by Tom Deitz
The trail ran steadily uphill for a considerable distance, illuminated by the light of a moon that was now full. At first David was uncertain whether or not they were even on the Track, for the characteristic golden glow had faded, and the forest itself seemed no different. There was none of the unnaturally healthy plant life he remembered, none of those shifts in quality of light or air. But when he stepped to the side of the trail and made to put forth a hand between two pine trees that grew close to what he supposed to be the edge, his fingers met a resistance, and he knew then, that for good or ill, they must remain with the Track until the end.
Alec noticed it first: how their every step sent traceries of sparks scintillating among the thick blue-green moss that had slowly begun replacing the pine straw beneath their feet—sparks that haloed outward and then died away. They were pale, initially, and almost colorless; but gradually increased in brilliance as the hikers progressed. Patterns began to appear, outlined by those sparks, forming and reforming more quickly than the eye could follow: lozenges and elaborate flourishes like Arabic calligraphy, and sickening spirals of interlaced beasts that disappeared if looked at directly. The colors changed as well, became stronger, more intense, varying from red close to the hikers’ feet through the whole spectrum into violet at the margin of the Track. Eventually, though, the familiar golden yellow that David remembered began to dominate and finally became pervasive, disrupted only by flashes of some other tint.
The further they walked, the more excited the sparks became, and the less confined to the area about their feet, so that for a time they walked knee-deep in a glittering cloud of floating motes that curved up more than head high on either side, obscuring any clear view except directly ahead.
After a while that part of the growth they could make out beside them began to alter as well. At first that change was marked simply by a gradual disappearance of the scruffy weeds that were a familiar but unremarkable adjunct to a normal forest; then of the taller shrubs, and finally of the pine trees themselves. In their place came taller, straighter trees, with limbs that branched forth higher from the ground. The leaves were still recognizable as oak and ash and maple, but they were unnaturally large and shiny, and there was now a greater degree of uniformity among them, as if each leaf were freshly struck from the same die.
And there were the briars that looped and whirled about those trunks like thorny snakes, forming an impenetrable screen of red stems that were sometimes thick as David’s arms, with serrated six-inch thorns the color of new-cast bronze.
The floating motes within which they walked became more agitated by the moment, rising first to their waists, then to their shoulders. For a while they presented the somewhat ludicrous image of disembodied heads bobbing along on a sea of light, with their make-do spears sticking up like the naked masts of becalmed ships, and the briars looming over them like hungry sea beasts.
Finally the mist rose above Liz’s head—she first, because she was shortest. A few strides further David disappeared, and then Alec. They could still see—no, sense—their route, rising straight and true ahead, but now a deep-pitched ringing sounded in their ears with every step. Bitter cold bit into them, then fiery heat, then cold again.
Eventually, though, the mist began to dissipate, at last revealing a lighter spot ahead illuminated by what looked like bright moonlight. As one they quickened their steps.
Immediately before them the wood opened suddenly onto a wide, grassy clearing through which the Track ran like a ribbon of golden fog. The trees fell away, but the briars remained, twisting and spiraling amid the tall, blue-shadowed grass—only now their thick stems were studded with satiny roses big as a man’s head. Even in the moonlight the saw-toothed leaves on those briars shone green as emeralds, but the blossoms they bore were black.
Liz reached out impulsively to touch one of the blooms, but David hauled her roughly back, though he also felt a strong compulsion to caress the silky petals, to breathe the heady fragrance of the black roses of Faerie. Instead, he reached into the haze upon the ground, picked up something which he had just seen fall there, and held it up for Liz’s inspection: an iridescent wedge of butterfly’s wing, sapphire-blue, and veined with silver, smoothly cut along one side. He pressed it against the edge of one of those onyx petals—and saw it fall into two parts, as if parted by a razor. A raised eyebrow was his only comment.
They moved on then, carefully avoiding contact with the roses, and entered another wood exactly like the first.
For a long time they walked in silence.
“Neat!” Liz cried suddenly, her words shaking David from the reverie into which he had fallen.
Without really being aware of it, they had passed from the wood into a beautiful green meadow maybe a quarter of a mile across. The Track was still visible as a withered strip in the neatly cropped grass, and they could barely make out the dark line of more forest on the other side. Twenty yards away to their right grazed three low-slung beasts that looked something like armadillos and something like turtles—except that they stood man-high at their armored shoulders and had heavy, spiked clubs at the end of their tails. The sun flashed on the bright spiral patterns lacquered on their shells . . .
The sun!
But it had been night when they left—nearly midnight. What was the sun doing out? They couldn’t have been walking so long; he was not even tired. In fact, David could not recall ever feeling better in his life. A sweet odor tickled his nostrils, and he inhaled deeply, appreciatively, noticing, as Liz and Alec followed him into the meadow, the waxy yellow petals and sooty black stamens of a vast profusion of huge poppies that grew alongside the trail. David regarded the animals warily and the flowers almost as carefully, wishing he could see just a tiny bit better, especially near the front feet of the most distant beast—though he had to admit his vision, with or without glasses, was nearly perfect now.
