Daikaijuzine

Even over the endless thunder of the pouring rain, Salir could hear the girl crying. She stood in the shadows, as still as the statues that surrounded her, oblivious to the rain that had soaked her white hair and dress, weeping, and it made Salir’s heart ache to hear it. He took a step towards her, slow and cautious, not wanting to frighten her, but she heard the sound of his boots clattering on the cracked flagstones and turned around to face him. There was no fear in her golden eyes, just misery, but as she looked at him, that misery seemed to fade and for just a brief moment, less than a heartbeat of time, the rain stopped and the sun shone, clear rays breaking up the darkness and the overcast grey clouds.

And the girl smiled.

Salir woke, with a start, to the familiar sound of rain dripping in through the holes in the ruined chamber’s ceiling. The air was cold, the fire had died down during the night, but beneath his blankets, and with Talyn’s arm still draped across his chest, he was comfortable and warm, yet restless.

It should have been a good night’s sleep as it was the first time, since they had run away together, that he and Talyn had been surrounded on all sides by walls and had most of a ceiling over their heads, not to mention having a bed of soft leaves to sleep on, but Salir hadn’t been able to get to sleep for hours. He had found it hard to shake off the feeling that there had been someone watching him and the continual sound of the rain, falling through the holes in the ceiling, dripping onto the flagstones and rattling against what remained of the shatters, had kept him awake well into the early hours. And now that he was awake again, the feeling of discomfort and unease had returned and Salir knew that feeling wouldn’t fade until they were on the road again and the ruined castle was a distant memory, a grey shadow on the horizon far behind them.

Salir yawned and slid out of the bed, reaching for his clothes. He had hung them up to dry through the night and although they were cold to the touch, they were only slightly damp, so he slithered into them quickly, stomping on his boots. When he was dressed he turned back towards the bed. Talyn hadn’t stirred, he was still asleep, lying on his side, his limbs sprawled out and his blond hair hanging around his raw-boned face, his chest rising and falling steadily. For a moment Salir almost changed his mind and climbed back into the bed beside his lover, but he forced himself to finish dressing. The sooner he lit a fire and they had breakfast, the sooner they could get back on the road.

Only Talyn, when he woke, had other ideas.

“We should wait out the storm,” he said, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he shifted towards the end of the bed and the warmth of the crackling fire. “It’s dry here, there is plenty of wood in the form of all that broken furniture and I’m sure if we explore we can find something to eat. Berries or mushrooms, perhaps even fruit? It just seems pointless to me to leave somewhere dry and safe and go back onto the road in the rain. And, although there will be taverns by the roadside, I rather avoid them a while longer until we are further south. I don’t know about you but I’m not in any hurry to be caught again.”

Salir bit his lip and shook his head reluctantly. No. He didn’t want to be caught again, the last time they had barely escaped with their lives.

They were lovers and that in itself was far from acceptable, but the fact that Salir was fey, a faerie, was a crime punishable by death, for him at least. What they would do to Talyn, a mortal who had betrayed his people to take a faerie, an enemy, for a lover, didn’t bare thinking about.

They had been at war for generations, the mortal race and the fey. No one even seemed to know why, but the result was still the same on both sides, death for the enemy. Both Salir and Talyn had risked their lives to be together, run away from their homes. Talyn had even cut off Salir’s wings, at his insistence, and helped to dye Salir’s white hair black, in an attempt to fit in and disguise the truth. But a few weeks earlier they had been discovered and had barely escaped with their lives. Salir was not surprised that Talyn was still nervous about being around people in a crowded settlement, but they couldn’t hide out in a ruined castle forever. They were going to have to face it at some point.

“I don’t want to be caught,” Salir said finally. “But I don’t want to stay here. I . . . I don’t like it here, Talyn. I had a strange dream . . . and there is something about this place, I don’t know, it’s cold, empty, and yet I feel . . . I feel something! Sadness, perhaps? I don’t know, just something! I don’t like it here, Talyn.”

“This is a castle, Sal,” Talyn said. “Or what’s left of one! It feels cold and empty because it is cold and empty! But there is nothing more than that to feel! The castle isn’t alive, you know.”

