 |
a/n: Just to clarify, this is not going to be continued. I am putting it up here solely for the purpose of judging the beginning. Hence the reason this doesn't belong in the WIP section.
Around the southeast edge of the country curved an unremarkable mountain range, a stony comma: an afterthought of geography. There were, throughout this mountain range, a few villages that had sprouted up beside the kingsroad, a sometimes dangerous trail that cut almost straight across the ridge, as per court order; and if the peaks were a cartographer's afterthought, the villages did not even amount to scribbles on the margins. But for all that the people who dwelt there were men like any other. One such was called Peregrine. 'Dwelt' is perhaps the wrong word, in his case: his sister, Dandelion and their mother lived in Bluepoint, certainly, and he had his roots there, but Peregrine spent his days climbing after his herd. He slept as often as not among brambles and thorns. All good herdsmen do, at some point or another in their wandering paths - though Peregrine had not strayed too far as yet; he loved the land around his birthplace too well, rocky outcrops, brambles, and all.
It was on one such day, while he was sitting and eating his dinner with his back to a boulder and one wary eye on the goats, when he spied a stranger approaching. He blinked, re-wrapped his half-eaten loaf, and stood up, the better to see over the low grassy ridge that sloped down to the kingsroad, which this high up was little better than a treacherous path.
"Hello?"
"Who said that?" The man – it was a man, that much Peregrine could make out from his shape – looked up.
"Me, sir," he said, and casting one last glance towards his goats scrambled down the hill, half-wondering whether he was being a fool even as he did so. Close up, Peregrine could see that the fellow did not seem like a decent sort: he was blond, which meant his ancestors were in all likelihood northerners, never a good sign, and his face was scarred heavily for a trader or singer, suggesting either belligerence or, worse still, a military career. Peregrine was eighteen years old and no fool; there hadn't been any significant wars in his lifetime, but that meant nothing, and little folk like he and his family had as good reason to fear mercenaries as any foreigner. At least, they did if his dead grandmother's stories were to be trusted.
"Sir, eh?" said the man, amused. "Come closer."
Peregrine held his ground, unwilling to chance it. He probably wouldn't be able to outrun the man if necessary, but he wanted at least a chance.
"I'm not going to hurt you." There was a pause. The man seemed to be waiting for something, but after another heartbeat he went on. "You can call me Porter. Is there an inn near here, boy?"
He considered whether or not to hold out his hand expectantly, as he'd seen some of the braver lads do when they thought the traveler was wealthy enough, but looked at the heavy-set face again and decided against it. Particularly considering the answer. "No, sir. The last inn is the one for royal courtiers, an hour's walk back." Right now he was glad of that fact, all things considered. Better that any and all rough, dangerous northern bastards get drunk several miles away from anyone he knew.
"Damn it. And some of us aren't royal courtiers. I take it there are no common ones past the place at the crossroads?"
"No, sir," said Peregrine.
"Hah. Well, thank you, I suppose." Porter opened the pouch at his waist and tossed a coin to him with an oddly delicate flick of his wrist. It caught the light at the high point of its arc through the air and then fell gleaming at the young man's feet. He stared at it. It was only a copper disc, but he felt reluctant about picking it up. He had never handled money before.
When Peregrine looked up again the man had already set off in the opposite direction.
Thoughtful, he scooped up the money, cleaning off the dust of the road with his tunic and rubbing it between his fingers like a talisman. He had seen its like before, of course – his mother took both he and his sister down to market twice a year, and there fat men traded with metal pieces that clinked as they passed from hand to hand, but in the village when one needed something one bartered for it. Well, well, well. Mother would probably be pleased, although she might box him about the ears first for chancing it with someone like Porter. A coin, even a copper one, was something to boast about to the other washwomen. It was a reason to go home for once, at least.
Then he remembered that his goats had been wandering unattended throughout. He swore, and thrashing through the underbrush found his way back up to a clearing empty of every single one but for the eldest, who was asleep.
