Graynelore (7 page)

I had not found my own way onto the mire. I did not find my own way off it. Rather, I would say, the bog-moss released me. It allowed me free passage, kept Dandelion steady upon the certain path without her protest or my direction. When we needed respite – to regain our strength after our night’s ordeal – the mire gave way to a sweet, grassy knoll, where there was some firmness to the ground; and we could both stretch out our lengths and rest a while. And later, where the way forward forced us through a meandering thread of the River Winding, well, the mire let me get my feet wet. How might I explain it? I cannot. Perhaps the mire was well satisfied with the victims it had already claimed? (Poor souls…) Or perhaps it was something else, something more, like a (dare I say it?) like a faerie pact. Ha! I might still laugh at the thought! Only, for certain, that dark figure among the meadow mist, that shadow-tongue whispering inside my head, that scattering of black birds had been no common thing.

Notwithstanding, the remainder of the trail I followed was long, and it was tedious, and it was grim, the going always difficult. When at last the mire relented, and I saw beyond a rising mist the town of Wycken before me, and felt good, solid earth resisting the movement of my feet, in all the world there could have been no more joyous a man than I. If, in truth, I had never before seen the town, nor did I have any real understanding of why I had come upon it now.

Norda Elfwych had beseeched me to find the place out, was that not it? (I was still having difficulty believing that the unspoken voices I had heard upon the killing fields belonged to any other than to her.) The murder of crows – circling in flight, high above me, even now – had helped signpost the way. More intriguingly, I had felt myself, inexplicably, drawn there. I had become a seeker, and here in Wycken I might find answers…if only I knew the questions to ask, and of whom. Or else I was a simple lost fool, who long before now should have been at his home, sitting at his own table, resting by his own fireside.

I will tell you this: I was not a man made for towns (nor was poor Dandy). Give us open fells and the bliss of solitude. I let her run loose beyond the first houses. She would come to no harm and find her own grazing. She had earned it. When I needed her she would surely find me out again. There was a good head and sharp eyes upon those old shoulders. And I had no fear of horse thieves. A Wishard has a private trick that keeps only his own arse upon his hobb’s saddle. If any man was tempted by the mount he would soon know himself delivered of a forceful rebuke.

I walked into the town alone.

In Wycken I was a stranger, an outlander, and aware of it. And any outlander who lingered in the town – with or without intent – would be revealed soon enough. I would be looked upon with suspicion. No man could expect to travel completely unchallenged. With that in mind I kept my hands openly filled. Not with the hilt of a blade, but with a bulging leather bag, a poke, lifted from Dandy’s back. Before setting out I had filled it with trinkets, and rag-cloth, and who knows what else (mostly, the latter), topped it off with a few loose coins, for this very purpose. I understood Wycken for a place where men traded. Everyone there was sure to be a merchant of a kind, and it might easily be assumed I was out to do some honest trading of my own. And if there was any argument I could claim to be there to see the spectacle of the Winter Festival; reveal my loaded purse. Money to spend was enough of a reason to let a man be. Mind, it would not do to remain too long. This was ever Graynelore! There were sure to be tempted men, who might happily dispatch an outlander for little more than the price of the clothes upon his back and his copper coin…

In Wycken there were more buildings standing together in one confined space than I could possibly count – certainly, I had never seen its like – and not a single one was built of good stone or visibly defended. Rather, they were all loosely made wooden shacks, each one leaning heavily upon its neighbour for support; the wood blackened with an oil or a tar, it seems, against the creeping bog-moss, and always lifted up on short stilts to keep them clear of the ground. From every rooftop, fire-smoke drifted. At every wind-eye, light blazed. The taverns were full. There was the sound of raucous laughter and excited banter. And there were people out in the streets…there were crowds of people everywhere.

By simple fortune (good or bad) my arrival had coincided with the first day of winter. In Wycken-on-the-Mire this day was traditionally marked by the festival they called the Faerie Riding. All across the town, though it was morning still, people were on the move. Their celebrations had already begun. Every door stood open in welcome. Trailing processions, of men and women, of youths, old crones and babbies, were snaking their way steadily through the streets. This was a day of joy then, a time to frolic and make merry. There would be no serious work done: fields would go untended; animals would go unwatched. For some it was a holyday, for all it was a day of truce. It was a moment, an opportunity for the local graynes to play the fool together; bad blood and deadly feud temporarily forgotten.

Though, a caution, my friend…Remember it. This was not a
real
Faerie Riding. This was only the people of Wycken
pretending
…

I stood by and watched it all.

And if for the first time in a day my belly protested for the lack of vitals, I took a small coin from my poke and offered it to a street vender in return for his warm bread and hot meats. Aye, and was forced to share it too; with the greedy mouth of some prancing urchin who cheekily tore off a piece, openly laughed at the affront and, with a full mouth, skipped merrily on his way. I, a man who had used his sword for less, only laughed in my turn at the thief in the making. This was a strange day indeed.

