Jennifer Shaw

This piece is a companion novelette to Elspeth and the Fairy. If you missed my May 13th post, you can read a little about this story’s context here.

You can also find Chapter One here and Chapter Two here.

Part II: IN THE FOREST

Chapter Three

Ruadh’s red head bobbed as the stallion plodded upward. Occasionally, his ears flicked sideways.

Ian wanted to shriek in his desire to hurry the beast, but the path up was too narrow and cluttered with rocks and fallen branches. The horse did not have the agility for anything faster, and Ian could not afford a stumble, so he kept his heels still in the stirrups, letting the horse set his own pace. Leaves brushed against them and twigs caught on the king’s sleeves, as though the forest wished to slow them further.

Hundreds of towering trunks, from thick massive firs to spindly white birches, rose from the tangled depths of fern, weed, and scrappy sapling, deep as Ian’s eyes could see. They pressed up and over him on both sides, threatening to swallow him. Only the narrow path cut a clear line ahead. The scene was dim as it always was in the primeval forest, though sunlight pierced larger gaps in the backlit canopy, full now with tender new leaves. Chipmunks, rabbits, and even a doe, flashes of fur, bounded away at the sound of Ruadh’s hooves. A squirrel shot up a tree.

They were right to distrust him.

Few birds made any sound, only a woodpecker somewhere high and hidden, tapping relentlessly. The sound chipped away at Ian’s skull.    

A lump of iron filled his gut. He’d been about to abandon his subjects without any real instruction. What if Alistair had not been there to question him?

Truly, what sort of monarch was he?

First, one who had proven too proud. Who’d invited chaos into his realm in the wake of his hubris and desertion, when he’d set out on his spiritual crusade ten years ago. He’d left in the hope of converting more souls and bringing them into his lands. But, early in his prideful journey, he had encountered the High Fairy Queen Aine, who led him to the shape-shifting witch, Sithia. It was that wicked she-demon who had seduced Ian into carelessness and complacency, then cast on him a monstrous spell, condemning him to live as a wretched half-man, half-goat, thus separating him from his duties and subjects for all time, as he’d feared.   

Young Elspeth, not knowing who he truly was, had been the only one willing to shelter him. Without the magic of her sacrifice years later, bargaining as she had with the meddling fairies for Alistair’s sanity in place of his love for her—thus buying the kingdom confidence once more in its presumed ruler-to-be, and thus stability—Ian’s lands might now be under the malicious influence of the fairies, or the fist of the ambitious Thane of Urquhart, whom Ian would have to deal with soon. Or both.

It had been too close. And it was all his fault.

Now, was he a king who still could not think straight? Who was too feverish with love to lead?

Though Elspeth, his devoted advocate for years, had likely broken his curse, was he too wrapped up in her? Ought he to have stayed behind and awaited her return while he tended to practical matters?

Did he deserve this restoration?

He was different, true. He was not that younger, foolish man who’d abandoned his subjects in a greedy crusade costumed as piety. He had since learned failure, hardship, humility.

Yet, just now, he’d left them again.

But the thought of placing Elspeth second twisted his heart. The kingdom had hobbled along, often well enough, without him for years; it could wait a little while longer.

Couldn’t it?

When the sun shone overhead, and the shadows were at their leanest, the horse’s easy rhythm lulled Ian. His head grew heavy.

His thoughts drifted back to Elspeth as a child. The first time she’d placed her smooth little hand in his chafed one, she’d been eleven or twelve. The gesture had been so sweet that Muir had almost yanked his hand away, afraid it was a trick. No one had touched him since he’d lain with that seductress, Sithia, except to shove or beat or throw things at him. Elspeth was never like that, of course. He’d hardly even seen her in a foul mood, let alone be cruel to anything.

She’d turned her face—golden in the firelight, her hair almost yellow—up to his and thanked him most earnestly.

“Your tales not only take me away to mysterious, wonderful lands,” she’d said. “They comfort me. They teach me how to be strong and righteous yet forgiving and merciful. They show me what love and goodness are. They teach me how to be brave. I do believe I learn more from you than I do my own father or Father Hamish.”