The sun was low in the sky when he had rounded up the rest and made his winding way to Bluepoint, tired, scratched and bruised enough from trying to run through the unforgiving woods that clung to the peak that the wives who invariably were the ones to answer the door when he knocked clucked in sympathy before leading their family's animal or animals away from the herd and into its pen. A few, the younger ones he'd known all his life, offered him a drink, even, not just the usual payment of eggs or milk or potatoes. Peregrine appreciated that, especially from Larkspur, an old friend with a sharp tongue, despite the fact that the charity was accompanied by her usual mocking words. Not that he accepted any, of course; his mother was waiting.
In fact she was at the door, hands on hips, when he arrived at their hut.
"Peregrine, if you don't tell me where you've been and what you've been doing," said Sparrow, glaring at him, "I'll take your skin off for you. Your sister saw you coming and she said you were all beat up like you'd been in a fight. Have you been flirting with Robin again? You have, haven't you. Or was it Brook?"
"Haven't either," he said, amiably – it was a fair question, considering that last two times he had come home injured.
"Good. I should've thought getting your hide tanned for you by both their husbands would cure you of that notion. So what happened?" she asked, beginning to unload him of his burden.
He told her.
She boxed him around the ears.
"Mother!" he protested, wincing and rubbing his head. "I thought you'd be pleased. At the very least this will pay for Dandelion's winter shoes, won't it?"
"Probably," she conceded, scooping up a potato, which she'd dropped in the process of punching him. "But winter shoes or no, you oughtn't have gone up to a stranger like that, not a grown man twice your size."
"He wasn't much taller than me," said Peregrine.
"Hah! 'Not much taller,' he says. You can just come inside and sit down to supper. You may not be a good son, but you'll act like it tonight."
"Yes, mother," he said meekly, and without further ado followed her inside, ducking under the lintel as he went – to make his point.
Inside their one room it was dim and smoky: the air smelled of burning peat. It was summer, but then Sparrow kept the fire lit at all times. Too easy for cold to creep in come nightfall, when one was as far up the mountain as they. There were no more villages, after Bluepoint; only a few miles higher up, the snow didn't melt 'til July and started falling again in September. The cold was always a danger. But at least in summer their livestock slept out in the yard. Peregrine didn't mind the smell – he'd lived all his life with it – but the constant noise made staying inside during blizzards and worse hard, very hard. Some men went mad like that. As he teased Dandelion: their father had surely run off because of the particularly piercing cry of their prize c**k.
"Hello, 'Grin," said his little sister, on cue, looking up from where she lay curled up by the warmth of the flames. She was black with soot and her grin shone like a crescent moon. "Who'd you kiss this time?"
"No one at all," said Peregrine, with dignity.
"Of course not." She gave him a look that he thought too knowing, coming as it did from a girl, and a girl six years younger than him at that. "So what really happened, brother?"
He slouched over and fell with a dramatic sigh onto the hearth. "Well," he said, drawing out the word, "I met someone on the kingsroad." He described Porter, not without a certain amount of somewhat exaggerated drama.
She raised her eyebrows. "And he attacked you?"
"No, no, no. He wanted to know where the inn was, and I told him."
"And then he attacked you?"
Peregrine snorted. "No. not then either. Then he gave me a coin for my pains."
"Gold, like always happens in stories?"
"No, copper. He was no hero or fairy or warrior, 'Lion."
"Well, I know that. Even so. He went to the inn, then?"
"Mmhmm."
"He didn't say goodbye, or give you wise words of advice, or something?"
"No. Just a funny look."
"Did he wear danger, power, and mystery like a cloak?"
Peregrine smirked. "No."
"He just asked for directions, paid you, and went? That's all?"
"That's all."
"But he was northern and nasty looking? A mercenary?"
"Yes."
"But he didn't pick a fight."
"No! Look, Dandelion -"
"Then how did you get to looking like that?" she demanded, gesturing at his unkempt state.
He blushed. "I, er, I left my goats alone while I was talking to him, and, well…"
She laughed a ringing girl laugh, merry and mortifying. "Did you get that nice shiner chasing ole Mallow?"
