The Night of the Solstice

by L. J. Smith

  “No, oh, no,” sobbed Alys. She wanted, not to run, but to curl in a ball and die. The hands with their twisted nails were searching for her again, and she whimpered and shrank back from them. As one found her, and closed on her arm, she struck feebly at it with the gannelin knife, and blood sprayed across her face. The shrieking grew unbearable then, as she slashed at the creature’s fleshless arms and legs, but in the chaos of noise and blood she realized that she was only infuriating it, and that all the while it was drawing her nearer with an irresistible strength.

  For one clear moment she saw it reared high above her, its mouth wide open with shrieking—and in her mind’s eye she saw the serpent, limp and perhaps lifeless on the floor.

  Thrown or wielded it will not easily miss its mark… .

  Wrenching her right arm free she changed her grip on the dagger, and with all her strength threw it straight at the gaping mouth. The shrieking broke off as if the dagger had severed it. For a moment the creature tottered, and Alys fell backward as it released her to claw at its own face with its nails. And then, with a shudder, the whole stringy, stinking bulk of it crashed down beside her.

  The dagger, jarred loose by the impact, plopped down. Alys lay without touching it for a long time, and cried.

  Her body was bruised all over, and there were bloody furrows on her arms where the crooked nails had gouged her. When she rose at last, her legs would barely support her. Still crying and shuddering, she searched with her hands in the nameless muck at the bottom of the lair until she found the serpent. She looped its flaccid body about her wrist and crawled back to the dagger. It was stained a deep muddy red and she could hardly bring herself to touch it. Somehow, sobbing, she clambered out of the pit and began to stagger through the marsh.

  The mist had thinned, and the moon shone down on her, but she was too dazed to tell where she was going. She only knew that she must not stop, and that there was danger everywhere. Clutching the serpent to her, stiffly pointing the dagger straight ahead, she stumbled on. Her legs were heavy and aching. She made them keep moving. A muddy red fog swam in her brain. Then the dagger seemed to go double before her eyes as a great wave of dizziness overtook her and the red fog turned to black.

  Chapter 14

  MARSH AND WOOD

  Alys was dreaming of eyes. Green-brown eyes, the color of the marsh, so large they made the small brown face they were set in seem even smaller by comparison. They looked down on her with an expression both keen and compassionate, and they wanted her to sleep … to sleep… .

  She woke to a gentle rocking motion.

  “What—where—?” She started up, heedless of the pain in her head, her voice a whispery croak—and met the eyes from her dream.

  “Hush,” said the creature belonging to the eyes, pressing her back gently. But Alys had seen enough. She was in a boat, a small, flat boat piloted by two more of the sleek brown creatures, and the marsh was slipping away beneath her.

  “I am Arien Edgewater of the Eldreth—the marsh dwellers,” said the lissome little creature, and Alys blinked stupidly at her in wonder. The elemental’s supple body was much longer than her slender arms and legs, and she had small, clever-looking hands, with fur on the backs but not on the soft palms. The same velvety fur covered her body and framed her face as if she were wearing a hood, and her only garment was a sort of open, sleeveless coat, made of gossamer material. The other two marsh elementals wore nothing.

  “Where—” began Alys again. Her throat was raw.

  A soft hand stroked her forehead. “We are traveling to the edge of the marsh, to a place of healing. It is not much farther. Rest.”

  Alys shook her head. “No. Please. Where—is serpent?”

  “Ah.” The green-brown eyes turned grave, and were covered for an instant by eyelids which slid sideways over them. Then a basket was placed gently beside Alys, a small basket of woven reeds. In the bottom, on a bed of leaves, the serpent was coiled, motionless. Its eyes were no longer like shining black glass beads, but milky and opaque, fixed.

  “Is it—dead?”

  “No. And I think it will not die if we reach the healing pool soon enough. Feathered guardians are strong. When my people found you lying senseless in the water I feared for you both. But, with luck, all will be well.”

