In Fallen Woods

by R N Merle

  Darklin pretended to eat her meal. Her stomach was sick with nerves, and she couldn’t manage even a spoonful. She knew that she had made Gressyl suspicious, but she didn’t want to think of that now. She had to get back to the orchard. She cleaned out the pot, and when Gressyl was not looking, took up a handful of black ash. As she put on her cloak to fetch the water, she stuffed the ash into her pocket, and surreptitiously loaded a sack with the potions and things she needed, and slipped out of the door, before Gressyl had a chance to speak.

  Hurrying from the house, she stopped once to cover her face with the ash, then raced to the orchard. Anything could have happened in a day. She almost convinced herself that he had managed to escape, or that someone had found him. She suddenly realised, there might be people out looking for him. She became more cautious in her movements. Her progress slowed to a torturous creep, and she strained her ears for sounds. Placing one foot carefully in front of the other, she tiptoed through the crowded trees, halting at every noise she heard. Feeding off her hatred for John, she willed herself to proceed, even though each footstep might lead her toward an unknown danger.

  At last she came in sight of the ring of apple trees. She peered through the darkness, and could determine a shape lying on the ground. She did not let herself feel relieved until she had crept as close as she dared, and could see the glimmer of his gold head resting on his arm. His eyes were open. She watched him blink and flex his hands, as if trying to warm them.

  She backed away and then took a moment to think. The full moon darted in and out through passing clouds; Darklin hoped it’s concealment would not have an impact on the spell. It had nearly risen to its zenith, and it would not be long before it would be at its strongest. She could not stay still and began to pace.

  She thought how this would be the last time she would ever see him as his true self, the last time she would be able to hear him speak. Darklin hesitated as doubt clouded her mind, and panic stole through her body. Was it really necessary to change him? Perhaps she had been foolish to try this. It was the most difficult spell for a witch to perform. Did she really have the necessary skill and power? In a few hours, instead of victory, she could be facing disaster. Was it worth the risk of trying? She could let him go now. He hadn’t seen her, nothing would come of it.

  The distant song of nightingales drifted across the darkness. The moon was almost high enough, only moments away. Darklin moved towards him. The white blossom of the surrounding trees seemed to light the way, as she slowly approached the cage. The air was thick with scent, enhanced by the mist, and it made Darklin feel almost dizzy.

  Peering through the thorns and branches, Darklin thoughtfully studied John’s face, cast in the moonlight. He was sitting upright now, with his knees to his chest. His rose-leaf eyes were large and wild, almost glowing against his pale skin. The sight of his face caused an acute ache in her heart. The torment rolled over her in a wave, replacing the space where her heart resided with a sphere of molten agony. As long as she was able to set her eyes upon him, she would always feel the torment, and would always suffer for it. She could not endure it any longer.

  Decidedly, she took a bottle of water laced with the shape shifting potion from her sack. He would be thirsty, she hoped, enough to drink whatever she gave him. Without food or water, his body would be weak, allowing the potion to take effect swiftly. She didn’t want to have to cut him.

  She prepared herself for being seen. Although the moon had become obscured by cloud, and her features were disguised with cauldron ash, she still pulled her hood low over her eyes, so that little of her face was visible. As she timidly approached the cage, she wondered what he would think when he beheld her.

  A thudding rain began to fall. Darklin could feel it dropping through the canopy and soaking into her cloak. Glancing up, she saw John was standing now, facing her direction with his fists balled by his sides. He had seen her. Darklin’s gaze did not leave the ground again until she reached the foot of the cage, then her eyes followed the twined branches until they reached waist height. She touched a cluster thorns with the tip of her wand. She whispered a few words, and the thorns shrank back into the branch, creating a space large enough to hand the bottle through.