Small bands of young boys chased after young girls who were dressed in faerie frocks. There were tall-ish men pretending to be gigants. There were short-ish men, carrying decorated wooden axes, pretending to be dwarves. Handsome women, dressed in flowing white garments, their hair braided with fake gold and silver thread, rode upon fell-horses dusted with white chalk – that they might appear like graceful white ponies – and they threw small coins to the frolicking crowds who followed at their horses’ tails.

Already jovial drunkards lay by the wayside, lost in a stupor.

It was a day for false ears, fake wings, and faces stained bright blue or green or red.

Young women stood purposefully at street corners, singing sweet melancholic ballads that told of old histories. Ancient battles lost and won. Love and hate. And there were sad, tearful laments for wasted youth.

Young men drank beer, swaggered, and bragged to each other of their conquests; real or make-believe.

Here and there, in the light of open doorways, Beggar Bards held eager crowds in raptures of delight as they told their mythical tales: of the making of the world, of the death of wizards, and the grounding of the Faerie Isle.

The babbies laughed and skipped, and scattered handfuls of black soot – scraped from the insides of chimneys – upon the unwary throng, in the pretence that it was Faerie Dust.

Handmade rag flags, dyed bright blue and red with the juice of berries, hung from roof tops and from the branches of trees along the way. While long rag ribbons decorated the hair of both young men and women alike. Often trailing the ground in the way of a tail, or a lure, encouraging the boldest among them (depending on who it was they were trying to attract) to make a chase of it.

Every now and then, small bands of revellers would break away from the main processions and, dancing hand in hand, form a human chain: winding in and out among the trees and the bushes, the standing boulders and the tethered animals, the horses and carts; cheekily coaxing friends and foes alike to join in with them as they went.

‘Oh, won’t you come, dance? Oh, won’t you come, dance and sing?’

‘Oh, won’t you lift your feet in time and join our Faerie Ring?’ sang the prancing fools to the pretty young girls.

I stood and watched it all…and did not believe a moment of it.

‘What is all this, eh? What is it?’ I called out, trying to take a hold of a dancing pair as they passed me by. ‘And where are you all going?’

What did these revellers reply?

‘We are on a Faerie Riding! And we are making Faerie Rings, of course. Then we’re off to raise the Faerie Isle!’

‘Oh, of course!’ I returned, with a shake of my head.

For a fancy, the young man I had hooked released himself and gave me an extravagant bow. The young girl with him took his lead and curtsied, lifting her skirts…too high. They laughed together, without shame, danced their ring around me and fled on.

I let them go, and looked again towards the seething crowds.

It seemed an open competition, for no two bands of revellers were moving in quite the same direction. Back and forth they danced and back again. This way and that way – at cross purposes. Some threaded their way towards the banks of the River Winding. (There is nowhere upon Graynelore where some part of its watery fingers have not stretched; great or small.) Others were seeking out the market square, or a particular outcrop of rock, or else a particular area of open green. Each human string, each family grayne was making its own way, regardless of the direction of the greater crowd, heading for its own favourite place of gathering where they could finish their dance, and complete their Faerie Rings.

Would I have joined the throng? Perhaps, upon another day, only I was more curious than I was enthralled by the unfolding events.

Wycken-on-the-Mire; here was the very place where the Faerie Isle was supposed to have floundered. Ha!

Well, there was not
one
Faerie isle here. No. I could see dozens of them, at least! No two quite alike and all of them make-believe. How so? The townspeople had built them for the purpose out of gathered windfall, dry grasses, broken wooden furniture and household rubbish. And they had set many of them upon make shift carts that they wheeled before them. I knew the children’s tales; the Beggar Bards held that eight true faeries were needed to complete a Faerie Ring…a Ring of Eight. But not here! Not in Wycken-on-the-Mire, on the first day of winter. For certain,
every
faerie dancer among them held hands and joined in. Even as I watched, people began to set their wooden Isles alight, one after the other, raising huge bonfires. Roaring flames quickly reached up into the sky (scaring off the gathered crows). And the brave, or the foolhardy, or the drunks among them tried to keep the carts moving as they burned. The heat scorched their hair, the flames licked at their hands and faces, caught hold of their ribbons, set fire to their clothes. Until they were forced to let go and roll upon the ground to put the flames out before they were badly hurt. Abandoned, the burning carts ran to a standstill. Though more than one toppled over, spilling burning embers into the throng of people that surrounded it: and far too close to the wooden houses for safety.

