Neither of them said a word. They only held fast to one another and kept running. But Emily was beginning to tire. She didn’t know how much longer she could do this. The only thing keeping her running now was the terror that lay in the thought of what would happen to her if she stopped.
“There’s something up ahead,” he said, gasping the words through his efforts to draw breath. He pointed into the fog. “There. That dark shape. Is it a building?”
Emily squinted, not seeing it. But when she realized what it was he had found, she cried out in relief. “It’s the tree! They’ve taken us in a complete circle!” She glanced at the ghost beside her; it was, in fact, motioning eagerly. Emily tugged on the red-haired man’s hand. “
Hurry
.”
It was as if, once spotted, the tree parted the fog for them; Emily saw more and more of it every second, and by the time they came to the foot of it, she could see the entire thing, trunk to tip, a dark, leafy beast hulking on the top of the ridge, so dense it defied even the lake’s worst fog. The lead ghost backed away and joined the others at the side, and once Emily and her companion cleared the edge of the fog ring, the ghosts remained at the perimeter, watching.
“Can we find our way back to the house from here?” he asked, trying to peer past it to the forest. “Use the tree line?”
“No.” Emily let go of his hand and stumbled forward to the tree, placing her hand on the rough bark, staring up into the branches. “We wait here. We will be safer here than anywhere else we could be.”
“Madam, those
sounds
—”
“They cannot come here. They are magical beasts. They come when the lake fog is high. They will kill us if they find us, and while we cannot see in the fog, they see very, very well. But they cannot come here.” She waved tentatively at the ghosts, who waved. Then she turned back to the stranger.
He was still watching the fog with heavy apprehension. “But what is to keep them from coming here? Why did they not attack us as we ran? What were those shades?” He blanched. “They’ve gone. The shades have gone.”
Emily was not surprised to hear the ghosts had vanished. She had been afraid on the moor, but now that she was at the tree, she found herself feeling much calmer and oddly centered. The alchemist was hunting her but could not reach her because she was surrounded by the beasts. Yet she had been rescued by the abbey ghosts. And she had been given a companion.
He turned back to her, eyes wide, face pale. Emily paused, then lifted an eyebrow and one corner of her mouth as she gathered her skirts for a curtsy.
“Emily Elliott, sir,” she said, her smile staying in place. “Thank you for my rescue.”
His eyes darted from her to the fog and then back again. He nodded stiffly, not smiling. “Thank you for mine.” He bowed, a proper, elegant bow, doffing his hat and all. “Stephen Perry. Your servant.”
Emily’s smile fell, and she stepped closer to the tree. “Another Perry?”
He perked up, following her. “You have seen my brother? You have seen Jonathan?”
“Charles. I have seen Charles.” She flattened herself against the tree, watching him warily. “You said you needed to speak to my sister.”
He nodded. “I wanted to ask the witch about my brother—about Jonathan. I don’t give a damn about Charles.” Then he blushed. “I don’t mean—I’m not like my grandfather. I’m not cruel. But it’s Jonathan I’m concerned about now.”
“He is at the abbey, I think,” Emily said. She looked off to the east. “I wonder if that is not where Madeline is also.”
A loud scream pierced the night, and the chitters rushed up around it. Both Emily and Mr. Perry glanced nervously at the moor.
“You’re certain they can’t come here?” he asked.
Emily nodded, but she kept her gaze on the fog. “This is the Goddess tree. They cannot come to it.”
Mr. Perry balked. “Devil take it—don’t tell me you’re expecting
religion
to save us!”
He looked ready to run again, which annoyed Emily. She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Not religion, Mr. Perry. The Goddess.”
“Splitting hairs, isn’t it?” he shot back, waving at the tree with disdain. “What is it you expect will happen? That she will descend from the boughs and smite the beasts with a golden staff?”
“I said this was the
Goddess tree
.” He stared at her as if this meant nothing. “You don’t know the story of the Goddess tree?” she asked.
“Why should I?” he said.
Emily shook her head in disbelief. “And you call yourself a Perry.”
She’d meant it as a jest, but he looked as if she’d slapped him. “I am a Perry,” he said coldly.
Emily sighed, then held out her arms, gesturing to the empty space around them. “Do you see any beasts approaching? Do you hear them coming near?”
