The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘Said so,’ replied the swanmaiden. ‘Handsome humans not harmed, ho?’

  ‘Do not congratulate yourself.’

  ‘Furtive fuath hungers for horses’ hide.’

  ‘And would fain feed on further flesh, I fear,’retorted Tahquil angrily, seizing inspiration.

  ‘Whiath!’ The eldritch maiden tossed her head. At her back, two wide ribbons bordered the length of the eastern horizon. One, of pastel blue, was dry-brushed with white-of-blue cloud puffs. Above it, a delicate lilac-pink band faded up to a dove-grey dome.

  ‘In the future you must warn us of any imminent danger,’ said Tahquil. ‘You must tell us of the safe paths, the negotiable paths. Inform us of the secure resting places.’

  ‘Weary wanderers wish for haven.’

  ‘Aye, we do.’

  ‘Sentinel shift-swan succours woeful wold-walkers.’ The swanmaiden’s demeanour remained wary, aloof, cold.

  ‘Precisely. You must help us until we safely cross the northern border of Lallillir. After that, I will set you free from the geas. If we are now agreed, you may depart, but do not go too far away. I might summon you at any time.’

  ‘Sorrowing shift-swan stays steadfast.’

  ‘My heart breaks,’ commented Viviana sourly, aside.

  ‘Your command of the Common Tongue is excellent,’ Tahquil said to the swan-girl. ‘You have the ability to form all sounds. Why speak thus?’

  ‘Swans speak smoothly. Humans have harsh sounds. Harrowing words wound,’ the marvellous bird-girl said contemptuously, stretching her long neck.

  First I am reviled for my ugliness, then for my beauty. Now I am despised for being born into the human race. Ah, but I must recollect—prejudice is merely the shield of the self-loving.

  ‘If you mislike our speech,’ said Tahquil, ‘teach us yours.’

  But she was speaking to emptiness.

  The swan took flight against the dawn that blazed over Wold Fell.

  The companions ate from the provisions brought from Appleton Thorn—hard black rye bread and dried sea-weeds. Throughout the day they slept, taking turns to watch towards the fell-top, the unprotected side of their nook.

  The western sky was glimmering with swirling colours, like the melting of a long spray of red wax roses dipped in gilt, when the travellers arose, stiff and craving more rest, from the stony ground. To rouse their blood they sipped nathrach deirge.

  ‘We are become nocturnal,’ declared Caitri.

  The moon was just past the full; a silver mushroom grown lopsided. Under its umbrella the mortals wended their way again. That night they saw no living thing save hunting owls and other lorraly creatures of the dark hours, yet their scalps prickled continually and they could not shake off the impression that unseen figures were walking near them, keeping pace. Morning unfolded like silk, with no mishap, and they lay down as before. The day brought a light spangle of rain. Sheltered under an overhang, wrapped in their fishermen’s oilskins, the three damsels remained dry.

  A shang storm drove through in the evening, and Lallillir dehisced in glitter like a burning palace, so eerie and awful, so splendid that the travellers must halt and behold it. They looked out, narrow-eyed against the dazzle, at rocks of crystal, fern leaves black as jet and powdered with bright sparks, solid silver water, pale golden grass dappled with shifting colours, reeds of gold or silver or tinkling glass. Lighted lamps bestarred thorn bushes. The skies were meadows on fire with flowers.

  The display passed away to the west, allowing the travellers to continue on their way. Bats, or perhaps night birds, swooped low out of the firmament. The damsels were forced to duck to avoid collision. Viviana, chewing dulse, passed the time voicing nostalgic reflections about dinners at Court.

  Down through the summer night harp-strung with stars, cool as silver in these inland uplands, swept the maiden of the swans. Advice she bestowed: ‘Steer for strong-stream. Shadow fliers harry the heights. Seek shelter. Stay far from standing streams, from foggy fens. Singing suck-spirit sirens sojourn. She scents. She steals. Her hunger’s high-honed hum stabs so shrill. Thus, seeking sip-straws hunt hidden succulence.’

  Which the listeners translated as: ‘Turn downhill towards the river. Strange dark birds patrol the ridges. Seek cover, yet keep away from the backwaters—culicidae haunt there, and the whine of hungry Vectors is as thin and piercing as their poisonous tongues.’

