Cold was the wind, the first wind of autumn. It came creeping in from the south, blowing across the moors and valleys. It swept over the mountains―the backbones of Essegena―as though they were mere anthills. Oh, and it chilled. Once, in the heat of the burning sun, the meadows and forests of Essegena had been alive with summer flowers. Already those flowers were beginning to disappear. The first browning leaves fell from trees only minutes after the dawn came. Soon the treetops would be bare.
There was a distinctly different aspect to the world. On a coin it had flipped, become gloomier. The cold wind whistled through the steadfast sentinels that were the old blackstone obelisks, and further it blew, seeking out river and road and winding upstream along them.
The wind caught up to Bess in the crumbling remainder of an old farmhouse, and sought refuge in the fibres of her being. It had penetrated to the marrow of her bones before she managed to find the shelter of a warm blanket, and it stayed there until she fell asleep, to wishful dreams of a toasty hearth.
Every night her sleep had been dreamless, or else filled with meaningless dreams. Every night since the dream that had sent her here, in the final days of summer. Then, barely a week ago, it had been warm to sleep even beneath the stars. Bess had―reluctantly―welcomed her nocturnal visitation. It had been so long since the Moonlight Woman had come to her. And so, between the Obelisks and the Ancestors’ Pool, asleep beside a half-dead woman, she’d listened to what the dream told her.
The dream hadn’t told her everything.
She’d not wanted to leave Eilidh Cailie. The pink-haired woman had a sweet face, and she was badly hurt. She had a mother, probably one who actually cared whether her daughter lived or died. But Bess had really had no choice. The Moonlight Woman, lofty and luminous as always, told her that she had to go now. Dawn hadn’t even begun when she left behind the weighty air of the Obelisks’ bay. She’d walked until sundown, through the winding valley that carved its way between rows of hills, to where the grass became an ancient road that traced the course of a great river.
And exactly as the Moonlight Woman said, Bess had found the big tree. Its leaves reached to puncture the clouds, its branches thick with juicy red fruit. At its feet, the ground was covered with the rotten brown husks of last year’s uncollected harvest. And a sturdy, gently frayed noose swung idly in the breeze. “The Hanging Tree will show the way,” the Moonlight Woman had told her. She’d expected a signpost or something, but there was no hint of the way to go. Six dusty, half-covered trails splayed out from the tree, each of them disappearing behind jutting rocks or mangy bushes in short order.
She decided to follow one of them at random. It ran alongside the river for a little while, at least until it stretched beyond the view of the tree. It was always best to follow rivers, if ever she was lost. That was one of the first lessons Speke had given to her. She could remember the way his moustache seemed to wobble when he spoke. If you stick with the river, he’d said, you won’t get turned around. Upstream or down, it made no difference―just so long as you kept it constant.
Just as her feet were beginning to ache, she’d found the remnants of a farmer’s homestead. It was long abandoned. Weathered fenceposts, many fallen or falling, delineated a fallow field. The shack itself was dry stone and rotted timber. Maybe the windows had held glass, once upon a time, but there was no evidence of it any longer. Decaying frames invited in the fury of the wilderness. The wind, even gentle as it was, whistled round the shack. Much of the house’s furniture was rotted to the point of being unusable. Spindly chairs and rickety tables, festooned with mildew, watched Bess from every room, threatening always to crumble away if she looked too hard at them.
Upstairs there was a small library, a reading nook which consisted of firm mahogany fittings, a moth-eaten cream mattress, and half a dozen crumbling books. She’d whiled away the last of the daylight reading from the only book whose spine didn’t collapse the moment she touched it, a copy of the Book of Kings. To quench her thirst, she swam around in the river, opening her mouth to take frequent gulps of water. Then, shivering, she’d hung her wet clothes in one of the open windows and rummaged around for anything she might be able to steal. There was a wardrobe in what must once have been a bedroom. The former residents couldn’t have been wealthy; there were just a few things hanging in the wardrobe, most far too battered by the ages to ever be worn again. Bess took a heavy floral frock. It was too big for her, but it had been cut from a thick cloth and it would do to keep her warm in the night. She fell asleep still thinking of the moons.
