A Shadowed Past
The war is over, and the King has gone from our land. Gone with him are the faithful children of men, and now only I am left! I alone remain to sing the Song of the Burning Light over this bloodstained ground. The Earth Brethren are gone; I know not where. It seems they are vanquished who once made all men tremble with fear before the strength of wolf and wind and water, of growing thing and of fire. They are gone, and never more shall I hear their battle cries all around me. My heart quakes to think of them conquered, yet how could it be otherwise? Their power was shattered in grief when the King’s heart was pierced by the treachery of his beloved ones. Surely the anguish of his heart-breaking must shake this world so that nothing can stand untouched.
And the Shearim, the merry ones, the Fairest of Creation: they too are gone. They whom no one could kill have destroyed themselves that the children of men might be protected from their own wickedness. With the life-force which once danced in their eyes the Shearim have woven a Veil, a barrier between the Blackness and men. Yet my heart tells me that even the Veil cannot last forever. One day it will grow weak and tear, and the Shearim will pass out of the world forever. How the stars weep for us!
But now my blood grows hot within me and visions pass before my eyes, and I, the Poet, I, the Prophet, will speak! The Blackness will not reign victorious always. In the end the hearts of men will yearn again for their King, and he shall come! Hear, all you heavens. Listen to me, all you earth! Rejoice, for he will come again!
Yet quietly will it begin. His reign shall not be taken up first on the Throne of Men, but in their Hearts: in the hearts of small things, of insignificant things, of forgotten things. In their hearts shall be kindled the Love of the Ages, and they shall sing the Song of the Burning Light!
And he shall come.
* * *
The air was just beginning to take on a metallic chill when Maggie passed the Orphan House.
Its tall wrought iron gates frowned down on her and striped her face with shadows where they blocked the orange light of the windows. Creepers, brown with the coming of winter, wound their way up the red, soot-covered brick walls. The windows were barred and tightly shut. One, on the ground floor, had been cranked open, though bars crossed it. Maggie could hear the clanging and shouts coming from that window, and though she was too far away to feel it, she could imagine the oppressive heat drifting out into the evening. It was the kitchen, a room made hellish by the constant activity of twenty ovens. In the winter the window would be kept shut to keep the icy wind from blowing in and the expensive heat from drifting out. But not yet.
Maggie picked up her pace instinctively, as she always did before the glaring visage of the House. Had she been caught outside those walls as a child she would have been locked in the cupboard, or worse. Now, there was no one to shout her name, no one to threaten her and slap her and tell her not to try running away again. It had been years since the Orphan House had held her prisoner, yet the tyranny of the place still held some sway over her soul. So she walked faster.
From the kitchen came the harsh shrieking of a matron in a foul mood, and in the yard a dog sent up a dismal howl. The cold seemed to cling to Maggie, seeping through her heavy brown overcoat. She pulled it closer to her and shivered. It was a cold evening in an autumn that had thus far been unusually warm. A dragon-headed iron train screamed over a bridge in the distance. An elderly man with a decorated sword hanging from his belt nodded to her as he sauntered past.
The Orphan House behind her, Maggie turned down a residential street lined with old houses that were crammed in next to each other like books on a shelf. The street dead-ended in an iron fence that closed in a large property: a stately old house with yellow paint that was peeling and a flower garden that bloomed like the sun in summer. In the quickly fading light, the old house looked somewhat mournful. Most of its flowers had already succumbed to the frost. In an upstairs window a candle was burning, and a stout shape moved around the room in what looked like a waltz. Maggie smiled.
She turned from the view of the yellow house and ascended the creaking steps of her own home, the last on the bookshelf street, a slim, two-story brick house with peeling blue shutters at the windows. Maggie sighed when she thought of the hours she and Patricia had put into painting them just last summer, while Mrs. Cook, the owner of the house, puttered around in the kitchen baking cookies to feed “her girls” when they finished.
Maggie twisted the brass doorknob and pushed the door open. It protested loudly, and Maggie made a mental note to oil the hinges soon. If Pat had been home, surely the door would have been attended to earlier. She always noticed such things.