“No? We . . . we faeries believe that everything has life, plants, trees, even the stones that go into making our homes, they have life within them, energy.”

“This isn’t a faerie castle, Sal.”

“Perhaps not, but you believe in ghosts, don’t you? And what is a ghost if not negative energy?”

“A ghost is just a childhood fear, Sal,” Talyn said. “They aren’t real.”

“There are some mortals, I’m sure, who don’t believe that faeries are real either,” Salir replied.

Talyn groaned, heavily, and rubbed his temple with the heel of his hand. “Salir,” he said. “Please, I want to stay here, just a few nights, and rest. I hate sleeping on the ground, I hate being cold and wet and out in the open. I hate not knowing where we are going to stay the night, I hate the fear that someone might find us. This castle . . . this ruin has been deserted for years. It is overgrown with brambles, covered with moss, no sign of any life at all! We can be safe here, for a little while, rest, before we move on. Salir, please, I need to rest!”

Salir bowed his head, feeling himself nod, even though that was the last thing that he wanted to do, to agree to staying in the hollow shell of a castle. “All right,” he said finally. “A few more days.”

“Thank you,” Talyn said, not bothering to hide the relief in his voice.

Salir sighed, wearily. “Well,” he said, his shoulders stooped, “are you going to get up? We can see if we can find something to eat.”

Talyn’s hands reached out and caught hold of Salir’s homespun tunic. “I have a better idea,” he said, gently pulling Salir towards him.

“Oh,” Salir said, letting himself be pulled down onto the bed. “All right . . .”

It was a little past noon when Talyn finally let Salir out of bed so that the two of them could explore. As they made their way around the crumbling ruins it quickly became clear that the castle was a lot bigger than it had appeared from the outside. It was vast, with chambers and stairs and corridors leading off everywhere, in all directions. And it was so still, so quiet and overgrown. Rambling plants ran up the side of the crumbled walls, peeked through the cracked flagstones of the floor, or covered the arch windows in a living curtain. Sometimes they had to tear their way through the overgrown brambles that reached out to snag their clothes with sharp, thorny fingers, or duck to avoid some low hanging branch, and even though the plants were alive, and the weeds were clearly blossoming, it only seemed to add to the feel that the castle itself was dead. The whole castle was like a mortal tombstone, a mark left to remind travellers of what once had lived, but was now gone, and the stench of death and decay that clung to it turned Salir’s stomach.

But Talyn was oblivious to this. He was so excited by it all, fascinated with every little thing he saw, from the remains of giant carved stone fireplaces to the tatty wall hangings, from the broken furniture to the cracked stained glass windows, coated with grime. And when it grew dark, and cold, and they headed back to their main chamber, what they had seen was all that Talyn could talk about. He rambled on about it for hours, stopping only briefly to eat the small chunk of bread and cheese Salir handed him for his supper, before continuing. He seemed tireless in his energy, in his excitement at being in a real castle, where lords and ladies, musicians and knights had all once lived, and Salir fell asleep listening to him still talking about it, to dreams of a golden eyed woman, standing in the rain.

A little after sunrise the following day, in a room with only two walls and no door, they found the remains of the castle’s weapons store.

There were weapons there that Salir had only ever heard of. His parents had warned him about the many different ways that a mortal had to kill another mortal, or even a faerie, but he had never thought to see it spread out like this, in all its rusty glory. His skin prickled all over to see them, all the weapons of death, all the iron, so casually laid out without a second thought. How many of his people had died at the end of one of those rusty blades? It made him sick to see it, to think of all the death.

Only Talyn seemed fascinated by it. He examined sword after sword, dagger after dagger, running his fingers over the rusty blades. He fiddled with the bows, drawing them back against his ear to test the string and attacked invisible enemies with a variety of blades. He was like a child, excited by everything that he could see, but it made Salir feel sick, just being in the same room with all that metal. In the end he had to go outside, press his face against the cold stone wall and close his eyes so that he could block it all out. Even so he could still hear the sounds of Talyn’s mock battle, his cries made to his invisible enemies and the sound of the rusty blade swishing through the air. For the first time since they had met, Salir was painfully aware of the differences between them and it frightened him.

