Into the Green

by Charles de Lint

  "Bring wood," Macal called as he pulled her along the ground by her chains. "We'll burn her now."

  "But the priest..." one of the men protested.

  Macal glared at the man. "If we wait for him, she'll have us all enspelled. We'll do it now."

  No one moved. Other villagers were waking now— Fael the innkeeper and the barmaid Jessa; the miller, roused first by Angharad's singing, now coming to see to what use Macal had put his mill; fishermen, grumpy, for it was still hours before dawn, when they'd rise to set their nets out past the shoals; the village goodwives. They looked at the red-haired woman, lying on the ground at Macal's feet, her body bruised, her hands shackled, the chains in Macal's hands. His earlier supporters backed away from him.

  "Have you gone mad?" the miller demanded of him.

  Macal pointed at Angharad. "Dath damn you, are you blind? She's a witch. She's casting a spell on us all. Can't you smell the stink of it in the air?"

  "Let her go," the innkeeper said quietly.

  Macal shook his head and drew his sword. "Fire's best— it burns the magic from them— but a sword can do the job as well."

  The mist was entering the village now, roiling down the streets, filled with ghostly running shapes. Lifting her head from the ground, Angharad saw the kowrie, saw the stag. She looked at her captor and suddenly understood what drove him to his hate of witches. He had the Summerblood in his veins too.

  "There... there's no need for this," she said. "We are kin..."

  But Macal didn't hear her. He was staring into the mist. He saw the flickering shapes of the kowrie. And towering over them all he saw the stag, its tined antlers gleaming in the moonlight, the poetry in its eyes that burned like a fire. He dropped the chains and ran towards the beast, swinging his sword two-handedly. Villagers ran to intercept him, but they were too late. Macal's sword bit deep into the stag's throat.

  The beast stumbled to its knees, spraying blood. Macal lifted his blade for a second stroke, but strong hands wrestled the sword from him. When he tried to rise, the villagers struck him with their fists.

  "Murderer!" the miller cried.

  "He never did you harm!"

  "It was a beast!" Macal cried. "A demon beast— summoned by the witch!"

  They let him rise then to see what he'd slain. Pog lay there, gasping his last breath, the poetry dying in his eyes. Only Macal and Angharad with their Summerblood had seen a stag. To the villagers, Macal had struck down their village half-wit who'd never done a hurtful thing.

  "I..." Macal began taking a step forward, but the villagers pushed him away.

  The mists swirled thick around him. Only he and Angharad could see the flickering grey shapes that moved in it, feral eyes gleaming, slender fingers pinching and nipping at his skin. He fled, running headlong between the houses. The mist clotted around him as he reached the outskirts of the village. A great wind rushed down from the hills. Hafarl's breath, Angharad thought, watching.

  The wind tore away the mists. She saw the kowrie flee with it, thirteen slender shapes running into the hills. Where Macal had fallen, only a squat stone lay that looked for all the world like a crouching man, arms and legs drawn in close to his body. It had not been there before.

  The villagers shaped the Sign of Horns to ward themselves. Angharad held out her shackled arms to the innkeeper. Silently he fetched the key from one of Macal's companions. Just as silently Angharad pointed to the men who had attacked her in the stone circle. She met their shamed gazes, one by one, then pointed to where Pog lay.

  She waited while they fetched a plank and rolled Pog's body onto it. When they were ready, she led the way out of the village to the stone circle, the men following. Not until they had delivered their burden to the hilltop stones did she speak.

  "Go now."

  They left at a run. Angharad stood firm until they were out of sight, then slowly she sank to her knees beside the body. Laying her head on its barreled chest, she wept.

  It was the kowrie who hollowed the ground under the kingstone and laid Pog there. And it was the kowrie who pressed the small harp into Angharad's hands and bade her play. She could feel no joy in this music that her fingers pulled from the strings. The magic was gone. But she played all the same, head bent over her instrument while the kowrie moved amongst the stones in a slow dance to honor the dead.

