Chapter 25
At some point, I must fall asleep because when I wake with a start, night’s outside the window.
Only the dying embers in the fireplace give any light.
At least I still have the infant in my arms; I did not let go of her, did not fail in that task.
Her eyes are open, they gleam in the faint glow of the last coals.
‘Mehrab?’ Rhea sounds sleepy. She sits up in bed, the blankets falling from her. ‘Where is she?’
‘Safe. Here she is.’ I rise and return the child to her mother.
No sound from the little one, glade-quiet, and I worry for a moment that she’s died in my arms. A brief-lived miracle of a creature, here for a mere breath of time and now gone.
But no; beneath the fingers I slip momentarily on her warm throat, there’s a vein that gently pulses, untroubled as she seeks her mother’s breast. Sighing with relief, I wonder what woke me. Us.
I think twice about lighting a lantern or rekindling the fire.
Best for the moment to play possum in a darkened house.
I tilt my head to listen better, as if the angle will help.
Two things, I think: a rhythmic sound circling the house – hoofbeats – but not the house, no.
Further away, around the boundaries of the holding, unable to get past the wards.
There’s that relief at least. The other noise: a scratching at the front door.
As if someone is trying the handle, picking at the lock.
‘Stay here,’ I hiss and take the stairs almost too quickly in the darkness, the soles of my boots – left on in haste to aid Rhea – slipping.
Down here, too, only the glow of the fire in the sitting-room hearth.
Striding towards the door, I’m neither angry enough nor foolish enough to open it, instead I grab the cudgel from the wicker basket where I leave a shoe horn, old rags, various walking sticks and my seldom-used bow.
I have my knife, but the cudgel will be better for keeping someone alive long enough to ask them questions; the knife is likely to kill them too quickly. Still, it has a use.
The night’s as black as a goat’s guts and I’ll see nothing out the windows.
So, I make a little nick in my thumb, and swipe the blood across the lintel, behind where the green woman sits, right over a tiny fissure that leads to the head, and whisper, ‘Lux.’ My own little invention, an improvement to the cottage after it became mine.
Through the lacy curtains, there’s a great flare of light, greenish in hue, but it illuminates the yard, rose garden, barn, some of the fields and almost to the tree line.
I hear swearing and footsteps, a stumbling run away from the cottage and into the woods.
They fade into the night and I’m not fast enough getting the door open to see anything more than a figure practically throwing themselves into the woods; no trace, I note, of a red cloak.
My wards may not keep people out, but they work on eldritch things, oh yes they do! At the edge of the green light pouring from my green woman’s eyes and mouth lurks the horseman of shadow and bone, on his mount, stalking back and forth. A good several feet from where I know the ward-line lies.
I wonder if, without the presence of the summer husband, the huntsman thought he might resume his game here.
I’m not sure what there was to fear in Arlo, but he’d have done damage, given half a chance – my aching ribs are a testament to that – and no creature that lives by its wits and speed can afford to risk damage, not even the thing that waits.
Nor the things beside him – not just the wish-hounds this time, but something smaller, different somehow, like two little wolves?
Grey rather than black, circling or running figure-eights, nervous, perhaps fearful – still and all, I’d not be risking a pat.
Without the summer husband in residence and with my sleepwalking under control, is it a coincidence that tonight’s when this thing reappears? When some mortal in its thrall tries to break into the cottage? The offerings on the doorstep could only have been left there by a human.
The strange thing on its bone horse could not have done so. Therefore, a mortal hand was behind it. But why?
Behind me, I sense a movement and tense, tighten my grip on the cudgel, but it’s only Rhea, babe nestled in the crook of one arm, the other unencumbered, a ball of witch-fire spinning in her palm.
‘You should have stayed inside,’ I mutter.
‘It’s my home, too. My place and child to protect,’ she says, more strongly than I’d have thought possible at this point.
I just nod. She’s right. But now I have two children at risk, and I’m afraid for them and myself.
I wonder how we look to that thing out there, an old woman and a young one, bathed in green light, all defiance, mostly fury. I wonder if it cares.
At that moment, the lord of the hunt’s mouth seems to move – by which I mean the shadowy substance of half his face splits and shifts about – and a command spills out, a word so weirdly dark it seems liquid and flows across my ears in a way that feels like the memory of a slap.
The hounds – the little ones, the nervous ones – leap towards the cottage, towards the boundary sown with salt and sage and hemlock, with angelica and ash and thistle, with hyssop and wormwood, my words and blood.
A barrier that cannot be seen, but can be felt…
The little wolves hit at the same time and burst into flames with a thunderclap and horrible screams. Elsewhere – from behind the cottage, past the fields, to where the ward-line runs around us – come other howls, other screams. This is why the lord of the hunt has not tried to cross the border of my holding.
Nor the wish-hounds – too valuable to him, long companions. But the little hounds? Expendable.
The moment that the huntsman holds my gaze is one of the longest of my life.
I’m aware of a force of will behind that stare – it must be immense or how else could such a thing keep itself intact?
– and there’s a sense that it’s still trying to get me to come to it.
To cross the ward-lines, walk into the woods, mount behind it on its skeletal horse, as if that bag of bones could bear us both hence.
I feel no temptation. At last, it wheels the beast about and takes off into the trees, the wish-hounds hot on their master’s heels.
