Capítulo 5: Chapter 5
Henry, Aisling, Zachary, Irene, Flora and Percy left the crumbling boundary of the chapel and followed the path the brambles had taken.
The only way around the tide of bristling, twitching, barbed tendrils was through a grotto of smaller caves. There were myriad tunnels and gaps between huge boulders that had come to rest there, aeons ago. Water trickled down the cavern stalactites and the rock face in a glistening, slimy sheen, and the barbed thicket reached through each damp part like prying fingers.
'This is wild land. I've never been further so I don't know what's beyond,' Henry muttered to the others as he cast his lantern about.
'Even after all the time you've spent here?' asked Irene.
'Yes, even after all the time I've spent here. It doesn't do you good to poke around in what doesn't concern you,' Henry rebuked, and Irene looked quite hurt.
Henry shook his head. 'So happens I don't know everything, even after all this time,' he said in a more neutral tone, and led on through a tunnel.
They travelled further into the wilder reaches of the caves, where many whispers, chuckles and unexplained noises echoed like a deep forest night. Here, though, the thorns had taken less of a hold and appeared sickly, weak, and flimsy.
'It's drier here, we've left the damp behind,' observed Percy.
They emerged from the maze-like network of tunnels and crevices to a wider chamber in the rock. The band of light was visible, a long way in the distance. Here, the dry tendrils that crackled underfoot rose to a solid wall. It was tall, warped and bristling with spikes and didn't even offer a glimpse inside, no matter how far they walked around. For all the height it had grown to, the wall was dry and brittle. The leaves were black and flaked off like ash when Henry ran his gauntlet along it.
'What is this? It isn't natural surely. Is this the work of the fey folk?' Flora wondered aloud.
'Fey aren't the only ones down here. There are tales I've heard of other beings that gather in these caves. Things that draw strength from the magic,' Henry replied.
'Like what?' asked Flora.
'Could be anything. I've been down here a while, but I don't have all the answers,' Henry said in a weary voice. 'We need to find out for ourselves.'
'Can you burn it with magic like before?' asked Percy.
'I feel that would be unwise, being this close to the source. Besides, I don't have much powdered ore left. I'm running dry and am not too happy about having to use it today.' It sounded as though Henry grit his teeth as he spoke. 'See if you can work a way through, even better would be without breaking any strands. You never know what might happen.'
Aisling hooked a pickaxe around one cluster of vines and pulled them back. They made a brittle, cracking noise as they parted way. With help from the others and their tools, in time they made a parting wide enough to duck through.
'What if it snaps shut on us when we're halfway through?' Zachary quavered. Aisling was about to take the first step through the parting. She stopped, with her foot in the air, and then put it back where it was before.
Henry gave a fierce grumble and his rough, fearsome helmet shot a scowl Zachary's way. He went first and although the thorns picked and tore at the sacking layer under his metal plates, the vines remained still.
An unexpected sight met their eyes as they passed through the gap.
'A garden!' Exclaimed Flora. 'Look, it has pathways and trees; these must be flowerbeds and lawns. But oh, they're all dried up and dead.' Flora cast her lantern about and illuminated dead, white, grass and beds of flowers that were grey, lifeless, and desiccated. 'There's no water, and no light. No wonder it's all dried up.'
'When it was in bloom it must have been beautiful,' remarked Zachary.
'Who planted all this, and how did they manage to grow it down here?' wondered Percy.
They followed gravel pathways tastefully lined with cut stone and privet hedges, and then turned a corner to the centre of the garden. Here, the plant life was not dead, but was wilting and wracked with disease. Rats scuttled among the plant matter that remained alive, away from the lanterns' light. The yellowed, sagging leaves were chewed through by rats, slugs and maggots that hung off them in fat gobbets and the air was heavy with a droning cacophony of flies.
At the centre of the garden appeared to be a stone altar with a tree growing from it. Around the tree's branches were tiny specks of light that floated in the air, as fine as sand. The glow they made was weak, so much so, that with it one could barely see that the tree had silvery bark and scant few leaves.
'What are those lights?' asked Aisling. She walked closer to the tree and swung a kick at some lingering rats on the way. She reached up to waft her hand through the little specks of light. They floated away from her fingertips, as light as smoke, and just as impossible to grasp.