A bright fire was burning cheerfully in the fireplace, casting its glow over the small room. A painting of a river in the country hung over the mantle, which was covered in little glass figurines, newly dusted and glowing proudly in the firelight. On the wall, tucked in the shadows of the fireplace bricks, a slim sword hung on a hook. Pat had insisted on leaving it with them—how she expected either Maggie or Mrs. Cook to use it was a mystery.
Maggie collapsed into a high-backed stuffed chair near the fire without taking off her coat or boots. She closed her eyes and let all of her muscles relax, while the heat folded around her like a cocoon.
A loud, cheery voice interrupted her near slumber.
“Well, then,” Eva Cook exclaimed, her ample form filling the doorway to the kitchen and blocking most of the light from that part of the house. “You’re home. Did you get the parcel?”
Maggie sighed with the effort of pulling her body back into action. She reached a red-gloved hand inside her coat and pulled out a small packet wrapped in brown paper. She started to get up, but Mrs. Cook stopped her.
“No, dear,” she said, “Don’t you move. I know a tired body when I see one. Was it a really long walk?”
Maggie nodded. “Not too long, really, but I am tired. I always want to go to sleep after being out in the cold.”
“Winter’s coming after all,” Mrs. Cook commented, “though I had hoped we would cheat it this year.” She disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, and the light from the homey room came streaming back. She reappeared bearing a saucer and tea cup, steaming with hot tea.
“Here, dear,” Mrs. Cook said. “Drink this.”
Maggie took the cup and saucer and let the steam from the bittersweet drink warm her face. She took a sip and leaned back again with a smile.
“Thank you,” she said. “But you don’t need to fuss over me. You’d think I’d been gone as long as Pat.”
Mrs. Cook didn’t seem to notice Maggie’s teasing tone. “I’m just taking care of you, Maggie Sheffield. You know as well as I do that you’re not the strongest bird in the sky. One of these days you’ll catch pneumonia, and I’ll fuss then. How’s your cold?”
Maggie chuckled. “Much better, with your tea steaming all the congestion out of me. It’s been years since I was really sick. You needn’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” Mrs. Cook said with a sniff. She caught sight of Maggie grinning at her and said, “Not about the likes of you.”
Maggie dipped her little finger in her tea, stirring it idly. “Something’s missing from the tea,” she said.
“Linlae leaf,” Mrs. Cook said. “I ran out and was too busy to cut more.”
Maggie set her tea aside and pushed herself out of her chair before Mrs. Cook could protest. “I’ll get it,” she said. She walked lightly to her guardian’s side and stood on her tiptoes to kiss the tall old woman’s cheek on her way out.
Mrs. Cook watched her march out the front door with a smile. She was so different from the old days, this girl. Eva could remember the days when even a hint of sharpness in her voice would send the little orphan into a fit of shivering, anxious fear. Maggie had been so small and skinny then, her auburn hair tangled and dirty.
“You don’t want that one,” the man from the Orphan House had said. “She’s no good for nothin’—too weak, and ugly besides.”
Mrs. Cook had seen through the dirt and grime to a child who desperately needed freedom. Margaret Sheffield was precisely the child she wanted.
She remembered clearly the first few days, when Maggie learned what it was like to be clean and well-fed and loved. She had accepted everything warily, as though she expected to wake up any moment and find the dream turned into a nightmare. Her greatest fear in those days had been that Patricia Black, herself an orphan, might prove to be an enemy. Pat, in true form, had taken the scared little thing under her wing.
Pat had cried the day that Maggie was sent off to Cryneth to live with John and Mary Davies, old friends of the Cooks’. Eva had cried, too, but she knew it was best. The mountains and Mary’s songs were what Maggie needed to heal.
Even now, Mrs. Cook had to fight back tears at the thought of the way those years in Cryneth had ended. She remembered how Maggie had appeared on her back doorstep, half dead and nearly unrecognizable. She remembered how Pat had run for the doctor at the Orphan House. She remembered the doctor’s words.
