Cruel Enchantment

by Janine Ashbless

  The roses were withering with an audible sussuration, like the sigh of old ghosts.

  Lying in my bed surrounded by yellowing briars, cock in hand, staring at the roof beams, I conceived my plan and came to my decision.

  I did little that day except tidy up and prepare. I washed, and disposed carefully of the water, and I shaved my cheeks and trimmed my beard – seeing in the polished steel of my mirror a face that, although still young, was already settling in sombre, pessimistic lines. After that it took some hours to gather up the heaps of brittle stalks that were all that remained of the briars and to clear my rooms. Once the way to the fireplace was open, I stripped the sheet and blanket from my bed and burned them; this was no time to take risks.

  An hour after sunset, wearing the shape of a crow, I was circling Galiena’s tower. She was not on the roof and the only light from the farm came from the window in the storey below the deserted ritual circle. There were no wardings about her home; the flowering woodbine I carried in my beak gave off only a faint, natural scent. I flew to the window and settled on the sill with a flick of coal-black wings.

  Galiena raised her face to me. She was sitting by the fire, a basket of carded fleece at her feet, a drop-spindle hanging from her left hand. Absently she drew another few inches of fluffy wool into thread without looking at it, then lowered the spindle to the floor and stopped its turning.

  I dropped the wild honeysuckle stem from my beak. The sweet scent of the night-blooming flowers suddenly redoubled.

  ‘Julian,’ she said.

  There was a taint of power in the room; she had some spell already prepared. Hurriedly I slid out of crow form and into my own shape which, even cross-legged, barely fitted into the window-recess. The stone was intensely cold beneath my butt – I was naked, of course, there being no choice when it comes to shape-shifting. I raised my hands apologetically and just managed to forestall the complex gesture she was making with her own.

  ‘Wait, Sister – I haven’t come to fight.’

  ‘What for, then?’ she asked, then suddenly laughed. ‘To bring me flowers?’ She nonetheless stilled her hands in her lap.

  ‘It seemed appropriate. I wanted to thank you for your gift last night. I appreciated it.’

  She flashed her eyebrows but did not reply. Her colour was high in her cheeks and she was failing to look at me directly, watching me from the corner of her eyes instead. I did not quite know what to make of this; I doubted she was merely being polite. My shins were crossed before my crotch anyway, so I was not forcing her to look at anything she might find too offensive.

  ‘I want to talk, Sister. If you will permit it.’

  ‘Yes?’ She was wary.

  ‘I’d like to propose a bargain.’

  She retrieved her spindle and began to wind the wool on slowly. ‘Why should I be interested in that?’

  ‘We are both trapped,’ I said. ‘We are cornered like dogs in a pit and will be forced to fight. Even if you kill me, they will only bring in other hounds against you. So I propose a deal. A duel, if you like; certamen singulare inter magos. Would that suit you? Then neither of us will have to end up dead. And if I win you’ll leave this place and let Chedzoy have the lands.’

  ‘But if I win?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll bring you a lock of the Baron’s hair, and you can deal with him any way you see fit.’ My throat was dry.

  She stared at me, unbelieving. ‘He’s your liege-lord,’ she objected.

  I felt cold. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘I have no love for him. And after fighting you … I’m sure I will not fear the Witch-hunters.’

  She bit her lip; it was an oddly childish expression. ‘No. I don’t trust you,’ she said at last, very softly.

  ‘You should. You could trust me with your life, Galiena,’ I said. ‘I would …’ Then I shut up, because I was all but offering my throat to the knife.

  ‘I would require a lock of your hair as well as his,’ she whispered.

  I shrugged. ‘If you wish. You won’t need it.’

  She pondered in silence, holding my eyes in her dark gaze.

  ‘What form of contest?’ she asked at last.

  ‘Shape-shifting.’ It was the traditional form between Moon-mages.

  ‘Tomorrow is a full moon,’ she said. ‘Meet me in the woods after sunset. Whenever you are ready.’

  I nodded. ‘The moon shine on you, Sister.’ I folded my form back into the small feathered shape of a bird – an owl, this time, for it was getting too dark now for a crow to fly. I was perhaps too conscious of her gaze and neglected to alter my colouring, so that it was a glossy black barn-owl that dropped from her window and sped off into the blue night.

