A Different Kingdom

by Paul Kearney

  'What is it? What's wrong?' He felt fine himself, as though the clean water had flushed the forest muck out of his belly.

  'The water,' she croaked. 'It's burning. It burns me. Oh, Michael—it's holy water.' She collapsed into convulsive retching again.

  Mystified and alarmed, he examined the stream, sniffed at it and saw the cross in the water arranged out of black stones.

  'The Brothers did this. They put it here when they came this way. They poisoned the water,' Cat gasped. Saliva trailed in a bright bead from her chin.

  'Don't be stupid, Cat. It's good water, the best we've tasted in this God-forsaken place.'

  'Your god forsook it, not mine.' And she collapsed again.

  He stood confounded and almost angry, glaring at nothing. The horses were greedily cropping grass. There was nothing wrong with them. He set a hand on Cat's shoulder but she shook it off, lost in her own suffering. Michael cursed and spun away.

  A shape in the trees. Someone standing there in the shadow.

  'Cat!' He drew his iron sword.

  Not a man, or even man-like. It was tall and thin, as black as tar. Cat was deaf to him.

  'Damn you, Cat.'

  A post, taller than he was, standing like a thin megalith ten yards from the stream.

  A cross, it had been. Dead briar was wound round it, and honeysuckle. At its base the arms lay, rotted free of the central post and decomposing with the stubborn slowness of oak. He felt a rush of ... relief? Some skeletal piety, perhaps, a remnant of the church-going child he had once been. He touched the old wood with something like a caress. So the Brothers and the Knights had come this way, untold centuries ago. They had drunk from the stream and left their markers behind.

  'It's all right, Cat. We're all right here.'

  'You are. This place—' She broke off, heaving. He was tom between concern and irritation.

  Michael's respite was short-lived. The next day they left the stream and its marker behind and the twilit dankness of the forest took hold of them again. Cat was pale and silent, still racked with occasional shudders, though Michael had filled his skin with the delicious water.

  So she truly was different. For so long he had refused to think of her as anything but an ordinary girl; a wild, fiery one, maybe, but a girl just the same. He could no longer convince himself that it was true.

  The trees unfolded endlessly, and the silence rang in their ears until it became a noise in itself, neverceasing. Michael longed for song, laughter, anything which did not belong to the towering trees and festering mould. Anything to break the spell of the stillness. But there was nothing. Though this place was named the Wolfweald, they had not seen or heard a single wolf in weeks, which was unusual even in the inhabited parts of the Wildwood. He began to wonder fu>w many of the tales and legends of this place were founded on ignorance and imagination. This dead emptiness, filled only with the huge presence of the trees, was somehow harder to bear than all the wolves and goblins in existence.

  Cat's bout of sickness passed quickly, but Michael's lingered on and on, despite the good water in his skin. Weight feH off him pound by pound and he felt weak and lethargic, needing Cat's help to rub down and unsaddle the horses in the evenings. It was as if the forest were invading his flesh, wearing him down.

  Cat seized his face in her hands one morning as he lay in the furs, scanning it with grief and worry written over her own. 'What is it?'

  'Your hair. The beard. They're going grey, Michael.'

  He paused, her cold fingers hovering over his cheekbones. 'I'm getting old, Cat. I'm getting old quickly in this place. I should be scarcely fifteen and I feel like an old man. It's the forest. It's this damn wood.'

  'No,' she said. 'It is the Horseman. He rules here, and he knows we are coming.' She stared at him intently, and he knew what she was asking.

  'I'm not turning back. Not now. I'm not sure it's possible anyway.'

  She left him, throwing aside the furs and letting the cold air bite. 'It's on your own head then, Michael. Yours alone. I am just a follower.'

  They continued, Michael leading, Cat following; and there was little talk between them.

  They came upon two more of the cross markers left by the Brothers' expedition, and once there was another of the clear running streams for Michael to drink from, but for the most part the wood was monotonous and dim with great trees hanging with moss and ivy, fungi riding up the trunks like steps or sprouting in profusion between the roots; and in the nights the only light was that of rotting, phosphorescent wood.

