From Word To Word

Here is the next instalment of Lindy. Those who are new to the story can find the beginning at Chapter One, and those who would like to have the story thus far in a single file can find it in both .pdf and .rtf formats on the Longer Works page.

Chapter Seventeen:
In Which Lindy Begins The Journey Home

When Lindy walked out the cottage door and along the path and into the woods the next morning, she had the feeling that she was only just then beginning her real journey.  Jumping down from Mister Hat’s wall and passing through the arch and finding The Crofts and looking for the cottage and losing the crown to Khurshid all seemed like preparations for the journey that she was about to make now, the journey back home to Clinton and Penates and The Crofts.  She had felt this way from the moment she woke, and she had tried to explain it to Amena as best she could as they ate their breakfast of fresh bread and butter and honey with lemon balm tea to wash it all down.  Amena had only smiled at her.  “Our most important journeys are often our journeys home,” she had said, and Lindy felt how true this was now as she began her own journey home.

The Crofts was not her real home, of course.  She had only lived there for a few days, three or four, she could never quite remember how many, but it was the only home that she had in The Weald.  It had felt like home to her almost right away, and she knew now that it was where she belonged, no matter how angry the house might be with her.  So she was going home now, at least in a way, and she knew somehow, just as Amena had said, that this was her most important journey.

When at last she had said her goodbyes, she followed Saffi from the clearing onto a path so completely overgrown that it hardly seemed worth the name.  It went weaving around trees and along ridges and through valleys and yet, in the end, somehow managed to find the main road just when Lindy had begun to wonder whether Saffi was leading her in circles. He bobbed about, ducking and diving and seeming to choose his way at random when the path disappeared, but he always knew his way, and the two of them always found the path again, and they did eventually come at last to the main road.  More importantly, they saw nothing of the fearsome creatures that Lindy now knew were lurking about in the forest, only a few squirrels and a few songbirds now and again, and these were pleasant enough company.

Once they came to the main road their journey was even less eventful, and I will spend as little time describing it to you as Lindy spent describing it to me.  She stopped once to eat some of the food that Amena had sent with her, and she stopped again that night to sleep in a dry little cave that Saffi found, but nothing much else happened throughout the day besides putting one foot in front of the other.  Even going to sleep that night, which Lindy had thought might be a bit difficult, was much easier than she expected.  She just laid her head on her pack, pulled her wool blanket over herself, glanced at Saffi keeping guard at the mouth of the cave, and fell asleep straight away, which is more than I can manage myself most nights, even in the comfort and safety of my own bed.

She woke the next morning to see Saffi still standing guard, and so she began the day feeling as safe and as happy as could be expected, but there was no one really to share her happiness, and she had to make do with talking a little to Saffi as she ate her breakfast of wild strawberries and bread.  She told him about how strange it was to be in a place so unlike her home, and how worried she was about her mother and about what Khurshid would do to The Crofts, and how much better she felt now that she was going back to The Crofts.  Saffi could say nothing back to her, of course, and she was not really sure how much he could understand, but it made her feel a little less alone to tell him what she was feeling.

They set off again while it was still quite early.  The coolness of the morning had woken Lindy before it was even light, and it had not taken very long to eat her simple breakfast, so the sun was only just filtering through the leaves when they reached the main road again.  The dew was heavy on everything, and Lindy’s pants and shoes were soon very wet from the plants that were overgrowing the cobblestones, but the sky was clear, and the sun promised to dry everything before very long.  Lindy thought that she should probably reach the bridge before dark if she walked quickly enough, so she set herself a good pace, and she hardly even stopped for lunch, eating the last of her wrinkled apples as she walked.

The sun had grown as warm as it had promised by the afternoon, and Lindy began to sweat as she walked.  The warmth of the day reminded her that it would not be long until it was really summer, and this made her wonder what day it was and how close it was exactly until Midsummer.  She even thought for a moment that it might have passed and that it might be too late to go back to The Crofts.  Her sense of time told her that this was not probably true, but she knew that time moved strangely in The Weald, and the trees did now look full enough for Midsummer, so she could not quite put aside the sense that she was running out of time.

She began to walk even faster now, though she was quite tired from walking so far, and she even found herself breaking into a jog at times, her feet starting to run on as fast as her mind.  She could only think now of how she might be late and come to The Crofts only to find that there was almost nothing left of it.  She began imagining the most terrible things, and the worst of it was that she knew these things might really be true or that they might really become true at any moment.

Saffi did not seem to be concerned by any of this, of course.  He just kept humming along beside her, matching his speed with hers, but after a time, he too began to act strangely.  He kept landing on the path for a few seconds at a time, keeping very still and seeming to feel for something in the ground, or he would suddenly sweep up very high above the tree canopy, as if he was looking for something, and all the while his buzzing became agitated and frenzied.

It took only a few minutes more until Lindy too began to hear something now and again.  At first it was only faint and muffled and intermittent, sounding a little like the works of a big factory, only very far away.  Then, after a few minutes more, she could hear that the sounds were actually drums beating, and then, when she was closer, she could also hear shouting and singing and growling and roaring and all sorts of other noises.  Soon she could also make out the orange light of bonfires mixing with the setting sun through the last of trees, and then, at last, she came upon the great horde of creatures that had gathered in the meadow before the bridge, all eating and drinking and carousing and dancing and singing and fighting.  Most of them looked at least a little human, though they were almost always wrong somehow, either too beautiful or too hideous or too something that Lindy could not quite name but could still feel in the pit of her stomach.  They all had a sense about them that they did not belong, a sense that they were out of place.  Even looking at them made her feel wrong somehow.

Lindy was too surprised by all this to be as frightened as she probably should have been.  She just kept walking along the road toward the bridge, right through the middle of the fires and the noise, with Saffi hovering above her like a halo in the deepening evening dim.  Some of the creatures stopped to look at her as she passed, and soon others were looking as well, and before long it seemed as if every eye was on her and that every voice was hushed.

Ahead of her, right in the middle of the path, nearly at the foot of the bridge, there was something like an old fashioned carriage, only it was covered in complicated carvings and painted everywhere in red and gold.  Its wheels were huge, twice as tall as Lindy, and it had steps leading up from the ground to a throne that sat high on the bed of the carriage.  Khurshid was lounging on the throne and eating something from a golden bowl as Lindy approached, but when she reached the foot of the carriage, he passed the bowl to one of his servants and leapt to his feet with such a show of joy that Lindy knew he could only be mocking her.

“Oh, Lindy,” he cried, “I’m so glad you’ve come to join us in our celebrations.”   He lowered his voice to a loud whisper, “In fact, I have the most marvellous surprise for you tomorrow night.  Do tell me that you’ll be there to see it.”  He moved down the stairs toward her, stepping around a large golden chest that was set in front of his throne like a footstool.  It was carved all over with impossible animals and plants, all holding each other in their patterns with teeth and claws and barbs and stings, and Lindy found her eyes strangely drawn to it.

“Ah, yes,” Khurshid said, noticing her gaze, “you’ve seen my chest of crowns.  Would you like me to show it to you?”

He took her hand and led her up the first steps of the throne so that he could lift the lid of the golden chest.  It was filled to its very brim with crowns, all piled carelessly, as if they had been thrown simply at random.  Lindy knew that they must be the crowns of the Keepers, but they were not all the same as she had imagined they would be.  Some were simple circles of gold and some worked in ornate patterns, some heavily made and some quite delicate, some very plain and some covered in jewels.

“You recognize this one, I’m sure,” Khurshid said.  He picked up the crown that Lindy had worn for so short a time and that Alisdair had worn for so long before her.  He placed the crown on his own head.  “It looks very regal, you must admit,” he said, “almost as if it was made for me.”

He picked up another and tossed it to Lindy.  It was heavier than it looked, and she staggered back under its weight, almost stumbling on the stairs.  As soon as she touched it, her mind was filled with the image of a handsome man, his green eyes quiet and grave, his red hair and beard closely cut like fur and shot with grey.  “He’s dead now,” said Khurshid, “that man you’re seeing.  I killed him with my own hands, as I killed all the Keepers who tried to resist me.  They were the foolish ones, and none of them survived, except you, of course, though I don’t expect you’ll live much longer.”

He took the crown from her and handed her another.  It was even heavier and set with three large rubies, and she saw in her mind a woman, dark-haired but light-eyed, and with the sense of something feline about her, something large and carnivorous.  “She was one of the wise ones,” Khurshid said, and he nodded to the left of the throne.  Lindy saw that a small crowd of people were now gathered there, and among them was the same woman, with the same hair and eyes, the same sense of cat-like grace and cruelty.  She stared back at Lindy, and Lindy turned her eyes away.

The images from the crowns saddened her.  They seemed to say just what Khurshid had said, that her only choice was either to surrender or to die, and a feeling of hopelessness began creeping over her.  She found herself wondering whether there was really any point of going back to The Crofts or even of going any further.  After all, had Khurshid not already taken all the crowns?  What difference would it make if she went back now or not?  She tried to remember why it was that she needed to go back home, but she could think of nothing but the faces she had seen in the crowns, and they threatened to shut out everything else.

It was then, Lindy said, that Saffi saved her for a second time.  Whether or not he really knew that she needed saving is a question that neither Lindy nor I can answer, but for whatever reason, whether because he saw Lindy’s distress or because of some instinct of his own, Saffi chose just that moment to land on the steps of the carriage and brush up against Lindy’s leg, like a cat looking for attention, and iLindy said herself that it was as if he had shone his light right into her heart.  In that soft, clean light everything became much clearer again.  She suddenly saw how Khurshid was using the crowns to drive her into hopelessness, and she saw too that going back to The Crofts was exactly what she needed to do, whatever else might happen.

She handed the crown back to Khurshid and straightened herself up as tall as she could.  “That’s enough,” she said.

Khurshid met her eyes with a look of surprise. “Is it now?”

Lindy held his gaze for a moment, then she turned and descended the stairs with Saffi once again flying close beside her.  She rounded the edge of the carriage, past its huge wheels, between the traitor-kings who had gathered beside it, and onward toward the bridge.  No one tried to stop her.  They only followed her with their eyes, and Lindy was already beyond them before she heard Khurshid calling after her from the height of his throne.

“Until tomorrow, Lindy,” he cried, his melodious voice singing out into the coming night.  “You won’t want to miss you’re surprise, I promise you.”

Lindy neither turned nor answered, only stepped from the path onto the bridge and kept her course for home, even as the sounds of Khurshid’s camp swelled once more behind her, growing fuller and louder with every step, until she reached the forest and found it echoing again with sounds of distant shouts and drums.

Previous Chapter < > Next Chapter

Here is the Sixteenth Chapter of Lindy, right on my promised schedule. Those who are new to the story can find the beginning at Chapter One, and those who would like to have the story thus far in a single file can find it in both .pdf and .rtf formats on the Longer Works page.

