'Plain as day,' Cat repeated. She seemed preoccupied, taken up with the dark line of forest on the southern horizon.
They kept marching and riding through the day, munching oatcakes as they travelled and drinking their fill from streams. Cat managed to tickle a trout from one in a twinkling, leaving Michael agape. Mullan had always said it was possible, but he had never believed it.
They went on through the lengthening shadows and halted in the eaves of the Wildwood. It was pitch-black under the trees except for the glow of fireflies and luminous mould, and Michael felt himself grow wary. He loaded the shotgun despite Cat's glare and they had their trout for supper along with the last of the bread and cheese. Then they lay in each other's arms before the fire and listened to the wood noises whilst Fancy stamped nervously in the leaves and sniffed the crowded air.
'They're here, Michael,' said Cat.
'What? Who?' His hand sprang for the shotgun but she caught his wrist and pinioned it with startling strength.
'Be still, love. You are all right so long as I am here.'
'Who is it, Cat?'
She did not answer him. The hair on his head rose up stiffly and his heartbeat became an audible swish in his throat. He began to mutter an Our Father.
Cat squirmed as if in pain. 'No! None of that. Be quiet.' She laid a hand across his mouth.
There was noise in the trees, a rustling that might have been a momentary breeze.
'Mirkady,' Cat said softly.
'I'm here, sister,' a voice said out of the blackness, making Michael jump. At once, all around him there was a chorus of titters and chuckles, some as highpitched as those of an infant, others a deep baritone.
'What have you done, sister?' one said.
'What company she keeps' a second gurgled.
'See how he glares,' a third put in.
'I smell iron off him,' a deep voice said, and then there was silence again. But Michael thought he could sense shufflings and shiftings in the dark, rustlings of movement. And there were eyes out there in the night, scores of them around the limit of the firelight. Some were as large as golf balls, others subdued firefly flickers. They moved incessantly, blinking and winking at him. He stared about wildly and saw that they were high up in the trees peering down at him. A twig came whizzing through the flame light and bounced off his skull, producing a ripple of merriment. Cat's arms tightened around him.
'Leave him be. He's mine.'
Something plucked at his foot. He caught a glimpse of a black spindly form, small as a child's. There was more laughter.
'Stop it, Mirkady,' Cat said, and her eyes flashed with a light to match those glowing in the trees. 'Leave him alone.'
'What game is it you are playing, Sister Catherine?' the voice
Mirkady asked, reedy and high-toned as a flute. 'Why do you bring an iron-bearing mortal into the Wildwood? Have we taught you nothing?' .
'I claim his eyes,' a voice said.
'His teeth I'll have—a necklace of them.'
'No,' Cat said steadily.
'He is from the place that spawned the bald men. I smell it on him.'
A long, collective snarl eddied round the tree trunks. Michael sprang to his feet, tearing out of Cat's embrace. His instinct was to run, but before he could go a step something hissed round his head and a rope of some sort had lassoed his torso, pinning his arms to his sides, He was jerked forward into the dark beyond the fire while a medley of catcalls and shrieks broke out, and behind him Cat's voice was raised in fury. He crashed to the leaves head first, his mouth and nose full of the stink of decaying humus, and struggled there whilst bony hands pinched and pulled at him, tugged painfully at his ears and poked at his eyes. Angry as well as frightened now, he battled to his knees and roared at his tormentors. Laughter rose around him like a ripple of bells, and he was jerked to the ground again. This time a tree root smote him between the eyes, filling his head with coloured lights and bringing the smell of blood to his nose. He grunted with pain and felt the weight of what seemed a child tap-dancing on the small of his back. Then there was a squawk; and the unseen dancer had gone. Hands helped him upright with gentle but irresistible strength. He blinked the tears out of his eyes until he was able to see.
There was Cat, holding a spitting branch from the fire, the light of anger in her eyes and her black brows thunderous. Beside her was a fantastic, scarecrow figure no more than three feet high. Its skin was black, the eyes upward-slanting slits filled with green light, the nose sharp and angular as a chisel, the ears pointed and long, a mop of curly hair so fine it might have been moss on the head. It wore rough clothes of tanned hide decorated with strips of fur, reams of shining beads, lumps of quartz and amber, and what had to be the skulls of tiny animals—shrews, moles, squirrels and voles. It stank of leaf mould and earth, the reek of autumn, of the very forest itself.