Hawthorn

by Jamie Cassidy

  “It runs in your veins, the dark blood. I will help you for a favour owed, to be collected at my will.”

  I don’t know what to say, I don’t know whether to trust him, but I can feel the threads of a binding contract hovering about me, waiting for the word so that they can wrap around me and cinch in tight.

  The underbrush to the left of us erupts in a series of snaps and cracks.

  “Hurry, hurry. The Darkling approaches.”

  “Yes, okay, fine. I agree to the terms, whatever.”

  Heat floods my veins and I am on my feet, hovering above the ground so high that my line of vision is almost obscured by the leaves and branches of the tree. With a spike of adrenaline I realise we are in the tree. The eyes and mouth, the thing, whatever it is, has me tight.

  I watch as Sam appears in the clearing, his knife glints in the moonlight, his dark hair shines and then he kicks the earth with a booted foot too big for his body, stomping off out of view.

  We remain in the tree for a moment longer and then I am hurtling toward the ground. I’m going to hit, smash, hurt.

  Mattress, I think, and I hit downy softness, bounce and land on my feet.

  The eyes are in my face again, the grin impossibly wide, but then who am I kidding? Nothing is impossible here.

  66

  GEMMA

  I’m underground, under earth. Dwelling on it makes it hard to breath. The blue-eyed thing led me here and I had no choice but to trust it. Hide, it said, wait for the sun then implore the rock with the moss-drawn face. Its heart will melt for you.

  I have no idea what the hell it was taking about, but at this point I have nothing to lose.

  Except your life.

  Ha! It looks like I’ve developed one of those annoying inner-voice things. I will it away and feel it pop out of existence. There is only room in my head for one set of thoughts.

  I curl up and those thoughts, the recent memories I have been trying to shovel dirt over, surface like angry worms. I have no choice but to relive them.

  We were doing good until the evil-reflection-mum showed up and attacked us. She kept asking which Mary mum was. Mary, Mary so contrary and then mum just went kind of still and floppy. The reflection mum stepped into real mum, and, oh god, it was weird because when mum looked at me she wasn’t really mum anymore. She had this strange light in her eyes, this cocky twist to her lips and her clothes had changed, just like that. There she was, standing there in this kick-arse outfit, all black and leathery and totally RPG.

  I was gonna start screaming or running, possibly both, but mum, not mum, grabbed my wrist and pulled me close. That’s when she told me the weird, will it, imagine it, stuff before the bushes behind her exploded and Sam jumped out.

  I clench my fists and squeeze my eyes closed as I recall this bit.

  Mum just stepped back into his arms and mouthed run. But I stood there, frozen long enough to see the silver knife come up and bury itself in mum’s throat, long enough to hear her gurgle. Sam locked eyes with me and it was clear. I was next.

  I ran.

  I’m not sure how long I hide in the hole in the earth. It’s warm and safe and I don’t want to leave, but I know I have to. I feel the sun come up, don’t ask me how, I just know. I crawl out of the hole and onto the forest floor, gasping because I am no longer in the forest proper, but at its edge. This is where the sea would be in my world. Although I can smell it, I can’t see it. All I see is a plain of rolling rocks all shapes and sizes.

  Implore the rock with the moss-drawn face

  The blue eyed creature’s words echo in my mind and I scramble to my feet, setting off with renewed purpose.

  Ten minutes later my purpose is waning. So many rocks… How am I going to find the one I need? It’s stupid, impossible. Gah! I stop and sit on one of the rocks with a sigh. There has to be a better way.

  I realise after five minutes of pondering that there really isn’t. There is no magic trick, no special potion to make me better at this. I will have to do it the old-fashioned way. Sitting here pondering is simply wasting time.

  Pulling myself back to my feet, I begin the search again.

  Moss-drawn face, moss-drawn face, moss-drawn fucking face! Time ticks by, the heat of this world’s sun beats down on the top of my head and I realise it must be midday. I realise I’m running out of time!

