by Jeannette Ng
I had slept less and less, however, as questions from the papers, from Mr Benjamin, from my own mind all crowded in on me.
The Reverend’s journal had continued to taunt me, and finally, late one night, I had succumbed. I had known I shouldn’t have opened it. I had told myself I was merely going to look over the hand to determine if any of the papers I had been studying were written by the Reverend.
I did not entirely believe myself, but it had been enough in the way of self-permission to take out the volume and hold it in my hand.
I spun on my heels, my fingers fisted in the stiff fabric of my skirt. I breathed deep and kept walking, trying in vain to find solace in motion.
As I had turned the journal over and over, it slipped from my hands and fell open:
The walls, the windows, the walls. None of them make sense. There is a history here but I cannot read it. A story told by a madman.
Their promises, their oaths, their geas are there to hinder you, to hobble you, to hide you. They are there to blind you and to bind you.
Their truth is not our truth. They wield it only as a weapon.
My eyes had glided over the words and read them before I even realised and my heart sank to my feet.
Of course, the missionary was lost now. There was no reason to think that he might be right in his mad scribbling. There was no reason to think that he might have the right of it.
But they were the words my restless soul most feared, most wanted to be true.
My fingers smudged over my aching eyes. They stung from how dry they were. My nails dug into my skin and the pinpoints of pain only reminded me how my skin could not contain myself. I wanted to be everywhere at once, anywhere but here.
The seed of doubt had been planted. I should not have read that book. The Reverend’s warning was more prophetic than he could know.
There was a knock, and Miss Davenport appeared by the doorway of my room. She was, as always, rosy in cheek and looking slightly breathless, as though she had just come in from a long walk. I knew by now that she looked that way even if she had been stationary for hours.
“I thought you might be up here, Miss Helstone,” she said, cheerfully. “The weather is simply divine and I was thinking we should spend the day knitting in the solar. I’ve almost finished my shawl and I do think I would like your advice on how I should start the socks.”
I said nothing for a moment. My hands tumbled over and over one other as I grasped for what to say. I was coming to see her as gaoler, an uncharitable and ultimately unfair assessment, but her seeming freedom only brought me bitterness.
“I need to go outside,” I said. “I’m…. I’ve been in here too long.”
“We can take a turn in the garden.”
The wall-bordered sky could bring me no reprieve. I shook my head.
“Or a walk on the roof?”
I shook my head again. The distances glimpsed within and beyond the mists would but taunt me in this state.
I turned and looked her in the eye.
For a change, her gaze did not dart away as it so often did. She had a disquieting habit of just looking past me, not quite at me.
“You should try to be still,” she said. “Please, Cathy.”
My name struck me like a slap to the face. There was no shock in her eyes as I recoiled.
“You have no right to address me as such,” I said. “We are not friends.”
“But, Catherine–”
“You tell me nothing. We talk and we talk and yet you forever keep me in ignorance and darkness. You keep saying this castle is built on secrets but we cannot build a friendship on–”
“You need to be still.” She reached a hand towards me. Perhaps she had meant for it to be soothing, but I was no skittish horse to be tricked by a steady voice and calming hand.
I took a step back. “Do not touch me.”
“Come with me.”
“No.”
“Calm down and we will talk. I promise.”
I shook my head. “I need to be elsewhere.”
It was then that I realised in my pacing I had placed myself between her and the door. It was ajar behind me.
So I turned and bolted.
Chapter 9
The Dog in the Mist
By and large, the Fair Folk possess all the essentials of humanity. They have in common with us all the elements of body which make up the man. They have two eyes, two ears, two hands and two feet. They appear to laugh when they are pleased, weep when they are grieved; they sleep when weary, eat when hungry; rejoice over their gains, mourn over their losses very much as other men do.
However, those longest associated with them, and most intimately acquainted with their character and habits, never expect one of the Fair Folk to speak the truth when there is a chance for them to tell a lie. Yet they will tell you by their own laws, and by their own lips (usually two), that it is a vile sin to lie and deceive.
William Finkle & Hildegard Vossnaim, The Arcadian Voyages, Embracing Diverse Accounts of First Travellers, With Notes on the Culture and the Climate
I was probably lost.
I had but pulled on gloves and marched from the house. I had needed to be outside of its walls.
My heart had been a storm-tossed ship, turning and turning inside me. Every snorting, frustrated breath I took only further agitated the vessel.
I had told myself I was but venturing outside the walls, to prove to myself that I could, that the stone could not hold me. I told myself I just wanted to stand beyond the portcullis and look back at my recent prison. I told myself I merely wanted to be out.
But soon I had wandered much further.
The path from Gethsemane was a fading dirt track but, five paces from the walls I could barely see it under my feet. It wound down from the precipice where the castle stood and my curiosity lured step by step into the roiling mist-sea.
It was chilly but not biting as I walked, adding to the grey mist with warm, white breath of my own.
The mists gathered at my feet and, between my steps, I imagined soft, downy undergrowth. I felt the flutter of foliage against my skirts, trailing their fingerlike fronds against me. They shed dandelion tears as they unfurled like wings.
