Once (26 page)

The junction into the main road was less than fifty yards ahead, although she could not properly see the break in the trees. Only when something large and painted yellow - a

high-loader transit van, in fact - blurred past the gap that was fast looming did she realize that she was about to arrive at the main road with possibly heavy traffic. Just before she could jam her foot down hard on the brake pedal, something appeared from nowhere in front of her, a flurry of movement between her and the windscreen.

It was a bird, of course, but Katy was too shocked to realize. It must have been travelling towards her at a good speed to fly through the open side window.

Strong black, blue and white wings flapped at her face and the bird’s beak scored bloody lines down her forehead and nose, while feather tips stung her eyes. She tried to fight off the creature, but it was like battling a maelstrom. Katy’s screams as she slapped and beat at it with hands and fists and the bird’s own harsh squawking filled the car’s interior with noise.

Katy continued to thrash out at the maddened thing, forgetting the steering-wheel for the moment, forgetting the footbrake, forgetting she was swiftly approaching the usually busy road. The VW shot from the small lane and into the main thoroughfare, unfortunately just as an articulated ‘sheepdog’, a carrier loaded with brand new Renault Meganes, fresh from the Continent, bright and gleaming on their treads, was approaching from the right.

Katy Budd had no chance. The vehicle-carrier smashed into her little VW Polo, knocking it a hundred and fifty yards further down the road, straight across a small ditch where it bounced back off trees that were part of the Bracken Estate’s woodland, and into the ditch again.

When it did come to rest, concertinaed bonnet rising over the edge of the ditch, the car was no longer recognizable as the model it was deemed to be. And Katy was hardly recognizable as the girl she used to be.

MARKER

THEY WALKED around the lake and Jennet led him even further into the forest.

‘I never thought I could get lost here,’ he remarked, ‘but this is something else. I couldn’t have come this far when I was a kid.’

‘You did, but you were too young to know,’ she replied, taking him through a tangle of brambles and undergrowth as if there were some secret path. “When you did grow older, when you reached an age to understand and remember, she stopped bringing you here.’

Wait a minute. How d’you know all this? You’re younger than me. At least, you seem to be.’

‘I am, Thom. Even in your years I am.’ She lightly pulled him onwards. The story, almost a legend among us now, was passed down. A union between mortal and faerefolkis is something we could never forget.’

Then why didn’t she want me to know? Why didn’t my mother tell me what she was? Or at least about my father?’

“You were too young for the burden. Besides, it seems, she’d made a promise.’

He came up short again. ‘A promise? To whom? About what?’

‘You’ll understand much of it soon. Let’s keep walking, Thom. I can only be with you for a certain amount of time.’

He could only brood over the secrecy all these years. Why, when she was alive, had his mother not told him of his father and these fabulous little people who lived in the woods? If she had, as Jennet had claimed, surely he would never have forgotten? And what did Jennet mean, why could she only stay with him for a certain length of time, where the hell was she taking him?

Jennet said no more to him for a while. They passed old oaks, venerable elms, sycamores, beech and many more that had grown undisturbed by man in this forest for countless centuries, alongside them new, leafy saplings that provided forage for fallow and roe deer. Animals, birds, insects too, appeared unperturbed by Thom and Jennet’s intrusion as they journeyed through this perfect and self-contained ecosystem, where each forest layer provided sustenance for every denizen - ground and soil, shrubbery and undergrowth, lower and upper canopies. Insects, animals and birds dwelt here in a harmony that today, at least, not even human presence could disrupt. Birds and small animals might feed on insects, some birds on some animals, some animals on some birds, but at this wondrous time for him, there were no sudden scuffles as one species preyed on another, no squawks of birds diving for some juicy beetle, no squeals of rabbits captured by old enemies: today this world seemed at peace.

He continued to catch sight of little people playing among flowering hawthorn, elder, or spindle, none of them shy of him but all of them curious if only in a passing way. At the earthy, blackened end of a thick fallen tree trunk, where twisted roots slowly degenerated, he saw what he had first

thought was a nest of termites, but on closer inspection discovered that they were hundreds of tiny faeries playing and bustling about, their frail red wings now giving them the appearance of minute moths or butterflies. He began to wonder just how many different types of faerefolkis there might be.

