by Ila Mercer
With a forward slither, the purple scales of her low-slung belly crackled against the charred grass. She flexed her wings and turned her head to catch sight of their iridescent shimmer. She wondered if they were strong enough to carry her weight – for the creature she had conjured was one of imagination. She flapped her wings faster and felt a slight lift beneath them. Pleased with that little experiment she decided to find a clear space and slithered her way along the lakeside path, crushing small bushes flat as she passed.
Before long, Lita found a long stretch of meadow. Again, she flexed her wings and drew them up and down. When she felt the air begin to lift her, she beat her wings harder and dashed forward as fast as her short legs would allow. With speed and momentum, her body began to lift off the ground and then just as she thought she might crash into a stand of saplings, her whole body soared over their tips. She beat her wings harder and folded in her legs. Higher and higher she rose, until she found the slipstreams where she could rest between downbeats.
She looked down, to see that she was now high above the forest canopy. At the end of the valley, she noted two figures atop their horses and realised it was none other than Yaron and Sal. If they were to turn back, she knew they would surely see her and the thought of this startled her. What would they think, she wondered?
However, her friends did not turn and soon disappeared through the chasm in the cliff face.
With a final backward glance, Lita said goodbye to the valley, and turned towards the direction of the Cawkill Ranges. She was headed for a little cottage at the base of those hills, back where everything had first gone wrong.
A Change of Fortune
By early evening, Yaron and Sal crested the last hill above their Keep. Below, the trees in the orchard bloomed. The meadows were lush and green from the autumn rains and a number of the cottages twinkled with light. Usually these signs of life heartened Yaron, renewing his hope that all would be well. But this evening something tightened in his chest, like a fist squeezing his heart and he found himself hesitating.
Sal on the other hand, had a wide grin on her face and she kicked the sides of her horse, urging it down the slope.
Yaron watched for a moment, and then he too followed.
As they drew closer, the feeling that something was wrong grew stronger. The gates of the Keep, often bedecked with welcoming lamplight, were unlit and looked like a large black maw, ready to swallow all who dared pass. The walls too had an unfriendly pallor in the dying light. Never before had Yaron felt his Keep radiate with such rancour. Sometimes he had fancied it was like a fossilised chrysalis – holding its inhabitants in a state of unchanging hiatus but now it seemed hostile and full of foreboding - as if it wished to ward him off with its glowering black stare.
He found he could not go on. Something was not right.
‘Sal,’ he called.
But she had already come to a halt as two figures emerged from the trees. They waved urgently – glancing back towards the Keep. Yaron guided his horse towards the trees, fearful now of what trouble lay ahead.
When he reached Sal, he found her talking earnestly with the Jims. Their faces crumpled with lines of worry.
‘What’s wrong?’ Yaron said.
‘You must turn around at once,’ one of the Jims said.
‘Why? What’s happened?’
The other Jim glanced back at the Keep again and then said, ‘You’ll not find a warm welcome at home.’
‘My uncle?’ Yaron asked, feeling a lessening in his fear. He had dealt with his uncle’s wrath before. If he weathered the storm, it would all blow over in another week or two and then things would go back to normal.
‘I’m afraid it’s worse than that,’ Sal said, her brow furrowed. ‘While we were away, it seems the Hunter went to Lacnor city and told the Order about our hand in Lita’s escape. Now there is a bounty on both our heads.’
This news did not shock Yaron. Captain Wright had said this might happen and had counselled Yaron to use his connection with Fallengrove to buy off the bounty. With a promise of betrothal to one of Sia Fallengrove’s daughters, Captain Wright had said Yaron would be safe. ‘Then I will speak with my uncle and we will sort out the matter,’ Yaron replied.
‘I’m afraid the King’s guard are waiting your return,’ one of the Jims said.
‘There’s more too,’ the other Jim interjected. ‘Your uncle now holds the title to the Keep by order of the King and he is to marry Sia Fallengrove – Dodo, I believe.’
