by Ari Berk
“Later, then,” said Silas, as he began walking toward the forest.
“We will light the lamps for you, so you may return by way of the summer house,” Ottoline said as he left. “What a time we’ll have! It will just like the old days . . . with carpets on the grass!”
At the end of the lawn, there was a long, low mound, and behind it the edge of the forest rose up like a rippling green curtain. From the summer house, Silas had just been able to catch sight of the tall oak he’d spied from the tower. He thought that if he kept to a fairly straight line as he walked, he should run into it.
His optimism was ill-founded.
Soon after entering the forest, he became confused as to which way the tree lay. After walking for several minutes, he looked back over his shoulder, and realized that he was now surrounded by nearly identical trees and couldn’t even discern the path back to the summer house. Indeed, there was no path at all. Before him, thick beams of sunlight pierced the canopy, making little glowing islands on the forest floor. Far away and deeper into the woods, he thought he heard the sound of horns.
He wandered for a time, unsure of how long it had been since he’d entered the forest. As the light began to gray, he looked up. Very little of the sky could be seen through the emerald canopy. He had no idea which way to go.
His mind drifted back to Beatrice again and what he was going to do when he got home with Lars. Maybe, he hoped, faced with the choice, she’d actually choose him. His gut told him she never would. Why would she? Lars was from her world, a lost fragment of her life. Lars was probably the reason she never went to her rest. Maybe if the two of them were reunited, then all the bad things that had happened to her would be mended somehow. Anyway, he’d made a promise to Lars to help him and he wasn’t going to break it. But what would happen when he found her, when he broke whatever binding held her to the millpond, and brought her back from the waters? What then? How would he feel when he saw Bea’s face again? Would he come to hate Lars for it? Or himself for making a promise before knowing the particulars?
The sound of birdcall sifted down from the branches, drawing his mind back to his search. Before him, a little robin jumped about, gathering leaves. It would take a few in its beak and fly off, then come back, pick up more, and fly off again. On one of its returns, it hopped just in front of him. Silas stood very still and the robin landed on his shoe, then flew off once more.
Silas followed the bird as it darted farther into the forest and finally toward a large oak tree, its branches hanging thick with mistletoe. For the Mistle Child, Silas thought.
The robin flew to the other side of the tree and disappeared. When Silas came around the wide trunk, he saw a great hole in the tree, an old deep hollow, its edges worn and rounded with age. The robin sat there, with two leaves in its mouth, then darted into the tree. Silas peered inside and saw the bird gently place the leaves on a small pile of other leaves at the bottom. The size of the tree allowed more than enough room to accommodate a person, so slowly and carefully, Silas climbed inside.
The rich smell of mold and earth was in his nose and mouth at once. A familiar smell. A grave smell. The floor of the hollow was deep with soft soil, and in the center was the robin’s little mound of leaves. It looked to Silas like a small burial. Without hesitating, acting purely on instinct, he gently pushed his hands down through leaf and loam. Tiny pebbles, acorns, and cool dirt pressed against his skin. He probed a little farther. Perhaps eight or ten inches below the surface, Silas felt something not-earth scrape his hands. He drew it forth.
It was a small parcel, perhaps twenty inches long, made from thin oilcloth or perhaps from a sheet of uncut vellum. It was slightly rounded and a little open at one end, very stiff. Inside it, Silas heard a soft rattling. He climbed out of the tree with the parcel, careful not to spill its contents. He could sense the presence of remains, and in that instant, he understood what, or rather who, the Mistle Child might be.
Sitting on the ground in the fading light, surrounded by the snaking roots of the great tree, Silas opened the parcel.
Within were tiny bones and a small book. He opened the book briefly, and knew he’d found what he was looking for. His eyes welled with tears, for there, within the tree, was a place where hope had been hidden, but only sorrows had grown. He closed his eyes, feeling for the presence of this lost child. He sat for many moments, but no ghost appeared and he knew whatever else the tree had been long ago, it was now only a quiet grave.
He put the bones and the book back inside their vellum coffin and came away, carrying the Mistle Child in his arms. Silas followed the robin through the trees toward the lights now flickering in the distance.
As Silas approached the summer house, the robin departed. Night had fallen. The trees and hedges all about were strung with little fairy lights. Persian carpets covered the lawn and large tapestry cushions were strewn in all directions. Cousins lounged everywhere, laughing softly. Great lanterns dotted the lawn, and on low tables, drinks awaited their drinkers in cut crystal glasses and decanters that caught the light of constellation and candle both.
