In Fallen Woods

by R N Merle

  Darklin tried to absorb the information, but it was often hard for her to concentrate, and it was too cold to sit still. Her thoughts drifted away from the page in front of her, as she imagined what it would be like to have the power of magic flow through her body. Darklin had never yet performed a spell herself, and though she frequently observed Gressyl preparing her spells, she had never seen them being cast. Magic intrigued and awed her. Gressyl had promised that one day she too would be a mistress of it, if she succeeded in learning the spells of the book by heart.

  She looked down at the book again, and made her mind up to concentrate, but it was too late. She hadn’t seen the witch’s dim reflection in the smeary window as she walked up behind her, hadn’t noticed Gressyl watching her stare off into darkness. The heavy end of Gressyl’s cane smashed down hard on Darklin’s knuckles where her hand kept her place in the book. Darklin inhaled shakily, the pain slow to register through the cold that had left her hands numbed.

  ‘I’ve warned you about paying attention,’ Gressyl said dispassionately. Darklin nodded, unable to speak.

  She waited for Gressyl’s footsteps to announce that she had returned to her chair; waited for her heartbeat to slow and the pain in her hand to ebb. She glued her eyes to the pages of the book, while she discreetly assessed the damage to her hand. She could discern the welt swelling. Despite her injury, she did not feel aggrieved by Gressyl’s severe discipline, but accepted it as a consequence of her own failure to concentrate. Harsh treatment was part of her routine as much as fetching water, or collecting firewood.

  Darklin did not doubt that the life of a witch was her best and only option, and conceded that living in dread of the witch’s sudden violence was the price she had to pay for it. She bowed to Gressyl’s methods, and shrank in fearful admiration of her skill and power. She was obliged to Gressyl for teaching her how to live a free life, and thankful that she was kept away from the villagers who wanted them dead. The idea of leaving, of stumbling out of the dark woods in search of a warmer, gentler place, never disquieted her mind. If she left, she believed she would not find anything better.

  Darklin put her head down and studied diligently, not willing to risk being hit again. She crammed what she needed tightly into her head, and when Gressyl tested her on what she had learned, Darklin recited the answers assuredly and without hesitation.

  At the end of the night, before Darklin went to bed, Gressyl ended the lessons by reciting and explaining the rules of their coven, the Coven of Vardyn, and their purposes. Darklin would sit, cross-legged on the floor by Gressyl’s chair, and stare at her own scuffed, pointed boots, while she was told why witchcraft must be used, why it was necessary to become a witch, and why they must reject the ways of other folk. Gressyl spoke in a low, quiet voice that crackled with approaching age.

  ‘A Witch of Vardyn is separate and superior to the plagues of men and women who infest the world like rats. We owe this to the formidable gifts of Her magic and Her wisdom. As a result we live a free life, immune to the ties and traps by which the folk are enslaved. We are beholden to no person, answerable only to Her. Her life is the only one true way to live freely. To keep her power and freedom, a witch of Vardyn is bound by certain rules. Every rule must be obeyed; a witch is no witch if one law is overlooked, twisted or broken. Listen, girl, and remember all I say, these are the Rules of Vardyn.

  The first rule: The purpose of our existence is to curse the folk and to destroy happiness. Folk are the greediest, cruellest, most foolish creatures on this earth. They are shallow, worthless, and wicked, and need to be punished for their ways. Watch the folk, and they will give you the reasons why they should be punished. Each has his own peculiar failing, be it vanity, greed, or weakness, but they all have one failing in common; they are all fools. They are fools because they are forever chasing what they call happiness, and they believe they find it in the most baseless ways and places. A witch must, above all else, destroy happiness wherever she finds it, anywhere, and in whatever form. You must turn people’s joy into their most bitter sorrow. Remember, happiness is an illusion. True happiness does not exist, and no joy goes unpunished, be it by witch, or by fate...’

  Though Darklin knew all the words by heart, the same sentences washing over her each night in a recurring hypnotic wave, she made sure she received all the words into her mind. She did not entertain the idea of letting her thoughts wander; she worried that Gressyl would probably have a way of knowing if she did.

