Oberon's Children

by Hal Emerson

  Chapter Six: The Darkness

  Our lives became a simple routine: We were woken each moonrise by the snarling face of Ai’Ilyn; we made our beds and followed her outside the room, where we were allowed to relieve ourselves; we ate; we were taken to Fal and a string of other Paecsies and tasked with cleaning work that took us from the highest dizzying heights of the Bower to the deep corners of the caverns underneath where the Urden lived. We ate again; we caught the moonlight; we slept, falling into our nestles utterly drained of energy.

  I was surprised at how easily I fell into that routine. All that I could count on from one day to the next in the world I’d left behind was that the sun would rise and the seasons would change – every day out there was different, every day was plagued by thoughts of where food would come from and where danger would find me. Here I was worried by none of that. All of those needs had been met – I had food, I had a bed, and I knew that if I did as I was asked I would not suffer harm.

  I suppose it’s no surprise I fit in so easily – I had nowhere else to go.

  I was soon certain there was no sunlight in the Bower. After waking several times to the dark night sky, I’d been forced to conclude that the Moonlight Realm had not been named figuratively. I couldn’t know it then, in those first few weeks, but later I would come to understand the seasons were unchanging too. The crushing winters of my early childhood, the kind that left the unprepared half-dead and the stupid all-dead, never came to this perpetually blooming world. There were changes, though: fluctuations in temperature, even weather. Some days the temperature dropped and huge crashing storms shrouded the Bower in wave after wave of drenching downpour; other days were so hot and humid that I felt I was breathing air turned solid; and still more days were so wind-wracked it felt that if I jumped into the air I’d land sprawled out six feet downwind.

  The moonlight went through its monthly changes, indeed it was the only thing that showed the passage of time, but it stayed in the sky longer than I knew it should, and it glowed brighter and hung heavier than any moon I’d ever seen in the world outside. It did set, dipping below the horizon while the Bower slept and leaving the sky spangled with stars that stretched out forever, but at times and in patterns that didn’t make logical sense. The only time it failed to rise was the night of the new moon.

  The one night that did not belong to Oberon.

  The first time it happened, the first time we woke to only the soft silver glow of the moonstones in the walls and no sign of light through the high window in the chamber wall, it was to the sounds of howling. I thought at first that I was still dreaming – thought perhaps something from my past life had invaded my sleeping mind – but when I sat up and looked around, I knew that the only dream I’d had was the waking one in which I lived.

  The darkness outside the glass-less window was oppressive and total, even extinguishing the stars. It crouched over the Bower like an invading army of shadows, sending tendrilic questing fingers through to me as I lay awake, listening spellbound to the howls that accompanied it. The silver light of the moonstones seemed like a collection of pebbles trying to hold back a flood; their wavering light flickered and sputtered, and I knew somehow that all light was being sought out, that the darkness outside would consume us if given a chance.

  We didn’t go outside that night. Ai’Ilyn still came to retrieve us, but she never acknowledged the howling we heard from outside, nor the snarling sounds that later morphed into the terrible sounds of ripping and screaming. Everywhere we went that night the sound of it followed us, coming in through the smallest window, echoing down the corridors, stretched and amplified into ghastly convulsions that shivered past us as we walked and worked.

  All the creatures of the Bower seemed to be elsewhere or firmly cloistered in quarters of their own; only the children were out and moving among the halls. The corridors were deserted, none of the moonstones lit. It was as though the entire structure had been deserted, the inhabitants fled in the face of a besieging force.

  The only ones out were the Caelyr – and they were everywhere.

  Every room we entered, we found the giant spiders spinning strands of gossamer silk to replaced torn sheets, to mend ill-used tapestries that hung in the meeting and feasting rooms we scrubbed, to repair or replace even the dirty rags we used to clean.

  I never dreamed of asking Ai’Ilyn about what was happening, but we had learned that while the Ilyn were harsh and unforgiving, others in the Bower were not so set against the children. The Paecsies were one such group – though there were variances among them as well. Fal was never to be crossed – when one of our group, testing the waters, spoke up the first time Ai’Ilyn was absent, the reaction had been swift and decisive: the offender was whisked away and only returned to us when we went to sleep, a huddled mass of weeping bruises held together by what once had constituted a child. Other Paecsies didn’t mind – some ignored us, unless we were loud, and others answered simple questions, so long as we did not attempt to carry on a conversation; but there was no guarantee you’d find one of them – the chance of getting one who’d punish you was much higher, and that kept most of us silent.

