The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  When her daughter was three years old, Lilith spoke to the urisk.

  It happened on an Autumn night in Ninember, when the moon was full and all human denizens of the marsh were abed. Soft luminosity filtered through the cottage window, beckoning Lilith to peep out. Behind the half-bare boughs of willows, the moon squatted low on the horizon like a ghost of the sun: huge, ripe, and glowing somber orange. Behind it soared the star-budded vault of night. Distant notes of eldritch flute music twisted thinly among the willows, bright as mercury, thrillingly poignant. Dim sounds of random sobbing and laughter drifted in and out on cool zephyrs, while, near at hand, shoemaker frogs clacked.

  A silhouette rose against the moon’s cauldron of melted copper; that of a curly head with two short horns. Not far from the cottage, the urisk was seated on an old black stump between the path and the water’s edge. As she watched, it idly and morosely tossed something into the water—a pebble, perhaps.

  Lilith felt sorry for it, sitting there all alone. Throwing her cloak about her shoulders and softly opening the door, she tiptoed out.

  On her bare feet she walked lightly along the path to the old black stump and seated herself on the grass, not looking at the urisk. She was already familiar with its appearance.

  From the waist up it looked like an ugly little man with pointed, tufty ears, a turned-up nose, and eyes that slanted up to the outer corners in the usual manner of wights. Its head was covered with a thicket of curly brown hair, from which protruded the two stubby horns. It wore a threadbare jacket, frayed at the cuffs, and a tattered waistcoat of indeterminate color. Ragged breeches covered its shaggy goats’ legs.

  Presently, she said, “Good evening, urisk.”

  It made no reply.

  “You have been of great help to me,” she said, careful not to thank him: wights were severely offended by thanks. “Four Summers ago, I was unable to make my way home. You guided Jarred to where I lay with an injured ankle. For that, I will never forget you.”

  Imperceptibly, the creature might have nodded. It continued to gaze impassively at the reversed moon floating in the water.

  “Methinks, perhaps you are not happy?” she inquired tentatively. When it gave no answer, she went on, “You do not have to stay with us. I am aware ’tis an urisk’s nature to stay at a particular domicile, but I know how that bond between you and your household can be broken.”

  It met her gaze. Its expression appeared interrogatory.

  “You are a species of brownie, urisk. Pardon my bluntness. I mean no offense. Brownies are made free when a mortal member of the household gives them clothes. If you wish, I will sew for you a nice set of breeches, jerkin, and jacket, and I will have made for you a pair of stout boots and a cap.”

  A look of scorn flitted across the wight’s elfin features.

  Lilith pondered: had she slighted him somehow? It was so easy to unintentionally insult wights.

  “Of course,” she said after much thought, “you would not want to make yourself look like some common peasant. Perhaps there is another way. Wait, prithee, urisk—I shall return anon.”

  She ran back to the cottage and stole inside. All was quiet. After a quick peep at the face of her peacefully sleeping daughter, Lilith unhooked the shining fish-mail shirt from the wall and went back to the stump where the wight sat.

  “Prithee,” she said, “take this.” And she held out the shirt. Sleeveless it was, and it hung from her hands like mother-of-pearl made silken, bathed in the rays of the rising moon. A sheen of iridescent colors glowed from its every liquid surface.

  The urisk looked at the fish-mail shirt without a word and took it away. Mortal eyes never saw the wight again in the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu.

  The year’s wheel turned, rotating its seasonal quadrants. The green nettle kerchief Lilith had woven for Jarred had worn out, and she made him a new one, along with a jade umber tunic of homespun and leggings to match. His embroidered Ashqalêthan garments were by now stained and tattered, fit only to be torn into strips and knotted into a rag rug.

  About twelve months after the urisk’s disappearance, the men of the Mosswell and Stillwater households, accompanied by Odhrán Rushford, voyaged with the usual party of marsh merchants to the Autumn Fair at Cathair Rua. They had been gone for two days when Cuiva Stillwater paid one of her frequent visits to Lilith at the Mosswell cottage.

