by Kim Wilkins
He burst back through the tree line and beckoned. She grabbed her pack and hurried after him through thick leaf fall, over rocks and roots. ‘Just out the other side here,’ he said, ‘there’s a ring of standing stones.’
‘Standing stones?’
‘Yes. The patterns that the Ærfolc left, many generations ago. Like the barrow. Like the dolmen where Rowan’s footprints ended. I think Rathcruick’s people can use them to move from place to place.’
They picked their way between trees, ducking under branches. Rose kicked her toe on a jagged rock and swore under her breath, but then the trees thinned and they stood in a perfectly round clearing much like the one around the barrow that contained a perfectly round pattern of ragged, rough-hewn stones half a foot taller than her. The late afternoon sunlight made their shadows long and thin.
Rose began to move towards them, but Skalmir stopped her, grabbed her hand firmly.
‘I don’t know how these strange gateways may work,’ he said, ‘but I do not want us to become separated.’
She nodded, and together they walked into the middle of the stone circle, their feet crunching on leaf litter and twigs blown in by harsh winds. There, they stopped, waited.
Nothing happened.
The skin on Rose’s scalp began to prickle.
‘Skalmir?’ she asked.
‘Yes?’
‘Can you …?’ She looked around, straining her ears.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
She dropped her voice to an almost whisper. ‘I feel eyes on me.’
Tightening his grip on her hand, he turned, watched behind them a while, then the other way. ‘There is nobody here.’
‘And yet … can you not feel it?’
‘Let’s move into the cover of the woods,’ he said, pulling her gently out of the stone circle.
The moment they crossed between the big standing stones, the sensation disappeared as quickly as it had come. She said nothing at first, glancing behind her and seeing only stones, dappled in weak sunlight. Relief mixed with embarrassment. When they reached the cover of the trees, she said, ‘I think I might have imagined it.’
‘We are safer in the trees,’ he said. ‘We can wait here until sunset, then go back among the stones and try everything we can to open its gateway.’ His eyes went to the sky. ‘If there is one.’
Rose sat on a rock and lifted off her pack. ‘Perhaps we don’t want to go back,’ she said. ‘Not yet. Perhaps Rowan is in here with us.’ She looked around. ‘Wherever “here” is.’
‘Why would Rathcruick bring us to her?’
‘We don’t know that Rathcruick has enchanted us.’
‘Who else?’
‘Nobody. The forest. Perhaps this is just the way the forest works.’
‘I have lived in the Howling Wood for –’
‘Yes, yes, you have said. But did you ever go into the barrow before?’
He shook his head. ‘Such places are … disquieting. The haunts of Ærfolc ancestors. Their ghosts.’ A muscle pulled tight in his jaw, and he reminded her so much of Bluebell in that moment: fearless, unless there was something supernatural afoot.
‘So if it is a gateway, as you say,’ Rose continued, ‘you have to admit that it’s not a gateway you’ve ever been likely to pass through before.’
‘Then why couldn’t we pass back? There’s nobody in this forest but us. No footprints. No signs of life. Where is everyone, if this is their realm?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not Ærfolc.’
‘No, you are much more trustworthy.’ He nodded. ‘They say undermagic is derived from the Ærfolc.’
‘Then I wish Yldra was here,’ she said, and she felt it keenly. She had grown used to her aunt’s practical warmth and comfort. ‘If she were here she could probably walk out there and –’ Rose’s words died on her lips, as she turned her gaze back to the stones.
‘What is it?’ asked Skalmir, reaching for his bow.
She stayed his hand. ‘Can you not see? The stones? Some of them have changed places.’
He shook his head. ‘Are you certain?’
‘The big one, the one that peaks almost to a triangle … it was on the other side.’
Skalmir locked his eyes on the stones as though trying to make them stay still with the power of his gaze.
‘And the one closest to us, the one that’s pinched in the middle. It was where the one leaning over is.’ She rose, moved as close to the circle as she dared.