Chapter Sixteen:
In Which Amena Offers Some Wise Advise

The next day and the next after that passed in much the same way.  Lindy slept much of the time, and she ate the simple, wholesome food that Amena prepared for her, and she healed at a marvellous rate.  By the end of the third day, in fact, she was feeling almost completely whole.  The little stings and bites and scratches were all healed, and there were only scars left to remind her of the deeper scratches on her forehead that were mostly hidden by her hair anyway.  The only wound not yet healed was the deep bite in her shoulder, which still caused her some discomfort and which Amena said might keep her from ever moving her arm normally again.

Lindy was not sleeping the whole of the three days, of course.  She had enough energy to sit up and talk or to walk around a little, especially on the third day, but Amena was not always available to keep her company.  She had a garden to tend, she said, and cows to milk, and eggs to collect, and animals to feed, and rabbit snares to check, and wild strawberries to gather, so she only had time to sit with Lindy while preparing their meal or while changing Lindy’s dressings.  This meant that Lindy was by herself with nothing much to do for hours at a time, and she was very much bored.  There was only a single book in the cottage, and it was written in a language that Lindy did not know with letters that she did not even recognize.  She tried to pass the time by sweeping the floor and tidying up the room, but the floor was small and there was not much to tidy, so this did not distract her long, and when she tried to go outside, Amena sent her back in directly, because she said that it was best if Lindy stayed out of sight from prying eyes, so Lindy was mostly trapped indoors alone.

This was not actually so bad, though it was not very pleasant at first.  The truth is that she needed to think about some things, but they were not exactly comfortable things, and she was trying to avoid them no matter how much they needed to be thought, but when she was left alone with nothing to do for hours on end, she could hardly avoid the things that needed thinking, which is very likely what Amena intended in the first place.  And so, eventually, she found herself asking how it was that she had gotten into such a mess, and how it was that she could have let Khurshid take the crown from her, and how it was that her vision could have led her so wrong, and most of all what it was that she should do now.  This last question was the most perplexing because it was also the most pressing.  Her mother was being held captive, and Khurshid was about to cross the bridge into The Weald, but she had no idea what to do about either of these things.  Staying where she was would not help anything, even if Amena were to permit it, and The Crofts would certainly not welcome her back, not after what she had said on the morning she left, and not after everything that had happened since, but there was really nowhere else to go.  She thought about these things for a long time without coming much closer to any answer, but she felt a bit better somehow anyway, as if just facing her problem and deciding that she needed to do something had mended her spirits a little, even if she had not yet determined exactly what her decision should be.

When Amena came in from the garden that third afternoon, she let Lindy help prepare their dinner of roasted vegetables and she began kneading the bread that had been rising beside the hearth.   “So,” she asked, as if she knew perfectly well what Lindy had been thinking about all that while, “have you decided what you will do?”

Lindy shrugged and kept chopping the carrots.  “I don’t really know,” she said, and then kept quiet for a moment, and then thought better of it and let everything out all at once in a rush.  “I don’t even know why I’m here,” she said. “I thought I was supposed to come here, because the dream told me to, but then everything went wrong, and when I got here it didn’t help anything.  I mean, you saved my life, and you’ve been really good to me, but I thought that coming to your cottage would make everything better, that it would help me understand what to do.  I thought that’s why I was supposed to come here.  But things are even worse now than when I started.”

“And just what did you think you would find here?” Amena asked, looking amused.  Her sleeves were rolled up past her elbows, and there was flour dusted on her arms.

“I don’t know.  Answers, I guess.  Maybe how to bring Alisdair back.”  Lindy remembered how clear her vision had seemed.  “I was sure it was the right thing to do,” she said, “but it all turned out wrong.  My Mom is captured, and the crown is gone, all because of me.”

“Well, things look very bad at the moment, it’s true,” replied Amena, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you didn’t do the right thing.  Doing what you’re supposed to do doesn’t guarantee that things will turn out as you want.  That isn’t why you do the right thing.  You do the right thing just because it’s the right thing, no matter what.”

“So then how do you even know if its the right thing to do?”

“Yes, that certainly is the problem,” Amena answered.  She began shaping the dough into loaves.  “Unfortunately, there’s no way you can ever really be sure what the right thing is.  You can talk with people who might know, with people you trust.  You can try to think things through as clearly as possible.  You can look back at your own experience.  Most importantly, you can listen carefully to what your soul has heard.  But, in the end, you can never be sure, and all you can do is try your best.”

Lindy sighed and scraped the chopped carrots into the pan.  “And what if your best isn’t good enough?  What if you get it wrong, like me?  Then it’s all your fault.”

“No, no. It’s not all your fault.  It’s partly your fault, true, but many people had to make decisions along the way in order to get us where we are  now, and some of those decisions were made before you were even alive.  You can only ever be responsible for the decisions that you make yourself.”

So, you’re saying that maybe I was supposed to come here, even though all those bad things happened?”

“I don’t know.  We’ll probably never know.  All you can know is whether you tried to do what you were asked to do.”

“I think I did.”

“Then you chose as best you could,” said Amena, putting the bread into loaf pans. “You failed, like everyone fails sometimes, but that doesn’t mean your choice was wrong, and if you really believe that it was right choice to make, perhaps you just need to do to see that choice through.”

“But my choice was to come here, and I did see it through.  I just don’t know where to go from here.”

“Seeing a decision through to its end also means seeing its consequences through to the end.  It means taking responsibility for what you decided.  It means facing the people that were depending on you, and probably apologizing to them, and then helping them try to fix the problems that you created.”

“So I came all this way for nothing.  I lose my Mom and my crown getting here, just so I can turn around and go back with nothing to show for it.”

“Oh, you have more to show for it than you might think.  You know now just how terrible a foe we face, and you know also that you have friends in places you might not expect, and you know too what it means to choose and to fail and to learn from your failure, and hopefully you are learning right this moment what it means to face the consequences of your failures.”

“What if I fail that too?”

“You might.  In fact, you probably will in one way or another.  But you still need to do it.”

“But if I fail, how will I save my Mom?  How will I stop Khurshid?”

Amena looked Lindy very seriously in the eye, and there was a sadness in her face that Lindy had not seen before.  “Maybe no one will stop him,” she said.  “Maybe he’ll cross the bridge and destroy The Crofts despite everything we do.”

“But he’ll kill my Mom, and Alisdair, and Penates, and all those people.”

“Maybe, and that would be a most terrible thing, so terrible I can hardly bear to think of it, but it wouldn’t be the end of everything.  Good is an easy thing to tear down, but it’s a very difficult thing to get rid of altogether.  I was living here in Khurshid’s country long before he chose to betray The Weald, and I lived through the sorrow of losing my friends to him, but I’ve survived all this time in spite of everything he can do.  And you’ve seen for yourself that there are other things here that aren’t evil, like Saffi, like the deer.  We couldn’t stop Khurshid from betraying us, but we’ve done our best to do what is good and right despite him.  It’s not our task to make sure that good triumphs over evil in the world, though we must always strive for this as best we can.  Our task is only to make sure that good triumphs over evil in ourselves.  That’s all we can do.”

The vegetables were all peeled and chopped by now, and Amena set the roasting pan in the oven.  Then she put the loaf pans beside the oven to let the bread rise again.  Lindy watched her wrinkled hands move deftly around the hearth, and she wondered how Amena had kept going so many years, one day after another, planting and growing and tending and gathering all alone.  “What keeps you from just giving up and moving somewhere else?” she asked.

Amena looked up from the dishes that she was stacking beside the washstand.  “I stay because this is my home,” she answered, “and because I couldn’t bear to see Khurshid have it, and because, most of all, it’s what I know I need to do.  It’s the right thing for me to do.  So I do it.”

“But how do you keep Khurshid from just coming in and taking it?”

“Because this is my home, and he has no right to it unless I grant the right to him, just as he had no right to take your crown until you gave the right to him.”

Lindy thought about this for a moment.  “Is it the same for me?  Can I keep my home from him?  I mean, I don’t have a home here exactly, but The Crofts is sort of like my home.  Can I keep The Crofts from Khurshid if I go and live there?”

“No, no.  At least not the whole of it.  The Crofts is the home of many people, living and dead, and you have as little right to it as Khurshid does, but as a Keeper, some small part of it is yours, and you may be able to keep that small part good and whole.”

“Yes,” said Lindy, remembering her cubby, “I think I know what part is mine.  It’s my cubby from my real house, but now it’s in The Crofts too.  And I can keep Khurshid from taking it?”

“Certainly.  Even if all the rest of The Crofts falls into ruin, you can keep your cubby from him, and Penates can keep the kitchen, and there will be some others also, and a little good will be kept alive in it still, and then who knows what great good may come from it someday.”

“Well,” said Lindy, and she discovered that she had made her mind up almost without realizing it, “I guess that’s what I need to do then.  But it’ll be hard to go back. I’ll have to tell The Crofts about everything that happened.  It told me this would happen, and I didn’t listen.”

“Yes, well, admitting when you’ve made a bad choice is one of the responsibilities of making decisions in the first place.  This won’t be the last time you make a bad choice, I assure you. So you may as well learn how to face the consequences now.”

Something about this made perfect sense to Lindy, and she felt better than she had since before the terrible night in the forest.  “You’re right,” she said.  “I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”  But she thought right away of all the creatures hiding in the woods, and she was already afraid of the choice that she had made.  “Could you came with me?” she asked.

“I would love to, Lindy” said Amena, and the look on her face told Lindy that she meant it, “but I can’t leave this place just whenever I choose.”  Lindy said nothing, but Amena seemed to know what she was thinking.  “Don’t worry,” she added, “I’ll send Saffi with you. Only Khurshid himself would dare bother you with Saffi around.  The forest creatures will leave you well alone.”

They ate supper and went to bed that night without saying much more to each other, and Lindy fell asleep quickly, and her dreams were full of things that she could not remember in the morning but that she knew were full of hope.

Previous Chapter < > Next Chapter

Here is the next instalment of Lindy. I have nothing much to say about it, but those who are new to the story can find the beginning at Chapter One, and those who would like to have the story thus far in a single file can find it in both .pdf and .rtf formats on the Longer Works page.

Chapter Fifteen:
In Which Lindy Meets the Inhabitant of the Mysterious Cottage

When Lindy woke, she was lying on a bed of straw and wrapped in a heavy patchwork quilt made from fabrics dyed in earthy reds and browns and yellows.  It was nicely warm under the blankets and nicely cool on her face where the blankets did not reach, just the way she most liked to wake, and she would have felt quite content if her body did not hurt her so much and if the pain did not then remind her of what had happened the day before.

