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The music stopped and folk set to helping one another clear the stalls and tables away. They muttered that this was unheard of, because the last time the May Pole dance had been washed out was beyond living memory. Will had just finished lending a hand when a cry went up. He turned and saw old Frithwold coming up the track, shaking his fists as he ran.
‘Jack o’ Lantern!’ he wheezed as he reached the Green Man. ‘May Death cut me down if I tell a lie! Jack o’ Lantern’s down in the lanes!’
‘Now, sit down and catch your thoughts, Frith,’ Bregowina, the brewster’s wife, said coolly. ‘There ain’t no warlocks round here.’
‘Sit down be blowed! It be Jack o’ Lantern in the lanes over by Bloody Meadow, I tell you!’
Baldgood peered past his barrels. ‘You’ve had too much of them cider dregs, Frith.’
‘Noooo! It was Jack o’ Lantern, as I live and breathe!’
They settled him down, and the clearing away carried on until all the doors were put back on their hinges and everything was closed up tight. There was no doubting Frithwold believed what he was saying – he was grey in the face and more upset than Will had ever seen him. Groups ofValesmen were muttering to one another, scythes in hand, glancing fearfully down the track. He turned to Baldgood and asked, ‘Who’s Jack o’ Lantern?’
‘You won’t recall him,’ Baldgood said, troubled.
‘Tell me.’
‘He’s a visitor who comes to these parts from time to time. And not such a welcome one neither. You’d’ve been just a babe in arms when last he came this way, or not even born maybe.’
Cuthwal leaned across. ‘We don’t none of us like the looks of him. And we never did.’
Will looked down the lane and saw nothing unusual. ‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s a crow, and up to no good.’
‘Don’t you fear now, Will,’ Baldgood said. ‘There’s a hue and cry gone up after him. Our stout lads’ll drive him off! Now you best get back home.’
Will looked out across the green. Inky clouds filled the sky now. It was almost as dark as night. Then it began to pelt with rain. The May Pole looked forlorn as it swayed with its ribbons streaming out. The wind had got up fiercely and was trying to tear down what was left of the bunting. Bregowina, unruffled as ever, lit candles, and her sons barred the doors. They had just finished when Gifold One-Tooth and both his sons started banging, wanting to be let in. The way they held their pitchforks showed they expected trouble, but nobody had told them what sort.
‘What does Jack o’ Lantern look like?’ Will asked, but nobody answered him.
He folded his arms. No fire burned in the hearth and the only light in the parlour now was from two candles that burned with a quavering, smoky flame. It was a light that did not penetrate far. ‘I’ve never seen a crow. Is that the same as a warlock?’
‘None of them knows much about what Jack o’ Lantern looks like, Will.’
He turned at the voice that came from the back of the room. At the table in the corner shadows sat Tilwin. He had found a place where nobody had noticed him. His hat was in front of him on the table, and he was thumbing the edge of a long, thin knife. He said, ‘The only man in Nether Norton who ever challenged Jack o’ Lantern face to face was Evergern the Potter, and he’s been dead these ten years.’
‘What are you doing, skulking back there?’ Gifold demanded, as if he was speaking to a ghost.
‘Minding my own business, Gif. Like you should be doing.’ Tilwin leaned forward and turned his gaze on the rest of them. ‘I slipped in quiet, so I did, while you were all running about down the way like fowls with their heads stricken off. I could have marched an army in here for all you’d have known about it.’
‘You’re a strange customer, and no mistake,’ Baldgood said.
‘That I may be, but let me tell you something about your Jack o’ Lantern – in this part of the Vale you call him by that name and say he’s a crow. Others further down call him “Merlyn”, or “Master Merlyn” to be correct about it, though that isn’t his true name. Down by Great Norton they say he’s “Erilar” and claim he’s a warlock. While over at Bruern they put the name “Finnygus” on him and fetch their horses to him to benefit from his leechcraft. But none of them knows who he is, for Jack casts a weirder light than any lantern ever I saw.’ Tilwin leaned further forward until the candlelight caught in his blue eyes. ‘He runs deep does our friend Jack. Deep as the Kyle of Stratha. Nor does he suffer fools easily. So if he’s got business in this place, I’d let him finish it without hindrance – if I were you.’
There was silence. Like everyone else, Will listened and held his peace. He didn’t understand much of what had been said, but the thrill of excitement at Tilwin’s words made the hairs rise up on the back of his neck.
