Solem

by Clive S. Johnson

  More distant this time, a voice called out “Leave him. We’ll only get lost in here,” after which the forest’s stillness and the incessant yet soothing sound of falling water soon lay upon Craith like a blanket, but one that did nothing to stem his eventually chattering teeth.

  He prised himself up, drawing his numb limbs close against his body, and sat and shivered for some time before his mind would work. “I…I must…must get dry,” he told himself, but couldn’t move at first. “I’m…I’m goin’ to fr-fr-freeze to…to death,” and at that thought, he summoned all his will and pushed himself to his feet. It brought his head above the ferns and he slowly turned around and stared.

  Other than the waterfall, all about appeared as though rendered on canvas: a once more placid pool within a shallow hollow of seemingly frozen ferns, rising from which a colonnade of tree trunks vanished into the verdant distance. Above, the forest’s canopy spread a vaulted ceiling from which only the thin and gentle pitter-patter of relinquished raindrops could be heard striking the undergrowth below.

  Craith now felt more lonely than he could ever have imagined. Not only lonely but cowed, overwhelmed by the intimacy of something so demonstrably vast. Although the view through the trees soon crowded itself out, the regularity not only hinted that it went on for ever but affirmed it as so.

  As though a child again, Craith felt fingers of fear rake at his back and neck. An imagined terror forced him to make some sound, anything to affirm his own company within this ancient, alien monster.

  Craith noisily slapped at his arms and jogged on the spot, trying to stir warmth from his muscles and fend off demons he never knew he’d feared. Janeen’s figure and features once more rose before his mind’s eye and seemed to extol him to even greater exertion. Before long, a cloud of vapour drifted from his sodden clothes, filling the dead air with the wisps of his own rekindled spirit.

  To keep from shivering, Craith blindly pushed himself on at first, his numb fingers fumbling with the buttons of his overcoat. Once freed of its dripping deadweight, he slung it over his shoulder, then stopped to consider.

  “H-higher ground,” he reasoned to himself. “Likely drier. Maybe some s-shelter, some safety,” and he vainly tried to glimpse the sky through the canopy, to judge the hour. “Still afore noon,” he could only guess from what he’d done so far this day.

  He aimed some way to one side of the waterfall, the labour of the steepening climb keeping some meagre heat in his body whilst the undergrowth thinned ahead. Before long, the ground became broken by rocks, between which he threaded his way towards a sheer rock face that began to loom darkly ahead and above.

  Still shivering, he soon stood before a wall of rock, barring his way, a crack of sky now visible through the canopy between the less crowded trees. To his cold touch, the rock felt warm, enticing, reassuring in its earthbound solidity. Tracing his hand along it, Craith stumbled beside its strangely smooth and flat surface until, in his cold-induced stupor, he fell through an opening onto soft, dry earth.

  Maybe he’d hit his head, or maybe it was nothing more than exhaustion, but he couldn’t move. The slope of the earth beneath him, though, angled his body so his gaze took in the frame of the surprise opening. No more than the width of a doorway, each side seemed unnaturally straight, but his marvelling at a rounded arch at its head proved the last thing he remembered.

  He must have slept, for when he awoke what he could see of the forest had become gloomier, its verdant greens now muted, the shadows deeper. Out of sight, however, Craith could definitely hear something moving. There was a padding sound, and a snuffling pant interspersed with low growling breaths. Another such sound came within hearing, then another, each quickly growing louder, more insistent.

  Craith lifted his head from the now damp earth beneath him and caught sight of a tail, thick, grey and straggly. Then a tawny head appeared, ears slicked back, muzzle puckered above a narrow, snarling mouth of long white teeth.

  “Shit!” Craith hissed as penetrating bright yellow eyes locked on his own. “What the—” and his limbs took on a life of their own, pushing him, scrabbling, hard against the rear wall of his imprisoning hole. His hands scratched desperately at the earth, feeling for a weapon they never found.

