Dark Mist Rising

by Anna Kendall

  Fear, like guilt and suspicion, does not help a man lie with a woman.

  Fia was endlessly patient with me. But as the days passed, her patience took on an edge of desperation. Tom grew steadily better. He slept less. He began to watch Fia and me.

  ‘Roger, are you bedding her?' The dangerous glint was back in his eyes, and once more I was ‘Roger'.

  I said, truthfully, ‘No.'

  His face cleared immediately. ‘I knew you ain't. I knew you wouldn't go back on your word to me. By damn, forgive me for even doubting you for a moment. It's this stupid piss pot sickness, it makes a man not himself. I hate it!'

  ‘You'll be better soon,' I said, because I must say something, and I no longer had any idea what was or was not true.

  That evening Tom was awake at dinner. Fia had prepared something new: small cakes made from the nut flour she had been laboriously pounding and hoarding for a fortnight. The cakes were baked in leaves on the hearth and sweetened with honey robbed from bees. Each of the three morsels was decorated with berries arranged in a different pattern. They had a delicious distinctive scent, a smell like every dream of food a hungry man ever had.

  ‘How fine!' Tom said. He sat on a log at our rock ‘table', looking almost like his old robust self. We were eating dinner later than usual, due to the long time Fia had needed to bake her cakes. Two rush lights lit either side of the cabin. They cast eerie shadows in the dim hut. By their subdued glow Tom looked even bigger than he was, and Fia even more desirable. She sat with eyes downcast, holding her honey cake, and her lashes threw spidery shadows on her pale cheeks. Tom swallowed his cake in two bites and shifted his gaze to mine. Hastily I ate it, letting the sweetness dissolve slowly on my tongue.

  ‘By damn, sweetheart,' Tom said, ‘but you're a treasure! And it's a wonder how those bees never sting you. They'd perforate me a dozen times over if I got within a field's length of their hive. Are you going to eat that or not, Fia? By damn, you didn't eat no more than a crumb!'

  She laughed and held it out to him. ‘I'm not hungry.

  You eat it.'

  He did. We went on laughing and talking, the three of us, and all the while Tom grew larger and larger. I didn't understand how that could be. Suddenly he filled the whole cabin, then abruptly shrank again to a normal-sized man. The rush lights grew to the ceiling and then shrank to nothing but glowing flames, which danced across the floor and then up onto Fia's white arms, turning them pink and gold and orange. I was admiring this when Tom said, ‘So tired ... just rest a moment ... tired ...'

  He staggered to his pallet and fell upon it, and the pine boughs enclosed him tenderly and began to hum. I knew their song; I had heard it once before; I almost had it in mind. But then Fia was leading me outside and we were in the pine grove.

  The pine grove, hadn't I been here before? I had been here with ... with ...

  ‘Roger,' Fia breathed, and her dress was half off, her white breasts gleaming in the moonlight filtering between the dark branches of pine.

  I took her then, with a ferocity I had not known I was capable of and a joy I had never known either. We loved once, twice, and when I lay spent on the fragrant pine needles, Fia cradled in my arms, she whispered in my ear.

  ‘Roger, love, will you promise me something?'

  ‘Anything,' I said and meant it, even though I was having trouble with the pine branches above us – they shrank and grew and shrank again. Now they were great sheltering arms, humming, and then they were mere twigs, silent. How odd! And yet it was not odd, it was just as it should be. Everything was just as it should be, and my member stirred faintly, a third time, at the press of Fia's body against mine. Pine needles damp with dew had become trapped between our bodies, and their slight sting only inflamed my love for her.

  She said softly, ‘Don't cross over again into the Country of the Dead.'

  ‘All right,' I said, watching the branches shrink and grow, shrink and grow, even as her words sank into my brain, no stranger than anything else in this strange night.

  ‘Do you promise?'

  ‘Promise what?' Shrink and grow, shrink and grow.

  ‘Do you promise me to never cross again into the Country of the Dead?'

  ‘Yes.'

  ‘Do you promise on your mother's grave?'

  ‘Yes.' And then, ‘Does my mother have a grave?'