"Yes," he admitted. "Mallow's a b*****d of a beast."
"So're we," she pointed out. "That old ram's cleverer than you, to be sure."
"Haha," he said. "He's just bloody-minded. It's not the same thing."
"No, indeed," she said. Something in her voice suggested that she wasn't talking about the goat.
"Dandelion! Peregrine!" snapped Sparrow, shooing them out of the way so that she could take the cauldron full of stew off the fire and slam it down on the table a few feet away. "Eat."
As one gangly, many-limbed thing they pushed themselves to their feet and hurried over. They ate. Peregrine was particularly glad of the potato, which was hot and soggy in his mouth but warm and filling in his stomach, though there still wasn't enough to really go around, as ever. A good night, nevertheless, and he went out to fill a bucket with creek-water for washing dishes with without complaint.
It was one of those evenings where the glow of the burning peat painted the walls a comforting shade of orange and his feet, for once, were free of any itch for movement. No, he was glad to lie still and doze off. His mother was at her loom, clack clack clacking peacefully away. Dandelion seemed mellowed, which was an occasion worth celebrating in and of itself. The world shrank down to the space inside their hut, warm and stuffy and welcoming –
"Peregrine, tell me a story!"
"Oh, gods." He rolled over and glared at her. "You know them better than I do."
"It's not the same when I tell them to myself."
Actually, it wasn't. He'd tried it often enough in the days after his grandmother's death; he would know.
"Oh, all right," he said, making a show of dragging his limbs into a more collected pose. "I'll tell you the story of, ah, of Bane and the Bear."
She smiled. It was rare, these days, to see an honest smile on Dandelion's wide face, and he was pleased to be the cause of it. "Yes, I thought you'd like that. So. Once upon a time, there lived a huntmage, a tall, dark –"
"– handsome," she supplied.
"– handsome, yes, thank you. Once upon a time, there lived a huntmage, a tall, dark, handsome man with a fierce face under his bristling beard and eyes like hot coals. He was a might huntmage, and together his powers earthly and unearthly made him a powerful force to be reckoned with, in the heart of the woods. His name was Bane, and it fit him well, for he was just that for a thousand monsters and more.
"Well, one day he heard tell of a great bear that was attacking a nearby town. He had hunted bears before, no doubt, but never one like this, the rumormongers swore. This one was as thrice as tall as the tallest man, and walked on two legs at all times. This one had claws that would gut a knight in the finest steel. This one had green eyes that pierced the soul.
"'Sounds like that's the bear for me,' said Bane with a careless grin. He ignored the rumormongers' hurried attempts to stop him, and set off that very night, carrying with him only a loaf of bread, a full wineskin, his net and his spear."
"What about his herbs and thread, for doing magic with?" Dandelion interrupted.
"He uses plain trickery in this one, remember?"
"Oh, right." She sat back, hugging her knees and waiting eagerly for more.
"Anyway. He arrived at the besieged town a few days later, and found the people who lived there in a state of panic. There were many dead. Yet his reputation was such that those as were left rejoiced to see him, and greeted him with celebration in his name. For if anyone could kill the beast that had trapped them and was devouring them one by one, it was surely Bane, master hunter. Through this Bane smiled and nodded and waved, but his mind was ever to the bear, not so far from them. None could or would tell him whence it had come or why it had become the monster it was, but all agreed it was not a normal bear.
"Evening came, and he crept out into the forest. He soon found the tracks of the bear and followed them back to a cave, wherein, he thought, the bear must be. But after examining it closely from a distance, he saw that within someone had lit a fire, and he heard a soft, sad voice singing, and knew the inhabitant of the cave to be a human. The voice seemed fair to his ear. Furthermore, a sweet, cloying scent came from the entrance. It attracted him, and he approached the crevice, intrigued.
"Inside, a lovely woman awaited him. Her beauty surpassed that of any ordinary girl; from her pale golden river of hair to her white skin to her eyes, green as grass, green and wild. She looked up at him and smiled a smile brighter than the evening star. Bane fell hopelessly in love at the sight of that smile.
