The Fathomless Fire

by Thomas Wharton

  Near him was a tangle of reeds that had twined and twisted around each other, and in their clutches was a wooden chair. The stalks had grown through the spindles that formed the back and had wrapped themselves around its legs. It looked as if the reeds had caught the chair in a living green cage.

  “Odd,” Balor said.

  They kept on, and a short distance ahead they came across a barrel tangled in reeds much like the chair had been. There were stalks growing through the barrel’s loose slats, as if it was slowly being taken apart. And near the barrel they also found the reed-snarled remains of a small boat.

  “If this is what’s left of Edgewater,” Balor said, “what happened to the people?”

  “We can only hope they escaped,” Finn said. “Strange that there was no word of this at Annen Bawn, though.”

  Balor gave Will a dubious glance.

  “Maybe they didn’t escape,” he said.

  Will lowered his head and urged Cutter forward.

  Now they pressed on as quickly as they could, but the further they went, the more thick and tangled the reeds became. Finally they were forced to dismount and lead the horses while hacking through the stalks with their swords. It was hard work, and often they had to stop to catch their breath. Despite his weariness, Will pushed on, hacking with one arm and leading Cutter by the reins with the other. He hadn’t been wrong about this place being a knot-path, he was still sure of that, despite Balor’s doubts. And he was not going to let anything, especially not a lot of tall grass, keep him from reaching Shade.

  He cut and slashed with the sword and shouldered his way forward until the sweat was running into his eyes and blinding him. He shook his head angrily and kept on, and finally he felt the reeds thinning out, resisting him less. He paused to wipe his eyes and then, to his excitement, he glimpsed the flicker of bright daylight. He was almost there. Cutter realized it too. The horse gave a whinny and plunged forward. Now he was the one tugging Will along.

  “That’s it,” Will encouraged him. “You can get us out of here faster than I can.”

  He turned his head to call back to the others about what he’d found. To his shock, there was nothing behind him but a wall of reeds. His companions had vanished.

  “Finn!” he shouted. “Balor!”

  “Will!” came Balor’s reply, but his voice sounded distant. Will wondered how he could possibly have gone so far ahead of the others so quickly.

  “Will,” Balor shouted again. “Don’t turn back. Keep going!”

  There was a desperate warning in his voice that filled Will with dread. Something had happened. But Cutter was tugging at the reins, pulling him to the end of the path.

  Will dropped the reins.

  “Go,” he said to the horse. Cutter tossed his head and lunged away towards the light.

  Will turned and struggled back the way he had come. He shouted his friends’ names, heard their voices calling him from what seemed like even further away, warning him to stay away. He pushed on, back along the slashed trail he had made, surprised to see that it was almost gone already, as if the cut stalks had healed themselves or new ones had grown in their place. Very soon all traces of the trail ended and he was surrounded again by a high wall of reeds. He raised his sword to cut a way through, but he was exhausted now, his arm burning and weak, and his blade seemed almost to glance off the thickly massed stalks.

  “Finn!” he shouted. “I can’t get through!”

  There was no reply. Will went still and listened. He heard only the hiss of the wind in the reeds.

  Fox wanted all of that cool, sparkling clear water for himself, he didn’t want to share any of it with anyone. And so he drank and drank until the spring was dry.

  – Tales from the Golden Goose

  THE BELL IN THE PALACE clock tower was tolling midnight. She ran in her ragged dress through the streets of the sleeping town, her bare feet cold on the stones. In her hand she clutched a glass slipper. Every so often she would stop to catch her breath and glance back furtively at the palace on the hill, its many windows still brightly lit despite the late hour. Even from here, faint sounds of music and revelry were carried to her on the still night air. How she longed to go back there, to step into that bright, happy world again. But she had been warned. The brief, wonderful dream she’d been granted would suddenly vanish on the stroke of midnight. It wasn’t meant to last.

  “Nothing here lasts very long,” she said to herself, then wondered why she had said it.