  I had told her the truth. She did not need any tokens or rites to hold me, for I was already caught fast in an enchantment stronger and crueller than any spell.

  Which is how I come to be standing naked under tall trees by night. I can just make out the dark shape of Galiena’s house against a sky flushed with stars. My ritual circle is unmade once more, my accoutrements – even the silver I normally wear always – hidden under a rotted log. There is a night breeze, but I hardly feel it; every inch of my skin prickles with power. Into this rite I have woven every strand of my knowledge, invoked the dominions by every name, prayed for Gwydion’s aid in the longest forms and bound in any and every token that might strengthen my hand. I have bathed in water steeped from mugwort, whipped myself dry with willow twigs and forsworn the use of steel since sunrise; even my horse’s bit was made from bronze.

  If she is an Immaculate, then all this will count for nothing.

  It is two hours after sunset. A late blackbird is still singing in the undergrowth to my left, no doubt disturbed by the strangeness in the air.

  This contest cannot be fought with magic, but with cunning and will – or else I have no hope.

  She is here. I see her slight figure, ghost-pale in the darkness, coming towards me through the trees. Her hair is loose and drifts like a cloud about her. Silver glints from her naked skin; the spiralling lines on her flesh are aglow. I can hardly breathe. She is a storm-cloud ready to unleash its fury upon me.

  We face each other, knee-deep in the lush woodland undergrowth. The gloom shields us from mutual examination, but I can make out that the expression on her face is one of calm, almost joyous, and I understand it; the power beating in our blood, the moon rising full beyond the branches – it is difficult to feel anything but pleasure. Our mutual nakedness, so close. I want her, very much. My prick rests heavily between my thighs, thick and filled with moonlight as the rest of my flesh is, but not yet rampant. In another few moments it will betray me.

  ‘Begin,’ I suggest.

  She, the challenged, has the right to make the first move and the right to take the defensive. I must prove my mastery over her to win. The rules are ancient, worn thin with time; defeat the other, cause them to yield from exhaustion, or spend their last dregs of power before dawn. My only advantage is that it is in Galiena’s interest to refrain from killing me.

  She smiles and is gone. So quickly, so smoothly does she pull herself down that it looks as if she has simply vanished. My heart jumps and I cast around for a moment in fruitless search. There is no movement under the trees except for the breeze stirring a few leaves on the ground-flora. I am wading through dog’s-mercury and ground-elder and ramsons, my feet crushing a pungent odour from their bruised stems. From the banks of green foliage tall spikes of fox-glove lift their heads. She hasn’t fled, I realise; she has hidden herself here.

  I change, becoming less. I fold myself down no larger than the joint of my own thumb, becoming a honeybee, fat and furry with shiny black legs. It is dark and a little too chill, but now I can smell all the scents of the woodland, the flowers and the leaves and the earth. I can smell her. I quest from plant to plant, wings droning softly, tracking down the one that tastes wrong or feels strange under my feet.

  Here she is; the leaves a shade too warm, the
scent a note too musky. She is a spire of fox-glove, pink flowers in ascending tiers. I crawl into one of the blooms, satin petals beneath my feet and over my head. It covers me entirely and her perfume surrounds me. I uncurl my long bee’s tongue to stroke the nectaries. She tastes sweet. I lick and dabble, my furry body vibrating and heaving inside her velvet flower. My feet tickle her. Strength flows through me, I feel a quiver from the plant – it is moving.

  She changes. I am thrust back out into the night as the flower convulses shut and she stretches for the canopy overhead. I catch a rushing glimpse of motion too vast for my smallness to comprehend, and then the foxglove is gone and where it was standing is a wall of bark. I resume my own shape briefly, just long enough to study what I am facing. She is a great ash tree, grey-skinned, in the prime of maturity. Her branches reach to the sky, her feet are buried in the forest soil. I lay one hand on her trunk.

