Chains of Gaia

by James Fahy

  It was some time later when Robin clawed his way painfully back to consciousness.

  He felt as though his head was splitting in two. Every bone in his body ached, and his mouth was dry. He became aware that he was lying, curled in a foetal position, hugging his knees, and that the surface beneath him was not deep moss, but cold bare iron with a light coating of old rotten straw.

  Shakily, he looked around, every movement of his head agonising. His vision was blurred. The light stabbed his eyes, darkening though it was. Sunset? He laid his head back down carefully. There was silence all around him, only soft noises of the Elderhart. And he was alone.

  Splinterstem, he thought groggily, struggling to focus. Splinterstem had hit him. With a rock. With a bloody great big rock.

  Memories flooding back, he struggled to sit up, unable to do so without crying out in pain. His head hurt so much it felt like a cracked egg. With tentative fingers and eyes screwed closed, he gingerly felt the side of his head. It felt tacky and tender. Dried blood.

  Dried though, he thought to himself. That’s good, right? It would be worse if it was still bleeding. What had happened? What had the dryad done to him?

  Opening his eyes properly, fighting the almost overwhelming urge to retch, he blearily took in his surroundings. He was in a cage, circular and suspended just above the forest floor on a long chain, his small prison hovering only a few feet above the grass. The bars were close set together and flecked with rust. There was room to stand, but he didn’t dare try to. He felt quite certain that if he tried, he would most definitely throw up or pass out, probably both.

  Beyond the cage, the forest stretched away. There were other swinging enclosures, two or three, all looking long-disused and empty.

  I know where I am, Robin realised, hanging onto the bars for balance. Behind him were the great roots of one of the elder trees, vast and wide like a knotted cliff face, and only a few paces away was the dark and overgrown stone archway that marked the entrance to the Labyrinth.

  I’m back at Rowandeepling, he thought. The dryad brought me back here. But why?

  Robin looked upwards carefully. Through the roof, he could see the great circle of the elder tree's trunk stretching up and away into the sunset crimson sky. High, far above, he could just make out the glimmering latticework of amber bridges, the treetop city of the dryads.

  He tried to call out, but his voice was nothing but a dry croak. He coughed and spluttered, each spasm making his head creak.

  Why would Splinterstem do this? Why were the other dryads allowing it? And why were none of them flying down here to see who was in the cage?

  Robin peered desperately around the forest. He had no answers. He was utterly alone. He didn’t know where Karya was, where Woad was, and though it worried him to admit it, he was badly hurt.

  “And the Shard’s gone, don’t forget that,” he muttered to himself. “Great job. Perfect.”

  The sun slowly set while Robin rested, waiting for enough strength to return to be able to stand. Gloom and twilight slowly descended on the wood, and still no one came. Not a single noise or movement was in deep darkness of the forest. The autumn air grew chill.

  Come to think of it, something else was very wrong, he realised after a time. He looked up again toward the distant settlement of the dryads far ahead. It was dark above. There were no glimmering distant lights, no lanterns making the bridges beneath the canopy of the elder trees glow. The sanctuary of the dryads seemed still and silent. Robin felt it in his bones. Something very bad had happened.

  When he eventually felt he could safely stand, feeling watery and tired with the cold of the growing night, Robin gave the bars an experimental shake. They rattled noisily, but didn’t budge, of course. The only thing he achieved was to set the cage lazily rocking, which made him feel nauseous again. He hadn’t expected much.

  He would have to use magic, he decided. Featherbreath perhaps, or a Waterwhip directed at the chain holding the cage aloft. It might be enough to break an old link? Or he could use the Golem cantrip, summon a few rocks and boulders. Maybe if he got them to pile up next to his swinging prison, he could roll one up this slope beside the cage and into his hand. He had an idea he might be able to bash at the bars with such a rudimentary weapon, bend them out of shape somehow. It might be enough to slip through and escape.

  His heart almost stopped when he reached for his mana stone with trembling fingers and found it gone.

