In Fallen Woods

by R N Merle

  The Curse

  The power of darkness

  The passion of hate

  Gifts of Vardyn

  Come to my aid

  Grant me a curse

  Nature’s Forbidden

  For one immune

  To my affliction

  Perform your magic to my design

  Shift the head, deform the spine,

  Alter limb and alter feature

  Make for me a helpless creature

  For the Victim

  Pour 5 drops of potion into victim’s drink

  Or Spill freely into a bleeding wound

  Conjure the transformation by repeating the curse

  To be executed under a Witching Moon

  When she had finished, she closed the book with a soft thud. She took her tonic from Gressyl and went to her chamber. She lay on her bed and closed her eyes. ‘Tomorrow,’ she thought, ‘I will decide.’

  The morning sky was milk white and patterned with dark grey clouds. Darklin watched over Shadows End from the edge of the wood. Her eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep, so she swept her cold hands over the still dewy grass and held them to her face for refreshment, the tangy sweet smell of the stems filling her nose as she dried her hands on her cloak. Moments later, Darklin’s heart lurched as she saw John come out of the kitchen door. She was sure that if she watched him keenly for a day, she would be able to determine if he was a threat worth the risk of performing the shape shifting spell.

  As he left the house, Darklin saw that he carried with him a bowl of steaming liquid, and a strip of white cloth was draped over his shoulder. He crossed through the gardens, opened the wooden gate into the meadow where the sheep were grazing, and set the bowl on the grass. He stepped slowly toward one of the lambs and caught it up, holding it steady under one arm. The lamb barely struggled and bleated only once. The lamb’s mother looked over disinterestedly and went back to nibbling the grass. John sat down with the lamb next to the bowl and held its hind foot in the liquid. It kicked twice, and then was still. John dabbed at the foot with the cloth and after a few minutes of soaking, carried the lamb back to its mother.

  John then fetched a spade from the barn, and walked to the fields at the back of the house. Darklin tracked him along the boundary of the woods, managing to be fairly close to him, but with very little chance of being seen. Choosing a stretch of ground next to an already established vegetable patch, John marked out a square of land the length and width of two grown men. He lifted the turf and built it into a mound, and then began to dig over the soil. Darklin studied him as he overturned the clumps of dense black earth, vigilant for some telling action from John that would give her an answer, but she could only see how beautiful he looked.

  She listened to the rhythm of the spade sinking into the wet ground. Two robins followed in the wake of his progress, picking up worms and pecking insects from the soil. The day was warm, and Darklin watched John’s face begin to streak with sweat, and his shirt cling to his back from effort. She wondered what he intended to plant, and why the Somerbornes seemed to grow so much food, when she and Gressyl managed to live on so little.

  After a while, she heard the sound of running footsteps and the two boys, Tom and James, came charging toward John. They brought with them tools to help, and immediately set about copying their older brother, mimicking how he brushed the hair out of his eyes and wiped his face on his sleeve. Tom had a wooden spade, and was quiet for a while as he did his best to turn the heavy soil with little success. James knelt on his hands and knees and awkwardly jabbed at the soil with a trowel, held in both his small hands. Shortly, Tom dug up a long worm and threw it at James. The little boy screamed, unsure whether to be disgusted or impressed. They both lost interest in helping and began to run around, chasing each other, laughing all the while. Darklin retreated a few feet back, and climbed half way up a tree in case they unexpectedly came her way. Children, she thought, were chaotic, unpredictable. They made her nervous.

  From higher up, Darklin had a good view of the children as they bounded around the field. They were pretending to be on horseback and were galloping, holding tightly onto invisible reigns. Darklin was bemused at how easily they found enjoyment, it seemed to her such a strange thing to do. Tom galloped toward a fallen log, effortlessly clearing it in one leap. James followed after him, his face rumpled in determination. Darklin could see that his legs were not long enough to clear it, and felt an overwhelming urge to call out and stop him. She shook her head and clenched her jaw shut. She closed her eyes tightly and turned her head away.

