Wily Cockatrice made us take a hold of each other’s hands, as if we were to play some frivolous game, deliberately leading us into the throng of Wycken revellers. She snatched at a tail of fluttering ribbons hanging from the backside of a passing drunk, and began to dance a kind of reckless jig behind him. We could only follow after her and joined his reeling procession. It struck me, these were
real
faeries: among a masquerade. Real faeries: pretending to be pretend faeries. (Though, I did not regard myself among their number.) In fact it was all quite ridiculous. I tried to feign enthusiasm for the dance, but each foolish, prancing step we took was badly placed and ever mistimed. The crowds were actually laughing at our lame attempts. Among it all, my leather poke, complete with its oddly assorted contents, disappeared. It was swiftly lifted from my person by some clever unseen hand. And there were random insults, if spoken in jest and not badly meant.
‘You’ll need steadier legs old mother, and better masks, if you mean to fool the babbies with that display!’ Someone called out to the ancient crone.
‘Aye, right enough…!’ added another. ‘Or else you’ll all be slapping your arses against the ground!’
Lowly Crows and Wily Cockatrice stoutly ignored the rebukes and put on brave faces – which meant them fixing rigid smiles, holding them stiffly in place. Mind, they kept up their unruly stride, unabashed. The fat youth, whose true name was Dogsbeard, only coughed and spluttered as if with some childish complaint. While the pair of coquettes took no mind of the insults at all. The reverse of it! They curtsied regally before our protagonists, and played up to the greater crowd.
‘Should we dance for them my, Fortuna?’ asked one of the other.
‘Indubitably…! We should dance for them my Sunfast.’ Together, they hitched up their skirts and, encouraged by a sudden spontaneous applause, flung their hair about in a furious abandon.
For perhaps another hundred clumsy steps the drunkard’s cavorting procession snaked forwards, to the wild beating of drums. Then, on reaching a division in the street, the teetering line gave an awkward lurch and swung abruptly in that new direction, spilling several of its members, losing them to an oncoming crowd as they fell over, tumbling together. Wily Cockatrice saw her chance and, at the same moment, let go the drunken man ahead of her. She turned sharply aside, taking us off that street altogether, and down some crooked covered back lane (only there because the wooden hovels rested shoulder to shoulder at that point, leaving an irregular gap between them on the ground).
The procession had let us go without a fuss and once out of its sight our company quickly stopped their foolish dancing and fell into a, more or less, steady walk. The drop in pace allowed us all to catch our breath a little – and straighten our faces.
I remember coming out of the crooked back lane onto a narrow, but widening, cobbled courtyard – its stones broken and loose – badly kept and overgrown with weeds and mosses. A few thin, ailing willow trees grew up among them. There was a shallow pool of stagnant water. Further in there were greater ruins. Tumbled stone slabs, and the remains of stone arches; all neglected, long abandoned in earlier times, and strangled with creepers. There were no crowds here. No lighted fires. No cheer.
‘Where are we going, Lowly Crows?’ I asked, not impatiently. ‘I mean…where does this all lead us?’ I was feeling for the right question.
‘You will know soon enough,’ she said.
‘I would know
now
…’ I said, and stopped walking. It brought our company up short. Fortuna and Sunfast drew quickly aside from me, as if startled by my outburst. I had not meant to speak so sharply.
‘What? Is this a tender trap then? Is that what you are thinking?’ Wily Cockatrice, quite recovered from the dance it seemed, had turned upon me in an instant and was hissing. The ancient crone was not to be trifled with. ‘Is our Lowly Crows the sweetmeats; a temptress to ensnare you?’
Beside her, Dogsbeard, the fat youth, sniggered into his hand. ‘Is she luring you away from welcoming company, leading you into the unknown darkness?’
‘No, I…I did not mean to…’ I stumbled over my words.
‘Understand this, Rogrig Wishard. What we are about is no trivial undertaking. Go back to the prancing parades if you would. Go and warm yourself by its fires. Get drunk; find yourself a whoring woman; plant your worried manhood where you think it safe, and forget us…It is all the same to me.’
‘There is not far to go.’
