by Kim Wilkins
Rowan turned these thoughts over. Niamma stood and came to her, crouching in front of her, one hand on either side of Rowan’s body, resting her fingertips on the outside of Rowan’s hips. The gesture was intimate, unexpectedly thrilling. Rowan held back a quarter of her breath, hoping Niamma would not notice.
‘You don’t have to do anything,’ Niamma reassured her. ‘If you are afraid or would not hurt Heath, I understand. But if you do, I will follow you.’
‘You would?’
‘Yes,’ Niamma said firmly. ‘Though you are untested, you are nonetheless the true heir of Connacht and these are dark times. I would follow you any place, Rowan Leh-an-Heath, and so would the other tribes.’
Rowan’s throat went dry. Niamma stood up and the spell was broken.
She sat on her bed again, drawing her legs up under her. ‘What are you intending to do?’
Rowan stood, her knees loose on their hinges, and made her way to the door. ‘What I must.’
‘I’m glad you came to see me, Rowan,’ Niamma said as she ducked her head under the threshold. ‘Brave girl.’
Rowan smiled.
‘You will have to be yet braver,’ Niamma added.
‘I know,’ Rowan replied.
The moon was bright and round. The stars paled beside it. A silvery light fell between the trees, making strange night-time shadows. Rowan crossed rivulets of rainwater, draining away towards streams or into the boggy ground. Mud sucked at her shoes, almost as if it was trying to hold her back. Stop her from making a mistake.
This wasn’t a mistake.
At length, she arrived at the sacred grove and stood before the dolmens. ‘Connacht!’ she called, her warm breath making mist. She turned around in a slow circle. ‘Connacht!’
Then she stopped, breathing slowly. Turned her eyes to the moon and waited.
‘Granddaughter.’ Connacht’s voice boomed in the grove and Rowan turned to it. His ghostly form shivered and resolved in front of her.
Rowan drew her spine very straight. ‘I have come to ask for the horns.’
‘You have?’ He looked amused and she doubted herself.
‘Yes,’ she said with finality. ‘I know what to do.’
He gazed at her a little while, his misty shape shifting in the breeze. Then he reached up to his head and removed the antlers.
‘You’re going to give them to me?’ she asked, startled. She’d been expecting some kind of wise words, a warning, a stern questioning about how sure she was.
‘Is that not why you asked?’
‘So you think I can … do this?’
‘You will learn by doing.’
His ghostly arms lifted the antlers above her head. They were made of mist and vapour, until they made contact with her skull. Then they became real and heavy, held on with a tight leather band. She took the weight without letting her neck bend.
‘You will make mistakes,’ he said. ‘We are all fallible.’
‘I’m afraid.’
‘Be afraid. But never show it.’ He stood back. Without the mighty antlers, he looked smaller, more human. Just a man after all. ‘What do you intend to do?’ he asked.
‘Unite the tribes under Renward. Help Bluebell liberate Blicstowe.’
‘And then?’
‘I …’ She hadn’t thought beyond that.
‘Take care of my people,’ he said. ‘Your people. Our suffering stretches back generations, and into the future too. Do right in the world, Rowan, and do not be swayed by those who seek to use you.’
‘I will do right,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘I can go now.’
‘Go?’
‘Across the veil. To the green city.’
‘But it is not resolved yet,’ Rowan said. ‘What if they don’t accept me?’
‘It matters not. You wear the horns. You will find a way.’ And then, when he saw the panic on her face, he touched her tattooed cheek with a misty hand that felt as cold as icicles. ‘They will accept you.’
A breeze whipped up, and the mist could no longer hold itself together. Connacht’s shape was swept away.
Rowan waited a few minutes, balancing her head so the horns stayed erect. A sense of rightness and purpose settled over her. She turned back towards the village.
