No more than an hour had passed since leaving behind the ivy-choked boggart dens when Fleat squinted into the sky and said, “There is a creature up there. Diving in and out of the clouds. It has a rider on its back, too, it does. One of them winged draig, I think?”
Caewen squinted at the clouds. “We should take cover until it passes.”
They found a place where the trees were dense enough with leaves to shelter them all. Caewen sat down against a trunk and shut her eyes, catching a few moments of rest.
The boy couldn’t imagine napping. He was too full of the wakefulness of fear and headlong flight. He could feel his pulse still thumping, even now that the ivy-shrouded dens were behind them. “Who would have thought that boggarts have children?” he mused quietly to the others. “I always imagined that they just grew out of mushrooms in caves, or something. And it’s strange to think of the wee boggarts as helpless. I’ve never thought of such creatures as anything but monsters.”
Dapplegrim, who had lowered himself down into a resting position under the same spread of leaves, raised his head at that and flicked his ears back and forth. “And is that what you think of me too?” He didn’t sound angry so much as distant. “That I am monstrous? That I shouldn’t or wouldn’t have anything care for me? Or, seeing as my blood is only half inherited from my night-striding father, then perhaps I am only half-capable of caring?”
“What? No. I mean… I didn’t…” the boy felt a quick hotness of embarrassment against his cheeks and brow. He looked down at the dirt. “Sorry.” There was a span of silence. “Really, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound that way at all.”
“No, I’m sorry. Hur. I’m being sharp and tetchy.” He twitched his ears. “It’s fine. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.” The strange horse flicked his strange tale. “The Old Goddesses of the Earth both made good creatures and evil creatures,” he continued. “You think boggarts and troldes, and all things under the sway of the Queen of Night are nothing but evil? There’s meanness to some of them, I grant you–but nothing that lives is thoroughly evil, and the Queen of the Day made some nasty things of her own too. The Lord of the Dayflame was one of her chiefmost servants in the ancient wars, and he laid whole kingdoms to waste in a demented quest to hold the sun in the sky, transfixed and ever-burning. Great evil has been done by both sides, as far back as memories go.”
The boy thought about this and asked. “Then why are we fighting?”
“We’re not fighting,” said Caewen. “Others are.”
The boy started. He had assumed she was asleep.
“But why?”
“The balance shifted a long age ago, and has remained tilted since,” answered Caewen, half-drowsy with sleep. “The Queen of Night found a hole in the Grand Bargain. And so, she returned from exile. She sits now on a throne in the farthest north of the world whilst the Queen of Day remains exiled from the living world.”
Fleat shook his shoulders as if he were a bird ruffling feathers. “I’ve heard that too, but it’s some-a-thing I never understood. Why would the Sun Queen not return? I cannot befathom that? If the bargain be broke, if the Night-Queen be returned, why wouldna the Brightness Queen come back also?”
“The bargain’s not broken,” said Dapplegrim.
Caewen opened her eyes a sliver and nodded. “Leastways, not strictly speaking. It’s just a hole in the wording of it. When the last wars of the eldermost age grew such that both Goddesses foresaw the destruction of the world and everything in it, they agreed to exile themselves into the primeval other that churns outside the mortal sphere. They would both leave the world they loved–and fought over–to save the world. But the agreement was worded so that neither of them could step again upon any ground, rock or water where living things dwell. It was meant to encompass the whole of the living world–but The Queen of the Night secretly knew that there was a place of ice and stone at the very farthest reaches of the north where no living thing has ever been, and likely never will. It is a place of everlasting ice and darkness. She returned from the outer chaos-places in secret, and raised a fortress there, and there she dwells within her ice-girt walls, alone but for what magical and necromantic things she has created to be her servants. Even the Twelve Lords and Ladies cannot approach her, because they are–in their own ways–alive. Commands issue forth through charmed arts, and she directs the war still, subtly, quietly. If any living thing were to so much as enter her presence, she would be forced to leave this world and return to exile, lest the ban actually be shattered and then the Queen of the Day would return, and then the old wars would start anew and this living earth would not long survive.” Caewen shrugged. “Or perhaps the Night Queen would not care. Perhaps she thinks she has enough of an advantage now to win if it came to open war again, but I don’t think so. Both goddesses love the world. Both goddesses know the risk of another age of god-armies. Neither want to see their world destroyed. They both know that the rocks and the sky and the soil cannot suffer such abuses again. It would all…” she waved a hand… “break.”
“Oh,” said the boy. “So couldn’t we maybe sneak up into the north? Sneak into her palace and then, I guess, that would be the end of that?”
Caewen smiled. “You’ve a brave soul, little one.” She sounded weary. “If only it were so easy as that.”
The boy wasn’t brave at all, and he knew it, and he knew that Caewen knew it too. So he looked down at the leaves and soil again, and he wondered if someday someone might find a way to trek all the way into the Night Queen’s house and end her threat, simply by walking up to her and saying, ‘Hello there’. He thought this over. He decided also that he didn’t entirely agree with Dapplegrim either. Boggarts were evil. They killed people. And they ate people. Even if that one she-boggart had done them a good turn, that didn’t forgive the whole blood-caste of them. He’d heard rumours of a village near Wurmgloath that was overrun by boggarts one winter, a few years back. They ate everyone. Even the little babies. That’s what the men said anyway. When they found the empty village in spring there were bones in the cookfires and they were human bones, big and little, large and tiny.
No. He shivered. Perhaps Dapplegrim’s Lord of the Dayflame had been insane, and evil too… but the boy could see a kernel of sympathy in wanting everlasting day. Everlasting night though? That seemed more than madness. Surely nothing would grow in eternal moonlight? Everything would wither and die in the darkness.
They didn’t move on again that day. The lurking presence of the draig-rider circling above never moved far off, and remained too much of a danger. They set up a quiet night-camp under the tree branches. They sat quietly, cooked on a fire that the boy kept as low and smokeless as possible, and they went to their blankets and bedrolls early.
The boy dreamed of his book again, and he woke knowing a little more of written letters. In the morning light, the first thing he did was open the book up and read the second story. The tale was written in an old Fane tongue and it was a story of two lovers and their many trials, and eventual tragic end together. The story was beautiful, but sad.
He considered both the tale and his circumstance as he lingered on the last illustration and the last words. It was such a strangeness to have this dream-thing happen to him. To have other people’s words in his head. He was burning to talk to someone about it, though he decided it was best to keep the secret a secret still. At least for now. It wasn’t harming anyone he reasoned, and it was a powerful hard rock of joy in his chest to have a small precious secret like this, all of his own.