The Death of Ghosts

“I love you,” Linth said. “I wouldn’t change that if I could.”

He stood up and dusted grass off his knees. To his left the sun was going down, its rim nearly touching the trees at the top of the ridge. The low light threw shadows that reached from each monolith to the next, all the way along this part of the Ring. Sunshine reached into the narrow gap between Stones and the forest, painting gold on the grass which had begun to grow over the earth where Talia lay.

Linth bent to pick up a leaf from the mound and flick it away. There would be more in the morning, here under the fringe of the trees. There would always be more, but that was all right, because he would always come to clear them. He tried to smile at the grave marker, couldn’t manage it, and instead went through the gap between monoliths and into the fields.

There were no trees here, except a few grown for fruit, and pruned back to little more than shrubs. Instead there were furrows and fallows, bounded by neat hedges that grew atop ridges of earth, nearly as tall as a man. In some of the pastures cattle grazed, long-horned auroch here and woolly moufflon there, grazing away the last of the day. Linth stayed on the drove road, picking his way between patches of dung until he reached the first U-shaped houses, three homes making most of a square with an open space between them. He hoped to go by unseen but Thal was there, Linth’s neighbour across the yard, scraping mud off his boots by his front door. The farmer nodded but said nothing.

Thal had been a friend, but he was distant with Linth these days – though the truth was probably that Linth was distant with him. He didn’t have it in him to care. He went on around the building, intending to slip through his garden and use the rear door so he didn’t have to see anyone else, didn’t have to talk or listen to their efforts to console him. He went past pig fences and overgrown potato beds, followed the kink in the path, and stopped when he saw someone sitting on his back step waiting for him. She leapt up, all spring feet and panic, as though he was her father come to beat her blue again.

“It’s your boar,” Cailin said, before he could speak. “It got loose, Linth.”

He turned and saw a rough hole in the pig fence, two boards splintered and forced back. He hadn’t even noticed as he walked by. Now he looked he saw the garden was close to ruin, the seed beds strewn with weeds and the herb patch invaded by them, and the pig fence cracked in three places. The farmer in him groaned his dismay.

It had been too long since he took proper care here. Longer than he’d realised. Day bleeding into day.

“When?” he asked.

“An hour ago. Maybe more.”

Never mind why she’d been nosing around. Linth knew the answer to that in any case, and his thoughts shied away from it. He looked at the hole in the fence. He went forward, bending to examine the ground, and near the gate he found the distinctive two-toed track of a hog.

“What are you doing?” Cailin asked.

He shook his head and went outside the garden. Just down the drove he spotted another spoor, in the soft earth beneath a hedge. That meant the animal must have headed east up the slope, away from the village and towards the Ring of Standing Stones, and the wood beyond. It might have turned aside, bashing its way through a gate and into the field beyond, but Linth didn’t think it had. Someone would have found it and herded it back home, if so, and tied it to a fence post for Linth to find. The boar had gone elsewhere.

In the wild, pigs were forest creatures. He knew where it had gone.

He raised his eyes to stare at the forest, the Spirit Wood, pressed up against the Ring like clouds piled behind a peak, waiting for the moment when they come boiling down on the valley below.

“It turned eiga,” he said.

He could hear Cailin five yards behind him, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “You think the forest possessed it?”

The boar had aimed straight for the forest, as direct as a hailstone. It happened, sometimes. There was no need to wonder.

Linth started along the track. Decades of use had packed the earth down tight, making a hard surface pocked with stones. But there were hollows where water gathered and there the ground was softer, taking footprints, like the earth close to the hedges on either side. Every few yards Linth found a print, or part of one. By a pasture which contained half a dozen aurochs he came across a clump of turds, again distinctive; he’d shovelled the pen in his garden clean of them often enough.

He was half a mile from home by then.

“Linth?” Cailin said again.

He ignored her. Moving faster now, checking each gateway in case the boar had turned aside, but not believing it had. The drove ran down a slope and then began to climb again, out of the nestled valley and towards the trees that swarmed all around, held back by the Standing Stones.

