The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  “Tried to take him! That’ll be the trows, curse them!” cried the carlin. Spying the effigy, she snatched it up and threw it on the fire. It did not burn but shot up the chimney, and the cottage resounded with wightish laughter.

  “Avaunt!” Eolacha shouted sternly at the walls. “Avaunt, ye wights. Ye’ve been outwitted.”

  The laughter ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Eolacha prowled the rooms of the cottage, her Wand at the ready. When she returned to Cuiva, she said, “They are gone. Not a sign of them. Are you hale? And the child?”

  “We are hale, but Mistress Arrowgrass, how could the trows’ influence reach in here?” Distraught, Cuiva clutched her mewling babe.

  Angrily, Eolacha said, “I ought to be hanged for a ninny! Our domestic wight vanished a good twelve months since, and I never thought to protect our threshold with amulets and charms! This place has been open to gramarye all this time. I shall be nailing some bunches of hypericum over the door right now. Thank the powers your child was saved this night by your quick thinking.”

  Lilith and the children arrived soon afterward, in the company of Willowfoil. They found Cuiva nursing her baby while Eolacha brewed a tisane of valerian and chamomile.

  “We are late returned, I know,” explained Lilith ruefully as they walked in, “but one of the bridge walks was broken. Captain Willowfoil was kind enough to become our ferryman—why, Cuiva, what ails you? Have you been weeping?”

  Oisín and Ciara toddled toward their mother, who embraced them eagerly with her free arm. “All is well, Lilith,” said Cuiva, giving a weak smile. “All is well now. But I shall be naming this son of mine Ochlán, meaning the Sigh, because of the terrible anxiety that was given to his mother just after his birth.”

  On the morrow, the carlin covered the lintels of all doors and windows with an assortment of potent charms. “No wightish gramarye will be reaching in here to touch my family,” she muttered, “or any who shelter within these walls.”

  Dark-haired and blue-eyed, Jewel was astonishingly close to her mother in beauty, astonishingly unlike her in temperament. Where Lilith was mild, Jewel was wild; where Lilith was temperate, Jewel was tempestuous. Lilith’s nature—forgiving, tolerant, altruistic, and consistent—found its antithesis in Jewel’s. Overindulged by her entire family, she was hot tempered, self-centered, and stubborn, a creature of whimsy. She might display utter selfishness at one instant, boundless generosity at the next. However, her flaws were mitigated by other qualities: good humor, insatiable curiosity, high-spiritedness, loyalty, and a warm, loving nature. All these virtues and faults existed together in one vigorous child. Sometimes, when she flew into her passions, it seemed they must tear her apart. Yet she thrived.

  Jewel’s parents had watched their daughter closely from birth. They had discovered that, like her father, she was immune to harm. She had been subject to the usual range of childhood accidents. When she was learning to walk, she often fell over, but never a bruise marred her skin. Once, a spark had jumped out of the fire and onto her knee, but she merely laughed and held it up between her fingers and watched it wink out. She found Earnán’s fishing knife and played with it for a while before Lilith discovered what had happened and confiscated the implement. The keen edges had never sliced her flesh.

  No sickness ever troubled her. Not eldritch wights, nor rope, nor fire, nor water, nor stone, nor metal, nor thorny plant ever hurt her. It appeared she was indeed as invulnerable as her father. Like him, she was the sorcerer’s true heir. And if this was so, then Strang’s curse could never touch her, although only time could prove it. But it was important that her endowment should not set her apart from others, so Jarred employed the same approach his own father had used for him: the gift of a token to deflect suspicion.

  On her second birthday, her father had given Jewel a talisman of carved bone, similar to the one he wore. It was strung on a fine silver chain—so fine it would break if it snagged on anything.

  “This is a very powerful amulet,” he told the little girl as he placed it about her neck. “It will keep you from all harm. Keep its powers secret. Do not let anyone else wear it, for its influence can work on no one else but you.”

  For certain she was protected from harm, but it was not due to the amulet. That was the first occasion on which her father had ever lied to her—not that she was aware of it. It was not to be the last either, because every time Jewel was involved in some injurious childhood accident—which, for the adventurous child, was often—her parents would invent excuses to explain how it was possible that she had escaped unscathed. They postponed informing her of her immunity, waiting until she was older, more discreet, less boastful and impulsive. Wisely, they understood that should her inherited invulnerability become public knowledge, her life must grow onerous.

