Where the Path Leads-Chapter 18

Taking the Plunge

            The next morning as Emily set out for Blackwood forest; she took the Mill road that followed alongside Castle stream. Even though the happily gurgling stream glinted with sunshine, it couldn’t tease her out of her dark mood. The Seneschal had sent her away and, despite her pleas, wouldn’t allow her to see Sophia before leaving. Nor could she find out anything concerning Will. 

            She had no idea even how to begin. Where was this abyss?  As far as she knew, no one had ever seen it.  Annamund had, of course. The forest was her home, familiar as an old pair of slippers. Certainly, she could point her in the right direction, maybe even take her there. With that thought, her steps lightened a bit, though she still had a sense of foreboding, and a nagging worry about Will.  If anyone in the village were willing to talk to her, she would have gone there and told them what had happened, when she had last seen him. He had been picking parsley in the croft with Bertha at the manor house. She wished, again, that he was here beside her.

            The sun was high in the sky by the time the Mill Road led into the forest.  The hot dustiness of the road gave way to the dark quietness of the woods. She thought of May Day when Thea had said how scary the forest was. It almost felt like going from day into night, except she could still see her way around. For now. Her stomach tightened. What dangers lay ahead? Just thinking about spending the night in here, in the dark, made her heart beat faster. And she had no provisions–no food, no blanket, not even a cloak. 

            Why had the Seneschal given her this task? It must not be easy to get to the abyss or to the cypress tree, otherwise he could have sent anyone–the Bailiff or one of the knights, or even the infamous forester she’d heard about. Thinking about him made her glance around warily as if he might be waiting to catch her.

            No, it must not be an ordinary branch.

             Still, she had to do it, for Sophia. She took a deep breath, stepping farther from the light and deeper and deeper into the forest. Here goes, she thought, just put one foot in front of the other. It was no help to think how she’d rather do just about anything else, even algebra, and she giggled nervously.

            The path she started walking on was fairly well trodden, wide enough for two horses side by side. After a while, her calves started to ache, and she came to a Y in the path beside a river, larger and swifter than the Castle stream. She knew it to be the Mouse river. To the right was a bridge crossing over the river and a path that continued on the other side. To the left, was another path through the forest. She stopped, uncertain which way to go.  

            She wondered about the time and looked up to see where the sun was in the sky, but the forest canopy was too dense. The place felt eerie; something about the quiet didn’t seem right but she tried to shrug the feeling off. There was no breeze stirring and she was hot and thirsty from walking all morning. Suddenly, the river seemed irresistible.

            She picked her way down a steep bank, brambles catching at her tunic as if to stop her. Though she hated snagging the dress Sophia had woven for her–the dress which just a few days ago had made her feel beautiful–yet as she neared the clear, rushing water the urgency became greater. She was careless of her footing and slid part of the way down the rocky bank, thinking only of the cool water.

            As soon as she reached the edge, she knelt and took a long, deep drink, immersing her whole face in the moving water. It was sparkling and delicious. She came up breathless, her thirst quenched, and sat back, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes.  Relaxing, she sat along the river’s edge where it was shallow and clear with smooth white pebbles on the bottom, reminding her of a beach. Farther out the water was deeper and, from where she sat, partially hidden by overhanging willow branches. The surface rippled and gurgled, while leaves and twigs carried downstream on the current sometimes eddied around and were pulled under. The water’s murmuring lulled her. She didn’t know when the thought first entered her mind, but while she sat there, she began to long for a bath. It had been days since she’d gotten clean all over and now she stood up, thinking how the water was deep enough farther out, and the place private enough, when a voice from behind made her gasp and spin around.

            “You really could use a bath!” said the voice, echoing her thoughts.

            A diminutive woman stood close behind her. Was she a midget? She came only to Emily’s waist. How had she made her way down the bank without Emily hearing her, and without damaging her lovely dress, a pearly white, iridescent, flowing gown that swirled out all around her, draping gracefully to the ground, lavishly embroidered with leaves and twining vines around the hem and sleeves. Her brownish-gold hair, too, billowed out in a cloud of curls around her shoulders and down her back, with green and gold satin ribbons woven through it.

            Emily was reminded of how beautiful Rosamond hand looked on May Day. This woman appeared even lovelier, if that was possible, but like the rushing river, her beauty also seemed untamed, even a little dangerous.  Emily felt especially grubby in contrast, and she would have been more self conscious if relief hadn’t overcome all other feelings. Here was someone who might be able to help her.