They saw her as she passed. The villagers, the refugee tribespeople. They saw her with the horns in the moonlight, and they started to follow her. Clapping, cheering. As she walked up through the town, in her muddy brown cloak and trousers, her hair in an untidy knot – not dressed at all like a queen – the gathering grew larger, louder. By the time she reached the village square the crowd was dense, excited. She saw the druids among them, their eyes averted. She saw the head family of the Fenlanders take to their knees, the eldest daughter turning her face to the moon and calling something in her own language. She saw members of the army with whom she had trained that day and their eyes went round and one of them ran for the edge of the square. To fetch Heath. She knew it.
She stopped in the centre of the square, climbing up on the low thunderstone. The moon shone behind her, making her shadow long, the antlers clearly outlined on the ground in front of her. The crowd went silent, waiting for her to speak. Rowan realised she hadn’t the faintest idea what to say.
But then hurried footsteps drew her attention, and there was Heath. What she would have given not to see his stricken expression.
‘Rowan?’ he said.
‘We will unite under Renward,’ she said, before Heath could tell her to get back to the house. To behave. She directed her gaze over his head. ‘We will join our armies and march to Anad Scir to join his army and, from there, to the battlefields of the south.’
A light hubbub, then Niamma strode forward, pushing people out of the way. With a flourish, she knelt on the ground in the shadow of the antlers. ‘Yes, my queen. We will follow you anywhere.’
The other tribal leaders began to move through the crowd, coming to kneel beside Niamma, until only Heath stood.
His face was unreadable, as he, too, knelt before his daughter.
Twenty-five
The boys would not stop whining. As sons of Sæcaster, they ought to have been habituated to rain and cold. Ivy wound tighter and tighter. The first day’s promise of ‘a jolly adventure’ – that was how she’d described their flight – carried them through on excitement for less than an hour. Then it became: ‘I’m cold’, ‘I’m hungry’, ‘I want my toys’, ‘My legs hurt’, ‘I’m tired’, and, really, it hadn’t let up in nearly three days. They were tired? Ivy had spent two nights sleeping under a moleskin with them clambering over her, little knees and elbows jammed into her, clinging close to suck the warmth from her. Her mind never stopped whirring. She had slept only in disjointed shreds.
Their route was parallel to the road so they wouldn’t get lost, but far enough into the forest not to be seen. Every now and then Ivy would hear a cart rattle past, or smell smoke from an inn, and feel as though she was not so far out of the world.
Through it all, Goldie had been a marvel. Stoic, patient, full of good advice, though Ivy didn’t always listen to it. The first day had dawned clear and even a little warm – perhaps because Ivy pushed them to walk so fast. Edmund had stopped to drink at a pond and, even though Goldie said they should wait for running water, Ivy let him. He’d been complaining about being thirsty unremittingly for over an hour. Sure enough, by the next morning he was shitting himself inside out. While he always managed to dash off the path in time and find a tree to go behind, on one occasion he had soiled his shoes. The faint scent of shit seemed to hang about everything. After that, Ivy had listened closely to Goldie’s advice.
The third morning, Ivy had opened her pack to get their bread, and found only crumbs. Eadric had slunk away guiltily behind a tree.
‘Did you eat all our food?’ she called after him, so loud that a nearby bird took to the sky with a frightened flap.
Eadric didn’t answer. Ivy wanted to scream. Scream until t
he hot rage in her chest emptied itself out. Did the boys not know how hard it was for her? She was cold and tired and hungry too, but she was also scared, broken-hearted and uncertain, and every time she looked at the bruises on Eadric’s face she wanted to sob with guilt. Yet, somehow, she was supposed to know what to do.
But Ivy didn’t scream. She kept walking, one foot in front of the other. She carried Edmund, despite his shitty shoes, when his little legs could not manage rocky slopes and gullies. She reassured Eadric that they could sit down soon. She tried to throw an occasional smile of gratitude Goldie’s way. And she kept going.
The days were growing shorter, and after two long marches – one morning and one afternoon – they ordinarily made camp. On the day Eadric ate the bread, Ivy made them continue an extra hour or so, until they came across a swift-running stream. She wasn’t about to make the same mistake with drinking water again.
‘We will rest here tonight,’ she said, and her sentence was not even complete before Edmund said, ‘I’m hungry,’ and she was reminded again that Eadric had eaten all their food.