Lowly Crows had stepped between us. Her black eyes shone coldly, unblinking. Her finger ends picked at the loose threads on the arm of her jerkin in the way of a bird preening. She might have been angry with me. She was certainly ruffled and looked anxiously towards the crone.
‘Pah! Speak again with this cautious man, if you would,’ said Wily Cockatrice. ‘Tell him a little of what you can. He tries my patience too far.’ She passed a meaningful look between us and withdrew to find herself a temporary seat among the fallen stones. ‘Just be quick about it. We will wait here but a short while.’ Her pipe was instantly between her lips. A great plume of black smoke rose up to engulf her.
Only a tempered sigh from Lowly Crows broke a prolonged silence.
It was I who spoke first, if in thin whispers. ‘Give me a sword. I can tell you what to do with that. But this, this vagary – where are the answers here?’
‘We all desire answers, Rogrig,’ said Lowly Crows, her black eyes still shining. ‘Only we pussyfoot…and dare not put a name to our dilemma, though we all understand it well enough, I fear.’
‘Not I!’ I said; again I spoke more sharply than I had intended.
‘No?’ She looked at me balefully. Then, considered a moment. ‘And there are others.’
‘Others?’
‘Others, who are the same as us…
Like
us. Just like us,’ she said. ‘They are close by.’
‘How so?’ I said.
‘You are a stubborn man, Rogrig Wishard. You will not easily let yourself see what your own eyes are showing you. You will not allow yourself to believe what you know in your heart is true.’
If she wanted a stubborn man, I would show her one. ‘And do you pretend to know me so very well, then: though we are hardly met at all?’
‘Who is pretending now? I know myself and I know my own kindred,’ she said. ‘I have followed after you for long enough. Be honest with yourself. We are not so very different.’
‘No?’
‘No…’ she hesitated. Her look was become close to anger. Though she was inwardly annoyed; as if she was uncomfortable with what she was about to say, and I was solely to blame for it; had given her no choice but to reveal herself and offer up her private testimony.
‘As a young child, when Lowly Crows was Lucia Hogspur, I always loved to dress up as a faerie. What little girl does not?’ She let her voice drift lightly with her words, although there was something in her tone that hinted at disguise…or perhaps, regret. ‘On the first day of winter I always wore my faerie gown – homemade from rags and tatters – just like my mother before me. I braided my hair with bright ribbons and dressed it with wild flowers. I loved the processions and the storytelling, the singing and the dancing, making Faerie Rings; burning the great bonfires in the pretence of raising the Faerie Isle…’ She paused, with a sigh. Then she took a short breath as if to steel herself, before continuing.
‘But a childhood soon ends. We must all stop believing in faerie tales and grow up. Or at least, that is the way it is supposed to be. Only, not for me; for Lucia Hogspur it was very different. I stopped believing in childish things when I discovered, to my horror…they are real. I saw them – faeries – if only glimpses at first. Tantalising glimpses…Fleeting moments when I recognized them for what they were. I saw through the Glamour that hid their true selves. It was like seeing a mask slip out of place, watching it hurriedly readjusted.
‘Worse, I came to realize…this gifted sight was mine alone. Among my whole family it was only I who possessed it. In all honesty, what innocent child can carry such a weight? And why me—? Why did I see them when no one else did? Not even Martha, my dearest cousin. No one! That would have made what I knew to be true, bearable…acceptable even. But no…what I had seen had only been revealed to me.
‘In the end, it was the wind brought about the revelation…’ Lowly Crows paused again, looked at me to gain my reaction to this seemingly odd statement. When I gave none, she continued. ‘When I was still quite small, the wind began to carry voices to me – the voices of the birds, that is. It carried their whispered secrets all the way to my ear. And I, without reason, fully understood their meaning.
‘Upon a day, I was out walking with my mother and my cousin. The voices of the birds came to me upon the wind and quietly warned me of a change in the weather: rain was coming (though there was not yet a cloud in the sky). It was such a simple thing, especially to a child. I thought nothing of it and so I told my mother what I had heard. Surely everyone could hear the voices of the birds in the wind? It did not make a changeling of me, did it? My mother and my cousin did not want to get caught out in a rainstorm, did they? Moments later the rain began to fall in earnest…’
There was another marked silence before she would continue.
