The Bitterbynde Trilogy (161 page)

‘Ah yes, I forgetted.'

He flicked his jaunty tail at an imaginary fly. Tahquil waited for helpful suggestions as to how they should proceed, but none were forthcoming.

‘Can we go around?' she asked.

‘Wild farrests creep tae the southern marches. Stony peaks cluster at the narrth. Baith are barriers equal tae this.'

‘Och,' said the urisk, a wild thing crouched among willow roots.

‘Och what?' said Tahquil.

‘Merely “och”.'

‘I gather that you have no advice as to how we should cross this … this formal garden that wanders in its dotage?'

‘I can gae its paths, for I am small enough that when I reach a dead end I can crawl underneath the bushes and out t'ither side. Nygel can swim the channels. Swan can fly over. But ye?' The urisk shook his crimp-haired head.

The swanmaiden reported, from green-shadowed torrents of withies, that according to her aerial inspection no route existed along the grassy walks between the hedges—all were blind alleys, at least in the western half of the maze. Beyond the midpoint, a route did exist, albeit a most circuitous course.

Tahquil pondered.

‘I require,' she said at length, ‘merely the materials at hand.'

With that she took the small knife that remained at her rope-belt and began slicing withies from the willow, stripping the leaves from the flexible stems. By the time the moon had risen, Tahquil, by dint of weaving and tying, had fashioned a pair of items which resembled the racquets with which the courtiers of Caermelor had been wont to play at shuttlecock—but without the handles.

‘Hedge-shoes,' explained their maker. ‘I intend to walk across Firzenholt. Without such apparati, the hedge-roofs will not support me if I should stand on them—my feet and legs would sink straight in amongst their twigs. Yet those twigs are strong and dense enough to hold up my weight when it is spread over a greater area. In any event, this is my hope.'

She tied the hedge-shoes to her own worn boots and practised walking, to the amusement of the nygel and the disdain of the swanmaiden.

‘Ye've the gait of an egg-bound duck, dearie,' opined the urisk.

‘Aptly described,' mused Tahquil. ‘And oh, to be able to fly like one, but where might I obtain such flight-feathers?' And she envied the freedom of the swan-maiden, not for the first time.

Tying the woven platters to her belt she tried to climb the nearest portion of the hedge. At the surface of the green wall, no shoot or sprout was stout enough—they all broke off in her hands. Plunging her arms deep inside the yielding plush nap, she found twigs and sprigs. Further in, her fingertips met small branches. To these she endeavoured to beat her way, but the springy shoots pushed out at her face and body, and would not let her near their supports. Her struggles were in vain.

Inevitably, frustrated, she flung herself aside.

‘At Caermelor, the palace gardeners used to trim the tops of the hedges but they would use ladders to get up,' she said, panting with exertion. ‘I have no ladder and my knife will not cut through any saplings thick enough to construct one. Is there truly no way around this maze?'

‘It straggles far to the north and south,' said the urisk, ‘until it meets forests and bleak hills. Beyond lies the coast. The swan says all the coastline is weel guarded at this time.'

‘Ye need nae ladder,' said the nygel, just as Tahquil had lost all hope. ‘There be a batter way. Jump an me back.'

‘Oh no,' said Tahquil, as his proposed method dawned on her. ‘That hedge is higher than a cottage roof-gable. If you overshoot, every bone in my frame shall be broken. If you undershoot, every morsel of flesh shall be stripped from me as I fall through the hedges.'

The waterhorse neighed and capered.

‘D'ye think I am a
larraly
horse with nae marr sense than a fly? My aim never errs. It has never erred sae far,' he added lamely.

Knowing that this was of course the truth, since wights were unable to lie, Tahquil mounted the horse. Nevertheless, as he walked away from the hedge to allow himself space for a run-up, feelings of trepidation strangled her with blue and skinny hands.

The night drew in, caliginous, gelatinous.

Tahquil could only assume that the nygel was able to see the hedge better than she through the gloom. He began to trot, then to canter and finally to gallop. Sitting back on his rump she was glued to the wightish hide so closely that she felt she was fused to the powerful frame. The outer hedge of Firzenholt loomed, solid sable. With an abrupt lurch her body separated from the horse's as his hindquarters violently heaved up, and she was flung through the air. For a timeless moment she hung suspended in the night, between firmament and ground—next she was sprawled face-deep in a resinous, scratchy cushion high on the hedge top.

