The River Witch

by Helena Rookwood

  “How?” Tabitha asked, curious now. She scrambled to her feet. Perhaps she wouldn't be wandering aimlessly for much longer, after all.

  “We found our friend the brook horse,” Corida said enthusiastically, still tugging at Tabitha's sleeve to hurry her up. “He can carry you on his back!”

  Tabitha hesitated. Her experience with the bigger faery creatures had so far not been very positive. The sprites saw the shadow pass over her face.

  “He's a friend,” Bellat said. “He lives in the river too. He wants to help.”

  “Come on, Tab,” Ani moaned, still pulling at the front of her clothes, her little wings vibrating furiously with the effort of trying to drag Tabitha forwards.

  “Okay, okay.”

  Tabitha grabbed her bag and the three sprites danced all around her, clapping their hands and whooping with excitement.

  “You're going to meet the brook horse!” Ani giggled.

  Tabitha allowed herself to be pushed and pulled along the river by the water sprites to where the ground levelled out into a big grassy stretch alongside the water. She stared. As promised, a small horse was prancing around on the grass, flicking its long, black mane and tossing its head about. She stopped walking.

  “You really found a horse,” she said in surprise.

  “Yes, yes,” Corida crowed. “A horse to hurry us on our way!”

  “It won't be afraid of me?”

  Tabitha had never worked very much with horses before. Brigit's family kept a couple at the dairy, but Tabitha had never much seen the point of them, since they didn't give you milk or meat or fur.

  “No, he's our friend,” Bellat urged, shoving at her back again.

  Tabitha walked slowly across the grass to where the horse was stamping its feet about and pacing back and forth. When it saw her approaching, it turned and gave her a big, toothy grin. Tabitha didn't know why this surprised her, as the sprites had told her that it was a faery horse, but seeing such a human expression on an animal's face made her stop in her tracks anyway.

  “My friends tell me you would like a ride,” it told her, giving her another broad, wily smile.

  Tabitha looked nervously at the sprites, but they were still just enormously excited.

  “Yes, a ride, a ride!” Ani cried.

  “Go on, Tab,” Bellat trilled.

  “I miss having a rider to keep me company,” the brook horse said. “I'd be ever so happy to carry you on my back for a while.”

  “Thank you.” Tab forced herself to smile. “If you're sure it's no trouble.”

  “No trouble, no trouble at all,” the brook horse assured her, and trotted right up to her so that she could mount him.

  This was going to help, Tab told herself. It would get her to the Iron City faster. She ran a hand gently over the brook horse's back. It was rough to touch, and damp, from the rain she supposed. But the sprites had said it lived in the river, so perhaps it didn't mind being out in the drizzle.

  “Yes, yes!” Ani settled on Tab's shoulder and stroked her hair. “He's a friend, see?”

  Tabitha ran her hand over the horse's withers and carefully hoisted herself up and round onto its back. It wasn't too hard to mount, as the horse was small, but she felt immediately uncomfortable. Its bony spine dug into her, and its hair irritated her skin. But before Tabitha could say anything, her faery friends had already clambered onto the horse's back behind her, and the brook horse began trotting forwards. Tabitha wobbled, and quickly sunk her hands into the horse's mane, gripping on tight. Its gait was so strange, unlike anything she'd experienced before. She did her best to move with the horse, but she felt awkward, as if she might lose her balance at any moment.

  “What's your name, spritefriend?” the horse asked her.

  “Tabitha,” she replied shakily. “What's yours?”

  “I'm the brook horse,” it said.

  “Right.”

  “And you're the girl with the river in her soul,” the brook horse said, and it sounded thoughtful.

  “So the sprites say,” Tabitha smiled weakly.

  The brook horse stayed quiet then, and so Tabitha stayed quiet too. She still felt very uneasy. She missed chattering to her friends, but she didn't feel like she could talk to them in front of this strange new creature. Were they really going any faster like this than they would have been if they were walking? She wondered whether it had been a mistake to take up the offer of a ride; the sprites were fun, harmless she was sure, but they didn't exactly match the picture of helpful sidekicks that she had read about in her stories, and something about the brook horse was making her very nervous...

  Suddenly, the sprites all dropped from the back of the horse. Tabitha twisted round, looking frantically for where they'd gone. But before she could do anything, the brook horse had taken off, more quickly than she thought such a strange little creature should be able to move. Tabitha screamed in panic as the horse rushed for the river. She felt tears spring to her eyes. She was such a fool to have trusted anything in the river after everything she had seen so far; this was going to be her end, and this time her grandmother wasn't here to save her.

  She felt the spray of the river water up the sides of her legs, the water icy on her skin, and she braced herself for whatever was about to come. The brook horse reared up, and Tabitha could hold on no longer. She slid back off the horse to land with a wet thwap in the water. Tabitha felt all her muscles tensing up as she waited for the sharp hands to grab her, the pointed teeth to sink into her skin... but nothing happened. Her senses slowly returning to her, Tabitha scrambled to her feet, coughing and spluttering. She dragged her pack up from the bottom of the river and held it up high above the water, hoping and praying that her book of fairytales hadn't got too wet. She hadn't even read it yet. Her other hand went to her chest, feeling for the stone her mother had left her. To her relief, it was still there.

