The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  After a great deal of huffing and straining, Tolpuddle brought in his net. As he heaved it into the boat, the full moon shone out from behind the trees, and he caught his breath like a drowning man. A damsel lay in the net. Her long tresses were green, her skin pale as a fish’s belly. She was about the size of a maid twelve Winters old. There was naught about her to make the two mortals afraid.

  “Ah!” breathed Eoin. “’Tis an asrai you’ve caught, Siv. What a pretty water-girl, just like a doll of porcelain.”

  The seelie wight appeared to be perfectly made, although her proportions were inhuman: slender fingers sprouted from slender hands; fragile feet terminated elongated legs as slim as a child’s arm. Her single garment was made of some gauzy fabric, ragged edged.

  “I have heard my grandfather say wights such as these only float up from their cold underwater haunts once in a century,” said Tolpuddle wonderingly. “They come to view the moon, for by its light they increase their size.”

  “If that is so,” dubiously said Eoin, “this one must be centuries old indeed.”

  “Are you old, wet thing?” Tolpuddle said to the wight.

  Turning her waiflike face up toward her captors, the gentle asrai fell to her knees and began speaking in some incomprehensible language, her delicate hands clasped in front of her as though she was pleading. To mortal ears, her speech sounded like tiny waves at play among the rushes along the banks.

  “I’m thinking she wants to go back in the water,” suggested Eoin.

  Shaking his head, Tolpuddle answered determinedly, “I’m thinking the children of Marshtown will like to see it,” he said.

  “Fie, you are too hard-hearted!” admonished Eoin.

  “And I am thinking,” Tolpuddle added stubbornly, “the rich nobles of Rua will like to show it in their fishponds. They will be giving me hard coin for the privilege.” He seized the oars. “Let’s bring it to land,” he said, and began rowing toward the shore.

  The asrai extricated one slim alabaster arm from the tangles of the net. Repeatedly she gestured toward the sky. A rugged bank of rain clouds was racing toward the moon. When Tolpuddle took no notice, she placed a hand on his arm.

  Startled, he gave a loud cry and almost dropped the oars. As if his blood warmth had seared her, the water wight recoiled from him and crouched in the hollow of the prow, concealing herself with her long tresses of virescent hair. Once or twice she whimpered.

  “Let her go, Siv,” Eoin snapped testily.

  “Its touch is cool as froth and bubble,” exclaimed suddenly deaf Tolpuddle, glancing at his arm where the wight’s hand had rested on him.

  On reaching the shore of an islet, Tolpuddle left the asrai in the boat, covering her with sopping waterweeds and dripping armfuls of rushes. “The light of morning might prove too bright for it,” he declared knowledgeably, “but a blanket of hornwort and fanwort will keep it fresh.” Gingerly he touched his left arm. “Ah, but the touch of its little hand has shrammed me,” he complained. “My arm is cold as midwinter mud.”

  The moans from beneath the weed were sounding fainter.

  “I’m thinking ’tis a shame to cage such a pretty thing,” grumbled Eoin.

  “’Tis mine,” reiterated Tolpuddle pettishly. “I caught it, and I’m after keeping it.”

  He would speak no more on the subject, and although Eoin pitied the captured water sprite, his friend grew indignant and agitated whenever he went near the boat.

  “I am not a rich man,” Tolpuddle said as they lay down to sleep, “but I soon will be.”

  Next morning his arm was still cold, and he could hardly move it. His eagerness to re-examine his catch overriding his discomfort, he removed the rushes from where the asrai had been huddled. Emitting a shriek of despair, he sat back on his haunches, sobbing wordlessly. His net lay vacant. All that remained of his captive was a film of moisture on the planks; she had dissolved or faded.

  An icicle slipped down the cylinder of Eoin’s spine. Her vanishment was so unexpected, so alien, so eldritch. Had she in some way escaped? Could it be she had drowned in the air, or perished in some unknowable way of the immortals? He could never accustom himself to the strange laws governing wights.

  Tolpuddle waxed sullen for half the morning, and his arm hung limp at his side. His gloomy moods, however, were ephemeral. As the sun rose, so did his spirits, and soon he was smiling again as though nothing had happened—but Eoin, in his heart, regretted the fate of the harmless asrai.

