The Space Between (2 page)

Kim shook her head. "For Christ's sake,
Doug, take a hint and piss off, would you."

"Right." He looked around, perhaps searching
for witnesses he'd have to eliminate. "Right." And he did as he was
asked.

Kim turned her attention back to her
sandwich. It tasted better than it looked, which was something.

As she chewed, a haggard old witch zeroed in
on the vacated seat next to her. The woman carried a twiggy broom
in her arthritic hands and used it to clear a path. She sat down
with a sigh of relief and spent a moment getting arranged. She
leaned her broom against the tilting picnic table and set her
pointed hat down carefully before turning to gaze around the
fairground.

Kim looked as well, as if something might
have changed in the last few minutes. It was a quaint setting.
Picturesque. But, in her current mood, she could only take so much
quaint and picturesque. She wondered how much worse her mood would
have been if she'd been sitting in some dirty old city.

Several minutes later, when Kim was almost
over the whole idea of sitting, the old woman spoke.

"I'll get you my pretty," she said in a
convincing Wicked-Witch-of-the-West voice. She added a cackle for
good measure.

Kim thought about that for a moment,
wondering if she was being offered a line for the second time that
day and suddenly wishing she'd chosen bachelor number one.
"Pardon."

"I'll get you my pretty," the woman said
once more, this time in a normal voice. She shrugged
apologetically. "I'd have gone for something out of Macbeth but I
can never remember much more than 'When shall we three meet again',
and, well, there are only two of us. My memory isn't what it used
to be."

Kim dismissed a couple of very lame jokes
before saying, "Macbeth probably would've been more suitable to our
surroundings. The Wicked Witch of the West is a bit far from home."
Or perhaps a fantasy wasn't out of place at all.

"I know. A bit of a shame really. Old Westie
is a lot more interesting than anyone dreamed up for Robin
Hood."

"Yeah. At least you admit Robin Hood is a
fantasy. Nobody else here seems to realize."

The old woman fixed Kim with a surprisingly
penetrative gaze. "You shouldn't be that cynical until you get to
my age. I think most of these people know Robin was a fabrication,
or a conglomeration at best. But they just want to have some fun on
Robin's birthday. Look at the clothes they're wearing." She
gestured with a knobbly hand. "More of them are in fantasy costumes
than traditional medieval ones. They're just having some fun and
there's nothing wrong with that."

"Fun is great. Idiots, not so great. If a
fifty ton dragon turned up now, half these knights would draw their
swords and run to fight it instead of running away and calling in
some professionals."

"Professional dragon hunters?"

"You know what I mean."

"Perhaps. But maybe idiocy suits their
disposition today. I know being the funny old grandma suits
mine."

"You're here with your grandkids?"

"My granddaughter." The witch looked around.
"That's her there, by the singer."

"The fairy?" Kim asked, looking at a little
girl with blonde, curly hair and pink wings. She was smiling and
laughing at the contorted faces made by the singer. "Cute.
Shouldn't you be with her?"

"No. That's my daughter just behind
her."

"Oh, that's all right then."

"Yes, it is." The old woman cackled her
Wicked Witch cackle again as she collected her hat and broom. "They
seem to have lost me. I'd better go, I suppose." She smiled and
pushed a lock of stringy grey hair away from her face. When she
brought her hand away, a few strands were clinging to her fingers.
She showed them to Kim with a look of mock horror on her face. "I'm
molting," she wailed, then shuffled away through the crowd with a
wave and a smile.

"Okey dokey, then." Kim shook her head.
"She's probably been waiting all day to do that joke."

Eventually, Kim got to her feet and headed
into the crowd once more. She examined some of the stalls and
chatted to a woman about the origins of her very Scottish
surname.

