The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

by Alan Garner

  During the afternoon the wind dropped, and the roots were now no shelter from the snow. It fell steadily, monotonously, so that it seemed to the half-frozen figures behind the tree as though they were on a platform that moved upwards through a white, beaded curtain. Reality, space, and time dissolved in the blank, soaring, motionless world. Only an occasional squall drew back the curtain for a second or two, and destroyed the hypnotic illusion.

  Towards nightfall Fenodyree made up his mind. Ever since the wind had ceased to clamp them behind the tree roots he had been weighing the advantages, and disadvantages, of moving on. As things stood, they were more than likely to lose their way, and they were dangerously close to Alderley, and to the Edge. No, that was a risk he did not want to take. But, on the other hand, it was becoming obvious that they could not survive the night in the open. Already they were experiencing the fatal, warm drowsiness of exposure, and the mesmerism of the snow was undermining their resistance to the peril. Both Gowther and Colin had had to be roused more than once.

  “We must move,” said Fenodyree. “If we do not find a roof for our heads we shall not have need of one by morning. I shall see if there is better cover downstream. The fewer tracks we make in this snow the safer we shall rest, but it would not be wise to go alone. Farmer Mossock, will you come with me?”

  “I will that!” said Gowther. “I’ve about had enough of this place!”

  Fenodyree and Gowther disappeared through the curtain.

  They followed the valley for a quarter of a mile, and came to a cart track near to where it joined the Congleton road on their right.

  “Hey!” said Gowther. “I know wheer we are! Straight on’ll be Redesmere, and theer’s some pretty thick woods just ahead: it’s mainly rhododendron again, but happen we con make ourselves summat out of it. It’s the best we’ll find round these parts.”

  “It may be better than you think, my friend!” said the dwarf, his eyes gleaming. “I had given no thought to Redesmere.”

  They retraced their steps. All the time, Gowther had been at pains to put his feet exactly in Fenodyree’s tracks, and his boots had blotted out the dwarf’s smaller prints. Going back, they trod the same tracks as on the outward journey, and the result would give any hunter much to think about.

  The snow was now a foot deep all over, and considerably more where it had drifted.

  “We shall cut branches here and there to make a thatch, if nothing better comes of Redesmere,” said Fenodyree. “But we must not waste a moment, since it is past sunset already, and that is danger even before the coming of night. If we are to … ah!!”

  “What …?”

  “Sh! Look!”

  In the time that had elapsed since they passed that spot on the way to Redesmere something had crossed their path, leaving tracks like nothing Gowther had ever seen in all his days. A shallow furrow, two yards wide, had been swept through the snow, and along the centre of the furrow ran the print of bare feet. Each foot was composed of a pointed big toe, divided by a cleft from the single wedge that filled the place where the other four toes would normally have been. The prints were evenly spaced – three yards apart.

  “Hurry!” gasped Fenodyree. “And may we come in time!”

  He did not draw his sword.

  “I’ve a real snow-thirst,” said Susan. “More than anything else at this moment I’d like a gallon of milk.”

  “Oh, don’t,” groaned Colin. “A gallon would only wet my lips!”

  The stream-water was too cold to drink: it numbed their throats, and made their teeth ache. And their mouths were dry and sweet with fatigue.

  They spoke little, for conversation had died long ago: it took too much effort. They moved only when cramp demanded.

  After Gowther and Fenodyree had been gone about twenty minutes, Susan, developing pins and needles in all her limbs, got up to stamp around and flap her arms. She was on the point of crouching down again when she heard a faint swishing sound, as of somebody wading through the snow. Thinking the others were returning, she stood on tiptoe to peer out of the valley. This brought her eyes just above ground-level; and at that moment a flurry of wind pulled aside the veil of snow. A second later the wind had gone by, and the veil fell back into place, but in that instant, Susan’s eyes had registered every detail of the thing that was passing within ten yards of where she stood.

  It bore some resemblance to a woman, an ill-proportioned woman, twenty feet high, and green. The long, thick-set trunk rested on massive legs with curving, bloated thighs. The arms were too short, muscular at the shoulders, but tapering to puny, indeterminate hands. The head was very small, elliptical, and scarcely broader than the neck on which it sat. There was no hair; the mouth was a shadowed line; the nose cut sharply down from the brow, between eyes that were no more than dark smears. It wore a single garment, a loose tunic that reached to the ground, and clung to the body in folds like wet linen. The flesh gleamed dully, and the tunic, of the same colour and texture, might have been of the same substance. A statue of polished malachite; but a statue that moved.

  Susan began to scream, but before the sound reached her lips, a rough hand was clapped over her mouth, and Durathror pushed her down into the snow.

  “Lie still!”

  For a time, above the beating of her heart, she felt the earth shake beneath a ponderous tread that died away.

  “Did you see it?” she whispered.

  “I saw it. We must find my cousin: next time our luck may not hold.”

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” said Colin from the bottom of the slope. But as he spoke Fenodyree, with Gowther on his heels, staggered out of the gloom and caught Durathror by the arm.

  “Mara!”

  “It has this instant gone by,” said Durathror. “It did not see us: there is still too much light.”