  Alys lay still for a minute, looking up at the moon. Then, painfully, feeling the boat rock beneath her, she propped herself on one elbow and sat up again. The mist was still there, hanging low and ragged over the surface of the water. But the marsh itself had changed since she had first stumbled into it.

  Strange and fantastic trees took shape out of the mist and were cloaked again as the boat passed, and bizarre vegetation rippled on the surface of the water. Yet, for all its lushness, this world was absolutely silent.

  “It is the influence of the Chaotic Zone,” said Arien Edgewater when Alys looked at her questioningly. “Wild magic has leaked out and changed this place. As it changes everything.” And as Alys leaned against the side of the boat and listened, too tired and befuddled to think or speak, the marsh dweller told her about Chaotic Zones. How they blossomed suddenly when the deep core magic found its way to the surface of the Wildworld, bursting through faults to form Wells of Chaos. How the Chaos spread in all directions from a Well, forming a Chaotic Zone, and how it receded every so often only to flood forth again. She told Alys about the destruction left behind when a Chaotic Zone did recede. Sometimes, to be sure, the Chaos left something strange and beautiful, like the perpetual glacier the Selessor had set in the midst of a desert, or the burning meadows of Balinarch. But usually it was simply desolation, charred and barren wasteland in which no life stirred except the twisted life the Chaos itself created.

  “Like the lurking thing you killed,” said Arien, and Alys looked away, the pain and confusion in her mind worse than the aching of her body.

  “I was afraid,” she said. “And I waited too long to strike at it—and you haven’t even asked me who I am,” she finished suddenly, almost accusingly, turning back.

  The green-brown eyes were serene. “You have been hurt,” said Arien Edgewater, “and you travel with a Feathered Serpent, and you have killed a very evil thing that has menaced my people long. That is all I need to know. But perhaps,” she added softly, “there is more you need to tell.”

  Alys felt a surge of anger, and then she realized that she did want to tell this marsh woman more. She needed to. Trembling with agitation, she let the whole story pour out of her: her promise to the vixen, her attempts to keep it, and her failures. All her failures. Defiantly, one by one, she set them before Arien Edgewater. The letter, Cadal Forge, Aric.

  And the mud monster. Tonight, because of her, the serpent had almost been killed.

  “And now look at what I’ve come to,” she ended, holding out her hands with a short, bitter laugh. “Covered with mud, and Charles and the others all lost somewhere in the mist. Who’d’ve believed it of good old responsible Alys? Good old practical, punctual, sensible, responsible Alys!”

  There was a pause while Arien Edgewater gazed out at the marsh. When the elemental spoke, without turning, it was very gravely. “You are responsible,” she replied, ignoring everything else Alys had said. “You are responsible for what will happen to you next, you are the creator of your own future. And you are what you are … because you have chosen to be.”

  “But I didn’t choose! Or, if I did, I’m changing my mind now. I just can’t take the responsibility any longer. I just can’t take it!”

  “Where, then, will you leave it?” said Arien Edgewater.

  Before Alys could gather her wits to form a reply, the rowers paused and the marsh woman added, in an entirely different tone, “Here you can see the wake of a Chaotic Zone.”

  Gray in the moonlight, a desert of mud stretched out from the marsh. Nothing rose above that mud, not a twig or branch or leaf. Alys couldn’t see the end of it.

  It smelled like the lurking creature’s lair. Alys shuddered
, and then she realized that Arien Edgewater was getting out of the boat. “You’re not going into that?”

  One of the rowers handed Arien the serpent’s basket. “I must,” she said. “The pool I spoke of is there.”

  “In a Chaotic Zone?”

  “In the very Well itself. When the Chaos recedes the pool is left. Wait here, and I will return with the water of it.” Carrying the basket, the slender elemental set out across the mudflats.