  When Gressyl’s lecture was finished, she handed Darklin a steaming tin cup of sleeping tonic. Darklin swallowed the liquid hastily in large gulps, disliking the bitter, metallic taste. Gressyl gravely watched until every last drop had been drained, and then Darklin retired to her chamber.

  The room was very small, and only had space for the bed, which was a thin layer of straw, and a grey woollen blanket which Darklin cocooned herself in to ward off the cold. In the short moments before the potion took effect, Darklin tried to make sense of the blur of dark hours that made up her life, but she was left stranded by her own confusion, and the sensation of something lost, haunted her mind again. Darklin closed her leaden eyelids, her spinning thoughts becoming an incomprehensible whirl in which the sound of the witch’s voice, the bubble of the cauldron, and all the noises from her night, echoed darkly. The potion took effect; oblivion descended softly, and she slept like the dead through the day’s promise of light.

  The next time she woke, the first change would come.

  2

  The Folk

  The night had begun as it often did, Gressyl had left for Fallenoak to monitor the results of her curses, Darklin studied the spell book in her absence. But when the time came for Gressyl to return, Darklin watched the door and waited. Waited. Gressyl was late.

  When the door finally opened, Gressyl staggered inside, shuffled unsteadily to her chair and collapsed. Darklin knew she shouldn’t be staring. She looked down at the spell book, and listened as Gressyl slowly caught her breath. Darklin was keen to know why Gressyl’s face had a ghastly white sheen, why her hands trembled, but she didn’t dare ask.

  Eventually, Gressyl summoned Darklin and tested her on the spells she had learned that night. Then, according to their custom, Gressyl began her nightly sermon. After she had spoken the words of the first rule, Gressyl stopped suddenly, and Darklin looked up in surprise. It had never happened before. Gressyl always delivered her speech without interruption or hesitation.

  ‘You say the words,’ said Gressyl.

  The room was silent for a moment while Darklin realised what she was being asked to do, and tried to summon the words she knew by heart.

  ‘The second rule,’ Darklin began, her voice unsure and quiet. ‘A witch must reject the ways of the folk. She must live alone, outside of their world. She must not speak to them, or communicate with them in any way. It is possible that when observing folk, you may become interested in their way of life. Do not be swayed by their illusions of friendliness. Remember, they are the ultimate deceivers. Never allow yourself to be drawn into their world. Turn your back on folk; they will deceive and betray you.

  It is the way of folk to live together. Beware the trap of fellowship, it is a life of imprisonment and misery. Folk like to live in a community because they are scared to live alone. Living in a community means you have to obey the commands and whims that their society dictates. Society is a prison, a trap of conventions and attitudes, where women are kept low and helpless, and money is all that matters. Folk are enslaved by the rules that rich men make, and kept in line and afraid by the men of the Church. They order you how to think and how to live. Anyone who dares to think differently is shunned and vilified. They must take their part, like a cog in a wheel endlessly turning until they die. If you live among them, you are a slave to the good opinion of others, and at the mercy of their prejudices, and degraded into valuing yourself by their judgement.’

  Darklin jumped at a sudden clatter, and turned to see the crow t
apping on a glass jar, trying to get at the beetles inside. The witch smashed the end of the cane down on the stone floor, a hair’s breadth away from where Darklin sat.

  ‘Concentrate!’ Gressyl snapped.

  Darklin continued reciting the rules. By the time she got to the end, her throat was hot and dry. She was unused to speaking for so long. She looked down at the floor and waited for Gressyl to speak. She could feel Gressyl’s scrutinising gaze fixed on her, but she didn’t know why.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Gressyl after a long pause, ‘you will come with me to the village; it is time you saw with your own eyes the ways of folk. The time grows near when you will use what you have been taught.’

  The following night, as Darklin put on her cloak, she tried to imagine what going to the village would be like, but she found it impossible to picture people and places that she had never seen. The prospect of the unknown was stimulating, a welcome addition to her limited collection of thoughts, but it was also unsettling; an irritant to her mind that only the unravelling hours could soothe.