"She never spoke a word, and though her voice was human her song was not: eerie, otherworldly rhythm and melody that were as much a part of the land as the hills. Bane did not care. He bedded her that night –"
Dandelion giggled.
"– bedded her that night, yes, and when dawn broke he opened his eyes and found himself naked and cold and alone. She was gone.
"He set out to hunt for the bear, again, though he had no more luck then than he had the night before, following the tracks even as he did. But when the sky darkened and he returned, hopefully, to the cave, she awaited him, and again they slept together.
"Thus his life fell into pattern: at night he listened and adored his mysterious lover, never thinking of leaving the cave, and by day he hunted the bear. A year passed, in a haze of blood and kisses. When he had known her for a year and a day, however, while hunting the bear blindly, as he had done for all the other days he could remember a pigeon lit upon his shoulder, and he saw that it bore a message in its feet. Wondering, he unbound the paper and read the anxious words of his kinsmen, many miles away, hoping for news of his whereabouts, his health.
"Such was the power of the woman's spell over him that reading their pleas for his return, dead or alive, made him more angry than ashamed. He hurried back to the hole where habit would now have him dwell, even as dusk was falling, and thrust the missive into the hungry flames.
"But they flared up strangely, and he withdrew his hand too late; his arm was horribly burned. (Thereafter he was known as Bane Blackhand). Panicking, he beat at the wood, and a goodly portion of the fire was doused, and as the sweet smell left his nostrils, he saw the truth of it. In terrible pain though he was, he realized that the fire had been magical. It was as if a cloud had been lifted from his brow. She was the bear, he saw. A skinchanger, a shapeshifter – there were many names for her, and none kind.
"He would have to kill her, for her wicked arts and for her murders.
"But for a time he let her sooth his hand with strange medicines and stoke the coals, until the sweetness filled once more the little space – useless now to befuddle him, but even so the fumes were powerful. He loved her one last time before the sun rose. When the sun had risen, he set the trap, just outside the cave, a deep pit filled with spikes."
"Why did he do that?" said Dandelion, as always at that part of the story. "I thought he loved her!"
"He was enchanted to think that he loved her."
"Even so," she insisted.
"Do you want to hear the story or not?"
"Yes, 'Grin."
"Good. So. That evening, he returned to the cave one last time, and discovered a great bear, impaled on his spear. Looking at the bear, with its yellow fur and green eyes, he thought he might love her more as she lay dying than he ever had when bewitched, for her strange terrible beauty and for the remembrance of her touch and her voice in his ear.
"'Bane,' she said, speaking his name for the first time. For as all know, skinchangers can only speak when inhuman, and make noises, like beasts, when human. It is part of their double nature, that.
"'My love?' he said, and though he did not weep his eyes were bright.
"'Bane, I have only a little longer. But you must – you must know why I was attacking the village,' she said.
"'Tell me.'
"'They took… my daughter…' she breathed. 'Find her for me, Bane. Find her and raise her to be everything you are, and more.'
"'I will,' he swore, hand on breast. 'I will.'
"'Yes,' she hissed, and died.
"So with a rage in his heart and a death in his eyes Bane strode back to the village where it had all started, and said, 'Where is the girl you stole from the bear?'
"'Here,' said the villagers, too terrified to resist him. The crowd parted, and a girl of five or so, with wheat colored hair and grass green eyes, stood alone. He knelt down and took her in his arms.
"She would later become far more than her mother and surrogate father, for she was Lioness, and her tale was a dark one indeed; but that is another story.
"The end."
"Thank you, brother."
"You're welcome, 'Lion. Good night."
"Good night."
They lay in silence for a while after that. He was aware, faintly, of Dandelion whispering to herself; it was comforting, familiar, that murmur. He fell asleep with his back to hers, warmed inside by dreams of stories and stories of dreams…
The man Porter, kissing a bear, killing a bear, and the world blurring beneath him, his sister, green eyes, sweet-burning fires held in each hand, a slamming door
darkness
…so his mother's voice came as a rude shock.
