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Astray - Chapter Five

The forest was so thick that the branches woven above their heads turned day into night. The trees were ancient, towering things. Moss and mushrooms grew in the perpetual darkness beneath them. The only light was cast by the shimmering, gossamer form of Queen Bodicea, her nakedness somehow less scandalous here in the deep woods.

"After long deliberation," William whispered as he followed Tamara and the ghostly queen, ducking beneath a thick bough, "I have decided that I do not like wandering the forest. Not at all."

Tamara glanced back at him. Her profile was silhouetted by light from Bodicea's ephemeral illumination and he could see that his sister was irritated.

"Do be quiet, William," she whispered. "We'd do well to remain undiscovered for as long as we can."

He arched an eyebrow even as she turned away. "Oh, yes. The six foot, glowing, ghostly naked woman isn't at all conspicuous." But he spoke those words in a whisper.

The sprite, Serena, darted about the overhanging branches with the caprice of a hummingbird. William was not at all certain that they should trust the creature, but his hesitant words had fallen on deaf ears. Tamara might be more adept at sorcery, and more dedicated to her studies, but William had done his share of studying as well. Or, at the very least, quite a bit of perusing. Enough to know that one did not give one's trust to mischievous and often fierce magical creatures such as wood sprites without making the little nasties earn a bit of confidence first.

That was Tamara, though. She worked on instinct. Thus it was left to William to accompany her, however reluctantly, for there would be no stopping her, that was for certain. Fortunately, her instincts usually turned out to be trustworthy. Usually.

It did not seem possible, but the darkness in the forest seemed to grow even darker. William stepped around a massive tree whose trunk was gnarled and bent like an old woman's fingers and he paused to look upward. Somewhere up there was daylight. The sun was shining, or at the very least in combat with the gray and dreary sky. Yet from here it seemed as though the only thing beyond the canopy of tree branches above was the black of a starless night.

It occurred to him, then, that this was an enchanted forest. Of course it was. He'd been dimly aware of this from the start. Sprites did not fill the trees in every copse in Britain. Ghostly soldiers did not ride every road, at least not with the power and solidity that Wild Edric and his men had shown. Faerie princesses and their ladies-in-waiting did not gallivant about in the dark heart of every forest of Albion.

As the darkness deepened and the blackest of shadows gathered, William began to wonder if they were really in Blackbriar Wood at all, if they had not, perhaps, slipped out of the world and into some corner of Faerie without knowing it. Stories of such misadventures were legion.

Somewhere nearby the underbrush rustled with movement. William glanced about in sudden fright and for a moment the darkness shadowed his eyes. Then he saw, just ahead along the same route they had been following, the spectral glow of Queen Bodicea. With an upward glance he located the rude little sprite who was their guide. With great trepidation and a frightful attention to his surroundings, he hurried after Tamara.

William whispered under his breath and raised his right hand. A silver light glowed at the tips of his fingers, casting shadows that seemed to move of their own volition, skittering away to escape the illumination. But he caught a glimpse of Tamara ahead and heard the crack of a twig beneath her step.

His sister paused and glanced back at him. All the sternness had left her and now there was only concern there.

"Are you all right, Will?" Tamara asked in a hush.

"When we've got ourselves out of this forest, I shall be very fine, thank you," he replied.

Tamara put a hand across her chest, idly, as though she was unaware of the gesture. "It is a bit unnerving, isn't it? I don't like this place, either. Not at all. But it's for the babies, Will. Just keep reminding yourself of that. It's for the children."

He frowned, thinking not only of the human babies that were missing, but also of the poor, wretched changeling children who had not asked to be abandoned with human mothers who would greet them with terror and confusion. William had never been comfortable with normal, human children, and yet the changelings had taken to him. Though they were unnatural things that made his skin crawl, still he was pleased that he had been able to give them some comfort.

Bodicea had moved quite a bit ahead of them and Tamara and William hurried to catch up with her. For a moment William lost sight of the sprite in the trees above, but the beating of her tiny wings left a trail of golden sparks - fairy dust, Will thought - and he spotted her again a moment later.