  They descended to the lower slopes where the trees stood taller, affording cover. As they walked between the boles, sounds began to bubble from somewhere ahead; a hubbub of queer voices. Cautiously the three turned aside. Presently the clamour arose again, in front of them. They altered their course again, but to no avail—soon the cries broke out almost at their feet and unavoidably they stepped out into a market scene.

  ‘Siofra?’ whispered Viviana.

  ‘No,’ said Tahquil, although the scene looked almost familiar.

  It was a marketplace indeed, but a travelling market, and the vendors differed from the siofra of the mountain forests as scimitars vary from penknives.

  So did the wares. At first sight the goods displayed for sale seemed sweeter, the purveyors of those goods fouler, than at any market of the diminutive siofra with their glamoured slugs and withered acorns disguised as meats and cakes. Odd little ‘men’ were these, some with the faces of cats, some with long, skinny tails tufted at the tips, some bent double into a crawling gait, as hunchbacked as snails—or hobbling bug-eyed, like fish or insects, some sprouting absurdly small bat wings from bony shoulders. Several crouched, thick and furry like giant mice, or leaped like sharp-eared, buck-toothed rats. Others came hopping in the manner of toads. Their voices whistled as scavenger birds whistle, were hoarse as parrots, soft as the cooing of doves. They chattered like mynahs, clucked and crowed like barnyard fowls, purred like cats. Winged and tailed, hunched and hairy, toothed and taloned, these wood-goblins—for such they were—lugged between them a wicker basket, an oaken platter and a dish of gold.

  The fruits arrayed thereon gleamed. Marvels of perfection, they glistened as though glazed with Sugar-syrup, their colours as vibrant as Autumn, as rich as a treasury. They bloomed with the softness of velvet, or the smooth sheen of silk and samite, glass-glossy, fresh as the breath of mountain mornings, and still with their mint-green leaves attached. Each pericarp and drupe, each ovary and swollen stem plumped full-fleshed and flawless, ripe as wine. There were garnet-red cherries, peridot grapes, apples like great rubies streaked with gold and amber, amethyst blueberries, strawberries glowing like pink charcoal, yellow pears of topaz, lucid gooseberries of translucent green quartz, quinces still on their twigs, melons, pomegranates, polished damsons, figs like blushing drops of jade. Luscious, they promised to fill the mouth with a sweetness, a flavour, a succulence unsurpassable.

  Without thinking twice the companions advanced, fastening passionate eyes on these magical treats. In their uncanny voices, the merchants were loudly hawking their wares. Viviana and Caitri heard them cry, ‘Come and buy, come and buy!’, but to Tahquil’s ears the summons sounded like ‘Come and die, come and die.’ Leering, the little mannish creatures crowded around the three damsels, pushing their basket and plate and dish aloft, holding them high, the better to display the delectable delights heaped there. Juicy clusters of grapes overspilled the sides of the dishes, hanging pendants like chandeliers of lapis lazuli, lit softly from within.

  ‘Don’t touch them!’ cautioned Tahquil, and as her lips formed the words, it seemed a veil was peeled from her eyes. The red of the pomegranates now appeared overhectic, the purple of the blackberries was an angry lividness, and the strawberries resembled nothing more than gobbets of par-boiled flesh. Bilious pears wallowed alongside gelid grapes. On envious leaves, apples rolled like fibroid tumours. Plums winked like giants’ eyeballs, flayed and bleeding.

  A nursery tale of wood-goblins returned to Tahquil. She recollected that their wares were far more deadly than those of the pretentious siofra. Once, Sianad
h had eaten glamoured victuals at a siofran fair and suffered nothing worse than a bellyache. The fruits sold by wood-goblins, however, were very different.

  ‘Come and buy!’

  Encouraged by the cries of the hawkers, Viviana and Caitri reached out. Tahquil pulled their elbows back.

  ‘Do not eat!’ she warned urgently.

  The cat-faced, rat-eared wood-goblins laughed and jeered while Tahquil’s companions slapped her, wrenched their arms from her grasp, scuffled, quarrelled.

  ‘No, no!’ Tahquil cried. ‘The ring on my finger lets me see the truth. This display is all glamour. Look through the crook of my arm and you shall pierce these mockeries. These are the fruits of death! Come away, do not look, do not hearken, do not touch!’ The squeakings and howlings of the guileful merchants proved louder and shriller than her voice, as they exhorted the mortals to taste. Yet, when Viviana’s fingers almost alighted on a distended plum the hue of a bruised bladder, the wood-goblins whipped away both dish and plum.

