A Fantasy Story, Part 2

Hi everyone!

I've had some really nice comments about the first part of this story so I'm now really excited to see what you'll think of the rest of it :D many thanks to those who did some reading, btw.

It's assumed that a bunch of stuff happens in between Part 1 and this part. Feel free to imagine it yourself, or just suggest what might have happened and maybe I'll write it! :P

Also, a bunch of stuff happens in between the two scenes that you're about to read. Again, just imagine it or ask me to write something, I guess. Or if you're cool with a slightly-nonsensical jump then you could always ignore it!

Anyways, hope you enjoy Part 2 as much as you seemed to enjoy Part 1! :D

♥Nancy♬

The night was dark, the trees were huge and the road was uneven. I tripped over yet another tree root and my horse spooked at the unexpected tug on his reins.

 “No,” I yelled, as he darted off between the trees. My voice echoed around my head. I was glad I hadn’t fallen; the light was bright enough that I could see the rocks and roots on the ground and knew for sure that I wanted to stay afoot. When it came down to it, I barely even knew which way I should be going. Nevertheless, I didn’t have much choice... I kept walking.

After only a few hundred metres, I realised that I wasn’t alone in this forest. In the distance, I heard the faint sound of not-quite-music. It was some kind of rhythmic cacophony, meandering its way through the dark and the trees. I had never heard a sound that made my toes curl and my stomach churn and my ears ache quite as much as this sound.

I tripped over another tree root, almost landing flat on the forest floor. My hand darted out and grabbed a low branch to steady myself. As I regained my balance, a flicker of light caught my eye, far off between the trees. Instinctively my hands curled around my belly.

 “Any companion would be better than stayin’ here all on my lonesome, right love?” I whispered. I felt a little crazy, talking to a baby I hadn’t yet met in the middle of the woods at night. I headed in the direction of the was-it-music? and the flickering lights.

As I got closer, the flickering light turned out to be a flickering campfire. The music grew more disturbing as it grew louder and I started to think that I could hear words in among the sounds, but they weren’t in any language I’d ever heard. The light of the campfire cast shadows all around, revealing the silhouettes of tents and travelling wagons in what must have been a large clearing among the trees.

Each step that I took brought me closer to the campsite in the clearing, and brought a new detail to my attention. The fire was definitely big, that’s how I’d been able to see it from so far. The tents were decorated in wild colours and patterns that made it look as though terrible creatures were inside them. They made my heart skip every time the flickering fire brought them into new focus. I could see the people - were they people? - in the clearing, too, although their faces were hidden in shadows because they were all looking in towards the fire. Many of them held instruments, but from where I was I couldn’t make out what the instruments were.

With my next step, I tripped. The ground was so uneven here and I fell onto my knees, landing hard right behind a small, wooden stool that formed part of the circle around the campfire.

The music stopped. For a moment I was simply relieved that the assault on my ears had ceased. And then I looked up and took a good, long look at the people surrounding me.

 “Oh gods,” I breathed. I clamped my hands around my belly and closed my eyes tight. “Please don’t eat me, please, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt my wee babe before it even meets the world.” If I had been surrounded by humans, my reaction might have been different. But as those faces had turned towards me I had seen some unmistakeable features. Their ears were pointy and thin, with raggedy edges and multiple earrings all up the edges. I’d seen the light glint off an eye and there had been no white to the eye at all. And I’d seen the tattoos all over their faces and I knew for certain exactly what these people - not people, creatures - were and exactly how much danger I was really in. I’d heard tales, from my da and from old people in my village, about the Nybelingnau, but I’d always believed that they were nothing more than tales.

One of them, a particularly tall, slender male, began to usher the others back. He spoke in the discordant tones of the Nybelingnau language, but his motions were quite human as he urged his comrades back towards their campfire. I whimpered and huddled into a tiny ball where I knelt on the forest floor. I had my hands clasped around my belly. It seemed so wrong, that we had come so far and here we were about to be eaten by Nybelingnau, a fairy story monster, of all things. The creature that had shooed away the others turned to me.

 “Please don’t eat me,” I whimpered again.

The creature spoke. He spoke in his own language, in sounds that burned my ears and maybe me think of serpents and hell-dogs and harpies and other creatures that weren’t meant to exist, just like the Nybelingnau. I shuddered at the sound and curled tighter into myself. The silence that followed his speech was unbearable. I could hear my breath, coming faster and faster, and the crackle of the campfire, but all the other creatures were silent and waiting. Until the creature spoke again.

 “We will not eat you,” he said. He spoke in a hissing, clacking accent, it was like nothing I’d ever heard before. But the words were English. I looked up.

 “Sit by our fire, eat of our food. I, Malvarl, from the lands that now house the Province of the Three Markets of the humans, offer you the hospitality of clan-” he said a word that I couldn’t understand, clearly the Nybelingnau name for their clan. I flinched at the unfamiliar sounds but the meaning of his words was beginning to sink in.

 “You’ll not eat me...?” I whispered, “but you’re Nybelingnau...”

The creature, Malvarl, made a sound that was almost close to a human sigh.

 “We will not eat you. I offer you the hospitality of my clan.” He was annunciating more clearly now, as though I were a child who couldn’t understand. “Sit by our fire, eat of our food.”

I uncurled myself a little, straightening my back. I kept my hands clasped tightly around my belly.

