Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (27 page)

Eve turned fully to face him. ‘Ye
want Hawkmoth?’ She pushed the door open; its hinges squeaked and
she beckoned Gargaron and Melai forward. ‘Well, inside cottage he
be.’

As if to confirm
this, a distant grizzled old voice appeared to sound from within:
‘
Send them in, Eve, and for Soor’s sake,
bolt the door behind you.
’

The doorway lay dark and
ominous.

Gargaron frowned.
‘
Hawkmoth?
’ he
called. ‘
Be that you?
’

‘
Who else would
it be, I ask?!
’ came the reply.
‘
Now, stop dillydallying and come on in.
We have much to discuss.
’

Gargaron frowned. Something were
not right here, something about that voice, something he could not
pinpoint.

‘
So, giant,’ said this Eve, ‘tell
me. Do ye wish to come in, or would ye rather remain out here? It
matters not to me but hurry and have your minds made up ’fore
yonder storm blows this way. For soon we shall have a tempest roar
down upon us that will suck ye up into its angry belly as
effortlessly as it will ye little wood’s nymph, and I personally
would prefer to be indoors when it strikes.’

Both Gargaron and Melai, and even
the two heads of Grimah, turned northways to where a dark broiling
mass had blotched out entire sky.

Melai gasped. ‘What by Mother
Thoonsk be that?’

Gargaron had not seen its like for
some years but knew it as soon as he saw it. Its rumbling blue-grey
cloud banks, the wild flashes of forked shard-light in its belly,
its ghostly arms pulling it across world, the hateful demon face at
its curved front. ‘A vortex storm,’ he said gravely.

‘
Aye, an angry breed, for sure,’
Eve said. ‘Now hurry, for I do not wish to remain out much longer.
Join me inside and away from its reach. Or… spend the night here
beyond shelter with naught but its fury for company.’

Gargaron looked again at the storm
and saw the dark clouds so much closer now; Grimah snorted, his
ears shifting back and forth, unsettled. Gargaron gazed at Melai.
‘I do not trust her,’ Melai told him again. ‘Why does the sorcerer
not show himself?’

‘
I have no answer,’ he
admitted.

‘
We saw a cave some miles back,’
Melai reminded him. ‘Perhaps we ought return to it, huddle there
for night.’

They could hear it now, the
storm’s dull roar, and sounds of trees being torn from ground,
growls of cracking thunder, screech of fierce gales. ‘Aye, if we
left now we may just make it.’

‘
Well?
’ came Eve’s voice, a sinister
tone underlying it.

Gargaron spoke not. Instead he
hauled himself up into Grimah’s saddle and made at once to gallop
away. Yet, what he, his Nightface, Melai, even Grimah, all failed
to detect were the hulking entity standing at their backs. A tall
white ghostly thing with hollow grey eyes and very few other
features to its form. It opened its mouth, a vast cavernous mouth…
and into it Gargaron and his companions were pulled.

7

Torrents of rain swept up the
valley and roared against the cottage, inundating gutters, flooding
garden and stables, gushing down into the vale. Day’s heat were
smothered and fingers of cold snaked up hill on the back of
squealing gales, chilling the air, creeping into cottage like a
ghost’s breath.

Shard-light crackled and
thundered, illuminating the night in searing bursts while the storm
front ate the hilltop woodland, bending trees, twisting them,
uprooting many and more, plucking them into sky, roots and all, and
off they went, end over end over end until the storm mass gobbled
them up.

For many hours Gargaron and Melai
lay unconscious upon a rug spread across a paved floor. A presence
floated above them. Eve. She hovered like a dark cloud, horizontal,
gazing down at their faces. Her own face were split in two, down
the middle from forehead to chin; a red proboscis had uncurled from
her mouth and had snaked up inside the giant’s nose. She shut her
eyes, she shivered in her delight as she drank of him. She savoured
the connection with his mind.