  The dryad had taken it. In blind horror, Robin searched the dark floor of the cage and the grass that he could see beyond the bars in the fading light, hoping against hope that maybe it had just fallen, that he might see his seraphinite shining in the darkness nearby. He knew, deep down however, that his stone hadn’t merely fallen off. It was gone. Stolen. He was utterly without magic.

  He spent some time listing inventive curse words.

  “Okay,” he said, forcing his voice to be calm. “Don’t panic. Panicking won’t help anything. You just … you just have to think this through. You recently defeated a king who was enthralled to the power of a Shard and turned himself into a dragon. If you can fight a dragon, you can think your way out of a cage.”

  But it was easy to say, and harder to feel. More than ever, stripped of his mana, he felt like nothing more than a teenager way out of his depth. Without weapons, lost and alone in a great strange forest in an alien world. His friends were gone, the Shard was gone, his magic was gone, and he was really seriously hurt. As far as he knew, no one in this world or the next knew where he was, and no one was coming to help him.

  “This is really, extremely bad,” he muttered, clamping down on the rising panic.

  Splinterstem’s betrayal was unfathomable to him. He had to get out of here. He didn’t want to rot here, forgotten and alone at the mouth of the Labyrinth. Or else, even worse, to sit and wait for Strigoi to awaken and track him back here. He didn’t fancy coming upon the wolf here in the deep woods, without even a smidgen of mana to defend himself.

  “This is what happens …” he said aloud, to no one in particular, “… when fairy tales are right. There’s always a wolf hunting you, and even the bloody trees want you dead.”

  After a while, the moon rose, shimmering down through the silent canopy in grey beams. The forest seemed a large and lonely place around him. Time wore on, Robin nursed his wounds as best he could, and the air grew colder.

  Miserable and trapped, he would have given anything, anything in the world to have been back at Erlking. Arguing around the dining table with Henry and Karya and Woad. Even Jackalope, murderer or not.

  He wanted Aunt Irene, stoking the fires with her poker and complaining about doors being left open everywhere. He wanted Mr Drover, snoozing in a high-backed chair under a newspaper, his snores as commonplace as the ticking clocks. He wanted Calypso, sitting knees tucked up on a deep window-seat, reading her obscure poetry. He even wanted Hestia, fussing around like a clucking hen and accusing them of tremendous crimes against the household.

  Robin wanted Erlking. He wanted home. So badly it ached.

  After a while, he lay in the thin straw, listening to the endless, uncaring forest going about its night business, and buried his aching head in his hands. He was glad of the dark then, and that there was no one around to hear him. The great saviour of the Netherworlde surely should not sniffle.

  *

  He was roused from the straw some time later, deep in the night, by a noise.

  It was very dark in the forest. The moon was hidden now above by the canopy and thick cloud, and the shadows were deep. Robin could barely see beyond the bars. But there had definitely been a noise. Something other than the occasional scurry of some small woodland creature going about its invisible business in the unseen undergrowth.

  He tensed, suddenly alert, straining to hear. In his mind’s eye, he thought he imagined the clanking of chains and the heavy footfalls of the minotaur, dreaded guardian of the Labyrinth. He was sure there had been footsteps, out
there in the deep grass, close by.

  This was just his imagination, he knew. It wasn’t the minotaur, come to claim him from his cage. Woad had already told him that the beast was chained, unable to leave the underground maze.

  But still, something was out there. A forest animal perhaps, coming closer out of curiosity to see the odd spectacle of a Fae caged like a songbird in the night? The treacherous dryad come back to finish him off? He scanned the darkness warily, straining to make out a shape in the trees. Maybe it was Strigoi, having tracked him down at last, following their path from the hollow of the forest drake, back to Rowandeepling. He imagined that dark grinning wolf face, looming silent and unseen in the shadows, watching him hungrily, and shivered with goosebumps.

  “Who’s out there?” he asked, striving not to sound afraid. In truth, he was so weary that his voice, if anything, sounded irritated.

  This time he definitely did see a shape, something detached from the darkness in front of him. Coming not from the direction of the Labyrinth but from the depths of the trees, back toward the deep ravine which separated the island of the elder trees from the rest of the forest.

