The Wild Folk

by Sylvia V Linsteadt

  She realized she only had a simple story of the Collapse in her mind, the kind that’s easy to memorize and repeat: the earthquakes, darkness, plagues from the water carried by insects, a handful of Brothers hoarding the last of the stargold greedily to power their City, building their Wall high and killing anyone who tried to get in. Outside, in the Country, the Wild Folk appearing in the hills and abandoned towns, as if they’d always been there, healing the water and earth and air. But where exactly did the Elk and the Fire Hawk fit in? So much had been lost during the Collapse, so many ancient mythologies from the First People destroyed, that afterwards the Country Folk had been left only with scraps, and new stories had emerged. She wasn’t sure how much time passed between the coming of the Wild Folk and the emergence of the four human survivors who became the salvation of all who were left outside the walls: Old Man John, his sister Bethany, and Bethany’s daughters Hatta and Rose, all farmers who knew about growing food. They knew about the shape of a landscape and where the water ran and how to make compost and what to grow next to what, and in what rotation, and how to make a house out of clay and straw.

  Once they had established a clear code of conduct between humans and the natural world, a code that protected the land, water and animals from any further exploitation, and included not only the leaving of Offerings but a series of other rules that ensured that humans never took more than they needed, the Wild Folk retreated from the Country to the land of Olima, and were scarcely seen ever again. No one was certain why. That terrible time, the time of the Collapse, was shrouded in much mystery. Old Man John, Blessed Bethany, Hatta and Rose spread their knowledge. The villages formed out of those who had survived. Those names were household nouns to Comfrey – sanctified, heroic figures from the past who seemed only part human. In muttered prayers over dinner their names were often thrown into the thank yous to the lettuce and chicken and beets. “Old Man John” was a high compliment to any exceptional act of wisdom or competence, as was “Blessed Bethany”. Sometimes Maxine called Comfrey “my little Hatta-Rose” when she had been especially helpful and thorough harvesting garlic in the garden, or turning the raspberry beds for new canes in March.

  That was the extent of Comfrey’s understanding of the Collapse, and it didn’t have much to do with Before. She knew that Before, the greed of the Star-Priests had turned Farallone into a wasteland. That in their City of New Albion they had found a way to turn stargold, which they mined out of the earth, into fuel. That this was against the laws of nature and of wholeness, that the use of such fuel had covered much of Farallone with cement roads and aqueducts, enormous fields of corn, and that poison from mining and from the Star-Breakers got into the water and the air. That the earthquakes and Plagues had come as punishment for the overreaching humans, to put them in their place and protect the land of Farallone from total destruction. Since then, the Country people had been careful to do each thing right. She thought of herself and the other Country Folk as virtuous, as Good, while the people in the City were Bad. She didn’t want to be Bad. She didn’t want to be seen as thoughtless and selfish by the Basket-witches, by the Bobcat-girl, by Myrtle.

  Her tears dried in salty lines across her cheeks as she lay under the cold stars, thinking hard.

  “I’ll prove them wrong,” she whispered to herself. “I won’t be what they expect. I won’t be like the humans Before…”

  She woke to what seemed a gentle dawn. A light smouldered along the horizon. Stirring a little under the heavy skins to sit up, she saw that there were still a few stars overhead, and that the horizon was dark. And yet there was a light breaking beyond the hill. It seemed to stretch its wings, sending sparks like droplets. Then Comfrey realized it was the Fire Hawk, rising from his own slumber, wheeling high to talk with the stars. She breathed a sigh of pure wonder. It was like watching one of the stars themselves, dancing. She fumbled her wool cloak over her shoulders and ran barefoot out into the meadow to get a little closer.

  “What are you doing?” groaned Myrtle, clambering out from under the covers, her ears crooked with sleep. But Comfrey was already away down the hill, following after the Fire Hawk as if in a dream. “Oh, drat, she’s off!” cursed the leveret, but despite the fear pounding in her little heart, she bounded through the dewy grass, calling her name. “Comfrey! Come back!”

