by Asotir
It was the book she had loved so, when she had lived, and the Sun had shone.
She let the old thing fall open to any page, and she read there: and the words came back to her, so that she could keep on reading them, even closing her eyes, even closing the book.
And unsteadily she rose, and stepped forward, and the dancers broke their ring for her, and she stood inside it. The great breath of the flames was burning into her face, like hot summer sunshine, and against it she narrowed her eyes, and breathed in fire. And she cast the book on the fire. Sparks and ash flew out of its lies into her eyes, drawing out tears. She looked through the tears and saw a woman on the yonder side of the fire.
This woman was dancing alone around the fire, dressed in a cloak reddened by the flames, proudly glowing and alluring with the sins of the flesh. The woman paused in the turns of her reels, and her shadowy, mysterious eyes caught Agnes’ own. Then the woman danced on, and others joined the circle.
‘Come dance,’ sang Brigit, beckoning, ‘with us, Aengus! Take my hand with me!’
‘Nay, now,’ answered Buana. ‘It’s with me Aengus will be dancing!’ But the young man shook her head, and quietly stepped back to the dark edge of the fire.
The rush of the ring swept the Tinker girls round out of sight on the fire’s far side, shrieking and laughing. Children were dancing after them, seven children in a row: they were Agnes’ children. All at once they caught sight of her and pointed her out, singing, ‘We know who you are! We know what your heart desires!’
She looked on them with no words in her at all. Then the dread of them took hold of her, and she slipped away into the darkness, and went down the hill side to a dark wood, ingrown and tangled with brambles and dense dead bushes.
She had nothing then. She had lost her lord and manor house, and her friends of the day, and Mielusine, and her beauty, and her hope, and her book, and Aengus.
* * *
ROUND THE WOOD she walked, looking for a trail, until the glow of the needfire was only a lost smudge of red in the sky beyond the twisted, thick, black boughs.
Some cottagers were living beside the wood, themselves coarse as homespun, still brown after those years without the Sun. Agnes thought them quite the loveliest people she had ever seen.
‘Mary love you, surely we been watching the trails,’ they said, giving her a failte and sitting her before a smoky peat fire on the only seat in the cottage, and it old, and in no good repair. It was odd, they to be burning turf and living at the edge of a wood.
‘We always watch for strangers and suchlike, it been hard to get some things since all went dark. You now, Miss, have you any goods?’
She could only offer them a hank of tobacco out of one of her coat pockets; they snatched it up gleefully and reddened their dudeens at the fire. But they knew nothing of Aengus.
‘Nay, now, none has been afore you for ever so long – seven moon or more: and them bandits on horses hot on the chase of something, but we hid from all them. All’s we gets is the madman in the wood. He howl, he howl, Lady! Whenas he’s close, it’s damned little rest we can be getting, the way he howl. Listen! There, now! Och, why don’t merciful Mary send him down a well, or break trees over his head!’
Outside the cottage Agnes heard a dim moan. It grew to a yell, a shriek. The cottagers’ children stopped up their ears. It went on and on, longer than a human voice might last. Then it broke, and faded away.
‘Moy-rua, he’s been doing it for ever,’ they told her. ‘He’s devil-haunted, poor miserable creature. And when he howl, we may churn and churn, but no butter will come. Why can’t that blasted devil chase him crost to the far side of the wood? – Or bring clouds in on bright moons. That’s when he’s worst, whenas the Moon’s most brightest.’
But Agnes felt her blood chill, the way that cry was in his voice.
And she went from the cottagers, burdened with jars of berries, and bags of nuts. Puffing happily on their pipes, the woman and man sent her off with a blessing.
‘Be well, be merry, Miss in a man’s breeches! Let her keep you warm and dry! Go east now, skirt the blue bogs, and you’ll be finding Grain’s county alongside the Sea. She maybe will be curing you. Do not be going into the wood, it’s an evil, nought but badness dwells there.’
‘Let her bless you,’ said Agnes, kissing the both of them.