‘How can you be sure, Rose?’ Skalmir asked, joining her. ‘We were only among them for a few moments.’
Now she doubted herself. Had her imagination run off the leash again?
She turned around to face him. ‘Maybe you are right. Sunset. We wait until sunset and try to travel back through the gateway again. That will be our plan.’
Rose built the fire and Skalmir climbed a tree and sat in the fork a while, very still and alert. Sure enough, after twenty minutes or so Rose heard an arrow whizz off, and he jumped out of the tree to collect his game. They spitted the rabbit and took turns holding it over the fire, then ate it with their hands. It tasted intense and wild, like smoke and rain. Rose washed her hands in a puddle gathered in a rock then turned her eyes to the sky.
‘It’s almost time,’ she said.
‘I have an idea,’ he replied. ‘Let’s set up camp right in the middle.’
Rose remembered the feeling of being watched, and shuddered. ‘Why?’
‘Perhaps we will … be transported while we sleep. I keep imagining waking up back where everything is familiar. Could we try?’
‘You can. I will stay here.’
‘We have to stay together,’ he said. ‘Rose, we have wandered three days without seeing another soul. We must try something.’
Rose opened her mouth to say, ‘But must it be sleeping among those stones?’ The words died on her lips. It was precisely such fearfulness that had made her impatient with herself earlier in the day. Skalmir was right: they had to try something.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. Let’s set up there now.’ Before she lost her nerve. She stood, collecting her pack. ‘Come.’
Careful to stay close, they moved between the stones and dropped their possessions. They sat a while, arms linked, while sunset came and went and no gateways opened and no unknown woodlands appeared around them. Then they built a fire and laid out their blankets.
Skalmir stopped, looked at her blanket on the other side of the fire from him. ‘Rose,’ he said. ‘We … need to be closer. We can’t risk being separated.’
‘Oh. Yes,’ she said, and stood to drag her bedding across to his. She felt awkward. She knew nothing of him and to sleep so closely made her feel vulnerable, embarrassed somehow.
He moved her bedding even closer, so it butted up against his. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know this is not comfortable, that our situations should call for different behaviour. I can assure you that I have no interest in taking advantage of our proximity and that I love another woman and would not be untrue to her.’ He said all this in a matter-of-fact tone while pulling the laces out of his shirt and binding their forearms together. He didn’t meet her eyes until he had tied them firm. ‘But the truth is, we cannot afford to lose each other.’
She nodded and they laid down side by side on their backs, joined at the arm. Rose was not yet ready to sleep ‘Tell me about this woman you love,’ she said.
He was silent a few moments and then said, ‘She doesn’t love me in return.’
‘No?’
‘It was madness for me to fall in love with her. She is high born and I am a hunter … but, perhaps that’s not the reason. I don’t know. I would ask her but she angers easily.’
‘Are you sure it is wise to be in love with somebody who angers easily?’ she asked, keeping her tone light.
‘When ever has love been wise?’ he said.
The fire crackled and popped while she lay quietly and thought about his words. She knew better
than many how unwise love could be.
‘Is she beautiful?’ she asked at last.
‘Not many would think so,’ he laughed. ‘But there is more to a woman than a pretty face.’ He fell silent again, and closed his eyes and Rose asked him no further questions.
She didn’t ordinarily like to sleep on her back, but she had no option. She lay a long time, listening to the fire burn low, the animals moving in the trees. The sensation of being watched had not returned and she eventually drifted off into a light sleep, filled with half dreams and scrambled thoughts. She tried to turn on her side at one point but the bindings held firm and the weight of Skalmir’s arm allowed for no movement. Then a deeper sleep came, the dark zone of forgetfulness and blank comfort.
When she woke, it was still dark.
No, not dark. Firelight, as though the fire had sparked back into life. Her eyes struggled to open, the lids gluey, being weighed down by the tide of returning sleep. Shadows moved in the firelight. She wanted to sit up, wake up, but her body felt as immoveable as stone, all she could move were her eyes. And she saw them: dancers, round and around they whirled, to music only they could hear. The stones were gone and the strange dancers had taken their place. She tried to say Skalmir’s name, but her tongue was frozen in her mouth. Sleep was crushing back down on her, claiming her.
