Angel in the Woods Read online

  Fresh bread graced the supper table, with cherries from a nearby orchard and a great pot of hot chocolate. I filled up on it well enough. I might have wished for a leg of meat or a tankard of ale, but either would have seemed madly out of place in the great white house. When dinner had ended the whole tribe returned to the soft room. I followed them, to find that an enormous wooden chair had been brought out of hiding and placed in the center of the room. The children had arranged themselves all around it. The Giant sat there in the midst of them. Illyrica rested on the floor on one side of him with her head on his knee, and the Pixie sat on the other side. Nora stood behind the Giant with her eyes full.

  I had not seen the Giant in the light before. I saw now that he was a very great man in stature, but only a man. His thick hair and beard, once coal black, were beginning to grey. He wore dark peasant clothes, and his massive hands were worn and wrinkled. He looked up and saw me. His eyes seemed to declare his pride in his little kingdom, and yet I thought I saw tears in them. The next instant he blinked, and the illusion was gone.

  “Will you not stay with us this time, Angel?” the Pixie asked. Every child in the room leaned forward to catch his answer, but he shook his great shaggy head and looked at me again.

  “No,” he said in a deep, gruff voice. “No, my girls, I have only come for that one there.”

  He pointed a finger at me. Every head turned my way.

  Every head but Nora’s. Her eyes were resolutely on the floor, and she would not look at me.

  Chapter 7

  angel in the dark

  I left the castle that night and went with the Giant deep into the woods. I did not know, when I turned my head to see the white stones disappearing behind the trees, that I would not enter the castle again for three months; nor would I speak to its inhabitants in all of that time.

  I followed the Giant through the woods until we reached a moonlit clearing. He knew it intimately, for he stretched out his hand and brought forth a staff that had been leaning against a tree, invisible in the night. He tossed it to me. I caught it, surprised.

  “You threatened me once with a stick,” he said. “So. Fight.”

  I saw that he had another staff in his hands, held at ready. I tightened my grip on the staff, feeling its weight in my hand, watching the Giant. I knew that my smaller size could be a boon, for I had agility that the Giant did not have—and I was by far the younger man, and the quicker. I thought I saw my chance. I moved in to strike him. In the next instant I lay flat on my back, gasping for breath.

  “On your feet,” the Giant commanded. “Again.”

  I struggled to my feet, letting the sting of pain and pride give me strength. I crouched lower this time, circled him more warily. Again I moved; again he bested me with such speed that I had no time to see it coming.

  We sparred that night until my body ran with sweat. Over and over he defeated me, until my limbs and back ached. I wondered if he had not brought me here to kill me after all—if he was not the villain I had first imagined him to be. Yet he did not seem interested in killing me. After an hour, when I once more lay on the ground with my chest heaving and my limbs crying out in protest, the Giant reached down his hand.

  “Will you let me help you up, boy?” the Giant asked.

  “I am not a boy,” I gasped.

  “No,” the Giant said. “Only a mule is so stubborn that he will not be helped. Stand, then.”

  I struggled to my feet. The world reeled around me as I did. I tried desperately to stay standing. The Giant’s gruff voice broke through the haze of my mind. I did not hear everything he said, but the word “drink” struck my ear.

  “Yes,” I gasped. In a moment the rough skin of a drinking horn was thrust into my hand. I poured the cool water down my throat as greedily as any ill-trained child. But oh, my whole body thrilled to it!

  The Giant stood and watched me. When I had finished, the world had stopped spinning quite so dizzily.

  “Are you in pain, boy?” he asked.

  “No,” I lied.

  The Giant grunted. He thrust something into my hand—a spear. I could see its tip glinting in the moonlight.

  “You’ll be hungry,” he said. “Feed yourself.”

  He meant that I should hunt—in the middle of the night! I nearly laughed at the idea. “It is dark,” I said.

  Somewhere in the trees, an owl hooted. “All the wisest hunt at night,” the Giant answered.

  “You misunderstand me,” I said. “I cannot hunt now; I cannot see.”

  “Only a fool trusts to his eyes,” the Giant said. “You remember that. The eyes can only show you the appearance of things. You will never understand anything until you learn to look past appearances.”

  I was sure he was not really speaking of hunting, but his true meaning I could not get at. Not then.

  I caught nothing that night, and the Giant did not share his catch with me. He might have, if my pride had not been stronger than my stomach. I rebuffed any compassionate gift he might have been tempted to bestow. Nor did I catch anything the next night, or for many nights thereafter. Thankfully, the Giant taught me the art of setting and checking traps; else I should have eaten nothing but berries and bark for months—and even these, I had to find myself. The Giant taught me always in the dark. My eyes grew more adept at seeing in shadow. I learned to recognize good food from bad by the smell and feel of it, to find my way by the bare outlines of branches and the patterns in what seemed like hopeless tangles of roots and moss, by the occasional glimpse of moon and stars. At long last I learned to throw a spear in the darkness and have it find its mark, and then I ate meat and was more glad of it than I could say. I thought my heart would swell to bursting as I sat by the fire and roasted that creature. I had done it. I had learned.

