“So what happened?” I asked eventually.
Simon stretched his mouth into what might have passed for a grin, if not for the coldness of his blue eyes. “The younger got a chance to prove himself. To do something that everyone, even his brother, couldn’t fail to recognize. After that, he thought, I will be like him, just as good as him, better even. He took the chance, and failed.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know, little witch. This story doesn’t seem to have an ending. How would you finish it?” He lowered himself to the ground cautiously.
I moved over to make room for him on a fallen branch. Linn was in her element, snuffling around in the autumn leaves, darting here and there, running back to check on us from time to time then bounding off after a new scent.
I chose my words with care. “It has the makings of a learning tale, though they usually have three brothers, not just the two. I think the younger brother would head off into the world to seek his fortune, and leave his big brother behind. On the way he’d meet three people, or creatures—it’s usually three.”
“You have an answer for everything,” said Simon bleakly. “Tell me the rest.”
“Well, you could end the story in a few different ways,” I said, warming to the task.
“Let’s say the little brother meets an old woman. He’s hungry, and he only has one oatcake, but he gives it to her. She thanks him, and he goes on. Maybe next he sees a rabbit caught in a snare; and he frees it.”
“He’d more likely skin it and have it for his supper,” said Simon. “Especially after the oatcake.”
“But this rabbit looks at him with such beautiful green eyes,” I said. “He has to let her go. Lastly he meets a giant. The giant challenges him to a fight with staves. The young man agrees, feeling he has nothing to lose. They fight for a while, and he gets in a few good blows before the giant knocks him out cold. When he comes to, the giant thanks him politely for a decent bout; of all the travelers who have passed that way, he’s the first who has dared to stop and give the giant a bit of amusement. After that, the giant comes along with him, as a sort of bodyguard.”
“Convenient,” said Simon. “What next?”
“There would be a castle, and a lady in it,” I said, gathering a handful of fallen leaves and berries and absently starting to weave them together. “He’d see her from a way off, maybe riding by in all her finery as he and his giant friend are trudging along the road, and the instant he sees her, he loves her and he wants her for his own. But there’s a problem. To win her, he has to accomplish a task.”
“Or maybe three.”
I nodded. “That’s more common. And here’s where his good deeds in the past help him. Perhaps he needs to clean out a huge stable before sunrise, and the old woman turns up with a magic broom and does it in a flash. Then maybe fetching some object, a golden ball, from a deep narrow place, the bottom of a long tunnel under the ground. The rabbit could do that. The last would be a feat of strength, and that’s where the giant comes in. So our hero wins the lady, and lives happily ever after.”
“What about his brother?”
“Him? Well, you see, by the time the younger brother has finished all his adventures, and won the lady’s heart, he’s forgotten all about his big brother and how jealous he was. He’s got his own life.”
“I don’t like this ending,” said Simon. “Try another.”
I thought for a bit. “What if he went to war, and came back to find his brother had died, and all the lands were his?”
Simon laughed, and I didn’t like the harshness of it. “How do you think he would feel about that?”
“Confused, I should think. He gets his heart’s desire, which is to take his brother’s place. But forevermore, he thinks about those years he wasted, envying his brother instead of getting to know him.”
“His brother wasn’t interested,” said Simon flatly, and I thought I’d come too close to the mark. I concentrated on the wreath I was weaving. Leaves of russet, deepest brown, golden yellow. Some were already fragile, the last trace of summer slipping away from their skeletal bodies. Berries red as blood. He watched me.
“Sorcha,” he said after a while, and it was the first time he’d used my name instead of “witch” or “girl” or something worse. “How can you believe in these tales? Giants, and faeries, and monsters. They are a child’s fantasies.”
“Some may be true, and some not,” I said, threading a long pointed leaf under, and through, and around itself. “Does it matter?”
He got up, and I heard the change in his breathing as he swallowed a gasp of pain; silence meant control.
“Nothing in life is like your stories,” he said. “You dwell in your own little world here; you can have no idea of what exists outside it. I wish—” he broke off.
“Wish what?” I asked when he did not go on.
“I would almost wish that you should never discover it,” he said with his back turned to me.
“Don’t you think I have begun to?” I stood up, the little wreath in one hand. “I have seen what they did to you. I have listened to you crying for help. And you have told me yourself such stories of cruelty that I must believe them true. You have hardly thought to spare me.”
“You shut that world out, with your tales.”
“Not entirely,” I said as we began the slow walk back. “Not for you, or for myself. The tales make it a bit easier, that’s all. But you will have to talk about it eventually, if you are to heal and return home.”
Father Brien had given him a strong stick of ash, and he used it to help him walk; he was still painfully hesitant, but he moved along now without my support. Here, the path was thickly covered with fallen leaves, and the tangled network of bare branches let cold light through to touch them with gold and silver. Linn was ecstatic, digging and sniffing here and there. A bird called; another answered.
“Will I ever be able to sleep again?” he asked suddenly, taking me by surprise. My answer was guarded; I had seen those taken by the Fair Folk, how their madness never quite left them by night or day, how the whirl of memories in their heads gave them no peace.