Then she was under again, the stone dancers hazing into dreams about Rowan saying, ‘All is well, Mother, you are close to me. Please come before I am too much changed.’ Then a long, dreamless sleep.
Skalmir woke at first light. Rose snored softly beside him. He rolled over as far as he could without waking her to see if it had worked, if the gateway had transported them home. His heart leapt. The stones were gone.
But it took only a few moments to see that the absence of the stones was the only difference. The rim of the woods was identical. He could see that their extinguished cooking fire remained, the bones of the rabbit scattered about it.
‘Rose,’ he said softly.
She woke, eyes moving about fearfully. Then she sat up, wonder and horror on her face. ‘They’re gone.’
‘But we are still here.’
‘Rowan is in this forest,’ she said. ‘I know it. I don’t want to go back to the Howling Wood.’
‘How do you know it?’ he asked, careful to keep any impatience out of his voice.
‘Because she came to me in a dream and told me.’
Rose hadn’t even finished her sentence before he remembered Rowan had been in his dreams too. She had said something to him. What was it? Something about how the wood changes those not native to it, but children most quickly.
‘She said she was close,’ Rose said, ‘and that I should find her before –’
‘Before I am too much changed,’ he finished.
Rose met his eyes, her mouth slightly open in shock.
‘Further into the woods, then,’ he said, and began to unbind their arms.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Further into the woods.’
Nineteen
After a day of walking uphill, Ash’s knees felt as if they could no longer bear the weight of her body. But the uncomfortable cost was repaid when she struggled over a rocky rise and looked down on hazy fields and quarries and a small town huddled in the crook of the hill’s arm. Civilisation. People.
She crouched, took a moment to catch her breath. Stanstowe. She could already hear the clang of the smithy ringing out, almost as though it were calling her. Ash stood, looked behind her. She had been looking behind her the whole way, wondering if the dragon would follow. Dark imaginings of the beast winging into Stanstowe after her, spewing hate and fire, had preoccupied her restless mind the whole way.
Ash stood and made her way down the grassy slope, around rocks and gorse, towards the town. Her feet met the road at the bottom of the valley, and she crossed a wood and stone bridge into Stanstowe. A woman with three young children passed, and Ash once again checked over her shoulder, looked to the sky for red wings. Saw only white clouds.
The town had more stone buildings than most other places in Ælmesse. As a consequence, the predominant colours were grey stone and green moss. She followed her ears towards the smithy, and found it soon after: an open-fronted building where blasts of heat and noise kept passersby on the other side of the road. Ash waited a while near the thick wooden columns that served as a shopfront, as the smith – a hulking woman who looked as though she had never denied herself a meal – had her back to Ash. Ash was surprised and curious to see her father’s insignia, the three-toed drake, hung on one of the columns.
Eventually, the woman turned, saw her, and strode over.
‘You should have called out to me,’ she said.
‘You were busy.’
She shrugged her big shoulders. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’m in a hurry and I need a sword.’
‘You need arms to lift it. How about a knife?’
‘No, that won’t do. It must be long and sharp.’
‘I’ll make you a spear, then. A light ash haft with a lethal tip. I can do that quicker, too. How much of a hurry?’
‘Today?’ Ash asked. ‘I have money.’ She pulled out her purse and dipped in her hand, withdrew a palmful of gold coins.
The smith shook her head. ‘Tomorrow morning. I would love your money, but I have long-standing customers who mean more to me.’
Ash didn’t want to stay in town overnight; her conscience wouldn’t allow it. Her eyes went to the royal insignia. ‘Why do you have Æthlric’s insignia hanging on this column?’
The woman’s chest puffed out proudly. ‘I am Gartrude Smith. This business has forged weapons for Æthlric and his family for twenty years. First my husband, then me when he … passed.’
