The Truth of Things Unseen

The first time I saw Luck was the day my parents died.

We had taken the Telbridge road beneath the mountain. Our cart splashed through puddles. It had been raining all week, but now the sun was out, bright and hot. I nestled in among the bales of wool and cloth, half asleep in the warmth of the morning.

My mother and father sat together up front. He rested his hand on her knee. She laced her little finger between his and rubbed his palm. My father sang the Rose of Embers, and my mother picked up the harmony.

"Within an ember, rose and bright,

Carnation dragons, tumbling"

She stamped a tiny jig with her fingertips on the rail. I watched her fingers twirl and dance as the dappled light shimmered through the trees and imagined myself somewhere magical, a dance for a homecoming hero. When he got to the sad bit at the end, she leaned into his side and held him.

I was broken even then, a cursed boy. Crossed by a hare, the village women whispered. I licked at my teeth, feeling the lopsided place where the lip did not join properly — the little snag where one of the teeth poked sideways through the gap.

It had rained all last week, and now the day was crisp and bright. The sun marched along with us, humming along to Father's song. The trees stooped over the rattling cart, their leaves fat and full of water. The blue brightness of the sky showed between them. The light sailed through the gaps, tumbling in a flickering brilliance that formed and reformed on my face and my hands and dazzled me.

That was when I saw Luck.

He was crouching in the fork of a tree by the roadside. I could tell it was Luck by his cloak, a cloak woven from every other cloak. Gold and silk ruffles; sackcloth and ashes. Loops of pearls and garlands of birds eggs, laced with filigree and bound with mildewed onion rope. His face was painted in motley — black and white squares that covered every bit of skin, smeared a little around the temples and in the creases at the corners of the eyes.

He raised a finger to his lips.

"Shhhhhh."

High over the road, Luck crouched in the fork of a tree.

"Come out, little mouse,” he whispered. “I'll show you a monster."

A tatty grey mouse crawled out of a fold in his cloak. It stood as tall as a mouse can on his shoulder, paws tugging on imaginary lapels.

"Very appropriate," it said. Its voice was clipped and sharp, like a high-class gangster, not at all squeaky. "Monsters, eh? How very... you."

"Just one today, little mouse."

Luck extended a pale finger, pointing away down the road. A battered cart drawn by a single mare. A handsome young farmer and his tousle-headed wife, bales of wool, crates of vegetables, maybe a cheeky barrel of smokeroot stashed against the revenue.

The mouse squinted in the glare of the morning sun. "No monsters there, mate."

"Look in the back."

Tucked in, snug amongst the bales, a child was looking back at him.

"The kid? You're joking. We don't hurt kids."

Luck didn't reply.

"I say," said Mouse. "That's a lot of grubby-looking ruffians in the trees up ahead of that cart. I take it you're planning to do something about that?"

A little way off, a half-dozen men had taken up positions. They were armed with a selection of ugly weapons.

"Would you look at that?" said Mouse. "That one has attached spikes to his bow. How quaint. Time to swing into action maybe..?"

The cart rumbled closer to the men.

"Maybe now or soonish..? You are planning to do something, right? I say, are you crying?"

“I named him Monster,” Luck whispered, voice ragged as his cloak. "This is when it all began.” The paint had smudged a little in the corners of his eyes.

I heard my father shouting at something on the road. My mother had her back to me, very straight and upright. Then she did a strange thing. Without looking at me or moving any other part of her body, she reached behind her, into the cart, put one hand on my head and gently pressed me down, deeper between the bales. I pushed back, trying to see what father was shouting at, but she was stronger than me. I sank down into the soft place and rested there. I could not see her face, but she was no longer singing.

The cart slowed and bumped to a halt. Father jumped down. I heard his footsteps crunching on stones. I heard his voice, indistinct, muffled by the bales that surrounded me. I heard other voices, a discussion, a note of anger.

The cart was stationary on the road. Insects hummed in the trees. The sun beat on my head. I began to sweat.

Luck still crouched in the fork of the tree, I felt his eyes on me. I wanted to tell Mother, but she was staring straight ahead at what was happening on the road, not looking up at all, and she still had her hand on my head, pressing me down into the warm place between the bolts of wool.

And then, just like that, there was an arrow.

It thocked into the rail next to where Mother was sitting. It hummed. The little brown feathers on it vibrated.

Mother grabbed the reins and shook them hard. She stood at the rail, knees bent, laying into our old horse with the whip, and the cart rattled down the road, with the packages falling all over and me in the middle of them. I wriggled out from the place between the bales.