  It was at the beginning of one such night that Michael was kissing Cat and their bodies were entwined like holly and ivy. Then her hair fell back, and in the light of the little fire he saw that her ears were pointed and long, fine dark hairs fringing them. And with the fire behind her there was a light leaping out of her eyes, green as the heart of a sunlit emerald.

  Mirkady had been wrong, he thought. He had said that Michael's love would make Cat into a human, a mortal like himself, but here in the Wolfweald she was reverting to the other half of her nature. She was starting to leave her humanity behind.

  They began to notice signs of life in the trees. Michael found the tracks of what seemed to be large deer in the dirt of the forest floor and Cat kept her bow to hand in case they should chance across any. Sometimes there were scufflings and scrabblings beyond the firelight at night, and once the wink of glowing eyes.

  They were riding along silently the morning after seeing the eyes when Michael became aware of something up ahead: movement among the trees, distant cries, the first sounds they had heard from voices other than their own in weeks. He and Cat halted at once, dismounting cautiously.

  'Grymyrch,' Cat hissed.

  'Are you sure?' Michael could make out nothing.

  'I smell them.'

  They crept forward. A dark knot of the creatures was struggling and snarling over something. There were four, perhaps five of them. Michael drew his sword and out of the corner of his eye saw Cat's arm drawing back her bowstring.

  A sound of air being sliced, and one of the goblins squawked and tumbled away with an arrow through the back of its neck. The others straightened, and Michael lunged forward with the Ulfberht. He stabbed one fanged, midnight face that already had blood plastering it and it disintegrated. Another he slashed down the spine as it turned to run, and a third he kicked aside as it leapt for his throat, impaling it as it struggled back to its feet. Another arrow took the last one in the eye. Cat swept the surrounding trees with her gaze, another arrow notched and ready, but the wood was silent again. Michael bent and examined what the goblins had been fighting over.

  A goat, or what was left of one. The goblins had just about torn it limb from limb. A glint of metal caught Michael's eyes, and he reached into the hairy, sticky mess to pull away a metallic object that rang and clinked in his hand.

  A bronze bell, and what remained of a rawhide collar. The goat had been wearing it.

  Someone keeping goats in the Wolfweald? He shook his head. 'There are tracks here,' Cat said, staring at the ground around the goblins' bodies. 'They lead off to the west. That is where these came from.' She looked at Michael questioningly, and he nodded.

  An hour's careful travelling brought them into an area of woodland they had almost forgotten could exist. The trees were farther apart and in between them the ground was covered with ferns and briars, yarrow and kingcup, the haze of bluebells close to the ground, primroses in bloom—reminding them that it was spring—and the purple of wood anemones. But most of all there was the light. The canopy overhead had thinned, and the blessed sun poured down on them in a thick stream so that Michael laughed aloud and raised his face to the sky as though drinking it in. Sunshine after these weeks of gloom. It was like a draught of wine.

  Cat noticed it first. A faint hint in the air.

  'Woodsmoke.'

  'Where?'

  'Up ahead.'

  They dismounted, tethered the horses, who were cropping th
e good grass greedily, and made their way forward with weapons drawn.

  A rude fence, the smell of goats. The trees opened farther. A neat stack of firewood and a bronzebladed axe. There were small structures dotted about a tiny clearing, some tacked on to the trunks of the immense trees and with bark and turf roofs, like those of the villages farther north, and thick. tree limbs for supports. No walls. They were little more than lean-toe, open to the air. One of them could only be a forge, with a squared boulder for an anvil and leather bellows propped beside a stonebuilt hearth.

  They startled a strutting chicken and it clucked crossly at them.

  Michael and Cat stared at it hungrily for a second. 'Michael?'

  'What?'

  'I smell the Brothers' work in this place. It is one of their sanctuaries.'

