by Paul Collins
An unknown woman of the clan had meddled where she had no right, letting loose the harrows. Lita looked down. A series of odd streaks, like scorch marks, ran across the algae-covered rocks. How could that have happened when the rocks were drenched by the falls? She counted the streaks. Ten. One for each dead girl.
The wisemon drew a glitter-blade. Its edge twinkled in the dawn light. ‘Hold out your left hand.’ From here, the pool Lita had to dive for was the size of a coin. She could not do it. No one could.
She hugged her arms around herself, shuddering.
‘W-what’s the knife for?’
‘Price to air, price to water.’
‘What?’
‘You have to pay both, or neither will support you.’
‘The air won’t support me. I’ll be smashed to bits on the rocks.’
‘You will fly to the pool,’ said Horler. ‘You will dive to the bottom. You will find the box, and open it, and bring back the cure, and save your clan from the harrows.’
Lita rubbed the swellings that ran across her shoulders and down her arms. ‘I have no gift,’ she lied. ‘I can’t fly.’
‘Everyone in our clan has the gift.’
‘I’m not allowed to try. The more the gift is used, the quicker the Change when we grow up. The quicker the Change, the worse the harrows.’
Horler curled her wrinkled lip. 1nd you think, if you don’t use your gift at all, you’ll be spared the harrows?’
‘Papa said -’
‘He’s a fool. The harrows will get you, gift or not. My way is the only way, and you’re the only one left who can save the clan. Hold out your hand.’
Cringing, Lita extended her small hand. Horler grabbed it and thrust it out over the water. She slashed the glitter-blade across Lita’s palm, then shook her wrist violently. Blood sprayed through the air, spilled into the water.
Horler’s eyes went a smoky, malevolent black; her lips pulled back to reveal yellow teeth. She dropped the knife and reached out to grab Lita, who suddenly realised that she wasn’t meant to be a saviour, but a sacrifice. Horler was planning to hurl her over the edge to die, like the ten girls before her.
Her hand was slippery with blood. She wrenched free, hurled her cloak in Horler’s face and ran. But not back towards clan-hall. She would find no shelter there - only the burden of all those who had grown up, gone through the Change, lost their gift and had been struck down by the unbearable wasting of the harrows. Horler was right about that. Lita was the only one who could do it. She had to save her clan.
As she ran, she reached inside herself for the gift she had been told never to use and, perhaps because it had been suppressed so long, it rose in a scalding tide. Her face was burning, her vision blurring, the strength draining from her legs as the swellings along her shoulders and arms throbbed and grew. The gift was working. Go, while you still can!
Lita shot past the wisemon, whacking her clawed fingers aside, bolted towards the edge of the falls and, sobbing with terror, hurled herself out and over, towards the pool.
Behind her, Horler howled with fury. Lita plunged headfirst down the cliff, faster and faster. The rocks were ferocious, the pool tiny. The swellings were opening, the leathery glide-wings she had never used extending behind her outstretched arms. But slowly. Too slowly to save her. She was going to smash into the rocks .. .
The glide-wings snapped open with a wrench and a burning pain in her shoulders, as if the shock had torn her arms out of their sockets. Had it? What if her wings collapsed? It felt as though they were going to. They thrashed, shuddered, held. Then she caught the updraught, lifted, and she was soaring, weightless, free for the first time in her life. And oh! The gift was wonderful. It was worth all the pain, even the cost when the harrows eventually wasted her.
As she turned in a wobbly, rising spiral, Lita realised that she could finally escape the burden of guilt that had suffocated her all her life. Escape her dying clan that nothing could save from the harrows. Escape the murderous wiseman.
But flying was much harder than she had expected.
Every flap made her shoulders throb and her muscles burn. As she circled, the streaks burnt across the rocks caught her eye. Could they be -?
