The Little Country

  “That’s it!” Henkie cried. “Drown the buggers!”

  The stench in the air was something awful. Moans and shrieks and a terrible caterwauling rose in a deafening cacophony. Sea dead and sloch both gave way to the little company as it forged forward.

  “I think we might actually have a chance,” Denzil muttered.

  He looked down at what was left of the first sloch that Kara had dropped with her bomb. The stink was worse here than it had been so far. The thing was a little taller than Ethy, which made it almost four feet tall. It seemed to be made of equal parts bog mud, rotting weeds, thin twisted bits of wood and shadow. Luminous eyes stared up at Denzil as he stepped around it, the light dying in them.

  “Don’t look,” he told Ethy.

  “Come along then,” Henkie called from up ahead. “Quick march, unless you want to be dinner for the bloody things.”

  They hurried after him, holding their water bombs ready. The sloch kept their distance for the moment, merely pacing them, keeping them hemmed in on either side. And while their quick pace was leaving the sea dead behind, the drowned men were still following.

  “Where’s the Widow?” Lizzie said worriedly.

  “That’s what I want to know,” Taupin muttered.

  Denzil didn’t even want to think about her.

  “Hedrik Henkie Whale,” a sharp voice called from out of the night ahead of them.

  With the moon at her back, the Widow stood on the moor, her arms raised as though she meant to enfold the sky with them.

  “Shut her gob!” Taupin cried.

  Denzil nodded. Three times named and the Widow would be able to enchant the strongest member of their small company. And then what would they do? But how could they hope to stop her?

  She had magic‌—and powerful magic it had proved to be. And the bogies she had called up from bog and sea easily outnumbered them. Her sloch rose in a wave from the moorland around her, more than they could ever hope to combat with their rapidly diminishing supply of saltwater bombs.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Lizzie said. “Stop your ears.”

  There was no chance to retreat, Denzil realized, for the sea dead were rapidly closing in on them from behind. No chance to go forward. And how could one not listen to the Widow? How could they not hear what she cried?

  But then Denzil remembered Jodi’s story‌—how the Small had stopped the Widow from enspelling her by singing.

  He started to sing then, as loudly as he could‌—that same old song that Edern had sung with Jodi.

  “Hal-an-tow,

  Jolly rumble-o,

  We were up, long before the day-o;

  To welcome in the summer,

  To welcome in the May-o,

  For summer is a-coming in,

  And winter’s gone away-o. . . .”

  His was not a marvelous voice, but it was enough to carry a tune, and he put volume behind it to make up for his lack of skill. The others joined in, a ragged chorus, but surely loud enough to drown out the Widow’s voice?

  The Witch merely laughed‌—a cackling sound that brought an answering clap of thunder from the sky above. The singers faltered over their words and the Widow called out Henkie’s name for the second time.

  Again she laughed. Clouds came rolling in on the heels of the Widow’s laughter, rapidly hiding the moon and stars. Darkness deepened on the moor. Lightning licked the sky, followed by more thunder. Above it and their tattered voices, they could still hear the Widow’s voice as she cried out Henkie’s name for the third and last time.

  The singing faltered again and this time Denzil couldn’t save it from dying out completely.

  “Be stone,” the Widow told Henkie.

  And stone he became.

  Denzil saw Henkie stiffen. His hands fell to his side, the hammer dropped from numbed fingers to the ground. His neck arched back, his head turned to the sky, and then he was gone. All that remained was a tall, fat standing stone where once he had stood.

  “No!” Lizzie cried.

  Peter flung a balloon at the Widow, but the distance was too great and it fell short. The balloon burst uselessly on the moor. Lizzie started forward to where the stone now stood, but Taupin caught her arm. One of the children began to wail in fear. Denzil bundled Ethy up in his arms.

  “Run!” he told them all. “Run as best you can.”

  But it was too late, he realized.

  It had been too late from the first moment that the Widow’s drowned men had encircled them at the Men-an-Tol. For while the Widow had transformed Henkie from man to stone, the sea dead had approached them silently from the rear. Before the small company could scatter, the dead were in among them‌—the dead drowned men, reeking of weed and salt, catching hold of them with their pale corpse hands, gripping them hard so that no matter how they might struggle, they couldn’t break free.

  Only Kara evaded their first onslaught. She dodged in between them and caught up the hammer where it had fallen from Henkie’s grip. She swung it wildly against the knee of a drowned man. His skin burst, gushering seawater, and then he collapsed in an untidy heap of bones and skin and rotted clothing. Before Kara could swing the hammer again, another of the sea dead had wrested it from her hands and held her in a grip she couldn’t escape.

  The Widow named her three times and turned her into stone‌—a small menhir to stand beside the larger bulk of the stone that had once been Henkie.

  “No!” Denzil cried. “Leave the children alone. They’ve done no harm.”

  “No harm?” the Widow said. “Ask my Windle how harmless they are.”

  Ethy whimpered in Denzil’s arms as one of the sea dead tore her from his grip. He fought the iron grip of his own captor with a desperate fury as the Widow spoke the child’s name three times and transformed her into a tiny standing stone as well.