  He raised his eyebrows at her. This deep in the Wolfweald? They halted as one. From the trunk of one of the trees a deep hollow had been carved, and in the hollow was a wooden cross, the bark still clinging to it. Before the tree a man in a woollen robe stood, his back to them and his arms uplifted to the air. Cat raised her bow but lowered it, frowning, at Michael's glare.

  They waited, and after what seemed an age the man blessed himself and turned round.

  'Pax vobiscum.'

  They stood, staring. A wild sight, Michael knew they must be, weeks of hard travel and fighting written over them, their clothes thick with mud and in tatters, their hair filthy, the smell of horse and sweat as thick as mist about them—and the sword drawn, the bow strung. He was obscurely embarrassed, as if his grandmother had caught him with a dirty face on a Sunday morning.

  The man smiled. He had a round face, as full and rosy as an apple, and his shoulders under the rough habit were as broad as a labourer's. He was short, stocky, and his hands were thick-fingered. He would have looked at home in Antrim digging peat with a flat cap on his head, were it not for the lively intelligence in the eyes, the shrewd lines at their corners. He spread his arms wide.

  'Welcome, travellers. You have no need of your weapons here.'

  It was as if a great load had slipped from Michael's back. He sheathed the Ulfberht. Cat hesitated, then replaced her arrow in its quiver, though her face remained tight with suspicion.

  'I am Brother Nennian, 'the man said. 'I have little enough here to offer you, but what I have is yours.'

  Water sprang into Michael's mouth at the thought of the goats and the chickens. He felt like a rude savage, a barbarian at the dinner table.

  'Thank you,' he said with what gruff grace he could muster. 'We've come a long way.'

  SEVENTEEN

  BROTHER NENNIAN HAD a more substantial building farther back in the trees, a long low hut which Michael would have to stoop to enter. A fine rain had begun, misting up the wood and starting a distant thunder as it hit the trees. They saw to the horses first, unsaddling. and rubbing them down whilst the Brother silently ladled out what seemed to be a good half-peck of barley grain for them.

  Brother Nennian's living hut was not much different to many Michael had seen the tribes construct, but it was cleaner and airier, due partly to the innovation of windows cut in the turf and mud of the walls and glazed with animal stomachs stretched thin. Firewood occupied one corner, a pile of goatskins another and a well-built wooden table a third, with the inevitable cross standing there. In the middle of the place was a sunken hearth in which coals gleamed red and around it were various utensils, including a surprising number made of bronze, Michael noted, and earthenware vessels of one sort or another. It was dark, stuffy, smoky, smelling of old food and old fires, but the hard earth floor had been swept bare except for the ubiquitous tree roots poking up through it, and none of the vermin usual among the tribe's huts seemed to be in evidence. Michael hoped that he and Cat had not brought too many of their own with them. The warmth was making them more active already.

  Cat sat with that green glow in her eyes, her quiver on her back and her face as still as stone. She kept her gaze averted from the cross on the low table, and eyed the clay pots around the fire with a mixture of longing and apprehension.

  The Brother deftly resurrected the fire and set a heavy bronze pot on to warm, stirring the contents. The flames lit his face from below, making it at once cherubic and daemonic. Michael could hear the sound of rain on the roof, heavy now, pattering against the cloudy windows.

  'Goat stew,' Brother Nennian said suddenly. 'You arrive at a good time. Usually it is porridge, or cheese and bannock, but one of my charges died yesterday and thus she makes her contribution.'

  'Was it goblins?' Michael reached into a pocket and brought out the bell, black with dried blood.

  Brother Nennian paused. 'That would have been Meif. She was always a one for straying. Yes, the grymyrch like to prowl the borders of the sanctuary in the hope of a stray. They have been busy these past few weeks. Something in the wood has agitated them. But do not be afraid. We are safe here.'

  'We were not afraid,' Cat said coolly.

  Brother Nennian smiled. 'I believe you, child. Anyone who has come as far as you must needs have rope in place of nerves.'

  'Anyone who lives alone in the depths of the Wolfweald is not short on them either,' Michael said, making it into a question of sorts.