  He wasn’t imagining things. There was someone there. Someone approaching in the dark. All the hairs stood up on Robin’s neck. He could hear the quiet footsteps in the grass. He was painfully aware that without his mana stone, he was utterly defenceless. The shadowy figure drew closer in the dark.

  “Bloody hell,” the stranger said breathlessly. “It really is you!”

  Robin blinked in utter confusion. The voice was so familiar, but so unexpected here in this dark place in the misty night. He hardly dared to believe his own ears.

  “Wh … who …?”

  The shadowy stranger rushed forward, running across the grass.

  “Robin!” Henry cried, grinning.

  Robin stared down through the bars at his friend. It was Henry. It couldn’t be, surely? It seemed impossible, and yet here he was. The boy’s tangled and tousled brown hair was matted to his head. His face was smeared with dirt, but it really was Henry, wide-eyed and grinning up through the darkness. He reached in through the bars and Robin grabbed his arms, feeling a desperate urge to check he was real, that this wasn’t just some fevered dream brought on by one too many knocks to the head.

  “Henry! You’re here!” he croaked, staring. “You’re really here? How are you here?”

  Henry, Robin noticed, was in his white school shirt, though it was filthy, tattered and torn along the arm. His school tie, he noticed, was rather surreally tied around his head like a bandana, keeping his messy mop of hair out of his eyes. The gangly boy looked practically feral.

  “And why do you look like you just stepped out of Lord of the Flies!?”

  “You’re one to talk, mate!” Henry laughed. “You look like something ate you up and spat you out!”

  “Something did!” Robin replied a little hysterically, unable to stop himself from grinning.

  “And you’re all hung up like a Christmas decoration,” Henry babbled. “God, it’s good to see you, mate! Where’s everyone else? I didn’t believe him when he said he could find you. This bloody forest.” He shook his head in disbelief “I swear, Rob, it’s endless!”

  “Who?” Robin asked urgently. “Henry, how on earth did you find me? Where have you bloody been all this time?”

  Henry’s initial manic elation was becoming tinged with a look of serious concern as he noticed how badly beaten up Robin was.

  “Wow, you really have been in the wars, haven’t you?” he muttered, his eyes roaming over Robin, clearly making a catalogue of injuries. “Can’t leave you alone for two minutes, can I? And here I thought I’d been having a rough time. I got a splinter, and I fell in some sort of poison ivy yesterday. Not a laughing matter, honestly, you should see this rash–”

  “Henry,” Robin interrupted. “Focus, you blithering idiot.” He couldn’t stop grinning, although it was making his injured head pound terribly.

  “Oh, right, yeah,” Henry nodded. He really did look trail-beaten. But Robin didn’t care. He was alive, and he was here, against all the odds. “Rob, you’re gonna have to let go of my arms, mate. I feel like I should be serenading you or something.”

  “Sorry.” Robin released Henry. He hadn’t been aware that his grip had been so tight. “Can you get me out of this thing?”

  “’Course,” Henry nodded seriously. “Then I want to know what’s been going on with you.”

  “You too,” Robin agreed wholeheartedly. He had so many questions. “How have you survived alone in the forest? Where the hell have you been?”

  “I’ve not been alone,” Henry said, and something cautious in his tone made Robin pay attention. “And listen … when I tell you, right? You’re going to freak out, but don’t freak out, okay.” He shook his head a little. “It’s just too weird for words, but you’re goin’ to have to trust me.”

  “Trust you about what?” Robin asked, scooting back while Henry pulled and fiddled with the heavy lock on the outside of the cage.

  “Wow, this thing is bolted fast,” Henry grunted. “Why didn’t you just blast your way out with magic?”

  “My mana stone is gone,” Robin replied, looking at his friend with open curiosity. “Henry, trust you about what?” he asked again, insistently.

  “I can’t open this,” Henry decided. He looked back over his shoulder into the darkness. “Hey, can you do anything about this, old man? Could use a little help here.”

  Robin peered into the gloom in confusion, unsure who Henry was talking to. He’d said he hadn’t been alone. Who was he with? For the first time, in the shadows, keeping its silent distance, Robin made out a second shape, much taller than Henry. It was a man, wrapped in a long dark and hooded cloak which was mud splattered and threadbare. Robin jumped in surprise.