  As soon as the thorns retracted, Darklin shakily pushed the bottle into the cage. She had planned to tell him to drink it, but found she could not speak. John stumbled towards her offering. He reached his hand towards hers, then quick as a flash, he grabbed her wrist. She dropped the bottle. The glass shattered, and the potion spilled over the grass. Her head jerked up in shock, and the hood fell away to her shoulders. The rain fell upon her face, washing away the soot in messy streaks.

  John’s hold on Darklin loosened in shock, and she snatched her hand back out of the cage. A ring of burning heat was left by his fingers, that had so easily encircled her wrist. She should have instantly covered her face, but she could not move nor think. Darklin was trapped. Her eyes locked with his, and she could not look away. As she stood paralysed, something happened that she had not planned for, or even considered. As she stood under his gaze, the torment vanished. In its place, a new sensation stirred inside her, and grew strength until it pulsed around her entire body. Though her clothes were soaked, she felt a tingling warmth wash over her skin. Though she was in the worst trouble of her life, she felt both light and strong. It was like being inside a different body, free of worry, hate and fear. She could not imagine why, but she felt wonderful, because this boy was looking at her, because John Somerborne had seen her.

  She did not want to return to her old body, but just as quickly as they had let her go, the old emotions were reaching out to claw her back. Voices of fear and foreboding hissed at her- he is poison to you, he has seen your face, he will betray you to the others, and they will come for you, just like they did for Annie Sparrow. She saw that John’s eyes, that had been wide with surprise, had narrowed, and his mouth was moving angrily.

  Darklin came back to herself. The spell was slipping away from her, and she struggled to recall even one of her many contingency plans. Her hand trembled violently as from her cloak Darklin took out the silver dagger. It was then that she noticed a deep scratch on John’s right forearm. A trickle of blood slipped down between his knuckles, and disappeared into his palm. She took out the last bottle of the potion from her sack, pulled out the cork and splashed it over his arm. She stumbled back and raised her wand. She tried to recall the words of the chant, but her thoughts were scattered and frantic. She closed her eyes, hoping desperately that when she looked again, John would no longer be standing in human form, that he would have transformed into the silent, helpless creature she had intended him to become. Taking a shaky breath, she mumbled what she could remember of the spell, and repeated it, trying desperately to concentrate. She could not sense the magic stirring. She opened her eyes. John stood unchanged, staring at her with bewildered eyes. Darklin turned and ran.

  10

  The Dawn

  Darklin lay on her bed, still wet from the rain. The complex patchwork of her hopes and plans lay in shreds, but she could find no desire to stitch them back together. Her world had changed; her revenge, the Somerborne’s punishment, didn’t seem to matter anymore. They had stopped mattering the moment he had looked into her eyes. She stared upwards into the darkness, recalling moments of the night, trying to understand exactly what had happened to her, but she could make no logical sense of it. She should be devastated, she should be ashamed and afraid, but she wasn’t. She didn’t know what she felt or what to think. Only one instinct beat within her heart, strong and clear; that not being able to look into John Somerborne’s eyes again, was the worst thing she could imagine.

  She did not wait long before she slipped out of the house and into the woods. When she could at last see the sky through the trees, she noticed a faint brightening in the east, and she stood for a long while to watch the indigo night recede. The sky slowly illuminated into cold silver blue, in which the stars beca
me lost, and the moon turned ghostly. Streaks of misted pinks and oranges trailed across the whispering morning, and the light rose softly around a pale yellow circle.

  Darklin had never seen the dawn before. The transformation of light was unsteadying. She gazed upward in wonder as tears pricked her eyes. Song birds twittered in the trees, the music of their voices rising gradually as each performed its own tumbling refrain. Unaware that Darklin was nearby, their chorus was unguarded and exultant. They sang as though the world belonged to them, and Darklin believed them.

  Darklin became overwhelmed, her senses saturated by the novelty and splendour of the morning. Feeling dazed and out of place, she looked down to the ground and hurried onward. She scurried through the trees toward the forgotten orchard, trying to gather her wits for what she would have to do next. As she neared the cage of thorns, she found herself wishing for more time to think things through, but knew she would have to act now, or risk putting herself in more danger.

