Legends II

by Ian Whates

“Strange weather for a walk,” he said, standing aside to give her room to pass. Inside, the single room was warm and faintly smoky from the fire in the hearth. Bundles of leaves hung from the beams to dry. A stool sat upside down on the hearth rug, its feet pointing up to the roof, and a heap of sheepskins were piled untidily in the corner. The light that she had seen from outside was not a lantern, as she had thought, but a single candle in a wooden cup. Gwen hesitated on the threshold… and one more time the wind rose up behind her and pushed her gently inside. Her eyes adjusted to the light and the smoke hanging in swags through the room, swirling in the movement from the falcon’s wings as it flew from its master’s shoulder to a perch on the far side of the cottage. Gwen’s eyes followed the bird as it landed and shook out its feathers, settling down to preen.

  “It’s… a tree.”

  Because it was. There was, in the corner of the cottage, a tree growing, the trunk knotted and gnarled. Branches spread through the beams – some of them were the beams. And despite the winter, despite the cold and the frosts, it was in full leaf. Gwen had never seen the like.

  “How?”

  “I needed somewhere to put the bird.” He looked thoughtfully at the tree. There was a frying pan hanging from one of the lower branches. “And somewhere to hang the skillet.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sit, please. You should sit.” He gestured to the upside-down stool, then seemed to wonder why she wasn’t sitting on it. He cocked his head on one side, looked at it a moment longer… and then hurried across and turned it the right way up.

  Gwen sat. She wasn’t sure what else she should do. She watched him sweep the skillet down from the tree. On a higher branch, the falcon tugged at its feathers with its beak. White down fell to the ground.

  “You aren’t a witch, then,” said Gwen, uncomfortable on the stool.

  “I might be.” He was setting the skillet on a rack over the fire, a thick cloth wrapped around its handle. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s not something to take lightly. There’s still plenty who would see a witch burned on the strength of hearsay.”

  “The flames of hearsay, you mean,” he said with a snort. “Gossip will burn a man faster than fire.” He appeared to be looking for something around the hearth.

  “Gossip is one thing, but the stories…”

  “Oh, stories. Stories are never about what they’re about. Stories are always about something else. It’s misdirection, you see – making you think to look one way…” The fire suddenly flared, the flames reaching high into the chimney, and Gwen jumped. He carried on, oblivious: “While they do something else. May I?” He stepped away from the hearth and reached for her – and pulled an egg from behind her ear. Gwen opened her mouth and closed it again, silently, as he cracked the egg over the pan. It sizzled and spat on the hot metal.

  “Misdirection.” He grinned, and turned his hand to show her the second egg he had palmed, spinning it out with his fingers so that if she had not already seen it with her own eyes, she would have believed he had magicked it out of the air. He cracked that one onto the pan too, and began to talk again – more to himself, she thought, than to her – his voice rising and falling like the smoke. “No, a story is about the teller and about the listener. Never the story. Here.” He passed her a wooden spoon and bowl and tipped the eggs off the pan into it. She stared at the bowl, then looked back up at him.

  “Eat,” he said. “I promise it won’t enchant you. They’re just eggs.”

  “Why?”

  “Why are they eggs? What sort of question is that? Why is the sky the sky?”

  “I mean – why are you giving them to me?”

  “Why not?” He leaned against the tree, absently stroking the falcon – which scowled at him. “Why did you walk out of the village? Why did you walk this way, this hour? Why?”

  Gwen ate a spoonful of egg.

  “Why did the wind pick up? Why would it let you walk neither forward, nor back? Why did it bring you to knock at my door?”

  Gwen put the spoon down as the back of her neck prickled.

  “Why would I have a tree, a growing tree – quite out of season – in my home? And why would I let you see it? Why would I bring you to see it?” With a swift sweep of his leg, he was kneeling before her. “If I had not – if I had not brought you here, shown you these things; kept you here with wind and with words, you would have met the soldiers riding hard for your village even now. You would have met them alone, in the fields, with no one to hear or to help you.” His eyes the colour of storms locked on to hers, and somehow the strength of his gaze held her where she sat – more than arms could have, or hands pressing on her shoulders. Even more than the distant, unmistakable sound of hoofbeats on the suddenly-still dusk air.