  I am a hairbreadth from giving up when I see it. It’s huge, leaning to one side. The moss dappled across it makes a face, a beard, a mouth, eyebrows and eyes. I blink to make sure I’m not hallucinating, but it’s still there.

  A moss-drawn face!

  I jump up and down on the spot and then freeze. I have to…implore it? What the hell does that mean?

  Talk to it you twit, tell it what you need, who you are, ask for its help.

  This time I listen to the voice and park my butt beside the rock. I clear my throat and begin to speak. I tell it about my home; mum and Jules, Heather and Danny. I tell it about the Darklings and how they’ve taken Danny, how mum and I came to save him. I tell him about mum, about the silver knife, and I choke on my words as the tears clog my throat and burn my eyes.

  I tell it I need help, that I need someone, anyone, who can help me. Please, please help me! Please!

  The rock remains a rock, anger shoots like fire through my chest and I am hammering on it, swearing and crying and screaming at it to do something, please do something.

  Suddenly I am being crushed against it. A scream locks in my throat as a voice like thunder fills my head.

  “Stop, child. Stop.”

  The voice is loud, rough, but filled with tenderness. I blink back tears and stare at the rock that holds me captive.

  I’m pressed up against the bottom half of its face, its cheek, and I can feel it shifting beneath me as it speaks.

  “My grandchild, I never thought I would see this day. I prayed never to see you here.”

  The earth rumbles and I am lifted into the air.

  I realise the rock has dislodged itself from the earth. It, he, is standing.

  Slowly, gently, he places me on the ground and I get a good look at him.

  He is a rock man, a moving rock man. I feel the incredulousness of it expand in my chest, but exhale to ground myself. Anything is possible, and then his words register. Grandchild…he called me his grandchild…

  The rock shifts and a smile appears. “My Mary cannot be killed, only wounded. My Mary is truly immortal, a child of rock and crone. The Mother’s blood can only be ended by The Mother’s hand. There is still time.” He kneels and reaches out to caress my face with a stone finger.

  I try not to flinch. I sigh because the contact is warm, soothing, and maternal. It brings fresh tears to my eyes.

  “I want my mummy.” The words seep from my lips and I am instantly ashamed of my weakness.

  The stone man sighs, a low rumble beneath my feet.

  “I took an oath not to speak to my daughter, but I did not take an oath not to speak to her offspring. You have the soul of a rock troll. You are strength and courage and maternal instinct, and these are the qualities that will aid you in getting your brother back. But before you do anything, you must understand what it is you are dealing with. Sit and let me tell you a story; the story of Merrydianne.

  Once upon a time, so long ago that even the rock trolls struggle to remember, there was a world so beautiful that Angels begged to enter. They were denied, of course, because this was a realm that brooked no outsiders. Because of this rule it had remained undetected and pure for millennia.

  The streams sang with crystalline waters that would refresh even the weariest soul. The sky was a multitude of hues on any given day, like living beneath an eternal rainbow. The rain, when it did fall, was sweet to taste, and the fruits, flowers and vegetation that fed on it made even more delicious.

  The creatures that lived in this world were content, happy, complacent. They asked no questions. They wanted for nothing, for the monarchy provided for all, equall
y. Every being had a purpose and the wheel kept turning in the eternal sunshine.

  Then the time came, as it does every so often, when the queen decided to step down, to appoint an heir to the throne. She had two daughters, both as beautiful as each in their own way. Brianna and Giselle, fast friends as well as siblings, each proclaimed it mattered not who would take the throne, that whatever the decision, they would stand by it and their sibling. So the queen had a task before her. Weighing up the pros and cons, she realised that although Brianna was much like her, Giselle contained a fire that she much admired, one that she hoped would burn true and bright for hundreds of years to come.

  Giselle was crowned queen, and Brianna, true to her word, stood beside her on coronation day, tears of happiness glistening in her eyes.

