The Wealding Word

by A C Gogolski

  “You fool!” the cloaked man shouted. “You’re as good as dead! We’re not coming for you!” Only then did he notice that the girl never went below the water. “What?” He staggered back a step, and the barbarians rushed forward to look.

  Nell rose to her feet, arms outstretched to steady herself. She found the twining carpet of vegetation supported her weight easily. Its song was a part of her now, and she could not help but sway in time with the snaking kelp around her.

  “It was you! Witch!” the man hissed from the vessel. “You brought the wrath of this creature upon us!”

  The sudden fury in his voice startled Nell, and she withdrew a few steps from the cog-ship, not considering that she could plunge into the sea at any moment. The barbarians quickly caught the cloaked man’s meaning and began shouting their own word at her: Maerfrood. A spear flew from the ship toward Nell, but all at once a dozen slimy tendrils whipped up to snatch it in mid-flight. The boat sustained another mighty jolt from below, and two men were knocked overboard. Their screams turned to bubbles as hungry yellow vines lurched them beneath the water, mere feet from where Nell stood. The rest of the men on board shouted curses, but none dared cast another spear. “Maerfrood! Maerfrood!” Witch!

  She turned her back on the shouting men and saw the small island waiting in the distance. Seeming to intuit her intent, the kelp knitted a springy causeway beneath her feet. She took a cautious step in the direction of the ruins, and then another. Soon she was laughing despite herself, her body moving with the rhythm of the water. It wasn’t merely the pliant mass of seaweed, but rather the song of the sea itself that lifted her. Rising tendrils brushed her arms and fingers as she danced, ran, and splashed her way to the island.

  Only then did something from the old tales return to her memory. She recalled stories her father used to tell, wherein the spirits of forest and sea were always dancing, dancing in the silence. For that brief moment she understood the melody that called their movements. It was something the storytellers never spoke of, never suspected: a beautiful, hidden, ever-present song that filled the world with life. A song which men could no longer hear. She skipped on, supported by the massive creature as sure and stable as the sea floor.

  It was a relatively short run over the living walkway to the rocks of the island. When she was almost to solid land, several leafy arms rose up before her, blocking the way. She felt a warning conveyed in the sway of the strands. It is not safe, they seemed to say.

  She peered past the kelp to the ruin dominating the island. It looked abandoned, except for the yeffel gulls crowding the toothy battlements. “I need to go there,” she said out loud, hoping the strangleweed could hear. “I want to be on the ground again. Just for a little bit. I’ll be careful.” After a moment’s hesitation, the tendrils splooped back into the sea, and Nell sprinted the last hundred paces.

  At last she climbed onto a long flat stone, half submerged in the kelp. It was part of a slain tower mounting up toward the ruin. As she stood upon it she heard a low rumble, followed by the echo of distant splashing behind her. She turned to see the raiders’ boat still mired by vines. But the ship was small now, no longer a threat. Just barely could she make out a speck of red cloak flying among the figures on the deck. Another explosion sent water splattering around the boat again.

  Nell felt no pity for the barbarians fighting to free their vessel. If they ever did get free, she doubted the ship would come any closer. She was a witch, a maerfrood, and that alone was enough to keep them away. Besides, the kelp forest did not want them sailing upon it. An incredible effort and a lot more explosives would be needed for the cog-ship to cross to where she now stood.

  One last, lone strand of kelp snaked up from the sea toward her. Nell put her hand out to touch it, feeling its waxy leaves strong and flexible between her fingers. She gave a shaky smile, letting a wave of gratitude flow through her. In another moment the cord withdrew, and Nell was alone on the desolate isle.

  PART 4

  THE CHIME OF ETERNITY

  CHAPTER 20

  THE SEA RUIN

  Nell climbed the ponderous tumble of stones that was once the western tower of the fortress. Hundreds of sharp-beaked yeffel gulls perched on the battlements above, watching her every move. She remembered how the birds attacked the raiders on the ship, and suddenly felt as vulnerable as a snail on a rock. She crept into the courtyard, gazing at the dark doorways and window openings for signs of life. The place was clearly deserted, but at least there were spaces to hide in if she needed.

  She looked again at one of the archways.

