by Jo Spurrier
The work went quickly with Kian’s aid, though he rolled his eyes at the strangeness of collecting things like the hazel twigs, and catkins from thirteen different willow trees.
Without him it would have taken me twice as long to find everything. As it was the list led us far afield, up into the high meadows where a particular kind of caterpillar spun its cocoon. By the time we were finished we were miles from where we began, or from anything I recognised. The only landmark I could see was a distant waterfall that vanished from time to time behind the slopes.
At last, my empty belly was rumbling loud enough that even Kian could hear it. But when I flushed and made apologies, he just laughed before his smile quickly faded. ‘Did she send you out with something to eat, at least?’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘She didn’t, but that’s my fault more than hers, I should have packed something. To tell the truth, she barely seems to notice if she’s eaten or not, most of the time.’
‘Oh really? Must be nice. Well, there’s a stream over this way. Let me tell you, water in an empty belly is better than nothing.’
I followed him back down the hillside, through meadow and around thicket, leading the horse until we found a clear stream running over rocks. I watered the horse first, and then tethered him to a sapling before returning to the water myself to drink with cupped hands.
There, under the water, a glimmer of light caught my eye, and I frowned at the sparkling water. Another one? I reached in, cautiously, not believing it until my fingertips felt the smooth faces and crisp edges of the crystal, smaller than the one I’d found yesterday, but if anything, more perfect. It was only when I lifted it out to sparkle in the sunlight that I wondered what Kian would think if he saw it. I didn’t know why I kept finding these stones but I couldn’t deny the strangeness of it, and I knew full well he had nothing but hatred for witches. I didn’t want to risk having him turn some of that coldness against me, when he was the only person here I felt I could truly talk to.
Kian had wandered downstream a little while I saw to the horse, and he was kneeling on a rock overhanging a pool, peering down into the water, so it was easy enough for me to sneak the crystal out of the water and tuck it into the pocket of my apron. Then, drinking from cupped hands, I watched as he stripped off his jacket and rolled up his sleeve. As slender as he was, his bare arm was all muscle as he dipped his hand into the water and reached down into the cool depths.
For a moment, we were all perfectly still, him lying flat on the rock, me crouched on my heels at the water’s edge. And then, with a splash and a crow of victory, he threw a streak of silver onto the bank of the stream — a mountain trout, flopping and dancing among the rocks.
In what seemed like no time at all, he had half-a-dozen of them there, and all I could do was gape as he lined them up on the rock and pulled out a knife to clean them. ‘There we are,’ he said, ‘a nice bit of lunch.’
‘That was amazing!’ I said. ‘How did you do it?’
He gave me a shy grin. ‘It’s a trick my ma taught me. Takes a bit of work to learn it, though. When we went fishing we’d bring a bucket and she’d put one in it for me to practice on.’
‘Oh,’ I said, with a wistful note. I couldn’t imagine my ma doing anything like that. I dreaded it when she’d try to teach me something new, she was always so impatient if I couldn’t get it right away.
‘Why don’t you see if you can find us some dry twigs and such?’ he said. ‘I’ll get a fire going and have these grilled in a flash.’
As soon as I came back with an armful of wood, he lit a fire with flint and steel, and with the fish strung on green twigs, sank the ends of the sticks into the earth to hang over the flames.
Sitting there, I had an idea, and began to hatch a plan. ‘Kian?’
‘Mm?’ he said, glancing up.
‘You must have a hard time coming by any coin out here.’
He gave me a slight frown. ‘I can make most of what I need, or scavenge it. You’d be amazed what folk throw onto their rubbish heaps.’
‘But what if I could arrange to get you a bit of money, now and then? If you brought a couple of rabbits or a string of fish to the cottage every week or so, I’m sure I could convince Aleida to pay you for it.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You want me to have dealings with that witch? Take her money?’
‘Aleida’s not evil like the old one was,’ I said. ‘I’m sure of it. I mean, the old one’s dead, thanks to her; and she says she’s going to do something about that warlock, and the beasts.’