  The bowl fell from her fingers, tumbling to the floor and splintering into two pieces. “Soldiers.”

  “You hear hoofbeats, you hide, girl. You hide”

  The man straightened, rising to his full height – and to Gwen, he looked taller than he had been before, his shoulders broader. “The new king likes to tell stories, you see. He tells stories of witchcraft, of poisonous devils hiding in hedgerows. He tells of an evil that will ensnare the unwary, the unwitting and the unwise. He tells of a land that needs to be conquered – and once conquered, kept.” He held out his arm and whistled once, and his falcon skipped across the air of the room to land on his shoulder. “And all this time, while he tells you what he would have you believe, you look.”

  “The wrong way,” Gwen whispered.

  “Now you see it,” he said. And she did.

  The man with the falcon was not a young man; it puzzled her that she could ever have thought it. He was a man in the middle years of his life: tall and strong, his shoulders straight and broad. His dark hair still passed his shoulders, but now it was streaked with grey like an old dog’s. There were lines around his eyes and scars that criss-crossed his face. The tunic he wore was no longer threadbare and his boots no longer scuffed. Instead, the cloth was a dark green that shimmered as though woven through with moonlight, and the leather of his boots was dark and soft as the spring soil. A sword hung from his belt, blazing in the light of the fire – and when he laid his hand on a branch of the strange tree that grew in the corner, it shrank to a single staff topped with leaves. And Gwen understood who he was.

  “You did all this for me?”

  “Not at all. But does it matter why I did this? Or simply that I did?” He stretched his hand towards the door and flicked his wrist. “I was away too long. And now I must put that right, however I can.” The door swung open, and the falcon launched itself from his shoulder and out into the fading light. The sound of horses was clearer than ever. These were not the phantom hooves that Gwen had imagined chasing her through the wind. These were real horses, bearing real men, real swords; real harm and real death. And as Gwen stood and watched, Merlin strode out to meet them with a smile on his face.

  Unlike Gwen, the soldiers did not know the paths and trackways between the meadow and the village. They were unsure in the dusk, and their horses slowed from gallop to walk. Several of them carried burning torches to light their way in the gathering dark, the flames reflecting in the metal of their helms and giving them the look of men who had ridden straight from hell itself. Their voices, unfriendly and unfamiliar, were clear in the quiet – even if Gwen couldn’t understand their words. One of them laughed: a hard sound that came from the back of his throat. A cruel sound that quickly died when he saw the man standing in their path. Merlin, leaning on his staff with a falcon on his shoulder, smiling up at them.

  Up on their horses, the soldiers towered over him. They shouted at him – telling him to clear the path or to bow, no doubt. And still Merlin smiled. The man who had laughed tugged on the reins of his horse, pulling its head up as the others moved aside, and he dug his heels into its flanks. From the shadows of the doorway, Gwen saw blood where metal cut into flesh as the soldier spurred his horse
on, straight ahead.

  Merlin did not move. He remained, leaning on his staff in the middle of the path as horse and rider bore down on him.

  Merlin stared at the charging warhorse and did not move - until he did. There was a sound like the sky splitting as the falcon took to the air, wings beating as it soared upward, and Merlin swung his staff under his arm and took a single step back. At the moment the horse was upon him, he lifted a hand and caught its bridle, and Gwen was afraid. Three summers ago she had seen a man dragged by a horse, his legs trampled beneath it until there was nothing left of them but mangled shreds. And yet, despite the speed and strength of the charger and the cruelty of its rider, as Merlin’s fingers wrapped around the bridle, the horse slowed. Then stopped. It turned its head first one way, then another – as though seeing for the first time. Its mane began to ripple; to curl and lengthen. And all at once, every buckle, every strap and rope fastened across its body came apart. Saddle, bridle, reins and rider tumbled down. Gwen covered her mouth with her hands in horror as the other horses wheeled, their riders equal parts shocked and angered… and none more so than their leader, the man who had tried to ride Merlin down. He sprang to his feet – as much as a man in a full mail coat can – and ripped his helm from his head. His hair, cropped savagely short, glistened with sweat in the light from the torches and the shadows writhed across the contours of his face as he pointed at Merlin and shouted in the invaders’ tongue.

