We seemed to have used all our good fortune on the first night, for we never found another shepherd’s hut to stay in. I had spent more nights sleeping out in the wilds than under cover, but my immortal blood had always kept me warm and I had had two dozen hounds snuggled in around me. In this new body I tossed and turned all night, trying and failing to find a comfortable position, and I woke each morning tired and sore. Worse still was the cold, which crept in through the stony ground and sucked all the warmth from me. The second night found me shivering so hard that my teeth chattered against each other loud enough to prevent Belis from sleeping until she insisted we sleep back-to-back and share warmth.
I was loth to listen to her but it was becoming clearer every day that Belis was much more suited to this life than I was. I would barely have reached the top of the Chalk on that first day had she not carried my pack and I would be close to starvation by now without her. The berries and mushrooms I had picked and eaten in the past were now poisonous to me and the wild beasts that had come eagerly to my hands for a caress now fled in fear.
This was difficult for me to accept; I had been bitter enough about accepting Belis as a travel companion when I had thought she would slow me down. To find that she could outpace me at every turn, striding tirelessly across the Chalk, was somehow harder to take. To have yew berries slapped out of my hand before I could toss them in my mouth was even worse. I had yelled at her about that and she had snapped back that a goddess of death should know her poisons better. I sulked at her rudeness, hugging the resentment to me like a cloak. I could hear myself being unreasonable, but it was difficult to stop my mouth from spitting whatever hurtful words I could think of at her. I couldn’t control the new emotions that were raging through me, was as ill practised at managing human feelings as human limbs.
Late on the third day we moved into the woods above the Misbourne and were considering stopping for the night when we came across a huge brown bear. He was standing up on hisback legs, nosing at a bees’ nest set in the branches of a slender elm tree. My immediate reaction was delight at seeing the beast and I kept walking towards him, intent on getting a share of the honey. Belis caught me by my pack and pulled me backwards. I turned, trying to shrug her off, and found she had her spear out, held in her free hand.
“Move back into the woods,” she said, “quick and quiet. I’ll cover our retreat.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I said, tired and eager for some honey to sweeten whatever dreadful stew Belis had in mind for tonight. “I won’t be a moment. I’ll just get him to share whatever he has found so far.”
Belis actually took her eyes off the bear to stare at me in disbelief.
“Are you mad? You can’t take food off a bear. This is trying to pet that lynx all over again.” I looked down at the scratches on my arms. I had forgotten about that.
“Humans and bears don’t get along?” I asked.
“Gods give me strength,” she muttered. “No, we don’t. Get back into the trees, we’ll go around, keep walking for another hour or so.”
I opened my mouth to argue but the bear growled, a low huff of warning, and an unfamiliar feeling swept through me, a cold kind of stiffness. I shut my mouth and ducked behind Belis before I could even process the instinct. She rolled her eyes and began stepping back out of the clearing. The bear turned back to his feast.
I kept quiet for another hour of walking, puzzling over my curious response to the bear’s cautionary growl. I hadn’t experienced anything like that before, a visceral urge to flee, to put something solid between myself and danger. Was it fear? I had never thought of myself as cowardly but as I trudged through the woods in the dim light of the evening I considered that there had never been any true cause for fright. I had felt exhilaration, anger, pride, but never fear. I felt revolted at its power over me.
Ahead of me Belis stopped walking and put her pack down.
“We’ve gone far enough. Let’s sleep here tonight and start fresh tomorrow,” she said.
I nodded and, dropping my own pack, began to gather wood for a fire. By the time I had returned with the third armful, Belis had the cauldron bubbling over a flame and was sitting on a fallen log, chopping up the vegetables she had gathered during the day’s walk. I took a seat beside her and stared into the flames. I didn’t say anything; I was still mulling over the memory of fear and its hold on me. Belis stayed quiet while cooking the evening meal, speaking only to ask me to pass more wood. We spoke less than a dozen words before turning in for the night, lying back-to-back, both cloaks piled on top of us.
Belis fell asleep quickly and the feel of her steady breathing beside me soothed my racing mind so that I slipped into dreaming without noticing.
In my dream I was back in the glade with Belis and her sister, but both of their lips were stained with the dark poison that had taken their mother’s life. I was immortal again, leaning over Belis’s limp body to loose the soul within. Suddenly her eyes snapped open, not grey-green but the amber eyes of the bear, and when she smiled it was with ursine teeth that opened to let out a guttural roar. I fell backwards and scrabbled for a weapon, but my hands found only yew berries and rabbit bones and I felt the chill terror flood through me.
I awoke with a shudder into the inky black of night. The fire had burned down to the faintest embers and the woods were cold. I had rolled out from under my cloak and found myself lying in the dirt. I sat up. Beside me Belis had pulled the cloaks around herself in her sleep. I shuddered at the memory of her with the bear’s eyes and decided not to try and wrestle my cloak back.
I crawled towards the fire and poked at the coals with a stick, releasing a torrent of bright sparks into the air. I shoved a few more branches onto the embers and blew on them, waiting for the flames to catch. When I had built up the fire enough to put out some more heat I sat there and tried to calm myself down. Ithad just been a dream, probably brought on by the shock of the last few days. Humans had dreams all the time that meant nothing. There was no need for this one to symbolise anything at all. I fumbled in my pack for an apple and bit into it, the sweetness pushing new strength into my blood.
Across the fire something moved in the darkness. A deeper black than the night, unlit by the dancing flames. The sound of rustling leaves came from my left and I turned to see the tattered edge of a cloak slipping between the trees. A foul scent drifted towards me on the wind, the sour taste of rotting flesh. It was faint but I could smell enough to recognise it. Wight.
A common enough problem in my old life. When a human died a quick and violent death sometimes their soul would not recognise its body had perished. It would not be strong enough to animate the fresh corpse, but if the body was not burned or buried, was left to rot, then the lingering spirit could re-enter it later. Demented by the pain of existing in such a form, the wight would attack any creature in its path.
I had put down hundreds of wights over the years, using the dogs to herd them away from human settlements to where I could quickly and easily prise the soul loose from the body and send it on to Annwn. I had even occasionally reunited with one of the souls when visiting Arawn and they had always thanked me most politely for my aid.
This wight didn’t look like he would be thanking me this evening. Branches snapped behind me and I jumped to my feet, keeping the fire to my back. Belis was still asleep, her spear propped against a tree beside her. I measured the distance between us, no more than a few yards. I didn’t want to call out to her lest I provoke the wight. The smell got worse and I felt my mortal heart begin to drum in my chest, pumping the blood faster and faster.
I dashed towards Belis, shaking her awake.
“Wake up, wake up, there’s a wight in the trees.”
She was dizzy with sleep for a moment, but her eyes focused on my face and in a moment she was on her feet, spear in hand.
“Where is it,” she whispered, tracing the spear point through the night. I pointed to where the smell was strongest.
“Over there, it came up from the south.” I moved closer to her. “Have you fought one before?”
“I’ve never even seen a wight,” Belis said. “You’re sure that’s what it is?”
For once she didn’t sound patronising, speaking as one equal to another. Still not appropriately respectful but better.
