The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

And it was her private secret. She feared, irrationally, that if she told anyone, the hunter might include her confidant in the pursuit. Furthermore, she believed there could be no help for her and desired only to keep the knowledge of her burden from her loved ones. Therefore she had informed no one of her recurring fitful flights from terror.

  The terror had commenced when her daughter, Lilith, was eleven Summers old. Now Lilith was twenty, and Liadán’s madness had been steadily worsening for nine years. During the first year, it had been no more than a tapping at the furthest reaches of awareness, a sense of disquiet that would come upon her sometimes, especially when she was alone. In the second year, there had been a definite sound of footsteps, sometimes like boots crunching, at other times like paws padding along, or the toenails of spiders ticking and pattering: sounds that no one else could hear. Later there came the occasional rumble of wheels rolling. By the fourth year, the pursuer had manifested into a vision of a figure, dim and misty, walking sometimes on two legs, or four, or eight, briefly glimpsed if she turned a corner too quickly, or impulsively looked over her shoulder, or glanced suddenly into a mirror. Five years after the persecution had begun, the tormentor was prowling some two hundred yards in Liadán’s wake—never catching up, not always present, but inevitably returning. Over the next four years it gained ground, coming inexorably closer, and all the while its appearance coagulated into something more solid, though equally unrecognizable and fickle.

  Now the thing walked only a few feet behind her.

  At nights she seemed to sense it standing beside her couch as she slept, and she often woke in frenzy, fearing it had laid its grasp upon her, or seeped into her like poison, or eaten her living entrails and hollowed her out like a gourd.

  By day she was continually plagued by fright. When she sensed the abstraction nearby, she was driven to imagine that a withered limb would soon shoot out and touch her, perhaps tap her on the shoulder; or wrap, tentacle-like, around her neck to strangle; or clap her between the swiveling blades of shears; or grip her by the head and pull her into an unspeakable embrace. There seemed always to be a cold draft at her back, perhaps the breath of some alien thing, and the low monotone of muttering in some unintelligible language.

  These phenomena of footsteps and weird representations broadcast a feeling of uncaring intelligence, of a presence utterly devoid of compassion and completely lacking in humanity. Whatever pursued Liadán was an embodiment of incomprehensible strangeness, and she knew only that it was getting closer—so close that if she took a step backward, she must be standing inside it.

  Now she stood on the cliff top, looking out over the wide sweep of the landscape, which seemed to represent liberty, and feeling the free winds stroke her hair. At her back, the ridge sloped down to the marsh.

  The Great Marsh of Slievmordhu was a far-flung tapestry of marshes, streams, raveled woods, and reed-edged lagoons. It lay in a low lush region fed by pure rivulets from the surrounding mountains. The marsh’s waters were not stagnant and stinking—except for a few shallow ponds lying at Marsh’s Edge, and the cesspools of Hind marsh—rather, they were sweet, being constantly refreshed by gentle currents that barely disturbed the surfaces of the mirrored meres, the black ponds, the secret, overhung channels, the tranquil shores of more than three thousand islets.

  A town was built over the complex of the marsh. Reed-thatched houses perched on stilts driven deep beneath the mud, some built on the tiny eyots, others suspended above their own glimmering reflections in the water. Several dwellings floated, being built on rafts made of the light, hollow stems of pipewood. All buildings were connected by wooden bridges, boardwalks, and a network of hidden causeways. Connecting footpaths, duckboarded trails, stepping stones, and catwalks webbed the entire marsh system. Giant lily pads grew in ponds here and there, so buoyant that children could walk across their leathery disks without sinking.

  The water protected the marshfolk from attack. At nights, the rickety bridges were drawn up and floating walks were disconnected. All water vessels were moored in the town, never at the outer margins of the marsh. For there was much lawlessness in the kingdom of Slievmordhu. Brigands and highwaymen abounded. Roving bands of mountain swarmsmen, the Marauders, were wont to mount surprise assaults on villages.

  Within the marsh, bulrushes and reeds proliferated, spearing up from the spongy lace of sphagnum moss and sedges. Trees grew tall. Leaning alders and ancient, lichen-painted willows trailed swaying curtains of foliage that formed, beneath their boughs, high-roofed palaces through which sunlight glimmered, emerald and topaz. In Spring, kingcups illuminated the water meadows with swathes of dazzling gold, and the steep-banked, tree-clad shores of the meres were fringed with a brilliant show of yellow irises. In the first months of Summer, the ponds were smothered with a lather of white lilies.

