by Prue Batten
‘Adelina, it will be impossible for us to fix this! And I cannot leave you alone here while I get help.’ Kholi rubbed a hand over his face.
‘And I do not intend for you to move an inch away from us, Kholi.’ She looked over her shoulder, checking, surveying. ‘But I have a prop under the van. We can move the broken wheel quickly and then be ready to replace it with the spare at first light. Oh, Aine, why did this happen? This is a terrible place!’ She cast a look at the lakes vanishing into the spreading darkness. Sounds emerged from the water; the odd cry, a garbled call. She was sure the sounds weren’t avian. She felt they were watched, could feel eyes burning into her as Kholi began to work.
The sounds from the lakes had accumulated as the dusk lengthened into night. Adelina rolled her eyes and made the sign of the horns but Ana merely smiled and raised her eyebrows. Unaffected by the screams and moans beyond the camp, child of the Weald that she was, she reflected how far she had come in such a short space of time. Loss, grief, anger, even hate for a moment had receded to a comfortable distance. For the first time she was an individual of her own making. Not her Pa’s, not ‘Rotherwood’s’. Not an item to be bargained with. She was far enough away from it all to test the waters of objectivity and poked and prodded like someone with a scab, wanting to see if it still hurt. Only a little. If I am afraid of anything at all, it is that I may forget my father as I move forward, and I must not. But it’s a new world and I’ll not go backwards. Besides, there is Liam.
Liam! She drew her arms in tight to her body and sighed as she thought of his face and remembered the feeling as he kissed the top of her head and how she had felt as she laid her own lips on his arms. In that instant in the peel tower as his arms had tugged her back against him, she felt she had been pulled into the slipstream of some fast-moving bird. Dragged along, buffeted by the power of emotional and sexual attraction. Her stomach filled with soft fluttering as if a flight of butterflies tickled its walls, delicious and disturbing. The same kind of feeling occurred when Liam brushed against her or when his eyes met hers. She tried to pierce the shadows beyond the stone pines. Where are you?
‘We must be up early, Ana. Before dawn. As soon as the new wheel is on we must be gone to Star. I’ll not stay another night here by the Lakes, it makes my skin crawl.’ As Adelina spoke, she wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered.
Kholi pulled her against him. ‘Do not fret, love. We have fire, silver bells and talismans. We shall retire to our beds and sleep with our clothes back to front and inside out if it will make you feel better and we shall allow no one,’ Kholi leaned forward and eyed Ana, ‘to convince us to open our doors to them all night. Shall we?’
‘Oh of course not, you silly man. I’m not stupid.’ Unconcerned, Ana laughed, picked up a cushion and threw it at Kholi.
‘Ana, I am serious. Shape shifting is common amongst unseelie water wights. Keep your door barred and open it to no one, for Adelina and I will not be leaving the pavilion until daylight. To remain safe inside with our talismans is our only protection. If you open the door, you meet them on their terms in their territory. Do you understand?’
Ana thought Kholi was over-stating things. After all, she had lived her life surrounded by the Weald’s malign worst and she had survived. But she agreed anyway and kissed both her friends as she beat a retreat to the van. Looking back, she saw Kholi hold back the door flap of the pavilion for his ladylove and presently they were just faint shadows preparing to sleep. Ana watched the wheel glowing on the fire, its rim and spokes sparking red as a faint breeze blew over the campsite. She turned and locked the van door.
Chapter Sixteen
Liam had cantered back to Faeran through an ancient and secret gate hidden in a dense orchard. He had avoided returning to his peers for he would not be quizzed or patronized, but he went back to find a quiet corner where he could think. To ruminate on the burgeoning comfort he began to feel in the mortal world and on the obsession with the young woman with dark hair. Sitting by the most sublime stream in an exquisite glade, he was unmoved, bored even, by his surroundings. The air was crystal clear, the temperature perfection but there was no stimulation. He surprised himself with the bald thought, is mortal life better? He strode back and forth, sleepless and agitated.
Sleep was not hasty in finding Ana that night either. She fretted and tossed in a lather and hungered to be in the presence of Liam. She wondered if he had cast a net over her heart as Others were rumoured to do. She threw her legs over the bed. Still dressed, ready for that early departure, she gathered up her embroidery. A stitch or two would settle her. She rummaged amongst the threads, searching for her stumpwork music box. A tune, softly played, would help sleep come as she sewed.
