Chapter 4 The Begbéam Moon
The Begbéam Moon
Osric
The night of the Begbéam moon found Osric in excellent spirits. He was merry, hopeful, excited even. At the last full moon, Fairhrim had managed to slow his seith system’s degeneration; perhaps this time she would stop it entirely.
He spent a long time in his dressing room, getting ready. This wasn’t a date or anything, obviously; he simply liked to make himself devastatingly attractive.
He would get to sweep Fairhrim into his arms again tonight. Not that doing so sent his heart skittering into pleasant, uneven throbs; he simply liked to whisk her about, and hear her little gasps, and feel her cling to him. It was great fun to undo her a little—she was always so tightly wound.
“Are you getting ready for a date?” came a voice.
It was the bloody critique cricket. Whenever it had been silent long enough, Osric assumed it had died. Then it came back again when it was least wanted.
“No. Go away, you little brute,” said Osric.
“Then why have you spent an hour fussing over your hair?” asked the cricket.
“I like it to be perfect,” said Osric, continuing to fuss in the looking glass. “I never do things by halves, you know.”
He couldn’t decide if he looked better with his hood up (mysterious, sinister) or down (devil-may-care, dashing) and alternated between the two, all while admiring the cut of his jaw.
“I think you’re trying to impress the Haelan,” said the cricket. “She makes your papule of a heart go pitter-patter.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Osric stepped back from the looking glass. “How do I look?”
“When I want to see clowns, I go to the circus.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You fancy her,” said the cricket musically.
Osric, sufficiently offended to detach his eyes from his reflection, looked about for the cricket, but there were too many hiding places amid the luxuries heaped about his dressing room.
He sent his seith to his tācn and searched the shadows on the bureau, between bottles of hair oils, pots of crèmes, pomades, and shaving articles.
No cricket. He swept his tācn towards the frock coats, waistcoats, boots, and gloves lying about.
It was of no use—every garment offered a place of refuge, and in getting ready to see Fairhrim, he had pulled out a lot of garments.
Osric regained his composure. “I am far too concerned with myself to admire anyone else.”
“Liar.”
“It’s true.”
Full of grave pity, the cricket said, “You can be honest with me, if not yourself.”
“I don’t know how else to tell you you’re wrong,” said Osric lightly.
“You think about her every day,” said the cricket.
“Because she’s helping to heal me.”
“Have you forgotten that I witnessed your Agonies?”
“An overreaction on my part,” said Osric, pulling on his gloves. “I’m prone to those.”
“You might have a chance with her. If she’s secretly a murdererphile. Or moronsexual.”
“Oi.”
“I shall pray for you,” said the cricket.
“Don’t bother.”
“When human means fail, one ought to give the gods a chance.”
The cricket’s Parthian shot aside, Osric remained in an excellent mood.
With sprightliness in his step, he took the waystone to the Hairy Hodmedod, the pub near Glastonbury Tor where he and Fairhrim had arranged to meet.
He popped out of the ley line in the Somerset lowlands at twenty past three (he was late due to the cricket, not his hair).
The full moon was at its zenith. A small cloud dappled its light.
Fairhrim awaited his arrival at the waystone.
She had once again complied with his request to dress in black, and wore a mismatched ensemble whose only saving grace was that the trousers hugged her thighs and bum to good effect.
Osric could appreciate a good bum. (But not too good—not better than his.
He would have to examine hers further to confirm that it wasn’t.)
Osric rarely saw Fairhrim without her Haelan whites. Black became her. It heightened her unsmiling intensity. It emphasized the dark promise of her eyes.
She had replaced her Haelan satchel with a leather bag, tucked into the small of her back. Tonight, the only sign that she was a member of that Order was her tācn, a white swan, presently hidden under black gloves.
“You’re late,” said Fairhrim.
“You said three but didn’t specify a time zone,” said Osric breezily.
This garnered no response from Fairhrim, exasperated or otherwise. Upon closer inspection, she looked fatigued.
“Hard day?” asked Osric.
“We charted the words ‘penile degloving’ this evening.”
Osric was silent as he processed this information. He could have gone the rest of his life without knowing that penile and degloving were two words that could be put together.
Another of Fairhrim’s eight-word horror stories.
He said, “Hel.”
She said, “I know.”
With these auspicious beginnings, they set off towards Glastonbury Tor.
