Lilith’s Castle

The birches grew more sparsely; tall chestnuts whose arrow-shaped leaves were blowing away on the wind succeeded them. Gry saw no vile but sensed them close by, hiding in hollow trunks or lying high where the tapering branches waved at the sky and whispered sparse songs. Once, a stony-faced puvush looked out from a hole in the ground; once, a blue and white jay flew chattering above them. She sent a thought to the Red Horse:

‘Is this the Forest?’

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘The Forest-margin at the least, safe enough for woodcutters and foresters by day. This must be Deneholt where the young River Shu runs; it is brother to the Sigla and, like him, a tributary of the great River Lytha.’

‘My father often spoke of the Lytha – though he had never seen it! And Leal too, who had not seen it either.’

‘Near Pargur it is so wide you cannot see the far bank.’

‘Shall we go far enough to find it?’

‘Perhaps, little Gry, perhaps – but the Shu, as you will see, is more like your own Nargil, shallow, fit to drink and easy to cross unless it is in spate.’

‘Battak threatened to drown me in the Nargil.’

‘Battak is a hard and tormented man – and no river is without danger.’

‘They say the Nargil flows into the Lytha …’

‘All rivers flow into the Lytha; all the river-water flows into the Ocean.’

‘You will fall into the Shu, Horse!’

‘Then hold fast, Gry! Perhaps I will have to wade.’

From her high seat on his back, Gry saw how steeply the river bank swept down to water’s edge. The Horse went cautiously, slipping and sliding on the dead leaves until he reached the shallows. Here, he stopped to sniff the air and to drink. The far bank was hidden in vegetation except for a narrow beach littered with mossy stones and for this, he struck out the water creeping to his knees and, near the middle, swirling as far as his belly. He stood still and looked down into the water.

‘I am a handsome fellow, Gry, am I not?’ he said, as he admired his reflection. ‘The nivashi think so. I can see one there, by the big boulder. She has the haunches of a high-bred mare and a smile like the Lady Nemione’s. Her eyes are white opals.’

Gry was afraid. He sounded less and less like her dear Red Horse; but perhaps he was bewitched and a nivasha had got hold of his soul. She sat very still to listen for its thin, ululating cry; and heard nothing. A fly buzzed in her face and she waited until it had flown away. Then, like the whine of a gnat on a still summer’s night, she heard the soul of the Horse. ‘Help!’ it was crying. ‘Help me!’

The Horse, while she listened, had lowered his head and now stood with his mouth in the water and his eyes on the hurrying ripples which flashed silver and green as they eddied about him.

Gry kicked him hard, as if he were an ordinary horse. She clicked her tongue and whistled to him; and he stayed where he was, frozen and immobile in the middle of the River Shu.

‘I am not afraid of you, nivashi!’ she said, and slid into the water. It came to her waist but she surged regardless through it until she reached the beach on the far side, where she wrung out her skirts as best she could. The Horse had spoken of foresters and woodcutters; such men would have ropes or might know of a shaman who could break the enchantment. Before she set off, she called out to the Red Horse but, dull and motionless as the stones themselves, he did not look up.

The brambles and thorns above her looked impenetrable so Gry walked along the beach. The river bent twice, to the right and the left; the shore became sandy and low. She climbed a bank and stepped at once into a grassy glade. Five hens and a splendid cockerel were feeding there, close to a gypsy bender-tent which stood like a small, multicoloured hillock in the exact centre of the clearing; for the bender, though clearly made of willow sticks and green-fir branches, was finished with a roof of chequered cloth, red, yellow and blue. So soon! Gry rejoiced. A gypsy forester: I never thought of that! The bender reminded her of the shelters the Ima put up when they were herding far out on the Plains and she hurried to it, while the chickens clucked and pecked contentedly at some corn-grains scattered in the grass.

She could not see the door. ‘Hello!’ she called. ‘Is anyone at home?’

No one answered her, but there was a loud rattle. The bender moved suddenly, jumping up on seven-toed feet of willow twigs and settling as quickly on the ground, while Gry rubbed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief. At least, she thought, she had found the door, there, arched and low in front of her. Again, it reminded her of home and she knelt and peered in.

She called again, ‘Are you inside?’

No sound came from the dark interior though a chaffinch in a treetop trilled, dipped his wings and flew off. She saw a three-legged stool on a hearthstone, bent her back and crawled forward. There was no entrance tunnel: you were either out or in, and she was within. Her eyes grew used to the dimness. She saw a bedplace made of cut bracken, a blanket of the tri-coloured cloth lying across it, and a small chest for clothes and possessions. There was also the stool, very low like the ones at home. She sat down on it to look about her. Curious – it almost seemed as if the place was growing lighter – and bigger. A rustle in the hearth made her jump. The sticks had fallen together and a small flame leapt up. Soon the fire was burning brightly and the kettle began to sing, while her wet clothes steamed faster than the kettle and in a moment were bone dry.