In the midst of the resplendent setting, Ottoline silently held out her arms to Silas, welcoming him back. She gestured to a place among some large pillows near a lantern. Silas sat down and opened the little parcel as if in a trance. The bones rattled softly as he took out the book. Its cover and pages were very thick, and when he held it in his hands, he could sense love and sorrow and fear pressed into it. He gazed over the small, hand-bound volume. On its cover were written the words Booke of Erth. Silas turned the pages and touched its inscriptions with his finger. He could feel the presence of the author. There were brief entries that seemed to be her own personal thoughts. Then there were lines of verse, perhaps hers, perhaps merely scraps of song from her time that held her heart and framed her own life’s sad tale. Silas breathed in, smelling the loam still clinging to the parchment. His heartbeat slowed and the words rose up in him, filled him, until there was nothing else but what the nameless girl had written hundreds of years before.
Silas did not realize that he had begun to read aloud. The jeweled lantern lit his face, and in his eyes shone the glow of memory. His voice rose, and some of the lines spilled forth like a song, as though Silas had lived through those long-ago days himself. The words of the girl who’d written the Booke of Erth became his words and it sounded like two voices spoke as one as the story ascended into the evening air. The chatty cousins were spell-stopped, there upon the rich carpets lit by lantern and star.
One of the cousins silently rose from the carpet and, drawing her shawl over her head, took on the character of the girl in the story, not in mockery, but with absolute solemnity, as though she were miming events she once saw herself. A young man joined her—the fellow Ottoline had once called the girl’s “paramour”—and as Silas read, he knew that here, before him, moving in pantomime, was the same youth who had been the girl’s undoing in some ancient past. The young man was unchanged, handsome and lithe, timeless, a young lord of a thousand summers, barely able to remember, until now, his former lover . . . one little bird from so many that once flew across the forest where he had hunted long ago.
He cometh to my house and below my window singeth sweetely to me. Each night, these wordes from him to me he calleth so faire. And in the light of the moone he stands and with his songs putteth me to swoone. . . .
Between March and April
when spring beginneth to spring
The little bird hath all her will
On her branch to singe.
I live in love longinge
For the fairest of all things—
She may my bliss bringe;
I am bound to her will.
A fortunate gift I have received
From heaven it is to me sent.
From all other women my love rent
And lighteth on Alysoun.
And I do meet him in the wood so wild
and he singeth to me in worde
s milde.
Where be they that before us were,
Who hunted hawk and hound so long ago
And owned all the field and all the woode?
We are yet here, my lover telleth me plain.
And I know he speaketh well.
For in this wood we ride
And lo! my belly swells
All fulle with his pride.
My father sayeth women flaunt their pride
and spring becomes them ill.
If I cannot hide my sin
then lost to fortune, I shall flee
and dwell in the wilde wood.
And tho winter cometh in, we warmed shall be
All by the flames of my lover’s love,
My little child and me.
All our Summer tyme now
endeth
Where to my love his love
sendeth?
Merry it is while summer lasts,
With birds in song;
Oh, now threatens north winds blasts
And storms so strong.
Oh, oh! But this night is long
And I do bear such wretched wrong,
In sorrow and mourn and fast.
For his love in sleep I slake,
For his love all night I wake,
For his love mourning I make
More than any maid.
Blow northern wind!
Send thou me my sweeting!
Blow northern wind! Blow, blow, blow!
Thoughe deepest winter now lay all about,
My father cometh hunting in wilde rout.
No more songs my lover maketh me
I sing only winter that blighteth ev’ry branch on ev’ry tree.
Winter wakeneth all my care;
Now the leaves waxeth bare;
Oft I mourn and in despair
Sigh when he cometh in my thought
How this world’s joy
It goeth all to nought. . . .
My child,
Once I did come here and put my back against this great oak tree.
Now I place you inside and pray my father shall not find you, ever.
May your own sweet father soon come here!
May his people hold and keep you dear!
Oh, folk of skin moste bright
gather ye up this innocent wight.
My child, I pray you shall go
Free from all my cares and worldly woe.
Now, child, take my name for all your own
Though my name be all covered o’er with sin
On you, in death, may it be washed clean again.
Alysoun, Alysoun, no longer named I
Alysoun, your name shalle be, when I do die.
And now I put this child of earth in earth.
Earth take of earth, earth with woe
Earth other earth, to the earth do go
Earth laid earth in the earthen trough
Then had earth of earth earth enough.
I am nameth Alysoun and do love well my forest childe. Alysoun I nameth her so she shall remember in what world is next her mother dear who must needs leaveth her where she were born. And so her mother’s name shall be upon her always even though her mother’s loving hands may not.
AT THE END OF THE LITTLE BOOK, there was a name almost scratched into the vellum of the final page, and Silas spoke it softly into the evening air.
Alysoun.
Alysoun.
Alysoun.