  From where she stood, Darklin could see John curled in a ball on the ground. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep, although his body shivered with cold. Darklin felt a stab of unease when she saw that his usually pink cheeks were colourless. She shook her head; she did not have time to stare, and if he woke she would miss her chance. She crept up to the apple tree into which she had carved Vardyn’s mark, touched the tip of her wand to the symbol and whispered,

  ‘Of Magic I have need no more,

  Make all that is as it was before.’

  Darklin held her breath until she heard the soft rasp of the long thorns gradually retracting into the stems. The branches creaked and shivered and moved, slowly disentangling, like a knot being loosened by quick, invisible fingers. The limbs shrank away from the sleeping boy, and the roots burrowed back into the ground. Darklin sighed in relief as lastly, the trees disentwined from one another, and bent back into five distinct apple trees, leaving no trace of the cruel cage that she had conjured.

  Darklin stepped silently toward John, stopping when her boots reached the edge of his shadow. Darklin inhaled softly. She had never seen him this close; if she stretched out her hand she could touch him. His shirt was damp with dew, and the crystal droplets that had formed on the blades of grass, had also beaded on his skin and hair. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and light brown stubble covered his cheeks and chin. Darklin didn’t have to touch him to know how cold he was, his lips were almost blue.

  She held her wand to his throat with a quivering hand. Barely touching it against his skin she said,

  ‘Silence this voice,

  Not a sound, not a murmur,

  Not a whisper, not a word

  From these lips will be heard.’

  Then she turned and ran. Her cloak billowed out behind her as she retreated a safe distance, to hide behind a cherry tree. When she peeked out around the trunk, and saw he had not stirred as she had expected, she picked up a stone and threw it lightly at his body. As the stone bounced off his side, John jerked awake and looked all around him. Confusion spread across his features as he saw that the cage had disappeared. He rubbed his eyes and face with both hands, then got to his feet stiffly and hurried away, as if he expected the cage suddenly to reappear and trap him again.

  Darklin’s eyes followed him until he was no longer visible. She imagined him returning to Shadows End, and being embraced by his relieved and tearful family. They would be full of questions, but he would have no way of explaining his absence to them. As long as the silence spell holds, I am safe, Darklin thought, He might even come to believe that I was just a dream.

  Tears, which she told herself were from exhaustion, welled and spilled from her eyes. Her body convulsed with sobs, and shook against the trunk of the cherry tree, sending down a shower of pink blossom where she buckled beneath its branches.

  Grey days of mist and rain lasted for a week. Darklin confined herself to the night, trying to find a purpose for her time. The torment had vanished, and with it her will to do harm, and now there was nothing to work for, nothing to plan.

  She thought of what lay ahead for her with resigned dread. Preparing spells that she would never cast. Inventing reports of her false visits to Fallenoak, nights of waiting out in the cold for time to pass, the inevitable agony that awaited her when Gressyl found out she had been lying, or worse still, the repercussions she would face for breaking Vardyn’s rules.

  Lost in a fog, Darklin couldn’t find the energy to do her chores, and the work of an hour began to take up her whole night. She became absorbed in staring, at the potions bubbling in the pot, at the stringy texture of the meat she ate for her supper, at the rippling surface of the water pool, at the blackened quill poised in the inkpot. Then one night, as she absently picked up the quill and ran the feather over the back of her hand, she suddenly let it go, as if it had seared her skin. The quill clattered onto the table and spotted the wood with ink.

  What if John could write? What if he had written down exactly what had happened to him, and had not just been able to point and gesture about some vague threat in the woods? He could tell them all there was a witch, and exactly what she looked like, and how he had seen her doing magic. The villagers could be looking for her even now. They could be breaking down the door at any moment.

