Beguilers (9 page)

‘Win?’

‘It wants my soul and then it would be free, but I won’t give it. No. That would be the end.’

For the first time I detected a hint of vulnerability in her tone, and I answered instinctively. ‘Then why do you stay here?’

‘What else can I do?’ I couldn’t see her, but I sensed her turning away from me in the darkness and I was aware of the beguiler’s power in the air of the cave. ‘There is nothing so beautiful in all the world, and it is mine. How can I give it up?’

It would not have occurred to me before to defend village life, but here in the damp cave, with the high altitude cold soaking into my bones, it seemed to have many attractions.

‘But don’t you miss the village, Shirsha?’ I said. ‘Don’t you miss warmth and comfort and security?’

‘Bah,’ she said. ‘Warmth, security. There is more warmth and security on the cloud mountain than there is in your precious village. I miss nothing.’ By the tone of her voice I knew it was true.

‘Perhaps life disappointed you in some way?’

‘Life, people, it’s all a disappointment. If it wasn’t, why would you be here?’

‘To see what more there might be, I suppose.’ It occurred to me as I was saying it that perhaps life held disappointments for everyone, and the only thing that made people like Shirsha and I different was that we were unable to accept those disappointments and carry on. But here there was merely more disillusionment. Shirsha had found her beguiler and, in some way, caught it. But her life seemed drab and empty, even worse than life in the village. ‘Will you stay here forever, then?’ I asked.

‘Why should I want to go anywhere else? I have all I need.’ I had only been on the mountainside for a few days, but it was already clear to me that, with a certain amount of work and forward thinking, it would be quite possible to live off the wild foods which were to be found up there. In one sense it was probably true that Shirsha had all she needed, but the tone of her voice suggested otherwise. It suggested that although she had food, and a home, and the beguiler that she had sought after, her heart was empty.

‘Where did you find it, Shirsha?’ I asked. ‘If you tell me I’ll go away. I’ll go and I won’t look back. I promise. I’ll get one of my own.’

‘Then you’ll have to go where Dabbo went.’ The sound of his name shocked me. I wondered if Shirsha was aware that I had his shawl, that the few clues he had left were all I had to go on.

‘He brought it out. Out of the cloud mountain. But it wanted me, see? It wanted me, and Dabbo couldn’t do a thing about it. He used to come around here with his whimpering and wailing, trying to get it back. But it wouldn’t leave me for him. Go back, I told him. Go and get another one. But he was gutless, see? Didn’t dare go in again.’

My heart sank. ‘The cloud mountain? Will I have to go there?’

‘Did you not know that? Did you come hunting for a beguiler and not know that you would have to visit the cloud mountain?’

‘How should I know that? If beguilers take travellers from the paths, why shouldn’t one come to me? I’m a traveller, after all.’

‘You’re softer than me, child,’ said Shirsha. ‘That’s why it tried to get away from me and come to you. But you’re still tougher than most. They don’t like us the same way they like those others, those villagers down there, all puffed up with chuffie love. They’re the ones they want. They’re the easy ones. You could wander the mountain paths for twenty years and never get close to another beguiler.’

I fell silent, pondering this new development. There was no way of knowing how far away the cloud mountain was, or even what it was. Some said there was land beneath the ever-present mists; others said there wasn’t. The common belief was that chuffies went there to die, but I had always thought this was just an easy excuse to cover the mystery of their sudden disappearances. I sighed and thought of my jub trees growing a few miles away. That sort of life would be so much easier.

I was no longer afraid. It was horrible being trussed up like that, but all my instincts were telling me that Shirsha would do me no harm. She seemed to be sunk in thought. In the heavy silence, I realised that there was a discrepancy between what I had learnt about beguilers and what was happening here. When I was under the spell of Shirsha’s beguiler, I was sure it could have led me anywhere, but Shirsha was still here, after all those years.

‘How can you live with it?’ I asked. ‘And how is it that you can look at it so easily and not be drawn in?’