She left the cottage behind her on her right hand, trailing round the wood, stepping closer and closer in to it. The eye of the spying Moon discomfited her.
The wall of brambles, tangled dead weeds, brake and bush shifted warily past her. Over the brambles she could see dead, white, rotting trunks; crooked branches curling low; black leaves bunching, blotting out the stars. She heard the rooting of boars, the rustle of small sneaking things, and owls and birds of the night. And she heard the cries of Master Aengus, gone mad in the middle of that wood. But there was no path through that wall.
She bent down by the wall of the wood, feeling the tangles. It was like wicker, and stronger than stone walls, the way not even cannonballs might have breached it. In some places the weeds were woven close as woolen mittens.
She dipped her hands into the weeds, taking them back with a shudder when thorns cut her palm.
The dampness breathed through her coat. She was feeling a burning round her brow and a dryness in her throat ever since she slept on the snowy hill side.
And after a time she felt an opening in the wall.
It was a dark hole down on the ground, half-covered with a fringe of grass. It must have been a fox’s path; but if she left the bags of nuts and berries outside, and took off her cóta mór, she might just squeeze into it.
The brambles coiled about her inside the black tunnel. Her breeches were wet with mire. Where the brambles crossed the tunnel she took them carefully between her fingers, bent them down and put her knee upon them. Behind her, her knees, cut by the brambles, left little curling trails of blood. She crawled further ahead, reaching her hand into the black.
Where her hand touched a thing, slender and slight. She took it into her bosom, and went on crawling.
The Moon must have fallen while Agnes was creeping down the tunnel. Weary as she was, seeing nothing at all about her, she dared not stop, the way she might be meeting some beast coming out from the far end.
At last she won clear. She crawled up a little mossy knoll, where the ground was some less damp, and there, in darkness, she let her limbs bend back out straight, until the soreness was fading and she could dream.
The Moon was peering through the branches when Agnes rose. On the broken trunk of the tree over her, she saw in the moonlight two words, crudely scratched out of the bark, one above the other:
GODDESS
STOP
Agnes traced the letters with her fingertips. Then she took out of her bosom the card she’d found in the tunnel. There was a couple drawn on the card, a man and a woman, both red naked, chained by collars on their wrists beneath a winged giant.
Il Diavolo, the card read.
And once more the stars wheeled round to touch the Samhain mark, when all souls and dreams are loosed. And for four and twenty hours the Moon did not rise nor shine.
The Seventh Year of Night
In the seventh year of that Night, the Masters, those who Woke and Spoke to the Strong Places in the Night-Land, put forth their Powers.
They Cast Out the other Waking away from the Strong Places. And they raised stones or air or water or fire about the Strong Places, and forbade the others from every walking there again.
28. How She Sang to Him
SHE WANDERED through the wood. In the brightness of the moon she heard the raging of the madman. The black leaves shook with his birdlike cries.
Her stockings, shirt and breeches were shredded by brambles, her shoes muddied and torn. Her hair was full of twigs and leaves, and the fear of Arianna’s bandits was in her, the way she could hear their hunting horns sounding outside the wood.
Could the
y hear him crying, too? Could they tell his voice, that voice that no other man was ever using?
On tree trunks she cut the thin grooves of his name, AENGUS. But she found no other scratchings beside the first.
‘Come down to me, Aengus,’ she was calling. ‘Come down out of the branches of trees. Let your feet feel the ground again: behold in my eyes the sight of the man that once you were: not so wild, not so driven by the winds, but mine.’
She knew he was near. But he did not answer.
She was drinking from a stream, and saw pale wood chips floating past her on the dark water. There were twelve, and then one larger.
‘Aengus, did you send me these? What did you mean by it?’
Agnes built a hut of fallen branches, ferns, and brambles. She made fires there, warming her bed. Her hut breathed blue smoke in the darkness, filling the wood and leading her home.
She hoped he would be lured by the smell of her cooking, and built a nest for him up a nearby tree. She rested dreaming that he was there; and when she might not dream she spoke to him, hoping her words like the smell of her fire would be reaching him.
