IX: SPECTER AT DAWN
Pursaiones stopped for a sudden movement in nearby foliage and bid her trailing party to be still: it was only a rodent, and it scurried along its route past the searchers and into a hole in the earth. Five members of the party sighed deeply, relieved that the creature had not been the ghost they sought, but Pursaiones and Taisle were disheartened—the search had gone on all night with no sign of anything out of the ordinary. Taisle had been growing audibly frustrated over the last hour, damning the decision of the mayor to send the party, citing a lack of a good night’s sleep for “the purpose of nonsense.” Pursaiones’s slender frame led them down a low path, cutting between blue-flowering thickets that ran along a stream where half of the trail whelmed with fresh crystal dew. Through the tips of maples and birches broken strands of light began to fall onto the forest floor, and Taisle felt at ease that their journey was almost at an end.
Their purpose had been to track the specter said to be haunting the foothills of Rislind, but through an entire night of searching not a single spirit had been seen or heard. Several in the party were still skeptical about the ghost, especially Taisle and Pursaiones—both of them had resisted the wishes of Mayor Doings, only succumbing to the consensus of the village that had urged them out. The trek had led them high up along the ridges of the deepest Rislind peaks, where they had scoured the few paths through the dense woods—they had reached either end of the Rislind Range, going as far as the secret entrances that kept Rislind hidden from all who might wander in the realm of her doorstep. Finally, as dawn was in full blossom, Taisle broke into the lowest foothills and reached the first low-lying trees where their horses were reined.
“Look—a shooting star!” cried one of the party as they descended into the early morning mist-filled meadow. The party, too tired to take much notice, grunted in acknowledgement of the strangely bright star that streaked to the earth—no one realized the star falling to the earth had not long ago been unmoving in the sky.
“Now to sleep all day!” Taisle rejoiced. Pursaiones followed after him, and together the tired party mounted their steeds, surrendering the fruitless night, hoping explanations wouldn’t be required as soon as they returned—all the energy they had left would amount to a “there was nothing.” Any questioning beyond that would have to wait until the morrow, Taisle decided.
The golden meadow glinted under a red sun. Glimmering beams of pink-yellow light twined with the high blades of grass that filled the prairie horizon, and the ocher homes of Rislind grew as the seven horses bore their riders home. All was quiet in the village when Pursaiones came through the front gate after releasing the horses to roam as they pleased, the morn meadow their stable.
“Can’t wait to get to bed,” repeated Taisle for the third time. The other five in the party had said goodnight and walked to their separate dwellings, while Pursaiones stayed close with Taisle, walking toward their neighboring homes.
“Me too. I hope this all dies down tomorrow and the elder folk realize their delusion,” Pursaiones replied. She didn’t boast, but she knew she would have been able to go on searching—her constitution was greater than Taisle’s, though the townsfolk thought the opposite. Despite her having outperformed Taisle in feats of valor through the years, the town had always charged him with status as their supreme protector, as their strongest physical specimen. She did not mind, however, because she knew that Taisle was aware of her power, and that was all that mattered.
Neither of them believed in the ghost sightings. Pursaiones did think something could be amiss in the woods, but she would not go so far as to claim a spirit culprit.
“Want to sleep here?” asked Taisle as they reached the front door of his clay-built two-room home. Pursaiones was taken aback: she knew Taisle was pursuing her, but why bother now, when he was so tired?
“No, I’m going straight to bed. I’ll see you in the afternoon,” she smiled, summoning the strength to hide her displeasure.
“Alright—see you then. Good night, or morning, whichever…” Taisle grunted as he stepped into his tiny cottage, warmly tucked beneath a low-hanging thatched roof that he’d built himself. Pursaiones wandered back to where both her parents lived, a cottage not much bigger than Taisle’s.
She tried to recall what the townsfolk had seen that had made them so certain there was a ghost: Miss Brewboil could have been tired from work, and surely old gnome Crumpet was demented. Something strange was at play though, and while it was not something as farfetched as a ghost, it still needed to be uncovered. It was hard to believe, she decided, that the coincidental apparitions were merely delusions, as Taisle had decided.
At last feeling exhaustion set in, she streaked through the tight corridor of her parents’ cottage. She quietly slipped past her sleeping mother and father’s room, practicing more stealth than she had while lumbering through the forest after the specter. She undressed, threw her clothes onto the floor, and rolled into her soft quilts. Her bed was snug against the far wall, by the room’s only window which faced another house. Hers was the next-to-last house from the eastern meadow; through her window she could see the last cottage before a low-lying fence separated Rislind village from the wild stretch of prairie that ran for several miles to meet the eastern mountain foothills.
“No more for tonight,” she scolded her still-analyzing mind. She pulled her body together into a ball and rested her gold-haired head on a soft pillow. The sun was gleaming, poking through her cross-hatched window, and until she had shut her eyes she hadn’t noticed the annoying brightness that had saturated her room, preventing sleep.