  Equinoctial light ambered the cottage’s main room. Rays struck diagonally through the half-open window, limning the spinning wheel and the handloom, crayoning with gold the bunches of dried herbs. Earnán’s pallet by the hearth was neatly made up with mohair blankets patterned in onionskin browns and nettle greens. A goatskin had been flung across it. Upon the hide, the upial slumbered. On the mantel above the fireplace stood a brown jug holding a decorative arrangement of bronze and russet leaves Jewel had picked that morning.

  Cuiva sat at the table with Lilith and Eolacha, her daughter Ciara perched on her lap. Motherhood had not much altered the Marsh-Chieftain’s daughter; her face was still fresh and young, her cheeks coral tinted, her eyes goldflecked hazel. Only her honey-colored hair, which had once bounced in ringlets, had lost its curl, and the outer corners of her eyes hinted at laughcrinkles. She was clad in an overgown of nubbly wool, a kirtle of sagathy, and a headscarf of city-bought linen, woad dyed. Her garments were loose and flowing; Cuiva was carrying her third child, which was due to arrive in two weeks.

  Her young son, Oisín, played on the floor with Jewel, whose toys were strewn all about: a menagerie of painted wooden animals, a spinning-top, a little cart with moving wheels, a boat complete with carven rowers and more. Jewel let other children play freely with her large collection of toys, not because she was any less selfish than most children of her age but because her uncle Eoin kept giving her so many playthings she hardly cared for any of them anymore.

  Cuiva, who had brought some mending with her, stitched at her husband’s torn tunic and spoke earnestly to Eolacha about matters pertaining to the sisterhood of the Winter Sun.

  “I plan to go into the wilderness next Midwinter’s, Carlin Arrowgrass,” she confided. “The time has come for me to find out whether the Cailleach Bheur will choose me to be a Wand-Wielder.”

  “Do not go until your children have grown older,” advised the crone. “What if the Winter Hag takes your speech as payment? Or your sight? How shall you look after your family then?”

  Her hand strayed to the left side of her head. A spume of thick hair concealed the scars at the root of the severed ear. Cuiva’s gaze flicked to the blue disk tattooed on the crone’s forehead. She bit her lower lip. Disappointed with the carlin’s response, she lowered her eyes to her needlework and tried to conjure a convincing argument.

  As she pondered, a bolt of pain unexpectedly struck through her body. She gasped and flinched, sending the needle astray. A glistening blood drop manifested on her fingertip, then seeped into the tunic.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed and bewildered, “the child is coming early! Cry mercy! And with my mother away at the Fair, and my sister gone calling in the Western Reaches and not due back for two days—”

  “Do not trouble yourself, Cuiva,” said Eolacha calmly. “For now, I shall serve as your mother, Lilith as your sister.”

  Cuiva’s second son was born that afternoon at the Mosswell cottage, attended by Eolacha. Willingly, Lilith looked after her friend’s other children, taking them on a picnic with Jewel to a pleasant islet so that they would not be party to their mother’s travail. The pallet by the hearth, occupied since Lilith’s wedding by Earnán, was made comfortable for mother and infant. After the birth, Eolacha urged Cuiva to avail herself of their hospitality until her strength returned.

  That very evening, as the marsh frogs tuned up for their nightly chorus and the marsh mists gathered like specters over the meres, Cuiva’s aunt—who was always among the first to obtain tidings—knocked at the door bearing gifts for the new baby. She bubbled also with the report that
a band of traveling hawkers from Grïmnørsland had arrived at the marsh and been conducted to the cruinniú by the watchmen.

  “’Tis a great thrill!” she enthused bumptiously. “They have announced their intention to stage a puppet show! Lilith, you must bring the three little ones. Allow Cuiva and her babe some quietude. Carlin Arrowgrass too might enjoy some peace,” she added, nodding deferentially in Eolacha’s direction.

  In the mist-smudged dusk, Lilith lit a horn lantern and took the three children with her to view the extraordinary spectacle that had come unlooked-for to the marsh. She left Eolacha asleep in the cell where once Earnán had reposed, while Cuiva and the new baby dreamed on the pallet beside a low fire of smoldering rubies.

  The upial had already gone hunting.