All in a rush she remembered Khurshid taking the crown and Moe lying crumpled on the ground and the creatures swarming over her in the dark and most of all the picture of her mother, and she began to realize truly what she had done.  She had gotten her mother captured, and she had probably gotten Moe and Cleanna killed, and she had lost the final crown to Khurshid, just as The Crofts had said she would, and now there was nothing to keep Khurshid from taking The Weald and doing what he wanted with it.    She felt a sudden sadness and guilt that went right to the centre of her.  She was sick in her heart, too saddened even to know what to do, and she laid there feeling more and more hopeless and miserable by the moment.

Just then the door to the cottage opened on creaking hinges, and Lindy looked, expecting to see the young girl from the night before, but she saw instead a grown woman who was closer to her middle-age than to her youth, though she was just as beautiful in her way.  The woman met Lindy’s eyes and smiled a smile so open and so sincere that Lindy knew immediately that she could be trusted, and there at the woman’s feet, following her through the door, was the beetle that had led Lindy home the night before, though it did not seem to be glowing now.

“Good morning, Lindy,” said the woman.  She was dressed plainly and neatly in what looked like homemade clothes, and there was something so motherly about her that Lindy half expected to see children trailing after her skirts as she came to the bedside. “My name is Amena,” she said, laying a hand on Lindy’s forehead as if testing for a fever.  “I was hoping we would meet under better circumstances, you know, but at least you’re here now, and I’ll wager you’re not so hurt that you won’t recover .”

Lindy started to thank the woman, only her face was so sore and her mouth was so swollen that she only ended up making a muffled kind of sound and hurting herself even more, and this made her realize again how sorry she really was, and she began to cry.

“Now, now,” said Amena, “You’ll do no good by getting yourself upset.  There will be more than enough time to talk about things when you’re strength is back.”  She took the edge of her heavy wool apron and wiped Lindy’s eyes.  “The best thing for you right now is to eat what I feed you and sleep when I tell you and heal as quick as you can.”  She stood and went to the small fireplace on the back wall of the cottage’s single room.  She ladled something into a wooden bowl and then returned to the bedside.  The bowl held soup of some kind that Amena began feeding to Lindy, a clear and wholesome soup with some vegetables in it that Lindy did not recognize, all cut very small and cooked very soft.  It was warm and comforting it her belly, though it hurt her jaw quite a lot to eat it.

When she had finished the soup, she was pleasantly full, and she thought that she could sleep again.  She watched Amena busy herself around the cottage, washing dishes in water that she carried in buckets from outside and heated over the fire, mending some clothes that Lindy recognized as her own, and then preparing some food at the table.  Actually, it would be truer to say that she half-watched Amena do these things and half-dozed, all the while wondering things like what had happened to the girl who had been standing in the cottage door the night before and how it was that Amena had known her name.  Though she still knew that there were far more important things to worry her, she could not seem to focus on any of them, and she drifted comfortably on the edge of sleep all that afternoon.

Lindy came fully awake only when Amena took the stew from off the fire and began serving it into bowls on the cottage’s little wooden table along with some dark bread and two glasses of red wine, one filled almost to the rim and the other only a little less than half way.  Amena did all this across the room with her back half-turned, so it was only when she turned to the bed that Lindy realized it was not Amena at all but a much older woman.  Lindy shrank back in her bed.  There was much about the older woman that reminded her of Amena, and she was wearing the same clothes that Amena had been wearing, but she was easily old enough to be Amena’s mother.

“Who are you?” asked Lindy, a little frightened and drawing the blankets up around her.

“Oh, Lindy,” the woman laughed, and her smile was the same open smile that Amena had smiled that morning to win Lindy’s trust.  “I’m still the same Amena.  I’m just a little older now, and I will be older still by the time you go to sleep tonight.”

“But how…” Lindy began.

Amena laughed again.  “It’s just the way I am.  Each day I grow older, from daughter to mother to grandmother, and each morning, at the very first hour of the morning, I became a girl again, like I was when you found me last night.  Do you remember?”

“Yes,” said Lindy,” I do remember.  There was beautiful girl standing at the door of the cottage.  And that was you?”

“That was me.  And I will be the same again not very long from now, when the last hour of night turns to the first hour of morning.”

“But why?”

“I told you.  It’s just the way I am.  The way I’ve always been.  And I have been a very long time.”  She reached out and took Lindy by the hand.  “Now,” she said, and her tone said that she had changed the topic of conversation, “Enough questions.  I think you’ll find that you’re well enough to get out of bed for a short while so you can wash your hurts and eat something.  This cottage is the kind of place where people heal quickly, and you’re healing even more quickly than most.”

Lindy allowed herself to be helped to the washstand where Amena had set a basin of water.  It was very cold in the warmth of the cabin, but it felt good to wash herself a little.  Her body hurt her much less than she expected, though her shoulder was still very painful and her face looked a horrible mess in the small and cloudy mirror that hung over the washstand, all red scratches and blue bruises.

Amena sat Lindy down in one of the cottage’s two rough wooden chairs to change her shoulder dressing.  The wound was quite deep in places, and it was still very much open and bloody, but there did not seem to be any infection, and there was already new pink skin showing at the edges.  Amena washed it carefully in salt water and then put some kind of salve into it that burned sharply and smelled a little like vinegar.  Then she wrapped it again and helped Lindy dress in her old clothes again.  Amena had washed and mended them so well that there were no blood stains to be seen and the carefully darned tears could hardly be noticed.

It felt good to be back in her old clothes again, and it felt even better to get some food in her stomach.  The stew was thick and tasty and filling.  Though Lindy was at first sceptical about eating rabbit in a stew or any other way, her hunger soon won her over, and before she quite realized how quickly she was eating she was already wiping her bowl with a piece of the heavy, dark bread.  She was feeling drowsy again by then, especially once Amena made her drink the half glass of wine.  Lindy had sometimes had a sip of her mother’s wine, but just a sip, and Amena’s wine tasted very strong on her tongue, and it was almost half a glass besides, and Lindy was soon in bed again and sleeping soundly.

She woke only once that night sometime shortly after midnight to feel something climbing on her feet.  She was startled, and there was a split second when she imagined herself out in the forest being attacked by the night creatures again, but she soon saw that it was only Amena’s beetle, whose name she had learned was Saffi, making itself a nest in the blankets at her feet.  The fire was low in the hearth, and there was little light in the cottage, but when Lindy looked out from her bed, she could see a very young girl, young enough to be Amena’s daughter, but somehow also unmistakably Amena herself, sitting in one of the wooden chairs and reading something by the firelight.  Lindy suddenly felt truly safe again, maybe for the first time since she had jumped off the wall into Mister Hat’s garden.  She was asleep again a moment later, and she did not wake until morning.

Previous Chapter < > Next Chapter

This chapter is quite a bit shorter than most, not for any good reason except that it seemed like the place to stop.  As always, those who are new to the story can find the beginning at Chapter One, and those who would like to have the story thus far in a single file can find it in both .pdf and .rtf formats on the Longer Works page.

Chapter Fourteen:
In Which Lindy Finds the Cottage After All

Unseen things surged out of the forest, scurrying across Lindy’s feet and hands, climbing over her body, flying around her face, crawling into her clothing, and everywhere they touched, they bit and stung and scratched.  She tried to stand, but something much larger suddenly grabbed hold of her leg, and she stumbled back to the ground.  She kicked out with her free foot, felt it strike something heavy, and then she was free enough to find her feet, running blindly, brushing at the little creatures that were still swarming over her body.  The branches of trees tore at her face, and then she collided with something large and covered in fur, and she was clubbed to the ground again by a massive paw, and something heavy and hairy and smelling of animal landed on her chest.  She turned her face and arms away from the bestial thing, feeling savage teeth tear into her shoulder, and at almost the same instant something raked large claws across her forehead and something grabbed a hold of her leg again, and she knew very clearly that she was about to die.

She would remember that instant forever after.  It would come to mind at the strangest times, while she was brushing her teeth before bed, or while she was waiting for the school bell to ring, or while she was riding on the bus.  And each time she remembered it, no matter how many times she remembered it, she always felt the same panic that she had felt that night, a panic that came over her all at once and made time seem to stop moving altogether.  It felt as if she might lie there with jaws and teeth and claws and stings piercing her flesh forever, as if there would be no end to the darkness and the pain and the terror.

And then there came a light.  It was not really a very bright light, but in the deep darkness it came like a flash of lightening.  Lindy’s eyes were turned away, so she was not looking directly into it when it appeared, but she was still blinded at first, and then she saw a large wolf-like animal standing over her, though no longer biting her shoulder and already cringing back from the brightness.  She could also see cruel looking insects and rodents scurrying off into the shadows, and what looked like a huge and disfigured bear standing at her feet and pawing at its eyes.  Soon even the wolf and the bear had fled, growling in pain and frustration, and then Lindy was left alone in a pool of light in the midst of darkness.

She lay there a long time, hardly believing that she was still alive.  She could feel stings and bites all over her, and there was blood running down her forehead from the scratches on her head, and her shoulder was beginning to hurt very much indeed.  In fact, she told me later that she almost did not get up at all.  Every bit of her seemed to hurt, especially her jaw where she had been hit and her shoulder where she had been bitten, and it seemed so much easier just to lay there.

It was the light, she said, that finally made her get to her feet, though this is another of those things that I do not myself quite understand.  According to Lindy, the light never actually moved or spoke or did anything at all, but it somehow coaxed her first to sit and then, though it hurt her arm terribly, to stand.  How a light could do this, I have no idea, but neither you nor I were there, so we will just have to take Lindy’s word for it.

However it happened, she eventually found herself standing beneath the light, and she saw that it was actually a creature of some sort, a large insect, something like a beetle, only it was glowing brightly, not with the phosphorescent light of a firefly but with the clear brightness of a full moon.  It was hovering several feet over her head, beating its wings very quickly, but it made only the softest sound, like the humming birds that came to the feeder by her back window at home.  It had been quite still until Lindy looked at it, but then it started to dip and weave around her, and finally it began slowly drifting away.

Lindy was afraid at first that it was leaving her, and the thought of being left alone in the darkness again with the horrible biting and stinging creatures filled her with panic all over again.  She began hobbling after the light as fast as her hurting body would let her, and she tried to call out to it as well, but her cheek and her mouth were too swollen.  She was following so desperately that she tripped over something in the forest litter and fell onto both knees.  Her whole body groaned with pain at the shock, and her mind groaned too, for she was sure that the light would now be too far ahead for her to catch it.

When she looked up, however, the light had not gone but was waiting patiently for her, dipping and flitting above her head.  Lindy knew then that it must be leading her somewhere, and it occurred to her that it might be leading her into further danger, but she could not imagine anything more frightening than being left with the creatures the light had chased away, so she pulled herself to her feet and struggled after it, wherever it might be leading her.