  Denzil went limp in his captor’s arms and despaired. He remembered the small hand in his, the trusting face turned to his for protection. Now she was stone. All her vibrant life stolen from her while he had been helpless to do a thing to stop the change.

  One by one the Widow transformed first the other children, then Taupin and Lizzie, until only Denzil was left. He cursed her with an eloquence that would have put Henkie to shame, but she only laughed. Above them, the storm grumbled and shot the thick clouds with streaks of lightning.

  The Widow stepped close to Denzil. He looked from her features to those of the evil little fetch that clung to her shoulder. There was no difference between them. The same hate lived in each of their eyes. Behind them the sloch pressed near‌—dozens of the creatures, filling the air with their bog reek and chittering voices.

  “I can still spare you,” the Widow said. “Who knows, perhaps you can find a cure for your stony friends. All I require is the girl. Give me the Small and you can live.”

  Denzil knew she lied. And even if she didn’t, he still would never give her Jodi.

  “Fool,” she said, and she spoke his name.

  Once, then twice.

  “Bravery doesn’t become you, Denzil Gossip,” she said, completing the charm with the third voicing of his name. “You won’t reconsider?”

  He spat in her face.

  She never moved, gave no indication of her anger except that the coals that were eyes glimmered a touch more brightly. The spittle ran down her cheek touching the corner of her mouth as she smiled.

  “Be stone,” she said.

  And Denzil felt the greyness of granite come over his limbs.

  3.

  Above the moor, the clouds grew thicker still. Thunder cracked, lightning spat. But the Widow Pender was calm. She surveyed her handiwork‌—the new scattering of standing stones that littered this part of the moor‌—and was partly content. Had Jodi Shepherd been in their company, the moment would have been perfect, but as it was, she was as satisfied as might be expected.

  She sought the missing Small with her witch-sight, but it was as though the diminutive girl had been spirited
away from the world itself. Turning to look at the Men-an-Tol, she couldn’t help but wonder what it was that the girl’s friends had hoped to accomplish out here on the moors tonight. Had she come just a few moments earlier, she would have known.

  Now she must continue her search again.

  The shadows would help her. Just as they had lent her their strength for the large sloch that she had called up from the bogs, for the drowned dead that had marched up from their sea graves, for the storm that had grown from the red fire of her rage to cloud the sky with her anger so that her own mind would remain calm.

  She would find the girl.

  But first she would deal with Bodbury.

  She had only this one night of borrowed power and she didn’t mean to waste it. The shadows were generous, but the cost was dear. If she failed them, it was very dear.

  But she wouldn’t fail them.

  She would give them Bodbury, just as she had given them the girl’s miserable friends.

  Darkness stirred at the bases of the newly made longstones.

  We want more, they told her.

  “I will give you the Barrow World,” the Widow said. “But first Bodbury.”

  Give us more.

  “Oh, you will feed well tonight, never fear.”

  Open the door between the worlds for us.

  The Widow glanced back at the Men-an-Tol once more and wondered what part it had played in the girl’s disappearance. She had walked this moorland in day and in night, searching for the Barrow World’s entrance. She had poked and pried into every hollow and dip of the land, dug around the bases of the stoneworks, tipped one or two over on their sides, but all in vain. She’d never found so much as a hint of a gate to that otherworld.

  She looked at the Men-an-Tol once more. She had searched long and hard, coming back time and again to that holed stone, for around it, the mystery seemed to lie thickest. The very air resonated with it.

  But the stone never gave up its riddles. Not before‌—

  The tolmen mocked her with its silent mystery.

  ‌—not now.

  What had the girl’s friends been up to?

  We want, we want, we want, the shadows chanted.

  The Widow nodded. “I know what you want.”

  She thought she could see eyes flickering in their depths, vague disembodied smiles.

  We want it all. . . .

  The first pinprick of uneasiness went through the Widow at that. They wanted it all?

  “First Bodbury,” she said.

  She turned to face the sea where it lay hidden by moor and hill. Putting the mystery of the Men-an-Tol at her back, she set off for the town, the sea dead shuffling in her wake, the sloch capering along either side.

  What did they mean by all? she couldn’t help but wonder.

  As though reading her thoughts, behind her, on all sides and before her, the shadows laughed in response.

  4.

  “So what do I do?” Jodi asked.

  Edern pointed to the hole in the Men-an-Tol. “That would be a good place to sit.”

  Jodi looked up. If she’d been her normal size, getting up to the hole would have presented no difficulty. All she’d have had to do was bend over and scrunch herself in. But mouse-sized as she was . . .

  “Here,” Edern said.

  He lifted his lanky frame from the ground and stood underneath the stone, cupping his hands to give her a step up. Jodi gave him a dubious look.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “There are handholds.”

  And so there were, she realized, as she gave the stone a closer scrutiny. It was only the first bit that looked hard.

  “All right,” she said.

  She stepped into his cupped hands and gave a startled little gasp as he lifted her up, up, above his shoulders. She held on to the stone to keep her balance, wondering at his strength.

