Drowned Country

by Emily Tesh

  The Queen laughed.

  “Quite, quite so; often these folk traditions are jumbled nonsense,” Silver agreed. “But there is something worthwhile in knowing them all the same; something worthwhile in—oh, in study, and discovery, and so forth; in earning the respect of one’s peers—for which one must of course have peers—and remember,” he took a deep breath, “your name first, Maud, when we publish!”

  And with that he reached out a blind hand in Tobias’s direction. He felt relief shudder through him all the way to his toes when Tobias caught hold of it at once. Then he clamped his other hand firmly around Maud’s arm, and let the drowned wood do what it had longed to do from the first and expel the living and breathing and human from its silent, eternal summer.

  And the waters rose.

  It had not been this way, Silver knew; not from a human perspective, anyway. The ocean had laid its long black fingers on the land slowly, rising a little one season and falling a little the next; the shoreline had marched inexorably inwards for generations, only now and then advancing in one great tide, far more often changing only a little, and a little more. But to the trees of the Hallow Wood time ran differently; and for them the waters had come as one single onslaught, without mercy, swallowing the forest and all the life it contained. So it came now, the dark gulp of the sea, roaring through the Wood.

  The Queen screeched in fury and tried to pull away from Silver’s grip on her. He was not a strong man. He was not a Tobias Finch. But her struggles were limp and unconvincing, the wildcat madness in her cries not matched by the strength of her movements, as if her body would not answer her commands. Then she tried magic, the dreadful power she pulled out of the very land; but Silver frowned, and the black water poured itself through and around the trees, swamped them, overwhelmed them, and they were gone. Where there was no Wood, her power fizzled out in darkness. There was no magic in this cold ocean, nothing for the ancient goddess to make use of. The Lord of Summer, Silver thought, in a wild reflection for which this was hardly the time and place, had been a parasite too. If he ever got around to rewriting his father’s tables of classifications, he would have to take that into account.

  The Fairy Queen twisted in his grip and spat in his face. Silver winced against it. He could feel her spit on his cheek; vile. He remembered with unfortunate hilarity that his handkerchief was filthy because he and Tobias had stood on the Rothport pier eating fried fish out of their hands. Tobias’s hand was still holding on to him on the other side. He didn’t dare look around, but there was no mistaking the strength and warmth of that grip. Silver was terribly afraid for him; for his careful, practical, thoroughly mortal life, his sound principles and good sense, his enormous shoulders and his hazel-green eyes and his hatred of helplessness and his excellent aim with a pistol.

  TIME WILL NEVER HAVE ME, the Queen hissed. NOR YOU, GREEN MAN. YOU WILL MEET ME AGAIN AND AGAIN. YOU HAVE MADE A DANGEROUS ENEMY.

  “I believe Time will have both of us, fairly shortly,” said Silver, “unless you consent to depart this place. I do not imagine the sea will follow you home.” Not a drop of water in Fairyland. “Miss Lindhurst will not be joining you.”

  SHE CHOSE TO SERVE!

  “She did not have,” said Silver, “the faintest idea what she was getting into. Eternal life among the old powers of the world is a fate I would not wish on my worst enemy, much less a bright young lady who had the misfortune to be curious.” He strongly suspected that Maud had been the victim of some ancient enchantment on top of that; fairy-mad, as Tobias had said. Silver himself would have hesitated before putting on that mask. Probably. “Now, madam,” he said.

  The waters were gathered around them, a rushing blackness higher than their heads; not a tree remained in sight but the twisted one which the Queen had made her gateway between worlds. The Queen hissed at Silver again, but she was quite trapped. Her long fingers, Maud’s long fingers, twitched wildly.

  Then she departed. The living flesh of her face disintegrated into dust, and the dust blew past Silver’s face in a sudden rush of foul-smelling air. He managed not to breathe in, and the wind of the Fairy Queen’s passing blew through the darkness and passed beyond the Wood, beyond the world, back into her ruined kingdom. Her one surviving servant, the last of the fairies, scampered back after her. The twisted green tree abruptly dropped all its leaves when they were gone, and faded from view like a dream.