Aisling gave a sudden gasp and stumbled back away from the tree. 'There's a body! There's a body in the roots!' she exclaimed.
The others came forward and saw that there was indeed a young girl inside the altar. Her deathly pallid body was pinned down in a bed of earth by the tree's roots. A layer of vicious looking, blood red nettles with a downy layer of stinging fur was wound around the tree's roots and cloaked the body inside like a veil. The girl inside gasped, twitched and grimaced in discomfort.
A stray rat fell from where it gnawed on a tree branch. The unfortunate creature dropped down on to the nettles where it squealed and writhed in a wide-eyed frenzy for a few moments before it stiffened up and lay still.
'She's trapped in there. This thing must be draining the life out of her!' Henry exclaimed. 'Let me see if I can get her out.'
Henry tore at the nettles with his stave, and tried to prise a root away with it. Within the tree roots, the girl's eyes fluttered open. Each eye was black like the berries of nightshade. Her mouth opened and she let out a piercing shriek that shook all those around to their core and made them weak at the knees.
'Get out, pest! Always hurting my garden, always hurting me.' A voice, feeble and trembling, came from the girl in the tree roots. The breath it took to speak the words sounded frail and tormented.
'We're trying to help you, we're going to get you out,' Henry explained. He held each side of his helmet, as his ears rang.
'You can't uproot me. You should have stayed out. This garden is my home; this garden is me,' the girl made great effort to speak each phrase. Her eyes fluttered shut again, and she make pained gasps.
'The garden is you?' Flora asked in bafflement.
'It's alright, it's fine. We'll leave,' Zachary interjected and tugged on Flora and Irene's sleeves to pull them away from the tree and the body tangled in its roots.
'My soil needs nourishment. So sick. So dry, so thirsty,' the girl intoned in a feverish whisper.
'Water! You want water!' Flora exclaimed. 'The thorns aren't after us, or the chapel. They want the water flooding the other side. Yes, we can get you water!'
'Little pests everywhere, come to feed off me. Get out!' the girl whispered in a delirious murmur. Her eyes partially opened again, this time seeming as though she might cry. 'On the other side is the one who wants winter. Unnatural frost bites my vines and freezes them. She took my water and froze it so now I have to reach further. Too far; past the building of that damned company. Enemies on the outside and pests within. It hurts…'
Away on the edge of the garden there was a brittle cracking as the wall of thorns parted. Through it, an unpleasant, cold wind blew that nipped at everyone's faces. The girl fell back to silence and fitful sleep.
'What can we do about all these rats and slugs and– ' Zachary swatted grotesque, bloated flies away from his face. '-Everything else? Should we stay and try to drive some off?'
'We'll be here forever,' Aisling grumbled in a flat response.
'We can't do much about this mess. The best we can do is to see what froze her source of water,' Henry said, his steps crackling over a bed of dry reeds. He made off for the parting in the thorns and the others hastened along after.
Outside the garden, the cold breeze was strong. It carried particles of hail on it that stung the bare faces of the mining troupe, who huddled deeper into their uniforms against the cold. Here, they saw the cavern was covered with frost and the layer of moss, lichen and fungus was frozen and kept preserved, as on the last day of its life.
The six of them came to a chamber in the cave. Here, the wintery air blew so hard that they had to shield their eyes against snow that blasted out and lay in drifts ankle deep. A blue-white glow lit it from within.
Aisling slipped and reached for support. Her hand sunk deep into snow. She grasped an object, and pulled it out.
'What's this?' Aisling barely had time to say aloud. The blizzard dropped and the air cleared. On a rush of cold wind, a horrifying, dark shape leapt across the chamber, straight at Aisling.
With quick reflexes, Aisling jerked her pickaxe up in front of her, and the metal head rang with an impact as the dark shape collided.
What met Aisling's eyes was a hideous apparition of a woman. Her skin was grey and morbid as someone who had perished in freezing cold, and she was wrapped in a ragged shroud. Her lips were pulled back and her teeth bared in a death-mask of frozen hate, and her madly staring eyes were yellow, with slit pupils, like those of a cat. Aisling recoiled, mute and wide-eyed with horror.