When she were done she retracted
her proboscis and turned it upon the woodland nymph, forcing it up
the nymph’s small nostril. And here Eve shut her eyes and fed
again.

Nearby, in the shadows, loomed the
peculiar grey entity. Watching… watching.

8

When Gargaron and
Melai awoke, the storm still screamed and roared, and they saw Eve
standing near shutters peering out into night. Outside, trees
crashed against the rigid stone cottage, shaking windows, rattling
crockery. Some fell and smashed into tiled roof. Eve looked around
and saw Gargaron and Melai and she grinned. ‘
Come and watch
,’ she urged them,
shouting above the roar of storm. ‘
Nature’s fury. Wondrous to behold
.’

Gargaron though could not move a
fist. He felt somehow bound to floor. As if some witch’s spell of
atrophy held him there. He groaned as he rolled over, trying to
ascertain exactly where he were. When he tapped his Nightface it
had nothing for him, as if it too had been influenced by some
spell.

Melai were none better. She opened
her eyes but they shut on her. She moved her arms in attempts to
hoist herself to some sort of seated position, hoping this may
rouse her. But halfway to her objective, her senses failed her and
she slumped back to floor.

It were Gargaron who helped stir
her, protectively pulling her to him as he might have dragged his
daughter from a pack of Hoardogs, rubbing her limbs, stimulating
blood flow, talking to her, urging her to stay awake. They slumped
against cottage wall together, too weak to stand, watching Eve who
crouched at shutters, gazing away into storm.

9

For a long while nothing changed.
They sat, out of storm grip but assaulted nonetheless by the sounds
of its rage and destruction. The cottage heaved and creaked and
more than once Gargaron feared the roof were about to lift free and
break apart and tumble off into sky.

‘
What do you want from us?’
Gargaron heard himself asking. His voice were weak though and went
unheard above howling gale and drumming rain. He looked about for
his pack, for his sword and his hammer hilt, for Melai’s bow and
quiver, but saw them nowhere.

Eve eventually left her position
by the shutters and both Gargaron and Melai believed they heard her
say, ‘What say we enjoy some supper?’

They watched her as she moved to a
side room. And here, through the doorway, they saw her disrobe. She
had a peculiarly shaped body, as if she had been constructed rather
than grown. The tops of her arms didn’t quite meet at the
shoulders; a short metal bar connected the two. The same could be
said of the tops of her legs; a metal bar holding her legs to her
hips. And there looked to be another that held her head to her
chest. She possessed four breasts (a pair on her chest, the second
pair below them) but below her sternum her stomach were open and
she appeared within to be a mixture of wires and cogs and cords and
clockwork.

When she emerged from the room she
were dressed in a light shawl despite the chill in the air. Her
feet were bare. She even looked different, younger somehow, not so
old and menacing. As if she had not only changed her clothes but
had swapped out her face.

She moved away to a kitchen and
returned carrying a platter of apples, cheese and bread. She placed
this on a large wooden table. Bursts of shard-light illuminated the
shuttered windows. Wind howled. Eve approached Gargaron and Melai
where they still had not moved, huddled together against cottage’s
stone wall.

She knelt before them, her knees
against the floor and her hands placed upon her thighs. Here she
regarded them, a motherly look upon her face.

When she spoke, she did not try to
compete with the storm howl, yet somehow both Gargaron and Melai
heard her clearly, as if she were but talking at their ear. ‘Allow
me to firstly apologise,’ she said. ‘We did not get off to a great
start. That were partly my fault. But truth is, ye did not trust me
and I did not trust ye both either. Yet while ye slept, and forgive
me but it were essential, I delved into ye minds. At least now I
know ye be who ye say ye be.’

Eve left them, disappearing into
kitchen. She returned carrying in one hand a stone mug sloshing
with some sort of steaming liquid, and in the other hand what
looked to be a twisted, knotted shrub branch growing with pungent
yellow moss. Again she knelt, offering mug to Gargaron, and moss to
Melai.

‘
What poison be this?’ Gargaron
hissed.