  Just inside the ruin stood a round-faced girl, about the same age as Nell. She wore a tidy white skirt covered in bows, with lace about her wrists. Her braided hair was tied with a pretty pink ribbon, and around her neck she wore a chain with a pearl. The girl’s beauty was marred only by the ashen circles beneath her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept for days. She gave Nell an uncertain smile and they stared at each other, neither quite trusting her eyes.

  At last, the sunken-eyed girl called in a sweet, hesitant voice: “Are you a mermaid?”

  Nell shook her head. “No. I just escaped from a ship. Do you live here?”

  “Yes, it’s all mine – I’m the princess of the island. Mummy Ann says.”

  Nell looked about. A crowd of mottled gulls landed a few steps away. They scampered closer, and there was a hungry look about them. “Oh,” said Nell. One of the birds tried to nip at the hem of her dress. She kicked it away, edging toward the girl beneath the arch. “Do you have another home too, I mean, on the coast? I need to get back there.”

  “No, I lived here all my life. You better come in, or else the birds will get you. Look who’s here everyone!” she called. At her feet a number of cats purred and meowed, but Nell could see no one else around. “I’m Evelyn. This is my castle and these are my vassals,” she said.

  “Thanks, I’m Nell,” Nell said, hurrying through the opening, “is your… Mum here?”

  “Mummy Ann? She’s away right now, but she comes to see me just about every day. Maybe tomorrow you can meet her. Come on!” Evelyn shook with excitement. “I never had a friend before. Mummy will be so proud I made a real friend!”

  “Sure.” Nell followed Evelyn into the ruin but froze only a few steps inside. Rather than a cold, deserted shell, she found golden door handles, stained glass windows and handsome marble floors within. “Like Lady Zel’s tower,” she breathed, awed by the splendor.

  “What’s that? You want to see my bell tower? Alright, let’s go!” The girl scooped up a kitten and threw it into Nell’s arms. “That can be your baby, and this will be my baby.” She kissed the struggling cat on its nose.

  Along the way they walked from room to room, with Evelyn pointing out one extraordinary detail after another. “There are fifteen thousand, six hundred and seventy eight books in the main library. I’ve read eight thousand, one hundred and forty of them. Have you read eight thousand, one hundred and forty books?”

  “No.”

  Evelyn chattered on blithely. “Mummy Ann always brings me presents. She brought me a skein of thread made from a chimera’s mane just yesterday, I’m going to make a new pillow from it,” or “This vase was presented to her by King Horace, and she says I can have it someday,” or “Whenever I want something to eat, I just say ‘pretty please’ and Gadnik brings me it. I can have cake whenever I wish!”

  The longer Nell spent touring the palace with Evelyn, the less she liked her new companion. Aside from ceaseless boasts about her treasures, the “princess” couldn’t go more than three minutes without nearly killing one of her cats in a death-cuddle.

  The two girls passed a set of huge metal doors, seeming rather out of place with the rest of the sparkling palace. The strange symbols worked along their borders had a sinister aspect, accenting the serpentine coils in the middle. Cold air from the other side whistled through a black, empty keyhole. “Where do these doors go?” Nell asked.

&nbs
p; “To the Chamber Beneath: only Mummy Ann goes there.”

  “But what’s inside?” Nell noticed more designs, oddly like skulls grinning in each of the corners. A pair of gates constructed of stout iron bars stood open on either side of the doors. It looked as though they could be swung shut and locked.

  “Mummy Ann’s things are inside,” Evelyn sang. “Come on! The tower is this way!”

  The majesty of the place surpassed even Lady Zel’s magical dwelling. Nell needed her candlestone to navigate the sorceress’ tower at night, but Evelyn’s palace was lit with torches that burned constantly, without fuel or smoke. Paintings in ornate frames lined every wall. There were rows of exotic potted trees towering to the ceilings in every hall. Intricate carpets covered the floors wherever they went, and the delicate hint of incense spiced the air. But despite its grandeur, there was something unwholesome about the place. Nell could not identify the feeling precisely, but it came to her when she passed a vase scrawled with unnerving symbols, or looked upon some of the curiously gruesome pictures in the halls.