  Tidings of rare entertainment spread swiftly, and soon the cruinniú was crowded with onlookers. Skilled were the Grïmnørslander puppeteers, cleverly made their marionettes. The younger children of the marsh had never seen a show like this. They sat and watched in rapturous awe. From time to time, Lilith glanced with quiet pride at her dark-haired daughter, delighting in the child’s evident wonder. Jewel was conspicuous among the others, with her rosebud mouth and her eyes seemingly collaged by two lucent petals of the blue sword iris. “Máthair, look!” she would cry eagerly, jabbing the air with a small index finger. “Look at that funny fellow with his hat!” Often the child would ask such questions as “Why did he do that? What will they do next?” for she had complete faith that her mother, being one of the wisest of all beings, would know all answers to all inquiries. Lilith, who treasured her daughter’s confidence in her, did her best to be worthy. To one side of Lilith’s daughter sat Cuiva’s three-year-old son, Oisín, while small Ciara snuggled in Lilith’s lap, frightened but mesmerized by the puppets and their jerky movements and falsetto voices.

  The puppet show proved a popular success. After the marionettes had performed, been rewarded with riotous applause, and packed away, the visitors claimed the further attention of the spectators. As his colleagues handed around their upturned caps in the hope of gleaning an appreciative coin or two, one hawker produced a set of bagpipes. He played such a dulcet, unpretentious, and whimsical reel that the audience begged him to repeat it.

  “Never have we heard such an extraordinary melody!” someone shouted. “Where did you learn it, sir?”

  “Ah,” said the peddler, tapping the side of his nose significantly. “That is an interesting tale, for this tune was taught to me by the trows!”

  The audience expressed due astonishment.

  The trows—or Gray Neighbors as they were sometimes called—were not malevolent destroyers of mortals, yet neither were they completely seelie. They possessed traits both benign and malign. The tallest among trows was no more than three and a half feet high. Their heads, hands, and feet were disproportionately large. They had long noses that drooped at the tips, and lank, stringy hair over which the trow-wives wore drab fringed shawls. Dressed in simple gray raiment, they slouched and limped about their business, with silver metal glittering at their wrists and necks. Trows were renowned for their love of silver, for their tradition of dancing under the full moon, and for their habit of stealing people and leaving carved effigies in their place. It had been a trow-wife that Lilith had once seen, wandering alone among the peat banks in the western reaches of the Marsh, day-bound until sunset.

  “One night I was walking over a hill in my homeland when I heard the trows playing inside the hill,” said the peddler, “so I listened until I had entirely memorized their melody. It is called, in their tongue, ‘Be nort da Deks o’ Voe.’”

  And the hawker played it through twice more, to the delight of the marshfolk, particularly the children, who now stood up to dance and clap their hands. The cruinniú platforms began to rock at their anchorages, to the alarm of the hawkers, but the marshfolk laughed and told them to rest easy, and offered them warm beds and a good supper in exchange for their entertainment. The peddlers promptly accepted the offers, and the evening concluded with jollity all around.

  Lilith led the children home in the dark. She carried Ciara on her hip; with her free hand she held up the horn lantern. Its yellow beams radiated like a dandelion flower.

  “Grasp my skirt, Oisín,” Lilith said, “and Jewel, you hold Oisín’s hand. It is not a good night to go swimming off the edge of the pontoon footpath.”

  Jewel obeyed. “Why is it not a good night to go swimming?” she asked with the literalness and inquisitiveness of extreme youth.

  “I intended it as a joke,” said her mother absentmindedly. Lilith was concentrating on balancing the baby and the lantern while navigating the gently rocking pontoon and keeping an eye on the children.

  “Does that mean it really is a good night to swim?” Jewel wanted to know.

  Lilith could not help smiling at this evidence of her daughter’s logic and persistence. “Indeed not, a stór. Just keep holding Oisín’s hand and go carefully on the walkway. I do not want any of you to fall in, because then I would have to dive in and rescue you, and we would all end up soaking wet and cold.”

  “I can swim!” protested Jewel.

  “Yet,” said Oisín, voicing Lilith’s unspoken fear, “there might be unseelie drowners down there in the water.”