  Mists grew thick again. Then a hoofbeat brought Angharad's head up. Her music faltered. The stag stood there watching her, the poetry alive in its eyes.

  "Are you truly there?" she asked the beast. "Or are you but a phantom I've called up to ease my heart?"

  The stag stepped forward and pressed a wet nose against her cheek. She stroked its neck. The hairs were coarse. There was no doubt that this was flesh and muscle under her hand. When the stag stepped away, she began to play once more. The music grew of its own accord under her fingers, that wild exultant music that was bitter and sweet, all at once.

  Between her music and the poetry in the stag's eyes, Angharad sensed the membrane that separated this world from the Middle Kingdoms of the kowrie growing thin. So thin. Like mist. One by one the dancing kowrie passed through, thirteen grey-cloaked figures with teeth gleaming white in their dark faces as they smiled and stepped from this world to the one beyond. Last to go was the stag; he gave her one final look, the poetry shining in his eyes, then stepped away. The music stilled in Angharad's fingers. The harp fell silent. They were gone now, Pog and his kowrie. Gone from this hill, from this world.

  Stepped away.

  Into the green.

  Hugging her harp to her chest, Angharad waited for the rising sun to wash over the old stone circle and tried not to feel so alone.

  10

  Although she no longer had a wagon, nor a tinker company to travel with, the blood of a traveler ran too thickly through Angharad's veins for her to ever surrender the road for a settled life. She was like the migrating birds— no matter where she found herself, one day she simply had to up and go. Down that path. Up that lane. The road never eased its hold on her.

  She traveled the length and breadth of the Green Isles, wintering once in the West Marches of Ardmeyn, cozily ensconced in the smoky caves of the diminutive Tus, the dark air rich with the smell of burning peat; summering on the Isle of Morennen, camped in sight of Horn Henge with the moors a sea of heather on three sides, and the Channel Sea a deep perfect blue on the fourth; a spring in Nowe, when the marshes were a riot of color and birds; an autumn in Umbria, riding the riverboats of the Longswaying from its mouth in Traws to its source in Cermyn.

  When the road took her through Cermyn, she always stopped at the Druswid Oak in Avalarn to guest with the treewizard's apprentice, Fenn. The feral child she'd once known had grown into a fairly sober young man— no stranger to humor, but given a second chance as he had been, he took his studies far more seriously now. Her arrival— always expected, for all that she often didn't know she was coming herself until she was there— signaled a time for Fenn to put aside his books and lessons and take a well-deserved holiday.

  They would ramble through the forest and its surrounding hills, gossiping with the badgers and squirrels, the ravens and hares. And with each other. Though the only blood-tie that lay between them was Hafarl's gift, they felt more like brother and sister than many born of the same mother. The joy in Fenn's face when he saw her coming— spreading through him like ripples expanding from a stone dropped in water— would turn into whoops of joy as he ran to meet her.

  But not this year.

  This year he stood at the foot of the oak, his face grave as he toyed nervously with the fingerbone that hung from a leather thong about his neck.

  His mood leapt to her, Summerblood to Summerblood, swift as a vanishing otter, so that she approached him anxiously, questions forming in her eyes before she could voice them.

  "It's bad," he said.

  "What is?" Angharad asked. "Fenn, what is it?"

  But he wouldn't answer, not until they were in his hous
e, high in the tree, with the wind talking in the boughs and Fenn's home swaying slightly in the branches. There he took her to a worktable and showed her his brass scryer. The water in it lay still as stone. The image it disclosed was of a small silver and ebony box, ornately designed, a mingling pattern of dark and light that stole the gaze and trapped it fast.

  "It doesn't go away," Fenn said.

  Angharad looked for as long as she could, but the box's design disturbed her. The more she looked, the more her head spun. It was like hanging over the edge of a cliff, high above the sea, and suddenly realizing that there were no handholds. The design drew her into it, the strange mix of linework and geometric spirals catching her gaze like a fly caught in honey. It dragged her into following a pattern inside herself, a pattern that laid shadows on the quiet green of her soul.