  Darklin was horrified by her own stupidity. In all the plans she had agonised over, why had she not considered that John might be able to write? What had she done? If the men searched carefully, the house would eventually be found. Should she warn Gressyl? Would they have to run away and leave everything behind them? Darklin couldn’t imagine it, Gressyl barely left her chair. It seemed right to warn her –they could leave right away. But there was a possibility that John could not write, that he hadn’t told anyone what had happened. That the woods were safe, and that all her worrying was for nothing.

  Darklin found a new meaning for agony, as she waited through each lagging second for the night to pass. Her ears rung from straining to hear the sound of footsteps outside, and her heart thumped fast and anxious in her chest. Just before dawn, as Gressyl handed her the sleeping potion, she held it back when she saw Darklin’s face.

  ‘What have you done?’ Gressyl growled.

  Darklin could not speak, she jaggedly shook her head.

  Gressyl studied her face and scowled. ‘I’ll find out, whatever it is. Now get in your room.’ Gressyl thrust the tin mug into Darklin’s hand, and the liquid sloshed over the side. Darklin took the mug into her room and put it down on the floor, knowing if she drank it, she would not be able to hold it down.

  Curled up on her side, Darklin pulled the blanket taut around her. She wished she could fall asleep, to escape the unbearable waiting, but knew she would not. Suffering through the dragging hours made Darklin weak with dread, and by the time morning came, and she thought it was safe to leave her room, her whole body was rigid with tension.

  She went to the shelves of potents. Her hand trembled violently as she took down a bottle of green liquid and an empty jar, which she filled with some dried leaves and moth wings, all the while keeping an eye on Gressyl, waiting for her to twitch and come to life. She slid the items into a sack, took an unsteady breath, and went out into the wood.

  Before she went far, she pulled out her wand and prepared a potion. Then bending low amidst the foliage and undergrowth, she moved as silently as she could towards Shadows End.

  It was as she neared the forgotten orchard, that she caught the sound of wood snapping. Her legs shook violently and she dropped to the ground. She knew she needed to find somewhere to hide, so crawled into the nearest bush. As she progressed, sharp branches jabbed and scratched her skin. Once she was sure she couldn’t be seen, she made herself as small as possible.

  She listened hard, frozen still. She was waiting for what she dreaded to hear most; the calls of rough voices, or worse, the whining of hounds desperate to be loosed from their leads. She prepared herself for the soft thud of boots to come to a stop by where she
was hiding.

  The sound that had brought her to her knees came again, a small distance away. The snap was too loud and deliberate to be made by any kind of creature, she was certain it was wood being broken by a human. Snap, snap, snap; the sound became rhythmical, not like the noise of a twig being cracked underfoot, more like that of branches being broken. Then another more familiar sound followed; an axe splintering wood.

  Darklin allowed herself to feel tentatively relieved and exhaled silently. If it was a woodsman, she was sure she could get by without being noticed. She could not be certain it was John, but made up her mind to follow the sound in hope that it was. Barely daring to move, she crawled amongst the ferns, brushing against the foliage so lightly it barely moved. Twigs and rocks dug into her knees and palms, but Darklin ignored the pain and concentrated on listening.

  When she got close to the sound, she cautiously stood up and looked around her. The sight of John’s golden hair was unmistakable, and once again Darklin let out a sigh of momentary relief. She waited and listened to ensure no one was with him, but the only other sound close by was the repeated song of a chaffinch, from high in the branches above.

  She observed John intently. He hacked angrily at a sapling, but his efforts appeared not to have their usual focus. After a moment, he stopped and listened warily, then went back to work. Darklin felt a pang of regret when she recalled his usual easy way of going about the woods, untroubled and singing to himself. She thought he looked a little thinner, and his face seemed strained and tired.

  Darklin swallowed hard. The time had come; she would have to reveal herself, and find out what he had told. She was terrified of what he might say, equally, what he might think of her. But she believed there was a good chance that he would not hurt her, that facing him would be wholly preferable to waiting for the villagers to come after her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.