  This was the haunt of fish, amphibians, insects, and wildfowl. Male sticklebacks glided amongst the water weeds, as bright as arrowheads heated red-hot in a forge fire. Frogs glistened like drops of lacquered jade; dragonflies in opalescent livery flickered in and out of view like colored lights. Iridescent flashes of cobalt blue or emerald green proved to be darting kingfishers; gray herons stalked furtively on long stilts of legs; ducks swam and dived in the labyrinth of reed beds.

  But such creatures were not the only inhabitants of the marsh; eldritch manifestations dwelt there also. Waterhorses inhabited the depths, and the fine-boned, green-haired asrai Gruagachs haunted the islets. Like all creatures of eldritch, whether seelie or unseelie, they were seldom glimpsed. The immortal races were secretive; sometimes their members were not seen for years. Indeed, so rarely were they spied that some of the braver or more foolhardy marshmen would dare to risk venturing into dangerous regions or diving into haunted pools. They would enter the dark green waters in search of lost treasures or foodstuffs to be harvested from water plants rooted in the soft mud below: the corms of water lilies, rhizomes of bulrushes, and the delicate spores of nardoo. It seemed a natural human trait to take such risks. The fact that death was close at hand made the gamblers more reckless, the boasters more eager to prove their luck and skill.

  The sprawling village of marshtown was built in places reckoned to be uninhabited by any wights at all, or else in locations haunted by seelie wights, who were benevolent toward mankind and occasionally helpful. Wights could not easily be expelled from their ancient abodes, although the druids had tried. Creatures of eldritch were part of the landscape. As easily could mankind drive out water or hills or stone as rid the land of wights. Therefore folk shunned the regions where unseelie wights dwelt; neither did they build there or walk there heedlessly.

  Yet sometimes a lone walker might look into the glass green depths of Rushmere and spy fragile forms swimming there, like miniature damsels with limpid eyes the color of mint, and clad only in flowing hair as green as the slender grasses of strapweed. An eel-fisher might see a horse’s head, hollow eyed, slowly rising out of a still, dark pool, with green weeds tangled in its mane; then he would know he must beware. In the dark of night, will o’ the wisps floated upon the marsh. Jacky Lanthorns prowled but wrought no harm upon the mortal marshfolk, who understood them and their ways.

  To keep unseelie incarnations at bay, most houses bore five symbols over every door: rowan sprig, bell, iron horseshoe, rooster carved of ash wood, self-bored stone. The purpose of the symbols was more for show than practicality. All five were indeed protective wards against the forces of unseelie, but even without them it was impossible for any eldritch wight to cross the threshold of a mortal’s shelter without being invited.

  One cottage was different: that of an eel-fisher named Earnán Kingfisher Mosswell.

  There were no symbols over the front door because an urisk was attached to this dwelling. Being connected to the household, the wight needed no permission to enter or leave the cottage. The small, goat-legged, manlike creature had been glimpsed now and then, usually at night. Urisks were seelie wights of the domestic type, s
olitaries who were known to crave human company. When the household went to bed, Lilith Heronswood Hawksburn, Earnán’s stepdaughter, always left a saucer of goat milk or a fresh-baked bannock on the hearthstone. In return, the wight was supposed to bring good fortune and occasionally to help with the domestic chores. However, Lilith had long since abandoned any hope that she might wake in the morning to find the hearth swept, a new fire set, bread baked, goats milked, the butter churned—the lurking urisk never performed any of these tasks. Not only disobliging, it was remarkably ugly and at times also seemed quite bad tempered, but it had been in Lilith’s family for years and was a kind of treasured token, since no domestic brownies were to be found in the Marsh. Brownies, those industrious wights who delighted any goodwife’s heart, were not wont to dwell near such a large body of water. Urisks, on the other hand, were traditionally associated with pools and wells. Of all the seelie helpers, only an urisk, with its attraction to water, would abide in the marsh, but householders must place no wards of protection over the door to repel it.

  Fortunately, no unseelie wights had been seen in the heavily humanpopulated areas of the marsh for decades, which meant that the risk to an unprotected household was very slight. There was so little risk, in fact, that wards above doorways had become more a matter of tradition and decoration than necessity. Besides, common wisdom held that any house in which a carlin dwelt might possess some kind of invisible security against the malign forces of eldritch.