Kian snorted. ‘How? I saw what happened yesterday. He grabbed her by the throat and she couldn’t do a blasted thing about it.’
I remembered the wand she’d had hidden under her cloak. ‘I think, I think she let that happen. I think she wanted him to think she was weak.’
‘But that’s just more deception, isn’t it? Folk like that, they’re just liars through and through. Sure it’s lonely, living like this, and sure I have to make do with what I’ve got rather than spend coin on fancy things, but no one out here lies to me.’
I could feel the crystal hidden in my apron pocket — suddenly it felt like it was made of lead. I hoped my cheeks weren’t flushing. ‘Just think about it? Please? If nothing else, it’d mean I could see you every week or two.’
He stopped then, as though that was something he hadn’t considered. ‘Well, that’s a good point. I, I’d like that. If I’m not careful, I could get real used to having your company. I’m just . . . Dee, I’m afraid she’s going to be just like the last one. You don’t know what it’s like, living next to them. If you knew the misery they’ve caused, the damage they’ve done. And now that young one is swanning back in here like she owns the place. She’s no different than the old Blackbone, really. How could she be, when the old one found her, gave her power, and trained her up in her image? They’re just the same.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I think she’s different. But I don’t want to keep harping on at you. If she’s different, you’ll soon see it. You and everyone else around here.’
‘I hope you’re right. But I’ll tell you this, Dee. If I’m right, and she’s not different; if you ever decide you need to get away, I’ll help you.’ He plucked one of the trout from over the fire and handed it to me, the white flesh tender and steaming. ‘I just don’t want to see you end up like the other poor souls who’ve crossed paths with those wretches, and paid dearly for it.’
CHAPTER 7
After we’d devoured every morsel, I collected the horse and made sure the packs were safely tied. ‘Many thanks for the food. I haven’t had fish that fresh in years.’
‘You’re welcome. I haven’t had anyone to share it with in years, either. Now, do you know your way back home?’
I bit my lip, looking out over the hillsides. ‘Um, that way, I think?’
He sighed and shook his head. ‘I guess I’d better come with you.’
‘I’m sorry, I know we’ve come miles and miles from where we started.’ I glanced up at Aleida’s grey. I’d hardly spent any time at all on his back, and I had a thought. ‘Why don’t we ride? We’ve just been strolling along, so he’s fresh as a daisy and you don’t look like you weigh all that much.’
He gave me a wide-eyed look. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Dee. I’ve never ridden a horse.’
What, never? I almost said it aloud, but at the last minute I remembered how much I hated the response I always got when folk found out I couldn’t read. What do you mean you can’t read? Didn’t you go to school?
Of course he’d never ridden a horse. Poor folk didn’t, and despite my patched dresses and hand-me-down boots, it had been a lot of years since Ma and me were truly poor and hungry. ‘Then come and ride with me,’ I said with a smile.
He looked nervous, scuffing his foot in the loose earth. ‘I . . . oh all right, then.’
I climbed up into the saddle, arranging my skirts as discreetly as I could manage and very glad that I had my nice stoc
kings on, to avoid showing too much leg. Then I kicked my feet out of the stirrups and offered a hand behind my back, ready to help him up. ‘Come on, then. Put your foot in the stirrup and take my hand.’
It took a couple of tries, but then he was sitting behind me, his chest against my back. There truly wasn’t much of him at all, the saddle stayed firmly put under his weight in the stirrup, and his hand took mine more for balance than anything else. Then, as he settled onto the saddlebags, the grey danced beneath us and his arms wrapped tight around my waist. Abruptly, he pulled away. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘No, it’s all right,’ I said, pulling the horse’s head in to quiet his stamping feet. Any doubts I had in this plan were swiftly fading. The horse set out with a sprightly step and it seemed to me he could carry three of us and barely feel the weight. ‘If you start to slip, you’d best grab for the saddle, or his mane. If you hold on to me we might both go over.’