  “So did it miss our tracks. Come: we have found shelter.”

  “Then why do we delay?”

  They slipped down the valley as quickly as they dared.

  “Is curiosity satisfied now, farmer Mossock?” said Fenodyree when Susan had given a breathless description of what she had seen.

  “Ay, it is that! But what in creation are they?”

  “Troll-women: from rock are they spawned, and to rock they return if the sun should find them above ground. But by night they are indestructible, all-powerful. Only our wits can save us now, and be thankful we have more than they, for the mara’s brain is as meagre as its strength is great.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth when a thin cry, like the plaintive voice of a night bird, yet cold and pitiless as the fangs of mountains, came from behind them.

  “Run! It has found our trail!”

  They had crossed the path where Fenodyree had turned back, and were forcing a way between the bushes when the mara called a second time, and now it was near.

  “Steady!” cried Gowther. “We munner get separated in here!”

  The thicket was not impenetrable, but it was close enough to make it difficult for five people to move quickly through it together. The snow was no longer falling: it was almost night.

  Again the voice.

  “Stay!” cried Durathror.

  They had all heard: it was not an echo. It was an answering call – from the front!

  Immediately there came another from the right, and the sound of snapping branches and rustling undergrowth. Hemmed in on three sides, they were, for the moment, spared the anguish of decision. They swung left. The voices were continuous now.

  Durathror ran ahead of the rest. Susan was nearest to him, trying to keep in his wake, and as they came to a thick screen of brush, Durathror put up his arms to shield his eyes, and forced his way through. Susan’s dive after him was halted by a stifled cry from Durathror, followed by a splash.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Where are we?”

  “What is it?”

  “Are you all right?”

  Susan put her head through the gap – and looked
out across an apparently limitless sheet of water. In the gathering darkness she could not see any land. Beneath her, to his waist in the water, Durathror struggled to climb back through the weeds and dead vegetation to the land. By this time the others had all reached the spot.

  “Redesmere!” said Gowther savagely. “I should have thowt of that one!”

  “Back!” spluttered Durathror.

  “But we conner!”

  “We have no choice,” said Fenodyree, “and very little time. We may pass through the net: we may.”

  Without a word Colin turned, and the rest hurried after.

  “Colin, wait! Let me lead you!” Fenodyree called softly.

  “All right …oh!”

  “Colin!!”

  “Stop, everybody!” cried Colin. “There’s water here, too!”

  “What? Theer conner be! Here, wait on a minute!”

  Gowther turned off left, and plunged into the bushes: ten seconds later he was back, only to vanish in the opposite direction without speaking. When he reappeared he was walking very slowly.

  “I dunner ask onybody to believe this,” he said, “but we’re on an island.”

  CHAPTER 18

  ANGHARAD GOLDENHAND

  “And it inner very big, either,” said Gowther.

  “But … but … it can’t be an island!” said Susan.

  “I know it conner: but it is.”

  “It’s not possible!” said Colin.

  “That’s reet.”

  “But …”

  Laughter broke in on their bewilderment, and they were aware of the dwarfs sitting in the snow, each with his back against a tree, at ease, and openly amused.

  “It is in truth an island,” said Durathror. “And, by the blade of Osla! I did not look to such a fair ending to this day’s work.”

  “Hush!” said Fenodyree. “And lie low awhile.”

  On the nearer shore, fifty yards away, three mara were casting about to pick up the vanished scent. They wailed, and whooped, and peered at the ground, uprooting bushes and bending trees.

  Gowther pressed himself further into the snow: he was exposed, and obvious: it would not be long before the mara would put two and two together, and wade out to the island, and then …

  Having flattened everything for yards around, the three shapes stood on the lake side, facing out across the water.

  This is it, thought Susan. How far can I swim in these clothes? But the mara did not move: their bodies merged into the racing shadows. All was quiet. And then they turned, and disappeared into the wood: the whooping broke out again, and continued until all sounds were lost in the distance.

  Gowther stood up, and shook the snow out of his clothes.

  “They must be pretty dim!” said Colin. “Why didn’t they find us? Anyone with half an eye could have guessed where we were: our footprints must have ended at the water.”

  “But the mara have not half a mind,” said Fenodyree. “Our tracks were all they had to follow, and when they ended the trail was lost. Nothing was moving on the lake, there were no tracks, therefore there was nothing to find: so their minds work. They will wander now until dawn, and let us hope there are few men abroad this night.”

  “Yes, but they knew we were somewhere close,” said Susan. “Why didn’t they try this island?”

  “Ah, but they did not know: they have never seen us. All they have seen are tracks that end in water. For the mara that is no puzzle; their minds look no further than their eyes, and I think that to their eyes this island is hidden.”

  “Is it now?” said Gowther heavily. “You dunner surprise me in the least! Happen you con also tell us how we come to be here without wetting our feet, and how we’re going to get back to land again!”

  “I do not doubt that we shall walk from here at sunrise,” said Fenodyree, “and, meanwhile, sleep safely and well.

