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 Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 1:08 pm
Briony stoked the fire of the smithy with a swift hand, delicately avoiding the molten iron already melting in the forge, and ignored that the fire took the shapes of running deer. The bell chimed from behind her and she turned to greet the visitor, brushing straw-coloured hair out her face with a gloved hand. It was Papa Georgee again.
"How many times do I have to tell you to give up this ridiculous endeavour, Briony, and leave men’s work to men?" he said, tapping his cane against the dirt floor. Briony dropped the tongs on the workbench and raised an eyebrow at his words, laughing inside at his predictability.
"You’ll have to tell me time and time again, Papa," she said merrily. "Besides, how is making jewellery not women’s work?"
Papa Georgee raised his eyebrow back at her, and scratched at his gut. He turned from the doorway of the smithy, taking his slow, methodical steps to the workbench, and poked the spiralling iron comb Briony had been working with.
"What is this?" he frowned, tipping it over with a slow twist of his cane.
Briony shrugged, her heart suddenly clenching and unclenching in a strange staccato rhythm. The sounds of hooves beating against the ground filled her ears momentarily. "I’ve been having dreams of the Wardwood these past few days."
"Briony," said Papa sharply, his voice cutting through a swathe of pelt she felt beneath her cheeks. "You must go! How long have you been ignoring it?"
"Since yesterday," Briony admitted with an unhappy curl of her mouth. She kicked at the dirt floor suddenly. "But Papa, I don’t want to get chosen, I don’t. I know the stories!"
The fire cracked and spit behind her and the iron was probably useless by now, but Papa Georgee stared at her with disapproval (and perhaps a bit of fear, she thought privately). "You must go, before it overtakes you," he said. "I will ready my carriage for you, lest you go running off into the forest with nothing but an anvil and your apron."
The drumming of hooves roared in Briony’s ears at his words, and for a moment she felt sick with longing for the dark woods and for the heavy weight of her guardian beside her. Papa Georgee tapped his cane knowingly, breaking her out of the daze, and said softly, "Briony, put out the fire. I will take you as quickly as possible to the edge of the Wardwood."
Briony nodded, her heart and her head filled again with visions of the dark forest, seeing the Wardtree flaring with power before her, and moved to put out the fire in the forge. The leaves whistled in tune with the slow hiss and steam of the forge, and she shuffled to put away the anvil and tongs with the lethargy of someone finally releasing supressed pain. Papa placed a careful hand on her shoulder, and led her, half-mad with desire, to the door of the forge.
"Briony," he said, clenching his fingers around her, grounding her from running with the sounds of a herd running. "Briony."
She shook herself, telling herself that she had ignored it for three days; she could ignore it for another. They were already at his carriage, the black horse snuffling from the cold, and Briony wondered how she had noticed moving from the smithy to the street. Papa Georgee tapped the side of the carriage door, and she climbed in slowly, as though her limbs were aching. He followed with a heaving sigh of old age and creaking bones, and with a hushed word to the carriage driver, they were ambling on the cobbled road.
Briony lost herself to the rhythm of the carriage and the calls of wild deer in the Wardwood.
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Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 1:13 pm
A thousand hoofbeats passed before Briony realised the carriage was slowing. Papa Georgee was warm beside her, his opulent coat pressing into her torso like the heat of her furnace. She shivered, the woods filling her mind, pressing against her fingertips, her ribs, her breasts. Papa shifted, his round face crinkled with concern.
"You’re awake," he said, gently patting her arm. "We are almost at the edge of the Wardwood; it will only be a few more minutes."
The carriage rolled over rough ground, rocking on its wheels with a pained groan. Briony nodded and tucked herself deeper into his side. She felt like an ill child again, helpless and gangly limbed and feverish, with nothing but Papa Georgee to pull her upright and comfort her. I must look a sight, she thought, a grown woman, tucked like a babe against an older man. What people would think!
She peered between the heavy curtains lining the carriage window, and could see the thickening of the bushes around her. Her heartbeat, light and airy then pumping faster and slower and faster, drew Papa Georgee’s attention. He followed her fixed, dazed eyes to the woods peeping from the windows, and with a surprisingly vicious twist, drew the curtains shut. Briony’s eyes filled with red as the green suddenly snapped away.
"Don’t let me look at the woods, Papa," she whispered, still longingly staring. Come, Briony, come to the Wardtree, the wind sang in her ears. "I don’t think I would remain coherent."
Papa sighed, his heavy, smoky breath curling around her, and put his arm around her shoulder. He looked both older and more pained that Briony had ever seen him before.
"Briony," he said, something dark colouring her name, "I know your parents did not teach you the Old Ways. You have learned nothing but tales to frighten children to sleep or to give lonely children hope. But being chosen is both and neither of those tales. I wish you to be careful." Papa Georgee was staring at her, his brown eyes heavy and liquid -- like a stag’s, Briony thought somewhat hysterically. "You are still so young, child, and so naïve to the world! I can only wish that your guardian will guide you."
I am not a child, Briony thought mutinously, even as she curled her head under his chin to avoid his eyes. "I’ll be careful, Papa."
Papa sighed again, but said nothing. They rode on for another minute, and then the carriage shuddered and jolted to a halt, the driver’s voice shouting a muffled, "Ho!" to the whickering horse. Briony’s body suddenly seemed alight with a dull, persistent flame. There were footsteps, and the carriage window opened again to reveal the pasty face of the driver.