  Someone had spoken those words to her, not long ago, though she couldn’t remember who or why.

  As the last ringing tones of the final stroke of midnight died away, she held up her hand. There was no glass slipper in her palm any more, only a worn and dirty cloth shoe. She wondered if the same thing had happened to the other slipper, the one that had come off as she’d fled down the steps of the palace in her hurry to escape.

  “A glass slipper,” she said, gazing at the shoe and remembering that someone had spoken to her about this, too. “A teacup. An apple…”

  The shoe was still a shoe. Why did she think it should be something else…?

  She took one last long look at the palace on the hill, then ran on. When she reached her house, she slipped in through the servants’ entrance at the side just as her stepmother’s carriage was pulling into the curving front driveway. She ran up to her garret room, tied on her apron and tucked the cloth shoe into its pocket. Before rushing out of the door she paused to smooth her tangled hair in front of the mirror.

  Her reflection looked back at her with a puzzled expression, like the face of a stranger seen through a window.

  “What is your name?” she asked the face she saw in the mirror, and a cold wave of dread rolled through her. Something was very wrong. But there was no time. No time.

  She hurried down to the kitchen to make tea, knowing it would be called for when the others got home.

  A few moments later, as she knew it would, the front parlour bell rang furiously. She carried the silver and fine china tea things on a gilded tray to her stepmother and her two stepsisters. They were lounging on the gilt-embroidered sofas, talking about the beautiful, mysterious young woman who had danced with the prince all evening and had suddenly run off into the night without a word.

  The girl set the tray down, trying to keep her hands from shaking. As usual her stepmother and stepsisters barely noticed her. She filled their cups with tea. The stepsisters were miserable about the evening, which was supposed to have been their great opportunity to be noticed by the prince, to have him fall in love with them in their expensive gowns and jewels. But he had danced with no one else after the mysterious, masked young woman appeared. And when she vanished he was inconsolable.

  “They say he found one of her glass slippers,” the older stepsister said.

  “I heard he’s planning to search the whole kingdom until he finds her,” the younger stepsister said, pouting

  “Yes,” their mother said, taking a sip of her tea. “He will. Which means he will come here to our house sooner or later.”

  The sugar spoon clattered against the teacups. The girl scrambled to retrieve it.

  “You clumsy idiot!” the younger stepsister snapped at her. “Watch what you’re doing!”

  She lowered her head and stepped back.

  The stepmother paid no notice to what had happened. She was stroking her chin with a far-off look.

  “What are you thinking, Mother?” the older stepsister asked.

  The stepmother smiled her icy, loveless smile.

  “When the prince comes here, searching for the foot that fits that glass slipper, we will make certain that he doesn’t leave without finding a bride.”

  “Really?” the younger sister squealed, clapping her hands. “It should be me, Mamma.”

  “But what if the slipper doesn’t fit either of us?” the older stepsister asked.

  “We will find a way,” the stepmother mused. “There’s always a way. After al
l, the young woman could be anyone.”

  The stepmother turned then, slowly, and looked hard at the girl. It was as if she was seeing her stepdaughter for the first time. The look on her face changed slowly from suspicion to dawning understanding, and at last to cold hatred.

  “Anyone,” her stepmother repeated. “Don’t you think so, daughter?”

  The stepsisters gaped in amazement. Their mother hardly ever addressed a word to the girl, let alone called her daughter.

  “Why are you asking her, Mamma?” the younger stepsister said. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  “I’m curious to hear what she thinks about all of this,” the stepmother said. “I really am. I wonder if she has any thoughts on who this mysterious girl might be. Well, do you? Speak.”

  The girl looked at the three of them sitting before her. The incredulous, sour faces of her stepsisters. The pitiless gleam in her stepmother’s eyes. But she didn’t know these faces. She didn’t know this house. It was supposed to be her father’s house. He had died and left her with this woman and her daughters. That’s what she’d told herself. That’s what they believed. But none of it was true. This was not her life.

