Chapter 34
My relief at seeing them is short-lived.
Their shouting takes on an edge of hysteria and fear that makes me look back over my shoulder, certain the shadow half has circled back, found a way through the veil.
But no. There’s nothing out there beyond the ward-line, nothing but darkness.
There are, however, two weeping girls rushing towards us, stumbling over their words and sobs and steps.
It irks me that they’re so unhinged. I prop an elbow under Fenna’s shoulder though she grumbles she’s perfectly fine.
Except she’s not, she’s worn out and I can tell.
‘What is it?’ I ask, trying to keep the impatience out of my tone.
‘The baby,’ Rhea yells. ‘The baby is gone.’
Oh. The words don’t make sense. My mind can’t take it in; it’s had quite enough these past few days, thank you very much.
No more, no more. Then the loss hits me and I feel as if my chest makes a hollow sound when Rhea leans against me, shuddering.
I thought the little one would stay, was not so weak as my poor babies.
I was so sure she would live, that this one would survive.
Perhaps if I’d been here, perhaps if I’d not died myself, I might have kept her alive.
Guilt adds its weight to my heart. I wrap my free arm around her. ‘Oh. Oh, Rhea. I’m so sorry.’
Then, to my utter confusion, she says: ‘We have to go after him.’
‘What?’ I gently push her away so I can see her face. Angry. Enraged. Not grieving, or not so much as the fury.
‘That boy! That shitty boy took my daughter!’ And as she shouts, flames snap in her palms.
‘What boy?’ ‘The one she let in!’ A howl and a finger pointed at Tieve, whose wailing reaches a pitch to hurt the ears.
‘Tieve. Who was it?’
‘Orin! It was just Orin Alderson. He’s my friend.’ She sniffles. ‘I thought he was my friend.’
Gods help me. Faolan’s boy. A deep breath to calm myself; a wave of relief: kidnapping is an easier problem to solve than death. ‘Right, you lot. Inside, all of you. Stop yelling.’
Rhea looks fit to defy me, to charge off into the night.
I grasp her shoulder tightly enough to let her know I mean business.
‘Inside. It’s too dangerous to go now. We need to plan.
No point everyone rushing off to die when I’m expending so much energy to keep you all alive.
Tieve, stop howling. You’re not in trouble.
’ Not yet. ‘Now help me get the horses settled first. Many hands make light work.’
* * *
In the warmth of the cottage I set about restoring order or some semblance of it.
I send Fenna to the bathroom for a good and fulsome wash.
I send Tieve up to my room to pull an old warm navy serge dress from my clothing chest; it’s from my younger days but will fit the half-starved older woman better now.
I make Rhea set the table for a meal, send her down to the cellar to retrieve cheeses and salted meats, preserved fruits.
There’s a rabbit stew on the hob that she must have made earlier, and a loaf of bread, a day old.
I saw it into slices, and when Tieve returns I instruct her to sit by the open fire and make toast. I deliver the dress and a fresh towel to the bathroom.
Rhea finishes her tasks and comes to stand in front of me as I relax, briefly blissful, on the sofa.
I need a bath too, although less desperately than Fenna, having spent entirely too much time in water, and then in dirt.
Mostly, I can smell horse and my own sweat. I pat the seat beside me. ‘Sit, Rhea.’
She does, a rebellious gleam in her eyes. ‘Mehrab—’
‘I will find her. I will bring her home. But I need you to be calm and tell me exactly what has happened. The huntsman is lurking – you heard him?’ She nods.
‘None of us can go out there until daylight.’ As she begins to protest, I hush her, ‘It just attacked Berhta’s Forge – openly, which means it’s grown bolder. ’
‘But—’
‘It doesn’t want her, Rhea. It doesn’t want her. She’s just a lure.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because it wants me.’
She stares at me as if trying to work out if I’m to blame for all of this. ‘Why? Why does it want you?’
‘Maybe because of what I can do. I’m not sure.’ I reach out and take her hand; she doesn’t resist. ‘I promise I will get her back, I promise faithfully. But we need a plan. I’d also like to get out of this alive.’ This time.
And I can see her maternal instincts warring with the good sense of what I’m saying. ‘I want to go with you. I can help. I’ll burn that thing alive.’
‘Nice thought. But I don’t know if it can be burned – so much of it’s smoke and spirit.
You might burn away the last of its sinews and flesh, sear its bones, but the other parts can’t be touched by fire.
And,’ I hold up a finger to forestall argument, ‘can you honestly say you can be rational about this? Not rush in the moment you hear your child’s cry? ’
Rhea looks angry but defeated, hugging her chest; without the child to breastfeed, she’s going to be in discomfort very soon.
She knows I’m right, that without the child she was already impetuous; with her she’s more likely to be reckless.
‘Your daughter has a better chance of surviving if I go alone. If you run off into the night? The huntsman’s got three hostages against me – and I have more than one soul to protect. ’
She looks around slowly, at Tieve and at Fenna who are waiting, watching, then back at me. She nods but her voice shakes as she says, ‘You promise?’
‘Faithfully.’ I touch my forehead to hers. ‘But I need you to be kind to Tieve. Think of every stupid thing you did as a child – and adult – and be kind to her. Don’t let the guilt and grief she already carries grow any bigger. It’s not fair to who she might become. Understand?’
‘Yes, Mehrab.’
* * *
After a welcome meal, after Fenna’s spoken of her capture and captors – confirming for me that they were indeed outcasts from their order, sent forth from their monastery for a variety of sins with instructions that the only way they’d be welcomed back would be to find Rhea and return her to Lodellan.