But it was not there.
In a fever, Ana tipped the basket on the floor and searched. The box reminded her of Pa because when Adelina gave it to her, she had an immediate need to show it to him. She had decided every one of Adelina’s expert stitches would be a token to his memory, just in case Aine forbid, she should forget him and need help in remembering. She mustn’t lose it. She tipped up this, pulled out that. Tears pricked her eyes. Apart from her cameo and the sketch of Pa, it was the thing dearest to her heart. Damn it! Grief raised its head again, always in the background, never far away. Ready to pounce, to drag her down.
‘Ana, look here, look what I have.’
She heard Liam’s voice, sighing with relief that he had come back, positive he had found the box at the foot of the van. Gratefully, joyfully, she turned the key in the lock because if the box were in her hands, then memories of Pa would stay with her, never to be lost. Liam understood this, he knew her.
‘Ana... Ana, look.’ A voice whispered from the other side of the trees as she slipped barefoot onto the ground.
‘Liam?’ She hastened round the tree trunk.
‘Here. Closer to the lake. See?’
‘Wait,’ she whispered. ‘Wait for me.’ Above her an owl hooted and she stumbled as she looked up. The lamp slipped out of her hand as she hit the ground and its friendly glow was extinguished. The dark settled on her like a shroud.
‘Liam. Where are you?’
No one answered. She sat very still and looked around, aware of an ugly emptiness. Even the campfire appeared to have gone out, everything swallowed in the blackness. No sound other than the slap-slap of wavelets on the shoreline and the honk of a lone goose calling for its mate could be heard. The uneasy quiet of a graveyard surrounded her. She turned to go back the way she thought she had come and a light sparkled through the trees. The campfire! Her breath gushed out in a big sigh. Angry with Liam now for playing with her, teasing her, she cast a look over her shoulder. ‘Liam! Don’t do this. You'll regret it.’ The anger implicit in the threat was leavened by the whisper and the whole was swallowed by the night. She headed for the candle-like glow, arms a little outstretched to avoid colliding with tree trunks and vans.
The gleam flittered and danced in front of her and she followed its path, believing she was moving toward the caravan. But after five minutes of toes sinking into watery puddles and feeling splashes of moisture dance on her calves, she stopped, concern and the faintest ripple of something-else pulling at her consciousness. ‘Liam?’ A scared whisper sighed out as she turned in a circle, confusion erasing all sense of direction. The dribble of fear that had rippled earlier now became a raging torrent as sweat began to gather across her body. Her mouth dried and she swallowed, taking shallow breaths. She ran straight ahead, terrified and barefoot into blackness until she spotted a pinprick of light dancing far ahead. Sobbing with relief in the sucking silence of the lakeside night, she ran faster. Water splashed and tussocks bent as she wound in and out. Always equidistant, the yellow gleam enticed her on. Soon her whole focus was that golden sheen. When she stumbled and fell to her knees amongst the puddles she noticed nothing but the light which waited mesmerisingly whilst she picked herself up and struggled on, Liam’s voice calling occasionally from a muffl
ed distance.
As she gasped for breath, her chest sucking greedily at the night-air, something gripped her arm - cold talons whose stiletto nails hooked into the fabric of her jacket. Phantasms rose from amongst the tussocks, growing like some malodorous grey waterweed, to tangle and trip. She screamed as hollow eye sockets bent toward her sucking her into their bottomless depths. Hands brushed at her hair, dragging at her, pulling her toward the marshy shore of the lakes. As they touched her she imagined her skin puckering, shrinking and dying. She fought them off hysterically, shoving and kicking. Her breath gushed in as she sobbed, mumbling words that had no meaning. Pushing at the phantasms, turning away from their shriveled, grey faces, from the weed and snails that bedecked their hair and clothes. Always keeping the light in sight.
For what seemed hours, Ana had described circles and squares and always that fateful light had kept her far from camp and fire. The wretched Teine Sidhe, cruel will o’ the wisps, had dragged her to the point of exhaustion where her legs gave way and she crashed to knees on which she began to crawl. The phantasms pushed her forward, all of them contained by circle upon circle of the dancing yellow light of the Teine Sidhe. The water surrounding Ana had thickened like black curd. Her legs bogged down in the mire and her hands found little purchase. But with the effort of the truly doomed, that final heroic push which mortals make when faced with disaster, she heaved her exhausted body up and took a last desperate step.