  But while we had tested the Ilyn and the Paecsies, we had not yet had a chance to test the Caelyr. They remained isolated in their distant tower, feverishly spinning their silk. By silent, common consensus, we were taking it in turns to test the Paecsies given command of us. I had yet to go – the others had all gone, even Faolan.

  So, that night, when Ai’Ilyn briefly left us in the care of a Caelyr named Ionmar, I bit back my revulsion and fear and moved to her side. Faolan saw my movement and his eyes lit up. The others were only a few seconds behind him – and they all spread out, working together to give me time, though Tristan watched me with suspicious eyes, the look he always had for me who obeyed the Ilyn so readily.

  I was sweating even in the chill night air. With the moonlight gone, somehow the darkness had grown so cold that it felt as though winter was upon us, and the shivering fear in my own gut only amplified the effect.

  “Hello,” I whispered.

  The word alone, the solitary sound amid the nearly silent ministrations of the children and the other Caelyr, made sweat leak from the skin of my entire body. I tried not to shake as I waited for the sound of Ai’Ilyn’s rushing footsteps, waited for the pain of the first blow. She hadn’t disciplined me for the way I’d acted when I went to catch the moonlight, but the Erlking’s favor was no protection here.

  “Hello,” the Caelyr replied simply. I felt a wave of relief roll through me, but the cold tinges of fear still clung to the edges of my mind and body. She had not yet betrayed me – but she could very well change her mind.

  “What is … outside?”

  I was carefully coiling the silk she was spooling so that it could be used to replace the unraveling strands of the tapestry that hung on the wall of the room we were cleaning. It depicted a scene of trees and a rushing river, the moon high above, like a fat, ripe fruit, dead-center in the sky. The edges had frayed, and the Caelyr were repairing it.

  “It is the Wild Hunt,” the Caelyr said softly, her human mouth moving only as much as it needed to as her spider forelegs and human hands wove the silk together in a feat of astonishing dexterity.

  “The Wild Hunt,” I whispered.

  Stories and legends spread far and wide, particularly among the landless masses, and even more so spread the dark ones. There were stories I’d heard of children taken in the night, stories I now knew were based in fact; but worse than that were stories of the Great Hunter, the nameless one who came and pulled the souls of the dead or wicked into the underworld, taking them through the land of the Fae. It was a story I’d heard from those I’d travelled with – a story that had given me nightmares.

  “Yes,” Ionmar said quietly, eyeing the distant form of Ai’Ilyn, who had returned and was watching over Tristan. “Would you like to know more?”

  I looked at her sharply, not understanding what she
was asking. Had she decided to tell Ai’Ilyn how I’d been speaking? Was she going to raise her voice and call the Ilyn over? Would she beat me herself with the hooked ends of her spider’s legs?

  In the lidless black orbs of her eyes I saw my own reflection, silvery and soft in the moonstone light, and realized she was waiting for me to speak. Her face was that of a kindly woman, with a simple fall of curled brunette hair pulled away from her plain face and button nose. There were even wrinkled smile lines around the corners of her mouth.

  I glanced back at Ai’Ilyn, saw that she was still involved with Tristan on the other side of the room, and forced myself to take a chance.

  “Yes,” I breathed at her, all the while thinking I was insane.

  She smiled softly.

  “Wait.”

  She turned and left, leaving the strand she was working on behind, and moved to cross the shadowed room. Her eight black legs seemed to be even more numerous in the dim light of the single moonstone set in the ceiling, and the shadow of her form spidered across the floor and walls as her legs skittered and clicked.

  She went straight for Ai’Ilyn. I froze in place, willing myself to be invisible, clinging on to the insane hope that she wouldn’t reveal me. The Caelyr reached the Ilyn and spoke to her in a hushed voice that didn’t carry. Ai’Ilyn looked mildly surprised, and then she turned to look at me. My fingers and lips went numb, but I continued coiling the gossamer silk Ionmar had left behind, only watching the pair of them from the corner of my eye. I moved slowly, by rote, only just able to keep myself from shaking.

  I remember very distinctly wishing she’d just get it over with and punish me – it was the anticipation, not the act itself, that most affected me.