  Giselle…what can I say…she captured my heart that day. I was barely a pebble in my father’s arms, but I knew that I would love no other. I pined for her as I watched her rule, knowing that even if she was so inclined, we could never be together. Faerie was liberal in its love matches, but my kind were forbidden to mate with any other. So I watched and loved from afar, and when the time came I joined the queen’s guard, not that she needed a guard, there was no threat, it was more of a tradition. I, being a rock troll, was a valued edition. I looked daunting in my livery, all silver and purple. When she looked at me for the first time, she really saw me. It was the happiest day of my life.

  We became tentative friends. She confided in me her desire to know more, see more, be more. She didn’t understand why Faerie folk were forbidden to interact with humans, didn’t understand why we couldn’t form an alliance; two worlds sharing knowledge and resources and fun. I was enchanted by the simplicity of her argument, and, yes, I may have encouraged her in her flights of fancy. I loved her. I would have lain my life down for her.

  On the fateful day that she asked me for my help, if I had refused, so much would be different today, but I didn’t refuse. I agreed.

  I lied for her, covering her absence when she took a forbidden sojourn into the human realm. I thought the trip would assuage the hunger inside her, that she would see me as more than a friend, as more than an ally. I waited eagerly for her return by the huge hawthorn tree that marked the line between our worlds, but when she returned she was not alone.

  In the short time she had been away she had met and fallen in love with a young human male, for a day in our realm was equal to a week in the human world. A week had been enough for her to court and be courted, to declare her love, and to enchant the young man away to our world, to Faerie.

  His name was Thomas Learmonth and the fey were captivated by him. He had a silver tongue and could weave a rhyme about most anything. The fey began to call him Thomas Rhymer. The only person who wasn’t so taken was Brianna. Rumours spread about a faction of fey who disagreed with Giselle’s wild decision; her cavalier attitude to a millennia old rule. Her mother, the former queen, counselled Giselle, but her words fell on deaf ears. The queen mother began to wonder at the wisdom of her decision.

  Giselle cared nothing for the rumours. She was ecstatic and time passed as if in a blur. She no longer had time for me. She no longer had time for anyone but Thomas. My heart was broken, but I consoled myself in the knowledge that he loved her true. Seven weeks passed and Giselle found me in the palace gardens. Her cheeks were stained with tears as she told me that Thomas wished to leave, to return to his world.

  “It is only for a short time, to complete his affairs,” she told me. “He promises to return to me.”

  I asked her, then, why she was so unhappy and she told me that her mother had placed a stipulation on his leaving; that he be bound by oath not to speak of the fey or their world. Giselle was queen, but to ignore the queen mother’s counsel completely would cause dissent, something that had been absent forever.

  I did what any friend would. I consoled her, told her that if Thomas truly loved her he would not mind taking such an oath. For in truth, I would take any oath if it meant being able to return to my beloved.

  This seemed to lighten her heart and she left me with a smile on her radiant face.

  Thomas took the oath for all to see, and then he was lead back to the gateway, returned to his world.

  Giselle waited. Days passed, weeks passed and she heard nothing from him.

  Things began to change.

  The forest to the east turned black, the pixies and elves began to sicken, but they did not die. Instead that turned into something else, hungry monsters that began to prey on the healthy beings. Giselle set up a guard to protect the town’s fey, but it was like an infection that refused to stop.

  The council met and the queen mother revealed the truth, the reason behind Faerie’s separation, its solitude. To allow outsiders in, to allow them out, to allow them to speak of our world, was to taint it. Faerie was ever changing, built from the thoughts and dreams of the ancients. The ancients were gone, asleep or dust, no one knew, but Faerie remained and it was obvious that Thomas had broken his oath. He had spoken of Faerie, and as the humans dreamt, the land changed.

  Faerie was doomed.

  Giselle refused to believe that her lover could betray her so. She insisted on seeing for herself. When she returned she was no longer the sweet Giselle I had fallen in love with. She was irrevocably changed.