‘I was beaten with a stick for it. I was beaten until my bones were bruised, and the welts upon my skin bled freely. But worse, much worse than this; I was cursed by my own father for the shame of it. Sworn to keep it a secret, threatened with a cut tongue.’ Her face became suddenly tight, as if with pain. ‘In my dreadful loneliness, in my despair, it was not long before I looked again towards the kindly birds. And, as is the way of faerie, thought I saw my own true nature, my own true kindred there…’
Her eyes stared through me to some far distant place only she could see.
‘Is not this Winter Festival a perfect irony, Rogrig? And how it hurts—’ Her voice began to lift with anger. ‘Once a year it is quite the thing for everyone to dress up in their ridiculous outfits and play at make-believe. They can pretend and paint their faces and put on their paper wings and fly. It is considered…
normal
. Just do not dare say any of it is true. Do not ever say that, whatever your belief. If you do they will only come for you; take you away in the dead of the night. They will hang you for a changeling, a throwback. They will burn you for a wych! They will burn your family too if they have a mind!’ She was glaring at me now, eye to eye.
I was at a loss. I wanted to say something that might help her, only I could not find the words for it. I held her gaze. It was the best I could do.
‘It is better to stay silent,’ she said. ‘What the world at large does not know does not exist. Was it not ever so? Like the true faerie, it is best to hide your reality behind a shaded mask.’
At this, she ended, turning her eyes away. I was still at something of a loss. Uncertain of what I believed? Or uncertain of what I
wanted
to believe?
‘And this is your tale?’ I tried to speak kindly.
‘Enough of it for now…At least, to see me hung upon a gibbet if it reaches the wrong ears…’
‘Ah, yes,’ I nodded my understanding. ‘And enough to calm the suspicions of a foolish man?’
‘Aye, that too, perhaps…’ she said.
Almost unnoticed between us, we had begun to walk again. We had caught up with Dogsbeard, and with Wily Cockatrice, who was already on her feet, and with the pair of coquettes who kept a-pace, if still cautiously shy of me. And then, for the very first time, we were all of us talking quite freely, and without embarrassment.
‘You know, I thought they were all just stories,’ I said. ‘Make-believe. Faerie tales! I did not think any of it was real. Well, why would I?’
‘Indeed, why would you, Rogrig?’ said Wily Cockatrice, without humour.
‘We can spend our whole lives alone – so very many of us have – without knowing the truth,’ said Lowly Crows. ‘I worked it out…though it took me long enough. The fey…they can feel each other’s presence. How else might I describe it? On our own we are incomplete, are nothing, in fact; less than nothing, perhaps, when we cannot know our true selves. But once together…when like-minds meet, that is something else. Faerie-kind need their kin. It stirs something within them, rekindles a dormant state.
It makes them stronger. More, it breathes new life into a hollow shell. Of course, you know of this already…’
‘Eh?’ I turned my head away, found myself unnecessarily distracted by some flying insect that was suddenly a bother to me.
‘I hear their inner voices…’ she continued. ‘It is like a distant echo, like a song being sung; only the words are faint and the language is indistinct. Anyway, the point of it is this: there is more than one voice calling, more than one song. And I know you can hear it too. Surely you must? It gets stronger even now…’
‘
What are you suggesting, then?’ I said. ‘Are we all to go and live in Faerie-land? Are we to speak to the wild animals and eat flowers for our breakfast?’ I was being deliberately flippant now, trying in desperation to remain the ignorant, common man. ‘We are not going to pretend to be trees, are we? I positively refuse to go and live in a lake…’
I stopped there. It was only now, distracted by the ludicrous tone I had allowed into our conversation, that I realized where Lowly Crows was leading us.
We had reached another area of broken stonework. It was as much overgrown and loosely scattered by time as the first, but here and there were the partial remains of walls still standing at the full height of a stout man, and perhaps four or five full paces in length. In almost a thousand years, no builder upon Wycken had used stone to make his dwelling houses. These were far more ancient ruins, then. At their centre was a group of even larger stones – some hand-cut, some natural boulders – leaning heavily against each other, as if they had been set there on purpose to mark an event. Either that, or to disguise a secret opening in the ground…? Certainly, there was something of that kind there.