An Uneasy Slumber

Happy 2008!

Due to a lack of enthusiasm for the mysterious ritual known as "sleep," not to mention a lot of energy leftover from New Year's Eve excitement, I've kicked off the year by working on my NaNo. I'm currently editing my original draft, which will not be posted quite yet.

In the mean time, I've divided each of the chapter posts into lettered sections due to length. If it's still difficult to read, I'll have to bite the bullet and divide each chapter into separate posts. Opinions welcome.

Thanks for all the input, both on this blog and off of it! Continued feedback is encouraged, but in the mean time, enjoy the holidays!

Hey all!

I've posted my entire National Novel Writing Month Novel(la) here in hopes of getting feedback. A project inspired by a site on the Internet ought to be continued by a site on the Internet. Go here for more info: http://www.nanowrimo.org

There are, I'm quite sure, errors in continuity, grammar, and the storyline, here, but that's one of the reasons I would like constructive criticism so very much. Please notice that each chapter post, right now, has the word "Draft" in the subject line. Over the course of the next few weeks, perhaps months, I'll be editing, cutting, and changing the original story. When I'm done with it, I'll post it online in its entirety.

For now, however, this story is up, so enjoy it.

EDIT: Yes, the entire story is up here.  If you have trouble locating all ten chapters and the epilogue, look at the tags on the sidebar.

Chapter 1

815 A.D.

a.
Ogre woke up with the morning. He always did so, because it was his duty and his cause. Light burned his eyelids red even though they were closed. He could only lay on his deerskin cot, unmoving. His heart was heavy and his thoughts were slow. He missed the calm of deep darkness and cursed in silence.

Wilfrid cursed aloud. “If I were more powerful than myself, I would make the sun a marble!” he said sleepily and confused. “The morning is a jackal! The morning is a mother of a jackal!”

Knowing it was best not to move, Ogre wondered if his master was reciting a spell. It did not sound like any spell he had heard of, but he was, of course, no one to judge. He could not read, he could not learn; he had never been allowed to touch a book.

Wilfrid could read. He had books as heavy as great stones and scrolls that he claimed belonged to the ancient druids of a forbidden isle. Wilfrid could also sing a song from his lips that would play like honey on the ear. Ogre’s master loved words, and could recite them wonderfully and with great power when he chose, which was rarely to Ogre. Wilfrid was a good man when he was a poet or a minstrel.

He was terrible in the morning, when he cursed the sun and threatened to blacken its eye if he only had a fist big enough and an arm great enough to reach it.

Ogre watched Wilfrid roll onto his side. The thin man had hair the color of copper and a beard as scarce as a goat’s. He closed his eyes, exhaled deeply, and drifted into the endless dreams of tired men.

Because he could not afford to stay still and sleeping in the skins of his cot, Ogre pushed himself forward. He stood on legs that were too sleepy to hold the rest of him up, and he fell back to the ground.

“Mmph!” he said with great intelligence, his head hitting the ground. He touched the bump that formed on his crown. Ogre turned to look at the dirt floor behind him, and saw a stone lying there. If Wilfrid happened to roll over in his drowsiness and hit his head, he would curse Ogre, and not simply with words, but perhaps with spells.

Ogre chewed his lip. He considered his choices. If he were to leave the rock, would it get the brunt of Wilfrid’s anger, or would he?

He took the stone into his hands. It was smooth and cool. Ogre stood once more, this time without falling.

Ogre moved to the mouth of the tent. He pushed back its opening which had been sewn together with linen shirts from the last village.

The brightness of the sun seared his face, and Ogre squinted at the sky. He scowled at it and decided, in his half-dreaming head, that it was his enemy. Wilfrid had called it his enemy, after all, could his servant not do the same?

Ogre still wore his soft, leather shoes from the day before. He had not dared to take them off that night, for the army of Eadmund had been marching for days. The smell of the sweat that had gathered on the soles of his feet was most definitely offensive. Exposing Wilfrid to the stink would have resulted in Ogre sleeping outside. He did not want that, for while his cot did not make the ground less hard, it gave him warmth.

He crossed the ground. The dew wet the cuffs of his trousers. It was June, and the summer did not allow for frost when the sun was present. Ogre liked frost, for it made a pleasing sound to him that was a private delight that he wished to share with no one else.

The army of Eadmund had made camp at the shore of the river. Ogre was surprised, for it had been so dark last night that he could not even distinguish it. It had been another moving shape in the darkness. He had even been too tired to hear the flow of the water or smell the stink of it.

Ogre cast his glance further down shore, and saw, indeed, that there was a village there. The thatched roofs and smoking huts were a familiar sight to him, for he had traveled with the army through many such villages of men and women. He smelled the river again, and supposed that they must use it for cleaning clothes, relieving themselves, and bathing publicly. A number of the places Ogre had visited had forbidden the practice of public baths, for disease and plague was spread that much more quickly.

This particular river was thick and dark. Ogre supposed it to be the home of wæter-elfen, should they choose to surface and attack the camp. He grinned to himself as he watched the water toss and spit at the rocks on its edge. What a sight it would be to see the elves attack when almost everyone was asleep! What murder and blood there would be!

He felt guilt stab through him, a bolt of lightning flung through his chest by God or Woden or the Jupiter of the Romans who had left long ago. Ogre was to be loyal to his lord, even in the privacy of his thoughts. Eadmund was a great man, as was his wizard, Wilfrid. They were great men, and Ogre, despite his name, was really nothing more than a human boy.

Ogre didn’t like them, though. His whole body grew still at the thought. He supposed he must hate them, as well, but he wasn’t allowed to dwell upon it. The archbishop they had met in Lundewic had promised Heaven not only to those who were loyal to their Lord, but also to their lord on Earth.

“Boy, what are you doing? You are standing there! Why are you standing there?”

Ogre turned around and saw Wilfrid standing in the opening of the tent. He wore his woolen tunic, and was just tying it at his waist. He already had his belt on, the dagger held in its leather sheath. Wilfrid did not fight, he couldn’t fight, he couldn’t win honor in battle, but he was allowed to carry a weapon with him. He was a man of nineteen years, and though he knew his weaknesses far too well, he had for himself the carriage of a soldier.

Wuffa passed, only just awoken. His knives were in his belt, each displayed with purpose. He sneered at Wilfrid with a twisted mouth and his good left eye. Wilfrid did not look back, and Wuffa stiffened with resentment. He went on to Horsa, standing nearby waving, his hand missing three fingers from the last battle.

“Ogre!” Wilfrid called him back to attention. “There is pickled herring that must be cut for our breakfast. Make sure to use the onions.”

“Yes,” called Ogre, his speech faltering. He had forgotten breakfast. At least Wilfrid was not fierce with him.

“Have it ready by the hour,” said Wilfrid.

“Yes.”

“You will have the smaller portion?”

Ogre nodded.

Wilfrid nodded back, and went inside the tent once more.

No longer tethered by the wizard’s presence, Ogre looked out across the water. The stone was still cool in hand. He raised it above his head and took within himself a great breath. He threw it into the river Thames with the strength of his thirteen years.

Wuffa began to laugh. He had been watching Ogre when the boy had thought no one was. Ogre was at once flushed with shame.

“Look how he throws!” Wuffa shouted. “He is womanish! Oswald! Oswald! Come here, and see the boy throw stones into the water.”

“Woden, what is he doing now?” Oswald, summoned, came toward them.

“I am not throwing stones,” said Ogre quietly and to himself. “It was one stone.”

“What did you say?” Horsa called. He turned to Wuffa. “What did the boy say?”

“Boy!” Wuffa was laughing. “Do you speak like a woman, too?”

Ogre said nothing.

“He is impertinent!” Oswald declared upon joining his fellows. He held at his side an ax with which to chop the wood that lit the fires of the camp. “Tell him that he must speak. Does he only obey the great magician?”

“The magician is not great,” Wuffa insisted. “He is a liar and an artful user of words.”

“He gives us the stories of God and the greatness of Woden before we go to battle,” said Horsa, for he liked the stories that Wilfrid told. Everyone did. “We are stronger, for of course he weaves his spells into his words.”

Wuffa was not swayed. “His spells are nothing. His words are better than all the spells he doesn’t cast.”

The three men continued to argue. Wuffa had red hair that flamed in the sun and Horsa had eyes steady as the blackest of forests and a beard of wiry brown hair. Ogre did not stay to watch, for there was breakfast to cook. He knew he was as hungry as Wilfrid, the liar, magician, and useless warrior.

Wilfrid complained of his fish as he ate it. It was too salty and it was too old. Ogre said nothing and listened, chewing quietly. Every once in a while, he reached into his mouth and pulled out a thin bone, for he had gutted the fish incorrectly, yet another flaw Wilfrid mentioned. When Ogre tried flinging the bones into the corner of the tent, Wilfrid cuffed him and demanded him to remove each one to the grass outside.

“Do you think yourself the king of a hall? No, you are not, you are my incompetent servant,” said Wilfrid. “I do not know why I keep you. After you are done with depositing the bones in the grass, the river, wherever you wish to throw them, go and bring me my calfskin map. Eadmund will be coming to the tent, shortly.”

Ogre did as he was told, and hated himself for it. He wished to fight back, but was unsure how to do this. Ogre was weak at throwing rocks, but how would it be to throw a man? He had never tried. Ogre wasn’t tall, but Wilfrid was thin and untrained. One of the soldiers could throw him with ease. Eadmund, however, was thick and strong, with his thinning pate but full beard. No man could throw Eadmund, for he would throw him first if not at a farther distance; and if he could not throw his enemy, Eadmund would smile and charm him as skillfully as Wilfrid did with his songs.

“Please stop thinking, and do as you are told,” said Wilfrid. “You have sat on the ground these past moments with the bones in your hands and nothing to do.”

“I am not thinking,” Ogre said quickly. “I do not think. Wuffa says I think, but I do not. He lies. I am not a woman.”

“When does thinking make you a woman?” Wilfrid demanded. “Ignore Wuffa. He does not matter. Eadmund does, for he is our lord and future king,” he said with a convincing, solemn air.

Ogre wondered if Wilfrid believed his own praises of Eadmund. “Can I ask you a question?”

“No. Put out the beer, then clean up the bones.”

He quieted his tongue by biting it and holding it between his teeth. Ogre picked up each bone in his large, clumsy hands, and took them outside. He moved slowly and did not care if Wilfrid chided him for the time he would spend on this chore.

b.

In the world outside the tent, Ogre nearly stepped on a hive of bees. He cast the bones aside, and admired the hive that had fallen from the tree. He kept his distance, though he watched it intently. Ogre supposed the bees must have built the hive on the ground in the tall grass.

“Oswald knocked that hive from the tree the other day. Most of the bees have fled.”