  Maud let out a small whimper. It was Maud; her long, thin, not very pretty face, her watery eyes. “She was— She would have—” she said.

  Then she fainted.

  Silver entirely failed to catch her, but Tobias was there, suddenly, a big arm under Maud’s limp weight. “Don’t let go of me!” Silver said. The waters were still looming all about, on the point of crashing down over the three of them, and he did not know what would become of either of their fragile lives without him.

  “I’ve got you,” Tobias said, which was not at all what Silver had meant. “Can you get us out?”

  “No,” said Silver. “It’s the ocean. It takes what it takes.”

  “Hm,” said Tobias.

  “So just—hold on,” Silver said, and hoped and hoped that he’d guessed right. He took a firmer grip on Tobias’s hand and put his other arm around Maud. They stood there in a strange huddled embrace, three small fragments of life at the base of this ancient stony escarpment in the midst of a world being swallowed by water. He could feel the very last fragment of the Wood holding out against all hope; little islands, he thought. There had been little islands, crowned with stiff trees: but the right birds had not come, or the great elk had not been by, or the soil had turned salt-choked and worthless, or—there were a thousand ways for a wilderness to die.

  Silver closed his eyes and said, to this last fragment of the drowned wood, That’s enough.

  Everything ends.

  With a terrible crash, the black waters closed over them all.

  * * *

  Time was unforgiving stuff. Silver looked up, somehow, in the midst of its roar, and saw the black stone rising on the hill above their heads. For one awful moment he was sure it was the palace of the Fairy Queen and she had found a way through after all.

  Then the building resolved itself into the stern arches of Rothling Abbey, and for a few moments—a few centuries—that lonely dwelling-place stood firm on the headland, and every storm off the sea broke with a crash on its high towers.

  Only a few moments. Silver watched it crumble, feeling a terrible ache of sadness in his throat. He thought of the old vampire, the old Abbot, creeping out at dusk to watch the child Maud playing among the ruins; lurking in the shadows of the town, and throwing the bodies of young men in the water. Rothport was coming into being now, first as a scatter of fishermen’s cottages and then as a market and finally, smug and confident, extending its modern pier out into the waters, acquiring its attendant tugboats, its row of gas lamps, its smart terrace of wealthier houses rising up along the hill towards the church. A piece of the future, Rothport.

  Silver let out a shaky, relieved breath. “There,” he said.

  He and Tobias were standing among the sharp rocks at the base of the cliff, with Maud a limp weight between them. Rothport’s dreary little beach stretched away from the base of the rocks; they would have to paddle through the shallows to reach the town, but that was a minor inconvenience. It was, so far as Silver could judge, an hour or two after dawn.

  He was not actually supporting any of Maud’s weight; and now they were here and safe with the Fairy Queen far away in her own kingdom, there was no need for Silver to be hanging on to the others this way. With immense reluctance he let go of Tobias’s hand. He would have liked to hang on a moment longer, trying to memorise the warmth and strength of it and the feel of the big man’s calluses. But it was done, it was done. Everything ends.

  “We had better take Miss Lindhurst home,” Silver said. “My mother will be pleased.”

  As he stepped away from Tobias and st
raightened up his tweed jacket, he turned his face out to the water. But not so much as a whisper of the drowned forest remained. Silver could not feel the faintest trace of it. Oh, he was a poor steward for the Hallow Wood, that was sure. What would Bramble think?

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured to the great silence. “I had to.”

  Tobias was looking at him askance. Silver gave him a bright, empty smile and said, “Shall we?”

  * * *

  They took Maud home. Silver this time was actually paying attention to the parents, so he could tell that she got her long face from her red-eyed mother, her watery eyes from her pompous father. These were the parents Maud had spoken of so scornfully. They didn’t understand; they would take her books and send her for rest cures. But they had paid Mrs Silver’s by-no-means-limited fees, and they looked terribly relieved to see their daughter alive.

  Silver set himself to be charming.