Shouts spurled from below. Crawling to the edge she peered over, waving to nygel and urisk. A winged thing dived at her head, hissing as it passed her ear—Whithiue. The swan veered away in a steep turn and faded to a glimmer on the darkness. Tahquil tied on her hedge-shoes, stood hesitantly, and looked around.

Up here, it is another world.

Acreages of black velvet roads spread around. A conglomeration of shapes like the structure of a city thrust up like cut-outs on the sky. It was a city whose arboreal buildings were bizarre and nonfunctional, whose roadside gutters were carved lethally deep.

And not a herbaceous rooster, not a foliate wishing-well, not a verdurate urn in sight. 'Tis most unlike the topiary gardens of the palace.

To call Tahquil's stilted progress across the hedge-roofs ‘travelling', would be a description less than complete. She shuffled like a child wearing its father's boots, or like an old man crippled beneath the burden of decades. Her thoughts at this time were few—purposefully she shut them out. Creatures of the night fluttered around the wedges, overhangs, blocks, cubes, stairs, archways, cones, ramparts, pyramids and spirals of the hedge-city. There were owls and bats and the sweet-singing nightnoon northmoths sung of in ballads, making tiny melodies with the resonance of their arabesqued and azure wings. Also there fluttered, at odd intervals, a black swan. In her swan-form she—unlike the nygel—could not speak the Common Tongue. Throughout the night Tahquil received no tidings from her, but the presence of the flying wight, despite her overtones of hostility, was reassuring to the mortal damsel as she trod the black roads.

Magenta-flowering vines pleached themselves among the evergreens, their perfume a harmony. Red berries ripened festively on the junipers, and these were not bitter at all, but sweet fare. At midnight and again at
uhta
the swan fluttered down. Tahquil handed it the waterskin, tied on a string. The bird brought it back clenched in her strong beak, filled with water from the canals below, and the damsel drank deeply.

At daybreak, Tahquil chose a comfortable topiary-helix and lay down on the lee side of it to rest. The hedge-eaters, which had retired into the foliage overnight, now surfaced. She watched them as they mowed across the dewy aerial lawns, their jaws scissoring like shears. They troubled her not, only trimming the shoots around her reclining form before obsessively proceeding on their way.

For seven nights Tahquil trudged, or waddled. She seemed alone, but she had company aplenty. There were the stars and the moon, and the whims of the swanmaiden, and the menace of the Hunt which passing back and forth unseen overhead, left the imprint of its clamour on the wind. And there was the unrelenting pain of the Langothe, and dreams of Thorn so vivid she feared she had already succumbed to madness. Now that the ring no longer encompassed her finger, the agony of loss pierced more deeply.

Gradually her strength was failing.

One evening she woke to see her avian guide, manifested in humanlike form, perched on a leafy trapezium.

‘Slow-walker has succeeded, fairly scoring the centre of Firzenholt,' said the swanmaiden. ‘From here a floor-way follows hedges as far as the verges—a winding floor-way. Swan shall steer helpless human.'

‘Helpless human hears helpful swan and is grateful,' replied Tahquil.

Grasping a handful of hedge, she began to slide to the ground. Descent was simpler than ascent. Gravity pulled her, sprigs broke her fall. Between the two forces, she landed, not
un
scathed, but only slightly so, to be met by the urisk and the nygel.

‘How now, loyal friends.' Tahquil greeted them with a smile. Her hair was full of twigs—that very hair whose prodigal filaments held open the last Erith Gate leading to Faêrie. ‘Are you hale?'

The calls of hunting night-birds were muffled now by the fur of the great cypress collars standing erect all around, towering into the sky, but the noise of water hurrying along the channels bubbled up from the hedge's foundations.

‘Hale and hearty,' replied the urisk cheerfully.

They walked on, now guided by the swan who made low passes overhead to indicate which direction they must take. Once, curious as to the source of sounds of merriment in the hedges, Tahquil drew aside a curtain of fragrant leaves and peered inside. A party of siofra was picnicking inanely on the banks of a channel, and rowing in leaf-boats on the water. They did not notice she who momentarily spied on them. The onlooker was intrigued at their unglamoured feast: the horns of butterflies, the pith of rushes, emits' eggs and the beards of mice, bloated earwigs and red-capped worms, mandrakes' ears and stewed thigh of newt, washed down with pearls of dew cupped in magenta flowers.