  “I don’t care about unseelie drowners,” said Jewel stoutly. “If we fell in, my father would rescue us. He would scoop us right out of the water and throw those horrible drowners into Hindmarsh.”

  “You father is not here!” exclaimed Oisín.

  “But if he was,” insisted Jewel, suddenly spotting the flaw in her reasoning and trying to cover it up.

  Foreseeing the beginning of an argument, Lilith said quickly, “Can you remember the tune the man with the bagpipes was playing?” And Jewel, who loved music, began at once to hum the opening bars.

  Frog voices belled and tapped, intertwining in the usual nocturnal symphony of the marsh. A breeze stirred the low-lying mists, soughing through the rushes, making them nod their tasseled heads in agreement. Under a half-sixpence moon, the well-trodden path went winding across ferny islets and mossy causeways, branching off toward the Mosswell cottage. Lilith and the children followed the byway until they arrived at a boardwalk on stilts, crossing from one eyot to another. The wide, flat path formed by the boards finished abruptly a few feet from the near shore and began again close to the opposite bank. In between lay a smooth, shining sheet of water.

  The bridge was broken.

  Lilith held high the horn lantern, the better to observe the situation. “This crossing always shuddered underfoot,” she said, half to herself. “Many folk suspected the pylons were rotted beneath the waterline.”

  “Or mayhap some tricksy wight was shaking them,” suggested her daughter. “Mayhap a wight broke the bridge.”

  In Lilith’s arms, Ciara whimpered.

  “How shall we get across?” little Oisín asked fearfully.

  “We must retrace our steps and look for someone willing to ferry us,” Lilith replied. “Perhaps Watchman Willowfoil will oblige.”

  As they started back toward the cruinniú, Oisín began to wail.

  “Hush!” Jewel scolded him. “You are hurting my ears, Oisín.” Encouragingly she added, “You must take courage. There is no need to worry; my mother will find a way.”

  “Do not fret,” Lilith soothed. “We shall soon be home for supper.”

  At the Mosswell cottage all was quiet save for an amphibious background monotony and the distant yapping of a dog. A mound of turves glimmered subtly in the fireplace, and the room was still. What had woken Cuiva she could not say; a snuffle from the sleeping infant, perhaps, or the whisper of a sifting fall of ash, or perhaps an alteration in the rhythm of the frog lullabies.

  She was lying in a doze on the palliasse when a tremendous tumult and jabbering of voices arose in the room, all around her. In terror she sat up, clutching the precious infant bundle in her arms. Yet though she cast about wildly
, nought untoward was to be seen in the chamber. Dim firelight bloodied the sparse furniture and mantelpiece. Near at hand, her husband’s mended tunic lay across a three-legged stool. All appeared untouched, motionless and empty, but her ears informed her the place was filled with a babbling, jostling crowd.

  It flashed into Cuiva’s mind that between birth and the official Naming, a newborn child was at the greatest risk of peril from wights. Recalling her grandmother had once told her Any garment of the father’s is a safeguard to the child, Cuiva seized Odhrán’s tunic and threw it around the baby. Instantly a scream tore across the chamber and voices cried out, “We’ve been cheated o’oor bairnie!”

  Silence flooded the chamber.

  With racketing pulse, Cuiva sat motionless, clutching her child. She was afraid to move or speak, frightened she would betray her fear. Her breath came and went in tattered gasps. Fine runnels of brine trickled down her brow, and she thought her heart must beat so hard it would push her infant from her grasp.

  After an instant of silence, a noise came from the chimney corner—a dull knock, as of a heavy object striking a solid surface. Peering about in panic, Cuiva beheld a waxen counterfeit of her baby lying there. Though it was crudely wrought, there was no doubting the image. A moan of horror escaped her lips. Darkness welled up within her, but just as she felt herself swooning, Eolacha came bursting into the room like an avenger, brandishing her carlin’s Wand.

  “What’s amiss?” she demanded with ferocious consternation. “What’s amiss in my house?”

  “The room was full of voices,” stammered Cuiva. “They tried to take my baby, but I flung Odhrán’s tunic over him.”