by A. Evermore
‘Thank you, Edarna,’ was all Issa could think to say.
Both women arose at dawn, each with dark circles under their eyes. Issa had the threadbare sack clasped to her stomach. Silently they left the house, the cat following behind, and made their way under a cloud-filled sky to where Issa’s boat was.
‘Take this lantern, I have many and yours is broken. Here is the food.’ Edarna passed Issa another small sack. Issa thanked her as she put them into the boat and a raucous squawk above caught their attention.
‘Ah a raven! You see I knew the Night Goddess favours you, you have luck and good fate upon your side,’ Edarna beamed, her face a thousand wrinkles.
Issa smiled, ‘Yes, the raven came before too, I had meant to speak about it,’ Issa trailed off under Edarna’s stare for her eyes flashed blue with insight again.
Edarna broke the gaze with a shake of her head. ‘There is something but it is not for me to see… and,’ she sighed, ‘the future is still dark to me. Never mind. Go in blessing, the Night Goddess is on your side,’ Edarna’s eyes held nothing but sincerity and something more, perhaps a hint of wonder.’
Issa couldn’t think of anything to say and instead reached down to stroke the cat. It purred loudly at her touch, ‘Goodbye, little one.’
Together they pushed the boat back into the gently lapping waves, Issa once again in her waders and Edarna in tall boots. Edarna held the boat steady whilst Issa dragged herself in and took hold of the oars. For a moment their eyes met and they looked at one another silently. The unspoken feeling shared; two people adrift and alone in the world. Then Edarna spoke.
‘I see a dark path before you but a strong soul who walks it. If you make it to the Main Land, which I know you will, do not relax your guard. Discernment will save your life, know thyself and who your true friends are. Most importantly, beware of the deceivers and their false gifts and broken promises. They would make you an enemy of yourself to break you so that you will serve them. Master yourself and know that true friends can be found in the most unlikely places.’
Issa nodded slowly at the woman’s wise words. ‘Edarna, if I survive this I shall come back one day. If you fall into shadow I shall try to find you. The future may be dark but it is up to us to make our own futures now.’
The old woman cackled and Issa wondered at her own words and what she had really meant. But then Edarna gave a big push and let go of the boat. Issa began rowing, her eyes never leaving the old Witch and her blue cat until the tide caught the boat and carried her along the island out of sight.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Into The Shadowlands
The tide carried the boat along swiftly and for a while Issa made some effort to travel across it, trying to head in a more easterly direction by using the brighter patch of clouds that hid the sun to determine which was east. It was somewhat futile though; her tiny oars had little effect. Always the raven circled overhead keeping watch, keeping her company.
Issa had no idea how long she had been travelling but it seemed like hours later when she first began to think they had reached the Shadowlands.
As she had already suspected, there came no definite border to the Shadowlands, no sudden bank of fog or looming dark land, only a slow closing in of the clouds above as if they sunk lower in the sky, the distinction between them blurring until it seemed only one great cloud covered the sky. The sea grew calmer and the air was cold and heavy with damp but lacking the fresh smell of the ocean. The water was dark and grey and all was silent as if hushed and pensive.
Issa glanced up, the raven circled much closer now, but even his wing beats were silent. The tide seemed to move much slower for there was no wind to gauge their passing. A billowing fog moved some distance away and in a patchy clearing she thought she spied land.
Issa stuffed her hands into the sack and pulled out the jar and cup. She filled the cup with sea water and stirred in the dark green paste. One gulp and her stomach lurched violently at the foul salty taste. It was more bitter than a lemon and stank worse than rotting cabbage. She forced the rest down and sat there grimacing at the assault, her stomach gurgling loudly. The raven circled down and landed on the prow of the boat. He looked at her, tilting his head left and right as if curious to see what happened.
‘Grrrr,’ she said to the bird and pulled a face, the bird made a funny snorting sound and Issa laughed aloud only to clasp her hands over her mouth for silence.
