Nocturne

by Louise Cooper

  “Another—” Then abruptly she realized what he meant, and shaded her eyes against the brazen sky to see better.

  A solitary figure was trudging towards the crest of a steep rise. From here she couldn’t tell whether it was male or female, young or old—but its air of mindless purpose was unmistakable.

  She and Forth exchanged a look, the rift between them abruptly forgotten. “Do you think—” Indigo started to say.

  “Can’t be anything else, can it? And he’s heading in the same direction as us.” Forth scanned the road ahead of them. Perhaps a hundred yards on, the fells’ edge bulged out in a steep escarpment around which the track curved. Whatever lay beyond that point was out of sight, but it was clear that the solitary walker’s path must cross their own on the far side of that same hill.

  Forth shortened his reins, making the stallion toss his head with anticipation. “Come on,” he said tersely. “Let’s see where he’s going!”

  The stallion sprang away before Indigo could argue, and she urged her own pony in pursuit. Grimya ran with her, then called eagerly, Indigo, I am faster than your horses on this rough ground—I’ll run ahead and find out what lies beyond!

  Yes, but be wary!

  I shall. Grimya streaked ahead, overtaking Forth, and disappeared around the turn in the road. An instant later Indigo felt the flare of silent shock and alarm from her mind, then the she-wolf reappeared, ears flat to her head, racing back toward them.

  Forth, seeing her, had the presence of mind to rein his pony to a halt, and Grimya ran to Indigo.

  Indigo! On the other side—there is— Confusion roiled from her mind and she finished desperately, You must see for yourself!

  “What’s frightened her?” Forth asked agitatedly.

  ‘ ’I don’t know. We’d best go on, but slowly—be very careful.“

  The ponies had sensed their unease and snorted, jinking, as Indigo and Forth cajoled them on. They rounded the escarpment—and Forth’s shocked curse was echoed by a cry of horror from Indigo as they saw what barred the road ahead.

  The forest rose out of the ground before them, towering against the moody sky. Vast black trees had smashed up through earth and rock, their alien, evilly twisted branches tangling together to form an impenetrable barrier that repelled the brassy daylight and seemed to reflect an intense inner darkness of its own. Black leaves, thick and waxy with a malignant sheen, rustled without a breath of wind to stir them, the sound horribly redolent of whispering, conspiratorial voices. And, though no living creature could have hoped to break through their wall, the trees seemed to beckon, to lure, as though they would enfold and devour anything that came within their reach.

  Forth looked wildly to left and right. The unnatural forest spread away in both directions, stretching into the distance until it was swallowed by the deepening haze. For a moment the sight seemed to freeze Forth’s mind; then he twisted in his saddle and stared uncomprehendingly at Indigo.

  “It wasn’t there before!” His voice was stark, horrified. “Before we reached the turn in the road—we’d have seen it, we couldn’t have missed it. But it wasn’t there!”

  Indigo didn’t answer him. She was staring at the malevolent trees, her eyes wide, her face rigid. Forth said, “Indigo—” but she only continued to look fixedly ahead and didn’t even hear him.

  Thorns. Thorns like knives, like sword-blades: she could see them, vicious and deadly against the sinuous movements of the leaves. Thorns that could impale a man, pierce him and pin him and trap him like a fly in a spider’s web, to bleed his life slowly away in agony… The memory which had haunted her nightmares for so long, which she had learned so slowly and so painfully to banish from her waking mind, came searing back to grip her in its monstrous hand. She had seen this place, these trees, before. They had no place on the mortal Earth, but were things of another world, a world of demons.

  The world into which, a quarter of a century ago, her own love Fenran had been taken, broken and bleeding, to suffer the torments of the living death from which she alone might one day free him.

  Forth was calling out to her, urgently now, alarmed by the paralysis that made her deaf and blind to his presence. Grimya was backing away from the trees, snarling, the hair along her spine bristling. Indigo’s pony trembled, stiff-legged, its eyes rolling as it fought the bit: but she was aware of nothing but the forest, and the images that her mind was superimposing upon the deadly black branches.

