by Jon Jacks
‘Then take a lock of my hair,’ the lion said, striding closer towards Uraeus so that she could reach out and pluck from his great mane a pair of long strands, ‘and braid the threads together as if they were intertwining serpents.’
As Uraeus did as she was told, winding the strands together, the lion gave her further instructions.
‘This will be your laurel wreath of victory, for it will give you a great body of troops to head: and to do this, all you have to do is place your twinned serpents between your feet as you stand amongst the prince’s oncoming men.’
*
A puzzled Uraeus looked up from her work to see if she had heard the lion correctly.
But he was no longer there. Neither was his brother, who had obviously recovered, and managed to rise and slink off as silently as his older sibling.
Her horse was still there, thankfully, and her lantern.
Unfortunately, the oncoming army of the prince was still there too, encroaching upon her from the oily darkness lying just ahead of her.
She could hear them now, it being a tremendous noise, like the roaring of an oncoming, angry sea. Lights flickered through the maze of almost interlocking branches, the yellow glow of lanterns and candles.
Untying the horse, Uraeus took its reins in her hand and began to calmly walk towards the oncoming men.
*
As Uraeus walked out from between the dark trees towards the prince’s troops, her own lamp held high to enable her to see the way more clearly, the oncoming men slowed, eventually halting.
Those lying in Uraeus’s way stood aside as she continued to draw closer towards them, their ranks parting.
They knew that she was totally incapable of causing them harm.
They were amused by her presence. Admiring of her courage.
Amazed by her foolishness.
She walked between the parted troops, a strange silence descending over the whole scene.
At last, she herself came to a halt.
Without a word, or even a glance to either side, she placed the braided strands of hair upon the floor, as the lion had instructed her to do.
Then she rose to her feet once more, wondering what would happen next.
*
There was a surprised grasp amongst the nearest men.
Their eyes were wide, and locked upon the dark, fiery brand lying upon the floor.
Uraeus peered down at the strands.
They were moving fluidly, as if alive.
Writhing, as if blazing serpents, struggling to free themselves from their own intertwining. Slithering, as if darkly red saplings, rising up from the floor, striving to grow at phenomenal speed.
They rapidly multiplied, swiftly coursed in and out of each other.
And a crow stood upon the ground, its feathers as black as the deepest earth.
The dark threads continued to sprout from the crow, burgeoning into yet more, hurriedly weaving branches.
Now it was a hawk: and then, abruptly even larger, a wolf that Uraeus suddenly found herself sitting upon.
The dark matter continued to shoot from the sides of the wolf, however, until Uraeus found herself sitting upon the back of a huge lion.
The eyes of the men surrounding her were now full of horror. Some clutched at their lances, their swords and shields, their spears and bows, perhaps wondering if they should rush forward in an attempt to kill her.
And yet they all held back, too fearful to challenge her when she was quite obviously in possession and control of some unknown magical power.
Uraeus presumed that the lion would be the final stage of the growth process of the dark matter. Yet she was wrong.
The darkly fiery threads continued to snake out from the lion, now even worming their way rapidly yet painlessly into her own body.
In an instant, she recognised that she and the creature she had been sitting astride were now one.
Her upper half was still that of a girl, but her lower half was that of a towering mare, one whose limbs surged with energy and even restlessness; for she was eager to leap forward, to accelerate into the most ferocious gallop.
*
The men who should have blocked Uraeus’s charge parted before her in astonishment.
She was a blur of the purest white in the surrounding darkness.
No one dared stop her.
No one wanted to stop her.
For, as amazing as the sight of Uraeus and her parting of the troops was, it was nothing compared to the parting of the darkness taking place above them all in the sky.
A moon was rising there: not a full moon, but one almost still wholly veiled, as if sharply illuminated but only from below. A crescent moon, yet one soaring into the darkness as if it were a pair of immense, gleaming horns.
The men had never seen anything like it before. They had never seen anything so imperiously bright, shattering the continual darkness they had become so used to and had accepted as being the normal state of affairs.
Behind her, as soon as she had passed through them, the men closed their ranks once more. They also turned around, following her with a roar of jubilation, a triumphant raising of their arms and weapons.
Not one of them supported the dark prince anymore.
They would have easily overthrown him, of course. Yet there was no need, for – to the bewilderment of those who had been nearest to him – he simply seemed to vanish in nothing more than the blinking of an eye, as if he had never really existed, as if he had only ever been some awful and terrorising figment of their imagination.
The only thing left behind to demonstrate that he might have once actually existed was a sheared crown, the remains of which were reverently placed upon Uraeus’s head as she was proclaimed ruler in his stead.
As she received her crown, Uraeus sighed deeply: and as if they were ultimately nothing more than a portion of that exhalation of breath, she also slipped free of her animal qualities as easily as if rising up from only mildly clinging waters.