  ‘No,' Fia said with profound sorrow. I did not understand the sorrow. My mind floated, high in the branches that were still shrinking and growing, shrinking and growing. ‘Do you promise on your mother's soul?'

  ‘Yes,' I said.

  ‘Remember that you have promised me.'

  ‘I will remember,' I said.

  She clutched at me. ‘They are almost ready!'

  ‘Oh,' I said, without interest, for her clutching had aroused me again, and I reached for her. But before we could proceed, I fell abruptly asleep.

  When I woke in the early morning, she was gone. And knowing all at once what had happened, what she had done, I started after her in rage, far more rage than I had ever felt towards any savage soldier who had only tried to kill me.

  20

  Tom still slept, as affected by his drug as I had been by mine. Those little cakes, each so sweetly scented and each individually marked with berries ... But now my head was clear. I dashed into the cabin only long enough to be sure Fia was not there, grabbed the water bag and Tom's knife, and set out after her.

  I was not the tracker Tom was, but she could not have gone far. When I had last held her close to me under the pines—

  The branches shrinking and growing.

  —the sky had already begun to pale in the east. Now the sun—

  ‘ Do you promise on your mother's grave?'

  — had barely cleared the trees. And it must have rained a little overnight, my clothes were damp, so—

  ‘ Does my mother have a grave?'

  ‘No.'

  — there should be traces of her in the mud of the track leading away from the hut. I could find her. I would find her. And when I did ...

  She had not stayed on the track, but neither had she gone very far. I circled the hut in ever-spiralling circles, as Tom had taught me. This was not as easy as I had hoped, but I could follow her course. A footprint here, smeared sideways where she had slipped slightly. A small piece of cloth on a bramble where she had caught her gown. A flattened place in the weeds where she had sat to rest. She must be tired; we had been awake much of the night. I was not tired. Rage is a great strengthener.

  I first glimpsed her through the trees, resting below me in a dell of wildflowers. She must have seen or heard me at the same time because she leaped to her feet and began to run. I caught her easily, threw her to the ground and straddled her slim body. Only with great effort did I keep from striking her.

  ‘You drugged me,' I said, barely getting the words out through clenched teeth, ‘and you made Tom ill so you could do it.'

  She said sadly, but with no surprise, ‘Yes, I did. I was a healer.'

  ‘I thought you said you were a shepherdess! Or a lady's maid! Or a kitchen girl!'

  ‘No.' And then with despair, ‘You know what I am, Roger.'

  ‘Bees don't sting you. Or they do, but you are not injured by them. You appear suddenly in the deep woods of the Unclaimed Lands, clean and fresh as if from court.

  You tell me ... you tell me that my mother has no grave.'

  I could not go on. And all at once I could not touch her either. I stood. Fia got unsteadily to her feet. We stood there facing each other in that little dell full of wildflowers, sunlight falling all around us and birds singing in the freshness after rain.

  I said, ‘You come from the Country of the Dead.'

  ‘Yes,' Fia said, suddenly fierce, ‘and you have given me your promise. Remember that. Your promise on your mother's soul! You will not cross over again.'

  ‘You exacted that promise from me unfairly. With drugs and sex!'

  ‘Nonetheless, you have give
n the promise.' Her face suddenly crumpled. She repeated quietly, ‘You have given that promise.'

  ‘How ... ? Who ... ?'

  ‘You know how – there is only one way. A hisaf brought me.'

  ‘But why?' I cried. ‘You have lost your chance at eternity! You will—'

  ‘Yes,' she said. ‘I know. I have lost my chance at eternity. As did Cecilia, as did all the Blue soldiers you brought over once before. All gone for ever. So remember your promise!'

  I seized her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Why?

  Why?'

  ‘They are almost ready!'

  ‘On Soulvine Moor? Ready for what?'

  But she only looked at me, a gaze of such profound despair that I clasped her to me. And so it happened in my arms. A fortnight had passed, the same fortnight that Bat had had, that Cecilia had had, that the Blues had had. Fia melted. All at once her face and body twisted and decayed, flowing into grotesque shapes, her mouth open in a silent scream. In moments she was gone. Her gown and apron and boots lay in a puddle amid the flowers.

