Nocturne

by Louise Cooper

  “No.” Indigo held out a hand as Forth made to strike once more. “Let me.” She met his eyes in the gloom, and smiled faintly. “Maybe this time I’ll be the lucky one.”

  Forth shrugged and handed the tinderbox over. Indigo held it before the leaf-pile. Concentrate, she told herself silently. Forth willed the forest to end, and it ended. You can succeed in this. Will it. Make it happen.

  “There’s a spark!” Esty said eagerly. Indigo struck again; the second spark caught the dry leaves, and a tiny tongue of flame began to lick at the pile’s edge. Esty squealed with delight and hunched over the precious fire, cupping her hands around it and breathing gently, expertly on the flame to encourage it, and Forth stared at Indigo.

  “How did you do it?”

  She sat back on her heels, only a little less surprised than he was. “I’m not quite sure,” she said. “I was remembering how we came upon the edge of the wood—and before that, how we defeated that howling voice—and I wondered if—”

  She was interrupted by an exclamation from Esty. The outer leaves of the pile were beginning to crackle and curl, and Esty had straightened, triumphant, as the fire took hold—only to freeze abruptly.

  “The flames are the wrong color!” Elation turned to chagrin as she called out. “Look at them—they’re blue!”

  Indigo and Forth stared at the fire. The flames appeared to be burning normally, but instead of a cheerful yellow light, all they gave off was a cold, colorless flicker, while the bright tongues at the fire’s heart were tinged a sickly blue-green.

  For a long, silent moment they all continued to gaze at the flames, and then, cautiously, Esty stretched out one hand. Her face was eerily lit, her spread fingers looked like those of a corpse; she turned her hand this way and that, then looked up at the others.

  “It isn’t even hot. I can’t feel anything, and it should be scorching me by now. See, I can put my hand right into—aah!” As she spoke, Esty had reached out to touch the flames, and she leaped back with a yell of pain, jamming her hand under her armpit.

  “Esty!” Indigo hastened to her side.

  “It b-burned.” Esty stammered the words out between clenched teeth. “I thought—ohh, that hurts!”

  “Let me see.” Indigo had medicinal herbs and salves in her pouch, relics of the small wisecraft skills she’d learned as a child, and carefully she took Esty’s wrist, turning the injured hand to examine it. The skin of the fingertips was red and already blistering; however little light and heat the unnatural fire might be giving off, it certainly burned like any ordinary flame. Indigo started to smear salve from a small phial on to Esty’s fingers, then from the corner of her eye saw Forth approach the fire, a hand outstretched.

  “Forth, be careful!”

  “Don’t worry; I shall. But Esty’s right. Even a handsbreadth away from the flames, I can’t feel any heat.”

  Indigo didn’t reply, but returned her mind to the conundrum. Esty hadn’t expected to be burned, yet the fire had seared her. That made a mockery of the theory she’d begun to formulate and had been about to expound to Forth, and emphasized her earlier comment about the laws of this world being irrational and unpredictable. This incident served as both confirmation and warning; and she resolved to be vigilant in even the smallest matters from now on. Step by careful step. Or the consequences of the next mistake might not be so trivial.

  Under the circumstances, Indigo was relieved to find that Esty’s accident had put the puzzle of the fire out of Forth’s mind. She didn’t raise the subject again, but finished salving Esty’s hand, and they grouped around the fire to eat a spartan meal from their rations. Forth rigged a tripod over the fire and tried to boil a pan of water; but time passed, the water remained cold, and eventually he gave up the attempt and carefully poured the pan’s content back into his waterskin.

  Disappointed by the fact that there could be no hot brew to complete the makeshift feast, they considered their next move.

  “The trouble is,” Forth said morosely, scraping at the grass with a short length of twig, “we don’t know how far this land extends. Da and Chari could be anywhere.” He looked up. “How can we ever hope to find them? That’s the question I keep asking myself.”

  “I know.” Indigo gazed beyond the fire’s dull circle to the sweep of grey moorland and fell reaching away into the distance. “I’d hoped we might be able to track the sleepwalker we followed: if he was being drawn towards some central place, Chari might have followed the same path.”