  It was only Fenn's touch that drew her back. Returned, she still felt an unclean remnant of that darkness remaining deep within. She shivered and wanted a bath, but knew that soap and water couldn't cleanse her of what she was feeling. The stain lay too far inside.

  "That," she began. "It's..."

  Words failed her and she was unable to finish.

  "Evil," Fenn said.

  There was a stirring in the air, heralding the waking of Druswid, the spirit of the oak itself, at whose sufferance Fenn studied and lived in his branches. He did not manifest physically, but his presence was undeniable all the same.

  It is a poison, the treewizard said.

  Angharad shivered again. Slowly the green silence inside her was overwhelming the patchwork shadow that the box's design had laid on it. But the memory of its presence wasn't so easily forgotten.

  "What is it?" Angharad asked.

  On the surface, Druswid replied, a simple puzzle-box. The kind any merchant's daughter might have on her windowsill to entrance her friends.

  "But that design..."

  Angharad gave the scryer a quick sidelong glance, shifting her gaze away from the brass bowl almost before it touched the metal surface. She couldn't help but wonder— if its mere image was so powerful, what damage would its physical presence cause?

  We called that design glascrow in the old days, Druswid told her. The green death.

  Angharad thought of the ancient enmity between the Lords of Summer and Winter.

  "Is it Lithun's doing?" she asked.

  Its source is not the Winterlord, the treewizard replied, for it causes havoc with his gifts as well. Its origin is more ancient still— predating the stoneworks, predating the rivalry of Anann 's sons. Whatever the design's origin, the knowledge is lost in antiquity. I know only that all the glascrow were either destroyed or banished from the Isles— a very long time ago.

  "And this one?" Angharad asked.

  "Is here," Fenn said. "In the Isles."

  "Where?"

  We don't know. Its image lies in the scryer like a fisherman's net, waiting to draw the unwary into considering its pattern.

  Angharad glanced at Fenn. "Where does it take you?"

  Into madness; into a death of the Summerborn silences within, and, if left unchecked, the green itself.

  "It would have taken me," Fenn said, "if not for Druswid." Now it was his turn to shiver. "I can still feel its taint inside me."

  "And you let me look at it?"

  Angharad didn't even try to keep the anger from her voice. The impurity was still inside her, like a bad taste in the mouth that couldn't be washed away.

  That was my doing— not the lad's.

  "Why?"

  How can you know evil's danger unless you experience a sliver of it?

  "The same way you know enough to not jump from a cliff— because it's a stupid thing to do."

  "I'm sorry," Fenn said. "I..."

  She laid a hand on his shoulder. "It wasn't your fault."

  She looked around the room, but though the treewizard's presence was palpable, there was no visual point of reference. It was hard to direct one's anger at an invisible presence.

  I understand your anger, Druswid said, but the experience was necessary. Left unchecked, the glascrow can undo what little wonder the world retains. It will spread— slowly at first, but more quickly as it feeds on the Summerblood of Hafarl's mortal kin.

  "I agree to the danger," Angharad said. "But... Broom and Heather! I can still feel that darkness inside me."

  Good.

  "Good? How can you call it good?"

  Because you must take your memory of it into the green and let the advice you acquire there point our way.

  "Why can't you go?" she asked the treewizard.

  "I wanted to," Fenn said, "but—"

  Neither the lad nor I are tinkers and harpers as well as Summerborn. We can see into the green. But you can open the door into its silence. With your music, tempered with your tinker's blood.

  Angharad nodded in unwilling agreement. A traveler's touch on a harp's strings— it carried a music more in tune with the green than that of one bound to a single place.

  Music and moon. And the ancient riddling stoneworks.

  Tinker, harper and witch.

  Triads.

  Calling-on magic born of threes.

  "When?" she asked.

  Tonight.