“She were never a well one. I don’t see how she’s made it this far, with all that smoke in her lungs. If I was you, Mrs. Cook, I’d be looking for a nice burial plot.”
But Maggie had recovered. Her hands and arms were forever scarred from the burns. She never told anyone exactly what had happened, although they found out later that John and Mary had been killed in a fire. Maggie had been seen digging through the still-smoldering ashes for some remnant of the happiest days of her life. The villagers had tried to help her but she had run away.
Somehow, Maggie had found happiness again. Somehow, she had put it behind her. And every time Mrs. Cook saw the young woman smile, she thanked the stars for the power that had brought Maggie all the way back to her doorstep in Londren, and home.
* * *
The linlae tree grew between the house and the iron fence. It hugged the wall like a vine, its silvery bark and the last of its light green leaves beautiful against the soot-smudged brick. Maggie smiled as she reached up into the thin branches, pulling them down so that twigs and leaves brushed her face and baptized her with the scent of life. The leaves rustled as she searched for a good bunch to clip. The warm autumn had been good to the hardy little tree; it was still green in the face of coming winter. Maggie started to hum to herself when a sound made its way to her ears. She frowned, releasing the branches so that they jerked away and quivered above her.
There it was again. Something was moving in the dark shadows behind the house. Maggie peered down the alley, but she could see nothing. A cat, she thought. It must be a cat.
She shook off the uneasy feeling that had settled on her and finished clipping a branch. As she took a step toward home, something in the alley clattered. She turned, her heart leaping in her throat.
What was back there?
She turned to leave when the sound of a deep, racking cough sent shivers up her spine. That was no cat.
Maggie turned back around and walked quickly, deliberately, toward the safety of the front door. Pat, she thought, would have been in the alley by now, forcing a full confession from whoever was skulking in the shadows. Pity the fellow caught by her fierce questions. But Maggie was not Pat, and Pat was far away in Cryneth. She kept walking.
“Maggie Sheffield?” It was a trembling voice, old, and strangely familiar. It was deep with illness.
Maggie turned slowly to see a small, hunched old man step out from the shadows. He stood silhouetted against the fence, and Maggie could not see his face or his features. He stretched out a hand toward her. It was shaking.
“Maggie?” he asked again. He took a step forward and Maggie realized that he was about to fall. She dropped the leafy twigs in her hand and rushed forward, grabbing the old man’s arm to steady him. He looked up at her with weary, gray eyes.
“Thank ye, Maggie,” he said.
She knew who he was. The relief of recognition flooded her. Those gray eyes had regarded her kindly when she was a child in the Orphan House, and once they had watched her from the safety of the little house in Cryneth. In the Orphan House he had brought presents for the children once or twice a year—mittens and scarves, pieces of candy, sometimes even dolls for the girls and trains for the boys. She hadn’t known why he had come to the Davies’ in Cryneth. Evidently they were old friends. She had never known his full name—the children called him Old Dan.
She certainly had no idea what he was doing here now, hiding in an alley behind her home.
He began to cough again, and nearly doubled over with the effort. Maggie clutched at him, wishing she could somehow transfer strength from her body into his. He sounded as if he might never stop coughing. But the fit did come to an end, and he leaned against her, exhausted. She was alarmed at how thin and light he was.
“Come,” she said, guiding him. “I live here, just a few more steps. We’ll take good care of you.”
Maggie helped him up the steps and opened the door. The hinges squeaked out an announcement of her return.
Mrs. Cook appeared from the kitchen, already talking. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d run away out there. Heavens, Maggie, what took you so—” she stopped in mid-sentence.
“Heavens,” she breathed.
Maggie helped the weak old man into the high-backed chair near the fire. He nearly fell into it. Maggie removed his threadbare gloves and began rubbing his fingers between her own hands. She wanted to say something, but his eyes were closed and so she kept her mouth shut. When his hands felt a bit warmer, she took the muddy boots from his feet and set them near the fire to dry while she wrapped him in a blanket snatched from the arms of Mrs. Cook’s rocking chair.
The lady of the house emerged from the depths of the kitchen with a washtub full of hot water.