Later, the whirr of spinning wheels permeated the night, intensifying as the travellers passed beneath an overhang of thick foliage, and dying away at their backs. Once or twice, grinning faces like those of wizened old men poked out at the passers-by.

After a time the sameness of high avenues roofed by stars began to foster the illusion that they were journeying pointlessly, in circles.

‘We're doubling back,' said Tahquil. ‘I know it!'

‘Sooth, lass,' said Tully. ‘But hae ye never walked the tricks and tracks o' a maze? Ye mun gae backwards tae gae forwards.'

‘This is no proper maze,' said Tahquil, ‘'tis a random affair. There's no logic to it. Yet I can do no less than to credit the swan with finding a path out of here. Tighnacomaire … Tiggy—will you bear me again, for the sake of swiftness?'

The waterhorse granted her wish. Five more nights she rode between the hedges then. Only down long boulevards could the nygel speed up to a canter—he must trot along the short lanes and walk around the sharp turns.

Sixteen nights have passed since Viviana and Caitri were taken
…

What had happened to them? It did not bear thinking about.

One eve Tahqil and her companions arrived at a place where the flowering vines twined thicker than ever. Here, between the grassy path and the lower stems of the hedges, lay five long canoes of bark.

‘The canals,' said Tahquil. ‘Do they flow straight to the eastern edge of this place?'

‘Almost straight,' said the faithful urisk. ‘So says the queen o' birds.'

‘And do you think the owners of these canoes will become severely enraged if I take one?'

‘That I cannae say. I've not set eyes on craft like these. There's no knowing who made them.'

‘Have you not lived since the world began?'

‘Aye, but I've not travelled much. It's a hame-body I am.'

The nygel was absent-mindedly ripping vines off the hedges and eating them. Their floral scent dizzied the air.

‘Well,' said Tahquil, ‘I've a mind to ride on the water. It will be a route more direct. But how to get to the canal flowing beneath the hedges is a dilemma—there is little space between the lower boughs and the ground. Tiggy, how did you do it?'

In answer, the nygel turned around and with his hindhooves vigorously kicked at the lower portions of the hedge. Broken branches flew in every direction. In a short while he had opened a gap high and wide enough for Tahquil to pass through, stooping. She dragged a canoe with her and slid it into the waterway. Four feet wide, the channel coursed along its low tunnel directly below the hedge wall.

‘Prithee, hold this vessel still for me, Tully.'

The damsel lay down on her back in the vessel of bark. With a splash the nygel sprang into the water downstream and swam away. The urisk pushed the boat. It began to move.

Recumbent, Tahquil glided under the arched trunks supporting the hedge, gazing up into the hollow ribcage of the wall, the secret halls of the hedge worlds. The eyes of the dwellers therein blinked as they stared down at her; voices chattered, and they flung down flowers from the vines. Covered with a blanket of magenta petals she drifted along the waterway, a horse's head gliding on before, with its weedy mane flowing into the ripples of its wake.

Another night, mauve and languid, floated past like a spent blossom.

At
uhta,
when many things happen, the nygel blocked the channel with his wide shoulders. The boat bumped against him.

‘We have reached the edge.'

Tahquil opened her eyes—she had been dozing. Instead of the cavernous, ribbed grey vaults of hedge-hulls overhead, there opened a sky as delicately pink as a camellia petal, bedewed with a single star. She climbed from the canoe.

Instantly, a horizontal wind threaded strong fingers through her hair. Atop a soaring cliff she stood beside the waterhorse, beyond the last bastions of the hedges. The canal had indeed brought them to the edge. Now, in company with other waterways flowing out of the maze, it plunged over the jutting brink to tumble seven hundred feet down a sheer precipice. At the foot of the precipice some of the falls splashed into rocky basins which drained into underground systems, while others joined a river thinly meandering across a bleak plain towards the dimly shimmering line of a distant shore.

Pre-dawn light laved the landscape. Up there in the open, it was impossible not to immediately become intensely aware of the sky, which throughout Cinnarine and Firzenholt had merely been a frame for a picture. Now the heavens unrolled to every horizon, becoming the picture itself, a moving portrayal of the moods of the climate roiling across the countryside in a paling, indigo vastness so clear and pure that you could drink it, so wide and dizzying that it seemed strange that the whole world was not spinning up into it.