The Woodcutter (4 page)

Blue eyes open beneath the blonde curls.

Her eyes were brown against her black hair. Large tears welled in those eyes, spilling over and creating paths in the blood, “I do not understand…?”

He held her hands quiet and allowed her to cry.

He did not understand, either.

Chapter 14

His wife was far better at comfort, he thought, as he poured the boiling water into the small cup.

The Princess held her knees to her chest, wrapped up in a blanket as if it could shield her from what she had seen and done.

She had washed away the stains from earlier and her clothes soaked in a tub nearby.

“Thank you,” she said, taking the cup from the Woodcutter.

He grunted in acknowledgement.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I am the Woodcutter,” he replied simply.

“So, you cut wood?”

“No.”

“Then how can you be a woodcutter?”

“I am the Woodcutter.”

“I do not know what that means.”

She should have, he thought. She should have known the name Woodcutter, for his father and his father’s father had overseen the crowning of every heir in the Sixth Kingdom for the past one hundred years. He knew her. He had brought her gifts from the fae days after her birth. Indeed, it was he that brought skin of snow and hair of ebony and lips as red as mortal blood.

She should have been told stories of him upon her father’s knee. Her father should have told her of the treaty between the fae and humans and of the Woodcutter that held the peace. More importantly, she should have been warned why she, as royalty, as a blue-blooded half fae, should never venture into the Woodcutter’s forest until her heart had discovered true love.

Instead, her ignorance had led her to spill blood at the base of his trees. Blood bound one to the forest and the water soaking her clothes was dark red.

He stood and poured the water out from the wash bin, replacing it from a pump carved to look like fish there in the kitchen.

Blood binds blood and she was bound.

“Why were you in the Woods, Princess?” he asked.

She wrapped the blanket more tightly, “I do not know.”

She was lying. And he knew it. He sat down in front of her and quietly waited.

The words were soft and hesitant when they finally flowed from her lips, “I woke this morning and went to the garden... It was as if the sun had forgotten to rise. The sky was dark and not a creature stirred. There is a pond in my garden with a weeping willow beside it. It has always been my haven. But instead of my pond, I found a mansion I had never seen before. It was as if faeries had come and built it overnight.

“Its door stood open. I called for the owner, but no one replied. I entered, which was foolish, but I only hoped to find the answer to the mystery. The rooms were strange. One would look like it was morning and the one beside it would be as dark as night. But then I came to a wooden door which opened into some sort of workroom. There was a spiral staircase going down. I followed those stairs and at the bottom…”

She paused, as if gathering her strength to survive the memory.

“I found a prison. The walls were lined with iron cages and inside, they were filled with pixies – thousands of pixies. They were dying. I tried to free as many as I could, but they were so many and they were so weak...”

She looked at the Woodcutter. She looked at him with haunted eyes that pleaded to forget the memory, “Have you ever heard a pixie touch the earth?”

He had.

He had seen and heard many things a person should never see or hear in their lifetime.

He reached out and gripped her hand, grimly.

“Their magic was being siphoned off,” she said. “Bottles and bottles of dust lined the walls… Fresh, wild magic. They had been bled dry. I freed as many as I could…” There was a note of frustration in her voice, “As many as I could…”

He wanted to touch her shoulder reassuringly.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he poured her more tea.

She stared into the depths of the liquid, “I knew I needed to get them to the Wood.”

The Woodcutter’s eyebrows raised in surprise before his face disappeared once more into a mask of control. He was surprised, for all her ignorance, she knew this. Once bound by iron, the life of wood could best reverse the effects upon the fae.

“I placed them in a basket and brought them here, but, as I entered the Wood, the Huntsman saw me. He had been following me, I am sure. I ran to the clearing and tried to give the pixies to the trees. But the Huntsman started killing them. He killed so many. They were just lying on the ground… They tried to protect me…all I wanted to do was to save them… He just kept slicing and stabbing with that knife and their light kept getting dimmer…the sound as each one touching the earth…he wouldn’t stop, even though I begged him…he wouldn’t stop…”

Her eyes bore deep into the Woodcutter’s.

“So I killed him.”

The Woodcutter rose to his feet.

The fae were as close to immortal as any creature could be. That the knife had been able to kill them…that this Huntsman carried a tool that could kill a faerie…and that this princess was strong enough to wield the knife to kill the Huntsman…

“Stay here,” he said.

Chapter 15

Two hours until nightfall.

He stood in the clearing.

The trees were silent, mute in shock and horror.

The pixies were splayed in unnatural positions, their blue blood pooled upon the ground.

Revenge.

The word burned in his mind; burned in anger, burned with a hatred that blinded him. The trees softly murmured their command,
Revenge.

His fingers felt along the handle of his Golden Ax as he looked at the Huntsman’s corpse. He reached out with his senses, letting his mind drift with the wind over the blades of grass and into the smallest crevices of every rock and tree. The Huntsman’s spirit still wandered nearby, waiting by its body until midnight when the door to the afterlife would open.

It would do.

The Woodcutter opened his eyes and his sight fell upon an ancient elm, a tree whose voice had called out the loudest.

