The Truth of Things Unseen

Followed

The Lady Fentallion, Mirabel of Erinthrain, was being followed.

From up on the ridge the ridge, she could see two ugly looking men inspecting her last camp about a mile away across the valley. One of them, small, quick and wiry, pressed his hand to her firepit. He nodded to the bigger man who lumbered about nearby. She could see his lips moving, though she was too far away to hear the words.

"What to do about you two?" she whispered to herself.

She had been travelling for five days now, and each day had got a little easier. It had taken a little while to get the hang of the flint and steel she had found around the back of Tamberlyn's tent. The trick was to strike the two together, then use little tiny bits of leaf to kindle the sparks into bigger sparks, and so on. It was a wonderfully logical thing, each step led inexorably to the next. All she had to do was be ready with the next size of wood. Esten always made the fires at home, and she was pretty sure he used matches. She would show this to him when she got back, he would find it interesting.

But what to do about the men?

They were walking back and forth now, pointing at things, pointing out across the valley in her direction. She didn't much fancy meeting them up close.

Perhaps she could lay some sort of false trail, but she really doubted she would be able to do it in a way that would convince them. Trackers followed "signs", so she had heard, but exactly what "signs" were was another matter. She wasn't really sure what a false trail would look like. Footprints going in the wrong direction, perhaps? Was she supposed to walk backwards? That didn't sound terribly practical and besides, she was pretty sure she wasn't leaving any footprints.

Still, the men seemed to know which way she had gone. One of them pointed across the valley and the other nodded in agreement. She ducked down, she would have to be careful they didn't see her, especially in the night time when she would shine out like a second moon. She pulled Gwynn's cloak tight around herself.

Perhaps she could set a big fire on the hillside, then escape through the smoke. The idea certainly had merits, but it seemed like setting a big fire would take a while and escaping through the smoke might be dangerous. It ought to destroy any "signs" though, whatever they were.

She glanced around the clearing. The leaves that covered the floor were a different colour in the places where she had kicked them over. "No more kicking leaves," she hummed to herself. There was a broken branch over there, too. Fresh-broken wood looked different to old broken wood. Different colour. Could that be what the two men were looking for?

She padded off away to the side and found a fox path that skirted below the ridgeline. Experimentally, she snapped a bunch of twigs there at the start of the trail and kicked some leaves down the way, then tiptoed off in the other direction.

"You're slower than me, aren't you?" she mused. "You have to work out where I go, and I just have to go there. If I make things hard for you and keep moving, you'll give up after a while."

That was it. She congratulated herself on coming to the right answer so quickly. She hummed to herself as she set off Westerly once again, off towards the distant mountains.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. She ate a few bites from the things in her bag and sipped some water, but she didn't stop. She didn't much fancy the cheese, maybe she'd save that for when she got hungry later.

She passed a crowd of hairy nettles. Seskie had once shown her how to eat nettle tips. She snapped the soft growing shoots off the top of them, rubbed them between her palms to kill the stingers, then snacked on the green squishy balls they turned into. They stained her hands green and filled her mouth with the taste of spinach.

There was a nagging, uncomfortable feeling at the back of her mind thinking about the two men following her. It was intimate somehow, they were there now, looking at the things she had touched and seen not so long ago. It made the food taste bad.

She found blackberries, barely ripe and still bitter, tucked among the thorns. She crouched next to them and frowned at them until they filled out and turned purple. Then she picked a bunch and stuffed them in her pockets.

She kept her knife handy, but no little animals showed their faces.

"How does one turn a little animal into food?" she mused. "Cut away the fur, but then what?"

She wished she had paid more attention when Gwyn had hung rabbits up in the kitchen. How to even catch one anyway? She might as well have been alone in the woods for all the animals she had seen. She had thought this would be easier.

That night, she camped in a clearing. It wasn't raining, so she didn't set the tent. Instead, she spread it out on the soft ground like a sheet on a feather bed. She lay back, hands behind her head, counting the stars. There really were a lot of them, bright little dots in the sky, and what were they all for?

She found herself thinking of Tamberlyn. Waiting for her night after night in the woods. Telling her a silly joke about a badger. Trying to be gallant. His face had been so carved up, like a story, like a lot of little walls running all over him. All sorts of things hiding behind the walls. All sorts of secrets and corners. It was easy to be pretty, a little glamour and anyone could do that.

She was fairly sure Mother had put a glamring on Esten one time to hide his deformity, but no one talked about that.

She thought about Mother in her lonely tower, staring out at the shifting hills. Staring North towards Erin and the Dathaldour and the Flame. Towards Nasnarieth, her father. Only watching, never actually going. Well she wasn't going to only watch. She was going to see things.

She heard a tiny sound, a tap-tapping. She froze, then slowly drew Gwynn's cloak tight over her hands, her head, her hair. The clearing grew dim.

Tap tap.

There was someone there, a pool of deeper shadows, crouched beneath a tree.

Tap tap.

She sat up on the sheet, cursing the crinkly sound it made when she moved. The figure was doing something with its hands, shaking them, as though rattling dice.

Tap tap.

She pulled back her hood and allowed her brightness back into the clearing. It was a boy, dressed in motley rags. His face was painted in black and white chequers. His cloak a mess of every other cloak, it hung ragged about his thin shoulders.

His eyes were every colour, as when paint is mixed and turns to mud, but within the mess of it, all the others are hiding. Here and there, a streak of yellow or brilliant blue. A thread of vermillion dipping below the liquid surface. A hint of cruelty at the corners, and beneath, a deep and crushing sadness, a soul well of sadness.

He shook his fist again.

Tap tap.

"Hello?" she said, staring at him. She recognised him from stories, whispered by Gwynn before bed.

“You are Luck. Is that right?”

The boy didn’t reply. Very slowly, he extended a long arm, a long finger pointing East, back towards home.

"East?" she said. "You want me to go back towards the wall?"

He didn't move or reply, just kept pointing with his long hand.

"I can't go that way," she said. "There are men following me, and besides, I have things to do."

He didn't move, only stayed there, motionless, arm outstretched, pointing East.

"Are you hungry?" she said. "I have blackberries."

She fished in her pocket. The backberries were pretty mushy, but she held them out to him anyway. His mouth was moving now, almost as though he were counting.

"Here, you can have them. I have more. I have cheese, too. Do you like cheese?"

He didn't move, but his expression changed. Sorrow, but underneath it, something else. Fear? Was he afraid of her? He looked like such a scrawny little thing, what was he doing out here, in the middle of the woods, pointing East with his bony fingers and his painted face? Her arm was getting tired. Was he going to take these blackberries or not?

And just like that, he was gone. A little wind swirled in the place where he had been.

The next morning she woke with the dawn, and set out West, onwards towards the mountains.