Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (19 page)

What they failed
to understand and comprehend were the fact that profits and money
meant nothing to folk of Thoonsk. That roads meant nothing. That
the suggestion of modernising were an insult to their way of life.
Profits from minerals meant nothing to a people who drew all their
sustenance and happiness from the very presence of the glades and
forest woodlands. And to push down trees and cut a corridor of
death through Mother Thoonsk would be like slicing off her own
fingers and toes. And following communion and parley with wise
Mother, the forest nymphs refused, and so refused second and third
offers. No fourth or fifth offers were forthcoming. The Rjoonds
instead resorted to bullying tactics: if the forest nymph clans
suddenly ceased to exist, then of course there would be no vocal
opposition to their scheme. And so a systematic genocide had begun.
Yet Mother Thoonsk had thrown out the invaders with mighty walls of
water and
guerrilla
attacks at
every turn by her forest children.

Yet, here a Rjoond had come again.
And all that remained now to defend Mother Thoonsk… were
Melai.

‘
Yes,’ she told herself, wiping
her eyes. ‘He lies. He is Rjoond. No honest word ever came from a
Rjoond’s mouth, and no honest action ever came from their
hand.’

2

She remained at top of Temple Tree
until dusk, until the red of the suns spilt across the sky, as if
the heavens had ignited in inferno. By now the Rjoond she had shot
would surely be dead, lying somewhere in a mess of his own meat and
guts and bone and blood. Finally she swooped down to her deserted
village, her deserted home, where the corpses of her sisters still
lay upon the spirit stone, awaiting Thoonsk’s guardians to receive
them.

With heavy heart she hovered there
a moment and watched them… then flew into her home tree, into its
dark cosy bole, and as light faded from Cloudfyre, Melai’s limbs
sprouted root and anchored deep into the wood until she were
encased within the tree itself and she were naught but eyes looking
out at the night world, and ears listening to the whispers and song
of the woodland.

Then she slept.

3

Both suns arose
as per normal next morning. But to Melai the surrounding
forest were
unusually quiet. She cowered within the bole of her tree,
simply watching the water glades stretched out before her family
village, sun twinkling off the still waters. The willow boughs
stretched out over lagoon surface, their soft reflections gently
riding the ripples. Giant lily pads covered the area immediately at
the base of her tree. In days gone she would awaken to woodland
fairies playing about them. Or wingless pixies riding the poisonous
brown-pink swamp frogs, hunting tadpoles and guppies. Nests of the
weaver birds, the great shadowy tree bound masses, were normally a
raucous mass of trilling life this time of day. But not a single
peep came from them. In the distance the gargantuan Monmoth trees,
long the wonder of Melai’s folk, were normally teeming with clouds
of swallows. They too sat undisturbed this morning. Quiet.
Deserted.

Since the day of the first shockwave, her
forest she knew were dying, growing quieter, animals vanishing. She
had received no word from the trees either; their voices had become
soft, whispering, like someone on the cusp of sleep.

I have slain the
Rjoond yet all is not well
, she thought to
herself sadly.
It grows more dire by the
day
.

Her skinny limbs, having coupled
with tree in the night, now retracted. She emerged from her nest
and peered down at the spirit stone, the enormous slab of rock upon
which her dear sisters still lay side by side in death.

Traditionally Mother Thoonsk sent
her woodland guardians within three rotations of Melus and Gohor to
retrieve the bodies of deceased nymphs. While the water forests had
been stricken with whatever curse the Rjoond had brought upon them,
while bird and fish and frog were mysteriously dying, while numbers
of Bucca and swamp cat and blue heron were diminishing, Melai had
been preparing her sisters for their retrieval.

She had removed their clothing and
rinsed their bodies. She had smoothed over fresh sap from
surrounding paperbark trees, thus preserving them. She had placed
logs filled with smoldering mushroom, the musky clouds of wafting
spoor keeping away hungry wanton pixies and corpse flies, and
half-fish half-devil corpse eaters who rose up from the depths of
lagoon and would attempt to drag away the deceased children of
Mother Thoonsk.