‘Don’t go, Aengus, come back! Let me warm your rain-chilled body, let me soothe your chafed red hands!’
But he never came or answered.
And she found a hollowed log, lined it with leaves and put food in it beneath the trees. It was often empty. Was it Aengus who ate it, or a badger?
The dark of the moon came circling back. That cold was the bitterest ever. The stream froze over, and the branches cracked in the blackness loud as pistol shots. And her cough deepened, like a plague cough, like a death cough.
It seemed to her he had become the wood, and the wood was him. Gathering berries from a rowan tree, she thought he must have eaten some. Hearing the owl screech, she thought he heard it too. The creak of branches in the wind spoke with his voice. It couldn’t be anyone else’s, the way there were no other people left in the world.
Through the black claws of branches, she gazed upon the Moon. She was the Samhain Moon, and herself so cold, and Winter still waiting to be born. And what, she wondered, would that Winter be after a Summer of snow and ice? She’d never live to see its end.
‘Is this our Eden, Aengus?’ she said to him from the door of her hut. ‘Is this our Paradise?’
That darkness she crept out into the glen. Something huddled over her tray. It started at her presence, spread its wings and flew into the tree.
‘Aengus, don’t go! I can tell you the beginning of your pain, and it’s only I can set you free of it!’
There was no sound or stirring answering her, but still and all Agnes sat against the hut, sending her thoughts far back; and she told him:
‘It was the first of May, it was, and the Sun was hot and bright, and all the ladies riding to the lake. Dame Letitia and Lady Felicia were speaking of their lovers, but I, I had nothing to say.
‘And across the lake I saw a dark and solitary man. He was standing on a rock gazing down into the lake. He didn’t even cast a glance our way. Miss Cecily told me it was a farmer without friends, and he was often seen on the meads with his dog; a cold, backward man, but something of a philosopher.
‘Then under my breath I was saying, “Never, Master Aengus, will you be happy without love; and never while the Sun shines will you love anyone but me.” Then all at once a black swan flew up from the lake, and out of all the ladies by the lakeside your dark eye fell on me.
‘I blushed hot as foxglove, repenting my rash words. I had to look away at once, the way I couldn’t after tell whether you but glanced at me or stared all the while we were there.
‘After that, I had your house pointed out to me, lonely and apart, half fallen from neglect. I heard the tales they told about you. Once or twice I even saw you, walking in our preserve.
‘I had never noticed you nor heard your name before. Now it seemed you were ever in my path. I had loved looking out my windows on the meadows; now it was always you there, dark and still and watching. The morning after a rain I found footsteps in my flower beds, and knew that they were yours. I thought, “What does he want? Why does he haunt me?” Oh Aengus, why could you not have been foolish and light like any other lover?
‘Talk of the mad farmer who chased me was ever on my friends’ laughing lips. And I thought after all, it was only proper that you love me. It was none of them who’d won your heart.
‘Then you were gone away,’ she added, after awhile.
‘You stood no more upon the meadow grass, there were no more footsteps under my rosebeds. Your house, half shambles, came to be shunned. It was easier without you, yes! Never again did I think of you, I swear, until the night before the last day. It was ever on such a night that you would come for me.
‘I didn’t miss you. But I mightn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t breathe, I opened my windows and you were there.
‘Then all at once I longed for you as I longed for no other man. You were unhandsome, and the sweat of the horrible thing that you’d done came gleaming off your brow. I did not know my longing was but a trick, a thing you put on me. I stepped back to be away from you, but when you entered I took hold of you and kissed you, viciously, and laughed…’
Agnes hugged her knees to her breast, rocking slightly back and forth.
‘I said what I said by the side of the lake, and that was the start of it all, for you, for me…’
And a cry came croaking down to her, hardly human, the way she had trouble making it out: two words:
‘Why, lady?’
* * *
‘WHY, AGATHA?’