  I am the ivy that grows from the soil at her feet. I coil up the column of her trunk, close as her own skin, feeling her stretched taut and quivering beneath my embrace. My tendrils explore their way into every crack and crevice. I wrap my thick green arms around her branches and pull her close. I feel the wind swaying her and I sway too, we are like lovers dancing, leaf brushing leaf, my rootlets are in the crotches of her limbs questing for moisture, my fingers are everywhere on the rippled texture of her skin. I find purchase, pull and push myself higher up her. My crown is entangled with hers. Her breath and mine are one. I feel her creak and groan beneath my weight and I embrace her tighter; prising, stroking, caressing.

  She withdraws. Suddenly she is not there and there is nothing to support me and I crumple to the forest floor – but there is no time to consider my next move because something is on top of me tearing and trampling, snapping brittle old wood and pounding new shoots into the mud. Ivy leaves fly everywhere. It hurts.

  She is a deer, raging among my greenery.

  Shit – she is trying to kill me. In a convulsive motion, I drag my sundered self back together, coalescing in a knot of hot blood and coarse hide, wood becoming horn and bone. I rise from the earth as a stag, snorting and belling. My head is crowned in nine-pointed splendour, my legs are like iron, my neck thick, muscles rippling beneath the bristling hair of my shoulders. She shies from me, outmassed, and attempts to dodge off into the woods, but I am there before her, barring her way with heavy limbs and a savage thicket of horn. Her nostrils are distended and I can see her flanks heaving. Twice and then three times I parry her escape, pushing her back. She is only a hind, built for speed not battle. The stink of my rut is rank on the night air. I fence her round with my own presence, letting her flee no more than a few paces in any direction, until she at last stands still in confusion and I can approach. I lay my heavy neck across hers and although she shudders she does not shrink from me. The scent of her is rich and inviting; borrowed flesh is betraying her as it will every mage, for shape-shifting is not simply a matter of appearance. Animal instinct clouds her human wit. I lay my head across her withers and then her haunches, feel her brace her legs, smell her submission.

  She is a wolf.

  She goes for my throat, swift as a shadow, and her teeth meet in my hide. She wrenches, slashing a gash open across my shoulder, then springs back out of reach as swiftly as she had closed. I founder, numb with shock, swing round to face her. She feints again but is repulsed by the points of my horns. She crouches, snarls then springs away and begins to circle me, pushing in low and mean at every opportunity. She is furious. Blood gleams on her muzzle and darkens the long points of her fangs. My own right foreleg is cold and weak, though drenched in the hot blood that is sopping from the wound at the base of my neck.

  I have to change.

  She is taking no chances, never quite closing enough that I can strike her. The advantage is with her, the unwounded hunter. I will weaken rapidly. I have to counter her in this new form before I am forced to yield.

  She is now male; I can see that as she circles me. She has chosen the shape of a huge dog-wolf, big as a calf. She does not mean to repeat the mistake she made with the deer.

  I am a wolf too.

  She leaps in at me, snarling, then stumbles and halts in confusion. Instinct claws at her guts. She has anticipated a fight, but I am much smaller than her, crouched flat on the ground. And I’m a bitch. She snarls at me, froth dripping from her jaws, but though she closes in she does not bite. I whimper and roll over on my back, exposing belly and throat – it is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. I am staking everything on her wolf-instinct. She sniffs me, hackles up, and I wriggle flirtatiously and beat the earth with my tail. There is nowhere for her anger to go except to die, and at last I smell her aggression fading into curiosity. I flop over on to my stomach and lick her jaws gently, tasting stag-blood. She closes her great teeth over my muzzle and holds me motionless. There is a long pause before she releases me.

  She is wondering if she has won, that I am no longer challenging her, what it is she should do next. I do not assume my own form to declare her victor, which warns her it is not over so easily as it might appear. She is quite aware of the scent of me, of my willingness which is more than conciliation. Despite herself and her human suspicions she is aroused. The big dog-wolf noses me gently, looms over me, shifts behind me. I dance with pleasure and present myself for her. She nips me teasingly and I writhe beneath her teeth. She makes to mount.

  She knows.

  I feel her freeze. She has recognised my strategy. She hits the ground with a thud, changes so fast I can hardly see, and I find myself alone with – a rock.