“We’ll have to run,” David whispered casually. “Those things don’t look like they could move very fast or see very well, but I think we’d be safer if we got by them as quickly as possible. Just don’t breathe any deeper than you have to, okay?”
Liz frowned uncertainly. “Is there something you’re not telling us, David? Wouldn’t it be better to sneak by?”
David shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve got a suspicion this is more dangerous than it seems. Take a breath. Doesn’t that air smell sweet? But doesn’t it make you sleepy, too? Now look at that animal furthest to the right. Doesn’t that look like a deer carcass to you—sort of a deer, anyway? I think these creatures are not vegetarians. I think they wait for the flowers to put animals to sleep and then feast on their bodies. We’d better run so the flowers’ll have as little time as possible to act on us.”
Alec and Liz nodded silently, and followed David’s purposeful jog across the clearing. One of the beasts raised a bone-helmed head and took a tentative step forward as they passed, but the friends crossed the distance safely, and shortly found themselves again beneath the limbs of a forest.
None of them looked back to see the armored beasts abandon their grazing and move as one in a very purposeful line toward the Track.
The companions paused for a moment just inside the wood. The trees around them were low and sprawling, very like live oaks, even to the pale tufts of what in the Lands of Men would have been Spanish moss bearding them. The leaves were too small and too regular, though, and the whorled bark seemed as much carved as natural. The silence was disquieting as well, for even as the leaves brushed one another they made no sound.
They walked for a very long time in that eerie silence. David’s nerves began to fray. He felt marvelous—physically—but tension was growing stronger in him by the instant. He was tired of keeping his guard up, of having to be wary every moment, suspicious of every sight and sound and even smell, and all the while knowing what would happen if he failed.
It was night again when they emerged into the next open space. A sound came to them as from a g
reat distance, a sort of hissing roar that spoke to them of waves on some distant beach. They could see little beyond the expanse of long grass that surrounded them. The sharp-edged blades flickered alternately all white and all black as a brisk breeze teased them beneath the blue-white disk of the witchmoon.
Shapes moved out there in the dark, hunched shapes taller than a horse, with smooth pale skins and vast staring eyes that glowed orange and never blinked, and that went sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four; and which now and then leapt high above the grass, displaying three-forked tails. And there were other shapes: things too tall and spindly to be of the world David knew, or too quick, or—he shuddered—too impossibly huge.
The place was alive: Even the ground seemed sentient, for it pulsed under their feet as if the earth sought to relay to them the secrets of that unseen sea. David found himself straining his ears, half expecting to hear the cry of gulls, but the only sound was their own shallow breathing and the steady, hypnotic hiss of the Faerie Ocean.
They passed quietly. Nothing threatened them, but eyes watched their every step. And three lumbering shapes entered that place as they left it.
Another woods.
Another meadow.
Daylight.
Closer together now, and their feet no longer struck sparks as they walked—among ferns, this time. But the air had become thicker all at once, clogging their senses. The simple act of breathing made them tired. A walking pace became an agony of effort. David could feel his vitality draining away like air from a spent balloon. They moved more and more sluggishly. The air itself seemed to push against them. A step seemed to take an hour, a single breath half a day. A dragonfly flew before them, so slowly they could count the copper spots that dotted wings like vitrified night.
Sunset, and red shadows upon the bracken.
And still they walked.
Night.
And sunrise again, and the air was thinner.
But it was dark again before they could move normally.
And then light.
There were bushes to left and right, and then trees, and then bushes again.
And dark and light.
And dark and light again, alternating with mind-searing rapidity, so that for a while David lost all sense of time and space, his world narrowing to the Straight Track that continued as it had: running dead straight, and now absolutely level, though the frightened ghost of logic that lingered in the back of his mind told him that if the geography of Faerie in any way paralleled that of his own world they should have long since crested whatever mountain they had been climbing and then have descended into a valley, and now be going uphill again. But the Straight Track was obviously much further from his own world now, or the heart of Faerie much nearer. He wondered idly where he was: in Tir-Nan-Og itself, or in another realm, or in some timeless space between where the only certainty was the Straight Tracks.
Light. Dark. Light. Dark.
Woods. Fields. Small streams.
Flowers. Another forest.
Abruptly they found themselves standing beneath a full moon, on copper sands at the edge of a vast, still lake perhaps half a mile across; a lake whose waters gave forth a peculiar, unpleasant odor that was nevertheless vaguely familiar, almost like blood. Exactly like blood, in fact. David saw that the surface of that dark lake glinted red—and that the countless small wavelets which licked the copper shore moved with a strange, greasy languor that did nothing to assuage his fear. But the worst thing was the Track.
Ahead of them lay not only the familiar Track, but a crossroads from which three tracks diverged, one a continuation of that on which they walked, one breaking off at a sharp angle to either side.
The way to the left bent steeply back uphill toward the woods they had just left, but long before it passed into that leafy barrier it became hedged about with a threatening wall of thorns that appeared quite capable of rending the flesh from the bones of anyone so careless as to accidentally brush against them.
To the right the upward slope was gentler. Short grass pierced the copper sand there, giving way perhaps twenty yards off to a field of white lilies that glowed eerily in the half-light—lilies that became more and more plentiful as they receded, so that at the limits of sight they seemed to form a line of light at the edge of the forest.
