by A. Evermore
‘He wants me to follow?’ The idea was ridiculous, ‘who ever thought about following a bird,’ she laughed, but the raven cocked and lowered his head, as if in indignation. She swallowed. ‘It would be wrong to mock any of the Great Mother’s creations,’ she murmured respectfully, smoothing her trousers. She took a few steps down the path and the raven took off again but then she stopped and turned back to look at the house.
‘What about mother? I should not leave her, she has been so sick and delusional,’ she said, feeling like the raven was owed some explanation. Her friends used to laugh at the way she talked to animals as if they were human, but she knew the animals were listening and that they understood. When they saw how she could heal them no one laughed any longer. A pity she did not have the power to heal her mother, she thought. Worry twisted her stomach but the raven’s caw came again and held an urgency that she could not seem to ignore.
I’ll just follow it for a little way, it won’t take long, she reasoned, and followed after the raven, glad to be away from the house and smell of illness, away from her mother that was not her mother, and from everything in her life that no longer made any sense.
CHAPTER THREE
The Hidden Glade
Issa followed the raven down the grassy hill away from the orchard and then along a well-trodden footpath through chestnut trees. Every time she slowed and looked back the raven’s caw spurred her onwards. It was a path well-trodden by her own feet for every other morning she would run along it, whether rain or shine, revelling with the feel of the wind in her hair, the sun or rain on her face, before returning home filled with life, exhilarated and ready for breakfast. She had run this way only yesterday morning and had planned to do so tomorrow morning, as she had done for the past four years or more, but after a few minutes her feet hesitated.
Hmm, no one knows this place better me, she thought, so why then did she not recognise where they were now? There was still a path but more gnarled with roots and stones and often difficult to see through the ferns. The trees crowded together more thickly than she remembered, making the path narrower. They seemed bigger too. Had the raven somehow led her along a side-track she had not noticed before? But that didn’t seem right for there weren’t any other tracks and no one to make them and besides, between her house and Farmer Ged’s, the wood was never as dense wooded as it was now.
‘Wait,’ she called out to the raven but he flew on from tree to tree moving deeper into the thickening wood. At every hop he turned back to look at her.
Issa huffed but followed onwards, mystery and intrigue leading her on. Laron would be all right for a while; she couldn’t face speaking to anyone anyway. Besides, she thought, how often does a raven ever approach a person and lead them on some unknown quest?
Ravens were quite rare and now she thought of it she could only remember seeing one once a few years ago on the other side of Little Kammy, the western wildest side. There on the jagged cliffs a pair roosted, but she had never seen them on the eastern side of the island, where the main port and most of the villages were.
Frequently the raven turned to check upon his follower, cawing whenever she hesitated or slowed. Now the trees were mostly old gnarly oaks with a few beech trees dotted here and there and the path was positively not well-trodden but thick with old leaves and aging roots and not really a path at all. It was harder to keep up with the raven for increasingly she had to clamber over thick roots or push carefully through thorn bushes that tore her once freshly pressed linen trousers and white shirt and scratched her legs.
The thorn bushes and ferns soon disappeared leaving only the trees. Issa glanced up at the sky but could barely see it through the thick canopy. It must have clouded over for it was all hazy and a soft mist clung to everything. The air was thick with the damp earthy smell of the forest; the ground was springy and a rich brown beneath her feet. She felt like a child again and each step brought her closer to discovering a secret hideaway or long-hidden long forgotten treasure. It was the childish feeling of wonder that spurred her on through the mysterious wood rather than not wanting to return to the confusion of her life.
Issa was working her way through a particularly gnarly bit when the root she was standing on snapped. With a yelp she fell head first into the sharp thorns and branches. They gave way under her weight and she pitched forwards rolling down the bank until she came to a stop on her back. She groaned painfully and sat up. Her hands were scratched and a few splinters had embedded in her palms. Gingerly she began teasing them out; luckily none had gone too deep though deep enough to draw blood. She then began extracting an entire branch from her hair.
Once done she glared at the raven that stood on the ground a little ways before her, ‘I’m surprised you bothered to wait,’ she growled. He ruffled his feathers and would not look at her, focusing instead upon an earthworm that was desperately trying to hide under a leaf.
‘Humph,’ she said heaving herself up. Thankfully nothing hurt too badly. She brushed the dirt from her grass-stained and now muddied and torn trousers though it was futile, nothing but a long scrub would get them clean now.
It was the silence falling like a blanket upon them that made her suddenly stand still. She was in a small glade of patchy grass surrounded by huge oak trees. A trickle of sunlight filtered through the canopy and fell upon the grass.
‘They must be very old,’ she said quietly to the raven, looking up the massive trunks to the rich green canopy above, their thick wizened branches bowing down with age. There was no bird song in the air or wind to move the leaves and all was still and serene. Her gaze dropped to rest upon several huge standing stones shimmering a silver bluish hue in the dappled sunlight. They towered above her, over twice her height, stretching up into the sky as if, like the trees, they too reached for the light.