  But then Ai’Ilyn shrugged, grimacing at me and then at Ionmar, before turning back to the other children. Ionmar nodded graciously and returned, stopping along the way to pick up an un-lit moonstone set in a small hole in a nearby wall. The stone came away easily, and as she touched it it began to glow softly, lighting her face from below. She didn’t speak; with a gesture she beckoned me to follow her. We left the hall quietly, the only sound of our passage the tread of our footsteps, mine soft and light, hers sharp and heavy.

  As we left, the sound from outside increased in volume, and we again heard wolfish howling that preceded cries for help that cut off in high, quavering notes. Chills went down my back, and I looked back and saw the others watching me go. I felt the combined hope and fear of them all like a weight I was suddenly carrying on my shoulders. They wanted answers as much as I did.

  Once we were in the hallway, and far enough down the circular corridor that noise would not carry to the room we’d left, Ionmar looked down at me out of the corner of her eye – or at least I think she did. It’s hard to tell with spiders’ eyes.

  “We are going to the Weaving Room for more cloth,” she said shortly, her voice low and without inflection. Her whole posture and expression was a study in neutrality. “Once we return, this conversation will end.”

  The finality of her tone, neither unkind nor friendly, brooked no room for argument, and I had no desire to argue. That she was agreeing to speak with me at all – and for the entire trip to the Weaving Room and back! – was more of a stroke of luck than I’d had the temerity to wish.

  “With every step your time grows shorter,” she intoned, her voice dry and bookish. She was looking ahead now, steering us through the Bower’s maze of corridors and branchings that I despaired of ever fully grasping.

  “The Wild Hunt,” I said quickly, watching her for even the hint of a reaction, lost though it might be in the soft light of the moonstone she carried to light our way. We passed though a larger room, one with long slender windows that let in long slices of the black night. As if beckoned by my words, the howling once again rolled over us, mingled with the shouting that sounded far off and yet too close.

  “Yes, tonight is the night of the Hunt. Keep up, girl.”

  I realized I had fallen behind her when I’d stopped to look at the black slab of night visible through the window, and I quickly hurried to catch up once more. My voice came out strangled as I spoke again:

  “What is it?”

  “You know the stories, I do not doubt. Even humans know of it. They are not far off. No one knows for sure who is a part of it, though we know who leads them. Any who leave the Bower and enter the darkness tonight will become part of the Hunt, and they will become something less than themselves. Or maybe something more.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Gwyn ap Nudd leads them,” she said, and I detected the first hint of a quiver in her voice as she said the name. “There are others as well, those who are rumored to be among them, the legendary dead. His brother, for one, and those of other close relation that joined him in the dark. They turn the tides of battles and sway fortune – they hold power over the witching hour of the Realm of Men, the realm the Erlking gave them long ago when they wanted to become part of the Fae.”

  “They weren’t Fae?”

  “They were – but not of the moonlight, not under the Erlking’s protection and without his blessing to move through the Bower into the earth – into the world beneath where lay the souls of those at rest.”

  I shivered violently and hugged myself, hearing again the sounds.

  We turned a corner and began to ascend, and I realized we were almost to the Weaving Room. I racked my brain for more questions, knowing I had them, knowing that this was my chance to have them answered.

  “Who is the Erlking?”

  The words were out of my mouth before I’d fully considered them, and I knew from the way Ionmar’s step faltered just the slightest bit that I had touched on something that even she, in her deep neutrality, was wary of answering.

  “His name is Oberon,” she said, her voice hushed, even softer than a moment ago, as if worried someone would overhear her. “He is one of the oldest Fae, his true name long forgotten when the Bower was still new, and he is now known only as Oberon the Erlking. He has ruled from the shadows ever since the day he withdrew from the world of men, taking the first of his children with him.”

  “His children?”

  “Those of us who live by night,” she said, turning her head to stare at me with her protruding eyes. “Those like you and I.”

  My heart was racing – we were touching on the true root of everything. I had so many more questions, but as I opened my mouth to ask them, she held up a human hand.

  “I must go to the Weaving Room for the cloth. I will return – but you cannot come with me. The way there is through the open air, and if you see the Hunt or hear it without the warding of the Bower’s skin, you will be called to it. Stay here.”