“Ugh,” she said, sitting up to close the heavy maroon curtain, wishing for her room to become a dark abyss. Propping herself up in frustration, she twisted to grasp the curtain, but could not reach without getting out from under the warmth of her quilt. Sighing, she vaulted herself up, grabbing the bottom left strand of the bunched cloth. Upon closing it she caught a glimpse of the scenery outside her window: dawn light was catching the roof of Crumpet Grames’s orange and brown shanty. She sealed the window and blackness reclaimed the room, finally allowing her much-needed rest.
But something had tricked her eyes.
She jumped up again, just after laying down, and swung the curtains aside: there, barely visible through the tiny window of Crumpet’s house, wandering through his kitchen, was a figure. It was hunched over, grisly and grey, peering into one of the old gnome’s pantries. The form was dark and sinister, and Pursaiones did not recognize it for a villager—she knew everyone in the town, and Crumpet himself was too short to be seen through the high window of his kitchen. She kept watching, half in shock, wondering who the thief could be—then she remembered in a wave of paralyzing fear: it is the same monster that Crumpet described. It had robbed his kitchen, spilled his milk, and run off last time—this was Miss Brewboil and Crumpet’s ghost! She immediately shut the curtains and her mind was electrified, all thoughts of sleep and fatigue vanishing—she would rush and get Taisle, as quickly and quietly as possible, or it could mean death for poor old Crumpet.
She bolted out of her room, moving purely on instinct. Suddenly, a wave of doubt came upon her as she reached the door—what if she was crazy, delusional from lack of sleep? Better check one more time to be sure, she thought: I don’t want to wake up that grumpy mope Taisle unless it’s absolutely real.
She darted back on top of her bed to see if a mysterious stranger really was creeping around in Crumpet’s house. She flung the curtains aside and peered into Crumpet’s kitchen through his tiny window: the kitchen was no longer there, and in its place stared a face lit by two glaring eyes. It saw her; it was leering at her from inside Crumpet’s kitchen—it knew she had been watching.
Pursaiones froze in fear, unable close the curtain. She shuddered at the deep evil in the stare, watching eyes blink rapidly at her above a grimy beard. The man-ghoul backed away from Crumpet’s window so that she saw his neck and chest, and in an instant the intruder f
led, dashing for the back door of Crumpet’s shanty. Panicked, knowing she was probably the only one awake in town, Pursaiones grabbed her sword, forgetting even her clothes, and rushed out stark-naked to wake Taisle.
The invader hadn’t run away like last time, when according to Grames he’d fled into the meadow: this time he’d come to face his only witness. In front of the naked Pursaiones stood the thin, long-bearded ghastly form whose lifeless eyes pored over her bare curves. It stood still, patiently awaiting her next steps, cornering her at the hedge by her front door.
“Taisle!” she screamed, and raised her sword high. The man-ghoul didn’t flinch. It remained motionless, and slowly its hand began to creep toward something at its side, something that looked like a satchel between discolored layers of rag-clothing.
* * *
Taisle lay comfortably in bed, held in the grip of a deep dream where he was galloping atop his horse, crossing the vast distance of the Rislind Meadow, heading for home, trailed by a slippery ghost—he could not seem to outpace the ghost, nor could he evade it in the wide-open expanse. Pursaiones was in the dream too, galloping on her steed just ahead of him, somehow beating him to the Rislind gate. Taisle looked back, still angry that the rest of the village had been right, and he’d been wrong. He recoiled in fear at the sight of the speeding ghoul—it did not look like it ran with feet, as it somehow glided above the blades of grass. No energy was spent by the ghost in its flight, and it seemed the chase would be endless.
Suddenly, Pursaiones fell from atop her horse, which whinnied loud, and she blurred past him as his horse continued on at full speed. “No!” Taisle thought to himself, seeing her left behind on the ground—her horse must have tripped, I have to turn around and save her, he thought. Quickly, he pulled on his reins, slowing his horse, turning it around to start toward his fallen friend. There in the meadow in front of him stood the ghost, standing over Pursaiones—her horse had abandoned her, fleeing back toward the foothills that encircled the meadow. The watery form hunched over her in the twilight of an eternal dusk. Pursaiones looked directly at Taisle as she cried for mercy:
“Taisle!” she yelped, and he paced on faster trying to reach her in time. “Taisle!” again she screamed, but he did not seem to be getting any closer even with his steed at full gallop—no ground was cut between him and his helpless love. He watched in terror; he could do nothing to help as the ghost leaned in close to her. Taisle seethed with jealousy as the wobbly spirit bent in close and forced a sensual kiss on her mouth:
“Taisle!” she screamed for a third time, and Taisle woke from his nightmare, sweating, looking all around—he was inside his house, but the scream had been real. He threw on crimson underpants, grabbed his sword from a nearby shelf, and ran out the door in the direction of the noise. His dream slowly dissolved, revealing reality again. As his consciousness stubbornly returned, a new state of panic overtook him. Running down a thin alley between two small houses Taisle felt sure his mind had not tricked him, and so he called out:
“Pursaiones!” he yelled, uncaring as to whether he woke his neighbors. As he cut through a neat lawn, trampling a small orchard and almost slipping on its dew-glossed petals, Pursaiones’s house came into view.