  Suddenly an awful sound broke from her throat: pain and horror and fear mingling in a wordless, croaking cry. She snatched at her reins, jerking the pony’s head about, and the animal’s hooves slipped and scrabbled as she kicked it into a standing gallop, flying down the track that would take her back to Bruhome.

  •CHAPTER•V•

  “I’m all right.” Indigo pulled her arms back out of Forth’s grasp and pushed hair from her eyes with a nervous, self-conscious movement. “Truly, Forth. I’m all right now.”

  Forth sighed, letting his shoulders relax and the air seep back into his lungs. Grimya hadn’t been able to catch Indigo, and Forth had chased her for the best part of two miles before the chestnut stallion’s greater stamina began to assert itself and he’d been able to overtake her, reach perilously across the gap between them to grab her pony’s bridle, and force her to a halt. Unbalanced, Indigo had fallen from the saddle, and as Forth went to help her up, to his chagrin she had burst into tears. He’d never seen her cry before: despite the fact that she was—or so Forth believed—only a few years his senior, somehow he’d always felt like a child by comparison; and to see her sobbing as bitterly as one of his little sisters when something hurt or frightened them was bewildering. He’d tried to comfort her, but knew his efforts were gauche and clumsy, and he was relieved when at last she regained her self-control and the tears ceased.

  Indigo wiped her eyes. Grimya stood gazing worriedly up at her, knowing what was wrong but not knowing what she could say, and after a few moments Indigo felt able to look at Forth directly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. “I shouldn’t have ridden off like that.”

  “That place was enough to unman anyone,” Forth replied with considerable feeling. “But—what was it that really upset you, Indigo? It just isn’t like you to be so …” He faltered, unable to find the right word, and Indigo smiled ruefully.

  “Frightened? Don’t try to be kind to me, Forth; it’s true. I was terrified. But I don’t think I know how to explain why.” For a moment her eyes unfocused, as though she was seeing something else, something invisible to him, overlaid on the landscape before her. Then it passed with a small shiver, and when she looked at him again her full composure had returned.

  “Well,” she said. “What now?”

  Forth understood her meaning. The road beyond the distant escarpment was impassable: whatever the nature or origin of that evil forest, they could no more break through the barrier it presented than fly over it. Nor, he admitted to himself, did he want to risk venturing anywhere near it again. There was, it seemed, only one choice open to them.

  “We’d best go back to Bruhome. There’s no point trying to find another route, not with the storm so close. We’ll have to return, and wait till it passes.” Despite his fear and uncertainty, and increasing worry for Chari’s plight, his mouth couldn’t help but twitch in a wry smile. “It seems you won’t be rid of us quite as easily as you’d thought.”

  Indigo hung her head. “Oh, Forth …”

  “Come on, now.” Afraid that she might cry again, he patted her shoulder awkwardly and guided her back towards the waiting ponies. “Better hurry, or it’ll be on us. Don’t want a dose of the rain-ague to add to our troubles, do we?”

  Indigo said nothing, only nodded, and they remounted and continued on southward. Grimya, loping alongside Indigo’s pony, was silent for a while, but at last she communicated a tentative message.

  Indigo. That forest. We have seen it before, haven’t we?

 
Indigo didn’t reply, but the she-wolf felt the quick stab of pain that emanated from her mind. It comes from the world of demons, Grimya persisted. The twisted world, where we ventured once before and were almost lost. Does this mean that we will have to enter that world again?

  Indigo didn’t know the answer to that question. It might be that the form the black forest had taken was nothing more than an evil coincidence. Or it might be that somewhere beyond the barrier of those corrupted trees lay another dimension, parallel to but removed from their own, and that there lay the object of their search and the source of the blight that had come to Bruhome.

  But she didn’t want to think of that. Not yet, not with the image of the forest still so clear in her memory. It opened too many old wounds.

  Grimya read her thoughts, and said nothing more. But as they hastened on, with the brooding, stifling cloud ramparts spreading across the sky towards them, her memories, too, were awakening. And on a deep level, in ways that delved far beyond a natural mortal instinct, she felt afraid.