“Come on, Maggie,” she said. “In with his feet.”
Mrs. Cook pressed a hand against the old man’s wrinkled forehead. “Fever,” she muttered. “Maggie, get another blanket from the cupboard upstairs. A thick one. Make that two. He’s shivering.”
Maggie rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and threw open the cupboard at the end of the narrow hallway. She grabbed two thick blankets and flew back downstairs with them.
Mrs. Cook was stoking the fire, while the kettle shrieked its readiness in the kitchen.
“Get the tea, would you, dear?” Mrs. Cook asked in a tone of voice that made it clear she was not asking.
Maggie went into the whitewashed kitchen where the copper kettle rattled on the surface of the wood stove. She snatched it off and poured the water into a white teapot.
She reentered the living room with Mrs. Cook’s largest tea cup and saucer, as well as two more just in case, and ducked back into the kitchen to fetch the teapot. When she came back out, Old Dan’s eyes were open and Mrs. Cook seemed strangely agitated.
Maggie shifted her feet and licked her lips uncomfortably, feeling that she had missed something important.
“This is Old Dan.” She felt like a child saying the name, which was not really much of a name at all. “He’s a friend.”
“We know each other,” Mrs. Cook said stiffly.
Maggie’s eyebrows raised a good half-inch. “You do?” she asked incredulously.
“Evie and I are old friends,” Old Dan said weakly, with a tinge of humour in his voice.
Mrs. Cook stood abruptly and started up the stairs. She turned when she was halfway up.
“I don’t want him going up and down stairs in his condition,” she said. “We’ll fix up the guest room.”
Maggie nodded. Silently, she picked up the bucket of coal that lay beside the fire and took a box of matches from the mantle. She felt Old Dan’s eyes watching her, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Mrs. Cook had seemed almost angry.
She took the coal and matches to a small, cold room just off of the living room. It had a fireplace of its own, and she knelt down to prepare the room for its new occupant. Soon she had a fire blazing, and the lonely little room seemed cheered. Starched white curtains hung by its windows, overlooking a single bed. Mrs. Cook entered the room and started to make the bed with flannel sheets and a large feather blanket and pillows. A tiny bedside table held a gas lamp and an old book with gold writing on its cover. It had been years, Maggie thought, since the room had been occupied. She didn’t recognize the book—perhaps a friend of Pat’s had left it.
Before long, the room had been transformed. The lonely chill gave way before the warmth of the fire and the glow of the oil lamp that spilled onto the deep green blankets. Mrs. Cook stood with her hands on her hips and looked the room over with a satisfied nod. Maggie slipped out the door to get Old Dan.
He was sitting totally still except for the slight shaking of his hands. His eyes were open and he was staring into the fire, seemingly lost in thought. He didn’t hear Maggie’s approach.
She reached out a hand and laid it on his arm. He jumped slightly, then reached up his own gnarled hand and covered hers.
“I’m sorry,” Maggie said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
He patted her hand. “No harm done, m’dear.”
“Your room’s ready,” she explained, and took his arm to help him up. He stood with a struggle, and leaned on her as they walked to the room.
“It’s not much,” Maggie said.
Old Dan chuckled, and the effort made him fight to catch his breath again before speaking. “Don’t forget I’m an old alley-dweller,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “The emperor’s palace couldn’t be any nicer.”
He started to laugh again and set off a fit of coughing. Maggie lowered him onto the bed. She cast a concerned look at Mrs. Cook, who had a man’s nightshirt draped over her arm.
“He’ll be all right,” Mrs. Cook said. “Go off to bed, Maggie. I’ll watch after our guest. Get!”
Maggie left the room reluctantly. As she climbed the stairs to her own room, a flood of weariness washed over her. She had forgotten how tired she was.
* * *
The voices drifted up the stairs, rising and falling through the cracks in the floor into Maggie’s room. She turned over in her sleep, pulling her quilt closer to her ears.
The voices sharpened, and Maggie awoke. For a moment she thought she had been dreaming, but then she heard them again. The conversation downstairs had grown heated.