  But Comfrey was wholly entranced by the bright wings of the Fire Hawk, and how, against the sky, the sparks he left behind seemed to form patterns – blossoms, spirals, webs. Now dawn really was beginning to lift the edges of the hills with light and, a long, glowing feather fell from the Fire Hawk’s wing and drifted down to the ground. It hissed when it touched the dewy meadow grass. Comfrey gasped with delight and darted towards it.

  “Don’t even think of picking that up!” squealed the hare. The Fire Hawk, hearing Myrtle, wheeled towards the sound of her voice with hungry eyes. The little hare stopped still inside a thicket of green wild iris leaves, so as not to be in plain view of the Hawk, and fought between her desire to remain safely hidden, and her desire to stop the silly girl from doing something rash.

  Comfrey ignored the leveret. She was in a trance, her eyes fixed on the bright glow of the feather. She stepped nearer. It was as long as her forearm, rippling its colours just as a hot ember does – gold, orange, red, silver – or perhaps a star. The sight of it made her feel faint, and suddenly she wanted it to be hers so fiercely she thought she would do anything to hold it and to keep it.

  “What are you thinking? Stop it, Comfrey, really, just listen to me!” the leveret cried from her hiding place. The Fire Hawk, hearing Myrtle’s small voice again, wheeled nearer. Comfrey only half heard. She was imagining what the feather would feel like in her hands. It was surely a thing of great magic and power, for the Fire Hawk seemed made partly of the stars himself. And it was so beautiful. Surely it wouldn’t hurt, just to hold it for a moment? Without another thought, Comfrey’s hand closed around the quill. It felt hot, but didn’t burn. The beauty of each smouldering fibre and the sweet scent of pine resin and smoke made her chest ache.

  She brought the feather closer to her face, marvelling at its intricate light. But the light was rippling and changing. No longer did it look like the fibres of a feather but a landscape on fire. The feather had become a molten mirror, and in it flashed a series of visions. First, Comfrey saw the land of Olima as if from the eye of a bird, high overhead, the shape of its coastline like a coyote’s profile, the borderlands a green valley flanked by two ocean inlets north and south, and two ridges east and west. All across it were hundreds and hundreds of bright lights, like stars. The vision changed, and close up Comfrey saw that all those lights were the hearts of Wild Folk. Their veins were full of a golden light. And they were being chained together, one by one, by men in strange grey robes, men with ashen eyes and strong hands and many, many guns. In the vision Comfrey saw a Mountain Lion-woman with broad hips and tawny fur lash out at one of the men with the knife-like claws at her fingertips. A shot was fired, and the Mountain Lion-woman hit the ground. Around her seeped a pool of pure gold. Then the men in the vision went into a frenzy. Gunfire rang everywhere. All of Farallone caught fire. The feather’s surface clouded with smoke.

  Comfrey screamed. The feather went as hot as fire in her hands, but she couldn’t let it go.

  “Oh Holy Mother of Hares!” cursed Myrtle, bounding out from her hiding place at breakneck speed towards Comfrey. “Now you’ve really done it! Daft human girl. I thought you knew better!”

  Comfrey looked over her shoulder at the leaping leveret as if waking from a dream. A bolt of orange flashed down from the brightening sky, leaving a streak of gold in its wake.

  “Not again,” whimpered the hare, frozen with panic. Comfrey, gathering her wits just in time, ran towards the Fire Hawk with a cry, trying to beat him away, but the bird landed on Myrtle and clamped obsidian-sharp talons round her neck. He didn’t make off with the leveret as he had done the first time, but only stood there in the gra
ss, smouldering. Myrtle’s long, pink-veined ears trembled in the hawk’s grasp.

  “Let her go!” Comfrey pleaded, holding out the feather. “I’m so sorry. Here, take it back. I know it’s yours. I should never have touched it, I should have known better! Oh, Myrtle, what have I done?”

  The Fire Hawk whistled and hissed, fixing Comfrey with a smouldering eye as Myrtle went limp in his talons.

  “Please!” Comfrey was screaming now. “Punish me instead!”

  “What on earth is all the commotion?” came a voice from up at the camp.