  “She is the only one who goes into that place,” said a rower softly as they watched. “And even she does not go often, only when there is much need.”

  “You mean,” said Alys, “that nobody else has ever been there? No one but her?”

  “Three times since she found the pool the Chaos has welled up and flooded to the very edge here. The danger is always great. No one else dares go.”

  Alys hung on to the side of the boat, head lowered, eyes shut. She knew what she ought to do. But she was wounded, she was tired, she had every excuse in the world for not doing it. Arien herself had told her to stay. No one would ever know, or blame her.

  Awkwardly, almost capsizing the boat, she tumbled out and floundered in the water toward the mud of the Zone.

  “Come back! There is no need for you to go!” cried one of the rowers excitedly, and the other added mysteriously, “You have not been invited!”

  Alys’s answer was a shake of her head as she slogged through the mud in the trail of Arien’s footprints. She could not explain it even to herself, but for the first time since Aric had held the Gray Staff to her throat her course was clear.

  Arien Edgewater slowed as Alys reached her, and after one long searching look, she gave Alys the basket.

  “Come, then,” she said.

  All the way they walked the ground was the same: dark gray mud, sticky as tar, smelling of decay. Alys was ready to jump at shadows, but nothing moved except them.

  The marsh and the boat were long out of sight by the time they came to the pool. It was surrounded by flat gray rocks and surprisingly small. A bare inch or two of water lay on top of the gray silt that formed its bottom.

  “The water seeps up very slowly, year after year,” said Arien Edgewater. “We try to be sparing.”

  Alys knelt beside her. As she did, a wonderfully sweet smell wafted up to her, a clean, delicious smell that put the stench of the mud right out of her mind. She looked at the pool with new eyes, and saw that the water, though shallow, was clear as crystal. And clinging to the gray rock, with its roots in the water, was a little, low plant. When Alys gently stirred its dark green leaves with one finger she found hidden under them a flower, white in the moonlight, veined with silver. The blossom was no larger than her thumbnail.

  All this time the fragrance of the pool drifted up to her, and when Arien Edgewater invited her with a gesture to bathe her face in it she obeyed eagerly. The water was icy cold and wherever it touched it left her feeling clean and strong, refreshed. The wounds on her arms closed as a few drops fell on them. When she had finished, Arien gently took the limp serpent and coiled it in the water, which just covered it.

  “I will come back every day and tend to it until it is healed,” she said, and Alys knew she would come, in spite of the danger, never touching the water herself.

  “Why?” she said.

  Arien Edgewater smiled. “Why did you come to the Wildworld?”

  Alys looked down. “Someone had to,” she said slowly, “and …”

  “And?”

  “And … there wasn’t anyone else.” Alys shut her eyes and took a deep breath of the pool’s fragrance. When she opened her eyes again it was as if she were seeing Arien for the first time. “I have been very stupid,” she said, “thinking I could give up because I’ve been making mistakes. Making mistakes doesn’t mean you’re a failure, does it? It only means you’re trying. And there are some things you just can’t turn back on.”

  “You can …”

  “You can, but that won’t make them go away. And you’ve got to turn around again sometime.” Alys sat back. “I know all this now,” she said. “When I leave will I forget?”

  Very carefully, the elemental reached down into the little plant and snapped off the flower. Its scent was the scent of the pool. She laid it in Alys’s hand.

  “Keep this and remember,” she said. “It is called malthrum, and it will never fade. And now,” she added, “come back with me to my home, and rest.”

  Alys touched a petal of the tiny flower with one finger. Then her hand closed around it and she looked up, steadily.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, rising. “But I can’t. I’d be grateful if you’d take me back to the edge of the marsh, though. You see, my brother and sisters are lost, and I have to find them.”

  Charles had run until he ran into a tree.