  As she checked herself and her possessions to make sure everything was still in one piece, Tabitha became aware of the roar of laughter from the riverbank. The brook horse was laughing and laughing, white teeth flashing again. Furious, Tabitha started wading back towards it, but it simply cantered off, still braying with laughter.

  But the laughter hadn't stopped. The three sprites were rolling around with laughter on the riverbank, gasping for breath in their hysteria.

  “That wasn't funny!” Tab shouted, but they weren't paying any attention to her at all.

  Furious, she scrambled out from the river and stomped swiftly up the riverbank, not looking at her little friends. Their shrieks of laughter were still tickling at her ears. Tabitha dragged the book out of her bag and inspected it for damage. It was a little soggy at the edges, but salvageable, she hoped. She pulled out each item of clothing from her bag in turn, wringing out the water and thinking miserably about how they were going to stink of the river from hereon. Miserably, she looked at the soggy remains of what had been the last of the bread from home. Tabitha tossed it aside, unable to look at it. Let the wild animals have it.

  She looked about for some dry wood, and set to lighting a fire. She needed to dry everything out – not to mention herself, for she was shivering now, having got so wet on such a cold day. Determined not to cry, Tabitha focused all of her energy on getting the fire to catch, and she could have cried with relief when it finally took. She blew softly on it, willing it to flicker to life, and piled up more branches around it with shaking hands. She fed it more wood until she was confident it wouldn't dry out, and then laid out her sodden clothes around it. They would have to dry out on the floor. Finally, Tabitha stripped off down to her underclothes, knowing that she would be warmer without her soaking clothes before collapsing crossly by the fire. She gently laid out A Compendium of Faerie, praying that the book wouldn't catch while it dried out.

  Tabitha remained hunched up by the fire, getting more and more irritated by the endless laughter of the sprites, until eventually they crept over to join her, tears of mirth still streaking their strang
e little faces.

  “Sister,” Ani wheedled, “are you cross with us?”

  “Yes,” Tabitha snapped, not looking at her.

  “Ah, but it was just a joke, sister,” Bellat said, coming to sit at her feet. “It was very funny.”

  “It wasn't,” Tabitha said crossly. “I'm freezing now.”

  “Cold, sister?” Corida asked in surprise. “From the river?”

  “Yes from the river,” Tabitha said, exasperated. “From your brook horse friend.”

  Ani stifled another giggle, and Tabitha shot her a dark look.

  “Sorry, sister!” she lamented. “We find the brook horse funny!”

  Tabitha just scowled into the fire.

  “He's an old friend,” Corida offered. “He lives in the river, where he waits to make his joke with humans who are silly enough to get on his back. But he's harmless, really, he just wants to play with you.”

  Tabitha frowned, not entirely pleased at being referred to as a silly human, but begrudgingly she thought that perhaps the sprites hadn't intended any harm... after all, they couldn't know that getting so cold from the water could be quite dangerous for a human. Perhaps it had all just been a misunderstanding.

  “We just wanted you to join in the joke, sister.”

  Ani landed on her shoulder and began combing the tangles out of her wet hair. Tabitha tried to smile. Even if it had been funny to them, she couldn't help still feeling a little uneasy.

  She glanced down at A Compendium of Faerie and thought that perhaps it was about time she started reading it after all. If nothing else, it might mean that she fell for fewer of the sprites' tricks.

  11

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The girl in the mountains was awake again. She wasn't sure what it was that had woken her this time, but now that she was awake she could feel that something was changing. It was a feeling that came from the earth around her, and had settled deep in her bones. The world was different now. She knew it. But how could that be?

  The girl put her head in her hands. Thinking after all this time hurt. She felt groggy, like she had been in desperate need of a good night's sleep and just been woken from a too-short nap. Things were very cloudy.

  Trying to keep her head as still as possible, the girl slowly sat herself up against the wall. The stone dug into her back, but she had been unaware of her body for so long now that she hardly noticed. The girl turned her head to one side, so that her ear rested against the stone, and she tried to listen.

  The earth around her had quietened down again now. Everything had stopped shouting at her, but she could still hear the voices all whispering anxiously to one another. She gently raised a hand to stroke the soft moss growing up the wall, but it barely seemed to notice. Likewise, when she touched the stone walls, the soil beneath her, they barely acknowledged her. Even the insects were too busy hurrying around to pay the girl any attention. They were distracted – distracted by whatever had happened that had woken the girl up. She wished that they would talk to her. That she knew what had happened.

  The girl didn't know why she had been woken up, but she was sure that it was important.

  12

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lysander was standing in the middle of a vast, cold, black room. He was trying desperately to look as self-assured as possible given the circumstances. But the bleak room stank of iron, which always made him nervous – which made him less persuasive than he could otherwise have been. Lysander would never have let the Court know it, but the truth of it was that he could hardly stand to be in the room at all. Not that he would have had any choice in the matter anyway. He had been summoned to recount what had happened on his mission, and so that was what he was going to have to do.

