Derrcott

They arrived at the village of Derrcott with the sun setting at their backs.

“It’s as good as any place to sleep the night,” Kinsom said.

Jadda looked over the little village, sunk as it was into a fertile valley, and with the forest hemming it in on all sides. It was neat and ordered, slinking along the valley floor along each side of the hills, lapping like a tide, gently half-opened like a mouth. “Good as any,” she agreed.

They’d travelled down out of the mountains and into the thick forests of the lower hills. It had been difficult for Jadda to keep from asking at first, over and over: “is this the place, is this near where you lost him?”

“Further down,” he said.

Kinsom had a map.  It was detailed, written on the back of a sheepskin in the old way of doing. The wool would be soft against her lap as she read it over. “We were right there, near old Sephracott, when we decided to take that short cut. But the Other Forest, it can spring up all over this area, for hundreds of miles around, on top of any careless traveller. We could find some trace of him anywhere along these ways.”

Or nowhere. Along anywhere. Jadda knew she should keep in the forefront of her mind that they might not find her brother. That there might not be anything left to find – perhaps not even bones. But she’d left her home, her everything, to take up this search with this man she barely knew, posing in passing towns as his wife. If she hadn’t the hope inside her of a happy outcome, how could she have taken this up and gone on doing it?

So, to she Kinsom responded, “As good as anywhere,” although, as they headed into the village, she began to have her doubts. It was hard at first to pin down what it was that made her uneasy. Something about the fields, about the ham-fisted way they were tended; or perhaps the animals, which seemed ill-at-ease; the layout of carts and tools and ploughs, that seemed dumped in place rather than returned to their sheds or left neatly behind the houses. Perhaps that the ovens were cold.

She might have thought that the village had been recently abandoned, or laid low by a wave of fever; but no, there were people around, going about their business. And she realised that what unnerved her the most was how quiet and incurious they were. There were women tending gardens, men out feeding hay or mending fences. A mild day for still-winter. The sun was only beginning to fall beneath the horizon. But she saw nobody smile, nobody stop and talk to another. She saw no children playing or guiding stock, and nobody looked up as she and Kinsom walked along the road into town.

She caught his arm: “I don’t trust this place.”

“It’s one night.”

“I’d rather sleep in the forest.”

“You’d do worse trusting the forest.”

“I don’t know…”

“We can ask some questions. It’s only the one night.”

There was an inn along the way, and Jadda was glad of it. She couldn’t imagine going into one of these little huts and asking the farmwife for lodging. The inn was a little bit rundown, but it had a sign hanging over the door promising ale, bread, beds; and there was a winter-naked jasmine growing all up one wall and spilling onto the roof, lulling her a little with the suggestion of its summer prettiness.

People who had bothered to grow flowers. Who had stained the walls with dull-orange to give a welcoming feel.

Inside though, there was no fire, and the common room was empty. A portly man moved about behind the bar, and a girl – the youngest person she’d seen so far – was stacking mugs up along a shelf.

“Excuse me,” Kinsom approached them, “I’d like to rent a room for my wife and I.”

The girl looked up. No answer.

“If I may.”

“Yes.”

“And a supper.”

“Yes.”

He held some coppers out to ask the price, since she’d not mentioned one.

“Twelve,” she said, taking the coins from his palm and dropping them into the pocket of her apron.

As good as any. Jadda balled her hands into fists at her side. She wanted to find Dreok, more than Kinsom did, so much it hurt, so much it kept her awake at night.  But this place… And this night – she’d scarcely get any sleep, so what point even in the cost of the room?

She tried to remember if she had ever been to Derrcott before. She didn’t think so, though it was not so far from the Ashelmarring Road. She didn’t remember the almond shape of the valley, or the way the houses trickled and clotted on either side of it.

Meanwhile, Kinsom asked: “I’m looking for a friend. For my brother-in-law.  His name’s Dreok, and he’s a lanky fellow. Got hair like watered-down clay, and light blue eyes, and a chin that leads his face by a good inch or so. A bit like my wife, but less pretty.” He put his arm around her shoulders and gave a quick squeeze, the way he did, each town, each little hamlet, with the same speech delivered anywhere they could.

If he still looks like that. Sometimes, in her nightmares, they’d find Dreok; but he’d be different, he’d have the head of a fox, and his body would taper down into that of a snake or lizard, he’d have an ugly, lopsided boulder on the end of his tail, which he’d strike at them with, a low little growl in his foxy throat. Or his tail would finish with another face, his real one this time, but distorted and bloody, wet, as if the skin had been turned inside out. There were fairytales and childhood whispers of what might befall you if you strayed into the Other Forest.

The girl was saying, “I haven’t seen him.”

“Would you ask around for me? I’m hoping to find him.”

“Nobody’s come through that looks that way, but I’ll ask.”

“Thanks.”

She put a key in his hand. “Your room is the first, no-one else is saying.”

Jadda thought: what have you done to your children?  Then she wondered, could it be that some voracious illness had robbed this town of its young? Was the quiet and coldness just a manifestation of grief?  She could think of no way to ask.

#

When they stayed in a town or village, posing as man and wife, they ordered the only-one room, with a typically single narrow bed.  Jadda slept beside Kinsom, and in the smaller beds he’d hold her against him, both of them in nothing but their smallclothes, and the bed too small to sleep any further apart. In all those nights, he’d never once strayed with his hands or mouth, and she’d never felt him harden against her back. She was surprised by how completely safe she felt and how easily she slept such nights.

