Nettle Blackthorn and the Three Wicked Sisters (35 page)

There were numerous faerie and folk who lived in the
Forgotten Wilds but Egnatius, the oldest of the spriggans, was only
a lad when the Thicket sprung up, separating him from his
family.
And
though he had a wealth of knowledge about the immediate area he
grew up in, he had not travelled far to learn of the wider
community.

The afternoon
took on a dreary quality. The mist hadn’t lifted, but had grown
thicker with the hour. They’d scattered pillows and cushions around
the floor of the living room creating a semi circle around
Egnatius. The fire cast an amber glow in the room and they lounged,
sprawled out like cats, basking in its warmth listening to Egnatius
spinning tales of his youth.

The old spriggan loved it, Nettle could tell; there was a
spark of exhilaration that shone in his black eyes. His stubby
fingers cradled the pipe-bowl as he pressed a finely shredded leaf
inside. “Since Quary and Roq grew of age, we’ve been travelling
around the Thicket, trying to find a way back into the Wilds,”
explained Egnatius, eyeing her with small rheumy eyes, heavily
hooded. The spriggans had quickly adopted Nettle’s moniker for what
they’ve always referred to as the wall or
blimmin’-beastly-barrier
, in Quary’s case.

Bram looked up
from the journal in surprise. “It’s taken you all that time to
circumnavigate it?”

Nettle
blinked, astounded at just how large the scope of the Forgotten
Wilds was. She glanced at Roq and Quary. They looked maybe as old
as their father, and that would have meant they’d been travelling
for years, decades even. “It must be enormous.”

“We’ve
stopped and started many a time,” said Sandee, sharing a cushion
with Roq who lay on his back flicking dead flies into the air,
trying to catch them in his mouth. “Especially moving slowly or
backtracking when Quary here, has one of his fandangle ideas to
make us rich.” Sandee chortled and Roq gave a sniggering
snort.

Quary puffed a
little, riled at being mocked. But he didn’t argue the point.

Something else Nettle was curious about was briefly
mentioned in regards to Bram’s new friend Spix.
“You mentioned –
Catcher
– yesterday, what
did you mean?”

“Oh, the
Wilds are rife with those `round here. Trolls and other
black-hearted brutes catching Folk like us, bagging us up and
dragging us down to their burrows, for who knows what. Probably to
truss us up and spit-roast, no doubt,” Sandee said.

Nettle gave a little shiver
and shared a horrified look with her
brother. It sounded horrible, and another reason to honour her
promise to her father and keep out of the Wilds.

“So the Thicket just sprung up out of nowhere?” Bram
asked
next.
He was tapping his pencil against his lips. Nearby, Spix sat
cross-legged sharpening Bram’s pencils with a star-shaped pencil
sharpener. He was fascinated by the process, making endless ribbons
of fine shavings that were piling up around his bare feet. It
reminded Nettle of her father and his wood-carving, and a wretched
twinge coursed through her.

“Aye, it did.” Egnatius lit his pipe and drew in a smoky
breath. His weary glance slid over Bram and fixed upon the fire and
when he next spoke his voice had lowered, becoming retrospect.
“
The noise,
it were horrendous. A rumbling in the ground. It had me shaking off
me feet, rattling me teeth.”

Nettle thought
back to the earthquakes up in Olde Town, and a shiver ran through
her. The noise of it had made her think the whole hill was going to
come apart around her.

The old spriggan took another puff on his pipe, watching
the smoke drift apart. “It had me bouncing around, bumping me
sideways. Then the earth tore open, and dirt and rock and anything
in its way was ripped in two, as these stems and stalks arose from
under the ground, knocking aside tree and root, churning through
rock as if it were butter. Hills became rubble and river and stream
were gone another way.” He heaved a heavy sigh his gaze
dropping.
“Split the den in two. It broke me ma’s heart to hear me
wailin’ on the other side. Roq and Quary were wee’uns, playing out
in the rock-rivers, while their Da worked, and ended up on the
wrong side of the Thicket too.”

