A Lament of Moonlight (10 page)

Chapter Nine

Melvin had no idea how they were going to get out of Singers Trail. He knew where they traveled was beyond the end, some distance into the Dickens lands but he had no clue how to
get past the shadkin
.

They were at the end of the trail and had no better idea of how to get off this trail than how to fly. It seemed just impossible to do. The birds and snakes were held back by the barrier though their intentions were clear in the way they were snapping and striking at the Bordeaux’s. The barrier kept them in check as if they were slamming into a glass wall with every attempt to get at them, but that wouldn’t be the case for long. Each time a shadkin bounded into the barrier an electric charge filled the air where they struck, lighting the night with snaps and pops. Even Luna who was their guide didn’t seem to want to leave the safety of Singers Trail, and for good reason. Melvin could almost imagine her translucent gossamer wings ringed in plum effervescence being torn to shreds in an instant once the barrier was breached. It was not a pretty sight.

A sea of shadkin faced them and they could no longer see the fields beyond for the darkness they created was all consuming, irrevocably there and impenetrable. Maybe they should have already taken their chance and broke through, but Melvin was unsure how that would have been any better, dead was dead and it didn’t matter if only a few shadkin did it or if all of the shadkin took part in tearing them to shreds.

“What are we going to do?” Ruby was
near
losing
her cool
.

They needed an army is what they needed. They were only three against hundreds, possibly thousands of shadkin, they were no match. As of yet none of them had done any real harm to the numerous shadkin. They had killed a couple so Melvin knew death was a real possibility for the beasts, but there were simply too many for them to take on by themselves.

He held up his hammer and thought with all his might, but it was just a hammer. Melvin wondered if he would ever learn how to control it, unless it was something that he would not ever learn to control. Maybe the hammer had a mind of its own and would not bend to another’s will.

Help us!
He pleaded with the hammer.
Kill them, hold them back!
But nothing happened, the hammer l
aid cold and heavy in his hands
.

“The wand!” Abigail said with a shaky voice, reaching for the length of willow wood in the sleeve of her dressing gown.

“What good will that do?” Melvin asked, but there was no scorn in his voice only genuine curiosity.

“Well I can loose fire into their midst,” she informed him.

“I don’t know if that would be the greatest thing to do. Grandmother Fire told you that there were only three uses in that willow wand. There is nothing combustible in the shadkin, only the wheat and the trees, and since there hasn’t been any serious rain in a while that could be disastrous. You might kill a few of them, but the risk would be greater to us.”

Abigail conceded his point.

“What are we to do then?” Ruby asked.

“I really don’t know. We don’t have much time left, maybe a couple hours. Last I checked we had three hours, I bet we are down to two or so. We might want to count on less than that.”

Something sang by his ear then and one of the birds fell dead, but Melvin was not sure what had happened. He searched and searched but couldn’t see anything. Another squawk and another bird fell dead, but again he didn’t see how. Now all of them were looking though they couldn’t find the means to this mysterious death that was befalling the birds.

Suddenly the night was alive with arrows!

“It is the things that saved us from the nix!” Melvin shouted elated, in his joy he forgot that he wasn’t sure if the beings helping them were good or bad. He was just happy they were scattering the shadkin for them.

Arrows sang through the night over their heads and they all stared in wonder. The arrows were small, maybe a forth of the size of a regular arrow but they were well placed and killed effectively.

The shadkin seemed just as confused as th
e Bordeaux’s
. A panic filled the birds and snakes, and Melvin wasn’t sure that something like that could happen.  The dark creatures were genuinely afraid and of something no one could see.

And then it happened, Melvin saw the first of the arrow shooters.

The man he saw was no taller than the elle folk were, and at first he thought that is what the little man was, but there was a difference, this little guy didn’t look mean at all. In fact the little fellow looked downright chipper.

“’ello!” he said to Melvin, smiling as he notched and loosed another arrow into the melee.

“Um, hi?” Melvin replied not sure what else to say. The little guy was dressed in what looked like brown cotton, but that couldn’t be right could it? Was it possible that this guy had regular clothing? His hat was made out of what appeared to be felt and sat on his head in a peak with a feather sticking out of it. Melvin supposed he would be an attractive being, whatever he was.

He looked like an extremely short, youthful human with thick hair on his arms and head (that which could be seen under the green hat) but nowhere else on his body. The only visible differences between him and a human was this little guy had pointed ears and a bulbous nose. He wore pants but no shirt, instead his upper half was covered with a brown vest and crossed with the strap that held up his quiver of arrows.