Tonight would be otherwise. Jadda couldn’t shake her distrust of the village.

“What, do you think there are bandits out there in the forest, who prey on them, and insist on their secrecy?” Kinsom quizzed her.

“How should I know?”

“Or shapeshifters, or they’re possessed?”

“For all I know.”

“Or they are ordinary people, if somewhat standoffish?”

“Where are their children?”

“Indoors in the warm. Or have they eaten them?”

“Don’t. Such things happen.”

“In far worse winters than this.”

But in evenings, in the brief red hours, a village’s children should be running through the streets, throwing stones, skipping, playing games. You couldn’t keep them indoors. Back up in Lake Elfstan, though the mountain would have made it already-dark, there would still be children out there, laughing, exploring, resisting the call to supper.

“I don’t like this,” Jadda insisted.

“I know. But sleep. We’ll go on in the morning.”

She felt as if she could all-but hear his thoughts: and likely there’ll be things we like far less than this village before we find Dreok. But she climbed into the little bed, glad tonight that it was a little too small for two, and that they need sleep close together.

#

She slept. She must have, despite the fitfulness, the wishing that she could kick and turn, but unable to such a small bed, in the circle of Kinsom’s arms. But she must have slept, because she was awakened by the noise. Something, landing heavy on the roof. All her darkest thoughts of werewolves and night hags reared up with the sound. She was bolt upright at once, shaking off Kinsom’s loose embrace.

He woke alongside her.

“Listen.”

“A possum or a squirrel.”

“No. Too heavy.”

And there was something else, a thready hint of voices? Of singing or whispering?

Jadda unshuttered the window. Her eyes widened at what she was seeing. The children hadn’t died of fever, or in the cooking pot; they were out in the night. But they were strange children. Their clothing ragged, and their faces lean, patterned, as if the sunlight through the leaves had left marks on their skin. And deeper marks, creases; and colours – as if face-paint from a long-ago fair had seeped into their skin and dyed it. There were lights in some of the patterns, just flickers or threads or pinpoints, a brightness in their eyes. And these feral things moved like monkeys.

Beneath the window was the innkeeper’s daughter. Or if not, it was her twin; but she too looked strange, her own face marked, her clothes worn and wet, a white light haloing her eyes, and her long hair all in tangles, her arms slashed by brambles and thistles.

She called up, “You’re strangers here.”

Jadda said, “I don’t understand. You were downstairs.”

“She? She isn’t real.”

Or is it you that isn’t real?

“Listen. Two seasons have passed. Back then, we built them. We made them out of clay. We didn’t know what was possessing us, we just wanted to do it, we just knew we needed to. And once they were built, they became us; and the rest of us, we ran off into the forest.”

“All of them, the whole town…?”

“Yes.  But the children didn’t build. And a few who did, well their effigies never came to life. Mine almost collapsed, it shuddered, and I thought it would die, but I suppose I was just old enough to succeed.”

“Will they hurt us?”

“No. They just live our lives.”

“And you?” Jadda didn’t know if she wanted to keep this strange girl talking, or if she wanted to shut and bolt the windows and shove the bed up against her door.

“I tried to follow the adults, but the mist was too thick for me. And for the other children too; we couldn’t get past, we just found ourselves wondering in the trees. Some of us, the older ones, tried to take care of the youngsters. But they went wild. And they wanted to go home. I keep trying to herd them away, but in the night, they come running back here. Like pigeons, aren’t they? Can’t keep them away.”

Jadda was ready to ask, why not find a new home? Why not re-occupy this one? But there was something in the girl, in the look of her eyes, the way her fingers clutched her skirts, and in the breathless, transparent smile. She’s quite mad. Just like all the little ones. Something took her mind.

Jadda looked at Kinsom: “Are we going to end up doing the same?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel any urge to build anything.”

“We should go at first light.”

“We will.”

Jadda turned back to the girl to ask her if she might have seen Dreok, but she’d already started to walk away, hips swinging, skirt swishing, seemingly forgetting the woman she’s been talking to at the window. There was a carelessness about her walk, an absence of purpose that placed her amongst the mad and sun-touched. The children played all around her, leaping and dancing and passing some song between them in words that made no sense; which were sounds more than language.

#

At first light there was no sign of any of them. The children didn’t leave footprints, just a few fallen flowers that should only grow in summer, or not at all in these parts. Downstairs, the innkeeper rolled a barrel across the floor, and his clay daughter was still there moving empty mugs, lining them up along the shelf. And Jadda was suddenly sure that when she was finished, she would just take them all down and start again. She stopped to look at her, trying to see in her eyes what she’d seen in her flesh counterpart’s.

“Enjoy your stay?” the girl said, no inflection in her voice.

“Thank you, yes.” The rote of manners.

“I hope you slept well.”

“Yes.”

Why should I judge? We have a script too, and we’re not even clay. Is this what we all are underneath, once we take away the fancy dressing?

She was relieved to be out in the woods again, even knowing these were the same woods that had called the villagers. Jadda’s mood lifted as the valley slipped away behind them. In-between the trees she would fancy she saw something moving, she’d think she heard a brief burst of song, then a second voice returning it in mimicry. But if she stopped to listen for a moment, there was nothing. And Kinsom hadn’t heard anything – or said he hadn’t.

By mid-afternoon, these traces of song were gone altogether.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work

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