The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Eolacha’s head jerked in the direction of the sound. “I’ll go to him, a muirnín. You wait here for your mother’s return.”

  The carlin took a bag of dried and powdered herbs from its hook on the wall and made her way across the ramshackle bridges and boardwalks toward the shabby hut near the edge of the marsh. There dwelt Lilith’s mother’s father, utterly lost in his private madness, his aging body ravaged by his mind’s ravings. Eolacha pondered as she walked. Might there be some link between the old man’s madness and whatever was plaguing his daughter?

  The setting sun was dissolving on the western skyline in a carnation haze. Crowned with a circlet of wildflowers, Lilith’s mother walked down the slope of Lizardback Ridge, her bare feet brushing the sighing grasses. The air was thickening with evening by the time she reached the edge of the marsh, but her feet knew the way, even if mortal eyes could barely make it out in the gloaming. Toward the cottage of her second husband, Earnán, she wended her way, treading lightly along narrow green causeways between the waxy white flowers of water hawthorn rising out of the flood on forked spikes, and stepping across shaky boardwalks edged by fishbone ferns. Dextrously, nimbly, she went, for she knew the secret paths as well as she knew her own face in a looking glass. Even blindfolded, she would have navigated their meanderings successfully.

  She skirted the reedy Drowning Pool, a backwater notorious for the wicked entity that dwelt among the tangling weeds of its depths. Avoiding the pool lengthened her journey, but she dared not take the shortcut. The pool’s drowner had not been seen for years, but only last Autumn a lad of the marshes had wandered that way at night and vanished from human knowledge. Mothers warned their children to avoid the place.

  The gauzy lamp of a will-o’-the-wisp danced among the bulrushes, and away to her right a bell tonked. It was the bell that hung around the neck of the nanny goat leading the flocks back to the safety of the marsh. At night the goat boys drove their charges from the grasslands back to the wetlands, where they were tethered on roofed pontoons, beyond the reach of raiders.

  The herds were important for the livelihood of the marsh dwellers. They provided dry dung for fuel, soft hair for spinning and weaving, milk and cheese. When they grew old and arthritic, the goats were slaughtered for meat, their tallow used for candlemaking and rustproofing, their hooves boiled down to make glue, their bones carved into needles, combs, and other useful tools, their horns fashioned into such items as drinking vessels and belt buckles. The goats must be kept safe from the perils of the night.

  When Lilith’s mother reached the cottage, she saw her husband, Earnán Mosswell, and his son, Eoin, arriving in the punt, bringing skeins of eels. Earnán stood at the stern, wielding the pole, pushing the punt toward its berth at the staithe, as the pontoon landing places were called. He was of middle height for a man, heavily built and clad in the loose-fitting tunic and oilskins of the fishers, his naked feet spattered with mud. His hair and short beard were shaded walnut brown, grizzled at the temples. A pale scar sliced across his left eyebrow, where a fishhook had once gouged him.

  Young Eoin was waiting, poised, until the gap between the craft and the staithe had diminished enough for him to leap ashore. He was a long-faced lad with large eyes, ruddy cheeks, and a protruding chin. The arrangements of his features would not allow him to be called comely, but his eyes were merry and full of mischief.

  Already, father and son had gutted and skinned the catch in preparation for hanging it on hooks in the smoke room behind the cottage. They hailed Lilith’s mother, who greeted them with a wan smile. Inside the cot, Lilith was cooking the evening meal. She looked up quickly as her mother entered, and gazed at her searchingly.

  “Where is Eolacha?” her mother asked, averting her face.

  “She is with á Seanáthair. She was after taking him some more calming infusions and making him comfortable.”

  “May she be sained. It is I who ought to be doing that. She’s no blood relation of his.”

  Withering flowers dropped to the floor from the hair of Lilith’s mother. The upial pounced on them. It began tossing them in the air and batting them across the room with velvet paws, its claws sheathed. A sprig of crowthistle was amongst the blooms.

  “Mother!” exclaimed Lilith. “Is it picking thistles you’ve been at?” She grasped her mother’s hands. “Your fingers are red and swollen. I will mix up a brine so that you may soak out the prickles.”

