The Shifting Pools

by The Shifting Pools (epub)

  ‘What was that?” I asked finally, still holding up the broadsword in a defensive position. I suddenly felt its weight, and its point dropped heavily to the leaves at my feet.

  “They were the Shadow Beast’s own personal guards – the highest caste of The Fears: The Riven. They never travel far from him. He must be near.” Raul looked pale, trying to take in this information, and work out what it meant for us.

  “The Riven? They were terrifying!” I couldn’t get them out of my mind. “Why did they leave?” I asked.

  “Because of this,” Raul said, coming closer and looking in wonder at the blade I was holding. “Where did you get this?”

  “I...I don’t really know,” was all I could say.

  Raul looked shocked, as he gently pushed my hands down and persuaded me to let the sword fall from my grasp.

  “It was just there! I went down to it, that well...that dark place…and it was just there,” I stammered, aware that everyone was looking at me.

  “What dark place?” asked Silas, eyes wide.

  “Not now, Silas.” Raul gently waved Silas away. “Just not now.”

  Raul walked me over to a large beech, and sat me down by its roots. Then he went around the clearing checking on everyone.

  After we had returned to camp, I still felt unable to process all that had happened. Lara and Raul found me, and I knew they were asking whether I was ready to talk.

  “There is a dark place inside me,” I whispered. I’ve tried to stay away; it scares me. I don’t know what it is. I have often retreated to its shores, many times over the years, but I’ve never dived in, until I was here. It helped me in the maze. Somehow I know it will help me – that there will be an answer there. But it frightens me; I don’t really know its depths, and I don’t know what it will give me.”

  “Well, it gave you the right thing this time,” said Raul. I’ve wanted you to carry a sword ever since you got here, to protect yourself, and you refused. But this is one heck of a sword. And they seemed to recognise it.”

  “What are the others saying?” I asked.

  “Some of them are a bit concerned. They don’t understand what happened, and they didn’t like the fact that this sword seemed familiar to The Riven. They are worried whether it is a good thing, or an evil power,” Raul said.

  I nodded. “I’m worried, too.” I gave voice to the concern eating away at me. Who was I? Where had this weapon come from?

  “It’s OK, Eve. This came from you. This well inside you, some of it will be dark; that’s true. You might find things there that you don’t like, but it is all you. You needed this protection, and it was somehow there. That’s all you need to worry about. If you can find things inside yourself that can help you, then it is OK to bring them to the light. They are stored there for a reason.

  “And don’t worry about the others – I’ll talk to them. They’ve heard of this sort of thing happening before, in stories passed down to us. They’ve just never seen it until now. And just like you, they shouldn’t fear it. It saved us today.”

  He looked down at the sword that I still held in my hands, I had been sitting there, fingering the dark handle, and running my touch along the deeply engraved marks on the blade. He touched it too, almost reverently.

  “These are runes,” he said, almost to himself. “Protection runes. They were in you all along. And here was I, worrying about the need to protect you! Today you protected all of us.”

  He looked me in the eye. “Thank you.”

  Enanti: the present

  The Beast comes

  As I prepared for sleep, I still felt the shock of that day’s events. Like a moth that beats itself against the glass, right next to an open window, something was trying to seep into my consciousness. All these castes of the Shadow Beast’s creatures; the whole essence of this place; how it was all playing out. At the edge of my mind I felt some flickering sense of pattern, of rhythm. But I couldn’t hold it. Like the moth, the closer I seemed to flutter near the open window, the less I saw that it was there.

  I dreamt of him that night. The Shadow Beast came to me, through the camp protection, through the flimsy material barrier of my tent, and right into my head. He always seemed to have open access to my mind.

  He appeared in his beast form, hunched over, colossal shoulders a mass of swirling darkness and power, eyes that seemed like black holes, pulling me into a tunnel from where there was no return.

  “It won’t work like that the next time you know,” he purred into my ear. “The sword. That was a one-off.”

  “I don’t believe you. I saw the effect it had on your Creatures.”

  “Ha. Yes indeed, but why do you think that was? My Creatures saw something in it that made them retreat, but why should that placate you? Why should that embolden you? You just haven’t thought it through...” He chuckled under his breath, then continued: “I know that even some of your friends are suspicious about what happened today, about how you got that sword; about you.”

  He had touched a nerve. I remembered the look of astonishment in the faces of my friends, and their awkwardness afterwards. What did his Creatures see? Was it something that made me akin to them – just one step away? Is it a fine edge, between walking with the uncontrolled darker urges of the soul, and letting them consume you? Did they see something that made them think I was touched by the Beast – belonged to him?

  “I belong to no one but myself!” I shouted at him. “No one but myself!”

  I could hear his receding chuckle in the night even as I felt gentle hands shaking me awake, trying to get to me through my nightmare.