“
Aye,” said Quary miserably, and he rubbed at his good eye
with the back of his hand. His voice sounded oddly strained and
Bram glanced up to wonder if he might actually be weeping. “Both of
us too young to even remember our Da.” Bram’s throat pinched. He
knew that feeling only too well himself.

Egnatius’s
tone lightened a little as he looked up and over to the two
brothers. “I found you both and raised you as well as I could.
Little good it did either of us.” He gave Quary and Roq and stern
look that Nettle could see was all bluster. “All grown up and not
listening to a word I say.”

“
How long ago did the Thicket arise?” Bram asked, his pencil
poised to write.

“Oh, it were a long while ago.” He tapped out the
pipe
’s ash
and repacked the bowl with the leafy rub and lit it drawing long
breaths of a smoke that he blew out in fluffy white clouds, as he
gave it some thought. “Maybe a few hundred years at
least.”

“A few hundred years?!” blurted Nettle without thinking.
“How
old
are you?”
A few hundred years?
And they’d been travelling most of that time
around the Thicket. How big could the Thicket possibly be? It
looked enormous on the map, but maybe the map drawn by humans
wasn’t accurate at all.

She
cringed as Egnatius’s crinkled face spat at her, “Don’t got
no manners have you? Askin’ me age?
Pah.
Next you be askin’ if I’ve a wife...”

Nettle felt
crushed, it was the type of comment Jazz wouldn’t have thought
twice about making. “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

He gave
her a good-natured wink, to which Nettle felt a great deal better
about herself and her thoughtless blunder. He squinted at her. “Yer
a bit tall for my likin’ but I suppose you might do for a
wife.”

Nettle shared
a grin with her brother before asking, “And can no one cross over
it?” She knew she could cross the Thicket, but for now wanted to
keep it to herself. She hadn’t even shared that knowledge with
Bram.

“Aye.”
It was Quary who answered. “There’s rumours of rare folk who can.
As to why and how, no one knows. But if I ever found myself in
company of such a fine fellow I’d be sure to get back home to me Ma
and Da.”

Nettle
had to bite down on the inside of her mouth to stop herself from a
sharp gasp of surprise and the immediate grin of satisfaction that
threatened to follow. She was glad to have kept her secret to
herself, for if she ever had need to convince the spriggans of a
venture, she had just the right kind of persuasion.

Quary’s tone became wistful and he leaned back against his
pillow, glancing upward at the reflection of firelight coating the
ceiling in a ruby wash flickering with ochre.
“Ah, home. It’s a hard feeling
to have, to not have a place to call home. Wandering the edge of
the Wilds, waiting for the day we can cross over to our families…
or...” Quary said wistfully, letting the last word drift away.
Nettle knew what he insinuated –
or die.

“
Aye, and I wonder if we ever did, what kind of world we’d be
entering,” said Egnatius, his voice contemplative. “The Queens and
their warring ways, there might not be much left of what we
remember as home.”

“
Queens?” asked Nettle. She hadn’t given much thought to who
if anyone actually presided over the Forgotten Wilds.

“
Aye, two sisters rule over the Forgotten Wilds. Just before
the Thicket came up there was a call to arms, I overheard me Da
talking about it.”

The
other thing that Nettle was curious about was the name in the
journal. “Do you know who, or what, Solstace Wittle is?”

“Do
we?!” Spix interjected with a wide fearful look. “Sure we do.
Egnatius used to threaten us all with Solstace Wittle when we were
young ‘uns, threatened to call the darkness to our doorstep if we
didn’t do as we were asked.”

“A fat
lot of good that did me, too,” complained Egnatius. “Didn’t ever
work, only a good boxing in the ears would get you lot to listen to
what I had to say.”

“So, is Solstace real or just a
fairy
-“ she almost said fairy-tale. “Just some
sort of story?”

Egnatius
tapped his bottom lip with the pipe, his eyes becoming hooded
again. “She was a name that me Ma and Da told dark and sinister
stories of. She ate wee ‘uns who misbehaved and flayed their skin
to make her leggings and boots.” And he told a tale, that suited
the mood of the dark dreary day, of a sinister twisted creature who
wore a red hat dyed with the blood of her victims.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The
Box and a Sword

The gloomy day had waned into dusk. Bram lit the candles
and gas lanterns with long safety matches and
he and Nettle collected around
the dining table in the kitchen with the spriggans, picking at the
food left over from the lunchtime affair.