"We are here," he stated unnecessarily. Briony only looked through him, past him, beyond him into the deep of the woods where the Wardtree was thrumming in tune with her heartbeat, her olive eyes wide and dilated. The driver blinked at her, startled, and Papa Georgee pushed at her sides.
"I cannot go any farther," he said sadly. "I will wait for you here until you return."
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Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 1:17 pm
Briony needed no other words. The singing of the wind had turned into an imperial bell, tolling, Come, come, come to the Wardtree, Briony, come find me. She clambered out of the carriage, sidestepping the driver absentmindedly, her eyes still pining for a Wardtree in the heart of the woods. The Wardwood loomed afore them, the green of the grass surrounding the dirt road tangling and dancing together to create a path of wild bushes and shrubs. Tall, gangly trees rose from the ground, their limbs heavy with dark leaves, while shorter, wider trees with stout branches weaved between the gaps in the sky, making the dark woods seem impenetrable.
To Briony, the trees were bowing at her. Come this way, they said, their branches bending deeper into the forest. You will walk this way, through here. She left Papa Georgee’s frail grip, and ran like a doe chased by hounds, ignoring the heel of her shoe catching on dry grass and her skirts ripping on exposed branch. The woods seemed to bend out of her way, and there was a clear path before here, but not straight, it twisted and wove like the deer in her mind, their hoofbeats muddled together like the sounds of rain against a window.
"I’m coming," she whispered to some part of her soul that had kept silent since her birth, "Wait for me, I’ll find you."
For hours she ran, or perhaps it was minutes, but time and trees blurred before her, until her heart thumped, like a final knell, and the woods fell silent.
The Wardtree tolled, standing majestic as a great iron bell of green and gold and dark brown, You are here.
Briony gathered up her ruined skirts and apron and stumbled forward, eyes blown wide and mesmerized. The tree stood tall and ancient and endless before her, with a thousand stories carved into its bark and roots. Its branches spread until it covered the sky, but its leaves were darker and stranger than any leaves she had seen before. No, Briony wondered at it, those leaves are statues. There were endless statues covering the Wardtree, growing from nubs and hanging from stripling branches, a masquerade of colour and hoofbeats and a thousand whispering voices.
Come find me! a voice whispered to her imperiously, not in words but in an urgent violet need and red impatience, swathing her in folds of yellow and brown. The woods stood silent before her, and the deer totems seemed to swell with life and a pressing power, but Briony was set on the brown pelt and yellow stripes in her mind.
"How do I find you?" Briony cried, lost among the roots of the Wardtree, feeling tears track down her cheeks. That secret half of her soul tugged at her, commanding, Come! with an imperious burst of incomprehensible emotion. She stumbled, pressing over root and branch and ducking around totems that fell lifelessly before her, feeling her fingers itch to find soft umber fur and a wet nose. The feeling swelled within her, like a game of cat and mouse, until she found herself climbing a branch, and climbing another, until the feeling swelled so greatly Briony felt her heart burst in her ribs.
She was holding a totem, plucked from a nub in the branch, a totem so small it fit between both of her hands.
The swelling of the woods and the call of the deer seemed to cease. The woods suddenly felt empty. The totem was glowing and warm and somehow knowing, as though it could see into Briony’s heart and soul and had judged and found her worthy, and Briony clung to the branch with her doe – for she knew it was a doe, coloured like the precious jasper she cut into her jewellery, with golden stripes whittled into the hinds – nestled to her chest.
"Jasper," she gasped, dripping tears onto the stone. "I’ve found you."
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Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 1:20 pm
The Wardwood had fallen silent after she had plucked the deer statue from the Wardtree. The trees were not bowing at her, or whispering at her, and the hoofbeats and colours that had filled her mind were gone. The woods were bright and airy and the sounds of wildlife twittered around her. Briony clutched at the branch with trembling fingers, her tears still staining her face. What – what – she stammered to herself incoherently, what happened?
The need that had filled her for the past day was suddenly gone, leaving a cavernous vacuum in her chest. It should have felt horrible, but instead there was a steady waiting beating within her lungs, and she suddenly was calm again, her mind and will returned to her. Briony stared down at the totem of Jasper, and felt like patting at her cheeks and pinching at her skin to make sure she wasn’t a dream. The stone seemed to warm and laugh at her for her thoughts.
I clutched at her like a fishwife after seeing her husband! Briony thought in horror, staring at the deer totem. What was I thinking? I must have been completely addled! The totem’s whorls seemed to dance with amusement at this.
"I will ignore you," Briony said stoutly to the deer – Jasper, her mind corrected her. "If you have nothing better to do than laugh at me, then you are beneath my notice!"
She placed the deer statue into an apron pocket, wincing at the state of her dress. Mama would have stripped me! she moaned internally, feeling obstinate and pained as she often did when she thought of home. Glancing at the ground from high atop the Wardtree, Briony wondered how she had managed to climb so high without falling. The smith clung to the branch, queasy, when she remembered.
"Papa Georgee!" she gasped, her head shooting up. "He’s still waiting for me!"
The totems sprouting from the branch rustled at her motion. Briony glanced at them uneasily, lifting a hand to pull her knotted hair out of her face, but they were dead and silent like the carvings she would find at a side market. Briony patted Jasper, still resting and warm in her pocket, and stared down below her in an attempt to find a way down. The branches, so large and strong before, felt like twigs.
"This is entirely your fault," she whispered to Jasper, as she tentatively dropped her foot onto a lower branch.
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