Into the Green

by Charles de Lint

  Banish it.

  It wasn't until that moment when she spoke with Lammond on the lawn behind Corser's house that she'd truly understood what the attempt would cost her.

  She stole a shivering glance at the table where the puzzle-box brooded— calling, calling to her...

  Come walk in shadow...

  "I will need my harp," she said.

  Lammond nodded. "Of course. We'll fetch it now."

  He went to the table and replaced the glascrow in its iron casing. Angharad felt an immediate relief, but that faded as soon as she realized that the shadow inside her had grown stronger, whining a darker song across the reaches of her green.

  "When we reach the stone," Angharad said, "before we do anything we will burn the fingerbones that Corser collected."

  Lammond raised an eyebrow. "I hardly see that you're in a position to demand anything."

  "After I've woken the glascrow for you, I'll be dead myself. I mean to see the souls of those witches, at least, laid to rest first."

  "Lammond, you said there was no danger," Veda said.

  "There is none."

  But Veda wasn't looking at him. Her gaze had settled on Angharad.

  "None to you," Angharad admitted, not sure why she took the time to ease the woman's fears. "Only to my kind. Only to the green. The glascrow kills the green, not housey-folk."

  "But, Lammond—"

  "It will kill lords," he said firmly. "It will kill all the gentry." He gripped the iron box that held the glascrow with whitening knuckles. "And then we'll be free, my sweet."

  Angharad shook her head. There was no freedom from the demons that haunted him— no freedom from madness.

  "The bones," she said.

  Lammond blinked, then nodded. "Will be burned."

  "Then I am ready to go."

  "Lammond," Veda began.

  "I will take the very greatest of care," he assured her as he ushered Angharad out the door.

  35

  Though they were both stoneworks, raised by the ancients for who knew what purpose, the Whistling Man wasn't the longstone in the green.

  There were no heaths surrounding it, just the dark waves rolling against the shingles, the limestone cliff rising high behind it. The air was sharp with the bite of salty spray. There was no ghostsong riding the hills about it, just the wind as it breathed through the holed stone, setting up an eerie counterpoint to a music Tom heard in his mind; just the tide as it washed the shingles.

  When the stone came into view, he'd sent Edrie's horse back to the inn with a slap on its rump, then made his slow way across the shingled stones of the beach. He looked for features in the grey face of the stone as he approached it, but though the moonlight was teasing, sending shadows scurrying every way he turned, it showed him only the grey exterior of rough granite.

  "Elspeth," he said softly.

  The wind stole her name, carried it through the hole in the stone, then away up the height of the cliff face.

  Tom bent down, searching through the shingles until he found one sharp enough to draw blood. He weighed it in his hand, then took a firm grip and cut open his palm.

  Left hand. Heart hand.

  He laid the bloody palm against the face of the longstone, grinding the open wound against the rough surface. Pain flared, but he put it from him, concentrating instead on what he sought.

  He heard the wind, still singing through the stone's hole, but it grew distant now. The sound of the tide faded with it.

  Close at hand, he heard hoofbeats on the strand. The belling of the stag as it called to the moon.

  His vision dimmed, until shore and sea were washed away, until all that filled his sight was the grey stone.

  And the face that gazed out at him from the granite.

  Awake, not dreaming now, he had stepped across. Like called to like, blood to blood— even Summerblood as thin as was his own. The spill of crimson from his veins onto the stone had carried him away.

  Into the green.

  "Elspeth," he said again.

  The ghostsong cried out all around them, winding from wave to wave across the rolling backs of the heathered hills. Soundlessly, her lips shaped his name.

  And he remembered once again. But this time, somehow, he could bear the pain.

  —

  "You have to go," she said. "They're coming for you— I heard them talking in the village."

  She had arrived out of breath— running from her father's yard outside the village to where he was mending Farmer Doak's fences in the hills.

  "We'll go together."

  She shook her head. "I can't."

  "But—"

  "I do love you. But I can't go. Not now."

  He had thought— for one terrified moment he had thought that she no longer loved him. It wasn't until later that he learned why she wouldn't go: she was carrying their child.

  She meant to wait until the hue and cry died down, then make her way to the coast where she would wait in her pregnancy for him to come to her. Better that, than to live like an outlaw in the hills and chance a miscarriage. She knew if she told him, he wouldn't go.

  "I'll wait for you," she said. "But not here. I'll leave word with Anna."

  "I..."

  How to tell her how full his heart was for her?

  "Oh, go, my heart!" she told him. "Go, before they catch you."

  So he fled.

  Into the hills with his witchblood, he fled. But he crept back that night to see her one more time before the wilds would swallow him for Dath knew how long.

  And couldn't find her.

  Not at her home, though he dared to creep into the house itself, with her family asleep around him while he searched.

  Not in his nook, in Farmer Doak's barn, waiting for him.

  Not anywhere in the village or around it.

  When he found her, it was at the place where he'd been mending the fences, where she'd come to warn him. She lay in a pool of her own blood— the tendons severed in her legs and arms, her spine broken, the tongue cut from her mouth. Punishment for warning a witch. She would run no more. She would hold him no more. She would speak to him no more.