Lying on the ground, helpless, just as in his dream, was Pursaiones. Naked, she turned to see Taisle closing in, her only hope of escape. Taisle realized it was unlike his dream in that the apparition hovering over Pursaiones was not a ghost—he was not the liquid, half-visible apparition from the meadow; he was a real man, appearing overly withered, famished and dirty.
“Just bread!” cried the haggard man, appearing as if he’d been wondering many long days in the forest without a shower, a change of clothes, or food.
“Get away!” Pursaiones replied in shock, digging into the earth with her fists and heels, crawling back from the man on all fours. Taisle rushed up and noticed Pursaiones’s sword lying on the ground near the feet of the scraggly man; she was unarmed, and so he raised his own sword overhead, preparing to strike.
“Don’t move. Back away from the blade!” Taisle commanded, feeling his fears subside; this is no ghost, but a frail old man, he thought.
“It’s just for bread, I am sorry,” replied the whimpering voice of the savage.
“What sort of monster are you?” Taisle asked. Pursaiones regained her feet and came to his side—Taisle had almost failed to notice that she was completely naked. “Come to rape our women?” he accused the rag-clothed man.
“No! I was hungry, I am no hunter of women,” cried the poor man, now falling to his knees next to the sword and throwing his hands to his face in misery.
“Away from the sword!” Taisle commanded, stepping up and knocking the man back with a swift kick to his head. In a fit of tears the tired looking creature, a tangled mess of mud and earth, flew back onto a patch of grass. They waited, but he had been knocked out by the blow. Taisle came in close to inspect the man and be sure he wouldn’t get back up; there was no sign of movement, and a slow trickle of blood ran from the man’s forehead down into his hair.
“He was in Crumpet’s house. I saw him before I went to bed, and I caught him trying to escape—” came Pursaiones from behind, out of breath from her struggle. Several footsteps sounded, coming nearer from the lane between the two closest cottages.
“Get inside—put some clothes on!” shot Taisle protectively, covetous of her naked beauty. She ran away at once.
“What is this noise? For Gaigas’s sake!” cried a short, fat troll. Next to his feet trailed two curious children.
“It appears we’ve found our ghost,” Taisle answered the man. Several more rushed up to survey the disturbance. Last to arrive was Mayor Doings who strolled up alongside Crumpet Grames. The sun blossomed in the cloudless blue above, a new day dawning upon the growing congregation. Pursaiones returned dressed, and Taisle turned the matter of telling the tale over to her. She quickly explained what had happened up to when Taisle had arrived, and then he finished:
“And so he went on about bread, of all things,” Taisle said.
“And he’s got my bread, look!” Crumpet complained as he lumbered close to the unconscious invader. Sure enough, in the still-clenched fists of the pale man were balled up pieces of bread, and fastened on his belt was an open satchel with more matted bread stuffed inside, some of it crumbling out.
“I hate to say it, but our ghost is no more than a common thief,” Pursaiones said.
“A bread thief! And he’ll repay it, and also the milk he’s spilled again on my kitchen floor!” Crumpet wailed in anger. At the climax of Crumpet’s judgment, the strange man began to writhe on the grass, and a moan sounded.
“Shhh, old one—he’s waking up,” came the burly troll. Nearly half the village had assembled now, mystified, watching the man stir to life in Pursaiones’s front garden.
“Be ready, in case he attacks,” Mayor Doings instructed, speaking to all but looking directly at Taisle so he would keep his sword ready.
“We don’t have to be afraid of this sorry beast—we need to question him,” Pursaiones returned, using her common sense in the place of panic. “Look at him. He’s harmless.”
“But when I came you were on the ground, your sword was over there…” Taisle reminded her.
“I tripped, nothing more—I scared myself believing it was a ghost, I didn’t know how to react,” she replied.
“Ughh,” moaned the man and he went for his head with his right hand. The crowd wooed and Mayor Doings called Taisle’s name to take charge of stopping any quick motions the fallen man might attempt. Taisle didn’t move, as all the haggard man did was rub his head where the sword hilt had hit him.
“Let’s allow him to come to first, and then we’ll bring him to speak and try him for the criminal he is, if he is no ghost,” Taisle ordained. Doings didn’t respond, and in his silence he affirmed what Taisle had suggested. The once-thought-to-be ghost opened his eyes, taking in the crowd of gawkers that watched his ever
y movement.
“I’m sorry, I’ve had nothing to eat for days…” moaned the man. “Agh, my head.” Suddenly, he rolled back over, closing his eyes again.
“Maybe you’ve done him in, strong young Taisle! Serves him right too!” came Crumpet, satisfied at the sight of pain on the face of the cornered criminal.
“We’ll have to let him recover before we can start questioning him,” Pursaiones stated.
“Indeed. Taisle, I appoint him captive to you,” Doings ordered. “You’re to hold him in your house until he’s ready to speak.”
“Of course Mayor,” Taisle said, slightly angered at the burden being placed on him.
“I’ll watch him with you,” Pursaiones responded, and she was followed by several others, most of whom were the warriors who’d been out in the forest all night.
Darkin: The Prophecy of the Key (The Darkin Saga Book 2) Page 9