  —

  A half-league from the Druswid Oak was a solitary longstone known by travelers as Ballan's Broom. It stood on the crest of a low hill; four times Angharad's height, it was a tall graceful stonework from the riddling elder days when wonder had a stronger foothold in the world of men than it did now. Waves of the surrounding gorse sea lapped at its base. As Angharad approached, a fox lifted its head to watch her with his secret eyes, vanishing into the gorse with a lift of his bushy red tail before Angharad had a chance to call out to him.

  Looking at the longstone, backlit by a low hanging half moon, she marveled, as she always did, at how much this stonework did look like the handle of a giant's broom stuck into the earth at the top of the hill. How the men of the ancient times had raised such a slender shaft of stone never ceased to awe her. But the answer to that riddle lay lost in history. And she had come for another purpose tonight, looking for the answer to another riddle.

  She laid her cloak on the ground, her walking shoes and staff upon it. Barefoot in the couch grass, with the dirt cool beneath the soles of her feet, she looked up the long height of the stone, then turned her back to it. She sat, leaning against its rough grey surface, harp on her lap, the moonlit hills spread out before her until their low backs were swallowed by the trees of Avalarn.

  Even, she thought, even without the gift of witch-sight, there was more beauty to be found in the world than could ever be snared in language or music. And with the sight...

  Her witcheries let her look deep into the night, the moonlight as bright for her purposes as the sun was for those without her gift. She watched the bell heather and gorse accept the patterning breath of the wind. Moths flew close at hand; higher was a pipistrelle bat. She saw a polecat stalking a hare, the hare escaping. A short-eared owl went by, so close she could almost feel the draft of his wings.

  She could have sat and watched all night, and been well content. But she had another purpose for being here tonight.

  She shifted her harp to her knee. No need to test the trueness of its tuning— she had done so already before leaving the oak— but she did so again all the same. The spill of harp notes tumbled from her instrument, deep and resounding for all the harp's diminutive size. When she began a slow air, the music floated like quiet thoughts over the gorse sea.

  She thought she heard the bell heather's rosy blossoms tinkling in response.

  The night held its breath, listening.

  The stone grew warm behind her back.

  Moon and music.

  And her witchery made three.

  She played until the moon hung low, then played in the dawn. When morning grew from dawn's pink smudge on the eastern horizon, she finally laid her instrument on her lap. Her fingers held cramps in every
joint, the calluses on her fingertips were soft and aching. Sighing, she set the harp on her cloak and stood, stretching the stiffness from her muscles. Disappointment lay like a heavy mantle on her shoulders, weighing her down.

  The kowrie hadn't come.

  The triad of moon, music and witchery hadn't worked its enchantment.

  Hadn't drawn her into the green.

  She looked across the moors, but her sight was turned inward, to the memory of the puzzle-box's pattern and the shadows it had left on her soul. Blemishes on her green. Like dry rot, hidden from sight, but eroding her witcheries all the same.

  Was that what had kept the kowrie away?

  Was there a kind of cold iron inside her now, an anathema to the poetry of the green?

  Best not to think of it. Best to come back another night and try again.

  She put on her shoes and cloak, shouldered her harp. Staff in hand, she set off to return to the Druswid Oak. The twilight of the dawn lay expectantly all about her, but where usually its magic invigorated her, this morning it merely brought home all the discomforts of spending a night on the moors.

  It was under the shadows of Avalarn's first outriding trees, just out of sight of the oak, that a voice called out to her.

  "Daughter."

  She paused to see a tall slender woman standing there in between the trees. Her hair was red-gold— a blazing blend of fire and honey. She was barefoot in a leaf-green kirtle, with a dark green cloak overtop. Her features were veiled and thin, her skin browned. Blue-gold lights flickered in the depths of her eyes.

  "I heard your music," the woman said.

  "Who—"

  The woman held a finger to her lips. "No need for names or what they can call to us."

  Angharad's free hand went to her breast as though to hide the stain of the puzzle-box's shadow from the woman, but the stranger merely shook her head.

  "You haven't lost the green," she said. "We all carry dark places inside us— the glascrow merely wakes those shadows, gives them life."