The High Forest
When Catrianne had explained to the curé what her intentions were, the rumor soon went around that she and the children were going to leave again in order to go further into the highlands, but the local crones, always ready to misinterpret circumstances, settled on the assumption that she was going to look for her father.
“If you find him,” more than one of them said, “bring him back.” One added: “The village needs him. Without the foundry, it will die. With the forest all round us, we can’t grow our own food, and what we can forage there won’t nourish the children that the plague has left. Our men can’t even become woodcutters and charcoal-burners without the foundry to buy their produce—we’re too far away from the markets.”
Surprised by the hope they seemed to be investing in her—even more desperate than her own, it seemed—she was carefully not to snuff it out entirely by telling them that she had no intention even of looking for her father. And after all, why should she not enquire after him, as they went along the road, in case he actually had gone that way?”
Honesty, however, compelled her to say. “I fear that our chances finding him are slim. Even if we do, I don’t know whether we’ll be able to persuade him to come back.”
“We understand that,” the crones admitted, “but we’ll pray that meeting his grandchildren for the first time will persuade him that it’s better by far to live as a human than to run wild like a bear or a wolf.”
“Will he not have become a werewolf, if he has been away too long?” asked one of the more superstitious, when a group intercepted Chatrianne outside the baker’s shop one morning.
“No,” said another. “That’s not how werewolves are made. But there’s a story, is there not, about a boy abandoned in the woods who was raised by wolves, and eventually became their king….”
“No, said a third, “it was a girl-child, adopted by a she-bear, who became the wife of one of her foster-brothers, and became the queen of the bear tribe. She called upon their aid to reclaim her inheritance, and they wreaked a terrible vengeance on her behalf.
“I doubt that my father can be living among wolves or bears,” Catrianne told them, “but I know of men who, becoming disenchanted with their lives when they took stock in middle age, retired to remote mountain hamlets in order to study the stars and live in peace. I know of a hamlet high in the mountains….”
“The one where your brother found his wife?” asked one.
“Yes,” said Catrianne. “You remember that, then?”
“I remember,” said one of the old women, proudly. “He was delivering a musical instrument of an unknown kind, which a wizard had commissioned him to make.”
“I remember it too,” said another, “but it was a witch, not a wizard, and the witch gave him her daughter in return….” That one fell silent, however, as she glimpsed Catrianne’s expression, and realized that further fanciful allegations about Lucinia’s suspected ancestry might not be welcome.
“You’re right, though, Mamzelle,” supplied the old woman who had been her first informant, on the morning after her arrival. “We should have thought of that. Your brother called to see his father on the way out and the way back, a week later, with the mountain girl on the rump of his horse. He must have told him about the hamlet, and what he found there. That might be where his father went. You others, let’s pray that Mamzelle finds him there, and brings him back. He’ll come, I’m sure, once he sees those two children, and realizes that he’s their sole support.”
“By all means pray,” said Catrianne, with a slight sigh, and went on her way, without bothering to remind them that the foundry no longer belonged to her father, and that even if she were, by some miracle, able to find him and bring him back, he would not simply be able to pick up where he had left off.”
At least, however, the inhabitants of the village seemed to be wishing her well, and were not holding the bad blood that her father had engendered against her and the children. All the old crones, in fact, seemed taken with the children, especially Handsel, whom they thought an exceptionally handsome boy.
“The villagers seem to think that we’re going in search of my grandfather,” Handsel told her, the day before they were due to set off again, having made what preparations they could.
“I never told them that,” Catrianne assured him, “but I’ve let them believe it. In any case, we don’t really know exactly what we’re looking for, or exactly what we might find when we reach the hamlet. They can’t help making up stories, and being desperate in the search for hope. They’ve lived through the plague, as we have, and have lost loved ones to it.”
“I think I would rather find my grandmother than my grandfather,” the boy confessed.
“She lives in the forest,” Chanterelle put in. “We need to live in the forest. She lives near the secret place, and she can read the dream. If we can find her…” But she trailed off then, perhaps conscious of the magnitude of that if.
But it’s necessary that we find something, Catrianne thought. If we come back alone and empty-handed, utterly devoid of resources, it will not matter that the hopes they invested in us were absurd; they will still have been dashed, and their charity will not extend far in that circumstance. We might be reduced, as some of them already seem to be, to foraging in the forest for food.