He was pacing the edge of the fog, looking agitated. “No,” he admitted, but he kept pacing. “I don’t understand any of this. I don’t understand those shades or how a tree could save anyone.” He tossed her a cutting glance. “And I do
not
believe in the Goddess.”
“If you don’t, then none of my explanations of the shades or the tree will make any sense.” Emily crossed her arms over her chest and glared back. “Perhaps you should walk out into the fog and explain to the moor beasts that they don’t exist either.”
She expected another outburst, and for a moment it looked as if he might give her one. But after a few seconds of fuming, he simply pulled off his hat again and ran his hand agitatedly through his hair.
Softening toward him, Emily sank down at the base of the tree, nesting between two of the roots. She patted the space beside her. “Come. Sit, and I will tell you stories. You can decide for yourself how much truth is in them. If nothing else, they will pass the time until morning.”
He stared at her a moment, then threw up his hands. “I only wanted to see my brother,” he said, sounding almost despondent. “How did it come to this?”
“I wanted the quiet of my bedroom and a mug of tea,” Emily replied and patted the space again. “Come.”
He came, and he sat, looking sullen like a little boy. It should have annoyed Emily, but for some reason it charmed her. She settled back against the tree, feeling its strength surround her, and she began her tale.
“Rothborne Moor is a magic place,” she said and gestured to the fog. “You cannot see it now, but we are sitting in the middle of a paradox. Ahead of us is barren, craggy moorland. Behind us is a thick, vast forest, full of trees and vegetation seen nowhere else in Etsey. They are here because of magic. They are here because the Lord and the Lady put them here.”
Emily tipped her head back and smiled up into the branches. “The Lord made the world and brought the Lady to see what he had made, ending the tour here in the land he made for their children. To mark the sacredness of this place, together they made this tree. It has stood for over three thousand years, and it will stand for three thousand more.” She glanced sideways at her companion. “It’s
famous
. It drove the Morgan mad, chasing all the lovers off the moor who came to spend a night beneath it. The story is any who do will never be parted, that they will have the love of the Lord and Lady in their hearts.”
“I’ve never understood that,” he said, clearly unimpressed by either the tale or the romantic legend. “How the Goddess is a man and a woman. Why isn’t she just a woman?”
Emily just stared at him. “What do you mean, how could she be just a woman? Do you suppose the androghenie would simply beget themselves?”
He glared back. “Who the devil are the androghenie?”
He truly didn’t know. It boggled Emily’s mind. “They are children of the Lady and the Lord.” She nodded to the empty space where the ghosts had been. “What you called the shades.”
He blinked at her, turned to the fog, blinked at it, then sank back more heavily against the tree.
“I’ll grant you that there truly were shades.” His voice was slightly shaky and more subdued than it had been. “I would have denied them before tonight, but I saw them, and I followed them into fog without questioning my own actions.” He put his hand over his mouth, then shook his head as he drew his palm down to rest on his chin. “But I refuse to believe they are androghenie. I’ve heard that term before, Miss Elliott. In a
fairy tale
.”
“In this parish, the fairy tales are more like simple history,” she said.
“I don’t like religion. The priests and priestesses are jokes. They’re only after a living wage or are on some moral mission of their own at best, and at worst they prey on the minds and the pocketbooks of the vulnerable.”
“I am not speaking of religion or of priests and priestesses,” Emily replied. “I am speaking of the Goddess. She isn’t something you can learn in a book. She is something you experience.”
He groaned. “You’re a
mystic
.”
Emily laughed. “I’m nothing of the sort. I’m just a girl from the parish.”
The beasts were still chittering in the distance, but Emily had all but forgotten them now. He seemed to have as well as he looked down at her dubiously. “Is this something to do with being the witch’s sister?”
“Perhaps a little,” Emily confessed. “Though mostly it’s simply from growing up here. When the Morgan was alive, we had one of the strongest witches in Etsey in our parish, but we were proud of ourselves before that. People use charms to ward off evil all over Etsey, generally evils of their own thoughts or meddling from alchemists. Here, the evils are more direct. No one walks the moor at night, and precious few do during the day. That is my sister’s chief job, beyond caring for the sick and ministering to the dead: she tends the moor, keeping the magic that lives inside it from leaking out into the world. But you cannot live beside the sea without feeling the spray. And so we all wear charms, because we all experience magic. It becomes easier, I think, to believe in ghosts and Lords and Ladies and beasts that appear when the fog is high, when you live in this parish.”
