Osric

The night of the Begbéam moon found Osric in excellent spirits. He was merry, hopeful, excited even. At the last full moon, Fairhrim had managed to slow his seith system’s degeneration; perhaps this time she would stop it entirely.

He spent a long time in his dressing room, getting ready. This wasn’t a date or anything, obviously; he simply liked to make himself devastatingly attractive.

He would get to sweep Fairhrim into his arms again tonight. Not that doing so sent his heart skittering into pleasant, uneven throbs; he simply liked to whisk her about, and hear her little gasps, and feel her cling to him. It was great fun to undo her a little—she was always so tightly wound.

“Are you getting ready for a date?” came a voice.

It was the bloody critique cricket. Whenever it had been silent long enough, Osric assumed it had died. Then it came back again when it was least wanted.

“No. Go away, you little brute,” said Osric.

“Then why have you spent an hour fussing over your hair?” asked the cricket.

“I like it to be perfect,” said Osric, continuing to fuss in the looking glass. “I never do things by halves, you know.”

He couldn’t decide if he looked better with his hood up (mysterious, sinister) or down (devil-may-care, dashing) and alternated between the two, all while admiring the cut of his jaw.

“I think you’re trying to impress the Haelan,” said the cricket. “She makes your papule of a heart go pitter-patter.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Osric stepped back from the looking glass. “How do I look?”

“When I want to see clowns, I go to the circus.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You fancy her,” said the cricket musically.

Osric, sufficiently offended to detach his eyes from his reflection, looked about for the cricket, but there were too many hiding places amid the luxuries heaped about his dressing room. He sent his seith to his tācn and searched the shadows on the bureau, between bottles of hair oils, pots of crèmes, pomades, and shaving articles. No cricket. He swept his tācn towards the frock coats, waistcoats, boots, and gloves lying about. It was of no use—every garment offered a place of refuge, and in getting ready to see Fairhrim, he had pulled out a lot of garments.

Osric regained his composure. “I am far too concerned with myself to admire anyone else.”

“Liar.”

“It’s true.”

Full of grave pity, the cricket said, “You can be honest with me, if not yourself.”

“I don’t know how else to tell you you’re wrong,” said Osric lightly.

“You think about her every day,” said the cricket.

“Because she’s helping to heal me.”

“Have you forgotten that I witnessed your Agonies?”

“An overreaction on my part,” said Osric, pulling on his gloves. “I’m prone to those.”

“You might have a chance with her. If she’s secretly a murdererphile. Or moronsexual.”

“Oi.”

“I shall pray for you,” said the cricket.

“Don’t bother.”

“When human means fail, one ought to give the gods a chance.”

The cricket’s Parthian shot aside, Osric remained in an excellent mood. With sprightliness in his step, he took the waystone to the Hairy Hodmedod, the pub near Glastonbury Tor where he and Fairhrim had arranged to meet. He popped out of the ley line in the Somerset lowlands at twenty past three (he was late due to the cricket, not his hair).

The full moon was at its zenith. A small cloud dappled its light.

Fairhrim awaited his arrival at the waystone. She had once again complied with his request to dress in black, and wore a mismatched ensemble whose only saving grace was that the trousers hugged her thighs and bum to good effect. Osric could appreciate a good bum. (But not too good—not better than his. He would have to examine hers further to confirm that it wasn’t.)

Osric rarely saw Fairhrim without her Haelan whites. Black became her. It heightened her unsmiling intensity. It emphasized the dark promise of her eyes.

She had replaced her Haelan satchel with a leather bag, tucked into the small of her back. Tonight, the only sign that she was a member of that Order was her tācn, a white swan, presently hidden under black gloves.

“You’re late,” said Fairhrim.

“You said three but didn’t specify a time zone,” said Osric breezily.

This garnered no response from Fairhrim, exasperated or otherwise. Upon closer inspection, she looked fatigued.

“Hard day?” asked Osric.

“We charted the words ‘penile degloving’ this evening.”

Osric was silent as he processed this information. He could have gone the rest of his life without knowing that penile and degloving were two words that could be put together.

Another of Fairhrim’s eight-word horror stories.

He said, “Hel.”