“Linth?” Cailin repeated, and this time there was a rising note of panic in her voice.

He paid her no mind. Linth knew what Cailin wanted from him, and he couldn’t give it to her. Not now, not ever. His heart had been given once, utterly. It was gone from him. He couldn’t give it again if he wanted to.

He didn’t want to.

Dusk had begun to fall. That was the reason for Cailin’s sudden fear. Even inside the Ring people kept close to their houses at night, or at least lit the village Green with torches to drive the darkness back. Nothing came through the circle of monoliths, it had never happened, but nobody got old by being careless. Mothers brought their children indoors and fathers kept staves and bows to hand for when the darkness came.

Outside the Ring…

Nothing survived the Spirit Wood at night. Even by day it was dangerous, and men had gone missing before. Tales were told to frighten the children, make them too afraid to venture beyond the Ring until they were old enough to be trusted with an axe. It didn’t really work. Linth had been one of the boys who dared each other to go beneath the trees at twilight, and he was one of the bravest… but he never went too far. Never lost sight of his friends, and the comforting sight of the open fields behind them.

But in the dark, one step could be fatal. One pace beyond the Ring. Linth halted in the gathering darkness.

“Danis save me, I thought you weren’t going to stop,” Cailin said. “Are you all right now?”

No. He wasn’t all right.

“Enough,” he said. Cailin came closer, sidling along the hedge until she could see his expression. She always skulked, not that Linth blamed her, given what her father was. But that was her problem, not his. How could this girl-woman think Linth could be drawn to her?

But, enough. Enough of trying to survive under the weight of sorrow. Enough being told he needed to shake out of it, get on with life, by people who had never known loss. Not like this. Too much of old Siola saying the village couldn’t afford for him to lose himself in grief: too much of all of it.

There was a boar print in the mud under his feet. You might take that as a sign, if you needed to believe in such things. Linth stared at the trees and became aware that he was smiling.

He began to walk again.

“Linth,” Cailin said. She tried to catch his sleeve but without conviction, and he didn’t even break stride. “Linth, listen to me. Someone will loan you a boar at tupping time. This needn’t matter.”

He went on, past a pair of apple trees at the boundary between Hedin’s fields and Linth’s own. On one side the field was ploughed and planted, on the other grass grew wild and had already begun to go to seed. Linth had ignored his work for a long time.

“Linth.”

The track turned to the right, angling along the slope. Here farmers had planted peas, so they enjoyed morning dew and evening sunshine. In a gateway Linth spotted another print, but beyond it the spoor continued along the drove. He followed it, so close to the Ring now that he could feel the shadows under the trees like a weight.

Something hit him in the back of the knees, felling him. His shoulder jarred against the stony ground and he twisted around, fist raised. Cailin had already scrambled away by then, retreating to the far side of the drove. She’d learned early to keep a safe distance. He climbed to his feet.

“Please don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t go in there, Linth. You’ll never come out if you do.”

He looked behind him, to where the sun had almost set. The tops of the trees were orange and red as though burning. Below them shadows stretched across the valley floor, the fields and village in their midst, the Festival House, the little river that was a ribbon of darkness now. Linth could see his house. He supposed it was for the last time.

Nothing survives the Spirit Wood at night.

He had no words for Cailin. After a moment Linth shook his head and turned back towards the Spirit Wood. Behind him he heard the girl sprint away, crying out for the naisen or her father or anyone to come and help, please come, please help. Nobody would. There wasn’t time.

Linth stepped between Standing Stones. The air changed as he did so, becoming thicker in his lungs. Another pace took him past graves so old they were almost impossible to make out, and then he pushed between trunks and the sun went down to leave him in the dark.

When Siola reached the end of the drove at a dead run, Linth was nowhere to be seen.

“He went in here?” she demanded. “Right here?”

Cailin nodded mutely. The girl was white, except for hectic patches of crimson on her cheeks. Never mind that, or her. Siola wheeled back to face the forest, searching for a sign. Any sign.

“What are you doing?” Cailin asked.