The fires were symbolic of what the Beggar Bards called The Raising of the Faerie Isle. A time when the Faerie Isle would be restored to its rightful place upon the Great Sea, when all things faerie would return again into the world, to make it complete: as it had been on the very first day of its creation. Of course, that was just another foolish children’s tale. It was a story to delight the babbies. More to the point, I think, the great bonfires kept the Wycken revellers warm on a cold winter’s day.

All the while the fires burned the people danced and played. The market traders came and set out their stalls and bartered their wares. In a drunken haze, the local Headmen – who, no doubt, fashioned themselves Graynelords – held their private courts, renewed old alliances and resolved old differences. In hidden corners, beyond the firelight, star-crossed lovers kept their secret trysts.

As for Rogrig Wishard, I confess I was now at something of a loss. Standing among this sham, I felt like a ruddy fool at a fool’s parade. Had I really made poor Dandy suffer so, for this? Had I gone against my grayne?

It was only then, through the fake trappings of the make-believe faeries, through the crowds of bawdy players, the dancers and the singers, against the light of the burning bonfires, I began to see them for real. Faeries that is:

Aye, Faeries…

Faeries…
My madness was complete. I felt myself lost within a living dream and I could not wake up from it. In that moment they appeared quite vivid and clear, while the people around them became the shadows and grew dim and grew vague. Intriguingly, none of them looked remotely like the dressed-up versions with their fake wings, their painted faces, and gaudy ribbons. What can I say? Faeries –The real thing looked a lot less spectacular (even to the eyes of an enamoured madman). And yet, somehow they were more real than reality, more normal, more ordinary even than the ordinary.

In truth, there were not that many of them. I could count them upon my fingers. I tried for six, gave up at five (it seems they would not stand still long enough to be counted). They were transient creatures. But believe me; they were there, all the same.

What was my proof of their pedigree? I did not have any – none that you would recognize, my friend. Nor did I need any. Let Beggar Bards do tricks, let wizards cast spells. Fey creatures are what they are. Does a wolf need to tear out the throat of a fell beast before you recognize a dangerous wild animal? Does a dog need to hear another dog bark before it recognizes its fellow?

What truly was become of Rogrig Wishard? It seems I had travelled so much further than the physical miles that separated Dingly Dell from Wycken-on-the-Mire. So much was gone behind. Fleetingly, I recalled the face of the dead girl upon the Elfwych killing fields; the look in Norda’s eye when we were first met; the exchange that had left me a man no longer balanced. I saw again the silhouetted figure of a woman become a flight of birds. I heard the whispers of the unspoken voices, the shadow-tongues beseeching…that were certain to be calling to me still if only I would listen out for them.

Those faerie creatures, now before me, were no less flesh and blood than you or I, my friend.

Among them, there was an ancient grotesque…a crone. She held a long wooden pipe to her mouth that burned badly. Its intermittent flame singed her wiry grey hair. She blew draughts of smoke out through her nose. There was a young boy, or rather, a fat youth. There was a pair of young women, strikingly elegant, beautiful, who held each other’s hands coquettishly, tossed their hair in the way of manes. And there was a black bird (of course there was)…a single black crow.

No matter where I looked within the crowds they seemed to be always there. Though, I swear to you, I never saw them move from one place to the next. There was an odd, worried-yet-startled look upon each of their faces.

The crone was suddenly in front of me, at nose length (and still blowing smoke). It was I who turned away, looked deeper into the throng; only to find her there again.

I first saw the fat youth sitting upon a fence, and then again, in between two frolicking babbies. He seemed far too heavily dressed. He was draped in reams of raw linen. He had a face like a half-cooked pudding and skin as soft as river clarts. While the crow kept flitting between the branches of trees and the gables of houses and gate posts. Oddly, I felt I knew it best of all.

And if I had suddenly noticed them, I was just as certain they were all aware of me. They were watching me, in an obvious rather clumsy way, I thought. There was no secret, no threat either. Rather,
they looked at me longingly, as if they were expecting something from me, a response or an answer to an unasked question. Or was it simple recognition? Eh?

Now that I knew them to be there, there was no mistaking them. They were the image of each other. By that, I do not mean they looked alike. No. Indeed, they could not have looked less alike! Nor, if I am to be truthful, less like I ever imagined true faeries! Forgive the paradox. I fear there never were two quite physically the same. Rather, it was something else they shared between them. They all possessed it. There was an aura about them. There was an intense, a profound sense of self: a deep shared knowledge; an understanding that was greater than simple truth. It gave them stature, a distinct presence, whatever their physical size or form; whatever they looked like.

In essence then, plain and ordinary was their make-up, their disguise. It was part of their faerie Glamour; a mask to shield them from common men, no doubt. They were all of them in hiding, hiding in full view of the world. And yet I had found them out there. And they knew it. And they in their turn had found me out, it seems. Perhaps that had always been their intention…or mine?

