The Firehills (9 page)

Her mother was frantic. She jumped up from a chair in the
residents’ lounge at the sound of the door and ran out into the lobby.

“Where have you
been?
”
she roared, “I’ve been worried sick!”

Mrs. P. emerged from the kitchen, drying her hands on a
tea towel, and stood in silence, staring at Charly.

“Mum!” she began, “I’m OK. Don’t fuss—”

“Don’t fuss! I’ve—”

“I’ve been with Sam. We went to rescue Amergin.”

“You went . . . oh, terrific.” Megan raised her eyes
to the ceiling. “So where are they?”

“Erm,” began Charly, “there was a bit of a
problem.”

“Megan, Charly,” interrupted Mrs. P., “I think we
should go and sit down, and you can tell us what happened.” She ushered
Charly through into the lounge. Megan ran one hand distractedly across her
face, then followed.

Five minutes later, Charly had finished her story. Silence
fell. Eventually, Megan said, “What am I going to tell his parents?”

Charly stared at the floor.

“I don’t believe this is happening,” Megan
continued.

“At least, Amergin is an adult—there’s a chance he
can look after himself. But Sam . . . ? How could you be so stupid?” She gave
Charly a despairing look. Charly felt tears spring to her eyes once more.

“Megan, dear,” pleaded Mrs. P., “don’t be too
harsh on the child.”

“I’m going to my room. I need to think.” Megan stood
up. “You, young lady, are so grounded—” She paused, then turned and
marched out of the room.

Mrs. P. stared at Charly for a long moment. “Foolish and
headstrong,” she said. “And utterly reckless.”

Charly screwed up her eyes and tried not to sob.

“And you’re not much better,” continued Mrs. P.

“Huh?” Charly looked up.

Mrs. P. was smiling. “Your mother, dear,” she
continued. “She was just like you, when she was your age. But not quite so
talented. Don’t take it too hard—she’s upset and frantic with worry.
I’ll go and speak to her soon, see if we can come up with a plan. You go up
to your room, and try to get some rest.”

Charly nodded, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and headed
for the stairs.

Sam scrambled to his feet, ready to run. He was on a
grassy slope, dotted here and there with scrub. A featureless sweep of grass
stretched before him up to a clear blue sky. He walked up the slope a short
way, but the turf was unmarked, featureless, apart from a scatter of dry sheep
dung. It seemed unlikely that elves or fairies were going to burst out of the
ground.

He turned around, and his eyes widened. The ground dropped
away steeply, the scrub growing thicker toward the foot of the slope and
merging into the fringes of woodland. A woodland that rolled away in all
directions, a dense green rug thrown across the landscape, fading to the palest
blue haze on the distant horizon. Here and there, a faint plume of smoke rose
from a clearing, marking a hidden farm or village. But otherwise the trees had
dominion, an ancient forest like nothing Sam had ever seen.
Well,
he thought to himself,
no
sign of Hastings.

One of the plumes of smoke was close, no more than an
hour’s walk, Sam guessed. With no better plan, he descended the slope,
scrambled over a rough hurdle fence, and set off into the trees.

From his view on the hillside, Sam had been expecting some
sort of primeval wildwood, a tangle of thorns and brambles, but the forest was
surprisingly open. Many of the trees had been cut at the base and left to
regrow, craggy old stumps of hazel and hornbeam sprouting crops of tall,
straight shoots, leaves fluttering like flags in the breeze. Here and there, a
mighty oak or ash had been left to grow tall, great timber trees standing like
pillars with their crowns in the sunlight.

Sam soon picked up a rough path that meandered between low
banks studded with wildflowers. It was bluebell time, and the ground to either
side of the path glowed beneath a blue haze. The air was heavy with the perfume
of a million nodding blooms.

As he walked, he became more than usually aware of the
presence that always seemed to lurk behind his mind, peering through his eyes.
The spirit of the Green Man within him recognized this place. It was the world
where he had been born, the ancient wildwood where he had grown and flourished
before humans, spurred on by the whispers of the Malifex, had destroyed it. The
spirit seemed to push forward, until Sam felt as if someone were standing very
close behind him, so close that if he turned and looked, they would be eye to
eye. He heard, or felt, a chuckle—a deep current of mirth running through his
head. Beneath the laughter was something wild, primeval, the music of pipes and the distant sound of horns. Sam
broke into a run, flickering through the shafts of light that pierced the high
canopy. The fierce happiness of the Green Man swept over him, and he began to
shift from one shape to another for the simple joy of it. He was a hare once
more, a wolf, a polecat arcing through the long grass like a coiled spring.

