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 Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2014 10:14 am
The next day, Dorothy did not appear in the morning. Colin supposed she might visit again in the evening- whatever had caused her change of schedule could be a permanent change. He didn't particularly mind, as it gave him something to look forward to at the end of the day, although the fact that he had begun to consider amicable human interaction to be a treat did depress his mind somewhat. Until then, he could but while away the hours, as it was clear that none of his other parishioners were quite so ready to stop habitually shunning his services, save when they needed him for some sort of blessing, funeral, or wedding. He went to the church early anyway, and was confused but pleased to see that the geese which had in recent weeks renewed their efforts to torment him had dispersed, losing interest as mysteriously as they had gained it. So, too, did he have good news from the builder when he entered the church. The roof beam was repaired, and upon re-examining the other beams, though he thought they all might need replacing, they seemed to now be fine.
"Made peace with the Goodwyns, Father?" he asked gruffly. Colin gave a short, forced laughed.
"I have been blessed with some sort of benevolence," he replied, staring up at the roof beams.
The builder left, having no desire, thank you Father, to stay for the sermon, even when Colin resorted to pleading. This gave Colin the rest of the day to clean the already immaculate church, balance the perfectly balanced ledgers, and pray for whoever he damn well pleased, so he took the opportunity to pray for his parents. In dying, they had proved to be terribly irresponsible guardians, but he was not about to behave like an irresponsible son in return. Boredom eventually set in, to be feebly chased away by hymns, conversations with God, or himself, or the air, and a mental debate over whether the companionship that getting a pet would afford was worth the subsequent allergic reaction.
By evening there was no sign of Dorothy, so Colin got up to return the the parish house, disappointed, but glad at least that the geese had given up pursuing him. As he stepped out from the church, however, he saw a movement near the border of the Wardwood. Lifting his lantern up to investigate, his stomach gave a mighty lurch, as he saw Dorothy, petrified and pale, and her younger sister, Beatrix, bright eyed and triumphant
"I have seen a malignant spirit!" Beatrix announced, wasting no time revealing their news, even if the recipient was the much-despised parish priest. "I saw it in the Wardwood! Father Byrne, fetch iron, we must make sure that no others are amongst us. I will do so," she insisted. "Dotty, you must tell Mama that no one is to go into the Wardwood."
Dorothy looked reluctant to do any such thing around Colin, and looked between the two of them, torn. She was white as a sheet, but unlike at the Whitson wedding, Colin could recognize that she was not merely mortified. Dorothy was genuinely afraid.
And of what? A ghost? Colin thought that she had more sense than this. The fact that she was allowing a young girl to forbid them from going into the Wardwood, to demand the villagers be tested with iron because she had seen a phantom raised unusual ire in Colin, whether it was because this was his parish or because this superstitious nonsense had so terrified Dorothy, or because the builder and all the villagers alike were so skeptical of him, but so readily willing to be gulled into thinking a demanding child like this had some kind of magical power.
"Father Byrne, you must bless the iron," Beatrix commanded haughtily, "It is unlikely to help, but we must take every precaution."
That was just about the last straw. "This is lunacy," Colin insisted, and by Dorothy's reaction, immediately regretted it. However, it was too late to stop himself, and he had a great deal of frustration pent up at the Goodwyn sisters and the whole blasted parish. If only to elicit a reaction from one of the main culprits in his misery, it was satisfying. "Everyone in this parish depends on the Wardwood for their livelihoods. You cannot just forbid it because you thought you saw something!"
"I did see a spirit!" Beatrix interrupted furiously.
"Miss Goodwyn?" Colin asked Dorothy, turning to her.
"Dotty will not have seen it," Beatrix replied for her sister. "She has dreadful little talent for any such thing."
Dorothy blushed hotly, and Colin suddenly felt he rather understood much about Dorothy's circumstances that he would rather she had been allowed to keep hidden. "Have you proof?" Colin demanded of her sister.
"Proof of my word!" insisted Beatrix.
"The proof of a child!" Colin retorted. "You saw a bit of cloth or a darting shadow. To test all the villagers with iron because you saw something and became afraid!"
Beatrix stomped her foot. "You cannot prove it neither! And what are you but an outsider?"
"I can prove it," Colin insisted, raising his lantern. "If I search for it in the Wardwood and find nothing, it will be proven."
"Colin," Dorothy hissed under her breath, grabbing at his arm, which gave him momentary pause. Dorothy blushed despite herself and corrected, "Father, the Wardwood is shrouded in darkness just at present. And you have not brought an offering, and--"
"No, now!" Beatrix insisted, having suddenly realized the implications of Colin searching the woods alone at this hour and found the prospect pleasing. "I am just a silly girl who will not be able to sleep tonight if we wait until morning."