"Where's your sister?"
"Whuh?" Peregrine mumbled, propping himself up on his elbows.
"I said, where's your sister?" She sounded panicked. Peregrine forced himself to open his eyes.
There was a conspicuously empty spot right where Dandelion should have been.
Where the hell would his sister have run to? It wasn't as if she'd been kidnapped or some such nonsense. Had she said anything?
Unbidden, his mind produced the relevant memory:
"Gold, like always happens in stories?" she'd asked.
"No, copper. He was no hero or fairy or warrior, 'Lion."
"Well, I know that. Even so. He went to the inn, then?"
"Oh, no…"
"What is it? Where did she go?"
"I think – I think she went to the inn."
His mother blinked. "The inn? Why would she go there?"
"Because of the traveler I met – oh gods –" He got to his feet and started for the door.
"Peregrine, you are going nowhere. I want you to explain –"
He stopped, one hand already on the latch. "She's out there in the cold heading towards a lot of violent drunks!"
Sparrow looked at him for a long moment, and then silently held up his cloak.
A few breathless curses later he was sliding and scrambling and muttering his way down the kingsroad, lantern swinging wildly in one hand. "'Lion, you idiot," he told the heavy darkness, "what were you thinking?" He'd thought she was more sensible than that!
It was a long way to the inn. His sister might have as much as half a moonrise on him. She might be at the inn already. ********, ********, ********. The ground was treacherous, crags and roots and twigs in his face and under his feet, he kept sliding, the sky was overcast and the light in his hand only served to make the way survivable. At one point he stumbled over something and fell hard, palms and knees breaking his fall. When he stood up again, there was blood soaking through his trousers, trickling down his bony wrists. He shook his head - more injuries to add to his current extensive collection of bruises - and ran/slid onwards, oblivious to pain and to darkness and strange shapes - oblivious, he told himself, oblivious! - strange shapes... and sounds... outlined in the faint glow of the witching hour. So many not-quite eyes watching, through branches like stark fingers wide-spread, and the cloudy heavens hung too low over his head.
It was half a league of going as fast as he could, oppressed as he was by unnamed and bestial fears, before he saw her, just as a turn in the kingsroad brought him up to a high hill summit where the inn could be seen easily. A silhouette made blocky by a loose tunic was running, a little ways ahead of him, towards the crooked building, which loomed over the crossroads like a scaffold. "Damn it! 'Lion!"
A minute later he had her by the collar. She screamed.
"What do you think you're –"
"Let go!"
"Hell no!"
She kicked him in the shins. He let go with a cry of pain, and when he'd opened his eyes she was gone again.
He followed.
But Dandelion was clever and Dandelion was fast on her strong short legs. Dandelion also had the advantage that her shin wasn't bruised and her night vision hadn't just been utterly destroyed by a lantern swinging up in her face. And Dandelion got there first.
To be fair, Peregrine was at the door not long after her. He slammed open the back door, which was not locked, and burst into –
– someone's room?
His mind registered: his sister, a straw pallet, a slop bucket, a sack, and a sword.
More specifically, a sister, holding a sword with both hands high above her head; a short, notched blade with a wicked edge. It was a plain thing, just dull metal without a gleam to its name, cold iron, but Dandelion's smile was bright and queer enough for curving edge and curving teeth both. There was triumph written in the line of her shoulders.
"It's just like the story," she sang.
"Which story?" he snapped. "What are you talking about? Come away from that -"
"With the Lioness. She always had her sword. That's why Bane failed and she didn't. He was just a hunter, and she was a warrior!"
"You must be mad. They're not real, Dandelion. They're not real," and he was almost laughing now, it was so ridiculous.
Maybe it was the mirth, the honest bewilderment in his voice. She seemed to dim, just a little. Her arms were shaking, he thought. Thank the gods. She would put the sword down, and they'd sneak back out, and no one need be the wiser -
"Who the ******** are you?" snarled a half-familiar voice, behind him.
|
 |
Reply
