The Language of Stones. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

down. You’re tired. Don’t you want to sit down?’

      The girl’s glowing eyes had lost their sadness. Now they assured him that sitting next to her would be the most wonderful thing there was. He remembered the look on Willow’s face when she had reached down to help him out of the muddy hole. How could he not do as she asked? It was hot now and the still, quiet warmth of the afternoon closed in around him like a suffocating blanket. He drew breath, but the air did not seem to satisfy his lungs and he sighed for more.

      ‘Let me touch you,’ the girl said, soothing his struggles. He felt a cool hand stroke his knee, his arm, the side of his face. ‘Isn’t that better? Isn’t that so much better than waiting alone? Close your eyes, Will. Rest. Soon we will be together.’

      A part of him resisted, knowing there was something wrong, something important, but when he tried to think what it might be it vanished. His eyes felt dusty and sore, and it was getting too hard to keep them open. He fixed his gaze on the dragonflies still turning and circling above the water. The brilliant blue flashes of their bodies swept out the loops into which his spell had locked them. I must release them before I go, he thought. But somehow he could not remember the releasing words, and it seemed not to matter any more if they flew on while he rested.

      The dragonflies’ weaving patterns reflected in the dark waters of the pool like a mystic symbol. It seemed as if the surface of the water was a looking-glass, a looking-glass that had the power to change him. He would have smiled but the tiredness was too great, and the soothing voice irresistible. ‘Close your eyes, Will. Come with me. Come with me into the beautiful, cool water. There is a wonderful world below. A wonderful realm bigger and more beautiful than anything you’ve ever dreamed. So much. So much you never thought could be. You’ll see many things, many wonderful things. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Come with me, then. Come, and we shall be together. Together forever.’

      He felt the last shreds of resolve drain from him. The drowsy opal sky burned and seemed to press down on his head. He felt the warm mud seeping between his toes, making the ache in his feet go away, making the hurts of his long journey out of childhood fade. When he looked again he was already knee-deep in the water and the girl was naked beside him. But it was all right. It was how it was meant to be. Velvet smooth mud caressed his skin, inviting him deeper. He sank to his waist, then to his chest, and then he felt the water creeping up his neck and chin. The air above was filled with the lulling drone of dragonfly wings, repeating, repeating, endlessly repeating. And Willow, graceful beside him, walking a watery aisle, her cool hands on his face. Then she kissed him full on the mouth and led him down into the wonderful world that lay below the surface.

PART TWO THE POWERS OF THE EARTH

       CHAPTER SIX A NEST OF SECRETS

      When Will burst into wakefulness he was choking and fighting for breath. A cage of bony fingers imprisoned his face and, as they were ripped away, they tore at his cheeks.

      ‘Be gone, foul hag!’ a tremendous voice roared.

      He saw a vile creature draw back from him. Its mottled grey skin sagged and fell in slack folds, its hair hung like fronds of stinking pondweed, its mouth hissed and spat as it struggled against Gwydion’s grip.

      ‘How dare you exact your revenges upon the innocent?’ the wizard demanded. ‘This obligation I lay upon you: get back into the slime where you belong and bother the sons of men no more!’

      The creature’s long fingers grasped for Gwydion’s face. Their ends had suckers that tried to attach themselves to him, but the wizard held the hag away. For a moment it seemed that it would succeed in embracing him, but then he laid a mighty word on it, and it collapsed into the water and melted away.

      Will was on his hands and knees coughing and spluttering. Every time he tried to draw breath, water vomited from his lungs and he began retching. Gwydion pushed him down and squeezed the water out of him and soon he was able to lie on his back and breathe freely again.

      ‘It was horrible,’ he said wildly. ‘Horrible! I thought it was a girl! I thought it was Willow!’

      ‘And what of your promise that you would not stray beyond the bounds of Wychwoode?’ Gwydion’s voice was soft but there was such a power of accusation contained there that Will shrank from it.

      ‘I didn’t mean to disobey! The forest got cut down and I sent word for Willow to come to the place we knew and then, and then—’

      ‘And then you fell neatly into a trap set for you by the marish hag! And I hoped you could be trusted.’

      Will was shivering and could not stop. ‘What…what was it?’

      ‘A hag. A creature that preys on fools.’

      He put a hand to his throat. ‘I almost drowned…’

      ‘Oh, you would not have drowned! You would have been kept happily alive for many days and weeks as part of the loathsome larder that all such water hags keep down below. And there all the juices would have been sucked from you one day at a time as you dreamed your death dream!’

      Will wallowed in the mush of stinking, black ooze that had accompanied him out of the pond. ‘Master Gwydion, if you hadn’t come…’

      ‘You are lucky indeed that I have returned.’ The wizard looked down on him as if from a great height. ‘Augh! I cannot abide the stench of dirty magic.’

      ‘But how did you know where to find me?’

      ‘Do you remember your little friends the dragonflies? Your use of naming magic upon them drew me just as it drew the hag. You are fortunate it drew nothing worse, for you were lit up like a beacon!’

      ‘I didn’t mean to do wrong. I—’

      ‘You are no better than the child who delights in pulling the wings from butterflies. Cruelty is a grievous failing, Willand.’

      Those words cut deep. ‘But I didn’t harm them.’

      ‘Of course you harmed them. And after all you were told. Who are you to entrap dragonflies and use them as you did? They are living creatures, with their own concerns and neither the time nor the strength to dance attendance on the will of a lad who merely wants to impress a pretty girl!’

      ‘I never thought of it that way.’

      ‘Indeed you did not!’

      The wizard paced up and down the bank and Will looked away in shame. He saw his dragonflies lying exhausted on the surface, their tiny legs moving weakly. He had nearly killed them.

      Gwydion reached down and lifted them from the water one by one and whispered words that unbound them, so they revived and flew away whole from the glow that was in his hands. When he had done with them he looked around, his face still grey with anger. ‘I hope you now have the strength to walk, for we must be gone from here.’ His anger blazed up. ‘Na duil! Look at the desecration they have wrought! They have hewn down an ancient and sacred grove. This is a high crime, the like of which we have not seen since Nis and Conat burned the groves of Mona!’ He turned suddenly. ‘And you! Where are your braids?’

      ‘I cut them off.’

      ‘Young savage!’

      He was shivering, and now he began to babble. ‘When the hag came to me she was beautiful, Master Gwydion. She reminded me of the white lady. The one who stood by the bridge over the Evenlode when we first came into the Wychwoode. You know, the one I asked you about. Why was she weeping?’

      Gwydion laid his hands on Will’s shoulders, his expression hard to fathom. ‘That is the innocent form of her apparition. She weeps for a lost love, for she was driven to madness by a jilting.’

      ‘Who