‘Now that’s enough of that kind of talk,’ Baldgood muttered, bustling out from behind his counter. ‘Willand! Now, I thought I told you to get on home?’
Will went to the door but after what Tilwin had said home seemed a long way to go in the pitch dark. In truth it was no more than a furlong – a couple of hundred paces – but it was still raining hard. He poked his head outside. Water was trickling down the track. Where only a short while before there had been dry dust, now there was a stream. He jumped out into the night and set off at a run until the light from the alehouse gave out. Then he stubbed his toe painfully on a flint and almost fell. After that he groped his way along by the side of the green. His shirt was soaked. Every village door was closed and every shutter barred tight.
So much for welcoming the summer in, he thought as he felt twigs snapping in the grass under his feet. His outstretched hands met the deeply grooved bark of the Old Oak. He paused, listening. Overhead, leaves were rattling in the downpour, and there was something eerie about the sound, as if the tree was talking to itself.
He shook the water out of his eyes and peered into the dark to where a faint bar of yellow light escaped under a door. Home. He stumbled towards it, and soon his fingers felt a familiar latch.
The light guttered in the draught as he came in, then steadied. He saw Breona and Eldmar, his mother and father, standing together by the unlit hearth, and there, seated before them, was a stranger.
The figure was wrapped in a mouse-brown cloak with a hood that shadowed his face. Will’s heart beat against his ribs. He was about to speak when his father told him sternly: ‘Go up to bed, Willand.’
‘But Father—’
‘Will! Do as I tell you!’
Eldmar had never barked at him like that before. He looked from face to face, scared now. He wanted to go to his mother’s side, but his father was not to be argued with, and Will obeyed. He felt his knees give slightly as he climbed the ladder into the rafters, and dived straight to his nest in the loft. There he lay on the bag of straw that served as his bed. It was warm and smoky up here under the eaves. His wet hair stuck to his forehead and his shirt was clammy on his back as his hand sought out the comfort of a stout wooden threshing flail. He moved as quietly as he could to the edge of the loft where he could watch and listen, telling himself that if anything happened he would pull back the hurdles, jump down and set about the stranger.
But if this was Jack o’ Lantern, he was nothing like the warlock the men had spoken about. By his knee there rested a staff a full fathom in length, fashioned from a kind of wood that had a marvellous sheen to it. The stranger himself had a pale, careworn face, with a long nose and longer beard. The hair of his beard might once have been the colour of corn or copper, but it had faded to badger shades of grey. He was swathed in a wayfarer’s cloak that was made of shreds, and at times seemed almost colourless in the flickering tallow light. Beneath his hood he wore a skullcap, but under the hem of his belted gown his long legs were without hose and his feet unshod. There were many cords about his neck, and among the amulets and charms that rattled at his chest, a bird’s skull.
‘It is said that eavesdroppers will often pick up things they do not like to hear,’ the stranger said. His voice was quiet, yet it carried. It was touched with a strangeness that made Will think of faraway places.
‘Why can’t you leave us alone?‘Will’s mother whispered.
‘Because promises were made. You know why I am here. I must have him.’
At that, Will felt an icy fist clutch him. His world suddenly lurched and refused to right itself. He heard his father say, ‘But those promises were made thirteen years ago!’
‘What does the passage of time signify when a promise is made?’
‘We’ve grown to love him as you said we should!’
‘A promise is eternal. Have you forgotten how matters stood when you made it? You and your good wife were childless, denied the joys that parents know. How dearly you wished for a baby boy of your own. And then one night, on the third day past Cuckootide, I came to you with a three-day-old babe and your misery was at an end.’
‘You can’t take him back!’ Will’s mother shrieked.
The stranger made suddenly as if to rise. Will’s parents took a step back as his grip tightened on the flail. ‘He is no longer a boy. A child you wanted, and a child I brought. But now the child is become a man – a man – and I must have this son of Beltane as we agreed. I said there would be an errand for him, and so there is.’
A dark gulf of silence stood between them for a moment, then the stranger spoke subtle words and Eldmar and Breona hung their heads and made no further argument.
Up in his loft Will found himself numbed to the marrow of his bones. He began to tremble. Whether it was from shock or fear or the working of evil magic he could not tell. As the stranger rose, Will’s grip tightened on the threshing flail, but when he looked again there was nothing in his hand but a wooden spoon, and the flail was nowhere to be seen.
‘Call the lad down,’ the stranger suggested. ‘Tell him he has no need to fear me.’
