Twig of Thorn (The Blackthorn Cycle Book 1)

by L. M. Hawke

  Maybe I will go and catch a bus after all. The thought cheered and encouraged her.

  She took the road that led, she knew, toward the village. Una strolled along, enjoying the crispness of the night, the coolness of the soft wind against her cheek. There was no reason to fear. There never had been Kylebeg was as ordinary a place as any country village could be, despite its residents’ peculiar celebrations and the keeping of the old ways. How could she ever have suspected otherwise?

  Soon, however, Una’s confidence flagged. The creeping fear and suspicion returned. For a moment she didn’t know why her mood had suddenly turned, and she paused, hugging herself tightly, trying to discern what had changed in the night.

  Then, with a slow tingle of fear climbing step by step up her spine, she realized that the woodland still surrounded her. She had walked through it for several minutes, and should have been well clear of the trees by now; it wasn’t a very long stretch of forest. Una eyed the dense thickets to either side of the road. Nothing stirred within them; no glowing eyes of creatures blinked out at her, no voices murmured in the trees.

  You’re mistaken, she told herself. You’re allowing your imagination to run away with you.

  With determined speed, Una pressed on toward the town. She strode resolutely down the road, refusing to look at the forest around her, staring straight ahead along the roadway. But she couldn’t help counting the minutes as they passed. Now there was no denying the truth: the forest was indeed persisting around her. She was not winning her way free of its dark, damp-smelling confines.

  It was not her imagination.

  I must have made a wrong turn. Must have turned up the road that leads to Ailill’s place. That leg of the crossroads was more densely forested, Una knew. For a few minutes she convinced herself that was exactly what she had done. But she couldn’t maintain the false bravado for long. Una had been absolutely certain of the correct way; she’d been clear-headed, too. There was no chance she had wandered about in a haze and gotten herself lost, no chance she’d truly turned up Ailill’s road by mistake.

  As she pressed on, the thin cover of clouds parted, allowing pale moonlight to spill down across the earth. Dapples of silver light bloomed slowly across the road, illuminating more of the avenue than Una could see before. She squinted down the road ahead, hoping to see some familiar landmark… and stopped dead in her tracks, wracked by a thrill of fear.

  A crossroads lay ahead of her. Her first instinct was to assume that it was the crossroads, the one she had already passed. But that was impossible. The roads ran straight as pins through the crossroads she knew. There was no chance she’d taken a wrong turn and looped back around to face the same crossroads again.

  Una forced herself to walk on, though by now her knees felt weak and wobbly. As she drew nearer to the crossroads, everything about the place looked chillingly familiar—exactly as it always did. She had seen this place before. The location of each fern and tree and half-buried rock in the mossy verge seemed to mock and torment her. She was back at the same crossroads. The very same one—the only one.

  “You did make a wrong turn, after all,” Una scolded herself aloud. “And now you’ve gone in a circle.” Somehow. Against all probability, you’ve gone in a circle. That must be it. That must be it.

  It was fortunate that the wrong turn had taken her back to a familiar place, Una told herself practically, speaking loudly inside her own head to stave off the fear that gibbered at the edges of her consciousness. She might have ended up hopelessly lost in the darkness, wandering about strange roads like that. But there she was, back in a familiar place—lucky girl!

  Una hurried eagerly toward the crossing, ready to gain the correct bearings and march on toward Kylebeg. But when she reached the center of the cross, she staggered to another dragging stop. With the moon’s glow unobstructed directly overhead, Una could see past the stretch of woodland before her. There was the foot of the hill that led up to her cottage. In front of her. But she hadn’t turned about in her tracks… not as far as she could remember. She had walked in a straight line, following the road as she always did. And if she had taken a wrong turn in her distraction, then the road that led home should be to the right or left now, not straight ahead.

  Una licked her lips and glanced uneasily over her shoulder. The road that should have led to Kylebeg stretched instead into a dense endlessness of trees. The chill creeping up her spine picked up its pace.

