Half Discovered Wings (5 page)

It got darker, and she passed the time by counting the
seconds until they were minutes, then counting the minutes away …
The darkness was upon her before she realised. However, this was
nothing to what it became hours later, a pitch blackness in which
she could barely see the moving shapes in front of her. They
stopped, and Gabel said something quietly to the magus. He moved
toward Rowan.

‘
Stay
close,’ was all Gabel said, and she had no trouble adhering to this
order; animal voices chattered and barked around them.

They stopped half an hour later, for fear of losing one
another. They each lay out two thick blankets to sleep between, and
Gabel started a fire in the centre of a small clearing. Rowan could
see the angular shape of something animal-sized near the opposite
edge, and Gabel swore, kicking the crusted thing away. The whole
place smelled of death, liquid yet knife-sharp.

The magus said nothing
to them before going to sleep. He lay extremely still under his
blanket, aged fingers resting on the frayed edges. The lids rolled
with the movement of his eyes underneath.

‘
Is he sleeping?’ Rowan whispered as Gabel kneeled next to her,
tending the fire.

‘
I don’t know. He could probably hear us anyway.’

There was a
crackle as the magus rolled over on the dry leaves.

‘
I’m exhausted, Joseph…’

‘
Get some sleep,’ he advised.

She fell
silent and tried to feel comfortable on the itchy blanket. It was
coarse against her skin, but she was too fatigued to even move
around to a softer area.

Already she felt like she was being eroded by the journey.
Pieces of her were being swept along by this strong, leather-clad
current, whilst others lingered back at the church, forever wedged
into the crumbling mortar and ground into the dusty wooden
floorboards.

She opened her
eyes and the only light she saw was the glow from the fire, surfing
through the darkness and reflecting off the bark on the trees
around her. A few minutes later she rolled over, and saw Gabel
disappearing into the darkness.

~

Gabel had heard noises before they stopped to rest, but he
wasn’t concerned. The forest was full of creatures, especially
around nightfall when they were awakened by the quietness around
them, the leaves settling as the day-winds died and the light fell.
Even now Gabel could hear small animals crunching through the
fallen leaves, or scrabbling in the low branches around his head as
he walked alongside a narrow river.

It had been a long time since Gabel had seen the stars
outside of the town. He recognised three constellations, but
another stranger one had appeared from the east, and he could not
think of a shape to go with those six bright points.

The moon wasn’t visible – it was behind the trees now – but
its shine illuminated the leaves of the plants across the
riverbank. Thoughts returned to William Teague, the theriope. Gabel
had been stupid to lead the others into that last clearing before
checking it first. The thing he had kicked away was a human torso,
rotted almost to the bone. But with the distraction of saying
farewell to Bethany he had forgotten Teague and their
confrontation, and Rowan couldn’t handle a shock like that.
Whatever illness ravaged her, she was weak.

Gabel dipped
his hands in the water by his feet, washed them roughly, and wished
his old friend good luck in whatever hellgarden he had sprouted in
since his death.

‘
May it be better than our sad lives together,’ he said, and
baptised himself with the cold, clear water from the river. ‘Rest
well, William, my friend.’

The slog back to the little camp was short, but it was a long
enough period for the factotum to dwell on the place he had
abandoned, and the place he was going. The old magus, who still
remained only a shade of a personality to Gabel, skilfully managed
to avoid giving any direct answers to their true destination. All
Gabel knew was that Shianti, also called Hermeticia, was in the
region of their destination. There they would seek out medicine for
Rowan’s wasting sickness as well as accomplish the magus’ obscure
goal.

Upon arriving
back at the camp he saw that the others were sleeping. He lay down
without a blanket a few feet away from Rowan, and rested his eyes
until just before sunrise. Then, after a modest breakfast, they
began to move on.

~

The three walked alone for five days without meeting any
person or creature. Rowan had started to believe that the forest
was completely uninhabited, and that the danger the magus and Gabel
constantly warned her about was nothing but fiction.

On the sixth day Gabel stopped dead, standing perfectly
straight as the few singular rays of light began to shine through
the trees. He lowered his hat over his eyes and said, ‘The wider
river’s to our left. Not far now.’

Treading softly through the forest, Rowan could hear the
sounds of a river in front of her. They arrived half an hour later,
where the rushing waters were white by their feet over deep
embankments covered in lichen and grass. She watched the waters
flow and it made the time pass quicker.

They walked
until long after dark, until the hunter absently looked up at the
moon and muttered, ‘It’s midnight.’

Rowan stopped
then and sat, looking over the waters with her hands in her
lap.

Gabel called
over to her from further away. ‘What’s the matter?’

She said, ‘It just became Sunday.’

The hunter
sighed, muttered to the magus, protested for a few minutes, and
then realised the futility of making a pious girl travel on the
Sabbath. The hunter sat by her, a few metres away from the magus,
and looked up at the stars from under his hat, smiling faintly.

‘
You don’t share your employer’s lack of faith?’ she asked him.
Gabel seemed to be surprised by her words.

‘
I owe a lot to Father,’ he replied, ‘but I don’t accompany him
in his religion, nor in the old man’s. I’m here not to comfort you,
Rowan, but to try and dissuade you from this respite.’

She listened
to the chirping of the insects for a few seconds, as if the little
things were speaking. She felt strangely calm, though the cold
winds that followed the waters were uncomfortable at best. She
gazed at the purple fireflies that gathered around the reeds near
her feet.

‘
Joseph, the thing that murdered Bethany … You said it was
a…’

‘
A were-creature, called a theriope. You’re asking me this
because you know the magus was there that night? I suspected he
might be involved because he foretold that I would lose something
dear to me.’

‘
He did?’

‘
Something along those lines.’

