Drowned Country

by Emily Tesh

“Perhaps we had better explore a little,” he said.

  “Better stay away from those things,” Tobias said, nodding to the nearest monolith: a monstrous black heap of rock, twice as tall as he was, alarmingly spindly at the base.

  “We are looking for people, Mr Finch,” Silver reminded him. “We are unlikely to find them by heading in the opposite direction from the works of their hands.”

  “Hm,” Tobias said, but he did not protest again.

  So they walked. And they walked, and they walked, among the black upright stones, under that pinkish sky. The light never changed, though it seemed like they had been at it for hours. They only stopped when Tobias glanced around at the two of them and called a halt. Silver was still exhausted by whatever it was he had done to summon that satyr, and he felt as if his legs had turned to pig iron from all this bold striding across the empty land. Maud looked wilted and miserable, her bright hair coming loose in wisps from its stern coil.

  Tobias, of course, looked like he could keep going for another million years, and he was the one carrying Maud’s pack. Silver had never resented his air of solid capability quite so much before.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got to go on, then,” Tobias said, and set the pack down.

  It turned out that Maud had planned her scientific expedition to Fairyland in much the way Silver would have done in her shoes: allowing of course for the disadvantages she had faced in the form of inconvenient parents and unhelpful tradesmen. She had dried meat in paper packets, and hard dry biscuits, and a good portion of the weight of her pack proved to be bottles of Mr Flower’s Patented Lemon Juice, Healthfulness Guaranteed, which struck Silver as sensible in a mad sort of way. She had her small kettle for boiling water, and she had three changes of men’s clothes, and she had eight blank notebooks, pen and ink aplenty, and an abridged edition of the latest Encyclopaedia in three handsome leather-bound volumes.

  “No tent,” said Tobias.

  “We’ll find shelter with the inhabitants,” Maud said.

  Tobias’s expression didn’t change. Silver winced. He wouldn’t have thought of a tent either.

  “I am sure we shall find the locals sooner rather than later,” he said, pretending confidence. The dizzyingly confusing patterns of monoliths had shown no sign of giving way to anything resembling civilisation as he understood it. Worse, the sense of the Wood in the back of Silver’s mind insisted that they had not in fact moved at all from where they started. He had a feeling that if he turned around quickly enough, he would catch the blood-soaked apple tree sidling out of the corner of his vision, when it should have been at least a couple of miles away by now.

  There was no water to boil in the little kettle, and no fuel for a fire. The expensive portable paraffin stove was still sitting in the crypt of Rothling Abbey with the cold remnants of their tin mugs of tea around it. They drank Mr Flower’s Patented Lemon Juice. Silver had never tasted anything so sour in his life. Then they ate a hard biscuit apiece.

  “No water, nothing to hunt,” Tobias observed when they were done. He did not elaborate on the observation. He did not need to.

  Maud only answered, “They’re here. They must be. They must be.”

  Silver coughed. “May I suggest,” he said, “a compromise?”

  Maud took on the expression of a woman uninterested in compromises. Silver knew it well; it reminded him of his mother.

  “I shan’t try to patronise you,” he said. “You are clearly too intelligent and well read to be fooled by flattery.” There, some flattery to help things along. “As Mr Finch points out, however, we are ill supplied for three. It is not merely a question of wishing to find inhabitants; we must find inhabitants, or we shall be in a rather sticky situation before too long. Would you agree?”

  “I suppose,” Maud said.

  “So, if no inhabitants appear,” Silver said, “would you be opposed to returning home, resupplying with a more substantial expedition in view, and trying again at a later date?”

  “You don’t understand,” Maud said quietly. “They will take my books. They won’t let me out of their sight. They think it’s foolishness—or that I’m mad—like he thinks I’m mad.” Tobias did not react. He was occupied in repacking Maud’s supplies according to some logic of his own. Maybe he hadn’t heard. “And I suppose you think I’m mad too, really.”

  “A few years ago,” Silver said, “I found something magical. Something extraordinary, in fact. And I simply knew that I had to understand everything about it, that I had to embrace it and call it my own. Someone much older and wiser than I was warned me to be careful.”

  “Were you?”