She said, “I know.”

With these auspicious beginnings, they set off towards Glastonbury Tor.

The Tor was a massive conical prominence in the landscape, surrounded by rings of its labyrinth, which shimmered in pale arcs around its base. It was topped by the squat tower of the Færwundor.

“This is as close as we should get without shadow-walking,” said Osric, “or we’ll risk being seen. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” said Fairhrim. She sounded pinched, but then again, when did Fairhrim not sound pinched?

Her principal anxiety was that they would get caught; Osric’s was that the healing wouldn’t work. She fiddled with her gloves.

“Do stop fidgeting,” said Osric. “They’re Druids. They haven’t even got a tācn.”

“Right.” The frown drawing Fairhrim’s brows together relaxed minutely. “Then let’s go. Resume the torment.”

She reached towards him, a gesture he found strangely elating. Osric lifted her against him. He had been distracted for the entirety of their shadow-walk practice by the feel of her in his arms. The feeling was back again.

(She did not make his heart go pitter-patter, so the cricket could fuck off. It did swell in his chest and beat more rapidly, but that was due to exertion, thank you.)

Osric swept himself and Fairhrim into the shadow-walk. The world passed in flashes of moonlit road, wheat fields, cattle and sheep, beehives. Fairhrim clung to him and emitted those little gasps that delighted him. He did not think about how good it felt to hold her to him, nor was he catastrophically aware of her nearness.

Their objective for the healing tonight was the crossing of two waterways. Based on their map, this occurred somewhere within the Færwundor.

They reached the base of the Tor, where the labyrinth began. A large signpost stood there, plastered with dire warnings about not proceeding farther unless authorised, that this was a dangerous area, and that trespassers would be punished. Two motionless Druids stood sentinel on either side of the labyrinth’s entrance. Golden sickles gleamed like crescent moons at their waists. Their grey-green cloaks camouflaged them perfectly against the ivy-laced stones.

Unfortunately for them, Osric and Fairhrim were even more perfectly camouflaged by seith and shadow, and slipped past them without incident.

Osric was pleased: everything was going according to plan, including Fairhrim not immediately getting sick. She clutched firmly at the front of his cloak. They had agreed that she would give it three tugs if she needed a break from the shadow-walk.

He had hoped to cut straight across the labyrinth by walking along the tops of its walls, instead of winding through all seven rings up the Tor. He was dissuaded from the idea after shadow-walking to the top of the first wall and finding himself waist deep in a hedge of massive spiky brambles. He and Fairhrim were impaled by long spines all the way up their legs.

Osric descended back into the labyrinth and released Fairhrim. They proceeded to withdraw needle-like spines from each other’s arses and hamstrings, with much whispered swearing.

“You all right?” asked Osric.

Fairhrim didn’t answer but did a lot of swallowing, and fanned herself with a limp hand. Osric left her to her queasiness and scouted ahead a bit, pleased to discover no further Druid sentinels.

“Let’s go on foot to let your stomach settle,” he said when he rejoined Fairhrim. “Stay close.”

“All right.” Fairhrim slipped her gloved hand into the crook of his elbow, which didn’t give him pitter-patters of any description.

They followed the ancient passage up the Tor. The labyrinth’s first walls were low, but as Osric and Fairhrim advanced, they rose higher and higher, and hid more of the world. Fireflies led them inward and upwards like will-o’-the-wisps. By the time they reached the labyrinth’s third ring, they could see little of the sky, only the full moon, directly above them, laced by ivy and bramble. Both Osric and Fairhrim breathed hard and walked upwards on leaden legs; the ascent was steep and the air felt thin.

“Does it seem odd to you,” whispered Fairhrim, “that there aren’t more Druids along the way?”

“It’s the night of the full moon.” Osric shrugged. “Most of the Druids are off in the henges. Stop worrying. I’m the most dangerous thing here.”

At last they came to the end of the labyrinth, which opened upon the flat top of Glastonbury Tor. There they found a garden, in the middle of which stood the Færwundor: a stone tower girded round by oak trees.

“What a garden,” breathed Fairhrim as she stepped into it.

Osric watched her go, noting that she had a good bum, possibly better than his.

