Robert Carter - The Language of Stones

He felt the last shreds of resolve drain from him. The drowsy opal sky burned and seemed to press down on his head. He felt the warm mud seeping between his toes, making the ache in his feet go away, making the hurts of his long journey out of childhood fade. When he looked again he was already knee-deep in the water and the girl was naked beside him. But it was all right. It was how it was meant to be. Velvet smooth mud caressed his skin, inviting him deeper. He sank to his waist, then to his chest, and then he felt the water creeping up his neck and chin. The air above was filled with the lulling drone of dragonfly wings, repeating, repeating, endlessly repeating. And Willow, graceful beside him, walking a watery aisle, her cool hands on his face. Then she kissed him full on the mouth and led him down into the wonderful world that lay below the surface.

When Will burst into wakefulness he was choking and fighting for breath. A cage of bony fingers imprisoned his face and, as they were ripped away, they tore at his cheeks.

‘Be gone, foul hag!’ a tremendous voice roared.

He saw a vile creature draw back from him. Its mottled grey skin sagged and fell in slack folds, its hair hung like fronds of stinking pondweed, its mouth hissed and spat as it struggled against Gwydion’s grip.

‘How dare you exact your revenges upon the innocent?’ the wizard demanded. ‘This obligation I lay upon you: get back into the slime where you belong and bother the sons of men no more!’

The creature’s long fingers grasped for Gwydion’s face. Their ends had suckers that tried to attach themselves to him, but the wizard held the hag away. For a moment it seemed that it would succeed in embracing him, but then he laid a mighty word on it, and it collapsed into the water and melted away.

Will was on his hands and knees coughing and spluttering. Every time he tried to draw breath, water vomited from his lungs and he began retching. Gwydion pushed him down and squeezed the water out of him and soon he was able to lie on his back and breathe freely again.

‘It was horrible,’ he said wildly. ‘Horrible! I thought it was a girl! I thought it was Willow!’

‘And what of your promise that you would not stray beyond the bounds of Wychwoode?’ Gwydion’s voice was soft but there was such a power of accusation contained there that Will shrank from it.

‘I didn’t mean to disobey! The forest got cut down and I sent word for Willow to come to the place we knew and then, and then—’

‘And then you fell neatly into a trap set for you by the marish hag! And I hoped you could be trusted.’

Will was shivering and could not stop. ‘What…what was it?’

‘A hag. A creature that preys on fools.’

He put a hand to his throat. ‘I almost drowned…’

‘Oh, you would not have drowned! You would have been kept happily alive for many days and weeks as part of the loathsome larder that all such water hags keep down below. And there all the juices would have been sucked from you one day at a time as you dreamed your death dream!’

Will wallowed in the mush of stinking, black ooze that had accompanied him out of the pond. ‘Master Gwydion, if you hadn’t come…’

‘You are lucky indeed that I have returned.’ The wizard looked down on him as if from a great height. ‘Augh! I cannot abide the stench of dirty magic.’

‘But how did you know where to find me?’

‘Do you remember your little friends the dragonflies? Your use of naming magic upon them drew me just as it drew the hag. You are fortunate it drew nothing worse, for you were lit up like a beacon!’

‘I didn’t mean to do wrong. I—’

‘You are no better than the child who delights in pulling the wings from butterflies. Cruelty is a grievous failing, Willand.’

Those words cut deep. ‘But I didn’t harm them.’

‘Of course you harmed them. And after all you were told. Who are you to entrap dragonflies and use them as you did? They are living creatures, with their own concerns and neither the time nor the strength to dance attendance on the will of a lad who merely wants to impress a pretty girl!’

‘I never thought of it that way.’

‘Indeed you did not!’

The wizard paced up and down the bank and Will looked away in shame. He saw his dragonflies lying exhausted on the surface, their tiny legs moving weakly. He had nearly killed them.

Gwydion reached down and lifted them from the water one by one and whispered words that unbound them, so they revived and flew away whole from the glow that was in his hands. When he had done with them he looked around, his face still grey with anger. ‘I hope you now have the strength to walk, for we must be gone from here.’ His anger blazed up. ‘ Na duil! Look at the desecration they have wrought! They have hewn down an ancient and sacred grove. This is a high crime, the like of which we have not seen since Nis and Conat burned the groves of Mona!’ He turned suddenly. ‘And you! Where are your braids?’

‘I cut them off.’

‘Young savage!’

He was shivering, and now he began to babble. ‘When the hag came to me she was beautiful, Master Gwydion. She reminded me of the white lady. The one who stood by the bridge over the Evenlode when we first came into the Wychwoode. You know, the one I asked you about. Why was she weeping?’

Gwydion laid his hands on Will’s shoulders, his expression hard to fathom. ‘That is the innocent form of her apparition. She weeps for a lost love, for she was driven to madness by a jilting.’

‘Who was she?’

‘Do you not yet know? Did I not tell you that Lord Strange was once the handsomest of noblemen? Before he became a lord he was the younger son of a noble family that lived many leagues to the north, but being without title he greatly desired advancement. While travelling near Wychwoode he met a beautiful girl called Rowen who lived close by. She was a churl’s daughter, a commoner, but she loved John le Strange with all her heart, and she was happy when he promised her they would marry.’

‘Do you mean his wife? The lady who taught me to read and write?’

‘On the day that everyone expected John le Strange to marry Rowen, he announced that he would marry another. That other is the Lady Strange whom you know. Rowen fell prey to despondency. She allowed herself to sink into madness and wandered the Wychwoode, living in the wild for a year before committing herself to the Evenlode. Now she cannot bear to see others who are in love. It is her delight to lure hopeful young men down to their doom to make them pay for her suffering. And meanwhile Lord Strange’s foul betrayal left him open to the spell that holds him in its power. Now do you understand?’

Will nodded. He thought again of the figure in white weeds that he thought he had glimpsed floating in Grendon Pool. ‘Now I see why Lord Strange must wear his wedding ring through his nose. He is more cursed than ever I knew.’

‘Take this lesson from today – bitter grudges corrode the human spirit, while only forgiveness restores it. The same is true of painful memories.’

Will hurried after the wizard until they regained the forest. Had he been a dog, his tail would have been between his legs. He halted and saw how Gwydion drew apart and flushed the anger out of himself. The wizard became as still as stone before he gathered his powers. Then, holding out his hands in an attitude of appeal he focused a thousand brilliant points of light on himself and called forth a staggering thunderbolt.

It was bluer than the flash of a dragonfly, brighter than the noonday sun. It flashed forth with a bang and burst the dam asunder. Out of the brilliance, a cloud of steam boiled up into the air, and the pent-up waters were suddenly relieved. They raged out for a few moments in a dark flood, then the water was gone and all that remained of the pool was a foetid acre of mud in which ooze-worms wriggled and thrashed.