The next few hours were passed in much the same way.  The beetle slowly lit the way, and Lindy followed, staggering and even falling now and again, getting back to her feet, and all the while feeling weaker and weaker until she wondered how it was that she kept going at all. The soft, clear light of the beetle did not reach very far into the dark forest, spreading just a little way around her, like a moving streetlight, and Lindy was sure that she could see things in the shadows now and again.  Some were tall and hulking and ran on two legs, and others were smaller and leaner and loped along on all fours, and still others flew from branch to branch or circled overhead.  She could hear them too, howls and chitters, growls and whines, pants and shrieks, all coming from the forest around her, first here and now there, never in the same place twice, and Lindy knew that they were circling her and waiting only for the light to falter.

At last, when she was sure that she could not go even a minute longer, there was a tremendous noise from all around her, as if each of the creatures that followed her was crying out at the same time, and then she took a few steps more, and she stumbled out from the trees into a small clearing, and there, not more than fifty steps away, was the cottage of her vision, and in the doorway there stood a beautiful girl, nor much older than Lindy herself.  Lindy tried to make for the cottage and the door and the girl, but her body now decided that it had reached safety and needed to go no further, and she fell to the ground and lost consciousness.

Previous Chapter < > Next Chapter

Here is the next instalment of Lindy.  I have now all but completed the rough draft, so I hope to post future chapters every two or three weeks as I edit them.  As always, those who are new to the story can find the beginning at Chapter One, and those who would like to have the story thus far in a single file can find it in both .pdf and .rtf formats on the Longer Works page.

Chapter Thirteen:
In Which All Lindy’s Plans Come to Disaster

When Lindy was sure that Khurshid was gone, she took the body of the little deer and buried it under some cedar litter and piled some rocks on top of it. She wished that they could have buried it more properly, but the evening was now getting very dark, and they had no shovel for digging, only Moe’s knife, so there was nothing more that they could do.

Moe patted Lindy’s shoulder as they walked back to the fire and told her that things would be alright, and Cleanna said the same, but Lindy felt that things were anything but alright. She lay down in her blankets and tried to sleep, only she kept thinking of the little deer that had been lying right where she was lying now, and she felt very alone and very frightened and more than a little angry too. She knew, just as you and I do, that it was not really her fault that the deer had died. It was Khurshid who had killed it. All she had done was feed it and play with it, yet she still felt guilty. After all, if she had never crossed the bridge and had never played with the deer, Khurshid would never have killed. It was not her fault that it was dead, but it had died because of her, and she could not stop thinking about it.

She rolled over so that the fire could warm her back, and she saw Cleanna sitting on a fallen log keeping watch. Then she must have slipped into a kind of half-dreaming, because the fire grew impossibly high and bright behind her, but she could not make herself turn to see it, and there were shadowy shapes all through the trees as far as she could see, and then she saw suddenly that Cleanna was gone and that Khurshid was sitting on the log where she had been, and then she woke to find that Cleanna was indeed gone but that it was Moe who had taken her place and that everything was as peaceful as a forest night can be.

She fell back asleep, more deeply this time, and she did not remember her dreams, though she knew that they must have been unpleasant because she woke all tangled in her blankets, as if she had been running or wrestling in them, and she felt more tired than before she had gone to bed. She was also colder and damper than she could ever remember being. The fire was still burning, but it was low, and its heat could not match the morning cold.

Lindy would have liked a nice bowl of oatmeal and a cup of hot tea, but there were only old, wrinkled apples and some bread and water, so it looked like a cold breakfast until Moe had the idea of roasting the apples over the coals of the dying fire. The roasted apples were very hot, and Lindy had burnt fingers and a burnt tongue before she was done, but she did feel a bit warmer, especially after she drank some of the water that Cleanna had left to heat by the fire while they packed.

Nobody said much as they ate their breakfast and packed their few things. Moe apologized for losing his temper the night before and putting everyone in danger, and Lindy said not to worry about it, and Cleanna said that no one could blame him, and then they all went back to packing their blankets.  It looked to be another beautiful day, and Lindy thought that the leaves had opened even more overnight, but the beauty of it all was spoiled by the thought of the small dead creature lying on her blankets the night before. She kept imagining ways that she could have stopped Khurshid, how she might have taken the deer from him while there was still time, or how she might have said something to prevent him, but no amount of imagination could change what had happened, and she was always left with the horrible image of the strangled animal lying in her bed.

They returned to the main road just as the sun was truly up over the trees, all of them still quietly thinking their separate thoughts.  Lindy was feeling more hopeful and more determined as the sun rose, and she had even half-convinced herself that they would be able to find the cottage before nightfall, but her hope and determination lasted only the few hundred yards it took them to come across the first of the dead deer in the road.  At first Lindy thought that it might be the same one that Khurshid had killed the night before, that he had uncovered it and put it in their path, but when she bent down to it, she could feel that it was still warm, and she knew that it must have been dead only a few minutes. She carried it gently to the edge of the road, trying not to cry. Khurshid must be just beyond their sight, she knew, and she did not want to let him see her crying, but she wondered how much more she could bear.

“We should keep going, Miss Lindy,” said Moe, as she began to pile leaves over the body. “We don’t have time to do things proper. Just say a prayer, and then we’ll have to keep on.”

Lindy knew that Moe was right, and she got to her feet again, but she felt like something was breaking inside of her. “It’s all my fault,” she said.

“No dear,” said Cleanna, putting her arm around Lindy’s shoulders. “You we’re only being kind and gentle with the little creatures, as anyone else would do.  It’s Khurshid’s fault.  You can’t go blaming yourself for his evil doings.”

Lindy did start to cry now. She could no longer stop herself. “But what am I supposed to do? I can’t help loving things, and Khurshid says he’ll destroy anything I love, just because I love it. How am I supposed to stop loving things?”

“No, no, Lindy,” said Cleanna, her face full of concern, “you must never stop loving, no matter what Khurshid does. If you let him keep you from loving, then you are already what he wants you to become.”

“Oh, Cleanna, I don’t know what to do!” cried Lindy.

“You just keep doing what you were asked to do,” said Cleanna, “and we’ll stay right here with you, because that’s what we were asked to do.  It will be enough. I promise.”

Cleanna led Lindy back from the little burial mound to the road, and she held her hand as they began again to walk along the cobbles. The sun was golden, and the sky was deeply blue against the green of the spring leaves on the branches that arched over them like a vast hall, but Lindy noticed none of these things, only the broken bodies that they kept finding every mile or so, one after the other. She lost count of how many bodies that she carried to the edge of the road. It might have been twenty, but she soon lost count, and the number did not seem to matter much anyway. Each one hurt her as much as the first.  She did not have tears enough for them all, and she soon found that her cheeks were dry, no matter how hard she was weeping in her heart.

At last, though it seemed that the day would go on forever, Moe said that it was time to make camp, and Lindy sat down in the road where she was. They could find no place as comfortable as the grove of the night before, but Moe had seen that the land was rising steadily into a ridge on their left and that it had formed a little hollow at one point that would allow them some cover from the wind. He left Lindy to make camp while he collected firewood, and Lindy somehow managed to find her feet and to unpack their things while Cleanna went to scout ahead again.  It only took a few minutes before the beds were made and a fire was burning, and it was only a few minutes more before Cleanna returned, her wings fluttering into arms with great excitement.

“The smoke is quite close tonight,” she exclaimed, “a little less than an hour’s walk, I’d guess.  And it really is a cottage.  I didn’t get too close, but I could see that it was a cottage.  And I found the tree too, Lindy, when I flew back toward the road.  It was huge, and its leaves look like gold in the sunset, just like you said.”

Lindy felt a great flush of relief.  She had been wondering how much further she could really go, but now it seemed that their journey was much closer to its end than she had feared.

“That’s great news,” said Moe, and he looked relieved as well.  He turned a little smile to Lindy.  “We’re almost there, Miss.  Just a little longer.”

“Not that the wretched woman who lives there will help you much, I’m afraid,” came Khurshid’s now familiar voice.

Lindy looked up at Khurshid’s beautiful face, and she saw that he was holding the twisted body of yet another little deer.  He knelt and laid it very gently on her newly unrolled blankets and caressed its fur. “I know how much you like to see them properly laid to rest,” he said, and his lovely voice was touched with amusement.  “I couldn’t think of any place more proper than this.”

Lindy had never felt so angry and so helpless and so guilty.  She wanted to cry and to scream and to run, but she could not do all of these things at once, so she just stood there, wishing that she could be anywhere else, but wishing most of all that she could be back home.

“Don’t worry, though,” Khurshid continued, coming to his feet.  “You won’t have any more little corpses to bury tomorrow.  I think I’ve made my point quite clearly already, and I do get bored of things so easily.”  He walked closer to Lindy and stroked her cheek again, as he had twice before, and she had the feeling that she was living the same moment again and again, that she would always have to endure that touch again and again, that she would always have to endure little broken bodies on the road again and again.

She met Khurshid’s eyes and saw that he was smiling at her sweetly.  “No,” he said, “there will be no more small bodies on the path.  You know how things are between us now, and tomorrow we will stop playing with pets and start playing with things that lie a little closer to home.  Like your mother, for example.  Have you seen your mother recently, my dear Lindy?”

It took Lindy a moment to realize what Khurshid was saying, but when at last she did, all of the emotion inside her seemed to gather itself into one tremendous scream of anger.  “No!” she cried.  “You keep away from my mother!”

“Oh my,” said Khurshid, as calmly as ever.  “Such an outburst.  But I’m afraid it’s a little late for keeping away from your mother at this point.”  He turned slightly and beckoned into the deepening darkness among the tress, and Lindy now noticed that Khurshid was not alone.  In the shadows behind him she could make out at least three dark figures. One of them stepped forward and gave something to Khurshid before drifting back into the darkness.

“I don’t think you’ve met my associates,” Khurshid said.  “They were all royalty once, just like you, before they made the very wise choice to surrender their crowns to me.”  He began turning over in is hands whatever it was that the traitor-king had given him.  “These three in particular have just returned from your world, dear Lindy, where they lured and captured our mutual friend Mister Alisdair Bridgebane.”

Lindy was trying not to listen, and trying not to think about what he had said earlier about her mother, and trying not to let her anger get the better of her, but she was failing at all of these things.

“You might like to know,” Khurshid continued, tossing the little square object in his hands and catching it, “that Alisdair is still alive.”

Lindy could her Moe and Cleanna both breath sharply behind her.