Bloody pixies. It's the pretty ones you've got to watch out for. I remember that much. There had been no pictures in the volume in which he had read about them, but one thing he did recall was that there were sprites that were hideously ugly, with fangs like those of a savage beast and eyes that burned a feral red. But the beautiful sprites were the ones that were the trickiest and the cruelest.

His eyes tracked Serena as she circled a branch far above and then darted ahead, gliding down so that she was now just ahead. The sprite hovered in the air and a moment later William saw that both Bodicea and Tamara had come to a stop. There were times when the ghosts were more ephemeral than others, times when all that lingered of them was a hint of body, a cool mist in the shape of head, shoulders and upper torso. Sometimes they were so translucent as to be almost invisible.

But William had never seen a ghost look so solid, so alive, as though Queen Bodicea were flesh and blood once again. So full of life did she appear, in fact, that propriety forced William to avert his eyes. He felt foolishly prim, like Lord Nelson, but he was, after all, a gentleman.

"Thank you, Serena," Tamara whispered to the sprite.

"Ye might wish to hold your thanks, pretty witch. Hold �em. I've no use for �em, and mayhap ye shall regret them."

Disturbed by the sprite's words, William forced himself to look up. He saw a trail of her pixie dust streaked across the darkness as though painted upon the air, but even that eerily magnificent sight only held him for a moment. Beyond it was a patch of sheer darkness so black it seemed as though someone had torn a swath out of the fabric of the world. William blinked several times before his eyes could focus and he raised the silver light burning at the tips of his fingers. Only then did he realize that the darkness ahead of them was the tree they had been searching for. It was twenty feet wide at least, and its trunk was knotted with strange whorls and holes. He glanced up and could see only its lower branches; its height was impossible to gauge.

"Well, then," William whispered. "Here we are."

From the shadows of the tree came the muffled sound of babies crying.

Damned faeries, she thought. Sprites were notoriously mischievous but she knew that if one showed them kindness they could also be the staunchest of allies. Apparently, Serena hadn't developed any fondness for her. Not that Tamara could blame the little beast; she had used a stunning spell on her, after all. Still, it was disturbing. They might be able to find their way out of the forest. But, then again, they might not.

She decided against mentioning this to William.

There was something in those woods, a creeping dread that danced along her spine and tickled the back of her neck like shadow fingers. Her stomach felt as though it were filled with ice and she felt the strangest urge to cover herself, as though the salacious gaze of unfriendly eyes was upon her at all times.

Slivers of icy cold touched her shoulder and she turned, gasping for breath she could not seem to draw, only to find it was the ghostly hand of Bodicea that had given her such a painful chill. Tamara frowned. That was impossible, of course. The ghosts cold not touch human beings.

Tamara glanced around, her gaze settling upon that terrible, dark tree. Perhaps here, the rules were different.

She was about to put voice to those thoughts and looked at her brother, but when she saw the alarm etched upon his features she frowned deeply and focused upon the tree again. Something had caught his attention, but what-

And then she heard them. The babies. All the children Wild Edric had sired upon the pretty young girls of Blackbriar, girls still of an age when the image of a brooding warrior come to court them still lingered in their dreaming hearts. But why would Edric have stolen the babies himself, have swapped them with such gruesome, inhuman substitutes?

It was a question for later, after the babies had been returned to the safety of the village, and their mother's arms. Tamara glanced around the forest, listened to the skittering of things in the undergrowth. She felt confident that she and William could protect the children, but not here. Not now. Now, they just had to focus on getting out of there.

"Tam," her brother whispered.

She spun around, attuned to the grave inflection of his voice. William had moved nearer to the tree and just to the left. The silver light that bloomed upon his fingertips cast a shuddery glow upon the bark of the tree. There were folds in the shadowy tree trunk, knots and protrusions that seemed almost to suggest faces. Others seemed like gashes in the bark.

William reached his hand toward one of those shadowy folds and his illuminated fingertips disappeared. Tamara blinked and took several steps nearer, peering more closely until she realized that this was no trick. William had found an oval gap in the tree trunk, several feet from where its roots plunged into the rich, dark earth. This opening was perhaps four feet high and two feet wide. Just large enough for them to slip through.

The wailing of the babies issued from the hole.

