The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter (23 page)

Then one day when I was nineteen, my parents were following a spoor at the edge of the woods and wandered in without me.

They never returned.

After much searching, we found the partial remains of two humans, one of them wearing my mother’s tool belt.

That evening, we went to the home of my father’s best friend, who was the town notary.  He had been entrusted with the will, and gave it to us.  We took it home and read it.

To my eldest brother was left the house, land, and fairy research.  To my second brother was left the horse and two years’ tuition at any university.  To me was left a song, written by my mother in an otherwise blank field notebook.  You may have heard the song; part of it goes like this:

Behold ye the robin who wished to fly

And made himself wings of gold

He plunged off a cliff and fell down and died.

At least that’s what I was told.

But I rather think the reason he’s gone

Is he learned to fly and flies ever on.

We all knew the song, and when my brothers saw I had been left nothing more, they sang it, capering around me, laughing.  This was hardly the first time they had acted thus, but they had never done so in such inappropriate circumstances.  Black rage enveloped me.

When I became conscious of myself again, I found my brothers lying on the floor, murdered.  I packed my possessions and took as much food and money as I could carry.  Late that night, I set fire to my brother’s bodies and the house and the nearby houses.

There would be no evidence left by morning.

While the town blazed, I fled north into the woods.  No one would find me there; they’d think I had died with my brothers.

I traveled further into the woods than ever before.  In the middle, I found a cabin—this cabin, in fact.  Believing that no other could survive in these woods, I naturally assumed it was empty, and decided to live there myself.  But when I opened the door, an old man awaited me.

“Are you the hero?” he asked.  “Have you come to rescue my beautiful daughter?”

My first inclination had been to kill the old man, but the concept of being thought a hero amused me—and I wanted to hear more about his daughter.

“I am that hero,” I said.  I could always kill him later.  “I have traveled long and far.  Tell me your troubles, and I shall banish them.  Perhaps over lunch?”

The old man welcomed me in and, over roast boar, he told me his woes.  “That is my plight,” he finished by saying.  “Will you help me?”

“I will,” I said, and plunged the carving knife through his throat.  He fell to the floor, gurgling.  I lost no time, but cut out his heart and buried his remains in the garden.

I left that afternoon and walked north into Faerie, to the court of the Fairy Queen.  She admitted me, and I presented her with the heart.

“I bring this freely,” said I.  “It is the heart of the father of a human woman you hold captive.  I offer this heart in exchange for her.”

The Fairy Queen’s eyes glittered, and she asked me my story.  When I had told her, she said, “In return for a heart freely given, I release the woman to you.  Yet before you leave, allow me to offer you a second bargain.”

I said I was listening.

“The old man was a spy for the human king.  When the old man is found missing, another will be sent to live in the cabin in the woods.  If you go and live there instead, and let no man pass, I will give you the gift of bedazzlement.”

I readily agreed, not realizing the extent of the bargain.

The old man’s daughter—who turned out disappointingly plain in comparison to the beautiful fairies wearing glamour—was released to me.  We traveled together to the cabin in the woods.

“Where is my father?” she asked.

“I don’t know.  He probably went down to the town.  I wouldn’t worry.”

“Shouldn’t we go find him?”

“He might be elsewhere, and return here to find you gone.  No; it is best that we wait here.”

The woman consented.  As the days and weeks passed, she became accustomed to living with me, and ceased mentioning her father.

Months went by.  I had forbidden her to dig in the garden, but one day a heavy rain washed away the dirt, and revealed the old man’s hand.  She dug up the rest of him, and discovered her father had been buried there, his heart cut out.

The woman confronted me, and I did not deny that I had murdered him.  She fell to her knees and begged me to kill her too.  Eventually, I did.

I could no longer leave the woods to visit the village, but travelers told me it had been rebuilt, enchanted, and renamed Robin’s Haven.

Robin’s Haven.  A haven from Robin of the woods.  A warning and a reminder.

“And now,” said Robin, “you must tell me your story.”

“I will,” said Stephen.  “And I shall do so just as truthfully as you have told me yours.”  And he did.

Run, run, as fast as you can.

It won’t do you any good, but you’ll try anyway.

The next morning, under Robin’s watchful eye, Stephen explained the situation to Dog, and his agreement with Robin.  “And if he does not uphold his side to guide me safely through the woods, you are to attack him.  But if he fulfills his oath and returns to you while I am alive and well, you are to be his forever and obey no other’s commands.

Dog lay on the floor and put his nose between his paws.

Robin provided Stephen with a flask of melted snow and enough provisions for two round meals—most of which had been, Stephen noted, taken from supplies the company had been carrying.  The two of them set out.  They ate a little after three or four hours of walking, and had just begun moving again when Robin abruptly changed the subject. 

“It’s a strange thing,” he said, “but I can’t recall reading about enchantments that disperse upon the deaths of their makers—excluding bedazzlement, of course.”

