Barefoot on the Wind

by Zoe Marriott

  It is very quiet, I thought suddenly. There was birdsong, high and sweet and golden … and completely unfamiliar. What kind of bird sang like that? I had known the call of every bird in the woods by the time I was seven – my grandmother had made sure of it. But somehow this song I did not know.

  Somewhere close by, water gurgled. It was the sound of a small, swift-moving rill, nothing like my family’s deep silent well. And I could hear the whispers of a light breeze through leaves, but the sound was too far away to be our apple trees, and at the same time much too close to be the trees up on the ridge above the village. I couldn’t hear anyone breathing, either. No one was sitting with me.

  Without knowing how, suddenly I was sure that I had been ill for a long time.

  When a person doesn’t move, can’t eat or drink much, their body starts to fail very quickly…

  I frowned crossly. Strange… I was sure it was Kaede’s voice I was remembering. But when had the healer told me that? Could it be something I had overheard while I lay here, barely conscious?

  Blinking rapidly, I let the tears from my watering eyes soak into my cheeks and hair as my sight slowly adjusted. I was sheltered by a dim, curving roof, high, high above me. I thought it was made of stone but of a kind I had never seen before, sandy yellow-ish in colour. There were vines, miles of them, leafy green and criss-crossing the circular roof space. Narrow, arching windows ringed the walls, too high for any human to be able to gaze out of them. The openings let in shafts of greenish light, and more clustering vines.

  My eyes tracked downwards. Curving stone walls, with strange round pillars carved into them, also cloaked in thick tendrils of green. The space was large but seemed mostly empty. The entire floor was covered in green and yellow moss. I thought my head must be pillowed on the stuff.

  From the corner of my left eye, I could see a dug-out hearth, circular like this room, cut into the mossy floor and ringed with stones. The fire there had died down to pale ashy embers. A stand of blackened branches held a clay pot suspended over the heat. Other signs of human habitation – a squat iron teapot, a cup, small bowls, a chipped spoon and a rough pestle and mortar made of two rounded stones – were carefully and precisely arranged on the floor around it.

  The sight of the pestle and mortar brought a sudden flash of memory: bitter, vile-tasting liquid that shrivelled my tongue but eased away pain and let me sleep. It felt like … like a very familiar memory. Something that had happened not once but over and over, until the shape of the memory was rubbed smooth in my mind. A large, warm hand cradling my head, and a cup pressed to my lips, and a quiet voice that hovered near by, always. Of course. The voice – the stranger. The man not of my village.

  Where had he come from? And where was he now?

  Where … where was I?

  Weathering the unpleasant twinges that the motion sent down into my shoulder, I rolled my head on the mossy pillow to look to my right. That was where most of the light spilled into the room. A wide, arched doorway with no door led out into – I squinted, eyes watering again – some green space. Very green. Grass? And the line of a tall hedge, perhaps?

  I did not recognize any of it. This was nowhere I had ever been, nowhere I had ever seen before in my life. How could that be? And then, like an icy cold hand laid upon my breast, the thought: Had the stranger been the one to bring me here? Away from my village and everything I knew? Where was my family? Why had they let him take me?

  Or had they?

  My hands curled into fists – or tried to. My right hand only twitched, and the movement sent a terrible burning twinge up along my arm that only added to the sense of panic. I was helpless. Weak. Utterly dependent on a man whose name I did not know and whose face I had never seen. Who was he? Why wasn’t my mother here – or my father? Had something happened to them?

  What happened to me?

  Against my will the air began to huff between my lips with a hard, desperate panting noise. It was the sound a deer made when my arrow had pierced its body but not struck its heart, bringing it crashing down without ending its life outright.

  A confused whirl of images from my nightmare assaulted me. Running in the dark. Falling.

  Something terrible had happened. Something terrible had happened to me.

  I am the prey. I am the prey. Run!

  No, I told myself fiercely. I am a hunter. And I am not afraid. I will not be afraid. I squeezed my eyes shut, searching for stillness inside.