They continued to move self-consciously among the crowds; never together, not as one, but always aware. It occurred to me, they were behaving shyly, almost as if they were as much strangers to each other as I was to them. I had been lured to Wycken-on-the-Mire, drawn there by an overwhelming desire I was still at a loss to explain. Was it the same for them? Was it? That same desire drew me towards them now, and so fervently, with such emotional force that the attraction – it was an attraction – physically hurt. It took my breath away. Even if I still refused to understand what it meant. Again, forgive your narrator’s infuriating reticence.

I began to feel a desperate urge: I wanted to go to them, to be among them. Only I hesitated. I was still just this ordinary man; this Rogrig Wishard. And they were…they were real.

Left to me, the reluctant stand-off between us might have gone on forever unresolved.

Someone was suddenly at my side, asking questions of me.

‘Sir, we are strangers, I think? And yet, do I not know you, my Lord?’ The introduction, the flattery, was clumsy at best. My lowly rank was obvious enough. I was, after all, dressed in a crudely armoured peasant’s jack, and no doubt smelled of mire and fields, fighting irons and…the stale blood of dead horses, and men.

‘Er…no,’ I answered lamely. Only then did I look towards my inquisitor.

I thought I had found my sixth faerie.

It was a young woman who stood there. She was looking at me in earnest, as if to put more weight into the meaning of her first words, and yet her face was flushed. She was obviously embarrassed by the pretence in her approach. That: or else she was simply unpractised at the common tongue.

‘Yes, I do think I know you…’ she said. Even as she spoke she took a deliberate step backwards, which left her standing in the shadows of a tree; as if, even now she was not quite ready to reveal herself fully to me. Around us, fires burned and the bright, childish processions of make-believe faeries continued to flow past.

I could see her clearly enough. She was tall and lithe, handsome rather than beautiful, and stood rather in the way of a man; without swagger but assured and capable. She was dressed completely in black – Everything about her was black. From her black pointed shoes, made of soft black leather, to her black skin-tight breeches that accentuated her bony hips and slightly bowed legs. Her woollen jerkin was black, with its sleeves pulled down over her hands and loose threads hanging wistfully from the ends (as if her fingers had deliberately unpicked them). Her face was flawed ebony. She had thin, slightly vague, black lips that were always wet. Long dark eyelashes, that hid her never more than half open black eyes. She left me with the same impression the other faeries had given me: she was trying to hide herself in full view of everyone. Everything was about hiding.

‘Who…who are you?’ I asked. I was being deliberately slow-witted. For I had no doubt now; it was she I had first encountered upon the mire. However improbable, this strange woman, this fey creature, had saved my life. I had seen no transformation, yet I knew if I was to look about me now to search out the crow I would not find it there.

‘You do not recognize me yet?’ she said. She spoke thoughtfully, with no hint of impatience. ‘If you are in want of a name, I have two. Which one would you prefer? Indeed, which one would you believe? I am both Lucia Hogspur and I am Lowly Crows…And you…?’ She began a clumsy unpractised bow, when she found herself rudely interrupted.

‘And you will be Rogrig Wishard, if I am not mistaken. And I never am.’ This was a statement not a question. The stubborn old crone had reappeared and stepped between us.

‘And how is it that
you
know my name?’ I asked rudely, in my turn.

‘Well, you look like Rogrig Wishard,’ said the crone, dismissively. She took a deep suck on her pipe and blew out an extravagant plume of blue-grey smoke.

‘Our Wily Cockatrice can,
see…
She
sees
…’ said Lowly Crows, drawing out the repeated word, wincing slightly at the awkwardness of her explanation (and finishing her bow). ‘She knows something of us all…Sometimes better than I would like, if I am truly honest.’

I saw the faint beginnings of a smile forming at the corner of her mouth, only for it to disappear.

‘Now please. We must speak together,’ she said, again in earnest. ‘We are in need of your close confidence. It is important…but cannot be done here. I think you understand?’

There were still crowds of dancers in the street. There were drummers. There were pipers. People were singing nonsense songs. There was a juggler, drunken men reeling, and a throng of babbies dressed as impish faeries. There was nothing to stop me from simply moving in among them and walking away.

Only I was not certain I wanted to walk away. (I was not certain of anything.)

‘So, what is it to be, are you coming with us or not?’ The old crone, who Lowly Crows had called Wily Cockatrice, spoke abruptly, yet softly now. ‘You must make up your own mind…One way or the other. Yes or no?’ Her words were an inquiry not a threat, but the implication in her tone was clear enough. She was the ancient grotesque and I the battle-worn reiver. Yet it was I who had reason to be wary of her; not the other way around. A thin wisp of white smoke escaped her nose.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I will come with you.’