She knew it was none of her business, but curiosity got the better of her groggy mind. She swung her feet out of bed, feeling the shock of cold when they touched the hardwood floor. The floorboards creaked as she lit the lamp beside her bed and pulled a robe on over her nightgown. Picking up the lamp, she stepped out into the hall. The voices had quieted.
Maggie stepped lightly down the stairs and through the living room to the spare room. The light was on, leaking through the slight crack where the door was not quite shut.
Maggie peered in through the crack. Mrs. Cook had moved her rocking chair to the bedside. Maggie could see her each time she rocked forward. Her eyes were swollen.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Daniel,” Mrs. Cook said, a hardness in her voice that Maggie had never heard before.
“I’m sorry, Evie,” Old Dan’s voice answered. “Perhaps you’re right.” He coughed painfully. “Truth is, I was afraid out there. I’ve never been so cold. I’ve never been afraid to die, before, but now… Well, I didn’t think ye would turn me away.”
Mrs. Cook’s voice sounded as though she might lose control and start crying again. “No, Daniel, don’t talk nonsense. Of course it was better that you come here than stay out there with such a—such a sickness.” Her voice lowered, but Maggie still caught the words. “If only Maggie didn’t know you.”
“I didn’t know she was here,” Old Dan said.
The rocking chair leaned forward with a forceful creak. “Promise me you won’t talk to her about anything more than the weather, Daniel Seaton. No talk of the old days. I don’t want Maggie tangled up with the council.”
“There is no council,” Daniel’s voice said. “Or have you forgotten? There’s naught left now but you and me and the others, all scattered and hiding—and dead, some of us. The council is finished.”
“And may it stay that way,” Mrs. Cook said. There was silence for a moment, and then Daniel spoke again.
“Have you forgotten, Evie? Have you forgotten the way it was, in the old days? Surely you canna hate its memory so much.”
“It was all a game back then,” Mrs. Cook said. “We were children playing with fire.”
There was a heavy sigh from the bed. “’Twas a glorious fire,” Old Dan said. “But dangerous, yes.”
“I want Maggie kept far away from it,” Mrs. Cook said. “It was bad enough that she was there when Mary—”
“I know,” Old Dan said. “Evie, there’s somethin’ I need to be tellin’ ye.”
There was an expectant silence, and Old Dan spoke again. His voice was barely a whisper this time, and Maggie was not sure if she had heard him right.
“I saw her,” he said.
The rocking chair leaned forward, and Maggie could see Mrs. Cook’s face. It had drained of colour. Maggie felt suddenly cold—the cold came from within, as though childhood fears had passed over her. She had half a mind to turn and go back to bed, but she knew the fear would only follow her. She stayed where she was.
“Evelyn?” Mrs. Cook asked, her voice suddenly as weak as Daniel’s.
“Aye,” Old Dan said.
“Did she know you?” Mrs. Cook asked.
“I didna think so,” Old Dan said. “But then this sickness… it makes me very afraid, Evie.”
Mrs. Cook let out a noise like an angry sob. “How long will she hound us? Was she not content to destroy us with her lies?”
“It wasn’t as though she came after me,” the old man said. “We stumbled across each other, quite by accident.”
“And John and Mary?” Mrs. Cook said. “Was that an accident? How many more of us will die before she’s content to leave us alone?”
Maggie closed her eyes as the shock of what she was hearing sunk in. For a moment she forgot herself and leaned against the door. It swung open and Maggie stumbled into the room. Mrs. Cook jumped half out of her chair, and then sank back into it with a moan. Maggie heard a sigh from the bed. No one spoke.
“I heard you talking,” Maggie said. “I don’t understand.”
“Go back to bed,” Mrs. Cook said gently.
Maggie shook her head. “No. John and Mary—you said a woman killed them.”
Maggie took a step nearer the rocking chair, almost menacing in her approach. She was trembling. “John and Mary’s death was an accident. Wasn’t it?”
Mrs. Cook seemed supremely unhappy. She began to answer, bit her lip, and finally nodded. “Yes, Maggie. It was an accident.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I don’t know anything to the contrary.”