Then her body began to feel very strange. It felt like she was growing lighter and less dense and could feel the air moving right through her skin and bones. Her heart fluttered as if made of paper and an uncertain feeling settled within her, like anxiety or dread but with no cause. She smoothed her hair back and steeled herself against the unsettling feelings. It is just the potion, nothing more.
‘Her eyes caught sight of the skin of her hands and she gasped; they were ashen-grey like a corpse. She reached over the side of the boat and stared at her reflection in the water. Her eyes had deep dark circles under them and her lips had no colour at all, she did indeed look like a wraith only more solid and without the billowing ribbon-rags for clothes.
‘I hope this works and wears off,’ she said, suddenly afraid.
Issa steered the boat towards where the land had been, needing to feel some semblance of solid ground beneath her feet as the potion in her belly and the constant rocking of the boat was making her sick.
The fog cleared as she neared, the raven still sat at the prow of the boat but with his back to her as if checking their destination. The hull ground into the pebbled shore but the sound was muffled. Issa slid the oars into the bottom of the boat and stood up slowly. The place seemed like any other. Trees lining a pebbled and rocky shoreline, except that everything was grey, as Edarna had said. The trees’ leaves were a faded grey-green, their trunks ashen brown, and there was no sound, no bird song or animal calls, nothing except the muffled sound of the waves lapping the shore.
Issa scanned the trees for a long while but could see no wraiths, which was a mixed blessing because if they weren’t here then where were they? All around no doubt, only she could not see them.
Issa lowered herself out of the boat and was surprised when her feet sloshed onto solid ground beneath the water. She had half expected to sink as if stepping onto clouds. She hauled the boat onto the pebbles and secured the bow rope around the stump of a long dead tree. As soon as her feet cleared the water the anxiety increased. She felt dirty, not in body but in mind, her soul felt tainted and stained. Is this how the Forsaken feel? She shuddered but could not push the feeling away. The raven landed upon a large rock before the trees.
‘I wish you would lead the way now,’ she murmured, but the raven only watched her silently and shuffled his wings as if also feeling dirty. Then he jumped and flew to another rock closer to her only to squawk and fly to another and then to a tree branch higher up.
‘You can see the wraiths can’t you?’ Issa murmured at the bird.
‘Please stay as long as you can,’ she pleaded, and swallowed hard trying not to imagine being alone in this place. ‘I shall find somewhere to rest and then be off, that is all.’
But after an hour or so of searching there was nowhere comfortable or dry to rest, everything was covered in damp and fog and hard rocks. She refused to leave the shore and venture inland. In the end she made her own simple shelter, a few rocks and branches shoved up against the base of a tree. With a yawn she settled down, hugging her potion sack to her chest, the raven perched on the highest branch far above her. She got the distinct feeling that the tree did not want her there and she angled herself so she was not touching it.
An uneasy sleep stole over her in which she dreamed she was a wraith, filled with great sorrow, walking with the dead over an endless ocean in search of the light. Several times she bolted awake but there was never anything there only the same dim grey light. Each time she checked her skin for signs of the potion wearing off.
The next time she aw
oke there was the faintest patch of pink showing just above her wrist. She jumped up making the raven above jump too. She licked her lips and glanced warily about her. The mist swirled as it always did but this time she was sure a tall figure moved within it, barely distinct. It was all she needed and she ran towards the ocean, her sack bouncing noisily against her hip. After a moment’s hesitation she dragged the boat back into the water and flung herself into it, she would take the potion at sea.
As soon as she had left the shore the current had caught her again and the Shadowlands were moving swiftly by. Now her whole left hand had turned pink but she sighed in relief, the potion would at least wear off and was not permanent. Hastily she gulped down the revolting liquid and clasped her hands over her mouth to control the retching.
When it subsided she drank from her water canister and forced down one of Edarna’s sweet cakes, though now it tasted of nothing and was dry as sand. Perhaps nothing was enjoyable in the Shadowlands.