She hesitated, her chest constricting and her mouth going dry at the thought of squeezing through that hole, not knowing what might be inside. Images and suspicions flashed through her mind, stories of sinister magic, of the sobbing of infants used to lure unsuspecting fools to horrible death. Her heart beat wildly as she stared at that forbidding door into the core of the tree. Could it be some trap? This was a magical wood. Might the tree be little more than a vicious bit of magic, the babies' cries like the call of the Sirens, drawing young sailors forward to be smashed upon the rocks?

Queen Bodicea drifted nearer to William. She was a full-bodied vapor now, but though Tamara could see the spectre's legs, Bodicea did not walk. Hers was the illusion of life, not the reality. The phantom queen floated beside William, who gazed back at Tamara with a puzzled expression, obviously wondering what was holding her back.

"Shall I enter first, to see what can be seen?" Bodicea asked.

Tamara nodded. "Please." She stared at that gap in the tree. The cries of the babies drew her, but if there was room for the infants in there, she wondered what else might be lurking.

Bodicea reached the tree and her beautifully sculpted, gossamer form began to slide through the bark as though it were made of water. She had barely begun to pass through it when she was forcibly shunted out. The barbarian queen grunted in pain and anger and surprise, and the cloud of ectoplasm that assayed her bodily form seemed to dissipate a moment.

Tamara called her name, worried at what might have become of her, but almost before the word was out of her mouth she saw Bodicea taking form and shape once more. Her solidity was gone and now she seemed only the vaguest presence, head and shoulders. A ghost of a ghost.

"What the hell was that?" William hissed.

"I... I don't know," Bodicea replied. "Some magic to keep me out. Or to keep anything supernatural away from the hollow inside that tree."

"There is a hollow, then?" Tamara ventured.

Bodicea raised an eyebrow. "There must be. Something in there is being protected."

The cries of the babies had lessened to one, lone, sobbing voice, a keening infant wail, and several others that were merely whimpering. They had no choice, now. They would have to enter the hollow tree, without the advance word that Bodicea could have provided.

Even as this thought crossed her mind she saw William glance anxiously around. "No sign of faerie women," he said.

Somehow, Tamara was not comforted by this.

"All right, then. Let's hurry," she said.

For a long moment William looked at her in silent recrimination, as though regretting that he was in front and therefore to be first inside the tree. Then he sighed and placed one knee up on the lip of that gap in the bark, and he crawled in. Tamara followed quickly, before her fear could grip her once more. Even if it had, however, it would only have delayed her. The lone voice of that crying infant would have pulled her onward.

There was soft, spongy moss beneath her hands and knees as she scuttled through that hole, and she imagined all sorts of insects falling upon her, nestling in her hair and the fabric of her dress. It had been cool in the forest, but the moment she entered that gap it grew warm. Even the moss was warm and moist as though what they had entered was not a tree but some strange organ, the black and beating heart of the wood. And a dark heart it was. She felt that very strongly. There was a smell within, like rotting leaves and human waste, brackish water and drying blood.

It was too close around her and it felt as though it was narrowing, as though it would trap her there. Tamara felt suffocated and her heart hammered in her chest. She could not breathe. Could not swallow. Her eyes watered and she pressed her lips tightly together and she thought that she would die there, in the bowels of that tree.

And then she glanced ahead and saw William looking back at her, luminous silver fire flickering from the fingers he held up beside his face to light her way. They had gone only a few feet and already he was inside the hollow core of the tree. In the back of her mind had been thoughts of tunnels into other worlds, a slit in the tree that would become a winding, twisting path to elsewhere.

Instead, she slid easily from the opening as though being born from that gap in the tree, only in reverse. She had thought of the tree as the heart of the forest, of the tunnel as the bowels of the tree, and there was a richness and warmth and dark life to the tree that fed her comparisons to biology. But as she drew herself up beside her brother and glanced around at the interior, at the smooth wood of that massive hollow, she realized it was more a womb than anything else. The space was ten, perhaps twelve feet wide, and high enough that the magical luminescence of William's spell did not reach its height. And there, upon blankets of black and gold and white fur that no human hands had wrought, lay seven human children, perfect infants, each one as different from the others as could be. Some were fair and some dark, some sleeping and some wide-eyed and alert. Some were red-faced with tears, sobbing but exhausted. And at the centre a single babe with wisps of reddish hair screamed with such ferocity that Tamara worried that the child's heart would burst.