“That’s because enchantments don’t disperse,” said Stephen, “unless they are temporary—in which case they run down in their own time—or actively being channeled—which includes bedazzlement and most kinds of sorcery.  But permanent enchantments can last hundreds of years after their maker’s demise.  After all, what would be the point of paying an enchanter to ward a house if the wards could be lost at any moment?”

“Certainly, no one would hire an elderly enchanter.”

“Indeed,” Stephen said.  “But how can you have read about magic?  All the books have been destroyed, except those in the king’s private library—and you haven’t left these woods.”

“The books in this land have been destroyed,” Robin agreed, nimbly hopping over a log, “but in the Fairy Queen’s library there is a copy of every book ever written.  Before returning to these woods, the Fairy Queen allowed me to read many of her books—and, indeed, take some with me.  You have seen them.  The Fairy Queen is wonderfully accommodating.”

“That is quite possibly a unique impression of her,” said Stephen, who was having rather more difficulty with the log.  Robes, while impressive, were otherwise entirely useless.

“Many find fairies cold-hearted and frivolous,” said Robin, “and those that do think the same of me.  Here we are.”

They had come to a short, flat wooden bridge.  There was no water under it, only a deep pillow of snow.

“The second bridge?  Have we come that far?”

“The distances between the bridges are not equal.  Listen closely: there is only one way through these woods, and that is to follow this path.  The third bridge is in four miles, the edge of the woods two miles beyond that.  There are, of course, obstacles.”

“But you’ll lead me past them, won’t you?  That was our deal: that you’d guide me safely through these woods in return for Dog.”

“‘Through these woods,’ yes—and I have.  Not all the way through these woods, though.  But I have given you directions, and six miles is not such a very great distance.  You might make it to the edge.  It is possible.”

“And what about the others?”

“You’ll know their fate before two days are gone.  Dog and I will pursue them to the woods’ end and no farther; if they make it that far—if you make it that far—you will survive.  So many of them, so little time.  But I will have traveled a full fourteen miles before the race begins, and that is not nothing.  But even so, Enchanter—I bet I win!”  With a final, bedazzling smile, Robin disappeared into the trees.

Stephen stood motionless, a number of things occurring to him.  There were ‘obstacles.’  His remaining companions were about to die.  Most importantly, when Robin returned, Dog would be his, and there would be nothing to prevent Robin from killing Stephen.  Stephen had instructed Dog to obey any orders from Robin and none for anyone else.  And he knew just how strongly he had constructed Dog.  If his own creation turned against him—

Stephen forgot his dignity, picked up his robes, and ran.

Two minutes later, he slowed to a walk, panting.  The sun was warm and had made the snow heavy and wet.  The snow was not particularly deep on the trail, but to the sides it sank three or four feet.

Then there were the obstacles.  What form would they take?  Presumably at least some of them were on the path, or Robin would not have found it necessary to warn Stephen against them.

What were they, then?  Some form of booby trap?

Stephen stopped short.  He could have been narrowly avoiding his death all this time, but that was no reason to walk blithely on.  If there were traps hidden under the snow, he needed a way to uncover them.

Wait.  Maybe there weren’t traps yet.  Robin needed Stephen to stay alive at least until he had returned to Dog.  How quickly could Robin travel seven miles?

I bet I win.

Stephen looked wildly around and spotted what he needed.  Not far off the path was a tree with a perfect branch: almost straight, an inch and a half in diameter, living wood.  An ideal walking stick.

Stephen packed a snowball and tossed it toward the tree.  It thumped down.  Stephen continued throwing snowballs until he was sure there were no traps between him and the tree.  He stepped gingerly off the path.

Nothing attacked him.

Another step—two more.  Stephen pulled his enchanted knife, grasped the branch firmly, and sliced through it.  He rotated it and slid the knife along it, smoothing the wood and removing twigs.

Stephen pulled off a glove, ran one bare hand down the wood to make sure there were no lingering enchantments he couldn’t see—there weren’t—replaced his knife, and went to pull his glove back on.

His bare hand brushed against the tree trunk, and stuck.

Under his fingers, the tree was bleeding stinkbug yellow sap.  Drops of it were raining from the stump from which he had severed the walking stick, and globs were sliding down the crevices of the bark.  As Stephen watched, the bleeding increased, oozing over Stephen’s hand, covering it in alarming quantities of sap that dried into a hard crust.  It didn’t sting or burn, but it didn’t need to.  If it glued Stephen to the tree, that would be enough.

No.  No, he was not going to lose to a tree.  It simply wasn’t dignified.

Leaning the walking stick in the crook of his elbow, Stephen fumbled in his robes for the knife.  He held it downward in his hand and slashed the tree.  The knife cut easily through the living wood and released yet more sap.

Stephen ignored it.  He was working the knife around in the tree, carving out a chunk around his hand.  Sap dribbled on his glove at one point, but did not stick; apparently, it was only adhesive to bare skin. 