There were still hosts of lights, no more than bright specks in the near-distance, flitting between trees or disappearing into undergrowth caverns, although not as many as he had observed before; in fact, the deeper into the woods that he and Jennet went, the less he saw of both animal and faery.

The great green canopy overhead grew thicker so that in places they made their way in twilight. Silver shafts of light broke through the overhanging branches to speckle the mulch floor, or to highlight certain patches of ferns and wild plants, and in the very deepest parts of the woods they seemed like beacons to Thom, letting him know that the sun still governed the skies. Yet it was cool beneath this leafy pavilion as well as shadowy, the tops of the trees absorbing the sun’s heat, a thin breeze below chilling Thom’s flesh.

He shivered and wondered how much further they had to go? The girl walked on ahead, her movement graceful, snarled undergrowth no impediment, the sudden duskiness no disincentive, and as he was about to speak she pointed ahead.

There, Thom,’ she said. ‘Do you see it?’

He followed her direction with his eyes and saw in the distance a bright oasis of light, a smallish clearing where the trees parted overhead to allow the sun full ingress. It was like a bright jewel in the sun-peppered gloom.

Her steps quickened as though she were eager for him to find out what lay ahead in the clearing and he followed close behind, trying to tread in her footsteps, for she knew the path that was all but invisible to him. Occasionally he stumbled, but hurriedly gathered pace again, feeling an

excitement - one that curiously was mixed with dread -rising up in him. His mind had not yet tired of the phenomena brought by the day’s events, but undoubtedly the constant shocks, delightful though they were, had been slightly numbed by his own brain defending itself from overload; but now his thoughts were racing once more, his imagination beginning to fly. Jennet had good reason for bringing him to this place, the confidence in her voice had reassured him of that, but so far she had not even hinted at the clearing’s mystery. There was a quiver in each breath he took and he felt an unsteadiness in his stride.

She reached the spot that was like a forest grotto well before Thom and turned to wait for him, her lovely, if playful, smile encouraging, enticing. He hurried his steps despite the shaking of his legs and the accelerating beat inside his chest.

‘Jennet…’ he said, but could think of nothing more to add.

‘It’s all right, Thom.’

The soft-voiced words soothed him. He didn’t know why, there was just something in this girl - her beauty, the stillness of her nature when she was quiet like this, the pleasing gentleness of her tone? Maybe it was her mystery, the idea that she was not as others he knew, did not possess the foibles and jealousies, and perhaps pride, so common in humans - something that made him trust her implicitly. He hardly knew her, yet he knew he already loved her. What normal and unattached man could fail to fall for one such as this?

He reached her, almost stumbling into the small clearing in his haste and she swiftly reached out to steady him, her movement fluid, her grip surprisingly firm. Like his mother’s, he remembered.

The colours in this sun-blessed site were dazzling: bluebells, late-blooming like those close to Little Bracken, mixed with wild orchids, foxglove with balsam, cowslips with

dropwort, and others whose names he did not know, a close-confined mixture he would not have believed were he not seeing it with his own eyes. An elder stood proud of the circle of ferns, shrubs with red berries and other trees, a fine, lush example thick with long tooth-edged leaves and creamy-white flowers, as though the soil here was rich in nitrogen - possibly a rabbit warren tunnelled through its roots, or badgers had built their setts nearby. Other elders, mere shrubs though, were in the vicinity, but only this one appeared to have flourished so well.

Thom looked at Jennet questioningly and she pointed once more, this time at the grass a few feet in front of the elder. He noticed the top of a stone or rock among the tall blades. Again he regarded Jennet.

‘See for yourself,’ she said, and when he went forward she accompanied him. He knelt on both knees before the stone - he could tell now that it had an uneven but generally flattish top - and parted the blades of grass. The stone had straight but roughly hewn sides too.

It was a marker. No, there was chiselled lettering on the rugged front. This was a headstone, for the lettering spelt out a name. It said:

JONATHAN BLEETH

INSIGHT

SIR RUSSELL’S elder son? The soldier who was killed in Northern Ireland?’

