Solem

by Clive S. Johnson

  She found and hurled another stone, this time the crash of breaking glass filling the still night air, and Fulmer sat up straight. He was soon out of bed, frantically hopping around, clearly trying to get into his pants. The intruder was already rushing back out onto the terrace, the watcher scrambling up to join it before together they hurried down to the gable end and around to the front of the building.

  Janeen hurriedly climbed the steps then back along the terrace, tapping her stick ahead of her until it struck the seat beside the backdoor. By now Fulmer was hurrying towards her through the kitchen, almost mowing her down when he came hurtling out.

  “Janeen?” he yelped, one arm raised. “What on Earth’s going on out—”

  She shushed him, pushing him back inside, then eased the door shut behind them.

  “We’ve had visitors,” she said in a hushed voice, drawing him closer.

  “Visitors? What are you talking about, Janeen?”

  Over his shoulder, it was as though she could see the three figures now running into the forest beyond the front of the building—along Dagning Way she presumed.

  She sat Fulmer down at the table before feeling for a seat herself, then quickly explained what had happened.

  “But who are they, and what were they after?” he implored when she’d finished.

  “Me, of course; the demon; what else?”

  “But you’re still in The Green, no doubt eaten by a boar…well, as far as everyone’s concerned. Gryff said so. Don’t you remember? I read it in their letter, and there’s no one else… Ah,” he gasped, grabbing her hand. “You said you reckoned they were using lamps to find their way about.”

  “It looked like it.”

  “Then who they are is indisputable: only Gryff can afford the luxury of lamp oil. But I still don’t understand; why come here? Gryff won’t know anything of my involvement.”

  “Because, my poor trusting dwelgefa, it was Craith who led them here.”

  “Craith? But he wouldn’t do that. Why should he? Why would he want to endanger you when he’s clearly so besotted with…”

  Janeen forgot to breathe, her mind trying to digest what he’d just said, her gaze intent on prying some better detail from his hastily averted features. She searched for some jest amongst the flickering light that somehow formed his profile.

  “Wh…what?” she said.

  “Oh. Er, well, you won’t have seen it, Janeen, of course not, and I shouldn’t have said anything; not my place. Forget I ever mentioned it,” and he slipped his hand from hers.

  “Be-besotted?”

  “Me and my big mouth,” and he scratched his head. “But then, Janeen, I may be old and crusty, but I can still remember what youth is about, and I know that look. So, you see, he’d never have brought them—”

  “No, not intentionally, but they…” and Fulmer’s words again struck her dumb. “Besotted” was all her mind now seemed capable of thinking.

  “Janeen?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you sure you saw what you think you saw?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t think you might have dreamed it all? You know, sleep-walked down to my shed, thrown the stone at my window in response to what you were dreaming?”

  Janeen had to think, think hard to tear her mind from thoughts of Craith and to what she knew had really happened this night.

  “You have a full barrel of beer in the shed, don’t you, Fulmer? Just inside the door?”

  “Yes…I have. What we used to weigh you when you first… But you could easily have felt what it was; it’s not hard to identify a full—”

  “What about the stack along the wall, about a dozen of them, all full? Could I have felt those?”

  “Ah, now, getting that far through the mess in there would have been impressive, if not damned near impossible, even if you could have seen what you were doing.”

  “But I saw them, Fulmer. Don’t ask me how, but I did. Saw your golden beer as though I could see straight through the barrels; saw it less clearly than I watched those men search for me; as clearly as I can now see your frowning face.”

  He jerked his head away, his brows rising. “As you… As you see me? I don’t understand, Janeen. How could you really have seen anything? Even if your sight had come back, you’re still wearing your pain-guard. And if you saw my beer, why not all the other rubbish in there?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Hang on,” and Fulmer grasped her hand again. “Everything you said you’d seen is alive.”

  “The beer?”

  “Our visitors, the hedge, the pigs, and yes, Janeen, the beer—it’s alive with yeast. Somehow, you now seem able to see things that are alive, but without the aid of your eyes,” and he blew out a long breath as Janeen stared blindly about her.