When she gave that matter further thought, however, she wondered if it might not be better, if that were to be the case, to remain in the highest part of the forest, where there was evidently a living to be made by foraging, if Lucinia’s people really had lived by that means. She had asked Chanterelle for further details of the stories her mother had told her about Alastor’s adventure in Melusine’s hut, and although the details that the little girl had been able to give her were obviously confused, and very vague, she had certainly formed the impression that the mountain folk got by, albeit frugally, without the assistance of agriculture, and with very limited livestock.
Even if Melusine is dead, she thought, her hut might still be there, inhabited by some relative who might recognize Handsel and Chanterelle as kin. Even her supposedly evil sister might do that, and might not be as evil as Lucinia reckoned, on the basis of a family quarrel. I know from my childhood experience that the forest is full of food, at this time of year, for those bold enough to risk its hazards. There are nuts, and berries, and mushrooms, which I know how to select in order to avoid poisons.
As they were leaving, she called in at the church to see the curé one last time, in order to seek his blessing, for what it might be worth. He gave it willingly.
“Commend yourself to the charity of Heaven, my daughter,” he said to them. “I am sure that Heaven will not let you down, if you have virtue enough to match your courage. There is a story about a boy named Handsel, as I recall, and his little sister, which ended happily enough—not that I, a priest, can approve of the pagan taint which such stories invariably have. In the final analysis, there is only one true story, and it is the story of our savior.”
“That isn’t so, sir,” said Chanterelle. “There are other true stories.”
“You misunderstand me, child,” said the priest. “Yes, there are other stories that are true in a trivial sense—but they are trivial. The story of our salvation is the only truly important one.”
Catrianne tried to give Chanterelle a surreptitious warning glance, but the little girl was not looking at her.
Fortunately, Chanterelle did not press the point. It was not until they were out on the road again, and out of earshot of the little church that she said to Catrianne. “It’s not the only important one to me—or to Handsel and you.”
“No,” said Catrianne, “it’s not. But the priest has his own concerns, and he’s a good man. He’s the only one here who has offered us real help, and the only one to whom we’ll be able to turn if we have to come back. And he might be right about the charity of Heaven, given that all the hymns that you and your mother used to sing must have been heard there, and appreciated. You really ought to sing again, you know. I can still accompany you on the flute I have in my pack.”
“Not now,” said Chanterelle. “Not here. Not yet.”
Catrianne took the final component of the triplet as a sign of encouragement.
Some of the villagers waved goodbye to them as they left the clearing and went into the forest, and Catrianne saluted them, if only to say goodbye.
They had no alternative but to do a certain amount of foraging once they were in the high forest, having taken the fork in the road that led up into the mountain rather than the one that led down toward the plain, because inns were far fewer and further between there that they had been to the east of the village. It was not a route that many people traveled on foot, and those who did generally carried more abundantly-stocked knapsacks than Catrianne and the children were able to do. They routinely moved away from the road, therefore, in order to search for nuts and berries, which were not impossible to find, but not easy either. Trees bearing edible nuts were in a small minority, and although numerous brambles bore ripening berries, they were equipped with ferocious thorns that snagged their clothing and left bloody trails on their hands and arms. Such excursions slowed their progress along the road considerably.
It quickly became obvious, however, that Chanterelle had a natural gift for insinuating herself through the densest undergrowth without mishap, and learned with remarkable rapidity to avoid scratches while picking berries.
There were mushrooms too, but at first the two children were wary of collecting them—even the ones that Catrianne identified as chanterelles. She assured them that they were tasty as well as safe to eat, but they were still hesitant.
“Some mushrooms are poisonous,” Handsel said, dubiously. “There are some called death-caps and destroying angels, and I don’t know how to tell them apart from the ones that are safe to eat. I heard a story once, which said that some of fae-folk love to squat on the heads of mushrooms, and that although those that the good fays use remain perfectly safe to eat, those favored by goblins become coated with an invisible poisonous slime, so that even ones that seem safe can still be dangerous.”
“I can recognize most of those that are safe to eat,” Catrianne assured him, “and I think the story about the fae-folk is just a fantasy intended to warn children to be careful.”
Chanterelle agreed with her that the story was probably fantastic, but she agreed with Handsel that it might be best to avoid eating mushrooms for the time being.
“As you wish,” sad Chatrianne, “but I’ll save some for us anyway, for when you’re hungrier.”