  “Or any other sleepwalker, for that matter.” Forth’s eyebrows knitted together. “I’d have thought we might have seen some sign of another. The Harvest Lady knows there were enough who fell prey to the sickness.”

  “Indeed; and I can’t answer that conundrum either. But there’s one thread of hope. If Grimya hasn’t become separated from the others, then there’s a chance—just a chance, mind you—that I might be able to make mental contact with her.”

  “Have you tried?” Forth’s gloom lifted a fraction as he grasped at the thought, then sank again as Indigo nodded.

  “Only tentatively, while we were walking, and there was nothing. But I couldn’t give it my full concentration. Later, while I’m watching, I’ll try again.”

  “What about your stone?” Esty asked. “The one you told us about? Might that give us a clue?”

  Indigo drew the lodestone from its pouch and held it towards the fire, the others craning to see. In the chilly glow the golden pinpoint looked dull and uncertain; it was pointing out over the fells, but even as they looked it shivered and darted first to the left and then to the right before settling at the pebble’s center.

  Esty said: “What does that mean?” and Indigo shrugged.

  “Either the lodestone can’t function in this world, or it’s telling us that the demon is all around us.” She slipped the stone back into the leather bag and pushed down the ice spiders that were crawling on her spine. “Neither prospect is very comforting.”

  There was thoughtful silence for a while. Then Forth said:

  “Well, it looks as though we’ve no option but to keep searching until we find some clue to where they’ve gone.”

  “If we ever do,” said Esty.

  “No.” Indigo laid a hand on the girl’s arm, troubled by the fact that her earlier optimism seemed to have slipped away so quickly. “Don’t start to think in that way, Esty, whatever you do. We have to believe that we’ll find them.”

  Forth gave her a probing look, but she didn’t respond. At this moment sleep was more important than talk. She was feeling soporific in the wake of the food, and had seen both Forth and Esty yawning surreptitiously behind their hands. In the morning—she checked herself, realizing that the reflex phrase had lost its meaning—in a few hours they’d be fresher and could look at their predicament with clear minds. Until then, there was nothing more to be said.

  With no way of measuring the time, they had agreed on a pragmatic solution to the problem of keeping watch. Indigo would sit the first vigil (Forth had argued, wanting to take the responsibility himself, but her will had prevailed), and when she felt she could no longer trust herself to stay awake, she would rouse her relief. And so, as Forth and Esty settled down with their heads pillowed on their packs, she fed more leaves to the fire and stared out across the eldritch, silent nightscape.

  Grimya? Her thoughts reached out into the dark, and she listened in her mind for an answering flicker of acknowledgment. Only the deep quiet and the ripples of her own uneasy consciousness answered, and she sighed. The hope was so slender, so frail. Even if Grimya could sense her presence, she might be unable to answer, though that was a possibility Indigo didn’t want to dwell on. And Stead and Chari. Were they still alive? Were they wandering helplessly in this world, or had something come out of the dark, out of the silence, to claim them and to drain their lives, as the crops had been drained of life in Bruhome?

  Indigo was overtaken suddenly by a miserable surge of despair as she ask
ed herself how she and her friends could ever find their lost ones in this benighted world. There was nothing here: nothing to aid them, nothing to sustain them, nothing to give them hope. Only the dead land and its darkness, and no road to lead them forward or back. They were as lost as those they’d so foolishly set out to save; lost, like the sleepwalkers, in a nightmare from which there’d be no awaking …

  A deep-rooted warning bell sounded suddenly in her mind, and with a small shock Indigo saw the trap into which she’d so nearly fallen. Despair. Isolated and lonely, with no one awake to distract her, she’d come close to allowing herself to slip into a dreamlike miasma, seduced by the atmosphere that pervaded this colorless world. The gloom, the empty land, the leaden silence—they were lures working on a tired and unwary mind, drawing her subtly towards the same snare that had caught the sleepwalkers of Bruhome. Despair, and apathy. They were the watchwords of this dimension, the fountainheads of its strength, its greatest weapons. And she had almost succumbed to them.

