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Chapter Seventeen Something was troubling RiffRaff. Since entering Albion with Ailyth and Granfer, he’d seen the jigsaw of his life spread before him and, as he’d suspected, there were pieces missing. He’d first realised this when Ailyth had spoken to him about her childhood, and asked him what he could remember, and it had hurt him to realise that there was so little before his time with her that he could actually recall. Well, now there might be some answers. Stepping carefully through the undergrowth, he waited for a feeling of familiarity to hit him. He was, after all, a talking rat. Most rats (and he knew this much) couldn’t speak to humans. That made him enchanted and, if he was an enchanted creature, surely Albion must be his home.
There was nothing he recognised.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with Ailyth. He’d grown terribly fond of the girl, from the moment she had stopped Matthew from running him through with his sword, and there was no question of ever leaving her. Wherever she went, he would follow until it was time for him to close his eyes and cross the rainbow bridge into the afterlife. His place would always be with her. But oh, to know something about his past! To understand himself just a little better; was there really any harm in that?
Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw a flash of black dart alongside him and he realised instinctively that the other creature was a rat. Jumping quickly after it, he ran until he thought his lungs would burst, shouting all the time for it to stop.
Twisting his body, he managed to slide across the mud and cut the other rat off in its tracks. Immediately it hunched its body up and bared its sharp orange teeth, and RiffRaff lay submissively on the ground, his ears flat against his head.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said breathlessly. “I just wanted to ask; do you know me?”
The other rat, far smaller and more delicate than RiffRaff, eyed him suspiciously before pressing its nose up against his and jabbering away contentedly in a series of high-pitched squeaks.
“Aha,” RiffRaff said, listening to his new companion as it gestured wildly with muddy pink paws and emitted a sound similar to a chuckle. “Yes, I see. You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?”
The other rat merely continued gabbling happily to its strange new friend, and RiffRaff waved a paw in front of it to get its attention. Distracted by the movement, the other rat grabbed his paw and gave it a thorough inspection, looking to see whether mayhaps it contained any food. When it saw RiffRaff had nothing edible with him, it made a clicking sound of disgust and bounded away.
No one, it appeared, recognised RiffRaff. As he made his way to the grove of trees, he called from time to time to the other creatures surrounding him, asking them all if they knew who he was. Each reply was almost the same: “No, you’re a stranger to me,” or “you look like any other talking rat, as far as I’m concerned.” No-one could tell him where his family was, or where he had come from.
Even the grove of trees was foreign to him. He felt no connection to the sacred place which, he felt sure, he should have, for every creature seemed to visit it at least once a day. Making his way to the oak that towered above all others, he felt dejected, knowing that there were no answers here for him.
No, he would go back to the foxgloves, and Ailyth would fuss over him. She was all he really needed; a good friend who looked after him. Who cared about Albion anyway?
He was just about to leave when wooden hands scooped him up, and lifted him so quickly into the air that his body was flattened by the force.
“You think that no-one remembers you, little rat,” a rumbling voice said, and RiffRaff was looking into the leafy face of the Green Man.. “Well, I know you.”
His eyes bore into the little rat’s and, as he breathed a fresh morning mist over the animal, RiffRaff began to remember.
*** Lying back in Tristran’s comforting arms, Ailyth knew that there was no greater bliss on earth than being with the one you loved. He was alive! Gazing up into his deep summer eyes, Ailyth had to pinch herself until she bruised before she could believe that it was real and, even then, she couldn’t stop herself from touching his face from time to time, just to make sure that it wasn’t an illusion, or a dream. She had dreamed so many times that he was back with her, and now that he was she didn’t dare breathe in case, somehow, that made him go away again.
“Is it you?” she asked, for the hundredth time since she saw him standing in welcome at Morgan’s door. “Can it really be you?”
“It is, my love,” Tristran replied, his grin as wide as Ailyth’s. “It’s really me.”
The sound of his voice! She had imagined it constantly since he’d died, or been told he’d died for, now that she was here with him she knew that it had all been lies. Tristran wasn’t dead. He’d never been dead. He’d been in Albion this whole time.
“Why did you leave me?”