  This was not her story.

  “Do you…” she said. “Do you know who I am?”

  They stared blankly at her, then the sisters burst into harsh laughter.

  “She doesn’t even know her name, Mamma,” the younger sister exclaimed. “Oh, this is too much. Just when I thought she couldn’t get any stupider.”

  “No, you don’t know me,” the girl said, and turned away from the three of them. She gazed around the room. There was somewhere else she was supposed to be. There was someone else she was supposed to be. Not this. This wasn’t real.

  Remember.

  She reached into the pocket of her apron, took out the dirty cloth shoe.

  “What is that?” the younger stepsister demanded.

  The shoe became a flower.

  The stepsisters gasped.

  An apple.

  Fear flickered in the stepmother’s eyes.

  A glass slipper.

  The girl remembered. She knew where she was. Everything here is like a dream. All she had to do was wake up.

  “Look, Mamma,” the younger stepsister shrieked. “She has the…”

  “How dare you?” the older stepsister said, rising from her chair. “How dare you keep this from us? Bring me that slipper this instant.”

  The slipper had shrunk to a tiny grain of light. Her hand closed around it and she took a deep breath. There are some very old, very powerful stories… It was time for her to leave this one.

  “Where is it?” the older stepsister demanded, her face flushed crimson with rage. “What have you done with it?”

  “Send her to her room, Mamma,” the younger stepsister cried. “Don’t let her out. Never let her out, ever again.”

  The stepmother had risen slowly from her seat. She was gazing at the one she had thought to be her stepdaughter, and she opened her mouth to speak when there came a loud knock at the front door.

  The younger stepsister gave a shriek and covered her mouth.

  “Who could that be at this hour?” the older stepsister asked, then her face went white. “Do you think … already…?”

  “Yes,” the stepmother said, glancing out of the window. “My daughters, it’s the prince’s coach and four.” She turned to the girl with a look of hatred, then pointed to the stairs. “Go to your room. Stay there until I call for you. Do not come downstairs, do you hear me?”

  But it had always been the stepdaughter’s task to answer the door. And for now, until she found her way out, she would finish what had been started. So she went towards the door.

  “Wait,” her stepmother cried. “What are you doing?” But it was too late. She had already turned the handle and swung the door wide.

  It was raining. There was nothing to see but the slashing rain, falling in darkness.

  She stepped into the rain with her hands outstretched.

  “Where are you going?” a fading voice shouted behind her. “How dare you? You can’t leave!”

  The voice died away. She saw a light ahead, flickering through the rain. There. That was the way out. She began to walk faster. The light grew, took on the shape of a doorway.

  She broke into a run. She had found the way back. She knew her name.

  On the other side of the doorway, Rowen pitched forward, sobbing, into her grandfather’s arms.

  “I forgot everything,” Rowen said. “I forgot all of you.”

  She was sitting up in her bed and Pendrake was seated beside her with his hand on hers. Edweth was nearby, folding clothes and casting a stern look at the loremaster that he was choosing to ignore. Riddle sat perched on the end of the bed, silent and watchful.

  She gripped the edge of the blanket. This was real. This was where she belonged.

  “The same thing happened to me the first time I entered the Weaving,” Pendrake said. “I was lost and frightened, everything was changing, and then I stumbled into a story. A familiar story that kept me from being afraid, for a while.”

  “It was so real,” Rowen said, remembering the glittering chandeliers in the palace, the music, the prince’s warm eyes and kind smile. The story had been hurrying to its happy ending, and she had been glad to go along with it. Ever after.

  She had even forgotten Will.

  “I could’ve stayed there…” she whispered in horror. Then she was angry at herself, and ashamed, as if she had betrayed them all, Grandfather, Edweth, Will. Her eyes burned. She was glad Will wasn’t here now to see this, but at the same time she felt a fierce longing for him. She vowed she would never tell him what had happened to her today.