  Merlin smiled sweetly at him and swung his staff back out from beneath his arm, planting it hard against the earth. “Welcome,” he said, and dropped into a mocking bow that only enraged the soldier more. The man threw himself at Merlin – his hands outstretched – only to be knocked sideways by the end of the staff.

  There was a cry from one of the other soldiers, and then another: surprise at first, then fear. For their horses had changed too, and now they found their legs bound to the sides of their horses by curling manes that wound about them like vines, leaving them unable to spur or to dismount. The hooves of their mounts had sunk deep into the earth of the path like roots. Leaves sprouted from the ends of their tails while tiny white flowers speckled their manes. Overhead, the falcon wheeled through a sky filling with stars as the clouds pulled apart.

  Another crack like thunder came as the soldier stumbled to his saddle, fingers fumbling with something tied to it. Merlin followed, his staff held lightly, the smile still on his face.

  “Odo!” The shout came from one of the men on the horses. “Odo!”

  He was calling the name as a warning.

  Odo looked up just as Merlin swung his staff – his own arm rising to meet the strike. Blocking the staff was a tremendous club cut from a tree limb, as long as man’s arm and capped with iron. The staff should have shattered – would have, if it had belonged to any other man – but like the one who carried it, the staff was older and stronger than it seemed.

  As Odo clambered to his feet, Merlin struck again – and again his blow was knocked away. They fell to circling one another, their feet constantly moving over the uneven ground. One stepped, feinted… then the other, both men watching for the other’s weakness, neither showing theirs. Mumbling from the others – now bound to their horses – as though they were praying for something. Freedom, victory, protection… Gwen wondered why they thought they deserved them more than her village, or the village before it. She should run, she knew it. Should head for the village, should warn them, should raise what was left of the fyrd, should tell them… What? That the Bastard’s men were coming, yes… but that Merlin had protected her from them? At best they would laugh and call her a fool; at worst they would ask why the soldiers had spared her, call her a traitor.

  The sound of wood splitting bone brought her back from her thoughts, back to the doorway of the cottage. Still no one had seen her, still she stood pressed against the frame of the door with her fingers digging into the wood and splinters pushing under her fingernails. Merlin’s blow had been knocked aside and Odo had landed one of his own: his club smashing into Merlin’s left arm. Merlin made no sound – other than to whistle once, sharp and clear – to the sky. The bird answered immediately, swooping down to sink its claws into the cropped hair that covered Odo’s scalp. Blood streamed down his face, painting it redder still in the torchlight and blinding him. He swung wildly about with the club but Merlin outstepped him, landing blow after blow with his own staff.

  The punishment for attacking the new king’s soldiers was mutilation, death, both. A village could not disguise a dozen bodies – and bodies they would have to be, or more men would come. They would come, and the retribution would be brutal. And just as Gwen had understood who Merlin was at the last moment, she understood what he meant to do. There would be no bodies. There could be no retribution.

  Even as Odo fell forward, his face against the cold winter-hard earth. Even as the horses became ever less like horses and ever more like trees; as the vines and branches that had been their manes pushed their way into the mouths and throats of their riders, as fear became pain became silence became the creaking sounds of the forest. Corpses became copse; death became a living, swaying thing and the torches the men carried snuffed out one by one.

  What remained of Odo let out a broken moan and, finally, Gwen stepped from the shelter of the doorway. A gust of wind caught her hair and she looked around to find the cottage gone. There was nothing there now but a grassy bank, and a three-legged stool. Merlin stood tall, his shattered arm hanging by his side and his hair thick with grey.

  “I was never the story,” he said quietly. “I was the misdirection.”