  I had to get up and find out where I was. I had to try to get home.

  If I could move at all, I must move now.

  Holding my breath, I shifted cautiously from side to side, testing, then made myself roll towards the hearth, onto my left shoulder. My right side seemed to catch fire at the pull on my injuries – a swoop of sickness turned my stomach and sweat sprang up over my whole body. I braced myself and rolled again, onto my front this time, getting my good arm under me with a muffled grunt.

  Pain washed through me in hot, queasy waves as I pushed myself upright into a kneeling position. I set my jaw. With a painful heave, I managed to gain my feet – but the effort sent black and silver phantoms darting across my vision. Blindly I flailed for balance. My hand hit something. Something solid. A wall. I leaned into it gratefully. My skin was icy with cold sweat.

  But I was up on my own two feet, and the doorway was before me.

  Pulling the stiff fabric of the robe up over my bandaged arm and clutching it close around my torso with my good hand, I shuffled forwards. The sun’s light fell directly into my face as I stepped outside, and I was so grateful for the warmth that I allowed myself to still for a precious heartbeat to bask in it. Then I blinked the water from my eyes a second time and looked around.

  And gasped. It was a garden. But such a garden.

  No workaday, muddy plot of earth for vegetables and fruit trees and pigs and chickens, this. It was … it was like one of the fancy noblemen’s gardens, or the Moon Prince’s public parks, which had so impressed Grandmother’s grandfather, when he visited the City of the Moon over a hundred years ago.

  The garden was deserted, silent under the still soft light of early morning, curls of mist rising up from the tall, dark hedge that seemed to enclose it. Beneath my feet, velvety turf, glittering with dew, had been cut into long bands that curled and flowed in repeating, symmetrical patterns. In between them, raked smooth, was shining white sand. Whenever several bands of grass met, they formed intricate knots, and in the centre of each knot was some small miracle of a gardener’s art: an explosion of vivid, unfamiliar flowers trained to cascade over an iron frame in the shape of a sunburst; a perfect miniature landscape formed of tiny rocks and trees and shrubs trimmed into pleasing shapes; a softly muttering fountain in a jewel-like tumble of smooth quartz stones.

  At the very centre of the knotting patterns of grass lay the place from which I had just emerged. It was a tall, round building, slender and golden, rising five or six storey’s high. Nothing like the squat wooden buildings I was used to. It must have been impressive once. Now it was clearly ruined; no shutters or paper in the thin windows, no door in the arched doorway. Perhaps there was no roof. But enclosing the entire stone building, so that only random sections of its walls could be seen, was an immense tree. I had never seen or imagined such a tree before. The greyish-purple trunk soared into the sky like a mountain, its lush green canopy spreading so high that clouds drifted in ragged wisps amongst its branches. It looked like something from a fairy tale.

  I turned back again, to look at the rest of the garden. The hedge that surrounded this place was taller than my head, and dark. Beyond that, the sun cast its light on more trees, more leafy giants, in the distance. Everything was in bloom. As if it were midsummer. It was impossible. Everything I could see was all impossible. This was more than fantastic. More than beautiful.

  Magic.

  Eight

  Somewhere not far off there was a liquid, mournful cry: a bird or some other creature. I starte
d, and shook myself out of my daydream state.

  Time enough to work out if this place was a trick or a hallucination or a … a spell, later. When I had figured out where on earth it was. When I knew I could find my way home.

  My unsteady feet trod slowly over the patterns of turf and sand, reluctant to ruin their beauty. The tall, dark hedge, I saw as I came closer, was in truth little more than a dense tangle of thorns. Each of the thorns was as long as my finger, and wickedly barbed. Not a good match for the beauty of the rest of the garden.

