The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  “The Wraith Fens are the haunt of eldritch wights,” whispered Lilith. “Many are unseelie. Nobody comes here. It is perilous.”

  “’Twould be a good place to go fishing, then,” said Jarred, half-joking.

  Lilith smiled. “Better to pass the time by dining upon our provender than dangle bait in the water and risk being dined upon by some malign thing that comes to the lure.” She unpacked the hamper, and they shared the food between them. Heedless of her half-hearted warning, Jarred took out a rod and cast the baited hook into the water. The reel spun, whirring like some insect.

  Drearily the vespertine vegetation slithered by. There was no sound other than the idle susurrus of the water. The rod remained motionless for most of the time, only twitching when the hook became snagged on something beneath the surface. Jarred peered over the side of the boat. The water slid past the hull, gleaming, translucent. Behind amber panes, long strands of weed were rippling. “’Tis curious,” he mused. “So much water, hiding so many strange secrets.”

  They floated into a wider section of the channel.

  Farther on, it opened out, widening to a pool several hundred yards across. The boat’s passengers witnessed, to one side of this sluggish mere, an utterly unexpected sight. A full-sized seagoing ship was anchored there: a galleon. That such a massive hulk should rear her masts in the very heart of the marsh was bizarre enough, but her condition made her appear even more fantastic. Dilapidated yardarms and stumps of cross-trees rose up against the treetops, draped with the broken remnants of rigging. The ship was vacant and somber, festering with slime and moss, silent except for the rasp of rope shifting slightly across decaying decks, the faint creak of timbers, the slap of water against a rotting hull. Once there came a faint sound that might have been the clanking of chains.

  When the little boat had floated past the abandoned wreck, Lilith let out a sigh of relief. “The Galleon,” she said, naming the spectacle for Jarred. “No one knows how it came here, or why.” He nodded; she perceived the amazement on his face.

  They had been drifting for nearly an hour when, inexplicably, the boat began to rock. An eerie sensation raked across Jarred’s spine. Next moment he had left his seat and was beside Lilith on the stern bench, his arms wrapped protectively around her.

  She was astounded by his sudden closeness and the impact of his vitality. The warmth of him was a conflagration that set her to shivering. She breathed the clean, elusive fragrance of his skin and hair, a scent that hinted of bergamot. The side of her face was pressed against the pillar of his neck and she could feel the beat of his pulse, strong against her cheek. She forgot where she was, or whether the two of them were in danger; she was no longer aware of anything other than the leather-supple touch of his arm about her waist and the pressure of his body leaning against her. It was as if her thoughts had been stripped away and her emptied mind flooded with a fizzing, intoxicating cordial.

  There appeared to be no reason for the boat’s chaotic instability. For an instant, unquestioning, Lilith closed her eyes and allowed herself to settle back into the embrace of her protector. Then one violent heave erupted, almost capsizing them. Jolted from her contemplations, Lilith shrieked, “Look!”

  Two rows of four pale fingers had appeared at the edge of the vessel, grasping tightly. The passengers stared in astonishment, unable to speak, as an entity that appeared to be a young woman hoisted herself out of the water, climbed aboard, and seated herself opposite them. She was lovely in face and form, with long hair the color of cobwebs, sopping wet. Her tresses flowed like shimmering silk down to her knees, and beneath this fountain of filaments she was naked. Pallid as a fish’s belly was her skin, with no trace of a rosy flush, even on her gardenia cheeks and anemone lips. Yet for all her strangeness, she was not frightening, merely disconcerting.

  Bravely, Lilith spoke up. “What would you have of us?”

  The water-girl’s eyes were large and luminous, like quiet pools beneath a morning sky. They appeared profound, and as Jarred watched, it seemed to him that he could perceive a liquescent eddying deep within those orbs. As if in reply to his inquiry, she shook her head, whereupon a shower of droplets scattered like glass beads from her hair. One droplet smacked Jarred in the eye with a sudden stinging sensation. His vision bleared, but he blinked away the moisture.

  “What would you have of us?” Lilith repeated. She was careful to keep her tone polite.

