Into the Green

by Charles de Lint

  By the time she was done, she already stood half on the strand, half in the green. She could hear the wind and waves, but they traveled across seas of heathered hills as well as the strand where the bone-fire burned in the shadow of the Whistling Man.

  "These were another form of calling-on," she said as she took her harp from her journeybag. "In the old days. The bone-fires burned on hilltops, calling out to the Summerlord, hill to hill, wave to wave... "

  Lammond was strangely quiet.

  Sitting with the fire between herself and the holed stone, Angharad brought her harp onto her lap. She woke a chord, then a spill of harmonic notes, searching until she found the key that the wind played as it whistled through the stone. There was a flat rock that she had set by the fire and she indicated it now.

  "Put it there," she said.

  There was no need for her to say more. He knew what she meant.

  Oh, Ballan, give me strength, she thought.

  Lammond took the glascrow from its iron casing and set it on the stone.

  Angharad stared at the puzzle-box's evil pattern.

  Lord of Broom and Heather, she called, sending her thoughts out into the night. Hafarl. Arn. Tarasen. Lend me the courage I need.

  She touched fingers to the strings of her harp. The small instrument sounded against the moan of the wind, against the whisper of the waves, its music far too resonant for an instrument of its size. Around her, the strand began to fade.

  She was in that twilight between the worlds. Two standing stones, one holed and one not. Two seas, one of water, one of land. Two fires, the fire of bones and the one in her heart. Two darknesses, the one that spoke to her from the glascrow—

  Come walk in shadow...

  — And the one that was already lodged in her heart.

  "What music will you play?" Lammond had asked as they fetched her harp.

  "The calling-on you require," she had replied.

  But it wasn't true. She played, instead, a requiem, a song to call up her own death. A music that would still the beat of her heart as soon as she had the power of the glascrow safely drawn into her soul.

  Then the shape that housed the green death would be only what it appeared to be: a simple puzzle-box, nothing more. For like all talismans, the glascrow had a soul of its own. And it had a name. A name it must give her if she were to free it from its housing. A name that would allow her to take it inside her, that would let her hold it fast until the harping she called up from her instrument's strings worked its own magic and gave her her death.

  "Give me your name," she said to the voice that spoke to her from the heart of the puzzle-box.

  When it spoke again, when finally it named itself to her, the calling-up took them both away.

  Into the green.

  37

  Lammond circled around the bone-fire, studying Angharad in its flickering light. Her gaze was fixed on the puzzle-box, her fingers pulling an eerie melody from her harp that harmonized with the sound of the wind as it blew through the hole in the Whistling Man. Feeling a little uneasy, Lammond coughed into his hand, but she never looked up, never stirred at all.

  She seemed to be in a trance, but that wasn't enough to explain why the hairs were rising on the nape of his neck. He had seen trances before— wise men, far in the east, who could feign death; a herbwife as she bent over her patient, searching for invisible hurts.

  But this was different. He could sense something here, within the circle cast by the light of the fire. A presence.

  Presences...

  The clacking of hooves on the shingled beach stirred him from his reverie. His hand went to his sword as he peered over Angharad to see who came. A rueful smile touched his lips as he recognized the group. Edrie Doonan and the urchin Jackin, sharing one mount. Farmer Perrin on a shaggy hill pony to their left. Corser's hoyer pacing them to the right.

  He let his hand fall from his sword. What had he expected? Ghosts?

  But that, he had to admit, was exactly it.

  "Out for an evening ride?" he asked, calling out to them.

  As they drew closer, he saw that Perrin was carrying a crossbow. There was a shaft in its groove, the bowstring cocked and ready.

  "Angharad!" Edrie called, ignoring him.

  So that was her name.

  "She's... away," Lammond said.

  "What have you done with her?" the innkeeper demanded.

  "Nothing. She's entered into some sort of trance."

  Playing her harp, while her mind flew elsewhere.