Henry lunged in and swung his stave at the apparition. Without turning his way, the apparition grabbed the stave with one hand and held it tight. Henry struggled to pull it back, it was stuck fast.
'That's mine,' the spectre hissed at Aisling.
Aisling drew back and let go of the pickaxe, which, although she had pulled with all her strength, was held rigid in the shrouded woman's clutch. She saw that the object she held was a statuette. It had a head, paws, ears, and tail that were so precise and delicate in form that it seemed lifelike.
'My baby,' the ghoulish woman growled and dropped the pickaxe. She flung Henry's stave across the chamber. Hunkering down, the woman made a slow advance on Aisling without breaking her stare.
There was a crackling noise and the head of the statuette turned to face Aisling. It flailed its paws and squirmed from side to side, as slow as if it floundered in tar. A dark shape moved within, that Aisling could now see was the body of a frozen kitten.
In Aisling's grip, the statuette was so finely crafted that it looked very fragile. The apparition paused. Her withered, white hands were outstretched not towards Aisling, but the kitten.
'Get back. I'll break it,' Aisling threatened, and clutched the little thing around the neck.
'No, don't harm my baby!' The apparition gave a mournful wail.
'Aisling, come this way, towards my voice. We'll back out and then put it down, gently,' Henry called in as soft a voice he could whilst still being heard.
'Back off, or I'll snap it,' Aisling snarled at the creature, and took faltering steps backwards towards Henry.
The apparition shrank down to a crouch and circled around to one side. Her purple tongue flicked out to lick her upper lip and she emitted a low growl.
'Look, there's more kittens,' Irene whispered and pointed to a host of other statuettes in the snow. They were arranged in a congregation around the edge of a chamber and looked on at the scene. Together, the rest of the group edged towards an exit from the chamber.
Aisling reached the others as the grey shrouded woman grew increasingly agitated, and paced from side to side. Together, the miners turned and ran for the exit, and Henry stooped to grab his stave along the way. Aisling still clutched the kitten under her arm.
The woman pursued them, close behind, but when they left the swirling blizzard she pursued them no further and stopped at the edge of where the snow drifts lay. The woman gave a chilling, heart-rending wail behind them.
'For God's sake Aisling, why did you go and do that? And why did you bring it with you?' Irene scolded, gasping for breath.
'I'm not bloody well going back!' Aisling exclaimed.
'This doesn't get any easier, does it?' Percy remarked. 'Now we have more problems to deal with.'
Navigating by the distant beam of magic light, they set off in the direction of the chapel. The route they took was along a fissure in the rock. At one point, many centuries ago, it may have been the bed of an underground river. Now there was only loose gravel beneath their feet.
'What are we supposed to do? Neither of those wretched hell spawn can be reasoned with and we're stuck in the middle!' Zachary bemoaned his fate.
'I don't know!' Henry shouted and jabbed his stave at the ground.
'We've still got the flooding problem as well. And Dale. We left him unattended back at the chapel,' Irene said.
Henry growled and quickened his pace, setting off ahead of them.
'Hey, I was only thinking aloud!' Irene called. 'Why does he get mad at us all the time? Lord preserve us.'
Back at the chapel, they were met with the sight of Dale looking wild-eyed and frenzied.
He stood up on the ledge where the rock pool was. His jacket was off, and his shirt was open and damp with perspiration. He was in the process of heaving stones on to a rough mess of a dam at the chapel door while water continued to seep through.
'I'll build it up, you'll see! It'll take more than this to get past me and my dam. Just you watch, I'll show you how it's done,' Dale raved as he threw another rock down to the loose, wet pile.
The others climbed up to have a look, but none of them wanted to get too close to their increasingly unhinged colleague.
'The pool's much bigger than it was before,' Percy whispered, trying not to provoke Dale. Indeed, the dark waters had grown in size, from when it was a simple rock pool fed by a trickling beck, to the size of a pond.
'Look how many fish there are! They're all wriggling on the surface and jumping in the water. The whole pond is full of them, and weeds and silt too. Ugh, it's disgusting,' Flora whispered back.
'Dale, knock it off. This is a complete mess. It's not working,' Henry called.
'No I shan't! This is how it's done,' Dale exclaimed. 'There's a good stone,' he remarked and waded into the pool's shallows.
'Careful, Dale,' Zachary called.