  Liadán seated herself by the unshuttered window, dabbling her fingers in the bowl of salty water. Outside, Earnán and Eoin were mooring the punt at the staithe. Staring incuriously at them, Lilith’s mother did not offer to help her daughter with the work, nor did she laugh or talk. Lately, this remote and melancholy mood had taken her more and more often.

  “Mother, what ails you?” timorously asked Lilith, dreading the answer. Her mother turned to look at her with turquoise eyes that seemed blind. After a moment, she drew breath, but before she could reply, her husband and stepson burst in with a clatter and a bustle, and suddenly the cottage seemed too small to hold them all as the large frames of the menfolk filled it.

  “Good evening, sister,” said Eoin exuberantly, grasping Lilith by the waist and kissing her. She pushed him away. “What, can a brother not be embracing his own sister?” he cried as if insulted.

  “Not while ’tis I who carries the ladle to wallop him with,” replied Lilith, brandishing the implement. In truth, she was wary of Eoin’s brotherly advances, which had lately become too urgent and ardent for her liking. Yet she hesitated to reject him outright. She and her mother depended on Eoin and his father for shelter and food. When Lilith’s own father had died, they had been left destitute. Earnán was kind and generous; she knew he genuinely loved her mother. His own mother, Eolacha, was a fount of wisdom and comfort. For the sake of these three, Lilith tolerated Eoin’s unwanted attentions, even exhibiting a veneer of good humor. Eoin was not ill natured, merely lacking in subtlety and perception.

  Having greeted Lilith, Earnán leaned down and kissed his wife.

  “Sain thee, my Liadán,” he murmured. Lines of weariness were etched on his face. He straightened and looked about for his mother.

  Liadán’s demeanor had brightened since Earnán entered the room. Raising a slim hand, she pointed out the window. “Look, here comes Eolacha, and young Cuiva is with her. That girl is forever trailing after your mother. She has the makings of a carlin, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Cuiva Featherfern Stillwater, the daughter of the Marsh-Chieftain, was Lilith’s friend and Eolacha’s admirer. She thirsted for the knowledge that Eolacha possessed and freely shared with anyone who asked. Quick of mind and movement, she had a heart-shaped face framed by a tumble of ringlets as lustrous as dark honey. Her irises were hazelnuts in amber, her lashes and eyebrows darkest brown tinted with auburn, and powderings of rose burned on her cheeks. She wore, this day, a woollen gown dyed in shades of heather, whose hemline revealed a kirtle tinted pine green. Her headscarf was woven of mohair.

  Cuiva was a welcome and frequent guest in Earnán Mosswell’s home. She usually brought with her some food or drink to share. This evening she carried on her arm a basket containing a ripe goat cheese, a jar of elderberry wine, and a loaf of bread made from ground lotus corms.

  “I have invited Cuiva to sup with us,” Eolacha announced as they came in.

  The girl was greeted and made welcome. She began helping Lilith set six places at the table. While the men unloaded the catch and carried it into the smoke house, Liadán drew Eolacha aside.

  “How fares my father?” she asked, concern furrowing her brow.

  “Not well,” replied the carlin soberly. “Not well at all. I fear the madness will be eating him alive. He moans that ’tis approaching so close now, it might reach out and touch him at any—”

  “The stew is boiling over!” shouted Eoin, leaning in at the back door.

  Liadán ran to swing the pothook out of the flames. Eel stew was bubbling glutino
usly at the rim.

  “Come, the table is set,” announced Lilith, wiping her hands on her apron. “Let us all be dining.”

  After the meal was over, the diners pushed the chairs and stools closer to the hearth. Earnán leaned back and began whittling a bone, while beside him Liadán stitched at a torn jerkin. Firelight flickered softly on their faces, winked silver on the elderberry wine waiting in cups at their elbows. The upial purred on the hearthrug.

  Eagerly, Eoin made as if to initiate a conversation with the two young women, Lilith and Cuiva, but Eolacha’s keen eye had noted a set of fresh gashes on her grandson’s arm. “’Tis an eel that has been tasting you this day, Eoin,” she observed.

  “’Tis nothing, á seanmháthair.” Quickly he pulled down his sleeve to cover it.