  “No,” Silver said. Tobias had expected the Lord of Summer to consume him, had warned Silver to stay away; and instead he had handed himself over to be consumed. He hadn’t known what he was getting into. It was sheer luck he had survived; luck, and Tobias, and his mother.

  “Do you regret it?”

  “No,” Silver said. “And I don’t think you’re mad. On the contrary. I think we are two of a kind.”

  “I won’t go home,” Maud said.

  “Perhaps you’d like to visit Greenhollow Hall,” Silver said. “I can introduce you to the dryads.”

  “Really?”

  She was of an age to be his sister, and she was bright and determined and curious to the point of folly, and Bramble would probably like her more than she liked Silver—certainly she could not like her less. “Of course,” Silver said. “Why not?”

  Maud looked at him carefully and then said, “Very well. We hunt for the inhabitants a little longer. And if we find nothing, we turn back, and try again another time.”

  “Agreed,” Silver said, and did not ask Tobias for his opinion. He did not even look over towards him. He was proud of himself for that.

  Two years ago

  August. Long muggy days broken by thunderstorms. Tobias had not left yet. They went for long walks in the afternoon, under the cooling canopy of the trees, and came back late to eat bread and cheese for supper and keep one another company in whatever way seemed best to them.

  Tobias could not read, but he liked to be read to. The subject matter did not matter much; he listened with equal satisfaction to news sheets and novels, the dry prose of academics and the sublime poetry of the great playwrights. Silver had picked out the plays thinking that maybe Tobias would know some of them; they were more or less of his time, after all. But Tobias shook his head, though once he corrected Silver’s pronunciation of a line spoken by one of the clown characters, turning it into a pun that Silver had missed entirely.

  Mostly, though, he listened in silence. Sometimes he closed his eyes. “My dear, I don’t believe you’re taking in a word I’m saying,” Silver said one night.

  Tobias shook his head. After a moment he confessed, “It’s not the words, so much.”

  “Oh?”

  “I like to hear you talk,” Tobias said. “Your voice. Always did.”

  “Should I recite my multiplication tables?” Silver said, delighted. “There’s a dictionary about here somewhere—I could read you that—”

  Tobias snorted. But after a moment he said, a little carefully, as if he thought he might be saying something wrong, “Saw you had a letter.”

  “Oh—yes,” Silver said. It had arrived that morning, from his mother. She had dealt with a “substantial haunting” since her last communication. As usual, she’d left out every detail Silver might have found interesting—what manner of ghost? When was it seen, and by whom? Had she managed to speak with it? Had it seemed an intelligent being, as traditional accounts held, or was it more like an echo, as some Continental theorists presently supposed?

  Adela Silver, to all these and more: A great deal of fuss over a benign manifestation that might as well have been left alone, & a rather dirty affair in the end owing to gravedigging &c. Some tiresome difficulties over payment also.

  “Not very interesting reading material, I’m afraid,” he said. “My mother has
never been the most sparkling correspondent.”

  “She’s well, though,” Tobias said.

  “Oh, in the pink, I assure you. Working: nothing makes her happier.”

  “She mention—”

  “Your name? No, not this time; you needn’t hurry away yet. I hope you’re not in a rush to abandon me.”

  “No,” Tobias said. “Only—”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a funny thing,” Tobias said. “Seems like I always had plenty to do, those days.” Living as a hermit in the woods, he meant. “Now . . .”

  The silence stood between them for a moment. “Tobias,” Silver managed, rushing to fill it, “you can do anything you like; surely you know that.” He stood up; he held out his hands. “And perhaps you would like—”

  Tobias took him up on the invitation with a clear, shy pleasure, as he always did. They retired to the ground-floor bedroom. It was an unlikely lovers’ bower, even with honeysuckle round the windows, but Silver did his best to thoroughly distract them both.

  He burned his mother’s letter the next morning, feeding it carefully to the fireplace in the library. The sight of Mrs Silver’s stern handwriting crumbling to ash gave him a dreadful feeling of relief.