  She pulled a hood up over her head, off-white like the rest of the garment that covered her woman half, and left me. I felt a wave of relief wash over me when I realized she’d left the moonstone behind in a hole in the Bower wall.

  I sat there in the semi-dark, listening to the sounds outside. I found myself staring into the moonstone, but the small wavering point of light was not enough to block out the images that my mind created to go with the howling and screaming. The seconds stretched out until they felt like wide, barren tracks of land with no end in sight. I tried to control my breathing, tried to focus on the light, but all my defenses seemed to wash away in the continual barrage. I could hear horns as well now – drums too. Far off, barely on the edges of my mind, I thought of the stories I had heard, of how the Hunter came for you when you died, collected you when the moon was gone and the sun was gone, and took you to the place where the dead reside.

  Gwyn ap Nudd …

  In a flash of memory, I realized I how I knew that name.

  The man in leather armor, the one who looked like half a wolf and still was handsome; the man at the gathering feast, where we were when we were called; the man that Robin mocked.

  The Lord of Death who bowed to none but Oberon. Shivers raced through my body as I once again co
ntemplated the power of the one who’d drawn me here.

  There was movement around the corner that led outside the Bower, and my heart raced in my chest before I could slow it. Ionmar detached herself from the shadows outside, holding two large swaths of cloth in her hands. She handed both to me; they were so heavy that I staggered beneath the weight.

  “Follow,” she intoned.

  I did, shouldering my newfound burden.

  “Tell … about the children,” I gasped, following her as quickly as I dared. She’d caught up the moonlit stone again, holding the light above her to light our way, and I was desperate to stay within its sphere of illumination.

  “I will answer questions, not give lectures.”

  “Oh – I’m – sorry,” I gasped, backtracking, trying to gather my wits from the corners of my mind where the sounds had driven them. I had to remember my place here – I had to remember the rules. “I apologize, Caelyr.”

  I’d heard the others use the name as an honorific, and it felt right to add it there. I fell silent, waiting for her to acknowledge me, and almost let out a gasp of relief when she gave a small nod of satisfaction.

  “Proceed with your questions, changeling.”

  My heart lurched in my chest – there was that word again.

  “What does that mean, Caelyr?”

  “Changeling?”

  “Yes, Caelyr.”

  She smiled down at me and shook her head slightly.

  “That, I cannot answer even if I wanted to. You will find out when the time comes. But you are one – and so are all the children who are here.”

  “Is that why … we are here?”

  “You were called home – nothing more.”

  I glanced at her, hoping for some other sign of what she meant hidden in her expression, but her face was once again impassive, showing nothing. We passed back through the large chamber with the tall, slender windows and the noise of the Hunt, and a new flood of questions rose up in me.

  “But why here? Why are we … the Fae? … why here? Why not outside?”

  Ionmar didn’t look at me, and I was worried that I had done something again to offend her. We passed through more corridors and I knew that we were approaching the room we’d started in.

  “We are here because we are safe.”

  The words seemed forced, but I couldn’t understand how. Her face was still impassive, and her black orb eyes contained as much emotion as the night sky or the water of an underground pool.

  “We are here because the world embraced the sunlight, and we did not.”

  This answer meant absolutely nothing to me. But before I could question her further and attempt to pierce the cloud that obscured her meaning, she stopped outside the door of the large chamber we’d been in, where the others were all still helping the Caelyr repair wall-hangings and replace lengths of cloth in the various structures molded and formed out of the walls of the Bower.

  “Enter; I will not go with you.”

  About to do just that, I pulled up short, surprised. Where else was she going? I looked up into her face, and she looked back down at me. I saw again myself reflected in her eyes, my white skin and blue eyes shining in the moonlight, my thick black hair concealing my shoulders and neck.

  “Do not worry for me,” she said simply. “You’ve reminded me of things I do not wish to know. I will see you when next you come for clothing.”

  A spasm crossed her face, and as I bowed my head to her, this time out of true respect and not in play-acting deference, she moved away, leaving the silvery stone in a sconce up the wall. It was only then that I realized she could make her way through the Bower in the dark; she’d only brought the light so that I could see.

  I turned away from Ionmar as she scuttered up the corridor, leaving me behind. Making sure to grab hold of the cloth I was still carrying – I realized now that she was gone that my shoulders had begun to burn with the exertion of carrying them all this way – I turned back to the room to rejoin the others.