Crack-crack. Horler’s cloak was streaming out behind her, firming and taking on a wing shape. The wiseman took three steps to the brink, lowered her head and shoulders into the updraught and the wind lifted her straight up. She side-slipped left, then right, then dived. Lita’s mouth went dry. Horler was an expert flier.
She came hurtling down, so fast that the wind hissed over her wing. Lita tried to get out of the way, but she was tiring rapidly. Horler’s teeth were bared, her fingers hooked as if she wanted to tear out Lita’s heart.
Lita flapped her wings, but could not get out of the way in time. Horler shot past, caught her by an ankle and heaved her upside-down. Lita felt a burn ing pain in her head, and her wings were shrinking back into her arms. Her gift was fading - no, it was being drawn out of her, stolen from her. She tried to push Horler away, but the short flight had exhausted her.
Horler swung Lita around by the ankle until the sharpest rocks were below her. The wisemon wore a look of wicked triumph, and only now did Lita understand. Those streaks must have burned across the rock when the dying girls’ gifts had been brutally wrenched from them. But where had their gifts gone?
Lita had to stop this. She had to get the panacea from the box. She kicked upwards with the last of her strength. Her left heel caught Horler under the jaw, snapping her head back, and the wisemon lost her grip. A little of Lita’s gift came back and she dived away, praying that she could glide to the pool on her wing stubs. But she was falling like a brick, arcing over and down. She was going to slam headfirst into the rocks.
She flapped furiously, churning the air with her useless winglets, and gained a little forwards motion. Was it enough to reach the pool? She dared to hope.
But Horler was again diving after her. Lita scooped the air with her arms, slipped sideways, shot over the edge of the pool and plunged in.
The shock almost stopped her heart - the water was icy. Lita plunged all the way to the bottom, sending up swirls of grit that scratched her eyes. She blinked them clean and there it was - a small brown box on a bed of fine white sand.
And the box was calling to her.
She clawed at the lid, wrenched it up and felt inside for the cure.
The box was empty.
Horler’s story had been a lie.
There was no way to save her clan from the harrows.
Lita shrieked underwater. She pounded the sand until it whirled up in clouds around her. Then a shockwave passed through the water and her ears popped. Bony hands closed around her throat from behind and squeezed.
She panicked, thrashed uselessly. The hands tight ened, choking her, Horler’s ragged nails tearing her skin. Lita’s head spun. Her vision blurred. She had to act now or die. She slammed the back of her head into Horler’s nose, then scrunched down into a ball and rolled forwards.
Horler went tumbling over her, nose trailing blood, and her head smacked into the open box. The water seemed to boil around her. Yellow rays - eleven of them - were drawn from Horler into the box, then she slumped sideways and the lid fell shut.
The rays faded. The sand settled. Horler lay on the sand beside the box, motionless.
Now desperate for air, Lita churned up to the surface. She wanted away from here, but first she had to understand. Mter taking three breaths, she dived again. The box seemed to be calling her again, and she wanted to open it. She felt sure the cure was there now.
But there was no time. She bore Horler up. The malevolence was gone from her eyes; she was just a bony old woman, close to death.
‘What happened?’ Lita said, panting.
‘Harrows lifted
. Clan saved.’
‘How?’
‘You- the cure.’
Lita no longer wanted to escape. It was over and she ached for her clan. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘But you - can never - go home,’ croaked Horler, sinking beneath the water to her chin.
Pain, worse than being slashed with the glitter knife. Lita hung on to the rock with one hand, Horler with the other. ‘Why not?’ she said hoarsely.
‘Work ... it ... out.’
Lita stared into the old woman’s eyes. ‘It was you! You opened the box, ages ago. You released the harrows.’
‘I was the fool who opened it,’ Horler said bitterly.
‘But I did not release the harrows - I became the harrows.’
‘Then why - why did the other girls have to die? Why try to kill me?’
‘I’m old. Fading. Harrows failing with me. It needed to feed on their gifts.’
‘But if it’s gone, why can’t I go home?’
‘Harrows gone back - into box. And you’ve opened it.’