  “Yet, ’tis something. You know full well the teeth may carry poison. Let me bathe the wound.”

  Eoin’s protests were in vain. His grandmother made him roll up his sleeve, then washed and dressed the injury.

  “Sit with me, Lilith,” invited Cuiva, noting that everyone else was occupied. “Talk with me. Sing, maybe.”

  “I would dearly love to do so,” replied Lilith, standing with her hands on her hips and surveying the piles of unwashed dishes on the table, “but there’s work to be done first. If I don’t scrub these dishes this night, I’ll be opening my eyes to a sorry sight in the morning.”

  “Leave it all for your house urisk to clean!” suggested Cuiva airily. “Is it not high time it was making itself useful?”

  Lilith laughed ruefully. “The moon would be as like to fall from the sky as for our domestic wight to lift a finger! Indeed, he has not been spied of late. I doubt whether he is still with us.”

  “Then I shall help,” said Cuiva briskly, jumping to her feet. “Come, let us set to scrubbing with sand and soapwort. Between us, we shall have it all done in a trice.”

  That night, after Eoin had escorted Cuiva to her home and Earnán’s household had retired to rest, Lilith lay wakeful, tense, wondering if there would be another cry from the direction of her grandfather’s hovel, where he dwelled alone with his nightmares. Nobody could live with Old Man Connick—he was beyond that. His dementia made him a frightening and unpredictable figure, and besides, it was nigh impossible to communicate with the doddering graybeard. He refused to allow anyone to abide in the cottage with him. All that could be done was to provide him with clean clothes and fresh food and hope that he retained enough awareness of reality to keep from falling into the marsh.

  The sounds of the marsh came murmuring to Lilith’s ears: the bell tones of frogs great and small, the light patter of a passing shower, the startling shrieks of nocturnal creatures. Vapor rising from the ponds condensed in drops on the undersides of leaves and fell with a plinking sound like tiny hammers striking glass. The tiny, partitioned sleeping cell she shared with Eolacha was located within the section of the Mosswell cottage that was built over water. She could hear currents gurgling below the floor as they went about their secret business. On the other side of the partition, the crone’s breathing was soft and rhythmic.

  Through the small window, Lilith made out the black-lace outline of osier willows against the spangled silver of the night sky. Amongst their boughs bobbed a trio of miniature ghost lanterns. Gazing up at the stars, Lilith recalled what Eolacha had told her about the vastness out there, the All that the carlin named the Uile, which was limitless and filled with uncountable lights. Far away in the Uile, other worlds spun. So said Eolacha. Some, she said, were worlds like Tir. Eolacha had named two of them: Eco and Aia. Such mysterious knowledge could only have come to Eolacha from the immortal Winter Hag.

  Lilith started up as something small and indignant scampered across the floor of the sleeping alcove and jumped out the window, but it was only the marsh upial going hunting for insects.

  A whiff of rotten eggs blew in the window as the sullage barge glided past, picking up slop buckets. Through the papyrus reeds, a light breeze went whispering. The stems rattled like dry bones. At the edges of hearing, Lilith fancied she heard a soft whimper. She wondered if her grandfather’s madness was taking hold of her mother. If that were so, what could it mean? Would her mother succumb to the terrible degeneration of the mind suffered by the old man and slide into a ranting haze of terror and illusion? The very thought was unbearable. And if the madness took hold of both of Lilith’s living forbears, did that mean there was some ominous pattern to it?

  A few days later, as the late afternoon sun was sliding down behind a cloudbank, a band of travelers arrived at the southern outskirts of the marsh. Here, facing the last firm ground, the slime-stained walls of a gray stone watchtower rose out of a black lake. It could only be reached by a drawbridge. In the far side of the tower a second drawbridge led to the beginnings of a marsh path.

  The travelers halted their horses at the moat’s edge, where mosses, ferns, and sedges were lapped by shadowy tongues of water.

  “Ho, watchmen of the marsh!” called out Tsafrir. “We come in peace. Will you give us safe conduct to shelter for the night?”

  Two hounds began to bark. Half a dozen men’s heads poked out of the narrow tower windows. They wore expressions of suspicion and hostility.

