Tundra

The tundra reached out for something to prey on, but it only found me– tired, gaunt, worn and not worth worrying about. My robe of black stood out as clearly as a fox in summer’s colours against the powdered fields, but I passed through the grass unnoticed, shimmering quietly like a mirage. My eyes, slitted in the wind, were the stony grey of the Tower I came from. That was me, Tower man. It was what the druids would call me, and it was the truth.

I had left my horse behind, tied safely to a tree a league back. I didn’t want to risk losing my only way home, so I was walking as far as I could carry myself. I didn’t want to go, to plunge back into the dark world of the forest, but it was necessary. Mossen Grove was there; Mossen Grove, where a man needed to convert in order to communicate with elder druids more evolved, not fully human, who could only be reached with through Dreaming; Mossen Grove, where torques were made of the purest gold, the liquid gold of sunlight, and the oak garlands sparkled with beams lancing through their gilded leaves in the only true clearing the Everglade had. According to the textbooks I had read, Mossen Grove would have standing stones, bright as ivory and faintly luminescent, like the fungi in the shadows under boughs. Mossen Grove would have things so far removed from human that they no longer even resembled animals.

I had come far enough from the tower that I had forgotten the bickering of seagulls on the beach and the far-off, lolling walruses on the islets that stood to one side of the Tower of the Art. I had likewise forgotten the haunting plains of tussocks on its other side, spread out endless like a second ocean. All I knew now was the crumbling ice and the grasses pushed flat by the winds, the true heart of the tundra. A crow flew overhead, cawing loudly against the muscling air, and I could not shake the feeling that these two beady black eyes were indentured to the Morrígan– spies’ eyes, high as the wind flies. I veiled myself, speaking the syllables that would grant me camouflage in this wild land. A white thing in a black robe I was no more. Instead, the grasses rippled through me, but still I felt watched.

I sped up, desperate to evade any raiders or others waylayers strayed so far from the sea. I knew the sons of wolves, with tattoos that marked them as lowly, sometimes hunted out here, distant as the tundra was from the salt-lapped home of the Cleaved Tide and other Seafarer clans. I robed myself in swiftness, becoming as light on foot as a zephyr, but still, I felt watched. I turned around abruptly.

‘Who’s there?’ I cried. ‘Reveal yourself!’ But nothing came back in reply. Only stolen echoes of my sound were snatched away from me before they could return.

I continued, pacing quickly now, exerting myself even in my lightened state. Then, there was a whooshing and something grabbed me from behind. It was the crow that had been circling above me like a vulture, its claws dug deep into my skin, piercing the fabric of my cloak. It flapped and squawked, beating its wings in my face.

‘Get off! Get off!’

But the crow did not get off. Instead, it transformed, and without a moment’s notice I was wrestling to break free of the grip of a mangy man, a man with glazed eyes and red leaking from his nose and ears; a man with a lopsided face. The fungus, I realised, had infected this man, who was obviously of druid stock. His torque, mere metal, was askew on his head, crowning mayhem, and his face was covered in odd, purplish blisters, leaking puss.

‘Fiend!’ I yelled, but it was too late.