The Wild Folk

by Sylvia V Linsteadt

  Comfrey smiled politely, impatient. “Myrtle,” she said after the hare swallowed her last bite. The candle’s shadow flicked and ducked against the wall in a sudden wind. “What did you mean when you said you’d come just in time? Just in time for what? You can’t just say that kind of thing and then leave it hanging.”

  The leveret looked up at the girl. She sat cross-legged on her bedroll, the two nettle-fibre pillows propped up against the earthen wall. In the candlelight her two dark braids, wind-blown but still intact from her clambering through the willows earlier that day, shone black as thunderheads. She was skinny and tall, like she had recently grown but hadn’t quite caught up with the sudden gangly length of her arms and her bony knees, which stuck up now through the sturdy old linen of her nightdress. Sniffing nearer at Comfrey’s hand, Myrtle paused.

  The girl smelled oddly wild, despite the neat little earthen house, the fenced vegetable plot and beehives and goats. It was a certain sharp musk beneath the smell of peppermint soap and wild lavender. The hare looked up again. Comfrey’s eyes were light against her dark skin, a greenish colour in the candle-glow, eager but utterly without guile. Myrtle was expert at sensing any kind of trickery or dishonesty. Any self-respecting hare learned those things not long after they were born.

  “Look,” she said, settling back onto her haunches beside Comfrey. “To be honest with you, it’s something of a mystery to me too. I wasn’t brought up like a normal black-tailed hare, with a hare mother, in the scrub and meadows, learning to leap and forage on my own. I was raised by your kind. Well.” The leveret paused. “Somewhere between your kind and mine. The Greentwins. Me and my twin brother Mallow both.”

  “The Greentwins? They really exist?” said Comfrey, catching her breath. A smile of astonished curiosity spread over her face.

  “Why of course!” said Myrtle.

  “And you lived with them? What was it like? Do they really have green hair and—” Comfrey caught herself. “I’m sorry, I’m just so curious you see, because nobody here knows much of anything about the Wild Folk, or if they do it’s pretty much a forbidden topic.”

  “Is it indeed? How strange humans are,” the leveret mused. “I did live with them. For all the nine months of my life before now I’ve lived in their green cart pulled by elk, and they and my twin Mallow were my only family. The Greentwins sent us on various little missions – fetch this certain bunch of bearberry leaves growing out of this particular serpentine-stone outcrop, or fetch those mimulus flowers, the most orange ones from the hottest bit of hillside, or investigate the broken heart of the winding patch of road where several hundred raccoons were murdered many years ago, when there were automobiles.”

  “Roads can have broken hearts?” Comfrey whispered, her eyes wide.

  “Why of course. And ghosts. Anyhow, the Greentwins are doctors, as you’d call them,” Myrtle continued, “but they are doctors for whole hills or meadows or families of bobcats or old roads or haunted barns from long ago. Anything that was wounded by what happened during the Collapse, or has been since. And my brother and I are – or I guess were until now – their swift little helpers. They taught us to talk to them in human tongues. They taught us the roads and paths through all the hills and valleys and mountains and deserts of the Country. And then, this very night, they asked us to be brave, and to allow two owls to carry us high up in the night sky. They explained to us that this was the biggest task yet. Angelica, the sister twin, she told me that the owl was going to carry me to a girl named Comfrey in a clay and straw house in a village called Alder, and I was not to panic or squirm, but to follow this girl. I was to be her guide, because it was a matter of life and death, not just for them or me but the whole island of Farallone itself. The same thing happened to my twin brother, Mallow, only he was sent to the City…”

  “The City?” said Comfrey, hoarse, her heart beating hard. “And you were sent to me, here? The Greentwins know my name too, just like the Bobcat-girl?”

  “Bobcat-girl?” said Myrtle. “You’ve spoken to a Bobcat-girl?” She groomed at her chest-fur, thinking. “Something is truly at work here…”

  “I hardly said a word!” exclaimed Comfrey, feeling almost feverish with excitement now. “It was the Bobcat-girl who spoke to me! And then, today, I accidentally spied on some Basket-witches and they asked me if I wanted to learn to weave the basket of my own fate!”