  Evelyn didn’t seem to notice the oddities of the palace. “This is my room,” she announced as they came upon another opulent chamber. Huge windows of alternating clear and colored glass looked out upon the morass of kelp. “Isn’t it wonderful? You can sleep here with me tonight!”

  Nell noticed a disheveled man leaning against the wall outside of Evelyn’s room. He was the only other person she had seen on her tour. His lips were frozen in a dazed grin, his eyes soul-weary, dark and sunken. They seemed to roll about, as though he hadn’t the will to focus anymore. As Nell watched, his hand drifted up to scratch a black, festering hollow just below his neck. “Hello,” Nell greeted him tentatively.

  “Oh, that’s just Gadnik, my servant. He doesn’t talk,” Evelyn said. “Get us some sugar cookies and cream. Pretty please.” It wasn’t a request but rather a command, punctuated by her impudently clapping her hands in his face. Gadnik blanched back to the present, tottering away as though the place were reeling like a ship.

  “Where are all the other people?” Nell asked.

  “There aren’t any. Mummy Ann says that a noble woman cannot have a proper education with all the distractions of court. Besides, the world isn’t safe for young girls.”

  “You’ve never been anywhere but here?” Nell asked, incredulous. She couldn’t imagine living her whole life confined to an island in the middle of the sea. A queer smile crept across her face, mingling disbelief and pity at the absurdity of it all.

  Evelyn caught the look and sniffed, “Someday when I’ve been properly groomed, Mummy will take me to the land where I will rule as queen. That’s how it works. You don’t know anything about being a queen.”

  Nell shrugged. That much was true.

  Evelyn’s bed dominated her chamber. It was a sea of silk sheets, with islands of pillows cunningly stitched with sequenced fish, rabbits and wolves. A flowering canopy of wisteria hung above the bed, filling the room with a heavenly scent and dropping lovely petals upon the sheets. It was a bed straight out of a fairy tale, one certainly fit for a queen. “Would you mind if I lay down on it?” Nell asked, longing for soft comfort. She yawned, “I’m so tired.”

  “Of course,” Evelyn grinned. “And I can read you a story! But wait a moment.” At least ten cats were napping among the flower petals and glittering pillows on the bed. Though there was room enough for both girls and ten more cats, Evelyn tugged at the sheets. “No, kiddies!” she scolded them. “Off! That’s my bed and I want to lay on it.” Two jumped down, a few raised their heads, and the others went on dozing. “Off!” Evelyn roared again, red in the face. One spotted cat jumped back up on the bed.

  “Cats,” Nell said knowingly. “I can share with them. Back at home I used to sleep with my cat every night.”

  “They never listen! OFF!” Evelyn commanded again. When none moved, she threw up her hands in a fit.

  Nell thought the sunken-eyed girl was about to cry. “No problem,” she consoled, “we can just shoe them off the bed.” She was just picking up a kitten balled among the covers when the Word inside her stirred.

  Evelyn stood nearby with one hand raised in the air, jabbing the other at the cats. Her eyes glinting with fury, she forced a crackly sound from her throat. It burned strangely in Nell’s mind. The room at once grew frigid, and dark powder like coal dust sifted down from an unseen source. Then, each cat on the bed jerked violently into the air as if by unseen hands. They floated there for a moment, yowling and flailing their paws.

  “What – what are you doing?” asked Nell. Dread crept over her.

  “This is what happens to bad kiddies,” Evelyn hissed. She repeated the same dark syllable, and the room started blinking white and black, white and black.

  Nell shut her eyes against the flicker, wishing she could block her ears to the grotesque popping sound, but she didn’t dare let go of the cat in her arms. When she finally looked again, the floating felines were gone. Just coal dust remained.

  Evelyn lowered her arms, acting as though nothing had happened. “Now I can read you to sleep. How about the Dancing Princesses?”

  Nell cradled the mewing kitten protectively. It was the only one left. She didn’t know what Evelyn had done, but she sensed a savage kind of power still resonating in the air. A fluttery feeling descended on her, like she had just glimpsed the long, scaly tail of a monster, and knew for certain that someday she would meet it again.

  The other girl was patting a place next to her, inviting Nell over to the now-empty bed with a smile.