She followed
the insects as they made their illuminate way up from the reeds and
mingled with the stars above them. ‘What do you think now?’

‘
That he’s as accurate as he is mysterious.’ He smiled at her.
‘But he’s not a theriope. I can smell these things. Let’s move on
in the morning, all right? It’s dangerous around here.’

‘
I can’t just abandon the rules I’ve set for
myself.’

‘
Rowan, you’re not living with the priest now. You can make
your own rules.’

A nod, followed by another glimpse upward at the bright
nebulous cloud of lilac-hued insects. They swam mindlessly for a
few minutes, before taking off along the path of the river and
blinking out, one by one.

‘
If that’s what you want,’ she said.

~

They set off an hour before sunrise, again keeping close to
the riverbank and following it west toward the town of Pirene. The
magus described the place to Rowan with such vivid detail that she
felt that the picture in her head was more a real memory than her
imagination: a town powered by water wheels that turned steam to
energy, and made up of single-story houses clustered around a bomb
crater; a sunken remnant of the war.

After the fighting had
stopped, grass sprang up around the inside of the basin, and in the
very centre a tree had grown. It hit the height of seven feet, and
then abruptly stopped growing. Its springy boughs turned to
inanimate stone. Its petrified branches remained forever bare. The
soon-to-be founder of the town had stumbled across this spectacle,
and Pirene was built around it.

Rowan was
halfway through pointing out that the people of the town were
living in sin, praying to a false idol, when Gabel asked brusquely
for silence. Together they waited quietly amongst the trees as he
stood, still as a winter lake, listening.

‘
I can’t hear anything,’ Rowan whispered.

‘
A noise like insects,’ said the magus. ‘Hornets?’

‘
Not quite,’ Gabel whispered back.

‘
Music,’ said the magus suddenly. ‘But this far into the
forest?’

He got no
reply from the factotum, who was listening patiently. Slowly he
began walking once more, and Rowan saw his fingertips flex, itching
to stroke the trigger of his pistol.

The other two followed nervously. As they got closer it did
almost sound like music, but it was distant and they had the trees
to listen through. Before any of the three could make a decision,
the sound stopped.

Voices tinkled in the still air as they proceeded cautiously
into the forest.

They stopped at a wide junction in the footpath paved with
wood-chippings, and in the centre of the fork lay another fallen
tree. Leaning against its mossy bark were two young women, dressed
in rural clothing in hues of cream and brown. They stopped talking
and watched as the travellers approached, their faces instantly
bright with recognition.

‘
Our old friend the magus!’ cried one, and she danced down the
path and put her arms around the old man’s neck, kissing him
lightly on the cheek. Gabel saw a hardwood violin in her left
hand.

Rowan stepped forward. She managed a hello, realising how ill
she must look beside these two sprightly young women who were
scarcely much older than her, yet so much more full of
life.

The two girls stepped lightly toward each other. They stood
side by side and bowed elegantly before the party, introducing
themselves as Maeia and Taeia.

It was with
this bow that Rowan noticed how each woman was the antithesis of
the other; Maeia young and left handed, and Taeia older and right
handed. Both wore the same outfit in design – a heavy frock and
apron, and, Rowan gauged, a tight corset beneath each – but each
was the other’s opposite in colour: where Maeia’s was cream,
Taeia’s was brown, and vice-versa.

Again they curtsied, grins showing bright teeth. The magus
seemed to beam with pride at the girls, and clapped. ‘And how are
people finding your music? Your skills seem to grow with each
meeting.’

‘
You see them around often?’ Gabel asked.

‘
We travel,’ Maeia informed them. Then she asked the magus,
‘Who’s this?’

‘
Joseph Gabel, a factotum I hired.’

Rowan noticed the unguarded look that Maeia shot Gabel. It
was a look of barely concealed disgust:
a
factotum! How revolting
.

Meanwhile, Taeia was saying, ‘We go from town to town to
share our talent!’

‘
Just this summer we played in Asunción,’ Taeia announced
excitedly. ‘For an inn in the city centre.’

‘
And it went down well,’ Maeia rebounded. ‘I believe they loved
us.’

‘
I believe they
loved
us!’ Taeia grinned back.

Gabel touched Rowan on the shoulder as the magus moved to
talk to them quietly for a moment. ‘Are you well?’

‘
I’m fine,’ she said, and smiled. She looked exhausted from the
unexpected excitement.

The magus approached them. ‘The girls are heading our way
toward Pirene. Perhaps they could travel with us for a
while.’

‘
I’d like that, Joseph,’ said Rowan.

‘
You don’t need my permission,’ he growled. They set off once
more, as the afternoon heat began to mount underneath the
leaves.

The two girls chattered like chipmunks, but to Gabel their
voices were melodic. He found their energy astonishing in such a
dark and dangerous place and, though their presence made the others
feel too much at ease, he had no struggle in keeping himself
alert.

Twice that
afternoon he urged them into silence as light footsteps were heard
behind them, then later beside them, across the river. An hour
before dusk he heard rustling in the branches of the trees on the
opposite bank, and in the overhanging boughs that reached over the
water like bridges. After he stopped for the third time the noises
disappeared.

‘
Is it anything, factotum?’ Maeia asked.

Gabel ignored her and turned to the magus. ‘We should find
somewhere to camp for the night. If we set off early tomorrow we
may reach Pirene by late the next day.’

‘
The next day?’ asked Taeia with surprise. ‘Mister Gabel, we
must be closer than you think; we’re but an hour away.’

‘
An hour?’ said the old magus, who glanced briefly at the
hunter.

‘
Let’s hurry, then,’ said Gabel. He scowled and shucked his
satchel higher onto his shoulder, then pushed on through the
forest.