Greenwitch (11 page)

 

 

LIKE DIVING BIRDS THEY FLASHED INTO THE WATER, LEAVING NO ripple in the great Atlantic swells. Down through the green waves, the dim green light; though they breathed as fishes breathe, yet they flickered through the water like bars of light, with a speed no fish could ever attain.

Miles away and fathoms deep they sped, on and on, towards the distant deeps. The sea was full of noises, hissing, groaning, clicking, with great fusillades of thumps like cannon-fire as schools of big startled fish sped out of their way. The water grew warmer; jade-green, translucent. Glancing down, Will saw far below him the last signs of an old wreck. Only stumps remained of the masts and the raised decks, all eaten away by shipworms. From the mounded sand sifting over the hull an ancient cannon jutted, lumpy with coral, and two white skulls grinned up at Will. Killed by pirates, perhaps, he thought: destroyed, like too many men, neither by the Dark nor the Light but by their own kind. . . .

Porpoises played above their heads; great grey sharks cruised and turned, glancing curiously down as the two Old Ones flashed by. Down and down they went, to the twilight zone,
that dim-lit layer of the ocean where only a little of the day can reach; where all the fish—long slender fish with great mouths, strange flattened fish with telescopic eyes—glowed with a cold light of their own. Then they were down in the deep sea, that covers more of the surface of the earth than any land or grass or tree, mountain or desert; in the cold dark where no normal man may see or survive. This was a region of fear and treachery, where every fish ate every other fish, where life was made only of fierce attack and the terror of desperate flight. Will saw huge toad-like fish with bright-tipped fishing-lines curving up from their backs, to hang cruelly alluring over wide mouths bristling with teeth. He saw a dreadful creature that seemed all mouth, a vast mouth like a funnel with a lid, and a puny body dwindling into a long whiplash tail. Beside it, the body of another began to swell horribly, as a big fish, struggling, disappeared inside the trap-like mouth. Will shuddered.

“No light,” he said to Merriman, as they flashed onwards. “No joy in anything. Nothing but fear.”

“This is not the world of men,” Merriman said. “It is Tethys' world.”

Even in the darkest sea they knew they were observed and escorted all the way, by subjects of Tethys invisible even to an Old One's eye. News came to the Lady of the Sea long, long before anyone might approach. She had her own ways. Older than the land, older than the Old Ones, older than all men, she ruled her kingdom of waves as she had since the world began: alone, absolute.

They came to a great crack in the bed of the sea, an abyss deeper than all the ocean deeps. A fine red mud covered the ocean floor. Though they had left all vestige of daylight long behind, miles above their heads, yet there was light of another kind in the black water, by which they could see as the creatures of the deep water saw. Eyes watched them from the darkness,
from cracks and crevices. They were reaching the place for which they were bound.

As Will and Merriman slowed their rushing course, there in the lost places of the ocean, they could sense all these watchers around them, but slowly, vaguely, as if in a dream. And when at last the sea brought them to Tethys, they could not see her at all. She was a presence merely, she was the sea itself, and they spoke to her reverently, in the Old Speech.

“Welcome,” said Tethys to them out of the darkness of the deeps of her sea. “Welcome to you, Old Ones of the earth. I have seen none of your kind for some little time now, for some fifteen centuries or so.”

“And then it was I,” Merriman said, smiling.

“And then indeed it was you, hawk,” said she. “And one other, greater, with you, but this is not he, I think.”

“I am new on the earth, madam, but I bring you my deep respect,” said Will.

“Ah . . . .” Tethys said. “Aaaaah. . . .” And her sigh was the sighing of the sea.

“Hawk,” she said then. “Why have you come again, this hard voyaging?”

“To beg a favour, lady,” Merriman said.

“Of course,” she said. “It is always so.”

“And to bring a gift,” he said.

“Ah?” There was a slight stirring in the shadows of the deep, like a gentle swell on the sea.

Will turned his head to Merriman in surprise; he had not known of any gift-bringing, though he realised now how proper it must be. Merriman drew from his sleeve a rolled piece of paper, a glimmering cylinder in the gloom; he unrolled it, and Will saw that it was Barney's drawing of Trewissick. He peered closer, curious, and saw a pen-and-ink sketch, rough but lively; the background of harbour and houses was no more
than lightly outlined, and Barney had given all his attention to a detailed drawing in the foreground of a single fishing-boat and a patch of rippled sea. He had even drawn in the name on the boat's stern: she was called the
White Lady.

Merriman held the drawing at arm's length, and released it into the sea; instantly it vanished into the shadow. There was a pause, then a soft laugh from Tethys. She sounded pleased.

“So the fishermen do not forget,” she said. “Even after so long, some do not forget.”

“The power of the sea will never change,” Will said softly. “Even men recognise that. And these are islanders.”

“And these are islanders.” Tethys played with the words. “And they are my people, if any are.”