            “Oh, I’m so glad to see you. Maybe you could help me. Do you know how I could find Annamund?”  Her words rushed out in a torrent.  Maybe the small woman knew Annamund and would be more inclined to help her if she heard the name. To her dismay, the reverse seemed to occur.

            “Humph!” she sniffed, pursing her little pink lips. “Annamund is not in charge of us. We bergfolk are natives of the stream banks and mossy places and, unlike Annamund, have nothing to do with the smelly, noisy creatures of this forest. I’m Lila.” 

            So saying, she moved gracefully over to the river bank, bent down under a willow branch overhanging the water, and said something Emily didn’t hear. She just heard the gurgling of the current, which sounded like laughter. A moment later, another small woman lifted the branch and stepped easily out from under it.

            She introduced herself as Lila’s sister, Tatiana, and Emily thought the gown she wore was even lovelier than her sister’s. It was crystal blue, like the river, with layers of silvery white ruffles around the edges of the long sleeves and about the hem.  When Tatiana moved, the ruffles reminded her of sparkling sunlight on moving water. Her light brown hair, which had a slightly greenish tinge, fell in undulations about her, and she wore a circlet of delicate white flowers on her head, the same flowers she’d noticed along the river bank. 

            Self consciously Emily smoothed her snagged tunic and put a hand to her short, stringy hair as they stared at her and began deluging her with questions.

            “Where do you come from?” Tatiana asked.

            “We thought we knew everyone from the Longsword demesne. Do you come from there?” Lila asked.

            “Are you foreign?  You look like it.”

            “How did your hair become that short?”

            Rather than answering all their questions, she told them she was a friend of Sophia’s.

            Lila tossed her golden curls disdainfully. “We know Sophia, the weaver of silks and satins, but they’re nothing compared to our clothes, which are much finer than anything she can make,” and she smoothed the iridescent ripples of her gown.

            Defensively, Emily wondered if their clothes had the same effect as Sophia’s, to make the wearer feel beautiful and confident? At least, that’s the effect she had felt. These two small women also reminded her of prissy girls she knew at school who thought they were “all that” because their clothes had designer labels. 

            “What my sister means,” said Tatiana, as if to clarify, “is that we care for our own. We have no need of either Annamund or Sophia. Those two conspire to order the forest by the laws of nature, but we have our own laws.”

            “Well . . . what you’re wearing is certainly lovely, but . . . ,” and she was going to defend Sophia and Annamund when Lila interrupted.

            “Don’t you think you ought to bathe before traipsing off to find the Mistress of the Creatures?  I mean, how long has it been? Your hair is greasy and you have a smell . . . .” She wrinkled her tiny white nose.

            Emily felt her face grow hot with embarrassment and sweat trickled down her back and the side of her face.

            “Look,” said Tatiana to her sister, although keeping her eyes on Emily, “you’ve embarrassed her. I bet you’d love to bathe,” she said to Emily, “wouldn’t you?  You’re all hot and sweaty, I can tell. I know,” she clapped her small white hands with enthusiasm, “we could clean your clothes for you while you bathed.”

            “Oh yes. You wouldn’t want to put that dirty garb back on, after rinsing yourself clean in our river,” said Lila, as if it had been decided.

            “But I d-don’t have time to wait for them to dry,” said Emily, muttering an excuse rather than admit that she didn’t want to be naked before these curious strangers. Sophia had shown her how to wash clothes on a rock in the stream, but that was when she’d had something else to wear. “I don’t have a change of clothes.”

            “Ohhh,” said Tatiana, smiling archly at Lila, “we have a dress.”

            “We certainly do,” Lila smirked back at her sister.

            “Made as a gift for Lady Rosamond. You know Baron Longsword’s daughter, don‘t you?  Everyone does.”

            Before she could answer, Lila said, “We could give it to you . . . ”

            “. . . to wear,” Tatiana finished, and they both giggled, a trilling, tinkling little laugh.

            Before she knew what was happening, they were beside her, one already rolling down her stockings, the other, unbuckling her shoes.  Together they lifted up her tunic to take it over her head.

            She opened her mouth to protest, but Tatiana prattled. “Don’t worry that Rosamond’s dress won’t fit you.”

            “Tis true, you’re not as delicately built,” said Lila, tittering.

