Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (66 page)

‘
And,’ Locke said, ‘who built that
fence?’

Hawkmoth had no answer. Only
speculation. ‘Perhaps some ancient, long died out race of
guardians.’ He gazed far away northwards, to where the bushland
vanished into the haze, wondering if he should have been able to
see the tower from where they stood. And as it were not visible, he
wondered how long it would take he and his friends to reach
it.

4

Through sand and stunted sea
shrubs Hawkmoth lead his troupe downhill, Gohor and Melus above
them both pushing their way up into the sky. They were halfway down
the decline when suddenly a peculiar phenomenon arose. One that
halted them all in their path.

Firstly, the buzz and hiss of
hidden bugs surprised them. Such a sound in recent times had become
almost alien. It were a welcome noise in many ways, a comforting
familiar noise. Yet to hear it here brought a sense of unease.
Though the peculiarity that struck them all were not the sounds of
bugs, but something else: the closer they drew to Vol Mothaak, the
bushland beyond the fence appeared to grow in size. And with every
step forward, the larger and taller it became.

‘
What be this?’ Locke said
sounding humoured. ‘Some illusion to trick us?’

No-one answered. They all simply
stared wide eyed at the scrub that were now a virtual woodland.
Even the fence seemed higher somehow, taller. But now that Hawkmoth
and his troupe had halted, so too had the growth of the
woodland.

Gargaron stood alongside Hawkmoth.
‘What magic be at work here, sorcerer?’

‘
It be nothing I understand,’
Hawkmoth told him. ‘Perhaps as Locke suggested, it be an illusion.
Perhaps one sent to test the minds and mettle of would be
trespassers. Stay here a moment and tell me what you see.’ With
that Hawkmoth retraced his steps through the coarse sand and made
his way back up the slope behind them.

5

Melai and Locke and Gargaron
watched him keenly.

‘
How are the trees?’ Hawkmoth
called down to them. ‘Do they remain so tall?’

‘
Aye,’ Gargaron called back.
‘There be no change.’

‘
Whereas from here,’ Hawkmoth
relayed, ‘they have reverted to naught but arid
bushland.’

‘
So, it be an illusion as I said,’
Locke commented.

Hawkmoth returned to them.
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’ And with a smile he marched down to the
base of the rim, the others following, the woodland growing further
with every step closer they took.

By the time they reached the
fence, the woods beyond had taken on colossal proportions. Trees
that had looked like meagre saplings from afar had grown now into
mighty oaks that stood as thick and wide as a giant’s cottage.
Shrubs that earlier appeared no taller than Gargaron’s ankle now
dwarfed him. Insects that before they could not see but only hear,
stood now larger than hoardogs, clinging to bark and
branch.

And the top of the fence loomed
above them at an enormous height.

6

‘
Have we somehow shrunk?’ Melai
wondered aloud, eyeing the tops of the fence line before gazing
back to the top of the slope from where they’d come.

‘
Anything be possible,’ Hawkmoth
said, smiling at her, as if the discovery of new enchantments were
still a treat to behold. ‘Still, no time to stand and marvel. Our
mission calls us ever onward.’

He turned and
headed over to the nearest gate. The others trailed him, watching
as he tested the iron handle. It did not budge and the gate refused
to open. Unperturbed he hauled his staff from where it were slung
across his back and presented Rashel’s face to the key hole.
‘
Laye doon un submiss
,’ he murmured.

Rashel’s tongue, rarely seen,
slithered from her gaping mouth and wormed its way into the key
hole. It licked about inside like an anteater cleaning out a nest
of mud-ants. But it were to no avail. Her tongue soon retracted,
she closed her mouth and the gate remained locked.

‘
Right then,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘Time
for a heftier dose of diplomacy then.’ He stood back and again
aimed his staff at the lock. He opened his mouth to speak his
spells… but hesitated. He looked around at the others. ‘Ah, best if
you all back up a wee way.’

They did as were told, climbing
back up the slope a bit of a distance. Locke even found himself a
tuft of grass on which to get comfortable, settling in as if for a
spot of live theatre.

Hawkmoth
proceeded. And he spoke: ‘
Bring uss diss
eea funss doon!
’

A rocketing blue flame squealed
from Lancsh, blasting the vicinity of the gate that held the lock.
Though there came a counter strike in the form of a jagged bolt of
blue flame that struck Hawkmoth in the chest and threw him out into
the air, over the heads of his friends, depositing him high on the
slope of the rim.

7

Melai flew to his aid, Gargaron
and Locke scurrying up slope behind her. They expected the worst
but before they reached him he grunted and sat up. He looked about
as if he’d merely been slapped across the face. His staff were
still in his grasp.

‘
Be you well?’ Melai asked
breathlessly.

He looked at her, slightly dazed,
then put his hand inside his robes, feeling his chest for wounds.
He withdrew his hand and proceeded to tap his breast bone. ‘It
would seem that stone for skin has its benefits after
all.’

8

Once Hawkmoth’d had himself a swig
of revitalising brew, he sat gathering his thoughts.

‘
Perhaps you weren’t, ah,
diplomatic enough,’ Locke suggested with a wry smile.

‘
What be your next move, pray
tell?’ asked Gargaron.

Hawkmoth sighed. ‘Why, we trail
the fence line until we find a gate that permits us
entry.’

‘
What if there be none?’ Gargaron
put to him.

‘
Well, we climb the ruddy
thing.’

Gargaron surveyed the fence from
their position high on the slope. Once again, the woodland beyond
appeared to have shrunk. ‘Seems easy enough from here. But down
there the fence be a league in height.’

‘
Plus it be lined in spikes,’
Locke reminded them.

