Bon Voyage

There is something horribly normal about death, it is a mundane thing. A body is not dreadful, it is an object, no more extraordinary than a table or a book. It takes up space. It gets in the way. It may be neat or messy. It can be stacked and moved. Once the life is gone it becomes just a thing to be ignored or worked around.

All this I know now, but back then I was a fool.

There was a painted boat folded around the trunk of a tree, down close to the river. Two bodies hung out of the broken bottom of it, impaled on the splinters. The cargo had been scattered into the woods behind, as though a child had chucked out a box of bricks. The boxes, the bodies, the broken hull, all the ingredients of a trading barge were here, only mixed up, as though if only you had the correct plans, you might reassemble the parts back into a boat and set it on its way once more with a pat on the head and a bon voyage.

The trees were broken here, tall thin pines with bushy clusters of needles up high near the tops of them. They had been snapped near the roots, and now they leaned into one another like drunkards in a bar. I pictured a massive figure moving between them, shouldering them aside, lifting the boat. I pictured the barge rising, tilting, cracking open like an egg, the things running out of the bottom of it.

Several other bodies and pieces of body lay scattered in or near the water. The flies had arrived, great fat bluebottles that swarmed over the meat. I tiptoed between the grisly bits.

Then I heard the singing. An inhuman sound, a soaring, swooping, swinging sound. A splintered sound, drifting between the trees.

"Walk the ring of stones around!" It gibbered. "Can you catch her? Can you catch her?"

I followed it, away from the river, up the bank. The pines were smashed down in a circle as though some giant cat had come by and trod around and around to make a place to sit.

“Suck her down beneath the ground! Hands to cut her! Nails to scratch her!”

In the middle of the ring was a single lone pine, black against the pale grey sky. I climbed over the broken wood, stepping from branch to branch, careful not to trip and impale myself.

“Tried to hide but now she’s found! To the darkling pyre bound!”

Death is mundane, but this was not. It was hooked over a branch, thirty feet above the ground. The legs had been neatly trimmed away. The stumps were black, cauterised with fire. The face was a ruin, the eyes were gone, also the nose and the ears. Only the mouth remained and the tongue for singing. The arms had been broken in a thousand places then looped like ropes, the wrists twisted around and around each other, the hands and fingers sticking out like decorations at the top. It hung from its looped arms, swinging slowly in the breeze like a paternoster bell.

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"Beware the eyes! Beware the eyes!" It sang. Then it sank into a series of cackling sobs that broke like wood in the dry throat. I pictured a great armoured fist lifting it, delicate as a sculptor, careful not to break it in the wrong places, patiently shaving away the pieces, gently folding and manipulating the arms into just the right shape.

It died a few minutes later. I couldn't tell if it had been male or female, all evidence of its sex had been trimmed away. I considered climbing the trunk to cut it down, but in the end I left it. It was outside of normality now, an aberration. Nothing I could have done would have restored it to nature so I left it swinging for the reluctant crows.

By the smashed boat I found a new knife, then another, all good iron. I took all the knives I could get, and also a mid-weight longbow and a fat quiver of arrows that I found amongst the cargo. Then I set off once again, running, back towards the Grendlewald.

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Two bells had been hung either side of the firepot gate. They swung slowly in the breeze, one was right way up. The other was upside down, the arms removed at the shoulders, the legs knitted together above, the feet sticking out like crows wings. They called out to me as I came close.

"Who’s there! Who comes this way!"

I unslung the bow I had taken from the riverboat. I’ve never been a good shot, but at this range, I couldn’t miss.

"A ring of bells for the ring of stone" called one.

"The king of leaves will claim his own," replied the other.

"A ring of flesh, a ring of bone. The lord of life on a spauldren throne!"

"Now ring ye bells and sing him home!"

"Now ring ye bells and sing..."

My arrow chunked into the upside-down thing’s chest. It let out a long, slow sigh and hung still. The other began screaming, twitching and jerking from side to side on its broken arms, screaming and screaming until the voice cracked and it began sobbing, natural human sobs, cries of pure grief like a mother torn from her children. I ended it with a second arrow through the heart. Blood bubbled up from its mouth and the hollow place where its nose had been, then it hung limp.

The river gates were smashed off their hinges. The people within were not just dead, but shredded, the pieces of them painted on the walls, the roofs, the chimneys. Skinless heads glared down at me from the gutters. There was no sound save my own footsteps and the slow dripping, like soft rain, but it was not rain.

There was a broken mirror in one of the houses, and what was I to do? I could almost see my reflection, broken in the shards. I checked my hands, the hands with fingers, felt the fine chin, the scruff of a beard. I turned away. There would come a time for checking mirrors.

I made my way through as quickly as possible to the back gate. There was a man there, cleaved completely in half, the wormy bits of him spilling out the bottom. I left the Snake's instrument on a wall and continued north.

I already knew I would be too late.