  “And people don’t live within what’s alive, do they, Fulmer?” she said in wonder. “They live within the dead stone and timber of their houses, walk upon the dead stones of their terraces and paths, store beer in the dead wood of barrels and sheds.” She squeezed his hand. “Fulmer, I can no longer stay here. You do realise that, don’t you? If I do, I’ll only get you into trouble when Gryff find out. And they will; they’ll be back.

  “But now, Fulmer, now I know where I can live, where I can make a life for myself without having to rely on others, where I’ll be safe from discovery and not risk those I now care so dearly about: you, Sharman and…and Craith.”

  “Where you can live?”

  “Where I’ve spent my whole life, Fulmer. Where I know best, and where I’ll be able to see once again, see just about everything around me: deep in the living forest.”

  27 Youthful Impetuosity

  Craith peered through half-opened eyes at the hint of dawn light seen through his bedroom window, although Janeen’s figure and features lingered on in his mind’s eye. This time, though, beyond her, set against the background of a wooded glade, something else persisted, something Craith had never seen before.

  Doleful black eyes, wideset across a long velvety brown face, regarded him with flighty caution. Above them, each tapering to a point, two broad ears turned their hearing towards him and twitched as the creature’s jaw periodically chewed and its round black muzzle continuously glinted in the verdant light.

  A cock crowed nearby.

  Craith yawned and stretched, his foot inadvertently kicking his stone hot water bottle from the bed and onto the wooden floor, where it gave out a loud thump to chase away the last of his dream. It shook him from his bed, relieved to find the bottle unharmed.

  As he habitually but this time groggily rubbed the night’s condensation from one of the window’s small panes, a resolve came over him.

  “It’ll be two weeks tomorrow,” he idly told the empty morning mist that had crept into the orchard across the lane. “Two weeks, but at least I’ve almost caught up. Just one job left.” Craith had enjoyed the rush, the crowding of his time with labour, for the distraction had served him well.

  Abigail appeared, hurrying down the lane that ran from the riverbank road and past Craith’s window, dawdling as she came beneath it, hitching her basket higher onto her hip before glancing up. Craith darted back out of sight, too slowly, though, to avoid her darkly shadowed brown eyes from rekindling a short-lived interest. A hint of his dream resurfaced, too brief to grasp. He couldn’t help take another look, though, but Abigail had gone.

  When his brother, Digga, came into the kitchen not long after, and as Craith scraped up the last of his porridge, the lad did a double-take.

  “I’ve summat to do today, and Duncan could do wi’ a day off,” Craith told him in way of an answer. “You wouldn’t be going near old Mother Heifferin’s, would you?”

  “Happen I might.”

  “Would you tell ‘er I’ll take ‘er baskets of jam down to Melligan tomorrow?”

  “She’s been waiting two days already, hasn’t she?”

  “Another won’t make any difference then,
will it? Tell ‘er I’ll do it for free; that should shut ‘er up.”

  “For free?” and Digga stared at him, as though at a complete stranger.

  A drizzle had set in by the time Craith reached Sheffy Hill. He fastened the collar of his overcoat tightly against the probing rivulets that soon ran from his hat. The drizzle turned to rain as he gained height, the air cooling on its sharp lift to where Fulmer’s property sat on the edge of the rise.

  At the top of the Hill, before the slope of the lane lessened and swept back and forth up the last of the climb, Craith again felt the hairs bristle at his neck. Not for the first time, he glanced behind, but the bottom of the hill lay hidden behind thickening curtains of rain.

  At Fulmer’s door, the man himself soon answered Craith’s sharp raps, but the haunted look on the dwelgefa’s face unnerved Craith.

  “Come in; come in, Craith. You’re drenched. What you doing traveling in this?”

  Craith was soon again at the backdoor, this time shaking out his overcoat, wondering where Janeen might be. Only when he’d sat down and she’d still not appeared did he ask after her.

  “Ah,” was all Fulmer would say at first, his look now even more strained. “Let me get you some tea first, to warm you,” he went as far as to say in response to Craith’s pressing stare.