Beatrix was looking at him expectantly. Dorothy's grasp on his arm tightened, in her great anxiety, and she looked at Beatrix pleadingly. "I will fetch Mama," she half-promised, half-threatened. "We will end it here."
With a sickening lurch, Colin realized that Dorothy was attempting to provide him with an out which he could at no cost allow to happen. If fetching Mistress Goodwyn solved this, he would miss out on a real chance, maybe his only chance, to prove these superstitions wrong. Whatever he found may never convince a child like Beatrix, but it would stall or maybe even stop her from forcing her fancies on the villagers. More importantly, it might convince Dorothy that all of this hedge magic was nonsense, which was a more pressing concern to Colin than braving the dangers of the woods long enough to find the source of Beatrix's so-called "spirit". Pulling his arm away from Dorothy, he agreed, "We will end it here. I will go into the Wardwood. Wait in the church until I return, and do not publish that there is a spirit about until I have a chance to prove my point. If I am not back within three hours, search for me."
Colin Byrne took his lantern, his logic, and his Lord, and stepped into the dark and tangled Wardwood.
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Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2014 9:53 am
There was a rhyme, Colin remembered, as he trudged through the damp bracken, that his eldest cousin used to sing to him when they were younger to try to make him wail.
The woods are dark, the woods are deep,
And wolves will come, those wolves will creep,
All throughout the tangled trees, into the village hushed with sleep.
Silently, the wolves will creep, into the village hushed with sleep,
And will in all the windows peek, the smallest child for to eat,
When they find him who they seek, the wolves upon him they will feast.
His bones they will drag past the creek, into the woods so dark and deep.
When the village wakes from sleep, no body of his shall they see,
Just blood and gristle there will be, and naught else but a memory, naught else but a memory.
To his horror, he found that he was muttering the sordid ditty under his breath, and he grimaced, lifting his lantern up higher and trudging a little louder, as if acting more commanding would somehow make the woods less menacing. Chanting about wolves! Beatrix would have felt gleefully vindicated, were she there beside him, to see him acting as nonsensical as she was with her evil spirits. He was a Naturist priest. He didn't believe in the wolves of the Wardwood.
Not that his disbelief would stop them from eating him, were they real, but he could at least be comforted in the fact that getting killed by pagan myths would likely qualify him for some sort of martyrdom. It was a better prestige than he could hope to gain otherwise, stuck as he was in Woodsend. He was sure that his parents, when he met them in heaven, or wherever it was that he was ending up, would be suitably proud of him if he was a sainted martyr, which would make a refreshing change from how he suspected they must feel about his path in life most of the time.
A cracking branch startled Colin out of his reverie, and, martyrdom or not, he picked up a large stick, just in case. In order to convince himself that things were still absolutely fine, he began whistling a hymn rather cheerlessly. Above him, there was no moon shining, and his candle was low in his lantern. He had to hurry and find whatever it was that caused Beatrix to dream up an evil spirit, not least because he had told Dorothy to send the villagers to look for him after three hours. If his light went out, he dared not try to make his way back to the village in the dark with no moon or stars to navigate by, and having to hunker down until sunrise would be dreadful. The only thing more embarrassing than spending a night in the woods whimpering about wolves, in his mind, would be to spend a night in the woods whimpering about wolves and then be fetched out again by villagers who already believed that a bunch of blasted trees were more powerful than the word of their lord and saviour.
Then again, if they simply left him in the woods, they could ask the diocese for a new, more compliant priest. He was sure that the prospect would occur to at least one of them. From the look on Beatrix's face as she had seen him off, it had already occurred to her. For Dorothy's sister and a girl of thirteen, she was diabolical.
Through the brush, he could hear a creek burbling, and Colin stumbled away from it, the nursery rhyme nagging at the back of his head. He whistled louder to clear his mind, and looked around, feeling fruitlessly in his pockets for any stubs of candles as his lantern began to gutter. A flash of white entered his vision, and for a second his stomach lurched, as his mind painted a picture of a deathly pale and wrinkled face. But as it entered the periphery of the lantern's light, he saw it for what it really was: a sheet of cloth caught on a branch. Pulling it down and cursing the night for playing tricks on his eyes, he wondered if Beatrix could have seen the same thing. He brought his lantern low to the ground now, looking for tracks in the muddy forest floor, and found what he was looking for a slight ways away. A small set of footprints, clearly a child's, and an adult's nearby, clearly discernible from the animal tracks all around.
He felt he should mark the place the cloth had hung somehow, in case he needed to bring Beatrix back for the final proof, so he took his stick and placed it against the tree at a rather jaunty angle. As he did so, he felt something by his foot, and looked down to see a carved and painted deer figure lying amongst the tree's roots.