  Before she had finished asking the question, the damsel had jumped over the side and disappeared into the water. The ripples of the splash had scarcely begun to spread when she appeared again. Demonstrating amazing strength and agility, she reboarded the craft, this time carrying an infant in her arms. She sat cradling the baby gently, rocking it and gazing at it with tenderness, yet still she spoke not.

  “You have done better than I,” Jarred said to the water-wight, “for although I have angled in many a river and stream, I have never caught a baby.”

  Lilith turned in his arms and smiled at him, but the aquatic manifestation simply rocked her infant and nursed it in silence while the boat drifted on downstream. Her wet hair was strung in webby hammocks about the child.

  Jarred muttered in Lilith’s ear, “What shall we do? What is her purpose? Shall she sit here with us forever? Evening is closing in, and I would fain leave this haunt.”

  “They have not the same concept of time as we. I believe we should courteously explain to her our position,” Lilith answered. More loudly she said to their silent companion, “Since success has deserted us, our intention is to abandon the angling and row home to hearth and couch.”

  Ever swift to find humor in most situations, Jarred could not resist a quick stab at a jest. Brashly, he appended, “That is, unless you’ve a desire to make a quick trip into the water and bring back some bream in place of a baby.”

  At that, the boat shook and swayed so violently that both mortal passengers were flung backward and their heads hit the planks flooring the hull. Afterwards they deduced that they had been momentarily stunned, for when they raised themselves up and peered about, they saw that the water-girl and her infant were no longer in the vessel. In their place was a lake of living silver—a great trove of fishes piled in the vessel, jumping and arcing and drowning in the air—and the boat had drifted free of the Wraith Fens and was once again floating in a weed-free channel, open to the skies.

  “Let’s be rowing for home!” cried Lilith.

  Jarred swung himself back onto the bow bench, seized the oars, and hauled with all his might. They were soon moving swiftly, despite the fact that the vessel was sitting low in the water. When they had navigated into familiar territory, the young man rested, whereupon they changed places and Lilith took a turn at the rowing. Spearheads of silver slipped and slithered about their feet, and the skin of the young couple glittered with sticky fish scales.

  “There are more bream here than anyone could have hooked in a se’n-night!” exclaimed Jarred.

  “A gift,” said Lilith.

  “Why would she gift us?”

  “The knowledge is not at me,” said the marsh daughter, heaving on the oars. “Perhaps because we treated her courteously and did not show fear.”

  “I was afraid something might harm you,” said Jarred.

  “But you were not afraid for yourself.”

  A look of displeasure briefly creased the young man’s comely features. “You were braver than I.”

  “Not at all!” the damsel said in surprise. “For I am familiar with the ways of water-wights, while to you they are utterly unknown. Besides, I can swim and you cannot! By rights it should have been me who was trying to save you,” she teased. Privately she was recalling the tempered strength of his embrace and the way the bleached fabric of his shirtsleeves, carelessly rolled up, lay in folds of softness against his forearms.

  “You may take your turn next time,” he murmured.

  For a moment he regarded Lilith in silence, and she smiled.

 
; Shortly after the unsettling but rewarding incident at the Wraith Fens, a party was held in Marshtown, to celebrate the twenty-second birthday of Muireadach Reedmace Stillwater, son of the Marsh-Chieftain and brother of Cuiva. That young man had decided that in order to inject substantial hilarity into the celebrations, the guests must costume themselves as some character or object, and for some reason known only to himself, he decreed that the names of these characters or objects must begin with B. Prizes were to be awarded for the best costumes. The friends and relations of Muireadach collected old clothes and scraps of fur and fabric, and they dressed themselves up as bandits, beggars, boatmen, boggarts, brides, barons, bowyers, bellringers, bald men, bearded men, and babies.

  To the surprise of his friends, Odhrán Rushford produced a long and shaggy wig of bleached horsehair, extravagantly curled, which he had obtained in Cathair Rua from a peddler who had little else to barter.