The silence that followed was long and cold. I wondered if I had said the wrong thing. I thought of the other things Dabbo had left with Hemmy. Maybe I could use the beguilers’ eyes to get myself out of this hole? I tried to inch the edge of the shawl through my fingers, but my hands were bloodless and numb. Shirsha was so quiet that I couldn’t even tell where she was in relation to me.

‘Shirsha?’ I said.

‘Cut off your feelings,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Cut them off. Amputate them. Keep them shut away so that they can’t get out. That way you never give the beguiler what it wants. It will stay forever, then, trying to get at you, trying to bore its misery into your soul so that it can lead you off and dump you over a cliff somewhere.’

‘But … but why should it want to do that?’

‘Because then it will truly be free. It will be gone, you see, gone from the earth once it has claimed back what it is owed.’

‘What it’s owed? What do you mean?’

‘Is there never an end to your questions?’

I heard her get to her feet and approach me, and I tensed, prepared for anything. She grabbed the rope that held me and hauled me to my feet.

I hit my head on the top of the cave and crouched low to avoid doing it again. Shirsha pushed me roughly across the uneven ground, and I felt the air moving across the face of the cliff as we stepped out on to the ledge.

‘You said you would go. Now do it,’ said Shirsha.

‘Don’t push me off!’ I cried.

She didn’t. She guided me all the way back along the treacherous paths, keeping me safe against the wall at the most difficult parts, turning me this way and that as the path turned. I was terrified, and worked hard at keeping my imagination from showing me the drop only inches away from each step I took. But at last we came to the bottom, and I was relieved to feel vegetation beneath my feet.

Shirsha didn’t let me go at the foot of the cliff, but herded me far out into the druze before finally untying the rope and pulling the blanket off my head. I turned to look at her, but it was too dark for me to catch more than a glimpse of her white hair.

She moved away from me and said, ‘If I ever see you around my home again, you’ll never know what hit you.’

And then she was gone.

I sank to the ground, not caring where I was. My heart was tired from its long hours of racing, and I felt the need to nurse it back to health before I moved again. I didn’t know how it had happened, but the beguiler had clearly been reclaimed by Shirsha. I no longer felt any sense of connectedness with it at all. It was a relief and a loss at the same time, but more than that I recognised it as a valuable lesson in beguiler behaviour. But of all the things that had happened, there was one that kept returning to my mind, again and again and again. The minutes I had spent under the power of the beguiler had been a terrible and haunting experience, but it was the moment I had first seen it that kept returning to my mind. That uncanny sense of recognition. What was it I had seen in those golden eyes? What was it that I had recognised?

Suddenly I knew. It made no sense and I tried to deny it, but there was no longer any doubt about it. The creature that hovered in the air at the back of Shirsha’s cave was, or had been at some time in its existence, a chuffie.

I
SAT HUDDLED IN
my shawl for what remained of the night, too disturbed by what had happened to fall into any sort of proper sleep. Once or twice I dozed, but woke each time with the plaintive cry of the beguiler dragging at my heart. This time, though, I was nearly sure that the sound originated inside my mind, and not outside it.

The same question presented itself to me every time I remembered the golden eyes peering down into my own. How could the distant and anguished beguilers bear any relation to the affable chuffies who were such an important part of our community? Their natures were utterly opposed. Yet there was no doubt in my mind that they were, in some way, related.

At first light I began to try and retrace my steps, hoping to find the little cache of jub-nuts that I had abandoned so readily the night before. But the druze and rhododendron were too thick and I never did find the spot where I had left them.

As I searched I was haunted by the memories of the previous night. What I had seen was surely a form of madness. Shirsha had made her journey and found her beguiler, but in order to hold on to it she had sacrificed a part of herself and was making no effort to retrieve it. She was as confined in the situation as the beguiler was, helpless to escape. It was an impasse, a stalemate, a condition which could not change in any way until one or the other of them conceded. And I was certain that neither of them ever would.