  As my lessons lasted all through the night, I made myself a den under the roots of an ancient oak, where I slept in the earth’s darkness late into every morning. In the afternoon I would emerge, to spend my day as I liked. In the lazy days of summer I fished in the creeks that ran through the woods, and I roamed the forest paths for a few hours each afternoon, trying to match up the world I knew in darkness with the world I saw in light. I began after a while to understand the Giant’s words, or to think that I did. The world was deeper in the night. In the day I could convince myself that I saw everything there was to see, but darkness forced me to know the woods in greater measure.

  I came to know the darkwood as though it was an extension of myself. To move as silently as a wolf in the trees. To pay attention to every sound and smell and movement. But as well as I knew the woods, the Giant knew them far better. Where he went in the day I did not know. His manner did not welcome questions. He came to me after dark every night, and we hunted together, or sparred as we had the first night, though he was gentler with me now. Toward dawn we would light a fire and sit by it, eating whatever we had caught that day. Often I saw by the light of the fire that there was blood beneath his fingernails and in the deep cracks of his hands, but I never asked about it. I grew to respect the Giant as I had never respected any man. He was wise in the way of the woods as no man I had ever imagined. His strength was enormous, yet he was quiet and gentle in it. His speech was gruff, yet there was more in what he said than I could easily understand.

  Summer drew near its close, and the night air began to take an edge to itself. The Giant handed me a cloak of furs one night. I looked at him quizzically.

  “It is yours,” he said.

  “I did not work for it,” I said. “You have never given me anything I did not work for.”

  The Giant looked at me for a long moment over the light of the bonfire. “A man must always use his hands in honest work when he has a need,” he said at last. “But he must also humble himself. If you cannot accept a gift from a friend, then you are still a fool.”

  I did not say another word about it. That night I slept warmly, couched in my den with the thick fur all around me.

  It was not
long after that the Giant came to me earlier than usual, when the sun was only halfway down its descent. His staff was in his hands. With his head he gestured toward mine.

  “Take it up, boy,” he said. “Show me what you have learned.”

  I took up the staff, my heart pounding with strange eagerness. Never once had I beaten the Giant since that first night in the woods, but I had grown in strength and agility. The twilight played tricks with my eyes, but I knew it did the same to him. We circled each other warily. I moved in. The clearing echoed with the sound as wooden staff hit wooden staff. He struck, and I countered; I swung for him, and he jumped back. An instant later his staff swung into my back, and I fell to the ground, the wind knocked out of me. I struggled to breathe as I pushed myself up on the palms of my hands.

  “What hurts, boy?” the Giant said.

  I looked up at him, fire in my eyes. “I think you have bent my spine,” I told him.

  He shook his head. To my surprise there was sorrow in his expression. “Better that your pride should hurt,” he said. “Let it hurt, boy; let it break. Pride is your greatest enemy.”

  I saw my chance. The Giant was not paying attention as he usually did. I leapt to my feet, catching up my staff as I did so, and brought it sharply against the back of his knees. I stood straight even as he hit the ground. He looked up at me and grimaced. I could only look down at him, my hands gripping the staff, my chest heaving as I fought to regain control of my breath. I had imagined beating him a thousand times, but I felt no triumph now.

  The Giant held out his hand. “Help me to my feet, boy,” he said. It was a moment before his words registered, and then I scrambled to catch hold of his hand and help him up.

  On his feet again, the Giant laid his hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him, stilled by the gentleness in his eyes. “You have learned a great deal,” he said.

  “I…” I stammered, trying to find my tongue. The Giant had not spoken so directly to me since I had come to the woods with him, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of indebtedness. “I thank you, Angel.”

  His hand tightened on my shoulder, and he smiled.

  And then the moment was broken. He looked away suddenly, deep lines furrowing his brow. I started to ask him what was wrong, but he held a finger to his lips.

  Faster and more silently than any man his size should have been able to move, he plunged into the forest. I followed him. He had not told me that I could not come, and I wanted to know what was happening. As I moved down the well-known paths in the footsteps of the Angel of the Woods, a chill came over me. Something was wrong. I could feel it in the air; sense it in the silence of the night-creatures.

  There was an intruder in our world.

  Chapter 8

  intruder

  A bright moon shone overhead, illuminating silver pockets of darkness as we moved through the wood. We were on high ground, and the trees were sparser than in most places, but I did not fear that anyone would see us coming. The Giant wore dark clothes as he always did, and I had long since traded my traveler’s garb for furred buckskin. I was as grey and drab as an aging deer; and if I did not move with his grace, I had at least learned the deer’s trick of silence.

  The Giant stopped abruptly at the edge of a low ridge overlooking a wide path. It was the road I had used when I first entered the wood, the remnant of what had once been a well-traveled drive. The forest had encroached much upon it, but it was still clearly distinguishable as a man-made path, and it led straight to the castle.

  Something was coming down it, something too clumsy and careless to belong to the woods, though quiet enough for a man. I peered down into the gloom of the road, and then I saw him—a small, hunched man, who moved with many a furtive look in every direction, and clutched his cloak to him against the night air. By the moonlight I could see that his skin was sallow, and his hair was long and thinning on top. I supposed him to be a gypsy, and I did not like the look of him.