Yaron could not believe what he was hearing. His whole world was collapsing around him. ‘What does my uncle say about all of this?’
‘You cannot rely on his protection I’m afraid,’ Sal said, to which the Jims both nodded earnestly. ‘He would not have the power to protect you even if it was his choice. We have to turn away and leave Dracodia by any means possible.’
‘Look at the banner flying above the Keep,’ one of the Jims said.
In the fading light, Yaron could just make out the colours of the flag and his heart skipped with shock. There above the battlements, Fallengrove's banner waved in the breeze and he realised this was the thing that had first unsettled him though he had not been conscious of it. ‘Why do we fly their banner?’ he asked.
‘It was a condition on which your uncle was allowed to hold the title,’ one of the Jims answered.
It was in this moment that Yaron realised the full implications of his actions. In running off to Yawmouth to rescue Lita, he had put his whole Keep at risk. He had lost his claim to rule and would never be able to show his face at the Keep again. His beloved home, the folk of his Keep… what would become of them now? He pondered on this for a moment and the answer that came back to him was an unpleasant truth. Under Fallengrove's rule they would grow rich and fat, he realised. And given the choice, would they wish it to be otherwise? He thought not. Sia Fallengrove would bring her farming methods to the Downs – making Beasts labor in the fields from dawn until dusk. His folk would scarcely object if they were spared from toil.
He thought back to the day when the troubadours brought their false Beast to the Keep. His folk had queued up and handed over their coin for the thrill of spying a Beast. They were no different to the other folk of Dracodia. Little had changed since his childhood.
‘There’s another thing,’ Jim said, interrupting Yaron’s thoughts. ‘The Hunter came this afternoon. In the morning he will be starting after the runaway Beasts and he says he thinks you and Lita have joined them.’
Yaron laughed. Could his troubles get any worse? No home, no means of income, and now the notorious Hunter after his hide. He should be scared out of his wits and miserable to the core. But strangely he wasn’t.
He looked to the Keep again and it came to him that it had the look of a prison with its towering stone walls, crumbling mortar and rising damp. He glanced at the flag under which his folk would now live their lives. That could have been him. Trapped by matrimony to do as the Fallengroves bid – pretending to himself that he was doing his part by quietly pilfering out of his own coffers to fund Captain Wright’s acts of heroism and all the while, he’d be dying by increments.
‘We should leave now,’ Sal said. ‘To get as many miles between us and the Hunter as possible.’
‘Of course,’ Yaron said turning back to the trio. He was surprised to see tears glistening in Sal’s eyes and wondered what had brought it on. The Jim’s too had a look in their eye, like they might have cried if they were not grown men.
‘We’ll make our way to Kipping,’ Yaron said, ‘and join the Captain. I don’t hold much store in Lita’s map, but I’d rather take my chances at sea.’
‘Then you mustn’t take the King’s road,’ one of the Jim’s said. ‘Now that there’s a bounty on your heads. Better to take the lesser tracks below the Cawkills.’
‘You’re right, except I’ve never gone that way. Chances are I’d end up back where I started.’ Then with a sudden inkling of understanding Yaron said, ‘If
I had guides, men who knew their way through those hills – and skills to foil the Hunter – perhaps Sal and I might stand half a chance.’
‘We’d gladly be your guides,’ the Jims answered in unison.
‘Though it means you might never return to the Keep,’ Yaron said.
‘There’s nothing to hold us here no more,’ one of the Jim’s said, glancing sideways at Sal.
‘Now that you’re leaving, Senna,’ the other Jim quickly added.
‘Then it is decided,’ Yaron said with a smile. He and Sal each hoisted a Jim into the saddle and then they were away, back over the hills from which they had come, the light of a nascent moon leading them on.
Somewhere, out there in the darkness, the Beasts would be Changing now. Men one moment, animals the next. For many folk, it was a notion that struck terror into their hearts but for Yaron it was a source of ceaseless wonder. He would not want to live in a world without it. It made him feel there was something greater connecting them all. If a man could become a Beast and return to being a man again, it showed him the rules of the world were not so static and perhaps there were many more mysteries to be discovered beyond Dracodia’s shores.