‘Mehrab, what was that?’ Child still in one arm, but she’s extinguished the witch-fire in her hand.
‘One moment, the green woman won’t last all night.
’ I rush inside, pull two old lanterns from the cupboard, oil swishing around in their reservoirs.
Back outside I have Rhea light them with a spark from her fingertips, then hang them either side of the door.
Then I collect logs from the woodpile, any rubbish branches I can find, build a bonfire, splash slow-burning oil on it to keep it alive throughout the dark hours, and again ask her for a spark.
Only when the blaze is in full roar – too much light for anyone to sneak back up the path, if that fool had sufficient courage – do I herd her back inside, lock the door, push Rhea towards the kitchen table and set about building up the hearth and stove fires (adding handfuls of dried lavender and sage for extra protection), then light every lantern and candle I can find.
We need warmth, we need food, we need illumination.
When I get the kettle on the hob, I feel my knees lose their strength, my hands shake, as the adrenaline wears off, and fear floods in to make itself known, irked at having been ignored for so long.
I blink until the tears stop threatening.
It takes a while before I get my breathing under control, though.
Finally, Rhea says, ‘I thought, at first, that someone might still be hunting me.’ She adjusts the feeding child, and the little girl makes a discontented noise. Rhea hushes her daughter. ‘But I think perhaps I’m not the object of interest.’
‘Anyone after you would be a god-hound and they’re not so stealthy. They tend to kick in doors and take one by surprise – subtlety isn’t their way.’ I shake my head. ‘But, for once, I almost wish it was sons of the church with pious intent.’
‘That thing… You didn’t seem surprised.’
‘You haven’t seen it before? Not a trace?’
She shakes her head. ‘But you…’
I tell her, at last, the tale of the Black Lake, all those weeks before Fenna brought her to me.
Of that creature of smoke and bone and hunger.
I tell her I think it’s been stalking me, that it was the source of my sleepwalking.
I don’t tell her that Arlo, I think, kept it at bay because that knowledge will do no one any good.
‘The offerings? The red cloak and the flesh?’ she asks.
I nod. ‘I think so.’
‘What is it?’
I wipe the beads of sweat from my face and neck; now isn’t the best time for a night-sweat but there’s no way of stopping it.
It feels like the bonfire in the yard outside has migrated to the very heart of me.
I’d get up, make a red clover tea, but I feel too heavy, too hot, too tired.
I reach out to the baby’s waving hands and she grabs at one of my fingers, holds it tight. That gives me something to focus on.
‘Mehrab, are you all right?’
‘A hot flush. It’ll pass.’ I close my eyes for a few seconds, force myself to a steadier breath, slower pulse. ‘She’s going to need a name, you know.’
‘I’m a bit leery of names at the moment. Someone once warned me against naming ephemeral things,’ she says pointedly.
‘I think she’s here to stay.’ I manage a smile, reclaim my finger, settle back into my seat.
‘Have you ever heard tales of the lord of the hunt, or the lady? An old god, or a new one, some man or woman so enamoured of the hunt that they can’t or won’t give it up?
And other gods, thinking themselves funny, condemn such mortals to an eternity of the chase?
’ She nods. ‘Cautionary tales to keep folk inside after dark, to not challenge the eldritch things that roam. Sometimes just cruel things – all that killing? Slaughter? More than you could ever eat? Just to feel an animal’s terror?
Acts that just beg for punishment. I think…
I think somehow that’s what’s been following me.
I don’t know why, other than it noticed me that night and I got away. ’
‘And that’s what’s taken the children? Even though Ari and the Peppergill boy were returned? What about the orphans, though?’
I tell her about my conversations in Berhta’s Forge, with Cylla and Anselm, with Reynald and Widow Wilky.
I tell her how Tieve’s mother behaved, and I do not mention Faolan nor how we spent our time.
In the end, she asks me what I can do and I answer honestly that I don’t know yet.
She doesn’t suggest I should hurry up and work it out, but her expression makes that thought quite clear.
Rhea does say, however, that I should have shared all this earlier.
I have no answer for her.
* * *
Later, when Rhea’s sleeping on the sofa, the little one with her, I watch them and think about the nature of the child, this melding of summer husband – of new oak – and human flesh.
My mother’s tale about juniper trees was designed to tell me about unloved daughters – to let me know that I was one most certainly.
I told it to the baby to let her know she was special, that she’d survived in spite of everything, and that it was my most fervent blessing for her to do so forever.
With a sigh, I rise, search the bookshelves for one of the books Yrse left behind – certainly one of her most valuable – the ancient copy of Murcianus’ Magical Creatures, which Rhea has put back in the wrong spot.
Though not native to my homeland, such tomes are known in certain closed circles there, highly prized.
Once, to the great rejoicing of the palace librarians and the high sorceress, a shipment of such books arrived to supplement the knowledge of those in the kingdom who sought after such things.
I was not allowed to touch them or read them for a very long time.
Those very same books I watched burn as I fled, piled high in a courtyard, the bodies of most of the royal family and scions of noble houses all added for kindling.
I shake my head, try to concentrate. I ponder the stories I told Rhea in that long-ago springtime about changelings and stocks, troll offspring left like cuckoos. Then I think about the huntsman, that broken thing with his wish-hounds by his side.
I open the pages and begin to search for anything that might give answers about both of my problems.