In the event, that did not take long. The bread they had brought from the village only lasted two days, and they soon had no money left to renew the supply on the rare opportunities that presented themselves. Their progress was painfully slow, especially when they left the branch of the main road to follow steeper and more rugged paths, which no cart could follow, and where all goods had to be carried by sure-footed beasts of burden. The further up the mountain they went, the harder the going became, but they were still several leagues short of the hamlet that was their ultimate objective.
Chatrianne did make enquiries about Ernand at a few inns along the way, where she found people who knew the iron-master’s name, and even what he looked like, but none had seen him, and several assured her that he could not have passed that way without their knowing.
“You’ve taken the wrong fork,” two of them advised her. “It was necessary to go down to the plain.” One of them, however, was conscientious enough to add: “Of course, you wouldn’t have any chance of finding him in that vast region, filled with people. If he had come this way, at least you’d have had a chance of picking up his trail.”
Chatrianne also asked about a woman named Melusine, but no one had heard of her, although they had heard of a fay by that name featured in an ancient tale of a man whose wife forbade him every to look at her on a certain day of the week, but was eventually conquered by curiosity and saw something terrible through the keyhole of her apartment. Some versions of the story did not specify what he saw, other alleged that the fay-wife was a giant serpent from the waist down, or even the neck down, having been interrupted part way through a periodic metamorphosis.”
“That was a very long time ago,” of course, one of her informants—an old woman, inevitably—told her, unnecessarily, “so the woman for whom you’re enquiring must simply have been named after the fay. Always an unwise thing to do, to give a child a fay’s name, especially in these parts.”
“Why in these parts, especially?” Catrianne could not help enquiring.
“Oh, the fae-folk are still active here,” she was told, “and malevolent too. Best to avoid catching their attention, even by something as trivial as borrowing a name. What’s your little girl’s name?”
“Chanterelle,” said Catrianne.
The old woman squinted at the child. “Never heard of a fay called Chanterelle,” she admitted. “Never head of a girl called after a mushroom either, mind—but at least you didn’t call her Amanita.” The woman made the sign of the cross.
“Amanita?” Catrianne queried.
“Shh!” said the woman. “Once is enough.”
“I don’t understand,” Catrianne confessed.
“Poisonous mushroom,” the woman muttered, sententiously, as if citing a proverb, “poisonous fay.”
“You’ve heard of a fay of that name?”
“Who hasn’t?” was the reply she received—although, in fact, Catrianne had only heard Melusine’s sister referred to as a witch…but she supposed that the categories inevitably overlapped somewhat in popular understanding and parlance.
The revelation gave her some pause for thought. If people in these parts thought it dangerous to name children after fays, then who would have called two daughters Melusine and Amanita? But she remembered that Lucinia’s family had been immigrants from elsewhere, quite probably regarded with suspicion and a degree of hostility simply by virtue of that fact. Perhaps names traditional to their culture had been adopted by the natives as the name of imaginary fays—or perhaps the incomers had adopted the names of the fays of local folklore, as a gesture of defiance or a way of implying that they had special abilities…such as fortune-telling.
The three travelers went on, slowly but inexorably, toward their goal. The children soon became hungry enough to overcome their caution and eat the mushrooms that Catrianne had saved for them, and further ones that she picked on their behalf. They did not eat well, but they did not starve, and they found mountain streams easily enough in which the water seemed clean and not in the least brackish.
The wild forest was not consistent in its nature. Although the lower slopes were hospitable to nut-trees and edible berries, those food-supplies became increasingly sparse as Catrianne and the two children went higher and higher. Their fifth day of foraging took them into a region where many of the trees seemed to be dressed in dark, needle-like leaves and there seemed to be almost nothing to eat except for mushrooms and plants that Catrianne did not recognize, because they were rare or non-existent in the area around the foundry.
It was rare by then, even alongside the path, to find the slightest sign of human habitation, and they all began to wonder whether they had not made a mistake in being so ambitious in their quest. Although the distance between the foundry and the hamlet had not looked much further than the distance between the foundry and the town on the map that Catrianne had consulted, the map had not allowed for changes in altitude, and had caused Catrianne to underestimate the effects of the lateral winding of the path. Measured pace by pace, the distance was considerably further, and the terrain much more difficult.