  Even Jewel’s fond uncle was kept from the truth.

  As they grew up, Jewel and her friends loved to frequent Eoin’s floating abode. The eel-fisher brought back novelties from the city Fairs—clockwork musical boxes and toys to fascinate his young visitors. He sang raucous songs to make them laugh and gave them gilt gingerbread at Yuletide. He grew a beard. It was unfashionable at the time for young men to wear beards, and this made him an object of wonder to the marsh children, who delighted in pulling his whiskers. He built a loft in his house; as the only loft in the marsh, it became another attraction for the children. Eoin loved Jewel as he would love his own child. Like all who knew her, he could not help but become fond of her; besides, in this little dark-haired maiden he saw somewhat of Lilith, and in the child’s company he could pretend he had not quite lost the mother. Jewel’s casual, exploitive affection was also, for Eoin, a form of vengeance upon Jarred, who could not afford to provide such toys and dainties for his daughter. Subtly, Eoin endeavored to thwart Jarred at every possible turn. Yet he did so discreetly.

  When they were not plaguing Eoin, the children would occupy themselves making tree swings, paddling canoes, playing hide-and-seek, learning to hunt, helping with tasks of daily living, conceiving ways of avoiding those tasks, being lessoned in wight lore, runes, and numbers from their teachers, or listening with rapt attention to tales of Tir.

  Jarred recounted many stories of the Four Kingdoms as the family sat around the hearth on long Winter evenings or picnicked by an island bonfire on a Summer’s afternoon, stories he had learned at his own father’s knee. Jewel learned of Slievmordhu’s formidable warriors of the Red Lodge; of the seafaring folk, the Grïmnørslanders; of the stern Narngalishmen and the famous knights known as the Companions of the Cup; of the flamboyant Ashqalêthans in the southern deserts; of the Marauders and their raids; of the goblin wars in days of yore; of the slumbering Fire Mountains, whose fuming peaks walled many of the borderlands.

  Sometimes it came to Jarred with fresh impact that his daughter was the successor of a malicious sorcerer. He himself had inherited no powers other than invulnerability—of that he was certain—but sometimes he worried in case any of Strang’s redoubtable abilities might have wakened in the blood of his daughter.

  As Jewel listened to her father’s stories beside the fire, she would often stare into the smoke. The billows, the swirls of dark and light, the soft, translucent streamers seemed to suggest evanescent shapes. She fancied they were, in fact, shapes: specters, phantasms, wraiths maybe …

  Once Jarred caught her staring into the amorphous vapors and said with unaccustomed roughness, “Do not look at the smoke like that!”

  She was startled. Revering her father, she refrained from her staring in future—even though she thought she had begun to glimpse faces in the murk.

  When Jewel was five years old, a band of Ashqalêthans came riding to the marsh at the waning of a War’s Day in Jule. Except for the accented way they spoke, they would not have been known as southerners, for they wore the raiment of Slievmordhu and they entered at the Northern Reaches.

  Dour Lieutenant Goosecroft observed their approach from a high window of the Northern Watchto
wer.

  “Sessa!” he called down imperatively to the band of five riders grouped together at the shoreline. “What is your business?”

  “We have none, unless Jarred son of Jovan still bides in these watery dominions,” replied one of the riders, throwing back his hood to reveal his face.

  “Methinks we’ve met aforetime!” exclaimed Goosecroft. “By what name do you go?”

  “I am Nasim, son of Tsadik. With my companions, I passed this way some seven Summers since. The hospitality of your people was extended to us most bountifully.”

  “And you wish to impose a second time?” inquired Goosecroft.

  “The old ferret has not altered,” muttered Gamliel behind Nasim’s ear.

  “No sir,” Nasim called back. “We bring gifts, and if Jarred still abides here we would fain seek out his company.”

  “He does.” At that, the travelers exchanged pleased glances. “Are you willing to give all your weapons into our safekeeping for the length of your sojourn?”

  Nasim sighed. At his ear, Gamliel murmured, “They have changed the wording since last we were here.”