Her question wasn’t angry, as the joy she felt as he gently smooth her hair meant that there was no room for bitterness. Just as she would have forgiven him about the whole ‘Meg’ business if it would have brought him back, she was now prepared to forgive him for leaving her for so long, provided he never left her again. But there were questions, a thousand questions to ask, and she needed some reassurance in his answer.
“I didn’t want to leave you,” his voice said, drifting on the serene breeze. “But I had to be punished for what we did...”
“What we did?”
“The White Hart. I drove it into the marshes. Remember?”
“Oh.” There was a deer, Ailyth could see it in the distant recesses of her mind, but that was so long ago. So long ago. What did it matter now?
“I was banished here, to be parted from you as part of my punishment, and it’s been the harshest punishment to bear,” he whispered. “I’ve been waiting for you to come and find me for over eight years.”
Ailyth’s laugh had filled the clearing outside Morgan’s house. “Eight years!” she repeated. “Don’t be silly, Tristran, it’s only been four months since I last saw you.”
“Four months for you,” he replied. “But every hour in the mortal world is a month in this part of Albion. Not everywhere,” he stressed. “But here, time passes so quickly. You don’t know how often I’ve fretted that I’d be an old man by the time you got here.”
“But you knew I’d find you?”
“Oh yes,” Tristran sighed, holding her closer to him. “I always knew you’d find me.”
And that was all that mattered, that they had found each other, and Ailyth knew that there was no way they’d ever be parted again. As Tristran stroked her hair until she began to doze, she couldn’t think how she’d ever managed to survive without him.
“You won’t leave me again, will you?” she asked.
Tristran shook her head, and kissed her on her forehead. “I’ll never leave you again,” he said.
They slept in each others arms, just happy to be together, but Ailyth kept waking up to check that he hadn’t gone. He was always there, smiling in his sleep, and happiness pulsed through her veins.
“What have you been doing since I went?” he asked her during the night, when they both woke up together.
Ailyth couldn’t say, at first. She had been doing something, she knew that she had. Something important. She had been on a quest for something very important.
One glance into his eyes reminded her, and she smiled sleepily at him. “Looking for you,” she said, and realised she was right, for could there be anything in the world more important than that?
Morgan was sitting by Ailyth’s side when she woke up, the following morning and, in a panic, Ailyth realised that Tristran had gone. She sat bolt upright, her heart hammering, until Morgan put out a hand to calm her down.
“It’s all right,” she said. “He’s just gone for a swim. He’ll be back soon.”
Soothed, Ailyth relaxed a little into the grass. Morgan tenderly brushed a hair away from her cheek.
“Happy?” she asked.
Ailyth beamed at her. “Very happy,” she confirmed. “I didn’t think I’d ever see him again, and now...now it’s like all of my dreams have come true.”
“I’m glad. He’s missed you so much.”
“I know.” She pulled herself to her feet and walked towards the faey. “Mother,” she said cautiously, the words sounding strange to her. “I wanted to ask you, while we’re alone...why did you abandon me?”
“Abandon you?” Morgan smoothed the skin on Ailyth’s cheek. “What makes you think I abandoned you?”
“I grew up in the world of man, I had no idea that I was a changeling. Why didn’t you raise me here, with you?”
“Were you unhappy, child?”
She thought for a moment. “Yes, sometimes,” she said. “I always felt like the odd one out, that my parents didn’t want me. Now I know why. Didn’t you love me enough to keep me?”
“Of course I loved you, very much,” Morgan said softly. “You were stolen from me, Ailyth. The other faeries didn’t want a halfling growing up here. They thought it was wrong, and that your father might come looking for you and do us harm.” She closed her eyes, as though in pain. “Whilst I slept, a faey woman stole you from your cradle and took you away, and when I found out they wouldn’t tell me where you were. I searched hard for you, but...when I found you, the men at the Manor house had hung charms around your bed, and had employed that same faey who took you as a nursemaid, and I couldn’t get near you.”
Ailyth’s eyes widened at this news. “Heloise” she questioned.
Morgan nodded. “Grethel, as she’s known here,” she said. “By the goddess, I hate that creature, as I hate mankind for destroying our land and not letting me take you back.”
Tears squeezed from her eyes, and Ailyth gripped her in a tight hug. “Don’t cry, mother,” she whispered. “I’m back now. I’m home.”