By the morning of the second day, she was feeling ill. Some demon was in her belly. She curled up in agony as it writhed and squirmed to get out. She lay within the shady walls of the shack until the day was half gone, lest the cramps in her stomach get worse as she tried to move. When at last she thought it had settled, she crawled to the kitchen downstairs, to the tumbledown table. The sun was high. It must be lunch time, she thought, or close to.
The cupboards were mostly barren, but Bess found a metal box which had a couple of stale and broken saltine crackers still in it. She broke one in half, and nibbled on one of the pieces. She wasn’t hungry, not at all, but she thought it best if she tried to eat something.
When she brought the cracker back up in a pile of half-digested mush, she regretted it.
Bess slept after that, even though it was still early afternoon. By the time she awoke it was the next morning.
The hunger never eased. She forced herself to take another bite of saltine, on her next trip to the outhouse. When her stomach turned, she pressed a cold hand to her mouth. The saltines were all the food there was, until she was well enough to forage for something more, and if she vomited them up, well then she’d just have to swallow the vomit. The thought made her mouth curdle. This cracker stayed down, though.
And then there was the matter of water. A heavy steel pot had been abandoned somewhere in the remnants of the farmhouse kitchen; she took it with her each morning when she went to relieve herself, filled it up from the river, then―with strength she hadn’t realised she had―lugged the overflowing pot back to the kitchen. It boiled while she sat in a daze, and she drank. It tasted foul, but it was no longer sickness in liquid form. It would keep her hydrated while she burnt off the illness.
The week passed in little more than fragments for her, occasional moments of vague consciousness between her long sleeps. Every time she woke her throat was a little drier, her head a touch more painful. She tried, at great difficulty, to relieve herself whenever she awoke. She had to. On those occasions when she couldn’t work up the strength to crawl to the outhouse, she’d woken to find herself drenched in her own urine. By now her nose was so desensitised that she couldn’t even recognise the smell.
There was rarely the energy for anything else. She retrieved a pot from one of the cupboards downstairs, on one of her patches of wakefulness: white porcelain with a scene painted on it in green lacquer. The age had worn away some of the paint, scratched it almost to nothing. Bess kept it beside the mattress she was lying on. She began to fill the pot rather than struggling to the outhouse. When full, it was easy to empty it out of the window. The strength she saved not traipsing all the way out of the farmhouse was strength she could use elsewhere, though she did little more than gather up blankets. Her head hurt too much. Life became nothing but drinking from the water she’d boiled up, and urinating into the pot, the two things interspersed with patches of dreamless sleep. What she would have given for a dream.
Her parents had kept the Gods. They had a little nook, across from the reading room, where seventeen idols stood. After Elly was taken, they’d gone to the nook every day. They’d lit candles, said words of reverence, pleaded to the Gods for the return of their favourite daughter. In anger they’d prayed to the Soldier and the Poisoner, and the rest of the dark Gods, begging them to scourge Elly’s captors and vanquish them from the universe. In peace they’d asked that the Vigilant might watch for Elly, that the Sage might know where she was, that the Overlord might lift one mighty finger and restore the rightful way of things. They’d made those prayers, in earnest, day after day after day.
And Elly had never returned.
Bess could see her now. It was a sunny day, and the market was crowded. Elly, her face full lightness, danced as she ran. Market day was always Elly’s favourite. She’d always hare around between the stalls, and it was all Bess could do to prevent her from knocking people over. And when at last she was tired out, Elly would stand by one of the stalls and beg Bess for a treat. Sometimes she went to the purple tent where a corpulent man sold hand-shaped chocolates; sometimes to the little wooden gazebo where Goodwife Shappoll displayed her carved wooden toys. Wherever Elly took Bess, the dance was the same. Each pleading request in Elly’s sparrow-song voice was met with denial: “Mother only gave me five copperheads”; “You’ve not played with the last toy”; “There’s too much sugar―you don’t want the goblins to come and take your teeth away, do you?”
On the fourth request, Bess always relented. On weekends, sometimes, she’d sweep out Hilda Frygge’s stables for a smattering of little coins. Her own private money. She kept it in a wallet of tanned leather that she tied around her coat―and inevitably, she’d reach in to take some coins and pay for Elly’s treat. It never left her enough to spend on her own desires. The books she wanted, and the azurite necklace in the jeweller’s window, were always out of reach. But it was worth it. Elly was worth it. Bess had never once thought to deny her sister.