  The Brother inclined his head slightly and stirred the steaming pot.

  'We each have our own way of getting by. Me, I have my faith. You, I think,' he said, speaking to Cat, 'Have something else. Another blood in your veins, perhaps. It does not make us so very different, believe me.'

  'It makes us enemies,' Cat said. Her ears poked through the black hair and her eyes were felinebright. She looked hardly human. With a sense of shock, Michael realized that he had become accustomed to her appearance. Only now, seeing the quiet, ordinary-looking man stirring his stew, did he grasp how truly strange she appeared.

  'I have made you welcome in my home, though I could smell the Wyrim blood in you. Do I not rate some trust in return?' Nennian asked.

  'Folk such as you have been persecuting the tribes and the Wyrim for centuries. You think we can easily throw that aside?'

  'Cat—' Michael began, but she ignored him.

  'We are the Folk of the Forest. What does that make us in your eyes? Even the water of the forest you taint. I can smell what you call the holiness of this place, the thing that keeps the beasts at bay. It does not keep me at bay, holy man, for I am half human, a changeling, and my soul is already forfeit.'

  Brother Nennian stared at Cat out of his round face, the humour gone; in its place was something like sadness.

  'Child, we three are a mere spark in the darkness of this wood. It would crush us if it could. I see something in you both that should not be there. Maybe it has preserved you thus far, but be careful that in the end it does not destroy you.'

  His steady stare fell on Michael, who was sitting mute but tense, prepared to intercept any spring of Cat's. She was crouched like a cornered leopardess, her fingers gouging the dirt floor. Outside the rain had risen to an endless rush and roar. It was beating on the roof like a live thing, a minion of the forest striving to batter its way inside.

  'You,' the Brother said to Michael. 'You are not of this world, though something of it is in you. I sense an old piety in you, my friend. Can you not tell your lady that I mean her no harm?'

  'It's true, Cat. He's telling the truth, I'm sure of it.'

  Cat glared at him, her pupils black vertical bars in the green blaze of her eyes.

  'Please, lass.' He took the savage face in his hands, searching for the girl he loved. She struggled and one hand fastened on his wrist, trying to pull him away. Once she would have succeeded, but despite his recent weakness the forest had bred strength into him and she could not. He kissed her, pulled her head down on to his shoulder and felt her shudder.

  'It's all right,' he murmured. 'We're all right here.'

  He heard the rain slacken outside, and knew that somehow the moment had passed. Mirkady's gift was double-edge
d, he thought.

  'Don't let him do anything to the food,' Cat muttered. 'I'm hungry.'

  'Plain fare it is then, unblessed and untouched,' Brother Nennian said. 'Eat with me, and be welcome no matter who or what you are. There are not so many travellers in this part of the world that I can be choosy as to the company I keep.' His smile was back again, and the appetizing smell of the steaming food was wafting through the length of the hut.

  THERE WERE TURNIPS and cabbage in the stew, bannock and buttermilk to follow, and they ate in silence whilst the sound of the rain dwindled. The afternoon was waning, the light that came in at the windows fading into blue. They heard a wolf howl off in the wood, the first since leaving the FoxPeople, and Michael started, fearing for the horses, but Brother Nennian shook his head.

  'Nothing will enter the sanctuary that I do not wish to. Your animals, and mine, are protected.'

  'How do you come to be here, alone so deep in the wood? This wood, especially.'

  Brother Nennian chewed on a bannock. 'I came here a long time ago, and I was not alone. I had a young novice with me, but he has left. If he is alive, he should be in the Woods of Men again by now.'

  Michael remembered the tortured corpse he and Cat had found by the Fox-People's camp, but said nothing. He could feel the brother's stare on him, though.

  'Why the Wolfweald?'

  'I am alone here, and I love the great trees: It is a good place to stay and think. Also, I have long wanted to find out the fate of an expedition sent here many years ago. I roam the woods looking for traces of it sometimes. And sometimes I have found old bones that have never been buried, but lie half sunk in the leaf mulch.'