It had now been three rotations of
Melus since her sisters had lost their lives and Mother Thoonsk’s
guardians had still not come for them. This troubled Melai more and
more. She did not wish to think what it could mean.

She leapt from her bole and
swooped down to the communal platform where she and her sisters
once laughed and chatted and braided each other’s hair; it were a
large naturally formed space amidst her home trees, where a dozen
mighty branches from a number of willows had woven together to
create a spacious terrace some fifty feet above lagoon’s surface.
The area were flattened and smoothed almost to a gloss from
centuries of use by Melai’s kind. And here she alighted, standing
before a separate side-branch that acted as a vast nursery which
grew with water moss and yellow horse-ear mushrooms, figs and
fyre-plums, dandelfruit and crab apples, salt-leaf and sugar
berries, lemon sage and flowers of bluegrape that bloomed from
small vines sprouting from the bark. That and more.

She ate, though her appetite were
lacking. She bit fruit and fungus directly from their perch, not
plucking them or picking them as she had heard folk from other
regions were like to do, cut them and pick them and pack them up
and ferry them off to markets to sell. That were a bizarre concept
to her and her kind. She ate slowly, distracted, the state of
Thoonsk continuing to trouble her. Why could she not hear swamp
cats fighting and chasing one and other through the treetops? Why
could she not hear the squawk of lagoon storks as they waded
through water catching fish, or the distant croak of toads, or the
buzz of cicadas, or the deep grunting sounds of faraway marine
mammoth, or the treetop, spider-like scrambling of the headless,
back to back Buccas?

It were bad
enough yesterday
, she thought to
herself,
but give me yesterday over
this.

And then there
were her sisters…
Why have they not yet
been collected?

She began to wish that she had
stayed to watch the Rjoond. She feared now that he had somehow
survived her attempts at finishing him off, that she had angered
him and thus in the sunless hours he had perpetrated some mighty
deed of evil, let loose some vile magic, something that had spread
like wildfire through Thoonsk, something that with a simple kiss of
breath had killed everything else left alive. Even the spirit of
Mother Thoonsk herself, and that of her angels who took away the
dead.

‘
Why have I been spared?’ she
asked herself softly. ‘Does he come for me now? Does he reserve a
special little death for me?’

She would not permit him, she
decided. She would set out to find him. She would appeal to the
trees for help, ask if they had seen him, to show her to his
whereabouts, be he dead or alive. She needed to know.

4

Wooden forest golems. Five of them
remained to her. Sentinels. Standing in shallow waters before her
family settlement. She could bring them under her command as an
attack force if need be.

She flew down to them. And rubbed
her finger tips, squeezing them, dabbing clear green sap that
seeped forth from her skin against the bared wooden tongue of each
golem. A moment or two later the vacant, woody eyes opened, lit
with a strange green luminescence.

‘
Doela-
ta Riyyoondish, minun
a
jrurshen
,’ she whispered.
Find the Rjoond
trespasser and killer.
‘Meestha ter
lelunay uns throotler.’
Set forth with me
to defeat him if he still lives
. And the
breath that left her mouth were tinged with wisps of silky vapour
that drifted and wafted against each golem. It were a language they
understood, a language spoken only in this realm, language of elder
days, when nymphs bragged entire armies of these creatures. Not all
nymphs spoke or understood this tongue. And in recent times those
born with its knowledge had become all the more rare. But Melai had
been one such born with its knowledge and its
secrets.

Each golem bore fins, a fish’s
tail, crab limbs armed with mighty serrated pincers. They bore
sharp teeth in a wide garish mouth, with carp lips and goggling
toad’s eyes. On Melai’s command each golem stirred and awoke,
looking about as if they had been in slumber for many a year and
did not recognise their surroundings. But one by one they
submerged, and with naught but their eyes above water’s calm
surface they swam away, the movement of their bodies almost
serpentine through the lagoon.

