A Different Kingdom(83)

'What is it? What's wrong?' He felt fine himself, as though the clean water had flushed the forest muck out of his belly.

'The water,' she croaked. 'It's burning. It burns me. Oh, Michael—it's holy water.' She collapsed into convulsive retching again.

Mystified and alarmed, he examined the stream, sniffed at it and saw the cross in the water arranged out of black stones.

'The Brothers did this. They put it here when they came this way. They poisoned the water,' Cat gasped. Saliva trailed in a bright bead from her chin.

'Don't be stupid, Cat. It's good water, the best we've tasted in this God-forsaken place.'

'Your god forsook it, not mine.' And she collapsed again.

He stood confounded and almost angry, glaring at nothing. The horses were greedily cropping grass. There was nothing wrong with them. He set a hand on Cat's shoulder but she shook it off, lost in her own suffering. Michael cursed and spun away.

A shape in the trees. Someone standing there in the shadow.

'Cat!' He drew his iron sword.

Not a man, or even man-like. It was tall and thin, as black as tar. Cat was deaf to him.

'Damn you, Cat.'

A post, taller than he was, standing like a thin megalith ten yards from the stream.

A cross, it had been. Dead briar was wound round it, and honeysuckle. At its base the arms lay, rotted free of the central post and decomposing with the stubborn slowness of oak. He felt a rush of ... relief? Some skeletal piety, perhaps, a remnant of the church-going child he had once been. He touched the old wood with something like a caress. So the Brothers and the Knights had come this way, untold centuries ago. They had drunk from the stream and left their markers behind.

'It's all right, Cat. We're all right here.'

'You are. This place—' She broke off, heaving. He was tom between concern and irritation.

Michael's respite was short-lived. The next day they left the stream and its marker behind and the twilit dankness of the forest took hold of them again. Cat was pale and silent, still racked with occasional shudders, though Michael had filled his skin with the delicious water.

So she truly was different. For so long he had refused to think of her as anything but an ordinary girl; a wild, fiery one, maybe, but a girl just the same. He could no longer convince himself that it was true.

The trees unfolded endlessly, and the silence rang in their ears until it became a noise in itself, neverceasing. Michael longed for song, laughter, anything which did not belong to the towering trees and festering mould. Anything to break the spell of the stillness. But there was nothing. Though this place was named the Wolfweald, they had not seen or heard a single wolf in weeks, which was unusual even in the inhabited parts of the Wildwood. He began to wonder fu>w many of the tales and legends of this place were founded on ignorance and imagination. This dead emptiness, filled only with the huge presence of the trees, was somehow harder to bear than all the wolves and goblins in existence.

Cat's bout of sickness passed quickly, but Michael's lingered on and on, despite the good water in his skin. Weight feH off him pound by pound and he felt weak and lethargic, needing Cat's help to rub down and unsaddle the horses in the evenings. It was as if the forest were invading his flesh, wearing him down.

Cat seized his face in her hands one morning as he lay in the furs, scanning it with grief and worry written over her own. 'What is it?'

'Your hair. The beard. They're going grey, Michael.'

He paused, her cold fingers hovering over his cheekbones. 'I'm getting old, Cat. I'm getting old quickly in this place. I should be scarcely fifteen and I feel like an old man. It's the forest. It's this damn wood.'

'No,' she said. 'It is the Horseman. He rules here, and he knows we are coming.' She stared at him intently, and he knew what she was asking.

'I'm not turning back. Not now. I'm not sure it's possible anyway.'

She left him, throwing aside the furs and letting the cold air bite. 'It's on your own head then, Michael. Yours alone. I am just a follower.'

They continued, Michael leading, Cat following; and there was little talk between them.

They came upon two more of the cross markers left by the Brothers' expedition, and once there was another of the clear running streams for Michael to drink from, but for the most part the wood was monotonous and dim with great trees hanging with moss and ivy, fungi riding up the trunks like steps or sprouting in profusion between the roots; and in the nights the only light was that of rotting, phosphorescent wood.

It was at the beginning of one such night that Michael was kissing Cat and their bodies were entwined like holly and ivy. Then her hair fell back, and in the light of the little fire he saw that her ears were pointed and long, fine dark hairs fringing them. And with the fire behind her there was a light leaping out of her eyes, green as the heart of a sunlit emerald.