  He drove the end of his staff into the ground with such force that it shook the world, knocking Gwen off her feet. She scrambled back, her fingers finding purchase against the hard soil, as the tip of the staff shot upwards into the night sky, branches bursting out from its sides. The staff thickened, swelling until it came to resemble the trunk of an old oak – and even as the trunk opened and wrapped around him like a cloak, Merlin did not move. He did not move as the wood closed about him, his foot still resting on fallen Odo’s back… and although she strained her eyes in the near-dark, all Gwen saw was an ancient oak tree standing proud of a copse, its gnarled roots spreading out across what had once been a path – and high in the branches, a small falcon perched, looking down at the world below.

  It cried out – once.

  And as she lay under the spreading branches of the oak, Gwen heard voices calling to one another; saw the far flicker of lanterns. The men of the village, come to stand against the soldiers – only to find themselves at the edge of a wood that had sprung from nowhere and an oak in full leaf despite the season, a single Norman helm lying on the ground beneath it.

  Gwen’s father reached her first, panic in his eyes. He knelt beside her, his hand on her shoulder. His gaze swept her, looking for any sign of damage. There was none. “What happened here?”

  Gwen stared at him, at the trees, at Bron’s pale face half-hidden behind the older men. Her fingers closed on the cold, smooth metal of the helm and she passed it to her father, then turned back to look at the spreading oak tree, which seemed to have grown even larger, even broader, even older – as though it had never not been there.

  “The story. It changed.”

  And so had the world.

  An Owl In Moonlight

  Freda Warrington

  The occasion of my sister Hetty’s wedding to the Reverend William Musgrove was an amiable affair, thanks in large part to the abundance of champagne and sherry at the wedding breakfast. I say breakfast: in fact the affair began at noon and lasted well into the afternoon in our parents’ spacious, if modestly appointed, drawing room.

  My sister fairly glowed. Her new husband bore a beaming smile, and he made our aunts flush red with embarrassed yet delighted laughter at his jokes. Whoever guessed a reverend could be so – irreverent? I saw why Hetty had chosen him and I raised my glass to their happiness. Outside, a great red- and whit
e-striped dirigible strained at its ropes, ready to carry them away to an undisclosed destination on their honeymoon. France, I hoped; anywhere dreamy and sunny and pleasing to them.

  I, alas, was having a less comfortable time of it.

  “Thomas, you are twenty-one years old!” Hetty said to me, teasing. “It would so please mother and father if you were to find a respectable young lady of your liking. I want you to be as happy as I am, my dear. Truly, you deserve it.” And she kissed me sweetly on the cheek.

  Now, I did not mind this from my beloved sister. However, from a flurry of aunts – both married and maiden – the endless refrain grew cloying.

  “Thomas, you are twenty-one,” they said, some in stern tones, others with a wink. “Are you still not yet courting? Surely the time is long overdue. There are so many sweet, respectable girls with whom you could settle down – but they won’t wait forever.” This was said in a warning tone, as if young ladies, like plums, might over-ripen in the autumn and be eaten by wasps. “The next time we hear wedding bells, they had better be pealing for you!”

  And so it was that I edged through one tide of chattering relatives after another, until at last I washed up in a corner with Great-uncle Bartholomew.

  This was the metaphorical fate worse than death at all family gatherings. Those poor victims inadvertently trapped with Great-uncle Bartholomew had been known to fake a swoon or a violent stomach ailment in order to escape his overbearing presence. But he who engaged the redoubtable uncle’s attention throughout the duration of the gathering would later be lauded as a kind of quiet war hero, or a captain who’d bravely gone down with his ship for the sake of the many.

  Today, I decided to be that hero. For Hetty’s sake.

  Bartholomew was a tall, coarse fellow, with big face that suggested elements of dray-horse and ape in his ancestry. This animated visage was fleshy, full of lines, and blotched scarlet from champagne. His once-gingery hair was now mostly white, but still thick and curly, worn in long mutton-chop whiskers fashionable in his youth – although I doubted that so much unkempt hair had ever been “fashionable” in the strict sense. His waistcoat strained over an impressive paunch.