The boy did a little of his own kicking at ferns. His whole face was a serious mask as he walked, staring down at the ground. The giant Eold didn’t seem to be a bad creature, at least from the brief exchange of words. But he had done some evil things. Or, at least Fleat thought so. And the Queen of the Night was perhaps not the demon-goddess the boy had learned to fear when younger. And the Night-Folk were not soulless monsters either: some of them were little girls who were poor and yet still hoped to grow up and be someone important one day. Caewen, whom he had been looking up to, did seem to have her own dark undercurrents. At first, he had thought that Dapplegrim and Caewen were odd bedfellows: but now, Dapplegrim seemed less ominous than at first glance, and Caewen was perhaps bleaker and more threatening than appearances suggested.
And where did that leave him? As he walked, he kicked some more at the dewy clumps of ferns. He decided that there probably were no sides of good, nor sides of evil–but there were good and evil deeds–and perhaps good and evil hearts too–at the end of everything, a person might as well be known for doing good with a good heart.
These were thoughts that he would never had experienced, even a few weeks ago. But ever since the nightly lessons with the dreaming scholar, his mind had expanded a little. He’d learned words like sophism and philosophy. He’d started to see the world’s complexities as a thinking puzzle to unravel, rather than a mass of unfathomable mysteries.
They wended their way among some stands of rag-bone birches and emerged back out, within sight of the stream. Now they were uphill of it, and could see the deep, churning course it cut through glistening bedrock. In this light, the water did seem to have a shadowy, blue-grey glow just visible above the surface. Much as the air. Much as the leaves of the trees. As the boy looked at it, he realised that they’d seen no creatures nearby, not along the whole length of the stream. Not a solitary blackbird had been bathing in the shallows. No daffocks fluttered or sang in the scrub beside the water. No dragonflies played above the surface. No winter-egret stood motionless by the bank, watching for fish. There was not even the silver-fast flashes of sticklebacks in the pools. Wild things were avoiding this place.
“Caewen?” he called, as loud as he dared.
“Yes?”
“You’re at the front. Have you walked through any spiderwebs? Or even seen a fly?”
She shook her head. “No.” Suddenly quite uncertain, and more wary, she added. “You’re right. There’s no life here that isn’t trees and ferns. Where are all the animals?”
“Hurm. Not here,” answered Dapplegrim. “If you were a squirrel, would you want to live in this woodland?”
Everyone shook their heads, silent.
But even the spiders… midges… moths? Even the tiny scurrying creatures were all afraid of this place?
That gave the boy a powerful shiver. He remembered what Eold had said about the water, and decided against getting too close to the splash of the stream, let alone dipping a toe, or drinking from it.
A little farther upstream, they arrived at a wide deep pool. Water cascaded into the black waters from a rock-shelf above, foaming its way down a little series of rushing cataracts as it did. The walls were sheer and entirely absent of vegetation. Across the stretch of water, on the far side, there stood a small cliff-face, higher than the ground they stood on. On it were carvings, very old and very worn. They ran up and down the cliffside, and into the water too. In places, they seemed to crawl over the submerged stony floor of the pool. Every small jutting of sharp rock that stood out of the water was also deeply carven.
Looking too long at the patterns made the boy queasy.
As he searched the intricacies and weird images, he caught glimpses of something cold, shadowy and shapeless just beyond the verge of his vision. A strong sense of something malignant and watchful grew in his mind. He had to forcibly tear his focus from the carvings, and only when he shut his eyes did a feeling of life return to his prickly skin. He looked around at the others. They also seemed unnerved by the engravings–that is–except for Dapplegrim who had his head cocked and was considering the pool and the stones and shapes cut into the rock with a more quizzical air. “I’ve never quite felt anything like this before,” he said. “There’s something here that thinks it’s a god.” After half-a-moment of considering, he added “It knows we’re here. It does not like us. But there is something else too… a woman’s voice… no, many voices… echoes of voices…”
“Yes,” said Caewen. “I can hear it. A chorus of voices, ghostly and sad.” She was looking at the carvings and the waters. Her expression was oddly distant, as if she were remembering a happier time. “I have met something akin to this before.”
Dapplegrim looked at her, askance. “Without me? When?”
“You weren’t with me. The feel of it… it is the same as before. It’s some ancient power of the warmthless and lifeless. A thing that has wormed its way up out of shadow-places and deathful places, deep in the earth. It’s not a god or goddess. It’s something older and more hateful.”
Dapplegrim flared his nostrils and twisted his ears. “Be that as it may, there are definitely mortal ghosts here too. We need to tread carefully.” He paused, lingering on his next word. “Behind those ghost-voices there is something even fainter. Much more alive and much more–I don’t know–fiery?”