  “No!” Indigo hissed the word softly but savagely, and, before reason could get the better of her, thrust her left hand straight at the fire’s blue flames. Scorching pain flared in her fingertips and she swore, biting her lip hard and snatching the hand back to slam it down on the grass. It burned agonizingly, but the ploy had worked, breaking the insidious influence. Indigo looked about her quickly, angrily, as though half expecting to see some disappointed shade slinking away, and groped in her pouch for the salve she’d earlier used on Esty’s fingers.

  Then paused.

  Will. The thought came to her abruptly, perhaps goaded by her angry reaction to the demon world’s effort to ensnare her mind. Because of what had happened to Esty, she’d believed that her hand would be burned. Yet the unnatural flames had no true heat; water had refused to boil, and it was only when Esty had touched the fire itself that she had felt pain. Indigo frowned and, trying not to wince, raised her injured hand to examine it. The skin was blistering, the nerves still sent agonized messages to her brain. But—she gathered mental strength, telling herself fiercely that it must be so—she was not burned. She was not. It was an illusion.

  For a moment, in the cold firelight, it seemed that the blisters on her hand wavered and almost vanished altogether. Indigo concentrated harder. No burn, no pain. Go, she told the wound with silent determination.

  And flexed an unmarked hand as the sting of agony faded and vanished.

  Very softly, and with intense satisfaction, Indigo exhaled a long, slow breath. This was corroboration of her tentative theory, and she believed she was beginning to understand the bizarre nature of this dimension. Not fully as yet, and certainly not well enough to allow for complacency; but a few skeins of the mystery were unraveling, and, as she’d suspected, strength of will was the key. She glanced at Esty, who lay curled with her back to the fire, her scorched hand unconsciously hooked and resting on her other wrist to protect it from contact with the ground. With a little help Esty should be able to negate her own injury, and once the seeds of belief and confidence were sown in both her and Forth’s minds they would have a valuable weapon to aid them.

  Indigo flexed her hand with stern satisfaction, shifting her position and stretching her legs out before her to ease stiffness. She didn’t feel tired now; that had vanished along with the creeping apathy, and she knew she’d stay awake for a good few hours yet, perhaps even until Forth or Esty woke naturally. A pity she didn’t possess a spy-glass. Even in this dim light she would have liked to scan the landscape and study the finer detail that at this distance was invisible to the unaided eye.

  And then, as she stared out at the dark fells, she heard a sound that made her stomach clench with the shock of familiarity. Far away, carrying with eerie clarity in the still air, a throaty yipping; rising, repeating, finally translating into the long, ululating howl of a wolf.

  “Grimya!” Indigo sprang upright, almost overbalancing as one foot caught in the strap of her pack. Beside the fire there was a flurry of movement, and Esty sat up. “Wha—?”

  The howl had died and vanished, bringing back silence, and Indigo swung to face Esty. “Did you hear it?” she pleaded hoarsely.

  Esty blinked. “Great Mother, but you frightened me!” she said, then: “Did I hear what?”

  Indigo’s heart pounded painfully beneath her ribs and her mouth felt very dry. “A wolf.”

  “A wolf? You mean, Grimya?” Esty scrambled to her feet and came to stand beside Indigo, peering across the tricky, silvered vista. “Are you sure?”

  Indigo nodded. For a few moments there was quiet as they both listened intently, but the distant cry didn’t come again. Indigo had begun to shiver with reaction, and Esty took her arm, squeezing it soothingly.

  “Sit down, Indigo. No point standing here like a pair of lallygaggers.”

  Indigo obeyed, but distractedly. Then she gathered her wits and said, “I’m sorry, Esty. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t sleep properly anyway.” Esty glanced to where Forth still lay undisturbed. “Not like him. Once he’s away, you could put him inside a drum and start thumping it and he wouldn’t stir. But …” Her green eyes were abruptly serious. “Are you sure you heard Grimya?”

  Indigo looked quickly, defensively at her. “I wasn’t dreaming.”

  “No, no; that’s not what I meant. I meant, are you sure it was Grimya, and not—well, something else?”