Airy faces seemed to form from the mist. I found them as I did before, strange elfin faces grinning wider and wider as sinuous features coalesced around them. Strange pinwheel creatures curled around one another, eel-like, suspended in the air around me. Droplets of mist dewed on unearthly branches and rows of moonstone eyes opened, watching and unblinking.
One of the tiny faces smiled at me. It seemed so guileless, childlike in its desire, that I smiled back.
It reached out a spindly, three-fingered hand towards me.
A sound in the distance, like a gunshot.
Startled, the half-formed creature effervesced. A look of sheer terror on its face as it melted away; its milk-pale, moonstone eyes lingering for just a moment after the rest of it vanished.
I staggered back and cast my eyes about the mists.
It was only when a second bark followed that I realised it was the sound of a dog.
The mists twisted around me and the sky darkened. The faces around me opened their pale maws and screamed without sound. Their contorted faces opened more and more to give breath to fear, but there was nothing but a deafening silence. The feathery mist-ferns became handlike, pulling themselves from the grey earth and snatching and snaring. They gained no purchase on the hems of my skirt but it did not stop them from trying.
A black dog tore through the mists. Its bark was sharp and abrupt, it filled my ears and, unlike the dreamlike softness of the mist creatures, the dog seemed to burn with a hellish intensity. The mist shied away from it; its tendrils turning to wisps of smoke where it touched it.
It had bounded straight out of a fireside story, a spectral hound with eyes of flame. The cook used to scare us with folktales, the Gytrash and the Barghest, all beasts of shadow wandering the endless moors.
Some were lost dogs, waiting for their long dead masters, but most were simply out to ambush lonely travellers.
Something darted past me, a black all-too-solid shadow. I heard a low, echoing growl that seemed to surround me. A deep, rumbling sound, it curdled my blood and rippled gooseflesh down my spine.
I spun around, trying to see the source of my terror.
The black dog was behind me; it turned and closed the distance between us in a leap.
Cold fear clutched at my chest. I was struck by how monstrously huge the animal was. It swung its great lion-like head towards me and its ember-like gaze seared my soul. I staggered back and I felt the brittle fingers of the misty undergrowth crumble as they clutched and clawed at me. Bonelike, I could hear them crunch under my feet.
The mist was teeming with squirming creatures, snaking over and over each other, chasing and biting tails, mirroring my tumultuous thoughts. They devoured each other in a coiling mass.
A rider on a vast horse-like creature charged through the knotted smoke. They cut through it like a veil.
I gasped.
Instinct failed me. Too shocked to move, I watched its approach.
The beast reared, leathery wings unfurling as its knife-hooves pawed the air. Its rider toppled from its back. The beast pranced forwards, shaking free its mane.
Hearing a groan of pain from the rider brought me back to my senses. It was a familiar, human sound.
I edged closer.
A glacial calm came over me. I saw my panic as though through a mirror now, separate from my self.
“Are you much hurt?” I said.
The rider tried to force himself onto his feet, but he fell again.
“I could get help. I live quite…” I hesitated. I thought of the shifting mists and my argument with Miss Davenport.
The mists curled between us, suffocatingly dense around him, but I could just about make out the shape of grey hands closing around the rider. The choking hands tightened in fist after fist.
“Stay where you are.” I sounded far more certain than I was. “I’ll get your horse.”
Fear thundering in my veins, I ran to calm the startled beast. It seemed a panicked flurry of wings and hooves.
Only when my hand touched its soft, scaly nose did I wonder if Faeland beasts were different than ones I was used to.
I had the reins in my hand. Murmuring soothing nonsense under my breath, I smoothed its mane even as it flickered fire under my fingers. The beast danced its hooves, slowly steadying. Its wings flapped once more and folded.
Feathery gills flared under my fingers. I could feel its breathing calm.
I saw my fear as a golden-eyed beast much like the one under my hands, and as I stroked it, over and over, I soothed my own fear. Its golden eyes seemed to soften as it regarded me, and then with an abrupt blink they turned blue.
I led the beast back to the fallen rider.
“Cathy?”
The voice sounded disbelieving. It held a very, very familiar tone.
“No, it can’t be,” he said, fear creeping into his voice. “Of all the days for this to… What are you?”
The mist lingered over the rider, obscuring his features, but I recognised him. The knot of my heart twisted and tightened. I knew that voice, that shift of his shoulders, that turn of head. I hastened. I knew that hand that reached out towards me; I knew it as though it was my own.
“Laon?”
Hearing my voice, he wavered for moment, withdrawing his hand. “What illusion are you?”
“It’s me,” I said. “No illusion.”
“The mists grow more deceitful,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “If you are trying to seduce me, spirit, I’m afraid I’m quite incapable at the moment.”
“I… I am your Cathy. Your sister.”
He grunted and cursed under his breath. I could hear the pain in his voice now and I could feel it mirrored upon myself. I knew he didn’t believe me. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve things that need–” He winced again, sharply.
“Can you move at all?”
“Probably. But I can’t put weight on my ankle. I’ve fallen on it.” He looked about. “Diogenes? My dog?”