  “I felt sorry for the wretch,” said Rushford, defending his purchase in the face of ridicule from his peers. “He was as poor as dust and had only this scarecrow’s mangy scalp and a chewed-up satchel of leather to barter in exchange for food. Out of pity I gave him a handful of coins and advised him to get himself a square meal, whereupon I’ve no doubt he hied himself to the nearest alehouse to squander the lot on obtaining a headache. Thus this wig became mine, and I thought it might provide us with some fun in due course. But although I like this hairpiece, it likes me not, for I cannot wear it on my pate but I break out in a fit of sneezing until I remove it. Jarred, you may lend it to whomsoever you please! I intend to get myself up as a pompous aristocrat and go to the party as a born fool.”

  Jarred took the horsehair wig to the Mosswell cottage, where the shabby mane of yellowish tangles provoked substantial mirth in Lilith.

  “You might wear this and go to the party as a blond beauty,” Jarred suggested.

  “The offer is tempting,” she replied, giggling, “but I have already made up my mind to be a buccaneer. ’Twould be a shame for this lovely peruke to go to waste. Why do you not wear it yourself? You could play the role of a blond beauty, a belle, or a raffish bawd!”

  After pondering for a moment, Jarred said, “A man dressing as a woman is bound to incite general hilarity. Yet I have no notion of how to go about such an enterprise. Will you aid me?”

  “Indeed I shall!”

  Although his form was lean and slender, Jarred could not be fitted into any of Lilith’s slim-waisted kirtles, so Lilith borrowed a disused gown from the goodwife Rathnait Alderfen.

  “You may have my old wedding dress,” said Mistress Alderfen. “I declare, it has been many a year since it was of use to me, and it’s been moldering at the bottom of my clothes chest since I cannot recall when. I’ve brought it out once or twice in the hopes that the young ones might wear it at their weddings, but I daresay it is no longer in the vogue or else has gone too much to pieces, for they won’t have a stitch of it.”

  The gown was a worn-out concoction of antique lace, shirred and ruffled petticoats of frayed muslin, and layers of threadbare velvet. It seemed made of weeds and dandelion leaves, lamb’s ears, and ossified webs: a sheaf of infested foliage torn from the banks of a wild stream. Eminently, it was a feminine froth of ruined loveliness.

  On the eve of the party, Lilith brought Jarred to the Stillwater house, where he willingly seated himself before Cuiva’s mirror so that rouge, kohl, and lipstick could be applied to his face.

  Partway through the process, he smacked his lips and grimaced, saying, “This red paint is tainted with some disagreeable flavor.”

  Cuiva shouted with laughter. “Of course! ’Tis made from the crushed bodies of insects. Sweet lad, you have not yet truly sampled the hardships of womanhood. Wait until you attempt to run about in your long skirts. Wait until you try plucking the hairs from your eyebrows, pinching your cheeks to redden them, or squeezing your stomach into a corset!”

  “Women are misguided, who put themselves through so much adversity,” said Jarred.

  “That may be true,” she answered tartly, “yet we would hardly do so if men did not prefer small-waisted, rosy-cheeked women and scorn the pasty, plump ones. It is the fault of men!”

  “Do not be teasing him, Cuiva!” protested Lilith.

  But Jarred was laughing too. “I thank the Fates,” he said, “if they had any part in it, for allowing me to be born a man, for I daresay I have not the courage to be a woman!”

  The guests arrived at the party as bats, bees, bears, balladeers, and balls of string; as barrels, beanstalks, boiled eggs, and bad dreams.

  “Who is this tasty wench?” bellowed Odhrán Rushford as soon as he caught sight of the tall, yellow-haired floozy who accompanied Lilith and Cuiva.

  “Keep away from me, you rake,” warned Jarred.

  “Despite appearances, my sister is virtuous,” interposed Lilith, “and will be led astray by no man.”