  “You did very well,” her grandfather said softly. “You found your way back much more quickly than I did during my first time in the Weaving. As I knew you would. Otherwise I could never have let you go. What you’ve learned today about the power of the Weaving you will need in order to stand against the Night King, should it come to that. His story is even stronger than the one you fell into just now. It will be much harder to resist, to remember who you are.”

  Rowen wiped her eyes. A new thought occurred to her. She hesitated to ask about it, but couldn’t help herself.

  “Did Grandmother get lost like that?” she asked, then was sorry for the question when she saw the look of pain that crossed her grandfather’s face.

  “I don’t believe that’s what happened,” Pendrake said after a moment. “She had travelled through the Weaving many times. She knew its dangers and secrets far better than anyone. Your grandmother is the most powerful loremaster I know.”

  Rowen stared at him in surprise.

  “It’s true,” he said. “That’s the only reason I was able to let her go.”

  “Why can’t we find her in there?”

  “So far, where you and I have walked in the Weaving is only the shallows. There are depths far beyond the shifting, dreamlike regions you have seen. That’s where she went, to search for the ancient lore of the Stewards.”

  “But we could find her, by following her thread, couldn’t we? Just like you did Shade’s.”

  “I have tried many times over the years, Rowen, believe me. Sometimes I felt I was close. But I knew that if I kept on, if I went any deeper, I might never return, and then you would have been left alone, with no one to teach you what you needed to learn. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  His hand gripped hers.

  “I understand,” she said, and then an idea came to her, one she would keep to herself for now. But he was studying her with fear in his eyes and she knew he had guessed what she was thinking.

  “You mustn’t rush this,” he said at last. “There is still much for you to learn.”

  “But I—”

  “Promise me, Rowen. Promise me you won’t go back into the Weaving without me. We will find her, some day, but we will do it together.”

  Rowen looked
away. She had been lost in a story but she had found her way out again. By herself. She knew in time she could master the Weaving, learn to wield the fathomless fire and make it serve her. And when she was able to seek those deeper places he’d spoken of, she could find her grandmother and bring her home.

  But if she was wrong, if she went alone in search of her grandmother and didn’t return, her grandfather would have lost everyone. His wife, his daughter, and her. He would be alone. She couldn’t do that to him, just as he hadn’t been able to leave her. She would have to wait until she was ready. Until she had learned enough.

  She took a deep breath, and turned to her grandfather.

  “I promise,” she said.

  Her grandfather nodded.

  “Get some rest,” he said, patting her knee as he rose from the side of the bed. “We’ll go again soon. One step at a time.”

  “Excuse me, but again?” Edweth blurted out. “Do you think it’s a good idea for Rowen to go back to this Weaving place at all, Master Nicholas? I know I don’t understand these things, but from what you’re saying it sounds to me like she was nearly lost in there for ever, and I don’t…” The housekeeper broke off, her eyes welling with tears. “I don’t want that to happen to her too.”

  “She may be lost here if she doesn’t learn what she needs to know,” Pendrake replied in a cold voice. The housekeeper pursed her lips, and went back to her work in a bristling silence that Rowen could feel from across the room.

  Although Edweth insisted Rowen stay where she was for the rest of that day, she relented in the afternoon, and let her get out of bed and get dressed. Rowen was eager to revisit the Weaving, but her grandfather had gone to Appleyard for a meeting of the Council.

  She paced, and looked into books, and talked with Edweth. She hadn’t seen any of her friends since she’d returned home, except Will. For a while she stood looking out of her bedroom window, from which she could just glimpse the edge of the wall of Appleyard. She understood now why her grandfather had kept her close to the toyshop all these years, but it still felt a little like being a prisoner. She thought of Will, somewhere out in the wild lands beyond the Bourne with Finn, Balor and the doctor. Even the dangers they might be facing seemed preferable to being cooped up here, unable to do anything to help. She was safe here, supposedly, but if no one else was, it wasn’t right.