He thought back to the last words his father had ever said to him. At the time, they had meant nothing to him, for he was a child. But now they came back to him with startling force: ‘You might not change the whole world,’ his father had said, ‘but your entire world can change in an instant, when you act with your heart.’ Finally, Yaron felt he understood those words.
The Truth
Lita whipped her terrible tail and roared her thunderous roar in practice. A flock of starlings shrieked and flapped into a whirling mass above the treetops, settling again when she carried on past them. In the distance, the Cawkill Ranges rose from the flat plain.
Before long she spied the tall pine that grew beside Tipple’s hut, then the roof of the barn, the yard filled with junk and the squalid hut where Tipple slept off her drunken binges. All was quiet except for the occasional bleat from Trubbles the goat as he stretched his long-tethered neck, trying to reach for a few blades of grass.
Lita alighted behind the hut, near the lean-to where the still once stood. Briefly, she wondered what had become of Tipple’s prize possession. Perhaps it meant Tipple had turned over a new leaf, but Lita shook her head at the thought. That was highly unlikely. She realised she would have to be careful. A sober Tipple was unknown to her. Then Lita saw corked bottles stacked against the wall. While Tipple had a cellar of bottles there was no chance of sobriety.
Lita turned from the lean-to. To the right of her, in the shadows of the trees, bleached bones reminded Lita of her evening of shame – the first time she had ever used her powers of Change to kill another. She wondered briefly about the pups. They would be full grown by now – if they had been lucky enough to survive. And, as if in harmony with her thoughts, she heard the distant howl of a wolf.
Above her the clouds were tinged with orange as the sun set over the hills. Soon it would be dark. She began to wonder if Tipple had abandoned her home but then she heard the clatter of pots being thrown to the ground. Lita scrabbled forward, she was far less elegant on the ground than she was in the air.
Tipple, alerted by the sound, called out, ‘Who’s there? I’m deadly with a knife y’ know.’
Lita flapped her wings and used them to lift her bulky frame from the ground. She rose above the hut, hovered for a moment just above Tipple’s roof and then landed on the rotting thatch with a light thud.
‘Who’s there?’ Tipple repeated, swinging left and right, overbalancing slightly, betraying her state of inebriation. Not once did she think to look above.
‘Up here,’ Lita called, in a curdling growl.
Tipple lifted her gaze to the roof above, eyes squinting and mouth contorting with stupidity as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. ‘What the blazes?’ she squawked.
‘Where’s the woman with the wagon?’ Lita growled. ‘The one who bought the wheel from you last summer?’
‘Is that you Lena?’
‘Lita.’
‘Ah yes, Lita,’ she said swaying slightly.
‘The woman,’ Lita reminded Tipple.
‘I can’t remember a woman,’ Tipple said, shaking her head.
Lita aimed a flame of fire at Tipple, singeing the top of her head.
Tipple jumped up and down on the spot, beating her hair with her hand. ‘Awright, awright. I’ll say,’ she slurred, sniffing her fingers now. ‘You burned me.’
‘I’ll toast you to a crisp if you don’t tell me soon,’ Lita said, leaning forward with menace.
‘Up in the mountains,’ Tipple said, pointing vaguely towards the darkening ranges as she listed to the left.
Lita had not expected MaKiki to be nearby. Why had she not come back?
‘With friends of mine,’ Tipple said.
Lita’s fiery red eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’
‘For company,’ Tipple replied, with a hiccup.
‘I heard there are only bandits in those hills,’ Lita growled and suddenly she had an inkling of what had happened, including Tipple’s part in their whole misfortune.
‘It was you who spooked Old Hodder, wasn’t it?’ Lita roared. She could feel the heat rise, unbidden, in her throat now. ‘Because you wanted our wagon to be damaged.’