The Tor was a massive conical prominence in the landscape, surrounded by rings of its labyrinth, which shimmered in pale arcs around its base. It was topped by the squat tower of the Faerwundor.
“This is as close as we should get without shadow-walking,” said Osric, “or we’ll risk being seen. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” said Fairhrim. She sounded pinched, but then again, when did Fairhrim not sound pinched?
Her principal anxiety was that they would get caught; Osric’s was that the healing wouldn’t work. She fiddled with her gloves.
“Do stop fidgeting,” said Osric. “They’re Druids. They haven’t even got a tācn.”
“Right.” The frown drawing Fairhrim’s brows together relaxed minutely. “Then let’s go. Resume the torment.”
She reached towards him, a gesture he found strangely elating. Osric lifted her against him. He had been distracted for the entirety of their shadow-walk practice by the feel of her in his arms. The feeling was back again.
(She did not make his heart go pitter-patter, so the cricket could fuck off. It did swell in his chest and beat more rapidly, but that was due to exertion, thank you.)
Osric swept himself and Fairhrim into the shadow-walk.
The world passed in flashes of moonlit road, wheat fields, cattle and sheep, beehives.
Fairhrim clung to him and emitted those little gasps that delighted him.
He did not think about how good it felt to hold her to him, nor was he catastrophically aware of her nearness.
Their objective for the healing tonight was the crossing of two waterways. Based on their map, this occurred somewhere within the Faerwundor.
They reached the base of the Tor, where the labyrinth began.
A large signpost stood there, plastered with dire warnings about not proceeding farther unless authorised, that this was a dangerous area, and that trespassers would be punished.
Two motionless Druids stood sentinel on either side of the labyrinth’s entrance.
Golden sickles gleamed like crescent moons at their waists.
Their grey-green cloaks camouflaged them perfectly against the ivy-laced stones.
Unfortunately for them, Osric and Fairhrim were even more perfectly camouflaged by seith and shadow, and slipped past them without incident.
Osric was pleased: everything was going according to plan, including Fairhrim not immediately getting sick. She clutched firmly at the front of his cloak. They had agreed that she would give it three tugs if she needed a break from the shadow-walk.
He had hoped to cut straight across the labyrinth by walking along the tops of its walls, instead of winding through all seven rings up the Tor.
He was dissuaded from the idea after shadow-walking to the top of the first wall and finding himself waist deep in a hedge of massive spiky brambles.
He and Fairhrim were impaled by long spines all the way up their legs.
Osric descended back into the labyrinth and released Fairhrim. They proceeded to withdraw needle-like spines from each other’s arses and hamstrings, with much whispered swearing.
“You all right?” asked Osric.
Fairhrim didn’t answer but did a lot of swallowing, and fanned herself with a limp hand. Osric left her to her queasiness and scouted ahead a bit, pleased to discover no further Druid sentinels.
“Let’s go on foot to let your stomach settle,” he said when he rejoined Fairhrim. “Stay close.”
“All right.” Fairhrim slipped her gloved hand into the crook of his elbow, which didn’t give him pitter-patters of any description.
They followed the ancient passage up the Tor.
The labyrinth’s first walls were low, but as Osric and Fairhrim advanced, they rose higher and higher, and hid more of the world.
Fireflies led them inward and upwards like will-o’-the-wisps.
By the time they reached the labyrinth’s third ring, they could see little of the sky, only the full moon, directly above them, laced by ivy and bramble.
Both Osric and Fairhrim breathed hard and walked upwards on leaden legs; the ascent was steep and the air felt thin.
“Does it seem odd to you,” whispered Fairhrim, “that there aren’t more Druids along the way?”
“It’s the night of the full moon.” Osric shrugged. “Most of the Druids are off in the henges. Stop worrying. I’m the most dangerous thing here.”
At last they came to the end of the labyrinth, which opened upon the flat top of Glastonbury Tor. There they found a garden, in the middle of which stood the Faerwundor: a stone tower girded round by oak trees.
“What a garden,” breathed Fairhrim as she stepped into it.
Osric watched her go, noting that she had a good bum, possibly better than his.
“It almost looks like a library,” said Fairhrim.
It was an adequate description. Plants were heaped over other plants on rocky shelves.
Under every plant was a label, written in a Druidic script, unintelligible to either Osric or Fairhrim.
The labels were illuminated by phosphorescent moths that were the size of Osric’s hand and were by nature or breeding happy to perch near them.