THE BLACKBERRY WITCH: chapter 18

All chapters of The Blackberry Witch

XVIII. Gravesong

“Elwood! Elwood, don’t you go sniffing off on your own again. Come back!”

The boy Saf darted ahead into the murk after his dog. Thomas’s heart lurched, but swiftly boy and dog both returned, the former with a mock scowl and the latter with the most earnest of panting grins. Thomas wasn’t sure how Elwood got himself around without bumping into every loose root and low-hanging branch; the shaggy black-and-white hair hanging over the dog’s eyes must surely have obscured all but his own hairy paws.

Still, I suppose he’s got that keen tracking nose, Thomas thought, following a few paces behind the boy and the dog. Let’s hope it can distinguish between the dead and the undead.

Thomas kept trying to engage Saf in conversation, but the boy was almost as flighty as Elwood and nearly half as oblique as Avery. Saf responded to questions with chuckles and odd gestures and a few half-finished phrases before something else distracted him: a belch of yellowish smoke from the bog, a hiss of steam as another dying tree collapsed into the muck, a distant bone-chattering howl from some unnamed monster. And off the boy’s attention romped like Elwood himself, the great shaggy guide leading them deeper toward the heart of Palewater.

Thomas supposed the boy was abashed in some regard of his origin and purpose in the bog. He didn’t appear injured, but Thomas could imagine that something had perhaps driven the boy and his dog away from a loving home and into the frightening clutches of the bog, where at once they’d become lost and then separated. In Saf’s position, Thomas knew that he himself would not be very forthcoming, and he was more than twice Saf’s age besides.

He resolved to give the little fellow his space. Whatever the boy’s reasons for entering Palewater Bog, they’d all need every bit of their attention to make it back out safely.

Cathán spent this portion of the muddy trek leaping from Thomas’s shoulder to Elwood’s and back again. Thomas could hear the Mouse Knight whispering to the dog, who responded with barks and—just once—a whine and a shake of the head. Avery, perched on Thomas’s other shoulder, seemed vaguely amused by the interplay of hound and rodent, although whenever Thomas laughed at one of Elwood’s antics and turned to see the raven’s reaction, Avery was immediately and wholly consumed with vain attempts to preen the oily vapors from his black feathers.

Slowly their path angled away from the muckiest parts of the bog, and they began to climb a long jumbled ridge of harder ground. Here and there spikes of rock poked up from the scrubby yellow vegetation on either side of the path. In some places, the rocks underfoot resembled scales, broad flat slabs curiously interlocked and sprouting knobbly trees and long split grasses with fraying bone-white flowers.

Thomas looked around. They hadn’t climbed high enough to have much of a vantage, nor did the haze shrouding the bog provide any sight of other distinguishing landmarks or even a hint of their destination. But they had ascended more than he’d expected, and the ground fell away on both sides, enough to make a breathless tumble were it grassy and green instead of rocky and foul.

As they walked, the ground beneath them began to shift. Thomas stumbled only a little and kept on. It wasn’t much movement—less an earthquake and more a dream-sigh of the rocky ridge they climbed. Still, it made Thomas and Cathán and Avery wary, and they each readied themselves and cast keen glances in all directions.

The boy Saf seemed unfazed, and of course Elwood didn’t notice much beyond the end of his own nose, still sniffing and leading them along the ridge.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Saf when Thomas asked about the faint rumbling of the ground, which continued intermittently as they walked. “That’s just the dead snake, I think. This whole track used to be a snake. See, you can see the shape of it, wiggling back and forth behind us. A great big snake that died and turned to stone. It’s dead, but sometimes it shifts a little anyway. This is a place where dead things don’t always quiet down.”

Saf said the words with a smile, but they made Thomas shiver. Appreciating the comforting warmth of Cathán against his neck, he squared his shoulders and trudged on in the wet gloom of the bog.

All at once the ridge ended in a lump of broken earth and deposited them at the edge of a crumbling wall of stone. Thomas stopped short.