“Well,” said Catrianne, as they settled down to spend yet another night in the forest, bedded down on a mattress of leaf-litter, “I suppose Heaven must be on our side, else we’d have been eaten by wolves or bears before now. If we’re to eat at all tomorrow we must trust our luck to guide us to the most nourishing mushrooms and keep us safe from the worst.”
“I suppose so,” said Handsel, who seemed to have looking closely at all the mushrooms they had passed since leaving the path in search of the means to make a evening meal, perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of a fay at rest. He had evidently seen none as yet, but that did not seem to make him any more cheerful as they settled down to a frugal repast consisting almost entirely of mushrooms and a few meager nuts, washed down with water from a spring.
“The undergrowth is becoming much thicker hereabouts,” Chanterelle pointed out. “There must be many more edible plants than there were in the region through which we’ve just passed.”
“It’s a mixed blessing,” Catrianne said, with a sigh. It makes foraging much more wearisome—at least for Handsel and me. I don’t know how you insinuate yourself through the densest tangles with such agility.”
“I’m thin,” said the little girl, dismissively.
“I’m not much more than a walking skeleton myself,” Chatrianne muttered.
They found it difficult to sleep, and tried for a little while to comfort one another by telling old, familiar stories—but they found the tales comfortless and they slept badly. The mushrooms with which they continued to take the edge off their hunger did not seem to cause their stomachs any considerable upset; but when they fell asleep, they all dreamed, and they all dreamed strangely—strangely enough to want to share the dreams with their companions when they woke up in the morning.
Chanterelle told Catrianne and Handsel that she had dreamed that an old man was chasing her through the forest, determined to make her sing again no matter what the cost. That made Chatrianne shudder, even though she had no reason to think that Chanterelle knew the end of the story about the man who knew the secret of making nightingales sing by day and had eventually applied the method to his ward.
“He didn’t catch you, though?” Catrianne said.
“No, he didn’t,” Chanterelle replied. “Usually, nightmares in which I’m being chased wake me up, but this one didn’t.”
“What happened, then?” asked Handsel.
“Just as the old man was about to catch me,” she told them “a she-wolf jumped on his back and knocked him down—and then set about devouring him while I looked on.”
“That must have been horrible,” Catrianne observed.
“No, it wasn’t. It didn’t upset me at all. I just watched, and my heart stopped hammering, slowing down to its normal pace, as the fear I’d felt ebbed away. When the wolf had finished with the bloody mess that had been the old man, she looked at me, and said: ‘You needn’t be afraid. Broceliande is still alive here, and has no intention of dying. The dream will protect you, if it can, but you might have to change, in order to sing again.’
“I knew then that although I was dreaming, I was also part of the dream—the dream of the forest—and I knew that we were getting close to where we had to go.
“‘Are you Melusine?’ I asked the she-wolf. The she-wolf said no, but that she had known Melusine for a long time, and that there would be others looking out for us.
“‘You are one of the fae-folk though, aren’t you?’ I asked her.
“‘I was,’ she said, ‘but the dream is changing. The fae-folk aren’t what they were. The forest is dying, but death isn’t complete, for Broceliande any more than it is for a single tree. Just as the tree can produce seeds, which can give birth to new trees, Broceliande might be able to produce dream-seeds, which can give birth to new dreams. Not all seeds grow, though, and there are predators of dreams, just as there are predators of seeds. Be wary, Chanterelle. Be ready to run, if you have to—leave Catrianne and Handsel behind, if you must.’
“That wasn’t all, but I can’t remember the rest. That was the message, what the dream wanted to tell me. What did it tell you?”
“It wasn’t really a message, Chanterelle,” said Catrianne, a trifle uneasily. “It was just a dream.”
“No,” said Chanterelle. “If it had only been a dream, the she-wolf wouldn’t have spoken to me in the secret language. But perhaps you didn’t have true dreams, because you don’t know the secret language, do you?”
At a loss to know what to say, Catrianne said nothing, for the moment.
“I dreamed about a wolf too,” said Handsel, “but I don’t know whether it was a she-wolf. I thought it was a werewolf, though, and I was afraid when I saw it creeping up on me, in case it bit me and I became a werewolf too. It seemed to know that I’d thought that—which isn’t really surprising, I suppose, as it was in my dream and in my head, where thoughts can’t really be private. It spoke to me, like your wolf, but in ordinary language.
