The Truth of Things Unseen

The second time I saw the fae girl was the night I first walked the ways.

I had decided to live in the forest until the month turned and the moon was narrow again.

The first night, I snuck down into the village. I collected my bow, my snares and my quiver of arrows from the hayloft behind Hettie’s house. On impulse, I stole a knife from a table outside the alehouse, a good iron one with a bone handle and a leather sheath. The owner was lying asleep nearby with his face in a puddle of ale. There was an oilcloth and some rope strapped over the log pile behind the alehouse, so I liberated those too, and also a couple of pies that had been left unattended. Also, half a candle, a tinderbox, some good glass bottles with lids, and a small bag of buttons that caught my eye. Several hours of careful larceny later, I had accumulated everything I needed for my camp, plus some buttons, so I made my way back up the ridge, over the down, and back into the western valley.

I found a likely spot, close to a stream but not so close that it might attract attention. I strung the rope between two trees, then slung my oilcloth over it, weighing down the corners with rocks. I chucked a couple of branches over the top of it for camouflage and dug out a fire pit with the flat edge of the knife.

When it was done, I stood back to survey my work. It was hardly palatial, but it was sound enough for a month of summer nights. I ate my pies and filled my bottles with water, then slept peacefully under my cloak.

The next day I set about laying my snares. There were plenty of rabbit tracks and I caught a couple in the evening. I snapped the little necks, held them until they stopped trembling, then stuck them and hung them up to bleed out.

I won’t bother you with all the mundanities of living in the woods. It all passed uneventfully, save one night when the heavens opened up and I huddled under my cloak, while my oilcloth whipped and thrashed around me, and the trees hissed like monsters.

After a fortnight, I had half-convinced myself that the whole thing had been a dream. Sometimes, I would walk to the ring, tracing the ancient carvings with a long stick. The longer I studied them, the more I realised that the pieces were meant to fit together another way. It had been something else once; I became sure of it. Some even more ancient structure which had been smashed so completely that not a single stone had remained unbroken.

It was like the pieces of a story, half-remembered. Like a grand and glorious dream that slides away with the sunrise. A memory of something else, pieced together to create a great broken ring that circumscribed the whole hilltop.

Bathed in the cold light of the moon, the shadows and the pieces seemed to fit in a way I could not describe, and as the month rolled around it was as though the pieces began aligning, like the patient mechanism of a clock, some grand, inevitable conjunction that would lead to a door, that would lead to a light, that would lead to her.

And so, like a story, the month folded back on itself and came back around to where it had first begun, and I sat, watching the moon rising thin and sharp above the valley, etching an intricate moving tapestry of shadows onto the forest floor, shimmering the dark pools into silver, ghosting the thin clouds on which it sailed like a galleon, sails straining and swollen with summers hopes and promises, the memory of her bright face, etched across the sky and in my mind and in all the world as far as I could fathom, and as the thin moon lit up the place where the door was hidden and the archway brightened, I struggled to rise from where I had been sitting and I stumbled because my legs were chilled, and when, silent as the dawn, she emerged into the real world and the world was made magical by her presence, she found me laying on my face, covered in leaves, clutching my shin and cursing like a fucking soldier.

She flashed me a smile. "You’re here!"

I smiled back, trying to ignore the stabbing pain that was climbing up my leg, into my groin. "Course I’m here. You asked me to be here."

"Gosh, you look awful. You’ve got sticks in your hair, did you know? Why are you on the floor?"

I struggled to my feet and sat on a fallen log, rubbing the bruised place. "I been waiting for you," I said. "I’ve been waiting this past month."

"Her eyes widened, and I saw they were pale blue. Ghost blue. "Has it really been that long?" She asked. "Time is different across the wall. It was wrong of me to tell you to wait."

I shook my head slightly, "I didn’t mind it. I ate rabbits and made a camp. I’d wait again any day."

She sat beside me and nudged me in the ribs. "I’m glad you waited really. It would have been awfully sad to come out and not find you here. Come, will you gather sticks with me please?"

The forest never really sleeps, and as I walked behind her, I was aware of a thousand small lives carrying on around me. Spiders were busily weaving. Moths flapped into her circle of light and spiralled around like crazed little machinata. Bats swooped above us on ragged wings. Small rustles in the underbrush might have been mice or badgers or weasels. I was aware of a thousand pairs of eyes on us, but foolishly I paid them no heed.

We walked between the trees while she inspected fallen branches. She was very particular about the ones she chose, nothing rotten, nothing with greenery still attached. Nothing with too many bugs. Nothing dirty. She had a ball of white twine, and each time she found one she liked, I helped her tie it onto the others until we had a good clean bundle.

"Will you tell me your name?" I said, asking the question that had been burning in my heart ever since I last saw her.

"You can call me Fen," she called back." It’s short for Fentallion. I’m named after my aunt you know, but I’m not much like her. She had a stilled heart of armour and smoke black daggers that could cut the moonlight. Anyway, she’s dead now. She could walk as tall as trees, but they cut her heart out and buried it under the city wall.”

Again the small frown, the passing of a shadow.

"I’m sorry," I said.