“Don’t run off, Elly.” Bess heard herself calling, an echo in the memory. Around her, all the patrons of the market were faceless silhouettes, anonymised by time. “We have to buy milk first.”
Elly turned around, and Bess saw her smile. Her golden hair hung down to her neck, tied up in pretty ribbons. Chubby pink cheeks stretched wide. Tiny fingers tugged at the lace of dress sleeves.
“Wait there, Elly. When did you get so fast? I can hardly catch up with you.”
“Can we get chocolate after, Bessy?”
Bess nodded. “If you’re a good girl, we can get some chocolate. But you’ll have to be quick choosing one. It’s hot today. The milk will go bad if we carry it for too long.”
“Okay.” Elly started to sing, in that little voice of hers. See the maid with hair of gold, by the fire to warm the cold. The sweet old song.
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And then Bess remembered the shadow. It had come from an alleyway, a fleeting figure. Bess hadn’t thought anything of it, until it approached Elly. Then she saw it wasn’t a shadow but a man. A man with piggy eyes. He reached out for Elly―
No. Fever or not, she would not relive that moment. Never again.
In that moment, her world had ended. Her life had been hijacked, her innocence stolen. They’d found her weeping in the sunshine, the milk turning sour beside her.
She’d become that milk in the years since then.
The dream faded. Darkness took its place.
Any second now the wakefulness and the pain would return, and they would only get worse. There was no water but the river, she’d established that before she was sick―and even if she did manage to crawl that far, she’d only get the same bug again. Speke had taught her survival lessons once. How long could she last without water? Days―even less when she was dehydrating so fast. She probably only had a few hours left. I was a fool, she thought. Why didn’t I wait for Macel? He would have known what to do. Known how to save me. But he wasn’t here.
“If I must die...” Her voice came as barely a cracked whisper. “Then please, let it be now.” Let her last thoughts be of Elly.
Presently Bess awoke. If it could be called ‘waking’. Her eyes were open, and she could see―though it was still night, and what little moonlight made it through the windows didn’t do much to illuminate the room―but her other senses were gone. She couldn’t smell the stale air, or the rancid piss. She couldn’t feel the wind that blew against the ragged curtains. There was no pain, no dryness to her throat. In fact there was no awareness of her body at all. She knew, on an intellectual level, that she did have a body; she could remember it, after all, and she could see it, vaguely, in the dim light. But there was no physical sensation to connect her to it. There was a scratch on her left leg, just below the knee―by no means a serious wound, but a fresh one. She should be able to feel it stinging. She should be able to feel that bead of blood trickling down her leg like an orphan raindrop. Why couldn’t she? Was this death, one last blissful moment of consciousness before her soul began its journey to the Hills of Alénor?
“Was the memory as you expected it to be?” The voice came from somewhere unseen. Rich, willowy, it was a purr in her ears, made all the more radiant by the surrounding silence. It broke that unnatural hush as the rising sun might break the dark night. Bess looked for the source. Squinted, such was the near-dark, and still she could barely make out a thing.
Suddenly, without a transitional period, the form appeared, in front of the dust-ridden bookcase next to what remained of the door. Where there’d been nothing but darkness, before Bess’ eyes, there was suddenly a woman. The Moonlight Woman. Clair de Lune. She’d never said her name―in fact, she’d never said a word to Bess before―but somehow Bess knew her. As though they’d been friends once, long ago, and the imprint of that friendship still remained even with all conscious memory wiped away. The Moonlight Woman hung in the air, looming over Bess. Her hair might have been white or brown or any shade between; her eyes were definitely green, and the dress she wore―that flowing dress that fell idly over hands and feet―was certainly a gentle shade of blue. It had never been blue before. But then, the Moonlight Woman had never come while Bess was awake before.
Maybe she hadn’t now.
“Is this dying?” Bess might not have been able to feel the dryness in her throat, but it was still there, restricting her voice to a hoarse croak.