Good thing he’d happened to come in winter.

Stephen finished cutting and used his knife to pry the wood under his hand out of the tree.  He stepped quickly back, freed.  The sap continued flowing, filling up the hole he’d left behind, healing the tree.  He flexed his stuck hand and sap flaked away, harmless.

Stephen smiled smugly.  Not a bad trap—for ordinary people.  But for an enchanter who carried an enchanted weapon, it was child’s play.  If all Robin’s “traps” were this simple, he’d have no trouble escaping the woods.

Stephen brushed off the remaining sap, pulled on his glove, grasped his walking stick, and returned to the path.  He walked on, tapping the stick in front of him like a blind man, searching for traps.  If any spot looked suspicious, he stood back and threw a snowball at it. 

Strange, how badly he’d missed this sort of thing—walking along with a stick in his hand, without companions, mission, horse, or dog.  He had whined to himself about the restrictions on enchanters and the difficulty of being a traveling enchanter for so long that he had forgotten how much he enjoyed his work, and the long hours of solitary thinking that accompanied it.

Stephen absentmindedly threw a snowball and uncovered a gaping pit.  He leapt over it, sidestepped a bear trap, and bashed in a mirror with his walking stick.  Foolish Robin, to think an enchanter would be caught by his tricks.  Why had Stephen ever been afraid of him?

The trail widened and leveled out.  Trees grew more sparsely, and Stephen felt sure he could have gone in any direction he liked without much difficulty.  It wouldn’t be hard to forge a shortcut.

He stuck to the trail.  Feeling superior was one thing; being stupid was quite another.

After about two miles, the earth sloped sharply downhill.  The slope itself was barren of snow, but cluttered with fist-sized rocks.  Some were smooth, some sharp, some firm, some loose.  None of them looked welcoming.  One misstep on that hill, and he’d tumble all the way down.

“I don’t like this,” Stephen muttered.  “Maybe there’s another path.”

“There is no other path!” gurgled a chorus.  “One path only to the third bridge!”

“Is the bridge far?

“We don’t know—we’ve never seen it!”

“Then how do you know—”

“Always the same!  People run—they go bridge to bridge to bridge—no one ever stops to chat!”

“I see,” said Stephen, “only, I don’t.  Who are you?  Where are you?”

“Who—what—where—where not?—We’re here—you’re there, Enchanter—we like enchanters.”

“Why can’t I see you?”

“You can—you can!”

And, of course, he could.  He had been looking at them all that time without realizing.  All the hundreds of rocks on the slope were turned toward him, their eyes like specks of dust.  Several of them oozed underneath, settling into more comfortable positions.

Ah.  That would explain why they liked enchanters.  Odd that he couldn’t see any magic on them.

“I beg your pardon—I thought you mere rocks.  I realize now that enchantment has brought you life.”

“Enchantment?  Injury!  Outrage!—Enchantments?  We never heard such a thing!—We are not enchanted!”

“Then what are you?” Stephen asked, bewildered.

“We are Robin’s Children!”

“His children?  He turned you into rocks?”

This sent another frenzy of arguments and complaints and explanations rocketing through the rocks.

“All right, all right!  I’m sorry I called you rocks—I didn’t mean to offend you.  I hadn’t looked properly.  You are, of course, Robin’s Children; it was a terrible mistake to think you otherwise.  Please forgive me—and please excuse me; I must be on my way.”

“Of course you must—naturally he must!—always hurrying around, these enchanters—terribly important enchanter business—come on down, Enchanter, come on down—don’t slip!”

“You won’t trip me?”

“Trip you?—Trip him?—Us?—What fun!—how jolly—trip, trip—roll all the way down—down, down, down—how they splatter—how they break—how they crunch and thump and bleed—how they scream as they are eaten—how amusing!”

Fairly warned, then.  Stephen gripped his stick and grimly stepped onto the slope.  Robin’s Children oozed politely out of the way, oohing at the size and shape of his boots and loudly wondering what deformity afflicted his feet.

Stephen sped up, and suddenly Robin’s Children were everywhere—sliding under his feet, tripping him, making him stumble—”

He stopped just in time.  Robin’s Children tittered “Enchanter—Enchanter—are you going to fall?—We won’t catch you,” and formed dizzying geometric designs to distract him.

Stephen began again, slowly.  Again, Robin’s Children presented him with a clear path.  Again, the moment he sped up, Robin’s Children darted under his feet, squealing reproachfully when he stepped on them.

Stephen slowed down and apologized.  After that, despite his desire for haste, he went slowly.  He found that he couldn’t dislike Robin’s Children, not really.  They might want him to die horribly for their amusement, but it wasn’t maliciousness that prompted them; it was pure silliness.  This was all a game to them.  Indeed, he realized, they were equally interested in showing off the pretty patterns they could make as they were in tripping him to his death.  After that, things were easier.  He marveled aloud at their cleverness, and they preened and let him go a little faster without harm.