  To attempt to push through the hedge would be not only painful but pointless; I didn’t have the strength. I needed to find a real opening. A gate. A gap. Anything. Following the curving line of the hedge, I began to circle the garden. I heard again that sad, lilting cry. A moment later an outlandish animal – a bird, it had to be a bird, but how on earth could such a bird ever fly? – walked past with stately indifference. Its body was the size of a toddler, its long, slender neck extended gracefully, a sweeping tail of feathers dragging behind it. The small head was adorned with a sort of crown of stiff black feathers, but the rest of it was snowy white, save for the dark, jagged, diamond pattern that marked the fan-like shape of its tail. Its beady eyes passed over me with no hint of fear as it continued its stately progress and disappeared into a stand of those blue-flowered trees.

  I stared after it, trying to make sense of a bird of that size and that colour which had no wariness of hunters. It took me longer than it should have to realize what I’d just seen.

  The bird must have come through the thorns.

  I took two cautious steps forwards. There, sure enough, was a neat opening in the hedge.

  A way out.

  But when I stepped eagerly through the gap, my heart sank. Another hedge faced me – identical to the first, and running parallel with it. The two hedges formed a sort of corridor that ran as far as my eye could follow in either direction. It wasn’t a way out – only a way into a different part of the garden.

  But a garden, no matter how strange, could not go on forever.

  The sun was just visible beyond the towering distant trees. If I headed east, maybe I would eventually encounter some sign of the river that flowed along the east side of the mountain, and through our village’s valley.

  That day I learned the relentless misery of walking when you are wounded, and in pain, and nothing but liquid has passed your lips for days. Each footstep feels like the last you can possibly manage. Yet as that foot falls you must find it within yourself to lift the other and go on again. The fire in my right side ebbed and flared with each heavy step. I was weak, and hunger made me weaker, and soon thirst added to that. At first I cursed myself for not stopping to drink from one of the fountains around the giant tree, but then I realized I could not have been sure that even the plain water would be safe in such an alien place.

  The sun rose ahead of me. The sky deepened into a clear, lovely blue. A warm breeze stirred the leaves of the distant trees and made the thorns rustle together dryly. And I walked. When the next break in the wall of thorns came, I was so focused on keeping myself upright that I almost walked right past it.

  Relief breathed new strength into me. But it drained away when I stepped through the gap. This was no way out either. The opening led to another enclosed garden, circular like the first but smaller.

  Here the pale trunks of dead trees, still rooted in the mossy earth, had been carved into flowing, elongated shapes. The bare branches spiralled up and out, stretching gracefully towards the sky. Between the statues, long ropes of tiny glass bells were strung, glinting in the light. The place had an air of tempting tranquility.

  Yet … on a second glance, something triggered a strange uneasiness within me. The more I looked, the more their graceful forms seemed … tortured. Human?

  The wind brushed through the branches, making a soft, silvery kind of music among the bells, quieter than I would have expected. The gentle tinkling sound set my teeth on edge. I felt uneasily that there were voices in it. Voices that wept.

  Something was very wrong with this place.

  I dragged myself away as fast as I could.

  There must be a way out. There must be a way home. There must.

  The path marked by the thorns stretched on and on. The sun was overhead now, and my shadow was a dark puddle around my feet. The misery of my injured side and my unquenched thirst were such that at first I hardly noticed the chill that had me clutching the heavy robe tighter for warmth. But I could not ignore the rising cold for long; soon my breath began to cloud in the air before my eyes. Underfoot, the grass had gone from warm to icy. Frost glimmered palely among the thorns and flowers of the hedge. All the while the sun shone down, undimmed.

  Something itched on my face. When I tried to release my grip on the robe to reach up and scratch it, I found that I couldn’t. My fingers seemed frozen in place. The skin looked … odd. Almost blue.

  My thinking was fuzzy and slow. Frighteningly slow. I shook my head to try and clear it, and tiny ice crystals rained down around me. From me. Ice … was forming all over me. I had been shivering before, but suddenly I realized that the shivering had stopped. It was too cold here. Too cold. I had to turn back…

  I moved too hastily. Deadened feet slipped on the slick grass. I crashed down onto my good side, my pained cry escaping as a cloud of white vapour. There was a sharp prickling sensation under my cheek. Delicate spears of ice were forming around me, criss-crossing and overlapping, latching onto the fabric of the robe, onto the cracked layers of frost on my skin. Trapping me.