“They do as they have always done,” Merriman said. “They go out to the sea for fish at the going down of the sun, and with the dawn they return again. And once every year, when spring is full and summer lies ahead, they make for you, for the White Lady, a green figure of branches and leaves, and cast it down as a gift.”

“The Greenwitch,” Tethys said. “It has been born again already, this is the season. It will be here soon.” A coldness came into the voice that filtered from the shadows. “What is this favour you ask, hawk? The Greenwitch is mine.”

“The Greenwitch has always been yours, and always will. But because its understanding is not as great as your own, it has made the mistake of taking into its possession something that belongs to the Light.”

“That has nothing to do with me,” Tethys said.

A faint light seemed to glimmer from the blue-black shadow in which she was hidden, and all around them lights began to glow and flash from the fish and sea-creatures waiting there, watching. Will saw the dangling bait-stars over great gaping mouths; strings of round lights like port-holes running the
length of strange slender fish. In the far distance he saw an odd cluster of lights of different colours, that seemed to belong to some bigger creature hidden in the shadow. He shivered, fearful of this alien element in which by enchantment they briefly breathed and swam.

“The Wild Magic has neither allies nor enemies,” Merriman said coldly. “This you know. If you may not help us, yet it is not right for you to hinder us either, for in so doing you give aid to the Dark. And if the Greenwitch keeps that which it has found, the Dark will be very much strengthened.”

“A poor argument,” Tethys said. “You mean simply that the Light will then fail to gain an advantage. But I am not permitted to help either Light or Dark to gain any advantage. . . . You speak deviously, my friend.”

“The White Lady sees everything,” Merriman said, with a soft sad humility in his tone that startled Will, until he realised that it was no more than a delicate reminder of their gift.

“Ha.” There was a flicker of amusement in the voice of the shadow. “We will have a bargain, Old Ones,” Tethys said. “You may in my name try to persuade the Greenwitch to give up this . . . something . . . that is of such value to you. Before the creature comes to the depths, this is a matter between it and you. I shall not interfere, and the Dark may not interfere either, in my realm.”

“Thank you, madam!” Will said, in quick delight.

But the voice went on, without pause, “This shall be only until the Greenwitch turns, to come to the deep sea. As it always comes, each year, to its proper home, to me . . . and after that time, Old Ones, anything that is in its possession is lost to you. You may not follow. None may follow. You may not return here, then, even by the spell which brings you here today. Should the Greenwitch choose to bring your secret down to the deeps, then in the deeps for ever it shall remain.”

Merriman made as if to speak again, but the voice from the darkness was cold. “That is all. Go now.”

“Madam—” Merriman said.

“Go!” Rage filled the voice of Tethys suddenly. There was a great flashing and roaring in the depths, all round them; strong currents rose, tugging at their limbs; fish and eels darted wildly round them in all directions, and out of the distant shadow a great shape came. It was the dark thing that carried within it the bright lights that Will had seen; nearer and nearer they came, looming larger and larger, white and purple and green, glaring out of a swelling black mass as high as a house. And Will saw with chill horror that the thing was a giant squid, one of the great monsters of the deep, huge and terrible. Each of its waving suckered tentacles was many times longer than his own height; he knew that it could move as fast as lightning, and that the tearing bite of its dreadful beak-like mouth could have annihilated either of them in a single instant. Fearful, he groped for a spell to destroy it.

“No!” said Merriman instantly into his mind. “Nothing will harm us here, whatever the danger may seem. The Lady of the Sea is, I think, merely . . . encouraging . . . us to leave.” He swept a low, exaggerated bow to the shadows of the deep. “Our thanks, and our homage, lady,” he called in a strong clear voice, and then with Will beside him he swept up and away, past the looming black shape of the huge squid, away to the great open green ocean, the way that they had come.

“We must go to the Greenwitch,” he said to Will. “There is no time to lose.”

“If there are the two of us,” Will cried to him as they swept along, “and we work on the Greenwitch the spell of Mana and the spell of Reck and the spell of Lir, will it give up the manuscript to us?”

“That must come afterwards,” called Merriman. “But those
spells will command it to listen, and hear, for only they harness the magic with which the Greenwitch was made.”

They flashed through the sea like bars of light, out of the deep cold, up to the tropic warmth, back to the cold waters of Cornwall. But when they came to the place, beneath the waves beating their long swells against Kemare Head, the Greenwitch was not there. No sign remained. It had gone.

 

 

WHEN SIMON AND JANE ARRIVED BACK AT THE COTTAGE, THEY found Fran Stanton setting out plates on the dining-room table. “Hi,” she said. “Want some lunch? Mrs Penhallow had to leave, but she made some great-looking Cornish pasties.”

“I can smell them,” Simon said hungrily.

“Lovely,” said Jane. “Did you have a good time, where you went?”