  The beast levelled its head and advanced, snarling, lips drawn back in a threatening grimace, teeth now bright white fangs sharp against a bed of vivid red gums. It snapped at the air then stopped on the threshold of the entrance, its breath pungent in the sharp intake of Craith’s own breath.

  “Oh, by Solem, preserve me,” he whimpered, mesmerised by the beast’s pinning stare. Then it blinked, its long tongue lolling from its panting mouth, and stepped back a pace. Turning its head to one side, it softly whined and stared up at a figure now standing beside it—the figure of a woman, eyes hidden behind the well-stained leather of a blindfold.

  29 Solem

  Craith whispered, “Janeen?” in disbelief. “But…but how…”

  “It is you,” and she seemed to stare directly at him—as did the beast again. “What…what are you doing here?”

  “Well, er,” and he had to wet his lips to speak on, “the…the same as you now, I suppose.”

  “The same as… Craith, what’s happened? You’re worrying me. Where’s Fulmer?”

  “They’ve…they’ve arrested him, Janeen. Gryff have taken him into custody!”

  “Arrested? Custody? I don’t understand.”

  “They’ve taken him back to Gryff, where they’ll probably hold him until…”

  “Until?”

  Two more of the beasts appeared behind Janeen, peering inquisitively past her and in at Craith.

  “Look, Janeen, can we go somewhere where we can talk without…” and he nodded towards the steadily gathering group of beasts behind her. “They’re making me—”

  “Until they find out where I am, is that what you meant to say?” She stared down at the beast beside her, deep lines creasing her forehead, then reached down, absently, and stroked the back of its neck. “I was going to keep my new house hidden, even from you, but I don’t think it really matters anymore.”

  She stared into his dark cell again, her mouth drawn to a line. “Come on then,” and she reached in to offer him her hand, “but I can’t promise anything about the wolves, they come and go as they—”

  “Wolves? They’re wolves? Shit, Janeen, why didn’t you warn me?” and he again flattened himself against the rear wall. “Why aren’t they attacking us? I thought they were supposed to be vicious, like in t’storybooks.”

  A half-smile played across Janeen’s lips. “So the stories go, which brings me to my own. But for that, I think we need to be where I can safely tend that nasty cut on your arm first.”

  Craith only now really registered the pain. He looked down at his torn sleeve, rolling it up to find a long but not too deep gash on his forearm.

  “But how did you know—”

  “All part of the story I need to tell you, Craith. So, take my hand and I’ll lead you to my small secluded sanctuary, where I can tell you all.”

  When he slowly reached out to grasp her proffered hand, the wolf by her side growled, low and menacing. She shushed it before pulling Craith out into the fast dwindling twilight.

  At first, the wolves moved in and milled about their feet, sniffing at Craith’s legs, clearly agitated. When Janeen drew him along the base of the cliff, though, the creatures wove a complicated pattern about them, steadily moving ahead, spreading out, low and fleeting.

  “It’s getting dark,” Craith worried when he realised he could no longer see where the cliff led.

  “Is it? Then stay close. Here, hold my hand. Trust to where I lead your feet.”

  Before long, the wolves were nothing more than a barely audible padding of paws in the blackness about them, the swish of ferns scythed at their passing. Occasionally, Janeen would whisper him warnings: of dips in the ground, of narrow gaps between thorn bushes, overhanging branches, foot-suc
king mires, steep slopes. And all the time, as Craith at intervals explained what had happened that day, she put not a foot wrong, unerringly steering him on through the utter pitch black of the night.

  At long last, long after Craith had first felt fit to drop, Janeen announced: “Here, at the head of this dene, is my meagre forest house. We’re almost there. Then you can rest.” For the first time Craith tripped, and did indeed now drop to his knees. He felt thin grass beneath him, smelt water close by, heard it trickle and fall, the pad of wolves gathering in from behind, the sigh of a breeze in the black canopy above.

  She helped him up and took his hand again, hers firm and confident, his drawing comfort from hers. More slowly now, she led him along a sinuous path between what felt like close-growing saplings, evoking the notion of some form of coppice. When she eventually stopped, he nearly ran into her.