  “Did they indeed?” said Myrtle, her nose quivering. “You are a curious human girl, just like you smell. Like I said, it seems I came just in time! You can’t just go about meddling in Wild Folk ways all by yourself like this. Though what we’re actually meant to do about any of it I can hardly say.”

  “Any of what?” said Comfrey, leaning very near.

  “That’s the trouble,” replied the leveret. “The Greentwins didn’t say! They are mysterious like that, you see. All I know is that I’m meant to follow you, and help you, and somehow this will help Farallone itself.”

  “All of Farallone?” Comfrey whispered. “But I’ve never been further than the town of Crab Apple in my whole life! And that was only once, for the Blossom Festival…I could see the Juniper Mountains from there, with snow on them! I’ve heard about Egret Valley, where the grapes come from, and once the cobbler went to Tule at the river delta for his sister’s wedding. But I don’t know anything about all of Farallone, Myrtle. Is it really in danger again? Will there be another Collapse? Everything seems so peaceful, so…normal. How could it be in danger?” She shuddered, thinking of the stories she had heard of that time. Sickness, even a regular flu, caused panic among the villagers, remembering stories their grandmothers had passed down from their own grandmothers about the Plagues and poisoned waters, and how many people had died.

  “I don’t know,” said Myrtle, blinking her golden eyes. “The Greentwins believe it is. That the way we’ve sealed ourselves off from each other – City from Country and Country from Wild Folk, so that nobody trusts anyone else or goes between the three – will be our undoing. But how two leverets and two human children can bring all those pieces together, I have no idea!”

  Comfrey was silent for a time, worrying at a bit of her quilt between her fingers and watching the candle’s shadows on the wall. Her thoughts were on her father and whatever it was that had sent him to the City eight years earlier. Visions, dreams? What did he know? What had he seen? Was she to follow in his footsteps? Her chest swelled a little, despite her fear.

  “Listen, Myrtle,” she said, trying to sound capable, trying to sound like somebody the Greentwins would set their hopes on. “The Basket-witches seem to know something about my fate. And if my fate has something to do with Farallone’s fate, then maybe it’s a good place to start?” The words came out a bit thin, as she could hardly believe them herself. She was only an ordinary Country girl! And yet, another voice in her countered, and yet… Your eyes have been turned towards the world of the Wild Folk your whole life long. Maybe you are not so ordinary after all.

  Myrtle regarded her with admiring golden eyes. “But Comfrey, you don’t know Wild Folk. Ask them a question and they answer you with another. Nothing is as simple as it seems, over the boundary line in Olima. Still, it’s as good a plan as any. It’s a start.” And with that, the little hare yawned, showing long, blunt front teeth and a small pink tongue, and settled down, chin to chest, ears flat along her back. Within moments, she was fast asleep.

  Quivering a little at the strange wonders this day had brought to her doorstep, and with a coil of pure excitement in her chest, Comfrey blew out the candle, pulled the wool blankets up to her nose, and tried to get some sleep. Somewhere below her awe and excitement, there was a feeling of strange certainty. At last, near dawn, she slept.

  The next thing she knew her mother was shaking her awake, the sun broad and warm through the windows.

  “Comfrey, love, are you sick?” Maxine was saying, concerned. Groggy, Comfrey opened her eyes with some effort. Her lids were heavy, sleep-dusted. She rubbed th
em and sat up suddenly, putting her hand on the empty place where Myrtle had been.

  “Bad dreams, slept terribly,” Comfrey muttered, trying to hide her concern about the hare.

  “I let you sleep, lovely, because I thought maybe you’d come down with a cold. But you’d better get up now and feed the geese, and then help me make milk cakes for tonight.” Maxine patted Comfrey’s leg under the covers, scanned her daughter’s face once with dark, searching, motherly eyes, and headed back to the kitchen. She bent to pick up a stray carrot top with a confused frown as she left.

  “There’s hot water by the wood stove to wash!” she called from the narrow hall, bare feet padding in that assured way Comfrey always liked to hear at night or in the morning.

  When the door closed Comfrey sprang up. The morning light was warm and beaming all over the hardpack floor.

  “Myrtle? Where are you?” Comfrey whispered. For a moment she heard no response and her heart dropped. Had she dreamed it all? She felt a shock of despair.