  I slide back into human shape again and crouch over her. She is a boulder as big as my torso, green with moss, half-sunken into the soft soil of the hillside. I clasp her in my hands, feeling the unyielding cold hardness of her curves. She has withdrawn from me as far as she can, become entirely obdurate. A rock cannot be betrayed by its appetites as an animal can. She has been forced thoroughly on the defensive. I smile to myself in the dark. She has realised the nature of my ignoble purpose, but her awareness is also a weapon in my hands.

  I become water.

  I am a spring welling from the ground beneath the boulder. My cold body swells along her rigid flanks, moulding to her hard lines, lapping and bubbling and covering her. I run trickling fingers through the mossy growths that clothe her, seep into the tiniest crevices, whisper soft sounds of pleasure to her. I learn her every curve and plane, knowing her form intimately. I feel the smallest possible tremor under my fluid lips, the slightest suggestion that this stone admits of sensation. I lick her skin all over, my mouth lapping on her unceasingly in inexorable, tireless rhythm.

  Only water is more patient than the rock, more persistent, more strong. I will caress her till she yields.

  It comes sooner than I expect, though perhaps hours have passed when I am woken from my cool reverie and my quiet lullaby shattered by her abrupt exit. She takes flight in the shape of a duck, rocketing into the sky with a struggle that splashes water everywhere. It takes me long precious moments to recollect myself and return to the chase.

  I am a hunting-hound, lean and leggy, hide white as snow except for the bloody red of my long ears. My nostrils are aflame with the scents of the night and my ears ring with the clumsy crashing flight of the duck climbing through the canopy. She will not flee far. She is too proud. I race in her wake like another shadow cast by the moon. She leads me down through the trees, over the road and into the barley field beyond. She is heading for the Levels. I run with my nose lifted to the sky, my ears straining. Though the open land under the full moon seems as bright as daylight I cannot see her, she is too distant, but I can still track her. I hear her wing-beats falter.

  My feet are in water, mud squelching up between my clawed toes. This must be the marsh. I leap from tussock to tussock and patter through the shallower pools. I can hear the grumbling quack of a great many ducks ahead. Elvers skitter from beneath my paws. The bitter tang of the Sedgemoor floo
ds my nose and mouth. I pause, lap twice at a muddy pool and cock my head to listen. I can see only grass and stars and the glint of black water.

  There is a flock of ducks roosting in the mire. I inch my way forwards, working round until I am downwind and the warm sour feathery smell of them fills my head. Drool runs from my lips. They are quarrelling and muttering among themselves. Something has disturbed them. I creep forwards until I can see the first few birds. The flock has camped in the shelter of a crumbling windmill that perches on a low knoll, but now they stand quacking and staring about them with mad little eyes. The arrival of another duck would not rouse them so.

  They are only birds. She is not there.

  Throwing open my throat I let forth a long baying howl and the flock explodes into panic, the air filled with the rattling sound of their flight. Across the deserted marsh I pound, right up to the wooden skirts of the building.

  She is the mill.

  I leap and stretch myself and became one with the sky. I am the wind blowing across the marsh. I bear the scent of rotted vegetation and rich mud, the sharp aroma of bog-myrtle, the whisper of grasses, the booming call of bitterns. I lean into the wooden arms of her sails and feel them creak beneath me.

  I am attenuated to the point of annihilation. She is pushing me to my limits. Her strength frightens me – but she has no plan. There is no pattern to her movements. Find me; chase me; fight me – she flees in every direction at once.

  The sails are starting to turn. The mill groans as the mechanism within is forced into life. I push harder and a tile slides from the roof. The spars rise and fall, picking up speed, their substance protesting but unable to resist my thrusts. The creak of the arms is now a rhythmic grunt underlaid with a swishing sigh. It is the sound of the bed under the pounding of ardent lovers. I feel her heart thumping within her wooden breast, racing faster and faster. I am blind and unthinking, feeling only her movements beneath me, my only will to stir her to the foundations. If I can bring her to a climax then I will have won. More than that; if she is an Immaculate, then with the breaking of her vow half her strength will slip from her like sand through her fingers.