“This is where you wanted to go, isn’t it?” Saf asked, looking back. “You’re looking for that mossy stone building, right? Elwood and I slept here two nights ago, just inside the castle courtyard. At least, I think it’s a castle, but it’s hard to tell now. It doesn’t have any proper castle things, like banners or towers or catapults. But the walls look like castle walls to me, and farther on there are some buildings that haven’t fallen down yet. They look like they’re being swallowed very slowly by the bog. They’re all wet with moss and covered in branches and leaves. Anyway, when we slept here before, we saw the building the little mouse was talking about. Big square building, like a tomb for a wizard. I can take you there. We just have to go into the ruins.”

Thomas squelched after Saf and Elwood into the flooded ruins. He agreed with Saf’s assessment almost at once—this had certainly been a castle. He recognized the walls and courtyards and walkways well enough from drawings in the old book of stories Mother kept by the hearth. And Father had described for him a hundred times the sight of Castle Hybria, the great city-castle he’d visited when he was younger and worked as a traveling merchant.

Thomas had listened raptly to those stories, and it had served him well. But it also made him wonder. “Who would build a castle in the middle of a bog?” he asked aloud, directing the question to Cathán and Avery. “Or was the castle here first and the bog came in after?”

“Foolish to build a castle where a bog is going to be,” sniffed Avery, “but nobody every consults the birds in their architectural pursuits, no, not even though we can see for leagues in all directions, forward and backward and the rest. But that is the way of your human people. Likely they built the castle and then ran away when the bog came home.”

“Or the snake,” said Cathán, less flippantly. “Something turned the ancient warrior to bones, after all.”

Thomas turned a corner and found himself knee-deep in mud and stagnant water. He grimaced. He was already wet and dirty, so there was nothing for it but to press on—but he’d lost sight of Elwood and Saf. He couldn’t imagine the dog making in through this drowned passage, but there was no other way to go. On second thought, that dog would just tramp through a place like this. But where’s he gone now?

“Saf!” Thomas called. “Saf! Elwood! Saf?”

He repeated the cries again, pressing forward through the muddy hallway to a nominally drier alcove. “Saf?”

Cathán and Avery joined in. No response came.

“Perhaps we might follow the raven’s counsel and seek higher ground?” Cathán suggested. He glanced down at Thomas’s feet and his whiskers twitched. “I don’t envy your state, friend Thomas, but I thank you. We should find a high wall or the wreckage of a tower from which to spot the boy and the dog.”

Thomas agreed and headed onward. After another three turns, they came to an intersection in the roofless remains of the ancient castle: three possibilities opening before them. Thomas stopped and looked down each one. All contained only the yellowish haze of the bog and the slime and mold and moss fading from green to black as the hallways disappeared in the dark. He glanced at his companions.

“Every warrior must someday dirty his own paws,” Cathán pronounced, leaping from Thomas’s shoulder toward the left-hand passage. “I’ll take this side. Avery, fly down the right hallway, as high as you can without getting swallowed by the fog. Thomas will tackle the mysteries of the middle corridor. We’ll meet back here if we exhaust our routes. Shout out the word if you regain the boy and his dog or need our assistance.”

Off scampered the doughty Mouse Knight. Thomas looked at Avery, who was staring upward with a worried expression. Much like the bog outside, the interior of the castle, though open to the air, was blanketed in a heavy gray fog about ten feet above Thomas’s head. The hanging gloom had kept Avery from flying too high or from surveilling the castle ruins prior to their entrance. Now the raven shrugged his wings and flapped up and into the right-hand hallway, leaving Thomas alone in the intersection.

The boy from Mídhel frowned and checked the fastenings on his satchel and stepped forward down the center hallway. It was dark here too, the sort of dismal gray twilight hanging at the edge of sleep, or the fuzzy pallid sensation of having slept too little or too long. Thomas cleared his throat and pressed onward, taking careful steps to avoid the worst puddles, straining his eyes to see the way ahead.

The hallway turned to the right and then back to the left. Thomas hadn’t imagined the interior of a castle would be so large, so winding. He tried to guess where he might be. On either side of the hall were rotted doors and the crumbling outlines of rooms. One of them looked like it might be a kitchen; another had the appearance of a storeroom, or just the memory thereof, everything but the walls stripped away and moldering.