Eldmar called, and Will came down the ladder as if his arms and legs had minds of their own. He felt his father’s hands on his shoulders, but his father’s face betrayed only heartsickness. ‘Forgive me if you can, Willand,’ he said simply. ‘I should have had the courage to tell you sooner.’
‘Tell me what?’ Will asked, blinking. ‘I won’t go with him. He’s a warlock, and I won’t go with him!’
‘You must, son.’ Eldmar’s face remained grim. ‘Thirteen years ago we gave our word. We swore to keep the manner of your coming to us a secret. We swore because we so wanted a boy of our own. Each year that passed sons came to others, but never to us. You seemed like our blessing.’
Will drew a hollow breath. ‘You…should have told me.’
‘We were sworn to tell no one,’ Breona wailed. ‘Even so we meant to tell you, Will. But first you were too young. Then, you were such a well-liked boy that we couldn’t find the proper time to upset our happy home. It would have broken our hearts, do you see?’
Eldmar hung his head and Breona held out her hand. There were tears in her eyes. ‘Say you forgive us for what we did, Willand.’
Will wiped away his own tears. ‘There’s nothing to forgive. You’re the best father and mother any boy could have.’
‘Please,’ Breona said, turning back to the stranger. ‘Can’t you give us just a little more time? Let him stay for one more day, as a mercy to us!’
‘It would be no mercy,’ the stranger said. ‘Of that I am quite sure, for he may be the Child of Destiny, the one whose name appears in the Black Book.’
At that, Breona’s eyes flared. She would have thrown herself on the stranger had Eldmar not caught her in his arms. ‘He’s my Willand, and nobody else!’
Will found himself unable to move. The stranger reached out to touch man and wife, speaking words and making a sign above both their foreheads. ‘Do not punish yourselves,’ he commanded. ‘You are blameless. You have done all that was asked of you.’
Eldmar’s eyes drooped, and his wife’s hands hung loose at her sides. Then Breona shook her head as if she had just come awake. She hugged Will, her eyes full of tenderness now. ‘You must put on a dry shirt, son. I’ll fetch out your best jerkin and give you a bundle of sweetcakes for your journey.’
But Will drew back in fear. ‘What have you done to them?’ he cried.
‘Be calm, Willand. They remember nothing of their former fears. They have been comforted.’
‘You’ve bewitched them!’
‘I have applied an incantation. There is no harm in it.’
Will tried to launch himself at the visitor, but Eldmar caught him in strong arms and said, ‘Willand, be easy! I made a promise, but it’s you who must redeem it. That’s often the way with sons and fathers.’
Breona kissed him again and went to the linen chest. From it she took a parting gift, an ornament the size of his thumb made of smooth, greenish stone. It was carved in the form of a leaping salmon, and engraved with a figure and some words. Words were beyond Will’s plain learning to read, though the figure was three triangles placed one within another. Its meaning – if it had one – was not clear.
‘It was inside your blanket when you were brought to us,’ Breona said. ‘It’s only right that it should go with you now. Wear it as a charm, for a mother’s love goes with it. And, like the salmon, may you return to us again some day.’
Her eyes sparkled when she smiled at him, and he threw his arms around her neck. ‘You’ll always be my mother. Always!’
Eldmar said, ‘I have nothing to give you, but I will do one thing before you go. Sit down.’
When Will sat down on the three-legged stool, Eldmar caught up a handful of his hair. His big, blunt fingers carefully teased out the strands. They twisted and pulled and twisted again, working expertly until two braids were done.
‘There,’ his father said as he stood up. ‘Now you’re a man.’
CHAPTER TWO INTO THE REALM (#ulink_894cfca8-cdbc-5ab9-8f89-3ed8aacc7e59)
They climbed up towards the Tops through the pouring rain, and Will told himself that he had made a fool’s wish come true after all. He did not know how or why his feet followed one another, but after a while they felt the tread-worn track peter out and long grass begin. The stranger was leading him onward through Nethershaw Woods. There were thousands of bluebells clothing the ground hereabouts, but blind darkness pressed in all around, and he saw nothing. The air was alive with deep green smells, but apart from the sound of rain, the night was quiet. Creatures of fur and feather had drawn deep inside their holes and hollows, and nothing stirred.
It was as if the journey was happening to someone else. His new, manly braids felt strange as they swung against his wet cheek. He put a hand to them and began to think of his parents again, and that filled his eyes with tears. He stumbled in the darkness and the stranger said, ‘Tread softly, Willand, for we have far to go tonight.’