  The thought hadn’t occurred to Indigo, and dismay showed in her face as she realized how foolish she’d been. She had jumped to the conclusion that the far-off, howling wolf could only be Grimya, but even her small knowledge and experience of this world should have warned her that such an assumption couldn’t be trusted. It might just as easily have been an illusion. Or it might have been something more tangible. A wolf perhaps—that cry had been unmistakeable—but a wolf which owed its existence to this world, and not to the natural Earth.

  Her shoulders sagged and she stared down at the black grass, feeling shamed. Esty patted her shoulder, then turned to rummage in her pack.

  “I know what we both need.” She produced a small metal flask and shook it conspiratorially. “Forth doesn’t know I brought this. It’s grain spirit. Good for the human spirit, too. And then I’ll take over the watch, and you can have some sleep.”

  Despite herself, Indigo smiled. “You’re very kind, Esty, but I’m not tired. And I couldn’t sleep now.”

  “Neither could I.” Esty uncorked the flask and sniffed it appreciatively. “Well, then: at least I can keep you company.” She took a mouthful of the flask’s contents and held it out. Indigo shook her head, and the girl re-corked the flask and settled down companionably beside her.

  “D’you know,” she said after a pause, “If it wasn’t for the color of the fire, I could almost believe that we were sitting round a proper camp, with the vans behind us and Chari cooking a good meal …” Then she realized what she’d said and the forced cheerfulness evaporated. “Oh, Indigo …”

  “How does your hand feel now?” Indigo spoke up quickly. Mention of the fire had abruptly reminded her of her discovery, and she was anxious both to distract Esty and to test her theory.

  “Ohh … it’s all right, I suppose. Still hurts. But the salve helped.”

  Indigo leaned forward. “Esty, listen. While you were asleep, I—” And she stopped as something rustled in the trees behind them..

  Esty’s head whipped round. “What was that?”

  What Indigo had been about to say collapsed in the face of a tension which became palpable while they both stared hard at the dark wall of the forest. Indigo’s hand had reached instinctively for her crossbow, Esty’s for her knife. But whatever had disturbed the leaves was not, it seemed, about to show itself.

  “I did hear it.” Esty’s gaze slid furtively to Indigo’s face. “Didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “There!” Esty pointed as a low bough on one of the trees just bey
ond the forest perimeter dipped down and sprang back, as though something had forced it aside. There was a shadow, Indigo thought; a shadow that hadn’t been there moments before.

  “Wake Forth,” she said quietly. “Hurry!”

  Esty crawled away to shake her brother’s shoulder, still looking fearfully back at the trees. “Forth! Forth, wake up! There’s—” And the hoarse whisper died in a gag of terror.

  “Esty?” Indigo swung round, startled, and saw Esty crouched like a frozen statue. Her mouth was working spasmodically, but no sound came out. And her eyes were staring, bulging with inarticulate horror.

  Suddenly, Esty screamed at the top of her voice. The scream was wild, insane, tearing from her throat in blind and insensate terror, and it brought Forth shouting from his sleep. Her mind buffeted between shock and her own fear of whatever Esty had seen, Indigo lurched towards the girl, then swung back in confusion, her stunned eyes focusing on the forest as something crashed among the leaves—

  “Ahh, no!” The image smashed against her brain even as she heard the whistling exhalation that through a hundred childhood nightmares had heralded the malignant, dismal hooting of one of the most appalling horrors in Southern Isles mythology. Framed among the black trees she saw the one eye glaring from the huge, misshapen head, the single, distorted leg with its splayed foot thumping through the undergrowth, the gnarled arm reaching towards her to rend and rip, the mouth in the thing’s fleshless chest puckering, working, drooling. She flung herself back, almost falling into the fire, and turned blindly, hands and feet scrabbling for purchase. Esty’s screams dinned in her ears; then suddenly there was a sound like fabric tearing, a rush of displaced air, and Esty plunged past her, running like a deer before hounds away into the dark.

  “Stop her!” It was Forth, Indigo realized through her own roiling terror, and his yell spun her back from the whirlwind of panic. Footsteps thudded in the grass; hands grabbed her, dragging her to her feet—

  And there was nothing in the forest. No reaching claw, no drooling mouth, no hooting. Just the trees, silent and still.