  Lysander had made it back to the Iron City more quickly than he'd dared hope. He'd raced overland with little pause for rest until he had reached the next village to the north of Tabitha's, where he had stolen a horse and urged it back to the Iron City as quickly as the mount could go. He had been a little worried to notice that there seemed to be no evidence of any other faery creatures as he made his way back up towards the north; but then again, he told himself, he had avoided all of the villages he'd passed on the way back. It was perfectly possible that he would have seen more of the fae had he stopped in any of those places along the way.

  Upon returning, Lysander had been summoned straight to the council room, but since he disliked being ordered about he had first returned to his quarters where he had bathed and made himself more presentable. When he had requested something to eat, however, the servant had instead ushered him straight through to the council room, whispering conspiratorially that the Court were irritated to have been left waiting. This was unusual, and Lysander had appreciated the servant's concern, but all things considered he wasn't too worried at that point. The Court had always allowed him his little eccentricities. He was their best thief, after all.

  From around the edge of the room, the thirteen members of the Iron Court watched him from their tall, throne-like chairs. They were barely able to contain themselves, and as he took in the agitated, excited atmosphere of the room, for the first time Lysander began to feel uneasy. There was something about their eager, wide-eyed look which unsettled him; the look was frenetic, bordering on hysteria. The Court were not going to be happy with him, he realised.

  Lysander steadied himself with a deep breath, the air tart with iron, and he began.

  “My Court,” he said, stooping as low as he could in greeting.

  “Yes, yes.” Magnus, the leader of the Court, waved his hand impatiently. His eyes were gleaming, and he couldn't keep from leaning forward in his chair. “Enough with the pleasantries, Lysander. We don't need to hear them now. Tell us what you found.”

  Lysander swallowed. No, they were not going to be happy at all.

  “After a prolonged search, I found the village,” he said slowly.

  There was a collective intake of breath. Lysander risked another look up, and there it was again – that same air of unfettered glee.

  “I found her,” Lysander continued hesitantly. “Madeleine's daughter.”

  A dull chatter swept around the room as the members of the Court all whispered excitedly to one another.

  “We never doubted you, Lysander,” Magnus purred, silencing the rest of the room. His voice remained steady, but his hands were clasped together so tightly that they had gone white at the knuckles. “And most importantly, Lysander... did she have it?”

  Lysander took a deep breath, and looked him squarely in the eye.

  “I... I don't know, Magnus.”

  He saw the rage and confusion flit across Magnus's face, the anger and disappointment spreading out to the rest of the Council members. He felt the muttered disapproval, the disbelief that their best thief should have failed them. Something in the air, in the attitude towards him, changed in that moment, and Lysander felt it.

  “I have good reason for returning without it,” he hurriedly continued, “something I think you'll all want to hear, even more than you want this stone of Madeleine's.”

  “Oh really,” Magnus said in a frozen, furious voice. “And since when did you, Lysander, become responsible for deciding what is of the most interest to this Court?

  “Magnus – ”

  “And indeed I wonder what could possibly be more important than your explicit instructions. Was I not clear that the girl needed to be eliminated, the stone brought back to us?”

  “Magnus,” Lysander said quietly, “if I had thought that the girl posed any threat, I would have eliminated her, you know that I would have done.”

  “It is not up to you to make that decision, Lysander. You do not have all of the information we do regarding this girl.”

  “Magnus, I think the fae are waking up.”

  Still trying very hard to keep his nerves under control, Lysander glanced around the room to see what impact this statement had had on the rest of the Court. They were all frozen in sho
ck, some looking alarmed, others sceptical. So they didn't know, Lysander thought with satisfaction. They didn't know it had happened. He had regained the upper hand.

  “I know it sounds impossible,” he continued, “but I saw it myself, Magnus. A sea serpent attacking boats on the moorings. Jenny Greenteeth at the riverside – she attacked the girl. It's happening, Magnus.”

  The Court remained dangerously silent. No one dared breathe until Magnus had replied to Lysander. He shifted from foot to foot, convinced that this information was enough to get him off the hook.

  “You idiot boy,” Magnus hissed. “Did you not understand your instructions?”

  Lysander felt his heart skip. Surely his information had been worth more than some keepsake Madeleine had left her daughter?

  “Of course, Magnus.” Lysander straightened up, his face whitening. “But I thought that this was more important.”

  “Foolish boy to return without such an important weapon! Especially if what you say is true. You have no idea what you might have left there.”

  Magnus was white with fury. Lysander could sense the panic in him – but he was truly angry, too.

  “You're right Magnus,” Lysander retorted coldly, turning on the offensive. “I don't have any idea what I left there. Because, Magnus, you refused to tell me anything about this mission. I asked you when I left to share further information with me, but you declined.”

  “You received the information you needed,” Magnus barked. “That is how it always has been.”

  “So you still won't tell me what I did wrong?” Lysander was white with rage now. His anxiety over how the Court would respond to the information he had procured for them was now replaced with a trembling anger. The Iron Court rarely denied him anything. Their best thief was worth more to them than any one mission.

  “You failed to retrieve the hagstone,” Magnus said, “and so you failed in your mission. That is all that you need to know.”