Jennifer Shaw

This piece is a companion novelette to Elspeth and the Fairy. You can read a little about this story’s context here.

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

Part II: IN THE FOREST

Chapter Four

This cannot be…

Ian lifted his head, chest tight. Nearby, the horse’s hooves struck the ground, his whinnies and snorts frantic.

I have not been riding all day… Surely not…

I have always prayed. Tried to serve You. I have always tried my best…

…But I am just a wretched thing.

Breath straining and steaming, and utterly blind, King Ian let go of the beech and allowed himself to scream.

It was either that—and invite the full wrath of whatever lay before him—or bungle his way back down in the darkness, conceding to Aine, to God, to the brutality of existence itself. To all the powers destroying or abandoning him.

Not again.

He would not let this chance go to waste.   

“Satis!” he screamed.

Then, in Gaelic:

“Gu leòr!”

Enough!

His fury ricocheted off the trees.

 “I summon you, Aine of the Fairies! Appear before me now!”

Black silence.  

But then, the darkness moved. Sections of animated shadow. 

It hissed.

Low, prolonged, filling the air.

Like an enormous, bitter snake. Except this was no snake—its bulk seemed far too vast. Beneath it scuttled what sounded like a hundred tiny, tapping points. Like the tap of that woodpecker but faster, furiously multiplied—the sounds bored a thousand minuscule holes straight into his skull.

There had not been monsters in these forests for many years. Not since before his coronation. When he’d inherited the crown, they’d all disappeared. It was yet another sign, his subjects said, that he was anointed by God.

Now, something was back.

Ruadh gave a final, high-pitched cry. Then, the stallion thundered away, striking back toward what Ian hoped was home. 

A sharp breeze cut his cheek.

He stumbled back, pulling out Saltire. He thrust the sword in front of him—left, right, left again, his blade striking nothing. He shoved it low in front—only air. The enormous thing scuttled back, its hiss magnifying. A whizzing sound screeched in his ears as something clanged against his blade, nearly dislodging it from his grasp. His wrists throbbed. Breezes cut across his eyes and nose. Pulling back, he lost his balance and fell, still holding fast to his hilt.

A hair closer and that strike would have been lethal, but he was on the ground.

He scrambled backward. His shoulders and tailbone rammed into heaving tree roots, and dull pain radiated up through him. Gritting teeth, he sprang low onto the balls of his feet, darting around the wide trunk, groping as he positioned himself behind this makeshift barrier. Shooting a hand up, he caught a low branch.

In an iron hold, he heaved himself up. Clambering like a frenzied bear, up he tore, groping, pulling, fighting for footing. Climbing was almost impossible while grasping Saltire, but he held fast to his weapon, using his right arm as a hook, his left fist grasping and pulling, muscles blazing. Slipping, fighting for toeholds again, more blind instinct than strategy. His chainmail scratched against the bark, exposed flesh scraping, bloodying. His bare head struck the branches above him.

A branch snapped in his grasp, showering him with bits of wood as he swayed back, tumbling into the darkness. But he managed to hook his sword arm over a limb, and he dangled for a moment, blinking against the sting of a splinter lodged in his eyelid.

Lungs flaming, he reached higher with his free hand as he flattened his boots against the trunk, pushing against it, pushing upward. His desperate fingers found a sturdier, thicker branch almost too high to grasp, but somehow he hauled himself up. A single hot tear slid into his damp beard.  

The thing was at the base of the tree, swiping, slicing branches, it sounded like, hissing and mewling—in frustration? Perhaps it could not see either, blind as it was acting. Buoyed by this suspicion, Ian continued to clamber as high as he could go.

The tree seared his frenzied hand and arms, but the heat galvanized him.

Does this feel like God to you?

It does.

“Deus meus, omnem fidem meam in te pono,” he rasped.

My God, all my faith I place in Thee.

At these words, whatever malevolence hovering over the earth parted—only clouds?—and a mass of stars spilled across the sky. Tiny, perfect pricks of light, displaced only by the brilliant silver moon.

The firmament gave just enough light for Ian to make out the full extent of the vast thing beneath him. It was vaguely arachnid—sweetest Jesus, Mary, and Joseph how he hated spiders—the thousand tapping things the tips of several sharp, spiderlike legs. Its enormous, round girth appeared spiky.  

It tipped its tiny, shoulder-less head up at Ian, sickly-yellow eyes blazing. Through parted white fangs it screamed, a sound moist and bloody. Its razorlike legs—dozens of them—swiped away in a fresh burst of fury.

Branches and limbs crashed down. The thing was dismembering the tree, cutting away all of Ian’s footholds.

But by now, Ian was far above it, straddling a high, sturdy limb, fighting to draw full breath. He was alert enough to recognize something in the thing’s eyes. The glowing irises weren’t round like a man’s.

They were horizontal slashes, goatlike.

Like Muir’s.     

“Enough!” Ian screamed at the thing.

He pulled his dangling legs up. His boot soles met the branch he straddled, and he hauled himself up to stand. He turned his sword down, knuckles bloodless in a knife-grip, and bent his knees.

Hesitation suckled only once at his heart.

He leapt, pushing his free hand hard against the tree.

The fall was almost too fast to sense, though he collided with a few spindly branches. He landed hard on his knees, behind the thing’s eyes. Lashing out, he gripped a long black follicle that cut his left hand. He plunged Saltire hard into the thing’s upper back. It was like stabbing an enormous gourd; his shoulder keened.

The spiderlike creature bucked him, repeatedly, but he held fast to its hair and his hilt. He managed to get closer to the follicle, where he gripped it between his powerful thighs. Then, two-handed, he wrenched out his sword and plunged it down again, deeper, into the thing’s head, feeling as though he tore his own muscles.  

He managed to stab the monster, again and again, though it whipped his body side to side, rattling his brain inside his cursed skull.

Damn thu! Damn thu!

The mantra channeled his strength and propelled his movements.

Damn thu dìreach gu Ifrinn!

Damn you straight to Hell!

The creature flung him loose. He hit the cold, black ground on his shoulder, his neck on fire, yet still he held his sword. Scrambling up, he charged the thing, Saltire ready.

He would die here, now. Trying.

He would rather lose his life than prove ever unworthy of his realm and the magnificent woman he loved.

Airson Elspeth.

For her.

The enormous arachnid overtook him, a black tidal wave. But Saltire cut before him.

Even as the thing suffocated him… even as a searing mucus soaked him, King Ian plunged in his sword. He fought with a passion rivaling anything he’d yet to feel, grinding his teeth down, transcending his own weak, wounded flesh on an endless lightning of surreal energy.

The enormous monster, far less effectual in such close proximity to the tiny, warring king, slowed. Then, it stilled.

Choking on the acid burning inside his throat, Ian ripped Saltire from the monster one final time.

He stumbled back, out of its bulk, gasping for air. He was covered in the thing’s blood. It smelled like fluids from Muir’s boils, each time one had burst.

The stink of rot.

Ian was drenched in it. But it was not his.  

A new potency, felt first in Aitken’s scullery as that single powerful pluck, now magnified into a concert of a thousand swelling strings, more epic than the screams of Ian’s muscles.

The king lowered himself to his knees before the destruction, his lungs gulping filthy air. He held Saltire like a staff, hands clasped over the hilt, its tip to the earth. He lifted his chin, feeling above the sticky film on his face the coolness, the permanence, of Heaven.  

“Queen Aine! I compel you! Cease this frivolity!” he cried when he could draw a calmer breath. “Appear before me now!”

He waited, counting in Latin.

He did not wait long.

***

Thanks for reading!

You can find Chapter Five here.

XOXO,

Jenn