‘
Aye. But we’ll need find some way
in,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘Or our coming here will have been a complete
waste of time.’

‘
Right, then we walk the fence
line,’ Melai answered impatiently.

‘
In which direction?’ Gargaron put
to her.

‘
Split up,’ were Locke’s
suggestion. ‘Two of us go one way, two the other.’

Hawkmoth shook his head. ‘Not a
sound idea. I fear this place would like to have us divided. We
stay as four.’

9

They set off eastways. In the
direction of the nearest gate. But it were locked and so were the
next. So they kept marching, trailing the fence line and testing
gates as they came to them. The call of bugs persisted. Gargaron
spied them through the fence as he traipsed forward. Enormous
things. Crickets, thrips, horned beetles. Clamped to tree trunks
beyond the fence. Or clambering about the forest floor, squealing
or hissing or chirping.

Melai watched them too. She also
watched the trees. With something of awe and wonder. So much so
that with each passing stroke of the clock she felt the woodland
drawing her, as though it were Mother Thoonsk.

Hawkmoth concentrated of course on
the fence. What he (and then the others) began to notice about it
were that in some sections, portions of its vertical iron bars had
sprouted small iron leaves, and branches. And occasionally,
blooming from twisting iron stems at the tops of the gates were
what looked to be huge embryonic sacks; a thin metallic membrane
concealed some sort of wriggling being on the inside.

‘
What by Thronir be those things?’
Gargaron asked puzzled, gazing up at the phenomenon far above their
heads.

The group had stopped to watch
them, craning their necks, while Melai, and flew to their height to
observe them, although she kept her distance.

‘
I have no idea,’ Hawkmoth
admitted. ‘Be some curious enchantment I do not
understand.’

‘
Perhaps they give birth to
sentries,’ Melai suggested. ‘Mother Thoonsk would give birth to
such things of wood and stone if she believed herself at risk of
being raided or trespassed upon.’

But living
iron?
Gargaron thought. He had seen no
such thing in all his days.

10

They moved on. And on. Trudging
through sand and shrub and leaf matter, mile after mile, with
dwindling hope that they might ever chance upon such a thing as an
unlocked gate. Melai who had long grown exhausted of flying,
perched herself upon Gargaron’s broad shoulder; there she sat with
her legs crossed against his shoulder blade, watching this strange
circular land recede behind them.

But it were Melai, quite by
chance, who spotted the eventual breach in the fence
line.

At the time there were an ongoing
discussion about the merits of splitting up. ‘Perhaps two of us
ought to have done as Locke suggested and striven west,’ Gargaron
had said. ‘We may have found our way in by now.’

‘
And you may also not have,’
Hawkmoth had replied, ‘and we would be a split and weakened
party.’

‘
Well, might
we
all
turnabout
and head the other way?’ Locke said, almost smirking, knowing what
the answer would be, knowing he were simply fueling the
debate.

‘
A foolish notion,’ Hawkmoth
scoffed. ‘We have come half a day already. Our heading is almost
northways at this current hour. It would be more worth our while at
this point to continue on our way than to back track.’

‘
And what if an unlocked gate lay
just west of our starting point all those long hours
gone?’

‘
And what if it
didn’t?’

‘
But it might have.’

‘
Right, if that be so, then, if
this island be circular as I suspect, we shall eventually come by
it.’

‘
And how long must we traipse
before that happens?’

It were here Melai saw it. None of
the others made any sign at all that they had glimpsed it, all too
engaged and distracted by their discussion it seemed.

Melai spread her wings and left
Gargaron’s shoulder, fluttering to ground and landing by it. ‘Did
you three not see this?’

They stopped and turned, curious
looks upon their faces as they took in the rent in the fence as
Melai presented it. By now their inane argument had
ceased.

‘
Oh my,’ Hawkmoth said as he
stepped before it.

It were clear that it were not so
much a rent or breach as a parting in the bars where iron branches
had sprouted forth, the bars leaning here and there as would the
trunks of growing trees. What remained were a large gap in the
fence. One that might submit even Gargaron, Melai thought, at a
squeeze.

‘
Oh, well spotted,’ Gargaron
said.

Hawkmoth announced he would pass
through first. ‘We cannot risk a bolt of energy on your lives,’ he
told them.

‘
What about yourself?’ Melai
asked.

To this he smiled. ‘Why, should I
be assailed again, well, at least now I know I carry natural
armour.’ So through the gap in the fence he climbed. And reached
the other side without incident.

While Locke went next Melai on
impulse flew over the top, which seemed to irk Hawkmoth and
Gargaron both. She could see that much by the looks on their faces.
‘What?’ she said looking at them as she swooped down on the
opposite side.

‘
I shall not lecture you,’
Hawkmoth told her, ‘except to say be mindful here.’

She took the advice with a nod.
She had not considered the idea that the fence may have struck out
at her as it had the sorcerer.

11

They stood now in the sand and
grass that lay between the fence and the woodland fringe, marveling
at Vol Mothaak’s beauty and grandeur.

‘
Never have I felt like a flea on
the back of a spine-hog,’ Gargaron declared, ‘never as undersized
and slight as I do at this present moment.’ For the trees
themselves, now that Gargaron and his friends stood this side of
the fence, had taken on ever greater proportions.

Melai simply felt an urge to fly.
To be off in amongst this mighty woodland realm and pretend she
were home in Mother Thoonsk. Though she stayed close by her
companions. Something about the place filled her with a sense of
unease. Perhaps it were the enormous insects, who she felt were
somehow watching her. (Watching her out of hunger? Or spying on her
for a higher power, she did not know.) But there were danger here
she felt, disguised by beauty.

Locke though, smiled like a child.
‘What endless wonders does our world still have waiting for us
beyond this?’