  Not sure what else to say, Nell finally managed, “That sounds great, Evelyn.” She curled up on a heap of fluffy blankets, weary from her travels. Despite her reservations, the soft covers and Evelyn’s prim reading voice quickly lulled her into a deep and sorely-needed sleep.

  Sunlight poured through the stained glass windows of Evelyn’s room, spilling a brilliant array of colors across the bed. The glass to the left showed a radiant woman wearing only her long yellow hair as a shift. Head cocked over her shoulder, the woman held a red branch in her hand. Dozens of blue chips formed a nimbus around her. Above her left shoulder rose a tower, and above her right loomed a snake equal in size to the tower, its head facing her feet. Lazily, Nell wondered who the figure was, guessing her a priestess of some kind. Try as she might though, she couldn’t read the word painted at the bottom of the glass. Opposite this window was another mosaic, equally exquisite, but done mostly in browns and grays. It showed a wild-eyed bird caught amid a confusion of blowing leaves. Flecks of yellow glass, like lightning, streaked through the frozen whirlwind.

  Nell liked to study the patterns worked into the glass back in Reginald’s castle, but they now seemed crude in comparison to Evelyn’s picture windows. Not even the glass in the king’s grand audience chamber, with its victorious knight and writhing serpent, rivaled the intricacy before her. Her eyes eventually wandered to the waiting plate of cookies that Gadnik had delivered the day before, after Nell had fallen asleep. She gobbled them down, drinking the cup of curdled milk he left as well. “I guess it’s morning,” she said to herself.

  After a moment she heard a high voice echoing down the hall. She had just enough time to knock the cookie crumbs from the bed when one of the doors creaked open. A round face framed by blond ringlets peeked inside. “Oh, I thought you might still be sleeping,” Evelyn said. “Look, Mummy Ann is here!”

  She pushed both doors open and smiled proudly, “See Mummy, I have a real friend.”

  Into the chamber shuffled the most ancient woman Nell had ever seen. Hunched almost in two, the black-robed crone leaned upon a stick that clicked on the marble floor. Even from this distance she smelled like the back room at the village butcher. Her face was scored by deep lines of age, and wiry hairs sprouted from her upper lip, chin and neck. “Who…” she rasped, “Who do we have here?” It seemed to take all her energy just to speak. “Come to me girl,” she beckoned with a gnarled finger.
>
  Nell slid down off the bed, coming to stand before Mummy Ann like a wary animal. She couldn’t help wrinkling her nose at the putrid stench.

  The woman lifted a haggard hand to clutch Nell’s jaw, turning her face roughly to the left and right. Nell blanched when the crone made contact with her skin. Involuntarily she startled back a step, but Mummy Ann hung onto her with an unrelenting grip. Her eyes flared at Nell. “You have the power of the Weald in you. Tell me your name.”

  Suddenly, all the stories she had heard from Lexi, the Hermit, and Lady Zel flooded back into Nell’s mind. The mad crone at the tree, the keep overlooking the water, the Widow of the Sea… “Rhiannon,” Nell breathed, struggling out of her bony grip.

  “Nell,” the old witch chuckled. “I thought so.” She scuttled over to a leather armchair and lowered herself down, looking pleased. “You’ll excuse me… if I sit.” Her black lips lifted in a smile. “I hope my little Evy has been kind to you.”

  Nell expected Rhiannon to be much younger than Lady Zel – seething with jealousy and power in the prime of her life. Instead, here was a frail old biddy on the brink of death. In fact, judging by the stench of her, Nell wondered if grave rot hadn’t already taken hold. She swallowed her disgust saying, “Yes… Evelyn has been very kind, Lady.”

  “Good,” Rhiannon crooned. “And how came you to this place? Professor Domani was to escort you to my castle.” There was a flimsy concern in the old woman’s voice. “What has become of him?”

  Nell’s thoughts drifted to the serpent’s bite, the misfortunes of their trip, and the bearded warriors making off with her. The hungry squeal of the Malady echoed in her mind. It was the cause of her suffering, and the reason she was here with Rhiannon. Unconsciously she rubbed her wrist, though the sprain was almost healed. “Peter was bitten by a snake. He’s still back on the coast.” Nell hoped he wasn’t dead. “I was waiting for a leech when raiders came and took me.”