  They arrived in Bruhome as the afternoon was waning, beating the storm, at Forth’s calculation, by a little over an hour. Turning the weary ponies into the river meadow, they found the Brabazons together with the other players who still remained in the town, busily making their wagons fast against the elements. Fires had been put out, possessions stowed away; though the broken axle had not been mended, it was clear that no one would be making any attempt to move on until the storm was over.

  Stead greeted them with a mixture of dismay at the failure of their mission and relief that they were safe. Forth had promised to say nothing of Indigo’s revelation that she meant to leave them; but he wasted no time in describing what had happened to them on the road. Stead listened with growing disquiet to the tale, and when he’d heard all there was to tell his brows came together in an unhappy frown.

  “So it’s true, then? This forest—it isn’t just drunkards’ stories?” He eyed the rapidly darkening sky as though it presented some personal threat. “I don’t like this. Seems to me that things hereabouts are growing worse too quickly for comfort. They’ve abandoned the Revels, did you know? Can’t say I was surprised, but it shows how worried the townsfolk are now. There’ve been seven more taken the sickness since you left; two of them here among the players. And more disappearances. Now this storm: they’re saying it’s likely to be the worst there’s been in these parts for a good many years, and folk are starting to fear that it’s all one play with the other bad events.“

  Indigo asked, “Chari’s no better?”

  “No better and no worse. She just lies there as though she was sleeping, but nothing will wake her. And there’s a smile on her face that turns my blood cold when I look at her.” Stead shuddered. “They all smile like that, so I’ve been told. It’s uncanny. Horrible.”

  “Da,” Forth put in. “There’s nothing more we can do for her until the storm’s over. I’d best get the ponies unsaddled and tether them with the others. By the look of that sky, I’d take any wager that it’ll be on us before we know it.”

  As though in answer to his words, a faint rumble echoed in the distance, the first threatening murmur of thunder far off to the west among the fells. Stead nodded.

  “Yes. Get them all together on the lee side, and make sure the stallion can’t chew through his rope this time. Then come into the main van. Better if we all stay together tonight.” He hunched his shoulders defensively, as though he already felt the chill bite of rain through his shirt, and added, more to himself than to Indigo and Forth, “No: I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”

  Forth’s guess proved right, and the storm broke an hour later. The light had changed from sullen brassiness to a tricky, unreal gloom that deepened as the sky’s menace intensified. The air felt alive with suppressed energy, and in the caravan’s softly lit interior faces were drawn and nervous with anticipation. The first gargantuan flash caught them all by surprise; the lightning was answered by a rolling bawl of thunder, and seconds later came a rising, swelling hiss as the rain began.

  The downpour was torrential, and the lightning continuous. Between the roaring of thunder and the racket of rain battering on the roof, conversation inside the caravan was all but impossible. To distract the younger children, Esty, Rance and Indigo devised a mime game, but as they played, striving to maintain a cheerful facade, Indigo’s eyes were often drawn to the pallet in a darkened corner of the van, where Chari lay still and silent under a patchwork blanket. The frequent lightning flashes starkly illuminated the girl’s face, and the smile which had so unnerved Stead looked chillingly like the rictus of a corpse in the glare. Once, to her shock, Indigo thought that Chari’s eyes had opened and that she was staring wildly at her; but as the next flash lit the van she realized that it had been no more than a momentary illusion. None the less, she tried not to look at Chari again.

  It was impossible to judge how long the storm lasted. It seemed to continue for hours, so that minds and senses became numbed to it, awaiting the lightning and listening to the thunder and rain with a weariness that bordered on indifference. But at last they became aware that the intervals between the elemental explosions were growing longer, until eventually the drumming on the roof lapsed to a gentler pattering, and the flashes diminished and the thunder’s voice began to fade as the storm marched away into the east and left Bruhome behind.