  “A pretty porcelain doll,” he murmured nostalgically to the small ripples among the lakeside sedges.

  Late on War’s Day, two days subsequent, the pike-fishers had well and truly left behind the haunts of mortal men and entered eldritch zones. They moved now among slow waters and secretive islets unfamiliar to them both. From moss-hung willows, withies trailed elegantly into narrow channels as dark as wine. The youths must push aside these beaded draperies to make headway. Eoin rowed past hidden coves, havens for mallard, teal, and tufted ducks. Shy water rail could be heard calling from the reedbeds, while blackcaps and willow warblers trilled in the trees. The illkept vessel was taking water. Occasionally Tolpuddle had to bale, using his good arm.

  “Siv, my friend,” declared Eoin, “we have made good time. By my reckoning, Glassmere lies close to these reaches, beyond that mossy spit and that grassy apron crammed with kingcups. Make for this inlet in the isle of black alders. We shall make camp beneath them. Tomorrow morn we shall plumb these depths for Great-grandfather Pike, who will be lucky if he eludes us.”

  To form a rude shelter, they draped a sheet of oilcloth over a horizontally extended branch. Tolpuddle worked awkwardly, his arm flaccid and useless. “I’ll be asking Mistress Arrowgrass to give me a poultice for this when we get home,” he said as he unpacked the boat. Next moment he exclaimed in astonishment, “What have we here, Eoin? A firkin, it seems! I never noticed it!”

  “A firkin it is,” said his companion, who had concealed the barrel beneath a canvas to prevent Tolpuddle from discovering it on the first day, “well made by Alderfen, our very own cooper of the Marsh. But better even than its manufacture are its contents, for it is full of good brown ale.”

  “Swampwater!” Tolpuddle said enthusiastically. “By gum, that’ll thaw this cold arm of mine!”

  That night they consumed almost half the firkin.

  Next morning, with remarkable stamina, Eoin was rowing toward Glassmere, sometimes pausing to quaff ale from a pewter mug, when he began to bellow forth the other half of his tavern song about the farmer and the bogie.

  “The bogie was no foolish gull, no simpleton was he,

  He started to suspect the farmer of some trickery.

  Next year in Spring he said, ‘Tis corn you’ll sow, we both shall reap,

  And he who wins the mowing match shall have this field to keep!’

  “A mowing match, a mowing match!” Tolpuddle’s fervor had not waned overnight, in spite of his incapacitated limb.

  “The winner keeps the field!” Eoin sang.

  “The wight and man together did divide the field in two.

  The farmer sowed both halves and nursed the corn ears as they grew.

  Before the crop was ripe, he on the blacksmith’s door did knock—

  ‘Three hundred iron rods I need, as thin as stems of dock.’

  “The farmer took the iron rods and to the field he hied.

  He stuck those rods all through the corn that grew on Bogie’s side.

  But gloating on his certain prize, the bogie did not know,

  And when it came to harvesttime, he shouted, ‘Ready—go!’

  “They both began to mow the corn like whirlwinds in a race.

  The farmer got on well, but Bogie could not match his pace.

  ‘These cursed hard docks! These cursed hard docks!’ the farmer heard him mutter,

  And soon his scythe did grow so blunt it couldn’t have cut butter!

  “Couldn’t have cut butter! Couldn’t hav
e cut butter! Soon the wight’s scythe grew so blunt it couldn’t have cut butter!” imaginatively sang Tolpuddle.

  “As half the morning wore away, the wight called to the man,

  ‘When will you mow your last?’ ‘Round noon,’ the farmer said, deadpan.

  ‘Ah, noon is it?’ the bogie said. ‘Well then, I’ve lost for sure.’

  And off he went at once, and troubled Farmer Brown no more.”

  “Troubled him no more! Troubled him no more! That foolish, witless, simple wight did trouble him no more!” screeched Tolpuddle incautiously at the wight-haunted marshes. Nothing answered his apparent challenge except, conceivably, a sense of wakened vigilance.

