In Fallen Woods

by R N Merle

  Several of the men were distorted in shape too, with large stomachs that looked as if small barrels had been stuffed under their shirts and into the tops of their breeches. They had elaborate lacy cuffs partially covering their hands, and wore more lace bundled luxuriously around their throats; as if in that part of their anatomy they particularly felt the cold.

  Darklin turned her attention to the long rectangular table, lit by hundreds of candles shimmering in silver holders. She eyed the feast laid out from top to bottom, and was disconcerted as her stomach growled, enticed by the smell of the food. A roasted pig glistened at the head of the table with a large red apple stuffed between its jaws. In tribute to the main attraction, miniatures of the roasted beast were positioned along the table at regular intervals. Between the piglets, were pies and puddings in decorated bowls, dressed with herbs and other greenery. Darklin was sure it was more food than would pass through her lips in years.

  At the head of the table, a man of middle age with elaborately curled ginger hair, lounged in his seat, the stem of his wine glass wrapped in his fist, his unmasked face bloated and dripping with perspiration. His expression was one of disoriented joy. He was seated between two women, one he completely ignored, turning his whole body away from her as if she did not exist, and to the other, younger woman, he gave his undivided attention.

  The woman he overlooked, Darklin recognised as beautiful; she had glowing waves of silky blond hair, symmetrical features, full red lips and limpid blue eyes. Darklin watched the blond woman staring at a fixed point on the table, her eyes cast down in dejection. A tear slipped from the woman’s eye and streaked her pink cheek, falling into her untouched plate of food.

  ‘That is Amelia Baines, the Squire’s wife. Remember that woman’s face girl,’ said Gressyl, ‘that is the look of a heart that has been poisoned by love, a heart burdened with implacable sorrow. She thinks she loves that fat hog the Squire, but he gives not two figs for her, in spite of the gold on her hand he used to trap her with.’

  Darklin looked back at the Squire, who talked, laughed and smiled at the younger woman. She basked in his attentions, exhibiting her teeth and giggling at his slurred words. Darklin did not like the look in his eye as he spoke to this woman, something in it made her want to recoil. She turned her eyes back to Amelia Baines. She could not comprehend how anyone could love the repulsive man or feel anything but gladness at not being the focus of his attentions. She decided that Amelia Baines was a foolish woman. Slowly, Darklin’s mouth twisted into a sneer of contempt. She realised she was seeing a living picture of Gressyl’s nightly words, and recognised for herself the truth of them; folk did love foolishly, and in doing so they nurtured and harvested their own pain.

  ‘She is a ridiculous creature.’ Gressyl whispered. ‘What curse would you choose for her?’

  Darklin considered. Nothing immediately came to mind. She thought Gressyl would be angry if she didn’t have an answer.

  ‘Rashes and boils?’ Darklin suggested timidly.

  Gressyl looked irritated. ‘A curse must be fitting. Consider, she is a woman who loves what is hideous. There must be something wrong with her eyes. I would curse her with horrifying visions, of ghastly phantoms and monstrous faces, appearing out of thin air. Perhaps that would make her think twice about what she is seeing.’

  Darklin nodded in agreement. She looked again at the other guests at the table, and found them equally repellent. Many of them had now removed their masks so that they could eat more efficiently. She watched them loading their forks with as much food as they could bear, and quickly shovel it passed their lips as if they were starving. They churned it around in their red mouths, and swallowed it in visible gulps, washing it down with careless slugs of red wine or ale. She wondered how they managed to cram so much food into their bodies. They talked loudly at each other, and laughed even louder, throwing their heads back and bellowing to the ceiling. Darklin was agitated at the level of noise, unused to the roar in her ears, after the near silence of the witch’s house. It grated on her strained nerves. She found she wanted to leave and find somewhere quiet, away from the shouting and its distorted echoes; if she had to endure it much longer, she felt like something inside her would snap.

  When they had finished their feasting, shabby looking servants cleared the table, and the dancing began. A tune was struck up by a group of musicians, and people clapped along to the beat, forming lines of dancers. Darklin found the cultivated and rehearsed movements of the dancers peculiar, especially as many of them were drunk and their movements were clumsy and ungraceful. Many of their faces grew red and sweaty, matching their teeth that were stained from the red wine.

