by Ila Mercer
At the end of the ravine, the path widened, and they found themselves on a ledge high above a meadowed valley. A silver lake, fringed with tall trees, lay at the centre, and at the far end of the valley Lita thought she detected a coil of smoke.
‘They’re here,’ Yaron announced.
‘Who are?’ asked Sal.
‘Friends. You’ll see,’ he replied.
As they descended into the valley, the sun broke through the clouds and Lita’s worries began to lessen. It felt as if they were in another realm, far away from the hand of the law, away from the judgements of others. Even her self judgement had eased for she had begun to convince herself of her own innocence, thinking that she had merely been the unknowing instrument of judgement. The Brother and the Madam had got what they deserved, but in the future, she would need to be more careful. It must never happen again – for she could never be innocent again, now that she knew.
It took them another hour to skirt the lake, again following a narrow deer track. Birds chittered from the safety of thickets and every now and then large fish leapt from the lake, as though they were attempting flight.
When they finally came upon the cottage, Lita gasped with recognition. It appeared just like the cottage of her dreams with its pale grey stone, wooden shingles and raspberry vine clinging to the walls. How could that be, she wondered?
‘What is it?’ Yaron asked, leaning forward in his saddle so his shoulder touched hers.
‘I’ve been here before,’ Lita said.
‘I doubt it,’ he replied. ‘Only the Jims and I ever come here.’
Perhaps it only reminded her of a place she had been, she thought, and yet it all seemed so familiar. When they dismounted, she continued to feel a peculiar stirring of recognition. When she closed her eyes, she remembered the sensation of woodland canopy rushing above her, of giddiness, of laughter and sunlight.
Lita opened her eyes and began to wander, following her instinct. When she came upon a
gnarly old oak, she halted. It was just as she had imagined. At the base of the tree there was a hole that was only wide enough for a small child to crawl into. And there, hanging from a low-lying branch hung a swing. The swing of her dreams. Lita sank onto the seat of the swing and began to tear up.
‘What is it love?’ Sal said, joining her.
‘I thought I’d dreamed it. Now I see it’s true. This is where my mama and I once lived.’ In her mind’s eye, Lita saw her mama again. Her long dark hair lay loose about her shoulders and her lips were curled into a half-smile, however the rest of her was hazy, indistinct – as though the memory had faded with time.
‘I can prove it too,’ Lita said, leaping from the swing. ‘The door will have a wooden knocker carved in the shape of a bear’s face.’ She felt excited now, as she darted across the clearing. Could it be her mama was still here? Was she the friend to whom Yaron had eluded?
When she reached the door, she stopped in her tracks. There was no knocker on the door. Instead the door was nudely smooth, the wood as blonde as a golden carp. She reached out, not quite ready to believe the evidence before her eyes. She stroked the wood, but it was plain and unadorned. Sal rolled up behind her and placed a hand over Lita’s.
‘Whatever are you doing?’ Yaron asked.
Just then the door opened, and a bearded man appeared before them, his eyes gleaming with pleasure. ‘You made it, I see,’ he said. ‘And this must be the maiden you spoke of,’ he addressed Yaron.
The background thrum that Lita had almost forgotten, altered slightly with this new presence. Like another strand woven into the textile of life. Lita tried to unravel it, but it quickly melded with the others and became lost to her.
‘Lita, Sal,’ Yaron said, becoming quite formal, ‘This is Captain Wright.’
The Captain bowed before them and then reached for Lita’s hand. Holding the tips of her fingers as though they were rare and delicate porcelain, he pressed his bearded lips to the back of her hand. When he stood upright again, he said, ‘It is a pleasure to meet you - Sias Sal and Lita.’
Lita felt a heat rising into her cheeks. She had never been referred to as a Sia before.
‘We only arrived last night,’ Captain Wright said, gesturing for Yaron, Sal and Lita to come inside the hut. ‘Your Jims have served us well. There’s a pot on the stove, filled with onion stew, and a bottle of mead warming on the hearth.’