 “We are bound by the laws of hospitality. Rise and be warm, human.” A hand appeared in front of my face. I stifled a scream - it was as if his hand had taken no time at all to lift from his side. But it was open and inviting, despite the knobbly fingers with one joint too many, and the tattoos up his thumb and across his hand. I raised my own hand, and put it in his.

Somehow, I tuned out the sounds of men - if they were men - screaming, moaning, crying, and the sounds of their chains rattling inside those cages and the sounds of the bars of the cages rattling and grating deep inside the stone where they were set. I concentrated on the faint drip-drip-dripping from the ceiling, the slow trickle of I-hope-it’s-water down the stone walls and the almost soothing sound of the barge pole propelling us smoothly along. I counted, silently, the cells as we floated past.

 “Soon,” I whispered. Malvarl nodded once.

Our torch shed only a little light ahead, but I knew Malvarl was keeping his sharp eyes wide open when he suddenly stopped paddling.

 “Are we...?”

 “There is a turn up ahead. Close your eyes,” he warned, and moved his arm to bring the torch round next to my head. He needed the light to read the cell numbers, but I’d learnt the first time to keep my eyes closed like he warned - that first look into one of the cells had been enough to teach me that lesson.

Our boat slowed almost to a stop in the thick water. We’d navigated two turns already in this maze of a dungeon and I knew that Malvarl was not looking forward to a third.

 “Myrna,” he whispered, “to our left there is number two hundred and thirty five. Stare straight.”

I did as I was told, looking straight ahead. I could only see gloom, I couldn’t even make out the turn we were apparently approaching. But eventually out of the gloom I saw the dull glint of our torchlight off iron bars, and then there was a cell behind them and then, in cell two hundred and thirty six, I made out the shape of a man.

The closer we got, the more details were revealed to me. At first it was just the blurred figure of a man in the cage, then I noticed that he was hanging, held upright by chains. As we got closer I saw that they were heavy iron chains and that as well as holding him up, they were also holding him still in the cell. Malvarl brought our boat to a stop just before it bumped into the stone wall ahead of us. To our right, the dungeon stretched on and on... But in front of me, was a cage that held a man I knew. Malvarl moved the torch so that we could see better. The man in the cage groaned and stirred, and looked up into the light.

Our eyes met. His face morphed into shocked recognition and then into his trademark grin, albeit more tired than I had seen before. His face was almost unrecognisable, scarred and caked with blood as it was. But it’s hard not to recognise the face that haunts your dreams... And apparently the case was the same for him.

 “Myrna,” he said. He was not using the same hushed tones that we had chosen for our journey through the dungeon. His voice was so loud that it almost hurt my ears.

 “Darach,” I replied, at a normal volume as well. My voice bounced off the walls and the other cages released a bellowing of rattling chains and humanoid moans.

In the boat behind me, a baby whimpered.

 “No, no, no,” I pleaded. The stable boat rocked as a I turned frantically behind me to snatch the baby up into my arms. “Shh, hush little one.”

But of course, when one baby begins to fret the other one has to as well. Malvarl picked up the other baby in his spindly arms and whispered to it in his own language, in words and sounds that I could never understand or replicate.

 “You brought babes to this hellhole, Myrna? Are they yours, pet? Did you make ‘em with this fella? Or are they mine?” he gave a hollow laugh.

 “Malvarl has tastes in a rather different area,” I said.

Malvarl looked up from the babe in his arms and grinned at Darach. The torchlight sparkled on the tips of his pointy teeth. The menace in his eyes sparkled even more. Darach’s eyes grew wide as wagon wheels.

 “Myrna, what do you think you’re doing? Travelling with one o’ them, and with babes along, too. Whose are they?”

 “Malvarl has kept me safe, Darach. You’ll be nice to him or you’ll stay in that cage. And the babes ain’t mine and they ain’t yours neither.”

 “Not these ones,” said Malvarl, and swung the torch so that I was in the light.

Darach gasped.

 “Myrna, you’re pregnant? Is it mine?”

 “Aye,” I sighed, feeling reluctant to tell him now that I’d finally found him here, “they’re yours, Darach.”

 “They? You’ve two in there?”

 “Aye, or three, maybe. It’s a little early to know for sure.”

 “Early? But it’s been so long...”

 “Not that long, Darach, not that long at all.”

 “How long have I...”

 Malvarl interrupted, “I’d say you’ve been here two moons, at the most. Shall we get you out?”

 “Aye,” Darach said.

 “Hold the babe,” Malvarl said, handing the second baby to me. I cradled the tiny twins and watched in awe and horror as Malvarl set about freeing Darach from his cage.

He reached a slender arm out to the cage and grasped an iron bar. Keeping his feet firmly planted in the boat, he leaned towards the bars of the cage, opened his mouth, and bit an iron bar. The iron crumbled to rust where his spittle touched it. He jerked back towards the boat, ripping out a huge chunk of that first iron bar as he did so. It fell into the murky water below us. I shuddered.

I can’t judge how long it took for Malvarl to eat through the bars of Darach’s cage. Over an hour, I’m sure of that, but three or six or twelve... I’ll never know. Eventually, he stepped off the boat and into the cage, to chew away the heavy iron chains that held Darach in the cage. When the last chain fell to the ground in rusty pieces, Darach slumped to the ground with it.

 “Up,” Malvarl said, and Darach obeyed. He dragged himself up and stepped onto the boat, where he collapsed again at my feet. Silently, Malvarl made his way back onto the boat, facing in the opposite direction this time. He picked up the bargepole and began to paddle.