Khurshid laughed mockingly.  “I wouldn’t get too excited.  He may be alive, but he’s very likely wishing he was dead by now, and I will gladly grant his wish as soon as he witnesses his crown on my head.  I only mention it because I thought that Miss Lindy should know that her dear mother is not alone in her captivity but is together with our good friend Alisdair as she enjoys the hospitality of my friends here.”

He turned just then so that the firelight shone on the object in his hands, and he opened it so that she could see inside. Lindy recognized at once that it was her mother’s wallet, only the picture inside had been changed.  Where there should have been a picture of Lindy herself as a little girl, there was now a picture of her mother, bound and gagged and lying on a stone floor.  Khurshid kept the wallet open only just long enough for Lindy to see what was in it, and then he flipped it closed again and tossed it contemptuously beside the dead deer on Lindy’s blankets.

“So,” he said, “I wonder what it is that you’ll find on the path tomorrow…” but Lindy did not let him finish the sentence.  Even as he turned away from her, she felt herself lose all control, and there was nothing inside of her but hurt and anger.  She bent and took a branch from the fire and rushed at him, striking him with it once across the head and once again across his arm as he turned back to her, but he was prepared for her third blow, catching the still burning embers of her club, wresting it from her grasp, and tossing it into the forest.  There was exultation on his face, and he seemed to hesitate just a little, savouring the moment like a bit of chocolate on his tongue, and then he struck Lindy across the face.

The force of the blow took her off her feet and threw her to the ground, her crown tumbling off as she fell.  Her mind refused to focus, and her eyes refused to see, and her body refused to obey her, but when at last she was able to look around, Moe was lying crumpled beside the fire as Khurshid’s traitor-kings tied his great arms, and Cleanna was nowhere to be seen.

Khurshid was now standing between Lindy and the fire. “You foolish girl,” he mocked.  “You couldn’t resist me even two whole days.  Alisdair was greatly mistaken to think that you could keep his crown from me.  He would have been wiser to die with it on his head. Now, I’m afraid, he’ll live to see me wear it instead.”  He stooped and picked up Alisdair’s crown where it had fallen in the dust, then spun it between his hands and set it on his own head.

“And you may see it too,” he continued, “if you live that long.  And what a joyful reunion that would be.  You, and Alisdair, and your mother, all together, watching me cross that bridge at last.  I can almost imagine the pity he’ll have for you, hiding his disappointment in your failure.  And just think how guilty you’ll feel to see him standing there, watching his final defeat, awaiting his execution, and all because of you.”  He laughed a soft and mocking and terrible laugh.  Then he turned and began walking away.  “Of course,” he called back over his shoulder, “you’ll need to survive the night first, which will be no easy task I assure you.  But I’ll be waiting for you at the bridge if you make it, and I’ll be sure that Alisdair and your mother live at least that long, so you’ll have plenty of motivation to join us.  Until then, I hope you enjoy all the pleasures that my country has to offer.”

Then the fire went out all at once, and everything was moonless and dark, and Lindy could hear only Khurshid’s soft laughter and the rustlings and murmurings of nameless things gathering around her in the shadows of the forest.

Previous Chapter < > Next Chapter

Many of you were complaining earlier in the year that I was posting instalments of Lindy too seldom, and I will probably now get complaints that I am posting them too often, but I have always said that I can only write at the pace that my time and my inclination allow, and my poor readers must, unfortunately, take what they can get.  As always, those who are new to the story can find the beginning at Chapter One, and those who would like to have the story thus far in a single file can find it in both .pdf and .rtf formats on the Longer Works page.

Chapter Twelve:
In Which a Great Evil Is Done

Lindy waited for a long time before she took the last step from the bridge into Khurshid’s lands. First she waited to watch Khurshid disappear into the forest, and then she waited a bit longer to be sure that he was truly gone, and then she waited even a bit longer because it was hard to know when to start, and then Moe laid his big webbed hand on Lindy’s shoulder, and Cleanna took Lindy’s hand, and Lindy knew that they were both waiting for her, but she still could not make herself take that first step.

It was not that the forest itself looked so frightening. It looked like a perfectly normal forest, just like any other forest she had seen back home, without even the strange sense of rightness that lay over everything at The Crofts. It was just that Lindy had half-expected Khurshid’s country to be full of darkness and rottenness, with nasty things living in its shadows, like the things that Bilbo had found in Mirkwood, or like the things that Mole had found in the Wild Wood, but Khurshid’s country looked nothing like this. The meadow just before them was like any other spring meadow, full of dry grasses from the year before and green shoots growing up everywhere among them.  And the forest looked like any other spring forest, with evergreen trees standing fully clothed in their needles, while everything else was wearing thin new robes of pale green leaves or waiting for their growing buds to cover their bare branches. It all seemed too ordinary, too natural, too beautiful to be the home of something as evil as Khurshid, and it made Lindy feel uncertain.

She knew, though, that she could not stand there forever. She could either go back to The Crofts, which she felt sure would be a very cowardly thing to do, or she could go on and try to find the cottage that she had seen in her dream. She already knew what choice she would make, but it was one thing to make a decision and another thing altogether actually to do it. Still, waiting was not going to make anything any easier, and the sun was already well past its height, so at last she gathered up her courage, and she stepped onto the cobble stones and began walking toward the forest.

The meadow was broader on Khurshid’s side of the river, and the sun was very warm, foretelling the coming summer, but the forest was cool when they reached it, and there were even patches of snow in the shade and the hollows of the deepest thickets. The forest was mostly quiet, but there were often the sounds of songbirds just out of sight, and there were squirrels now and again, and they even saw a long slender grass snake warming itself on a rock where the path let the sun into the canopy.  Lindy was never quite able to forget where they were or what Khurshid had said to her, but the forest was so beautiful in the muddy sort of way that forests are beautiful in spring that she found herself enjoying the walk even still.

“I don’t understand,” she said to Moe and Cleanna after a time. “If Khurshid is so evil, why is his country so beautiful?”

“Not all evil things are ugly, Lindy,” replied Cleanna, “and not all good things are beautiful.” She gestured toward the forest, “Besides, there’s still much goodness here. Evil’s greatest frustration is that goodness continues to grow, even where it’s least expected. Evil is never able to destroy goodness wholly, and never forever. Goodness always clings on, though sometimes only in the smallest ways.”

“So, why,” asked Lindy, “is everyone so afraid to come here. It doesn’t seem so bad to me.”

“Oh, well,” said Cleanna, looking a little worried suddenly, “there’s certainly plenty in the forest to fear, I assure you, and much of it looks as evil as it is. Sometimes beautiful things only hide a deeper ugliness. That’s why Khurshid leaves the forest mostly untouched, I think, because it pleases him to see something so beautiful hiding things that are so evil.”

Lindy thought about this for a minute, and all three of them were quiet for a long time, just walking the road and feeling the cool of the forest and watching the little spots of sunlight trickling through the leaves. Then, just as she was about to say that she might like to stop and have lunch, Lindy suddenly saw something moving on the road ahead. It looked like the deer that sometimes appeared at her Grandfather’s cottage, only it was much smaller, and when she looked closely she could see others as well, hiding here and there among the trees. She looked over to Moe and Cleanna to tell them what she had seen, but they had already noticed the little deer themselves and were watching the creatures as curiously as Lindy was.

The little animals had seen Lindy and the others as well, and they investigated the newcomers to their forest with timid interest, as Cleanna began setting out their lunch. The deer came closer in fits and starts, from tree to tree, until at last they were close enough that Lindy could toss one of them a crust from her bread, and it was not long before all of the deer were crowding around them looking for food. The braver among them came right up to feed from Lindy’s hand, while the more timid stayed just beyond her reach, waiting for her to toss something in their direction.  Lindy’s crusts were gone quite soon, however, and she did not know how long the food would need to last, so she could not afford to feed them anything more.  Even so, the deer gave no sign that they would leave, circling Lindy and her companions as they finished their lunch and repacked their things and set off along the road once more.

For a short time the deer even followed after them, running through the trees on either side of the road. Some grew brave enough to run after Lindy’s heels, and she would sometimes slow suddenly to watch them skip nimbly around her.  After a time, however, the deer suddenly slowed and then stopped altogether, as if they had come to some invisible border, and then they disappeared back into the forest, leaving the three travellers alone once again.

The path seemed much more lonely without the little creatures, especially since the sun had started to go down behind the trees.  It would be a long time before its light found the horizon and things became truly dark, but Lindy began thinking that it might be time to stop and make what camp they could.  She was just about to say so, when she heard Moe behind her saying in his low and gentle voice, “There’s a good spot to camp over there, Miss Lindy.”  He pointed over to their left.  “See that little grove of trees in the meadow there?  That should give us some shelter and let us see if anyone is coming too.”

“I’ll fly up and have a look around a little,” offered Cleanna.  “Maybe I can catch sight of the tree where we’re supposed to turn.”  She flapped into her bird form and spiralled swiftly above the canopy, leaving Moe and Lindy to carry the three packs to the little grove of trees. It was bigger than it had looked from the path, maybe fifty trees altogether, mostly cedar and something that looked a little but not quite like birch and a few other evergreens too.  The litter from the cedars smelled good, and it was soft under Lindy’s feet.  Moe chose a smooth hollow to set up their camp, and he had a fire burning very quickly from the dead wood under the trees.  He went off then to find enough wood to last them the night while Lindy laid out the blankets and got the food out for their supper.  She could almost imagine that she was camping with her mother like they did every summer, only they had no tents or cook stove or anything like that, just a few blankets and some cold food.

Moe did not go very far, making sure that he always kept Lindy and the camp in sight, but he soon had quite a pile of wood piled up, all broken into lengths.  He was just stacking the last of it when Cleanna came flitting down and settled by the fire.

“I couldn’t see anyone around,” she said, pulling her shawl around her shoulders and leaning close to the fire.  “And I didn’t see any trees tall enough to be the one you saw in your dream, Lindy, but I did see some smoke from a fire or a chimney a long way off.  I thought about having a look, but it was getting dark, and I didn’t want to get lost.”

“Do you think it might be the cottage?” asked Lindy.

“It might be.  It’s on the right side of the road.”

Lindy was about to say something more, but just then they all heard footsteps in the leaf litter, and they turned to see Khurshid approaching their camp through the trees.  He looked as he had when he had met them at the bridge, tall and golden-haired and beautiful, and he moved with the same ease, and he was carrying in his arms one of the little deer that had eaten from their hands and had followed them as they walked that afternoon.

“Good evening, Lindy,” he said, when he had stepped past the last of the trees and into the circle of flickering light cast by their fire.  “You certainly have found a cozy camp for the night.  You’ll sleep very well, I’m sure.”

“What do you want?” demanded Cleanna, her voice shrill and nervous.