Thom was stunned by the implication of this tribute stone deep in the woodlands of the Bracken Estate. Jennet did not reply to his question; she merely watched him.

‘Jonathan Bleeth. You’re saying … you’re saying he was my father…?’

At last she spoke. ‘It should have been obvious to you.’

‘Why? Bethan never spoke of him.’

‘Perhaps she thought it best. I can’t really say, Thom, I only know the story that’s been passed down through the years.’

He looked from her face back at the marker again. ‘It isn’t possible. She would have said. And surely when she died, Sir Russell would have let me know.’

Jennet gave a small shrug. “Who can understand humans? Come, let’s sit down and we’ll talk.’

She strolled to the edge of the clearing and sank to the grassy floor, ankles crossed, the broad exposed tendril of a nearby oak at her back.

‘Come on, Thom,’ she entreated again.

Only after gazing at the rough and inscribed grey stone for several moments as if it, itself, would offer answers to the questions that almost swamped him, did he follow the girl. He dropped to the ground and leaned against the trunk of the oak, wrists on raised knees, eyes gazing back at the marker peeping over the blades of grass.

*Why? Why wouldn’t my mother tell me? If I’d known …’

What? If he had known, then what? It was a question to which even he had no answer. But Sir Russell must have been aware. At last Thom began to understand why the old man, his mother’s employer, had become his patron, sending him off to private school, giving him a small but helpful allowance to get by on. But why hadn’t the old man acknowledged Thom for what he was, his grandson? He looked at Jennet uncertainly.

“You are telling me Jonathan Bleeth was my father, aren’t you? That is why you brought me here?’

She nodded.

He was a confusion of emotions, glad at last to have the solution to the mystery that had vexed him for most of his young life. With it came some kind of relief, although the reality was perhaps more perplexing: why had nobody -especially his own mother - explained to him, told him of his heritage? He and Bethan had not been deserted by Jonathan Bleeth; his father had been blown to pieces by an IRA bomb. Why hadn’t Sir Russell and Hugo acknowledged him as Jonathan’s son? Because he was illegitimate? Was that much shame attached to the label in those days? Surely not? And what about now, when he was a grown man? Was he still to be rejected? It seemed so.

‘Godamnit!’ he said with force and Jennet reached out to touch his arm.

Try to forgive her, Thom. Bethan must have had her reasons.’

‘Oh I don’t blame my mother. You’re right, she must have had her reasons. She could never have kept the truth from me otherwise. But why didn’t anyone else let me know?’

He thought of Hugo. Had his lifelong friend been aware all this time, or was it a secret kept from him too? In all the years Thom had known him, Hugo had never alluded to the possibility that they were kin of sorts, even if not in name. Thom tore a clump of grass from the soil and scattered it. Why? What was the purpose? Was Sir Russell really that upset at having a bastard grandson? Were his values still so set in the past?

As if having read his mind, Jennet said: Tm told they were married right here, Thom, in this part of the woods. A faerefolkis ceremony.’

Then he, Jonathan Bleeth, knew about Bethan, knew where she had come from?’

‘She was almost entirely human when she was with him. That’s the way of it, it’s faery law.’

‘But he knew what she once was?’

‘Of course. They met by the lake, Thom. Your father called to the undines and it was Bethan who came.’

A quick shake of his head. ‘I don’t understand. How could he know?’

‘Who do you think owned the Portal Book in the cottage? And all the others you still have not bothered to look at since your return?’

They belonged to Jonathan Bleeth?’

‘As owner of the cottage, yes/

‘Bethan used to read stories from them to me.’

‘And now you think they were only stories, faerytales to keep you amused.’ She laughed and it was charming, not aimed at him. They were history, silly, and pictures and stories are always being added. The book is never-ending.’

At once, she became grave. ‘Every master or mistress of Little Bracken has inherited the Portal Book and your father spent most of his time there, away from the big place, away from your grandfather. Weren’t you aware that Jonathan Bleeth lived at the cottage from the age of sixteen, as soon as his father allowed it? And before that, even as a child, he was ever there, reading the books, seeking the faeries. It was the Portal, itself, that told him of us. Don’t you see, Thom? Little Bracken has always been a place of magic.’