Ogre turned and saw Eadgyd standing before him. She was a red-faced woman with a jaw that could belong to a man. Though she sneered more often than she smiled, she was not unkind. Ogre found his eyes studying the clothes she wore. The necklace of glass beads that Eadmund had won for her from a town they had traveled through was fastened around her neck. It was warm, but she wore a red shawl on her shoulders.

Ogre greeted her with a nod.

“I am not a lady. Do not bob at me.” She looked on him with merry disdain, her imperious eyes as muddy as the river, her smirk both warm and distant. “I saw the bees yesterday and have come once more to do away with them. Hilde will complain much if she were to step on them.”

“I will get rid of them for you,” Ogre said. He saw a good, heavy stick lying in the grass and went to take it into his hands.

“No.” Eadgyd paused and laughed at him. “Within two hours, I am meant to go to the tent of Edbert, and he will declare love for me. After that, I am to go to the tent of Wuffa, and he plans to declare his love for me, too, and after that, I am to go to Oswald, who will surely do the same thing. Do you wish me to wear myself out further and go to the tent you share with the wizard?”

Ogre said nothing. He set his eyes down in shame, for he strongly suspected God was watching him and shaking His great head in the sky. Yet Ogre was curious if she was truly making an offer. What could he say if she was?

Eadgyd laughed louder, showing the place in her mouth where her front teeth were missing. “I am sorry! I am, I am! It is only a joke, Ogre. Hilde was telling me about when she was in Lundenwic, and made an offer to the son of a merchant if he would give her apples. She realized that he was barely a man only after asking him!”

“I am a man!” Ogre said with more force than he intended.

She stopped smiling. Eadgyd stepped forward, and though she did not touch him, she stared right into his eyes. “Has Wuffa called you things, again?”

“I am not womanish,” he said. “You were calling me womanish, too.”

“No,” said Eadgyd, carefully. “It was only a joke, as I said. All the men laugh at each other.”

“I do not laugh with them,” replied Ogre.

Her brow furrowed. “Wuffa must not tease you so. He is good despite himself, but rather an idiot. "

“He came up with my name,” said Ogre. “No one knows what my real name is and no one asks. Everyone thinks I am named for a monster, though I am as human as any of them. He is unknind.”

"He talks of his wife kindly, even when he speaks during our time together. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“Eadmund ought to let me hold a sword. He ought to let me go to battle,” Ogre heard himself say before he could stop his mouth from moving. When Eadgyd did not speak, he added unwisely, “If they will teach me, I will do it.” This wasn’t true, not entirely, for he was aware that his heart, mind, and muscle were not the same as the soldiers.

Though they were alone, Eadgyd began to whisper. “Eadmund has asked you not to fight, so you shall not fight.”

“You can speak to him,” he said softly.

“Do not ask me to do that, and do not speak more of it.” Her mouth was a hard line. “I will not be swayed, certainly not by a young man who has been denied the glory of battle against our enemy.” Eadgyd did not hate Ogre, but even now, when she did work that brought her dishonor, she could not look forward to sinking lower in esteem.

Ogre was not satisfied, and so he persisted. He hid the emotion of his voice, for he was ashamed as he spoke, but his grievances were too many. “Who has asked him that I not fight? Was it Wuffa? He must have asked when I was a boy and I had followed the army, when the village that I came from was destroyed by them. He hated me then.”

Eadgyd also did not wish to comfort a young man who had been forced into the position of a child. “My sympathy is with you. Wuffa did not hate you, and he does not hate you now. You are smaller than him, and Wuffa is not the strongest warrior. He calls you Ogre to draw attention from his own faults.”

“How do you know this?”

“He likes me, and he has told me, but that does not matter.”

“Eadmund likes you, as well. Has he told you anything of the reasons that I am not to fight?” Ogre inquired as innocently as he knew how to do.

“Eadmund?” Eadgyd tilted her head and gave Ogre a sneer. “Eadmund has told me at length of himself. He had a home and a hall in Northumbria, and has ventured from there to here in order to gain fame and raise an army. His good friend Wilfrid has helped him with the army, but Eadmund cannot achieve the fame he wishes to find. He often speaks of his father, Alric, fallen in battle in 798 with many good men.” Her tone grew more rigid and serious. “I admire him intensely, understand. He is as good as any man here.”

As she spoke of this, her voice cracked as if tears were in her eyes, but when Ogre looked, none were there. She did not look at his face, and after a while, he could no longer look at hers.

Eadgyd turned away. Her back was straight as a pole, her shoulders rigid as stone. “Take care not to be stung by the bees when you dispose of them.”

This frustrated Ogre very much. “Take care not to be stung too many times, yourself,” he said to her back, though the poison
he willed into his voice was not as potent as he hoped.

Eadgyd heard this and turned to look at him, smiling. Light and goodness was in her face. “I do not know if Eadmund has lost a warrior, but I know he has lost the rudest clown to face down the other army!” Then she laughed, tossing her head back. Her shawl fell loose from her shoulders, and the wind that rushed past turned it into a flag. “It is a good joke, and I shall tell Hilde!” She began to run back to camp, her soft leather shoes trampling the grass.

Ogre regretted saying it as soon as he had spoken. He was a clown, and not even a very good one, but not because of jokes, but because of his complaints. To allow himself to complain was not at all manly. He ought to boast of what honor he had.
With this in mind, he kept his promise to Eadgyd, and rid the ground of the nest with the aid of his stick. He did not crush the nest, only pried it from the earth and cast it aside.

Does the enemy think of us as bees, silly and of great annoyance? He wondered this, and did not know where the thought came from. It most certainly did not feel like it had come from his head. All his own thoughts were occupied with discontent.

“I cannot run away, you know,” he informed the fractured nest as he pushed it to the shore. A bee would escape it every once in a while, but none bothered him. Perhaps they knew as well as he when it was time to abandon something dead and useless. With his foot, he prodded the almost empty nest into the water. “If I left, I would starve,” but his voice sounded hollow as he said this.

Ogre returned to the tent that Wilfrid kept. Outside was a horse that had been tied to one of the poles of the tent. It belonged to Eadmund. As he passed, he greeted the great animal with, “Hello, Weyland,” and touched his long, black nose lightly. Weyland watched him with a steady gaze as Ogre lifted the linen flap. He wrinkled his nose as he disappeared into the summer-stinking tent.

Eadmund loomed over Wilfrid as they consulted a map, together. They were in conference, speaking too quietly and too quickly for Ogre to hear. He did not move, not even to his corner where he could clear away the animal skins on which he slept.

At last, Eadmund looked up. He smiled. “Ogre! We were speaking of you!”

He thought this was perhaps another joke.

c.

Wilfrid looked at the map as Eadmund continued to talk. “Boy, you are a good person, I hear, even from Wilfrid, and Wilfrid has complaints about every man!”

Ogre nodded. He wished to smile at this, but felt it wise that he should not, for at any moment the wizard might look at him. Wilfrid continued to study his map, however, and did not move.

Eadmund lowered his voice. “I want you to look at this.”

Nodding, Ogre stepped closer. He watched as Eadmund took the map easily from Wilfrid thin arms, and pushed it into Ogre’s hands.

“Read this,” said Eadmund.

Ogre did not tell Eadmund that he could not read, for it would offend. Ogre had never been handed anything to read in his life.
No one could afford to offend Eadmund. Instead, Ogre held it tight and squinted at the map and the small scratches. He pushed his face closer until the tip of his round nose brushed the calfskin. Finally, knowing that lying was as bad as offending a powerful man, Ogre said, “I cannot read it.”

“Then do not try to do so!” Wilfrid cried at once. “Do not try, only look!”

Eadmund spoke with much more gravity. He had confidence, eyes that sparked with a certain amount of knowledge that Ogre couldn’t name. “When you hear a song, Ogre, you are meant not only to hear it, but to listen to it. Do you know the difference?”

He thought about this for a moment. “Maybe.” Ogre paused in horror, realized this was the wrong response, and said, “Yes, I do.”

“Then do that with the map, but with your eyes.” Eadmund grinned and spoke with a kindness that Ogre did not often hear.
He seemed pleased.

Ogre also felt pleased, for he was at last a use to someone. He stared at one of the black scribbles that was written on the calfskin. He tried harder to see what it said.

“I don’t know,” he tried to say, but the words did not come out of his mouth exactly right. In his mind, unbidden knowledge fell into his head as if from Heaven. His tongue twisted in on itself, and he said, “‘This way Wessex.’”

Wilfrid was pale. “You could not have read that so easily.”

“I did not! It read itself,” Ogre tried to explain. “It announced itself,” he said nervously.

The smile beneath his beard grew wide. Eadmund pointed at another place on the map, leaving a fingerprint of sweat and dirt.
“Read this,” he said.

Again, Ogre couldn’t read it. He looked at it and tried to do what he was told, listen with his eyes. The word meant nothing until he stopped and let it announce itself to him. “It says, ‘Forest unknown. Deer.’”

“Yes!” Eadmund cried. He turned his head toward Wilfrid. “And you are certain he never looks on your tomes when you aren’t here to guard them?”

Wilfrid frowned. “There is a trunk I keep. All my books are kept in there.”

“Where is it? I have never seen you carry a trunk.”

The wizard stuck out his pointed, thinly haired chin. “I have cloaked it with nothingness. You can only see it from the corner of your eye if you at one side of the tent.” His smile was broad and proud. “Perhaps you will try and I find it? I challenge you to find it.”

Ogre had heard about this trunk before, and in his upkeep of the wizard’s quarters, he had not once stumbled across it. Wilfrid lied often, but whether he was talented at it depended on who one asked.

“Such a challenge is unimportant, you ridiculous man.” Eadmund laughed. He was studying Ogre. “You were wrong about this boy.”

A strong sense of pride thrummed through Ogre. He did not look up, for he was still examining the map, but his face was warm. He could not lift his voice to boast of his talent, of course, as he had not known he had it.

“I wasn’t wrong,” Wilfrid said carefully, his voice wound tight. “I only wasn’t aware how much he had absorbed. Perhaps he has found my oak trunk, after all, and has been perusing my tomes since the day I bound him to my service.”

“I haven’t read anything, not until now,” Ogre said aloud. He was afraid he would become worthless once more if Wilfrid continued speaking of him in this way. “When I was a boy, before I came into your service, I was told I was born with a caul on my face. Also, I was born in the month of an eclipse.” Both were lies, as far as Ogre knew. He hoped his voice did not show this. “Perhaps I have only just now realized a power I didn’t know I had.”

“Yes.” Eadmund looked proudly at Wilfrid. “Do you not suppose that is what happened?” He looked again at Ogre. “He said he had had one of his foretelling dreams of the coming battle. What was it you said, Wilfrid? About the boy?”

Ogre hoped, for a moment, that this meant he would be at least allowed to ride with them to the fight. When Wilfrid spoke of prophetic dreams, battles were usually what they were about, which was fairly convenient when Wilfrid had to speak to the men and convince them of fighting with greatness and courage for their victory.