But, less than an hour later, Talyn was bored of it all and, with a smile that was warm and familiar, he rejoined Salir and the two of them continued their exploration of the crumbled ruins.

By early afternoon the rain had stopped and Talyn agreed to move their exploration outside. He was a quieter now and walked a little slower, he also seemed to have developed a cough, but as he was still willing and eager to carry on exploring, Salir thought nothing more about it.

Beneath a grey sky, still heavy with pregnant rain clouds, they wandered around. They walked through courtyards and open spaces, through decorative flowerbeds and overgrown herb gardens, and in all that time there was no sound other than that of their boot heels clicking on the cobbles. There were no birds, no flies, no life of any kind other than the rambling, overgrown plants and it struck Salir as very odd that nothing seemed to live here. The silence was unnerving, it made his skin crawl and he found himself constantly looking around behind him, still painfully aware of the feeling that he was being watched.

But then they found the statues and all of Salir’s unease was forgotten.

They were set out in a courtyard that stood at the bottom of a crumbling flight of stairs. Three circles, one inside the other, of stone dancers, men, women and children. Even though they were moss covered and worn by time, the skill of the craftsmen was still evident in the folds of the loose, flowing clothes, in the strands of the hair and in the look of pleasure and enjoyment on the faces of the dancers, in their wide eyes and smiling mouths.

“Oh,” Salir breathed, as he headed down the stairs. “Oh, gods, look at them! They’re so lifelike!”

“That’s what makes them so disturbing,” Talyn said, sitting himself down at the top of the stairs.

“They remind me of the statues that stand in the royal palace. My father took me there once, when I was a child, and I could have sworn that they were real faeries, just holding very still, instead of being carved from stone.” He laid his fingers against a rough fold of stone cloth. “You’d love it there, Talyn-.” Then he stopped and shook his head. “No,” he said, “no that doesn’t matter.” He shrugged, as if to shake off the memory of his home, the one he was trying so desperately hard to forget, and instead moved around the stone dancers, running his fingers across the flowing hair and heavily draped cloth, over the sharply defined features and smooth bare limbs. They almost felt alive beneath his fingers. If they weren’t so cold, their flesh so hard and unmoving, Salir could have sworn that they were alive, that he could feel the warmth of their flesh, or smell the roses that several of the women held in their hands, or hear the sound of their laugher.

Yet there was something odd about them. Not because of how lifelike they were, but because there was something about their long limbs and feline features that seemed very familiar and yet wrong at the same time. This sense of wrong niggled in the back of Salir’s mind as he moved from statue to statue and then it hit him. These statues, these long limbed, feline faced figures of men, women and children, were faeries. But what were statues of faeries doing in a mortal castle?

“Sal,” Talyn’s voice was soft, but it still sounded so loud in the eerie, unbroken silence. “My head hurts. Can we go back to our camp?”

Salir turned, reluctantly tearing his eyes away from the stone carved denizens of the courtyard and hurried back to Talyn’s side. Talyn smiled up at him as he approached, but the smile seemed forced and the earlier bright excitement in his eyes had been replaced with a look of pain and weariness. A thin veil of sweat glistened on his forehead and when Salir touched it, Talyn’s skin felt hot and clammy.

“You’re burning up, Talyn. I think we better get back to camp and put you to bed!”

“Oh?” Talyn gave him a suggestive smile. “Back to bed . . . ?”

Salir rolled his eyes as he brushed Talyn’s blond hair fondly. “That’s all you think about,” he said. “But let’s put you back to bed and see how you feel later, all right?”

“All right,” Talyn said, but as he got to his feet he wavered and nearly fell. Salir reached out to put an arm around him supportively and together they started to climb the stairs. As they neared the top Salir caught a glimpse of something moving, something white, fluttering in the breeze and a flash of something golden, but when he turned around there was nothing to be seen, just the stone figures, caught up in their eternal dance.