  In ten minutes he had them eating out of his hand. He was such a clever young man; a very bright fellow indeed; he had taken such good care over our dear little girl—

  “The fact is, Mr Lindhurst, Mrs Lindhurst,” said Silver, “after her dreadful ordeal, I think Maud needs some expert attention. I hesitate to suggest—because, you see, it would really be doing me a favour—but my dear old mother, as I am sure you have noticed, is not in the best of health.” He bestowed a limpid smile on Maud’s mother, who leaned a little closer towards him. He could feel Mrs Silver’s eyebrows going up behind him, but he did not look round. “I have often thought that some feminine companionship would be just the thing for her,” he said.

  * * *

  “What do you think you are doing, Henry?” said Mrs Silver, when the Lindhurst parents had departed all wreathed in smiles and left them to confer among themselves. “Feminine company! If you mean to punish me for having the effrontery to involve you when you were busy having one of your sulks—”

  “Maud Lindhurst is very bright, knows far too much, and is sure to get herself into trouble again if she is left here alone,” Silver said. “And she beheaded a nine-hundred-year-old vampire with a kitchen cleaver just this week, so I’m sure you’ll have lots to say to one another. Please, Mother.” He gave her a smile. “For me.”

  Mrs Silver sniffed. “The charm didn’t work when it was your father doing it, young man, so don’t think you can bully me.”

  “It’s true enough,” said Tobias abruptly. “The girl’ll get herself in trouble again if nothing’s done.”

  “Even you, Mr Finch?” said Mrs Silver irritably, and then, “Oh, very well, very well! I suppose if you both insist.”

  “Wonderful,” Silver said. “Oh, and I meant to ask. Would you be willing to give me a haircut?”

  * * *

  Freshly shorn, almost presentable, Silver returned himself to Greenhollow Hall. He did not bother with the travelling part. He went into the Lindhurst family garden, and he walked between two trees, and he was home.

  Greenhollow Hall, from the outside, looked as if no one had lived there in centuries. It had never been exactly a beautiful house. Perhaps the mediaeval hall had been attractive in a foursquare way, but it had been added to patchwork-fashion over the centuries, developing wings and cupolas and even a small pointless tower like an unfortunate youth developing boils. As far as Silver could tell, no one with any sense of grace or proportion had ever been consulted on a single one of the additions. Honestly, the creeping vines swallowing the place improved it, if only because they suggested some sort of unity of purpose.

  It was just as well that Silver had no intention of trying to set up the place with a staff ever again, because he could not imagine anyone consenting to work in such a ruin. What a look he would get, if the redoubtable housekeeper he had originally employed saw what had become of it, and how quickly!

  The main entrance opened into the now roofless great hall. Silver went in through the side door that led into the wing where he and Tobias had kept their bedroom. The apple tree he had commanded into being in the height of his sulk was still in fruit and flower there, unhappily. “I am so terribly sorry,” Silver said, and laid a hand on its trunk.

  With a nearly visible shudder of relief, the power of the Green Man passed away from it. A flurry of white blossoms fell at once, and most of the fruit too, with a rotting stench. It would be kinder to take the roof off this room too, so the tree could get some more light and build up its strength. Silver settled for a good tug through the ivy that had taken up residence on the eastern wall, which fell apart into dusty fragments of brickwork at once.

  He picked up the ewer that was still on the splintered remnants of the floor. A large spider scuttered out of it and fled among the tree’s twisted roots. Silver laughed softly. “I apologise,” he said to the tree, “but may I—”

  It gave him one more crab apple, small and sour. It probably wouldn’t fruit again for years. Fair enough, really. “Thank you,” Silver said.

  Then, since he knew the way of it now, he opened a door through the Wood and walked the hidden pathway into Fairyland.

  The palace of the Fairy Queen was unchanged; only the black dust had resettled itself over their footprints, as if it had been months or years and not two days. Silver climbed to the throne and looked thoughtfully down at the mask that had re-formed itself there. What an extraordinary artefact. He would still quite like to sketch it, but he did not think he would come back here again willingly. Maybe in nine hundred years or so.

  “I can see you,” he said, in the language of the dead, as he descended the steps.