  Jackin slid down from his seat behind Edrie. A moment later and the innkeeper and Perrin had dismounted as well. Edrie looked about the stone, obviously trying to pierce the darker shadows.

  "Where's Tom?" she asked.

  "Tom?"

  "Tom Naghatty."

  The name recalled a lame beggar— curled in a heap of thin limbs and tattered clothing.

  "Ah. The Summerborn drunkard. Haven't seen him, I'm afraid."

  "I don't see him either,"Jackin said at her side. "But I can feel him." He pointed at the Whistling Man. "There. By the stone."

  "So you have the true sight too, have you?" Lammond asked.

  Corser's witch-finders appeared to have been better at their work than he'd supposed. Lammond himself had never sensed Summerblood in the boy.

  "Get away from the girl," Perrin said. "I think not."

  "Get away or I'll... I'll..."

  Lammond smiled. "Or you'll what? Cut me down where I stand?" He held his hands well away from his body. "And not a weapon in my hand. That's brave, farmer."

  He was about to continue when the boy suddenly shaped the Sign of Horns in the air between them.

  "Arn" Edrie breathed. Her hand reached for the fur of the hoyer that stood at her side.

  Perrin merely stood with his mouth agape.

  What... ? Lammond thought. But then he turned and saw it, too.

  The Whistling Man had begun to glow. Mist spilled from the stone, weaving a circle along the edge of the bone-fire's light, shapes moving in it. And Angharad... His fingers twitched to shape a warding themselves.

  The witch was gone.

  Vanished, both her and the damned puzzle-box. But that wasn't possible. That—

  The blood drained from his features. In the mist he could see figures clearly now— thin and wiry men and women, with narrow dark-skinned faces and feral eyes. They were dressed all in grey, their dark hair braided with shells and feathers.

  Kowrie.

  It was impossible, he thought as he stared at them, yet here they were. And though Angharad was gone, he could still hear her harping— a distant sound, as much a part of the wind that moaned through the hole in the stone as apart from it.

  As they drifted towards him, he reached for his sword. Iron would stop them. Cold iron.

  But the mist swirled about him. At its touch, the leather of his belt and scabbard rotted and his sword fell to the shingled stones with a clatter. Before he could bend to retrieve it, there were faces pressed up close to his. Thin but strong hands pushing him back until he was brought up short against the stone.

  "Get away... " he told them.

  His voice died as the kowrie brought three figures forth to stand in front of him. Dath help him, but he knew those faces. Knew them all too well...

  "How... ?"

  "You carry them with you," one of the kowrie said.

  "No, I... I laid them to rest."

  A score of years dropped from Lammond's mind and he was just a fearful boy again. Creeping from the cupboard. Cradling his dead in his tiny arms.

  He'd had no tears then, but his eyes blurred now.

  "With each death, you took them further from their rightful peace," another of the kowrie said.

  "I didn't... "

  A third shook her head. "You did."

  "What... what they did to my sisters... " Dath, it hurt to look at them, standing there with their wounds as fresh now as he remembered them from that night. "Who are you t
o judge me?"

  "We don't judge," they said.

  "We explain."

  "They called to us."

  "And we came."

  An old wizened kowrie stepped from their ranks.

  "You took the road you did," he said.

  "What would you have me do?" Lammond cried.

  "Leave them unavenged?"

  "But there were other roads," the old kowrie said.

  "There are always others."

  "Even now. There are others."

  Lammond shook his head. "No. This... this is impossible."

  "Was it so sweet, your revenge?"

  "Was it worthy of their memory?"

  "Their pain?"

  "With each death—"

  "No!" Lammond cried.

  "— you took them further—"

  He shook his head. No. No.

  "— from their rightful peace."

  No.

  But he looked into the eyes of his dead kin and saw the truth there. Saw their pain. Their pity. Their sorrow.

  No.