‘Ah, good point.’ He had to reach around me to hold the saddle-horn, which meant that he was pressed right against my back. Part of me rather enjoyed the feel of it, but most of me just wanted to giggle and gibber with nerves. I tried very hard to squash that part down — the last thing I wanted was to make the grey think there was something here to be nervous about. I did my best to think soothing thoughts for the both of us. ‘So,’ I said, ‘where are we heading?’
‘Oh! Ah, that way,’ he said, pointing, and then quickly grabbed for the saddle-horn once again.
Heading homewards, my thoughts turned to Aleida, and I wondered how she was going with the construct she meant to build, and if she was getting impatient that I’d taken so long to collect her ingredients. Well, honestly, it’s her own fault. She had to know I wouldn’t be able to do it quickly. She knows what it’s like to be a stranger out here, after all.
I remembered, then, what she’d said about Bennett, and how she’d met him, and suddenly I felt very strange. That was quite a coincidence, wasn’t it? She’d been in the exact position I was in, sent out into unfamiliar territory to collect things she had no idea how to find, only to come across a local lad who helped her. Once again I had that peculiar sensation, as though the world had pulled back around me and I was watching everything from a state of calm detachment, before it all snapped back into focus.
Well, no, I told myself. It’s not the same circumstance at all. And besides, what does it matter if there are some similarities? It doesn’t mean anything.
I had bigger things to worry about, anyway — like this warlock. Aleida might have a plan to deal with him, but I wasn’t looking forward to carrying it out, and I strongly suspected she’d need my help. She wasn’t up to doing it all by herself; and even if she said she was, I didn’t like the idea of letting her go alone.
‘Hey, Kian?’ I said. ‘You must know this area pretty well, right?’
‘Pretty well? I know it like the back of my hand,’ he said.
‘That’s what I thought. So let me pick your brains a little. That fellow we saw yesterday must be camped somewhere nearby. You wouldn’t happen to know where a fellow with three horses and not much gear would find a spot to hole up for a few days, would you?’
I felt him shift behind me. ‘There are a few spots I can think of.’
‘Would you show me?’
For a moment there was silence. ‘You shouldn’t get mixed up in her affairs. Not any more than you already are.’
I didn’t want to risk an argument. The morning had been too pleasant to spoil it now. ‘Oh, I’m just thinking, in case she’s mad that I took so long, if I can tell her where the black rider is camped she might forgive me for it.’
‘Oh, right. Well, there’s an old bothy near the river, but that’s a bit too close to Black Oak Cottage—’
‘He’s not there,’ I broke in. ‘I was there this morning, the place is deserted.’
‘Well, there’s a couple of little herdsman’s shelters up in the high meadows, but there’ll be folk up there at this time of year, grazing their cattle.’ He shifted again. ‘Actually, there is a place. It’s a few miles from the cottage, down a ravine. There’s a cave there, big enough for a couple of men and horses, with water and firewood nearby. It’s no good for herders or folks on any regular business, but it’s a good place for laying low, if you know what I mean.’
‘Well that sounds promising. Could we go and take a look? Carefully, I mean.’
‘Oh, very carefully. I don’t want that fellow turning his attention our way. But if he’s there we should see it easily enough, those big horses will leave tracks a blind man could follow.’
‘All right, good. If we see them, that will be enough to tell my mistress, and we should be able to get in and out without being seen. Where do we go?’
‘Head back to the main road. There’s a stream flowing to the south that leads into the ravine.’
We set out, picking our way through the trees and following an easy path that kept to the flat — for Kian’s sake, I told myself, since he was so green at sitting a horse, though I had to admit he was doing well.
We skirted around the trees as well, since low branches were a hazard to any rider, but as we passed by one thicket I couldn’t help but notice huge clods of earth scattered over the patchy grass and wet litter of the forest floor. There were dozens of them, and still more smaller chunks, scattered around as though cast by a careless hand.