The others watched as, waist deep in the water, Dale stooped to pick up a rock. He yelped as he stumbled and made a sudden plunge beneath the surface. A few smirks among the others gave way to concern when he didn't come back up.
Strands of plant life and murk made it hard to see, but faint lights shimmered and swirled above as though they were moonlit clouds. All around Dale was the dark of night. It was cold. Everything seemed motionless, and weightless, as though time had stopped.
Something was holding on to his ankle. There was a dim light below, and a dark shape that rose up to meet him. It had a human head, arms, and upper body, but something else moved behind it, writhing and swishing from side to side.
Dale realised that he was underwater. The figure that moved towards him was swimming. It had no legs, but a long, serpentine tail. A flurry of bubbles escaped his mouth as he thrashed his arms but he was held fast by the thick rope of weed that anchored him to the pond's bed.
The figure glided up to Dale. Its face was pointed and angular; one could almost have said it was beautiful, but there was something eerily inhuman about its bulbous, dark eyes and pointed teeth. A row of gills ran along each side of its neck. Dale mutely goggled at the monster he saw before him. Its hair floated around its unblinking, ghastly face like pond weed.
'Listen to me, boy.' A voice appeared in Dale's head without the monster seeming to move its mouth. 'I, among all fae, was chosen as the embodiment of this river. On the surface, man has dammed my rivers, polluted my waters and fished my creatures to naught. I sought to take my gift of life away from the surface so I sunk its waters down here. My passage was frozen shut by some evildoing witch so I sunk this new channel.
'What you're going to do for me is undam my waters and let me flow. You shall not hold me back, dirty my waters or eat of the many beings that live within me. Now go!'
As he was about to pass out, Dale found himself propelled to the surface. He burst above the water and sprawled into the shallows. There he gasped and floundered, thrashing and stumbling, until he made it to dry rock where he coughed and spat, and muddy weeds trickled and spilled all around him.
'Dale, are you alright?' Irene asked in concern. The others drew in to help, except Henry who stood and chuckled to himself.
'There's a m… there's a m…' Dale stammered, pointing at the water. 'A mermaid! It said…'don't eat the fish'.' Dale's voice was weak, as though he couldn't believe the words he was saying. He got to his feet, seized a pickaxe and wedged it under a boulder at the pool's edge, where the water met the ridge.
'I have to undam the pool. The river needs somewhere to run. The mermaid told me so!' Dale yelled.
'Dale, no!' Henry cried, but Dale wrenched down on the pickaxe. The boulder rolled out with a crash and the water of the pool was freed. It cascaded down to the dry river bed the others had walked along and carried its load of fish, weeds and mud towards the icy blizzard.
'Oh God, she is not going to like that,' Irene whispered, aghast.
'Dale, what have you done?' Flora wailed.
'There was… there was a mermaid…' Dale uttered in a helpless voice, as though he still could not believe the words he was saying. He peeled some pond weed from himself and wiped away the muddy sediment from his face.
All they could do was watch as the water made its way to the frozen catacombs. There was a moment's pause before they felt a tremor on the air and a noise that could have been the soughing of the wind or a distant scream of anguish. With a crackling, crunching sound, a layer of ice rushed along the water's surface from the catacombs towards them. In a matter of moments it turned the waterfall to a veil of frosted glass and coated the surface of the pool in a crystalline pane.
There was a frantic splashing as the mermaid burst from the surface. It tried to break clear of the ice but was bound to the water. Everyone stared in amazement at the creature that writhed as it was bared to the surface and gasped in the air.
The mermaid was trapped, chest deep, in the hardening, frozen pool. Across the icy river that now led from the catacombs, the frozen cadaverous woman soared with uncanny speed, straight for the mermaid. Her dark shroud flapped and her mottled, ghoulish hands had their pointed claws outreached.
The woman snarled and wrapped her claws around the mermaid's neck. 'You! Trying to flush me out, fish-monster? I'll show you who these caverns belong to and save my little ones!'
Unnatural, foul witch! Curse you! The mermaid opened and closed its mouth, helpless in the witch's crushing grip.
'Stop! Let the mermaid go!' Cried Irene, in horror at what she saw.