  Enanti: the present

  Elemental

  Morning reclaimed the land. The sky looked as if it were on fire, licked by flames. Daubs of alizarin crimson bleeding into cadmium reds and blood orange, softening out to the palest pink edged by grey. I stared at the sky, absorbing the beauty of this artwork that changed by the minute. Is there beauty in the reflected light only? What about the beauty within? Does it even matter, if we are lucky enough to see it? As long as it is there. Like the pebbles on the stream-bed that shine and glint, illuminated by the sun’s rays, does it matter whether that beauty comes from within, or is borrowed from without? Does it not just serve to remind us that it is the sense of connectedness that is actually where the beauty is revealed? That without the grey pebble, without the water sheen, without the sunlight, there would be nothing to remark upon.

  “We are now entering the Hinterlands. We need to travel light: we leave everything extraneous behind,” Raul announced.

  For a man who travelled as light as he did, I wondered what else he could possibly be able to leave behind.

  With only passed down stories to guide us, we were just flotsam on the surf, entering a place where we didn’t know the rules. All we took in with us was ourselves – what we knew, what we’d learnt, what we sought. If that would be enough to bring us out again, then we’d be lucky; it was all we had.

  We left any extra items – even some food we felt would weigh us down – in a hollow in the root system of an old tree near the edge of the tree line. It was left unspoken, but we all knew that for those of us who made it back, this tree would offer some replenishment, while others may never come this way again. I could see some of us touching the tree lightly, hoping they would be lucky enough to see it again, imprinting its form in their minds.

  Each one of us had a caught-beam, strapped onto our backs in a rough leather holder. I also had the dagger that Raul had made me promise to carry at all times. The pouch at my side held my sea glass and Sula’s note – I didn’t consider those extraneous at all, and I knew that Raul would understand. Other than that I carried some food, some water and a few other basic items. The broadsword was slung across my back.

  I felt so different now from the woman who had fallen into that cave. I’d steppe
d out of the cave, in so many ways, and I felt powerful now; ready. I could stand in the wind, not to touch some form of redemption, but simply because it was where I belonged. It didn’t punish me now; it just was. The world was a storm, but I was part of it. I didn’t feel pulled into the vortex, I could now ride with the storm at its very centre, sentient and alive.

  My body was different, too. My form had purpose. I was sleeker and more powerful, because I was using my body for what it had been designed to do. It was an honest form, primed with life. My wings, fully developed now, had been conditioned by the journey and what I had learned. I could stow them, unseen, until they were needed, and although I knew I would in time gain even more control over them, I could already outfly everyone around me. I could hold them out fully and ride the thermals to the giddy heights, or I could tuck them in close to my body to achieve near terminal-velocity speeds as I plummeted back towards the earth, angling them minutely at the last minute to swoop out of my fall. I had reached a point a while back, where I had realised that I was no longer simply following the lead of those around me. I had entered a new phase of flying, starting to fulfil some of the untapped potential in me that allowed me to fly higher, fly faster than any of my friends. I had a reached a point where I could only go further alone, had to step out of the shadow of tutelage, and find my own horizons. The liberation had been intoxicating.

  “Ready?’ Raul asked, after we had all deposited anything inessential by the tree.

  We all nodded, wordlessly. We hoped reinforcements would come in time. We hoped we wouldn’t be so few to face this trial, as we turned and walked into the Hinterlands.

  The land was different here – you could feel as well as see the change. The blanketing of trees was gone. The air itself felt thinner, less nourishing. Each breath gave you less than you expected. Salt hung heavy in the wind, stinging your nostrils with each intake. Yet I found this curiously enlivening. I felt energised by the salted rasp of oxygen, the more urgent need to breathe, the feeling that we were on the edge of what the earth could sustain.

  The flora around us had changed considerably, too. Only the hardiest of plants could survive here, but they did so with poignant gusto, clinging on to rocks that concealed the merest pinch of earth within their nooks and crevices. Clumps of sea thrift facing the open water, purple saxifrage sending creeping stems out to find any toehold, and the thick carpets of heather, each flower so tiny, and yet lending a flush of pink to this edge of the world. And they moved in the blasts of air, bending right down to the ground in supplication, only raising their heads once the burst receded. It made me think of the world between the tidelines, it had the same ebb and flow to it, the same dynamism, the same feel of living on the edge of the known. The seaweed beds would dance in the same way in the falling tide, moving with the pulse of the water, until they were left bereft and lifeless, awaiting the next wave.

  You couldn’t escape the sea here. It was everything. You might like to think that the rocks jutted out defiantly into the water, ruling the waves from above, but theirs was a false authority. The rules of millennia dictated that the sea was in charge, caressing the protruding landmasses slowly to death down the ages. The waves pounded the shoreline relentlessly, crashing into the land. And the sea was everywhere. It came inland on the salted air, it burrowed into the earth, turning it increasingly crystalline, it determined the plants that it would allow the earth to hold on to and display. There were few trees to stem the ravages of the salted squalls that blew in from the sea. Those knotted trees that remained had thrown their branches out beseechingly towards the milder climes of the south.