Knowing that he couldn’t use a sword, yet, Ogre was curious as to what he would be doing in battle. A round shield would be good equipment for him, he decided, and he wondered if Egbert had one extra in his store.

“I said only that he was standing in the sun.” Wilfrid looked at the ground, the side of the tent, and anywhere that wasn’t where Ogre and Eadmund stood. “He was nowhere near the battle, not in my dream.”

“Of course he isn’t going to battle.” Eadmund spoke with warmth. “But tell him what the sun means, won’t you?”
With some hesitance, Wilfrid began, “The sun is the brightness of the false Roman god, Apollo. To be bathed in his light is to
be associated with his son, Mercury, the false god of scholarship.”

Ogre could not tell the difference between a spell and a morning curse, he knew, but he had been in the service of Wilfrid long enough to understand that where the gods of the Romans were involved, the wizard was most likely lying. He couldn’t tell if this meant Wilfrid was keeping him from battle or not. Ogre knew as well as Eadmund that the wizard was making a fabrication.

Eadmund was immensely entertained. “For false gods, they are rather powerful to have sent you this message.”

“The world sent me this message.” With a wave his hand, Wilfrid dismissed the accusation. “Visions are messages of the wyrd, not of gods, who are all transitory in nature. They, like men, grow in disfavor and die.”

“Would you like to go to Canterbury and argue this with the archbishop there?” Eadmund inquired. “He will take back every one of the blessings he gave us if he heard you speak this way.” There was a strand of disapproval running through his words, but Eadmund said no more.

It is the will of the wyrd that I have found my power, he decided, even if Wilfrid is telling lies. He felt pleasure at this realization, but also fear. He would rather not imagine something so big using him as a tool. The thought of wyrd and of destiny was large and powerful.

Ogre looked again at the map. Every word on it was making itself known to him. The idea that the entire sum of the universe was attempting to make itself known to him, as well, did not make him feel safe, only alone. He was unsure if he was ready for such a thought.

Wilfrid announced, suddenly, “The explanation is unimportant. We have no use for his abilities, not now.”

“Is that so?” Eadmund said carefully, still smiling.

Flushing, Wilfrid looked down at the earth crushed beneath his shoes. He said, “Yes, that is so.”

He is jealous of me, Ogre thought to himself with wonder. His pride rose within him, though all was new and surprising. I am the instrument of the universe and that horrible, false wizard is not, he said to himself. He swallowed back the words before they could escape from his mouth.

“What are you doing?” cried the wizard. “Are you crushing the map in your fingers? Eadmund, he is ruining the map!”

Ogre looked down at his hands, and saw, indeed, he was bending the map in his hands. He had not been paying it any mind,
and now the calfskin was being crushed in the grip of his large hands.

Wilfrid went forward to force the map from him with all his might, but Eadmund stopped him.

“Give him other things to look upon and understand,” the lord told the wizard. “What of that trunk of which you spoke?” His smile was half moon that had turned into a displeased crescent. His grip on the arm Wilfrid had extended must surely be tight, for the wizard cringed and grit his teeth.

Ogre loosened his hold on the map, and tried to find a surface on which to leave it. Eadmund interrupted him, however, and said, “Would you mind looking on this?” From a bag tucked in his leather belt, Eadmund produced a stone. It was about the size of the one Ogre threw into the river Thames not an hour ago. This one had writing on it.

Wilfrid paled at the sight of the stone. He turned away and went to retrieve his tomes. All were buried beneath skins and furs in the tent. Curiously, none of the books came from the invisible trunk that he claimed to own.

Ogre took the stone into his hands with care as if handling a nest. He studied it and the deeply carved letters running along its smooth surface. He looked at it a long time while Eadmund watched him expectantly. Finally, Ogre said, “It says, ‘The river binds it.’”

Eadmund was taken aback, but he smiled, still. “Is that all it says?”

“No.” Ogre pointed at another part of the stone. “Here, it is written, ‘The earth beneath your feet belonged to us before it belonged to you.’”

“Is that all? What more of the river?”

“Nothing more of the river,” Ogre said, his head shaking back and forth.

“Horsa brought that stone to me after our last battle,” Eadmund explained dutifully. “It was on the land the elfen had been fighting upon before we chased them from it.”

Ogre thought on this. His eyes widened, and he dared to look Eadmund directly on his face. “It’s written in the language the elves speak, not our own?”

Eadmund responded with nothing but a grin.

Wilfrid came forward and set down his tomes in front of Ogre, though he paused before he surrendered them. “Do not treat them as terribly as you have my map.” Wilfrid snatched the calfskin away from Ogre, and the young man gave the item willingly.

Entranced with the thought of understanding all the books set before him, Ogre set to work opening the first one at the beginning. If a dream that Wilfrid had had predicted he do such a thing, he supposed he must.

He had attempted to study the book for some time before Wilfrid came to him once more. The wizard took the heavy tome from him, turned it so it faced upward instead of down, and handed it to Ogre once more. The young man took it with some resentment, but he took it all the same.

Ogre was reading the books dutifully when Oswald came to the tent. He did not hear as Oswald, out of breath, informed Eadmund that wudu-elfen had been seen.

“Who told you this?” Eadmund demanded calmly.

“Alred saw them. He was wandering about with his sword, cursing trees and all manner of creatures. He is half blind and as crazy as he was yesterday.” Oswald related this with little feeling.

“He may still be right. Wilfrid, come with me, and bring Weyland. If we see wudu-elfen at the edge of the trees, than we will surely be readying ourselves to fight by noon.”

“I think,” Wilfrid said, correcting him as no one else dared to do, “that we will not simply be readying ourselves to fight, but that we will be fighting. Though he is old and should have retired the shield long ago, Alred does not pretend to see elves.”

“No, he only pretends to see old enemies long slain.” Eadmund sighed.

Oswald and Wilfrid left the tent with Eadmund leading. Ogre was alone. He decided that he would do what he was told. He sat upon his animal skins and read.

As the morning wore on, Ogre heard a trill of laughter and a shriek from outside. Eadgyd stepped into the tent followed closely by Hilde. Hilde was fairer of complexion than Eadgyd, but she had a harelip and an excitable nature. She laughed whenever the thought struck her to laugh. The sound grated on the nerves of the men when they supped together and Eadgyd and
Hilde strolled about pouring beer and honeyed wine into their cups. The women had no beer with them now, only blankets of fur and skin.

“Do you think Eadmund will bring back the head of one of them? I think he will,” Hilde said to Eadgyd. “He will bring back the head cupped in his shield! Is that not a terrible thought? I think it is a terrible thought!”

Eadgyd saw Ogre as she stepped into the tent. “They are fighting, now, and Hilde and I are to stay here if the battle lasts into the night. This tent is safest. If we hear them coming, Eadmund has instructed us to go to the town.”

“What work would there be in town, I wonder? We will surely not get the food that we have now, that is certain,” Hilde said louder, though she spoke only for her own benefit.

“Oh,” said Ogre. “I did not think they would be fighting them so soon.”

“An army of them was in the wood waiting for their chance to attack us.” Eadgyd laid out her blankets on the floor. She did not inquire about the books Ogre was reading, which disappointed him.

Hilde talked on for some time, and eventually Ogre was driven outside. He looked out on the deserted camp. It was an old habit that all the fire be put out so that the smoke would not signal their presence nor the flame catch and burn the site.

Far away, he could hear the horn of Egbert. He began to walk toward the camp toward the sound.

Ogre came to the hill above the forest. Beneath him, too far to see each face distinctly, he saw the elfen in their armor. Their armor was not simply helmets, but shining, gold-plaited suits. He could see the green of each elf’s face, the brightness of each hand.

The battle was no minor battle, for Eadmund’s men fought fiercely and with honor. The elves were in wonderful formation, but they were not as strong as the army that Eadmund had at his disposal. Ogre could see bodies laying this way and that in the wet muddiness of the soft earth. They were warriors, all of them, dying for honor granted to them by the Lord of Life, the Ruler of Heaven.

He turned his eyes toward the sun, but he saw no Heaven or angels. Instead, a great lizard was flying about in the sky. It had scales that shone bright green and wings that, at his distance, looked as thin as the wings on a flea. For a moment, Ogre thought he saw a woman with streaming hair riding on his great back. The moment passed and so did the dragon.

Ogre watched the fighting for a long time. Here, one man thrust into an elf; there, an elf trampled a man beneath his horse, for all the elves had horses, though not one knew how to use his effectively. The men looked all the same, and so did the elves in their matching costumes.

If the elves were to somehow get past, he wondered if he would be captured. Would being a slave to an elf be a worse life than being a slave to a wizard? Deep within his chest, Ogre felt his heart grow tight.

“I hate you,” he said, the words whispering past his mouth like breeze. “I hope you all die and never come back.”

They did not die.

In the heavy blackness of night, Ogre could no longer read his books. He sat in the same tent where Hilde and Eadgyd spoke together. Each ignored him, anxious as they were about the return of the men. Even Eadgyd had become worried about her future. The soldiers came shouting back with Eadmund leading, their cries and laughs victorious.

As they sat supping on roast pig, Eadgyd and Hilde circulated through them and the fires, handing out wine and flirting in turns. The fires were lit again, and the camp grew with warmth that Ogre did not wish to share. His eyes traced the sparks among the smoke as he watched them float up into the deep night.

Wilfrid, flushed with pride and beer, stood to sing a song of prayer and thanks. Ogre wished to protest the wizard by not listening to his words, but he failed. He drank deeply of the song, and it ran through him as bitter and sweet as the honeyed wine.

Chapter 2
a.

Wilfrid roused Ogre from his sleep the following day. He was shaken by the pale hand and its thin fingers many times before he began to stir. Ogre found that his head hurt, and knew he had drunk more deeply of the beer than he had intended. His mouth was sour with the aftertaste of pork, beef, and fermented drink.

His eyes met the thin nose and furrowed, copper brow of Wilfrid’s face, and while Ogre wished to tell him the surprise was unpleasant, he was aware enough to hold his tongue. Ogre instead inquired where his books were so that he could continue reading them.

“My books,” said Wilfrid, correcting him. “You will not touch a page unless I give you strict permission.”

“Yes.”

“Some of those pages are written in Latin, but I assume you knew it when you read it,” Wilfrid told him.

Ogre responded with another, “Yes,” but the truth of it was that he did not know Latin and Greek from the language he and Wilfrid shared. “Will you mind if I ask where the books came from that are so precious?”

“The books were given to me by a man you will never know.”

“A more powerful wizard?” Ogre inquired.

The magician frowned. “You have become proud, already!” Wilfrid took hold of Ogre’s arm and pulled the boy to his feet. He straightened his back once he did this as if to show that he was still taller. “Eadmund made a mistake in using your gift in this way. Perhaps you wish me to discover where this talent came from?”

Ogre thought about this. “You said you saw it in a dream.”