Her feet hit bottomless murk squelching up all around her. She fell, buried to her knees in the sucking quagmire. The swamp began to exert pressure on her body, squeezing, strangling, and she floundered little as inch by weakened inch she sank. In the distance a lone rooster crowed in some cosy yard at Star. Above, in a sky that changed from ink black to deep navy, a dark shape flew over the doomed mortal. Looking down, the black swan shook its elegant head and flew on.
Chapter Seventeen
‘Where in the name of Aine have you been?’ Adelina flung around at Liam, shrieking as he rode into the copse. ‘SHE’S GONE!’
‘What?’ Liam’s smile froze.
‘It’s true.’ Kholi spoke with a knife-edge to his voice. ‘I thought we could trust you, Liam, to be there for us. You were our friend. We welcomed you as such. And in this wretched place you leave us, and what happens? I asked you to have a care for Ana, didn’t I? And now she’s gone. Been spirited away; the van is a mess.’
Adelina moved like a wildcat, advancing on Liam with teeth bared and eyes narrowed. If she had a tail it would have twitched from side to side. ‘You feckless, arrogant bastard, I don’t agree with Kholi, I swear she would still be with us if you hadn’t happened into our lives.’
‘Adelina, stop!’ Kholi shouted. ‘This achieves nothing.’ He turned towards Liam. ‘But in truth I don’t know where to begin to search.’
‘Show me.’ Liam pushed past Adelina to the van and Kholi preceded him inside. Drawers teetered open and baskets of embroideries, fabrics and threads tumbled out. Ana’s bedding was pulled back, the sheets ruckled. Her basket lay on the bed, its contents a rainbow of scattered colour. ‘No Other has been here.’ Liam turned to go.
‘Is that all you have got to say? No Other has been here? By the spirits!’ Adelina raised her hand to crack him across the cheek. Kholi grabbed her arm, full of intimidation and a quelling anger.
She subsided as Liam leaped down the steps to stalk around the copse, sniffing like a hound, casting wide. ‘And none here either.’ He walked outside the ring of trees, turning this way and that. ‘But here...’ he paused and looked into the watery distance and then quickly returned to the van. ‘There have been Others here. And she’s gone after them. I think she has followed, not been taken.’
Adelina threw down the nosebag she held for Ajax, the grain pooling in a honey coloured heap on the ground, full of fright at Ana’s predicament.
Liam avoided her and spoke directly to Kholi. ‘Get the wheel fixed and leave immediately for Star. I will find Ana and bring her to you.’ He grasped Kholi’s forearm and gave it a shake. ‘I will find her, I swear.’
‘Yes, friend.’ Adelina spat the words like so many shards of ice, cracking in the morning air around them. ‘But alive or dead. I tell you, if one hair of her head is damaged, I will seek you and curse you until you are dead yourself.’
Liam glanced at her briefly, a look that said ‘don’t cross me,’ and turned away to fling himself on Florien. Leaving the copse at a gallop, he flung divots of soil in his wake.
Momentarily there was silence and then Adelina picked up a fallen branch and flung it, followed by a string of invective after the departing horse and rider. Kholi shook his head and as he bent to pick up the spare wheel to slip it on the axle, he spied something lying half buried in the disturbed soil and pine needles by the side of the van. He curled his fingers around it and brushed at it, holding it to the ever-brightening sky to get a better look. ‘Adelina, look. It’s Ana’s music box. How did it get by the wheel?’
Adelina had been striding around the copse, hands on hips and breathing hard. She attempted to calm herself as she took the box from the merchant’s hands. ‘I imagine it fell out of her sewing basket when the wheel collapsed. We had our work on the step as we journeyed.’ She rolled the petite object in her hand.
Kholi watched her struggling with the fear of Others and what they may do. He reached over and pulled her to his chest. ‘Come doveheart, he will find her. I have faith.’