  You could see further here. The lack of tree cover allowed the eye to travel for miles – not only out over the dark waters, but along the empty coastline, too, dotted with sea-pinks and lichens. A free, elemental place. Desolate only in the lack of luxuries and protection it afforded. To me, it represented life at its most fundamental, its most primitive, and yet also its most sophisticated. It gave me the visceral joy and exhilaration that I had always sought by the sea – but had never fully touched until now. My new, heightened senses allowed me to drink in this heady mix in abundance, and I felt almost faint from the onslaught.

  And there was the water of The Straits itself – dark and brooding as far as the eye could see. Even in the distance it looked restless, moving constantly, as if looking hungrily for more to consume. It had nothing of the serenity of the sea I had seen further back in my journey. Here, the waters were clouded, concealing their pitch depths with raven-tipped swells. The surface was too rough to reflect any starlight at night, and during the day, the sun was never clear enough for us to see much reflected off this dark body of water, which appeared to suck in, consume and pull the light around it into its obsidian depths.

  As I looked down into this churning sea, I saw the life clinging to the walls of the cliffs. Throngs of seagulls nested in this most jagged of havens. Some circled round and round, gaining height on each turn, while others broke out of the holding pattern to attempt a landing that had to be inch-perfect. Their cries filled the air. So many voices working in unison, creating a new sound, a higher sound. I quivered with pleasure as gulls flew over my head, shooting out across the water, wheeling and calling, holding this niche so perfectly as their own, finding freedom in the wind, finding life itself from the water. Everything around me was alive.

  “We make camp here.” Raul’s voice broke through my reverie. We were standing in a slight incline in the land, a bluff to the seaward side, sheltering a good area of ground that was protected from the buffeting wind. A ragged colony of trees had taken hold in this dip, running in a determined line for several hundred metres, sending their roots winding down into the earth for the deepest grip they could find. We had a few tents we were still carrying to allow some of us to sleep protected from the night air – not the luxury of the individual tents we had enjoyed in our larger camp, but enough material to make a rudimentary dormitory tent for most of us.

  As the others busied themselves with making camp and getting water on to boil, I went with Raul to see what dry wood we could find in the tangle of trees to the side. The cover was dense here, everything taking full advantage of the respite from the wind, the undergrowth clawing up from the ground in the living tent of the tree canopy. We eased our way through carefully, unwilling to damage the foliage that had worked so hard to hold on here.

  “The next few days determine everything,” Raul said unexpectedly.

  “Yes,” I replied. What else was there to say?

  “So much,” Raul answered, and my eyes shot to his.

  “Do you always know what I’m thinking?” I asked.

  “Yes. Well, I know what you are feeling, and sometimes the two follow each other. Not always, though.”

  “How?”

  “Because I am tuned in to you. In a different way from how I’m tuned in to other things. I see you,” he said simply.

  I felt a little electric current travel through me at his words. It was true; he did see me, and it wasn’t just because I let him. And why did I let him?

  “Because you trust me,” Raul said quietly.

  “Of course I trust you. You’re my friend. You are the first person I met here, all those months ago, and you’ve taught me so much. That’s why we feel connected.”

  “Partly,” Raul responded.

  “What do you mean?” The air was even thinner than it had been.

  “I haven’t just been teaching you, Eve; you’ve been teaching me, too. I don’t like you always putting yourself at the passive end of things; I thought you were done with that. Look at yourself now – I’m not responsible for getting you there. If you hadn’t flown on from me, flown past what I could teach, into things that I couldn’t, we couldn’t be where we are now.”

  “Where are we now?” He wasn’t referring to the Hinterlands.

  “We are past friendshi
p, Eve. You know that as well as I do. We are standing on the threshold of something more, and I want to cross it.”

  He reached for my hand and his eyes shone down at me, glittering with a feral edge. His other hand reached for my face, but I startled and hastily backed away. Immediately, he let me go.

  “Don’t!” I managed shakily, sounding breathless even to myself.

  “Don’t what? Don’t want you, or don’t act on it?”

  “Either! I mean, both! Just don’t.” I was completely shaken.

  “Are you offended because I am drawn to you, or are you simply scared by the fact that you are drawn to me?” he said, very softly.

  “I am not drawn to you!” I shot back, angry at his presumption. “No! I would never be with a man like you. You are everything I avoid – with good reason!”

  “Being scared isn’t a good enough reason.”

  “I’m not scared of you!”

  “No. I know it is not me you are scared of.”

  “I am not scared! Will you stop saying that. I know what that feels like, and this isn’t it!”

  “Oh Eve, you are so afraid of being scared, that you can’t even recognise it in yourself. You stifle any possibility of putting yourself in a position where you are exposed, or could be hurt. By doing that, you are actually hurting yourself – can’t you even see that!?”

  He was angry now. I thought back to the first time I had heard him speak to his men, thinking then that I wouldn’t like ever to hear him angry. I’d been right. The force of his anger, even with his voice controlled and low, blew through me like a desert wind, stripping me and leaving me parched and raw.

  So I did what I’d done every time that someone had tried to get too close. I tried to wound him.