And ahead . . .
The Track ahead was not straight. For the first time it failed to run laser-true before them. Instead it bent and twisted like the writhings of a wounded serpent as it continued on into that disturbing lake, where it manifested itself as a vague red-tinged burnishing beneath the surface.
They stopped where they stood, filled with despair.
David caught his breath, his shoulders sagging. “Jesus Christ!” he whispered.
“Well, Davy, which way?” Alec asked at last.
David shook his head. “I don’t know. Straight ahead seems out, for obvious reasons. Of the other two, my instinct says left. That looks like the most difficult path, and thus the one most likely to test us.”
Alec followed David’s gaze in that direction, but then turned to look toward the right-hand trail.
“I don’t know, Davy,” he said. “What seems obvious might be too obvious. This path seems to be the least dangerous, and thus might be the most dangerous. So far we’ve seen nothing directly threatening. We’ve had no decisions to make, and had no indication that any part of the Trial had begun, much less been completed. I think this is the first test. It’s the first time there’s been a decision to make. But if you ask me, the right-hand path seems the best.”
Liz had said nothing since stepping onto the beach, but her forehead was wrinkled in perplexity. “I don’t think either of you are right,” she said. “This place reminds me of something, an image from a song my granny used to sing—the one who taught me how to read vibrations. I think she called it ‘Thomas the Rhymer.’ It’s about this fellow who runs into the Queen of the Fairies and is carried away by her—funny how I never thought of this before. But the part I’m talking about seems to fit this place perfectly—a little too perfectly, I might add.” She closed her eyes and recited:
“O see you not that broad, straight road,
that lies across the lilied way?
That is the path of wickedness,
though the road to Heaven, they also say.
And see you not the narrow road,
that’s thickly walled with thorns and briars?
That is the path of righteousness,
though to its end but few aspires.
And see you not that pretty road,
that winds across the ferny way?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
where you and I must go today.”
She opened her eyes. “It’s too close, Davy, too close to the song, for it not to be the way.”
David shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know, I just don’t know. It still doesn’t quite fit. That’s a lake of blood out there, not a ‘ferny way.’ ”
Liz frowned. “That’s true, but there is another verse a little further on that runs like this:
For all a day and all a night,
he rode through red blood to the knee,
And saw he neither sun nor moon,
but heard the roaring of the sea.
“Well, that’s interesting,” David said thoughtfully. “There now seems to be logical reasons for following all three routes. There’s supposed to be a Test of Knowledge, a Test of Courage, and a Test of Strength. This seems to be the Test of Knowledge. But what if I’m wrong?”
“Then you’ll be wrong,” Alec said matter-of-factly. “Won’t be the first time.”
“But it might be the last—probably will be the last.”
“It’s your decision, David,” said Liz. “Because whatever else we do, we have to follow one of these routes. The Lord of the Trial said to follow the Track, not follow the Straight Track, so we have the option at least of taking that crooked road. It may not even
be crooked, it may only seem that way to confuse us.”
David squared his shoulders. “Okay, Liz. It seems wrong to my way of thinking, but one thing I do know about the Sidhe is that though they are devious, they do not lie. Their riddles are difficult, but there’s always a solution. In fact, I don’t think they dare cheat. They use words like an artist uses a brush—only a really good artist can make you see more than one set of pictures at the same time. I . . .”
“Whatever it is, you’d better decide fast,” Alec interrupted urgently, “ ’cause we’ve got company.” He inclined his head upslope.
David followed his friend’s gaze, just in time to see three hulking shapes shoulder their way out of the woods fifty yards behind them. Branches squealed across their shells; blunt, low-held heads swung slowly from side to side with ominous deliberation, heavy front claws scraped upon the sand as the creatures came full upon the beach. A red light shone deep within their tiny eyes, increasing in brilliance as they turned their heads toward the travelers.
“David, hurry!” Liz cried.
“They’ve been tracking us!” Alec whispered. “They are meat eaters. Make it fast, Sullivan.”
David glanced about uncertainly. “I guess we’d better continue on ahead and hope the creatures won’t follow us there. If nothing else, we can wait them out. Alec, lend me your staff. I want to know where I’m going.”
Alec relinquished the staff somewhat hesitantly, and with that David stepped hastily onto the crooked road, hearing, rather than seeing, his friends fall into step behind him.
Though they did not seem to move rapidly at all, the creatures somehow gained five yards.
With some trepidation David eased the staff into the substance ahead of him, probing a bottom he could not see and did not truly want to visualize. To his complete amazement, the liquid—he could no longer bring himself to think of the stuff as water—drew away from it, barely a foot on either side, forming a sort of trough with the faint gleam of the Track superimposed on the copper sand at the bottom. Encouraged, he took a step, and then another, planting the staff ahead of himself again, and then once more. Alec followed him, with Liz bringing up the rear, her staff also borne low before her. Thus fortified they marched grimly forward into the tenuous rift formed by the untested Power of the makeshift spears of iron and ash that a would-be boy sorcerer had once made for pure amusement.