Tipple’s gaze had dropped to the ground but the colour in her face and the way she kicked at the dirt betrayed her guilt.
‘And the day you had me locked in the hut I heard voices. That wasn’t MaKiki was it? It was your friends, your outlaws who live in the hills. Because you didn’t want MaKiki to come back for me. Not once you realised that you could use me for your own rotten thieving.’ Lita snarled. ‘If they’ve hurt her…’
Terrible thoughts filled Lita’s head. The fire in her gullet rose like bile and forced its way from her throat, sending forth a gust of scorching flames.
This time Tipple was a little better prepared and she cowered as the flame flew above her. Instead of rebuking Lita, she stoppered up her mouth.
‘Take me there,’ Lita growled.
‘First light would be bedda,’ Tipple said, edging away slightly.
‘We go before you sneak off,’ Lita growled.
‘You won’t be able to see in the dark,’ Tipple said.
‘Oh, but I can,’ Lita said flexing her wings. She swooped down on Tipple, who had spun around to run away. With far greater care than Tipple deserved, Lita hooked the old woman’s jacket between her teeth and scooped her into the air.
Tipple flayed and struggled, but once she realised her captor had a tight grip she went limp and hung like a rag doll between Lita’s great teeth.
With a vigorous shake Lita conveyed an intention Tipple quickly comprehended. ‘To the left, towards the highest peak,’ Tipple said, losing some of her slur.
Inwardly Lita smiled.
*
Honeycombed with caves and shallow shelves, Tipple’s friends would have been impossible to find without a guide.
The moon emerged from a bank of clouds, lighting outcroppings and fissures so that the mountain resembled a horned ogre with hollow eyes and a knobbly nose. As Lita followed the contours, the trees gradually thinned, and the chill of rising mist tingled in her nostrils. With humour, she noted her great shadow gliding up the scabrous slope, with Tipple’s pathetic little legs dangling from her jaw like two long whiskers.
Lita was excited by the thought of ambushing the outlaws, to see their eyes wild with terror, to hear their teeth chattering in their skulls. She imagined finding MaKiki - sound of spirit though perhaps a little thinner, her clothes slightly ragged and dirty. At the corner of her mind though there was a flicker of doubt, an unformed fear of what she might find.
Up, up, she flew, past a grinning cave that sheltered a herd of wild goats, their bodies so still they could have been made of stone, except for yellow eyes that followed her flight. Then she soared through a ragged r
avine and over a small warty knoll.
High above, on the mountain face, fire glowed from a cave. With the goal in sight, Lita surged headlong into rough air currents that walloped her wings until they crackled and shivered like delicate parchment. Afraid they might tear, she slowed her flight, gliding sideways, surrendering to the greater forces. And so, her flight up the mountain settled into a progressive dance: up, up, sideways, back, up, up, sideways, back. Once she passed the jutting stub of the halfway nose, a genial breeze drew her aloft. She barely beat her wings and her approach was blessedly silent. When she drew level with the cave, she hovered for a moment, wondering how best to attack.
Tipple wriggled again, trying to slip out of the jacket that held her trapped within Lita’s teeth. Lita responded by giving the old woman a rough shake. It was meant to warn Tipple to be quiet but instead had the opposite effect.
‘Let me down,’ Tipple squawked. ‘I done what I said I would.’
A lone outlaw, dozing at the lip of the cave, jerked awake. Inside, his brethren grew silent and stared at her with lips poised over the rims of their cups. For a couple of moments, it was as if they had turned to stone, so shocked were they by the spectacle hovering just beyond their cave. Lita counted seven of them but saw no sign of MaKiki. She tried not to think what this might mean. Her roars sent rocks tumbling down the mountainside and broke their paralysis. Tipple, released from Lita’s tight grip, dropped to the ledge.
The outlaw at the lip of the cave, with a hatchet in hand now, waved his weapon menacingly. Lita doused the outlaw’s feet with flames. Instantly he ditched his hatchet and rang shrieking into the cave.