Lita’s stomach growled with the mention of food for she hadn’t eaten properly in a couple of days. She shrugged off the blow of finding the wrong door on the cottage. That disappointment could be nursed later. It was nasty the tricks a mind could play when it had unmet longings. And yet, on entering the cottage the peculiar feeling of familiarity lingered. The placement of the windows, the positioning of the stones around the hearth, even the tatty old curtains all triggered an unsettling feeling even though the table and chairs were wrong.
As they ate their bread and stew, Captain Wright recounted a gripping tale. It turned out that he and a band of five Beasts had fled the Shindalay Shales three weeks prior. Wright had then gone to Yawmouth to try and negotiate their secret passage, but all to no avail.
At once Lita’s imagination stirred with images. She wondered if the Beasts were covered in fur, with nails as long as rake spokes. Did they speak with deep growls and stare with red gleaming eyes? She imagined their hides as tough as old boots. Or perhaps, as Sal once suggested, their appearance resembled that of a man. She knew this to be the more likely truth – and yet the myth and mystique surrounding them was hard to ignore. She longed to ask Captain Wright about them but dared not. The Beasts would return from the woods soon enough and then all her questions would be answered.
As she waited, her heart beat fast and her throat constricted so that she could not ask any questions, even if she had dared.
Throughout his tale, Captain Wright rarely took his eyes from Lita. He described how the Beasts had hidden down an abandoned well prior to his return. And then, when the runaway band slipped past the sentries stationed outside the Shale’s walls, he described how they’d been pursued by a pack of feral dogs. For two long days they’d stayed on their feet, dodging the hungry hounds.
‘Why didn’t they use the Change to make a faster escape?’ Sal butted in.
‘Oh, but they did,’ the Captain replied. ‘Except the Beasts who ran with me weren’t blessed with tokens of speed or power. For two nights I ran beside a skipping creature the size of a cat, a pony that was lame, a small spotted deer, plus a couple of smaller furred creatures in each of my pockets. Can you imagine such a motley crew defending itself against a pack of wild dogs?’
Lita wondered why they made themselves into such weak and feeble animals. Did they have no say in the matter? Is that what the Captain meant? But Sal asked the question, saving Lita from the need.
‘Why not Change themselves to lions or bears?’ she asked.
It was Yaron however who answered the question. ‘I heard most Beasts tokens are fixed to one form. It is a rare Beast who can Change into a creature of his choosing.’
Lita felt the heat steal into her cheeks and hoped they would not notice. She had often wondered why the Beasts did not find it easier to escape their masters and now she had an inkling about the answer. She reflected on her own talents: the ease with which she Changed to any creature of her imagining; her new-found power to return to the form of a maiden at will; and that darker power – the ability to Change by drawing up the life force around her.
‘You’ve gone quite flushed,’ Sal said, patting Lita on the knee. ‘Are you feeling poorly?’
Lita averted her eyes. ‘It’s just the mead.’
It was at this point Captain Wright addressed her. ‘Lita.’
She glanced up.
‘There are a great many dangers for the Beasts I rescue from the mines. The danger once we leave this valley only worsens for it is no easy trek across the mountains once the snows fall. On our last journey we lost two on the w
ay and I barely escaped with my life.’
Lita wondered why he addressed her so earnestly. She nodded her agreement. Her flight from Yawmouth seemed so easy in comparison.
‘The point is,’ the Captain continued, ‘it would be so much easier by sea. From the Shales it is only a half day hike to Kipping. And then, with a map, it would be at worst a three-day journey across the straits to the free port of Moelibok.’
‘Do you still have the map Lita?’ Yaron asked, leaning forward in his seat.
Suddenly Lita understood the Captain’s attentions. Yaron must have told him about the map, however she no longer possessed it. The map lay folded and tucked into the split seam of her mattress at Madam Grist’s House of Paint. In all the fright and confusion of the last day, she had forgotten about it. ‘I no longer have it,’ she said.