The Moonlight Woman looked at her, the look much as that of a mother regarding her child. “Does it feel like dying?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never died before.” Bess thought for a second. Faces flashed across her mind in sequence: Elly, that last glimpse of her; Master Speke, sweltering in the sun’s heat as he led Claine by the reins; Macel, sat on the lakeshore, smiling at her. Warming her with his smile. “I hope I’m not dying,” she said.
“You’re not,” said the Moonlight Woman. “The contrary, in truth: you’re just about to live. Truly.”
“I don’t understand―”
“A cold wind has risen.” The Moonlight Woman sounded so aloof, so impartial, like it was a hassle to have to put some hint of emotion into her words. “Autumn breaks. Such an autumn has not been felt here for many generations, and it will not lift idly. You are needed here, Bessily.”
“Needed?”
The Moonlight Woman seemed to curl the corners of her mouth. “Did you think I would bring you here just to die?”
“You didn’t bring me here,” said Bess. “I came with Master Speke.”
“And Master Speke came on my command. Your death is not this day. Yours has been planned since the stars themselves were merely motes of dust waiting to be born into light. The cold wind is here, child, and it is time for you to awaken.”
And just as soon as she’d come, without her image so much as fading, the Moonlight Woman was gone.
Steadily, slowly, Bess began to return to normal. The sickness began to abate. The day after the Moonlight Woman’s visitation, Bess had found the strength to boil three pot-loads of water; when she’d drunk it all, and slept for another hour or so, she realised that the headache had gone. After a few days more, she no longer felt ill at all―not when she didn’t exert herself, at least. She was able to read until the sun disappeared―was it her imagination, or were the days beginning to get shorter?―but the moment she thought of doing anything physical she grew dizzy. It was simple enough to make it to the river to fill up her pot for boiling, at least if she took a few minutes to sit down and rest on the water’s edge before she started back, but trying to return to the Valley would have killed her. She didn’t think she’d have the energy to make it even so far as those horrid Obelisks without collapsing. And she meant never to go near those things again, if it was at all possible.
So it was that Bess stayed at the farmhouse. It wasn’t a big building, even without considering the parts of it lost to weather and age; day by day she set herself to exploring another bit of it, searching it thoroughly for anything she might be able to use. There was very little. Two of the rooms downstairs had been turned into nests for some animal or another. One had been long abandoned, judging by the unbroken coating of dust on everything in there. In the other―what she supposed had been the sitting room, when the farmhouse had been occupied―she nearly stepped on a rat that had scurried out from under some fallen masonry she’d been midway through moving. Half a dozen more followed, each one making Bess jump, and for the rest of the day she was tentative with everything she moved. At the rear of that room, behind the broken remains of a wooden chair and half-covered by assorted debris, was a cabinet of dark wood with a brass knob on the door. It was the first closed cupboard door she’d seen in the farmhouse. The few others that weren’t open-faced by design had swung loose over time.
Bess moved the broken chair one snapped-off leg at a time―hurling them to the other side of the room―and dug out debris with her hands until there was nothing in the way of the cabinet. It was stiff. It must have been shut for decades at least, if not longer, and she was close to giving it up for a bad job before the door eventually popped open. Inside was nothing apart from a music box; it was a white cube with gold-painted detailing and tarnished brass feet, and a woman carved into the porcelain at the top. She was like something out of an old illustration, the sort that might accompany a children’s tale; brown-painted hair in a braid at her back, dress of brilliant scarlet, face entirely unpainted but for the rosy blush of the cheeks. It was the sort of thing Elly would enjoy.
A noise broke Bess’ thoughts. Voices. People moving. She stuffed the music box into the folds of her dress; a good job the farmer’s wife had liked her clothes baggy. Bess hurried to the front door of the farmhouse―the opening where the front door had once been―trying her best not to trip on the farmer’s wife’s oversized crimson skirts.
Outside was a wagon, big wooden wheels with spokes almost as wide as her arm, and white canvas draped over the body. Mud spatters had turned much of the lower portion of the canvas to a dirty brown instead. Three horses were affixed to the wagon, two of them mares with chestnut colouring and the other white. A man in a muted green jacket and brown breeches was tending to them. How had he found her? Bess didn’t recognise him, but she didn’t mind. Familiar or not, he could take her back to the Valley. Back to Macel.