In the far wall was an archway tall enough for her to walk through and there, beyond it, was a high and airy bedroom equipped with every luxury from cushion-littered bed to silk carpets and cut-glass bottles of lotions and perfume. She pulled the stopper from one and put a dab of golden liquid on her wrists. It smelled of waxy cactus-blooms and far-off, spicy desert sands. She saw them as she breathed it in, enchanted. Beyond the bedroom was a transparent, six-sided tent with an empty bath sunk in the floor. She touched the walls and marvelled at their hardness; knelt to examine the pictures of deer and huntsmen with which the bath was lined. Water began to flow from the mouth of a stone snake coiled on the bath’s rim: Gry backed away and bumped into the glass wall. Outside was a garden in which herbs and sunflowers grew against a picket fence and bees made constant journeys to and fro between a row of wallflowers and a straw bee-skep. But there was no door into the garden and neither grassy glade nor forest trees beyond the fence. The view was wide and inspiring: of a flower-starred meadow amongst high mountains capped with snow and divided, one stone face from another, by shiny ribbons of falling water.

Gry ran back the way she had come. The fire burned merrily on the central hearth, but the doorway had gone: the curving wall of branches ran all the way round the room. She beat her hands in vain upon it and turned away, tears welling in her eyes.

‘The Horse,’ she murmured, ‘I must get out and rescue him …’

But nothing seemed to matter greatly, neither the Red Horse trapped in the river, nor her own predicament. The bed-place vanished and a velvet-covered chair appeared. A tin box stood on the hearthstone beside a spouted pot and two cups. Gry sat down on the three-legged stool and opened the tin: it contained dry leaves which had a sharp and appetising smell and a spoon with a short handle in the shape of a briar topped by a rose.

The kettle boiled, its quiet song bubbling to a crescendo and Gry, surmising that the leaves were much like those of the water-mint she used at home, warmed the pot with a little boiling water and tipped it to one side of the hearth with an automatically-muttered charm.

‘May the grass grow sweet.’

She put three spoonfuls of leaves into the pot and poured the water in.

‘Do you take it with milk?’ someone asked.

Gry swivelled wildly on the stool and almost upset the pot.

The doorway had come back! But it had grown big enough to accommodate the tall, stoop-shouldered figure of an old gypsy-woman. In her large and capable hands she held a brown jug which matched the teapot in Gry’s hand. She wore a scarlet skirt and a black bodice and the shoes on her feet had high, scarlet heels; her jewellery was made of gold and bone, of amber and jet; she had a wart on her chin and blood-spots on her apple-cheeks; her eyes, bright as a wren’s, were full of knowledge and cunning; worse, her grey hair fell straight down to her shoulders where it began to twist and curl in waves as tumultuous as water in a rocky rapids. In short, she had all the signs and hallmarks of a witch.

Gry was speechless.

‘Go into the forest till you come to a fallen tree; then turn to your left, and follow your nose – and you will find me!’ said the witch and cackled with laughter. ‘And here you are – a little, thieving Ima woman.’ The witch advanced and set down her milk jug on the hearth. ‘A female horse-herder far from home. They don’t let their women roam alone, those handsome, doughty horsemen; so this one must be a harlot or a murderess. An outcast, plainly.’

She bent over Gry and took the teapot from her unresisting fingers, poured milk and tea into the cups.

‘Will you take a cup of tea with me, my dear?’

‘I –’ said Gry. ‘I –’ but she could find no other words.

‘Drink your tea and then you will tell me all you know and every detail of your story,’ said the witch; and Gry drank, feeling warmth and courage flood into her with every sip.

‘Now!’ The witch was sitting in her chair, leaning back against the purple velvet like a queen on her throne.

Gry recited her tale, without sentiment and without apology, right to the end,

‘… and so I sat on the three-legged stool and put some leaves and boiling water in the pot –’

‘Tea!’ interrupted the witch. ‘You made my tea! Witless girl: couldn’t you see the house was waiting for me, making itself comfortable and laying out the things it knows I like. You’ve confused it, don’t you see? – look at the wall, are those a gypsy’s traps?’

Hanging from a peg were three Ima bird-traps and a horse-goad which shimmered and disappeared as the witch glowered at them.

‘You are a gypsy?’ said Gry hesitantly.

‘Am I a gypsy! By all the stars and Lilith, I am Darklis Faa, the famous gypsy witch, the celebrated chov-hani.’

‘The gypsies sometimes came into the Plains to buy horses of us,’ said Gry, the picture from childhood strong in her head; though whether it was her own memory or a tale her father had told, she could not remember. ‘The women carried willow baskets and their children on their hips and the men had bright neckerchiefs and big, gold earrings and sprigs of rosemary in their buttonholes and whips plaited from the hides of griffons. They prized our horses above all others.’

‘Tosh! We use Ima horses to pull our vans, but never for riding: they are too coarse.’

‘They are the chosen mounts of the Brothers of the Green Wolf.’