Captain Wright’s hopeful expression fell. Lita could see he had been counting on it and she felt sorry for she would have liked to help. Oh, how she had studied that map, dreaming of the places it might take her one day. Even now she could picture the port of Kipping, the markings for the hidden reefs across the strait, the dangerous stretch of water beyond Yawmouth where countless ships lay buried beneath the waves. She recalled a day when she had measured the distances between navigational marks using her fingers – and committed the details to memory. At the time, it was a way to combat the boredom but now she realised it had prepared her for this moment. ‘Do you have a parchment and quill in the cottage?’ she asked Yaron.
He frowned with puzzlement but got up and fetched a yellowed parchment with faded writing on it. Lita measured the parchment with her hand and found it was too small by half.
‘Do you have another?’ she asked.
Yaron peered in the draws of a shabby desk but come up with nothing.
‘Under the pots,’ Lita said, ‘you’ll find parchment lining the cupboards.’ At the time she did not question how she knew this, for she was already lost in other thoughts.
When Yaron came back with more parchment, a quill and a pot of ink, Lita set to work. Sal cleared a space on the table and together they lined up the blank sides. Then Lita measured an outline of the map using her hand and began to fill in the areas of land and sea from memory. She was so absorbed in her task, that she did not hear the approach of others until they were at the door. Outside there was the stamping of feet, and hushed murmurs.
Lita glanced up to see several figures entering the door and felt an immediate change in the thrumming. She had almost forgotten about the thrumming for it had faded into the background of her awareness but now here were new notes – being added to the others. These notes were sweet, sad and full of longing, then they too melded with the other frequencies. Lita’s heart raced for she realised they must be the Beasts returned from their foraging. At first all she could see were their outlines – the shape of heads and shoulders and bodies but as they came further into the cottage, she saw that they were unremarkable, except for their beards – a fashion that was rarely taken up by Dracodian men. On the rest of their bodies there was no trace of fur or fang, no evidence of barbed quills or snout shaped mouths. Nothing to mark them as Beasts except for the brandings on the back of their hands, and the thrum of their past suffering. They were accompanied by the Jims, who now stepped forward to greet Yaron and Sal.
While the Jims and the others were engaged in pleasantries, Lita studied the Beasts. The tallest of them, a man with the darkest skin she had ever seen and worry lines etched across his forehead, lifted a sack from his shoulder and lowered it to the floor. He glanced at Lita and Sal, then at Yaron. The others behind him grew still, their stance wary and alert. With the greetings between the Jims and the others done, Captain Wright turned his attention to the Beasts. He greeted them and made introductions, but the Beasts remained formal and stiff – as though they were still measuring up the newest arrivals. It was only when Yaron pulled a collection of sticks and stones from his pocket that they stirred. Each one craned forward slightly as Yaron arranged the sticks into a pattern and when at last he was finished, Lita sensed a shiver of excitement in the room. The Beasts, who had been silent until that point, began to converse amongst themselves in a strange and lyrical tongue.
‘What did you do?’ Sal asked Yaron in a whispered aside.
‘Let them know we are friends,’ Yaron replied.
When at last they seemed to have come to some sort of agreement, the tall Beast with the worry lines picked up the sticks and stones and arranged them into another pattern.
Yaron frowned in bewilderment for a moment, and then a grin broke across his features.
‘What is it?’ Captain Wright asked.
‘I think it is a sign to say two things. They return our welcome and invite us to share their bounty.’ Yaron pointed at the bulging sack and one of the smaller Beasts knelt next to it. From the sack he drew out a variety of tubers, fungi and berries. Lita felt another stirring of recollection. She could not recall the last time she saw the heart shaped berries, but her mouth salivated as the memory of their flavour came to her.
Before long they were all gathered around the table. The map was put aside and the fire restoked. Lita studied the Beasts as they talked amongst each other and continued to exchange signs with Yaron. The tall Beast reminded her of the Jims, with his dark skin and dark eyes, the lines on his face like ravines and gullies. Amongst the other four there was a youth about her own age, two more who were so shy they had not looked at her or Sal once, and a stout one with light brown eyes framed by brows as thick and furry as two giant caterpillars.
