Cloudfyre Falling - A dark fairy tale

by A. L. Brooks

‘Aye,’ Gargaron called back. ‘There be no change.’

  ‘Whereas from here,’ Hawkmoth relayed, ‘they have reverted to naught but arid bushland.’

  ‘So, it be an illusion as I said,’ Locke commented.

  Hawkmoth returned to them. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’ And with a smile he marched down to the base of the rim, the others following, the woodland growing further with every step closer they took.

  By the time they reached the fence, the woods beyond had taken on colossal proportions. Trees that had looked like meagre saplings from afar had grown now into mighty oaks that stood as thick and wide as a giant’s cottage. Shrubs that earlier appeared no taller than Gargaron’s ankle now dwarfed him. Insects that before they could not see but only hear, stood now larger than hoardogs, clinging to bark and branch.

  And the top of the fence loomed above them at an enormous height.

  6

  ‘Have we somehow shrunk?’ Melai wondered aloud, eyeing the tops of the fence line before gazing back to the top of the slope from where they’d come.

  ‘Anything be possible,’ Hawkmoth said, smiling at her, as if the discovery of new enchantments were still a treat to behold. ‘Still, no time to stand and marvel. Our mission calls us ever onward.’

  He turned and headed over to the nearest gate. The others trailed him, watching as he tested the iron handle. It did not budge and the gate refused to open. Unperturbed he hauled his staff from where it were slung across his back and presented Rashel’s face to the key hole. ‘Laye doon un submiss,’ he murmured.

  Rashel’s tongue, rarely seen, slithered from her gaping mouth and wormed its way into the key hole. It licked about inside like an anteater cleaning out a nest of mud-ants. But it were to no avail. Her tongue soon retracted, she closed her mouth and the gate remained locked.

  ‘Right then,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘Time for a heftier dose of diplomacy then.’ He stood back and again aimed his staff at the lock. He opened his mouth to speak his spells… but hesitated. He looked around at the others. ‘Ah, best if you all back up a wee way.’

  They did as were told, climbing back up the slope a bit of a distance. Locke even found himself a tuft of grass on which to get comfortable, settling in as if for a spot of live theatre.

  Hawkmoth proceeded. And he spoke: ‘Bring uss diss eea funss doon!’

  A rocketing blue flame squealed from Lancsh, blasting the vicinity of the gate that held the lock. Though there came a counter strike in the form of a jagged bolt of blue flame that struck Hawkmoth in the chest and threw him out into the air, over the heads of his friends, depositing him high on the slope of the rim.

  7

  Melai flew to his aid, Gargaron and Locke scurrying up slope behind her. They expected the worst but before they reached him he grunted and sat up. He looked about as if he’d merely been slapped across the face. His staff were still in his grasp.

  ‘Be you well?’ Melai asked breathlessly.

  He looked at her, slightly dazed, then put his hand inside his robes, feeling his chest for wounds. He withdrew his hand and proceeded to tap his breast bone. ‘It would seem that stone for skin has its benefits after all.’

  8

  Once Hawkmoth’d had himself a swig of revitalising brew, he sat gathering his thoughts.

  ‘Perhaps you weren’t, ah, diplomatic enough,’ Locke suggested with a wry smile.

  ‘What be your next move, pray tell?’ asked Gargaron.

  Hawkmoth sighed. ‘Why, we trail the fence line until we find a gate that permits us entry.’

  ‘What if there be none?’ Gargaron put to him.

  ‘Well, we climb the ruddy thing.’

  Gargaron surveyed the fence from their position high on the slope. Once again, the woodland beyond appeared to have shrunk. ‘Seems easy enough from here. But down there the fence be a league in height.’

  ‘Plus it be lined in spikes,’ Locke reminded them.

  ‘Aye. But we’ll need find some way in,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘Or our coming here will have been a complete waste of time.’

  ‘Right, then we walk the fence line,’ Melai answered impatiently.

  ‘In which direction?’ Gargaron put to her.

  ‘Split up,’ were Locke’s suggestion. ‘Two of us go one way, two the other.’