  Myrtle sprang up to the window sill from a patch of calendula and peppermint that grew outside. Several sticky orange petals clung to her tawny fur, and the scent of mint came in with her.

  “I’m not so easily scared off,” said the hare, licking mud from her lean paws. “Just went out for breakfast. Lovely carrot patch, excellent kale.”

  “Myrtle, that’s our food! And what if someone had seen you? It’s dangerous. People kill rabbits and deer if they come over the line, into our villages. It’s believed they’re offering themselves as food, and that the Wild Folk have sanctioned it.”

  “I am not a rabbit! I am a hare,” Myrtle huffed. “Very different. Much quicker. And I’m not worried about people catching me, only hawks or bobcats. Silent as silent can be, those ones, and claws sharper than any knife.” Myrtle hopped down to the floor without a sound.

  “Right,” Comfrey stammered, a little startled at the hare’s defensiveness. “Listen, I forgot that today’s a holiday,” the girl said. “It’s a feast day in the village centre, for the Festival of Candles, the return of milk and sap and green. We all cook things and bring them to the fire and there’s dancing and music while the sun goes down. I’m trying to work out when there might be a moment to sneak off, without my mother noticing.” Comfrey went to a firwood trunk in the corner of the room and started to pull on a pair of wool stockings. The mention of her mother had given Comfrey sudden pause, and she fastened her stockings slowly, remembering how Maxine’s face had fallen yesterday at the mention of her father. Was she crazy, to go rushing off after Wild Folk? How did she know she wouldn’t upset the whole order of everything? What if her mother got a bad flu, or all the geese were eaten by a bobcat?

  “Myrtle,” she said in a voice much less confident than it had been the night before. The hare looked up from her grooming – the calendula leaf was very sticky, and hard to dislodge – and studied the girl’s face. “Will I bring misfortune on my family if I go running after the Basket-witches? Isn’t it forbidden? I’m not afraid, not for myself.” Her voice dipped, betraying the lie. “But my mother – she’s already lost my father. I couldn’t bear it if I did something wrong that hurt her.”

  And yet Comfrey’s eyes were far away, caught in the memory of the Bobcat-girl peering from her thicket; the smooth shaping of clay dirt into bobcats; the yellow willow branches, watching those women and their hands as old as rain. Myrtle regarded her a moment longer. The clouds moved thin and white in the winter morning sky. A thrush darted past the window, then a robin.

  “I don’t know what will happen,” the leveret said at last. “But I do know that the Greentwins would not have sent us like they did unless it was very necessary. Still, it seems best to stay on the safe side. Since I’m not a human, why don’t you send me across the border, a sort of go-between. I’ll investigate these Basket-witches, if they’re still camped nearby, feel things out, and report back to you. Then, well—”

  “Yes!” Comfrey’s face was shining again. “You’re not a Country person, after all. That would be different, not a breach. I’ll come with you just as far as the Offering spot, and if it seems safe I’ll follow you, and we’ll see what we can find out. I’ll just help my mother with a few things, and then we can slip off for a little while. So long as we’re back by dinner. ”

  Comfrey washed quickly in the basin by the wood stove. Maxine watched her daughter from the corner of her eye, and noted a cheerful secretiveness in Comfrey’s half-smile. She shook her head over the pumpkin as she sliced and peeled, wondering at the moods of twelve-year-old girls. Comfrey put on a brown wool dress and sweater. Then she fed and watered the geese, milked the three goats into a wooden bucket, cut several handfuls of sage for the cakes, all faster than usual. Her hands ached from milking at that pace, and the goats regarded her from their narrow milking platform near the beehives with odd, slant-eyed knowing.

  “Going to check on the Offerings, Mama, just a peek!” she blurted out as she trotted back through the house, flushed from the cold mid-morning air and her bustling efficiency with the chores.

  “Frey, I need help with all these cakes. I can’t make twelve all on my own!” Maxine looked up from the kitchen counter, wrist-deep in milky sweet dough, her full mouth pursed. Comfrey knew that look, and didn’t like it.

  “Just half an hour, please? I only want to make sure they took everything!” Comfrey, not used to hiding anything at all from her mother, gave a quick big grin, her cold-flushed cheeks masking her blush.

  Maxine rolled her eyes and waved her off. “Be quick about it.”