‘But the box was empty,’ said Lita.
‘Not empty now. Harrows has fed. It’s waiting. For you to open the box.’
Lita closed her eyes. The pain was getting worse.
‘Go! Fly!’ said Horler.
‘Where can I go? I’m only fourteen.’
‘Too bad!’
‘Tissy won’t understand. I’ve got to see her first.’
‘You can’t. Never come back or you’ll open the box. You’ll become the harrows.’
Horler’s eyes went blank, she slipped from Lita’s grasp, the water closed over her head and she was gone.
Lita lifted off, but as she laboured up past the falls, she heard the box calling again. What was worse - to spend the rest of her life in bitter exile, or rejoin the clan she loved, only to harrow them again?
High above the pool she circled. Tormented.
Tempted.
She had to say goodbye. If she opened the box, just a crack, could she see Tissy one last time?
Lita was strong.
Surely she could close it again?
Thanks very much to Lisa Leigh.for the seed ftom which this story grew.
Legend tells that gypsies abandoned the boy at the gates of the monastery. Perhaps this is true, perhaps not. But one thing is certain: having found the child shivering in the snow, the friars of St Benedict took him in.
Martin, they called him, and raised him as one of their own.
Being worthy men, and devoted to their garden, they taught the boy all that they knew. Of rue and rosemary, liquorice and lavender, cloves and comfrey, and every healing herb whose root or branch or bud or flower flourished within those grey stony walls.
Nor was the garden the only place where Martin learned.
When evening fell, the boy could be found, candle in hand, poring over ancient manuscripts in the monastery library, gleaning all that he could of field and forest, hill and vale in those distant lands where mystic remedies grew wilder than his imagining.
One night, as Martin sat reading in a secluded alcove, he spied a manuscript secreted in a dusty recess. Now there is a strange thing, he thought, but as he reached for the document, a sudden shiver passed over him and he drew back, afraid.
Next morning, he hurried to the library, took down the manuscript and hid himself away to read alone.
When he had unrolled the document, he saw it was a map. ‘The Kingdom of Darcia ...’he whispered.
‘They say it is a dreadful place. Its people bewitched by a shaman. Its caves the abode of lizards so huge they might, perhaps, be dragons. But why should a map be hidden ...?’
Though the ink was faded, and difficult to read, he examined the map until finally, he cried, ‘Here is a word that I recognise. Amanita, the name of a mushroom.’
True, the word following was almost indecipher able, but at length he made out the first two letters: Amanita Im ... And after, Whosoever shall eat of it shall be made whole, and live like ...
‘Live like what?’ the youth wondered. ‘Like kings? Surely that is the answer! Amanita Imperialis.’
At this, Martin fell to thinking. If only he could find this mushroom, what medicines, what healing balms and poultices the friars might make from it. Yes, he would travel to Darcia to find it. Yes, he would risk his life for that!
And setting aside his fears, he hid the map in another place until he was able to study it at will. Which he did, daily, dreaming always of his Amanita Im and the salvation it might bring to humankind.
So it was when Martin reached the age of seven teen and the friars invited him to join their order, the youth graciously declined. ‘I thank you,’ he said, ‘but I would rather pursue the studies of moss and herb and root-of-fern that I have learned while in your care. I have long desired to discover more. Please, I mean no disrespect, but grant me my liberty.’
Heartened by the good friars’ ready blessing, Martin happily set out upon his long-dreamt of quest.
He crossed boundless oceans.
He climbed the Mountains to the Moon.
And finally, on the very morning of his eighteenth birthday, he reached his goal.
The Kingdom of Darcia was all that rumour had warned it would be. A land pocked by hail and parched by sun, of will-o’-the-wisps and whirlpools, of rain and mist and dreary desert, and though Martin saw no sign of herb or grass, or flower or fern, he trudged on, his dream glowing bright with faith.