They knew, Fenna said, that it was a fool’s errand, the likelihood of them finding such a needle in such a haystack spectacularly unlikely – but what good luck for them (and bad for her) that there’d been reports of a bright-haired girl and an older woman with a distinctive stripe of white hair travelling months ago by the village of Teind’s Tor, and that they’d seen her in a tavern in Belvidere’s Lot, taken her after a struggle.
How she’d told them where she’d left Rhea, how by chance they’d run into Thaddeus Peppergill in Asher’s Brook and joined him on the road home.
Then Tieve, shooting nervous glances at Rhea the whole while, told how she’d seen Orin outside the ward-line, looking confused and searching for the cottage.
He was her friend, after all, had been kind and she had no reason to suspect otherwise, so she’d called him in, told him to close his eyes and walk towards her voice.
She’d noticed the effect of the veil seemed less in the centre and directed him that way – the child’s too smart by half, observant.
That will need managing, directing for better purposes.
She’d brought him inside, introduced him to Rhea.
He’d been polite, deferential, then asked to use the privy – and taken the child from her basket while the other two were preparing a meal.
It was a miracle Rhea managed not to run into the forest then.
Another miracle. There’s hope for her yet.
And I… I tell them of my drowning death.
Of the mari-morgan dragging me along the River Ayda like salvage.
Of the green woman and her tale of a slaughter of her sisters, of a horned god broken and split, of a huntsman of shadow and spite ravaging the Great Forest at his leisure for so many years.
I tell them of the promise I made, what I must do – figure out how to do.
And when they’ve all gathered their breath again, their wits, their calm, I announce I need a bath.
Once in the tub, water rushing hot and loud, only then do I let myself weep.
Despite the voice inside shouting that I’m wasting time, the other part of me knows that if I don’t regroup, if I don’t let this out, I’ve no hope of formulating a plan to save us all.
No hope of carrying it off. No hope of anything.
Focus, Mehrab. Examine the pieces.
A huntsman roaming the forests, ravening, wanting something of me.
Ari and Matthias, lying on stone biers in a barrow while changelings feed on their families – and this surely of benefit to the huntsman, feeding in turn on all that energy and emotion channelled from his creations. Feeding, in this case, not on flesh but on the ephemera of mortals.
Five orphans stolen away, turned into wolflings, used as fodder trying to break through my wards.
And Orin Alderson. Orin walking freely around Berhta’s Forge, nature unchanged or showing no sign of it, not like Ari or Matthias.
Faolan hasn’t mentioned any change – although with the distance between them, would he even notice?
The lad drifts between the horses and the smithy, and playing with other children on the green; plenty of time to get into mischief, plenty of time to wander the woods.
A motherless boy with a father who can’t or simply doesn’t communicate with him – one of the most dangerous things in the world.
Orin luring Ari and Matthias from their homes, leading five orphans into the woods, stealing a baby from her mother.
Ari away for so long – ’prentice work while the huntsman poked and prodded and experimented to produce the changeling? Then Matthias, the second attempt, so much quicker. The wolflings, needing only to be bitten…
My mind flips back to Rhea’s baby and all the tales about strange children, hybrid children, born of forests, fathered by juniper trees, springing from the earth and putting down roots, hibernating, even of summer husbands and how they might be turned to other purposes.
How rare they are, how extraordinary. How their very flesh and blood might have magical powers, containing within them the essence of creation because they have come from the impossible mixing of two very different beings.
What if, used in the right way, they might become alchemical ingredients themselves? The essence of remaking.
What if, in telling Rhea the huntsman doesn’t want her child, I’m very wrong indeed?
If the shadow half wants me to remake him, but he’s only part of something else – something that’s lost – then perhaps there’s not enough of him to work with. But what if…
An infant with the essence of creation within her.
A witch with the power to change the very fabric of a being.
All the energy the changelings are siphoning away.
Might he be made anew, solid and real and entire?
What if?
* * *
It’s very late when I send them all off to bed and set about banking the fire in the sitting room.
We’ve made plans for what Rhea and Fenna and Tieve will do tomorrow while I’m making my way towards Night’s Barrow.
Selecting and packing foodstuffs that won’t spoil on a long journey, ensuring the warmest and toughest clothing they can find in the chests and cupboards is in good repair, sewing gems and jewellery into hems and between linings in coats and cloaks because that will act as coin if our purses become empty, and checking the saddles and tack and that the horses are all fit for a long journey.
Where? I don’t quite know yet; perhaps Adestan’s Harbour or St Mortimer’s Landing or Windermere’s Break or Tredwine’s Haven. Perhaps none of them.
Rhea’s loitering, her fingers tightly clasped in front of her skirts. I understand – how to sleep when your child is…
‘Mehrab?’ she says quietly. ‘I… I haven’t even named her. I was too afraid and now, please let me—’
‘I will bring her home. Have a name ready for her and it’ll be the first thing she hears upon her return.
’ I reach out, cover her hands with my own.
‘But I need you to remain here while I go. Protect Fenna and Tieve, this place – if by any chance something gets in, your fire will be the only thing standing between them and the grave. And I must go alone because I can’t be distracted.
Once I leave the safety of the holding, I can only look after myself.
I don’t have a power that can be used from a distance.
Wait for me. Trust in me.’ I don’t tell her to leave without me if I don’t return by tomorrow night because that won’t instil any confidence.
She nods, hearteningly quickly, dauntingly quickly.
That night, I dream of women as cauldrons, of them remaking the world.