Why had she been such a fool to go off on her own? Macel had probably given her up for dead by now. No, he wouldn’t. Not Macel. He’d come looking for her. She knew he would.
“Bloody buggery,” came a low voice. “There’s somebody here. A woman.”
Bess turned. The man tending to the horses was not the only one here. There were two others―dressed similarly, though one had a scabbard on his hip with a blade sheathed in it. The other’s jacket―blue, rather than green―had a gash ripped out of its side, exposing his bare flesh. The man in blue was the tallest, slender and sullen-faced, with dark hair tied back into a bun. He peered at Bess with narrow eyes. The other man was a head shorter but wider almost in equal measure. His hair was blonde, cut short. A long scar snaked from just below his left eye all the way down to his chin. His right hand had gone to the handle of his sheathed sword.
“She doesn’t look Burnt to me,” said the man in blue. He seemed young, younger perhaps than Bess.
“It might be the Burn hasn’t long taken her,” the blonde man growled. “Captain Kenton seemed fine until it was too late. Best not to take the chance.” He drew his sword from its sheath, baring the steel at Bess. She backed away. Why hadn’t she stayed inside? This was what she got for being nosy.
Before the blonde man had taken more than a step towards her, though, the slender man grabbed his wrist. “No, Dall. She’s just a girl.”
“And if she’s Burnt? Girl or not, you’ll die all the same.”
The slender man shook his head. “There’s rope. She’ll be harmless tied up. Maisella can tell the truth of it.”
The blonde man―Dall, as he’d been called―sniffed. “Alright.” He returned his sword to its scabbard. Bess exhaled, then squeaked when he called out to her. “Who are you?”
It took her a second to find her voice. “I’m Bess,” she said, eventually. “Bessily.”
“You’ll be coming with us.” Dall had a stern look on his face, and still clutched the handle of his sword to make it plain that he’d not be listening to any arguments on the matter.
The slender man was called Heath, Bess learnt. He introduced himself to her―softly spoken―as he tied a rope around her wrists. Heath did it tenderly, the knots so gently done that Bess wondered how they were able to stay fastened. “I’m sorry for this,” Heath said. “But you understand. The Burn. Can’t take any chances this far out.”
Bess didn’t understand. But Dall was watching them with a deep scowl, and he still hadn’t let go of his sword. She thought it best not to talk, not now anyway. Later, if the men didn’t plan to slit her throat and dump the body, she’d ask them who they were. They didn’t seem like they’d come from the Valley. There was a hardness to them, that she couldn’t well imagine people picking up while living in the confines of the Unity. The Unity was a place of peace and plenty.
Once Heath was done with the rope, the two men led Bess to their wagon. Beneath the canvas, two narrow wooden benches ran the length of the cart, and a heavy chest was wedged between them. Dall clambered in, and Heath helped Bess up the step into the wagon. He sat her down on one of the benches, and took up a position beside her―close enough that he could grab the ropes holding her, if she even thought of making a run for it. Briefly they introduced her to the third man, Tobit, who greeted her with a toothy grin then turned his attention to the horses. Dall grunted something, and old Tobit set the horses moving. The sudden jolt nearly knocked Bess off the bench she’d been pushed onto, her bound hands unable to reach out and brace herself. Heath held onto her shoulder. “I won’t let you fall,” he said. “Don’t worry about that.”
After that, none of them spoke for a while. Not until the farmhouse had vanished from sight, and the evening was beginning to set. Bess sighed, and leaned her head back.
“We’ll not be making camp until tomorrow night,” said Heath, “so if you’re planning on getting any sleep you’ll have to do it on the road. It won’t be safe to stop for a while yet.”
Less than ideal. The hard angles of the bench would give her a stiff neck, and she’d feel the price tomorrow. But her eyes were heavy, and when she closed them she could feel sleep beginning to take her. The music box was still in the fabrics of the dress―even though Elly had never owned the bloody thing, it reminded Bess of her sister―and despite herself she smiled.
I hope you’re not out there looking for me, Macel, she thought, drifting off to sleep over the gentle shudders of the cart. You shan’t find me now.