*
At least, that’s how it all appeared to happen to the innumerable men surrounding Uraeus.
In the silvery light cast by the fragmentary moon, the four legs and body of the horse she had become a part of appeared to dissolve, as our reflection in a pool vanishes as soon as we step away from it.
Uraeus, however, saw it all completely differently.
The white mare separated from her just as our spirit might abandon us, when our body is no longer of any use. Similarly wraith-like, it moved unheeded or unhindered through the massed ranks of troops; not, thankfully, headless, as she might have imagined or feared, but now possessing the neck, head and crown of the most beautiful hind.
How could she see all this while her men saw something else, something that was almost so entirely different?
Because now the Morning Star was also rising, bringing its own strange light to everything it looked over. And within that brightness, the glow that the hawk had shared with her illuminated things hidden to everyone else.
As if sensing her probing gaze, the creature turned to directly face her.
It was of the purest white.
As pure as a cleansed soul.
‘Thank you, my daughter,’ the deer said kindly. ‘As you wisely spared me when I was at my lowliest – as the son and a bridegroom, the father and a brother – the Holy Spirit is now yours. For I am Chammah, the wisdom through whom you will eventually recognise your angelic self – and then your life will no longer be forfeit.’
With that, it might have appeared to anyone but Uraeus that the deer simply disappeared.
But naturally, Uraeus was now fully aware that Chammah would always be there for her.
And so she was no longer surprised whenever she heard Chammah whispering the most enlightening advice to her.
And not surprisingly, she reigned as the very wisest of queens.
In fact, she lived happily ever after.
Indeed, she lived forever.
*
Chapter 42
As the goblin came to the end of the telling of his tale, whispered into Helen’s ear as he rode behind her on her horse, he grimaced in frustration when it dawned on him that she had briefly become distracted, and might even have missed his final flourish.
Their column had come to a halt, the still whirling snow biting hard at his face as he looked past Helen to see why they had stopped.
Directly ahead of them there was a long, dark band snaking across the white-sheened fields. It was the edges of a forest, one stretching out endlessly away from them no matter whether you looked left or right.
The goblin couldn’t understand the reticence of the men to enter the forest. Yes, it was now late evening, a time when most sensible people avoided the woodlands: but these were warriors, and warriors with an urgent mission to fulfil too – they weren’t the kind, surely, to let fear of a dark forest hold them back?
The riders let their horses impatiently paw the ground, swapping anguished, nervous glances.
‘What’s wrong?’ the goblin asked Helen in a hushed voice. ‘Why are they so petrified of the woods?’
The goblin hadn’t been with them, of course, when the trees had whipped and snatched at the men if they’d been foolish enough to draw too close.
‘Isn’t there anything you can do?’
Due to the muffling effects of the snow, Gremir’s approach had almost been silent. He looked at her now with pleading eyes, preferring her magic to whatever enchantments they would find themselves facing in the forest.
Helen slumped miserably within her saddle.
If only she knew how to use her magic!
Yes, she had simply wished the road into being – but then she’d had the speck of fairy dust: she could have simply wished for anything and obtained it!
But as for her own powers: she was still unsure how to manipulate them.
In the corner of her eye, she caught the movement of darkness out in the white sheet of snow.
It was the wolves, as dark as patches of night against the snow, despite their ice-sparkled pelts. They were completely silent in their movements, but were drawing closer to the halted column, taking advantage of its indecision.
The wolves.
Did they bear any similarity to the wolves in the goblin’s story? Were they just some other facet, or manifestation, of the men around her?
That could explain why their numbers never depleted, no matter how many the men took out with their spears or arrows. Why, too, the men themselves would sicken just after any such killing.
But…surely that wasn’t possible, was it?
And even it were true, how did that help them in their present situation? Didn’t it, in fact, make it worse? For if the wolves attacked, then killing them would never lessen their numbers, but would only ever weaken the men.
She couldn’t wait to see how such an unequal battle might pan out.
Slipping her sword from its scabbard, she raised it high: and spurring her horse on, she galloped through the swirling snow, recklessly charging into the dark forest.
*
The men exchanged nervous glances.
She was their king’s daughter: they had to follow her.
Besides, how more embarrassing could it be: were they going to allow a young girl to appear braver than any of them?
Unsheathing and raising their own swords, and hollering out a courage-bolstering war cry, they surged into the woods behind her.
Immediately on entering the densely packed wood, the light changed from one of glaring snow-strewn fields to the darkness of massed and labyrinthine branches.
Worse still, the thick swirling of snow had been replaced with the frenzied whirling of dark stems, the innumerable branches whipping and snatching at the men as they rode through them. The lashing branches smashed shields, or tore them from hands. They snapped the holstered lances, ripped at and pulled away the armour plates from padded jerkins.
It could have been worse: the men had expected it to be far worse.