  I am now bound to the fens on a case regarding a bridge troll, if my correspondent is to be believed. Let Mr Finch know that I would be very grateful for the resumption of his assistance as soon as practicable, both in matters requiring a shovel and in those delicate affairs where his substantial presence inspires promptitude and honest dealing in those to whom it does not come naturally. Your loving MOTHER—

  But she didn’t need Tobias. Silver needed him. He did. How old was the man—thirty, thirty-five? It was hard to know, and Tobias himself was vague about it.

  But in any case Silver had fifty years if he was lucky. He did not intend to waste them.

  Now

  Since they had halted for the time being anyway, Silver went to inspect one of the black monoliths. He took one of Maud’s blank notebooks with him and attempted a sketch of some strange markings he found near the base. It was not his best work. He considered calling Tobias over to assist, thinking of those sketches he’d done of Rothport’s vampire. But then they would have been trapped in conversation at close quarters, when Silver had been doing his absolute best for hours now to keep Maud as a buffer between them.

  He did the best he could; he was better than his mother at this sort of thing, at least. Then for good measure he turned the notebook sideways and doodled the flat land, the wide horizon, the monoliths. He lacked the tools to attempt a map, but something in him was slowly sparking to life at the possibility. Imagine—a map of Fairyland!

  When they came back, of course. They would have to come back. He was reaching for a future of sorts. Maud was young; she would live a good long while. Fairyland was a project that might absorb him for years—decades. You cannot adopt an angry young lady like a stray cat, a voice rather like his mother’s said in his head. Silver suspected it of being his conscience. He shoved it to one side.

  He had three more sketches, one of them quite good, by the time he returned to the others. Tobias had found thread and needle in Maud’s belongings and was sewing something or other. If you dropped Tobias on a desert island in the middle of the ocean, Silver reflected, you would come back six months later to find he’d built a neat cottage out of driftwood and supplied it with curtains and bed linen woven entirely from—coconut hair, or something. There was no end to the man’s quiet industriousness.

  “Should we carry on?” Silver said.

  “Let her rest,” said Tobias, not looking up.

  It was the first thing he’d said in a while. When he spoke his voice was always deeper and softer than one expected, his accent always a little startling in its oddness. Silver startled at it now. He had not realised Maud was asleep. But she was, curled up with Tobias’s coat over her.

  “You’re a thing apart,” Tobias went on, and now he did look up, “and I’m a tough old pack mule. But she’s only a mortal girl, and it was close on dawn when we went over that cliff.”

  “Mr Finch,” said Silver, “perhaps—now we have a moment—we should clear the air a little.”

  “There’s naught to clear.”

  “I only wanted to say—”

  “You’re sorry?” Tobias said.

  Yes, of course, was on the tip of Silver’s tongue, terribly sorry; I very much regret—I can only apologise—

  Tobias’s eyes were hazel-green and serious. Silver stumbled over the lies. He wasn’t sorry, not in the least, only—

  “You’re sorry you got caught,” Tobias concluded, correctly. His mouth was very slightly turned down. Silver felt a sliver of unfamiliar shame. But Tobias shook his head. “No need to make a fuss. Done is done. There.” He’d been sewing up a seam in the canvas pack. “Jammed full of books and bottles,” he added, with another headshake, this one amused.

  Silver stood where he was, reaching without hope for words. Tobias had always liked to hear him talk. There had to be, somewhere, a combination of words both true and effective. There had to be something he could say that was both I loved you, I love you, doesn’t that damned well matter? and also So what if I lied, so what if I was selfish—what is love if not selfish—so what if I needed you—I still need you—and really, really, Mr Finch, shouldn’t you be the one who’s sorry? Aren’t you the one who left me?

  Two years ago

  September brought the year’s turning, and Silver’s summer kingdom came crashing down.

  He’d been awake with the dawn as he always was, and he’d left Tobias sleeping. Crab apples were swelling on the boughs of the crooked tree near the wood’s boundary; Silver plucked one and bit into it. It was very sour, a month or so away from ripe. Silver dropped the bitten apple into the pocket of Tobias’s tweed jacket, which he’d stolen off the back of the chair in their bedroom, and went looking for Bramble. He had not seen her in some time, and it worried him slightly.