She’d been nearly hysterical when she came hammering on the door of Siola’s cottage. In truth she wasn’t far from it now. The girl loved Linth, that was obvious enough, and much good it would do her. Well, love made people do odd things, and its loss could make them stranger yet. Strange enough to walk into the Wood in the dark.

She could see the glimmer of lights in the depths of the trees. Not lanterns, nothing made by human hands. She’d seen them before, but rarely. Three times in twenty years.

“Can you see the daujos?” she asked. When Cailin only stared at her she snapped, “Look, girl! Can you see them?”

Cailin turned her head, and let out a gasp. “What are they?”

“Nobody has ever seen one close enough to know,” Siola said. “They’re daujos, that’s all. Death lights.”

“What do they mean?”

“They’re called death-lights. You know what they mean.”

Cailin’s face fell into misery. Well, what did she expect? Linth had walked outside the Ring just as night was falling. He was probably dead already, and if not he was being led astray by sprites and illusions, to the place where he would die. There was power in the Spirit Wood. Not the magic of sorcerers, those fabled men in their far-off tower that no one could find, but something slower, quiescent. Sleeping was the word Siola used, when she allowed herself to think about it – which wasn’t often. Her own power was born from it, and the forest slept lightly. Think about it too much, too closely, and it might open an eye.

Go into it at night, and it would wake.

But the death-lights were rare. No man from Crossings had been idiot enough to go under the trees at night in Siola’s time, but she’d heard stories, told in other villages. Anyone who went in died, without trace or any kind of fuss. She’d never heard of them being greeted by daujos.

Her instincts, and the tiny piece of the Wood’s power which lived in her blood, told her something was wrong. The Wood was too quiet. She looked up and saw that the branches were still, every branch and leaf hanging motionless, though all day there had been a light breeze. She’d grown so used to the whisper of foliage that she’d stopped hearing it, and now the silence banged on her eardrums like trumpets.

The stillness was broken by the arrival of the Jarl and half a dozen men of the village, all with torches in one hand and a weapon in the other. Clubs mostly, though the Jarl had a boar spear as thick as his wrist, as though that would be any use if the creatures of the Wood learned how to cross the Ring. In the thunder of their feet Siola’s thoughts broke apart and she glared at them, a waste of effort since she still stood in darkness.

“He really went in?” Brega asked. The Jarl had a harsh, raspy voice, which in the dark became even more threatening than normal. “That girl of mine wasn’t lying to you?”

That girl might make a good naisen one day. The power was in her. But Cailin was disturbed, too emotional, when control of the Wood’s magic needed calm. The result of her father’s maltreatment, of course. It would take hard training to deal with that, with no guarantee of success. Never mind. A problem for another day.

“What did he say?” she demanded.

“Nothing!” Cailin burst out. “Nothing… except that it was enough. And he said his boar had gone eiga.”

Enough? Well, she knew what that meant. Enough of grieving for his lost wife. Linth had wrapped himself in sorrow like a child in leaves and nothing could reach through it to touch him. But eiga? That was unsettling, if it was true. Even inside the Ring animals were taken by the Wood sometimes, their poor brains filled with a longing to leave the fields and walk beneath the canopy of branches. It never meant anything good.

“How would he have known?” she asked. The girl seemed to know the question wasn’t meant for her, and she didn’t reply. Siola stepped forward, close to the Stones, and heard someone behind her mutter in unease.

“Stop that,” she snapped over her shoulder. “I’m only looking for signs. Bring a torch over so I can see better.”

“Now,” she added a moment later, when nobody moved. “Unless you’re all cowards?”

That brought them. You could call a village man many things but raven starver wasn’t an insult he would swallow. Two of them shuffled forward and raised their torches over her. Siola edged closer to the Stones and heard one of the men whimper.

She sighed. “He went in, Jarl.”

“There’s a print?”

“There are two,” she said, “though I don’t expect you to want to see for yourself. No? You’ll have to take my word for it then. Cailin didn’t lie to me.”

Brega glowered at his daughter as though insulted by her honesty. Torchlight gleamed off the gold torc he wore at his throat. “Black Teeth! Why would he do that?”

