"Cold as clay... old and grey...
But, O the barrow looks warm!
For I am a shade without a grave —
I sleep in a winter storm."
The barefoot girl by the brook continued to sing as the woman approached. Syaven called out to the child. If only she had known. Cousin, she might have said. Little one, she might have said. Even in the misty shade by the Eaves of Fangorn, the pendant gleamed at the woman's throat. A necklace with a red jewel.
"Celawyn!" she shouted, and condemned the child to oblivion.
Both ignorant of this, the girl began a cheerful babble of nonsense to avoid a scolding, and Syaven dismounted to collect two little boots, two little stockings, and replace them on two little feet.
She embraced Celawyn, returned to her horse, and disappeared down the road. She did not mention she was not planning to return.
The singing faded, and the child was never seen again.
"...for I am a shade without a grave
And I scarce recall what is warm.
For all I miss, I bend to kiss
A dove with a barren bed —
Whenever she cries, I tell her lies,
Until she sleeps with the dead."
♦
The raised voices were jail guards. The pounding in her head was her pulse. But Syaven heard only chanting and felt only drums, and her mind was far away.
It was a place she had never been but always recognised. Where she could not recall the words but she knew what they meant. Where she had discovered that a tongue could be so evil, to hear it was pain. Where she had stood on a peak to see a world of blood. Nothing compared. Across every arm of land, from the sea of the West to the sands of the East — flood and drought, famine and disease, storm and blaze — no misery the Earth commanded could measure against the cruelty within a human hand.
So wild, so loud were the beating palms on the drums, the vibrations shook the curtain. The heavy, dark curtain. It was woven of sticks, and bark, and bits of fur, and strips of hide, and feathers, and hair, and bones, and many limbs, and two little feet.
She knew it was not a curtain but a robe. She knew it all. She knew behind the grotesque cloak was a rotting face. She knew that one bright glint within the darkness was the red jewel, the hag's single eye.
But this time there was another light. In the smile, in the space between teeth where another tooth should be, a new jewel. A deep emerald. And she knew only one place that colour lived. Only one green so clear and so dark at once.
"No," she said to the hag, fierce and confident. "No, you will not."
The leer widened. Malice and mischief. The emerald glittered between the teeth.
"You will not," she repeated. "I do not know his name. Not in waking, not in dreams. You will not learn it from me."
There was soft laughter now. The cloak of trophies rattled.
"I have never asked. You will never have him."
Something was wrong. She should not be here.
"Begone, witch. You can do nothing. You can do nothing. Your stone is lost. Leave me—"
Syaven touched her throat. Where it once had been. Where it was no more. And she felt the rough bandage around her neck. She felt the wet spot where the blood soaked through.
Her new necklace. A necklace with a red jewel.
Her heart fell to the floor like a rock. She blinked away the vision, the revolting laughter. She blinked until she could see the dark shape by the door. The man with many names.
She knew many things. She knew of scars and sins. Torture and torment. She knew what life could mean when death was watching closely. But she did not know of sorcery, or how a curse took hold.
Never... never... You will never...
The chains at her wrists began to whisper in quiet panic. Fingers cold and quivering rose to claw at her throat — loosening, straining, and tearing the bandage away. Away. Away.
Leave me.