How his breath had caught!

Her face had fallen—“Is that wicked?!” 

He’d only laughed.

“I’m so glad you’re with us now,” she’d added, placing her other hand over his, though it was sticky from a burst boil. “I hope you remain here always. This is your home.”

That was the night everything shifted for Muir. When he’d been able to take hold, finally, of some kind of hope, secretly vowing to do all he could to support Elspeth in the Godliest way possible. Fiona, too, if she would let him. Even if he never returned to his form as King Ian, if he remained Muir until the day of his death, he would still have done good in the world. He would have encouraged this marvelous little sister-in-spirit and aided both girls in becoming their noblest selves. His life would not have been wasted.

He’d needed Elspeth. By the time he’d reached the age of eighteen, all of Ian’s brothers had died. His mother went shortly thereafter, and finally his father. In those initial years he’d been a solitary monarch. Anguished, and reflective, he’d often cloistered himself, focusing perhaps too intently on what God wanted. Deluding himself into believing he was more extraordinary than he truly was.

But the curse had given him siblings again, and a different kind of purpose. He had a new family. He was no longer alone.           

Ahead, a figure stood in the path, her back to him. A noblewoman by the looks of it. Dressed in a light-yellow gown with long, open sleeves. Her hands rested on her hips, thumbs forward, for he could only see her fingers at her slender waist.

Sunlight glossed her curly brown hair.

His Elspeth!

He pulled gently on the reigns, stopping the horse.

She stood in the same attitude she had that day last autumn, not long after her twentieth birthday. Muir had gone into the courtyard to fetch more firewood when he’d noticed her gazing up at the ruby and citrine leaves on the high trees beyond the castle walls. He hadn’t recognized her right away, but that womanly figure—her torso veeing to a narrow waist, the shapely curve of her seat beneath her skirts—and the vague floral scent wafting under his goat’s nose, defying the season, had made him ache with a new, sharp desire. And when she’d turned, and he saw on that figure his sweet Beth’s soft smile, the world had tipped right over.

“Do not the leaves look like jewels?” she’d asked him.

He could only gaze at her.

Though he’d fought the suspicions, those earliest guilty inklings, that day, he could no longer deny that Elspeth had become far more than a sisterly figure.  

And there she was again, just like that.

Agitated, Ruadh shifted his weight, his hooves pawing the soft ground. The figure turned.

She saw him, and her face lit up.

“Elspeth!”

Her brow creased. Her hands came to her mouth. She took two steps back.

“I—” he began

She dropped her arms to her sides, her entire body stiff like a frightened cat’s, and opened her mouth.

She screamed.

A blood-freezing screech.

Ian jerked awake.

Around him, the green-deep forest wavered.

He grabbed fistfuls of mane, squeezing his mount between his legs. Raudh’s gait shifted awkwardly. Upper jaw tingling, Ian pulled hard on the reins and, hand clamped over his mouth, looked ahead.

The path lay empty.   

“By Morrigan…”

Sweaty, he dismounted. Tying the horse to a limb, Ian strode over to a nearby stream pouring crystal water over a flat rock, smoothed bone-white by friction and time. He kneeled, cupped his hands, and drank from the frantic little waterfall. The cold liquid soothed his throat and stomach. He dashed some of it onto his neck and face, scrubbing his eyes and cheeks.  

Thirst quenched, his head clearer, he walked farther downstream. There, the path briefly plateaued and the water stilled. The sky above him hovered clear of branches, and he gazed down on the little pond’s surface, trying to glimpse his human face.

His reflection was fuzzy, elusive. He recognized general human features, but the water’s surface swirled in tiny, lazy eddies, and he could hardly discern anything distinct. Straining his gaze, he thought he saw a whitish shade of hair around his temples, and perhaps tiny lines radiating from his eyes, but the water’s slow motion mocked his efforts.

Did he look old? He had aged, of course; the skin on his face felt dry and tight.

Old, yet foolish still. Easily startled by a bad dream, though he had twenty years on Elspeth.

In truth, he could be her father.

She’d nurtured a kind of affection for Muir. But would she want him, Ian? Would she desire him, as a grown woman desires a man?