Beatrix. Exasperated, Colin leaned down to pick up the figure. She had probably placed the cloth here herself to frighten him away from the parish, it was a plan childish enough for her. Well, if she wanted to fool Colin Byrne, she would have to be more careful not to drop her toys whilst she did her dirty work. This would be proof enough. If she wanted her figure back, he would make her admit her misdeeds in front of Dorothy, and there would be the end of it.
Pocketing the toy and whistling more cheerfully, he began to wend his way out of the Wardwood. The woods, dark and deep, watched him go, and not a wolf stirred to stop him.
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Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2014 9:49 am
Long before he saw the church, he saw the flickering torchlight.
It was a brighter glow than could be cast by any one lantern, and as Colin considered what it might be, he heard noises- clearly, his own lantern had been spotted amongst the trees. No one came to greet him, however, so he approached carefully, and when he finally emerged from the woods (checking his pocketwatch- under two hours from when he had entered, well under the allotted time he had told Dorothy), he saw the entire village of Woodsend congregating apprehensively.
They were silent. Unsure how to respond, or even of their purpose, Colin shrugged his shoulders and said "Good evening."
This seemed to startle several of the villagers, many of whom, he saw, were holding iron.
The villagers looked at Colin, and Colin looked at the villagers. He experienced an epiphany, which was almost empathetic after his terrifying trip into the dark Wardwood, but only almost. They thought he might be a disguised spirit. Well, he had proven there was no spirit to be afraid of at all, and after tonight, there would be far less of this nonsense in Woodsend, if he had his way. He came to a decision, reached into the muddle, and took a single iron nail from the builder, who flinched. Pausing, he held it up in the air so as to make it quite visible, and stuck it briefly in his mouth, just to prove for good measure how ridiculous the whole affair was. It appeared that he had guessed at the source of their concerns correctly, for this seemed to break the ice. There came a few muttered "Evening, Father"s in reply to his own greeting, and some of the crowd looked almost disappointed. Beatrix was too short to see, if she was amongst their number, but Colin was sure that she would be heartbroken that he had not been killed and replaced by a faerie.
"I see you've heard about the evil spirit," he remarked congenially, and Dorothy, not Beatrix, separated herself from the throng at this point, crimson with embarrassment.
"I told them you had entered the Wardwood, and I was obliged to explain the situation entirely, Father Byrne. I was concerned for your welfare."
Clearly the rest of the village had not been unduly concerned themselves, otherwise they might have actually entered the Wardwood to look for him, instead of just stood gathered around the edge, brandishing whatever iron was close to hand. Dorothy, he noticed, at least seemed to have enough faith in Colin not to grab a hoe to hit him with, but she hardly needed to when the crowd around her was bristling like a metal porcupine. Even now some of them were eyeing him doubtfully, and more than one pair of eyes fell upon the wrapped bundle of cloth in his arms. He could not reveal it yet, though. Beatrix hadn't spoken up yet, and he wanted to make sure she was there.
"Where is Miss Beatrix, Miss Goodwyn?" he asked Dorothy solicitously. "I believe I have something of hers." Underneath the cloth, his grip on the little smooth figurine tightened.
"I left her with Mama, so that she should not cause mischief."
Colin approved of this, at least. Everything Dorothy had done was sensible, considering how nonsensical the whole situation was. In some ways she had behaved more maturely than Colin, which would embarrass him if not for the fact that Woodsend had long ago proved to him that it did not reward mature and rational behaviour. He had tried mature and rational behaviour and it had yielded nothing but geese. It was clear to him now that he would have to model himself upon the evangelist saints of old and engage in petty displays of one-upmanship with all of Woodsend's chosen champions, and it was not his fault if one such of those was simply just a spoiled thirteen year old girl. Not every heathen enemy could be a mighty druid or an Airish king.
"It would be cruel to make a child come all the way to the edge of the Wardwood so late at night. I will bring it to her, if I may." he decided. "Those who wish to know the truth of the evil spirit may come with me. Be easy, Miss Goodwyn, I do not wish to invite myself inside your home, I simply desire to put the girl's mind at rest."
Dorothy looked at him quietly, none of her usual half-amused smiles on her face. She assented at last, though it made him nervous, causing guilty twists in his guts. But almost the whole village followed him as he walked to the Goodwyns' house, and he could say nothing to her in so public a gathering. What would he even say? There was no reassurance he could make to her that would not ring untrue, besides the simple fact that there was no evil spirit, which would spoil the reveal he had planned. It was plain that her family had never done her any favours in life, but Colin felt badly for her regardless. She was his only friend in this village and he was using her ill, even if it was in the service of a greater cause.
He walked faster, outpacing her by a few steps. The torchlight being cast by the villagers behind him lit his way, but he had no desire to see Dorothy by it.
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