They Mostly Come Out At Night (29 page)

Despite how uncomfortable the dark of the forest was, Lonan felt a sense of dread in the pit of his stomach when moonlight broke through the trees ahead. This meant he had reached his destination. Sure enough, the cover of the trees broke, and there in front of him, in the centre of the clearing, was the Lonely House. It was exactly as Lonan remembered from Adahy's dream, although the front wall and window was completely intact despite the damage that had been caused to it years ago. Lonan was not at all surprised about this.

Adahy gave out a low moan, which Lonan initially assumed was due to the familiar sight of the building. He quickly realised, however, it was a reaction to the face that was waiting for them both at the window. Again, Lonan had expected to see the Pale Lady, but the differences between her silhouette now and when Adahy had been younger unnerved him. The white face remained, but it was her hair that was unusual. For Adahy, it had hung covering her face, but now it was suspended, stretched out above her head, waving like a seaweed halo under a stormy sea.

They may have lost the nerve to continue at this point if not for the inhuman bellow that echoed from the trees behind them.

"Adahy. IT IS MINE. IT IS MINE."

It was the cripple who began moving first, running from the sound of the Magpie King's pursuit towards the awaiting face. Lonan followed his king's lead, quickly overtaking him. At this point he realised that the face in the window had disappeared, but he feared the certainty of death that Maed
oc offered m
uch more than whatever the Lady held in store. His shoulder hit the door of the cottage with as much force as he could muster, and his efforts were rewarded with a painful shattering of wood as the ancient barrier gave way, swinging open.

Lonan tumbled onto the ground, his wildly flailing arms proving useless at stopping his face from coming into contact with the floor. A wet explosion and the loss of sight to his right signified that some damage had been caused by the fall, and as he raised himself up the now-familiar dripping of blood to the floor confirmed this. Knowing he did not have the time to tend to minor wounds, Lonan looked around for a possible exit. Based on his memories of the house from Adahy's dreams, he knew that no force within these woods would convince him to enter the downstairs room that contained the Pale Lady, so his only remaining choice was the stairs.

This choice was confirmed by the form of Adahy, who barrelled past Lonan, howling as if he was being yanked up those stairs by an invisible chain. Behind Adahy, the door to the cottage slammed shut, closed by an unseen force.

Lonan expected to hear the rampaging pursuit, to see the door splinter open and to look his death in the face. 

But nothing happened.

In the seconds it took Lonan to realise that Maedoc was not going to appear before him, the silence of the Lonely House settled over him like a smothering sack. He slowly turned his head towards the doorway that opened to the downstairs room. The dancing shadows of candlelight and a quiet symphony of innocent creaks were the only signs that something or someone might be in that room, but Lonan's entire frame began to tremble uncontrollably at the thought of facing her now.

A whimpering noise from above him relieved Lonan of having to make a decision. Swiftly, yet taking as much care as possible to move with little noise, Lonan crept up the staircase to find Adahy perched on the mid-way landing, the king’s fists white with tension as he clutched the banister, staring at nothing in particular, returned to his catatonic state after the action of the chase. Lonan tugged at the old man's sleeve, but Adahy's knuckles were white. He was not letting go, and simply moaned in response to the disturbance.

This delay gave Lonan time to take stock of the situation. He could discern no noises from outside, but was certain Maedoc had not called off his search so easily. From below, the firelight from the downstairs room trickled out to the hallway and up the stairs, but Lonan knew that he was not yet ready to make the journey to see her. That left only upstairs. He raised his head to the landing, which was illuminated only by moonlight from a single window. The landing was thick with cobwebs, all rife with arachnids marching up and down them. These unnatural drapes moved ever so slightly back and forward, but Lonan could not discern where exactly the breeze was coming from.

At that moment, the moon outside must have unveiled its strength from behind a cloud, because the landing became considerably brighter and Lonan noticed two things at the same time.

First, perched on a shelf at the back of the hallway was a small clay pot with a single black flower blooming in it.

