Chapter 68
Avice
Avice saw.
She did not know where she was as she stood next to the Spriggan Queen.
While not as sickly as she had been when Trewoofe carved her from the cross, the Queen was still ill: her skull dull, back hunched, and bark-skin cracked.
The Spriggan’s tufty ears drooped as she looked at the Dragon before her in the woodland glade.
The Dragon was dead. Avice could tell by the lack of rise and fall of his chest, and the stillness of his massive body. He was a Drake: red scaled, four legged, and two winged. He must have been ancient – even by a Dragon’s count – as he was bigger than even Treth the Morgawr.
The midwife’s fingers twitched to hold the Queen’s. She wanted to offer comfort as the Spriggan snuffled sadly behind her skull. Avice reached for her hand and passed right through. Bewildered, she held her up her palm to her face.
The midwife was translucent.
“I am here, but not really here,” she murmured.
Avice glanced around but could see nothing past the vivid green of the surrounding forest and the behemoth Dragon before her.
It was disconcerting; the midwife could see and hear, but could not touch, smell, or taste.
So often, she depended on all five of her senses to navigate the human and Faerie world, but she had been robbed of three.
“The Queen must be showing me what happened to her,” Avice guessed.
There was a rustle in the emerald leaves, and a big male Spriggan waddled over carrying something large and oval. He laid it reverently between the dead Drake’s behemoth paws. The egg’s shell matched the red of the Dragon’s scales.
“Is this where it all began to go wrong?” Avice wondered.
She watched the male Spriggan as he marched over to his Queen.
His pelt was a fluffy green, in contrast to his Queen’s mossy bark skin.
While she was slender and tall, he was all muscle and bulk.
He dipped his heavy skull at his leader.
Avice could understand their buzzing, yips, and chirps as easily as if they were speaking Cornish.
“First the Sidhe King, and now you must undertake your cycle,” he whimpered. “What will become of the Green? Who will wake Eostre?”
“So…” Avice tapped her chin. “We are in the Green and Eostre is sleeping here.” She looked the Spriggans up and down.
“I wish I could ask you two directly, rather than just watch what you are showing me now.” She knew the Queen was exhausted, but surely it would have been easier to simply tell her.
“Faeries and their nonsense,” she tutted.
“It must be done,” the Queen said. “I used too much of my magic trying to save King Draig, the Sprigganlings…” She let out a sigh. “And try as we might, his egg will not hatch.”
The male Spriggan dropped his snout. “And I could not find the dam.”
“The mother could be from over the sea, passed Land’s End for all we know. Draig was gone for a whole turn of seasons,” the Spriggan Queen grunted. “I am both angry and sorry for him. He clearly knew his time was at end—”
“And Nature knows…” a second male chipped in as he scurried out of the bushes. He was much smaller than the male who had carried the egg and was missing an ear. “Dragons are rare these days.”
The Queen let out a grunt at the interruption. “That is correct, Derrowen, just like we are. My seeds have barely sprouted, and the ones that have did not fruit into Sprigganlings.”
“It was the iron, was it not?” the big male asked. “The iron we pulled from him that finally took his life. We must not have removed it all.”
“The Drake King must have been attacked by men,” Avice surmised.
Her chest felt warm as she said it, like the Spriggan Queen was confirming her statement.
“They are all connected: the Sidhe King, the safety of the Otherworld, the Sidhe that surrounds it…” She tapped her chin.
“… and the Good— I mean, Folk who live there. But how does Eostre fit in?”
“That is correct, Pren,” the Queen squeezed his bulky shoulder. “We tried our best, but we could not save him.”
The Queen wobbled then and fell forward. Pren dove to catch her, cushioning her fall. Derrowen tugged her back up and offered his shoulder for her to lean on. She was weak, that much was clear. Her legs trembled like leaves in the wind, and her neck could barely support the weight of her skull.
“Queen Fawen, we must get you to the Birthing Tree,” Derrowen said, his voice sharp with concern.
“Yes, yes, we will help you!” Pren agreed.
The scene dissipated in a waft of mist and a gusting of wind, forcing Avice to squeeze her eyes shut.
When Avice opened her eyes, the memory changed. She stood next to the Queen – who was flanked by Pren and Derrowen – in front of a colossus of a tree.
The Birthing Tree towered above. Her emerald branches kissed the grey cloud, and her trunk was wider than Trewoofe was long. Avice looked up for so long, that she had almost forgotten why she was here, until Derrowen spoke.
“I do not like this. I know I insisted, but I did not know it would be like this,” he squeaked, wringing his clawed hands. “The Birthing Tree is no longer protected, the Sidhe has retreated, and the ward is broken.”
Pren rattled his skull in agreement. “You will not be safe while you start again.”
Avice frowned up at the Queen. She was thin and would blow over in a stiff breeze. Her orange eyes were dull in their sockets and moss fell from her bark-like skin.