“It almost looks like a library,” said Fairhrim.

It was an adequate description. Plants were heaped over other plants on rocky shelves. Under every plant was a label, written in a Druidic script, unintelligible to either Osric or Fairhrim. The labels were illuminated by phosphorescent moths that were the size of Osric’s hand and were by nature or breeding happy to perch near them.

The entrance to the garden was an archway, curtained over by vines heavy with buds. Osric and Aurienne stepped through it. As though they had been waiting for this moment, the buds on the vine burst open. They revealed mauve petals, speckled with white, exuding the sour-sweet scent of crushed nectarines.

“What blooms at the full moon?” Fairhrim studied the nearest flower. “That variegated purple is lovely. I’ve never seen such petals. They look like galaxies.”

Osric and Fairhrim both got a noseful of the flowers’ potent scent and sneezed.

Fairhrim held her illuminated tācn up as she walked. “I don’t know half of these species,” she said, sounding at first shocked at such an impossibility, and then full of wonder. “Some of these specimens are enormous—straight out of the Carboniferous era. What are the Druids feeding them?”

She squatted to observe a colony of plants with deeply lobed leaves. She studied an elegant cluster of wine-red flowers tumbling over a ledge.

Osric, anxious to get into the Færwundor, asked, “Could you indulge in your botanical sightseeing at another time? We’ve got to get this healing done by dawn.”

Fairhrim stared at the catkin-filled branches of a tree, arching above them, perfuming the air with something sweet.

“I think,” said Fairhrim, awe in her voice, “that everything here is either a drug or a poison.”

“What?”

“Don’t touch anything. Don’t step on anything.”

Osric froze where he stood.

“I don’t recognise all of them,” continued Fairhrim, “but that, just above us, that’s Orphillic—a potent soporific. That black-leafed plant is King’s Ransom. Its sap is a potent stimulant when distilled—see where they’re collecting it? Those pretty white flowers are Frostbell—they’re paralytic. That looks like a type of Creeping Crescencia—causes bowel ischemia. Those berries are Lyphithea—they cause death within seconds of ingestion. That one with the fuzzy leaves is a performance enhancer—I think Bruiser is the street name. Those shrubs—their roots can be synthesized into tevaquine—makes your brains leak out of your nose. This mushroom is Widow’s Lace, I think. Witchthorn there; I’ve only ever seen it in the powder form. And that bed over there is, I suspect, Doom Poppies, only they’ve all closed up for the night.”

Fairhrim walked ahead of Osric, pointing as she went. “That’s a soporific. That one’ll turn your kidneys to mush. That’s Hecate’s Woodbine, we use it as a chemical restraint at Swanstone. And this whole section here—I’ve no idea. I think they may be hybrids. Experimental.”

“This crop must be worth a fortune,” said Osric.

“I know some pharmacologists who would give up a limb for access to this place,” said Fairhrim. “Hang on…”

Upon her face was an expression so alien it took Osric a moment to place it.

It was confusion.

“What’s the matter?” asked Osric.

“I’ve just realised—none of those plants should be blooming at once. Not the ones I know, anyway. Most of them bloom in spring—some are late bloomers and only throw up inflorescences in the autumn. But it’s summer. And we’re in the open air. These aren’t greenhouse conditions. So how are they all blooming at the same time, as though it’s spring and summer and autumn all at once…?”

Osric had no answer to offer. They continued into the centre of the spiral. A crooning, tinkling song filled the air as they advanced.

Osric was heavy about the legs after the climb. It had taken its toll on Fairhrim, too; she was dragging her feet.

They finally approached the Færwundor. The squat tower had windows and doors, but no glass or wood crossed them; the Druids apparently liked to keep things au naturel within. On either side of the Færwundor’s entrance stood two more hooded Druid sentinels.

Osric bypassed the sentinels in the shadow-walk with Fairhrim in his arms, straight into the tower’s vestibule. He put Fairhrim down when they were safely inside. She was pale-lipped, but didn’t have that particular greenish tinge that heralded vomiting.

“Almost there,” whispered Osric.

“Thank Frīa,” said Fairhrim. “My legs are done for; I can hardly lift them.”