Wilfrid laughed, though his displeasure was apparent. “Never have you believed my forecasts of the future.”

“No, but I am ready to accept that that is the answer you wish me to believe. I will ask for no other explanation.”

The wizard was not surprised. “You are not a curious, intelligent soul. I should not expect you to think about any question that brings you dismay!”

Ogre protested. “I am curious! If I find the source of this new thing that I have acquired, though, I fear it will be taken away from me.”

Wilfrid paused. Ogre saw for the first time that they were not headed back to camp. Instead, they were following the same course that Ogre had taken to get to the site of the battle. His throat grew tight, for now he feared he was caught. The best and greatest course of action in this situation, he decided, was to say nothing about it until his master accused him.

“What would it matter if the gift was taken from you?” Wilfrid asked though he did not look at him. “You have nothing to gain or lose and you have no thought of what use your talent could be.”

“Whatever its use, I know that I have been made useful to the army through it,” Ogre said. “Before this, I was disposable. Now Eadmund allows me to look at his face. I am better off than I was before.”

“We still give you food and a place to sleep,” Wilfrid chided him. He led Ogre across the moor and towards the green hill. “Do you wish for more?”

Ogre knew exactly what he wanted to say, and so he told him. “An honored place,” he said with bravery.

“Is honor worth so much to you?”

He felt his mouth open. Ogre had never heard such a thing in all his life. Even when he was a boy on his father’s farm outside of Ludenwic, he was instructed to always seek honor, even if it meant tilling the soil rather than holding a sword. He found himself considering the sort of person Wilfrid was, weak and frail, and he wondered if Wilfrid despised Eadmund for the strength and courage he did not have. Ogre had considered the idea that there was more to worldly life than honor, but he would never think of speaking it allowed.

After a moment, Ogre could think to say, “Yes, honor is worth very much to me.”

Wilfrid dismissed him easily. “Living without honor is no crime.”

“Eadgyd lives without honor. Am I so low?”

“If not lower,” Wilfrid said without sympathy. Then his head jerked strangely and he laughed. “Unless you wish to do the same sort of work as she? You are not that sort of man, are you?”

Ogre burned with shame. “No, I am not. Are you?” he spat.

Wilfrid laughed harder. They had just reached the top of the hill. The earth was flung about, with dirt, grass, and stones turned over. Footprints were worn into the ground where it had grown wet and bare. The battle had escalated to a greater height than Ogre had been, and he supposed he was supposed to be thankful he left when he did.

Ogre stopped. He looked to the sky, for part of him wondered if the great lizard was still there. All that was above his head was a great expanse of blue, stretching from one horizon to the next in a great arc.

“Ah, I see you are looking in the wrong direction,” said Wilfrid. He was greatly amused though there was something tired in his voice. “Look down,” he said.

Ogre looked down.

No one had removed all the bodies of the elves. His stomach twisted, but he felt little disgust, in truth. They were his enemy, and Ogre was no stranger to the sight of death. He knew of no one who wasn’t.

“Are we to clear it?” Ogre inquired of the battlefield. His voice was low. He had helped dig graves for men fallen in Eadmund’s army, but never for his enemies.

“No, that is what the villages nearby must do. Eadmund had told them that because we are fighting their war, they must do what we say.”

“He convinced them so easily?”

“Ha!” Wilfrid began to climb down the slope of the hill. He grabbed onto his assistant for balance, and Ogre was forced to follow. “I negotiated for him, afterward, and they gave in to me after I spoke. He inspires great confidence and mighty courage, but he cannot persuade with only these things. Eadmund has no thought for the art of words.”

“Then you admire him?” Ogre could not resist inquiring. He hoped he would not be cuffed for it. “You don’t hate the honor he receives?”

“A man is his own honor, and that is all I will say on that,” said Wilfrid with great severity. He waited. Then he demanded, “Won’t you ask me what our purpose is here if it’s not to clear away the dead wretches?”

Ogre said nothing, unsure how to respond to such a strange inquiry.

Wilfrid was impatient. “We are here to look for precious things.”

“Oh?” As they neared the bodies, Ogre saw a shield lying on the ground. It wasn’t round like the ones soldiers carried, but long in shape.

Yesterday, he swore he had seen jewels on each one of the weapons carried by the elves, but he supposed he must have imagined it, for there were no such riches, now. Even the gold on the armor of the elves, he saw, had been pried and scraped away. Not one bare, pale green finger he could see had a ring on it. Ogre supposed thieves had come from town in the night, though he wondered at how fast they had worked.

Wilfrid was speaking to him and holding a stone. Ogre tried to give him his attention.

“We are looking for spells,” said Wilfrid, displaying the very stone Eadmund had shown to Ogre. The carvings that spoke of the river and the stones were still there.

“Is that a spell?”

Wilfrid studied it for a moment. Then, arriving at an answer for this question, he said, “It is a tool through which a spell can be cast. Look for them on the bodies of the slain. Shy away from their blood. Egbert touched it in battle and he claims that it burns.”

“Is that so?”

“Just do as I say, whether or not it’s true,” said Wilfrid with a scowl. “I need my assistant to have unburned hands, if you do not mind.”

Ogre did as he was told. He and Wilfrid looked through the tall grass and the dark mud, over the elves and in their empty belts. Not only had the gold on the armor vanished, but also some of the armor, itself.

The green bodies were not all alike as Ogre had supposed from his view last night, but he saw that almost every elf was thin, thinner than even Wilfrid. The green skin varied in hues, as well, and some of the elves were pale as mint or dark as olives. If their faces also varied, Ogre did not notice. Most of the heads had been crushed or else covered with clay, though during the battle or after it he could not tell.

Wilfrid found three more carved stones by midday, all as smooth and cool as the first. Ogre had found only two, but Wilfrid wished him to carry all five as they walked back to camp. Ogre’s stomach was empty and the sun was burning hot, and the stones felt twice their wait in his hands. He carried and read the stones aloud, however, just as Wilfrid bid him.

“This first one is written, ‘The moon is my queen. The tide holds me close,’” Ogre read.

“A protection spell.” Wilfrid scratched his chin speaking chiefly to himself. He made a motion in the air. “Continue.”

“This next one reads, ‘A sea of milk holds me aloft. My mother’s heart is brave, my father’s heart is good, my sister’s heart weeps good tears for me.’”

“Another protection spell. It refers back to the land from which the elves come, I suppose.” Wilfrid was smiling. “The milk may be purity, I think, if not a real river. I don’t know of the mother and father and sister he speaks and what they might mean.”

“His family is giving him their blessings?” Ogre offered.

“No more speaking. Read the next.”

The third read, “Each meal plentiful. Every drink good,” while the fourth was written, “Your loyalty is a lion, this day is a good day for no blood,” and the fifth was simply, “Feet that do not weary with travel.”

“These were difficult to find,” Ogre said quietly, groaning under the weight of the stones. “If they are so powerful, every elf would have one if they were smart.”

“Every elf would have them if they could, but they don’t.” Wilfrid was nearing camp first. He turned around to face Ogre and opened his hands, demanding silently to be given the stones. They needed to be in his hands so that he could show who was the master and who the servant.

“Then they’re rare,” observed Ogre.

“Or they are hard to come by in the country of the elves.” Wilfrid’s hands were not as big as Ogre’s, but his arms were long. A stone was squeezed between his arm and waist, another beneath his chin. “I, of course, had one spell myself since youth. It had been given to me by a wild man when I was boy,” he added. “But the writing has worn down. Now I cannot find it though I kept it with my books.”

Ogre waited to be asked if he might know where the stone had gone. He was unsure how he could tell Wilfrid that he had seen the stone last the prior morning when he had thrown it into the enormous river Thames. Ogre tried to recall the speed of the current and how far the stone might have traveled downstream.

Wilfrid did not ask as he walked into camp, however, strutting proudly with his treasures, and so Ogre had no need to tell him anything at all.

***

b.

Nightfall brought another celebration. This one was not nearly as loud and hearty as the first. The beer was not nearly as good or the laughter as loud. Wuffa was in low spirits, for Eadgyd was occupied in entertaining Oswald with her company. Oswald was Wuffa’s greatest friend and companion, and Wuffa went about reminding everyone of this.

“He wounds me deeply. Brothers do not wound brothers as he has wounded me!” Wuffa declared, forlorn, as Hilde filled his cup once more. His face was red with beer and his eyes wet with drunkenness.

Ogre stood nearby with his own cup. The night was warm, but the fire was greatly pleasing to him. He sipped his beer and hoped that Wilfrid would forget about his missing stone.

Horsa laughed at Wuffa. “Is it your brother who wounds you? Is it not perhaps your own expectations of Eadgyd’s virtue?”

Wuffa hit him. Horsa drew back with a bloodied nose, wiping his face to discover the warmth flowing over his mouth. He reared forward and grabbed Wuffa’s arm, attempting to tear it off.

Alred tried to seize Horsa and instead pulled out part of Wuffa’s hair. Wuffa howled, and Egbert ran to get his sword.

Ogre watched for some time with Hilde. Both were entertained and horrified at the sight, which Hilde demonstrated with her awful laughter. Ogre only looked on and did not turn away.

Eadmund appeared from the darkness. He wore a frown etched deeply into his face. He did not smile when he said, “I suppose this is what my men do to honor themselves when there are no elves that need to be slain?”

Alred stilled and Horsa stopped beating upon Wuffa. Wuffa did not return the consideration, and took the moment to hit Horsa’s stomach with a stiff punch.

Taking control immediately, as a good lord ought, Eadmund went forward and withdrew Wuffa from the crowd. He shook him, for Eadmund was taller and stronger than almost all of his men. “You upset yourself for nothing! Do you wish me to leave you in that town, yonder, and march on tomorrow without you?”

Wuffa shook his head back and forth. “No, I will do no more.”

Eadmund shook Wuffa harder. “Will you continue to fight like this when we go to Elfland? If you do, I will turn you over to the great lizards when we are there, and they will eat you as easily as I stand on this earth.”

“No! I will listen!” Wuffa’s terror was genuine; he did not like the dragons that sometimes marched with the elves. Surely, the elves were terrible for wanting the whole of their land, but the dragons were a symbol of something greater and far worse.

“I am sorry, sir,” said Horsa. “I laughed at him when he did not wish to laugh. Punish me as you will,” he added, hopeful that by admitting his mistakes, his punishment would be light. “Only tell us of what you just said, sir. Are we to march to
Elfland, as you say?”

“No one can get to Elfland. Men madder and older than I go there!” Alred announced.

“You contradict yourself, Alred,” rejoined Egbert. He had found a sword, but now sought to hide it from Eadmund behind his back. “If no one can find Elfland, how can old men get there?”

He scratched his toothless, swarthy chin with a strange twitch. He also touched the black tumor that grew beside his nose, though it had no prevalence in their conversation. Finally, Alred concluded, “A mad man’s mind can wander anywhere it pleases.”