He walked over and placed his hands upon the elm’s trunk. He could feel the sap flowing, feel the life within the wood. He asked the dark green tree for a sacrifice, to taint its existence for revenge, and the elm replied without hesitation,
Yes.

Just then, the Woodcutter’s ears caught a whisper.

Hope…,
the trees whispered, first one and then a chorus.

Hope,
their leaves shivered as they stretched their branches out to point at the fallen fae.

The Woodcutter looked upon the ground.

His eyes caught the faintest flicker of light and he sprinted to its side.

It was alive. One small pixie was still alive.

He gently picked it up. It was so tiny it fit in his cupped hands. It was pale blue with such black eyes. It did not weigh as much as a feather.

Its light kept flashing in and out as it gasped for breath.

He hurried to the closest tree, an oak that had lowered a limb to take the tiny one.

He placed the pixie in the bough and the tree whispered,
Yes
.

He would never cut unless invited, unless absolutely necessary. But the tree had whispered
yes
and so he did.

He removed the Golden Ax from his side and sliced down the middle of the branch. The Ax cut the bark like a hot knife through butter.

He felt the tree shiver in pain.

The sap ran dark as the wound deepened, as the tree pulled itself apart to widen the incision.

The Woodcutter transferred the dying pixie into the wound.

He felt the pixie and the tree sigh at the contact.

He held the Ax above the cut as it dissolved into water – clean, purifying water to wash away the evil.

The pixie raised its head, drinking in the gift of the River God.

The Woodcutter caught a sleepy smile as the wound sealed the pixie within the tree, to be fed and nurtured until the next spring when the pixie would be reborn within the first flowering of the first blossom, healed and whole once again.

He rested his hand against the tree in thanks for the sacrifice and the gift.

Two Axes gone.

Chapter 16

The Woodcutter placed the small forget-me-nots upon the hearts of the remaining pixies.

He stepped away and a swaying shadow fell across his face, the swaying shadow of the dead Huntsman, now hanging by his neck from the dark green elm.

The Woodcutter checked the knot holding the noose.

The bodies of the fae circled the Huntsman’s feet, binding him to walk the earth. They kept his soul from rest. He would be bound until one could be called to deal with him as was fit.

The Woodcutter looked down at his pack, fingering the pocket that held the black bag.

He did not need to do this, he told himself.

The trees whispered,
Revenge.

He looked at the pixies, their tiny shapes lying so still upon the ground. They should never have touched the earth.

Such small hands.

Small hands.

Blonde curls.

A little leg turned at a wrong angle.

Flowers on the floor.

He pushed away the memory.

Sunset was fading and the Woodcutter shivered.

He settled himself at the base of the tree and lit his pipe, waiting for midnight to come.

Chapter 17

The Woodcutter jerked awake, disoriented at first. The hanging Huntsman reminded him where he was. He looked up at the sky, at the full moon on the rise. It was almost midnight. He had not slept too long.

He stood and the trees around him slowly stirred as his hand moved towards the bag. He felt them form a sleepy barrier, knowing what was to come. He heard their leaves whisper the spells. His hand grasped the black bag and the whole forest seemed to hold its breath.

He opened the bag and shivered as a current of raw power surged up his arm. His fingers wrapped around the humble instrument inside and lifted the horn to his lips.

And he blew.

The sound that emerged was a hurricane. The trees bent. The wind whipped. The air tasted of fresh rain. The sound reverberated across the Wood, across the Twelve Kingdoms, across the Land.

Dark clouds rolled across the moon and pitched him into the blackest of night.

The trees screamed out warning to any that might hear, “Stay to the middle of the path! The Hunt rides!”

The Woodcutter lowered the horn and waited.

The baying of dogs echoed across the clearing, echoed as they came down from the sky.

He closed his eyes, willing away the urge to run, to run to the end of the earth and farther beyond, to do anything but to face the coming dogs.

Their snarls and growls drew closer. Closer.

Then he heard the hooves of the Raging Host, of their carnivorous horses trampling the ground. The beasts were ridden by the souls powerful enough to control them – a horde of male warriors chosen to ride the night sky instead of surrendering to the caresses of eternal sleep; a pack of bare-breasted Valkyrie women who intoxicatingly called people to their doom – a band of the dead who lusted for nothing but the Hunt.

He felt hot breath upon his cheek. He heard the metal jangle against the warm leather.

He opened his eyes.

Before him stood the eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. The eight-legged horse sired by Svadifari and out of Loki.

And upon him sat the Rider.

The Master of the Hunt.

The King of Valhalla.

Odin.

The god’s hawkish eyes stared golden and unblinking through the slit in his horned helmet. His hellhounds milled like moonlight fog at his feet, their shadow teeth brushed against the Woodcutter, waiting only for Odin’s command to rip and tear into such sweet smelling flesh.

The Woodcutter bowed in respect, but was careful not to bow in subservience.

The Rider tilted his head, “Woodcutter.”

“Odin.”

Their names were charged with magic. It crackled the air about them and caused the Valkyries’ mounts to dance.