*

The rainbow silks of the dancers rustled as they whirled around the marble dance floor. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers and full with the sound of laughter and gentle music. Salir stood still and silent at the edge, watching the dancers whirling around, their pale hair streaming out around them, glistening wings sparkling in the moonlight as though covered with dew, eyes bright with laugher, and he smiled to see them. For the first time in a long time he felt at ease, peaceful and comfortable, as though this was where he belonged, back among his own kind, back among the faeries.

“This is where you belong,” a voice whispered into his ear, seductive and warm, reading his thoughts. Turning Salir met the gaze of the pale haired woman. Her golden eyes were bright, dancing, as they met his. “This is your home, you should stay with us, be among your own kind again, away from those . . . those mortals.”

“Those mortals . . .” The mention of them brought images to Salir’s mind, of Talyn, his blond, blue eyed farmer’s boy, and slowly he shook his head. “No, I left my home to be with Talyn, I cannot stay.”

“But you want to, don’t you? You miss your own kind. That mortal boy, he will never truly understand you, not like we will. Besides, he will grow old and die while you are still young. Why put yourself through all of that, why not stay, with us, here, where you belong?”

“Because . . . because this isn’t where I belong.” It was a wrench to say those words, it made his heart ache to say them out loud because deep inside, he knew that it was true. He couldn’t stay, he wasn’t home, he would never have a home again.

“No,” the woman agreed, “but it could be.” She caught his hands, her touch was cold and strong, like stone. “You do belong here, Salir!” she insisted. “This is your home. You should not leave us, you should not leave me!”

With a gasp, Salir awoke and found himself lying in a bed that was bathed by the sunlight. The air around was unseasonably warm, even for a mortal summer, and the room was flooded with golden sunlight that made the once dark, dank and dismal chamber appear like a different place entirely. The room, despite its broken furniture, holes in the ceiling, and moss covered crumbling walls, seemed warm and comforting, homely somehow. And that sent a shiver down Salir’s spine. This ruined chamber shouldn’t look so different in just a few days.

“Talyn.” He leaned over to shake his lover’s shoulders. “Talyn, maybe we should move on now? I-I really don’t like this place and-.”

Talyn shook his head, rolling away on the pallet. “Head still hurts,” he muttered.

Salir frowned as he pressed his fingers against Talyn’s forehead. It was still clammy and very hot. “I’ll go back to that herb garden, the one we saw yesterday, and try to find some herbs that I can use to bring the fever down, all right?”

“No . . .” Talyn shook his head. “Don’t . . . don’t leave me, Sal-.”

“I won’t be long, Talyn, I promise.”

“Sal-.”

But Salir forced himself from the bed and scrambled into his clothes. “I won’t be more than half an hour, and then I will make you something nice to eat.” Talyn’s only response was a muttered protest and then he fell silent and Salir slipped quickly from the ruined chamber.

The remains of the castle seemed much the same as the room in which they had made camp, awash with light, warm, pleasant, almost alive and if Salir hadn’t known any better he would have said that the castle was waking up after a long rest, because it felt that different now.

And the herb garden was no different.

When they had passed through it the day before Salir had given it no more than a cursory exploration to see what sort of garden it was, but had seen no sign of anything living there except weeds. Now, though, as he ripped up the weeds, he found budding new shoots, amongst the dry and withered remains of dogtail root, silverthorn, dragon’s breath, and fyral. Salir picked the small plants and wrapped them in a handkerchief, hoping that they would still do the job, despite their small size, and then he got to his feet.

And he stopped, seeing a familiar shape standing across the garden from him. A woman, with long white hair and golden eyes. In the daylight Salir could see the tips of her pointed ears, poking through her masses of white hair, clearing marking her as one of the fey. Her golden eyes were sad as they watched him, and even though she seemed innocent enough, vulnerable even, Salir felt his skin prickle with the sense of danger, with the sense that something wasn’t right.

“Hello, Salir,” she said, with a smile, “and welcome to Ume.”

Salir froze. There were a hundred questions whirling through his mind but he heard himself ask only one. “This is Ume?”