He reflected, thought of so many things, so many occasions that had been normal to him at the time, but now, given this new-found knowledge, could be explained as little pieces of magic. The time he had badly cut his knee falling from a tree he had been warned not to climb: Bethan had spread some sweet-smelling salve over the wound, gently squeezing the two sides of the deep tear together for a few moments; when she had let go, there had been no pain and the flesh had sealed over - the next day there hadn’t even been a mark. In fact, he couldn’t ever remember having seen a doctor or nurse as a child; all his ills - headaches, fevers, tummy aches, the normal kid things - all had been cured or ‘sent on their troublesome way’, as Bethan would tell him, by Bethan herself. He remembered the animals that had come through the always open doorway to the cottage, from young deer to squirrels, birds to butterflies; even the shyest of all creatures, the badger had found its way inside, unafraid, curious, and only sometimes hungry. How had he forgotten?

The cold winter evenings they had huddled together before the blazing fire in the old range, when Bethan had explained faery folklore to him, read him stories, parables you might even call them, from the big book and others; those summer nights, windows wide to allow in the slightest breeze, with tales of dragons and witches, themes to excite, sometimes to scare badly, but stories that always had happy, safe endings. And then, a few years older, the serious explanations of conjuring and enchantment, sorcery and magic, of bewitchment and potions, the natural medicines and the ancient laws of the faerefolkis, his young mind filled with so many things, so many treasures. How had he forgotten it all? Why could he remember so much now?

But yet another question begged. ‘If Jonathan Bleeth was the kind of man who believed …’

‘Believed in us, we the faerefolkis!’ she finished for him, shaking her head at his hesitation. ‘It was in his nature to believe, as it is in many other humans. As it is in yours.’

‘But he became a soldier. That’s what I can’t figure. If he had the sensitivity - and I assume that’s what it takes—’

‘Among many other qualities, yes.’

Then why would he become a man of war?’

‘He didn’t. He became a man of peace. His intention was for the good, Thom. He never took up arms to kill people, but to protect them.’

‘By your own words you weren’t even around. How could you know all this?’

‘From Rigwit. He and Jonathan were great friends.’

The keeper of the cottage. Thom wondered just how long the size-changing elf had been around.

‘Rigwit has told me much since we knew you’d be returning here.’

‘You were aware that I was coming back? I didn’t know myself until a few weeks ago.’

‘It was predestined. It’s why the cottage never deteriorated in its emptiness. We knew of your illness and we knew you would choose to recover here in the place that was always safe for you.’

‘I was hundreds of miles away. How could you know about my stroke?’

‘It still hasn’t sunk in, has it? You’re part of us, Thom. Not properly, you’ll never be one of us, but you are linked. And there is another reason, but I don’t quite understand

it myself yet It will evolve though, in time it will come through.’

A butterfly, wings of blue and gold settled on her shoulder. It spread those wings, as if proud of their regality, then fluttered away, its presence, its elegance made known.

‘Rigwit told me that Jonathan was forced to make a choice by his father. Unless he took up a worthy profession, then Little Bracken would be destroyed. His father wanted him to prove himself a man, leave all “fancy notions and blithering books and nature study behind”.’

Jennet’s voice had suddenly lowered, become gruff, and the image of the formidable Sir Russell was sharp in Thom’s mind. It was almost as if she had magically taken him back to the moment of father-son confrontation, for not only could he clearly see Sir Russell, almost as if he were standing there before him in the forest, but he visualized another, a younger, taller man, someone who resembled Thom himself…

*You have a younger brother,’ Jennet’s other voice was saying. ‘You must be an example to him. No more daydreaming in that bloody place. Take up a profession, or I’ll have it torn down. It was never used for any good purpose anyway, nearly always tenanted by some mistress or other of whoever was the landowner at the time. I’ve never liked Little Bracken, can’t stand its atmosphere. The choice is yours, Jonathan, but remember you have a half-brother now who will eventually look up to you. Show him a good example, make me proud …’

‘… Make me proud.’ It was Jennet’s voice again, sweetly husky, light and somehow reassuring.