“It might take a long time,” I said gently. “You have made some progress; but I cannot lie to you. Such damage does not heal easily. You may be your own best helper, if you choose the right path.”
Simon’s body was healing. He had been young, and strong, and resilient, and he was winning the fight against the damage and invasions of that night and the evil humors that had followed. After a time he began to walk without the stick, and he exchanged his first few words with Father Brien, almost without noticing. I greeted each small victory with joy. A kind word, an attempt to do something new for himself, a spontaneous smile, each was a priceless gift. Once the healing process took hold, it gathered speed, and I began to believe we might eventually be able to send him back to his own folk.
It was clear, however, that he could not yet leave our care. Late autumn weather was closing in and the nights were longer and colder. And Simon could not yet shake the demons that beset him during the times of darkness. Over and over, his torturers visited and tormented him, and he fought them, or fled from them, or gave himself up to their mercies. One night I got a black eye out of it, when he rose from his bed half asleep and tried to escape out into the night. Between us, Father Brien and I stopped him, but I caught the full force of his arm across my face. In the morning he would not believe that he had done this. Another time he caught me off guard, waking before I did, suddenly and in terror, but silent for once; and he had the knife in his hand and turned in on himself before I was aware of it. How I moved fast enough I’ll never know, but I grabbed his wrist and hung on, and screamed for Father Brien, and the two of us tried to calm him, while he wept and raved and begged us to kill him and let that be an end of it. And slowly, slowly I spoke to him and sang to him until he grew quiet and almost slept, but not quite. He had stopped talking, but his eyes spoke to me, and their message
was plain. He understood too well what the future would be for him, and he asked me why I would not end his pain. What right had I to refuse this?
I had told him many tales. But I could not tell him why I believed he must live and grow well and move on. If he scoffed at the tales of Culhan and the old heroes, the sagas of the folk from the west, if he found the stories of the little folk and the tree people odd, though I myself had seen their work with my own eyes, how could I expect him to believe his destiny and mine were somehow linked in what the Forest Lady had told me? He would never believe that I had seen her myself, there in the clearing in her cloak of midnight and the jewels bright in her hair. Simon was of another folk entirely, a practical, earthbound people who could credit only the evidence of their own eyes. And yet, if ever I met a person who needed to let the magic and the mystery of the old ways flow through his spirit, it was him. I used it to heal him whether he knew it or not, but without his own faith in himself it could go only so far. Until he could be convinced of a reason to live, we could not safely let him go, even if his body was well enough mended, for he would not last even the first night without us.
I tried to talk of this with him, but he shut me out whenever I drew close to his home, or his family, or whatever it was that drove him. At first he was, I think, adhering strictly to his soldier’s training, which had held him silent under torture and which was born of the feud between our peoples. I was the enemy; I should know nothing of him that might give me the advantage, or put his kind at risk. However, those nights of torment, which we endured together whether we wished it or no, changed both of us. Toward the end he recognized me, somehow, as part of his world, and at the same time he knew I was neither of the one side nor the other in this long struggle. With my herbs and my stories, I was to Simon some strange, alien kind of being, but slowly he began to trust me just a little, despite himself.
Father Brien was making plans as best he could. Time was passing and still the night terrors persisted. Wet weather had come on, and I could not keep up Simon’s walks; he was restless now, confined to the cave even by daytime, and he vented his frustrations on me by arguing every point. Why must he eat and drink when I told him—what was the use? And, frequently, why did I not go home and play with my dolls, instead of experimenting on him? Why should I bother mending his outdoor clothes, when he would never be fit to do other than lie around being tormented by a crazy girl and a pious old fool? After a while he was driving both of us mad, but at least Father Brien had the luxury of retreating to the cottage to write or meditate. I had made a promise to Simon and I was stuck with him.
I was trying to sew, and kept my eyes on my work as Simon paced around me.
“What are you doing, anyway?” he demanded, looking more closely at the overtunic I had in my hands. “What is that?”
I showed him. “You will hardly notice it,” I said. “But it will help to protect you. The rowan tree is one of the most sacred; such a cross is sewn into all my brothers’ garments, when they go to war.” The red thread with which I had bound the tiny rowan cross showed like a drop of blood against the cream wool of the lining. I bit off the thread and folded the tunic, and it was like any other garment.
“I’m not going to war,” said Simon. “I’m hardly fit for it anymore. And maybe wasn’t then,” he added in a lower voice, turning away from me.
I placed needles and thread carefully back in their box. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“I—nothing,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, and looking at the floor. I sat still, waiting. After a while he looked up, and his face was white.
“The problem is,” he said with difficulty, “the problem is not knowing. Not knowing if I—if I was strong enough.”
“Strong enough for what?” But I could guess.
“The problem is—I can’t remember. Not all of it.” He was shivering now as the memories came flooding back, not in the unthinking visitations of night but by full, waking daylight. “Not all of it. I’m pretty sure I held out. I held out a long time, I know it, because they were angry, they were so angry—”
“It’s all right, Simon,” I said, moving over quickly to kneel beside him and take both his hands. “You can tell me.” He clutched my hands painfully, like a lifeline.