"Don’t be," said Fen a little too brightly. "It was a long time ago, and I’m sure I never met her."

"My name is Tam", I said.

I wanted some words to make her understand that I had thought of her every day, that I was glad she came back. I wanted to thank her for being kind last time we had met, and that somehow just being listened to had made me feel better, but I was not clever with words, so I just repeated my own name like a turd encrusted simpleton.

"Tam," I intoned, "I don’t think it’s short for nothing."

Once again the small frown crossed her brow, a flash of sorrow that was hidden almost as soon as it appeared. I wanted to ask her about it, but I was afraid of what she would say, so I changed the subject.

"I’ve been thinking about you," I said. "I think I know what you are."

"Do you?"

"You’re an Aden ain’t you, one of the Old Kings that left the world before the Breaking."

"You think I’m an Old King?" She was smiling at me now, teasing. I liked it.

"No, well maybe you’re an Old Princess."

"An Old Princess?"

"Yes, well... Maybe not so old, but from the old days, the time before the books were written."

"I’m just me, Tam."

Again the look of sadness, and I cast around desperately for something to say, to delay the moment that I knew would come, the moment that always came when my Luck ran out, but my mind was blank, and she spoke first.

"I came to say goodbye," she said.

And there, it was done, but there was a heat in my heart that wouldn’t let go, and the words came back to me.

"Why must you go?"

"It’s hard to explain. I’m not really safe to be around. There are deeper shadows, even in the darkness."

"I ain’t afraid of no shadows, Fen."

"Well, you should be. There are some things you can fight, and some things where you just have to keep very still and hope they don't notice you."

"I can fight. I’ve got a knife, see." I unclasped the good iron I had stolen from the drunk in the tavern and held it up for her to inspect. The blade was dented and there were spots of rust where the storm had got to it. "I’d fight the Shadow Lord himself to keep you safe."

She laughed at me, "I do believe you would. There’s a realness about you when you talk. It’s like you’re made out of solid stuff. Cows and summers and bags of oats. I sometimes feel like I’m made of moonlight and dandelion fluff, there’s nothing to me, I could just float up into the sky and really, no one would miss me. I think I’ll miss not seeing you though."

"If you are going away, you have to tell me why."

"I don’t have to tell you anything. I'm in charge. I can do what I like."

"Then I’ll wait, right here by the stones, even till I’m old and grey."

She laughed again, the beautiful tinkling sound, followed by the snort that both spoiled the effect and completed it.

"I mean it," I said. "You’ll come through that gate in fifty years and find me waiting for you with a long white beard, surrounded by all the animals I’ve tamed."

"You plan to tame animals?"

"I’ll have to do something with my time. I’ll tame foxes and badgers and teach them tricks."

"I do believe you’re toying with me."

"Don’t go. At least tell me why."

We had a good bundle now, we were coming back around towards the wall. I could sense the moment slipping away. I wondered what I would do, after she had gone. What possible meaning my life could have, but in my heart I knew where I would go, back to the village, working small jobs, into the alehouse each night until I gradually disappeared.

The gate was open and I handed her the perfect bundle of sticks, wound and knotted with white twine. I noticed there were buds already starting to form on the tips of them.

"Go home Tam," she said.

"I ain't got no home."

"Then do something good. Go travel."

I nodded, though I knew I wouldn't. She went to the doorway and passed through it. Her light brightened, then the door closed behind her, and the world became dark.

A badger shuffled into the clearing, snuffled around, then toddled off back into the bushes without even looking at me.

Then there came a brightening once more. A small crack around the edge of the doorway. I sat up straighter, and there she was again. Her face was a second moon. Her hair was a net full of stars.

"Oh do come on then," she said. "Just for a little while. You have to be gone before anyone notices or something completely awful will happen. I'm not sure what, but it’ll be perfectly dreadful for everybody."

I leapt to my feet and crossed the space between us in two strides.

"Don't touch the sides when you come through," she said. "You'll make a mess if you do. The rain doesn't get under here and I don't want to have to clean your blood off the arch."

I made myself as narrow as I could. There was moss hanging down, and the roof was dripping with moisture. Bright points of rippling light reflected on the glistening rocks. The arch turned into a tunnel, and as I moved further, it became narrower. She was a distant star, skipping away far in front of me. I sensed the disapproving weight of the rocks. The tunnel grew narrower still, and I had to stoop to avoid brushing the ceiling. The earth shook, and I almost fell. I flattened myself to the ground, gripping the wet soil until the movement ceased. Then, at the far end of the tunnel, I saw a new light, brightening.

I scrambled towards it. It swelled and bloomed and filled my head with colour. I pulled myself free, shoulders and arms. My legs and feet slipped out quickly as though the tunnel were vomiting them into the light. The warm heat of the sun greeted me.

I was in a meadow full of flowers, bordered by fruit trees. Fen was standing there with her bundle. Her grey summer dress fluttered around her legs.

"You made it," she said. She sounded surprised.

I took a deep breath. Behind me, the tunnel was black as a cavity.

"Do we need to close the door?" I asked.

“Oh, don't worry about that,” she replied. “There are all kinds of doors.”