Once he heard a snorting and rustling and feared that the
Sidhe had returned. But it was only a herd of pigs, rooting beneath the oaks.
They were leaner and hairier than the fat, pink animals Sam was used to, with a
halfwild look to them. They ignored Sam, seeing only a young stag, and he moved
on.

He passed a fallen tree, a giant of the canopy that had
succumbed to gales or rot and had crashed down into the undergrowth. Its roots
had taken with them a huge disk of earth, which stood now vertical, leaving
behind a circular crater. The rain had filled it, and the creatures of the
forest were busy claiming this new pond as their own. Yellow irises flowered
around the edge, and kingcups, and the blue needles of damselflies darted
through the rushes. In a grassy clearing, Sam stopped before an area trampled
to mud by deer and assumed his human shape. A huge butterfly, dark except for a
lightning-flash of white across its wings, fluttered up from a hoofprint. Its
wings glinted an intense metallic purple as it passed through a shaft of
sunlight, heading up to the high canopy of oaks. Sam was getting hungry. He had
lost all track of time, but it felt like several hours since his last meal. He
stopped for a breather, climbing the low bank and settling with his back against a tree. He sat listening to the sound of
birdsong for a while, watching midges weave a ball of silver in the light that
fell on the path below. And then, with nothing else to do, he continued on.
Soon he came to a patch of woodland that had recently been cut—the word
coppiced
sprang to his mind, though he wasn’t entirely
sure what it meant. Here the old stumps that he had seen throughout the forest
had had their crop of tall stems removed, and piles of long poles were neatly
stacked by the path. The great timber trees had been left to grow on and stood
in majestic isolation in the wide clearing. Sawdust and wood chips littered the
ground, but already primroses and purple orchids had pushed up through, basking
in the unexpected flood of light that now bathed the forest floor.

A little farther on, Sam came across a series of low
mounds. They reminded him of barrows or tumuli, but the earth was raw and
fresh, and each was crowned with a wooden peg surrounded by turf. A wisp of
smoke drifted from around one of the pegs. Sam went over to investigate. He
placed one hand on the bare clay of the mound and found that it was warm.
Moving on, he soon found an explanation for the mounds. They were charcoal
kilns—the last in the line had been broken open and its contents
removed. Glossy black charcoal was strewn across the trampled ground, and a
pile of blackened logs stood to one side. He kicked at the scraps of charcoal,
and they tinkled like glass. The trail of footprints and black dust led off
through the trees, and Sam’s eyes, following the trail, made out the dark
shapes of buildings in the distance.

Sam edged into the clearing, eyes darting back and forth.
A regular metallic ringing came from the largest building, as did the plume of
smoke that he had seen from the hillside. The buildings themselves confirmed
his suspicion. This was not his own time. Thatched and timberframed, the sides
daubed with mud and straw, these were no buildings from Sam’s world.

There were three main structures: the largest in front of
him, across a yard of bare earth, and two smaller ones—barns or storehouses of some sort—to either side. A few
hens scratched around in the dust. The trail of charcoal fragments led to a
neatly stacked pile of black logs by the main building. The metallic sound of
hammering suddenly ceased, and a figure appeared at the door of the building
ahead, a huge hulk of a man. He stared at Sam for a few moments, then beckoned,
turned, and disappeared back inside. Sam stood on the edge of the yard,
paralyzed with indecision. The man had not seemed hostile. Otherwise, surely,
he would have approached Sam instead of turning back. But was it safe to
follow? Sam considered his options. He had clearly emerged from the Hollow
Hills far from his own time. He was alone, with no idea of where or when he was
or how to return. What did he have to lose? With a shrug, he set off across the
yard.

It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.
The windows were tiny, and the main source of illumination was a roaring fire
in the center of the room. Silhouetted against its light was the bulk of the
man who had beckoned. He had his back to Sam and was examining something
intently.

“Welcome, lad,” he rumbled, without turning around.
His accent was thick but somehow familiar. “Don’t ’ee ’ang on the
threshold. Come on in.”

Sam realized that he spoke like the man they had met at
the foot of Windover Hill, who had told them of the windsmith. He stepped
forward.

The man turned suddenly, and Sam saw that he was holding a
long, curved blade. In a panic, Sam scuttled backward and collided with the
doorframe, bringing down a shower of dust from the thatch.

“Oh, don’t ’ee mind this,” said the man, waving
the blade at Sam. “New scythe blade; old ’un’s as sharp as I am.” He
placed it carefully on a low wooden table.