  “Enough walking for tonight,” she said, and hurried on toward home.

  But no matter how far Una walked, she never came any closer to the edge of the wood. It always stood somewhere ahead of her, with the road to the cottage—and sanity, and safety—forever beyond her reach.

  Una clenched her fists and marched determinedly, refusing to acknowledge her fear. She paused only when her legs grew tired, and stood firm among the moon shadows until she had found the strength to go on. Each time Una stopped, she noted a new crossroads to either side—roads stretching to her right and left, beckoning to her, with the moon bright and full overhead. Regardless of how many steps she took, there were always two roads beside her, offering themselves up with a temptation Una was finding difficult to resist. It’s as if I haven’t left the center of the crossroads at all, she thought, mystified and shivering. But that was impossible, of course.

  She fought hard to quell the panic that rose repeatedly in her gut. She walked on, and now and then broke into a run when panic overtook her. But the road that led home never came any nearer.

  Finally, with exhaustion fast winning the fight to claim her, Una stopped and braced her hands on her knees, hunched over and panting to catch her breath. The roads to the right and left seemed all the more inviting now. Perhaps they, at least, would lead to somewhere other than the same damn crossroads.

  With a toss of her head, Una turned suddenly to the right. Almost at once, a prickle of relief washed over her, for she quickly left the forest behind. Now at last she gained ground with each step she took. Her heart slowed again; her breathing calmed.

  Una broke out into open ground beyond the forest, but stopped, staring out at the placid pastures and distant homes that glowed dimly in the darkness. Something was decidedly wrong with the land around her, but Una couldn’t identify just what the wrongness was. Even by night, with only moon and stars to reveal the details of the world, Una felt as if something important had been altered. She eyed the pasture fences, running in long lines across the dark grass, dimly lit by the moon. She gazed for a long time at the nearest house—which was not particularly close—at the fire-orange, flickering light in its window.

  The styles of fences and house were all wrong—significantly different from those she’d grown used to seeing in and around Kylebeg by day. These structures had an unmistakable, old-fashioned air—and although everything about Kylebeg was old-fashioned, this particular brand of oldness felt unsettlingly new. Significant. Never seen before.

  Una held still, counting her heartbeats to calm her nerves, wondering at the odd contradictions she sensed milling and drifting around her.

  And then, as she stood transfixed in the center of the road, staring about her at the rustic cottages and sheepfolds in the hills, she heard a low rumble on the avenue behind her. She turned quickly to see a horse-drawn wagon emerge from the shadows of the crossroads. “Make way, Miss,” the driver said.

  Una stepped hastily into the damp grass on the road’s verge. She peered up at the wagon’s driver as he passed. His clothing looked like something out of a textbook on Medieval studies—rough and dull-colored (she could tell that much even in the night), with peculiar cut and fit that spoke of a simplicity even the people of Kylebeg did not exhibit. And as rustic as Kylebeg was, she hadn’t seen any indication that its residents went about in horse-drawn vehicles.

  As soon as the wagon had rolled past, Una spun on her heel and hurried back into the woods. To her immense relief, the crossroads re-appeared in front of her. She charged on, st
raight ahead, ignoring the path that pretended to lead back to her cottage. The forest closed around her again, the road carrying her toward a new reality.

  This time when she came out on the other side of the woodland, it was to witness an even older scene. Some fifty yards away, on a gentle hill to the left of the road, a great fire burned within a ring of tall, standing stones. Red light and black shadow played fitfully against the stones, by turns illuminating and concealing the people gathered around the fire. Una watched, transfixed, trying to sort out whatever details she could glean from the scene.

  The people seemed to be men and women gathered together, though it was difficult to tell for certain at Una’s distance. She could see, as they appeared and disappeared in disorienting bursts of firelight, that they were dressed in smocks of animal skins or pale woolen robes. Una watched as a man robed in white and wearing a hood of antlers lifted a goblet of some liquid high above his head, then poured it onto the fire. A woman beside him raised her arms and began to sing; Una had the impression that the woman was invoking some great and sacred ritual.

