by Sam Bowring
Instead, a century ago, on a certain day at a certain time, every single prophet in the world stopped what they were doing and saw my future. Forks were dropped clattering to plates, conversations halted mid-sentence, the dreams of the sleeping were pushed aside and the same vision clouded every set of eyes. What they saw: a man with blue hair who possessed the power to end the war. For which side? Unclear. How? They couldn’t say. The only other thing they knew (the way we just know things in dreams sometimes) was that I would be born within the next hundred years.
In beginning this tale, I choose the hour of that birth. I call it ‘that’ birth because I do not exactly think of it as being ‘my’ birth, as you may grow to appreciate. Be that as it may, my prophecy was alive in the world, and a race between shadow and light was being run.
And it was a dark and stormy night. Of course.
MOMENTS OF FATHERHOOD
A man stood in a hut in the forest, staring into a mirror. Lines scored his face like tributaries, feeding the purple delta beneath his eyes. He’d torn at his bushy brown beard, and tears had fallen heavily, like the rain that would come. He heard the screaming again, a high-pitched wail he’d been powerless to stop; it spiked out of memory to stab at his heart.
‘What is it?’ he asked his reflection. ‘What has happened?’
His eyes focused, and in the mirror he saw behind him reflected that which was real. Twisted sheets, sprawling limbs, blood. Her hair shining too vividly for her to be dead. His wife, Mirrow.
An unbidden image flashed into his mind: a shovel-load of dirt hitting her face. He lashed out against it, shattering the mirror. If only the pictures in his mind’s eye could be smashed away so easily.
He sat down next to Mirrow’s body. Pushing her hair back from her pointed ears, he remembered when it had been blonde, not this freakish blue. He forced his eyes further down the bed to the baby she had died expelling. The child they had hoped for these last three years. She had been so happy to discover she was pregnant.
‘Little man?’ he whispered, reaching out to touch the baby’s foot.
The baby did not stir; it just lay still, breathing quietly, eyes closed. It was a strange way for a newborn to behave, and the man did not know what to do. In his heart he believed the child would die, but his mind danced around this belief as though it were a pit full of spikes. He did not know how he would cope with double grief. He probably wouldn’t.
‘You just rest,’ he said, patting the boy. ‘You just sleep, little man. So you can wake up healthy.’
He was almost scared to touch the boy, scared his shaking hands might clumsily break whatever sinew kept the child tied to life. Why did the boy have blue hair too? Why had his wife’s turned such a colour? Again he saw dirt, her face, and he knew that leaving the terrible duty undone was driving him insane.
He found himself standing outside the hut with a shovel, asking himself where she’d like to be buried. His gaze fell on the flower garden. It was the place.
His shovel bit the soil.
Clouds gathered in the fading light and a sprinkling of raindrops heralded the storm. It could have been raining fireballs for all he cared. When it was done, he climbed out of the grave and leaned on the shovel. For a merciful time his mind went blank. Around him the storm whipped into a fury, and it took a thunderclap to stir him. The grave was beginning to fill with water. Maybe, when he put her down there, the water would cover her and he wouldn’t have to shovel dirt onto her face after all? He almost laughed.
‘How dark the day,’ he shouted at the trees, ‘when one must hope for such things! How could you let this happen? She loved you as much as I loved her, and still you let her die! Do you hear me, Vyasinth? One of your fold comes home!’
With the weight of grief making it hard to breathe, he re-entered the hut. No change with the boy, and certainly no change with his wife. Unable to bear the sight of her lying there, he bore her up and out of the hut, into the driving rain. Over the grave, he rested his face against the cold skin of her neck. ‘Mirrow,’ he choked raggedly. By the time he lowered her in, the rain had cleaned her body of blood. A long time he looked upon her, burning her features into his mind to scar them there forever. Then he began to shovel dirt.
With the grave filled, he promised that tomorrow he would bring the boy out and they would say goodbye together. ‘And when he’s old enough, I’ll tell him of you, Mirrow. Everything about you. You will not fade easily from our lives, I swear.’