  ‘Here, cover your face with this. You don’t want to be seen.’ Gressyl pointed to a pile of black ash she had gathered in a trowel from around the fire. Darklin watched as Gressyl smeared it over her face, the soot becoming lodged in the crevices of her skin, and the whiteness of her complexion turn a dark smoky grey. Darklin copied her, trying not to show any reluctance, smothering a sneeze when the particles of black powder strayed up her nose.

  ‘Tonight,’ said the witch gravely, ‘you must do exactly as I say, if you are inattentive or disobey me, you will almost certainly be captured and killed. They would torture you most brutally first.’

  Darklin was made wary, but not afraid. She trusted that Gressyl was too artful, too experienced to ever be caught, and that if she kept close by her, it was not likely she would find herself at risk.

  They started out into the wood, walking single file through the darkness. Darklin carried a lantern, shaded with a grey rag, which allowed enough light for her to make progress without tripping over unfamiliar tree roots. Though none of the trees seemed recognisable, Gressyl followed a definite course, directed by landmarks that Darklin could not identify.

  After some miles the trees began to thin, and Darklin became aware of snowflakes falling softly through her field of vision. For a while she watched them gracefully descend and rise in a swell of chilling air, before they eventually fell to the frost covered ground and dissolved.

  When they came to the edge of a road, flanked on both sides by ranks of skeletal trees, Gressyl paused.

  ‘Put out the light!’ she commanded.

  Darklin struggled to extinguish the lantern speedily with fumbling, frozen fingers. Gressyl snatched it from her and concealed it amongst some dead foliage. Darklin waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Her guide from now on was a sliver of moonlight, intermittently obscured by heavy snow clouds that were speeding across the sky on a rising north-easterly wind.

  As they set off again, Darklin was conscious of a fluttering in her stomach that increased with every step she took along the road. She felt her senses strengthening; a sharpening clarity lending a cleaner shape to her thoughts, thinning the fog of her prolonged hibernation. At last her deadening routine had changed; for once she did not know what was about to happen, and was eager to find out.

  After tonight, the world beyond Gressyl’s house would become real to her. Instead of imagining what Gressyl described, she would see for herself the village, and the people who lived there. As she listened in at the windows of the closed up houses, she would feel the icy fire of hatred, a witch’s guide, she had been told, to when a curse was needed. After tonight, the performance of magic would no longer be an unimaginable mystery to her, she would have witnessed Gressyl casting her perfect spells. She would have taken part in the satisfaction of seeing a contemptible life broken and spoiled by a well-conceived curse; the ultimate reward of a witch’s labour. After tonight, she would know what her destiny looked like.

  They hurried cautiously over a bridge, and passed the sign for ‘Fallenoak’. The streets were silent and unlit; not a soul to be heard nor seen.

  ‘You must keep to the shadows and not make a sound!’ Gressyl said lowly. Darklin tried moving as silently as she could, but found it impossible to quieten the crunching sound her boots made on the frozen ground. She wondered how Gressyl was able to move so soundlessly.

  As they progressed through the village, without realising, Darklin had slowed her pace as her eyes took in the unfamiliar surroundings. Her head swept from left to right as she beheld the rows of houses, and tried to make out the lettering and pictures on the signs that hung above the shops. She scanned the streets for signs of life, for leaked light, for any evidence of people alive behind the closed doors and windows, but saw none.

  The houses leaned against one another, shoulder to shoulder. Darklin couldn’t imagine how people lived so close together. She thought of how their windows looked out over the street and at the opposite row of houses. There would always be someone watching. She shuddered at the thought of being so available to another’s scrutiny.

  ‘Keep your eyes to the ground and hurry up!’ Gressyl barked. Instantly, Darklin glued her eyes to the back of Gressyl’s heels. She suppressed her desire to glance around at the new scenes, aware only that as they passed out of the village, she was being led up a steep hill.

