Into the Green

by Charles de Lint

  He twitched in his drunken sleep. Listening carefully, she could hear what he heard— the belling of a stag, distant and distant, but as close as thought.

  As close as the green that they both carried within.

  But unlike Tom, she had no fear of the stags that made the Middle Kingdom their home.

  "If you could only accept," she began, her voice wistful, but then she shook her head.

  Only he could work the change. Others could guide him, but only he could decide what he accepted to himself, and what he kept at arm's reach.

  She went down on one knee and laid her hand on his brow, soothing him with a wordless song hummed quietly under her breath, until his limbs were still, his features peaceful.

  "The green could give you more," she said. "The green could give you it all."

  There was no response from the sleeping man, but she hadn't expected any.

  Rising from his side, she left the alley to continue on her way, but a few blocks later was brought to a second halt by yet another odd sight: Lammond d'es Teillion and the innkeeper of the Pipe & Tabor, walking side by side ahead of her on the street.

  What were they doing here? How did they come to know each other? Cathal was a small enough town, that was true, but Edrie Doonan and Lammond seemed to her to be too different from each other to be ever anything but chance companions. Yet here they were, obviously upon a shared errand. In Lowtown. Where honesty was an accident, rather than the norm.

  She was quick to remember how Lammond had rescued her from the witch-finders, but she also remembered the fear in Johnny Tow's voice when he spoke of the man. That fear had been genuine— as had been Tow's warning.

  There's a meanness in him that's easy to miss until it turns on you.

  The witch-finders had been afraid of him as well.

  A meanness in him.

  Had she sensed even an inkling of it while she'd been in his company?

  No, she'd been too busy playing the role of the breathless naif to do much more than make note of Lammond's basic attributes. He was handsome. He carried himself with confidence and grace. He had rescued her...

  Angharad's confidence in her own judgment had played itself false too often today as it was. Better to be suspicious of all and later pleasantly surprised at a mistake, she decided, than take the chance of falling into yet one more predicament from which, this time, perhaps neither luck nor her own abilities could rescue her.

  So she kept to the shadows and gave them a good lead. When they finally turned off the street, she hurried up to the corner and waited there for a few moments before dashing across to the other side. A quick glance down the street showed that the pair were already out of sight, then Angharad was past the corner and making for the Hill once more.

  They might have been able to help her.

  Might have.

  But it was best she did what needed doing on her own.

  She could do it. Druswid and Fenn had confidence in her. So did Tarasen, Hafarl's own daughter.

  She only wished she could borrow a portion of that confidence from them to carry inside herself.

  27

  An hour of walking Lowtown's streets, an hour of sidestepping refuse, fly-encrusted objects, sleeping drunkards, and Arn knew what else, had fairly much taken Edrie to her limit. All that kept her at Lammond's side was his single-minded purpose. He strode fearlessly through the darkest alleyway, caring not a fig for what he got on those polished boots of his.

  Edrie was damned if she'd give it up before he did.

  Once he stopped, head cocked as though listening. She paused at his side, the query dying in her throat when he touched her arm and shook his head. He looked back along the street they had just traveled up, then sighed.

  "I thought I heard something," he said finally.

  Edrie merely shook her head. What wasn't there to hear? Rats crawling in the garbage. Infants howling. Men and women arguing. Tomcats fighting. Drunkards attempting song. A pack of children racing by, one block over, trailing their shrieking laughter behind them.

  It was late evening, though you wouldn't know it from the lack of quiet that held Lowtown's streets.

  "What kind of something?" she asked.

  "Footsteps— trailing us."

  Lovely.

  "Well, perhaps we should—" she began.

  "This way," Lammond said, taking them down another side street, paying no attention to what she said.

  Why had he even wanted her to come along? Edrie wondered. Arn, she was of about as much use to him as-

  "Got you!" Lammond cried, springing from her side.