Grethel. Heloise. Somehow she knew that her nursemaid had been a faey, but she’d been kind to her. Of course, that was to stop her being suspicious, to lull her into a false sense of security and stop her from asking questions. The fiend!
“If she ever comes back here, I’ll kill her,” Ailyth growled, with an unaccustomed fury. “How dare she take me from you.”
Morgan smoothed Ailyth’s forehead, and her anger dissolved. “She’ll never come here,” she said. “But now, mayhaps, you’ll understand why it is that so many of us hate mankind. They steal our land, and our children, and fool us into thinking that working for them is a great honour.”
The halfling child nodded. “I hate them too,” she murmured. But not Tristran.”
“Oh no,” Morgan hastily agreed. “Tristran is different. He is good.”
Ailyth smiled at the thought of him swimming in the cool waters, knowing that he was so close and she could see him whenever she wanted. “He hasn’t aged at all in all of the time he’s been here,” she said.
“Of course not,” Morgan said. “He’s eaten an apple from the golden tree. He’ll be young and handsome forever.”
A thought occurred to Ailyth, and she grew flustered and excited as she brought it up to Morgan. “Mayhaps,” she said, “I could eat the apple too, now. Then we would both stay young together.”
“A good idea!” Morgan said, clapping her hands together. Then she paused. “Of course, you do know that if you were to do that, you would never be able to leave this place,” she said thoughtfully.
Ailyth stared at her. Albion was beautiful and magical and Tristran was there, and her true mother. Why would she want to leave? To go back to the evil world of man? That was madness.
“I don’t care,” she said. “I want to stay here. There’s nothing for me in man’s world.”
The golden tree wasn’t difficult to find, and Ailyth’s feet seemed to pick out the path without her even trying. Before she knew it, the tree was sparkling in front of her, resplendent in bright gold.
“Have a care,” a lazy voice drawled as she reached up to pluck an apple, and a serpentine dragon slithered out from underneath the roots. “They aren’t for just anyone, you know.”
“But...” Ailyth protested, although she was soon silenced by a flicker of the dragon’s sharp tongue.
“Answer me question, and get your prize,” it said, fixing her with its red eyes. “Fail, and walk away with empty hands.”
Morgan hadn’t had to bother herself with silly riddles, Ailyth thought, but then, she had lived in Albion her whole life. The dragon had probably asked her the riddle long ago.
“All right,” she said.
The dragon slid towards her and reared up to her face, the smells of burnt meat blasting in Ailyth’s face. “What is greater than your god, more evil than the devil? Poor people have it, the rich want it and if you eat it, you’ll die.”
A small explosion went off in Ailyth’s head, and she asked him to repeat the words again. With a sly smile, the dragon refused.
“Nothing,” a small voice called out, as Ailyth’s face contorted with confusion. “Nothing is more powerful than God, nothing more evil than the devil. Poor people have nothing, rich people want nothing and if you eat nothing, you’ll die.”
Ailyth turned to see who had answered for her, and saw a small rat lying under a clump of foxgloves.
“Very good,” the dragon said. “You may take an apple. But you,” he said, pointing a scaled finger at Ailyth, “get nothing.”
Ailyth turned to the rat as the dragon retreated back into its lair. “Why did you do that?” she asked, walking towards it.
“You didn’t want that apple,” he replied.
“Yes, I did,” she insisted, sitting on the grass next to it. She gave a dramatic sigh. “Never mind,” she said, “I’ll try again later.”
RiffRaff stared up at her. “Where’ve you been?” he asked.
For the first time, Ailyth noticed that the rat could talk. It didn’t particularly surprise her, considering where she was, but it was a novelty nonetheless. “I’ve been over there,” she said, humouring the rat as she pointed in the direction of Morgan’s house. It wouldn’t do any harm to talk to the sweet little thing, she decided. It was all part and parcel of living in Albion.
“But Granfer told you to wait here.”
Ailyth was confused for a moment, until she realised what must have happened. The rat had obviously mixed her up with someone else. Or mayhap it was mad, that could be it. If that was the case, it would be best not to upset it, or who knows what it might do next?
“Yes,” she said slowly, acting like she was talking to a child. “But then he came back and told me to wait over there instead.”