  ‘Come and buy!’

  ‘We have no coin!’ despaired Caitri. ‘No gold or silver, nor even bronze.’

  ‘Will you take my chatelaine as payment?’ beseeched Viviana.

  ‘Or my silver locket!’ entreated Caitri.

  ‘You fools!’ Tahquil cried in consternation, dragging them back with strength born of desperation. Again, her friends thrust her aside. The sly wood-goblins, cajoling, joined their various voices in a chorus:

  ‘The older girl shall give a curl as bright as precious gold.

  The younger dear, a silver tear, as pure as ice is cold.’

  With alacrity, Viviana took her scissors from her chatelaine and snipped off a lock of her bleached hair. Tahquil knocked it out of her hand—the goblins snatched it up. They took hold of Tahquil by the hair and clothes. Laughing, screeching, fleeting, they leaped to her shoulders and head, restraining her. They kicked, pinched and pummelled.

  ‘Give me my fruit!’ screamed Viviana. Caitri wept. Next moment, apples and pears and grapes and plums spilled into the hands of the courtier. She sat down on the grass while the wood-goblins poured them into her lap. Tahquil, her hair and clothes caught in wicked hands, must watch helplessly as Viviana, smiling inanely, picked up up a seductive plum, parted her lips on her white teeth, opened her mouth—

  A wind like a cold current forced between rocks came blasting. In the heart of that wind was a clapping and a heartbeat of thunder, and a tremendous rustling as of a forest in a gale. Three black snowflakes whirled, and the blast blew away the insidious fruit. It went rolling helter-skelter through the trees, with the wood-goblins at full pelt after it, scampering, scuttling, prancing, shrieking, their empty dishes and basket bowling along the ground, over and over.

  The swan’s black wings continued to beat out their fury until all the wood-goblins had fled. Not a trace of them was left, save their cries, fainter and smaller, fading through the wood. And the swan folded her wings.

  Tahquil bowed. The bird, larger than lorraly swans, extended her sinuous neck and hissed savagely. Gathering herself, she launched upwards into flight. In the backwash of her departure, yellow filaments eddied. Tahquil caught one between finger and thumb.

  ‘I wonder how the wights would have served you, Via, had they discovered your gold is counterfeit.’

  But Viviana’s gaze was as cold as the pallid oculars of a deep-sea fish.

  ‘You took it all from me,’ she accused.

  ‘I shall find you fairer food—Fairbread, indeed.’

  ‘No. No friend are you.’

  Caitri dried her tears but said nothing.

  As the hunger of the Langothe increased day by day it wore away Tahquil’s appetite, sleep, strength, joy. Eventually it would wear away life itself. Coupled with this, another unfulfilled longing inexorably drove her towards madness—the hurt that is born of profound passion. Thoughts of one who was all the enchantment of the night and more beautiful than truth were with her always, along with the appalling, intolerable possibility that he might not be living still.

  Now it seemed that she had lost also the loyalty of a cherished friend. Viviana, having brushed her fingers against the goblins’ wares, seemed half under a spell.

  Food supplies were running low. Thorn had told her: ‘Fairbread is the fruit of a mistletoe which loves only certain trees—apple, alder, hazel, holly and willow, elder, oak, banksia and elm, birch and blackthorn. It will never grow on other trees, and not always on those I have catalogued.’

  But where were such trees? None grew here, on the misted heights of Blackwatervale. Maybe willows leaned down by the river itself, down where wights lingered and perhaps mosquito-girls hovered on gauzy wings of spun moonlight.

  They foraged as they journeyed, but Lallillir in Summer was not as generous as Tiriendor in Autumn—the lessons learned in one region and season were barely relevant to another. Once, the swanmaiden brought them three small fishes, green-silver as winking waves, to be roasted in the crimson coals of the travellers’ campfire. Tahquil gave her share to the others. Ever since breathing the air of the Fair Realm she had not been able to endure the taste of flesh.

  It was not always easy to cross the volatile waters of Lallillir. In some places the gills plashed down vertical drops. In others they split into many channels, as wide networks, or they chiselled deep and narrow clefts to trap clumsy feet, or rushed so quickly that to dare a step in the current was to be swept from one’s footing. In seemingly innocent banks sudden jets squirted where none had been evident. Rocky margins and boggy soaks barred the way. From time to time the travellers must retrace their steps and locate an alternative path, which in turn might prove inconclusive.