  More magic, she supposed.

  “I can’t hold you up all day,” he said.

  She found a handhold, then another. A few moments later she had scrambled the rest of the way up and could sit down in the Men-an-Tol’s hole. With an enviable skill that would have put Ollie to shame, Edern made his own quick way up until he had joined her. He sat at her side and gave her a reassuring smile.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Empty your mind.”

  Jodi laughed. “Do you think it’s so full of wise thoughts? It’s empty most of the time, I’m afraid.”

  Edern shook his head. “I mean, stop thinking. Let your mind clear until all you can feel is quiet, until you are drifting, without thought, without that constant burr of conversation that murmurs in your mind, day and night.”

  “Are you going to hypnotize me?”

  Again he shook his head. “Just try.”

  So Jodi did.

  She sat there, looking out over the moorland, enjoying the feel of the sun and the rare clear skies. She wondered what it was going to feel like to find this secret music‌—this first music. What would it sound like? She thought of all the old tunes she could, wondering which came the closest.

  “What are you thinking of?” Edern said.

  “Of music,” Jodi replied.

  “Well, don’t. Think of nothing. Don’t think at all. Just be.”

  Jodi found that it was harder to do than she had expected. The more she tried, the more quickly this thought or that popped into mind. One led to another, then to another, to yet more until her head was filled with a long connected parade of observations and memories and little commentaries, all tangled together in a noisy confusion in her head.

  And suddenly she’d be aware of them, and remember what she was supposed to be doing. She’d sigh, and start all over again.

  And back would come the parade.

  “I can’t do it,” she said finally.

  Edern smiled. “You’ve hardly tried.”

  “I’ve been trying for ages.”

  “You’ve been trying for ten minutes.”

  “Honestly?”

  He nodded.

  “Bother and damn. I’ll never be able to do it.”

  “Try listening to your heartbeat. Don’t think about listening to it, just focus on it, on its rhythm, on how it moves the blood through your arteries and veins. If some extraneous thought comes to mind, don’t worry at it, don’t be impatient with it; just set it gently aside and return to your contemplation of that steady rhythm of your heartbeat.”

  This was a little easier, Jodi discovered after a few moments of following his advice.

  Whoops, she realized. That was a thought.

  Back she went to concentrating.

  Dhumm-dum. Dhumm-dum.

  Odd bits of memory and the like continued to float up from the pool of her mind, but she found it easier and easier to set them aside. She did it gently‌—as Edern had told her to. She didn’t allow herself to become frustrated by them. Didn’t worry about how she was doing, whether she was doing well or poorly.

  She just listened.

  Dhumm-dum.

  And drifted.

  Dhumm-dum.

  Until she felt as though she were floating away, out of her body.

  Dhumm-dum.

  Away and away‌—or was it deeper and deeper within herself? It didn’t matter. She just followed that steady rhythm . . .

  Dhumm-dum. Dhumm-dum.

  . . . away and down . . .

  Dhumm-dum.

  . . . deeper and farther. . . .

  Dhumm-dum.

  At some point she passed between awareness of what she was doing and simply doing. At that moment, in that place, she found the first music waiting for her.

  It was born of harp string and flute breath, fiddle note and drumbeat.

  Dhumm-dum.

  But it had no sound.

  It was a place where lives end, where lives begin. Where lost things could be found, where found things could be lost. A forbidden place, fueled by that forgotten music. A place of shadows and ec
hoes. A place that encompassed every landscape that she had ever viewed or imagined.

  But it had no physical presence.

  Dhumm-dum.

  It consisted of pure logic. It showed her how everything that existed in the world, no matter how large, no matter how small, was all connected to each other, could not exist without each other.

  At the same time, it made no sense whatsoever.

  Dhumm-dum.

  The individual disappeared into its vastness, into the greater whole, linked together so that there was no division between where one began and the other left off.

  The whole was divided into individuals, each so separate and distinct from the other that their unity was incomprehensible.

  Impossibility abounded.

  It all made perfect sense.

  It was a mystery, and all the more revered for that.

  An old magic.

  She knew such unthinkable joy at discovering it that she thought her heart would burst. No. Not at discovering it, but at rediscovering it, for she knew now that it had always been there. In the world around her. Inside her. . . .

  And then that part of her that was still her recalled what Edern had said about the music. How remembering called up both the storm and the sunny day.

  And she wept.

  For all the things that were lost because of the segmentation in the world, the divide that had created an Iron World and a Barrow World. Species extinct. Hopes extinguished. Heartlands ravaged. Wastelands and barren lands that lay both in the world and in the hearts of its inhabitants.

  Some could be found again‌—just as she had found the music. Some would be found again.

  But there were so many that could never again be reclaimed.

  Lost forever. . . .

  She was still weeping when she returned to Edern’s side in the hole of the Men-an-Tol. He was shaking her‌—not hard, but firmly.

  “Stop,” he was saying. “Let the music be still.”

  She regarded him through eyes blurred with tears.

  “But all that’s lost. . .”