  For some time he’d been tripping over roots and underbrush, and now, as he disentangled himself from the low, twisted branches, there was no mistake. He was in Elwyn’s Wood. The shock of this realization, and the simple act of stopping, helped restore his senses. They shouldn’t run anymore, they should sit down and figure out what to do next. He was surprised that Alys hadn’t thought of that. In fact, where was …

  The second shock was much worse than the first.

  They had all been running together, falling together, picking each other up. But as the effort of running became torture he had focused only on himself. Now, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard one of the others.

  After a moment he shouted, “Alys?”

  The silence that followed told him everything.

  After another moment he began to walk.

  He walked between trees to other trees. At their roots grew phantom orchids and bindweed, enchanter’s nightshade and fairybells, and tiny ruffled mushrooms which glowed like foxfire. Nowhere was there any sign of a clearing.

  Don’t panic, he told himself. Don’t panic; whistle.

  He whistled his way along for almost two minutes before something whistled back.

  Bird? Maybe. He stopped whistling in case it was the kind of bird that was attracted by music. Thereafter the silence was broken only by the crunching of dead leaves under his feet, and by the little shuffling noises behind him—or were they to the left of him? He began to walk faster. Now the noises were to the right. And to the left. And—

  He almost walked into the girl.

  Her pale face shone out of the mist. She had a sweet, wild smile, and the moonlight reflected from her eyes.

  Rustling noises behind him. Charles turned hastily to see another girl there. This one had a hunting horn slung over her shoulder.

  More of the smiling, dark-clad girls appeared. Looking into their slanted silvery eyes Charles was overcome by the sudden absolute conviction that he was seeing the Dirdreth.

  “Um …” He gulped and tried to smile. “Excuse me. Excuse me—please—but I have to …”

  The two nearest linked hands to bar his way. Instead of answering him they spoke to each other.

  “What shall we do with him, crimson and saffron? Pluck him and make him a cushion to sit on?”

  There was ringing laughter. Charles looked down at his yellow windbreaker and red shirt nervously. They were all holding hands, now, in an undulating ring around him. Charles turned round and round in his tracks, trying to confront each speaker in turn.

  “Put him in earth, then, or put him in water.”

  “Put him in limestone and teach him to wander!”

  “Come, he’s a pretty one—”

  “Deela says keep him!”

  “Give him a draught and don’t trouble his sleeping!”

  The circle began to revolve the other way.

  “What shall we do with him, poor little mankin?”

  A dozen voices rose in answer: “Take him to Elwyn! Take him to Elwyn!”

  Laughing, singing, they surged around him, forcing him to walk, and then run, in the direction of their choice.

  “But I d
on’t want to—”

  They took no notice of his protests. If he stumbled or slowed many hands bore him up. The girls ran like greyhounds, as lightly and effortlessly as the wind. Charles had lost track of time when at last the hunting horn sounded and was echoed from in front of them, and the wild girls slowed. They parted ranks before him and he stumbled into a clearing.

  Heavy, night-blooming flowers hung from the trees on all sides. There were dozens of elementals, watchful, half-hidden by the veils of mist. And in the center of the circle, between mist and moonlight, sat Elwyn Silverhair.

  “Do please sit down,” she said, and smiled at him.

  Charles felt fear give way to anger.

  “I don’t want to sit down!” he snapped. “I didn’t ask to come here at all, and you have no call to keep me. I—I demand my rights!”

  Elwyn leaned her head on one side, puzzled. Of all the creatures he had seen in the Wildworld, she was the loveliest—and the strangest. The human world could never have produced such perfect delicacy of feature, such liquid grace of movement. A faint, insubstantial light hung about her, haloing her every gesture.

  “You don’t want to sit down?” she said.

  “All I want is to get out of these stinking woods!”

  Laughter from the wood elementals.

  Elwyn Silverhair looked more puzzled than ever. “But you came into these stinking woods of your own will,” she pointed out reasonably. “You might as well enjoy them.” With her own hands she took a jeweled cup and, dipping up water from a flowing spring beside her, offered it to him.