  The next thing that she heard was an unrestrained cry. The little boy clambered to his feet, his crumpled face wet with tears. He held his hand to his forehead and without hesitating, waddled over to John, sobbing loudly as he went. John laid his spade down, wiped his muddy hands on his trousers and picked the boy up. He balanced him on his hip and gently swung him left to right. Darklin thought it was something like a mother would do. He lifted the boy’s forelocks and kissed the spot on his head where it had been hurt. Darklin could not see a bump, or even a mark. When the boy had stopped crying, John set him down, Tom took hold of James’ hand and they walked back toward the house. John continued digging.

  At Midday, John went back inside the house, came out with another steaming bowl, and bathed the lamb’s foot again. He finished turning the soil, sewed seed into the patch and watered it. On the most exposed side of the square, he hammered several wooden posts into the ground. From the barn, he carried out a pile of fresh cut willow rods and began weaving them between the posts, to make a screen against the wind. Tom came back to help him, handing him strands of willow.

  While he helped, Tom chattered to John. Darklin couldn’t hear every word of what was said, but managed to understand most of the conversation.

  ‘Mrs Day said that George Medley is going to sea. Have you ever been to sea, John?’ Tom said.

  ‘No, I’ve never even seen it.’

  ‘What do you think it looks like?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Well, Father told me, it reaches farther than the eye can see, and the surface can one day be as calm as a lily pond, and the next it might be rough and furious, with mighty waves that crash on the shore. And you can taste salt in the air.’

  ‘Why can you taste salt?’

  ‘I don’t know why.’

  As John described the sea, an image dropped from nowhere into Darklin’s head. A beach of yellow sand and a shimmering green blue ocean rolling with white capped waves. It was something familiar to her, and yet she didn’t know why. She couldn’t remember ever having seen it. How could she have seen it, when all she remembered was this wood? It was confusing; she dismissed it from her mind.

  As the afternoon wore on, Darklin came to regret her choice of vantage point. All around her, sharp little twigs dug into her, her limbs became stiff and deadened as she stood awkwardly in the tree. She surreptitiously rearranged herself, leaning her weight on one foot then the other, but could not find a comfortable position. She was afraid she would make too much noise if she attempted to climb down, so tried to remain as still as she could.

  Tired and irritated, Darklin felt that the day had been wasted. Nothing she had seen had made her decide either way. He was still beautiful; he still caused the torment to bluntly stab her heart, she still wanted to be free of him, but was it worth risking all?

  They kept working on the screen until the light was just starting to fade.

  ‘I’m starving.’ said Tom. ‘And Bess has been cleaning all day, so that means there won’t be a good supper.’

  ‘I thought Bess cleaned yesterday.’ said John.

  ‘She did, but she says she keeps seeing beasties wherever she looks, creeping out from the corners. I told her there weren’t none left, but she keeps sweeping and mopping. She hasn’t had time to do anything useful, like make my dinner.’

  ‘She does her very best for all of us, young man. You should be grateful. Now, go on inside and give he
r a hand. I’ll be in when I’ve treated the lamb.’

  Again, John went into the house, came out with the bowl, and bathed the lamb’s foot for a third time. When he returned to the house, Darklin exhaled in relief. Not being able to trust her legs, since they were completely numb, she half climbed, half fell out of the tree, and landed inelegantly at its base. She sat on the damp earth and stretched out her legs before her, waiting painfully for feeling to return to her feet. She noticed that her clothing was covered in a green residue left by the bark of the tree and she busied herself by trying to rub it off.