I reined in to look it over. ‘That’s odd, isn’t it?’ I twisted around to look over my shoulder at him.
‘Yeah,’ Kian said. ‘It’s odd.’
I turned the horse towards the thicket, and watched his ears. He didn’t seem concerned, and even with the two of us on his back, I reckoned he would take any excuse for a run. ‘Everything seems quiet, though.’
‘True. Take us a bit closer, maybe?’
I nudged the horse onwards, closer and closer to the thicket. There was a clear trail of loose earth, I could see it now that we’d come closer. The clods nearest the trees were largest, some bigger than my head.
Behind me, Kian hissed. ‘Something came through here. Something big. Look over there, there’s a print it left behind.’ He pointed, and I nudged the horse closer.
The print looked like no kind of foot that I’d ever seen — it looked like some unholy combination of a hand and a foot, with either stubby, clubbed fingers or long, grasping toes. ‘Good gods,’ I said.
‘And look, through there.’ He leaned forward, over my shoulder, and pointed into the thicket. Deep within the trees was a dark patch of earth. No, a hole in the earth, dark and damp.
We edged as close as the trees would let us.
The hole was enormous, big enough to swallow the stable-block back at Black Oak. The bottom of it was littered with loose earth, while broken tree roots bristled around the walls and the saplings around the edge leaned precariously over it, as though they’d fall in at the first touch of rain or wind. ‘Earthbeast,’ I said. ‘That’s what she called them. One was born from here, I think.’
Kian felt tense behind me. ‘I think you must be right.’
‘I wonder how long ago?’
‘A few hours, from the look of it. This morning, I’d say, maybe around dawn? But listen, the birds are still chirping. It’s long gone, I’d say.’
‘Well, thank the Lord and Lady for that. But I wonder how many of them are out here?’ I remembered what Aleida had said, about Gyssha making monsters by firelight like other folk knitted socks.
‘Gods only know,’ Kian said, and I felt him shiver. ‘Let’s keep moving.’
‘Yes, of course.’
We left the cavernous hole in the earth behind, and, a disconcertingly short time later, found the road; though to my mind it hardly deserved the name when it was little more than wagon-ruts cutting through the soft earth.
I kept watch for anything that looked familiar, any sign that we were heading back towards the cottage, but the landmarks all looked the same, and I felt like I could have been anywhere in t
hese hills. I couldn’t even see the waterfall from here.
After heading north a ways, we reached the stream. Out here in the wilderness there was just a shallow, rocky ford that the grey splashed through without hesitation. ‘Turn here,’ Kian said, pointing downstream. ‘And keep the horse off to the side, don’t let him trample any tracks.’
We didn’t see any prints at first, what with the rocks beside the stream and the bracken that choked the damp ground. After a while I reined in. ‘Kian, I’m not sure . . .’
‘Keep going,’ he said. ‘Just a bit further.’
Biting my lip, I pushed the horse on, around a willow tree that hung across the water in a green curtain. The ground was getting rockier here and ahead of us it rose, soil giving way to rocks and rubble, just as it had when I’d climbed the slope to the bothy that morning.
As the ground rose, the stream sank, cutting through the hillside in a rock-strewn ravine. Had I stumbled across the place by myself I wouldn’t have looked any further — the water filled the entrance between the rocks, and it looked for all the world like there was no point going on, just a death-trap of water and rock. But there on the sandy bank above the water were hoofprints.
They were bigger by far than the grey’s rather dainty hooves, and I thought of the three black horses I’d seen on the road, their huge hooves feathered with coarse black hair. There were many prints headed in, and even to my untrained eye the prints looked old and crumbling, but cutting across them was another, newer set. I realised, frowning to myself, that I had given no thought to what had happened to the horse yesterday after Aleida’s beast had torn apart the construct, but if I was reading these tracks correctly it had somehow found its way back to its master. ‘All right,’ I muttered to Kian. ‘I think this is the place.’
‘So now what?’ he whispered back.
‘Now we get out of here. Back to the cottage.’