  Miraculously, she still lived.

  But the hurt he caused her when he hoisted her into his arms proved it to be no miracle. Rather a curse— like the Summerblood was a curse, for it had done this to her.

  He took her to a healer in the hills— an old wise woman. She was no witch, but close enough to being one that the folk shunned her. Except when they needed her cures and potions. She was a simple herbwife, but skilled.

  Though not skilled enough to help him.

  "I can't give her back her voice," she told him, the anguish plain in her features. "I can't make her walk again."

  Tom hadn't known despair until that day.

  "But what can I do for her?"

  The herbwife merely shook her head.

  Tom looked at where Elspeth lay by the fire. Her eyes were open, dark with pain. Her features as white as the bandages the herbwife had used to bind her wounds.

  Elspeth knew what he could do for her. She told him with her gaze.

  "No," he said, shaking his head. "I can't."

  You must, her gaze pleaded.

  "I will care for you," he said.

  But he knew as well as she what that would mean. He would have to take her far— far from where folk knew that odd Naghatty boy who could see things in the hills and talked of them in wondering tones. He would have to work to earn their keep, while she lay unattended in a bed, unable to care for herself, unable to move, unable to do anything but stare up at the ceiling of whatever home they could make for themselves.

  For they weren't gentry, with the wealth to hire servants to care for her and amuse her. They were farming folk, and he wore not only the curse of witchery in his blood but the curse of poverty as well. Such a life as lay before her now promised only torment.

  I could never live like that, her gaze told him.

  "I
don't have your courage," he told her.

  Then you must find it, my heart.

  So find it he did.

  He bore her away from the herbwife's, away into the hills to the place she'd loved the best, where an ancient stonework stood guard on the brow of a rise and looked out across the sea of gorse.

  There he laid the blade to her skin.

  There he wept as the blood flowed.

  There he laid her to rest under the thick sod at the foot of the stone.

  There he fell into an exhausted sleep and stepped into the green, where her features regarded him from the stone.

  Oh, my heart, she said. Be not so sad. I can see into forever from this view.

  There the wind blew; the ghostsong rode the hills.

  There she told him why she had bid him go while she stayed.

  There she told him of the child that had died inside her when the men had hurt her so.

  There his soul died inside him.

  You must not blame yourself she said. I will endure. I will wait for you.

  There he realized that he could live no more. But he had spent all his courage on the one deed. There was none left over for what he must do now.

  Live for us both, she told him. Go gentle, my heart.

  But he could no longer hear her. He heard only the howl of the pack— the hounds of his guilt, snapping at his heels. Her lips moved, but the words he took from them were, Be a coward no more.

  So he went to war, that war might accomplish what his own courage could not.

  But he had survived.

  A patchwork man, forever haunted. One leg lame. One eye missing. One heart broken. One soul lost to the green.

  And then it was no longer a matter of courage. For if he died, he knew he must face her, and how could he face her with what he had made of his life?

  Live for us both.

  He had spent the promise of his life on nothing of worth.

  Go gentle.

  But gentleness was too long fled.

  —

  The face in the stone smiled at him as he stood now before it in the green.

  I have waited so long for you, she said.

  "I was never worthy of you. I was never worthy of anything."

  Only you saw that— no one else. You have always been worthy in my eyes.

  Tears welled up, blurring his vision.

  "I... I will be with you soon," he said.

  You have always been with me.

  "I want to help her... the witch. Angharad..."

  He told her of what had brought Angharad to Cathal, of Lammond and the glascrow, of her kindness, of her worth.

  "If I help her," he said, "perhaps then it will make amends for all I've left undone."

  There is no judgment in the green, she said.

  Tom remembered the stag. The moon in its eyes. The wisdom and the mystery. But never judgment.

  I, too, lost all hope, the stag told him, time and again. I, too, suffered.

  Like the face in the stone, the stag spoke but never judged. That he brought on himself— with the hounds of his guilt that he set loose in the green.

  What you do, Elspeth said, you must do because it is within you to do— not to make amends.

  Tom swallowed hard. This time he would keep his courage. This time he would heed the true words that she said— not what he heard in their place.

  "Tell me what I must do," he said.

  36

  What you need is a wizard."

  Lammond shook his head. "What I need is magic— and I don't much care what kind, or who wields it for me."

  They stood on the shingled beach before the Whistling Man. Lammond was dapper as always, his back straight, a gleam of anticipation heightening that odd good humor that was invariably in his eyes. Beside him, Angharad presented a disheveled appearance. Her fishergirl's garb was stained and torn from what she'd already been through this evening. Her red hair fell free, tossing about her face by the wind that came in from the dark waves and whistled through the stone. She had her journeybag over her shoulder, the comforting weight of her small harp in it.

  "The green is a state of mind," she said. "And a place."

  "It is power."

  "Yes— but not killing power. For that you need wizardry. Black wizardry."

  Because the glascrow killed only the green.