'Shh! What are you doing? We'll be next!' Percy urged Irene to be quiet in a choked whisper. Henry made a desperate fumble for the last of his lodestone powder.
'I- I have your kitten!' Aisling shouted to the witch, and held up the kitten. It had begun to drip as it thawed.
'My child!' The witch turned to Aisling, and let the mermaid go.
Henry's stave ignited with magic fire.
'What are you? And what power is this that you have?' Henry challenged the witch, and pointed the stave at the kitten.
'No!' The witch cried and gave a wail of panic. It sounded inhuman, more like the noise from an animal.
'Answer me!' Henry demanded.
'I took this human's form…' the witch began, faltering on her words.
'Are you a fae?' shouted Henry. The kitten wriggled helplessly in Aisling's grip. 'You're not like any fae I ever saw.'
'No. I'm a cat. I was a cat,' the witch responded in a mournful voice.
'This human witch, the one whose body you see, forced me to bear litters of babies then took them away. It was so much pain. Conception, pregnancy, labour; endless, exhausting cycles of it. Each time, I knew they would be taken away from me, even as I washed and nursed them. So many babies. She would sacrifice them and use their souls for her magic.
'She took the magic stone from down here. She travelled down the shaft of a well to get it; the same well she cast my babies down when she was done with them.
'My sorrow was so great it was like a winter inside me. I craved vengeance. So great was my sorrow; so great was my rage, that the magic heard me. The time came that I no longer bore litters and was cast to the same fate as my children. My spirit lingered, and when the witch slipped and perished to the winter's cold without aid, my spirit took her place.
'My mind opened up to new, terrifying vistas of the witch's knowledge, and from the energy in the caverns, her powers increased a thousandfold. This frozen hell is mine forever, but at least I can preserve my little ones in the winter born from within me. Now give him back!' the creature wailed.
Although she stammered, Irene said; 'You want to save your kittens? The river needs somewhere to run. It wants to protect the life it makes, so you both want the same thing. There is also another; a girl whose garden depended on the water, but you froze it over. Now she is dying and has sent these thorns. I hear your story. You know the anguish of loss, but you are going to cause the loss of the river life, and there's a little girl out there who needs you to let the water flow again.'
'Why should I care about others' loss when no-one cared for mine?' hissed the witch.
'Your children have already gone. There's nothing you can do to bring them back, you've only frozen them. You're only making what you yourself called a frozen hell.' Zachary said, even though his voice wavered.
The witch turned its demonic, feline eyes to them in despair.
'I'll make the choice easy for you,' growled Henry. 'Let these waters flow, and you can have this back' He held his burning, glowing stave closer to the frozen kitten, and more drips came from the tiny form's melting ice.
'I vowed. I vowed to keep my little ones close, forever. Never to let my babies go. I vowed I would bring my winter to the world that took them from me,' the witch lamented, in a hollow whisper. 'Gone; they're all gone. Dead. And here am I with this witch's cursed form!'
The air, which had hung with bitter cold, lost its chill. All around, the ice began to melt with a soft crackle and dripping as it thawed.
'Release me from this nightmare,' the witch gave a defeated whisper.
The witch's body became rigid in the place she stood, then began to dissolve in front of the others' eyes. Her death-grey skin soughed away like dust and the pale bone beneath disintegrated like chalk. The shroud she wore flopped into the stream that flowed again as the ice broke, and the tattered garment washed away. Water spilled to the ground from Aisling's hands, and the kitten dissolved to black soot.
There was a moment where the distant beam of magic that hung in the air gave an intense glow, then all light dimmed and the cave was plunged to total darkness.
The light returned, and they saw a cat at the water's edge. It gave them a lingering, knowing look, and then ran in the direction of the garden in the thorns.
Regaining its senses, the mermaid swam upright in the pool.
You did a great thing here today. Thank you. I shall remember this, the mermaid addressed them, with its unearthly way of speaking without using its mouth. I vow to you that these waters shall always run clean and clear. You may drink freely and catch fish from it, but only the ones I bring to you, who will be docile and easily netted. Be warned, repay this gesture with greed and you shall bring my wrath. The mermaid sank below the surface and vanished.
'Is it over?' Flora asked in a little voice, clinging to Irene's sleeve.
Dale swayed where he stood, then trudged wetly back to the chapel without a word.
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