  Rush, who had slept closest to Comfrey, filling the night with the scent of lemon balm, rose from her bed mat, reweaving a few stray coils of her milky hair as she did so. “Oh my stars above,” she breathed, seeing Comfrey down in the meadow with the luminous feather in her hands and Myrtle in the clutches of the Fire Hawk. “Never did I think it would happen thus.”

  The marsh wren in Sedge’s green hair gave a rattling call. Her expression was strained and full of horror.

  “Look.” She pointed at the ground by the firepit, where Comfrey’s basket was nothing more than a neat circle of ash. The other baskets, in varying stages of completion, were all whole and gleaming with dew, save the girl’s.

  But both Salix and Rush were already running down the hill towards Comfrey.

  “Lay the feather down, child, and the Hawk will let the leveret go!” Salix cried, lifting her yellow skirts as she ran. “It is only a warning – he doesn’t mean any harm. He has a short temper, that’s all!”

  Comfrey, her face red and wet with tears, fell to her knees before the Fire Hawk, dropping the feather in the grass. The bird hissed again and loosed his claws. Myrtle, with a frantic lunge, leaped inside Comfrey’s cloak.

  “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, curling her body over the leveret’s and bowing her head before the Hawk. “Oh Myrtle, I’m so sorry. And what I saw in the feather…oh it was terrible! It was so terrible…”

  She felt a warm, strong arm around her shoulders, and was engulfed by the smell of trees.

  “You did what any human would have done,” soothed Salix. Turning to the Fire Hawk, she chided, “No need for such dramatic displays, my love. You know she couldn’t help herself and that you only expected as much.” The bird blinked one smouldering eye and took to the air, showering them with sparks. “This is a very serious affair,” she continued, turning back to Comfrey.

  “I know I should have left gifts and asked the Fire Hawk’s permission to touch his feather! I’m sorry, I’m only behaving like all the other greedy humans of my kind…” A small sob caught in Comfrey’s throat, and she was afraid to look up into Salix’s face.

  “Well…” the Basket-witch said, and there was a sadness in her voice. “That’s not what I meant, though it is true, a Fire Hawk should be thanked for his feather with gifts and songs. That’s why he lost his temper. But what I meant, my dear, is that this is a serious affair because our Fire Hawk has never dropped a feather before. He was entrusted to our care by the Elk of Milk and Gold at the time of the Collapse. She made him out of the molten fires of the fault line to be her messenger at that time; she left him with us, saying that if ever one of his feathers should fall, the one who found it must come all the way north to tell her, for Farallone would be in danger again. A feather dropped from the wing of the Fire Hawk means that the Fire Hawk is dying, and the Fire Hawk is but a microcosm of the soul of Farallone itself. If you bring me the fallen feather of the Fire Hawk, the Elk commanded long ago, it will be time to read the words of making and unmaking that I carry.”

  “It must be a mistake,” said Sedge, her voice a sharp knife through Salix’s gentle one. “Surely she cannot be sent across Olima to the Elk herself. Not a human girl! Surely that’s not what the Elk wanted when she entrusted her sacred Fire Hawk to us. If we send the girl alone, she’ll never make it. Or worse, she will betray us.”

  “I’d never—” Comfrey began.

  “Now, now,” soothed Rush, settling a pale hand on her sister and Comfrey both. “You saw how the Hawk burned Comfrey’s basket as well. Surely that was no mistake.” She took the embered feather gingerly from the grass and bundled it into a scrap of white deerskin from her skirts, guiding them all back to the fire.

  She pointed to Comfrey’s basket, now a silver ring of ashes, and kneeled to examine the patterns there.

  “Isn’t the message clear enough?” seethed Sedge, refusing to kneel. “He destroyed her basket. There is no pattern, only a warning. She is dangerous. She is a human. We must get rid of her, for the good of all.”

  Comfrey went very cold at these words. “Get…rid of me? Do you mean, send me home?” But inside her cape, Myrtle was trembling at the predatory edge in Sedge’s voice, and Comfrey knew in her heart that the Basket-witch meant something far worse than that.

  “Sedge,” said Salix, her face stern. “Your wariness is of course well-founded. But this girl is only a girl, and if we were to do as you say, we’d be no better than them. Besides, it is not the time for sacrifices, and they are only ever fawns.”