Just before 2 o'clock, the rhythm of the
crowd changed. Kim joined a growing surge of people and jostled her
way past several street performers as she crossed the main green.
All the performers wore suitable medieval raiment, but one of the
acts involved a monocycle called the 'one wheeled chariot of doom'.
The two monks who owned the chariot, Brother Phil and Brother
Terry, were soon lost from sight as the current moved Kim on. On
the far side of the green the throng reached a bottleneck between
two rows of stalls and the pace slowed but it wasn't long before
Kim and everyone else broke into the clear and crossed a dirt
road.

"Come to see the battle, have you?"

"What?" Kim turned and discovered she was
once more looking at the Wicked Witch of the West. Or, at least, at
the top of her pointy hat. The press of people was still too tight
to make eye contact an easy task. Her daughter was hovering by her
shoulder carrying the little girl with the pink wings.

"The battle," the witch repeated.

"Which battle?"

"No, the usual kind. Not a single witch
involved." She cackled.

"Oh, har-de-har-har."

The witch craned her neck. "This is the
tourney field, otherwise know as the cricket ground. They have mock
battles and such here. Can be interesting. On the other hand, if
you don't find this sort of thing interesting, it can be boring."
She smiled.

They turned a corner and shuffled along with
the crowd. The makeshift grandstand up ahead seemed to be filling
fast, so Kim found a likely vantage point on the grassy bank that
ran along the edge of the field. The old woman managed to sit down
as well, with a grunt of effort and a wince of pain.

"This is my daughter, Karen," she said,
settling as comfortably as possible. "And that, is Jessie."

Kim nodded. "Hi, Karen. And hello, Jessie.
How are you?"

"Good, thank you," the little girl said,
cuddling up to her mother.

"That's good. Are you having fun?"

Jessie nodded. "I rode a horse and talked to
a princess."

"Really? Wow. I might have to go see if I
can go find the horses later."

Jessie laughed.

"They're only ponies, aren't they honey,"
Karen said, straightening her daughter's wings.

"You're too big," Jessie agreed.

"Oh well."

"You're Australian?" Karen asked after a
moment of silence.

Kim nodded. "Either that or American,
whichever will get me through the door."

"Oh."

"Long story involving elopement, unimpressed
grandparents, and the CIA."

Normally a line like that got people
interested, but Jessie asked a question and her mother was
sidetracked. Kim was happy enough — she'd told the story too many
times since hitting the road a couple of years earlier. She turned
to look out over the field.

A dozen tents were clustered near the edge
of the forest to the right. Weapons of all shapes and sizes were
standing in racks nearby, most of them looking impressively real
from a distance. Dozens of warriors, archers, and camp followers
were milling around, but none of them seemed to be ready for action
just yet.

The crowd continued to grow and eventually a
group of eastern European soldiers from the early renaissance
rolled three cannons out onto the field. Introductions and speeches
were made over a loud speaker before the battle was declared open
with a wadded-paper, three-gun salute. Parents opened their mouths
wide in mock shock, children screamed with delight. Most other
people seemed to prepare themselves for the real action.

Two teams filed onto the field as the
announcer told the crowd a little about each group and the period
and regions they represented. Then challenges were called and
tributes offered to various damsels and princesses. It was all very
awkward and over done. When the battle finally got underway, it was
much the same. There were rules and obvious safety issues that kept
it all very sterile and theatrical.

"So, is this as interesting as it gets?" Kim
had spent eight years in the army and been involved in real
military action, much to her mother's eternal mortification. So,
while she had a slight appreciation for the fake battles as a form
of art, she could not put much stock in them as a type of
instruction.

"Oh, goodness, no. There is no limit to the
excitement around here. There are archery displays later and
jousting. And more battles of course." The witch pulled a sheet of
paper from inside her robe. "I have a map and itinerary."

"Oh, boy."

The witch wrinkled her nose for a moment
then pointed to a spot on her map. "Here, this is the Major Oak
where Robin kept a stash of food in case of emergencies."

Jessie leaned over to have a look. "Can we
go there later, gran?"

"We were there earlier, honey. That's the
big tree with the hole in it."

