As they rode, Caewen spoke, raising her voice over the on-rush of air. “We were gone for three days? I was joking about it. I thought perhaps we’d been absent a few hours at most. Not days.”
“Do not make light of such things,” said Dapplegrim with a huff of noise. “Hurm. Do not ever. You were lucky that you were only kept for a short time.” His voice grew curious. “Were there Faer Folk in the darkness? Time plays strange games in their weird-encircled places.”
“No. Not the Faer. We found the resting place of a sort of living spirit. The ghost of a Fane Queen, only she was not yet dead.”
“You’re speaking in riddles now, Caewen. Though–” he seemed to consider this information a moment,”–I have heard folks say that the Faer are something like living ghosts. Or ghosts made to come alive through magic. Hur. Perhaps your living ghost and the Faer are akin? Maybe there is something in the magic of such things that distorts the flow of hours? The time and the world of the secret kingdoms does not run smoothly alongside ours. Their time is always faster or slower. A person can come out of a spirit place, touch mortal earth and crumble to dust–as if they had aged a thousand years in a moment.”
“Really?” said the boy, eyes widening.
“Well,” conceded Dapplegrim, “…at least so I have been told. I cannot say I’ve ever actually seen such a thing. Or met anyone who has seen such a thing. Hurm. You know. For that matter.”
Caewen laughed under her breath. “Dapple, don’t. You get carried away sometimes. Those are stories to frighten children.”
As they rode heavily over the earth, away from the ruins, the boy wondered if it was strange to have associated Caewen and his mother in his mind. Caewen was some years older than him, but she was still young, and was not very motherly, truth be told. He snuck a glance at her face. It was hard and weirdly beautiful in the cold rushing wind, her hair streaming and her eyes glinting against the sunlight. Not motherly at all… more like some sort of war-goddess or maiden-of-swords out of a droll-tellers tale. It made him shiver to look at her. A small cold sensation of fear went through him.
And Dapplegrim was right when he spoke earlier. Something in her did seem changed. She had been haunted before. Her eyes had been smudged with shadows and heavy, hooded lines. He had looked so tired. Now she looked clear-faced and rested. Even joyous.
Behind them, the hill diminished with distance, taking with it the ruins and the little copse, and the huge purple-leafed tree at the heart. Ahead, sharper, taller hills uprose in grey-gold ridges, harshly fanged with limestone crags, and behind the hills stood the ever-present mountains, like great snowy-headed giants, crouched and watching the world. Down and over the hills scrambled a few long fingery shaped forest patches, and after a time galloping, Dapplegrim and his two riders entered the edge of one of those thin woodlands. The air was immediately full of greyness and cool shadows and pine-needle smells. Off in the distance a pine-jay squawked. The ground was damp and mossy.
An enclosing silence fell about them.
They were in the shelter of woodlands and hills again: encompassed by shadows, in a world ruled by shadows. Travel would be more difficult if they kept to the woods, but at least now they were hidden from eyes that might be winging above them, or boggarts creeping about in the open grasslands come nighttime, or white women drifting in the haunted fogs.