  The fairy—Maud’s fairy—was standing in the shadow where one crooked column had half-tumbled against another. Silver could mostly see the grey glitter of its eyes. He thought of the satyr that he had somehow summoned out of God-knows-where—maybe some other beyond-and-further place like this one—and how it had solidified as it died with an apple in its heart like a silver bullet. “You weren’t always like this, were you?” he said. “There used to be more to you.”

  The fairy came forward slowly.

  “Here,” Silver said, and tossed it the crab apple. “Unfairy fruit. If you want it.”

  The fairy looked at the throne.

  “She does not seem like the best of mistresses,” Silver said. “Though I am no expert.”

  “I have nowhere else to go,” the fairy said.

  “The Wood welcomes you, as it welcomes all the lost,” Silver said. “It may not treat you kindly; it is the Wood. It may not keep you safe; it is the Wood. It will not last forever, but it will last long enough; and the trees grow, and the seasons change, and the wild things come and go, as do the monsters.” He nodded at the crab apple. “Try it. Sour, probably, I’m afraid; it’s out of season.”

  “I will consider,” the fairy said. It was a sensible being, Silver thought: thinking, speaking, from a civilisation unknown to Man, at least for most of the last ten thousand years; a civilisation that had perished somehow and left nothing but a throne and a mask and a dry country. Perhaps Silver would find out how, someday. Perhaps he should press the fairy a little harder. But he felt sympathy for it, sympathy and not a little fellow-feeling. He gave it a polite half-bow of farewell and went home.

  * * *

  And the months of spring and summer went by. Silver walked the Wood. His only concession to humanity was to visit his library occasionally. He would really rather not lose his books to rust-mould and white mushrooms; not yet, at any rate.

  Bramble seemed to think better of him than she had in a while, though with a dryad it was always a little hard to know. Silver attempted actual conversation with her a few times, but they only succeeded in confusing one another.

  Then came the August day when the dryad came to him adorned with early blackberries and said, “He is here. He came.”

  Silver’s first thought was of the fairy. Bramble shook her head—that human gesture! How like Tobias she was. Silver would be able to look at her, and remember, five hundred years from now.


  Then he said, “Wait, Mr Finch is here?”

  “Yes!” said Bramble, with an exasperated air, and a stray tangle of her thorns caught in the flesh of Silver’s hand and tore a red gash there. “Come.”

  “Of course—don’t fuss—I’m coming,” Silver said, wishing mostly to avoid further thorny expressions of the dryad’s urgency.

  It still took him a rambling while to find his way back to Greenhollow Hall. When had he last been there? The days ran together like a dream, and he did not often sleep. Had it been a month?

  Had it been more?

  The sun was setting when Silver walked out of the wood. He found Tobias standing before the ruin of the Hall with a sober look on his face.

  “Mr Finch!” he called out.

  Tobias turned and his expression flickered: he looked relieved and stricken all at once. Silver was caught at the heart by it. Had it only been a few months ago he had inwardly railed against Tobias’s imperturbability, his enormous calm? It was somehow more upsetting now to see him robbed of it, if only for an instant.

  “Whatever is the matter?” Silver said. A whole collection of human concerns rushed back upon him at once and he felt a chill. “—is it my mother?”

  “What? No, she’s well,” Tobias said. “Well enough. Hip pains her sometimes. She’s thinking of retiring.”

  “How unlikely of her,” Silver said, but he smiled, reassured.

  Tobias smiled back for a moment, the same small smile that Silver had once treasured as his own particular possession. Not for very long, all things considered. Their intimacy had lasted only a span of months. He was still glad to see that smile, though it vanished after an instant and was replaced by another flicker of expression: embarrassment, maybe. And then stony calm again. Dear Tobias, always the same. “Doubt she will,” he said. “Not with Miss Maud dragging her hither and yon.”

  “So Maud is well too,” Silver said. “How glad I am to hear it. Then what brings you to Greenhollow, Mr Finch?”

  Tobias closed his eyes a moment. Silver took him in. He was not unchanged by the time that had passed; his hair had grown a little longer, and he’d grown a beard to go along with the moustache. It suited him. There was a trace of grey at his temples, too, which had not been there before; that suited him as well. He’d always been a handsome man.