  No, no, I must move, I must get up…

  I heard, as if from a very long way off, an explosive, growling roar. The bestial sound shook the ground, and even in my half-dead state, I quivered with a spasm of instinctive fear.

  A shadow fell over me and I was scooped up in a quick, violent movement. Thin pieces of ice cracked and tore away from my skin, and the wounds in my side flared anew with pain.

  “You’re alive,” rumbled the deep, soft voice I had grown to know in that strange little tower in the tree. “Thank the Moon. You’re still alive.”

  It was the stranger. I still couldn’t see his face – frost coated my lashes and clogged my eyes almost shut. I gasped for breath but couldn’t force out the words: Who are you? Where are we? What is happening to me?

  “It’s all right – I’ve got you,” he said. “I must get you out of this place.”

  Then we were flying. The world whirled away into a blur around us − gales tore at my hair and whipped his cloak wildly around me. He was running faster than the wind itself.

  Sunlight suddenly disappeared, and the wind died down as he slowed to a walk. I cracked open my eyes to see that he had retraced my steps through the thorns already. In only moments, we had returned to the first garden, the garden of knots. My teeth grated together as a convulsive shiver worked through my body.

  He carried me through the shadow of the giant tree, and ducked to fit through the doorway of the little stone room from which I had fled hours before. I could never have imagined I would feel such overwhelming gratitude to see it again. We went straight over to the hearth, where he folded down into a cross-legged position and propped me up against his shoulder. Holding my shivering body steady with one arm, he drew open the heavy folds of his cloak with the other and wrapped the fabric around me with swift but painstaking care. The sudden warmth was intense – almost painful – but at that moment I would have dived headlong into an open fire if it meant an end to the cold. I burrowed into the cloth, inadvertently nudging up against him. I was only barely aware of his small, shocked breath and jerk of surprise as my hands glanced against the rough fabric at his side. I didn’t care. I did not know this person, but I must get warm, or I would die.

  “Your hands are like ice,” he said quietly. His voice was the same calm, deep rumble as always. “I’ll light the fire.”

  He kept me close with one hand, using the other, by the sound of
it, to arrange a wood chimney in the hearth. I heard the unmistakable scrape of flints and felt the lapping warmth of the fire against my side as the little blaze grew. He shuffled us both closer to it, tucking the cloak around my legs more tightly.

  There were more sounds at the hearth – clinking, pouring water, dry rustlings. After another few moments had passed, he shrugged the shoulder where I leaned to get me to straighten up. I forced my eyes open to see a very recognizable rough ceramic cup being held before me.

  The sleeping draught.

  “Drink this.”

  “No,” I croaked, and turned my face away. My skin was still crawling with shivers and if he tried to push me away from the fire, I would resist with every bit of strength I had – which wasn’t much – but I wouldn’t drink that stuff any more.

  There was a short, puzzled pause, then a small sound, as if of realization. “It is only tea. Or the closest thing to tea I have.”

  Tea? I felt a surge of longing for the familiar drink. But … it was clear now that he had been keeping me drugged, maybe for days. I shook my head again, tensing in anticipation of a display of displeasure, even anger, at my defiance.

  “I don’t blame you for being wary,” he assured me evenly. “But won’t you at least try the tea? It won’t make you sleep, I promise. You’re shaking. Just try it and you’ll see.”

  I reached out a trembling hand for the cup. I hissed and jumped a little when the heat of it seemed almost to scald my chilled palm, and sipped cautiously. The brew did not taste like tea. Not any tea I’d ever had, at least. It was also nothing like that bitter, herby liquid he had dosed me with before. This was slightly sweet, and had a sort of warm, gingery aftertaste, and I sipped again, with more enthusiasm this time, savouring the slight burn as the tea slid down to my stomach.

  I did not feel sleepy. He had been telling the truth.

  “I’m sorry that you didn’t like the pain draught,” he said – a little hesitantly, I thought. “You needn’t drink any more, if you don’t want to.”