  When the children, under Esty’s direction, had counted to a hundred five times without seeing another flash, Stead got to his feet and picked his way to the caravan door. As he opened the upper half, cool air rushed in, and with it a faint smell of ozone. A sound which previously had been masked by the storm now became audible; the hectic rush of water not too far away: and Forth scrambled up, his eyes alarmed.

  “Da, the river—”

  “It’s all right.” Stead waved him down again, then poked his head out into the night. “It’s in spate, but it hasn’t burst its banks. The tents down by the edge are still standing; I can just make ’em out.”

  “Thanks be for small miracles,” Forth said fervently.

  “Right enough; but all the same we’d best take a look round and see if anything’s been damaged.” Stead pulled his head back in. “Everybody all right, then? Come on, Pi; you can take your face out of Honi’s skirt now, the storm’s gone.”

  Tension eased in talk and laughter as they emerged from the caravan and descended the steps to the sodden ground. The youngest Brabazons reacted to their relief with a surge of energetic excitement, and were allowed to help their elders with the checking of the vans and animals. By a second small miracle there seemed to be no damage either to the Brabazons’ camp or to those of the other travelers who now emerged from shelter; a swift count revealed the ponies and oxen all safe and sound, and Stead finally announced that there was no more to be done, and they could all retire for what was left of the night.

  Indigo was asleep almost as soon as she slipped beneath her blanket and laid her head on the pillow she shared with Esty. The day had been long and exhausting enough to give her a reprieve from dreams, and she rested undisturbed until a faint presence, a niggling sense of disquiet, began to intrude on her dormant mind. She tried to ignore it but it persisted, until she found herself awake in the dark van with the silhouettes of her companions around her. For a few moments, still drowsy, she didn’t know what had woken her: then she saw Grimya’s faint outline against the part-open door and realised that the wolf was trying to communicate.

  Grimya? She wanted only to turn over and go back to sleep, and her mental query was tinged with irritation. What is it?

  I don’t know. Grimya’s head turned; Indigo saw her sharply-pricked ears move against the night. But something is wrong.

  Indigo sighed, and sat up. What do you mean, wrong?

  I don’t know, Grimya said again, unhappily. But my instinct is telling me… She paused, then a shiver ran down the length of her body. My instinct is telling me that the day has come.
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  Grimya, it’s still pitch dark!

  Yes. But I feel it should be day. The night has passed. I feel it.

  Indigo quelled her anger. Grimya, too, must be weary and still tense in the wake of the storm; little wonder that her sense of time, usually so reliable, had slipped out of kilter. She could hardly blame her for her agitation.

  Come here. She held out a hand, beckoning. Come and lie down by me. We ‘re both very tired, and your mind’s probably playing tricks with you. Try to sleep until it gets light again. You’ll feel better then.

  Grimya whined softly, as though not convinced, but padded over none the less and stretched out at Indigo’s side. Slipping an arm over her Indigo felt the rapid beat of her heart under the coarse fur, and stroked her head soothingly.

  There, now. She yawned hugely. Better?

  I… think so.

  Good. Go to sleep now. The world was already slipping away into soft, dark velvet. Go to sleep.

  Again, there were no dreams to haunt her. And when, refreshed, she woke naturally at last, she turned on to her back, stretched her arms, and opened her eyes.

  And, as the darkness of sleep gave way to the darkness of reality, she realized with a growing sense of horror that Grimya had been right.

  Indigo sat up in a flurry of movement. For a bare few seconds her mind tried to tell her that this was a mistake, that she too had succumbed to overtiredness and dawn hadn’t yet broken. But she knew the truth. By the same instinct, less acutely honed than Grimya’s animal awareness but now refusing to be gainsaid, she knew she’d slept for many hours, and the night should have been over.

  Fear, unformed but horribly real, crawled over her skin like cold spiders, and she projected a tentative call. Grimya?

  Movement in the dark; and the she-wolf slid out of the deeper shadows towards her. Indigo! At last!

  How long have I slept?

  I don’t know. I, too, was asleep, and I can’t tell how many hours have passed. But it must have been a long time.

  And it’s still dark…