown and loosely scattered by time as the first, but here and there were the partial remains of walls still standing at the full height of a stout man, and perhaps four or five full paces in length. In almost a thousand years, no builder upon Wycken had used stone to make his dwelling houses. These were far more ancient ruins, then. At their centre was a group of even larger stones – some hand-cut, some natural boulders – leaning heavily against each other, as if they had been set there on purpose to mark an event. Either that, or to disguise a secret opening in the ground…? Certainly, there was something of that kind there.

  I had a sudden fancy; the opening I could see was obviously the entrance to an underworld, perhaps a circuit of tunnels that would lead us on to the Faerie Isle, or to a dwarven hole, at the least.

  (It was neither.)

  Without hesitation or debate, one after the other, my entire company stepped through the opening. How could I, the only grown man among them, not follow their lead?

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Secret Meet

  We stepped into what I sensed was a cavernous chamber, though one completely taken up with the dark (and unnaturally so). Outside, a veil of heavy cloud had begun to creep upon the town. At best it would make for a poor grey evening. Nevertheless the remnants of the daylight should have seeped into that greater space. It did not. It stopped at its entrance, as if deliberately shut out. The darkness was a solid curtain, or else the mark of a closed door. This was a private place; an otherworld where even the fading light of day had no business without a firm invitation.

  The cavern remained always just a cavern, only I had no sooner stepped across its threshold and into that utter darkness than it began to change – not avert, but transform; the stuff of faerie. What happened was this: all at once I could see a way through the darkness. Not in the way of my eyes becoming used to it. This was altogether different, if immediate. Without the use of my eyes, I was allowed knowledge of that dark space. An enchantment was lifted or the gift of blind-sight was bestowed upon me. Either way, I was made aware not only of its extent but also of the nature of the welcome that awaited me there.

  This enlightenment did not make me any the braver, nor did I feel better for it. Rather, it reminded me of how little control I had over this foolish adventure. Since the very outset I was never the guide, but always the guided; a beguiled man, blinded by my own ignorance and left groping in the dark – like a weedling babbie – until I was shown the way. I did not like it. Nor did I yet truly believe in it.

  Does your narrator’s continued nagging doubt exasperate you, my friend? Would you have me eagerly embrace this shadow-land? Is the knowledge of a lifetime so easily dispelled by the passing of a few hours among a company of strangers? I say not! I had heard Lowly Crow’s impassioned testimonies. I was trying to come to terms with these bloody fey creatures! Only theirs was the miraculous transformation, not mine. Do not expect it so easily of me! Rogrig Wishard was always the man first, and ever so!

  I was become wary. My inbred instincts were beginning to reclaim me. Should I have followed Lowly Crows? I had the sense of there being numerous figures in that cavern – certainly more than I knew – standing or sitting about in the darkness. I was aware of their presence. And if I could not see them naturally, I could hear them. Their breathing…A fidget was scratching. There was the sound of movement, as someone shifted their body weight from one foot to the other. And there was a bird – no, more than one – birds now! I could hear the slight raking of their claws, as they moved about upon some rocky perch; hear the gentle pecking of a grooming beak.

  And the air was filled with a mixture of common smells…the sweet odour of a woman’s sweat…old clothes, too long unwashed…rusted iron (was someone holding a sword?) Cold stone…cold, cold stone…anxiety…even fear? There was the leather of worn boots…rotting wood and damp…It was a dank cave, its floors, no doubt, constantly awash…

  It was not a sweet hole, then.

  We had all been drawn to this place separately and yet together. (And now inseparable, it would seem.) For me, it had begun with the Elfwych, with a severed head, and Norda…that was the first connection…I had felt it again when I met with Lowly Crows upon the mire. Even now, as I stood there in the dark, that mystic bond between our gathered company was growing ever stronger. If I was still fighting hard to deny it! After all, this was just the sort of careless mess my whole life’s training had taught me to avoid. Had I really allowed myself to be lured here? Was this not simply a robber’s ambush after all? It bore all the marks.