Nettle scoured
her back against the chair. That annoying itch had been plaguing
her all afternoon. It felt like her skin had been bitten by fire
ants.

“
Here lass, let me see if I can ease yer irritation.” Sandee
had already poured a dirty yellow powder into a cup, emulsifying it
with water.

“
What is that?”

“
A wee lotion. Now here, lift yer shirt so I can get at
it.”

Nettle turned around and lifted up her turtleneck so the
spriggan could rub the lotion onto her back. Sandee’s fingers felt
calloused and coarse but there was a comfort in her touch. The cool
paste tingled her flesh where it was spread and swiftly dried from
the heat of her body, calming the irritating itch.
“
Ah
,
that feels so much better.”

“
Aye, I hoped as much. It’s almost been more painful to watch
you scratch yer back like a flea-bitten cat, than I imagine it is
to be one.” Sandee rolled down Nettle’s jersey. “What is it? I
didn’t see no signs of a rash or the like of one.”

Nettle
swivelled around. “I don’t know. It’s only really come about this
last month. It just comes a goes, but it’s getting
worse.”

Sandee pressed
a small wax-coated pouch into her hand. “Well if it does, try this.
It’s a mixture of lemon-weed and perrin root.”

“
Thanks,” smiled Nettle, pocketing the pouch.

“The thanks goes to you and your brother,” Sandee replied,
nodding her head in the direction of
Bram and Spix. They were sitting beside
one other, their heads close together laughing over something. “He
don’t talk much young Spix. It gladdens my heart to see him gain a
friend.” Sandee gave her a friendly wink and walked off to join
Roq.

Nettle smiled. Sandee was right and not just on Spix’s
account. It was heart-warming to see her brother with a friend,
even if he was a spriggan, and one with a dubious line of
work.
We’re
all making friends and that can’t be bad,
she thought to herself, one side of
her mouth curling upward. Though she couldn’t help but wonder what
their father was going to make of it all when he
returned.

The front door
slammed shut and Jazz stomped into the kitchen. Only then did
Nettle realize just how late it’d become. She stifled a yawn. “How
was your day?”

Jazz just
shrugged. “So, so. What’s going on here?” She rubbed the inside of
her arm gazing about the living room with curious eyes.

Egnatius
was sitting in one of Nettle’s childhood chairs on top of the
dining table, pipe smoke drifting above him in big whorls as he
sung a melancholy tale in a raspy voice while Roq hummed along.
Quary sat beside his rooster stroking his feathers and feeding him
wheat from his palm while Sandee stirred a pot of fruit she’d
gathered earlier on the hotplate of the wood-burner. Nutmeg, pear
and tangy blackberries gently stewed together, spicing the air.
Nettle’s lips tugged into a lopsided grin. “They’re just making
themselves at home.”

Sometime
during the night Nettle managed to drag herself up the stairs to
bed. The next morning she awoke with a start.

Dad!

She was fairly
exploding with all sorts of feelings. Eagerness and impatience and
zeal, tempered with apprehension and dread that frayed the edges of
her excitement. Today Dad was set to return with Aunt Thistle and
her friends, if their plan had worked. And if not, she realized
with a sinking heart, they’d have to leave the cottage and set out
for Aunt Mae and Uncle Geoffrey. It would also mean something
terrible had befallen her father. But for now she decided to put
that kind of worry out of her mind. It was far too early in the
morning for such troubles.

She
yawned, lazily stretched and rolled over. As there was no rush to
get out of bed she may as well go back to sleep. But for the moment
sleep eluded her. It took a while, since her mind was skipping
around all sorts of things and nothing in particular, she became
fuzzily aware of something that wasn’t quite right. It sat on the
bedside table blatantly out of place. Nettle blinked, rubbing her
eyes. Surely she was still half asleep.