  It took a surprisingly long time to find her. Normally Silver knew everything in his wood the moment he wanted to, but today its tangled pathways resisted him. “Is everything quite all right?” he asked politely when he finally located the dryad sitting on the banks of the Haller Brook. Water splashed over her long brown feet. She was curled over on herself like a small wooden statue, when at this season he would have expected her to be caught up in the Wood’s jubilant fruiting, not yet quietening for the winter.

  She showed him her pointed teeth. It was not a smile. “Bramble?” Silver said. “What’s the matter?”

  “Wickedness,” said Bramble.

  “Where?” Silver said. He had felt no stirring in his domain. “Tell me—I’ll put Tobias to it. He’ll be glad of the work.”

  The dryad shook her head slowly. It was a human gesture. She had a surprising number of those. “You are just like the other one,” she said, “really.”

  Silver was truly offended once he realised what she meant. “In what way,” he said, “could I possibly be compared to a criminal, a failure, a monster like Rafela? I am a scholar and a gentleman, and you are just a—a woodland creature, frankly. I don’t know what makes you think you are entitled to pass judgment on me. Whatever it is, you are very much mistaken. What has even brought this on? Who have you been talking to?”

  “Not talking,” the dryad said. Her eyes gleamed with that odd light they got sometimes. “Thinking.”

  “It’s not your business to think,” Silver said.

  Bramble hissed at him, and then she stood up with an abrupt splash, wrapped herself in the half-light and damp smell of the September morning, and was gone.

  “Well,” said Silver, “that was uncalled for.”

  He trudged back towards the Hall feeling disturbed and not a little upset, and found Tobias waiting for him.

  He had a letter from Silver’s mother. He’d asked the housekeeper to read it to him. He said this quietly and calmly; and just as quietly a
nd calmly, he added, “She took on an old troll alone. Smashed her hip.”

  “I— Oh,” said Silver. “Is—she all right?”

  “Well enough,” Tobias said.

  “My dear—”

  “Don’t you my dear me,” said Tobias, just as quiet, just as calm. He was a big man; he was a gentle man. He didn’t get angry. Silver had never seen him angry. “She wrote to me for help, and I never knew about it. Don’t you lie. I’ll head to town on the next stage.”

  “I— Of course,” Silver said. “Of course. You must be very worried. I’m very worried. She’s my mother, you know. I’ll come with you, of course, I’ll—”

  “You’ll do as you please and be damned to you,” Tobias said, in that same calm tone, and he shook his head hard, and he rubbed his hand over his eyes and let out a great shuddering sigh, and added, “There’s no help for it. Never was anything but a fool, but shame on me all the same.”

  “Tobias, I’m—”

  Tobias looked down at Silver’s hand on his arm, and shook it off with one sharp movement. “You’re as bad as Fay,” he said. And then immediately, “No, I shouldn’t say that, there’s none as bad as Fay. But bad’s bad enough; and I’m old enough to know better.”

  “It was one little lie!” Silver burst out. “Yes, very well, I confess—I omitted to mention—because I enjoy your company, because I wanted you with me—”

  “You ever seen a bridge troll?”

  Silver said nothing.

  “Didn’t think so,” Tobias said. He scrubbed his hand over his eyes again, turning away. “Well, you’re a pretty fellow, and a clever one,” he said, “and I’m a fool as I said; but your mother was good to me when I would as soon have died, and I find I’d rather have her good opinion than yours, Mr Silver.”

  He took almost nothing with him. Silver had lavished him with gifts of good clothes and little luxuries ordered from town; Tobias left them all as if he had never even noticed them to begin with.

  After he was gone Silver went back to the ground-floor room where he had slept more often, lately, than he had slept in the master bedroom. The bed was neatly made. There was an ewer of water on the bedside table. Silver took the unripe crab apple out of his pocket and threw it onto the bare floorboards. He had been making some effort to be circumspect about some things, within the house, but to hell with it. Henry Silver was only a mask after all; time to drop it. He was the Wood. He didn’t need a housekeeper, or a cook, or whatever it was the rest of them did, Silver hardly knew. Let them all go back to Hallerton or High Lockham and forget he’d ever been here. He scowled at the little apple sitting sad and lopsided in front of the fireplace and made an abrupt one-handed twisting gesture.