“
Great
night aint it?” the little man asked.

“It is now,” Melvin conceded and the guy laughed at him, laughed so hard that he had to stop shooting his arrows.

“I am Nel,” the little man extended a hand that was little bigger than the end of Melvin’s thumb. “I am a nature spirit,” Nel explained. “Also known as a mannikin.”

Nel continued shooting the arrows at the shadkin whose numbers were rapidly depleting.

The flight of arrows lasted for a long time, and soon more mannikins appeared from out of the woods, and the youths were staring at a sea of miniscule humans that looked as similar to Nel as one human looked to another.

“Well,” Nel said. “They are starting to thin down, where are we headed?” the mannikin asked.

“U
h, Eget Row
,” Melvin said and Nel looked at him critically, raising one eyebrow. Melvin was aware then just how pristine the eyes he looked into were, and all the mannikins had the same startling green eyes, eyes that reminded him of the first of the summers grass, vibrant and new, filled with life and curiosity.

“Why you wanna go there for?” Nel asked.

“We a
re going to face
Cailleach Bheur
,” Abigail told them, and a cheer went through the mannikins as the last of the shadkin were warded off with fierce arrows. There was jumping and dancing and a gay sort of music went up through the army of mannikins.

“You gunna kill ‘er?” Nel asked.

“
Yes
.”

“Good
,” Nel nodded stoutly as if that settled the debate.

“Thank you so much for your help,” Melvin said looking to the mannikins now drinking and rejoicing at the news the Bordeaux’s had brought them. “We must be going now.”

“Going?” Nel asked, he motioned and suddenly the merriment came to an end. “Not without us,” he said resolutely. “We
might be able to help you.
”

“
Oh, that would be perfect
,” Melvin blinked.

“We are going to help
; tell your moth to lead on!” Luna looked a little disgruntled at being called a moth, but flew out of the barrier protecting Singers Trail gaily.

Melvin crossed the border from Singers Trail to the fields and looked up at the sky for the first time in hours. The storm that had been threatening to break when they were home still played willy-nilly with the sky, but gave no indication of breaking soon. Melvin could not believe how good it felt to look up at the sky instead of being surrounded by woods. It had only been a few hours that they had been in the dark embrace of the forest and yet it felt like it had been weeks they were ambling around in there.

Abigail crossed the barrier and felt it caress her skin again like cold mist, but this time instead of imploring her soul to speak its worth the touch was sad, almost as if it were saying goodbye.

Chapter Ten

Off in the distance and to their left, glimpsed through flashes of lightning and cloud filtered moonlight they could see trees, trees in full autumnal beauty in the middle of summer. How could such a thing be possible? They had just left the embrace of healthy summertime trees, and now they were staring ahead of them at the death of the summer.

It felt good being out of the dark embrace of the forest and in the field, for the shadkin had not threatened them since the forest of their homes, largely due to the presence of the mannikins. There wasn’t the constant hissing of fowl and snake to put them on edge, and there wasn’t the overwhelming feeling of death waiting for them arms reach away, even though they marched toward one of the most powerful shadkin yet.

Instead all around them danced and skipped the merry mannikins through the wheat that yet needed to be threshed.

The first part of the trip through the field was calm, and it wasn’t until the mannikins told them that they
were halfway to the tear
that an event so profound that it gave them all pause occurred.

It started in the wind.

It was a cold, biting wind reminiscent of the hellish
winter land
to which they traveled. But it was more than that, the wind held a note of fate, of destiny. It was not, however, the type of fate or destiny that one would generally like to equate themselves with. The wind was fearful, terrifying really, and the Bordeaux’s looked about themselves in fear of what might be creeping in the wind, for they were sure they could feel eyes on them, cold unfriendly eyes that wanted nothing more than to devour them whole. As strong and terrifying as the wind was it brought with it a silence and Melvin wondered if the
all-consuming
silence was why the wind was so deplorable. The land was plunged into quiet so profound that it made the ears ring and muffled all other noises until finally they could not even hear the sound of the wheat rustling together, the nocturnal insects singing, or even the hammer beat of their racing heart in their ears.

The wind was damnable, evil, and like the grave. There was only one thing they could hear on the wind, and it started out as a whisper that they could barely discern above the ringing of silence in their ears.