"Oh."

The witch continued the inspection of the
map. "The stream where Robin fought Little John is..." She turned
it over as if something else might be on the back. The only thing
there was a picture of the 'Sherwood Forest Country Park Visitor
Centre'. "Well, I don't know where the stream is but it's around
here somewhere, I'm sure."

"All of this," Kim said, glancing at the
girl and wondering if she was about to give away a secret, "despite
the fact he never existed. I suppose he's going to arrive later and
hand out gifts?"

"He's busy stealing them from the rich at
this very moment."

Kim smiled and looked at the map. "Robin
must have been very skilled. He lived in an area not really large
enough to hide a group of somber men, let alone a group of merry
men."

"The forest is quite a bit
smaller now than it was, but Robin
was
very skilled. He'll be at the
archery display later if you need proof."

"Oh, my."

After the second battle Kim decided she'd
had enough. "This is wonderful," she said to her companion, "but
night is coming and I must get to grandmother's place before
dark."

"Really? I know a short cut."

Kim smiled again. "Thanks," she said.
"You're the nicest evil witch I've ever met."

"I'm not sure if that's a compliment or
not."

"It is." She smiled at the little girl. "And
you're the best fairy."

"You really think so?"

"Oh, of course."

With that she rose to her feet and sidled
away though the crowd, back towards the main green. Amongst the
stalls again she passed a man playing folk songs on a violin, an
instrument that wouldn't be invented until a few hundred years
after Robin Hood's time. For a while she watched a group of women
working on a tapestry then moved on to a wood carver.

Soon, she'd gone up and down a few rows of
stalls and stopped to listen to the shouts, cheers, and screams
from the latest battle. Shaking her head, she started following a
path northwards into the forest. A long line of people were strung
out in front of her like beads on a child's necklace, though most
were heading in the opposite direction. She continued forward with
no clue as to where she might eventually end up. Perhaps she should
have paid better attention to the old lady's map.

It was more than fifteen minutes before she
arrived at her destination. The Major Oak, standing near the edge
of a wide clearing, was about as exciting as one might expect for a
tree. It was quite large, Kim had to admit, and quite hollow, with
a high, narrow, curving split giving access to the dark interior.
Some of the larger branches were propped up with metal braces.

Kim leaned on the fence that surrounded the
tree. Monica loved James, apparently. And, according to another
message carved into the moss-covered trunk, Nick had been here
about ten years ago. When the excitement became too much, she made
her way to a log seat. She sat down with a sigh and closed her eye.
Everyone else seemed to have wandered away leaving the clearing
strangely quiet. Sounds still came from the festival, a football
riot heard from outside the ground.

Just when she was about to
nod off to sleep, sitting on the uncomfortable bench, Kim heard a
voice. At first she thought she
was
asleep, and dreaming. But the voice came again,
deep and rough, in a language she couldn't understand.

“
[The tree is huge, you
must be able to get in further than that.]”

2: Wilder Parts

Meledrin had not ventured
into the wilder parts of the forest for many years and, as she
strode along the game trail, she suddenly wondered why that was. In
recent years, hardly any elves went beyond the quiet dells and
leafy dales surrounding Grovely. It was only the young men who
wished to live the way they once had, if only as a way of avoiding
their responsibilities. As a child Meledrin had listened to her
grandmother tell stories of weeks spent in solitude, wandering
through the forest for the pure joy of it. What stories
would
she
pass on
to the younger generations?

Whatever used the trail that Meledrin
followed was nowhere to be seen. She had carried her bow, strung
and with an arrow nocked, for several hours without coming across
anything larger than the robins and warblers that sang from the
high branches or hopped amongst the undergrowth. She was
unconcerned by this lack of game. There was food in her pack and
she was enjoying the verdant crispness of her surroundings too much
to bother with serious stalking.

Grovely was a distant memory, Palsamon a
warm glow in her consciousness.