  “We’re here,” she said and drew his hand to what felt like a tall sapling, placing his other hand on another. When he felt between them, he found yet more along a curve growing at a slant away from him. She guided his feet to what seemed to be a stem woven back and forth, a stitch of steps leading up the others.

  “It’s meant for kids, so it’s not that big,” Janeen warned, “but it means we’ll be snug; nice and warm and dry once we’ve settled in.”

  Encouraging him up, she guided him through a narrow gap between stems that now grew at a slant towards him. Finally, he tumbled in to the cupped palm of a seeming giant’s hand.

  “Get your breath back, Craith,” she told him, “while I get us something to eat. It won’t be up to what you’re used to, but it’ll help get your strength back. You look fair done in. Hmm, and there’s that wound of yours I mustn’t forget, and all your other scratches.” She gently patted his good arm and was then gone, the sound of her feet and that of paws receding into the night.

  Craith felt around, slowly building up a picture in his mind’s eye of Janeen’s “meagre forest house”.

  She’d been right, it wasn’t large, a tight fit for two, certainly. The bowl of sapling stems in which he lay had been lined with a leathery material, springy to the touch, extending well up the sides. Above, his poking fingers found a thatch-like substance, maybe leaves or grasses, but made hard and fibrous somehow.

  Janeen soon returned, carefully clambering in beside him. She had water with her, and found a cloth from somewhere before gently tending his wounds.

  “Why all the wolves?” Craith quietly asked, listening to their muted panting coming in from outside. She didn’t say anything for a while, only dabbed at his injuries. Eventually, she breathed in deeply and remained still, hardly breathing.

  “On about my second day—though then I’d no way of telling the Sun’s passage—I noticed them arrive, slowly in ones and twos. As they did with you, Craith, they scared me. I didn’t have this bud-house finished then, you see, nowhere near.” Again she went silent for a while.

  “Other than a knife Fulmer gave me, I was defenceless, at their mercy…completely petrified.”

  “But how could you…‘see’ them, Janeen?”

  “Anything living somehow appears in my…in my imagination, at that time just as a flickering form, riven with strange wavering colours, with shifting patterns and shapes. I’ve seen wolves before, back in The Green, not often—they’re wary of people—but enough to know what I was…what I was, if you like, what I was ‘mind-seeing’.”

  Craith waited, again listening to the sounds of the wolves close about them.

  “There must have been a couple of dozen when they moved in on me, circling ever nearer, scenting the air, snarling and growling as I pressed myself up against my half-finished house—against its lack of protection. I was frozen with fear, Craith. So witless I actually wet myself, which sent them into a frenzy, first one then another rushing in at me, snapping at the air close around me…”

  He felt her stiffen, bracing her limbs at the memory, her breath now shallow and ragged.

  “I gave up then, Craith; I don’t mind telling you. At that moment, I knew it was the end. I couldn’t watch, tensed every muscle in my body and turned my face up, away from the horror and pain I knew was coming. I expected blessed blackness to fill my mind as it cried out in despair ‘Solem save me, please…’ But then my mind saw the forest’s canopy, every leaf, every branch, in strange colours and textures but as clearly as if I’d regained the sight in my eyes. And beyond it, brighter by far, I saw a startled face, vast eyes bursting wide as it stared right down at me, straight into my heart.”

  She didn’t breathe for so long, remaining frozen beside him, that Craith feared she no longer lived, until she grabbed his arm, hard across his wound, oblivious of the pain she caused. In a voice so quiet it almost seemed his own thoughts, she said, “Solem spoke to me then, through my heart, in every fibre of my body, and she said, ‘Trust in me, my daughter, for to me you are special’.”

  Craith placed his hand on hers, still gripping his arm, and she relaxed, his pain slowly subsiding. “But…what about the wolves?”

  “The wolves?” she said, distantly.

  “Yes. The wolves that were attacking you?” and her hand turned under his and held his own tight.