Something was wrong with Ailyth, RiffRaff could see it in her eyes. They were dazed and distant, as though she’d been moonstruck.
“What have you been doing over there?” he asked cautiously.
At last, someone she could share her wonderful news with. Ailyth couldn’t wait to tell someone, it was after all an unusual story, and with such a happy ending. “I’ve been with my true love,” she gushed.
RiffRaff’s ears pricked up. True love? He knew that the girl had only ever loved one man, and that couldn’t be him. “What did you say?” he spluttered.
“I’ve been with my love, Tristran,” she repeated, wondering why the little animal was suddenly looking so agitated.
“And who took you to him?” RiffRaff asked, the fur on his back beginning to prick a little.
“My mother, Morgan,” Ailyth said, frowning at his tone of voice.
RiffRaff leapt to his feet. “No,” he said. “No, Ailyth, it’s a trap,” he cried, his panicked voice rising to a squeak. “It’s not him, it’s a trick.”
“Of course it’s him,” she replied, furious that an animal should be telling her what was what in her life. “I’ve been with him since yesterday. Do you think I imagined it?”
“No,” the rat cried, gripping onto the hem of her dress. “I don’t think you’ve imagined it, but she’s tricking you. Morgan’s tricking you. She’s not your mother, and that isn’t Tristran.” He tried to climb up onto her shoulder, but Ailyth shook him off. “Please, listen,” he went on, gasping on the grass. “She’s trying to trick you into giving up your quest! She’s like Canute, she wants the plague to wipe out mankind, and she knows that there’s a good chance you’ll stop it. Don’t listen to her! It isn’t Tristran, no matter what you might want to believe.”
Ailyth was furious now. How dare this nasty little piece of vermin ruin the excitement of the previous day? “You think I don’t know my own true love?” she demanded, storming back the way she’d come. “It is Tristran! I know him!”
Muttering angrily to herself, she thrashed through the brambles back to Morgan’s house. She didn’t know why the rat had decided to but in on her affairs, but he had no right to! He didn’t know her, and he certainly didn’t know what she was talking about. Not Tristran, ha! Of course it was Tristran.
“Wonderful!” she said, looking around her. “Now I’m lost!” In her annoyance, she had taken the wrong path and was now ankle deep in mud and briar.
“And of course Morgan’s my mother!” she roared into the emptiness, although RiffRaff had been left far behind. She belonged here, in this otherworld, she was as much a part of it as any creature here.
“Hello,” a timid voice called, breaking through Ailyth’s tirade. “Have you come to set us free?”
Hanging in wicker baskets, like large birds in cages, Ailyth could see the faces of several young children staring down at her hopefully.
“No,” she stammered, as their faces fell into disappointment. One of them began to cry and clung to the bars of her cage, weeping.
“Please,” the first child pleaded. “Please, get us out of here. We’ve been here such a long time.”
Ailyth took a step back, fearing that they might leap on her suddenly. “Who are you?” she asked. “Where are you from?”
“We’re the stolen ones,” the first child said, dangling his legs through the bars of his cage. “They took us from our cradles and put us in cages. We used to live in Topsham, but that was a good while ago.”
Topsham. The word meant something to her. A memory, like a half-forgotten tune, swirled in her mind. “I used to live in Topsham,” she said, before the memory had come back to her fully.
“Are you my mother?” another, smaller child asked, and the others shook their heads sadly at him.
“No, stupid, she’s not our mother,” they said. “She’s one of them.”
“Who put you there?” Ailyth asked, her heart being pulled with each sob the children made.
“Morgan,” the all replied in unison. “Morgan stole us and put changelings in our place.”
“You’re wrong,” Ailyth said, backing even further up the path. There was something eerie about this place, something wicked, and she knew that she shouldn’t be there.
She fled, her mind a whirl of confusion. What was happening? Why was everyone lying to her? She would get back to Tristran, and her mother, and they would make it all right again. They’d know what to do.
Tristran was waiting for her when she returned to the house, and she fell into his arms.
“Hey!” he cried softly as she trembled against him, shaking with fear over what was happening around her. “What’s wrong?”
“There are terrible things in this place,” she whispered, feeling calmer as he kissed her cheek. “The faeys, they must know I’m only a halfling, they’re lying to me, trying to turn me against you all. They want me to leave.”