Dared Ash tell the smithy who she was, in the hopes that she could get her spear sooner and leave town? But no. In four years, nobody had ever found her. She was determined to keep it that way.
‘A great honour,’ Ash said.
‘Princess Bluebell’s famous sword, the Widowsmith, was forged right here in Stanstowe, by my husband’s hand. It was the last thing he made before he died. He kept working through his illness because he wanted to make the greatest sword in Thyrsland. She wields it well. Long may she live.’
At Bluebell’s name, Ash felt piercing melancholy. ‘Yes, long may she live. I have been long out of company, smith. What is the news of Æthlric’s family?’
‘He is well and visited us not two moons past.’
Ash’s heart leapt. ‘Really? Has he remarried? Is he as strong and handsome as he ever was?’
‘He is much aged, and unmarried, but yes, still strong and handsome for a man with so many winters on his brow. Now Bluebell leads his army and has secured the great strongholds of Merkhinton and Harrow’s Fell, and they say that King Gisli and his raiders dare not approach the border any more. News came to me just a day ago that Princess Ivy, now duchess of Sæcaster, has lost her husband the duke and now governs the city for her two sons.’
Ivy was married? With two sons? Governing a city? Ash couldn’t imagine it. She had always been so flighty and thoughtless. Such sweet and bitter comfort came from the smith’s words: reminding Ash both of the living, breathing existence of her family, and her cold dislodgement from them.
‘Nothing of the other sisters?’
The smith shook her head. ‘Not that I’ve heard. They must be living quiet.’
‘Yes,’ Ash said. ‘They must.’ She opened her fist again and reached for the smith’s hand, pouring the gold in. ‘Tomorrow morning.’
‘This is far too much money.’
‘I have little use for gold,’ Ash said. ‘I will see you tomorrow morning.’
The smith nodded, dropped the money with a resounding chink into her apron. ‘You shall have my best work.’
Ash walked four paces into town, longing to sit in an inn and eat a meal and have a hot bath, but then she turned, one eye on the sky, and walked back out again.
She would sleep in the woods and return in the morning, only for long enough to collect her spear.
If she wanted company, if she wanted the warmth and comfort of her family, it would have to wait until she had killed the dragon. Until then, on the other side of that impossible horror, there would be no rest nor happiness for Ash.
Torr was sick. He’d bravely kept his head up for miles, but now he grew weak and Bluebell couldn’t make him go on. She’d kept hope in her heart that neither she nor her horse had drunk enough of the poison water to kill them, that a few days would pass and their symptoms would improve and they could continue on their journey, but now they were both too ill to travel, and a long way from help.
Bluebell had long ago left roads behind for the meandering cliff paths. There were few trees for shelter in this part of Ælmesse, but she found a gully of hardy ferns where Torr could fold his legs under him. She gave him water, then stroked his nose as he snorted softly. He, like Bluebell, had no appetite. The phantom hoofbeats were still following them, and Bluebell grew superstitious that the ghost horse knew that she too would soon be a ghost.
Despite these cold thoughts, Bluebell was hot. Fiercely hot. The afternoon sun was in part responsible, but she had been fighting a fever for three days and the ocean looked invitingly cool. She found her way down to the shore by a winding, gentle path and stood a moment, scanning the world in all directions. Completely and entirely alone. She stripped naked, leaving her armour and weapons and clothes between two rocks, and waded into the sea.
The water sucked at her skin, cool and bracing. She stood in it up to her breasts, arms floating on the waves, looking back at the land. Ash could be anywhere. Anywhere at all. This journey was fruitless, and would likely end in her destrier’s death if not her own. She was confused about how she had thought this plan worth following through. Had her mind been addled by the poison as well?
Bluebell ducked under the water completely, felt her long hair snake about her face, heard the bubbling waves breaking over her head. Yes. If it got too bad, she would not die on the side of the road. She would come here, under the water, where it was cool and dark.