  “We are,” Nasim called out, and the drawbridge was lowered.

  Goosecroft had the visitors conducted to the cruinniú. Tidings of their reappearance preceded them, and the marshfolk were swift to accumulate at the central meeting place. Chieftain Stillwater welcomed the Ashqalêthans. They brought gifts for him and for Carlin Arrowgrass, who had tended Nasim’s injury. Amongst all and sundry they distributed string bags bulging with hazelnuts and walnuts. Victuals and beer were brought out for the guests, who were appreciated as much for their generosity and amiability as for the fact that they brought tales of the world outmarsh.

  “You have done well for yourselves, then!” cried Odhrán Rushford, clapping Gamliel heartily on the shoulder. “But some of your comrades are missing. Where are they?”

  “Jarred is missing also,” said Gamliel, settling himself cross-legged in the middle of a rush-strewn pontoon. “Where is he?”

  “Tolpuddle has gone to tell him of your arrival. He will be here soon.”

  “When he arrives, we shall recount our history and that of our comrades.”

  At Gamliel’s side, a man-mountain peered at a dish newly set before him. “Hmm,” he said suspiciously. “Looks like chicken.”

  “Yaadosh!” shouted a joyful voice, and there was Jarred, leaping lightly across the pontoons toward his old friends.

  The reunion was tumultuous. So much vigorous embracing and backslapping took place that the pontoons bucked and swayed violently. Yaadosh clutched at the wickerwork fencing. “By the beards, Jarred,” he said in alarm. “Hanged if I know how you keep your foothold on these fickle platforms. I’d be seasick forever.”

  “Grip tight and do not slide!” laughed Jarred. “Do not fall in, for you must all meet my wife and daughter now, and afterward you must account for your every adventure—especially for the absence of half our band!”

  When Jarred introduced his old comrades to Lilith and Jewel, the Ashqalêthans ceased their raucous banter. There ensued a moment of awkward taciturnity. Then Nasim stepped up to Lilith and bowed.

  “Your pardon, lady,” he said. “Your pardon if we stare. We had but glimpsed you once, from afar. Now, on meeting you, I can fairly say that in all our travels we have never seen one so fair, and the sight binds our churlish tongues.”

  A hue of ripe peaches suffused Lilith’s cheeks.

  “And you, little lady,” said Nasim, bending gallantly to Jewel, “are as lovely as your mother. Indeed,” he added, straightening up, “the resemblance is striking!”

  “Gramercie, sir,” she said, leveling on him a bold, inquisitive gaze.

  “I have acquired two prizes, as you see,” Jarred said with unabashed pride. “But now, my friends—you shall tell all!”

  Visitors and indigenes alike settled down on the pontoons, anticipating pleasant hours of talk and listening. They were well rewarded. Michaiah informed them that he had secured a worthy position with the Duke of Bucks Horn Oak, who, having observed the young man’s conjuring tricks, had employed him as an entertainer. Nasim told of the band’s ride through Slievmordhu to Narngalis. He described the adventures they had encountered along the way, their harrowing grief when one of their number had been lured to his death by boggarts, and how Tsafrir had entered the service of the king of Narngalis, becoming a member of the Royal Regiment of Guards in the Kings’ Household Division at King’s Winterbourne.

  “But the best of all sights I saw in Narngalis,” concluded Yaadosh, “were the great knights, the Companions of the Cup. Grim are they, and tall, wise learned and honorable. Indeed, they were the proudest company of warriors I have seen anywhere, and I have traveled many roads.”

  “Aye, many roads,” agreed Nasim. “Through Saxlingham Netherby we went, and Ramsnest Common, and by Far Forest to Gatehouse of Fleet. Then over Hinton-in-the-Hedges and Mill of Fortune to Little Wratting. From there to North Boarhunt and Old Wives Lees, and from Old Wives Lees to Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe. Thence past Wall-under-Heywood, Much Birch, and White Ladies Aston.”

  “Not forgetting Frisby on the Wreake,” Yaadosh reminded him.

  “And Draycott in the Clay,” subjoined Gamliel.

  But the marshfolk were laughing. “You’re inventing these names, surely!” guffawed Odhrán Rushford. “Next you’ll be telling us they have villages named, er”—he cast about for inspiration—“Little Ducksbottom, or Much Snoring!”