  She could scarcely take her eyes from Jarred all through the evening’s revelry. The feminine draperies of his costume somehow accentuated his intense masculinity. On being confronted by a gown, one expected to see a female wearing it. It was startling to behold, in place of the slighter stature of a woman, the full height and breadth of a strapping man, to perceive the definite vigor and energy of his movements where one would have expected the relatively dainty gestures of a damsel. The contrasts served to heighten the stark lines of his body and make his natural vitality more striking. The flicker of his eyes was intensified by the dark smudges of kohl Lilith had crayoned on his lids. To watch him was a delight. He was stone immersed in flowers, steel sheathed in lace, his virility enhanced rather than disguised by the trappings. That he had been willing to dress in a ridiculous costume in order to make others laugh endeared him to her even more. It also demonstrated that he was so assured of his own masculinity that he had no need to prove it. Among the lads there was much hearty jesting about the seductiveness of Jarred’s persona, chaffing in which he good-naturedly took part. Damsels congregated about him in large numbers, giggling and bantering, reaching out to touch his counterfeit tresses or tweak the hem of his gown, feigning sisterly interest in his attire and using the charade as an excuse to pay close attention to him.

  Yet he danced only with Lilith.

  Despite a drunken bout of fisticuffs between five youths, including Eoin, as quickly resolved as it was begun, the majority of the merrymakers greatly enjoyed the celebrations. Toward the conclusion of the festivities, Muireadach Stillwater stood up on a stool and announced the winners of the prizes for the best costumes.

  “I award the first prize, four jars of swampwater, to Doireann Tolpuddle for her most excellent portrayal of a berry bush.” The audience cheered rowdily. “Second prize, four jars of swampwater, goes to Eoin Mosswell for his most fearsome bogle costume.” More shouts of approval pervaded the air. “And third prize, the much sought-after four jars of swampwater, goes to that saucy wench Jarred Jovansson!” Roars of acclaim arose from the crowd.

  Toward dawn the partygoers began to straggle sleepily to their dwellings through the tepid darkness. Eoin was snoring on the floor, so Jarred, who had taken off the horsehair wig, allowing his own clove-spice locks to pour down over the bedraggled gown, escorted Lilith home.

  “Let us go by way of Rushford’s house,” he said to her as they walked alone together. “From atop the roof, there will be a wondrous view of the sunrise.”

  She gladly agreed, dismissing latent misgivings about her household’s likely reaction to the lateness of her return. Soon afterward the couple found themselves ascending a ladder that leaned against the side of the small cottage. They clambered out upon the reed thatching and seated themselves on the highest part of the ridge, setting their heels firmly against the thatch bindings to prevent sliding. The colors of the marsh were already fading from black and silver to gray-blue, sprayed with a pearly haze of mist. The eastern sky took on the hue of rich blue velvet, ripped horizontally to show inner linings of si
lken tangerine and daffodil. The watchers sat side by side, marveling at the beauty of the world. Jarred was still clad in his feminine attire, but most of the face paint had rubbed off, save for the kohl, which had smudged further and rimmed his eyes like a bandit’s mask. He carried three small red apples, which he had brought with him from the house of Stillwater, and these he was juggling absentmindedly, having learned the trick from Michaiah. As he practiced, it happened that he leaned slightly to his left. Instantly any intentions the couple might have had to admire the splendor of a newborn day dissipated like sun-scorched fog.

  As if by chance, their shoulders had softly collided.

  From that moment they were unaware of anything else in the universe except that tiny spot of gentle pressure and warmth sustained between them. Yet not a word was exchanged. Lilith continued to gaze at the sky as if nothing whatsoever had occurred, and Jarred continued to juggle the three crimson fruits, yet he leaned a little to the left, and she to the right.

  For Lilith, the place where her shoulder pressed against his was a center of burning sweetness. It was as if all her senses were augmented and she could feel, with acute fidelity, every shift in the musculature beneath his sleeve. Her body was alive with fire, and it came to her that she was finding it difficult to breathe. She dared not move an inch, lest that delicious contact should be broken. Her thoughts flew into foolish chaos; surely he must also be aware of the touch, but what if he was not, and moved away, leaving her in desolation? And if he was aware of it, what could it signify? Did it mean he simply did not care if they brushed casually against each other? Was it in fact an accidental contiguity? Every time she tried to pursue a train of thought, she lost control and dissolved once again into the aching pleasure of that thistledown touch.

  “You try,” said Jarred suddenly, handing her the apples.