Emma and the Banderwigh

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Daddy!” Her shout echoed into silence.

  She spun in place, searching the room for anything of promise, studying every place where roots had cracked the mortar between the stones. No doors, one tiny window, no way in or out. It was impossible for her to be in this room. It was impossible for her to be in a cage with no way to open. She let her arms fall slack to her sides, standing in the center with her gaze focused on her little brother. Creaking metal grew quieter and quieter as the swinging came to a stop. The only possible explanation for any of this was that Nan’s stories were true.

  There really were faeries and monsters.

  mma wiped the last of the tears from her face, exhausted from her sadness. She squinted, trying to recall what Nan had told her. The thing had fed from her. The sight of Hannah, so pale and wasted, sent a chill down her spine. This creature would not kill them, but to do so might well be a kindness compared to what awaited her, and Tam. She remembered Hannah stumbling out of the forest, clad in nothing but leaves. In her mind, the face changed. Hannah became Emma’s older self.

  Frantic, she crawled around in a circle, pulling and banging at the metal in hopes of finding some way to get out. She squatted and grabbed the edge of the disc, tugging. It didn’t move. She reached up and yanked at the spot where all the bars curved together through the ring.

  Maybe it opens like a flower. She prodded everywhere she could think to prod, but the enclosure felt solid, as if it was one single piece of iron.

  Impossible.

  Emma sagged to the bottom, somewhere between kneeling and sitting. She tried to rub cold out of her feet while forcing herself not to cry. Her lip quivered, her face grew warm, the lump swelled in her throat. She drew her knees to her forehead and breathed. I’m acting like a five-year-old. I gotta be strong for Tam. Father can’t find me here. The last thought proved to be a mistake, and she let tears slip. Something tugged at her soul, making her tired. Her head popped up. She squirmed, not liking the way it felt to be something’s food. Her brother muttered, still asleep.

  “Tam, wake up.”

  He mumbled.

  She wanted to hold his hand more than anything, but did not even try the futile reach through the bars. “Tam!”

  The boy yawned and sat up, bonking his head on the side of the cage. He looked around, startled, rubbing where he had hit. With the realization of where he was, he lapsed into a red-faced screaming fit―wailing for his mother.

  “Tam, be quiet. Don’t feed it.”

  He continued bawling.

  Emma scooted to the side of the cage closest to him, reaching. “Tam, shh, shh, it’s okay. Don’t cry.”

  He screeched even louder, saying “Mommy” over and over. By the fifth repetition, his wail was no longer recognizable as a word.

  Emma hummed a melody her mother used to sing to them, until his screaming lessened. The song made her want to cry too, but she held on to her need to protect him. She went through a full verse, in hum, before he stuck his thumb in his mouth and stopped screeching.

  “Tamrin Brae, Tamrin Brae, went to the well one summer’s day,” she sang.

  Tam sniffled.

  Emma let her head lean on the cold metal, her musical voice echoing through the small chamber. “Clear water, clear water, the dear, darling daughter.”

  Tam wiped his face.

  “Did fetch by the noonday sun,” she sang.

  He frowned. “Tam’s a boy’s name.”

  “Mother likes that song,” said Emma, sitting back on her heels. “If you were a sister, she’d ‘ave named you Tamrin. Maybe Mama will let you grow your hair long and we’ll put a dress on you.”

  His face reddened again, and tears fell.

  No…

  “I hadda dream they died.”

  She slapped the bars. “No, Tam. It’s a lie. It lied to me, too. They’re alive. The Banderwigh wants to make us sad. We can’t be sad.”

  “B-Bandy-wee? You said it wasn’t real!”

  Emma shivered. “I didn’t believe it before.”

  He wiped his eyes and glanced around. “I wanna go home.”

  “Me too, but you can’t be sad. Did you see Hannah?”

  “No.”

  “The lady with leaves on like clothes? Did you see her?”

  Tam wobbled his head. “Yeah. She looked sick.”

  Emma giggled at his exaggerated nod. “The monster won’t kill us, but he’ll turn us like her if we let him. We can’t let him win. It’s not going to hurt us; it wants us to be sad all the time.”