But their hacking at the attacking branches was far more potent than they might have ever dared hope, for their blades shone a blazing gold, the iron passing effortlessly through the wood, the effect more like fire than that of a regular sword. The branches whipped back as if stung, as if in agony, while even the merest touching of the smallest twig by the blazing light caused the stems to rapidly shrivel, as if poisoned.
The light emanated from Helen’s raised sword, its streaks of fire rushing back from blade to raised blade, even the connecting flames forming a defensive barrier against the attempted slashing of the branches.
‘Why did you come in here?’ the goblin screamed in terror into Helen’s ear as he clung on tightly to her waist, keeping his head low to avoid the snatching branches.
Helen couldn’t answer his question.
She hadn’t expected the woods response to their presence to be so violent, so effective. For, of course, if it hadn’t been for the blazing of her sword, then she and the men would now be dead, caught at and torn apart by the riving branches.
And yet she had no idea how she – if, indeed, she was the one responsible – had brought the magical flames into being.
It briefly seemed to her that they might safely get through the forest after all. But then, just behind her, Gremir was abruptly brought crashing down to the ground as a tangled clump of tree roots tore themselves free of the earth. The roots whipped up from the ground, entwining themselves around the legs of his mount.
Other roots were now similarly ripping out of the dried ground, sending up clouds of choking dust, the stems lashing out like angered serpents at the horses and their riders.
Another horse had its feet whipped from under it, bringing both it and its rider crumpling to earth. A rider was grabbed by the ankle, and wrenched out of his saddle.
Everyone, including Helen, whirled their horses around, bringing their ferocious galloping to a halt as they cleaved at the roots and branches reaching out for the dismounted men. Stems wrapped around throats, around arms, knocking swords from hands.
At this level, the fiery blades were less effective than they had been while raised. The flickering, connecting flames struggled to maintain contact, while the horses suffered from and were terrified by the blazing fire.
They couldn’t rescue the horses that had fallen, the roots dragging off the poor, horrifically whining creatures, overwhelming them in black, snaking coils. But the fallen men were helped up onto the backs of other horses, or at least defended from receiving any major injuries as they all retreated to a nearby clearing of hard, dried earth, where neither the branches nor roots of the trees could reach them.
The men sagged with relief and exhaustion as they slipped from their mounts. They all breathed heavily, their exhalations grey clouds in the cold atmosphere.
‘Now what?’ Gremir asked huskily, rubbing the red welts around his throat where the roots had almost strangled him.
Helen glanced forlornly about her, taking in their hopeless position.
The whipping, snapping branches and roots encircled them. Now and again, a root would try and stretch out towards them, until it was made to retreat with a swift strike of a blade.
Worse still were those stems burrowing into the earth, as if intending to re-root there. So far, none had been successful, as they were quickly unearthed by a few, fierce blows of a spear – but the snaking stems could so easily achieve their aims if they chose instead to root nearer to the edges of the circle, where it would be dangerous for the men to draw too close.
The thrashing of the branches was so chaotic, so confusing, that it sometimes appeared to Helen as if many of the trees were actually warring against each other, with stems, even trunks, being abruptly ripped asunder, or torn away and immediately cast aside.
Through the odd, revealing gap in the writhing, encircling branches, Helen caught glimpses of the wolves calmly gathering, forming their own enveloping c
ircle. The wolves weren’t been hindered or molested in any way by the furiously snapping trees.
The blades of the men’s swords, like hers, still flickered with a crackling, surging flame, but it was all now more subdued, as if tempered by the lack of action. If she and her men charged in amongst the frenziedly flailing branches, their swords whirling, they would probably manage to get little farther than half a mile before the trees entirely buried them beneath the dark, entwining stems.
She didn’t know what to do, she realised.
Where was her Chammah when she needed her?
*
Chapter 43
There was a flash and a movement of purest quicksilver amongst the living wickerwork of writhing branches.
It flowed through the smallest gaps, rushing towards her, like moon-spattered water.
But before it had reached the beleaguered circle of exhausted men, the mercurial stream shivered, came to a stop, expanded.
The sparkles of white amongst the silvery grey merged, like stars abruptly conquering an evening sky: and a perfectly pure white deer stood unaffected amongst the furiously lashing branches, as if they didn’t really exist.
But maybe, Helen thought, it was the deer that didn’t exist: for none of the men appeared to have seen it, their own eyes still locked fearfully on the encircling, whipping stems.
The deer silently, leisurely, ambled its way through the darkly snapping branches, heading towards Helen.
As the deer finally cleared the last of the whirling stems, Helen expected it to shiver, to dissolve: to become Mary Magdalene once more.
Disappointingly, however, the deer made no further moves.
It remained by the edges of the clearing, standing there with its head raised imperiously.
It didn’t speak.
It didn’t whisper advice.
It simply stood there, as if expecting Helen to make the next move.
*