  And found Ai’Ilyn standing right in front of me.

  I froze, every muscle in my body seizing in terror, and the cloth tumbled from my hands. What did she know? What did she suspect? Would she beat me even though she had no proof that I had broken the rule of no speaking?

  She stared at me with her red-white eyes, unblinking. She reached down and grabbed the piles of silk I had just dropped and thrust them once more into my arms, striking my chest through the bolts of cloth.

  “Do not drop that again. Come with me.”

  My knees weak with relief, I followed her and was placed again near the others, all of whom were looking so intently at what they were doing that I didn’t know how Ai’Ilyn missed that they weren’t looking at me. I wanted to catch Faolan’s eye, but I couldn’t; Ai’Ilyn was still too close. When she finally turned away, I looked over and saw him turned toward me. I tried to convey as much of the conversation to him as I could in a single look – something that seemed so easy to do at that age in that place.

  But he only looked back at me with confusion, and then flicked his eyes to the room’s high window, far off the floor, high enough that none of us could even attempt to see through it. The question he was asking made perfect sense to me, and I nodded as slightly as I could, telling him I did know what was out there – I knew what was making the noises we were hearing. He flicked his gaze toward the form of Ai’Ilyn; the corners of his eyes narrowed, and I knew he was making the same calculation I had, that she was far too close to attempt to speak. He flicked his eyes back at me, those hazel eyes that changed in the light and were tonight rimmed with a ring of misty gray, and grimaced, a slight tightening of the skin along his jaw and over his upper lip. I nodded again, barely, and we broke contact, isolating ourselves in our own work.

  The howling outside increased throughout the night, and so did the screaming. The horns sounded once or twice more, and each time my soul shook as if begging to leave my body and run to the source of the sound, to become one with it and loose the bonds that held it anchored inside my body.

  Ai’Ilyn seemed to sense these moods in us, and when she saw one of us shiver, as we did when a particularly intense howl filtered through the leaves of the Bower and down to us, she moved us to another room. The Caelyr that worked with us didn’t say a word about it; in fact, they said no words at all. They spoke in hissing whispers from time to time, and made strange clicks deep in their throats that shouldn’t have been possible with human vocal cords; but there were no words that we could understand, which left us trapped in our islands of dark isolation, with only the moonlit stones lighting our world.

  She took us back to our nestles early that night, and I found myself more than willing to go. There was no moonlight and thus no need for us to be awake any longer. She watched us get into bed, watched us pull the covers up and over our heads to put a physical barrier between us and the sound, and then turned to go. Just as I was about to do the same, about to duck my head and hope that the night would soon swallow the sounds, I noticed that Faolan was looking toward the window of our room, the one at the far end high up the wall.

  I couldn’t see his face; he was turned away from me. But his back was stiff, and his head cocked to one side. He was listening. I glanced toward the door, toward where Ai’Ilyn was, and saw her looking away.

  I scratched a nail against the heavy grain of the wood, the barest hint of sound, and Faolan twitched, breaking out of his trance. Ai’Ilyn heard the sound too, and turned back, only to see the two of us in bed. She paused again briefly, then turned away and moved on.

  Faolan rolled over, turning his face to me, one eye just barely catching mine across the length of the room over the edge of his cut-out. He wanted to know – needed to know. He’s the only person I’ve ever met as curious as I am.

  Hunters, I mouthed to him, not even daring to make the sound required for a whisper.

  His eyes narrowed in confusion, but then he nodded, and I realized he had understood me, j
ust not the reason why there were hunters here. He arched an eyebrow, and I took it to be a request for further information.

  Gwyn ap Nudd.

  I don’t know why I said the name – I guess it was just the one thing that made most sense to me to try and summarize all that Ionmar and I had spoken about. But as soon as my lips formed the final silent syllable, Faolan’s eyes went round and I knew he understood what I had said. A flicker of an expression pulled his face into a frown before he smoothed his skin back into a solemn mask. He nodded once, a bare fraction of movement, and I swallowed hard.

  His mouth moved, but no sound came from it – he was mouthing back to me.

  Goodnight, Mol.

  Goodnight, Faolan.

  We both rolled over, turning away from each other. I lay awake for a long time after that, listening to the sounds coming through the window. Judging by the breathing in the room, I was not the only one.