  The boy crawled around in a circle, grabbing and prodding at the bars. After a few minutes of not finding a way out, he pouted and sniffled.

  Murmuring voices outside brought her attention to the tiny window. The sound of men talking mixed with the squeak of wagon wheels and the bray of a horse. Emma flew to her feet, pressed against the bars nearest the window.

  “Help!” She shook her weight back and forth, rattling and making noise. “Help us! We’re trapped in here!”

  Tam joined her in making noise and screaming. After a moment of frenzied shouting, she stopped so she could listen. Whoever was outside had kept going; the voices quieted with distance. Emma set her feet against two thick bars and tried to swing her prison to the point of breaking. It careened around, striking the wall and both adjacent cages with ringing metallic clangs. Tam covered his ears from the noise, but the people outside either failed to notice or failed to care.

  Or maybe they weren’t real either.

  Out of breath, Emma fell on her hands and knees, feeling a tad sick from the motion of her cage swaying and spinning. Walls went by, one after the next, each without seams or doors. She put a hand over her mouth to calm her stomach, and clutched the small burlap doll. Was this Hannah’s? Did she have this when it took her?

  “I’m hungry,” whined Tam.

  Emma dropped the toy, careful to ensure it did not slip to the floor. “Me too.”

  He pouted. “Sorry I played in the woods. You shouldn’t be in jail too.”

  “Tam.” She scooted towards him. “This isn’t punishment. We’ve been taken by something bad. Mom and Dad won’t be angry with us if we get out.”

  He curled up on the metal disc, back to her. Emma ran her fingers through her hair, finding fragments of mulch and pine. She leaned against a cold bar, staring at the distant rock wall. Trembling set in as she thought about Hannah, taken at Tam’s age, sitting in the same cage and not being let out until she was old enough to be a mother. If Nan were still alive, she would surely be gone by the time the monster released Emma. What scared her more was the look on Hannah’s face.

  Would there be anything left of me then? Would I know who I was? Would I care? No. There’s got to be a way.

  She swallowed her fear and stood again, squinting at the walls. “There has to be a secret door.”

  Tam sat up and peered at the room with her. Everywhere she looked, roots and dirt cracked through the ancient walls. Not one place seemed intact enough to be a hidden opening. With dread clawing at her heart, she stared up at the roof of the cage. Despite the eerie, burned girl vanishing into fog, Emma considered for a moment that Old Man Drinn was responsible for putting her here. He was certainly mean enough, and she had given him reason to want her to disappear. She daydreamed about what Father would have done to him if she’d told him the old man hit her.

  Da had once muttered something about him and thieves. Thieves knew about secret doors and locks and stuff. She pulled herself off her feet, reaching into the upper parts of the cage where everything linked together. Something had to be movable. There had to at least be a keyhole. Little fingers explored the knot of iron through the ring for almost an hour. All thoughts of the old man’s involvement died with her hope of escape. It was one solid mass of black metal.

  She plopped down, gathering her arms around her legs and shaking. Drinn could not have made that awful girl vanish. No, nothing she believed in before could have done that. Unless, of cours
e, that was only a dream. Yes, that had to be a dream. Someone’s taken us to get money out of Father. She sniffled. Impossible. The cage was impossible, the room was impossible.

  Was the Banderwigh?

  Hannah’s parents never found her. Emma’s throat tightened. Hannah’s father was not the captain of the town watch. She risked a smile. Surely, Guard Captain Dalen would save them. Emma glanced up at the tiny window. For her to have heard passing travelers, they would have had to be close. They should have noticed two children screaming, but the people outside didn’t hesitate. Emma traced her fingers down one of the bars, dreading how cramped it would be when she grew up. Her lip quivered.

  Is this place enchanted?

  Sensing her deteriorating confidence, Tam burst into tears, calling for his mother. Emma closed her eyes so she didn’t see his face; that sight would have made her cry too. A rush of energy came past her like a warm breeze radiating from Tam and flowing into the wall, reminding her the monster feasted upon their sadness.