Abruptly, he turned a corner and saw something blacker than the hallway fluttering toward him. Thomas fumbled for his knife and backed away. A moment later, his senses caught up with his instincts and he let his hands drop, breathing a great sigh of panicky relief. Avery alighted upon the boy’s shoulder and leaned against his neck.

“Nothing in that direction,” the raven said. Thomas could feel Avery’s heart beating very fast against his neck and ear. “Suppose we’ll just continue on your pathway now. I hope the mouse has found a less confusing portion of the castle to explore. Mice are not so big as humans.”

Thomas could hear the real concern beneath Avery’s careless tone, and that frightened him right anew. The boy moved forward, knowing that the sooner they faced whatever terrors the castle hid, the sooner it’d all be over, one way or another. It wasn’t a very positive outlook, but it was enough to keep him moving.

They came to the wreckage of a stairwell. It led up to a crumbling walkway that might have served as an ideal vantage for the rest of the ruins, but Thomas stopped short, reluctant to proceed beyond the first step. Avery clacked his beak in worry, gripping Thomas’s shoulder tightly.

“That’s—,” Thomas said. His throat was dry. He wished he had a fresh skin of water, but he’d drunk his supply while walking along the snake-ridge. “That’s—”

“One of those human campfires, yes,” Avery interjected. “Burnt-up logs, embers and ash, blackened stones, even a little piece of flint left behind. Yes, surely a campfire, made by something living, and not too many days ago. All very positive things, yes.”

“Yes, I suppose, but—what about that?” Thomas asked, pointing. Next to the campfire was a pile of yellow bones covered in pinkish lumps of wet, stringy goop. Draped over one section of the bone-pile was something much akin to a skinned rabbit, though it had no fur and was yellow with splotches of green. Thomas had never imagined a sight more disturbing.

He was almost grateful for the sound of tiny feet behind him, for though it nearly made him collapse from fright, it was at least a forced reprieve from the gruesome scene on the stairwell.

Thomas turned to see Cathán hurried toward him down the hallway. The Mouse Knight leapt up onto Thomas’s shoulder. “Nothing down the left-hand hallway, so I doubled back to find the two of you. No sign of Saf or Elwood, either. Thomas, my friend, are you well? You’re bog-yellow, unless that’s just some trick of the light here.”

“I’m not sure how much more fright I can take,” Thomas admitted, “but I’m well enough for now. At least—Cathán, look.” He turned around to face the Mouse Knight toward the stairwell.

“Ah,” said the First Captain of the Thistledown Kingdom, and the syllable was grimmer and dourer than any other Thomas had ever heard. “I understand now. What a horrible thing to find in the gloom; I envy you even less now, friend Thomas, and even for the raven do I feel sympathetic. At least you were together when you came upon it. Come, turn away; no good comes from staring at the remains of a changeling.”

“A changeling?!” Thomas complied, retreating a short distance down the hallway, far enough that the campfire and bones and other leavings were just a mottling of color on the dark gray of the stone steps. Thomas had heard the stories of changelings, of course: fearsome tricksters, thieves of children, sharp devious creatures that wore others’ faces and led many to bloody deaths in the woods at night.

“Aye,” said Cathán; and then the Mouse Knight drew his weapon and leaned forward, holding to Thomas’s ear for balance. “And hark!”

Thomas listened. Rising from somewhere deeper in the ruins of the castle came a jangling voice, deep and throaty and rough, saying words Thomas couldn’t make out in a sing-song rhythm that felt oddly discordant to Thomas’s ears.

The voice got louder, closer. It was joined by a howl: a dog’s howl, but deeper and heavier than the howling Thomas had heard in previous hours; less playful, more menacing. The howl of a dog mixed with something worse. The voice grew louder and darker and more filled with dark delight. It was a boy’s voice and the voice of something older than the castle in its sometime glory; it was the mischief of youth and the dread certainty of ancient death.

Thomas swallowed hard. “The boy and the dog,” he said in a thin voice. “Do we run? Do we fight? If the boy’s a changeling, what’s the dog?”

“Something even heroic warriors will find challenging to defeat, I suspect,” said Cathán. “But we have yet wit and time and some advantage, even though we’ve been pulled along into an awful trap. Come, backward and over the changeling’s skin and up the steps to the walkway! We yet may catch a glimpse of the warrior’s tomb, or perhaps of our advancing foe, and thus we can better arm ourselves against the predators of Palewater Bog.”