  I sat there beside them the entire morning. I could not move. Fia was neither in the land of the living nor the Country of the Dead; she was nowhere. Her soul had been extinguished, giving up its chance at eternity in order to exact my promise to never again cross over. To give up my quest to find my mother. That was why she had destroyed herself – to gain my promise.

  No. That did not ring true. Fia had insisted on travelling north, towards The Queendom, to put more distance between herself and Soulvine Moor. That I could believe. But I did not believe that she had forfeited all existence, both here and in the Country of the Dead, solely to keep me from crossing over. There was more to Fia that I did not understand, much more, just as there was more to the fog on Soulvine Moor and to the figures I had glimpsed in that fog. ‘ They are almost ready.'

  For what?

  A great lassitude came over me. I had been up most of the night. Fia was gone. My body had been put through drugging and lovemaking and tracking. She was gone. I would never now talk to my dead mother, not unless I broke a vow sworn on her grave. Fia was gone. I lay on the ground and buried my face in her gown. It bore her scent still. I wept.

  Then I fell asleep.

  I woke to the sound of guns not far off.

  Carefully I rolled Fia's clothing into a tight ball, and so found the miniature. It had been sewn into a secret pocket of her gown. I held it in my hand, where it lay small on my palm, and turned it to the light to make out the tiny image. Shining waves of black hair, green eyes, sad half-smile. The miniature was undoubtedly Fia, and yet it reminded me so much of Cecilia. Even though, except for the green eyes, the girls' features did not look much alike. The resemblance was more shadowy, impossible to define, but real.

  I stared at the miniature until I nearly went blind. I suspected that both Fia and Cecilia had had some connection with that shadowy web of women who practised, or at least knew of, the soul arts. Cecilia, artless, had not practised them at all, but Mother Chilton had nonetheless once gone to great trouble to smuggle her out of the palace and to the Unclaimed Lands. Fia had been a healer, and perhaps more. Mother Chilton had known I was in Applebridge and perhaps had used a strengthening potion on a hawk – as she had once, two years ago used it on me – to enable the bird to drop a rock down my chimney.

  Putting the miniature in my pocket, I carried Fia's clothing a half-mile into the woods and buried it in a copse thick with dead leaves. I had no doubt that Tom, a far better tracker than I, would follow her trail to this dell, but he would not be interested in following mine. I replaced the leaves.

  Then I went home to see if Tom had woken from the drugged sleep that Fia had given him instead of her body.

  He was awake and fully recovered. Standing in front of the hut, hands on his hips, he glowered at me. ‘Where did you go?'

  I feigned surprise. ‘To check the snares, of course. As I do every morning. But no game today.'

  ‘Then where's Fia?'

  ‘Fia? Isn't she here with you?'

  He scowled uncertainly. ‘No, I thought ... Ain't she with you?'

  ‘No. Well then, she must be off gathering plants.'

  ‘Oh! I thought—'

  ‘What?' I could feel false innocence on my face like a suffocating mask.

  ‘Nothing,' Tom said, too heartily. But he was never good at withholding information. He blurted, ‘By damn, I thought she was with you! The truth is, I been feeling very strange this last week, Peter. And last night I thought I would finally bed Fia, but then I fell asleep as if I'd been drinking ale all night with the lads at the Ram and Crown! But I feel fine now. Fia must just be off on one of her food gatherings. Come, then – I have something to show you. Behind the hut!'

  I followed him reluctantly, glad that he accepted my story but wanting only to be alone to grieve for Fia. Why had she done it? Why give up eternity – even an eternity of sitting tranquilly in the Country of the Dead – for a fortnight of subsistence living in the Unclaimed Lands? What did I not yet know?

  Everything, it seemed. I was as ignorant as Tom, and far more beset. He beamed as he led me behind the hut to a full-grown deer, a buck in summer antlers, lying dead on its side. But there was no arrow in its flesh, and anyway Tom had no bow. I had to squat down and look closely to see the single small hole in the skull, between the animal's staring eyes.

  I said, ‘You killed it with a gun!'

  ‘And got it on the second shot! Pepper my arse, but I'm good!'

  ‘You stupid fool!'