  Hawkmoth shook his head. ‘Not a sound idea. I fear this place would like to have us divided. We stay as four.’

  9

  They set off eastways. In the direction of the nearest gate. But it were locked and so were the next. So they kept marching, trailing the fence line and testing gates as they came to them. The call of bugs persisted. Gargaron spied them through the fence as he traipsed forward. Enormous things. Crickets, thrips, horned beetles. Clamped to tree trunks beyond the fence. Or clambering about the forest floor, squealing or hissing or chirping.

  Melai watched them too. She also watched the trees. With something of awe and wonder. So much so that with each passing stroke of the clock she felt the woodland drawing her, as though it were Mother Thoonsk.

  Hawkmoth concentrated of course on the fence. What he (and then the others) began to notice about it were that in some sections, portions of its vertical iron bars had sprouted small iron leaves, and branches. And occasionally, blooming from twisting iron stems at the tops of the gates were what looked to be huge embryonic sacks; a thin metallic membrane concealed some sort of wriggling being on the inside.

  ‘What by Thronir be those things?’ Gargaron asked puzzled, gazing up at the phenomenon far above their heads.

  The group had stopped to watch them, craning their necks, while Melai, and flew to their height to observe them, although she kept her distance.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Hawkmoth admitted. ‘Be some curious enchantment I do not understand.’

  ‘Perhaps they give birth to sentries,’ Melai suggested. ‘Mother Thoonsk would give birth to such things of wood and stone if she believed herself at risk of being raided or trespassed upon.’

  But living iron? Gargaron thought. He had seen no such thing in all his days.

  10

  They moved on. And on. Trudging through sand and shrub and leaf matter, mile after mile, with dwindling hope that they might ever chance upon such a thing as an unlocked gate. Melai who had long grown exhausted of flying, perched herself upon Gargaron’s broad shoulder; there she sat with her legs crossed against his shoulder blade, watching this strange circular land recede behind them.

  But it were Melai, quite by chance, who spotted the eventual breach in the fence line.

  At the time there were an ongoing discussion about the merits of splitting up. ‘Perhaps two of us ought to have done as Locke suggested and striven west,’ Gargaron had said. ‘We may have found our way in by now.’

  ‘And you may also not have,’ Hawkmoth had replied, ‘and we would be a split and weakened party.’

  ‘Well, might we all turnabout and head the other way?’ Locke said, almost smirking, knowing what the answer would be, knowing he were simply fueling the debate.

  ‘A foolish notion,’ Hawkmoth scoffed. ‘We have come half a day already. Our heading is almost northways at this current hour. It would be more worth our while at this point to continue on our way than to back track.’

  ‘And what if an unlocked gate lay just west of our starting point all those long hours gone?’

  ‘And what if it didn’t?’

  ‘But it might have.’

  ‘Right, if that be so, then, if this island be circular as I suspect, we shall eventually come by it.’

  ‘And how long must we traipse before that happens?’

  It were here Melai saw it. None of the others made any sign at all that they had glimpsed it, all too engaged and distracted by their discussion it seemed.

  Melai spread her wings and left Gargaron’s shoulder, fluttering to ground and landing by it. ‘Did you three not see this?’

  They stopped and turned, curious looks upon their faces as they took in the rent in the fe
nce as Melai presented it. By now their inane argument had ceased.

  ‘Oh my,’ Hawkmoth said as he stepped before it.

  It were clear that it were not so much a rent or breach as a parting in the bars where iron branches had sprouted forth, the bars leaning here and there as would the trunks of growing trees. What remained were a large gap in the fence. One that might submit even Gargaron, Melai thought, at a squeeze.

  ‘Oh, well spotted,’ Gargaron said.

  Hawkmoth announced he would pass through first. ‘We cannot risk a bolt of energy on your lives,’ he told them.

  ‘What about yourself?’ Melai asked.

  To this he smiled. ‘Why, should I be assailed again, well, at least now I know I carry natural armour.’ So through the gap in the fence he climbed. And reached the other side without incident.