If he lives, came the treacherous interior voice.
Corlas remembered the prayer she had asked him to repeat if ever she died. It had always made him angry when she brought it up, and he would gruffly inform her that she was not going to die with him around to protect her. ‘You cannot take on every danger with an axe, my woodsman,’ she’d reply. He hated that she’d been right.
The prayer was in the same language as her songs, and he’d learned the words surprisingly easily. Mirrow had always maintained that it was because of his Sprite ancestry, but he had never truly believed her. How could he? He didn’t see meaning in the way a leaf twirled to earth, or hear voices in the trees, or see faces in streams. He didn’t remember generations of ancient peoples who had gone before him – blood memory, as Mirrow called it. ‘The Lady told me I am almost pure Sprite,’ she’d said. ‘I’ve many of the old talents that are lost to our kind. Perhaps with you it was only a very distant relative who had Sprite in them and so it is not so easily seen. Yet you are Sprite nonetheless.’ And he would smile and remain silent, because he knew the idea pleased her.
Summoning it from memory, Corlas spoke the accursed prayer. The wind howled, sharing his despair, and earth blasted from the top of the grave. The trees surrounding the clearing shook violently, twigs and leaves ripping free. Sticks and stones took off from the ground and Corlas heard the whiz of objects hurtling by his ears. Underneath the wind came the whispering of unearthly voices. A chill seized him as he realised that the spirits of the wood were all around, churning the air. The fear faded, however, as, although the wind roared loudly, he didn’t feel the slightest breeze. And then, for a moment, he thought he saw her. In the fork of a tree by the clearing’s edge, some twenty paces above the ground, she stood watching. Taller than a mortal woman, with arms like branches and fingers like twigs, her face was impossible to make out in the dark. A voice spoke to him clearly above the others, seeming to come from all around … and he understood that the forest loved Mirrow as he had, and that her spirit was safe. Then the Lady was gone, replaced by whipping branches and rustling leaves, and he wondered if he had seen her at all.
Shivering, he went back inside. There, he stared at the bed for a long moment. Then he glanced from left to right. As he tore the sheets off the bed, confusion fast became horror.
The child was gone.
Corlas clutched his beard. Had he gone mad with grief? How could a child vanish? Had he moved the child and not remembered? Surely that wasn’t possible.
It was a small hut that Corlas had built, just one room with simple furnishings – a bed, table, rug by the fireplace, and the cot he had made for the new arrival. It took only a moment to sweep it with his eyes and find no sign of the child. He kneeled down and looked under the bed.
Amber eyes stared back at him.
Corlas fell backwards in surprise. Under the bed, on hands and knees, the child was alive! The boy regarded him curiously, with open, seeing eyes. Corlas stared back in disbelief. He didn’t know a lot about babies, but he certainly knew they did not see and crawl and … climb off beds? … when they were but hours old. The child had blue hair, the same shade that Mirrow’s had turned with her pregnancy. Was it the work of spirits or demons? No, surely not. Corlas had grown to trust Whisperwood since he’d come to live here and he didn’t think it would allow such a thing.
The child burped, and giggled at its own wit. Suddenly Corlas relaxed. This child was no demon spawn. This was his son. He blinked as the thought sank in, then re
ached under the bed to seize the child under his chubby arms and hoist him out. Standing, he awkwardly arranged the baby against his chest, staring down in wonder. The child, unnaturally aware, stared back at him.
‘A son,’ Corlas breathed. He rocked the baby, who cooed gently. Corlas smiled, cracking the lines of grief on his face. Happy tears fell, and splotches of dried blood on the child’s skin ran afresh. ‘A son,’ he repeated. ‘I have a son!’ He held the baby aloft and shouted the words. The baby looked a little worried and Corlas laughed with joy.
Setting the boy carefully on the bed, he busied himself stoking an almost faded fire back to life. The room began to warm, and Corlas heated water in an iron pot. He bathed the child, rinsing his downy blue hair.