One evening, more dead than alive, he entered a cavern whose steep descent and tortured wall caused him to cry, ‘Surely, I have died and entered Hell! Now I know why the map was hidden. In their wisdom the good friars would have kept me from this path.’ And only through pure valour did he keep on.
The creatures that inhabited this place lay resting in their caves. Such was their astonishment at seeing a man, one called, ‘Ho, Pilgrim, what has brought you to this fearful land? We have not seen the likes of you for many a year.’
And Martin, being a worthy youth, answered boldly, ‘It is indeed a fearful place, and though mon sters you be, I do not envy your habitation. I have come in search of a humble mushroom. A plant by whose good grace the poor and needy might live as kings. It is known to us as Amanita Im . .. ‘
Before he could finish, a lizard - a dragon? - slipped from its lair and came towards him, its great wings folded, its fiery mouth extinguished, its sinewy neck stooped low and supple in courteous greeting.
‘There is another like you in the distant mountains,’ the beast whispered. ‘His hut is a good day’s journey north from here.’
‘And what have I to do with him?’ Martin asked.
‘He is an old man, and solitary. A shaman. A tender of herbs and cure-alls. Perhaps he knows of the plant you seek, this Amanita Im.’
‘Perhaps he does,’ Martin agreed. ‘How should I find him, since he lives so far?’
‘If you would spend the night among us,’ the beast graciously replied, ‘I would take you there in the morning.’
‘You are a monster,’ Martin answered. ‘Little of me though there is, and so near to death as I am, surely you would devour me while I sleep.’
At this the beast turned aside, its eyes downcast.
‘And surely you are a man, and ignorant of courtesy. If I had so desired, I would have eaten you already.’ Humbled by the truth, Martin regretted his words.
‘Forgive me. I forget myself What might I offer for your kindness, seeing my scrip is empty.’
‘Why,’ the beast replied, delighted, ‘a simple story.’
‘A story? And if I should tell you one, you would be satisfied?’
The beast laughed. ‘How else might a dragon survive? Since by story we were imagined into being, by story we li
ve.’
Upon hearing this, Martin followed the dragon deeper into its cave, and when he had kindled a fire and settled to rest upon a bed of rushes, and when the creatures from without had curled quiet and cosy round about, he wove a tale of knights and maidens, lilies and roses, chivalry and kind courtesy (in which he had been sorely lacking), until all fell deep into a joyful slumber.
In the morning, having woken to the delight of finding himself refreshed, Martin set out, the dragon his companion. Again the land was raw and barren and, tired after his arduous journey, the youth all but yielded to despair. ‘I will abandon this foolish quest,’ he moaned. ‘It is better that I return to the friars and spend my life in prayer and penitence.’
‘For the second time you insult me,’ the dragon remarked. ‘I have told you that the old shaman lives beyond those distant hills, and that he keeps a garden rich and rare. When will you learn to believe in what you must, meanwhile, imagine?’
Humbled again, the youth went on.
At length, true to the dragon’s words, a single buttercup appeared and then sunflowers and violets and forget-me-nots, and by twilight a view of a valley so patterned with fields of azure and yellow, emerald and scarlet, so brushed with silver and spangled with gold, that it might well have been a scene illuminated upon a manuscript - not a land of the real and everyday.
‘Let us wait until morning,’ the dragon advised.
‘Then we will descend at our leisure.’ So Martin slept upon the hillside, wrapped in the warm promise of the morrow.
No sooner had the sun lit the valley than the dragon woke, and having yawned and flexed its steely scales, it said, ‘Since the descent is steep, I will fly us down, if you would but climb upon my back.’
Disbeliever though he was, Martin did as he was asked, and withal the dragon spread its wings and glided slow and easy into the painted valley to land, soft and safe, in a garden by a cottage.
As Martin stepped down, an old man appeared.
‘Ho, good dragon,’ he called. ‘I have not seen you in many a year.’
‘Greetings, old man,’ the beast replied. ‘I have brought a friend to speak with you.’