  The Mosswell cottage was built half on an islet and half over the water. To the rear, on firm ground, a boxlike smokehouse had been erected. At its side, a lean-to sheltered barrels of salt and vinegar for preserving and pickling meats. The confined interior of the cottage’s main room harbored a sparse array of furniture. Near the hearth, a pallet was arrayed, whereon young Eoin Mosswell slept at night. A spinning wheel and a small handloom stood in one corner, while bunches of dried herbs dangled from the walls. Beside these foliate bouquets hung a shirt of silver fishes’ mail. It was a family heirloom, made from the hide of a strong-armored deep-sea fish: impenetrable, exceptionally lightweight, and very beautiful, but small in size; too small for a full-grown warrior. The interlocking scales glistened with iridescent greens, blues, and silvers. This wonderful garment, it was said, had been given to a forefather of Lilith’s by a mermaid who loved him. Indeed, it was also said the blood of the sea folk flowed in the family’s veins. Besides Lilith and her mother, Liadán, Earnán’s second wife, the fish-mail shirt was the only beautiful thing in the poor eel-fisher’s cot.

  In this chamber two women sat at the table, a young and an old. Over their kirtles both wore simple gowns of brown homespun, clasped at the waist with a leather girdle. The girdle of the older woman was embossed with a pattern of bullfrogs, while that of the younger was adorned with lilies. Their feet were bare; they saved their boots for cold weather.

  The crone was Eolacha Kingfisher Arrowgrass, the mother of Earnán. Her hair was rime white, thick as a snow fox’s Winter pelt, and her face bore a weathered look bestowed by years of hard living in the marsh. Bright brown buttons of eyes peered from that face. A thin leather thong was strung about her neck. From it depended the tiny antlered head of a stag fashioned from ebony, amber, and mother-of-pearl. About her wrist she wore a bracelet of coral beads. The woman’s headscarf appeared lopsided; one of her ears was missing. A small blue disk was tattooed on her forehead, and an embroidered stag’s head adorned her sleeve. These were signs that she was a carlin, a wisewoman who had been chosen to receive a Wand from the Cailleach Bheur.

  It had been the Cailleach Bheur, also known as the Winter Hag, who had deprived the older woman of her left ear and also her sense of smell. This was the payment in return for bestowal of the carlin’s Wand and all the healing, nurturing, and protective powers that accompanied the instrument.

  Eolacha of the Marsh was thankful she had been spared her sight, speech, and hearing. The payment was unpredictable. Each year, when new carlins were chosen, none could foretell what the Cailleach Bheur would demand. Yet none who were chosen ever regretted the price, no matter what it was. Carlins were highly regarded in most parts of Tir, especially in the rural regions where no druids came and no apothecaries hawked their botanicals.

  The face of Lilith Heronswood Hawksburn, Eolacha’s young companion, was as bewitchingly lovely as any unseelie drowner who had ever beckoned mortal men to a watery grave. Black and glossy were her tresses, like water reflecting starshine. They had been roughly trimmed in shaggy layers, and the strands clung together in a curious fashion, tapering at the ends, so that when they were free of the headscarf, the locks spiked forth from her mane like the pointed petals of a cornflower. As slender as a lily stem was Lilith’s waist. Her skin was snow at sunset, her mouth a rosebud lying in the snow. Unlike her mother’s, her eyes were sapphire, the color of sorrow. Her lids seemed brushed with purest azure, and when she lowered them it was as though the gossamer wings of the Blue Lycaenidae butterfly rested thereon.

  It was late afternoon in the month of Juyn. The carlin had recently arrived home after spending four days in the western reaches of the marsh, tending a sick man. Now she sat at the table nursing a small bowl of herb tea, which she sipped from time to time. Lilith was busy pounding the dried rhizomes of irises in a well-used mortar. A dish of bulrush roots waited at her elbow, ready to be scrubbed clean for baking. Yellow flag-irises stood in a vase; the air was heady with their scent. A small, bristly marsh upial sharpened its claws on a table leg that was peeled and splintered from the animal’s past attentions. There was not much on which the upial had not left its mark, but it never touched the fish-mail shirt.