The next day passed much as the first and then the next. There was no change; the land was a replica of the place she had left the first day, the same or similar looking sandy cove bordered by rocks and ghostly trees. Was she actually getting anywhere or simply going back to the same place again and again?
Yet each time she got into the boat it flowed with the tide and the land moved on her left. The only thing that changed was that the potion no longer made her retch, though it was still as foul as the first time she had taken it. It also seemed that the fog was seeping into her mind because the memories of her mother and Little Kammy were harder to recall and hazy when they came. She could no longer remember how many days had passed since she had left Edarna.
Issa reached for the axe and notched three thin chips into the wood the wood of the boat.
‘Three days have passed,’ she murmured, ‘or three potions taken,’ she corrected, for there were no days here, no setting sun or darkness of night, as Edarna had told her.
‘Three days?’ she asked the raven perched on the prow of the boat. He glanced at her over his shoulder and then turned back to stare silently at the bobbing horizon. ‘I know,’ she breathed, ‘the sorrow eats away like a canker.’ Her face was grim, ‘my spirit has never felt so laden and low.’ She looked at the potion left in the jar and quickly added two more notches with the axe.
The next day she scraped one of the five notches off, ‘it can’t have been that long,’ she said to the raven, but it didn’t even look at her this time.
The next day she added the notch back with two more and then threw the axe into the bottom of the boat.
‘What’s the point!’ she dropped her face into her hands, frustration a tight knot in her belly. ‘This place is killing us, eating away at us until we too become wraiths,’ she said to the raven, but he only ruffled his feathers uncomfortably.
Rarely now did the raven leave the boat. He can’t have found any food for a while now, she thought, instead he shared with her Edarna’s sweet breads. She still had plenty of dried fruits and nuts and jams from her own supplies but everything was tasteless and dry, even the apple juice seemed to stick in her throat.
‘I guess the dead don’t need to eat,’ she thought sourly as she forced a piece of apple down.
Issa found less and less desire to go ashore and instead slept on the boat more and more. It was always a strange sleep, more like daydreaming than real dreams. She had given up counting how many days had passed because there was no telling when the day began and, really, there seemed no point to do anything anymore.
To keep her mind active she recited the names of the people she knew, hoping it would help to keep their memories alive in the increasing fog of her mind. Always she knew her mother, Fraya, but it took a few attempts for Farmer Ged’s and Tarry’s.
‘Eda, Era, Erad,’ she mumbled drifting in and out of a doze, her face squashed upon her arm as she watched the grey Land of Shadows drift by, trying to recall an old woman’s face she had met once, but it wouldn’t come to her. Issa reached down and swirled her hands in the dark water. There was something wrong with her arm but she couldn’t work it out.
‘Pen, puk,’ she mumbled. ‘Hmmm. Pink!’ she gasped and wild panic gripped her but she couldn’t quite understand why. She sat bolt upright in the boat, there was something she had to do but what was it? She stared at the growing patches of pink on her arms dumbly. ‘Pink!’
The raven jumped into the middle of the boat, his eyes darting all about and his feathers ruffled. The fog was very dense and crowded around them so that she could barely make out the sea beside the boat.
There came a long low sigh, like the final sigh of a person on their deathbed and a hand reached towards her out of the mist, itself made of the mist. Issa whimpered and sank into the boat. Her foot hit something as she did so and her eyes fell upon the potion.
‘The potion! My arms are pink,’ she rasped and grabbed the jar. Several hands formed all about her now, long misty fingers caressing her hair. She closed her eyes and forced herself into them in order to reach the seawater. Deathly cold filled her body as she struggled to pull herself back into the boat. Whispers fluttered around her, some soft and gentle and others airy shrieks and howls. Her hands were shaking so much she spilled half the liquid as she stirred.
Far away there came a sound she hoped never to hear again, a long low wail that cut right through her. The wraiths’ hands hesitated at the sound. Issa spluttered down the liquid and grabbed the oars. She had to get to the shore but was shaking so much she could not control the boat.