‘They were not here before,’ she gasped and glanced at the raven, ‘I am sure of it.’ Though, having said that, she suddenly wasn’t sure. Ma and Farmer Ged talked of hidden glades and so did Laron, they called them “Fairy Pockets” and spoke of them as places where the veils between this world and the worlds of Fairy were thinnest. They said there were many all over the place but they mostly existed in woodlands where the Tree Spirits were strong and Fairies and Sprites dwelt amongst them.
Of course she believed them, she had even seen a Fairy or two, a flashing ball of light dancing among the twilight flowers, tiny slender arms and legs and purple transparent wings, barely visible in the light. They disappeared as quickly and few people were fast enough to see them so she must have been lucky. Some of her friends didn’t believe they existed but Tar had seen one once a long time ago too with her soon to be married friend, Jessy, so they both could not be lying.
Such ‘thinning of the veils’ could also be stumbled upon in the ocean though these were less likely entrances to Fairy worlds and more where the Ancients’ mythical land of Aralanastias lay, or the Elven Land of Mists. But only an Elf could ever find the Elven ones, so it was said. Though Issa doubted whether those otherworldly realms really existed.
Elves, of course, were real; otherwise they would not have had lessons in Elvish. There had been one in the harbour three years ago, their grand ship blown off course in a gale that even their skilled magical arts could not avoid. But she had never seen one for real, and had only heard about it from Tar’s father.
The Elven land, Intolana, was far to the east though rumour spread that it had fallen long ago to a terrifying Dark Lord. No one really believed in Aralanastias either, the Ancient’s ethereal realm of peace and light and wonder, very few even believed the Ancients actually existed. But the legends of old said their lands disappeared beneath the waves long ago, destroyed by the same Dark Lord who plagued Intolana and the lands far to the east.
And of course there was always the nightmare place called the Shadowlands far to the north of the Isles of Kammy. Issa shuddered. That place was real and you didn’t need to find a Fairy Pocket to get to it either; if anybod
y wanted to go there, which no one did. It was a Shadow Realm, like the name suggests, filled with ghosts and wraiths, the land of the Forsaken dead. Sailors that ever set foot on that fateful earth never left, overcome as they were with grief and sorrow that ran like rivers through the ghost realm. The phantoms got them, sucked away their life force long before they could ever find their way through the fog to their ships.
Issa stood still as a statue. What if she were trapped? It was said that many wanderers through the veils lost themselves and never returned, trapped forever in a Fairyland never knowing they were imprisoned. For an hour in a Fairyland was a year in the Real World. But she could see no Fairies here and though indeed it was unknown to her and a mysterious place she could find no reason to be scared other than through her overactive imagination.
The logic settled her mind and she relaxed her shoulders focusing instead upon the great stones. They were old and crumbled with some completely covered in moss and ivy. They seemed like figures standing there, watching her, as if waiting. How tall had they been when they were first placed here? And how long ago would that have been? She itched to know as she walked towards one.
Looking closely she could just make out carvings upon it. She traced the lines and curves of strange symbols and letters; perhaps it was a language long lost and forgotten and faded by time. There was no date or anything she recognised. She walked to the next one that was similarly carved and then the next and noticed that between them they formed a pathway of green grass stretching fifty paces or so onwards towards a large, perfectly round, grassy mound surrounded by thinner shards of whiter blue stone.
The raven flew over her head and landed upon one of the stones near the mound, again waiting for her to follow. Issa looked around her but apart from the raven she was alone and the serenity of the place was blissfully infectious.
‘Maion'artheria,’ a voice said in the faintest whisper, though it made her jump. Her eyes darted about looking for Fairies or worse and her heart raced as the voice echoed around her, soft as summer rain. Again the voice whispered like the last, a soothing gentle song upon the wind. The raven squawked and flew further down the path of velvet grass; she followed him, running to keep up.
Three stones, two upright like the others and one a lintel, spread horizontally atop them, formed an entrance into the mound. Or rather, it would have been horizontal except that it was crumbling like the others and now hung down on the left, creating a crooked black hole of an entrance. The raven landed upon it and watched Issa approach with unblinking dark brown eyes. She smiled uncertainly at the bird, and then laughed aloud, feeling foolish for following him all this way, and more so for talking to him. But her laugh seemed so loud in the silence that when she stopped could hear its echo.
Issa came to stand before the pitch-black entrance; but could not see anything inside, the light stopped here as if there was an invisible door blocking it. Tentatively, she reached out and touched the inky blackness. She gasped as her hand passed through what felt like water but thicker and very cold. Her hand completely disappeared into the cold black liquid that filled the entrance though she could wiggle her fingers on the other side.
She stared at the ripples circling out from her wrist and as they moved she could see her reflection in them with the forest and the stones behind her, like giant blue ghosts wobbling in the water, watching. The freezing cold became too much and she pulled her hand back. But her hand was not wet and her skin was dry, smooth and cool.
‘It is not solid,’ she breathed, glancing up at the raven. He squawked in response. Issa watched her reflection ripple gently until the black water had calmed to stillness once more. But her image did not fade and instead the doorway reflected herself as perfectly as any mirror, where once it had been all black, as if somehow her touching it had left an imprint of herself and her surroundings. She chewed her lip thoughtfully.