“But you don’t believe it. You think this woman killed them. You think they were—” she faltered. “Murdered.”
Mrs. Cook reached a weary hand to a strand of grey hair that had worked itself loose from her bun. She brushed it back and regarded the young woman standing before her, eyes pleading.
“Sit down, Maggie,” Mrs. Cook said. Maggie obeyed, sinking into the deep green feather blanket on Old Dan’s bed.
“No,” Mrs. Cook said wearily. “I don’t believe the fire was an accident.”
Maggie leaned forward. “Then what—?”
Mrs. Cook leaned back in the rocking chair and listened to the pop of the firewood in the hearth. “When we were very young,” she said slowly, “we were part of a council. John Davies, and Mary, and Daniel and I. We were studying old legends and phenomena. Things that couldn’t be explained naturally.”
Daniel spoke up, and his voice seemed stronger than before. “It was glorious,” he said.
Mrs. Cook ignored him. “It was dangerous,” she said. “There are powers in this world, Maggie—or outside of it, as it may be—that are best left alone.”
“Who was the woman?” Maggie couldn’t remember the name they had mentioned.
“Evelyn?” Mrs. Cook asked. Her voice suddenly grew more tired. “She was nearly one of us. She would have become one of the council, if we had voted her in. Mary stopped that from happening.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Thank heavens.”
“She were an evil one,” Old Dan suddenly added. “Swore she’d kill Mary for opposing her.”
Mrs. Cook shot Daniel a scathing look. Maggie felt that Mrs. Cook had planned to leave that part out.
“We didn’t think she meant it,” Mrs. Cook said. “We didn’t think there was any real danger. Not until the fire.”
“Do you have any proof?” Maggie asked.
Mrs. Cook shook her head. “Only the warning bells that went off in my own heart, and the memory of her black face all twisted and laughing.”
“Laughing,” Maggie whispered.
Mrs. Cook looked at the young woman and suddenly burst into tears. “Oh, Maggie,” she cried, reaching for the girl who once more looked so orphaned. She rose from her rocking chair and enfolded Maggie in her embrace.
For a long time they remained together, Mrs. Cook holding onto Maggie as though her tight embrace could stop the sorrow from coming. When at long last Maggie lifted a hollow-eyed face, Old Dan was watching them with a rolled up piece of parchment in his hands.
“What is that?” Mrs. Cook asked. She did not sound as though she wanted an answer.
“It was Evelyn’s,” Old Dan said quite simply. “I took it from her.”
Mrs. Cook paled. “When?”
“Not two weeks ago,” he said. “When I saw her. She was in Galce, in an inn. I snuck into her room and this was there, and I thought it was important. So I took it.”
“Why?” Mrs. Cook asked.
“It’s important,” Old Dan repeated. “It means something. I’ve been up to see the laird with it.”
A flush of anger rose in Eva Cook’s cheeks. “You mean you’d still speak to that—”
Old Dan shrugged. “I don’t suppose he’s any friend of hers, not after all this time. It was his council she ripped to pieces.”
“Why did you come back here?” Mrs. Cook asked.
“The laird wouldn’t see me,” he said. “So I was takin’ the scroll to Pravik. Maybe Jarin Huss can read it.” He held up the parchment, and his hand began to shake violently. In a moment his body was racked with the terrible cough, and Maggie saw blood on his hand where he covered his mouth.
“Trouble is,” he rasped when he had regained control of his body, “I’m not sure I’ll make it to Pravik.”
Mrs. Cook walked slowly to Old Dan’s side. She laid her hand on his forehead. “You’re burning up,” she said. “Daniel—what happened to you in Galce?”
“She looked at me,” Old Dan said. “I didn’t think she recognized me. At least not at the time. But her eyes met mine.”
His bony frame sunk back farther into the bed. “All that night I dreamed about her eyes. The coughing fits woke me up. It’s been getting worse ever since.”
As though to illustrate his words, Old Dan began to cough again. This time, blood ran from his mouth down his chin and onto the sheets and blankets. Mrs. Cook ran from the room for water a