  The Giant stepped down into the path without a word or sound of warning. The little man gave a cry of astonishment and threw up his arm as if to ward off a blow. The Giant simply stood in the path with his arms folded over his broad chest, glowering down upon the intruder.

  “Why have you come here?” the Giant demanded.

  The man bowed, his hands tucked inside the front of his cloak. His face was a mask of terror. “Please,” he said in a high-pitched, whining voice, “have mercy on me; have mercy, guardian of the woods…”

  The Giant was unmoved. “State your business,” he said.

  The man began to babble, something about being lost and a merchant seeking fortune, but I did not hear his words. My eyes were fixed on his cloak. I did not like the way he kept his hands hidden. There was something wrong in his whole manner, something… feigned. My time in the woods with the Giant had taught me to trust a great deal to instinct, to pay attention to what my other senses knew that my eyes did not. What warned me first I do not know, but I became suddenly aware that the man had a knife in his cloak, and that he was carefully sizing up the Giant to determine how he would aim before throwing it, deceitfully and skillfully.

  I shouted as loudly as I could and leaped from the ridge. I slammed into the man, knocking him to the ground, and punched him as hard as I could in the face. He shrieked with terror the whole while, and I grabbed him around the throat. I felt the Giant’s hand on my shoulder, and turned to see him glaring at me.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  In answer, I reached into the man’s cloak. My fingers closed around the hilt of a knife. I pulled it out and held it up to the Giant triumphantly. “He is a treacherous worm,” I said. “He would have thrown it in a moment.”

  The Giant reached out slowly, and I handed the knife to him. My knees were still firmly planted in the dust on either side of the little man, and my hands were still around his throat, though loosely enough to let him breathe. The Giant examined the knife. He seemed shaken. I had never seen that look in his eyes. Itt frightened something deep inside of me, even as I felt wildly triumphant—I had saved the Angel of the Woods.

  “Let him up,” the Giant said. His voice was deeper than usual. Whether anger or some other emotion deepened it, I did not know. For a moment I considered disobeying him. But another look at the cowering weasel beneath me, his face smeared with his own blood, subdued the fire in my veins. He was not worth bothering over. I stood, wiping my hands together in a vain effort to clean them of dust and blood.

  The Giant glared down at the intruder. “Get up,” he said.

  The little man scrambled to his feet, bowing and scraping and falling over himself as he backed away.

  “Get out of my woods,” the Giant said. “Never return. Do you understand me?”

  “Oh yes, master,” the man said, still bowing. “I understand.”

  We stood together and watched him hurry away into the gloom of the night. When at last the Giant turned to go, I thought his shoulders seemed stooped. For a moment he seemed to be a very old man.

  “It is time to go home,” he said. His voice was weary. I did not for a moment understand him. I thought he meant to return to whatever den he slept in—I never knew where it was—but as he continued down the road to the castle, understanding dawned.

  “Do you mean that we’re to go back to the Castle? I asked.

  He looked back at me and nodded.

  I felt a moment of elation. Back to the castle, place of beautiful mysteries. Back in the company of this man who had taught me so much, in whose defense I had proved myself—to myself—a hero. But elation was dulled by the sting of regret. I stood still in the path and closed my eyes, taking in the sound and feel of the night woods. They had become a part of me. Without realizing it, I had almost thought to stay within them forever. Yet another emotion overtook me at the thought: a pang of loneliness. Of fear. No, I could not stay here. It had been too long since I had spent much time in human company.

  I opened my eyes.
The Giant had also stopped, not much ahead of me. His eyes were lifted to the treetops and the moonlit sky above them. He turned back and looked at me from beneath his great black brows.

  “Winter is coming,” he said. “We will stay in the castle till spring.”

  Without another word he started down the path again. All in a confusion I followed, driven on by excitement and the fear of loneliness even as a part of me stayed behind to haunt the forest forever.

  Chapter 9

  the first winter

  Snowflakes began to fall before we reached the castle, carried in on a deceptively light wind. They swirled around us in the darkness, catching the night lights like pieces of the moon. Heated by my victory, I now found myself fighting against the cold as the winter air blew against me and chilled the sweat on my body. I drew my fur cloak close as we stepped out from the trees. The grounds looked barren and desolate under the moonlight, and the castle sat white and ghostly amidst the falling snow.

  It was late at night, and I wondered as we approached who would be awake to welcome us. I needn’t have wondered. Only minutes after the Angel’s knock the great wooden door swung open, and Nora stood in the torchlight. She wore a long white robe over her nightclothes, and her hair was down, falling to her waist. The torchlight made its golden waves deepen in colour. Perhaps it was the cold that heightened my senses, but I felt that I had never seen Nora before. The blue of her eyes, usually so sharp, was softened by a mix of concern and welcome—the welcome, I knew, was all for the Angel. Standing in the doorway Nora looked to me wondrous and magical, an ancient fairy queen still garbed in the beauty of youth, ushering us into her otherworldly castle. What happened to my heart in that moment is beyond my power to explain, even now.