The whisper, they could tell, was almost as sickly as the wind, almost as hated, nearly as fateful. It was a dark word, one that you would expect to hear in the darkest of nightmares. It floated on the wind as if carried by wings blacker than the shadkin.

Helvegr,
the wind spoke quietly, and though they could barely hear it their souls seemed to understand, and quailed within their bodies as if the very sound of the word would be their undoing.

Melvin watched his sister shudder, for this was the first time that Ruby had heard the word whispered by unseen lips almost
as if the fabric that kept the Dark Goddess
and O separate had torn and in that rendering there came the word which they were certain was spoken in the language of Chaos. It was a word spoken so truly of terror and blight that there was no wonder the wheat field was in such poor standing.

It was more than the wind and the word that had them
scared;
however, it was the fact that this word was haunting them, following them as if it were a living being, a thought that could think for itself. With the whisper of the word the
hammer
began to shudder slightly, as if it didn’t like the approach of the word either.

It was more than a shudder though and as the word came again (
Helvegr
)
Melvin was sure that the hammer
glowed. It wasn’t the word that
was making it glow though, and he realized that as the hammer
pulsed a luminescence into the night there was a figure not far away, approaching them from where they traveled, supposedly from t
he direction of Eget Row
. The figure pulsed and glowed in
the night in time with the hammer, but where the hammer
pulsed and glowed in purity the figure approaching them pulsed and glowed in hatred, in greed, and in malcontent.

There was a flash in their minds then of the figure surrounded in evil light, in the black glowing that spoke to them of evil and discord. They saw the image of the woman that approached as if she were standing right before them. Her hair hung like golden light about her face, a face so youthful and beautiful there was fear they might lose themselves forever in the very image itself. She smiled at them, and while the smile was hypnotic and gentle it carried with it scorn, and pity. It was not a joyous smile at all, they told themselves, and that was true for soon the image looked as though she were about to laugh, but changed her mind and instead whispered something to them.

Helvegr is your fate,
she said, and smiled again, the word and the smile threatened to drive them mad in the vacuum of silence they now found themselves.
Still the hammer
shimmered and pulsed, and still
the woman contradicted the weapon
in her very being, in her aura, and in her p
resence she was against the hammer
.
If she was shadkin than the hammer
was made from that which was her complete opposite. If she were shadkin they were certain that she filled them with more fear than Chaos itself would have.

Helvegr is your undoing,
she whispered again, a perversion of a whisper that carried with it nothing of what her happy face belied. There was a shimmer then, a ripple and half of her grew black, distant almost but not distant in a way that made it harder to see. No, the distance that was expressed by her face was not physical distance but distance in time. Where one half of her was beautiful and youthful the other half of her was dead and rotting.

The flesh of her left side was black, cracked, and withered. It was not just the skin of her face that had rotted before their eyes, but the whole half of her. Her hair had gone from beautiful blond, bleached out to white and they watched as strands fell away from one half of her ancient skull leaving a parchment covering of skin devoid of hair while the other half was untouched by the time, by the evil and death that clung to her left.

If they thought the word she spoke was bad it was nothing compared to staring at the hell which had become her face. They no longer found her beautiful and instead were urged to flee from her. They had no idea what she had to do with them, but they felt a pulling, a tugging at the deepest recesses of their mind, a sense of familiarity as if they should know her, as if this woman before them, this creature of life and death was a being so close to them that she could very well h
ave been one of their ancestors.

Her words twisted and tangled through their heads like bugs, millions of bugs crawling around. Her words were so evil, yet not the words she herself spoke but the voice which gave them birth was so deplorable that they cringed away from what she said.

For a moment Ruby thought that this woman before them must have been
Cailleach Bheur
, but that wasn’t right at all. Even though she didn’t know who this woman was there was no doubt in her mind that she
was not at all the shadkin
.

She smiled one more time and looked to them all, the glazed dead eye moving slightly without control. Though the eye appeared dead it was watching them, staring intently. It was almost like this one eye could see better who they were than the living eye. If the living eye saw what was on the surface, the milky dead eye saw what was beneath the surface, witnessed what no other should be allowed to see.

I can’t wait for our meeting,
she told them, and just as soon as she appeared to their minds she was gone, a pulsing evil image at the edge of their sight, and then nothing.

In the time they had been within their own minds they had entered
wintery land
. The mannikins didn’t seem to notice anything had happened at all, but the sound of their singing and their dancing had died away in the time between their meeting with the living dead woman and
crossing into the blustery winter
.