Eve smiled. ‘Portoluca Tea. And
Leanavale Moss.’

Melai eyed Eve closely, intently;
she had watched her keenly stroll away to kitchen, had watched her
return.

‘
And laced with toxins, I take
it,’ Gargaron grunted. ‘I’ll not have it.’

‘
Nor will I,’ Melai said
coldly.

‘
Please yourselves. But I shall
leave it here in case you change your minds.’

Eve moved away,
and Melai grasped the moment. She
vanished
, the trick her kind
employed to evade attacks by predators alien to Thoonsk. One moment
Melai were cradled in Gargaron’s arms, the next she were upon
witch’s shoulder, jabbing her thorny green thumb into witch’s
forehead before another word could be spoken.

The witch fell prone instantly,
mug and moss both dropping from her grip, the mug smashing against
stone floor, hot tea splashing over Gargaron’s feet and legs. Eve’s
eyes rolled upwards, she knew no sound, no sensation, and knelt
there unmoving.

1

THE vortex storm
raged on. The sound beyond the abode were deafening, as if the womb
of Xahghis,
Afterworld
Goddess of eternal pain, had ruptured and her spawn were
spilling free. Every now and then some uprooted tree slammed
against cottage walls. Every now and then some unfortunate beast
were sucked up and dashed against the steel shutters across the
windows, its death howls heard loud and terrifying. Rain flurried
in, flying horizontal across the room. Shard-light kept blasting
the heavens, thunder shook the ground.

‘
She tells the truth,’ Melai said
from where she sat against wall; green witch-blood dabbed on her
thumb, and green witch-blood still seeping from the pockmark in
Eve’s forehead, though slowly clotting.

‘
She delved into our minds?’
Gargaron asked, looking about, for the first time wondering what
the witch had done with Grimah.

‘
Aye. I believe she lived out our
entire lives through our memories. She be the wood’s witch,
Renascentia, born again as Eve, First and Last. Haitharath’s loyal
companion. And wife.’

Gargaron frowned. ‘Wife?’ He
looked across at Melai, questioningly. ‘Are you
certain?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Honestly?’

‘
I read her blood. Unlike minds,
blood fabricates no lies. Why does it intrigue you so?’

Gargaron shook his head,
perplexed. ‘A sorcerer and a witch… mortal enemies. But married?
My, what bizarre tale shall my ears be privy to next?’

‘
How about this? Eve were once
killed. Haitharath returned her to life.’

Gargaron frowned at Melai.
‘Killed? As in she were dead?’

Melai frowned. ‘What other way
could I be meaning?’

He watched Melai keenly. ‘There be
many forms of death, woods nymph. Like those skeleton folk we
witnessed on Claraville. There be also ghouls. Zombeez. But she be
none of these.’ He pondered this news further. ‘In what manner did
her death occur?’

‘
She were but a handful of years
into her marriage with Haitharath when it happened. She were out
one morning beyond some nearby hills collecting Strange Fruit; a
fruit she dries and turns into a tea that enhances ones dreams.
That morning she stumbled unawares upon a den of what her blood
memory calls ghost wolves. Once they detected her, they set on her
and tore her to shreds.’

‘
She were torn to
shreds?’

‘
Aye.’

‘
And the sorcerer brought her back
to life?’

‘
Such as I have
learned.’

How?
Gargaron wondered. Reanimation were the domain of
necromancers and nothing they kissed back to life could sit and
hold a conversation; their best efforts returned naught but
mindless, soulless ghouls. Gargaron watched Eve who lay there
still, her eyes rolled up into her brow. This woman, this witch, if
Melai were telling it true, had died… and returned to world of the
living.
By Thronir, could my Veleyal, my
Yarniya, have been returned to life?
It
were suddenly a conundrum in his mind. He had delivered his girls
to the Great Precipice at World’s End when for their salvation,
for
his
own
salvation, he could have brought them, had he just known, to this
sorcerer.