  In her bedroom, Comfrey put the blue cape on again, this time hiding Myrtle in its folds under her left arm. The hare complained and protruded slightly, but Comfrey kept her to the outside. Maxine didn’t look up as her daughter left the house, deer-leather boots padding soft and excited on the floor.

  “You’re going to have to stay under here until we leave the village,” whispered Comfrey as they passed the beehives.

  “That’s ridiculous!” said Myrtle, and twisted, then kicked free. “I can hide myself, thank you.”

  Comfrey sighed, looking down at the lanky stubborn hare, all fur and muscle. “Suit yourself.”

  The girl paused in front of the hives, inclined her head, murmuring about checking the Offerings. Then she introduced Myrtle to the bees. The hare bowed her head and ears respectfully, then added, “I come from the Greentwins.”

  Comfrey looked around instinctively, hoping no one was passing by to see a talking hare. Then she turned and walked quickly down the muddy dirt path, the hare bounding in the tall wet grass behind a patch of wild blackberry, nothing but a blur of gold. When they reached the road that crossed the marsh towards the Offering hills, they saw that a couple of silvery buckeye tree limbs had snapped and lay straight across it, downed in the storm. The air smelled stirred up with fresh dirt and fire-smoke and resinous leaves. Ribbons of water carved the pathway, streaked with alder and laurel leaves. Comfrey ran ahead, eager to peek at her Offering bundle before leading Myrtle to the place she’d seen the Basket-witches.

  “It’s gone! Everything, even the cloth and candles!” the girl cried. “They don’t normally take the whole altar!” She climbed up the slope to get a better look. All that was left of her Offering bundle was a single red thread snagged on a nearby thistle and a golden rivulet of wax that had hardened onto the smooth stone. Myrtle bounded up the hill in a stride and sniffed everywhere around the edges of the serpentine outcrop.

  “I don’t think I smell any Bobcat-folk,” said Myrtle, nosing about the grass. “And bobcat is a smell I know well!” She raised herself up to her hind legs and sniffed the air, then lowered to the earth again. “I smell willow, and deer, and well-oiled wheels. But I can’t be sure; it’s a tangled-up smell. There’s a mystery about it.”

  “Do you think it was the Basket-witches, Myrtle?”

  “I’ll go up over the hill a little way and have a look,” said the little hare. “I’ll be ba
ck in a flash!” She bounded off, pausing between each leap to smell the air and grass.

  Comfrey swallowed hard, feeling a nervous quiver in her chest. What was she doing out here anyway, flirting with this forbidden boundary? Her thoughts spun. She twisted her hands and tried to take a deep breath but it was hard to get enough air.

  A high-pitched squeal shook her from her thoughts. She saw a flash of red up beyond the slender trunks of the bay trees, well into the land of Olima.

  “Comfrey!” came Myrtle’s voice, pinched and frantic. “Help!”

  There was no time to worry about forbidden boundaries now. She looked back only once, across the marsh towards the safety of the Country. Then Comfrey took a deep breath, muttered a prayer of protection to the Offering spot, and ran off up the hill, legs burning at the steepness of the slope, stopping once at the outcrop of bay trees to catch her breath. “Myrtle, where are you?” she called, gasping. The hill rounded off to its peak five metres higher up, and Myrtle’s high little voice seemed to be coming from just beyond. Comfrey saw another flashing of red. This time it looked orange-tinged, like fire.

  A large bird came veering up over the crest of the hill, flying lopsided, with Myrtle kicking her strong back legs into the creature’s stomach. At first glance Comfrey thought it was a massive red-tailed hawk. Then, as it tacked right on a wind, showing its tail feathers and wings fully, Comfrey gasped aloud – the red, fanned tail was glowing orange as an ember and flickering with flames, as were the tops and edges of the wings.

  “Stop!” yelled Comfrey, then realized how silly that sounded. Fiery birds didn’t just stop at the command of a girl! With a leap she was running uphill again, straight for the flame-feathered hawk, who had pinned Myrtle on the ground under his claws and was about to slice at her white neck with a sharp beak. Some bounding panic gave Comfrey’s legs extra strength. She thundered up the hill and yelled again, hitching up her brown dress with one hand and waving frantically with the other.