Darkhenge

Though I am small, I have fought

in the ranks of the forest.

“THE BATTLE OF THE TREES”

Rob had never had to fight.

In school he had always been popular, not one of those who got picked on. He was tall and had always been absorbed in his art, and though he’d once done a term of martial arts classes, the real thing had never happened.

Besides, this was an animal. It had no mercy, no fear.

It wouldn’t hesitate.

Rob felt the weight on his arm ease; the King pulled himself straighter.

The wolf paced toward them, head low. Its ears were flat, its teeth yellow. When it leaped, the impact would be staggering, its bite would rip through muscle and bone.

He searched under his coat. Then flicked one despairing glance sideways.

The crane-skin bag lay under the trees, where he had tossed it.

He inched a foot toward it. The wolf’s hackles rose, the growl deepening in its throat.

And to his astonishment the tree bent down between them. At least that was what he thought was happening; then with a flash of understanding he saw one dark bird had landed on the branches above, its weight bending them. Then another, and a third.

Long-legged, thin-billed, the three silent cranes perched in the branches. In the dimness they gleamed pale. The King whispered, “The guardians,” his voice a cracked breath of hope.

The cranes looked at the wolf.

Doubtfully, its amber eyes moved from Rob, surveyed the birds.

Nothing moved.

And then with a crashing of branches they could hear something approaching through the icy forest, its weight vibrating the ground. Something vast, something enormous, something that cracked and splintered its way through the undergrowth, so that Rob flattened his back even harder against the tree, wishing it would open, wishing there was a doorway inside it that would open and swallow him.

The wolf slunk back. Its teeth were still bared but its eyes darted in fear.

To the left, a thicket of blackthorn trembled. A shadow shouldered through, leaves and berries dropping from it, soil sliding from it, as if it had reared itself up from some mud hollow.

A great horned head, a dark pelt, rain-soaked, two tiny red baleful eyes.

A bull.

“Quietly.” It was Clare’s whisper. Rob felt a hand grab his, pull him gently behind the tree. The King seemed transfixed; Rob had to tug at him urgently before he stumbled, and at the movement the three cranes all swiveled their beaks and looked down, fixing him with their gaze.

Clare drew him around the bole of the gnarled oak into the dimness behind, but even as they moved the bull lumbered forward, dropping its head. Its mouth opened like a pit of darkness; it bellowed, a terrifying roar of defiance, advancing on the wolf.

The wolf snarled, but it was slinking, its belly low, its ears flat.

Then it turned, and ran.

“She’s totally useless.” Chloe folded her arms in fury. “Twice now she’s supposed to have stopped you, and yet here you are.”

Vetch nodded mildly. “It’s gone on longer than you think.”

“And you brought Rob here. Of all people!” Without waiting for him she turned and marched into one of the looped openings, holding Callie’s harness tight. The horse’s bulk was warm and comforting, her flank steaming slightly after the swift ride, but even behind the thud of hooves Chloe felt Vetch’s presence stride after her like a shadow.

“You won’t slow me down,” she said angrily. “I’m going to the Chair. I’m going as far in as I can get.” She glanced back and saw how his dark eyes watched her, irritatingly calm. “I could kill you,” she said. “I could make you die, just by wanting it.”

“Perhaps you could,” he said. “But you won’t.”

She walked faster, but he was tall, and kept up easily. Ducking under skeins of the flecked ceiling, she said, “Out there I was small and weak. Have you any idea what it’s like to be a little girl? I didn’t have any power, but that’s different here. The King told me about the Chair. Whoever sits on it holds all the power of the Unworld. Was he lying to me?”

“If this world is yours,” Vetch remarked, “you could make such a chair, couldn’t you? If it is. But have you thought, Chloe, that in fact it may not be?”

She stopped, dragging Callie around. Vetch was a little breathless, but then so was she. “No I haven’t! I don’t believe that. You’re full of tricks and lies and stories. You never tell the straight truth.”

He smiled ruefully. “Now that’s unkind, coming from you.” Taking a step forward, he put his hand on Callie’s slender neck and smoothed her mane. The horse whickered, nestling up to him. “Because you never do either, do you? You pretended, but you were bitter in secret. Rob, your parents—you never really told them how you felt.”

He was looking down at her; she felt humiliated. “What was the point? I couldn’t explain.”

“Then how can you blame them for not knowing?”

“I do! I blame Rob.” She wished she was older, taller. She wished she knew how to argue, how to be logical, how to use words back at him. Tears choked her; she swallowed them, turned, marched on.

The thick wool grew tangled. She had to step over it, duck under it, draw Callie around vast impenetrable knots that blocked the way; she strode fiercely through openings and gaps, taking any way that seemed open, and all the time Vetch came behind, silent, as if he was biding his time.

She wanted to race away from him, but the castle tripped her and snagged her; it looped around wrist and ankle. Denser now, it closed in, growing colder, as if she was forcing her way to the heart of the mesh. Small things began to scuttle past, always running outward; they looked like mice and spiders and beetles, and once a snake, wriggling in panic. And the tunnels weren’t still either. Sometimes they rose under her feet, or twisted, or even rippled, so that she and Vetch and the horse all lost their footing and staggered against the stretchy, yielding threads.

And then Vetch began to talk.

His words were quiet, and though she wanted to block them out, she couldn’t.

“It’s not easy, is it, to find your way through? Yet it should be, if this Unworld is yours. But have you thought, Chloe, that it’s you that’s hindering yourself?”

“Shut up,” she snapped.