“I don’t know where your dog is.”
Laon whistled, piercingly, and the great black animal came loping back. It circled us, weaving in and out of the mists.
I swallowed, feeling a cold breeze ripple across the back of my neck as the dog disappeared behind me. I could feel it in the shadows, lurking. “But I’ve brought you your… horse.”
“I need help to it.” He regarded my outstretched hand with weary suspicion. “Can I trust you not to melt away? When I lean on you?”
I nodded, though realising he might not be able to see it through the mist, I added, “You can trust me.”
His hand clasped mine, solid, an anchor in the sea of mist. I could feel his warmth, his breath on my skin.
He gritted his teeth as he got to his feet, using me as ballast. It was two false starts before he stood and could move his hand to my shoulder. His breath grew ragged from the exertion.
With him leaning heavily on me, the two of us staggered towards the side of the horse.
“I won’t be able to ride with you,” I said.
“Of course not.”
“Are you headed towards Gethsemane?”
He laughed; I recognised it as humourless. “Aren’t we all?”
“Well, I am.”
Steadying himself on me, he pushed himself onto the saddle of the beast. He hissed in pain as he swung his leg over. “If you are, then I shall see you there.”
“You- you shall.” I wasn’t sure if I should correct. It felt as though the mist was upon him and he would not believe me.
“Thank you, nonetheless.” He sighed and nudged the beast into motion. Its skin rolled as it moved, ropes of muscle shifting like snakes. He whistled again for the hound. This time it didn’t emerge but I could feel the shadows shift in answer to him.
I couldn’t help the tears as I watched the mists swallow him. He was very so close. Perhaps it was because of this enveloping mist, obscuring and obfuscating. I was trembling, but it was no longer fear that shook me.
He didn’t look back when he said, “Though I would rather you didn’t take the shape of my sister to torment me.”
The mists, grey-dark and murky, closed around me. They rose and fell like waves; I could hear the echo of the crashing across the valley, above me. The mists swirled like water and huge shadows glided above.
My knees buckled, and as I knelt I cradled my face in my hand. A darkness gathered above me. Glancing up, I saw a strange edifice of mist break in half. Its pieces rained down around me, insubstantial as all the other phantoms of this place. I tried to stem my tears. My eyes stung from the wool of my gloves, my tears soaking into them, warm at first and then cold.
As I took off my gloves, I saw the valley around me littered with sunken shadow ships. Despite the mist, I could see very far and the plains of torn sails, shattered hulls and bent masts seemed without end. Serpentine smoke-beasts circled them, over and over, threading themselves around the white husks of the ships. Tear-shaped fish streamed down from the distant surface and fish-tailed merfolk tore at their own hair as they danced, half-mad among the ruins.
It was some time before I could walk back to the mission.
Chapter 10
The Brother in the Hall
The feeling of discomfort which insensibly creeps over one upon entering a fae dwelling is produced neither by the rudeness nor the scantiness of the furniture, nor by the difference in external appearance from that which one has been accustomed to.
It is the result, rather, of the instinctive feeling that there is still something absent, without which even regal splendour would fail to satisfy. There is wanting that which is the charm of every home, whose influence can invest even poverty in the raiment of beauty and joyousness, and which, even amid much that is depressing, can fill the house
with perpetual gladness; and that is, the spirit of love.
The absence of that mysterious bond of loving oneness, which links together indissolubly the hearts of Christian homes, is distressingly apparent in almost every heathen family that one visits. There is a dreariness, and want of that earnest mutual sympathy which is the very foundation of domestic happiness, which is apt to bring back to one's mind home-scenes in England, and to give one a more thorough appreciation of the blessings of Christianity.
William Finkle & Hildegard Vossnaim, The Arcadian Voyages, Embracing Diverse Accounts of First Travellers, With Notes on the Culture and the Climate
When I finally returned to Gethsemane, the castle was ablaze with light. It was a beacon above the mists, and I saw it far, far before I reached its gatehouse. The mist creatures swarmed around the light, as though fascinated by their lurid glow. It was then I noticed that most of them cast no shadows. They seemed faint and unearthly against the stone of the castle.
The portcullis raised at my approach. I heard hurried footsteps, but saw no one.
Gate followed gate, cobbles hard against my sore feet. I longed to take off my boots. At the far end of the courtyard were the stone arches that led into the keep. For a moment, the steps seemed impossibly tall and I climbed them wearily.
The painted wooden pendants that hung from the arches seemed sharper and all the more like teeth as I leaned into the ironbound door to open it, using my shoulder for strength. It was very heavy. Its creaking filled my ears.
As I stepped inside, the door whined shut, a sound that echoed far too loudly despite the myriad tapestries and carpets that clothed the foyer.
The lofty, elegant ribs of the ceiling no longer seemed distant and beautiful. I had once thought them like a birdcage, but now I could only think of the heaving ribcage of a great beast that had swallowed me whole. Wind rushed through the foyer, howling as it reached the corridors above. The grey curtains and tapestries fluttered and then stilled. For three quick heartbeats, it had stopped.