And when he looked up, Alysoun, the terrible spirit who had wrought her sorrows and losses furiously against the walls and very stones of Arvale, stood quietly before him, little more than a child, perhaps of fourteen, in her ruined and tattered raiment, her face hidden below her hair. Seeing her then, as she was, and knowing what had befallen her, Silas knew he would never let anyone harm her again.
By the doors to the summer house, the nurse sat by the cradle, rocking the child and singing. The baby was crying softly, almost in time with the nurse’s song.
Lollay, lollay, little child, why weepest thou so sore?
Little child, little child, you have been kept since days of yore.
Child, if it betideth that thou shalt thrive in joy
Remember only that you were fostered upon your nurse’s knee.
Ever hold in your heart these things three:
Whence you have come, what thou art, and what shall come of thee.
Lollay, lollay, little child, child, lollay, lollay.
With sorrow thou came into this world,
but in joy may thou wend away.
The nurse looked up at Silas and slowly nodded. He knew then what child it was she’d kept and tended. For though the infant had died and been buried by its mother in the tree, the baby’s father’s people had taken up the child after all. The nurse leaned into the cradle and brought out the Mistle Child. She followed Silas back to the edge of the lawn, where Alysoun stood, her hands shaking. Looking back once at the company, who waited silently in approval, the nurse handed the baby to her young mother. Alysoun stood and wept, and the stars stopped their round, and the company went quiet. She clutched the child to her and held her tight and dear. Slowly, she lifted up her head and spoke to Silas.
“Is this heaven?”
“No. I cannot give you heaven, but I can give you home. Little sister,” Silas said tenderly, “come home with me.” As he spoke the invitation, Silas realized he had just broken his promise to Cabel Umber, the same monster who’d wrought such horrors upon his own child and grandchild. Silas couldn’t care less about his promise now.
He led Alysoun away. As they reached the path at the edge of the lawn, Ottoline waved and said, “Farewell, Silas! We’ll come later to see you off!”
Silas looked back, and said with regret, “I fear there won’t be time.”
“Oh! Little cousin,” Ottoline called after him gaily as he and Alysoun walked away, the sound of all the cousins’ laughter briefly bubbling up, “there’s all the time in the world!”
And beneath the ever-living stars, the candles and all the ornate lanterns were suddenly extinguished. Arrayed in shadow and starlight, the cousins left the lawn in quiet reverence, and took away with them the bones and the little book. They walked into the summer house, and its doors closed silently behind them.
SILAS BROKE INTO A RUN AS HE approached Arvale. The ghosts of Alysoun and her child were right behind him.
As he came to the entrance he held up his hand and the doors swung open. He crossed over the Limbus Stone and turned around to see the ghosts waiting in the middle of the threshold, unable to come any farther.
At the long table, Maud Umber and Lars sat staring.
Lars ran to Silas’s side, but Maud spoke first. “This is well done! Well done. But Silas, abide a moment. She has been bound from entering the house. She may not pass the stone. Have you given her the waters? Is she safe? Is she nameless still?”
Maud’s voice was measured. She smiled. But her eyes were fixed on the baby.
Silas saw this. “She has a name.”
“You have found that as well? Very impressive, Silas. Truly, you are Janus of this house. Still, as she is, she may not enter here.”
“Maud, I would break this stone in two before I allow it to become a wall to keep out this mansion’s kin. She has the right to come in; this house was once her home.”
“Yes, but she was banished,” Maud said, then added gently, like the merest afterthought, “I do not imagine the baby is likewise bound. Perhaps if you bring her in . . . take pity on the infant . . . then you could more easily give remedy to the mother. For her, the obsequies must be obeyed, Silas. The Doom must be pronounced upon her. She has wandered. She has embraced unrest. She has wrought vengeance against this house. A judgment must be made, Silas. Let her take the waters and find rest, or send her down, if you must. Give me the child.”
Alysoun stood upon the threshold but did not speak. She rocked her child in her arms and Maud’s head moved back and forth, follo
wing the baby’s face as though it were a pendulum.
“Thank you, Maud, but that will not be necessary. Tradition must bend to necessity. I am the Janus and will stand for the dead and for the peace of the house. There has been a terrible wrong committed against this girl. We must acknowledge that, and concessions must be made to heal the sins of the past.”
“How?” asked Maud, her face flushing with desperation.
“I will start as I mean to go on. I will bring peace to my ancient sister. She has been judged enough. I mean to help her. Let me show you.”
Silas put one foot onto the Limbus Stone near where Alysoun stood with her child.
“Little sister, Alysoun, welcome home. Be welcome here, among your kin. Come in, come in, come in.”
Silas reached across the threshold and brought her inside the house by his own hand.