‘You shouldn’t be afraid,’ it said to me. ‘There’s really no need. It’s not so bad, being a werewolf, because your grandfather was wrong to think he’d find the dubious solace of unconsciousness in the world of bears and wolves. If you decide to become a werecreature, you’ll be more conscious than before. You don’t have to be bitten, either. All you have to do is choose the right dream.’
“I’ve heard too many stories, though, in which wolves are deceivers, trying to lure innocents into traps. They’re not as cunning as foxes, it’s said but I was still wary. I didn’t want to let the wolf know that I didn’t trust it, though, so I nodded my head slowly, as if I were promising to think about it. I think it knew what I was really thinking, through, because it barked in an odd fashion, that might have been a kind of laugh, before it sidled away.
“Then the forest grew very dark, but I could see a light in the distance: a pale white light. I wanted to go toward it, to see what it was, but I realized then that I was on my own, and I thought that I ought not to go without you. I thought you had to be nearby, and that the only reason I couldn’t see you as because it was dark, so I began searching with my hands, but I couldn’t find you. I think I searched for a long time, and when I looked again, the white light had gone.
“I remember thinking that I wished that I were more conscious, as the wolf had promised that I might be, if I weren’t stuck so obstinately in my human form, but I didn’t want to let go of who and what I am, because…well, because it’s who and what I am. And some time after that, I woke up, with that thought still buzzing in my head, as if it were important. But you’re right, Aunt Cat—it was just a dream. It doesn’t really mean anything, does it?
“Probably not,” said Catrianne, uncertainly.
“But what did you dream Aunt Cat?” asked Chanterelle, swiftly. “You did dream, didn’t you? Did you see a wolf too?”
“No,” said Catrianne. “I….” She stopped.
“You need to tell us, Aunt Cat,” said Chanterelle, seriously. “Even if they are just dreams, that doesn’t mean that they don’t mean anything. If this part of the forest really is still dreaming, in the way that the whole forest used to do…well, dreams might be more important here than what happens while we’re awake.”
Catrianne shrugged her shoulders. “All right,” she said. “I dreamed about the kithara. But that’s not really surprising, is it?”
“The kithara?” repeated Handsel, puzzled.
“The musical instrument that your father came up here to deliver. I was the first person to play it—really play music on it, that is, rather than just plucking the strings one by one to see whether they were in tune, and sampling chords to check that they rang true. At first, obviously, it was strange, and I had no idea how to get a tune out of it, but I soon figured at out.
“My dream started out with remembering that—I remembered picking up the instrument, and cradling it, then getting the feel of it. But when I first played it, more than thirteen years ago, I picked out a tune that I knew, something that I’d played on other, simpler lyres. In my dream last night I played different music—music I’d never hard before.”
“Music written on trees?” asked Chanterelle.
“No, it wasn’t written anywhere. I was making it up as I went…except that I wasn’t, really. It was…as if it were already in the kithara, and I was only bringing it out. And there was an accompaniment, but I honestly don’t know whether the other instrument, or voice, was a flute of some kind, or birds, or even a human voice modulated like birdsong or the notes of a flute. I couldn’t see anyone, or anything. I was still in the forest, I think, but I couldn’t see any trees: just mist. Silvery mist…like a cloud, or….”
“Or what,” Handsel prompted.
“I don’t know. Like…gaseous music, or like disorganized matter, not even gaseous, but ethereal, but somehow possessed, not of life, but of rhythm, perhaps even melody. In fact, I had the sensation that perhaps I was part of the music I was playing, that my body was only a kind of phantom, a visual appearance…but that doesn’t make sense, because I was certainly solid enough to hold the kithara, and to play it.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” said Chanterelle, quietly.
“About what?” Handel asked.
“About the music, the song of the dream.”
“There was singing in your dream too?”
“No, no, not this time…not yet…not singing in the dream, the song of the dream.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Handsel complained.”
“Nor do I,” whispered Chanterelle—but Catrianne was deeply impressed by the strange expression on the little girl’s face: an expression of fervent concentration, as if she were trying with al the might of her immature, eleven-year-old mind, to understand something still beyond it, not because she was too young, but because she had not found the exotic direction in which her imagination and her reason needed to go, in order to reach that understanding.
“Too many mushrooms,” opined Catrianne. “I suppose we should be grateful that they didn’t make us sick, or give us indigestion, but they must be giving us strange dreams.”
“Yes,” Handsel agreed. “But there’s nothing much else to eat hereabouts, is there?”