Not one of them was more than two months old.

"Oh my God, William. Look at them," Tamara whispered. And now she thought it might be her own heart that burst.

"I... I wondered if it was a trap," he confessed.

She glanced at him. "I thought the same." Then her attention went back to the babies, her gaze drawn to an olive-skinned child with a thick head of hair who was sleeping peacefully, unperturbed by his situation or the screaming of the red-haired girl. Tamara went to the crying babe and lifted the child into her arms. She shushed the red-haired baby and kissed her head and whispered nothing words of comfort and the little girl's chest hitched, her eyes blinking curiously. The baby sighed, whimpered twice, and then her eyes fluttered closed and she rested her head against Tamara's chest.

"Quickly," she said to William. "We must get them back to Blackbriar. To Doctor Nichols' home. From there we'll have to figure out how to protect them."

But William was staring down at the babies arrayed upon those strange, delicate furs. He shook his head. "How? How do we get them all back, Tam? We haven't thought this through, have we? We can't very well carry seven babies, just the two of us."

"We'll translocate," she said, holding the red-haired baby against her breast with her left hand and stooping to lift a second child with her right. When William didn't reply she turned to find him staring at her.

"Can we do that?" he asked. He crouched and looked sweetly down at the dark-haired, sleeping child. "We've never tried to bring someone else along with a translocation spell. How do we know it can-"

Tamara sighed. "You really must study more. It can be done. There are risks, but it can be done."

William still hesitated. He gestured around at the tree. "Bodicea couldn't get inside. This whole forest... I know you can feel it. There's more magic here than you and I will muster in our entire lives. How do we know it's safe for the babies?"

She trembled, her stomach lurching. But she held those two babies against her, their skin warm upon hers, tiny hearts beating within them, and she knew they had to try.

"We don't know. But we can be certain they aren't safe here."

For a long moment he only stared at her, and then William nodded. "All right. But with what Bodicea said about spells on the tree, wards or whatever, I think we must at least be cautious. We shouldn't try to translocate from here. Let's take the babies outside, and then we'll begin."

The idea of crawling back and forth, in and out through that hole in the tree was not at all pleasant, but Tamara knew there was nothing to be done about it. William was right. They had to get the babies home. Now there was no hesitation in her. The decision made, her priority was getting it over and done with as quickly as possible. She went to the opening that would take them outside again and pushed her upper body inside, cradling both babies against her, elbows propped upon the spongy moss. Carefully she inched through that opening. Behind her she heard a low, snuffling sob from one of the other babies as William began to follow.

Again the passage through the tree seemed warm and damp and again it seemed ready to close in around her, to suffocate her. But Tamara had those children in her care and she did not allow fear to slow her down. She kept her eyes forward and she could see the phosphorescent glow given off by Bodicea's presence. A moment later she had reached the outer bark, the gnarled lip that ran around that hole in the tree. She would have to take the utmost care, but she knew she could lower the babies to the forest floor first, then slip out herself.

Tamara pushed herself to the edge of that hole, dragging her body along. Then she could see beyond the tree, into the woods around it. Bodicea waited for her, still little more than an echo of her usual presence.

And she was not alone.

They slipped from the trees, some dropping from the branches and others simply striding into the flickering ghostlight of Bodicea's presence. Yet they had a light of their own, a cascading, golden sparkle that shimmered in their wake as they moved, not unlike the pixie dust that sprayed off a sprite's wings.

There were six of them, all told, each more beautiful and terrible than the last. Their eyes were forest green and their bodies lithe and elegant. Unearthly flowers were twined in their hair and their gowns were woven of some fabric more delicate than spiders' webs. The sight of them made Tamara catch her breath, and then one-the tallest and most regal among them, who wore a red-bladed sword at her side-stepped forward and the others inclined their heads in respect for her.

"You come without invitation, sorceress," said the Faerie princess, and her eyes narrowed to slits, fingers stroking the hilt of that crimson-bladed sword. "As a thief, you come to steal my children.

"Let me show you how my kin deal with thieves."