  While Locke went next Melai on impulse flew over the top, which seemed to irk Hawkmoth and Gargaron both. She could see that much by the looks on their faces. ‘What?’ she said looking at them as she swooped down on the opposite side.

  ‘I shall not lecture you,’ Hawkmoth told her, ‘except to say be mindful here.’

  She took the advice with a nod. She had not considered the idea that the fence may have struck out at her as it had the sorcerer.

  11

  They stood now in the sand and grass that lay between the fence and the woodland fringe, marveling at Vol Mothaak’s beauty and grandeur.

  ‘Never have I felt like a flea on the back of a spine-hog,’ Gargaron declared, ‘never as undersized and slight as I do at this present moment.’ For the trees themselves, now that Gargaron and his friends stood this side of the fence, had taken on ever greater proportions.

  Melai simply felt an urge to fly. To be off in amongst this mighty woodland realm and pretend she were home in Mother Thoonsk. Though she stayed close by her companions. Something about the place filled her with a sense of unease. Perhaps it were the enormous insects, who she felt were somehow watching her. (Watching her out of hunger? Or spying on her for a higher power, she did not know.) But there were danger here she felt, disguised by beauty.

  Locke though, smiled like a child. ‘What endless wonders does our world still have waiting for us beyond this?’

  It were impossible to know, but Hawkmoth were eager to be on with their journey, for every moment gone were a moment closer to another possible boom shake. Besides there were other menaces to consider. ‘We must keep our senses about us here,’ he warned his friends. ‘The Ghartst paintings, as far as I could decipher, showed depictions of Star Angels, strange beings that inhabit Vol Mothaak, who supposedly cling upside-down to trees by tentacle legs, who bear the torso of a woman and an elongated head with no face. They are the guardians of these woods I fear and all trees come under their protection. Though our simple presence here may be enough to agitate them. So, be mindful.’

  VOL MOTHAAK

  1

  THE troupe struck out westways and for a time none spoke. Their eyes and attention were on the enticing world about them. For the woods were enchantingly beautiful; trees themselves whose girth were so unbelievably wide and so dizzyingly tall were almost godlike. As if this were a garden, a sanctuary, where the gods of the cosmos came to rest at the end of their days. An indescribable light cascaded down amidst the canopy so high above them. A golden light that turned almost green as it refracted through a million leaves. High up in the leafy boughs there were almost a misty quality to the air. As if clouds of pollen drifted. And constantly there came the fall of leaves dropping like feathers to ground.

  Every now and then away in the woods, if there were a corridor through the trees to spot them, there stood or huddled the forms, or the appearance, of giants. Not Gargaron’s kind; Gargaron were a dwarf in this strange place, a nymph, a minnow. These giants were colossal beasts, and towered far above him. And they stood concealed in shadow. None but large apish eyes watching them in silence.

  ‘Do you see them?’ Gargaron asked the others hushly.

  ‘Aye,’ Locke promised, intrigued by what he saw.

  ‘What be they?’

  ‘Dark Ones,’ Melai said, yet were not certain.

  ‘Press on,’ Hawkmoth urged, determined to ignore them and the myriad other distractions this land threw at them and they hurried onwards as quickly as they were able. ‘They may be statue, they may be sentient being, they may be the guardians of these woods, but press on, I implore.’

  They pressed on. Into regions where many trees had somehow assumed the appearance of great standing cosmic angels. Hands and arms, sprouting with branches and leaves, displayed as if in prayer or offering. There were the feeling here of strolling through a gargantuan cathedral, somewhere immense but sacred.

  ‘Could this be what we spied?’ Melai asked. ‘Those towering shadows back there watching us. Something like these?’

  ‘I would like to think as much,’ Hawkmoth answered. ‘But somehow I feel these be different. Trees, fashioned or grown to honour deities perhaps.’

  2

  The further they went the more quiet the woodlands became. The chirping thrips stopped chirping. The squealing cicadas stopped squealing. The only sounds seemed to be the shifting and rustling of the troupe’s weaponry and equipment, the muted sounds of their footfalls on the soft, leaf riddled ground, the sounds of their breathing. There were no echo in this woodland; when Locke whistled to test it, it fell from his mouth a flat, muted sound.