  But it couldn't be denied. The red rage he carried inside him went shrieking through his mind.

  No!

  He lifted his head, madness wailing in his eyes. It was impossible. All of it. The stone at his back, trembling like living flesh against him. The kowrie and his dead sisters ranked before him. The wind moaning, the harp music playing...

  No.

  But then they spoke, the three dead shades. Spoke with one voice.

  "Poor Lamb. What pain you have known."

  No.

  "We know. With each life you took, we learned again. And again... "

  Lammond could bear no more. The red rage fired his mind until only the inferno of its madness remained. Turning his face to the sky, he howled at the darkness that lay between the stars.

  38

  Edrie's grip tightened on the hoyer's fur as she realized that Angharad had really and truly vanished. The sound of her harp still played, but the woman herself was gone. There one moment, the next...

  "Jackin... ?"

  "She went away," he said in a wondering murmur. "Into the green."

  The green. Paeter had known the green. But her husband was dead and gone now. And Angharad. Where had the green taken her? Arn, was the Summerblood always to be a curse to those who carried it in their veins?

  "But there's a shadow lying over her," Jackin said. "It's ever so dark."

  The mists continued to spill from the holed stone, circling the fire and Lammond. Edrie thought she saw shapes moving in it, but knew that couldn't be. Then Lammond began to speak.

  At first she thought he spoke to them, but as he went on, she realized he saw something more than mist swirling about him.

  "What does he see?" she asked Jackin.

  He had the Blood. He would know.

  "Kowrie," Jackin whispered. "And the dead."

  "The dead?"

  Was Paeter there?

  As though he read her mind, Jackin added quietly,

  "His dead. Kin he had."

  "Mother of Dath," Perrin cried as Lammond backed up against the stone, shivering and fearful.

  The hoyer whined at Edrie's side.

  When Lammond began to howl, they all backed away. The swordsman tore at his shirt, then turned and battered his head against the stone until he sank slowly to his knees, bloodied face pressed up against the granite. His mindless shouts died to a muted sobbing.

  The mists sank into the ground, then were gone. But the stone continued to glow. The harping played on. The wind moaned its counterpart melody through the hole in the stone. The air about them all was charged as though a storm was almost upon them.

  Lammond had fallen silent. He was just a shadow shape now, huddled against the base of the stone.

  Edrie regarded the swordsman for a long moment. Then she went to her horse and took down the provision sack and blanket that was tied behind its saddle. She carried them to the fire, where she smoothed an area of the stones and shook out the blanket.

  "Give me a hand," she said to the other two as she bent over Lammond.

  Jackin blinked at her. "But he—"

  "Can't harm anyone now," Edrie said.

  "But what he did to Angharad... "

  "There were choices made here tonight," Edrie said, "and who knows which Angharad made or did not make on her own? She came here for something; for good or ill, I believe she found it. We know nothing of this man, except for the rumors that we've heard in town. Witch-blood stirs rumors, too, and you know how many of those are true. Lammond could well have been helping her."

  "With what you said your friend Tom told you," Perrin said, "I find that unlikely."

  "I'll still not leave him lying there, unattended like some hurt animal. Now will you give me a hand?"

  So they helped her carry Lammond to the blanket where they stretched him out. Edrie sent the others to fetch more wood to build up the fire while she tended to the swordsman's battered face. When she had done what she could for him, and the fire was burning high once more, she sat down beside it, idly poking at the flames with a length of driftwood.

  Jackin and Perrin joined her. The farmer held his crossbow on his lap, a shaft still in its groove, the weapon held so that he could easily bring it to bear on Lammond. Corser's hoyer laid down between Jackin and Edrie and stared at the holed stone, head cocked as though he listened to more than the harping, more than the wind and the tide.

  "What do we do now?" Perrin asked.

  Edrie turned to Jackin.

  "Nothing we can do," the urchin said. "Nothing but watch and wait."