  An ancient ritual. With a shiver in her gut—half fear, half excitement—Una realized she as witnessing something unfathomably old and primal.

  Far too old to exist in this day and age.

  Gasping in shock, Una turned again and ran back into the trees. The branches seemed to stoop down to meet her; damp twigs grazed her forehead, and she recalled with a twist of dread the blackthorn crown she had worn in her dream. Una brushed frantically at her head, clearing the branches away, deflecting them with her hands as she strove to find the crossroads again.

  It felt as if she ran for hours, though reason told Una she couldn’t have run for more than a few seconds. But she found the crossroads again, and plunged in a panic down another path. There she saw men and women alike marching—toward war, Una thought, based on their grim expressions and the primitive axes they carried. Their bodies were lined and spotted with woad dye, which was black beneath the moon. She ran again, and found herself watching a woman in a skirt and blouse that reminded her of Victorian times. The woman was herding a flock of geese across the hills, tapping her long staff in the grass, as if herding geese in a long skirt were a perfectly natural thing to do in the middle of the night. Una ran, and came upon a young couple driving a distinctly mid-century car along the road, both of them laughing as the girl held a silk scarf up to blow behind her in the wind. And another scene, wherein Una witnessed a cluster of painfully thin children clinging to a woman in a dirty, faded, nineteenth-century dress, crying and begging for food while the woman stared vacantly, hopelessly into the night sky.

  I’m going mad, Una thought with a matter-of-fact sadness as she turned away from the famine-ravaged family. This is it; I’ll soon be perfectly cracked.

  As she re-crossed the crossroads for the tenth or twentieth or hundredth time, a new sound cut through the hiss of wind and the panting of Una’s own breath. She drew Una up short, listening with desperate keenness. It was music… the sound of a harp. Or perhaps a guitar; she couldn’t quite tell. Her chest heaved, as much from terror as from exhaustion, but she forced herself to hold still and listen. The music was so much like the tune she had heard in her dream that a prickle ran through her body, and she couldn’t tell whether it was fear or relief.

  Una turned her head this way and that, searching carefully for the source of the music, until she was quite sure of its direction. Then she hurried down that path.

  “Ailill?” Una called as she went. She half expected a fringe of gold and purple flowers to unfurl and bloom amid the ferns along the verge, expected their gentle light to illuminate the forest. The music was growing stronger. She called out to Ailill again, both relieved to know he might be there, and furious, because she didn’t really want to see him again after his abrupt departure from her bedroom. But if indeed it was Ailill playing, then he might be the only solid, real thing in this wood. Una had to find him, if she was to have any hope of getting out.

  She was very near the music now. It was loud and rich around her, caressing her with its poignant chords, comforting her with its presence. Was it a guitar, thought, or a harp? Una still couldn’t decide. It didn’t matter, though. The music sounded so close that she might reach out and touch whoever played—if only she could find the musician.

  “Ailill?” Una said, more hesitantly now, for there was nothing around her but the forest. She called for him again and again, but he never answered.

  The harp kept playing, though, and Una followed its sound. It led her through the forest—led her on and on, back to the old familiar crossroads, and onward still, to other crossroads Una was certain she had never seen before.

  It doesn’t matter, Una told herself. Focus on his music. Focus on his music. Keep following…

  She went doggedly where the harp led her, refusing to be distracted by the mysterious crossroads that appeared and faded all around her. Wherever the harp led, Una went along with it…

  Until at last she stepped out of the wood, her feet on the road that wended up the moonlit hill to her cottage—to home.

  She stared up the hill in disbelief. The music faded on the wind. After her long ordeal in the forest, Una hardly dared to believe that she had found her way out of the wood at last. Slowly, afraid of what she might see there, she turned and looked at the dark woods gathered around the sinister crossroads. The wind whispered easily in the masses of black leaves; nothing stirred among the trees except dapples of moonlight.