  A few quick steps took him into an alleyway from which he emerged with a cursing street urchin, his long fingers fastened hard to the boy's ear. But as soon as they stepped from the darker shadows of the alley into the street and the urchin could recognize his captor, his mouth shut and he stood placidly in Lammond's grip.

  "I wonder," Lammond said. "What's Johnny Tow up to this eve?"

  The urchin quickly shook his head. "Didn't have nothin' to do with Tow, yer lordship, sir. I swear."

  "Didn't say you did," Lammond told him.

  The boy hung his head.

  "What's your name?"

  "Tappy, yer lordship, sir."

  "I'm no lord," Lammond said.

  Edrie blinked at the dark tone to her companion's voice. Didn't like the lordfolk, did he?

  "Beggin' yer pardon, yer... uh, sir," Tappy mumbled.

  Lammond nodded. "No harm done— Tappy, was it?"

  The urchin nodded eagerly, an odd mixture of reverence and fear in his features as he looked at Lammond. "We're looking for a fishergirl," Lammond went on, "and we think she came into Lowtown with Johnny."

  Tappy nodded again. "That she did, sir. Johnny tried to net her— planned to rob her an' then sell her to a hussyhall."

  "Did he now."

  The darkness had returned to Lammond's voice, Edrie noted, but with it directed to Johnny Tow instead of himself, Tappy didn't appear to be nearly so frightened.

  "Yes, he did, sir. But she served him! Turned into a ball of fire an' near' burned him to a crisp, she did. She's a bleedin' witch, sir, this fishergirl. Dath, but Johnny's boys did run!"

  "And where did she go when they'd left her?" Lammond asked.

  Tappy shrugged. "Don't know, sir, an' that's Dath's own truth. Nobody wants to watch the likes of her going by."

  He seemed to consider what he'd just said and to whom he was saying it. Edrie could see the cogs whirl in his head. Best not to badmouth someone that Lammond was interested in— just in case she turned out to be his friend.

  "Beggin' yer pardon, sir," he added, "but that's just what I've heard said."

  Lammond nodded. "Thank you for your candor, Tappy."

  "My what, sir?"

  Lammond shook his head. Rather than answering, he took a coin from his pocket and pressed it into the boy's hand.

  "Off with you," he said.

  Not until the urchin was swallowed by the shadows of another alleyway, his quick footsteps fading, did Lammond turn to Edrie.

  "A witch," he said. "What do you think of that, Edrie Doonan?"

  "What's to think? There's no surprise there— not for either of us, I'm thinking."

  "That our Ann Netter is a witch, or that the Lowtowners presume her to be one?"

  Edrie said nothing. What was the point in arguing the fine points when they both knew what they knew? Lammond merely liked the sound of his own voice, the play of his tongue on the words. He might not care for the lordfolk, but he had some of their airs all the same.

  Lammond nodded. "It doesn't matter. Witch, or merely supposed witch, she'll still be in danger."

  "The Lowtowners appear to be too afraid of her to hurt her," Edrie said. "At least for tonight."

  "You're correct, of course. It takes time for them to gather their courage. But I don't think our quarry remains in Lowtown anyway."

  Edrie remembered what Owen had told her.
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  "The Hill," she said.

  "I'm afraid you're right. She has an interest in Aron Corser, it seems."

  Aron Corser. Whose witch-finders had already taken young Jackin this afternoon.

  "We must—"

  Lammond shook his head, interrupting her. "Not we," he said. "I think it best if I go on alone from this point."

  "But—"

  "Can you make it back to your inn by yourself?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "The Lowtowners have seen you with me— they'll leave you alone."

  "I'm not worried about Lowtowners."

  Lammond nodded. "I know. You're worried about a fishergirl and Jackin Toss."

  "He's a good lad. Not like the others."

  "No?"

  "Well, not much," Edrie amended.

  "If I find him, I'll bring him back as well. What I need from you is a pair of horses, saddled and provisioned, waiting for me on Bellsilver Lane at the foot of the Hill, in case the night's work takes a messier turn than I'd like and I find I need to take a week or two of the country air.