There were men on the road behind us. Angry-looking men with lean faces. There was something else there too, laying on the road behind them. A prone figure, wearing Father's hat and Father's shoes.

Mother screamed and spurred the horse again, but the cart was loaded, and our old mare was tired. The men began jogging along the road behind us, calling to Mother, words I couldn't understand then, and can't bear to recall now. They were not even hurrying. They laughed at her as though she were something small and funny, jogging along next to us, reaching up into the cart, brushing her dress with their fingers. Their smiles were unclean.

Mother had a knife in one hand and the whip in the other. She began striking at them. One of the men grabbed hold of the bridle. Another snatched Mother's whip and yanked it out of her hand. She stabbed at the fingers that reached for her and drew blood. The men stopped laughing at her; they had their own blades out now, but still, she stood atop the stationary cart, slashing at any of them who came near.

Luck was still there, crouching in the tree. His expression was unreadable, but the paint under the eyes had run a little.

"Why don't you do something?" I yelled at him, but still he sat, mute. His lips started working as though he were counting. I heard a rattle, like dice.

The men had noticed me now and were staring at me with the same hungry broken expressions. Mother stepped back into the cart and stood over me, gripping her knife, snarling like a cornered dog. An arrow zipped past me and thunked into the wood behind. The feathers were beautiful. The bright metal tip had little fingerprints on it. Another arrow sailed over me and thumped into something soft.

Mother let out a little sound. An arrow stuck out, stiff and bristly from her side as she turned to me. It was an alien thing. I expected her to laugh and brush it away like a splinter.

"Why don't you do something?" I said to Luck again, but my voice was tiny.

High above me, I saw Luck rattle his fist like a gambler at the table, a sound like dice. He took an apple from his pocket, his mouth moved quickly, as though he were sounding out the world, every drop of water, every needle on every branch. He took a single bite. His arm flicked out, and he flung the apple, high up the hill, high between the trees. I heard the rush of it as it fell.

It had been raining for days. The hillside was soaked earth held together by tree roots. I understand now that it only needed a little tap in exactly the wrong place, sometimes a nudge is all that's needed to change everything. I felt the earth shift, just a little.

The trees began rustling above us. There came a noise, like thunder, louder and closer, and between the trees, I glimpsed something like a brown wall, rushing down the slope towards us.

Death came, swift as a broom, a churn of mud and splintered boughs, boiling, breaking, turning, breaking again, turning and breaking and turning.

The men were washed away as if they had never been. A massive boulder sailed across the road and slammed into our old mare, and she was gone too. I sensed a sort of mist where she had been, the shadow of an outline.

The earth heaved like the press of a dance. The road rippled like a tablecloth laid for a feast. The cart waltzed and wallowed in the middle of it, a drunken revel of screaming wood and breaking stone.

The cart lifted, jerking up and up. My mother reaching for me. My mother falling away into the teeth of rock and broken cedars. My mother drowning in it, one hand raised towards me. My mother trying to climb from the flowing press of rock, the sound of her breaking. A bright cough of blood, and she was gone.

The earth was liquid. The whole earth was a tempest, and our cart was a ship drowning in it. The rail cracked, the cart came apart, and I fell, down and down into the mess. I fought with the mud. I jerked my head to one side and watched a whole tree trunk slide right past me, widening along its length, twigs slapping me again and again in the face. My head went under. I could not tell which way was up. Liquid soil forced itself up my nose and into my mouth. I thrashed and heaved myself free of it. The mountainside was a churning ruin of broken trees. I flailed around, half-blind, searching for something to cling to. My fingers found smooth wood, a cartwheel. I hauled myself up onto it and clung to it like a sailor adrift in a storm.

But Death did not say my name that day.

When all was still again, I felt a red warmth on my eyelids and a pain that grew sharp. I opened my eyes. The sun had broken through the clouds, and shafts of light were running up and down the slope.

The land was unrecognisable. The green trees had gone. The road had gone. My parents...

I tried to sit up, but my hand was caught beneath the wheel. I tugged it free and felt a sharp agony that shot up my arm into my shoulder. My hand was no longer my own. Three of the fingers were torn away. The thumb was bent in the middle like an old twig. The wounds were ragged, packed with earth and decorated with splinters and hanging flaps of skin. I stared at it as though it were something else, a half-killed animal I had found by the road.

There were crows walking across the hillside, picking at things they found here and there. I joined them, a broken little crow hopping across the hillside, all alone, finding a scrap of cloth here, a piece of Mother's dress there.