  “This is the Isle of Angharad Goldenhand, the Lady of the Lake, and it is one of the Two Floating Islands of Logris. It was lodged against the shore when Angharad guided our feet hither. Here no evil will threaten us. For one night we may lie at peace, and the Lady will watch over us.”

  “Very comforting!” said Gowther. Melting snow was sliding down the inside of his collar, and he was tired. “But wheer is this ‘lady’ of thine? I conner see owt but snow and trees, and I doubt they wunner make a warm bed!”

  “She is there, though we do not see her, and we are under her protection. Now we must eat a little, and sleep.”

  A hunk of dry bread, and a mouthful of cheese, washed down with snow, made their supper. Hungry, damp, cold, and thirsty beyond measure, Susan curled up between the roots of a tree. Her ground-sheet was more of an affliction than a comfort. A long night of misery stretched ahead: sleep would never come. But come it did, and surprisingly quickly. A warm languor crept through her limbs: her brain told her to resist, but she could not. “This is how you freeze to death.” “Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now. And it’s the … first … time I’ve been … warm … for years … years …” The snow against her cheek was a pillow of swan’s-down. The scufflings of Gowther and Colin in their exhaustion and discomfort were carried far away beyond her reach. Susan slept.

  It was a curious dream. Much of it seemed to be no more than a mixture of all her waking thoughts and wishes, timeless, disjointed, as difficult to hold as an image in rippling water. And then, for long periods, the people, and voices, and episodes of her dancing brain would fall into place, and become so vivid, so concrete, that there was nothing of dreaming about them. But always, after a while, the pattern would break. It was a painting in which the brush strokes became detached from the canvas, and drifted away as isolated scraps of colour, only to regroup themselves to show the scene advanced a little in time. But this was the main thread of Susan’s dream.

  She was sitting cross-legged with Colin, Gowther, and the dwarfs under the trees of the island. Before them were golden dishes piled high with meats, and spices, fruits, and cool, green cresses. Redesmere flashed blue in the light of high summer. Stromkarls were laughing and playing in the water, others listened to the music of the voice of Angharad Goldenhand. She sat between the children, dressed in a robe of white linen. She was tall, and slender, and fair; her long, plaited hair like red gold; and on her brow a band of gold.

  It seemed that nothing of their adventures were unknown to her, and she had much to tell. The lios-alfar of the west, said Angharad, grew fewer every year. Only beyond Minith Bannawg did they hold court in great numbers; and when they had heard rumour of the capture of Firefrost by Grimnir and the Morrigan, the elf-lord Atlendor son of Naf had come south to find what truth there was in the tale. He was ill of the smoke sickness when he reached the island, and Angharad nursed him to health. Then, when the stromkarl came from Goldenstone the previous evening, Atlendor decided to go back to his people, since news of Firefrost was good and there was need of him in Prydein. He had set out that morning, in haste to be clear of the sullied air, and he dared not stay for words when he put an end to the spies in Radnor Wood.

  The dream ran on in a world of sunlit laugher, and stromkarls brought Fenodyree and the children cloaks of red muspel hair, woven from the beards of giants, and lined with white satyrs’ wool; and there were four cloaks sewn together to cover Gowther’s broad shoulders.

  “And for you,” said Angharad Goldenhand, “for whom the danger is most real, take this bracelet of mine. It will guard you on your journey, and when the other is with Cadellin Silverbrow, think of this as fair exchange: it has many virtues.”

  She took from her arm a band of white metal, and fastened it about Susan’s left wrist.

  “May the Sleepers lie safe in Fundindelve.”

  “Thank … thank you.”

  Susan was overwhelmed a little by such generosity; normally it would have embarrassed her, but she could not be embarrassed in the warmth of Angharad’s smile.

  The picture dissolved once more, but those golden eyes, full of s
unlight, remained steadfast through the wheeling colours of her dream.

  “Thank you,” said Susan.

  The golden eyes faded.

  “Thank you. Thank you!”

  Her voice sounded loudly in her head; the kaleidoscope receded into a blank screen of consciousness, against which her words fell with a peculiar lack of resonance. Susan knew she was almost awake: awake to a world of snow, and hunger, and weariness, and great peril. Desperately she tried to force her way back into sleep, to make that reality, but the wall was too strong. One by one her senses returned. She felt air cutting into her lungs like blades of ice, and when a drifting snowflake landed gently on her cheek she groaned, and thrust her head into the crook of her elbow. Instantly Susan forced her eyes open, and strained to bring them into focus; but the remains of sleep were heavy upon her, and it was a full quarter of a minute before she knew beyond doubt that her cheek had not lied.

  Susan was wrapped in a cloak of bronze-red hair, lined with a fleece of curls.

  There was something enclosing her wrist, something that had not been there earlier. She worked her arm free of the cloak to see what it was. A silver bracelet.

  The others were awake now. Colin and Gowther fingered their cloaks as though in a stupor. A waning moon shone in a clear sky of frost.

  “But it was a dream …!!”

  “… and the stromkarls …”

  “It conner have happened …”

  “Did you see …?”

  “So did I!”

  “It was summer, too!”

  “… and all that food.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No!”

  “Theer’s only our footprints in the snow, and all.”

  “But these cloaks …”

  “And what about this?” said Susan.