“What does he mean ‘start again’?” Avice pondered.
“It must be done, and I will ensure my daughter will be strong enough to wake Eostre by Annis’s end,” Fawen promised, limping over towards the behemoth Birthing Tree. Her bark was old, gnarled, and knotted with all the turns of seasons she had seen.
“Annis…” Avice squeezed her pendant. “I know that name.”
A memory niggled at her.
From back when she was a sick child on a pallet before the roaring hearth.
When her mother had still been alive. It was within the dead of Winter, and the snowfall was deep.
Avice had coughed and sneezed under threadbare blankets.
Her mother had made a poppet. A small doll made of dried grass and linen scraps.
She had cut some of Avice’s raven hair and wrapped it around the doll.
Then, her mother had tossed it into the hearth, while begging Mother Annis to take the doll instead of her daughter.
“Annis is the Winter Goddess. So, if Eostre must be woken before Annis’s end…” Avice’s eyes widened as Queen Fawen melted into the mighty tree with a crackle of green magic. “…then Eostre must be the Spring Goddess.”
Avice watched the two Spriggan males lace their clawed fingers together.
Derrowen looked up at Pren. “Will she be alright?”
The bigger Spriggan met the smaller one’s eyes. “Nature’s Blessing, I hope so.”
“Shall we check on Eostre?” Derrowen asked. “Her roots may need watering.”
Pren rattled his skull in agreement. “First to the Goddess, and then we will return to the Birthing Tree.”
Avice watched them depart, pity drooping her shoulders. They had no idea what would happen to the Fawen, and that no Spriggan Princess would come. That there would be no one to awaken Eostre… That was until, she and Trewoofe did.
The strands of the story wove together, forming a tapestry in her mind.
The Spriggan Queen never grew her daughter.
Without her, the Spriggan males could not awake Eostre, the Goddess of Spring.
That was the cause of the endless Winter, until she and her Knucker King woke her up on Equinox.
Using a combination of his magic, and the power she had pulled from the Good Neighbour chorus.
“But why did the Spriggan males try to change the children, and the Pillywiggin Princess?” Avice mulled.
“Did they hope that by changing a female into a Spriggan she might be able to wake Eostre? But Mary was born after Spring came and Boarden is a boy.” She tightened her grip on her crystal.
“And what is happening to the village? Is it because we freed Eostre?”
Mist formed around her, a swirl of emerald leaves tossed her skirts, and her vision clouded once more.
When Avice could see again, everything was black. She tried to move, and panic gripped her chest when she could not. Her arms were pinned to her sides, and her legs were forced into a kneeling position.
“No,” she whispered into the crushing dark. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and they dissipated into nothingness as they fell. “No, no, no, no.”
The root cellar was one thing. The Underneath and their nesting cavern were home. This was oppressive. Too much like the ale cellar where she was attacked all those turns of seasons ago.
“Queen Fawen, I do not like it here,” Avice hissed. “You must let me go.”
She did not expect the Spriggan to answer her, and the midwife squeaked in surprise when she did.
“To know, you must see,” she insisted.
Fawen’s voice buzzed with the fury of a thousand bees, needling the midwife’s skin, and stinging her ears.
“I do know!” Avice snapped. “I know exactly what happened to you. It happened to me. You were sliced, ripped open, violated, and cut into pieces so small you never thought you could be put back together.”
A sob echoed in Avice’s head.
“Yes,” Fawen whimpered.
“Men came. Ones who follow the Cross God,” Avice continued, weaving the last threads together in her mind, determined to get the full picture of what happened.
The new cross, Father Richard going mad, and Father Peter taking over the church.
The old priest must have had some form of the sight.
He must have heard Fawen screaming inside the hanging cross and it drove him to insanity.
“They cut down your tree, did they not?”
“Yes!” the Spriggan wept.
“They sliced you up—”
“Then…” Fawen interrupted with a sniff. “I saw they were keeping a long pole intact, so I drew what parts of myself I could from the pieces that were left. I reformed in there. Along with my daughter seed.”
Tears ran rivers down Avice’s cheeks. “My Lady?”
“Yes?”
“I am so sorry this happened to you. But please, do not make me relive your suffering. It is too much like my own. For too many turns of seasons, the man who cut and broke me stalked my nights and memories. I have only recently stopped having his image behind my eyes.” Avice swallowed the lump in her throat.
“Do not make me see yours, for I think it will make my own monster come back. I promise you. I already know. I already see.”
Avice felt a cold, rough palm cup her cheek. “You have not only seen. You have felt and lived it.” The Spriggan Queen let out a shuddering breath. “You know.”
With a final sob, Fawen released Avice from the memory inside the Birthing Tree. The midwife shrieked as she plummeted backwards through a swirl of glossy viridian leaves.