  Tom's swift change from pride to bewilderment to anger would have been almost comical if I had been in the mood for comedy. I was not. He said hotly, ‘Don't call me names! I got us a deer, and Fia will want the meat for her stews.'

  ‘Your gun folly will bring savage soldiers down on us!'

  ‘Oh piss pots. We ain't seen any soldiers in a fortnight.

  They don't come this far into the Unclaimed Lands. You know that.'

  I did not know that. But Tom had the capacity to believe whatever he wanted. All at once I saw my chance to both protect him and shed him. I said, ‘I think they will come here. Attracted by your gun noise.'

  ‘Well, even if they do, I can defend myself!'

  ‘I cannot.'

  His anger vanished as quickly as it had come. ‘I'll defend you, Peter. You know that.' He smiled at me, confident and big and an utter idiot.

  ‘I can't take the chance. I'm going now.'

  ‘Going? Going where?'

  ‘Away. It's not safe here.'

  ‘But ... but ... where will you go?'

  ‘I don't know. But I'm going.' I went inside the hut and packed the water bag and some left-over food. ‘May I take your knife?'

  ‘Yes, of course, I have the guns and— Wait. What do you mean, you are going? Ain't we all going?'

  ‘Fia may not be back for hours. You know how she is about her gathering. And she'll want to stay here. We just made the bathing pool.'

  ‘But I can track her! I can track anything, you know that. I'll go find her and we can all—' He stopped. His face changed. Finally he said, ‘You would go without her.'

  ‘You'll be here to take care of her.'

  That struck him powerfully. I watched him struggle between the desire to have me gone and the desire to have us all together. Tom Jenkins, who feared nothing but being alone, finally said slowly, ‘You're a coward, Roger. You would leave her to save yourself from the soldiers.'

  I shrugged, letting him think so. He would be safer without me. He would wait in vain for Fia to return, and when she did not, he would search for her. By the time he came to believe that he couldn't find her, my trail would be too cold for even him to track. The Young Chieftain's soldiers had no business with Tom Jenkins. I would have saved his life as he had once saved mine, and we would be quit of debt to each other.

  His broad face furrowed with contempt. ‘A coward,' he repeated, and I shrugged again. He turned his back to me. I p
acked some of the useful things Fia had made. Then I picked up Tom's knife from the floor beside his pallet, and in its place I put the miniature of Fia, half-hidden by pine boughs.

  I did not want it. It hurt too much. Let Tom think she had left it for him. When she did not return, it might give him comfort. Despite everything, I would miss Tom Jenkins.

  He did not turn around or say goodbye. I walked out of the hut that Fia had briefly made into a home and turned my steps towards Soulvine Moor.

  21

  I was not going to enter Soulvine Moor; my plan was to walk only a half-day's journey south, away from the savage guns. I knew from my days at court that the savages were as fully superstitious as the people of The Queendom. During their occupation of the palace they must have learned from servants that the Soulviners ‘stole your soul'. That was not true, but the truth was equally horrendous. And since no one ever returned from Soulvine to tell that truth, the stories and folk tales grew. It was said that inhuman things lived on Soulvine Moor. That too was false; the human things were terrible enough. I was fairly sure that savage soldiers would not enter Soulvine Moor.

  And I knew beyond doubt that Soulviners would not enter the Unclaimed Lands. Anyone leaving the Moor and then attempting to return met the same fate as a stranger. It had been Cecilia's fate, and she—

  Don't think of that.

  I walked the entire afternoon, sometimes sure I was too exhausted to take the next step, and yet I did. Long before sunset I ate the food I had brought, hid myself under a deadfall and fell into sleep as down a dark well. When I woke it was morning again, and raining. Soggy, cold, hungry, I contemplated my future.

  Where was I to go?

  How was I to live?

  The savage army's main purpose in making the hard mountain trek to The Queendom seemed to be to lay siege to the capital, abduct six-year-old Princess Stephanie and carry her back over the mountains to marry the Young Chieftain. If they succeeded in capturing the princess, perhaps they would leave. Then I could return to Maggie and Jee. Unless the savages both carried off the princess and also left enough soldiers here to hold The Queendom. Was their army large enough to do both? I had no idea.