  “Where is she, Dwelgefa?” and Craith stood, abruptly, pushing his chair back. “Come on; something’s happened; I can tell.”

  “If you’d sit back down, I’ll explain…while I make us some tea.”

  “She’s all right, isn’t she?” and Fulmer shrank back when Craith took a step towards him.

  “As far as I know, yes, but—”

  “As far as you know?” and Craith couldn’t help the menace showing in his voice.

  “Please, Craith, please sit down—I can’t think with you looming over me like that—then I’ll tell you everything.”

  As Craith again sat at the table, Fulmer’s kitchen somehow seemed to become unreal, the dwelgefa’s actions strangely slowed, haltingly; his bland face partly averted, all eyes; his hands unpractised as they fumbled with the teapot, the caddy, dropping a spoon. Had his own legs not felt so weak, he’d have grabbed the dwelgefa and shaken the answers from him.

  When Fulmer finally said, “It was the night of the day when you visited on your way back from Gryff,” Craith realised he no longer had the will to move, neither body nor mouth. He could only listen, staring numbly at Fulmer’s back as the man carried on making tea and told him all about their nighttime visitors from Gryff.

  “Well before daybreak,” Fulmer eventually told him as he placed two beakers of stewed tea on the table, “I’d equipped her with the best I could to help make her life a bit more comfortable whilst she settled herself in.”

  “In where?” Craith at last managed to croak.

  “Somewhere in the forest, but precisely where I purposely don’t know. She was adamant about that.”

  “So how do you know she’s all right?”

  Fulmer took a sip of tea, at which he grimaced. “We…” and he lowered his voice and leant nearer Craith. “We have a secret signal. At the far side of the pigsty, where it abuts the forest, one of its wall’s coping stones just happens to have a bit that juts out, like a pointer. If it points into the forest, then it means she’s passed by and all is well. I then turn it to point into the pigsty, to acknowledge I’ve seen it. If it ever points up, though…well, then things aren’t so good, and I’ve to—”

  “But it hasn’t yet, has it? Pointed up, I mean.”

  “No, Craith. No, fortunately not. So, I can only assume she’s faring well…at least up until the day before yesterday, when she last moved the stone.”

  Craith narrowed his eyes at the dwelgefa. “So, how on Earth did they know to look here for her in the first place? And why write and tell Woodwright there was nothing to worry about, that there couldn’t be a demon loose in The Espousal?”

  Fulmer bit his lip for a moment. “Well, er…I don’t know how to say this, Craith,” he eventually said, “but we reckoned it was all down to you having been—without you knowing it, of course… Well, your being followed here, when you left Gryff.”

  “Followed?” was all Craith could say, his gut quickly chilling as he cast his mind back.

  “We realised that night that Gryff must have lied, to put you at your ease, so you’d lead them here and so I wouldn’t feel the need to hide our demon. Since then, I’ve not been able to warn you. I’m sorry, Craith. I wish I could have, but we reckoned they’d be watching this place. All I could safely do was carry on as usual; you know, not raise any suspicion.”

  “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “It’s not just you they’ve been watching, Dwelgefa; I think they’ve been watching me as well. A couple of days after getting back home, I was in the Penny Barb Inn when I ran into one of them carters who’d got a lift in t’same wagon as me, out of Gryff. I just thought it were a carter’s interest when he asked me whether I could get m’cart up Sheffy Hill, or if I had to go t’long way round like they had.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “That…that I’d never had need to; you know, sticking to our story: that m’dad were still alive when your last demon needed bringing up here. That he’d brought it himself, before I took over from ‘im.”

  “But they certainly saw you call in here on your way home from Gryff, and have probably seen you arrive today.”

  “Or…or they’ve followed me again, from m’home in Crook’s Fold this time. Bugger. I wish I’d known and stayed away, not given lie now to what I told that carter. Damn, but I think I may have dropped us in t’shit again.”