  We'd be in a hurry, you see."

  "Yes. Of course I can do that. But—"

  "But, but. You'd be a poor bargain for the guard, always asking questions."

  Edrie wouldn't let him tease her question away.

  "Why are you doing this?" she asked.

  "You mean, what's in it for Lammond d'es Teillion?"

  Edrie nodded. It was impossible to read his features in the poor lighting, but she saw him shrug.

  "No matter what I say," he told her finally, "you'd try to second-guess it. Leave it at this. There are those in need and I have chosen to help them. Let that be enough."

  Another question rose in Edrie, but she cut it off before speaking it aloud. She thought about what she knew of him and still came up with next to nothing. He was a romantic swashbuckler in the eyes of the town, one with the hint of a dark shadow in his past which only added to his mystique, and that was the sum total of her knowledge of him as well. But he had helped Ann before. And his manner with the urchin just now, that had not been the manner of an evil man.

  She would have to trust him.

  "I'll have the horses," she said. "Ready and waiting."

  "Then wish me luck," he said.

  Before she could speak, he turned, stepped into the alleyway and appeared to simply vanish. Edrie could see nothing of him, could hear no footfall. Her fingers began to shape the Sign of Horns. When she caught herself doing that, she angrily stuck her hands in the pockets of her skirt.

  "Luck," she called softly after him.

  Then she turned and began the trudging walk back to the inn to ready the horses.

  28

  The Belling of the stag called Tom into the dream again, and it wasn't good.

  It never was.

  While his body, numbed by alcohol, lay twitching and shivering in a Lowtown alley, he stood alone on a desolate stretch of moor. The hills ran off into lost distances on every side of him, wave upon wave of shadowed grey, swaying under the watchful eye of a swollen moon. The wind bit at his tattered clothes, carrying a sharp tang of sea air from a shoreline too distant to see. Voices called to him in the night, a chorus of ghosts carrying a wordless song on the wind's stinging breath.

  And he stood alone, except for the standing stone before him.

  The grey rock crackled with a witchy blue fire, throwing shadows across his features as he looked at the face etched in its stone. Its mouth was open; its song was an echo of the ghostsong carried on the wind. Its eyes regarded him without recrimination, but guilt still snapped at his soul like a chase of feral hounds.

  The pack would come soon, as it always did. The dogs of his penitence, grown rabid by his presence in this place.

  The green.

  And she would watch from her stone, for watching was all she could do, year upon year as the seasons spun. The seasons turned, but it was men and women who were the wheels of the world, cogs in a clockwork machine that timed its motion to the ebb and flow of their lives. The wheels turned, following the seasons, but she was dislodged from her rightful place in the mechanism that was the world, forever trapped in her stone.

  Here. In the green.

  The ghostsong faded until it was only one voice. Her voice. Singing to him. Striving to wash away his guilt. But he was deaf to all but the voice of the pack that hounded him.

  He could hear them coming now, their lean feral bodies streaking through the bell heather, their howls entwined until it was a single sound, rushing towards him across the hills.

  He would flee, as he always did. Because he wasn't man enough to face them. Because he'd spent his courage in war and whiskey. Though he longed for an end to it, he was too much the coward to face what he had done. To right past wrongs.

  He meant to. Each time the dream came, called up by the belling voice of that red-flanked stag, he meant to. But then he would hear the pack, and he would flee again.

  She would watch from the stone as he went pell-mell through the heather, stumbling along as fast as he could drag his lamed leg behind him. She would watch from the stone, her gaze piercing the night with depth, while he fled through the flat landscape that his one good eye showed him.

  Don't run, her ghostvoice would call after him.

  You did no wrong, that voice meant. But he heard only: be a coward no longer.

  And he would flee— floundering through the heather, panting like a dog himself as he scrabbled his way up one steep incline, staggered down another. Fleeing. Fleeing. Until the hounds were all around him, their baying and growls louder than the rumble of summer storm thunder.

  And he would flee.

  Until a root caught him and he tripped.