“But at the end, when they—when they—” he closed his eyes, his face contorted with remembered pain. “Then I—I don’t know if I—I might have—” He seemed unable to complete this thought, as if finding the words was beyond his endurance.
“You think you may have told them something you shouldn’t have, something secret?”
He nodded miserably. “I told you he failed. Betrayed his trust, gave up his brother’s men to the enemy. How could he go back, after that?” He wrenched his hands out of my grasp. “Who would befriend him, after such a deed? He’d better have died.”
“You don’t know for sure,” I said carefully. “I believe you—he—”
“His brother,” said Simon. “You remember the story? His brother waits for the troop to come back, but they do not. He waits for a little longer, and then he sends out a scout to look for them. It’s a long way, across the water. He finds the place where they were camped. But they are all dead; limbs hacked, sightless eyes open for the crows to feed on. Betrayed by one of their own. After that, his brother curses him, that he should never return home to those he has failed so utterly. But to the younger brother, this is nothing new. He was never wanted; he might have known the pattern of his life could never change. His brother is the hero of every tale; but he is doomed to failure.”
“Nonsense!” I retorted, and I was so angry with him I grabbed hold of his shoulders and gave him a good shake. “The end of the story is of your making, nobody else’s. You can do with it as you choose. There are as many paths open to your hero as branches on a great tree. They are wonderful and terrible, and plain and twisted. They touch and part and intermingle, and you can follow them whatever way you will. Look at me, Simon.”
He blinked at me once, twice; the candlelight showed his eyes a soft blue, morning sky color. And cold with self-loathing.
“I believe in you,” I said quietly. “You are a brave man, and a true one; and I know in my heart that you kept your secrets that night. I trust you better than you trust yourself. You could have hurt me many times, and Father Brien as well, but you did not. There is a future for you. Don’t throw my gift of healing back in my face, Simon. We have come this far; let us go on.”
He sat there for a long time in silence; so long that I had time to tidy up, and fetch water, and ready the cloths and salves for the dressing of his wounds. Finally he spoke.
“You make it hard to say no.”
“You made a promise,” I said. “Remember? You cannot say no.”
“How long must I do your bidding?” he asked, half joking. “Years?”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve been keeping my big brothers in line since I was pretty small. You just might have to get used to it. Until you are well, at least.” And we began, again, the cruel task of washing, and salving, and bandaging.
As it grew dark outside I told the tale of a warrior queen who had men after her like flies, but she never kept one for long; and Simon, who had heard it several times before, offered a dry commentary on the more unsavory parts of the action. And eventually the job was over, the linen cleared away, and Father Brien came with soup and elderflower wine. There was a sort of peace around the three of us that night as we sat quietly by the fire with our simple meal; and later, Simon fell asleep like a child, cheek pillowed on one hand.
It wasn’t like this in the stories. In the old tales, when a young man went forth to have adventures, he endured his trials and came forth triumphant. He became a leader, or acquired a magical skill, or at the very least wed a princess. Maybe all three. There was never any question, not even in the darkest moment, that the hero would conquer both his enemies and his self-doubt. Perhaps that was why I had been angry with Simon, because
I wanted the ending of his story to be the good one he deserved. For I had become fond of him, despite his oaths and his tales of death and misery. Somewhere, beneath that darkness, I had seen both strength and honor. But his words of despair mocked my efforts at healing. I was pondering this, deep in my thoughts, when Father Brien spoke, startling me.
“I’ll have to leave you for the day tomorrow,” said Father Brien. “I need to call at the village to the west, for one of my brothers will be there awaiting papers from me; and we need supplies. I won’t ask if you can manage without me, for you have done so all along. But I will make sure to be back by nightfall. I will not have you left alone after dark.”
“He is doing well,” I said. “Another moon or two, and he may be ready to go on—but where?”
“I’ll set that in train tomorrow,” said Father Brien. “The brothers in the west will take him, I think. He can stay there awhile, and when he is ready they will conduct him safely to his home, wherever that is.”
“How?”
“It can be arranged. But you are right; he cannot go while he is a risk to himself. And he cannot ride; by the time you suggest, he may perhaps be able to withstand the jolting of a cart. I will know more tomorrow night.”
True to his word, he was off at dawn the next day, taking advantage of a lull in the persistent rain. Simon and I had slept better, for he had woken only twice, and there was a little more color in his cheeks. We watched from the doorway as the cart trundled away under the trees.
The morning was peaceful. There was a fine drizzle, on and off, and in between low slanting sunlight, as if the day could not make up its mind to be foul or fair. I tied back my hair and got to work preparing salves from dried lavender. I measured oil and beeswax; Simon watched me. Later, we shared some green apples and a rather hard bannock. Our supplies were indeed in need of replenishment. I wondered if there might be enough flour left for me to bake a few rolls.
Linn heard it before we did. Her ears pricked, she growled deep in her throat. I stared at her; there was no sound from outside. Then, an instant later, the silent message flashed into my mind with an urgent clarity.
Daughter of the Forest Page 10