Thomas obeyed quickly, hurrying to the side of the gruesome campfire scene and taking the stairs quickly. They curved upward to a thin walkway that had once connected the tower to some other building another dozen paces or so along the inner wall of the castle, a building that was now little more than a few piled stones weathered by time. The walkway itself collapsed halfway along, but it gave Thomas just enough room to pull himself up from the stairway and peer out over the misty ruins.

The same yellow fog coiled through the broken hallways of the old castle. It had receded somewhat overhead, giving Thomas the faintest glimpse of what he thought might be the rising sun of Monday, a weak and sickly patch of light shining brighter than the rest of the haze. He looked left and right. To the furthest extents of his vision, Thomas could see the outer edges of the castle ruins and the hillocks and bubbling pools beyond, the outline of a haphazard island in the midst of the bog. The earth there looked to strain beneath the weight of the castle ruins; the fetid water of the bog lapped greedily at its edges, long fingers of slimy moss crawling forth to claim the rocky soil.

Thomas also saw ghost-lights ringing the castle ruins. Glowing spheres of light bobbed over the bog and bumped up against what remained of the outer walls. They were mostly yellow and white, though some held a darker hue that hurt Thomas’s eyes, like spots of mold on the underside of a fern. The ghost-lights formed an unruly rank on all sides of the ruins, as far as Thomas could see: hemming them in, preventing their flight from the changeling and his demon.

“I smell sirens,” Cathán said, his voice so low it resembled a growl. “Out there in the water. The ghost-lights precede them.”

“But how?” Thomas cried. “We stayed away from the ghost-lights. We didn’t succumb to the sirens’ temptations.”

“They seem to be cannier foes that ever I imagined. But look!” The Mouse Knight grabbed Thomas’s ear and pointed. Away in the castle ruins, a pair of black shapes were silhouetted by the yellow haze, one on two legs and the other on four. The shapes moved toward them, and the dissonant chant of the changeling boy started up again.

“Any sign of the warrior’s tomb?” Thomas asked. He looked around, wishing somehow to pierce the fog of the ruins. “We can’t leave without the lichen, but we need to flee soon, before the sirens or the changeling can corner us. Unless you think he lied about having seen anything of value here at all?”

“Why would I lie?”

The voice came dark and deep out of the gloom. It was followed at once by the figure of the changeling himself, stepping up onto a broken half-platform parallel to Thomas’s walkway, only just beyond the reach of a man. Thomas’s skin prickled at the nearness of the monster, and he looked about for the disappeared dog.

“Don’t you worry now, Thomas; old Elwood’s just gone to snuffle about and take a bit of a nap,” said the changeling. “He’ll be back before the fun begins. Come, sit, let’s have ourselves a chat for a spell, while the sirens get their preparations.”

The changeling sat on the edge of the platform, seemed unconcerned about the sway and creak of its foundations, and dangled his feet over the edge. Thomas got his first clear look at Saf since they’d entered the ruins. He’d expected the boy to have transformed into some vile creature, but there sat the same Saf, a young boy with a mop of brown hair and freckles. Only the glint in the boy’s eyes denoted any change—that and the deepness of his voice and the cruel indifference of his words.

“Expecting a monstrous skin I’d be wearing, no doubt,” said the changeling. “Understandable. You don’t have much ken of the changing folk or our ways, I suspect, else you’d know better. The skin I left behind down at the bottom of the stairs was my prior form. Ugly little thing, but I did love the roughness of the skin on its chest. Had more muscle and meat to it that this boy, but I imagine I’ll grow some of that soon enough. I wore that form for many days before we met. Only by luck did I change to this young boy’s skin before you entered the bog. I doubt I’d’ve gained your trust otherwise.”

“Where you get the human skin?” Cathán demanded of the changeling. “From Thomas’s home, Mídhel?”

The changeling tilted his head to one side. “You don’t really want to know the answer to that question, I think.”

“What about your dog?” asked Avery. “What true form hides beneath that great brute’s body?”