“Mine, too. Keep your voice low and your eyes open. I don’t know if those sentinels are going to patrol.”

Fairhrim sniffed the air. “Something smells awful.”

“Cadaverine,” said Osric.

He and Fairhrim looked at each other. Osric felt a bit sluggish not only in the legs but in the brain. Cadaverine? What had died? He slipped back into the shadow-walk and stuck his head out of the Færwundor’s entrance.

Neither Druid sentinel moved, in spite of the Fyren popping into existence between them.

Osric prodded one of them in the shoulder.

The Druid slithered to the ground in five or six decomposing parts. Only his torso remained at attention. It had been driven into the stone behind him with a stake.

Fairhrim, who had followed Osric out, said helpfully, “He’s dead.”

Osric pulled the hood off the other Druid to reveal not a face but a pulpy mass of maggots.

“Frīa,” gasped Fairhrim.

“Poor bugger.” Osric replaced the hood.

“Who did this?” asked Fairhrim.

Was there a slight slurring at the edge of her words, or was Osric hearing things?

“I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s get in. The healing is the priority. But be careful—something’s afoot.”

They reentered the vestibule—more accurately, stumbled into it—and peered into the Færwundor proper. No further Druids, alive or decomposing, were within.

They found a vast atrium bathed in moonlight. The Færwundor had no roof.

The tower’s interior walls, trickling with wet, were draped with more of those galactically beautiful flowers, which opened as Osric and Fairhrim passed them. Fairhrim got a real dose of one right up the nose; it forced her into a muffled sneezing fit.

On a plinth at the very centre of the atrium stood a great oak tree, stretching its stately arms towards the moon-filled sky. Osric discovered the provenance of the strange music: in the oak’s branches, chimes of copper and bronze rang softly. The tree’s roots circled the room and made a sculptural, art nouveau masterpiece of the floor and walls. Its leaves caught a soft yellow light, as though the sun of another place mingled with the moonlight.

Fairhrim studied the tree’s crown. Osric followed her line of sight. He thought, at first, that the tree was diseased. About a quarter of its boughs were bare and dry. Above that, tender green shoots peeped. The next quarter featured full, dark green foliage, and the final one, leaves burning with the red death of autumn, and heavy with acorns.

“How is it in all four seasons s-simultaneously?” whispered Fairhrim.

She was slurring. Osric regarded her with concern; perhaps it was her fatigue, or an effect of the shadow-walk.

The tree’s roots, blood dark, curled from the plinth into a pond at its base. Well, it looked like a pond, because it was locked in by wide, flat stones round its circumference—only the surface of the pond moved swiftly, emerging from a source to the right and disappearing in a frothy tumble under a rock ledge to the left.

“Look at the current. That must be the River Istorr. It passes under the Færwundor. I suppose it surfaces briefly here,” said Fairhrim.

“I thought we were looking for an intersection between watercourses,” said Osric.

Fairhrim pointed at the oak tree’s plinth. A man’s face was hewn into it; carved leaves made up his hair and beard, and a purling stream frothed from his mouth. The water sparkled green, unlike the black-silver river.

“Th-there,” said Fairhrim. “That’s where we’ll want to do the healing.”

They approached. The flagstones underfoot softened as stone gave way to damp moss dotted with violets and the occasional reed.

Osric and Fairhrim stood before the great oak in silence. The tree’s enormity stifled them, made them subdued. They were in the presence of something ancient. The place felt too sacred for words.

The patch of sky above lightened. A warbler sang its aubade. Flutelike notes spiralled upwards. The scent of crushed nectarines filled the air and tickled at Osric’s brain.

Fairhrim tore her attention from the oak to her pocket watch. “Almost dawn,” she whispered. “It’s time.”

Osric removed his hood, pulled down his cowl, and loosened his collar. He felt a great heaviness not only in his legs but in his arms. But all had gone as smoothly as he had hoped. If the Færwundor stayed this quiet, the way out would be easy, too.

Now he needed Fairhrim to pull off another miracle healing.

“Dare I be stupid enough to hope again?” he asked. His tongue felt thick. The air was cloyingly sweet.