The steady climb brought them out onto open land. It was curious how slow the raindrops seemed to fall here, and how filled with echoes was their noise. Underfoot the going was as gentle as a sheep-cropped meadow. Will had never climbed so high before, nor walked so far or so fast in the dark. The stranger did not lean on his staff as an old man should, he wielded it. His long legs strode out as if he could see the night world around him as clearly as any cat.
A hundred questions about the stranger whirled in Will’s head. Perhaps he’s a sorcerer, he thought, dread welling up. It’s plain he’s got the power about him, and he spoke an incantation onto my…
His thoughts turned away from Breona and Eldmar. The pang in his belly felt like fear, and underneath it there lurked a dark and dreadful question – if Eldmar and Breona are not my real parents, then who are?
There must be a spell on me now, he told himself, or why else are my legs being forced to follow him?
Will tried to resist, but he could not. In the back of his mind, shapeless fears writhed.
‘What’s the matter now?’ the stranger said, turning.
He wanted to ask the dreadful question, but instead he stammered, ‘Are…are we going to the Giant’s Ring?’
The stranger loomed in the darkness. ‘What do you know about the Giant’s Ring?’
‘N…Nothing.’
‘Then why do you fear it? Are you drawn by its power? Tell me!’ The stranger gripped his arm. ‘What do you know about the Ring?’
‘Only that there’s a stone near it that shepherds say is lucky.’
The stranger’s tone softened, and he laughed unexpectedly. ‘Forgive me if I frightened you, Willand. We are not going to the Giant’s Ring. Nor was that ever a place where folk were ritually slain, or beheaded, or buried alive – as no doubt you have been led to believe.’
Will’s heart hammered at the strange answer, but already some of his fear had begun to turn to obstinacy. They went on, crested a shallow rise, and headed over the brow into lands that drained westward. Moments later they skirted the sleeping hamlet of what could only be Over Norton, a fabled place spoken of rarely by Valesmen. A hound barked in the distance, a deep-throated, echoing sound that was full of longing.
At last, Will staggered to a halt. He shielded his eyes from the rain, peering back the way they had come. They had reached another track, this time on level ground, that ran right across the Tops.
The stranger turned. ‘What now?’
‘I’m…scared.’
He flinched away as the stranger reached out and touched his shoulder, but the words that came this time were plain enough. ‘I will not say there is no reason for you to be scared. This is the most dangerous night of your short life. But I will do everything in my power to protect you.’
Something seemed to burst in Will’s chest and he blurted out, ‘Well, if you’re so wise, why don’t you just magic us to wherever it is we’re supposed to be going?’
The stranger paused and regarded him for a long moment before saying, ‘Because magic must always be used sparingly, and never without considering gains against losses. Magic must be requested, never summoned, respected, never treated with disdain. It must be asked for openly and honestly. Listen to me, Willand! I am trying very hard to deliver you to a place of safety. But we may not reach it if you decide to defy me. And the danger will be the more, the more you resist.’
The stranger seemed suddenly older than old, a man used to talking high talk, giving important words to important people, not a man who was used to coaxing frightened lads into following him through the night. Will stared at the ground sullenly. ‘Aren’t there…aren’t there giants up here?’
The other laughed softly. ‘Giants? Now who could have put that notion into your head? Ah, let me guess. That would have been Tilwin, the well-travelled man.’
Will’s mouth fell open. ‘Then – you do know Tilwin!’
‘I know a great many folk. Did Tilwin say he knew me?’
It was more than a question and Will gave no answer. He gritted his teeth, still fighting the urge that moved his legs forward. ‘You still haven’t told me where we’re going.’
‘The less you know about that the better, until we are a good deal closer to it.’
‘Is it far?’
‘Four more leagues tonight, three as the rook flies, then we shall come to a place of sanctuary.’ The voice mellowed. ‘Try to be easy in your mind, Willand. There will come a day when you are no longer afraid of giants – but we shall have to work hard to make sure you live that long.’
The stranger’s voice was as vivid as lightning – at once exciting, comforting and terrifying. Oh, yes, he must be a great sorcerer, Will thought. For who but a great sorcerer could use words like that? But four leagues! Four leagues was a very long way. In the Vale a single league was a trip from Nether Norton to Pannage then away to Overmast and back again. To go four leagues in one journey seemed unimaginable.