‘I thought you might escape me, boy,’ Corlas said. ‘You lay so still.’
His drowsy eyes slid closed, and he dreamed of his wife. Most his time with Mirrow had seemed like a dream anyway.
His eyes opened. He was sitting on the banks of a clear stream just outside Whisperwood, against a willow tree in the shade. The heat was slow and thick, and running water the only sound. For the first time in a long time, he was at ease. The ache of the wounds given to him at the Shining Mines had finally begun to fade.
Movement by the water caught his attention. On the forest side of the stream, someone emerged from the trees. She kneeled by the water, singing in a language Corlas hadn’t heard before, but which resonated with him somehow. It was beautiful. Her wild hair shone gold in the sunlight, her small ears were pointed. She ran her hands through the water, fingers slim and graceful. She looked up and saw him watching. He felt awkward, a hulking battle-scarred warrior sitting in the shade, staring silently at a beautiful girl. He thought she would run and was filled with sadness. Instead, she smiled in greeting.
‘Are you from the healers’ valley?’ she called.
‘Yes,’ answered Corlas. The word floated by itself, oafishly alone.
She jumped to her feet and began to wade into the stream with no regard for her dress. He tried to rise, but his body creaked, and before he knew it she was kneeling at his side.
‘Don’t get up,’ she said. ‘You’ve been hurt.’
‘Some months ago now, miss,’ he said, dumbfounded by how bold she was. ‘I’m almost healed.’
Her blue eyes were shot through with orange flecks and turned up slightly at the corners. He realised she had Sprite in her blood, and a strong dose at that.
‘The wounds, yes,’ she said. She touched him where his flesh was tender, and his surprise doubled. ‘But not returned to vitality, I think. You should spend some time in the wood – you’d quickly return to your full self.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
She laughed heartily. ‘Why, because of your Sprite blood of course! The wood looks after its own.’
He chuckled, though confused. ‘I have no Sprite blood, miss.’
At this she laughed even louder. ‘You don’t even know that you have Sprite blood?’
‘I don’t see how I could,’ said Corlas. ‘I have none of the marks. Though you do, stronger than I have ever seen.’
‘Seen? Seen?’ she repeated, eyes flashing. ‘Do you mean pointy ears and twice-coloured eyes? I am talking about the blood underneath your skin!’
She reached up to put her hands on his forehead. He froze, unwilling to move lest he startle her.
‘There it is,’ she exclaimed. ‘Bubble, bubble. You need to learn to look underneath the surface, my fine fellow.’ She leaped to her feet. ‘I think you should come for a walk in the wood!’
Corlas was enthralled. Right then he might have joined her if she’d announced she was walking to the moon. She grabbed his arm to haul him to his feet, and he rose clumsily, still marvelling at her forwardness.
‘Are you not afraid to go walking alone with a strange man?’ he said.
‘Alone and with?’ She chuckled. ‘You make no sense. Besides, you are not just a human man. I certainly wouldn’t allow one of them to catch sight of me by the stream.’
He allowed himself to be led into the water, the flow soaking his trousers.
‘And I never,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘would let one hear me sing that song.’
‘What did it mean?’ he asked. ‘Your song?’
‘Don’t you remember?’ she said.
‘I have not heard it before.’
‘Not with your ears.’ She smiled and thumped him on the chest. ‘But maybe your heart remembers.’
She sang again, and something within him stirred.
They walked into the forest, which he hadn’t left since.
The Lady Vyasinth wafted through the trees above the hut. She would have to become more involved again, she knew, as she had been when Mirrow was very young. Back then Vyasinth had appeared to the girl almost every day, to look after her and teach her the ways of the Sprites. Mirrow had been supposed to pass the knowledge on to her children, a plan which, sadly, had died with her. Vyasinth now regretted having ignored Corlas, offended by his refusal to believe what he was. She would have to put her qualms aside, unless she wanted the child to grow up in ignorance, as good as an end to all her hard work. Yes, she would speak to Corlas, but not now, not yet – for there were strangers in the wood, presences that pricked at her far-reaching awareness. Why are they here? she thought, even though she knew the answer, knew with a horror like an inversion of the joy she’d felt when Mirrow’s hair had turned blue with her pregnancy. Arkus and Assedrynn coveted that which was hers.