  She listened to the waves wash ashore, and the whistle of the wind as it bored through the hole in the longstone. The shingles shifted underfoot when she stepped closer. The moon was near to setting, but still visible in the western sky, hanging low upon the rim of the limestone cliff that edged the strand.

  "I can accept witcheries," Lammond said. "I know they're real. But wizardry? I think not."

  Angharad shook her head. "What makes the one more believable to you than the other?"

  "Witchery is merely a word for what we are all capable of— heightened nightsight, an empathy shared with beasts, a utilization of the more obscure abilities of our minds. Nothing that science can't explain away. Wizardry is spells and enchantments. Fairy tales."

  "And the green?"

  She could hear it sing in the doleful whistle of the longstone. She could taste its proximity, the rich tapestry of its otherworldly reaches, green and close at hand. Cutting across it was the trace of a familiar presence. Although she recognized it, she put no name to it— neither speaking it aloud, nor even in her mind.

  "It's where we go when we die," Lammond said. "Some sort of spirit realm, I'd think, where ghosts live. No different from the afterworld of the Dathers— just given another name."

  "So you can believe in ghosts— but not wizardry?"

  "I am... open-minded about ghosts."

  Of course he would be, haunted as he was by the specters of his three dead sisters. But what of the lords he'd killed? Did they haunt him too?

  "Then what of the glascrow?" she asked. "Isn't it a magic talisman? Doesn't it reek of wizardry to you?"

  "No."

  "Broom and Heather! Why not?"

  "Because it, too, operates on scientific principles. The man I got it from explained it to me. It's not the puzzle-box itself, so much as the focus a witch's mind acquires as she follows its patterns, that gives it its power."

  Why couldn't he see the contradiction in what he said? Angharad wondered. Magic wasn't real, except for the one spell he needed— it was a child's reasoning. She had anticipated more from a man of his obvious intelligence, but when she thought about it, what could she expect from one who hid such a dangerous madness behind his calm logic?

  There was another contradiction as well.

  "Why do you trust me to do your bidding?" she asked. "What makes you think I won't simply turn this magic upon you?"

  Not that she could— but if he believed the glascrow could harm those without the Summerblood, then surely he must have considered that.

  "Because I have your word that you won't."

  "When did I promise you that?"

  "You will promise it to me now."

  That was easily enough done because the glascrow couldn't harm him.

  "I promise," she said. "But what's to make me keep that promise?"

  Quicker than she could have believed possible, his sword was in his hand, the tip touching her throat.

  "Because I will kill you if you don't. And if I'm not quick enough to do so while I live, then I'll do so after death."

  So, Angharad thought. He believes that much in ghosts.

  "I... see," she said.

  The tip of the sword was suddenly gone from where it touched her throat, the steel whispering back into its scabbard.

  "Someone's been here," Lammond said in a conversational tone, as though the past few moments had never happened.

  He approached the stone and indicated the smear of fresh blood on its granite surface, but Angharad had already seen it. Unlike the swordsman, however, she knew what it meant.

  Blood to blood. Like calling to like.

  Oh
, yes. She knew.

  Where have you gone? she thought. Into the green you feared so much? And why now? Why choose this night of all nights to reclaim your heritage?

  "This night's too busy for my liking," Lammond said. "Everywhere we turn, there's someone abroad where they shouldn't be."

  He gave Angharad a sharp look, but she merely shrugged.

  "Or," Lammond went on, "not where they should be."

  He had told her of Edrie's promise to wait for him with horses at the foot of the Hill in case the night's work went badly and an alarm was raised. But Edrie hadn't been there— unless, Lammond had concluded, it had been the innkeeper who had clattered by them as they stepped onto Bellsilver Lane.

  Angharad had said nothing then, and said nothing now. But she had recognized the spark of Tom Naghatty's thoughts as he rode by— just as she could sense his Summerblood in the red smear that colored the holed stone.

  But she kept his name hidden, else he might be drawn into the night's business, and that she would not allow. He had suffered enough.

  "Never mind," Lammond said. "We've work to do."

  He took the iron box from the satchel he carried it in, but Angharad shook her head.

  "First the fingerbones," she said.

  "The fingerbones."

  He spoke as though he regretted his promise.

  "It will help open the way into the green," she said.

  "I'm not so sure I'm ready for ghosts," he replied, more to himself than her, but he left the bag of bones with her and went off along the shore to collect some wood.

  While he was gone, Angharad took one of her rowan twigs from the bundle in her pocket. When he returned, she prepared the fire. Waking a flame in the rowan, she set it upon the wood and moments later the driftwood was burning. Sparks hissed and crackled in the flames.

  "A pretty trick," Lammond said.

  He reached for the bones, but Angharad shook her head.

  "I must do this," she said.

  Steeling herself, she opened the bag, then one by one she took the fingerbones out and dropped them into the fire. Each tiny bone she touched woke a shiver in her; she relived the pain of each witch who had died to fatten Aron Corser's purse. And as she gathered their pain... with each hurt she took into herself... she could hear a Summerborn soul fly free. Their voices were blue-gold sparks on the wind, an exultant chorus that sped away, beyond the ache of their worldly trappings... away and beyond...