‘Oh yes,’ she uttered in a macabre tone. ‘He will find her. But alive or dead, Kholi, that is what I am afraid of. This is the work of Others and you know as well as I what can happen. This is the home of many shape shifters, and of the Teine Sidhe. But worse Kholi, it is the home of the Limnae, the spirits of the Marsh. They are terrifying. They are dead spirits.’
‘Adelina, stop.’ Kholi shook her. ‘You only have two choices in this. To trust Liam or not. For myself, I shall trust him. If you have faith in me, do as I do.’
The dawn strobes flashed through the stone pines as she nodded. Perverse and cruel, the sun had rolled into a clear blue sky and the day would be beautiful. Kholi picked up tools and continued to work at the wheel, desperate to be away to Star on the Stair where they could wait in safety.
Liam followed the trail at a gallop, the smell of mortal quite overt. To Liam it was like pollen to a bee. Ana’s track meandered; looping, curling, retreating, advancing till Liam felt he was creating a vast Faeran calligraphy... a rune of flowing, curving curlicews telling a story of disaster. All the while his mind gnawed at the emotion he was feeling - mortal emotion. An overpowering fear that someone he wanted, that he obsessed about, that he could almost love, would be lost. Why did it matter, because he had only ever really wanted a game, an experience? It was as if some giant prophetic hand had moved all the pieces on the board so that he must really struggle to win. Perhaps it was something he had done so that some Other cursed him. His father’s soul? No. Perhaps a mortal then - maybe Adelina. Aine knows she hated him enough and wanted him as far from Ana as possible. He could die in the attempt at goodliness and the copper-haired she-devil would remain unmoved.
His horse flew, as if by galloping, Liam raced away from the dark shadow of his former life. Perhaps by finding Ana and sweeping her into the saddle with him, he would be resurrected, reformed and revived. Maybe it was a game. With the winner taking all. He careened to a halt by a stone-pine that bent over a knoll overlooking a lake. A silver ruffle of buttongrass and sedge edged the shore. As the sun rose, seeping over the horizon and stretching gold and silver light across the landscape, the lake became a bowl of molten metal, as if an alchemist strove to create something magical in a steaming cauldron. In the dawn air, the gauzy mist lacing in amongst the shrubby shoreline created mystery and mesmer.
The lake edged around a small promontory and as the cocks crowed far away at the foot of the Goti range, a lone black swan flew in a circle over the lake, gliding smoothly onto the surface, legs skimming, r
uffling the water and then allowing stillness to resume as it shuffled and folded rich black wings across its back. Paddling idly, it approached the shoreline and as it took a step from the shallows it shape-changed, becoming upright. The feathered covering dropped over the being’s arm to drape, shining like satin. The white swan face smoothed and elongated to become a woman’s visage... a woman palely beautiful with lips the colour of blood and cheeks the colour of blossom. Her form was clothed in a black gown falling in pliant folds to white, narrow feet and she walked to the shrubs and laid her cloak of plumage carefully. Everything about the woman was starkly graceful and she returned to the lake to enter its shallows as any normal woman would. She bent and washed her face and sank below the surface to float like a star, arms outstretched, eyes shut.
Liam dismounted and ran to the shrubs, to the heap of glistening feathers. As he touched the cloak and gathered it to his arms, a hiss flew from the water and the woman turned to the shore, raising herself, a column of black fury. ‘Faeran! Leave it!’
‘It is mine, Maeve Swan Maid. And you are now mine. Again as I recall, and this time you will do my bidding to get your cloak back.’
The swan-maid ran out of the water, her robe clinging to her perfect form. Her chill face was filled with mocking anger as she stood in front of Liam.
‘Thy memory is good. Apparently though, thou has no humour or thou would have taken that moment, so long since, as youthful foolery? I asked for my cloak then and thou did give it to me. Thy misfortune. Hast thou brooded of thy weak-minded idiocy since? It is surely history.’
‘You owed me favour. I lifted your cloak, you owed me. It is the lore of the swan-maids is it not?’ Liam fixed a gaze filled with loathing on Maeve.
‘Thou tell of the truth. And I would ask thee, if I do thy bidding now wouldst thou then give my cloak willingly? For thou seems inordinately angry at my own self.’ What passed for a smile and a faint attempt at charm flashed across the chill face. A mere lifting of the corners of the mouth, no answering lilt in the eyes.