  There were also no breeze, yet the air felt cool, and a fragrance wafted about as sweet as any floral odour. The curious insects here that crawled lazily upon tree and branch went about with a stillness and quietness that seemed somehow unreal. And perhaps they were not real. In a living sense, at least. For as the travelers past them by within close proximity the insects did not appear organic, but somehow things formed from a sort of copperish metal unknown to them.

  3

  They ate as they travelled, picking at what small provisions they had not stowed aboard ship, never stopping for lunch as they had done at other times during their travels. Gargaron’s stores were growing low. They had spied nothing within this strange place to hunt, no deer, no rabbit, no fox, and no eel nor fish in the few brooks or streams they crossed. Hawkmoth had called this place enchanted but Gargaron preferred to think of it as cursed. If it had ever supported such animals (and somehow it felt as though it never had) they had gone. Fled, or perished at the hand of the Ruin. Gargaron had enough rations to last him another two, maybe three days. He hoped that by then, the Death Bell they had come to visit had been put to sleep, and the state of the world put to rights.

  4

  It felt as though they had been marching for many hours when Hawkmoth had an urge to check their bearings. He removed his chronochine, studied it for a few moments and were pleased to establish they were still more or less on a westways heading. When he checked time of day however, he were puzzled.

  ‘What be the cause of your consternation, sorcerer?’ Locke asked him.

  He inhaled slowly as he considered his reply. ‘Either my chronochine be dying a sickly death, or unnatural forces are playing mischief with its internal workings. It claims that twice, time around us has stopped. And on three separate occasions, it tells me, time has begun running backwards.’

  Melai looked about. ‘Backwards?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘How can that be?’

  Hawkmoth laughed quietly. ‘I have no answer.’

  Locke smiled. ‘Well then, naught can be done about it. We push on and ride out whatever this place throws at us.’ He sounded like someone eager to take it on, like someone keen to leap from the top of a waterfall, hoping to dodge submerged stones when he landed.

  They pressed on after each had satiated thirst from their gourds and rest their feet a short while, gazing about their surroundings, listening to naught but bone dead silence.

  Though once more Cahssi entered Gargaron’s mind. And once more he heard her as if s
he stood before him. You be the earthchild. Soon the days will begin to run backwards. From you, a new world will come. But you have work here first.

  5

  For much of that day the suns swung slowly across sky—if they were not visible to Gargaron and companions on the ground, their glare were evident beyond the canopy. Yet for long stretches it seemed the suns did not move at all. And when Gargaron looked up at them late in the day, well, one moment they were directly overhead and after he had blinked they were suddenly and inexplicably hovering in the eastwun hemisphere. ‘Do you lot notice the position of Gohor and Melus?’

  They had. And they had all stopped to study the phenomenon.

  ‘Has time once more reversed?’ Gargaron asked Hawkmoth who were again studying his chronochine.

  ‘Aye. Almost a full day this time.’

  ‘Be it a symptom of these woods, this land?’ Gargaron asked. ‘Or a symptom of the gravitational forces forecast by the Ghartst cave paintings?’

  ‘I might suggest we shall not know the answers until we are rid ourselves of this place,’ Hawkmoth replied.

  ‘Whatever the case may be,’ Melai said, ‘I don’t much like it.’

  Locke made no comment. He appeared untroubled, merely fascinated.

  6

  They moved on. Hawkmoth leading the way. Lock and Melai next. Gargaron at rear.

  Later, Melai and Locke were in conversation about home and family; Hawkmoth and Gargaron were lost to their own thoughts. For a little while the troupe proceeded as such until Gargaron drew alongside Hawkmoth and said, ‘You mind if I have a word?’

  ‘What be on your mind, giant?’

  Gargaron took a while to answer. He were at once trying to recall Cahssi’s strange words. He were nervous to repeat them. ‘There is something I have not spoken about since our leaving Dark Wood.’