‘What is in there?’ she asked the raven but he only cocked his head at her and she could sense nothing from him. Usually an animal she was with for a while, and one that was calm of mind and open to her touch, would make a noise or movement to indicate its thoughts. Sometimes an image would come to her, as if placed there or suggested by the animal, though that was rare. With the raven there was nothing, only obvious intention, such as leading her here.
‘Maion'artheria,’ the voice whispered again making her jump once more. This time it came from beyond the mirror within the dark mound. It sounded like Elven but it wasn’t the same.
‘Well, I guess there is nothing to lose,’ her voice sounded hollow in the stillness, ‘and you did bring me all this way,’ she glanced up at the raven who peered down at her from his perch atop the lintel.
‘Is that all you can say?’ she added hoping for a little more encouragement, but none came. She sighed and looked back at the door. ‘I am not a coward and we have come all this way.’ Before she could hesitate anymore Issa closed her eyes, took a deep breath and stepped forwards into her reflection, into the freezing cold. The silvery blackness engulfed her, darkness so complete she could no longer see her body and every limb and finger and toe turned cold as ice.
Perhaps if her mother had not told her that she was not her mother Issa would never have so carelessly stepped into the darkness. She probably would never had followed the raven at all, she thought, had everything been ‘normal’, and right now she would be helping Laron with the horses at the Smithy.
But words could not be undone; her mother who was not her mother had spoken, the raven had come, and she had stepped into the strange ancient doorway hidden between the stones.
At that moment in the pitch blackness, where she wasn’t even sure if her body existed anymore, Issa knew with unquestionable knowing that something had been set in motion that could not be undone. Though she did not know what she had a feeling that there was no going back. The cold engulfing liquid vanished.
Issa blinked several times and though it was still dark she felt an open space stretching out around her, she could hear her own shallow breathing once more and her body was not frigid with cold. Instead a warm breeze moved over her skin. Not a coward, she grinned as her breathing calmed. A soft light grew, driving back the dark, and she gasped.
On the other side of the black mirror there was no tomb or rock chamber that she was somehow expecting, but a vast desert of pale sand expanding out under a starless midnight blue sky. It seemed the sand held its own light for it gleamed a subtle indigo.
A little way ahead there was another stone doorway, only this one was made of a stone she had never seen before, for it shimmered silver and gold specks, like the stars at night, and were three times larger than the one through which she had stepped. The stones were not weathered but immaculately smooth, with rounded precisely carved edges. The two monoliths tipped with a heavy lintel stone stood alone with no mound, no other stones, nothing but the desert around it. The doorway was empty, with no mirror door, and went nowhere except through to the desert beyond.
As Issa looked on, a tall slender female figure draped and hidden within the folds of a dark silvery blue cloak emerged from the entrance, seemingly stepping out of thin air. The figure stood still. Though her face was hidden Issa could feel her eyes upon her and she swallowed nervously. She glanced behind but the door through which she had come was not there, instead only the endless desert stretched out.
The figure raised an arm; the folds of her robe falling back to reveal a long slender white hand, and beckoned Issa to come to her. A dark shape flapped noisily over Issa’s head and the raven landed heavily at the woman’s feet. So the raven had followed her inside, Issa thought, had this figure sent him? She motioned again for Issa to follow.
Slowly, Issa stepped closer until she stood only a few paces away. But nearing the figure revealed no more about her. Only that the woman’s dark blue robe was a thing of beauty for it shimmered with silvery lights like thousands of stars. Issa peered closely at the robe and fell back with a gasp. The woman bef
ore her really was robed in stars; small galaxies swirled slowly all over and a large one moved at the hem. There were clusters of stars of all shapes and sizes and numbers, some were the deepest red, others were various shades of blue, some moved as twins through the darkness and others stood alone, throbbing their brilliant white light into the darkness.
Issa’s eyes travelled up the robes and came to rest high upon the woman’s chest. A twinge of pain, more akin to sadness than any physical pain, knotted her own chest for there, below the woman’s neck and above her bosom, was a dark patch that should not be there, blacker than black and, as Issa looked, stars were being sucked into it, their beautiful pulsing light fluttering weakly as they circled down into the blackness, like a whirling pool of water sucking bubbles down into its centre, never to emerge again. She saw then that all the stars and galaxies were slowly moving towards the black point, and every star that disappeared seemed to make the dark patch grow a little.
‘The stars are dying,’ Issa breathed. She looked up at the taller woman, but no face could Issa see within the darkness of her hood, only a smooth luminous chin and pale lips were visible.
The figure raised her long slender hand again and made a gentle circling motion. Beneath her fingers appeared a pale golden light that formed into a miniature swirling universe of stars, like the ones within her cloak only larger at three feet wide and all centred around a bright golden star. It expanded suddenly and swiftly, engulfing them all before Issa could step away, and brilliant stars flashed with dizzying speed around her. She looked down but her body was gone and instead she was a ball of shining silver light like a star and around her moved countless similar stars and swirling galaxies, as if she were travelling amongst them.