“We are going there all the same!” Eadmund shouted. “I have decided. The elves attack us in full force. Why not we go to their homeland and attack them? We will march on the morrow!”

Horsa looked about nervously, still clutching his stomach. He did not question his lord, of course, not out loud, but his face made plain his anxiety. Wuffa, too, looked greatly doubtful.

“We are not going mad in order to get there!” Wilfrid said, coming upon the party of men gathered there. More of the soldiers were following, curious as to what the commotion was about. “No, we are striking the elves where they are most weak! We are crippling them at the source of their strength! Us men have only fought battles against the soldiers they have sent. Let us fight the ones who send the soldiers!” cried Wilfrid.

Ogre listened as his master continued to speak. His enthusiasm was clearly feigned and his words were slick as oil, but even Ogre found himself convinced. He wondered if it was that Wilfrid had woven a spell into his words, after all. Soon, the men of Eadmund’s army were not only convinced that they must follow him to the elf country, they had become impatient to leave for their destination. The night had grown black, but they were sending prayers up to see the sun once more. Their voices sang out in joy and the beer flowed.

Wuffa had a question, but only for the reason that he was able to resist the enthusiasm of the crowd due to his lingering anger at Oswald. “How do we get there? Do we march? Do we swim?”

Eadmund’s face grew bright. He looked on Wilfrid and nodded.

Wilfrid spread his arms toward the sky. His fingers were wide apart. The fire bathed his face. “We will open a door!”

Most of the men applauded and sang. Even Wuffa was content with this response, and felt no need to ask anything further, but now Horsa had grown doubtful once more. “What door is there to be opened?” he asked. “Who will open it?”

“It is a door that will cross from one world to the next,” Wilfrid explained as patiently as he could manage to do. He let his arms drop. “Think of a soul leaving the body and going to its reward. Our flesh selves will take the place of that soul, and our Heaven and Hell will be Fairyland!”

Eadmund then took hold of Ogre by his collar and lifted him into his arms so that he could raise the boy for all to see. “This is the one who will open it!”

The singing began once more, the joyous laughter ringing high into the dark. Horsa, with his face bandaged, helped men put more wood into the fire, and so the night grew in warmth. Wilfrid was persuaded to sing and Eadgyd coaxed to dance once she and Oswald rejoined the men.

Ogre was given more beer and wine. Often, soldiers reached out to squeeze his arms and shoulders or pat him on the back. Hilde kept herself from laughing long enough to run forward and place kisses onto Ogre’s face.

Not a soul who celebrated knew exactly how he would open the door, least of all Ogre.

***

c.

Wilfrid woke Ogre, again, that morning, shaking the boy in his resting place. It was later in the day than Ogre had intended to wake. In his weariness, he could see through the tent toward the sun, and he decided that it was much higher than it ought to be.

The wizard did not look nearly as joyous as he had been the night before. His eyes were dark and his face was clouded, and Ogre wondered if he had slept. Wilfrid did not yell or thrash him but said only, “Get up,” which Ogre obeyed readily.

He changed into a much cleaner tunic, for the one he had worn that night now stank of beer and hot sweat. The wool of his new tunic made his skin itch, and it was a little too warm. Ogre felt relieved when he pushed open the door of the tent and felt the breeze of a cool day push past him. His first thoughts on seeing the sky and the moors far from him were of the elves and if they still lay on the earth where Eadmund’s men had left them.

Wilfrid soon followed him out of the tent. His walk was bent and his form haggard. He asked Ogre to help him with taking apart the tent and packing away its many treasures inside, including the stones.

The silence stretched between them. Thinking Wilfrid was perhaps miserable from the night before for some unknown reason, Ogre inquired whether or not he had had any more prophetic dreams that night. It was a joke, but he was a little serious as he asked it.

“People do not have dreams of what will be, only what is or what has already happened,” Wilfrid said quietly. His voice was a rattle deep in his throat. “Don’t ask me that again.”

Ogre complied, and grew angry with himself, for he knew he should have asked further of the part he was to play. He opened his mouth, venturing to speak once more, but Wilfrid grew displeased and boxed his ears. Ogre did not speak after that.

Before noon, the men were marching behind Eadmund. Ogre began at the back of the line with Wilfrid, but soon felt other – Egbert, Alred, Horsa, even Wuffa – stepping aside for him. Ogre was soon beside Eadmund at the front, who looked down at him every once in a while with a kind grin. As he looked back, Ogre saw for the first time that the youngest of Eadmund’s army were sixteen, and that though he was younger, they were barely older than himself. He had never thought of this, before.

At Eadmund’s side, he marched forward with a sense of pride in his heart. He supposed that he would learn how to open the door into Elfland as easily as he had acquired his gift of understanding words. It would be quite easy, he decided.

They arrived hours before evening, though the sun was deep in the sky. The moor was as plain as any moor, and Wilfrid had to run to the front of the line to stop Eadmund.

The air had grown thick, Ogre felt, and the anticipation mounted in his chest. He calmed himself, though at once felt stupid
for doing so. One day, perhaps soon if he was ever released from Wilfrid’s debt, he would have a wife as most every man in Eadmund’s army had, including Eadmund. Then, he thought with great strangeness, there would be children. It did not fit in his mind, the idea of younger versions of himself and a peculiar woman. It would be his duty to them to tell stories of his triumphs, no matter their importance in the years to come.

“This must be the place if you say so,” Eadmund said to Wilfrid. There was a twitch in his smile, and Ogre wondered if it was unease.

Of course it wasn’t unease! How could he think that of his lord, he who was stronger than his own master?

“Tell the soldiers to sit where they wish,” Wilfrid said to Eadmund, “but they will be away into the next world, soon, so caution them not to rest too heavily. They will need to do work soon.”

Eadmund chuckled warmly. “When do I take orders from you?”

“Always,” Wilfrid said with a tired laugh. Then he turned to Ogre, and his face had grown stern. “You will need the spells. Stay still.” Wilfrid had a cloak pinned onto his shoulder, and from beneath it, presumably from his belt, he withdrew the bag of stones. He placed it into Ogre’s hands. “Do not let them go. How are you feeling?”

Ogre was looking at the hill before them. In one of Wilfrid’s stories, he had heard of a king buried beneath a hill. The king had been a giant of some sort, and no one had had anywhere to bury him. In the story, an elf queen had stepped forward and had offered to bury him in a place that would suit. The elf queen had been the king’s wife, and she had wished to reward him in his death. Ogre thought it had been a very good story, though he didn’t like it as much as the stories with monsters in them. Those were his favorites.

“Answer me,” Wilfrid hissed.

Ogre grasped the bag tight in his hands. “I thirst. The beer from the night before has made my head hurt and my throat dry.”

Eadmund said to Wilfrid, with great cheer, “Go get Eadgyd and tell her to bring the wine. Our noble young man thirsts.”

The wizard nodded and left.

“I am not making pretensions to be noble,” Ogre said once Wilfrid had left them. “If I am to do this correctly, I only wish to do it to the best of my abilities.”

“As do we,” Eadmund replied. “Does this place feel like the place you should stand?”

Ogre stopped and considered this. He looked at the hill that might or might not contain the body of the dead king. “This is where I am supposed to be,” he said. In his voice was confidence that he didn’t feel.

Eadgyd came and gave him his cup of wine. He drank it, swallowed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His throat still felt dry.

“Tell him to do it now,” said Eadmund, withdrawing with Eadgyd to a certain distance. They receded into the milling crowd that was the rest of the army. Everyone was there, but now it was only Ogre and Eadmund, alone.

Ogre’s courage wavered. If he was a true hero, he knew that that should not happen. He was to be bold and unhesitant in action and deed. His stomach hurt, and he wondered if it would look strange to the men if he became sick. Perhaps they
would think it part of the magic.

“I want you to look at the sky,” said Wilfrid.

“The sky?” Ogre gaped at him like an idiot.

“Yes,” said Wilfrid quickly. “Look at the sky, and read it. This is the best place.”

“How do you know that?” Ogre demanded bitterly.

“Eadmund was not leading. He was following you.”

His eyes widened. “That cannot be true.” The excitement rose in his breast.

“It is,” Wilfrid insisted.

The tightness of his master’s voice made Ogre wonder if he was lying, for the idea didn’t seem exactly right. Ogre wondered if perhaps he had both lead and followed, but as he couldn’t see how both could be true at the same time, he allowed his suspicions to die.

Ogre touched his throat. It still hurt, so he said, “Can Eadgyd bring more wine?”

“You will become dizzy if you have too much,” Wilfrid said, waving dismissively. “Read the sky.”

“It hurts,” he repeated, both hands on his neck. His wool tunic felt heavier and hotter than it ought, he was sure.

“Please,” Wilfrid whispered. He was pale. “Please, please read the sky!”

Ogre looked to the sky above the hill. He felt his eyes grow unfocused, and so tried harder. He couldn’t see anything. The sky was the sky, the hill was the hill, and the sun was a burning marble that lit his eyes ablaze.

“I can’t.” Ogre began to scratch at his throat. The tips of his broken fingernails left red scratched slanting across his neck. “It’s not there! I can’t see it!”

Wilfrid took the bag of stones and their spells away from him. He opened it quickly, and flung them on the ground at Ogre’s feet. “Don’t see, look!”

Ogre looked.

There it was.

“It’s over the hill,” he gasped.

“I see it.” Wilfrid’s gaunt face was full of light.

“What did you do!” Ogre shouted. He clawed at his throat. “What did you make Eadgyd give me! What did you do!” They were not questions, but accusations. “You are a jackal!” he cried out.

Seeing nothing of the sky, the grass, the sun, or the door, Ogre fell backward. His body stilled before it hit the earth.

No one looked at him. The eyes of Eadmund and his dozens of men were fastened on the hill and, above it, the opening to the world before them.

Chapter 3
a.

Eadgyd could not speak to Eadmund without his permission. The men around her raised their voices and punched the air with their fists joyously. The door was there, the door was open, and everyone could see green hills and moors hovering above them through a window in the air.

She went to find Wilfrid, wrapping her red shawl over her hair. She could find no one else to whom she could voice her concerns and complaints.

Wilfrid stood above his slave, looking down on him with a pale face.

Eadgyd did not address the wizard with shock, only annoyance. “Oh Lord, you did not make me poison him? I had no knowledge he was a sacrifice, sir.”

“He is not a sacrifice,” Wilfrid mumbled to the ground.

“He looks quite dead to me,” said Eadgyd. She tilted her head and drew closer to the boy. “Look how blue his lips are! That’s the mouth of a man who’s frozen to death.”

“Who’s dead?” Wuffa ran up to Eadgyd. He smiled brightly, his joy radiating from him with the force of another sun. “I am dead with joy, you must be certain! Now we will kill those elves, we will!”