She was pacing the woods, weighted by his question. Why had she spoken those words by the lake? Why Aengus? And why word her geis in that way? She tried to recollect herself as she had been on that bright day, but that one was a stranger to her now. Only the wooing of her geis stood out in her mind, unforgotten.
She left him food on the tray, as before; when the Moon rose the food was untouched. She knew he hungered for her food. She knew he starved for it. One darkness, at last, he ate of it.
Come moonrise Agnes found him lying on the moss beside the tray. Her herbs had put peace in him.
It was a great black crow she was looking at, with one white feather on its wing, a bent leg, and human eyes.
She took him in by her little fire, and cradled him in the crook of her arm. While he slept she was silent, listening to the wood. She heard an owl screech very near. Then the fancy seized her that Arianna was there; she covered the fire and scooped leaves over both their bodies to hide them.
‘Now I’ve grown half as mad as you,’ she muttered. ‘But while I hold you I’ll never let you go, let lady and bandits come as they like.’
At length she rested. It came onto her slowly, in stages, and this was the way of it. First she was aware of his breathing, the rustle of leaves at his breathing. Then it was the rapid beating of his birdlike heart she was hearing, deep under the feathers. Her own heartbeat she heard as well. And she thinking, If music has the power to charm, so does love have strength to heal, and let my love now heal your poor burning brain, my Aengus, though I am so tired.
She felt her own heart slowing. So she rested.
When she opened her eyes he was gone. There was only a feather caught in her sleeve.
She saw him across the glen, crouching on a root, ready to flit up into the branches. But his feathered form was larger now, and he was almost a man again.
‘Aengus,’ she cooed sleepily, holding out her arms. ‘Come again.’
And warily, like one half-tamed, he hopped down off the root and came back to her, walking with darting steps.
She took his hands in hers.
‘We must go now,’ she said. ‘We must find shelter, and a way to summon back yourself. Even if it means losing you. Aengus, will you come with me?’
The way he looked at her he might still have been a crow.
Firmly she took his hand, and led him out of the wood.
* * *
IN THE FIELDS they were wandering in snow up to her waist, though the stars were harvest stars, and Winter after being born. They went down south and eastaways, down to the Irish Sea.
They went by starlight, and hid in the shadow of a hedge or rock by moonlight, when the lanterns crossed the distant hills, and the bandits’ horns were blowing. Agnes let drape the long braid of her hair down between them while they dreamed.
She was dreaming of flowers springing up and growing strong, taking her strength, like Day being born out of her bones. Her coughing was hindering her, and weakness and weariness, and a rising tide of sleep, dark and sluggish as death.
From the hilltop behind them they were still watched.
The woman stumbled and could go no more. The pair of them lay down in the snow under a hawthorn tree, the way there was no other shelter to be found. When the Moon rose, she shone down on them like an evil lantern lighting the bandits’ way.
Through the icy mist hanging over them like tent cloths, Agnes was watching the Moon. ‘Aengus,’ she murmured, ‘are you there? I am burning. Fetch me water.’
Aengus melted snow in the hollow of his hands, and she licked at it. They had nothing better to be eating. He looked on her, saying nothing. But it seemed to her a bit of reason was returning to his eyes. Or was it her reason was failing?
That moon she lay in the hollow under the hawthorn tree, waking and dreaming dreadful dreams. She knew she must find strength to move on with the darkness. But when it came, she hadn’t.
With the next moon her fever had lessened, but herself weaker. She was no better on the next darkness, or the next, or the darkness after that. But already they had tarried there too long. They must be going.
He was lifting her, and she leaning against him, and he hobbling with her, and they step by step going down a hill.
That walk was torment to her. Her head was thrown back against his shoulder, and she feeling the ground through his stagger, and the stars moving and jigging with them, like her starry black skirts.
* * *
‘AENGUS, Aengus, set me down.’
It was later, and the Moon was glaring through the clouds. Blown snow was a forest now.
She lay back on the snow. It felt so good that she lost all care for anything except to go on lying there until the dawn. In the back of her mind the flowers were blooming, tall in the Sun above her bones in the dark Night of the Earth.