  Then, the spell broken, Una ran up the hill to her home, as fast as her exhausted legs would carry her.

  11

  Una wasn’t surprised to see Ailill coming down the garden path toward her cottage the next morning. She should have been—she knew that. But she was still groggy from lack of sleep, and troubling memories of the previous night still hung heavily about her. She found she could do nothing but watch from the kitchen window, holding a steaming tea cup between her hands, as Ailill approached.

  She watched him pick his way down through the garden beds, moving through the layers of gold morning light with his usual, unconscious grace, with a dull sense of inevitability sinking into her chest. She remembered the sound of music the previous night—the soft, compelling chords wending through the darkened trees, leading her to safety step by shaking step. It seemed only natural that she would see Ailill now—that he would come to her now, in the daylight, stepping out of the darkness now when the time for dreams was past.

  Una left the kitchen window with a sigh. Her steps were reluctant—she didn’t know what she ought to say to Ailill, what she even could say. But she had to speak to him. She knew that; she felt a solid lump of certainty in her throat. She would have to understand him better—understand everything that had happened to her—if she ever hoped to come to a decision about her future.

  She opened the door for Ailill before he could even knock. They stood in silence for a moment, staring at each other across the threshold. Una felt wretchedly tired. She had no idea what she might look like just then—probably as if she’d been dragged through a knot-hole backward—but for his part, Ailill looked shame-faced and hesitant.

  “Well, come in,” Una finally said, breaking the silence. “I’ve got some tea if you want it.”

  “No coffee?” He smiled crookedly, tentatively.

  “None, sorry.”

  “Tea will have to do, then.”

  As she turned to lead him into the kitchen, Una swore she could hear him mutter faintly, “Whiskey would be better still.”

  Whiskey? At ten in the morning? What had upset him enough that he felt his nerves needed such an early fortification?

  Una and Ailill sank into chairs opposite one another at the kitchen table. They sipped their tea in silence while the clock on the wall ticked away. Una had never noticed its ticking before, but now it seemed oppressively loud.

  She kept glancing up from her tea cup to assess Ailill with a shy flicker of her eyes. Th
at haunted, gaunt look was on him again; it never left his face, even when he tried to smile at her. Was it only guilt over his near-sprint from her bedroom that made him look so wretched? Or was something else at play?

  Una felt as if she ought to say something—break the silence somehow. But she didn’t know what to say to him. So she held her tongue and watched instead. She noted all the small signs of his distress—carefully controlled, nearly hidden, but still there for anyone who cared to look closely enough. Ailill’s hands trembled slightly, as if he, too, were tired; he kept his face determinedly downcast, apparently too ashamed to look at her.

  Finally, though, just when Una could stand the awkward silence no longer and was about to bring up the weather or something equally inane, Ailill set his cup down with a clink. “Una,” he said, raising his startling blue eyes at last to meet her stare, “I owe you an apology. I feel terrible for… for having run off as I did, after…”

  She nodded quickly. For some reason she didn’t want to hear him say it—name what they’d done together. She wasn’t ashamed, despite being furious with herself for having given in. But she could still feel him, still smell his woodland scent on her skin if she closed her eyes and tried hard enough to breathe him in. Those memories pained her, but they were also a kind of fragile magic. It would be too easy to break that spell—too easy to shatter forever those moments of wonder and bliss.

  “Don’t worry about it.” That wasn’t what she wanted to say. She wanted to scald him for having been such an insufferable wanker. But she was far too tired to get into an argument now. It was better—easier—to nod and let it go. “It’s all forgotten now.”

  “I can’t forget it,” Ailill said softly.

  The layers of meaning in those simple words sent a thrill up Una’s back. The sensation was only amplified by her wobbly, wrung-out state. She gulped at her tea, trying to disguise the flood of emotions that was surely washing over her face. When she set the cup down on the tabletop, she did it too hard—so roughly she thought for a moment she had cracked it. Una hissed a curse and examined the cup, then set it back down with exaggerated care.