“The boy’s dead.” Eadgyd did not turn to look at Wuffa.

“Which boy? Irminric? Osfrid? Swidhelm?” Wuffa looked back at the soldiers. “They’re all there. Hilde is giving them wine as we speak.”

“I hope not the wine I gave Ogre,” Eadgyd said, folding her arms to her chest. “He’s been sacrificed for Eadmund, which I suppose is as honorable a death as he could hope.”

Wuffa cast his glance to the earth and Ogre, who lay still as a stone. “My God, the boy! Wilfrid, did you kill him?”

“It was to open the door, I think.” Eadgyd took hold of one of Ogre’s arms, lifted it, and watched it drop to the ground.

The wizard grew red. “He is not sacrificed and he is not killed!” Wilfrid announced.

With great care, Wuffa bent down to touch Ogre’s face. “He’s cold to the touch! Did he die hours ago?”

“He couldn’t have.” Eadgyd chided him. “I saw him standing on his own two legs before the door opened. It must have been the wine.”

“It was not the wine!” Wilfrid stamped his feet. He reached down, and took up the bag of stones that lay on the ground. “It was these! I wove in my own spells, last night. He needed only to hold them long enough.”

Eadmund came upon the gathering. “Is the boy asleep, then?” he said proudly. “I rather hoped to thank him before it came to pass. A grand deed!” he declared.

“He is not asleep!” Wuffa argued. “Do you see? Feel, then! He’s cold!”

“Don’t speak insolently to your lord,” Eadgyd twittered nervously.

“I hope he’s cold. He’ll be sleeping for rather a long time, I suppose, probably a month at least!” Eadmund laughed grandly. “Do you see?”

“No,” said Wuffa.

Eadgyd said nothing. She looked at the sky, she looked at the grass, but she did not look anywhere near Eadmund.

“He will be asleep until we need him to open the door back,” Wilfrid explained in his desperation. “It was a good decision! He is not a fighter, anyway, and now he is of use.” His voice was small, and he grasped at his throat as if it hurt him. “Even if he is to be awakened and stolen, he knows nothing of the nature of his enchantment. He can tell nothing to no-one.”

“What is this? Is our opener to the next world dozing?” said Horsa, bowing to Eadmund as he came to them. He stopped and stared at the boy on the ground.

“The treacherous wizard put him under a spell!” said Wuffa. He sounded strangely affected. Sweat had broken out on his brow, its oily gleam making a mirror of his face.

“I put him under many spells!” rejoined Wilfrid. “Sleep is one, preservation another! Soon, his body will be protected from the elements in as good a shelter as I can make him! He will be warmed as he sleeps,” he said.

“You could have still poisoned his drink,” Eadgyd said slowly and quietly. Out from the corner of her eyes, she glanced at Eadmund. “He could still be dead and none of us would know.”

“Witches work with poisons, idiot,” Wilfrid snarled. “I put a spell in his drink, good as anything else! It is taking its effect right now.”

As Horsa was drawn to the group, so were Egbert, Alred, and Oswald. Others followed them. Wilfrid found himself answering questions he had already answered. Eadmund, all the while, stood tall and proud and said nothing at all.

The sun sank lower.

“The boy we called Ogre has fulfilled his debt to me!” Wilfrid said. “That is all that has happened.”

“We should bury him,” said Wuffa. “We were horrible to him -”

“You were horrible to him,” Eadgyd interrupted.

“We were horrible to him, and we ought to give him a place to rest while we are fighting elves and he is waiting to wake
up,” Wuffa finished.

“How can we bury a man who isn’t dead?” Oswald cried. “You are as stupid as ever.”

“I am not stupid,” Wuffa argued.

“Yes,” Wilfrid said suddenly. “Bury him! He’ll be fine underground!”

“He will be suffocated from the dirt,” said Horsa. “The village iron welder where I lived buried his brother while he was still breathing, and the man died before we realized he truly wasn’t dead.”

“No, no! Ogre is not dead! If we bury him, he will flourish far better with the protective spell,” Wildrid insisted.

“What protective spell is this?” said Oswald, leaning forward to examine the body once more.

Ogre’s mouth opened.

“He lives!” shrieked Hilde, who had joined the throng.

A vine shivered out between Ogre’s teeth. It resembled nothing more dangerous than a string. It moved of its own accord, however, wrapping itself around Ogre’s face. Thorns began to grow from it, pushing up like swords in every direction but toward the boy from which the vine issued forth.

“You have possessed him!” Egbert turned toward Wilfrid. A shadow had crossed his face. “You have filled him with devils and arcane evils.”

“I only gave him wine,” Wilfrid said in reply. He looked down on the vine, his face flushed with a strange pride. “Now we shall lie him in the earth, and he will be well provided for!”

“But what if we don’t come back?” said Oswald. “If he is living, now, then will he become an old man? He will become an old man and shrivel into nothing beneath the earth, if he thrives.”

“Elfland keeps men there for an extraordinarily long time, I’m told,” Horsa agreed.

“We will all be old men!” Oswald was now truly horrified.

The other men stared at Ogre. The vines writhed over him like snakes. Eadmund’s men were all brave soldiers, and not one of them shied away, not even from magic.

“He is being swallowed alive,” whispered Wuffa. He began to shake his head. “We must leave for the other world, though,” Eadgyd told him.

“But first we must bury him!” Wuffa had become insistent.

“Burial is the death of a poor man!” Wilfrid cried. “This is not a death. When he awakes, he will be lifted out of his grave by the vines, no matter how deeply they draw him into the bosom of the earth, and he will open the door for us. He will not
age because for him, time will have stopped. When he truly dies, then – then we shall give him a hero’s funeral.”

It was small speech, and by no means was it great. Eadmund was about to speak in his loud, warm voice, and tell his men to get in line and march into the land where they would become heroes. Instead, he watched as they began to shovel the earth with their hands, building it over Ogre and the thorns that swarmed over him.

Eadmund finally said, after some minutes, “Stop!”

All but Wuffa heeded, for the soldier was trying to bury the boy with the greatest of desperation.

“If we are to bury him, whether or not he’s dead, he needs to be buried right.” Eadmund fastened his attention to Egbert. “Go get a sword.”

Egbert obeyed and brought back a sword that was by no means great. Its hilt had a strange dent, and the blade was not at all fine. All held their breath to see what Eadmund would do, and Egbert nearly fainted from the suspense as the weapon was lifted from his hands.

Eadmund took the sword and laid it on top of the vines that encased Ogre. “There,” he said. He was not the wordsmith that his faithful companion, Wilfrid, was, and so he did not try and explain. His father, Eadmund had heard from Alred, was also a poor speaker, though a noble commander.

Eadmund was sure he was just as noble. With his army in hand and with Wilfrid pale and gaunt by his side, Wilfrid marched grandly into Elfland. He thought of the sword he had given up, and decided it was a fair price. Upon waking up, whenever he did wake up, the boy would understand his worth.

No one would have to be bothered with guilt when they thought of him.

***
b.

The scribe had a high collar, the nose of a fox, and the cruel eyes of an elf. He wrote it all down from what he saw and heard, though he lived only in the harsh Court of Twilight, where the sun burns bright on through the evening, and the gossip is thick as the blood pudding.

She lived in the Court of Shadows. She claimed for herself the hallow mines and open caverns beneath one of the countries of Faeries. The queen of shadows made the dwarves into her livery, she commanded the elves to keep her belongings to keep her gold and silver as shining as the day she had found them, and she brought with her dragons that slept in the palace constructed deep within the earth. Her castle was hung with linens and silks dark blue and sable, and the queen felt that she was content with this and only this.

The queen also had for herself an almost-husband. He gave her a throne made of silver.

“It’s the very best gift I could give,” said the king of twilight kindly. “It’s an engagement present.” He presented the gift in his own court with great pomp and circumstance.

The throne was adorned with glass creatures. The one attached to the back of the chair was her royal mount, the serpent. The creature had eyes made of pearls and teeth as sharp as the cavern ceilings. The queen did not like to smile, so the dragon on her throne always did it for her.

“I desire to give something to you,” the queen said strangely to her husband. Her voice was soft and, unusually, her eyes had grown wet. “I will have to think what sort of gift I can give you. Give me time?”

“Always,” said the king as politely as he could. “Any gift you may give would be one I could cherish,” he declared.

The women in spiked dresses cooed, the men in black hats raised their glasses, and all applauded him. The pixies and the sprites paused to speak to one another, and everyone knew that when the marriage came, it would be happy. Even the witches who drifted in and out of the edges of the party glowed with pleasure. A pooka turned into a great black horse and offered himself to the queen so that she could give him to her husband. Nymphs went to him to brush his nose and sigh at his giving nature.

In the halls of the Court of Twilight, joy was drunk down as quickly as nectar and honey. No one remembered a party that had been filled with so little obligation. The pressure was on the queen, for the lady oak trees and the satyrs stood aside as she past, gossiping among themselves what her gift would be, when she would give it, and how soon the wedding was to begin. It had already been one hundred and forty-three years since the beginning of the engagement.

The queen’s chief mount was the serpent Iron-Tooth. He spoke because his lady had gifted him with an amulet that turned his grunts and hisses into words. He devoured a herd everyday and didn’t care to speak to anyone but the queen. She made him her confident, and he was privy to the secret of what her gift was.

The gift remained a mystery, for though the king of twilight wished as often as he could to show his achievements in court, the queen deigned to present her awards in private. After their private meeting, no marriage date was set, but the king kept a silk bag in his belt. In it, it was whispered, was the queen’s gift, but no one knew for sure, for he still wore the bag the day the queen appeared unannounced at his court of twilight.

“Do you still have that which I gave you?” she asked loudly so that all who witnessed could hear her.

A minstrel was entertaining the gentlemen and ladies, and he was just playing his harp, strung with the hair of a maiden who had perished at the hands of her stepsister, the very subject of which the minstrel had chosen to sing. He paused so that the court could listen to the intruder-queen, the minstrel’s snake-oil tail glinting and twisting impatiently on the ground.

Said the queen, standing across the room in her sable gown, “I asked you if you still have that which I gave you.”

“I have seen none of it,” the king of twilight laughed. “If you cannot find it, why not look for it yourself? It can’t have gotten too far!”

Because the king laughed, the court laughed with him.

The queen of shadows left and searched. With her, she brought Iron-Tooth and a company of elven soldiers. When Fairyland was exhausted, she began to visit other worlds.

In the world of men, it was 742, and Charlemagne had been born hours ago. In the Court of Twilight, each of these hours had been fifteen minutes. The queen stayed here for a month, and returned in 774 to her almost-husband.

He was in his court, and when he saw her again, he begged that she leave him no more. “It is an important gift,” the king pleaded, “but if you surely wait, it will be found again.”

“Why?” she frowned. “I have searched the world with my retinue of lizards, and I can’t find the thing you so rudely lost.”