Melvin wrapped his arms about himself and shivered. The land was suddenly plunged in winter, and he turned back to see where the land of autumn had gone, but they must have been walking for a while for he could not see where one land ended and the other began. There was a queerness to this land, and he was reminded of Samarra telling him they had approached a land before, the grove of lime trees that was not of his world, but there none-the-less because of the darkness.

The wind was blowing abysmally here, drifting snow all about and yet more snow was falling. They were in one of the worse snow storms they had ever seen. The snow was so deep that Melvin wasn’t sure how he was able to walk through it, for it was nearly up to his waist.

It was only a moment later that a now silent, solemn mannikin was handing them all thin gossamer cloaks, and Abigail wondered how this would help at all. The moment they put on the strange cloak, however, they were suffused with heat, a heat so comforting that they might as well be curled up before a roaring fire.

“So
where do we find these objects of power
?” Melvin asked as his teeth slowed in their chattering and he was able to talk again without fear of biting his tongue.

“Shh,” Nel commanded as he turned his head listening for something off in the distance that it seemed only the mannikins could hear. A moment of intense listening told them, however, that it wasn’t just a noise that the mannikins could hear but a sound muffled to near silence by the falling snow. It was a howl, more than one actually it sounded like the howling from earlier in the night. The howling of a pack of wolves and there were no trees to climb this time to escape them. Melvin was sure the arrows of the Mannikins would most likely not harm the wolves, and he began to panic.

“Fear not yet, it is harder for them to scent us in this storm,” Nel said, and Melvin didn’t want to tell him that most likely it was not their smell the shadkin wolves were scenting, but their light.

Nearly before they headed out again there came another voice to their ears.

“Where do we think we are going?” They knew the voice before they even turned to see Gretchen watching them, staring at them across the great expanse of land between her and them. It was amazing how they were able to hear her at all above the wind and the hush of the snow, for they could barely see her.

As she came into sight, however, they saw that she was changed from what they knew. She was still blue, but now more so than before. Before they had come on this trip she had been slightly blue, nothing that you could really comment on but could see when not looking directly at her, now she was unmistakably blue. Her hair was silvery instead of black, her eyes like frosted lakes, and her skin the blue of the winter sky, it was her lips, however, which drew their attention, for they were so blue as to appear black in the low light of the winter night. She drew closer to them, and that is when they saw the protrusions from her head, branches growing from her scalp as one would expect them to sprout from a tree. The branches didn’t hold any leaves or needles, for Gretchen was now to icy, too winter-like for that. Instead the limbs which sprouted from her head, tousling her silver hair were dead and
bare
with
nothing but ice sickles to adorn them.

“I asked where you were going,” Gretchen said again, and the sound of the flocking birds came to them again as their supposed cousin began to glow with that eerie black illumination they had saw the half-dead woman before glow with.

“We heard you,” Ruby said acidly.

“And yet you didn’t answer,” she said chewing her tongue in the way they were used to. The iciness of her skin did nothing to hinder how wrinkly her skin was, and if she wasn’t so old looking for her age she could truly have been beautiful in a very forbidding way. The sound of the birds flocked closer and the mannikins all looked up, notching their bows, preparing for a battle that was surely to come.

“What is happening to you?” Abigail asked instead.

“You know what I am, how is this image so startling to you?” she asked walking closer. Unlike them she didn’t seem hindered by the snow, but instead walked upon it as though it were the most solid of grounds. “Again, where are you going?”

“To release our real cousin,” Melvin said, and he thought at first she might have laughed at them, but then thought better of the act, as if she were averted to showing glee, even if it was mock glee.

“You will die trying,” she threw up her hands then, and the snow began to coalesce around her as if she were a tornado made of snow and ice. The birds came then, flo
cking in by the hundreds. Abigail
swung with her fire poker striking out at birds even as Ruby swiped at them with her knife.

Several times Abigail made contact with the birds, and several times the snow was speckled with crimson blood.

There was no time for her
to see what Melvin or Ruby were doing, but if Abigail had been able to see them she would have noticed how Melvin was causing nearly as much damage as Ruby. For some reason he was not able to injure the birds as easily as other creatures. The hammer, for reasons unknown, seemed not to work right
in the cold environment
and was much heavier in his hands than ever before. He was dismayed, and often injured more by the birds he swung at than he was able to harm them.