“Shhh,” Tristran said, rocking her comfortingly. “You’ll be safe here. We don’t want you to leave. We love you.”
“I know, I know,” she said, her eyes tightly closed. “I love you too, Tristran. I’m so sorry all of this happened. I’m so sorry you had to wait here for so long, I’m sorry I had to get married...”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Tristran said. “I know it was against your will and besides, Martyn’s dead now. He can’t stop us from being together.”
Ailyth froze in Tristran’s arms, before pulling away. “What did you say?” she asked.
“I said ‘Martyn’s dead now, he can’t...”
Ailyth wrenched herself away from him and walked towards the house in the tree. “That’s what I thought you said,” she whispered, her back to him.
“Ailyth? What is it?” Tristran asked, trying to pull at her hands.
“My husband’s name was Matthew,” she said, not facing him. “You knew his name was Matthew.” Spinning round to face him, she realised now who the rat was. Her friend, her loyal companion who would never lie to her. “You’re not Tristran,” she said.
A clap of thunder broke the air, and Ailyth’s surroundings melted along with the rainfall. The lush greenery, the lofty trees, each turned into muddy bogs and thick, thorny briar that caught at her dress and snagged her fingers. The stars in the sky fell to earth in bolts of fire, and the pretty little faeries turned into locusts and warty toads, devouring any life that remained.
But Ailyth wasn’t watching that. She was watching, heartbroken, as Tristran became a troll, shrinking to just above her knee and covered in hairy scales, crooked teeth sticking out from his mouth.
“I’m sorry I had to lie to you,” Morgan said, stepping from within the brambles like the doorway was still there. Ailyth still stared at the troll, praying that her eyes had deceived her and that Tristran was still there.
“Why?” she spat.
“I knew that what you wanted most in the world was for Tristran to still be alive,” Morgan explained. “You are so easy to read, my dear.” She rested a cold hand on Ailyth’s shoulder. “So I used a glamour to make it seem as though he were.”
“No,” Ailyth said bitterly.
Morgan laughed; a laugh borne straight from hell. “I needed you to stay here, where I could keep an eye on you. You were causing far too much damage in man’s world, trying to stop the plague. Why, I ask myself, would you want to do a thing like that? You were, after all, the one who brought the plague here. Why backtrack, and try to send it away again?”
“I didn’t want to see innocent people killed,” Ailyth replied through gritted teeth.
“But there are no innocent people,” Morgan said. “You’re all guilty, to a man. Or woman. Did you know, Ailyth, that England used to be the faery isle? That we were worshipped, and treated with respect. Everything used to belong to us, but bit by bit we were forced back. Oh, you people can do a lot of damage when your minds are set to it.”
She stroked Ailyth’s chin. “But I don’t blame you, of course,” she slithered. “You are still a halfling, that much is true. And you’ve done so much to help us, by letting the plague fight our war for us. Soon, there will be hardly any people left for us to destroy. So, thank you Ailyth.”
A thousand hidden creatures giggled at this, and their tittering made Ailyth’s hair stand on end.
“But then you went and started this quest of yours, to control the damage already done to your people, as though you could, and we just had to call you away from that. Oh, we’ve tried, many times, but something always stopped us from getting near you. It wasn’t that infernal Granfer; he wasn’t always with you. What then?”
Her hands dug into thin air and, when she uncurled her fingers, Ailyth could see the firestone glowing dully in her hands.
“This,” Morgan said. “Given to you by that idiot Grethel. You poor fool Ailyth. You were careless with it in the very place when you needed its protection the most.” She tutted slightly. “Very senseless, girl.”
A small rush of air circled Ailyth’s feet, and Morgan looked down, cackling. “Are these you’re knights in shining armour?” she sneered, and Ailyth looked to see that RiffRaff and Granfer had come to rescue her. Morgan raised her foot above Granfer’s head. “Is this the best you can do?”
She stamped her foot down to squash him, as she did so, she was sent hurtling across the ground as Granfer returned to his human height.
“Get out of here, Ailyth, get to the Green Man!” he cried, as Morgan leapt to her feet and pounced on him, but the girl couldn’t move. Once more, Granfer was fighting for her and she couldn’t stand by and watch him get hurt again.