  She slid her legs through the bars, sitting on the edge of the disc, singing and swinging her feet. “Tamrin Brae, Tamrin Brae, went for a walk one summer’s day.”

  He gave her a pathetic stare, but curled up to listen; his tears waned.

  Fear slipped from Emma’s thoughts as she lost herself in the memory of Mother singing them to sleep. “She pranced upon the meadow grass, where faeries danced and faeries laughed.”

  Tam leaned on the bars, a trace of a smile on his face.

  “They found her there, Tamrin Brae, and bid her stay a month and day…”

  Emma closed her eyes, remembering the puffs of Mother’s breath on her face.

  Her eyes grew heavy and her limbs leaden. Her voice mixed with Mother’s in the back of her mind, trailing off into silence.

  he scent of soil filled Emma’s nose, followed by cold wetness all along the front of her body. Startled, she shoved herself up from the ground and gaped at the trees of Widowswood. Sunlight filtered down through gaps in the wavering pines, creating a dancing patchwork of light. She leapt to her feet, taking a few steps in a whirling stride to take in her surroundings. Still in her nightdress, now wet down the front and dirty, she shivered from the early-morning chill. The soft rush of wind in the treetops carried the calls of birds overhead. Emma swiped her hands down her dress, brushing away dead pine needles and clumps of bark. Freedom from the tiny cage made her feel better, but not so much it stalled her involuntary trembles.

  “Tam?” she yelled. No response. “Tam!” she shrieked.

  Emma balled her hands into fists, and stomped a footprint in the dirt. Angry, she snapped her gaze from tree to tree, searching for that overgrown window. There was no way to know how far away it had taken her from that place. Would it even look like a building from the outside? Perhaps it was an earthen mound with a tiny hole she’d never find. She looked around again, memorizing the area. Tam was still there; the monster had let her go because she could outwit it. Amid her singing, she had forgotten where she was and broke free of the sorrow it so urgently wanted. The Banderwigh still had Tam. Emma squatted and scratched an X in the ground. After digging a deep enough mark, she patted a pair of crossed sticks into it for good measure.

  A brief search yielded a sizable length of wood, one too heavy for her to lift all the way off the ground. Emma dragged it over to the mark and squinted through the treetops. If she was in Widowswood―which she was sure of―the sun would be coming up in the direction of home. Emma wrapped an arm over the fallen branch and dragged it behind her, leaving a trail as she marched off. It pained her to leave Tam behind, but it would be silly for her to go looking for the monster alone. She would only get lost, and probably wouldn’t even find him. No, she would come back with Father and half the town guard. Daddy could defeat the monster.

  Strange chattering noises, snaps, and a sporadic pulsating thrum of unseen insects emanated from the trees around her as she walked east. The forest seemed different, as if every shadowed patch stared at her. Emma shivered, clinging to the branch, and tried to take her mind away from what had happened by singing.

  “Tamrin Brae, Tamrin Brae, went to the well one summer’s day.

  Clear water, clear water, the dear, darling daughter.

  Did fetch by the noonday sun.”

  Tam’s smile flitted through her mind, but she steeled herself against feeling sad. She would not leave him there. Emma sucked in a breath and pictured her Mother singing. Dragging the stick, she kept walking.

  “Tamrin Brae, Tamrin Brae, went for a walk one summer’s day.

  She pranced upon the meadow grass, where faeries danced and faeries laughed.

  They found her there, Tamrin Brae, and bid her stay a month and day.

  “The Faerie King, the Faerie King, smiled and flew on emerald wing.

  Around this girl, Tamrin Brae, his fancy she had caught.

  She danced and sang until the night, a feast they did then bring.”

  Her wavering voice did not do as much as she had hoped to still her nerves. The urge to drop the branch and run as fast as she could go battered at her resolve, but her little brother depended on her. Emma would not allow that thing to turn him into a wasted wretch.

  “Tamrin Brae, Tamrin Brae, so young and filled with life.

  He bade her drink, Tamrin Brae, the wine of faerie’s draught.