  Footsteps hurriedly approached along the terrace outside, officious knocking at the door soon drowning out Craith’s thoughts before a silhouetted figure loomed in the doorway. Behind it, Craith could see the very carter himself, clearly now no longer deceived. He stood amongst a number of other grim-faced men, none of whom Craith recognised.

  “Dwelgefa Cracchen Fulmer? And carter Craith Waindrifa?” the man in the doorway intoned, to which they both no more than nodded. “I’m Acting Constable Uppaldon, and I have with me a duly authorised warrant for your arrests.”

  “Eh?” Craith managed, although Fulmer remained speechless.

  “I’m afraid I must ask you to come with me, immediately,” and the man stepped ominously into the kitchen, ably filling it with his cold and undeniable authority.

  28 To Strike Off

  Constable Uppaldon gave Fulmer time to gather some things together, whilst Craith donned his overcoat and hat and waited by the door. The carter he’d met again in the Penny Barb Inn refused to make eye contact, but one of the other four with him kept close to Craith.

  When Fulmer, not long after, came to stand at Craith’s side—wearing a shabby overcoat, a bag crammed with Solem knew what over his shoulder—the constable nodded to his men and strode out through the doorway. He waited on the terrace, expressionless, as Fulmer and Craith followed, two of the constable’s men behind them. Fulmer hesitated and stared towards the pigsty.

  “What…what about my pigs?” he asked Uppaldon, sounding like a lost child. “And any demons that’ll need receiving? There’s got to be a—”

  “It’s all been arranged,” the constable said flatly. “There’s another dwelgefa on the way,” but then he seemed to relent. “It’s all in hand. There’s nothing to worry about,” and he coughed. “Not any longer.”

  Craith heard Fulmer swallow, or try to. He now looked forlorn, at sea, but Craith reckoned he knew the real reason why. For a moment, the older man’s eyes met Craith’s, and in them he saw Janeen.

  The backdoor closed with a resounding thud, and Uppaldon stretched his arm out towards the gable end of the terrace as his men shuffled nearer behind Craith and Fulmer.

  “This way, if you would. We have a cart ready to take—”

  Craith put all his might into his bunched fist as it came
squarely against the nearest man’s face. A crack rang out as the man’s head snapped back, sending him sprawling against his fellows, Fulmer stepping neatly aside.

  Craith saw nothing more, already at the end of the terrace and now flying down the steps towards the pigsty, four at a time. A cry and the clomp of boots came after him but the shed now loomed ahead, blocking his way. A hand on the pigsty wall, and he was over, jarred to one side as his leg slid off a squealing pig. He rolled to his feet, slipping and sliding in the mud, then found firmer ground. Launching himself at the sty’s far wall, he dived headfirst into the ferns and bracken at the forest’s edge as another squeal squeezed the air behind him.

  He crashed down through the dry rush of undergrowth, a sharp pain searing his arm before he again leapt to his feet, pushing on hard into the growing gloom. He glanced off trees and crashed through bushes, soon labouring against a steepening slope. It slowed him until he pushed through some brambles and abruptly found himself rapidly slithering and sliding down towards a stream. His foot then jammed, levering him head over heels into the raw shock of its ice-cold water.

  Coughing and spluttering, he stole a glance back up the almost sheer bank. A little higher upstream, a head bobbed above a bush at the top of the bank and a cry of “He’s here” rang out as an arm waved.

  Craith took off again, downstream, splashing through pools, slithering across mossy rocks, leaping and scrabbling over fallen branches, until the thundering sound of falling water warned him just in time.

  He teetered on the edge of a waterfall, between two vertical banks, a pool some way below, too dark to judge its depth. He bared his teeth, uncertain, cursing himself, then heard another shout from not far above and behind. Gritting his teeth, he leapt, arms flailing, stomach lurching as he fell silently towards the dark water below.

  After the initial shock, sheer bloody-mindedness and the sudden stark memory of Janeen drove him to kick out for the surface. When his head came out of the water, he gasped in great lungfuls of air, flicking his hair out of his eyes before realising he was within easy reach of the bank. He dragged himself out by the roots of an overhanging tree and rolled into the heavy cover of ferns, where he lay on his back and shivered.