“Grief, I suppose,” she said. “Linth hasn’t been right since Talia died.”

There was something strange there, always had been. Siola had known Linth since he was born; hell, it was she who’d slapped his baby’s arse to start him breathing, when he was still smeared with the bloody mess of his mother. He’d never been hasty, never a boy prone to strong emotions or sudden fancies.

Then Talia had come to Crossings for the Spring Festival and all at once nothing would do for Linth but to marry her, right there, on the first day. Siola had put him off, and again the next day, only to be confronted on the third by Talia. The corn-haired young woman had said she would sleep in Linth’s bed tonight, as his wife if she could, as a lover if not. The choice was Siola’s. Which made it no choice at all, of course. She’d had a pair of brooms placed in the middle of the Green, the two fools jumped over them and back and over again, and they were married.

Much joy they’d had from it. Six weeks and Talia was in the ground. Since then Siola had wondered if they’d known, somehow, that there was no time to wait. That if they delayed until the Summer Festival in Hungerton they would never be married at all. And if so, then how had they known? Was the Wood working through them as it worked through Siola?

Something strange there, and something strange now. The trees were still frozen, as unmoving as carved figures. Half a dozen lights gleamed somewhere in the depths. Siola could feel something too, a ripple in her mind, like a terrible storm far away. Perhaps it really was a storm, at that.

“Well,” she said, “he’s dead. No one survives the forest at night. We might as well go to our homes.”

“That’s it?” Cailin cried. “You’re not going to do anything?”

“Are you stupid? Short of going into the Wood there’s nothing I can do,” Siola said. “And I’m not going to do that. I just said it, girl. No one survives the forest at night, and you know it.”

She looked at the clump of villagers, gripping clubs and torches and still huddled together like children afraid of the dark. “Lock your doors and shutter your windows tonight, and stay indoors. This is not a time to be out.”

“Nothing comes through the Ring,” one of the men said.

“Nothing ever has. That doesn’t mean nothing ever will. There are ruins in the deepest Wood where villages used to stand. Are you such a fool that you won’t listen to your naisen?”

Silence, and Siola nodded. “Good, then. Go home and lock the doors. The Wood feels… strange.”

She hadn’t meant to say that last. The words escaped before she could still the tongue that spoke them. Worse, she was starting to get a headache. That happened sometimes, when the Spirit Wood pounded with some unknown paroxysm, far away from Crossings. Once it had been close enough that she could see the trees on their ridges buffeting each other, and that headache had almost made her skull split down the middle. She doubted she’d sleep much tonight.

At least Linth left no family behind. No parents to grieve, no siblings, and best of all no children. It was always Siola who brought bad news, for Brega went missing when it needed to be done, like a dog hiding under the porch until a storm is over. She’d never found an easy way to tell a child his father wasn’t coming back. It was harder yet to tell parents their son was lost, perhaps, but adults knew grief and could deal with it. Never mind. Linth had left nobody, which meant Siola had no duty to perform.

She began to turn away, and then the storm of power was right there, pressed tight to the Standing Stones, and the trees thrashed against the wall that kept them out.

Siola staggered. Her brain was suddenly all white light and jagged edges, and the pressure at her temples nearly made her moan. “Get away from the Ring.”

The men had already drawn back a step. “What?”

“Away!” she said again. Her tongue felt thick, the words slurred. “Get to your homes and stay – aaaahh – stay there. Go!”

Some of them broke and ran at once. It was hard to tell which; her vision was a jumble of blurs, and anything she looked at directly turned to haze. Cailin was still there, a figure standing apart from the others and too close, much too close to the monoliths. Siola tried to tell her to move back but agony flashed in her temples and she reeled, clutching her head.

Someone picked her up. A big man, who carried her in his arms like a child. A naisen needed to keep more dignity than that but she didn’t seem able to remember how to say so. There wasn’t much except pain now. She smelled burnt metal and realised it was Kern the blacksmith who carried her, and then she gave herself up to oblivion.