  To sleep she fell, a month and day, awoke the Fae King’s wife.”

  Emma swallowed hard. The song, meant to be calming, was about a girl who had vanished forever into the faerie kingdom, never to be seen again. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she thought of being separated from Tam forever. She caught herself a moment later, refusing to give in. If the monster was still watching her, she did not want it to smell her sorrow and take her back.

  She stepped over rocks and roots to the edge of a stream and hiked up her nightdress to keep it dry as she waded through thigh-deep water, cold to the point it made her shriek. The ground on the far side turned into an uphill grade. Emma squinted through the treetops, making sure she still moved towards the sun.

  Good. The woods are lower. I’m going the right way.

  Before long, the ground grew thick with grass, cold and wet. Trees thinned out as the edge of the forest gave way to open fields, the darkness between trees replaced by grass. Emma grabbed her line-maker with both hands, dragging it behind until she hit the meadow. In the grass, she dropped it. The huge stick was itself a marker. She had emerged from further south in Widowswood than her parents had allowed her to go before, putting a long field of rolling hills between her and home.

  Filled with hope, she ran as hard as she could, unable to resist the urge to cry out for her father.

  he crested one hill, darted through a depression, and scrambled up the side of the next incline. At the top of the mound, the shape of buildings shrouded in early morning fog came into view far ahead. The sight of home gave her the strength to keep running, despite her exhaustion.

  On a downhill slope, she slipped in the wet grass and tumbled out of control until she skidded to a halt, flat on her chest at the bottom. She sat up, clutching a scraped knee, unwilling to cry over something so trivial. Emma growled and got back on her feet, moving in a limping run to the next hilltop.

  What she saw there sent her back to the ground.

  The fog Emma thought she had seen was smoke. Every hut had burned to the foundation. Trails of smoke wisped into the air from piles of rubble. A few of the more robust dwellings, like her own, remained as little more than stone walls outlining the ghosts of buildings. Emma glanced back at the woods, trembling, wondering how she hadn’t seen any of the smoke before. With little life left in her legs, she plodded down the hill along the same dirt road the leaf-clad woman had taken into the village.

  The destruction made her feel like Hannah had looked, drained and without hope. Instinct led her home, and she found a gutted mess. The back wall, which faced the privy, had collapsed outward into loose stones.
She crept up the stairs, onto a charred porch she had swept so many times. An ash-covered stick with a small tangle of burned bristles leaned against the wall. The bottoms of her feet turned black as she crossed to the front door. Inside, the raised wooden floors were nothing more than white ash at the bottom of a shallow pit formed by the remaining walls. She climbed down, covering her face with both hands as she tiptoed through the debris-strewn interior. The fireplace, and mother’s cauldron, remained intact. Gone were the bed, the forbidden cabinet, or anything not made of rock.

  Overwhelmed, and with tears streaming from her eyes, Emma ignored the wreckage, and moved to where Nan’s bedroom had been. Some of the thicker parts of wood from her bed frame remained as a loose arrangement of what could pass for half-burned fire logs. She squatted and clawed through the silt, coughing and sneezing. When she found no bones, Emma hugged herself and shook. Her home had burned, but her family didn’t die here. Hope brought her standing. Bones would have survived a fire. Emma swallowed back her tears, and wiped her face with her forearms, as soot coated her hands.

  What strange things Mother talks about sometimes.

  She searched the wreckage of the house, sifting through all the dirt and ash until her arms were black to the elbows. Not one tooth, no skulls, and nothing even close to a bone turned up. Emma let out an uneasy laugh, and made her way to what was once the back door. The townspeople would have all gone to the same place. All she needed to do was follow the road northeast. She climbed the rear foundation wall, narrowly avoiding a splinter in her foot, and walked out among the scattered rocks.

  There, on the ground by the water pump, lay the stick-knight and shrub dragon.

  Wind lifted her long, black hair to the side and carried tears off her cheeks. Arms slack at her sides, she fell to her knees and closed her eyes. She did not sob anymore; she was too sad to cry. The toys reminded her of the little boy still stuck somewhere in a cage.