Melai took flight. And
followed.

5

She had expected
a fight. She had expected to come across a raging Rjoond bringing
down Thoonsk in madness. All she found though were his remains.
Guts, dark dried blood, and limbs hacked free. His torso she found
nearby, lying across bough of an oak. It were mostly hollow,
intestines and hearts dragged free, rib bones exposed like a cradle
of pale fingers. His head were naught recognisable. His face were
flayed completely off. And his skin were already turning colour.
Rot-black it were. Rot-black and unrecognisable. She had heard of
this Rjoond phenomenon
.
How their dark deeds turned
their innards to decay long before they died, how it bubbled out of
them on death and tainted their entire being before
decay
set in.

His steed were nowhere to be seen
but the Rjoond had suffered she knew. It were easy to see. She
imagined she would be elated. Yet all she felt were a strange
emptiness.

The golems had surrounded the
scene. Awaiting her instructions. Waiting to attack and kill
whatever assailed her.

‘
Yysia,’ she
told them softly. ‘Yysi
a
sensa
isi.’
At
ease. At ease, our target is terminated
.
‘Jirru noothith. Jirru noothith.’
To home
now. To home now.

Out of respect
for more life lost, she spared the remains of the Rjoond some
moments of silence, her head lowered where she perched on the edge
of the bough on which his torso lay. ‘Nahei,’ she whispered.
I am sorry
.

She turned, spread her wings and leapt into
the air.

6

Thoonsk’s guardians arrived at
dawn four days after her dear sisters had mysteriously and
simultaneously fallen from the ghost tree. Through the woodlands
they came, tree creatures, tall, majestic, wading through deep
water, their long bark-laden legs gliding effortlessly, gracefully,
as they strode onward, their long bark-layered arms swinging
majestically, long fingers of twig and leaf dragging through
lagoon’s pristine surface, forming ripple trails in their
wake.

A deep thrumming
hum came from their wooden mouths, reverberating up from the depths
of their throats, heralding their arrival long before they were
seen.
The Lament of the Waiting
Ones
this song were known. Always
sung
during
a Retrieval ceremony. Their red sappy eyes were serene, angelic.
They strode forward in leafy robes of red and brown and gold, robes
that drifted like spider silk on dawn’
s cool breeze, robes that were webbed in veins like
the leaves of trees.

Melai lowered herself to her knees
and bowed her head. It were not proper to stare at Thoonsk’s
guardians. Yet Melai were required to look upon them but once. To
respond to their words.

‘
Via
sha Thoonsisk,
jan
ua
srarsarri,
’ they spoke.
Mother Thoonsk, takes back her
children
. ‘Viasha Thoonsisk, eeyoon
srarsarri tumaya florinthah.’
Mother
Thoonsk will give them rebirth, in the form of another and
kind
. ‘Chilla Melaiys basheeathi?’
Are these the blessings of Child
Melai?

Their voices came in unison it
seemed. Yet so quiet did they sound, their voices were more like
distant wind shaking the leaves of a faraway tree.

Melai replied in
similar voice. ‘Basheeathi na Melaiys tuhth.’
They are my blessings, aye
.

Tears fell from her eyes and down
her face as the guardians gently, respectfully took each of her
five sisters into their woody arms. Here they bowed to Melai,
turned slowly and Melai watched them carry the last of her family
and folk away. She wept as they went, her tears dripping gently
into lagoon. She wept as the morning mists silently engulfed the
guardians. And soon they were gone and she were left there truly
alone for the first time in her life. Below her face she saw
beneath water’s surface tiny blue water horses, creatures that had
fallen moments earlier in the form of tears. They swam away into
the depths of the lagoon and Melai sat there watching them go,
wondering what to do next.