  Some of the men became breathless, and went to rest around the periphery of the room, waiting for refreshments. Darklin watched a young servant girl, she imagined to be a similar age to herself, pouring out wine to the drunken men. The girl was leered at by a man, three times her age, who grabbed her around her waist and covered her lips with his sloppy, dribbling mouth. The girl did her best to struggle away, twisting her body to escape his lips. As she gained her freedom, the man slapped her across the rear with a force that could be heard around the room, causing her to trip over in shock, and smash the heavy jug of red wine. For a second the room fell silent, then the leering man and his friends broke out in raucous laughter. The servant girl got on her hands and knees to pick up the pieces of the smashed jug. Darklin saw the Squire approach her, and raise his hand as if to strike her face. He frowned, but his mouth wore a mocking smile. He pointed toward the door, and the girl ran off crying to another loud burst of humiliating laughter.

  Moments later, Darklin’s attention was drawn to the other side of the room. Two young men were arguing over a pretty, plump girl in a pink dress. They began pushing each other, and then one of the men drew back his fist and sent it into the mouth of his rival. Darklin saw the struck man’s head turn with the force of the blow, a tooth fly from his mouth, and blood spray outward, splattering over the walls, and onto the fine clothes of the onlookers.

  A fight began in earnest, but no one seemed interested in stopping it, they seemed more eager to know who would win, and called in excited shouts for their favourite. A winner was declared when the man who had lost his tooth, threw a punch which flattened the nose of his opponent; who then sat in dumb shock on the floor, blood flowing in a steady stream over and into his mouth, as he uselessly tried to mop it up with his elegant cravat.

  The girl they were fighting over looked pleased at the trouble that had been caused by her presence. Both young men were handed glasses of wine and patted on the back, while the other guests unknowingly stepped into their spilled blood. Their red footprints spread out over the tiled floor, as they danced to music straying harshly out of tune.

  When the party finally ended and the guests had dispersed, Darklin followed Gressyl back down the stairs. She was greatly relieved to be away from the loud voices and jarring music. Her head throbbed. She felt the noise and agitation of all the new things she had heard and experienced pressing in on her.

  ‘Are we going now?’ she whispered hopefully.

  ‘No, follow me,’ Gressyl said, ‘We are not finished yet.’

  They crept past the lower quarters of the building, where the servants gathered. Darklin could hear them complaining about the Squire, how they were badly treated and how poorly paid. They all looked scrawny and miserable, but it did not make an impression on Darklin; it was more jarring for her to see the overweight Squire than it was to see the skinny, downtrodden servants.

  They descended further down a dimly lit, spiralling staircase. Darklin felt the air becoming colder, and shivered. She tried to ignore the growing instinct to turn and run, to escape back through the wood to the safe darkness of her room and her scanty bed of straw.

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, an agonised howl ripped through the air, and a feeling of dread slithered down Darklin’s spine. Before her throat was rendered silent by
the growing waves of panic, she managed to whisper, ‘Where are we?’

  ‘The dungeon.’ Gressyl replied coolly.

  Gressyl walked boldly passed a snoring guard, and onto a dark, dripping gantry walkway. Quelling her overwhelming aversion to the surroundings, Darklin hesitantly followed. A foul stench overcame the air and Darklin gagged. She did not know what she was supposed to be looking at, until the cries of the inmates began to reach her ears, and Gressyl directed her eyes with her cane to the floor below.

  Through a small opening, Darklin could make out the iron bars of the prison cells, each one barely big enough for a full grown man to stretch out in. In the first cell a man slept shirtless, shackled to the dank wall, every few moments his limbs jerked violently in his sleep, causing his chains to rattle loudly. Rats strayed perilously close to open wounds on his legs, sniffing around his body.

  Darklin could guess at the occupant of the next cell, she could already hear her crying, ‘No, no, no, no….,’ a continual wail of repeated despair. She looked at the woman, so dirty and dishevelled she could not estimate her age, rocking herself in time with her moans. Darklin quickly looked away.