  When she stood up, she made sure she could move normally, then checking that there was no one out of doors, approached the edge of the sheep’s meadow, and climbed over the fence. She spied the lamb that John had tended to; it was not far from where she stood. Though the sun was beginning to set, she waited patiently in the shadows, as still as a fox ready to pounce. When the lamb came near, she made a dive, and caught it with one hand by the back of the leg. With her other hand, she got a better grip on it. It struggled violently and called loudly for its mother, behaving nothing like when John had held it. She grabbed it roughly by one ear, and took hold of the foot John had been bathing. On the back of its leg, near the hoof, was a gash no bigger or deeper than the one that was healing on Darklin’s hand. She dropped the lamb and turned back into the woods, inexplicably outraged by the tender care he had shown the insignificant creature, that barely seemed in need of it. The torment flared and intensified with startling speed. The pain and fury blazed through her, pervading every part of her body, an agonising fire that incinerated her powers of reason and wisdom. She doubled over, and covered her mouth with both hands to stifle a scream. She hated him, she hated him. Suddenly, she was sure. She would do it.

  9

  The Capture

  Once the decision had been made, Darklin did not waver. She knew the curse would need meticulous, if not perfect planning, so in any time she had spare, she immersed herself in deep and solemn concentration, shutting out all considerations except what she would do to John Somerborne, and how she would do it.

  She made plans for every scenario she could think of, foreseeing a hundred different circumstances that might occur, and how they could be manipulated to secure her objective. She considered timings, anticipated mishaps and variables that might turn against her, what situations she could take advantage of, and what reactions she could expect; imagining each possibility in elaborate detail until her head pounded with exhaustion.

  Every day, she went back to Shadows End and studied John, watching as he worked around the farm, shadowing his footsteps whenever he ventured into the blossoming woods. As the days passed, the force of his attraction seemed to gain strength at an equal rate with Darklin’s resolve to destroy it. There were moments when he stood still, that she could see his strength and beauty so clearly, that it engendered in her a strange sense of longing; but other times, when she witnessed his affection for his family, or instances of his softness or indulgence, it rekindled her hatred with such a force that she recoiled in loathing. However he made her feel, with every observation she made about him, the pattern of his behaviour slowly became clear, and another thread was woven into her designs.

  She spent long hours deliberating what creature John should be turned into. At first she imagined him in the form of a golden stag, haunting the woods beyond Shadows End. But then she thought that he should be become a creature more fitting for the punishment. Something ugly and small. At last, she decided on a bat. Transformed, his hideous, wrinkled face would be a perfect antidote to his beauty. He would become a creature forever trapped in the realm of darkness, never to feel the glory of the sun again. For one who seemed so touched, so blessed by light, Darklin thought there could not be a greater curse.

  Lastly, her planning turned to preparing for if the very worst happened; a plan to use if she should fail. She had to admit it was possible that her skill would not be great enough to perform such a difficult spell, or that the spell might only work in part. If fate was not in her favour, she planned a way to make sure she would be safe. She desperately hoped she would not have a reason to use it.

  The next thing to be done was to prepare the potion. Darklin went to the back of the spell book, and read through the spell again. Some of the potents she needed, Darklin had never used before. They were amongst the most powerful used in magic, and not easy to come by. She collected what she could from the shelves, and made a mental list of what she had left to find. After many nights of trawling the woods and riverbank, there were only two items she did not have.

  The first was the bat. This at least, she thought, would be easy to get hold of, she knew of a cave in the woods where there were thousands. The second was something she had never heard of–Uther’s Knot. She had not been shown it during the hours she had spent wandering through the woods with Gressyl, learning to source plants and species. She feared that it was something she might have to ask Gressyl about, but continued with her plans regardless.

  To find the bat, Darklin trekked to the northern edge of Fallen Woods, taking with her a finely woven net concealed in a small brown sack. After hours of walking and climbing, Darklin stumbled to the top of a steep, wooded bank. She looked around her, peering through the gloom. Hidden by trees, the entrance to the cave was almost imperceptible. She ducked under the shelter of the branches in front of the cave, and felt with her hands until she found the way in; an oval gap in the rocks, barely big enough to squeeze through.

  Darklin crawled head first through the hole, jumping at the sound of her boots scraping on the rocky ground. Inside, the air had a dank, putrid smell, and it was darker than Darklin had even thought possible. She could hear echoing drips of falling water, somewhere at the back of the cave. She listened, trying to tell from the noise, how far the cave reached into the hill. It would be perfect she thought, if she should ever need a place to hide.