“Tripping yourself up, tangling yourself? That we’re struggling deeper into your own doubt? That secretly, far down somewhere inside, you don’t want to get to the Chair at all. You want to be stopped. You want to be made to go back, to wake up safe in your bed and see Mac leaning over you, and your mum and dad crying with joy. You want to make it up with Rob. You want it to be all right.”

“I said, shut up! You don’t know anything! Rob’s dead. I’ve killed him.” She turned, hot and hurt and desperate not to hear him, flung out a fist at him. He grabbed it, and his hand was cool, the marks of his theft three red coils on his pale skin.

“No you haven’t.”

“What do you know?”

“I know about the struggle with words. About ‘The Battle of the Trees.’”

For a moment she just stared at him. Through him. Saw a white room full of nurses, Mac in the background looking sick and old, a broken window where the ivy was creeping in. Felt a small cool kiss on her forehead.

For a moment she was there and wanted to be there.

And then she saw the painting. It was on the wall, behind Mac. It was brilliant, it was beautiful, it was hateful. It was her own face, the portrait she’d always wanted Rob to paint, which he must have done since she’d left; it looked down at her with that light, mischievous grin she fell into sometimes, when things were good, when she could forget about being their Chloe, and be her own.

It hurt her. It stung tears into her eyes.

Vetch recognized the change. He looked dismayed.

She shook his hand off and stabbed a finger at him. “That’s enough! No more words!”

Red rope dropped around him; he dragged it from his lips. “Don’t! Chloe, wait…”

Around his neck, another loop. It tightened; he choked, tore at it, but his arms were held, his wrists dragged back.

She stepped up close to him. “No more words, Vetch. Now you’re the one who’s tangled. See how you like being speechless. I’m going on.”

She turned Callie and strode away.

Vetch fought. He struggled and pulled at the red-flecked ropes, but they held him and slithered around him and crushed his chest. He was suffocating in them; as she climbed up on Callie’s back, Chloe said without turning her head, “That’s enough.”

The threads were still.

Vetch tried to loosen them. He said, “You know I’m right. My words will go with you.”

She smiled at him kindly. “It’ll take you long enough to get out of there. Good-bye, Vetch. I’m sorry you won’t see me reach the Chair. Any of you.”

“We made a truce,” Clare said sourly. She held a whippy branch aside for Rob; before them the hillside ran down, the grass smooth. “He’s gone on to find her; I came for you. She’s on horseback, so we’ve got no time to talk.”

Rob looked back. “But … the bull. Those birds.”

“Guardians of the crane-skin bag. There are many such magical beasts in the wood. I brought the bull because I couldn’t deal with the wolf myself.” She smiled a tight smile. “Chloe may think the Unworld is hers, but it isn’t yet. There are powers here stronger than she is, until she reaches the Chair.” She turned then, and he saw with dismay that she had the crane-skin bag.

It hung on its string around her neck. Now she took out a single ogham stick and held it up like a wand.

“I’m afraid I have to change you.”

Rob said, “That’s Vetch’s. What do you mean, change?” Alarm flooded him; he said, “I don’t want—”

“I’m sorry, Rob. It will hurt a little, but it’s necessary.” She tapped his face, then the King’s, quickly, and as he looked he saw the King’s mask alter. The blackthorn leaves shriveled, the eyes widened, became round; tufts of feathers sprouted.

And then he felt it himself, the contraction within him, the sudden gasping agony that made his eyes water. He knew that his body was twisting, that his mind was collapsing, all its thoughts and reason folding away, leaving only light and pain and hunger and fear.

His bones hollowed, his skull attenuated, his hands clawed.

And then he lifted himself up from the ground.

And flew away.

This caer. She had no idea what it was called. She galloped away from Vetch’s imprisoned shape quickly, ignored his hoarse plea. “What good is a queen without subjects, Chloe?” he yelled.

The tunnels narrowed. Red and warm. She rode faster into veins and blood vessels. Flocks of birds flew against her, a scatter of scarlet moths, a swarm of bees.

Far ahead, the bell chimed, and then a clattering grew clearer. It sounded like the clack of great needles, as if someone was knitting the castle, as if stitches were being formed and slipped and counted in some enormous chamber ahead.

But all she found when she finally burst through the last knot was a room she knew very well indeed.

Her bedroom at home.

It was exactly the same, except that the bed here was all made of antler, and bones, and rough branches tied together, with four posts of dark wood inside a ring of high, unshaven timbers.

She slithered down from Callie’s hot back, and looked around.

Her wardrobe. She could change, and wash.

Her clock. The small hands said 4:50 AM.

Her photograph of Mum and Dad and Rob on holiday.

Her notebook.

Suddenly, she was so tired. She sat on the bed and it was soft and full of feathers. The duvet was white, embroidered all over with snowflakes; it wasn’t hers, but she liked it.

She drew it around herself, and it was warm, and smelled sweet, so she curled up, kicked her boots off and yawned.

A small sleep wouldn’t matter.

And Rob was alive.

Smiling, she touched one of the embroidered flakes with her fingers, watching it detach and float up, letting sleep open under her.

Vetch gasped a ragged breath, then another. He had managed to wriggle his long fingers up to his throat; now he rubbed it and swallowed, feeling the red soreness of the tight threads.

He was shaking.

To discover the uselessness of words was too terrible a fate for a poet.

A small wetness stung his hand. Then another. He looked up quickly, his breath smoking, and despair chilled him to the bone.

He had failed to persuade Chloe. And now she was making sure they never caught up with her.

For through all the interstices and webs of the Woven Castle, through all the hollows and loops and tunnels, small white flakes were falling.

Snow.