  Eoin dropped the oars and took another swig of ale from the tankard in his hand. Returning to his exertions, he commenced another ditty and was singing at the top of his voice when he rammed the boat’s prow into a snag. The hull caught on a projection. He backwatered with all his strength, cursing vehemently. Eventually the small vessel wrenched itself off the snag, but as it came off, some half-rotten planks were ripped from the hull and the boat began to sink. Finding themselves up to their knees in rapidly rising water, the two young men struck out for the nearest shore, Tolpuddle floundering gracelessly.

  They reached firm footing without encountering worse than a bootful of water and a mouthful of aquatic larvae. On shingle banks they sat, dripping, their hair slurped like dark paint across their skulls, suddenly sober.

  Swallows swooped low over the water, snatching flying insects out of the air. Their twittering warbles rang musically through the marshscape. On the opposite side of the channel, a vertical sandbank lined the shore. It was pockmarked with holes, in and out of which sand martins busily flickered, furbishing their nests.

  The stern of the boat upended itself and disappeared. Concentric ripples opened out from the ceiling of its tomb.

  “Oh,” said Tolpuddle after a long silence. “What are we to be doing now, Eoin?”

  Eoin extracted a tadpole from his left ear. “Well, Siv,” he said, “we could fish off the banks.”

  That had not been Tolpuddle’s intention when he asked the question. He struggled to find the right words. “But how are we to be getting back to the town?”

  “We need a vessel to get back to town. There is no other way to return—not enough connecting walkways.”

  “But we’re not having a boat. Not anymore.”

  “No.”

  Tolpuddle had the impression he was making little headway.

  “So, what are we to be doing now?” he repeated.

  Eoin assumed a thoughtful air. “Methinks we had better be getting back to our camp,” he said. We’ve our tinderbox there to light a fire and dry off these clothes.”

  “Ah,” agreed Tolpuddle, a smile dawning across his lunar features.

  Presently he added, How are we going about that, Eoin?”

  “We’re swimming. Unless you can walk on water, in which case you can carry me on your shoulders.”

  Tolpuddle emptied one of his boots. I am thinking I cannot do that,” he said carefully, in case he had overlooked some quality he might have inadvertently possessed.

  “Then we’ll be swimming, man!” cried Eoin loudly, to drown out the hangover headache he felt coming on. With that he jumped up and plunged back into the water.

  Had they been completely sober, they would have balked at immersing themselves in wight-infested waters. Somehow their haphazard luck held, and both swimmers, the one-armed and the two-armed, reached their campsite beneath the black alders. They kindled a fire and began to dry out. Tolpuddle held his left arm close to the flames but was unable to warm it.

  “We have no choice but to remain here and build a makeshift raft,” said Eoin. I shall take the hatchet and seek suitable materials. You must look for marram grass and creepers, some han, maybe, strong enough to tie branches together.”

  From the lush grasses of the islet peeped orchids and kidney vetch. The deeper shade harbored a variety of ferns: fishbone, royal, and stag’s head. Above Eoin’s head, gray willows stretched their lichened trunks toward a delicate sky tinted the color of robins’ eggs. As he searched farther afield, he discovered he could actually walk to Glassmere from the campsite. A series of narrow peninsulas and tongues joined in such a way as to create a causeway that proved solid, if tortuous. He might have noticed it sooner had his wits not been befuddled by drink. Having navigated these paths, the eel-fisher’s son walked out from the thickets onto the shores of the secluded lagoon.

  Aptly was it named. Sheltered from breezes by the topography of the surrounds, or by the thickness of the bordering vegetation, Glassmere rested, profoundly still under the sky. Not a ruffle marred its surface. Not a ripple expanded, not a whirlpool stirred, not a bubble drifted. Even mayflies did not trouble this unbroken pane. It existed as a flat expanse of silver light, trapping within its tranquillity the images of all things that ventured nigh.

  Halfway around the shoreline stood a stone, about waist-tall compared to a man, its feet buried among ferns. Some weathered runes were inscribed on the stone, but from where he stood, Eoin could not decipher them. A couple of wild goats wandered among the sallies, nibbling at mosses. To one side lay a dark pool, half-concealed by willows. At its brink Eoin found some tufts of goat hair. He examined them closely. Several were stained red.