“Perhaps I didn’t lose it,” he answered quickly. “Maybe it was stolen or destroyed. Won’t you catch the thief for me if shi is so?”

“I would know if it was destroyed,” and she left once more.

The court laughed at her once she was gone, except for the king, who appeared much affected by the meeting though made no one the confidante of his feelings. If he was distressed at all, however, it was forgotten when the minstrel began
once more and the dryads broke out in dance.

“It’s like a story,” said the pooka to the scribe, “one where the king will win his sweetheart back by the very end. Do you think it’s like a story? It must be one of those stories.”

“The entire world is made up of stories,” said a woman in her black dress with golden spikes. Her red hair was piled on top of her head in frizzy curls and pinned with baby’s breath. “Some stories end worse than others. It’s certainly possible that the gift has been lost for good by the king, himself, and that the queen is out looking for nothing at all. Perhaps he really doesn’t want to marry her, and we have all been lead on in a foolish game!”

This woman’s voice was too loud when she said this.

By the next morning, she had been ordered into a barrel full of nails by the executioner, a dour little girl with blank eyes and cream-colored hair. The entire court gathered to watch as the lady in the spiked dress was thrown down the hill. It was good entertainment.

Afterwards, and after much prodding, the woman who was thrown down the hill was forced to agree. She rather disliked the number of holes on her person, however, for they made it impossible to consume the nectar given to her in her dungeon cell.

News came from the other court that the queen of shadows had put together a party of elves with who she would march with into the next world. The invitation was sent to the king of twilight by a blue pixie with bat wings.

“It’s a request!” he announced to the court after reading it. “I am to come with her and bring my best elves for the search!”

No one knew whether or not they should laugh. The pooka wondered aloud why a lady would send a request for the battle the same way another queen would send an invitation to a dinner.

The king sighed loudly, and ordered that the pooka have his fingers bound together and his mouth sewn shut for the rest of the day.

He declined the invitation, and told the scribe that he would give her his aid in the search for the lost item when it suited him.

c.

Eight days after she spoke to him, the queen ventured with her dragons and her elves to the world where she hoped her gift to be. Her elves were good, and before they left with her, they dined with their families for the last time. The elves of her realm, tall and lingering, grew up close in communities where blood was thicker than the molasses that the trolls made in autumn. Between few elves, stones were exchanged that had been carved with the blessings of the local wizards, who did not sell their wares at small prices.

The queen, in her communications to the Court of Twilight, spoke of green isles that were laid on the land of their ancestors. To entertain his devoted court, the king read aloud the letters he hoped they would find most amusing. “‘The largest island the natives have taken over was once our own,’” he read. “‘I remember living there as a young woman thirty years prior, but each day that has passed in our beloved country has been a year here, and you may imagine that the land is still intact if its other features have faded into nothing short of memory. I cannot imagine leaving this land in the hands of these barbarians for another century, much less two thousand.’”

The court laughed, and the king of twilight was pleased to see them all so amused.

A nymph whispered to the scribe, “Why do we laugh?”

“Her displeasure is most displeasing,” said the pooka. It was agreed that that must be the likeliest cause of the king’s merriment at his lover’s letter, where in fact his merriment was at the merriment of his fellows. The pleasure of the Court of Twilight goes in a circle, perhaps, much like a dance that carries on unending.

The queen waited to attack. In 793, sent the necessary warnings to the island to panic its inhabitants. Light went through the air, whirlwinds came down from Northumbria on the back of Boreas, and her very own dragons – Iron-Tooth, Green Back, Thistle Thing, and Soft Eyes – rode about the sky and breathed flame. A famine followed, for she disrupted the soil and made the land too dry to farm.

“We shall invade in seven days,” she told her men, for on the private isles on which they set up camp, they dipped in and out of the time that governed their country. Hours felt like days, but a year was a day.

Time moved unevenly, and some of the elves were mad enough to defy their beloved, pale queen. They headed ashore with the great serpent Iron-Tooth at their heels. The cattle that were kept in herds in the island were ravaged, the deer in the forests were hunted to fulfill the hardy appetites of the soldiers, and the wolves ran screaming through the forests. The people were horrified in the year 798, for the elves ran wild in their land. A battle broke out in Northumbria, interrupting the elves on their sabbatical. Many Northumbrians were slain, among them Alric son of Herbert and his men. Soon, the lizard felt deep in his breast his loyalty to his queen, and knew she would be kind if he came back. Iron-Tooth led the soldiers back to the isle where the queen and her elves were.

Once there, the queen rewarded the dragon for his loyalty by giving him another pearl, one that not only gave him the gift of speech, but a second body so that he could walk the world in the form of a man if he chose. Iron-Tooth had much pleasure in his new body, and christened himself Julius Iron-Tooth after the emperor so famed in the new world. He wore clothes but carried no sword, entertained by the thought that every weapon he knew of was far less sharp than his own teeth. He would have made a pretty man if not for the fact that he still wore on his body green scales.

The day of the serpent’s christening was the same day the queen carried out her punishment against the disloyal elves, drawing her sword from her scabbard and slicing off each of his thumbs. Afterward, she wore them on her belt.

“Do you see what you have done to yourselves?” she demanded of them. “In battle, your swords will slip from your hands. Wait three days.”

The elves did as they were told.

In 800, the land was seized with groups of elves. Each group was small in number but quick and remorseless, but though their armor was strong, it was not impenetrable.

“If this succeeds, lady, then will you seek out the rest of the world?” Julius Iron-Tooth asked the queen.

“No,” she said. “I only want this island. The rest can belong to the barbarians.”

“But what of the king’s gift?”

The queen paused. “Yes, I suppose it’s important, too,” she said, finally.

In the tree near the queen and the serpent sat the pooka. After they left, he went back to the Court of Twilight and amused all its members by recounting the tale of the queen and her war.

The king of twilight announced, shortly after this pretty speech, “In the interest of speeding my almost-wife home, and keeping her from further exposure to the horrors of war, and worse yet, barbarians, I shall send myself and my armies to
her.”

He was applauded for his selfless deed and accepted the shouts and songs of praise with a sweeping bow.

In 815, a few days before her almost-husband arrived, the queen said to her mount, “Iron-Tooth, something empty has opened within me.”

“Is there?” asked the beast as they flew over the moors. The wind swept past them, and if the queen answered his question, he didn’t hear it.

The king arrived and so did his soldiers. Though his army was also made up of elves, they were not the green-skinned men that served the queen, but pale, freckled elves that always seemed to smile. They were taller than the green elves, too, and had a far better proficiency at the sword. At first, the armies worked together, but it didn’t last, for the queen and king were often out of contact.

The king said to her in 832, after his army had overtaken the Isle of Shepey, “Lady-love, I still search for that gift which you gave me! When I sleep, I dream of it. I admit that I may have lost it long ago, but my memory is unclear on the matter.”

“The gift?” the queen asked. Her eyes were calm and dark, but now they widened strangely.

“Yes,” said the king with great care. “The one that you gave me.”

“Oh,” she said. “Why do you speak of it? Is it important?”

Iron-Tooth, who stood tall in his form of a man, took hold of her majesty by her pale, tiny arm. “She must rest. I will make sure she does this.” He took her away.

The king of twilight watched them leave. Afterward, he went to his soldiers, and spoke of how they would march onto Kent.

Resting, the queen of shadows seemed of a better humor. The dragon asked her if she wished to return home.

“Home?” said she.

“Yes, our home. You can live in your castle beneath the earth and sit in your silver chair and be served by your royal servants, the good dwarves and pixies.”

“This is our home,” she told him kindly, and promptly fell asleep.

Iron-Tooth went to her soldiers and sent them home.

“Our queen does not command this,” said an elf without any thumbs. “I would not like to disobey her wishes if she doesn’t command this.”

“The queen is sick,” the serpent told him. “If you wish to stay, you will not be following her orders.”

“Whose will we follow?” asked an elf with his thumbs intact, but whose ear had been missing a very long time.

“Mine,” Iron-Tooth said with a grin.

Some of the green elves stayed, but most did not. Julius Iron-Tooth was pleased, for he had a country of cowherds and sheep from which he could dine.

The king of twilight did not return home, either. He led his army proudly in a chariot of gold. As he looked upon them with adoration, they looked back with adoration, and he was pleased. “Let us go forth and take this land so that I may find what I
have lost!” They shouted his praises, and every few days, their army went forth.

In 886, though his campaign on the barbarian island had yet to bare fruit beyond the deaths of his soldiers, he spoke to the elves with a new speech. “Go back to the domain of the queen. Empty the places where her tribes dwell in the hallows our country and claim them for the Court of Twilight.”

The soldiers went back with many reservations, but no voices to speak. By 996, ten days after the king had given the order in his world, the tribes of the dark elves were his.

Alfred, who ruled a united country on a small island off the coast of France, believed himself victorious, for the elves along
with the troublesome Danes had retreated for a very long time.

The king of twilight bided his time and harvested soldiers from his new territories. He launched attacks every now and then for the next six hundred years, according to the calendars in the realm of the barbarians.

He did not lead a full-scale invasion again until the spring of 1595, when a play-writer at the time had just finished a play about the fairy-creatures still believed in by the good folk in the country.

In 1601, the whole of London was burning, and Elizabeth I, a brave queen and a God-fearing woman, met in the palace with a creature with which no English monarch had met before. She looked on him as they sat in her hall at the palace, her face powdered and rouged, her clothes extravagant and perfumed. Elizabeth remembered the creature as a girl when she had seen a face very like his own leering at her from an illustration in a book in her nursery.

“Your Majesty,” said General Julius Iron-Tooth with a kind and shining smile. “I have an army of elves, many of which are refugees from the land that the king of twilight has taken. If you wish it, you and I will be great friends, and we shall crush the king, together.”

“Your price will be a great one,” Elizabeth informed him, her face stern. She felt the weight of her years.

“My price is land for the elves in London, or wherever else you wish to put us that can provide people, places, and sheep.”

“What do you threaten me with if I refuse this offer?”

“Nothing,” General Iron-Tooth answered. “Only the ashes of London when it is burned to the ground by our mutual enemy.”

An agreement was drawn and signed. London, as well as the whole of England, was safe from immediate destruction, though the king of twilight was a persistent man and had all of eternity to do as he pleased.

The elves who no longer had a home where they belonged lived in places, allies and nooks, that served them as well as any. They were almost comfortable, save for their neighbors, Englishmen who let them know very plainly they were not welcome, wanted, or, as it had happened in the old days, worshipped, at least not any longer.

General Julius Iron-Tooth had as much veal, lamb, and beef as he could ever desire and a place in government that he rather enjoyed.

The queen of shadows was an ill woman and slept as often as she could.

Somewhere under fine, English earth, a boy slept even longer than that.

Chapter 4

1815
a.