“I have warned you about speaking to me, bird-woman,” Khurshid said sternly, but losing none of his dignity.  He turned back to Lindy.  “I only came to let you know,” he continued, “that you need to be more careful now in choosing the people and the things that you love.”  He stroked the cheek of the deer he was holding with great gentleness.  “You see, I may not be able to harm you, but I am quite capable of harming the things you love, like this little fellow here,” he said, looking down at the small form in his arms.  “Isn’t it a lovely thing?  So small and innocent and beautiful.  You seemed quite taken with him this afternoon, and he made such a delightful sight tripping over your feet as you walked.  It’s unfortunate that your affection for him will mean his death, don’t you think?”

Khurshid’s eyes met Lindy’s just then, and they were full of a terrible joy, and then she saw his free hand seize the deer by the throat and break its neck with a savage twist.

“No!” cried Lindy, and at the same moment Moe lunged forward, already changing into his monstrous self and reaching for Khurshid with his huge webbed hands.

Khurshid batted him aside with an almost casual blow.  “That was unwise, my little monstrosity,” he said.  “Don’t you know that the protection of your young Keeper here is good only so long as you do me no harm?  I could kill you this very moment.”  He squatted down beside Moe and looked into his eyes.  “But I won’t,” he went on, looking back to Lindy, “as a sign of good faith to you, my dear Lindy.”

He stood again and walked to Lindy, reaching out to brush her cheek, just as he had brushed it only a few hours earlier at the bridge and just as he had brushed the deer’s cheek only a few moments ago.  “Remember that I reward as well as I punish, my dear.  But I can only reward once you give me the crown, and I will never cease punishing you until it is mine.”  He was still holding the little deer by its broken neck, and he threw it now onto Lindy’s blankets.  “This is what I will do to everything you love.  So ask yourself truly how much sacrifice that crown is really worth to you?”

He turned smoothly on his heel, and then he seemed to blend with the last few rays of sunlight, and then he was gone.

Previous Chapter < > Next Chapter

I have had a number of people request that I provide a single file where they can either read or print the entire story to date, so I have posted such a file in both doc and pdf formats on a new Longer Works page that I have just added under the blog’s Pages heading.  I will update these files as I post new chapters, so they should always be as complete a version of the story as possible.  I have also included links to these files below.

Lindy: A Fantasy.rtf

Lindy: A Fantasy.pdf

Here, as promised, is the next chapter of Lindy in very short order, at least for me. I cannot promise that the next one will follow quite as quickly, but anything is possible. As always, those who are new to the story can find the beginning at Chapter One.

Chapter Eleven:
In Which Lindy Crosses the Great River

The morning of her journey did not go quite as Lindy had planned.  She dressed as quickly as she could, putting on the clothes that she had laid out the night before and washing her face in the was basin, and then tried to travel to the kitchen to meet the others, only to find that she was unable to get anywhere at all.  She tried going through the attic hatch to see if that would help, and she tried traveling to other places like the library and the great hall, but no matter what she tried, she stayed right where she was.

She thought at first that this was her own fault, that she had somehow lost the knack of traveling that she had only learned so recently, but the more she tried, the more she felt that she was doing everything as she should, and she began to wonder whether the house itself was keeping her trapped where she was. So after a few more minutes of trying and failing, she gave up and decided just to walk to the kitchen, assuming that she could somehow find her way and assuming that the house had not locked all the doors as well.

The attic hatch opened onto a short and narrow hallway that was lit only by a small window on one side.  The door at the other end was faded and chipped, so that Lindy could see its many layers of paint, a light cream colour over yellow over white over pale green.  The brass handle, however, was clean and brightly polished and heavily made with an ornately fashioned lock.  Lindy turned the handle and pulled, but she knew even before she tried that it would be locked, and she was sure now that it was The Crofts that was keeping her from the kitchen, but she also remembered what Penates had said about using her will when talking with the house, and she decided that she needed to say something in as firm and as adult a way as she could.

“Okay,” she said, not so loudly as to yell but loudly enough to show that she was not frightened, “I know it’s you, Crofts.  I know you don’t want me to go, but I have to.”

“You have no idea what you’re doing!” The Crofts shouted.  The sensation of the house was suddenly so strong in Lindy’s mind that she stumbled back against the wall, but she was determined not to let it bully her.

“Stop yelling at me,” she said, trying every hard to keep her voice strong and even, and trying also to use her will to calm The Crofts.

“You’re will is nothing compared to mine, girl,” the house spat back, but it had already softened its tone somewhat, and Lindy felt more confident again.

“I know you don’t think I can be a Queen or a Keeper,” she said, “and I know it seems crazy to go closer to Khurshid, but I have to.  My dream said so.  And Alisdair said that sometimes you have to make choices, and nobody can make them for you, so that’s what I’m doing. I’m making my choice.  If you don’t let me go, I’ll go myself, even if I have to start climbing out the window.”

The house seemed to shudder or tremble in Lindy’s mind.  “You will lose the crown to Khurshid,” it said, more softly now. “You’re not strong enough to resist him.  I beg you.  Don’t go.  For all our sakes.”  It had quietened almost to a whisper now, pleading rather than demanding.

Lindy felt a sudden sympathy for the house, but her vision had been so clear, and everyone else had been so supportive of her, and she had no choice now but to go on.  “I won’t fail you, Crofts,” she said, letting her own voice soften as well.  “Just let me go.  I’ll show you that this is the right thing to do.  I promise.”

There was a long silence, so long that Lindy wondered whether the house would ever answer at all, but then there was a sound like a sigh in her mind, and The Crofts spoke at last.  “Do what you will.  I will no longer prevent you.  But when this ends in ruin, remember that I forewarned you.” Then, in the next moment, Lindy found herself standing in the kitchen.

Everything seemed to be moving in every direction there, and nobody bothered to ask Lindy why she was late.  She was made to eat a heavy breakfast of eggs and bacon and beans and toast and coffee, which Lindy had never tried before, and then she was helping Cleanna distribute everything between the three packs, the biggest for Moe and the smallest for Lindy herself, and at last Moe was helping her on with her pack, and Penates was giving Moe some final instructions, and all the others were saying goodbye.  Even Clinton offered Lindy his hand, though he refrained from giving her a hug, as some of the others did.

The goodbyes took rather longer than anyone thought. and the sun was quite high when Lindy and Moe and Cleanna passed out at last through the cloak room and the side door where Lindy had first come into the house, how many days ago she could not quite remember. The sun had already dried the grass, and the sky was clear and blue, and a warming spring breeze was rustling over everything, and Lindy felt better almost right away.

The path from the side door ran alongside the house until it reached the cobblestones of the driveway that led onto the main road toward the bridge. The road had once been cobbled too, Lindy saw, because the smooth tops of cobblestones were showing here and there, especially along the wheel ruts, but a layer of earth had now covered most of it, and there was mud in all of the low lying places where the spring rain had made puddles that were only just now drying.

Each step into the spring morning seemed to Lindy another step away from her worries, and she began to skip a little, hopping from one cobble to another when there were two close enough together. Cleanna must have been feeling the same because she suddenly flung her arms wide and took a hop and a leap and then began to fly, her shawl dissolving into a beating of brown wings. Lindy watched her circle ever higher into the air and wished that she could do the same, to meet the sun part way on its long journey to the earth.

It was only when they came over a small rise in the road and the trees ahead parted enough for Lindy to see the bridge that she remembered just how dangerous a thing she was about to do. The sun did not shine any less brightly, and the breeze did nor blow any less warmly, but Lindy felt colder anyway, and her stomach began to ache like when she was sick with the flu. She looked to Moe and saw that he had changed into his monstrous form, his pack becoming a grotesque hump on his shoulders, and Cleanna had returned to the ground now too, standing in her human form and looking very grim.

None of the three said anything, but they all paused together, and they looked down to the valley and the river and the bridge. There were no trees within a long distance of the river on either side, as if the forest was afraid to come too close to it. There were instead long marsh grasses and bullrushes, still young and green, and here and there glimpses of purple flags testing the new spring warmth.

They turned down the hill toward the river, and the road became ever more muddy and overgrown the closer they came to the bridge, but even from a distance the bridge itself looked as sound and unblemished as if it had only just been built. There was nothing very fancy about it, just wide blocks of very plain stone, smooth and closely-fitted, without carving or decoration, but it dominated their view more and more the closer they came to it, and they all paused again when they reached the foot of the bridge, where the muddy and half-buried cobbles met the crisp smoothness of the bridge.

“You’ll need to lead us into the bridge, Miss Lindy,” said Moe at last,”seeing as you’re the Keeper. We’re under your protection from here on.”

Lindy sighed. She had no idea how she could protect anyone from anything, and she was not even really sure what it was that they were facing over there in the forest across the bridge, but there was no use going back now. She took a step forward, felt the hardness of the bridge on her foot, and then she began to shiver just a little, as if she had come out of a nice warm lake into a cool breeze. Then the feeling passed, and she stepped forward again, and she felt quite a lot braver.  The smoothness of the bridge felt good beneath her feet after the ruts and cobbles of the path, and the breeze grew harder and cooler and cleaner as she climbed the broad curve of the bridge. She did not for a moment forget the danger of what she was doing or lose the ache in her stomach, but she felt a little bit like she had felt when she first saw the cottages, as if she was exactly where she belonged, no matter how frightened she might be.

The bridge was longer than it looked, and it reached much higher above the river than Lindy expected, curving upward like a great stone hill, so it was only when the began to descend the other side that Lindy saw the figure approaching the bridge from the forest.  He was a tall man, golden-haired and lithely muscled and naked, walking toward them with his arms casually swinging at his sides, as if he had merely been taking a walk and happened upon them quite accidentally. The only sign that he had even seen them was that his eyes were looking fixedly toward where they stood on the bridge, never looking to the left or the right, even as he walked along the overgrown road.

Lindy wondered for a moment whether she should stop on the bridge and wait for the man to come to her, but she knew somehow that this was the wrong thing to do, so she kept walking along the bridge, downward now, as firmly and bravely as she could. The slope of the bridge hurried her feet, and the man’s ambling pace was much faster than it looked, so they were approaching each other very quickly, and Lindy felt a strange mixture of fear and courage at the same time, as though there were two people inside of her, one terrified to go even a step further, and the other determined to keep going as long as she could. They reached each other at last at the foot of the bridge, her feet on the last of the broad stones of the bridge itself and his on the first of the overgrown cobbles. He was very tall, and Lindy had to look up to see his face, but he bent down on one knee so that they were face to face, and he smiled warmly at her.

“Hello, Lindy,” he said. “I’m Khurshid. Welcome to my country.”

“We need to pass,” said Lindy, and her voice sounded quite brave, though she had been worried that it would sound as small and as frightened as she felt.