The raven started squawking and darting about, pecking uselessly at the wraith’s hands that reached for him. Finally he was forced into the air and disappeared in the thick fog.
Issa pounded the oars into the ocean. The wail came again, this time much closer, and the reaching hands drew away with a heart-wrenching gasp. Her arms were losing their pink colour but still the potion needed more time to work. The fog dissipated and Issa’s breath came in ragged gasps as she heaved the oars backwards, the sweat stinging her eyes.
Something struck the boat making it surge violently towards the shore. Issa screamed and clung to the boat as it smashed into the rocks jutting from the beach. The impact sent her flying out and she plunged head first into the cold grey water.
‘Flee, Issa!’ a panicked disembodied voice echoed around her as she clawed to the surface for air. ‘Run and hide!’ she remembered the old woman’s name then, Edarna, for it was her voice.
Her hands scraped upon solid rock and she dragged herself onto it, ignoring the sharp edges slicing into her flesh. She half fell, half jumped to the next rock, slipped and fell under water. Her feet found a sandy floor. She lunged upwards and fell forwards. Her feet found the floor again, shallower than before, and she lunged again, falling heavily onto her hands. She struggled forwards on all fours until she had cleared the water completely.
Once there she did not stop but tore into the woods, going deeper and deeper until the sound of the surf could no longer be heard. Her heart pounded in her head and her legs trembled so much she was soon forced to slow and then stop. She slumped back against a tree and then collapsed to the ground sobbing and shaking.
Issa lay still until her breath came more easily. She opened her eyes and stared up at the slate coloured sky, an endless blanket of grey blotting out the sun and the stars. There were no gulls crying or frigates circling the currents, the raven was nowhere to be seen. She was utterly alone, all who had ever known her were gone and only an old Witch hermit could ever speak of her existence.
Issa inched to sitting and breathed a small sigh of relief. The sack was torn and soaking wet but wrapped around her with the potion jar and cup still inside. On closer inspection she found the cup cracked but it might still hold liquid long enough to drink it.
She glanced back along the way she had come, the tall trees stood motionless, not even their leaves moved, as if they had been frozen in time. How far had she run? She could not tell b
ut she was certainly not going back to the shore for a while, no matter what remained of the boat and her supplies.
Issa hugged her arms and shivered. Perhaps it was the long-term affects of the potion draining away her will, or perhaps it was the constant sorrow of this place eating away at her, never letting her rest, or maybe it could be for all the things that had been lost, taken from her, leaving her to struggle alone, but the last of her strength and hope now trickled away.
The boat was gone and now there was no way to get to the Main Land she had fought so hard to reach. She would die here alone, a Forsaken. Silently the tears came and she no longer had the strength to fight the despair of the Shadowlands as it closed hungrily upon her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Growing Shadow
A wave of frigid sea water crashed over her head dragging her into its freezing current. Issa followed the bubbles and clawed upwards towards the surface, the cold sapping her strength. She gulped and spluttered warm air into her aching lungs. Blinking through the stinging salty water she saw a land of green hills and tall trees under a blue sky and a long curving cove of white sand. ‘Little Kammy!’ she cried, her voice a hoarse caw.
Issa lunged towards the cove, the sun shone upon her head and arms as she swam through a now warm gentle turquoise ocean. But another cold grey-green wave crashed over her, the sudden icy current pulled her under. She clawed again to the surface but when she got there the green verdant land was gone and instead a world made of dark rocks and grey sodden sand tore into view.
There came a loud wailing noise like metal scraping upon metal. Another wave tumbled her over, swiftly followed by another. Issa frantically clawed upwards or forwards, desperate to get away from whatever was making that awful sound. In the swirling blur of bubbles and murky green she thought she saw black-feathered wings flapping in the distance. She reached towards it, frozen hands pulling through the churning grey, not knowing whether she moved up or down, only that she must follow those black wings.