The Weald

Long ago, deep in the countryside, far secluded from any road or town, stood a small, run-down cottage. It showed signs of neglect and disrepair, as though its owners had given little thought to it in some time. Its shutters were barred, and in some cases hung limp and clacking in the breeze. The roof was a shambles, the occasional hole punctured through the thatched covering. It stood near the gentle curve of a burbling stream, and aside from the flowing whispers of water and the groaned complaints of the cottage in the wind, the place was silent.

Inside, an aged man and a shriveled woman were quiet and unmoving. The man stood upright in the middle of the single room of the cottage, an iron fire poker clasped fiercely behind his back. He stared blankly into the meager fire that was lit within his hearth. Great dark circles hung under his eyes, and a look of deep, insurmountable fatigue permeated them. The woman sat in a modest wooden chair, her hands clasped loosely in her lap. Her posture was one of defeat, of standing on a precipice to elsewhere. She gazed weakly at the floorboards through lidded, puffy eyes, seeing nothing before her. Only vague suggestions of the world around her managed to filter through the numbing fog in her mind. 

The sun was setting. The orange light deepened to intense reds and unearthly pinks as its rays lanced in through the patchwork holes of the cottage. The light stained the two frail figures with an eerie palette evoking visions of hot blood, and fire. The man sighed heavily, tremulously. 

A loud knock came at the door, three times. The sound of wood striking wood piercing into the room. The two started visibly, yet remained mute. They turned languidly in unison and gazed forlornly into each other's eyes, then slowly back together to the heavy wooden door. The suggestion of a figure was standing before it outside, blocking the last spluttering rays of the sun as it sank below the horizon. The man trod silently to the hearth and laid the poker against the stone of the chimney. The sharp clink of it was almost deafening within the pregnant silence. The man flinched at this, and then slowly turned to face the door. 

The knock came again, thrice. He gathered himself with much effort and walked to the door. The floorboards groaned mournfully with each step. He reached for the latch and opened it. The clack of metal heralded the groan of aged hinges, as the door swung slowly and wide as though of its own will. He stepped back, never tearing his gaze from the darkening doorway and what was illuminated within it by the abating fire.

Framed in the entrance, in the purple light of the drowsing sun, was a creature of individually fey construction. Its shape was that of a young woman, yet as though weaved by seeking roots and strangling vines. Its chest was a mesh of thick, sinuous wooden cords, and from within pulsed a faint red light, as of some distant beating heart. At the ends of its arms were gnarled hands, with fingers of vine that ended in wickedly long blackened thorns that glinted in the firelight. Atop its head stood cracked antlers like that of a stag, hooked and reaching menacingly from where they sprouted among the tangled bracken flowing over its shoulders.  

Most unsettling of all was the smooth white mask that covered its face. Be it of porcelain, or more likely, of bone, none could be sure. It held upon it a perpetual rictus of pain, an almost accusatory malevolence, and from within the wicked slits that served for eyeholes, that same ruddy light gently pulsed. The mask tilted slightly with a suggestion of predation, and the light flared within as it saw the man fully. 

“Come in, won’t you?” he stammered quickly. Gesturing towards a simple wooden bed, piled high with quilts and skins. 

The creature righted the lean of its head, and with a laborious certainty walked beyond the threshold and stood next to the bed. 

“Please, lie down, rest.” The man said, barely keeping the stammer from his voice. 

The otherworldly being did as it was bidden. It sat and slowly laid back atop the blankets with a rustling and creaking as of trees in the wind. It set its antler-laden head back upon the feather pillows of the bed and gazed at the ceiling with unblinking eyes of beating light. It, at last, intertwined its hooked fingers over its heart and lay still, expectant. The mask it wore gleamed palely in the firelight.

The woman, without moving, began to moan as with great pain, and after a time her voice shifted in intonation becoming bright and clear. She began to sing, and she lifted her head to direct her song at the creature that now laid upon their bed. She began a lullaby, like those used to soothe babes as they lay in fear of sleep on stormy nights where the clouds waged war upon each other. The man inhaled deeply through his nose, and let his voice join hers. 

And so the aged couple sang, all into the night. Songs of their ancestors, songs of love and tragedy, songs to portent rain, songs of sorrow and of loss. They sang every song they knew until the sun began to stir below the horizon. Not once did the creature move, except for the scant few moments of silence that the man and woman could not avoid. In those silences, the thing stirred, flexing its barbed fingers, and groaned deeply and hideously. Yet when the singing resumed, it once again pacified, clasping its hands in content and staring skyward.  

All at once, the creature sat up, cutting short the strained song the man was singing while the woman dozed restlessly in her chair. It swung its corded legs over the side of the bed and stood. This roused the woman, and the frail exhausted man stepped back unthinkingly as a hitch came into his voice and ceased his song. They silently watched as the creature solemnly walked through the still-open door without a backward glance. 

They stood with a speed beyond what their weakened state should have allowed and rushed to crowd next to each other in the open doorway. The sun was now glaring in a thin blade over the edge of the world, and they shielded their eyes as they winced at the starkness of its light.  

The man shuddered and croaked weakly through cracked lips. “It is only a matter of time before we haven’t the strength to sing down the calling inside of her.”

He shifted uneasily, blinking his reddened, tired eyes against the sun, and began again. “When the sun sets again, and our voices fail, she will drown her roots in our life's-blood, for what we have done.” 

The woman, at first trying to speak wetly and then clearing her throat with a sickening hack, said. “A gift of one's own flesh, to the heart of weald is never without its curse, my love.”

Together, they stood inside the doorway and watched the creature that was once of their own blood stride inexorably in the direction of the impenetrable treeline beyond abundant fields of golden wheat. 

After an age of silence, she continued. “As we shall eat of plenty, so shall the weald, in time.

That cottage still stands, after a fashion. The roof has fallen in, the walls have long since become as broken grave markers, and the stream has run dry. No life is there now, only barren earth and dust where once bountiful harvests were made. Nothing save for the solitary, soaring tree that now grows impossibly rooted among the rotting boards of that ancient place. Its branches reach toward the sky, wreathed in leaves of malevolent red that whisper faintly in the wind.