“Certainly, certainly,” Khurshid said, as if he were a favourite uncle giving a toy to his niece. His voice was soft and gentle and musical, and Lindy thought that she had never heard anything so beautiful before.  “Of course, I must warn you that will use every means at my disposal to get that crown from you,” Khurshid continued. “It’s the last one, you know, and I was so close to having it just the other day, and I do want it so very badly.”

“You can’t touch her while she wears the crown,” Cleanna said, quietly and evenly.

Khurshid’s voice hardened a little. It was still soft and musical but no longer gentle. “You would do better to hold your tongue before your betters, Bird-woman,” he said, his eyes glancing up past Lindy’s shoulder to where Cleanna stood. “Besides,” he continued, returning his eyes to meet Lindy’s, “it’s simply untrue. There’s nothing that keeps me from touching you, as long as I intend you no harm.”  He reached out his hand and brushed Lindy’s cheek. She flinched, but his touch was not unpleasant. There was no pain or heat or cold, nothing but the gentle warmth of a human hand. “You see,” he said, “I intend you no harm, at least not yet. All I want is your crown, and I’m asking it of you now, so you must answer me. That is how things are done here.”

“No,” Lindy answered, and she did not have to hesitate, and her voice was still firm and strong.

“Well,” said Khurshid, “I see that we must now both play our parts. You will go to do whatever it is that you think you’re doing, which I confess intrigues me very much, and I will try and take the crown from you. Of course, your bird-woman friend is quite right when she says that I cannot harm you unless you challenge me yourself, which would be very unwise, but I assure you that I do not have to touch you to do you harm, so you should be well warned.”

Quickly then, he rose to his feet and turned away from Lindy, and he shimmered in the air, and then it seemed to Lindy that he became a gigantic bull, huge and shaggy like a buffalo, with the wide horns of a longhorn steer, and then it seemed to her that he became a tremendous snake, long as an anaconda and wide as a python, its head reared up much taller even than a grown man, and at last she saw him take the form of a lion, with a heavy golden mane and powerful shoulders and fierce jaws. It roared savagely once and then loped away down the road to the forest, never looking back, leaving Lindy standing on the last stone of the bridge.

Previous Chapter < > Next Chapter

It has been a long while since I posted a chapter of Lindy, but I may post a few in fairly close succession now, so regular readers should be fairly warned. As always, those who are new to the story can find the beginning at Chapter One.

Chapter Ten:
In Which There Are Preparations for a Journey

Now, you may think that Lindy was being a bit foolish when she decided to go and look for the cottage in the clearing just because she had a dream about it. After all, she would be going all by herself across the bridge into Khurshid’s forest in order to find a place that she had seen only in a dream and that she knew almost nothing about.

You should remember though that people often do strange things when they feel that there is no other choice, and this is just how Lindy was feeling at that moment. She was in a strange place with no one she knew for company and no way to find her way home. Alisdair had left her and was maybe even dead for all she knew. Even the house, which had been so comforting to her at first, had now turned against her. Besides, her dream had seemed so clear, and her mind was made up now, and nothing was going to keep her from going, not even the most reasonable objections, like how she would find the cottage, or where she would get food to eat, or what she would do if she should happen to meet Khurshid along her way.

She probably would have set off right away, in fact, but she was not so rash as to leave without at least some food and supplies, and she realized that it would be difficult to find anything without causing suspicion, even if The Crofts did not know her intentions already. She decided that it might be worth the risk of going to the kitchen, just to see what she could find, but first she looked around for anything useful to take with her from the attic. There was the flashlight that she used to keep for reading when it got too dark, though she remembered that the batteries were low and there were no extras to be found. There was also a hooded sweatshirt and some blankets that she kept there for when it got cold. She had nothing handy to carry them, but then she saw her Father’s old army dufflebag, and she dumped his clothes out of it to make room for her things. She also found some of her own clothes. They were summer things that had been packed away for the winter and would probably not be warm enough for a journey outdoors in the spring, especially at night, but she packed two pairs of jean shorts and a few of her warmer shirts anyway, just in case.

The dufflebag was much too big for her. She had to cinch up the strap as far as it would go just to pick it up, and she could tell that it would soon be uncomfortable on her shoulder, but she thought it would be manageable so long as she took lots of breaks. She only wished now that there had been some food in the attic, but there was only her empty water bottle, though she decided now to add that to her pack as well. It was only as she was about to leave that she remembered the candy canes in with the Christmas decorations, so she pulled open the box and found a dozen or so of the candies. They were probably several years old and very stale, but they would be better than nothing, and Lindy felt better when they were safely packed with the other things in her bag.

She was just about to leave for a second time, and feeling a little sad to be going away from her cubby so soon, even if it was not the real one, when Moe suddenly appeared right in front of her. Lindy was so startled that she jumped and stumbled backward over a box full of old encyclopedias.

“Oh,” said Moe, who seemed almost as startled as she was, “I’m sorry, Miss Lindy, for surprising you like that, and uninvited too, I know. But Penates said you might be needing someone to talk to, and you were gone such a long time, so I thought I’d come and see if you were alright.” He reached down and lifted Lindy to her feet as he was saying this and then noticed the bag still dangling from her shoulder.

“Miss, Lindy!” he cried, suddenly changing to his more monstrous self. “You’re not leaving are you?”

“I have to, Moe,” Lindy said quietly. She looked down to avoid his eyes. “I can’t stay here anymore because the house is angry with me, and I can’t go home because the arch is broken, and I…”

“How do you know that the house is angry with you?”

“Because its showed me all these broken rooms, and it said that the house would die because I couldn’t be a good enough Queen…”

“The house talked to you?”

Lindy nodded.

“Well!” said Moe, “I know that Penates can talk to the house because he’s a part of it in a way, but I’ve never heard of anyone else talking to it. Maybe Alisdair can. I’ve never heard him say so, but I wouldn’t put anything past him.” He looked at her with his big amphibian eyes. “So, if you can’t stay, and you can’t go home, where is it that you think you’re going?”

“I had a dream…” began Lindy, and then trailed off, because it sounded silly even to her.

“A dream?” prodded Moe.

“Well, I was awake, sort of, so maybe it wasn’t really a dream.”

“A vision then?”

“Something like that, I guess, and there was a cottage across the bridge, past a tall tree with leaves that looked like gold, and I have to go there. I don’t know why, but I have to.”

Lindy stood there and waited for Moe to tell her that she was being foolish to leave and that she would be staying right where she was, but he only looked thoughtful and began slowly turning back into Moe the man. “Well,” he said at last, “I think, under the circumstances and all, it might be good to talk with Penates a bit. He’s the one who would know best now that Alisdair is gone.”

He looked suddenly saddened, then gave a sigh so big it seemed almost a roar. “I don’t know what we’ll do without him,” he said. “It makes me cry just thinking of him.”

He rubbed at his nose a bit and sighed again, more quietly this time, then reached out his hand. “Well, pick up your bag, Miss Lindy, and let’s be off to the kitchens. At least it’ll be doing something worth doing instead of crying over things we can’t change.”

His hand was warm and strong, and Lindy could almost believe that things had taken a turn for the better after all as they stepped through the door of her cubby and traveled to the kitchen. She held onto Moe’s hand even after they arrived, and he did not try to take it from her, so she took it in her other hand also, laying her cheek on his arm, even though it probably made her look like a little girl.

Penates was basting something in one of the ovens, but he seemed to feel them arrive and looked up at them immediately. His face was very grim, and even his movements about the kitchen seemed abrupt and angry. He finished what he was doing at last and came to them, putting his hand on Lindy’s cheek with surprising gentleness.

“I’m sorry for what The Crofts did to you this morning,” he said, his voice still gruff but gentle too. “I hope you weren’t too badly frightened.”

Lindy was surprised. “How do you know what happened?”

“Because I’m part of the house in a way. The Crofts is the spirit of the house, but I’m the spirit of the hearthestone. We’re connected. The Crofts is far more powerful than I am, of course, and I serve it in a sense, but I’m also a part of it. I can often feel what it’s feeling and know what it’s doing, especially when it feels very strongly.”

Lindy must have looked confused because Penates chuckled at her quietly. “Let me try again,” he offered. “When the house was being built, that great slab of stone over there was placed at the foundation of the hearth.” He pointed to the massive fireplace and the broad hearthstone that supported it. “I’m the spirit of that stone, or I was before it became a part of the house, and now I’ve become the spirit of the hearth, the spirit of the kitchen, you might say. I was built into the house, so my spirit is bound to its spirit, and so I can sometimes speak with it and feel what it’s feeling.”

“So you can talk to it too?” asked Lindy.

“Sure. At least, I can when it wants to talk and when I want to listen.” He chuckled again.

“But what if you don’t want to listen, or what if you don’t want The Crofts to listen to you?”

“Oh, it’s not really that complicated. You just need to will it. Like when you’re traveling around the house, or like when you sat on the chair this morning. Just will The Crofts to stop poking around in your mind, and it’ll stop.”

“I see,” said Lindy. She was thinking how long ago sitting on that chair seemed to her now.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” said Moe then, “but I think that Miss Lindy has something to say that shouldn’t wait much longer if she’s to say it all.”

“I imagine it has something to do with that great sack over her shoulder,” Penates said, and there was a good deal of humor in his voice.

Lindy was afraid that he was making fun of her, but when she looked up at him, he winked solemnly, and she saw that he was listening, so she took a deep breath and told her story. She told him all about her dream, about how she had been asleep and awake at the same time, and about how she had seen the man singing across the bridge and the tall tree with the golden leaves and the stone cottage in the clearing.

All the while, she kept expecting Penates to interrupt and tell her to stop taking a silly dream so seriously, but he just listened, nodding every once and while and looking at her steadily from underneath his bushy eyebrows. When she finished, still holding onto Moe’s hand, he closed his eyes for a minute and was very quiet, almost as if he was saying a prayer.

“Miss Lindy,” he said, after a minute, his eyes still closed, “I think you’re dream is too important to ignore.” He opened his eyes and looked at Lindy intently. “Do you remember when I told you just now that I’m the spirit of the hearthstone and that The Crofts is the spirit of the house?”

Lindy nodded.

“Well, there are many such spirits, and The Crofts and I are not the greatest among them by any measure. I am among the oldest of the spirits here, but some of the tree spirits are very powerful in their way, and the river spirit is strong enough to keep the law that binds Khurshid from crossing the bridge. Some of these spirits are good, and some of them are evil, and some of them, like your own spirit, are able to choose between one and the other. But all of these spirits are subject to the ruling spirit of this world. We call this spirit Aigaonz, and it often speaks to us through dreams and visions like the one you had.”

“So, is Aigaonz like God then?”

Penates shook his head. “No. What you call God would be the spirit of everything, of the universe and everything else. Aigaonz is just the spirit of this world, of this place here and now.”