  Or until he fell from sheer exhaustion.

  And then the hounds would close in, jaws slavering, his cowardice plain in each glinting eye. They would trap him in a circle that only hope could penetrate, but he had no hope either. That, too, had been swallowed by war and whiskey. And by the deed that had driven him into their arms.

  But before the hounds could close in on him, before their teeth tore at his unworthy flesh, their ranks would part and the stag would be there, red-flanked and dark-eyed, its tines ringed with witch-fire. The moon always in its eyes. And wisdom. And mystery.

  I, too, lost all hope once, it would tell him. I, too, suffered.

  Those dark eyes, so deep with sympathy and understanding that the weight of their gaze was a pain in itself. For her eyes were there as well; her eyes were a part of that gaze, her sympathy and understanding.

  And that he couldn't bear.

  He would tear at his rags, exposing his throat and chest to the hounds. But they backed away from the presence of the stag and its mystery. They fled the moon in its eyes. Bowed before its wisdom.

  That was how the dream went, ever and again. Except tonight. Tonight, while his body lay in its whiskey stupor, nested in the refuse of Lowtown, he heard the ghostsong, and he heard the hounds, but before he could flee, the witch-fire rose higher about the longstone, crackling and hissing. It leapt the distance between grey rock and where he stood.

  Her face was still there, trapped in its stone prison, her calm gaze watching him, but there was another woman watching him as well, looking out at him from her eyes.

  The witch.

  Her voice joined the fading ghostsong.

  He shook his head, willing her from him. The dream was terrible enough, each time the same, but he couldn't bear for her to change it. Because he deserved no less than its punishment. Though he fled it, though he drank an ocean of whiskey to keep it at bay, it was still fitting and just for the night to bring it to him.

  "Go away," he said.

  And then he called on the power of names.

  "Angharad. Leave me alone."

  But already the dream had changed. The menace was gone and he was left with only the serene features etched in the longstone. The moon hanging high above.

 
And wisdom.

  And mystery.

  He bowed his head and wept, and was still weeping when he woke in Lowtown. Woke to the stink of his body and the mire of the alley. Woke to the pain in his heart that tore great racking sobs from his chest.

  He lifted his head to the night sky, framed by the crooked buildings of Lowtown on all sides.

  "Damn her," he cried. "Oh, Arn." The old name came easily to his lips, the stern judgmental strictures of Dath forgotten. "Damn her..."

  He clawed his way to his feet and leaned against a filthy wall, shivering as though fevered. A headache drummed between his temples. His empty eye socket burned. His lame leg held a muscle cramp that left it stiff and aching.

  Understanding, was she? Full of sympathy?

  Well, he would show her.

  He staggered out of the alleyway, drawn to her like a bee to honey, by the secret they shared. By the green. He looked down at his hands, the grimed flesh hiding a witch's fingerbones, the marrow of the Summerlord's gift.

  Curse, he amended. Hafarl's curse.

  For he had sight, but no magic. No wisdom.

  Still the green drew him to her. The cogs of their lives clicked against each other in the machine that was the world. And all he could do was follow.

  29

  The dark peaks and gables of Aron Corser's house loomed up at Angharad out of the night. Watching from the back lane near Corser's stables, she studied the building and its surrounding land. She could spy no sign of guards or witch-finders. There were no lights in the windows, the structure standing private in the darkness, its secrets hidden— from the eyes of housey-folk, at any rate, though not from the Summerborn, for Angharad could sense Jackin's presence, somewhere behind those stone and wood walls.

  He was still alive.

  Thank you, Arn, she called silently skyward, for this small blessing.

  The moon returned her gaze with silence, but not, Angharad sensed, with indifference. She returned her attention to Corser's house, seeking further.

  Jackin's presence was a small flickering blue spark that she could see with her mind's eye. But, as her witchy sight took her further into the building, she sensed something more than just the sleeping witcheries of the kidnapped boy inside. There was another witchery in that house. A deeper enchantment. A darker one.