Streets of blood

12

His vision swam slowly in and out of focus as he coughed and spluttered, dimly aware that someone was trying to force a liquid down his throat. The stuff smelled like horse manure and tasted even worse. Feebly attempting to push the administering hand away, Serrin managed to prop himself up on an elbow and tried to take in his surroundings.

He was inside a decrepit wooden hut, unlit except for the last of the daylight filtering in from the mist. It was close to dawn or dusk, he guessed, but he couldn’t see much through the open doorway. The place looked as if it were built on wooden supports, and he was sure there was water right outside.

The woman sat back on her haunches, watching him attentively. She was dirty, unkempt, and wearing a simple garment tied around the waist with a length of thin twine. It looked like a piece of old sackcloth.

"How are you feeling?” Her voice was surprisingly deep for a woman’s, slow and languid.

“Oh, I think I’ll survive," he croaked, but he felt dreadful. "How did I get here? Last I remember, something that looked like the bastard offspring of the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot was about to snack on me. It was a toss-up between drowning and being eaten alive.”

She smiled as if at a child. “Ramalan brought you here. He would not have harmed you. He is old now, and had already fed that day. Eels are plentiful this year. He was only just roused from sleep. He wanders a little in his dotage.” A wave of water lapped up to the doorway, almost washing into the hut. She smiled peacefully. “He is outside now. I think he will sleep again in two, three days. I must keep him closer in future. I never know what he may bring back, elf.”

As she talked, he looked around the room. Serrin realized he was lying on a bed of what appeared to be dried reeds, but nothing else in the room indicated where he might be. He dimly registered a couple of simple pots and urns, some wickerware and a rag or two, but that was all. He rubbed his eyes and turned back to the woman.

“Who are you, lady? Where am I?"

Her face remained impassive. “You are in the marshlands, elf. you are safe, but you must rest.”

He groaned. “The Stinkfens? Spirits, lady, my lungs are in a bad enough state already. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but the night air here’ll be the death of me.”

“If you had not been brought here, the walking dead would have killed you. Anyway, the air is not so unhealthy here."

“The walking dead?” He wondered if she were mad.

"The men from the laboratories," she said with a frown. "Those who carry guns and wear armor. They are dead men; their bodies and hearts are destroyed by the wires and machines within them. You know this. You use Power too.”

“You’re a shaman?" Serrin asked. “But you don’t carry any-”

"I am a druid. I am of Wyrm."

“But I thought you people, I mean druids, I thought that was all about stone circles and white robes and mystical Albion, all that stuff” At once he regretted these shallow words. “I’m sorry, I can’t clear my head. Truly. I’m not from your country, I don’t know much about you. Please forgive my ignorance and bad manners."

The woman waved her hand to indicate that she took no offense. "Those who walk the Circles have their own places and their own hearts and minds. I endure here. I heal and purify as I can. I am not alone; there are others here, in what remains of the village, and there are many who make their living here, beyond the man-sprawl. They travel the fenlands in their punts and coracles. We are beginning to live again as we all will, if this Earth can be healed. We do what we can.

"Now drink, and sleep. I still have work to do on you."

She reached across him and picked up the crude pottery mug she had placed on the table. Shushing away his feeble protests, she made Serrin drink some disgusting green liquid, while she smoothed the hair back from his forehead. Then she pushed him gently down, and began to massage his head and neck.

He felt Power flowing through her strong hands, into his head and nerves, and a wonderfully cool calm began to radiate through his body. With his eyes closed, Serrin saw his own body in his mind’s eye, a network of cool blue nerves shining over his chest and arms, stretching out over his pelvis and solar plexus, down the length of his legs. He gave a little gasp when the encroaching net met the most ravaged part of his long-damaged leg, and then relaxed after a momentary resistance.

With a long, deep sigh, the mage let himself float gently back down into sleep.

As the woman showed him around the village, Serrin became uneasy. Much of the place had sunk half-underwater because of the rise in the fen waters created by decades of polar thaw. Some families lived on the top floors of three-story buildings whose lower levels had been lost to the waters, and the whole of which were threatening to sink into the marsh. This barren land offered little in the way of building materials, but a few wooden houses looked relatively recent. He was utterly baffled when they came upon a grove of young willows on one isolated shallow hillock.

“A few trees grow now,” the woman said. “Power is not only for healing people-or elves. Much of this water is almost pure now, but at any time the dead men with their factories may bring more poisons. I must be ever vigilant. The battle is never-ending. But in this place we have a small victory. Look, isn’t she beautiful?”

The druid picked up a small child who had ventured out to peer through the open window of a house they were passing in their boat. The little one had all the mischief mixed with shyness typical of most three-year-olds, and she was lovely, with silky brown hair and big, deep brown eyes. She stretched her small hand away from her mouth and waved at them and then, almost overcome by her own temerity, she ducked out of sight, only to reappear again and stare at the tall, gangling elf.

"She’s a pretty little girl."