  No one but Giselle knows the truth of her time in the human world, but everyone knows of the events that transpired upon her return. Brianna, having gained the support of the untainted fey, staged a coup, took the throne and cast Giselle out.

  Giselle’s bond to Thomas had put Faerie in danger. In order to remove the taint, they had to remove Giselle, and cut ties with the dark forest and the surrounding lands. In effect, Faerie moved, it reinvented itself and it left Giselle behind.

  But she wasn’t alone. I remained and, because I remained, so did my people. Being king had its advantages. A rock can thrive anywhere and my people are loyal to a fault.

  Giselle changed, becoming darker, twisted and hungry. We realised that being cut off from our motherland meant that we would starve, for Faerie sustained us and without it we would die. It was with that that Giselle had the idea. Why not take back from the human realm what they had taken from us? Take their lives, their souls, to sustain our existence. The Darklings agreed, but the rock trolls would not participate. Many opted to deep slumber.

  Giselle began using her power to place changelings into the human world. She brought back their babes and those souls gave her power that in turn powered her Darklings, her forest.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  She needed more.

  A longer lasting power, one connected to faerie. There was no blood purer than that of a monarch. When Giselle lay with me for the first and only time, breaking an ancient law that no longer seemed to apply, it was not out of love but desperation.

  Our union sired Merrydianne, your mother.”

  I take a moment to absorb this information, but a moment is all I am given.

  “Giselle had many offspring and many of them were placed in the human realm as changelings. They were charged to grow, lead human lives, and procreate and then return with their first born. A child born of a fey and human union would be a delicacy to sustain for decades, a fey with a soul to feast upon. Once the soul was depleted, the child would take its place in the Darkling realm where it belonged. That was to be my daughter’s charge, but my paternal instincts arose. Rock trolls are renowned for our nurturing dispositions, and I held fast to my Merry, refusing to give her up. I think our friendship made Giselle lenient, and she allowed me to keep my babe.

  Time went by and Merry grew into an inquisitive, strong and independent creature, while Giselle grew ever twisted and dark until she was unrecognisable as the radiant fey queen she had been.

  I grew despondent. This was no way to live when life was eternal, but Merry gave me strength. She brought me happiness until the day that I discovered her secret trips to the human world. Like her mother be
fore her, she had become enchanted by them. She implored me to allow her a human life, to be a changeling, to experience what they experienced.

  I was furious. Did she not understand what she would be giving up, her firstborn to be fed upon? She told me she did not care, but in truth she did not understand. She went to Giselle without my knowledge, and by the time I discovered it, the deal was done. Merry would be placed in a human home as a babe and the human home was a Learmonth one, the direct descendants of the man who had spurned her. It was then that I discovered her curse, her bargain with Thomas Learmonth all those decades ago. In exchange for his life, which was forfeit by his oath-breaking, he agreed to give the fey rights to his bloodline; one every generation. Giselle has been placing changelings in the Learmonth home for generations. Merry would be the latest.

  The day Merry was to leave, I made an oath of my own. I told her that if she did this, if she left, then I would be stone to her forever more.

  She left anyway. I don’t think she believed I would shield my heart against her, but I have kept my oath. I kept it when she came back the first time, sobbing that she could not give up her firstborn, I remained stone when she returned a second time because her firstborn was sick, cursed to feel its full fey heritage without the changeling veil to guard it. I heard of the deal she brokered with Giselle, with The Mother, to cure her firstborn, to keep her in exchange for her firstborn son. I expect she believed to trick The Mother. After all, Merry could have decided not to have further offspring. But The Mother is not so easily fooled, she agreed to the bargain on one condition; that Merry give up her night-self, the self that dreams of Faerie. Merry agreed, not knowing that the night-self was where all her memories of Faerie were held. Merry was forever cut in two, her day-self forgetting all about this realm, and her night-self trapped, cursed to watch as Merry became pregnant and had a son. She watched powerless as Merry of the day, or Mary I should say, was called back to Learmonth by a will written by a changeling.”