  “One of our number has need of a healer,” Tsafrir explained. “We can pay for hospitality. We ask for no charity.”

  “That is well, for you would have been receiving none here,” the watchmen’s spokesman called back gruffly. “’Tis a poor folk we are, in the marsh. We have nothing worth stealing.”

  “No brigands are we,” Jarred broke in hotly, “although we were set upon by such ruffians as we passed over your borders.”

  “Oh?” responded the spokesman with interest.

  “Aye, and we split a few of their heads before we were done with them.”

  “It seems you have a few tales for the telling,” the spokesman said. “Where were you saying you hail from?”

  “Southwest. The kingdom of Ashqalêth.”

  “Then ’tis far you have traveled. Enter—we shall lead you to shelter, and you shall tell tidings of Ashqalêth and of your travels.”

  The first drawbridge was let down, and two heavily armed watchmen, clad in brownish green tunics and leggings, strode across to meet the travelers. A pair of black retriever hounds trotted at their heels. In the tower windows, a couple of marksmen stood with bows at the ready, their arrows trained on the newcomers.

  “I am Tsafrir, son of Tsadik,” said Nasim’s brother, dismounting, “and these are my comrades.”

  “’Tis Neasán Longboat Willowfoil I am named,” said the taller of the two armed watchmen, “and I am captain of the watch. I’ll be telling you now, son of Tsadik, there is no feed for your horses in the marsh. If any beasts are to graze there, it will be our goats. Strangers are given no grazing rights.”

  “We carry rations of horse oats in our saddlebags,” said Tsafrir tightly, “in case we should encounter barren lands.”

  “The marsh is not barren,” replied the other in icy tones. “If grazing rights are not part of the hospitality we offer, that is our own business.”

  “And how much do you ask of us for this hospitality, Captain?” asked Tsafrir, gripping his horse’s reins and keeping his temper in check. “For we do not enter into any transaction without knowing the cost.”

  “There is no cost,” replied Willowfoil. “It is not the way of the marsh to be charging a fee for what should be freely given. Traditionally, we show kindness to strangers invited within our boundaries.”

  Tsafrir bowed. “The generosity of the marshfolk is estimable,” he intoned courteously.

  “Gramercie,” said Willowfoil, returning the bow perfunctorily. “Heed: when you enter our territory, you must keep together, and first you must give your blades and bows into our safekeeping. Never fear, they shall be returned to you on your departure.”

  Hesitant and scowling, the travelers divested themselves of their ironmongery.


  “I feel naked without my scimitar,” growled Yaadosh, eying the marsh watchman who bore the weapons away into the tower. “They are valuable arms,” he continued loudly. “When we ask for their return, if you should tell us they have been misplaced I will with my own fingers tear out the throats—” Alert to his belligerent tone, the watchmen’s dogs snarled, baring their fangs.

  “Peace, friend Yaadosh,” interrupted Jarred, holding up his hand. Neasán Willowfoil had grasped the hilt of his sword, and a flame burned in his eyes. “Would you have us stoush with our hosts?” Jarred continued, speaking to his friend. “I have heard that the men of the marsh are honorable.” He turned to the tall watchmen. “Do you give us your word our weapons will be safely returned to us?”

  “I do.” Willowfoil gave a curt nod. His hand moved away from his sword hilt, although he remained wary.

  “That is promise enough for me.” Jarred raised one eyebrow inquiringly at Yaadosh.

  “And I,” Yaadosh mumbled into his newly sprouting beard.

  Leading their horses, the travelers were shepherded across the springy bridge into the lower hall of the watchtower and from thence across the second drawbridge to a wooded islet. A path, strewn with a layer of flat river stones, led away between thickets of drooping she-oak whose long, slender branchlets hung down like curtains of gray-green hair. Willowfoil went ahead with one of the hounds, while a fox-faced watchman named Frognewton brought up the rear. These paths could only be navigated by the knowledgeable and the skilled—those whose eyes had been trained to recognise the marsh’s sly deceptions. To the ignorant, a mossy green sward might seem firm-enough footing, but too often it was in reality a raft of floating pond weed concealing sluggish, sucking depths. On the other hand, what appeared to be a fathomless well might in fact prove to be nothing more than a shallow puddle.