  ‘Did your father never warn you? You must not follow strange young women into dark enclosed spaces.’ This first voice was mocking – a faerie slight? It was as if its owner had plucked my thoughts out of my head and thrown them carelessly back at me. But there was a caution there too. And with the voice there was suddenly extra light in the cavern: again, no common thing, not light to be seen with the eye; but ethereal light without a natural source. Almost as if it had been spoken into being; was a part of the words. Though, not yet enough light to reveal the protagonist, only enough to ease the darkness a little.

  Other voices began to join in.

  ‘Maybe this man is an idiot?’

  ‘Maybe he is a great warrior, come to show off his sword!’

  ‘Well, you know what they say about Wycken girls, especially upon the Winter Festival. Maybe he thinks our Lowly Crows is up for it? And him only a poor innocent lecher led astray?’

  ‘Maybe you have got the guts to show your faces?’ I said. Though I knew myself bated, I could feel my anger rising above my trepidation. ‘So I can knock your teeth down your throat—! Lowly Crows, where are you?’

  I heard the flapping of a bird’s wings.

  ‘Patience, Rogrig, and rest easy, I am here. My companions only jest. They are making fun of you.’ With the sound of her voice, yet more of that ethereal light filled the cavern, enough now to expose something of the figures standing there. Wily Cockatrice and the youth, Dogsbeard, were clear to see. Though there were others still only a vague mass, perhaps keeping deliberately to the shade? I supposed that was where I might find the pair of coquettes…

  There was a short ripple of not so innocent laughter. Could they all read my mind? Or maybe, if they were among the shadow-tongues inside my head, was my voice but a shadow-tongue inside theirs?

  ‘Enough of this foolishness! We are each of us come to this place in good faith. Let us get down to our business here,’ demanded Wily Cockatrice.

  As she spoke, I felt the mood of the whole company change. The laughter, the mocking jollity, was suddenly gone. The very air was thick with concern. ‘Is this gathering complete? Are we enough for our common purpose, at last? We have waited long enough for it. Can it be done?’

  ‘Business? What common purpose?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh my…Tell me he knew. Lowly Crows, tell me he knows why he is here?’ Wily Cockatrice rolled her tongue, gave a deliberate rattling hiss. If her pipe had been in her mouth there would have been smoke billowing.

  ‘Aye, and be mindful, crow – There are many among us now, whose prowess is so diminished, so diluted by the passage of time, they can do no more than bear this company witness.’ An elder-man had stepped out of the shade to speak. He was stooped with age, but was also crooked and wiry, in the way of a tree as it naturall
y grows. ‘Yet they came to us all the same. All the same!’

  ‘There was little enough time…I—’ the crow began to explain, only to be crossed by the elder-man.

  ‘It was dangerous enough for each of us on our own,’ he said, his annoyance rising. ‘Aye and ever so! Meeting together…in a company of strangers…was a greater folly.’

  ‘What sense, Wood-shanks? How else were we to do this? None of us are powerful enough on our own,’ said Lowly Crows, matter-of-factly. ‘We must complete our Ring. Only then—’

  ‘Our Ring?’ I interrupted their growing argument. ‘What?…Are you trying to say this is a Faerie Ring? This is another bloody meeting of a Faerie Ring upon the Winter Festival?’ I let my hand rest heavily upon the hilt of my sword (if only for its comfort).

  ‘This is not a game we are playing, Rogrig,’ said Wily Cockatrice. ‘We are not here to dance around a bonfire! Unless, of course, you know better; then you can tell me—’

  ‘You still jest, I think…’ I said. ‘You are after the makings of a Ring of Eight? Is that it? You are putting on a show!…And then what? Do not tell me! Let me guess the end of your riddle. You are going to raise the Faerie Isle and restore the world to its former glory…’ I could not disguise my contempt, nor stop the deep sigh rising in my throat. ‘I know this story well enough. Upon Graynelore, what three year old babbie does not? For fuck’s sake! It is a Beggar Bard’s tale. It is a ridiculous fiction.’

  The strength of a growing anger – not all of it mine – seemed to resonate physically in that dark hole. Inside my head the shadow-tongues were groaning with despair.

  Several real voices began to speak together. ‘How long have we waited, how many lives…eh? Wasted…unknown…forgotten…unlived…How many fruitless generations has it taken us to find each other out? Just to hear this fool of a man insult us?’ There was a sense of frustrated, agitated movement among the shade, if I could not place its whereabouts.