“Elwood? Oh, he’s just a dog.” The changeling laughed. It was very much the laugh of a five-year-old boy, carefree and high, which wrenched Thomas’s stomach all the boy. “A very, very old dog, and very hungry always. He’s learned that I’ll provide him with the food he needs, and so he maintains his playful disposition with new friends. Needs no encouragement to romp about. You’d have been fast friends in your human village, I expect. And I assure you that he does consider you friends now, at least. So that should be some consolation.”

A noise came from behind them. Thomas glanced over one shoulder toward the ghost-lights. The lights had pressed in closer to the castle walls, though as yet none crossed over into the ruins proper. Beyond, he could see black forms moving in the yellowy gloom, shifting and fading in and out. The noise coalesced into a repeated sound, something between the buzz of an angry bumblebee and the breaking of stones in a rockslide or earthquake. The scent of poisonlily blooms reached him.

“That’d be the gravesong of the sirens,” the changeling said. Thomas looked back at the boy, who still dangling his legs over the edge of the sagging platform. “Not their usual tune meant to lure travelers in for a meal. Though, truthfully, I’ve never found the sirens’ song that pleasant; I have a hard time imagining how it works for them. I suppose you must be fully mortal to understand. Alas.”

The gravesong rose all around the castle ruins. Somewhere far away, Thomas heard Elwood’s deep howl join the raucous melody.

“In any case, it’s a rare treat to hear the sirens’ gravesong. They’re a greedy folk, but since so few travelers come this way anymore, they don’t feed too often. You’re perhaps the first to hear the gravesong in several years, I’d wager. A real treat to tell your friends about.”

“Why’d you bring us here?” Thomas asked. His mind was racing, trying to grasp onto a viable plan for escape, but thus far he’d found no purchase. “Why not feed us to the sirens at the pool before?”

The changeling scoffed. “The sirens are such messy eaters, Thomas. They chew through skin and bone indiscriminately. No sense of art or preservation or beauty. They’d’ve disturbed that lovely skin you’re wearing. And I needed you here for other reasons besides. The gravesong heralds death for the bog, and the bog rewards those who bring it blood. Blood gives life to the dead things in here, especially in these ruins at the very heart of the bog. I told you before that dead things don’t stay quiet, and I’m no liar.”

It seemed as though the gravesong reverberated through the stones of the castle ruins. The yellow fog had grown heavier and damper, clinging to Thomas’s chilled skin.

“Here in the castle,” the changeling continued, “the sirens will spill your blood into the bog and wake it up, give it a little more life and power. They’ll get the meat for their fill. I’ll get your skin. That’ll let me go hunt more new people in your village—Mídhel, you said? Sounds like a nice place. Your friends will be happy to see you returned whole.”

“You claim to be no liar,” said Cathán. “What about the tomb covered in moss and branches? The dog Elwood said it smelled of dead man’s bones. But that was just a lie to trick us here.”

“No lie at all,” replied the changeling. “The tomb of Sir Elbarion is what you’re looking for. It’s over that way”—he pointed over his right shoulder—“not a stone’s throw away. Difficult to find in the fog, but if you light a brand, the gloom clears right away and leads you right to the door of the tomb. Must be some kind of enchantment. You can find the old fellow’s bones there easily enough. I had no need for lies when the truth worked so well.”

The changeling boy stood, and something in his demeanor changed, as though all the bones in his face had shifted beneath his skin. “Pleasure traveling with you,” he said, his voice deeper still. “Safe journey to wherever your souls go.”

A new gravesong began then, ripped from the changeling boy’s throat, an awful accompaniment to the sirens’ song that ringed them in all directions. Thomas shuddered and gulped a breath, feeling the rapid heartbeats of Cathán and Avery on either side of his neck. Together they had some weapons and more bravery, but Thomas felt that neither would be enough against such fearsome foes.

The changeling leapt over the empty hallway with hardly an effort and landed a pace away from Thomas. The boy Saf’s mouth opened and revealed long pointed teeth much like the sirens’. His dark gravesong rumbled from deep in his chest, and over the unholy song, the changeling grinned and said, “Farewell, Thomas, Cathán, and Avery. Sleep in your blood in the deepest waters of Palewater Bog.”