Back on Ruadh, several minutes later, he came across what appeared to be the same fierce little cascade. He stopped the horse, staring down.

The stone over which the water spilled was smooth and pale as ever. The same stone? 

When another block of time had passed, and he’d only traveled forward, and upward,  and the sun’s rays angled from the west, blazing the tips of western arbors while shrouding the east in shadow (though hardly enough time seemed to warrant such a solar passage), he came yet again to this same fall.

“What in Heaven’s name?” he whispered.

He sat atop the horse, staring at it, before climbing down from his saddle. Opposite the stream, he drew Saltire and cut a horizontal line in the tender flesh of a massive beech. Two-handed, he cut a second line more carefully, with the tip of his sword, bisecting the first. A simple cross. He sent up a silent prayer.

When more time had passed, despite Ruadh carrying Ian only in the same upward direction, the landscape appearing to change all around him, he came yet again to the waterfall. Also, to that same landmark on the same tree. The cross stood out as two clear, deep gashes in the arbor’s flesh.

The hair on his arms and neck spiked.

“By Morrigan. Dearest God in Heaven.”

The iron in his stomach dissolved, infecting his blood, threatening to paralyze all of him.

“Quid hoc malum est?”

What evil is this?

But, he did not need to ask. It must be the fairies, those ancient enemies of man. Their queen, Aine. As before, she was working against him, that must be it. Though his curse was shattered, their antagonism had not ceased. If anything, his victory—Elspeth’s—had wounded Aine’s own ancient, malevolent pride. He’d been wrong—wrong again!—to believe things were resolved. Safe.

He needed to get his bearings. He turned Ruadh around and traveled back downhill, though his jaw ached and his heart hammered and everything in his being screamed at him to beat the horse forward, upward. To ram against the fairy’s magic in sheer brute force.      

Traveling downward was easier. He let the horse go much longer than he wished, and the landscape descended naturally. The same patches of white fungi here, the same widow maker looming above the path there, the same rotting log over which the horse had to step. Nothing this way obstructed him.

The sun was low now, sunk well beneath the treetops. Dimness thickened into darkness.

Somehow, an entire day had passed.

Elspeth, Elspeth. She must be home by now.

But she had not crossed his path… there was only one way down, only one way traversable …

What if Aine, or something else, had snatched her?

What if the fairy queen now plotted to break his own heart, so that the being who wore the crown, though “restored,” was nothing more than the shell of a man? And the battles, the strife, the pain, would only go on?

What if there could be no victory, in fact?

Darkness swirled before his eyes; his head felt light. His hollow stomach thrummed.

Please, God, keep her safe.

Elspeth deserved safety more than anyone.

If I lose her, it will kill me.  

He dismounted. In the icy twilight, a mist like a long, wasting ghost wound its way through the black trunks, which looked themselves like stalking wraiths—poised to swarm him and waiting only for a signal. Then, he heard it—the tinkling of falling water.

He stumbled away from the horse, straining his ear toward the sound. It hadn’t been there before, he swore it. Through the swirling gloam, he could make out—

The same flat, white stone.

The same little waterfall.

Rock clanged against chainmail as he fell to his knees. He thrust his hands under the cascade. The frigid water burned his hands.

Whipping his head around, he lurched toward the nearby beech. Grasping the trunk, he managed to make out the slices beneath his numb fingers.

“Magnus Deus in Caelo.”

He closed his eyes, letting his head fall against the sign. It was cold and hard.

Great God in Heaven.

The horse stirred, his whinny low and urgent.

Now all the trees sucked at Ian, at his bubbling panic. The whole dark, tilting world suckled from him, nursing on all his weaknesses. So addled and inept was he, he could not even find the woman he loved, a single young maid at the top of a hill.

The trees closed in, and he smelled decay—the heavy stink of wet meaty fungi, laced with the putrid sweetness of rotting flesh. It wafted out from the ground beneath his feet.

Then, Heaven extinguished the little light left—the sinking sun snuffed out between God’s thumb and forefinger.

***

Thanks for reading!

You can find Chapter Four here.

XOXO,

Jenn