  The ground, the rocks and water, the green places and the flowers of verge and slope passed arduously or easily beneath the feet of the three companions; however, Viviana remained taciturn and dour of countenance. At length Caitri overcame her own silence—unlike the courtier, she had not actually touched the fatal fruits.

  ‘I have heard of the Wood-Goblins’ Market,’ she murmured to Tahquil. ‘Those who taste of the juicy wares cannot help but gorge and glut themselves, so delicious are those fruits of gramarye. To taste once instantly outlaws them from ever tasting the goblin fruits again—nor shall their eyes ever again behold the insidious wood-goblins or their wares, nor shall their ears catch the beckoning call to buy. All else becomes as nothing. Longing to taste again, they pine and wither, caring naught for food or sleep, dwelling only on this obsession—to find once more the Wood-Goblins’ Market that they shall never find, and suck the fruits they shall never suck.’

  ‘The fruits induce a kind of Langothe,’ said Tahquil. ‘A wicked kind, swifter to act but more cruel.’

  ‘So you say,’ responded Viviana coldly, walking on ahead.

  Dawn diluted the sky between the willows that leaned out over a stream. The breeze was in the west. Beneath a green-haired tree, Tahquil stood. She looked to the left and upwards. In the dim light she glimpsed, at the edges of sight, leafy sprouts and amongst them small soft spheres like softly glowing lamps. Reaching up, she plucked them.

  ‘Fairbread of Willow for our supper,’ she announced to her companions.

  The taste was a cream of confectionery with an aftereffect similar to mild intoxication. Fairbread stimulated strength, wellbeing and serenity, energising the heart, firming the sinews, refreshing the blood, sending the very roots of the hair thrusting more vigorously up through the scalp. But it did not cure Viviana of her wood-goblin-induced gall.

  Several nights after entering Lallillir, they came to a gorge cut out of the fell-side, between two ferny shoulders. Along its nadir gushed a loud, broad stair of water, so dark and swift in the moonlight that the companions gave it a name—‘Black Force’. This watercourse was too wide and swift to cross on foot, and the swan-girl, during one of her brief visits, had advised the travellers to divert their path to lower levels. She told them that stepping stones crossed the Force where, silted a
nd shallow, it entered the Blackwater.

  The deeply cloven rift that birthed Black Force was too stark and precipitous to allow anyone to cross, except goats and other sure-footed beasts. The travellers began to search for another route. Above the cleft, the fell-top hung like a curtain against a roil of hyacinthine clouds, banners heralding a storm. Tahquil tilted her head back and studied the horizon measuringly.

  ‘I would like to go that way,’ she said at last, ‘but ’tis more than likely the fell-tops are rife with creatures of eldritch, despite the growing light of day, such as it is. Indeed, here we are too close to their roads for comfort. Reluctant am I to say this, but we must go all the way down to the ford of stones.’

  ‘Let us sleep first,’ said Caitri. Her young face looked drawn and haggard, grey as a crone’s. At her side Viviana sat slouching, hollow-eyed.

  ‘Sleep,’ said Tahquil gently. ‘I shall keep watch.’

  Her two companions lay down in the dawn, beneath the meagre shelter of a jutting rock. New light brushed the ancient, cracked stone, burnishing it with nacre. Dew twinked gold, ruby and sapphire on the beards of grasses.

  At dusk, the eerily gorgeous shape-shifter returned.

  ‘Windwater soon shall skim, sheeting, from far west-away sea,’ she declared. Her flawless alabaster face peered obliquely from the long flowering of black hair. On her brow was bound a headband woven of scarlet geraniums. The white feathers edging the cloak’s front opening glowed palely.

  ‘From salt-stream steams, water-hoisting winds scull, shimmering,’ she proclaimed, ‘funnelled forcibly high where sharp horns of first fell scrape skies. Soon water-clouds shall shed windwater, wetting Elfinwoodsdale and, hastening for hinterlands, shall shower wild wolds, steeps and summits, hills and heights, hollows and holms, fissures, fosses and furrows. Streams, waters, forces of Blackwatervale shall swell, shape-shifting, forming formidable sluices. Hurry! Hasten! Slow wingless ones ford Swarth Force soon, soon since she’s still small. When windwater falls, fierce, foaming, fulminating waters will forbid further wayfaring.’