            “We just won’t lace it up as tightly,” gurgled Tatiana as Emily bent forward so they could slip off her tunic.

            Struggling to free her arms, she yanked down the cotton chemise under her tunic that was coming off along with the dress. She was determined to maintain her privacy and was grateful they couldn’t see her scarlet face as they compared her figure to Rosamond’s. However, nothing would do but that she strip down completely bare and, despite their size, they were quite insistent and wouldn’t be denied.

            Reluctantly, she took off her last article of clothing behind a bush, handing Tatiana her chemise, damp with sweat, and protesting that she couldn’t take a gift meant for Rosamond.

            “It would make you look even lovelier,” said the berg woman, holding Emily’s chemise away from her with her fingertips.

            Emily smiled wryly, knowing she could never compete with Rosamond’s fragile beauty.

            “You could be as beautiful as she is, with the proper clothes,” said Lila, dropping Emily’s dirt-stained tunic on the ground, but wiping dust from the calf skin shoes Will had given her and examining them with interest. “I’ve never seen anything like these,” and she handed them to Tatiana who also appraised them. 

            “Besides, nobles should not be the only ones to have the pleasure of wearing lovely things,” said Tatiana, setting the shoes down carefully on a rock.  “You deserve to look lovely and be admired as well.” 

            Emily wanted to look lovely, to wear beautiful clothes like Rosamond’s. The costume she’d worn to the Renaissance Faire was nothing by comparison. But even as she was swayed by their words, she felt there was something that she was forgetting.

            “Never mind,” said Lila, with an airy wave of impatience. “Look at our gowns.”

            “Exquisite, aren’t they?” said Tatiana, twirling around.

            “They mirror the colors of the stream–blues and greens. . .

            “. . .  ripples and sparkles . . .“

            “. . . like light on water.” Lila held out her arms so her sleeves trembled beneath her, imitating the lightest breath of a breeze on water. 

            “We can make you a gown like ours . . . “

            “. . . if you don’t want Rosamond’s.”

            “A river gown . . .”

            “. . . made to look like the river.”  Their twinkling eyes met each other and they laughed again, a sound like water burbling over pebbles.

            She was dying to get into the water, but she couldn’t let their last statement pass.

            “You could never make a gown like yours in the time it takes me to bathe,” she said from behind the bush where she waited to get in. “I’m grateful to you for cleaning my clothes, but . . . .”

            Tatiana smiled condescendingly.

            “Sophia hasn’t told you of our powers, I see.”

            “Too busy with her own powers of weaving . . . ,”

            “. . . and too envious of ours,” finished Lila superciliously.

            “It won’t take us nearly so long as it does her.”

            “Ours is the power of water.”

            “Ever moving. . .”

            “. . . at our command.”

            “Is it cold,” Emily asked, suddenly apprehensive, “or deep?”

            Again the tinkling laughter. 

            “Does it look deep?” said Tatiana, running her delicate bare foot along the white rocks in the shallows. “Still warm from summer.”

            “Yet a little farther out, deep enough to bathe,” assured Lila.

            Emily hesitated. “Do you mind . . . turning around, while I get in?”

             Lila arched her eyebrows and looked as Tatiana, whose little heart shaped face dimpled into a smile. They both tittered but finally did as she asked.

            Casting away her doubts as she had her clothes, Emily sprinted from behind the bush and ran in.  As they had said, the shallow water was warm and inviting, but as she got deeper, it became colder. Behind her, she heard one of the bergfolk say,

            “Don’t worry.  We’ll take care of your garb.”

            “We’ll take care of everything,” trilled the other, then their tinkling laughter blended with the sound of the water in her ears, and she felt they were no longer on the bank behind her.

            Besides being colder, Emily hadn’t considered the force of the current, which was deceptively strong. Immersed in a deep pool, she could no longer touch bottom, and although she was an average swimmer and could tread water, the current kept pulling her, dragging her downstream, swirling around her until finally it sucked her under. She came back up spewing river water out of her nose and mouth. It tasted like fish and mud. Quickly she realized she had to get out, that she was in over her depth, and she started for shore. But the more she swam towards it, the more she kept being pulled downstream and under. She called out to the bergfolk–perhaps they had a rope or something to throw to her, but they were nowhere in sight. How had she been so stupid to put herself in this situation?