“Like an angel?” Lindy tried again.

“Sure. We wouldn’t use that word, but it’s probably as good as any.”

“So, if this Aigaonz is the angel of this world, then why doesn’t he just take care of Khurshid himself? Why does he need to have the Keepers and everything if he’s the one in charge?”

“Well, I’m not sure if I’m the one to answer I question like that, but I would say that Aigaonz has certain limitations, just like we do. I mean, I can do some amazing things, but only if I’m close to my hearthstone. If I go too far from it, I can’t do anything at all. And you can do many things as well, many that I can’t do, especially now that you wear the crown of a Keeper, but you’re limited by your body and your mind. We all have our limitations. We can only do what we are able.”

“Well, if it’s Aigaonz that gave me this dream, then it means that I should go, right?”

“I think so, but I can’t be sure. You can never guarantee these things, and you still need to use your head, no matter what you think you dreamed.”

“I have to go though, Penates. I have to.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t go. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t leave this very moment all by yourself with a few things stuffed in a bag that’s far too big for you. Stay here just one more night. Let me pack some food for you, and let Moe put some blankets and some clothes in a pack that you can actually carry.”

“And let me come along,” added Moe, and the fierceness of his tone suggested that he was not asking her permission.

“Absolutely,” Penates agreed, “and I think Cleanna should go with you too. You may want a good pair of eyes to find this cottage of yours.”

There did not seem to be any arguing with Moe and Penates. They made so much sense, and it was so comforting to know that she would have company on her journey, and Lindy soon found that she had agreed to everything. Moe produced some rucksacks and some bedrolls from somewhere, and Pentates set about packing dried fruit, and nuts, and some kind of flat bread, and dried meat, and even a few bars of very dark chocolate. Then Cleanna arrived, wondering why Penates had called her, and everything had to be explained to her, and she said that she would be honoured to go with Lindy before flying off to make her own preparations.

Before she quite knew what was happening, the preparations had all been made, and Lindy found herself curled up in her cubby for the night. She had just enough time to wonder whether she could really go through with her plan before she fell fast asleep, and it seemed only another moment before she woke to see the sun already rising.

Previous Chapter < > Next Chapter

Though I have said any number of times that I would not go back and make substantial changes to previous chapters before the novel was finished, I have made myself a liar.  In order to continue the story as I wanted it, I felt that some changes were necessary, so parts of Chapter Seven and Chapter Eight have been significantly enough rewritten that readers may need to reread them, particularly the last  bit of Chapter Eight.   As always, those who are new to the story can find the beginning at Chapter One.

Chapter Nine:
In Which Lindy Makes A Decision

The place where Lindy found herself was very dark.  It smelled of damp and mould and rotting things, like the crawlspace under the house across the street where the bravest of the children would go when they played  hide and seek.  She could hear water splashing whenever she moved her feet, as if the whole room was filled with a thin puddle, but the only other sounds were the whispering of her  breath and the creaking of the house and the scurrying of small feet.  Even the house was quiet now, and Lindy was so frightened that she began to cry.

Now, I have said at least once before that Lindy was a brave girl, and I have said this because there was truly nothing much that frightened her.  She was not at all afraid of the dark, for instance, and not afraid of small spaces.  She was not even afraid of bugs or mice or rats or snakes or things like that, so long as there were not too many of them at once.  But now she had to endure all these things together, and she had to face them alone without any idea of where she was or if she would ever find her way home, so it is no wonder that she cried, and I hope that you will forgive her for it, because I know that you and I have sometimes cried over a great deal less.

In any case, she stood there for a very long time, crying, and the longer she was in the cold and the damp and the dark, the more frightened she became, and the harder she cried, and the more panicked she grew, and then she found that she was running along the wall, or at least stumbling along it as fast as she could manage on the slippery and uneven floor, and then she caught her toe on something and fell and scraped both her hands on what seemed to be a worn stone floor, and then she started to cry like she never had before.

When she had finally cried all the tears that she had to cry and had began to think about things a little more calmly, she found that she was half-lying against a damp and uneven wall and half-sitting on a wet and uneven floor.  She began brushing her hair back from where it had fallen onto her face, which she thought was the best way to start pulling herself together, but her hands soon discovered that Alisdair’s crown still sat on her head, though it seemed to weigh nothing now.  She took it carefully in her hands and set it in her lap.  It grew heavy again, the moment it left her head, and there was a comfort in its warm weight.  Her fear and panic vanished all at once, and she sat, cold and wet and hungry, waiting for whatever it was that would happen next.

As if The Crofts had been waiting for just this moment, it suddenly filled her mind again, and Lindy could feel its pain and fear and anger.  “I’m glad you’ve finally stopped your blubbering,” it said, and there was a harshness in its voice that Lindy had never heard before.  “It never becomes a Queen to blubber.”

The Crofts sounded so full of disdain that Lindy could hardly believe how comforting it had been to her only a few hours earlier, and she had to stop herself from crying again.  “Why are you so angry?” she cried.  “I didn’t do anything.”

The house laughed sadly, but it seemed suddenly more resigned than angry.  “Maybe not, but you will certainly have to do something now, and you will fail, and Khurshid will claim me, and I will become an evil thing, twisted and foul.”

“I don’t understand.  What do I have to do with Khurshid?”

“Do you know where you are?”  The Crofts demanded, ignoring her question.  “You’re in what was once one of my most beautiful rooms, the map room.  I took it into me from one of the Keepers, but it has fallen now, as the Keeper from whom I drew it has also fallen, and it is now beyond my power or anyone else’s to recover it.”  The house paused, and Lindy felt its sadness deepening.  “There are countless more like it.  Would you like to see them?”

Lindy started to say that she would rather not, but she was already sitting against a very different wall in a very different room, with jagged holes in its plaster and with cobwebs on its furniture and with dust lying thickly on its floors.  “This,” said the house, “was Keeper Aulden’s study.  Countless people came from among the worlds to sit here and listen to his wisdom, until Khurshid struck him down at the bridge, and everything that Aulden gave me began to fall into ruin.”

The room changed again, becoming darker and filled with a smell like rot.  Things opened their eyes in its corners, and small creeping creatures began working their way stealthily toward Lindy across the garbage strewn floor.  She gave a little scream and scrambled to her feet, but the house seemed unhurried.  “This was the old chemistry laboratory,” it said, “a place of great learning and discovery, the pride of Keeper Dennison until she chose to give her crown to Khurshid.   Now it’s full of unspeakable things.”  The little lizard-like creatures had come almost to Lindy’s feet now, but The Crofts whisked her on again.

They were now in a long paneled room, littered with debris and pitted on its walls and floors and ceilings, as if it had suffered a terrific explosion.  Lindy was so frightened from the creatures in the previous room and so confused by everything that The Crofts was saying and showing that she felt sick to her stomach, as if she had been on one of the big rides at the amusement park after eating too much candy.  She tried to clear her mind, but everything was too overwhelming.  Her whole body wanted to be sick, or to run away, or just to lie down and sleep.  “This was the sculpture gallery,” the house said, breaking into her mind with its sad, lost voice.  “Keeper Woods once…”

“Stop!” Lindy cried.  She felt as though she would begin to scream or vomit or even cry again if The Crofts said another word about the broken and rotting rooms.  “I didn’t do any of this,” she pleaded.  “It’s not my fault.  Why are you showing these things to me?”

“Because,” said The Crofts, quietly now, but full of a fierce anger, “you need to know that I was once much more than I am now.  I grew up from the homes of the twenty-four Keepers, drawing into myself what was best in them, and I became a house that was truly fit for kings.  But all the Keepers who were killed by Khurshid’s sword left their rooms to fall into decay, and all who were seduced by Khurshid’s promises allowed theirs to become something far worse than decayed, and sometimes the rooms have even fallen away from me altogether, so I am a fraction of what I was, a husk, full of rot and maggots.

“I still don’t understand what this has to do to me.”

“Then listen more and question less.  Alisdair was the last of the Keepers, the last of the Crowned, and his will was a strong will, so he and I and Penates, we strove to hold together much that was good in me, the libraries and the kitchens and the cottages and the great hall and much else that you have not yet seen, or these too would have fallen into decay.  I was broken, but because of Alisdair’s strength, I was no longer breaking further.  And now he is gone.”

The house paused, but Lindy said nothing.

“You are now the sole remaining Keeper.  Alisdair granted you his crown because there was no other choice, because his crown was the crown of your world and must be worn by someone of your race.  So now it falls to you to turn Khurshid back at the bridge on Midsummer, and you will most certainly fail, for you have neither the strength of arms nor the strength of will to resist him, and so I will fall to Khurshid.  And even if you somehow succeed, I will still diminish, become smaller and darker, more ruinous and more haunted.  You lack the will to hold me to myself, and you lack the memory of how I once was.  Perhaps Penates will be able to keep the kitchens as they were, but all else will fall into ruin, and all that will remain of me is what you have added from your own poor house.”

The house laughed mournfully.  “Would you like to see what would be left of me?”

Before she could answer Lindy found herself in her very own cubby, with her books, and her radio, and the old Christmas decorations, only she knew right away that it was not really her cubby.  The window looked out onto the trees of The Weald now, not onto Mister Hat’s yard, and she knew that her own cubby in her own house was still far away.  She did not cry again, but she wished that she could.

The house had left her alone again, and everything was very quiet, like in her real cubby at home.  She sat on the old couch cushions with the orange fringes, turned her back to the window, and pulled her sleeping bag up over her legs.  Then she took her crown off again, which had somehow found its way back to her head, and she laid it in her lap and tried to think what it was that she should do next.

As she was sitting there, propped in the comfort of her cubby, a strange sensation began creeping over her, as if she was no longer entirely awake but not yet entirely asleep, and it seemed to her that she began drifting through the attic window, out across the huge bulk of The Crofts, and over the fields of The Weald, until she came to the bridge that crossed the great river.  She hung there for a moment, and she could see a shining figure far below her walking along the stream, the same figure she had seen when Alisdair had been talking to her in the great hall, only now she could hear what he was singing, a strange song, a mixture of sadness and hate.  Then she was moving again, over the tops of the trees, following the path that led away from the bridge, and she flew for what seemed like miles and miles, until there arose a tremendously tall and peculiar tree beside the path, its leaves shimmering gold-green in the sun, taller and brighter than any other in the forest.  Lindy paused again in her flight, hovering above the tree, then and swooped down through the forest to her left, weaving her way through the trees, and then the trees came to a sudden end, and a small clearing opened in front of her, with a stone cottage in its very centre.  Lindy began to settle toward the front door of the cottage, and she was filled with an overwhelming need to know what was inside it, but her dreaming ended just then, and she was back sitting in her cubby once more, and she knew now what she had to do.

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