  Nasim scratched his head reflectively. “Perchance, did we pass through such towns?” he queried Gamliel.

  “Those foreign realms!” chortled old Frognewton after the hilarity had somewhat subsided. “Why can they not have proper titles, as we do in Slievmordhu ? What could be more pleasing and tuneful to the ear than Bellaghmoon and Mórán Srannfach, Orielthir and Beag Tóindúinnlacha?”

  “A rope is not more twisted than a foreigner’s tongue,” quoted Earnán Mosswell sagaciously. “Yet the names of those Narngalish towns have a pleasant ring, I daresay.”

  “Aye, but after a time even novelty may pall. Some of us,” concluded Nasim, “grew homesick. We longed to bask in the dry winds of Ashqalêth again, and so we are returning home, albeit for a short time, methinks.”

  “Home!” mused Jarred, and ninety-seven images rushed from his memory to his foremost thought. “Home,” he repeated. “Will you take a message to my mother? But tarry!” he added, struck by a sudden notion. “Nay—I shall go with you and speak to her myself!”

  “I want to come too,” Jewel immediately piped up.

  “So you shall!” Jarred cried with exuberance. “So shall we all!”

  Catching her husband’s eye, Lilith smiled in accord.

  Thus it transpired that Jarred, Lilith, and Jewel accompanied the travelers on their journey back to Ashqalêth, mounted on three of the marsh’s sturdy moor ponies.

  It had been four days since the departure of Lilith and her family when Earnán paid a dawn visit to Eoin at his peripatetic abode. The raft house was currently anchored upon a somber, willow-bordered lake at the outskirts of Marshtown. Some said a fuath lurked in the green twilight depths under Willowlinn, although no evidence had ever emerged to prove it beyond doubt. Nevertheless, even a whiff of anything unseelie was enough to encourage most folk to avoid the locality.

  Not so Eoin. It seemed he had grown even more reckless with the passing years.

  His father, rowing to his son’s front staithe, found him seated thereon in a rocking chair. Eoin was smoking his pipe. The sun was rising over the opposite shore, above the tops of the corkscrew willows, whose feet were wrapped in white mist. The blue inks of night were gently sluicing from the sky. Like paper cutouts, wingtip to wingtip, lines of birds glided out along the early jet streams, black against the brightening pallor.

  Earnán tied his boat to a bollard.

  “Good morrow, Áthair,” Eoin greeted him. “Pray sit by me.” He brought out a se
cond rocker. Both chairs were famous in the marsh; he had purchased them in Cathair Rua, and the children found them immensely entertaining. Does a body not endure enough tumbling about on these waters, wondered the older folk, without deliberately seeking it out?

  Winds arose amongst the willows and fled across the lake’s surface, ruffling it in long flounces like ladies’ silk petticoats. The two men sat unspeaking while the music of wakening birds poured into their ears and the weather vane atop the gable squeaked, swinging around to the northwest.

  Mingling with the fragrance of the pipeweed, a faint poignance of hickory woodsmoke stung the men’s nostrils.

  “You are doing well for yourself these days,” Earnán said presently.

  “That I am.”

  “Never do you lack for coin or company.”

  “In sooth.”

  “It has been six and twenty Summers since your birth,” Earnán went on. “When I was your age, I had been married five years.”

  Eoin nodded, rocking. The platform on which his house was built stirred softly, tweaking at its anchor chains. Deep in the sucking mud, the anchors remained embedded.

  “Your siblings,” said Earnán, “did not survive infancy. You, however, grew to manhood, ever your mother’s joy and pride.”

  Eoin nodded again.

  “She and I hoped you would make a good marriage,” said Earnán, “and raise a family.”

  Eoin did not nod. He stared out across the pleated waters of the lake, where wild mallards were now splashing down.

  “When will you marry?” his father asked bluntly.

  Eoin tapped his fingers rapidly on the arm of his chair as though impatient or annoyed.

  “Áthair,” he said, “when I marry ’twill be for love. Otherwise there is no profit in it.”

  “Can you not find someone to love?”

  “I have found her.”

  “And who is the lady?” Earnán asked warily, suspecting already the answer.