And where did it all leave me, in terms of my own search? There was no way that I could know what had happened to Dabbo on the cloud mountain, but whatever it was had made him too scared to return there. Was I ready to undertake a quest of that magnitude?

There was a raw place in my soul that remembered my brief but unforgettable connection to Shirsha’s beguiler. It longed for union again, and that part of me would do whatever was necessary to experience that extraordinary sense of fulfilment. But there were other parts of me active that morning as well; frailer, more timid parts. I had been frightened, not only by Shirsha, but by the power that the beguiler held over me. What if it had led me over a cliff, or up into the snows to die? Could I have resisted it? Would I have even tried? And what use would it be to me even if I did withstand its power, if I ended up like Shirsha; my entire life lived in bondage to the creature?

I decided to go back to my nut tree. At first my only aim was to gather some more supplies, but as I walked along it occurred to me that it would do no harm to put my name on it as well. Even if I did succeed where others had failed, I would still need to make a living when eventually I returned to the village. There could be no harm in staking my claim.

It was mid-afternoon by the time I found the tree. While I was searching around for a sharp stone, I came across two more, much younger trees. They had no nuts on them yet, but in a few years’ time they would mature, and I decided to claim them as well. The big tree was easy enough to write on, but it required a lot of care and patience to mark my name on the smaller trees without damaging their delicate trunks and arresting their growth. By the time I had finished the sun had entered its golden phase. It always made me hold my breath when that happened. The forest around me was utterly silent as well, as though all the birds and beasts were aware of the magical moment. The day had reached its peak and was about to start a slow, soaring free-fall towards night.

I longed to be in the village, standing beside the pond, watching the sun’s reflection on the dark water, waiting for the girls and boys to return the nodding, bleating herds to their safe byres and sheds. I couldn’t remember, couldn’t even imagine what had come over me to make me embark upon such a wild adventure, hunting for spooks in the night skies. I wanted to go home.

There was nothing to stop me. The jub trees gave me a license. I might not have succeeded in my Intention, but I had gone one better in the eyes of the villagers. Thirty full-sized nuts would buy a good milking goat. Sixty would buy a yak, and seventy would buy a springing heifer. Within two or three years I could have a nice little business going; grazing my herd on the hill-sides, sending milk down to the plains at first light. Nothing inferred status in the village like material success. Even if people were a bit sniffy to begin with, they would accept me in no time at all once I became wealthy.

I picked as many nuts as I could gather in my shawl and set off to rejoin the porters’ path. The going was easy; all downhill, but my heart was unaccountably heavy and instead of being springy my steps were leaden. I tried to shake off the feeling, imagining Lenko’s reaction when he saw my stash, and my parents’ and Temma’s. They would think I had stolen the nuts, of course, and I would have to bring a party of villagers up to see my trees and confirm my claim. But they would have to admit it was a true find and that the trees were mine. I couldn’t wait to see their faces. Mad girl made good.

But none of it helped. There was no relief to be had from the feeling of disappointment that dogged my steps, and I was still bringing it with me when night began to fall.

I walked on, completely unafraid of beguilers after what Shirsha had told me about them and their preferred victims. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t see any, and I was right. What I did see, though, soon after nightfall, were the tents of a group of porters, pitched in a broad, flat meadow beside the pathway. It was a place that they regularly used on their way up the mountain and I wasn’t surprised to see them there. But I was surprised to see the boy again, lying outside the tents in the moonlight. It must have been the same group, returning with loads from the settlements on the other side of the mountain pass.

I hesitated. The boy was on the side of the camp nearest to the path. For some reason, I found that I was reluctant to meet him again. But he was lying still and after a while I decided that he must be asleep. I crept quietly past.

‘Who’s there?’ he called.

I jumped. ‘It’s no one. Just me.’

‘Oh. Hello, me. Have you got your beguiler?’

I was surprised that he could recognise me at that distance. I couldn’t see his face clearly at all.

‘No. I haven’t, actually. But I’ve got jubs.’

‘Jubs? Good for you.’

‘I found trees. I staked a claim.’

‘You’ll be rich, then.’