In the distance, in the fork of a tree, Luck watched me, a silent figure in motley. His cloak flapped about his thin shoulders like a banner over a battlefield. I saw him whisper a word, then he was gone.

I once heard a story about a man walking with his dogs in the hills. A rock fell and crushed that man completely, smashed him right down into meat. Do you know what his dogs did? They wandered around confused for a while, and then they began to eat the meat, because they were hungry and they didn't understand what had happened.

It was something like that for me, alone on that rubbed-out hillside. It was impossible that they were gone. Here was a fragment of cloth from my mother's patterned dress. I put it in my pocket, meaning to give it to her when I saw her. Here was my father's leather bag with a roll of good wool in it. I slung it over my shoulder and kept it safe for the market.

There was blood leaking from me, down my arms, dripping off my fingertips. I did not dare touch my face. One of my eyes had swollen shut. There were twigs and white stones glued into the missing pieces of my hand. My thumb stuck out stiff and purple like a blood sausage.

The day grew cold and I longed to wrap my father's wool cloth around myself, but I did not. It was pure and clean, and I was a dirty little crow.

This was a lifetime ago, before I knew even a single word of power, when I still wore my own face.

Words beget ideas, and ideas beget stories, and stories are the hidden frame over which the world drapes itself like a garment. This is the very essence of magic, and yet I had no true name and no stories for what had happened to me, and so I wandered, lost and storyless over the slopes.

The broken trees stood up like spider legs, cobwebbed with blackened branches, and the stars came out above them. The world grew cold.

I dug in the bag and found a tinder box. Father would appreciate the fire. My hand shook. It was cold, Lord's Bones, it was cold, and I could barely strike the flint. My hand was useless. I gripped the steel between my feet and struck sparks into the tinder, but it was wet and would not kindle. I pulled a tiny piece of wool from Father's satchel and struck the sparks again. A little blaze worked its way into life in the middle of the wool. I piled up leaves and little sticks. I've always been good at fires.

There was no pain in my hand anymore. I felt nothing, not even the cold. I stared into the heart of the flame, and for a moment, I thought I saw something moving in there.

But then there came a crashing in the trees at the edge of the rubbed-out place. White shapes burst from the shadows, small white shapes that ran at me. Before I could stand, they were around me, a dozen white goats fleeing from something. They passed to the right and to the left, swift, silent. Hurried little stars across the bleak and the dark.

A woman followed close behind. I could hear the ragged sound of her breathing, the crunching sound of her feet as she zig-zagged towards my fire.

And there was something following her. It was tall and it billowed. It had no shape of its own. It moved like a cat, like a wolf, like a mare, rearing up. Black tendrils burst from the middle of it, reaching blind for the woman, snagging at her feet. I could hear her grunting as she kicked at it in the darkness.

I grabbed a fire branch and ran at the thing, screaming. It fell back before the flame, wailing like a newborn. I hurled my branch into the midst of it. The fire was swallowed up in a knot of shadows, then it shrank back away into the trees and was gone, though I could still hear it wailing across the hillside.

The woman was kneeling in amongst the broken branches, coughing. I knelt by her. I took the bolt of carded wool from Father's bag, unrolled and wrapped it around her. It was the right thing to do.

I got my shoulder under her arm and tried to help her walk to the fire. I had barely any strength in me, and my knees shook, and I could not keep them still. She staggered towards my small blaze, sat there, knees pulled up, shoulders hunched, staring into the depths of it. There was a big tear in her trousers and blood welled from a scratch. She rubbed at it.

"Goats," she said at last.

I didn't know how to reply, so I said nothing.

"Can you speak, boy? Did you see my goats? Some motley boy opened the pen."

A motley boy. Scaring goats. And my parents…

"Aye," I said. Something more seemed to be expected. "They came by here."

"Ha. You're a funny little one, aren't you?"

Again, I had no words for her. There had been a shadow and she was asking about goats, and there was a gash in her leg, and my parents were...

The mundanity of lost goats on a hillside. It was so normal, but...

I dragged another branch onto the fire. It crackled, and smoke churned as the water boiled out of it, then flared up as the resin caught. The light of it fell across my face. She gasped. Her hand went to her mouth.

"Lord's Bones, what happened to you, boy?"

I didn't have any words, so I let her draw me in. Let her smooth my hair. I let her fold me up and carry me over her shoulders like a sick lamb, though the blood and tears mingled with the mud that caked me and stained her cloak, down off the mountain to the river and the Sister Villages.

Her name was Hettie. Her back was warm and solid. Warm and solid until the day she died.

Luck was nowhere to be seen, though I felt his eyes on me in the darkness and hated him.