  In every cell the prisoners shivered with the cold, some with festering cuts and sores, all unwashed and fetid. Every few moments, death rattle coughs barked out into the gloom. Darklin understood that there was no escape from here, even in sleep. In the last cell was a prisoner who would not reconcile himself to captivity. With a voice hoarse from screaming, he marked out each minute with a livid declaration of innocence and injustice, or with wordless cries of futility. All the while he sobbed and writhed tirelessly against his chains, although the irons had chaffed his wrists raw.

  ‘It is because they have not paid the Squire enough money for their freedom, or they might have poached a rabbit from the land he claims to own.’ Gressyl told her. Darklin did not hear. The dungeon’s thick walls were closing in on her, and she could not breathe. Small black specks had appeared in her vision, beads of perspiration distilled on her icy brow, and the world started to tumble and roll and fall away. Gressyl slapped her hard across the face, and she was jolted back into consciousness, quick enough to hear the sound of the strike echoing along the gantry. Darklin was not the only one to hear it. Looking up from where she rocked, the ragged woman stared at the black form she could make out from her cell. Her eyes grew slowly wide with terror. ‘Death has come!’ she wailed. ‘Death has come!’

  Gressyl took hold of Darklin’s arm and pulled her roughly along the gantry and up the spiralling stairs, before the woman’s horrified shouts woke the sleeping guard.

  Darklin felt slightly better as they left the dungeon behind them, and stole out of the castle, desperately hoping that Gressyl would now lead her back into the woods.

  ‘Can we go now?’ she whimpered through chattering teeth.

  ‘Not yet, I have a little something to do for the Squire before we leave.’

  Darklin followed Gressyl listlessly to the rear of the castle. They walked down a muddy track to a cobbled courtyard and into the stables. Gressyl took a potion bottle out of her pocket and poured it into the trough.

  Darklin observed, but was unable to feel any excitement in seeing Gressyl execute her curse. She kept wanting to look over her shoulder to see if anyone was coming, mentally willing Gressyl to be quick about her business.

  Gressyl began to mutter lowly, and dark smoke slithered out from the top of her cane, swirling outward in growing circles. As she watched, Darklin found she was not thrilled by the magic, but fearful of it. She sensed the sinister power in the wisps of smoke creeping toward her, seeming to want to touch her, to discover her heart. A small whimper escaped from her lips. Suddenly Gressyl’s chanting came to an end, and the dark smoke rushed downwards and vanished into the ground.

  Gressyl stood for a moment to catch her breath. Darklin looked away, taking the time to recover herself.

  ‘It is done.’ Gressyl breathed, and without waiting to see if Darklin followed, took off toward the castle walls.

  As they finally began their journey home, Darklin followed Gressyl in a daze; persistent recollections of the dungeon making her blood run colder than the freezing wind. She pulled her cloak around her tightly, but could gather no warmth. Snow had begun to fall in earnest, chaotic flurries swirling in the wailing wind and banking against the buildings and trees.

  When they came upon a crossroad, the moon abruptly appeared from behind a cloud, casting the whitened world in a ghostly silver light. Darklin looked up, intent on seeing the moon, instead she met a pair of darkened eyes staring down into hers. Darklin stopped still as ice, a harrowed gasp burned her throat. She did not know how she had missed it on the way into the village, but now Darklin saw it. Her. Only footsteps away. A dead girl hanging by a rope around her neck. She saw her blue face, jewelled with frozen tears, her ribbons of dark hair perversely full of life, rising in the sudden gusts of twisting air. She saw her black dress, stiff with cold, patterned with snowflakes, the laces of her black polished boots neatly tied in even bows, the small silver cross at her throat, catching the light of the moon.

  And before she could even think of turning away, Darklin became trapped in the dead girl’s unseeing gaze; only her eyes were not dead. They still held everything she had felt; agony and despair, shock and anger, but most of all they were imploring, pleading. And Darklin felt she was imploring her. In that moment, the dead girl’s right hand, given life by a breath of chilling air, seemed to reach out to her, as if she wanted Darklin to take it.

  Darklin felt her own hand twitch in response. And then the wind died away and the girl died again with it, and the offered hand returned lifelessly to her side.