The mail carriage thumped along the road, each wheel jumping on the stones laid in its path. The carriage was jostled hither and thither, along with its passenger, driver, and cargo, each of which was worse for wear as the journey brought them across the country.

Mr. Green was a swarthy man with a round head, a feeble jaw, and the bravery to carry himself with the pomp of the Prince Regent. In his early years of the job, he had not especially enjoyed the occupation of being in the postal service. The roads were long and his solitude was often overwhelming with only a shotgun beneath his seat for company, a most insidious instrument that he had never learned how to fire.

Mr. Green’s most exciting experience was in 1806 when he met a distressed woman on the road. She was clothed in a white, ruffled cap and a marvelous, billowing nightdress. He had been excitable in his youth, and marveled at the woman claiming that the armies of Faerie had come up to her village to attack everyone in sight. The difficulty was immediately dissolved, however, when her husband, the village parson, ran toward the carriage in a flurry before she and the postman had the chance to run back to the city at full-speed. The parson explained that his wife had only seen an elf who had come down from London and who had spoken of invasion in jest even though he was, in fact, a descendent of the elves who had taken up residence in the city when Elizabeth was on the throne. The woman was upset at the trick, but eventually conceded to her husband and, with bright color in her cheeks, went with him back to the village.

Despite this incident, the excitement of which was aborted very quickly, Mr. Green had little interest in his work before his route was changed. On the new route of his mail carriage, he passed by a number of inns and villages where there was to be found a great number of poor and weary travelers willing to accompany him on his travels, specifically if he was going to the city. He asked them many questions of their origins and futures, and each response varied in both explanation and openness of manner. None were as excitable as the horrified woman in the nightdress, of course, but Mr. Green didn’t mind.

The passenger he had at this moment was very open and, to him, kind. He had taken her up at an inn south of ___shire where she claimed a stage couch had turned her out. Mr. Green found the young woman amiable and sweet, and she told him many stories of the city and the women and children who, in support of the armies in Belgium, had taken to wearing regimental colors and carrying flags with them everywhere.

The woman, in the first few minutes of her conversation with the nosy Mr. Green, gave her name as Mayfield. She was not at all annoyed by his prying questions and answered each to the best of her ability. She was five and twenty, she said, and had grown up in Westminster. Her favorite place in the city was Hyde Park, she claimed, but only in the early morning and Kensington Gardens in the late afternoon. No, she didn’t often venture to Drury Lane; yes, she enjoyed herself at its theater from time to time, but rarely found a moment to spare. Yes, her destination was Blackthorn Hill in ___shire. After much prodding on Mr. Green’s part and much hesitance on hers, she admitted that she hoped to visit some sadly deceased relatives in the graveyard of Blackthorn Chapel.

In short, Mr. Green found her to be great company. Unfortunately, while she seemed relatively grounded in reality if a bit flighty, she appeared to be under the impression that she was a man.

She attempted to convince Mr. Green that her name was Lieutenant Mayfield, all the while wearing a bright red uniform with gold buttons and bullion lace. The woman had appeared to do everything necessary in order to pass as a gentleman of the regiment, from the red and white feathers in her shako to the shine of her boots. She even took care to lower her voice so that it almost sounded like she was a young boy, though not quite.

Miss Mayfield was clearly female, and not a soul could mistake her for anything else if they tried. She was really quite pretty, with a pleasing countenance and a space between her front teeth that made her look quite young.

Mr. Green was a gentleman, of course, and didn’t think to take advantage of her. He did his best to avoid looking at the breeches she wore, for it was inappropriate to dress this way at best, criminal at worst. Mr. Green didn’t want to imagine if she had also decided to bind herself, as well, for he attended church as regularly as he could.

He could understand why she was heading out of the city. London drove people mad, but that didn’t mean they would hesitate to send a lunatic like Miss Mayfield to Bedlam. Once, he had driven a haggard looking gentleman from Islington westward, an unkempt if softly spoken man who didn’t have much taste for conversation. They had been alone the entire journey, much like he was alone with Miss Mayfield now, and it was only later at the post office that he discovered the man had been a burglar. Mr. Green hadn’t mentioned this to anyone, and instead amazed himself with the honor of being a criminal’s accomplice.

“Tell me, Lieutenant, are you married?” Mr. Green said carefully, interrupting the silence that had begun to stretch between them. He felt it was best to speak steadily and not aggravate her temper.

“No, I am afraid not!” she informed him pleasantly enough. “I am a free man, and a young one, at that!”

“Free man, indeed,” Mr. Green rejoined with a smile. “No young lady at home?”

“No, sir! My soul is fully invested in my occupation, I am afraid. I belong to the army and no one else, and also, I am an orphan.” The last declaration was delivered so happily, Mr. Green could swear that being an orphan was the pleasantest thing
in the world.

“Now, why are you not with Wellington, might I ask? Isn’t the Duke fighting bravely against that terrifying little Frenchman in Belgium, at the moment?”

Miss Mayfield flushed momentarily. She frowned, and she didn’t look at all as pretty as she had looked before. “Some men are not needed there, I am afraid,” she said finally.

“Less glory than the veterans from the Peninsula, though?”

“Glory can be found off the battlefield.”

Mr. Green found himself nodding his head in agreement. “That it can, that it can,” he sighed.

They arrived outside of ____shire, and though Mr. Green apologized profusely, he felt he could not take the young woman further. His explanation for this was feeble, at best.

“The road up ahead is muddy from the rain, this morning,” he told her. “If I ventured forward with your added weight, Lord, the wheels would be caught in moments!”

In truth, he did not wish to go to the next village and take on more passengers who were less obliging with games of folly than he.

Miss Mayfield smiled brightly and did not question him. “Thank you for doing a member of the regiment proud,” said she, saluting him. She paid him a nominal fee, thanked him, and set off once more.

Mr. Green’s next two passengers were country gentlemen whose chief topics of discussion were livestock and the raising of livestock. There was no moment where Mr. Green was allowed to intervene, much less describe his adventures with the peculiar woman convinced she was a cavalryman. Instead, Mr. Green grudgingly resigned himself to the exchange of words behind his ears, and by the end of the journey, he found himself content to swear off chickens, cows, and whatever else roamed a farm, and any mention there of.

*** b.

Miss Rose Mayfield was very pleased with herself.

The sense of self-satisfaction she felt was so immense, she felt her spirits lift even as she trenched her way through the muddy fields of Blackthorn parish. I fooled that postman so well, she thought to herself happily. She wondered if it was perhaps her costume that had been convincing, for she had been working on it for month. Perhaps it was how she had kept her voice lowered, or how she had made sure to walk in precise, long footsteps like when the soldiers were on review. Rose had forgotten a few times, yes, but as the pleasant enough Mr. Green hadn’t said anything, she decided it wasn’t worth her precious time worrying about it.

The fields were full of mud, muck, and she concluded with some displeasure, the leavings of many cows. Her boots, both of which she had taken three hours to shine before she had left London, were not as lovely as she hoped they would remain. It was very tragic business, she decided, to see good boots ruined so quickly!

She had purchased them on Bond Street, knowing very well that they weren’t really the same boots the brave men serving Wellington currently wore, despite what the shopkeeper attempted to convince her. Regardless, she had made them look like they were items with careful, precise work, and she was very proud of that. Rose had had some difficulty putting them on her feet without the boots slipping off, but that had been rectified fairly quickly once she stumbled upon the idea of putting tissue in the toes.

“You see?” she said to the Professor in her triumph. “They fit good as gloves!”

“Gloves for your feet? Really, Rose, you are surely as silly as that elf woman.” Professor Watterman sighed, and closed the book Rose had interrupted, The Dragon and the Virgin, or the End of the Elizabethan Era and Its Triumphs. He had read the book many times before, but only because he had been the one who had edited it. He was working on the next edition, and Rose had no end of work to do in helping his with it.

“Professor, I know that they are certainly not gloves, not really,” she said impatiently, looking dour and stubborn. She smiled, however, at once brightening her countenance. “But are they not lovely?”

“They are men’s boots, dear.” He spoke gently. “You may wear them when you are working alone on one of your assignments, you may wear them when you are lounging about the house, but I certainly cannot promise you shall be comfortable, but, Miss Mayfield, I forbid you to wear them when you are in public. You will look very ridiculous, my dear. I say this not to be mean and to upset you, oh no, but to be honest.”

Rose was immediately upset. She pouted and stomped and generally looked more like a girl of thirteen than a woman of five and twenty. “But may I not wear them when Holly and I are shopping?”

Professor Watterman reddened. “You must absolutely not wear them when you are out with Holly. It would only encourage her.”

“It will not encourage her if I wear them on assignment, though?” she persisted.

“I already said you can, but only if you do not wear them when other people are about,” he said kindly. “Now off with you. Go upstairs and get ready to go to Blackthorn.”

“I thought I was to spend the afternoon working in the library.”

“You have the afternoon off. Leave before I change my mind, you silly woman,” he told her, but there was a smile on his mouth.

Before she left, she made sure to ask him whether he thought all women were silly.

“Oh, I don’t know, but they seem to be at their worst when they are around me,” he answered kindly enough. “I suppose it would be rather odd if they were silly by themselves, though.”

Rose, now walking past Blackthorn Chapel, stopped to look down at her uniform. It was a ridiculous idea to travel this way, she admitted to herself, but surely, it was all worth it. She had fooled the postman, hadn’t she? She had made the innkeeper and the maid jump when she came downstairs dressed as a soldier, but that, she supposed, was only because they had seen her go upstairs the prior evening in a muslin gown.

She swallowed and continued to her journey through the fields. Very soon, she saw her destination come in sight. Past a tilled field, a hill came up on the horizon.

It was a very large hill, and for a long time it had been called Blackthorn Mountain until the local gentry had corrected the local countrymen of their silly, imprecise name in the 1700’s. Now the gentry, Rose had been told, were trying to change the name once more to something less menacing than Blackthorn, but they had not yet succeeded. Professor Watterman laughed and said they never would, for folktales were stronger than iron, and if there was anything Blackthorn Hill was lacking, it was most certainly not folktales.

Rose neared the mountain. “It is quite tall if one is very close,” she said aloud, for she was very much alone and no one was there to tease her for talking to herself, like the Professor or Holly.

Unsure how she would approach this particular difficulty, Rose began to climb the hill. It was not as muddy here as it was in the fields, and she could not help but wonder why. Though it was June, it had been raining a lot, recently.

“Why would a hill be less wet than the earth surrounding it?” she asked the open air and trees.

Nothing was there to answer her, only the sun filtering through the leaves. It was a pleasant place, she realized. It was quieter than Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park were, of course, and she thought it would be a very good place to read and do work if the hill were somehow closer to London. She would not even dress in a full uniform, she told herself.

Miss Mayfield took out her bag. It was a large parcel, and she had had difficulty carrying it to here from London, but it was important. In it were a change of clothes, a nightgown, three blankets, rope, no less than three books, and a purse of money. On h