Her ire increased as she thought of those two. Everything was their fault! How she longed for the days when there had been only one type of magic in the world – Old Magic, as it was now called – which had existed when the two gods had ruled together. Arkus, God of Light, and Assedrynn, God of Shadow, had once lived in duality and balance – night and day, water and fire, certainty and uncertainty, truth and dreams. There had been only one Great Well, where all souls journeyed upon death to become part of a collective. That had changed when the gods had gone to war. They had closed their domains to each other, and come to one final agreement that made it possible for one to destroy the other: to break the Great Well. Each god had drawn out his own aspect from the Well, shattering the duality that had previously existed. The souls of those not fully dissolved had suffered the most, their very beings wrenched apart. Vyasinth remembered vividly their cries.
After that, the Old Magic had no longer worked. Instead each god created a new Well of his own, in his own domain, so that the souls of his people would go to him alone. With shadow and light thus divided, a creature could be born only of one or the other. Born of light returned to light in death, and born of shadow returned to shadow. Vyasinth had seen it as a violation of the natural order and, unlike the other minor gods, had refused to side with either Arkus or Assedrynn. As punishment they had banished her here, to Whisperwood; meanwhile, her people suffered greatly.
The Sprites weren’t like the luckier creatures of the land who had more easily survived the division of magic. The Zyvanix wasps, for example, had always built their hive cities in the arid plains of the north. Their neighbours, the Varenkai, were bronzed farmers, growing food under the sun in open fields. These were folk of the light, and Arkus had always been their god. The Varenkai’s pale cousins, the Arabodedas, lived by the sea in the cloudy south; here, deep water offered up food and life and icy winds drove their robust ships. There were the Vorthargs who dwelled in caves, and the Graka who lived in the storm-laden Bentemoth Mountains. These were all folk of shadows, and their god naturally became Assedrynn. They had made the transition quickly, instinctively.
The Sprites, however, were folk of the forest in whom Old Magic was strong – after all, trees keep their roots in shadow and leaves in the light, relying upon a balance of both. Robbed of balance, the Sprites had died in their multitudes. Only those living in Whisperwood survived, for with Vyasinth’s presence it became the only place in the world where Old Magi
c could still exist. The survivors weren’t many, and had been forced to interbreed with Varenkai, so their blood had thinned over generations. Soon there had been no true Sprites left, only half-breeds or less, beings who could survive outside Whisperwood. As they had spread out into the land, all vestiges of culture had been lost and no more souls returned to Lady Vyasinth and the Well that was Whisperwood.
In Mirrow, Vyasinth had sensed, for the first time in centuries, almost pure Sprite blood. She had decided it was time to rebuild; her sorrow finally replaced with purpose. She had called Mirrow to the wood, and time had even brought her a suitable mate. When Mirrow’s hair had turned blue with her pregnancy, Vyasinth had guessed that the child would be born special … and maybe she could even hope for more than simple rebuilding. Maybe she was to be delivered a champion.
It was then that she had decided to give Mirrow the Stone. She had never told her that it was special, created when the Great Well was broken, retrieved by Vyasinth before she was cast down into the world. It would make a fitting weapon for a blue-haired hero.
And yet others had discovered him too. Now, despite what they had promised her, Arkus and Assedrynn trespassed in her domain.
A CONVERGING IN WHISPERWOOD
Battu’s consciousness dissolved from his body and melted down the sides of Skygrip Castle like black butter. He trickled down stairwells and spread over balconies, seeped through cracks and curled around doorways. Sometimes it was useful to travel so slowly and widely. With his awareness diffused, he gathered impressions of all that he touched. In his broadest moments he could feel the castle itself, as if he were a glove over an enormous hand.