  ‘Why is she there?’ Darklin heard her voice asking shakily.

  Gressyl sniffed, ‘They thought she was the witch.’ she said, briefly looking up at the girl as if she was the last leaf hanging on from the summer, and not innocent Annie Sparrow, buffeted by the rushing wind, and dangling from the gallows tree.

  3

  The Rites

  Returning through the howling woods, Darklin trailed after Gressyl as if spellbound to her shadow. Every now and again Gressyl would glance back to make sure their footprints had been erased by the fast falling snow, then continued on, following the obscure, twisting path only she could read.

  Darklin understood that she must keep putting one foot in front of the other, but that was all. She barely noticed the wind ripping past her face, the snowflakes caught on her eyelashes; how the cold blanched her skin the same colour as the dead girl’s.

  When they arrived back at the witch’s house, Darklin did not stop to take off her cloak, but staggered to the fire, collapsed onto the floor and gathered her knees to her chest.

  Gressyl eased herself stiffly onto her chair, and eyed Darklin’s stricken face speculatively. ‘Do you see now child, why our work must be done?’ she began.

  Darklin did not answer. Gressyl went on, ‘How foolish they are, how detestable? The abomination they call love. You saw the Squire’s wife, how worthless she was! You must understand now why we are an enemy of their way of life. You witnessed the poor, the lowness of their existence, scraping and slaving for money, or else left to die in the dungeon. You see now what that life means, and how the wretches and wastrels need to be punished?’

  Darklin was aware she was being spoken to and managed to nod once in response. She tried to comprehend the words that were being said, but the dead girl’s eyes would not leave her.

  Gressyl continued, ‘Now that you have seen, have been repulsed by what you have seen,’ she amended, ‘are you ready to use what you have been taught?’

  Darklin could not find any words.

  ‘Answer me!’ Gressyl half growled, half shouted.

  Gressyl’s raised voice cut through Darklin’s stupor. She looked up at the witch’s angry face blankly.

  ‘Are you ready to receive the power?’ Gressyl demanded.

  Power; Darklin
heard the word and clung to it in her mind. She was drowning in all that she had seen. Power was what she needed, something more to help her endure, to make her stronger, to be able to recover from this night. She recalled the reassuring words of the fifth rule of Vardyn: “A Witch of Vardyn is powerful and need not have fear. We have allies in the destroying wind, the perishing rain and the tides that drown. We are made invisible by the cloak of darkness, and powerful by the witching moon. Vardyn lends us the gifts of being artful and bold, vigilant and untraceable as air.”

  Gressyl’s eyes bore down on Darklin. The room pulsed with maddening silence until it was abruptly shattered by the sound of glass breaking. Darklin and Gressyl jumped violently. In the same moment their eyes flew to each other’s faces. When Darklin saw Gressyl’s complexion drain white with fear, a cry escaped her lips. Only one thing would frighten Gressyl…

  Darklin inched her head to the right, imagining what she would see when she looked behind her, and what would happen in the moments to come. The window had been broken by a stone thrown by one of the men of Fallenoak, who had followed them back to the house, and were at this moment gathered outside, waiting to capture them. She could almost hear their angry voices, almost see the blaze of their torches reaching inside to flicker on the black walls.

  She did not doubt they would be taken, marched through the bleak woods back to Fallenoak, to be strung up beside the dead girl. A trio of accursed witches, frozen solid in their solemn dresses, swaying with the branches when the north wind blew…

  She was afraid to turn her head, in case the next image she glimpsed would confirm her fears. Slowly, her eyes took in the fragments of broken glass catching the light of the fire where they lay on the floor. She looked up at the window. The window’s murky panes were still intact.

  Darklin’s body shuddered with a wave of temporary relief. There was no one outside. The crow had disturbed one of the insect jars on the shelf, and it had crashed into pieces on the stone floor. She turned in time to see several wispy spiders disappearing into the darkest corners of the room. From the floor, the crow peered at Darklin and Gressyl in turn with its small glittering eyes, and then fluttered up into the rafters. Gressyl exhaled and quickly looked back to Darklin.