“This place was the most promising time and place yet, in termsh—in terms—of the data,” said Fairhrim. She attempted to put away her pocket watch, fumbled it, and pulled it up from its chain. She frowned and stared at her fingers.

At their feet, the Begbéam moon’s reflection danced in the waters of the river. Wavelets surged around the moon, distended her, broke her; steadfast and indomitable, she reappeared, a white sphere among rushing black.

A moth pollinated one of the purple flowers. Osric watched as the flower dropped under its weight. The moth fluttered drunkenly off; the flower sprang back up into place.

The heart melody of the warbler rang through the tower.

Osric said that it was beautiful.

Fairhrim regarded him with worry.

Silly fool. There was nothing to be concerned about. All was well. Life brimmed around them. And how glorious the oak, which had stood here for a hundred frail human lifetimes; and how enchanting the moon, softening everything into fleecy points of light; and how incredible the purity of the dew upon the moss. All was so beautiful it almost brought him to tears.

That was when he began to suspect that something was wrong.

He knew something was wrong when Fairhrim, staring vacantly at nothing, pressed her forefingers together and said, “Tibwiddles.”

A part of his brain registered quite how wide her pupils were, and that this was, perhaps, a point of concern.

The warbler sang. Osric listened, but he did not hear the sound through his ears. Sound wasn’t sound; he could perceive it by the eye as well as by the ear. Small shocks and aftershocks emanated from the warbler in notes that fell like pebbles in still waters and dissipated into wide golden circles.

“It’s so shiny,” said Fairhrim, staring at the warbler, too. Her voice came from far away, and joined the warbler in sending concentric waves of light around them.

“We’re high off our gourds,” said Osric.

His own voice added to the ripples in wide violet-blue arcs. They intersected with hers.

Fairhrim fell into a heap beside him, boneless. “I suppose the flowers are a hallucinogenic,” she said softly.

She was unbothered by the thought. Osric knew that she should be bothered by it, and so should he. But why? They lay on moss at the edge of a pool, and leaves caught the light of the moon, and that was what was really important.

Why was he here, again? He was pleasantly confused.

Fairhrim said, “I’ve got to heal you.”

She crawled towards Osric as he—his legs having gone completely numb—pushed himself towards her.

The first rays of dawn tinged the sky pink. Fairhrim, her legs tangled with Osric’s, pressed her palm to his nape and pushed her seith into him. Her tācn was a beauty all of its own, a stream of white light.

Time was no longer passive; like her seith it glimmered and swelled, pulsed like a heartbeat, refracted and intensified. With his hands in the moss, Osric could feel the earth moving beneath him—could feel its spin, how every revolution made a day, and how those days whirled into years, and years into centuries, only time was compressed and erased now, it did not exist linearly; it was like the four-season tree.

There, somewhere between time and untime, between self and unself, over the door to the Annwn, Fairhrim poured her healing into him. Osric’s skin seemed as translucent as a moth wing; he could see his seith channels and the light where Fairhrim’s seith filled them. He was at her mercy; her light went everywhere, into brain and eyes and heart, pushing healing in little jolts along the nodes, and in long rushes in his seith channels.

She pulled her tācn away. Then, humming dreamily to herself—Fairhrim never hummed dreamily to herself—she leaned over the edge of the water and peered into it. “There are other stars down there. And another moon, and another sky.”

“Are we the Up or are we the Down?” asked Osric.

“I don’t know,” said Fairhrim.

They leaned over the water’s glassy black depths. The oak tree’s leaves trembled restively; the chimes were alarmed. Osric felt compelled to fall into the pond; he was possessed by a sense of something everlasting awaiting him there, of a beautiful finality. Fairhrim looked down, equally entranced.

The oak tree and its bells rustled again; it was no longer a song but a warning.

Then—the strangeness of it stretched Osric’s brain to the utmost—the tree spoke.

“Don’t do it,” said the tree.

“I want to do it,” said Fairhrim.

“Have you heard of the Threefold Death?” asked the tree.

“Yes,” said Osric. “But there aren’t any Druids in here, so we’ve escaped that difficulty.”

“Poor creature,” said the tree. “You haven’t escaped it.”

“What?”

“You’re in it.”

5