“I like logic,” he said a little desperately. “My mother sent me to a school run by a Catalian refugee who had been a professor before the war came to his country, and he taught me logic. I believe in what I can see and feel and taste, and I make sense of the world before me by studying it. I do not hide behind Etsian superstition. I
like
logic.”
“Then use it,” Emily suggested a bit sharply. “You saw ghosts, and you believed your eyes. You heard dangerous sounds, and you ran from them. You have calmed beneath the Goddess tree because you are observing how the beasts do not come close to it. Now you are being offered an explanation as to why. I suggest you listen to it, and let your logic lead you from there. Your
logic
, Mr. Perry. Not what you wish logic would be.”
He let his head fall back against the tree and stared up into it. “Very well. Tell me your stories. As you say, they will pass the time.”
“In the beginning,” Emily began, using the same voice she used to tell stories to the village children, “there was the Goddess and only the Goddess. It was dark and quiet, and she was alone. There was no world, no light, and no companion but darkness. And so she gave birth to herself, to the Lady and then to the Lord. And the Lady and the Lord looked at one another with love, and they swore they would never again be parted. The Lord made the Lady a garden, filling it with flowers and trees, and she in turn filled it with life. They learned their rhythms there, that he could create, but that she breathed the breath of Life. They lived in happiness for a long, long time.
“But the Lord became restless, for it was his nature to explore and to grow. And so he left the garden to explore the world. The Lady came after, breathing Life, but she moved slowly, and they discovered they could not keep all life alive at once. And so Death was born. What the Lady touched had life, and what she abandoned knew death.”
“That’s not the story I heard,” Stephen said, sounding a little unnerved. “I thought the Goddess was the great mother. She doesn’t create Death. That’s the devil.”
“We don’t speak of devils here,” Emily said patiently. “Demons are trouble enough.”
“But that isn’t right,” Stephen insisted, “making the Goddess responsible for death and cruelty. And to give it to the Lady? How is that feminine?”
“Why is death cruel?” Emily asked. “And what do you mean, it isn’t feminine? Did you never think of the sacrifices and difficult decisions mothers have to make?” Emily saw that he hadn’t, and she shook her head. “The Lord could never create Death. His heart is too tender. He loves life, loves to create. He cannot stop. The Lady tempers his enthusiasm, remembering that all life must be tended and that death must come to all to make it meaningful.”
Now he was frowning. “This isn’t right, is all I’m saying.”
Emily lifted an eyebrow at him. “Would
you
like to tell the story?”
He smiled, but only half. “No. Go on.”
Emily continued. “The Lady grew even wearier trying to follow the Lord, but she saw he could not stop, and so she let him go. She sent with him the Wand of Life, which would allow him to create without her presence.”
She caught him grinning, and he held up his hands in self-defense. “I’m sorry, but it’s silly,” he said. “The
Wand
of Life? It’s very—”
“Phallic?” Emily finished for him coolly. “Yes. It’s why all the oldest art is never seen in museums, or when it is, it is always conveniently broken. They remove the phalluses. The Wand is important, and it’s just what you think it is.” She looked at him archly. “Without the little-boy snigger.”
He didn’t stay his grin. “I’m sorry, Miss Elliott. The little-boy snigger comes with the wand.”
She blushed and turned back to the fog as she went on.
“It pained the Lady to let the Lord go, for she knew she would see him less, but she loved him for who he was, and she knew he could not be happy to remain always in the garden. She made Death independent as well, to move about the world the Lord created and reclaim the life he made.
“But the Lady was not alone. She had many children by the Lord, as many as there were stars in the sky—they
were
, in fact, the stars in the sky. The Lord made many creatures in the image of himself and the Lady, and they were called human, but the children of the Lord and the Lady were the true heirs of the Lord and the Lady. They were each one beautiful, and they were as fluid and gracious as their parents in all things. And they were just as full of magic and wonder. The Lord, out of love for his children, encouraged them to come with him into the world, to explore it with him, and because they loved their father and his stories of the world, they went.”