  “Henry, who is that?” he asked. “Who are you with?”

  Henry looked up at Robin, as the figure behind him began to walk forward toward the hanging cage.

  “Promise you won’t freak out,” Henry implored him. “I mean it, Rob. Seriously, I’ve had the weirdest few days.”

  Robin looked up warily as the tall stranger approached. He remembered what the dryads had said. That there had been rumours of an odd man, a pale and hooded wanderer, haunting the forest of late. A strange and oddly portentous chill ran down Robin’s back.

  “Good evening, Master Fellows,” the stranger said. His voice was cold and crisp, and horribly familiar. It sounded amused. “How is it …” the man mused from beneath his deep hood, “… that whenever we meet, you seem to be in a cage? The amusement of the Fates, perhaps?”

  Robin stared from the man to Henry with wide, unbelieving eyes, his mind refusing to process what his ears were hearing. Henry gave him a wan, almost apologetic smile.

  The stranger leaned close to the bars, and with white hands and long, spiderlike fingers, he lowered his hood. There, in the darkness of the forest, floating in the shadows like a pale will o' the wisp, was the cold, lined face of Mr Strife.

  In shock, Robin instinctively fell backwards from the bars, scooting away and making the cage rock.

  “Strife!” he shouted. He stared at Henry in alarm. “Strife?” he repeated. His eyes flicked back to the green-haired ghoul leering in at the bars. The old man wore a tight, humourless smile, and his eyes were as black and cold as space.

  “Mr Strife, if you please,” he said politely. “One must observe manners, Master Fellows. Or else one is nothing more than an animal.”

  This made no sense to Robin at all. He glared at Henry, wide-eyed. “Why are you with Strife?!” he gasped. “You do know … you know who this is?!”

  “Yes, yes I know,” Henry had his hands raised, trying to calm Robin down. “I knew you’d freak out!” He looked sidelong at the Grimm looming at his side. “I told you he’d freak out.”

  Strife did not acknowledge Henry. His beetle black eyes were fixed entirely on Robin.

  “Calm
yourself, Scion of the Arcania,” he said, in a rather bored tone. “At this present time … things being as they are … I can assure you that you have little to fear from me.” His lip curled. “More's the pity.”

  “Like hell!” Robin said. “Henry? What the hell is going on?”

  Henry looked at Robin seriously. “Look, Rob. I know it’s beyond weird. Trust me, I know, okay? But really. He’s not here to do damage. Just … let’s just get you out and I’ll explain. I wouldn’t even have been able to find you if it wasn’t for him. I’d still be wondering the forest like an idiot.”

  “My skrikers are keen trackers, Master Fellows,” Strife said to Robin, in cool but conversational tones. “We found this human boy, we found the site of the dragon’s death - congratulations on that by the way. Excellent work. And we found you.” He held something up in the darkness beyond the bars. It was Robin’s pack, the satchel he had been given by Aunt Irene for his birthday. It dangled from Mr Strife’s long fingers by its strap. “My skrikers got the scent from this. You left it at the drake’s corpse, buried under moss and earth. Very careless of you really.”

  Robin gritted his teeth. “I was busy being eaten alive at the time, and then hit with rocks,” he countered. “And if you expect me to believe for one second that you’re not here to do harm, then you must think I’m stupid!”

  Strife narrowed his eyes, dark slits in powdery white paper. “Oh, I mean to do harm,” he admitted freely, dark relish in his tone. “There is plenty of harm coming your way from me, Robin Fellows. Make no mistake about that.” He leaned back from the bars a little. “But not today, however. You are lucky. I have other, far more important fish to fry than you at present. And lamentably, I require you alive in order to fry them.” Admitting this seemed to revolt the Grimm. He made a face as though he had smelled something vile.

  The old man’s free hand passed in a wave over the lock of the swinging cage, and with a flash of shadows, there was a metallic pop, and the bolts fell broken to the grassy floor. The cage door swung ponderously open with a loud grinding creak.