  “It’s all one unbroken thread leading to the Elk,” murmured Rush, still crouched over the ashes, tracing their patterns with a gentle finger. Her creamy cheeks were flushed.

  “The Elk?” managed Comfrey, who was finding it difficult to breathe. “You mean, the Elk?” After what she had seen in the feather, and after the threat in Sedge’s words, she wanted nothing more than to turn round and run right back home over the boundary, Coyote-men or no. Sedge was right. How could she, a human girl, possibly cross the land of the Wild Folk alone? How could she seek out the Creatrix herself? And what on earth would she do if she did find her?

  “Cheer up, Comfrey, you’ve got me to help you!” Myrtle tried to quip, but her tone fell a bit flat and her trembling ears betrayed her fear.

  “Yes. The Elk of Milk and Gold,” said Salix, crouching beside Rush to examine the wheel of ash. She was silent for a long time. At last, as if reciting a very old hymn, she said, “In the Beginning there was only darkness, stargold, and the milk that comes from mothers and from moons. In the Beginning there was the Spider and the Elk, who made the island called Farallone and all who live upon it. The Old Spider Mother Neeth spun down the dust of stars to the earth, and bade the Elk shape it into the lifeblood of Farallone. The spark that animates everything. The gold that men have mined from mountains and from rivers. They are the same. The Elk’s third stomach is a book of endless pages, and on those pages are written all the words of making and unmaking. It is called the Psalterium, and it too is made of stargold. It is only to be opened at the time of greatest need. Only if the very life of Farallone is at stake. No one knows what will happen if that book is opened, but it seems it must be opened now. For the Fire Hawk was not born to lie.”

  “We have heard nothing of danger coming from the City, nothing at all from the birds or the willowbuds or the roots, nothing in any of our baskets,” said Sedge, raising a thin hand to her reedy hair to quieten the rattle-cries of the marsh wren there. “And you want to send this human girl we’ve never met across our sacred land, to defile it with her every step? What if she, this wretched human, is the true danger, and the Elk too old a Creatrix to notice?”

  Despite the light-headed feeling these ancient stories of creation gave her, Comfrey suddenly found that she had been insulted quite enough for one day. She took hold of her long black braids defiantly and said, “I am no threat and I am no danger, and all my life I’ve done nothing but try to be good, and loving, and kind to all creatures! You may be right that I’m not equipped to travel this land by myself, seeing how your kind hates mine so, but I would never willingly or knowingly defile anything. This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. And all of you – and the Fire Hawk too… And anyway nobody even bothered to ask me what I saw in that feather. Maybe you’d like to know why it made me scream. Well, I’ll tell you. It was the most awful thing, lines and lines of you, of beautiful Wild Folk cha
ined by men in grey and being led away. All of your bodies glowed golden inside your veins, and then there were guns being fired and there was blood all over the ground, except it wasn’t blood, it was gold, like liquid stargold, and the men, the terrible men in grey were leaping upon it all like starving dogs. They seemed to be eating it, or gathering it up, and…and…” But the memory overcame her, the horror and the terror of what she had seen. She sank to her knees, weeping. Myrtle wriggled from her cape and crouched beside her protectively, her ears flat, her amber eyes fierce, with a look in them that said, Come near my friend and I will box you silly!

  Even Sedge was silent now. Rush and Salix had taken hold of one another’s arms. The birds in their hair had vanished deep into their nests.

  “She must go,” said Rush at last. There were tears in her eyes. “The pattern is too clear, sisters. Already the Greentwins entrusted this noble little hare to her. She will not be alone. But the feather fell at her feet and hers alone. The feather flashed its vision for her and her alone. The Fire Hawk burned her basket and hers alone. It is she who must go to the Elk, and not one of us. I don’t understand why. I know we always assumed it would be one of us, if the time ever came. But then, the ways of the Creatrix are mysterious.”

  “But she has seen what was never meant to be seen. She has seen the stargold in our blood. She has seen what the Elk meant always to hide… That all living things carry a bit of the stars in their blood,” Sedge said, but now her voice had no malice in it, only an ancient sorrow, and fear.