  “ … and ’tis such a pity you were not able to be here for Midsummer’s Eve,” Lilith was saying.

  “Oh, ’tis many Midsummer’s Eves I have seen,” replied the crone. “After sixty-five years in the marsh, there’s not much that’s new to me.”

  Lilith smiled. “Well,” she continued, “in the afternoon of the Eve, I was poling the small punt along Cattail Backwater. I was not far from the cruinniú when I heard a lot of shrieking and screaming coming from that direction.”

  “Fickle fortune!” exclaimed Eolacha. “Was someone hurt?”

  “I was wanting to know, so I pushed into a bank and ran down the orchid path. You will not guess what I saw when I arrived at the cruinniú!”

  “What? What did you see?” Over the rim of the wooden bowl, Eolacha’s bright button eyes regarded her stepgrandchild with amused interest.

  “Six youths were cavorting on the pontoons, kicking a football from one to the other. Some girls were watching from the shores, and they were doubled over, shrieking with laughter, for between these brave lads there was neither a stitch nor a shred of clothing!” Lilith was laughing.

  “By the Fates! Who were these bold knaves?” Eolacha concealed her smile behind the bowl.

  “Nobody could tell! For the rogues had all painted their faces and were unrecognizable. Upon my life, it was a merry sight! I vow, Cuiva almost capsized into the mere with the force of her hilarity. Then the watchmen appeared and the boys fled!”

  Eolacha placed the bowl on the table and yielded to mirth. “I’ll be warranting a certain young man well known to us partook of this ribaldry!”

  “But that is not all,” said Lilith, her blue eyes sparkling. “Later that evening, after the festivities were over and the moon was high, they repeated their performance—to the grievous annoyance of the elders, and of course the watchmen, who could neither identify nor catch them! Oh, but ’twas a wondrous sight!” She wiped her eyes: her merriment had induced tears.

  After that, Eolacha began recounting less extraordinary anecdotes from the past few days—tidings from the Western Reaches. They talked of preparations for the annual Swan Upping, scheduled for the nineteenth of Jule, and wondered whether the new King’s Swanherd would prove as tight mouthed and vinegar sour as the old. Then for a time the two fell into a companionable silence. Be
yond the unshuttered window, flocks of birds drifted like dark sails across the sky. Their calls slid down the sharp edge of the wind like wild music: the shrill, chattering chee-ee-ee of the grebes, the loud orhk flight call of the pied heron, the black bittern’s cooing coooorh and repetitive eh-he, eh-he.

  “Grebe,” said the girl musingly, her eyes raised to track the flocks. “Grebe, grebe, grebe.”

  “What’s that you’re after saying?” Eolacha said abstractedly.

  “Grebe,” repeated Lilith. “’Tis one of those words that sounds funny on its own, don’t you think? Like carrot and blob.”

  Eolacha smiled broadly.

  “And straggle,” continued the girl, encouraged by Eolacha’s mirth. “And hen and snout.”

  “Why are they so amusing?”

  “Say them over and over often enough, and you’ll find out.”

  “Hen, hen, hen,” said Eolacha. “Confound it, girl, you’ve got me gibbering like an idiot. As like as not someone will come walking in and I’ll be saying ‘snout, snout, snout’ or suchlike, and they’ll think I’ve taken a drop too much.”

  Again, they laughed together.

  “Where you’re dredging these ideas from, I cannot imagine,” said Eolacha, shaking her head fondly. Having finished her drink, she picked up a knife and began chopping the young shoots of bulrushes to make a salad. She hummed a tune as she worked.

  “Eolacha, where is my mother?” suddenly asked the girl, wiping the pestle around the sides of the mortar.

  “I saw her go out toward Lizardback Ridge.”

  The mood altered. The two women exchanged glances. A knot formed in Lilith’s throat, and she ceased her labor.

  “Methinks some secret ailment has been troubling her these past several years,” murmured Eolacha. “In recent months it has grown worse.”

  “What is it that’s haunting her dreams?” Lilith whispered. “Is it—”

  At that moment, a curious keening came ululating across the marsh, thin and hurtful as a splinter of bone. It was like the desperate cry of some lost creature sick to the very essence of its being. Although it sounded inhuman, it was not a cry of a water bird, nor was it a howl of the stormwarners or any other wight, for it emanated from a human throat. The bristly upial yowled its outrage and shot, spitting, out the window.