As Morgan pinned Granfer to the ground, Ailyth crashed onto her back and tried to pull her off. The faey’s strength defied her thin, wiry frame and, like a fighting dog, once she had a grip on Granfer she wouldn’t let go. Her fingers clasped around his throat and, even as Ailyth struggled to pull her away, she could see the light in his eyes dim.
“Get off him!” she cried as Granfer’s efforts to fight back slowed and became more clumsy, but Morgan was a woman possessed and only when Granfer’s struggling stopped did she step away, shaking Ailyth off her casually as she did so.
“You cannot fight me and win, Ailyth,” she said as she stepped towards her, her hands outstretched. Ailyth didn’t even acknowledge her, and couldn’t tear her eyes away from Granfer’s lifeless body. “I’m far stronger than him...do you think that you could beat me?”
RiffRaff crawled up Ailyth’s dress and whispered in her ear, “Check your pockets!”
Morgan heard him, and smiled. “What’s in your pockets, child?” she asked, stepping ever closer as Ailyth fumbled in her cloak. “A knife? A club? My skin can bend metal and splinter wood. No, you’ll have to do better than that.”
Ailyth’s fingers closed around one of Heloise’s charms, something supple and thin, and she brandished it in front of her like a weapon. Morgan’s laughter haunted her.
“A twig?” she crowed. “You think to fight me with a twig?” Her laughter turned to a sneer as she demanded, “give it to me.”
“Now what?” Ailyth asked RiffRaff.
“Throw it at her!” he hissed.
Ailyth threw the twig at her adversary, and watch as she caught it and split it in two.
“That wasn’t very helpful, was it?” she mocked, moving forward as the girl stepped back.
Something caught Morgan’s foot, and she stopped. The two halves of the twig had partially buried themselves in the dank soil, and were stretching out around her ankles, growing thick and strong. Frowning, Morgan tried to pull herself free, but the plant had a hold, and snaked its was rapidly around her body. The hold wasn’t tight, but Ailyth could see what was happening. The twig wasn’t trying to crush her, but was growing into a living prison, a cage of magic that Morgan couldn’t free herself from.
“Do you think this will hold me?” Morgan screamed as the climbing brambles reached her face and circled her like a spell. “Do you think no-one will free me?”
“They can’t free her,” RiffRaff said to Ailyth. “Look.”
Morgan’s feet were turning into roots, delving down into the mud. As the brambles began to slow in their growth, her skin darkened and hardened, and her limbs twisted into the gnarled, thorn-covered branches of the briar.
“We should go, now, before anything decides to avenge her,” RiffRaff said, transfixed by the faey who had turned into a contorted parody of nature.
“But Granfer...” Ailyth faltered, and RiffRaff put a shaking paw on her face.
“He’s gone,” he said simply, and Ailyth gulped back her despair.
Yet whilst Granfer may have fallen, she was determined not to leave behind anyone else who had suffered at the evil faey’s hands. Stepping her way across the path that still bore her footprints from a little time before, Ailyth reached the tree where the children hung in cages.
“You’re back,” one of them pointed out needlessly, only this time there was no hope in his voice.
“And I’m taking you with me, back to Topsham,” she said, studying the bottom of the cages. The only question was, how?
No sooner had she voiced the conundrum to RiffRaff when each of the cages plummeted out of the air. The children, whilst rattled by their fall, were delighted to find freedom had so easily come to them, without knowing that Morgan’s powers had at last diminished, and promptly hailed Ailyth as the greatest faey Albion had ever seen.
“Hardly,” she said dryly, counting each of the children. There were six in total, and the each held another’s hand for the fragile safety that it brought.
There was only one place to go, the place Granfer had instructed Ailyth to run to, and it was at the great oak tree that Ailyth, RiffRaff and the children found themselves desperately begging for a way back to Topsham.
“Ah, you again,” the Green Man said, winking at RiffRaff. “I’m glad you’ve found your friend. Now, what is it I can do for you?”
From all around, crowds of different faeys called out their displeasure at what they saw as queue-jumping, but Ailyth felt no guilt when she interrupted all of their questions and asked: “How do we get back to Topsham?”
The Green Man smiled, and the sun shone through the clearing. “Close your eyes,” he said.
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