"Her parents’ last child was stillborn. Before that, her mother had two miscarriages. Before that, the mother bore a monster, a wailing thing with two heads and skin peeling red raw from its body. It lived for three days. The land and water drip with poisons. Now you must understand why I am here, elf, and why I would die for this place. I have the animals and plants to care for, too, but I do not think you would really understand that.” Only the whiteness of her knuckles gripping the oar gave away the force of her emotions.

“I don’t know what to say." Serrin was ashamed, as if somehow he was part of those who had done harm to these people. Then he realized that every time he bought something advertised by a sanitized, smiling corporate bimbo, he really did become part of it.

Something fractured within him. Why am I affected by this? he pondered. I’ve seen enough streets paved with starving children and beggars with limbs ripped off by street samurai or gang kids who did it for the sheer sadistic pleasure. I’ve been places so polluted it takes round-the-clock work just to keep ‘em from spontaneously exploding into flame. I’ve worked for people who I know damn well dump filth and effluent by the gigaliter. She must have done something to me with that healing. How does her Power flow? What has it done to me?

Still, he recoiled from what he felt and saw. It was simply too painful to embrace. And he knew this place was hardly paradise; the people who lived here would argue and steal just as anywhere else in the world. The thought did not bring consolation.

They were stopped on the way back to her hut by a small punt laden with bales of swamp hay, pushed along by a young man. Serrin’s first thought was that it was rather late in the year for that. Then he wondered, how the hell do I know that?

The man looked up at them as the punts drifted past each other. He had one eye missing and an ugly mass of scar tissue where one of his ears should have been. His face opened in an almost toothless smile as he saw the druid, then he looked away uncertainly from the stranger. Shyly, he looked back again, and nodded in greeting to Serrin.

Serrin didn’t know why, but as he turned away he was aware that his hands were shaking slightly. Then he realized that they hadn’t been shaking all day, something that hadn’t happened for nearly thirteen years.

He hoped the shaman did not see the tears welling in the corners of his eyes.

"I don’t even know your name,” Serrin said as he hungrily spooned up the stewed grain; it had an edge of spiciness that wasn’t obvious until it hit the throat. It was very welcome to him.

"You don’t need to know my name. Have I asked yours? To some, knowing the name of one with Power is power in itself."

He nodded, feeling foolish. “Of course. I’m sorry.” He shifted tack. "I must find my way home.”

"Of course. But first you will tell me some things. What were you doing among the dead men? Do they pay you with their worthless money?”

He ducked that query. “I sought a man-one of the dead men, you would say. Definitely, very much a dead man. More machine than man, if he ever had a man’s heart. He murdered my father and mother." She nodded in a matter-of-fact way, as if such things happened regularly and routinely. “Over at the Fuchi laboratories, at Longstanton… I was separated from a friend there, a man I haven’t seen in many years. He was helping me out of friendship. I hope he got away. He will be worried about me. I need to get back to let him know I’m still alive, for a start."

"Do you work for those who blaspheme creation?”

The words stunned him. He had no idea what she meant, and said so. His reaction seemed to satisfy her.

"There is a place to the north of where you were found. I do not go close, but I sense the energies there. There is pain inside it, and they keep animals there, and so they will torture them as they always do. But there is an evil there that is different even than that, and a confusion also. I fear that place. I feel the confusion serves to make it easier for the evil and pain to triumph.” She was struggling for words, not certain how to express herself. “I have not been close, as I say. There are many dead men there. I did not think you came from that place.” The shaman allowed herself a small smile of pleasure that her intuition had been correct. "You are not evil any more than you are a dead one.

"But how alive are you, elf?”

Again, he did not want to face her probe. Instead, he was untying the belt of his most precious possessions. Unlocking the sequence of plaques, he handed her one of the stones. It was beautifully crafted, from Tir Tairngire, and it made his heart heavy to part with it. "It brings help in healing. It does not heal in and of itself, but when healing power is used, it makes such work more effective, more assured of success. You heal much in this place. You will use it so much better than I."

She pushed the stone away. "Elf, you are not healed. Your body is well again, but you have a long way to go before you are healed."

The stone would be a real loss to him, but he ached for her to accept it. "Please. For the child we saw. For the man on the punt. For everything this fragging rotten world dumps on you. It was made by one of my people, and it is a true part of me. I don’t have much of me in the world and, uh, sometimes I try to hang on to little things, scraps and papers and possessions, until I get mixed up and leave myself behind with them. But this is Power and I want you to have it. Perhaps it will mean I am remembered here.” Serrin felt embarrassed by the strength of his need. “I don’t usually think about such things."

She took the stone then, quietly turning it over and over in her hands, beginning to fill with the wonder of it. She gestured him to silence as he began to apologize that she would have to bond it, that it would take time, and so he sat quietly looking out into the gathering evening mists. He knew too much and had seen too much of the world ever to be at peace with something as simple as this beautiful, blighted place, and he didn’t know how to deal with that.

As if searching for respite, his thoughts turned again to Cambridge and what the hell he would do when he got back there.