I am sitting with Beasts, she told herself again, and if I did not know it, I would say they were folk like any other. She wondered then why others made them out to be wild and savage creatures. Why had it taken so many years for her to learn the full truth of the matter? But as she thought this, she reminded herself that Madam Grist and the noblemen who paid her visits had no difficulty reconciling what they saw with what they held true. When they came to the house of paint they saw a maiden and yet believed wholeheartedly that she was a Beast. In fact, her typical appearance only seemed to excite them – made them desire to know what was hidden beneath her ordinary veneer. It was then that Lita realised folk would continue to see the Beasts as wild and savage animals – despite evidence to the contrary.
After their supper, Lita returned to the task of drawing her map. She did not follow the conversation of the others as they sat around the fire for she was so intent on completing her task. She felt compelled to help these Beasts knowing how they must long for their kin. It was a thing she understood too well – losing her mama, MaKiki and Hodder, her good friend Madea and then life at the Keep. She wondered whether she would ever find a place she could name home.
She asked for the oil lamp to be refilled twice that evening as she bent over her task. She felt pleased with the shape of her coastline – though she knew it wasn’t perfect. And the towns and forests were roughly in the right place. It was the shipping routes and perils of the sea that were most important. She remembered these things best of all for they had excited her curiosity. Near the line where the north and south seas mingled, calm seas were the danger. Further along the east coast of Dracodia, hidden reefs dotted the way. And to the west, near the free lands of Moelibok, swift currents waylaid vessels from their route.
Dividing the map into perfectly spaced squares, were lines with numbers – and she had guessed these had something to do with a ship’s navigation. When she first drew these in, Captain Wright had become very excited, telling her how impressive she was one moment, then fretting about whether she had recalled their placement accurately. In the end, Yaron had drawn the Captain away, seeing how his presence agitated Lita. Then there were parts of the map where memory failed her. In these parts she drew a symbol – to show the area as a dead spot. But these were few for she had studied the map every day when it had been in her possession.
It must have been after midnight when she finished t
he map. Her back was aching, her eyes felt raw with tiredness and her full bladder could not be ignored another moment. By this time, everyone else had bedded down using the straw from the loft to soften their sleep. Lita picked up the lamp and crept out of the cottage, shutting the door gently behind her.
From the front step, she could see the shimmer of moonlight on the lake. Above her the great arms of the trees shielded her from light and yet she still felt the stirring of Change trickle through her body – like the niggly beginnings of hunger pangs. But she did not wish to Change this evening. All she wanted to do was empty her bladder and sleep. Intuitively she pushed outwards – pouring herself into the grass and the trees around her but not so much that it robbed her own life force. The net result was stasis – and a feeling of overwhelming tiredness.
With her last reserves of energy, she stumbled behind the woodpile and relieved herself. When she finished, she reached for the lamp but knocked it over. The oil in the lamp trickled out, and the light died. She fumbled around, eyes unseasoned to the dark, and grasped a carved knob. What’s that, she thought? She picked up the carving and ran her fingers over it, tracing hollows and ridges that gave an impression of a creature’s facial features.
With mounting excitement, she traced it again, just to be sure her mind hadn’t played tricks. Could it be a carved knocker that once adorned the cottage door? The one she had thought was a dream but now knew was a memory. There were too many small signs to discount it now. How was it she had known about the swing tree with the hollow at its base? Why else had the cottage felt so familiar? And this - the door of her childhood, discarded on the wood heap. She knew with certainty now that she was back in her home. And yet it wasn’t, really. For what was a home if the ones you hoped for were no longer there? She traced the heart again. Where was her mama now and who would know? MaKiki, that’s who. MaKiki, who had raised her up on half truths and lies. Who had left her to fend for herself against the greed of Tipple. Lita rubbed the carved knocker with her palm causing a sharp splinter to snag her flesh. She cried out and drew her hand to her mouth, sucking at the sting. She tasted the saltiness of warm blood.