“Yes.”

Salir swallowed. “My mother told me stories about Ume. That it was one of the seven faerie castles built in this realm, and the first to fall when the mortals moved up from the south and declared war on us, centuries ago.” His jaw tightened. “She . . . she also said that it was cursed, that any mortal who entered its walls will sicken and die. Is . . . is that why Talyn is sick?”

The woman laughed and the sound sent a chill straight down Salir’s spine. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Of course it is! Did he really think he could enter these walls and live! No mortal can, I won’t permit it!”

“You?” Salir whispered. “What did you do?”

“I took my revenge for my fallen children,” the woman said, as if it was obvious. “Some of them were killed here, did you know that? The mortals came in, waving their iron blades, shouting insults at my children calling them monsters and demons, before they dragged them outside to die. Men, women and children were hacked apart, their blood shed on the cobbles, their bones smashed, their flesh ground into dust. And when it was over, when the last of the blood had been washed away, the bodies had been burnt in a foul smelling pyre, and all signs of the true inhabitants of this castle had been destroyed, the mortals thought to live here, but I put a stop to that!” Her smile grew and in her gold eyes something cold glistened. “I poisoned the waters, I turned the fertile lands to dust and I brought sickness here and the mortals died!”

“And . . . and you made Talyn sick?”

“I had to, he is mortal, he is the enemy. You saw the way that his eyes lit up when he saw the weapons, how excited he was. Those weapons took the lives of my people, my children, yet he thought nothing of it. It is in his nature to be cruel, to be bloodthirsty, and to kill. It is in the nature of allmortals and for that he deserves death!” Her golden eyes flashed dangerously as Salir swallowed back a tight lump and shook his head.

“No,” he whispered. “Talyn isn’t like that. He loves me, he wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t hurt anyone!”

“No? He hurt the mortals that caught you, the ones that wanted to kill you. He shows no loyalty for his own people, why should he show loyalty to you?”

“You . . . you know about that?” Salir whispered.

“I know everything about you, Salir.” The woman smiled sadly. “But, if it’s any consolation, the mortal’s death with be painless and quick and when he is gone, you can stay with me and everything will be all right again! Since my children died I have been in mourning, lamenting their death, and I would let nothing grow, but now that you’re here, a child of the fey, life can return! You have seen the start already, the budding plants, and soon, flowers will grow, fruit on the trees, animals will return and water will be fresh and clean in the wells again! Now that you’re here, I will live again and life can return to me, through you!”

“You can live again?” Salir whispered, and a cold chill ran down his back. “You . . . you are Ume!”

The woman smiled. “I am Ume,” she agreed. “I am this castle, I am the land. I am the herbs in your hands and the stone beneath your feet. I am all and everything and I welcome you home, Salir.” And she opened her arms, as if to embrace him . . .

Salir turned on his heel and ran.

Back in the ruined chamber where Talyn still lay, Salir threw their belongings into their bags, and when everything was packed he turned to shake Talyn awake. “We have to leave,” he said. “Now!”

“No,” Talyn moaned, rolling over. “Sal-.”

“We have to. Now!” He didn’t let Talyn protest any further, just pulled him from the bed, dressing him hastily. He forced himself to ignore his lover’s whimpered protests and the feverish heat of his skin and the pain, fogged look in his eyes, because he knew that if he gave in, if he let Talyn stay, Ume would kill him, as she had killed the other mortals who had stepped foot inside her walls.

It took all the strength that he had to get Talyn to his feet and to pull him out of the ruined chamber, heading back out the way that he had first entered the castle. All the while he kept expecting Ume to appear and stop them, but he saw nothing, not even a flash of her golden eyes, or the white of her dress, not until they stepped foot onto the cobbled road that led out of the castle. Then she was suddenly standing there, eyes wide and tears streaming down her face.

“Salir, you can’t go!” she cried. “Please, you can’t leave me!”

But Salir stiffened his shoulders and tightened his grip on Talyn. Without looking back they left they walked down the cobbled road and away from the ruined castle of Ume.

It started to rain again.