But between the stairway and the landing stood the Pale Lady, the faded white of her dress blending with the hanging cobwebs.

Lonan was transfixed, his mauled fingers suddenly throbbing with the rush of adrenaline that surged through his veins. The Lady did not move towards them, but watched the pair, or at least as much as she could with her flat, featureless face. As it had been when Lonan had viewed her from the window only moments ago, her hair flowed in waves from her head, as if she was submerged underwater. The folds of her thin, white dress also rippled in the unnatural breeze. His eyes tried not to focus on the tree roots below her nightdress, moving like human muscles as she swayed her body. What he could not avoid, however, was the ruined condition of the Pale Lady’s skin. When Adahy had met with her in Lonan’s dream she had appeared as a child, her young skin rippling with snake-like movements underneath. Now she appeared to them both as an old hag, her pale skin thin and tattered, in some places completely torn, showing the movement of the tree roots. Her human mask was little more than puppetry, a child’s sock pulled over a fearsome hand.

Tentatively, Lonan took one step up the staircase. "We’ve come for the flower," he forced himself to say. "May we have it?"

She did not answer, but cocked her head slightly and stretched a clawed hand towards Lonan, opening it expectantly.

She wants a gift.

Lonan cursed his own stupidity. They had nothing to offer her. He wracked his brains to think of anything on his person that might satisfy her. Back home in Smithsdown, he had an array of items that held value for him - a black squirrel pelt, his favourite carving knife, an old horse shoe his father had forged - but he was not sure if any of those items would satisfy her curiosity, even if he had remembered to bring them.

Maybe she’d be interested in something she can’t hold. A year of my life? The memory of my father?

My love for Branwen?

Before he had sufficient time to process these thoughts, the downstairs door imploded.

The next few seconds seemed to happen so slowly for Lonan, as if all involved were wading through treacle as they performed their next actions.

Through the dark door below leapt Maedoc. The impact that burst the door open was the same impact that propelled him up the stairway, causing him to land like a spider on the thinly plastered wall. He hung there suspended for what must only have been a fraction of a second, although to Lonan it was an eternity. He could see now that the feathers of magpie cloak that was draped across Maedoc's back were ragged and old, and many bare patches littered the once-proud item of clothing. What he was wearing over the rest of his body had once been some sort of leather armour, but it too was not a complete item anymore. Gaping holes in the material exposed Maedoc's flesh to the world, yet his skin was so ill-kept and abused that in the darkness of the night, most would assume it was just a continuation of his clothing. The bespoke helm of the Magpie King was now firmly directed towards Lonan and Adahy. In Lonan's dreams of it, when it had been worn by Adahy and his father, the helm had been brightly polished and perfectly maintained, as was befitting of the most important symbol of the leader of the Corvae. Maedoc's reign had given much abuse to the helm, and it had clearly received poor repair work in response. At one point, it looked like it had been broken where the beak joins with the rest of the head, and the weld marks there stood out from the burnished-black metal work on the rest of the item.

With all of this visual information before him, what stood out most for Lonan were the eyes that looked out from the helm. Positioned in such a way to reflect the firelight from the room downstairs, Maedoc's eyes were so horribly bloodshot, they no longer seemed human. The eyes locked on Lonan and Adahy just before Maedoc's final leap.

Adahy reacted in time with the imposter's attack, pushing Lonan to the side with inhuman strength, sending him flying up the remaining stairs to the top of the landing. As Lonan completed his flight, suspended helpless in the air, he had a clear view of Maedoc's claws finding their mark, ripping Adahy open from chest to belly, the force of their impact throwing Adahy's ruined body towards Lonan. Desperately, Lonan did his best to stand up and hold his ground, just in time to catch Adahy as he flew at him. One hand found good purchase on the back of Adahy's neck, yet Lonan's left hand made an attempt to grab the old man around his waist but found only slippery red ribbons. Aghast, mouth open, Lonan moved his gaze from the old man's emptying eyes to the dark figure on the stairs. With what Lonan recognised as a grunt of victory, Maedoc pounced again, making impact with Adahy's broken body, sending all three of them hurtling across the moonlit, cobwebbed landing.