“Run on an’ get us summin’ t’eat,” he commanded.
Sam was confused for a moment, but then a small shadow detached itself from the
larger gloom and scurried past him. It was a young boy, covered in soot. Sam
had a glimpse of wide, white eyes, and then he was gone.

“Don’ get many strangers,” said the man, folding his
arms across his massive chest. He was wearing a long leather apron over rough
brown leggings. His arms were bare and hugely muscled.

“I’m, er, lost,” said Sam.

“I should say y’are,” agreed the man, “a tidy way
lost, an’ all. A young ’un, too, ter be wanderin’ the ’ollow
’ills.”

“You know about the Hollow Hills?” Sam asked in
surprise.

“Course I do, boy! I ain’t no gowk! An’ I knows a
Walker when I sees one.”

“A walker?”

“A Walker Between Worlds. One as uses the ’ills to get
about, an’ ’as commerce with the Faery Folk.”

“I dunno about
commerce,
”
replied Sam. “I was trying to get away from them. They’ve kidnapped my
friend.”

“Ah, a sorry tale,” said the man with a sigh. “Not
wise to cross ’em, the Farisees. What did ’e do, this friend of yourn?”

“He invaded their land, killed quite a few of them,
drove the rest underground.”

“Ah. ’E’ll be a pop’lar lad, then.”

At that moment, the boy returned with wooden plates
bearing thick slabs of coarse bread and slices of tangy cheese.

“Tuck in, lad,” said the man.

“Thanks. I’m Sam, by the way.”

“’Ow do, Sam? You can call me Wayland.”

Silence fell as they applied themselves to the food.
Eventually, Wayland said, “Youm gonna rescue ’im, then?

This friend of yourn?”

“That was the idea,” admitted Sam, “but I didn’t
get very far. I’d just found a way into the Hollow Hills when the Sidhe
turned up, and then somehow I sort of fell out and ended up on a hillside not
far from here.”

“Aye, well, them as goes crawling round in the earth
like moldywarps is arskin’ fer bother.”

“Moldywarps?” spluttered Sam, spraying crumbs.

“Little gennlemen in black velvet, as digs in the earth.
Leaves their little mounds o’ muck hither and yon.”

“Ah, moles,” said Sam and returned to his sandwich.
Wayland was quiet once more, chewing steadily. His face was weather-beaten and
ruddy, like old leather, polished and oiled; and his graying hair was
square-cut at the shoulders. His blue eyes twinkled in nets of fine lines as
he watched Sam.

“Iron,” he said, after a while. “That’s yer lad
for the Faery Folk. Iron.”

Sam looked blank.

“Can’t stand it, see?” Wayland continued. “Takes
away their power, only thing as can kill ’em. You needs you some iron.”

“Have you got anything I could use?” asked Sam.
Wayland dissolved into laughter. It went on for what seemed like an
unreasonable length of time, and Sam was starting to look around in
embarrassment when Wayland took a shuddering breath, wiped his eyes, and said,
“’Ave I got any iron? I’m a blacksmith, boy! I’ve got precious little
but
iron! Tell ’ee what, you an’ me, we’ll
make somethin’, a good ole pigsticker fer visitin’ bother on the
Farisees!”

The smith jumped to his feet. “Don’t just sit sowing
gape seed, lad. Tackle-to!”

Charly lay on her back on her bed, staring at the ceiling.
Her mother had gone upstairs with Mrs. P., up into the attic room, where they
were now deep in discussion. Closing her eyes, she pictured once more the crop
circle forming around Sam, the spheres of light crackling and dancing, the
breathtaking pattern of swirls stamped across the landscape. How typical of
Sam, she thought. Miracles and wonders followed him wherever he went, and he
blundered around in the middle of them, moaning and sulking like a child. He
was a hero, yes. He had defeated the Malifex, after all—but almost by accident. She had done
most of the real work. And Amergin, of course. She sighed. It all came down to
power again. Sam was a boy and had it; she was a girl and didn’t. If only
there was some way. . . . She thought again about her initiation and the books
she had read as part of her training. Her
Book of
Shadows
was full of tantalizing hints and rumors
of the powers she would gain as she completed her training. One ritual in
particular had always stuck in her mind, because it summed up the glamour of
Wicca. It was central to the Craft and was carried out by the high priestess.
Charly shivered just thinking about it. From her earliest memories, she had
dreamed of one day becoming a high priestess, with her own coven. An idea came
to her and she sat up.