One thing at a time. The clouds had cleared, but it had rained during the day, so the ground was muddy. Goldie explained again to Edmund and Eadric how to drink from the part of the stream that was flowing fastest, while Ivy lay the oilskin under a tree and searched fruitlessly for dry kindling for the fire. The peat blocks she had brought were fast running out. Curse the rain. Curse autumn.
Curse Crispin.
What she wouldn’t give for a covered cart, plump with pillows, driven by a sturdy man and two horses. A crate of apples. A night at an inn, with roast deer and buttery parsnips.
Ivy realised her mouth was watering.
She found a few twigs that had escaped the drenching, or had sat in the sun long enough to dry, and brought them back to the camp. Peat block. Fire oil. Flint. It took six attempts to light, but light it did, and Ivy crouched close to warm her cold fingers. She looked up to see Goldie standing there.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘We have no bread. Will you let me take Eadric into the woods to find some berries or mushrooms? I can show him the safe ones to eat.’
Ivy bit her tongue so she didn’t say, ‘Then he can eat them all and save none for anyone else.’ Instead she smiled tightly. ‘Do not become separated,’ she said. ‘Make sure you can see each other the whole time.’
Goldie nodded and dashed off, collecting a whining Eadric on the way. Their voices faded off among the trees, and Edmund came to lean against her.
‘I’m tired,’ he said.
‘I know, poppet,’ she replied, curling an arm around him. How fiercely she loved him then, even though his feet smelled like shit.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Blicstowe.’ Whatever was left of it. ‘Or the nearest town. It depends …’
‘Why?’
‘To see my sister, Bluebell. You remember Bluebell?’
His slight recoil told her he did, indeed, remember Bluebell. The boys had always found her terrifying. ‘Why?’ he said again.
‘Because …’ Ivy trailed off.
‘Mama?’
Because I don’t know what else to do. ‘Oh, just for a visit.’
‘How far is it?’
Nearly a hundred miles. They were managing twelve miles a day. They had already run out of food. She forced a smile and kissed his cheek. ‘Don’t you worry, my darling. We’ll be there before you know it.’
She sat him on the oilskin and half-heartedly tried to feed a few more twigs to the fire. They weren’t dry enough to burn, so smoked instead, making her eyes sting.
‘Are you crying, Mama?’
‘It’s the smoke, darling.’ She stood and stretched her legs, then came to sit with Edmund. He had been collecting pebbles all day, and was now sorting them earnestly, keeping some, discarding others.
‘What are you looking for?’ she asked him. ‘Why aren’t these ones any good?’
‘They are too round.’
‘Too round?’ She picked one up to examine.
‘Yes, see.’ He held up one that he had kept. ‘An egg.’
‘An egg. I see. What hatches out of such eggs?’
‘Stonebirds. Goldie told me about them. They are always cold, and they find it hard to fly because they are so heavy. But Goldie says if you upset one of them, the whole flock will come after you and fly at your head until you’re bruised and bleeding!’
‘Terrifying!’ Ivy said, pantomiming shock.
‘Oh, don’t be terrified, Mama. Goldie says they are only ever on the side of good, and we are good so we do not have to worry. But they are at war with the crows and ravens, and the crows and ravens are very frightened of them.’
Ivy smiled and leaned in. ‘Well, then. Let me see if I can help you sort these, so we can raise some fine young stonebird soldiers. I’m averse to crows too.’
She lost herself in the little boy’s recounting of Goldie’s stories, and in sorting through the pebbles, forgot her burden. The sounds of the creek running, the wind bristling in the trees, were soothing. Goldie and Eadric returned sooner than expected, too: Goldie with an apron full of mushrooms and blackberries, and Eadric triumphant with a very skinny pheasant.
‘It was old and slow and Goldie caught it and broke its neck!’ he shouted, then ran over and thrust the dead bird at Ivy. ‘I’ve never seen somebody move so quick, Mama. How can I be as quick and clever as Goldie?’