  The witch’s destination was a castle which dominated the crest of the hill, and looked down over the village, river, fields, and woods beyond. Four unguarded towers and large square turrets patterned the line of the roof. A disabled drawbridge was hinged over a moat that had long ago been drained, and gave access to a portcullis wrought of impenetrable iron, which had been so long unused, it was now stuck irrevocably up. Outside, sections of the high outer walls surrounding the castle grounds had crumbled into pieces, and the fallen stones taken and used by villagers before the walls could be repaired.

  Gressyl circled the castle grounds until she reached a side entrance, leading into a courtyard. When Gressyl’s quick steps came to a halt, Darklin at last looked up, and took in a pair of huge rusted iron gates, each embellished with a roaring black lion, bearing elongated fangs.

  ‘This is where the most wicked of all live,’ whispered Gressyl. Using her cane, she gently tapped twice on the unyielding metal. Darklin’s mouth dropped open in amazement as the gates slowly parted without a groan of protest. She managed to follow Gressyl inside, just before the gates closed silently behind them. They crept toward the castle with their backs against the courtyard wall, a pair of insubstantial shapes, shifting swiftly through the shadows.

  Out of nowhere, a deep, low growl announced that they had been discovered. Darklin stilled. She turned her eyes in the direction of the noise, and could make out the raised hackles of a large dog’s slowly approaching silhouette. Darklin stepped backwards, slowly and deliberately. She looked to Gressyl, waiting for her to command that they should run away and hide, but when the dog saw Gressyl, it stopped and immediately retreated, running to a corner of the courtyard where it cowered and shivered in fear. Darklin watched in awe, wishing that one day she too might have such effortless power over a creature.

  Continuing onward, they entered the main building by an unlocked servant’s door, and stole up a wide, lit corridor. Darklin was conscious of her heart hammering against her ribs, expecting that at any moment someone would appear and raise an alarm. As they followed the turn of the corridor, Darklin gaped as she caught sight of the elaborate tapestries covering the walls; woven pictures of soldiers and kings, maidens and queens, stories of characters unknown to her. Undone by the fine detail and rich colour, Darklin’s finger involuntarily trailed the patterns of bright silky thread in wonderment.

  ‘Allurements!’ hissed the witch and rapped Darklin’s shin with the cane to break her fixation. Darklin bit down hard on her lip to stop a cry of pain.

  They ascended a flight of twisting st
one steps. Not wanting to trigger another of the witch’s rebukes, Darklin returned her gaze to Gressyl’s heels, and her ears, instead of her eyes, gathered information about her surroundings. She detected the distant sound of voices and music, which grew louder as they walked through a doorway at the top of the stairs. Darklin saw briefly that they were on a gallery, hung above a large dining hall, before Gressyl pulled her down to her knees, intimating that she should peek between the colourful flags that were draped over the balustrades.

  Darklin looked down. The room was full of people, but none of them appeared to be human. She stared in horror at their distorted faces. Instead of eyes, they had large hollows resembling the empty sockets of a skull, instead of noses, they had sinister beaks that protruded horizontally from their faces. It took her a moment to realise that they were wearing disguises, that their faces had been obscured by grotesque wooden masks, trimmed with the remains of the animals that they were supposed to resemble. Darklin saw goat’s horns and the discarded antlers of a stag, she saw the skinned heads of foxes and badgers, the sawn off tusks of a boar. The ladies carried masks of lace, held on sticks to cover the top half of their faces. Their masks were framed with strange and vibrant feathers, belonging to creatures Darklin had never seen and found difficult to believe existed.

  Darklin was astonished at the shape of the women; they had tiny waists and enormous hips that bulged proud of their bodies. They wore costumes dyed in the vast array of colours that Darklin had seen in the tapestries, dresses that revealed the bare skin of their necks, the tops of their shoulders and chests. Inexplicable ruffles, ribbons, bows and gatherings of material congregated in the skirts and around the sleeves. Darklin compared them to her own dress; a rough cutting of shapeless scratchy black wool, held at the waist by a thin black cord, and was startled and mystified at the differences between them.