With a howl of success, the reigning Magpie King reached a searching clawed hand out to Lonan's face, too impatient to wait until the mess of bodies had concluded their flight before killing his prey. Horror-stuck, Lonan jerked his head around, doing what he could to distance his face - specifically his eyes - from Maedoc's touch.

Suddenly all thoughts of Maedoc vanished from Lonan's mind as he saw what awaited him at the end of his flight. There, rushing towards him at an accelerated pace, stood the still figure of the Pale Lady, her arms open wide to welcome the trio as they surged towards her.

It was the roots beneath her nightdress, not her arms, that grabbed them first.

Both Lonan and Maedoc were restrained around the waist and thrown roughly to one side. Lonan found himself being held to the ground by a tree root, gripping him tightly like a rough-skinned snake. Maedoc lay not far from him. The reigning Magpie King struggled considerably more than Lonan did, ripping at the roots and threatening to break free. The Pale Lady responded in kind, sending more of her long appendages to coil around him, squeezing him into a wooden cocoon. Lonan’s heart leapt for a moment, thinking the Pale Lady had chosen to remove the Magpie King from the forest forever. However, Maedoc continued to struggle beneath the roots, suggesting this was only a temporary arrangement.

It was clear that it was Adahy the Pale Lady wanted. Lonan baulked when he saw the old man suspended in front of the spectre. Blood was flowing from the wound in his gut now, and the Lady had noticed as well. She lowered her face to the trickle of red, the old man uncharacteristically moaning in pain.

Then, to Lonan’s horror, more of the tree roots reached up to the stream of blood that came from Adahy’s chest. At first they touched it tentatively, but then one by one a trio of tree roots forced their way into the old man’s chest.

Lonan screamed in protest and was rewarded by another root reaching tightly across his mouth, gagging him.

Adahy began to convulse. Lonan’s eyes widened as he saw movement under the old man’s skin. The tree roots continued to surge into his chest, widening the hole but also stemming the flow of blood. His limbs jerked wildly and his head was thrown from side to side. The Pale Lady was learning how to work her new toy.

The illumination from the stars and moon faded, plunging the chamber’s inhabitants into darkness. The Pale Lady appeared to expand, her huge, billowing shape engulfing the room. She peered into Adahy’s face, blocking it from Lonan’s view.

“Our time here grows short,” she whispered.

The sound of the hag’s voice - conjuring up images of maggots feeding from rotten corpses - made Lonan gag, but he forced himself to swallow the bile trying to rise in his throat.

“The tale is nearly over, Adahy of the Corvae. This final meeting between us was requested many, many seasons ago. I am to ask you to give in. Let Maedoc here take the flower, to start a new line of Magpie Kings. Let his people, the outsiders, thrive in the forest, to take it from the Corvae as the Corvae stole the forest from me in ages past.”

“The boy. You will let the boy live?”

Lonan’s head jerked at the sound of this voice. It was one that he had never heard before in his life, except in his dreams. Animated as he was now, in this suspended form between life and death, Adahy was speaking. Lonan could still not see the old man’s face, but the voice was unmistakable.

I want to live! I’ve just been given back the life I thought I’d never have again. I want to go back to it. But what’s the cost?

In response to Adahy’s question, the Pale Lady hovered over to where Maedoc lay buried. Her white form remained attached to the mass of tree roots beneath, which guided her body around the chamber like the head of a snake.

The roots covering the Magpie King’s face fell away, allowing the Pale Lady to address her captive directly.

“You will let the boy live. Is that not correct?” She indicated towards Lonan, ensuring that Maedoc knew who she was referring to. At her gesture the tree root gag fell from Lonan’s mouth and he felt himself being pushed upright so Maedoc could get a better look at him.