Goldie joined them, shyly not meeting anyone’s eyes. ‘Here,’ she said, emptying the berries and mushrooms onto the oilskin. The boys descended on the berries with grabby hands, and Ivy had to shout at them to slow down and leave some for her and Goldie.
‘It is late in the year,’ Goldie said, apologetically. ‘The berries are bitter. But the mushrooms are good.’
‘I would have liked to cook them, but they are all but gone,’ Ivy said, and recoiled a little at how fast Eadric was eating. She picked up the pheasant. ‘What do we do with this?’
‘Pluck it, gut it, spit it and hold it over the fire. I can show you.’
So as the evening grew cool and dark, Goldie roasted the poor old pheasant, whose flesh was as dry as string. Ivy gave the boys a leg and thigh each, then she and Goldie picked at the withered breasts. While she wouldn’t call herself satisfied, Ivy was much less miserable after eating, and so were the boys.
Finally, the four of them wrapped themselves up in blankets and huddled together to sleep. The fire grew low. Ivy tried to stay awake until they all stopped wriggling, but exhaustion overcame her quickly.
The next thing she knew, somebody was shouting. She woke with alarm hot in her breast, but it was only Goldie, shouting in her sleep. Ivy sat up and leaned over to touch the girl’s shoulder. Goldie’s eyes flew open and for an instant Ivy saw the horror there and her blood went cold. But then Goldie remembered where she was and relief flooded over her face.
‘Bad dream?’ Ivy asked.
Goldie nodded, little tears squeezing from the corners of her eyes.
The boys were rousing now, so Ivy took the opportunity to shift Eadric along and make room for Goldie next to her. Goldie snuggled gratefully against Ivy, tight-lipped and silent.
‘Was it about the crow mother?’ Ivy asked softly.
Goldie nodded. ‘She wanted to cut me up. She said I was all wrong and she took her knife and started slicing pieces off me.’
‘Who did?’ This was Eadric.
‘The crow mother.’
‘There’s no such thing as the crow mother,’ Ivy said.
‘Yes, there is,’ Edmund said, revealing he, too, was awake. ‘And we must watch for her because she’d kill us all and wouldn’t even care if we were children.’
Ivy looked sternly at Goldie. ‘Goldie, your stories!’
‘It’s not a story,’ Goldie said. ‘It’s a warning.’
‘Everyone back to sleep,’ Ivy ordered.
All three children huddled very close, as if prox
imity to Ivy could save them from the crow mother. Ivy wanted to laugh bitterly; what use would she be if Willow did find them?
None. None at all.
They woke to a dawn so grey that Ivy thought at first it was still night time. A damp chill in the air told her rain was coming, and before they’d picked clean the carcase of the pheasant for breakfast, the first soft mist descended on them. They had contended with rain before and at least it wasn’t cold, so they set off. Ivy hoped to push the children a little further today. The horrid, hard journey would be much more bearable if she knew they were more than halfway; even if it was only a few miles past halfway.
Then, forty yards from their camp site, Edmund slipped over and struck his knee on a rock. The only way to stop him crying was to promise to carry him a while, and so Ivy hoisted him on her back and kept going. Ordinarily, Eadric would complain that his brother didn’t have to walk, but this morning he was grim and quiet, which unnerved her almost as much as his endless whining.
The hours drew out in a miserable, wet blur. Whatever she saw, she forgot immediately. Rocks, trees, mile-measures, streams. All green-grey and damp and endless. Edmund was a wriggling weight on her back or hip, and his knee bled all over her dress. But of all the hardships, surely sodden shoes were the worst. Her feet were so cold she could no longer feel them. They made their way forward and the rain grew heavier – cold, fat drops like stones falling from the sky – and the wind grew stronger, sending the rain sideways on some of its gusts. She thought about shelter but realised no tree, no rocky overhang, could protect them from this.
‘Mama, listen!’ This was Edmund, who had his head lying on her shoulder and his elbow firmly in her left breast.
Because nobody had spoken for hours, Ivy was lulled out of her wretched reverie. She stopped, and listened. But she smelled it before she heard it.
Smoke and the unmistakeable odour of roasting meat. Then hooves and carriage wheels.