            The current tugged at her like an insistent child, taking her farther and farther, pulling her under again and again into the cold, murky depths. Each time she surfaced she gasped for air, struggling to escape the invisible force rushing her towards the bridge pilings. Maybe she could grab hold of one of them and stop being carried downstream, but she still had to get out of the water and the bank was much steeper here. As she went rushing by, she reached out to grab one of the timbers holding up the bridge, clawing desperately for a hand hold, but the piling was covered in slimy moss and she slipped loose. The water roared in her ears.

            “Beware the troll that lives under the bridge,” trilled a berg woman’s lilting voice somewhere.

            They were nearby? Why didn’t they help her? Couldn’t they see she was in trouble? She was getting tired of fighting the water, and its coldness numbed and penetrated her, making her clumsy. She was so tired. That was when the current pulled her under for the last time. Dazed and exhausted, she felt herself sinking towards the bottom and knew she didn’t have the energy to push herself back up. Her last desperate thought was that maybe she could escape the current by swimming underwater.  It just depended on whether her lungs could hold out long enough.        

            The murky, bluish grey water was its own world, quiet as a first-period class on Monday morning. Small brown fish swam around her and she wished she could breathe underwater, like them. Her chest started to burn and fatigue overcame her. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to sleep on the river bottom, if only her chest would stop hurting. She was so cold that she no longer had sensation in her arms or legs and now she sensed, rather than felt, the rocky river bed beneath her. Her mind no longer raced but grew quiet, like the river bottom. 

            But in the darkness (or was it in her head? Was there a difference?) she heard the swish of Sophia’s loom, the threads rubbing gently against each other as the heddles went up and down, up and down. She felt the blueness of Sophia’s gaze and, like gentle hands, something lifted her up; she was buoyed to the top and deposited in a pebbly area where the river was shallow.

             She didn’t know how long she lay there, but she awoke with the single thought that she must find her clothes. But where? Where had the bergfolk taken them? She didn’t care about the river gown anymore. They hadn’t even been there to help her when she had almost drowned in their river. Hadn’t they said they controlled it? Were they somehow responsible for what had happened? Certainly they were the ones who had encouraged her to go in.

            Angrily, she shook the water from her hair and sat up, considering what to do. Looking around, she spied something nearby in a scrubby oak. The tree had grown too close to the river bank and some of its roots had been exposed by erosion. Its scraggly branches hung out precariously over the river and were already dropping a few yellow leaves into the water. Something was up in its branches and she stared, trying to discern what it was. Looking around to make sure no one was there, she stood up, even though she was naked, to get a better look. As she gradually realized what it was, she was filled with dismay: it was her tunic, chemise, and stockings, spread out in the branches as if to dry. Only far from being clean, they were so muddy that the original gray color of the tunic now appeared completely brown, as did the other articles of clothing. And draped over all of it were bits of moss and twigs and strands of briars that grew near the river’s edge. The heads of dead fish protruded from each stocking, their blank eyes glaring at her accusingly. In horror she saw a snake slither from under the fold of her chemise and rest on a branch nearby, its tongue flicking in and out warningly. All the clothes were weighed down with rocks and pebbles from the river bed: inside the tunic, in the toes of the stockings, everywhere. But her  shoes were noticeably absent, nowhere in sight. 

            This, then, was her river gown. 

            Anger welled up inside her, but still she looked around the bank to make sure it was deserted before sprinting to the tree. “I don’t care about your stupid gown,” she muttered, as she disentangled her garb from the branches. Looking to vent her anger, she took the stones out of her stockings and hurled them into the river. The bergfolk had tricked her by appealing to her vanity, her desire for pretty clothes, by telling her she could look like Rosamond. And she’d fallen for it. As she continued to throw rocks into the water she heard their tinkling laughter again.

            By the time she had washed out her clothes and put them back on, it was dusk of her first day in this strange forest, and she reflected that her clothes were sopping wet, she had almost drowned, and she still had no idea how to reach the abyss.  For now, however, she just wanted to put the river and the bergfolk behind her.

            With growing unease at the approaching darkness, she looked for a place to sleep and found a mossy, flat area beneath a large spreading oak, far enough from the river that the water’s sound was only a light murmur. It would have been a good place to sleep if it hadn’t been for something hard littering the ground. Of course, acorns. Squirming uncomfortably in her damp clothes as she pulled the hard nuts out from under her, she wondered why they were falling so early? Were they were edible? Would she be able to find some food tomorrow?

            It never occurred to her that where she lay at that moment might be a dinner table for someone else.