  Perrin looked at the holed stone, at the bone-fire which Angharad had been sitting beside when she vanished, swallowed by magic. Only her harping remained, still sounding against the murmur of wind and tide.

  "But Angharad... ?" he began.

  "What happens now," Jackin said, "happens in the green.'

  39

  When the Glascrow told Angharad its name, they were already in the green. She could feel the otherworld shudder at the sound of it. There was a tremor in the ground that made her shiver where she sat. The reaches of the green grew tense and rigid. For one moment all was still, except for her harping. When the ghostsong of the wind began again, its sound was more mournful than ever.

  A shadow grew from the puzzle-box, a thick tendril of blackness that coiled above it like smoke. Beyond it she could see a standing stone with a face in its granite, stone eyes watching her. Angharad thought of another ancient stonework, of a simple-minded man named Pog who had been taken into the green by the kowrie in just such a shape.

  On one side of the stone stood a red-flanked stag. On the other stood Tom Naghatty.

  What are you doing here? she wanted to ask him, but she knew she had no time for questions. She had to speak the glascrow's name and draw it inside her; she had to bind it to herself so that when her death came, it would die with her.

  But Tom spoke its name first.

  She shivered at the sound of it, felt the borders of the green draw more taut. She called the name herself before the echo of Tom's voice had a chance to fade; she called it quickly, desperately, but the soul of the glascrow could only heed one master at a time.

  With sick dread she watched the black smoke disengage itself from the puzzle-box and fly to where Tom stood. He opened his mouth wide and it sped down his throat. Darkness flowed under his skin. His stance altered as his lame leg straightened. His blind eye grew hale, and shadows lived in his gaze now.

  "Give it to me," she said.

  "Too... late... " he replied.

  "No."

  "Give me... your song."

  He meant give him her death.

  "I can't," she said.

  Not that she couldn't, but that she wouldn't. This had been hers to do. She was already tainted by the glascrow's touch. Even if it died here, she would still carry a shadow of it inside her— though that shadow was just an echo of what Tom bore himself. She
realized then that he had taken the choice from her.

  "Why did you do it?" she asked.

  His features continued to darken. She could feel the glascrow's power growing as it explored the resonances of his Summerblood. Soon it would own him completely. Soon it would spread out from his body to feed on the green.

  "For your goodness," he said. "For your kindness."

  Angharad could have wept.

  The choice was his, the face in the stone told her.

  There was an infinite sadness in its voice. Looking at the grey features, Angharad realized that she looked upon Tom's lost love. Her gaze went to Tom, slid away from his changing features and settled on the stag.

  Allow him his moment of courage, the stag said.

  "Quickly now," Tom said. "Before... "

  Before it was too late.

  "I... can't... " Angharad began, but her fingers were already pulling the final chord from her harp's strings.

  The wind died. The ghostsong fell silent. The land ceased to breathe. A look of extraordinary peace crossed Tom's features, then he closed his eyes. He sank to his knees, smiling, and pitched over on his side.

  In her mind, Angharad could hear the frustrated howl of the glascrow as it died with him.

  Then silence.

  For a very long time, only silence.

  Finally the wind began to murmur once more. First one soft breath, then another, until it was traveling over the land, hill to hill, heathered wave to heathered wave. The ghostsong chorused behind it.

  Angharad saw a pack of dogs encircling them— dark feral hounds that seemed to melt into the ground like frost before the morning sun. She looked at the stone, but the features in its granite surface were gone. The puzzle-box lay in front of her, empty and harmless. Its inlaid pattern of ebon and silver was innocent now— except for how it reminded her of the shadow she carried inside her.

  But we all carry shadows, don't we? she thought.

  Hugging her harp to her chest with one hand, she rose and knelt by Tom's side. Her gaze was thick with tears. She took his head onto her lap and softly stroked his brow. As the green began to fade around her, she turned her gaze to the stag, one hand still upon Tom's cooling skin.