  “They…they were all lying at my feet, close round me, looking up into my face, each head tilted to one side, as though seeing something there that…that had somehow truly bewitched them.”

  30 A Proposed Union

  When Craith awoke, he lay alone in the dim cocoon of Janeen’s “bud-house”, as she’d called it the previous night. Its trapped air smelt stale and close. The thin dawn light looked chill, creeping in through the crack of the little house’s entrance. Keeping him warm, and tickling his nose when he lifted his head to peer out, a blanket of leaves lay across him, folded back from the narrow space beside him.

  Folded back?

  He brought his hands out from beneath and felt the leaves, realising they were subtly woven together, overlapping like fish scales. No doubt another skill from her childhood, he reasoned, remembering some of what Janeen had told him before he’d slept.

  So, where were they?

  Craith pushed the leaf blanket away and stiffly rolled forward, leaning out through the entrance and almost into the jaws of a grumbling wolf.

  “Whoa, shit,” he gasped, shrinking back inside. “Janeen?” he cried out, and the wolf growled.

  “Hey! No!” her voice shot to his hearing from a little way off. “Leave him be,” and he could hear her draw nearer. Her smile appeared, framed in the slit of the opening. “Awake at last; and a good morning to you. How did you sleep?”

  “Er, pretty well, I think. Don’t remember much about it, so I must’ve.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “Is it more of what I had last night?”

  “’Fraid so. Limited pickings at this time of year, but I’ve found some affodille bulbs. Cut thinly, they’re pretty good.”

  “Affodilles? You sure?” but the only answer he got was a grin.

  “I should not have left you alone, Craith, not ‘til we know better. I can’t vouch for the wolves, you see, not where you’re concerned.”

  There only appeared to be the one, as far as Craith could see when he again peered out into the thin dawn light. “Where are the others?”

  “Don’t know. They’re only around in numbers when I move away from here. Anyway, to keep this one happy, you’d best come with me. I need to finish preparing our breakfast down by the pond.”

  Janeen stood aside as Craith squeezed out of the bud-house and down its rudimentary ladder. The wolf, a big, scruffy looking beast with a torn ear, squared up to Craith at first, a hint of teeth showing before it stretched forward to sniff his legs. The closeness again brought ice to Craith’s blood.

  “I must smell rich,” he tried to joke, “what with my dunking yesterday and now having slept in m’clothes.” Only when the wolf backed off and lay down, still watching him, did Craith feel at ease enough to take in his surroundings.


  Stark white against the dawn light dimly filtering in through the forest’s canopy, what he’d taken to be close-growing saplings formed a straggly wall not far before him, and likewise to each side. Here and there, dark gaps suggested pathways through, the sort kept clear by the traffic of wild animals.

  When he turned to face the bud-house, he took a step back in surprise. The name was apt. Set within the edge of another wall of those slender trunks, it looked like a large seed head, not unlike an overgrown poppy’s. Instead of a stem, though, it rested on the point of a sharp cone of drawn-together trunks. The “seed case” itself was formed from the higher growth of those same trunks, curved out and back in on themselves to where they were bound together at the very top.

  “You used to make these as a kid?” he asked Janeen, finding it hard to believe. “As a playhouse?”

  “Yes, but they have their other uses, like storing tools and produce. Nothing’s wasted in the forest, Craith, certainly not effort. And more importantly, for me at least, it will remain alive, so I can always find it and move about within.”

  She smiled at him. “Come on; this way,” and she led him down one of the pathways through the press of white trunks, the wolf at their heels.

  At the bottom of a shallow slope lay a sizeable pond. A tall, narrow waterfall fed it from an undercut cliff at the head of the dene, and a sheer rock face rose from the opposite bank.

  On the earth at the water’s edge rested a couple of large leaves holding what looked like sliced roots. Janeen squatted down, rinsing them in pond water. Draining one against her fingers, she passed Craith his breakfast. It looked only slightly more appetizing than it had tasted the previous night.