The vision was gone and now he doubted there had been one, or even that her tone and timbre had changed. She had put pictures into his mind, that was all, perhaps his enchantment with her making it an easy task.

‘So he chose the services,’ Thom found himself saying as he continued to rationalize his latest experience. ‘I suppose the most macho profession he could think of, just to impress the old man.’

‘No. He became a soldier because he wanted to protect people. Rigwit told me that your father—’

My father. Jonathan Bleeth was my father. It was a shock, yet surprisingly easy for Thom to accept.

‘—intended to gain experience as a soldier, then join another force, some kind of worldwide army whose sole purpose is to act as a peacemaker in other countries’ wars.’ The UN,’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘I think it’s something like that.’ ‘And instead he got blown to pieces in Northern Ireland.’ Trying to protect others. He was a brave man, Thom, a good man.’

‘But when - how - did he meet my mother?’ ‘Just before he left to take up his duties as a soldier. He’d believed in us for years and it was as if we, ourselves, realized we had little time remaining if we were to make contact. It’s very rare that we choose to do so, but sometimes association with certain humans is beneficial to both sides. Sometimes we need someone like you.’ ‘Me? What have I got to do with all this?’ You are the result of Jonathan and Bethan’s bonding.’ You mean it was planned just so that I could come along years later and help you in some way?’ He was shaking his head in disbelief.

‘Not planned, never planned. Foreseen, you might say. There is a difference.’ ‘But what can I do?’

That we don’t know. But there is a course for everything no matter how inconsequential some actions or events might seem.’ She leaned forward and the flimsy material of her clothing hung loose, exposing her small but perfectly-shaped breasts. He had difficulty in checking his gaze, had to force it back to her eyes. ‘Jonathan first gained access to us,’ she was saying, ‘through Rigwit, who showed him how to use

the Portal Book. The undines cannot use the portal, it’s only for those whose form is small and constant, but he was guided to the lake where he met Bethan.’

‘You used Jonathan Bleeth for some future purpose? Is that what you’re saying?’

She sighed, but remained gentle with him. ‘Haven’t you learned anything, Thom? Aren’t you listening to my words, is your heart so closed to us? We do not use anyone, certainly not humans. We leave that to the bad faerefolkis, the black magicians and those you call wiccans or worlocks. Jonathan and Bethan’s secret marriage was always meant to be, it was an association that could only work for the benefit of us all, humans and faeries. Without us, without our influence on nature itself, your world would soon be over, overwhelmed by the elements and the physical earth you abuse so much. Oh, you think you’re very clever, you imagine you’re learning to control nature itself with your technology, but you have no idea how wrong you are. Even when you feel you have complete power over the elements and the environment, you will not even be half-way there. You will eventually discover that you need our help. You’ll discover that your yearning for material things and that the subjection of others is not the way, that it’s these very faults that have led you away from us. Eventually - and this is our greatest hope - you will understand the emptiness of such desires and ambitions and begin to communicate with us once more.’

All this spoken in the same soft manner, nothing strident or chiding, nothing bitter, about her tone.

‘Jesus…” he said.

*You both have something in common.’

‘What?’

The Nazarene was a carpenter too.’

Well, there the similarity ends.’

‘Not necessarily.’

The enigma of her comparison was breathtaking, for it

was not a mild aside, but Thom was already too perplexed to comprehend or question Jennet further. They both lapsed into silence.

Soon, wearied by images and words, and suddenly worn out by the long walk, Thom’s eyes began to close. Perhaps the effect of Rigwit’s tonic and the magical powder Jennet had blown into his face and the energy-giving lights were beginning to wear off. He lay down by the oak and slept.

Thom awoke and the sleep had been good, for it had been dreamless; nothing at all had disturbed his subconscious.

The angle of the sun had altered so that he found himself in shade; he was still warm though, comfortably so. And as he opened his eyes he realized he did not lay on the soft, mulch-covered earth alone. Jennet was nestled into him.