  Made uneasy by this discovery, he moved on. A stand of young willow saplings appeared ahead, and immediately he set to work with his hatchet. With a load of rod-straight boughs balanced on his shoulders, the eel-fisher’s son returned to his friend Tolpuddle at the campsite and unloaded his burden.

  “We shall be able to make a good start on our raft,” he announced briskly.

  In spite of being hampered by a frigid arm, Tolpuddle had collected a pile of tough marram grass. He had, however, been hard at thinking, and his conclusions were dismal. “But it will take long, and we shall be stuck here for countless se’nnights,” he mourned, “and we shall run out of food and have to eat nothing but roasted sparrows and hedge gnarls.”

  “We need not fear hunger,” soothed his companion, “for if we should run out of stores, there are plenty of wild goats nearby to be slaughtered and roasted on the fire, not to mention an abundance of ducks.” He refrained from inquiring what “hedge gnarls” might be.

  Tolpuddle nodded dubiously. They began to construct their raft and were soon so intent on their business that even their headaches receded somewhat.

  All that King’s Day they persevered at their task. Among the early mists of Thunder’s Day, Eoin set forth again in search of more straight boughs and saplings. As he walked, he allowed his thoughts to turn inward and engaged in frank examination of his disposition. He became aware it did not trouble him that he and Tolpuddle might be late for Lilith’s wedding. In fact, the more he pondered on the matter, the more he was pleased he would not be forced to witness Jarred’s triumph. He wondered, as he walked, if some mysterious inner prompting had driven him to run the boat upon the snag, some jealous incentive of which he had been unaware at the time.

  “Let him wed her, then,” he muttered. “Let him wed her, but I will not be there to shower them with flowers and good wishes.” He knew they would be anxious on his behalf. They might even postpone the wedding! At the very least, his unexpected absence would cast a pall upon the day, a catchpenny misery that would scarcely hold a candle to his own.

  A cuckoo was piping its two-note song from the swaying boughs of the alders. Behind the topmost leaves, a waving line of swifts screamed its way across the arch of the sky, which glistened powder blue in the morning. As the sun ascended its stairway to the zenith, dissipating the fog, Eoin grew weary. Dumping his burden, he lay flat on his stomach beside Glassmere, gazing into the water. His own face shimmered there.

  “Still waters glow,” he murmured, “silent and deep. What lies below? What do they keep? Look in this pool—what dost thou spy? Only the face of a fool.” He paused, then continue
d somberly, softly, “Is it I?”

  He was reciting the inscription written on the stone at the water’s edge, having perused it during his quest for wood. A laugh skittered from his throat—a bitter sound, void of delight. Then he ducked his head into the cold water as if trying to rouse himself from a dream. When he shook his head, droplets spattered, bedewing him like satin-rolled beads.

  Glassmere furrowed its brow, disturbed at last.

  A goat bleated.

  Eoin arrived back at the campsite, a bundle of boughs over his shoulder and a brooding expression darkening his face. Near the water’s edge, Tolpuddle was assiduously lashing boughs together with ropes of twisted marram grass, using his fingers, teeth, and toes.

  Again they set to work. Around them, the marshes were alive with movement. Mayflies, exquisitely fragile, swarmed in huge numbers above the surface of the inlet, the males ascending and descending as they engaged in their extraordinary nuptial dance. Swallows pirouetted amongst the insects, performing the ballet of dining. Noisy coots, moorhens, and great crested grebes paddled between rafts of floating water plantain and club rush, water violet and orange foxtail.

  On labored the lads until the raft was more than half-finished. Dusk drew in its dim skirts, its swirling of vapors. The swallows came to roost in the reedbeds, while toads began a percussive chorus. Lesser horseshoe bats emerged like shadowy ghosts to flit through the trees with a silence so deep it was a color, and that color was black.

  That evening, the lads lay back under the leaves and stars in stillness, unspeaking.

  His mind now free to roam its accustomed paths, Eoin thought: A man watches a flower grow, day by day, developing from a single green shoot to a budding stem, and that man is waiting for the bud to open. Then it unfolds into a beauteous bloom, fragrant with perfume, rich with color, and he reaches out to cover it with a bell jar of finest glass, so that it may be protected from biting insects and the ravages of wind and hail.