  Just then, Darklin felt a disturbance in the air on the left side of her face, followed by the light whisper of a fragile wing, as a bat passed by. She shrieked in horror, flapping her arms around her head. Bats. Something about them never failed to repel her, perhaps that was why she had chosen them. She wondered what it would be like for John Somerborne, after the spell had transformed him; flitting through the night, harvesting insects, and sleeping upside down for the rest of his life. She struggled to imagine it. After the change, would he remember being human? Would his thoughts still be those of a man, trapped inside a mute animal body?

  She shook her head. Why should she care what happened to him, after all the pain he had caused her? She put out a hand in front of her, feeling the space in an attempt to discover where the best place would be to hang the net. She decided not to take any chances and to lay it over the entrance of the cave. Assuming the bats did not have another way of entering, she was bound to catch a few on their way back to roost.

  The next day, she found three small black bats, two still alive, entwined in the netting, like flies in a spider’s web. They were far smaller than she remembered, and their wings looked almost transparent. They would be so easy to kill, Darklin thought, trying to ignore a strong pang of unease that made her stomach lurch. She tipped them into the sack, careful not to come in contact with their gnashing little teeth. She closed the sack gently, drawing the material together with a string. She needed to keep them alive until she brewed the potion. She hoped that would be soon. Now there was only one potent left to find.

  One pinch of Uther’s Knot. Could one pinch really make a difference to the potion? Could she risk trying the spell without it? Darklin was getting desperate. In only four days, the witching moon would arrive. All her plans were in place, only the creation of the shape shifting potion was left to do. She would just have to ask Gressyl what the missing potent was, and hope she wouldn’t start interfering. She couldn’t wait any longer.

  In last moment desperation, Darklin decided to search the shelves again. She was sur
e she hadn’t seen any there before, but it would do no harm to check again. She carried her chair over, so that she could properly see what was on the highest shelf. She gingerly put her right boot on the centre of the seat, hoping that the rickety chair wouldn’t unbalance. The chair tipped back and forth, but held.

  ‘What are you doing, girl?’ Gressyl barked from across the room.

  ‘Checking our stocks.’ Darklin replied, trying to sound like she wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. She turned to look at Gressyl, to see if she was going to take any more interest, but Gressyl had already turned back to the fire. Darklin started at one end. She rummaged inside each of the wooden boxes, and peered into every bottle and vial, no matter what was written on the label. She pulled the containers out and searched behind them, under them, and into every dark corner. As she moved the objects, thick layers of dust were disturbed, and gradually Darklin’s fingertips and the hems of her sleeves turned grey with accumulated dirt.

  Every now and again she would go back to the table and make a note of potents they were low on, so that Gressyl would not be suspicious. Darklin moved her chair along the shelf to examine the middle section. She searched the lowest shelf first, and methodically made her way to the top. The highest shelf of the middle section was home to prepared distillations, arranged in colours. It sloped hazardously, so Darklin had to be extra careful when she moved the bottles to one side, that they didn’t slide off entirely. As Darklin placed the group of purple potions back where they belonged, something irregular caught her eye. She noticed that concealed under a shrouding of spider’s webs, one stone in the wall behind the top shelf, slightly protruded from the rest.

  Darklin again put the purples to one side, and made a subtle movement to glimpse behind her. Gressyl was looking the other way, seeming not to be paying attention to her. Darklin reached toward the ill-fitting stone, gripped it with her fingertips and pulled it toward her. To her surprise it moved. With a trembling hand, Darklin gently coaxed it out from the wall. The stone was shallow, the space behind it had obviously been purposely designed as a hiding hole. Darklin checked behind her again. Gressyl wasn’t watching. She put her hand inside the space and pulled out a small damp wooden box, the same kind Gressyl used to store potents in. She quickly put the stone back in place.