Elm of False Dreams
Jon Jacks
Other New Adult and Children’s books by Jon Jacks
The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly
The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale
A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)
The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator
Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666
P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers
Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)
Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent
Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak
Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife
Coming Soon
God of the 4th Sun
Text copyright© 2015 Jon Jacks
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Chapter 1
The leaf came in on a wind, landed softly by her feet: so innocent in its appearance, so malicious in its intentions.
As any young girl might have done, she bent down, picked it up – twirled it curiously in her hand, taking in its strange beauty, the way its veins pumped its green blood through to its soft skin.
As no other girl would have done, she saw in this beauty the fluttering of a bird’s wings, the beating of its relatively powerful breast.
She wanted to fly.
She sat down on the bare ground, careless of the way the earth dirtied her skirt, the sharp stones scuffing her legs.
She curled the leaf between her fingers. Her sharp eyes sought out another leaf, and another.
She spun them swiftly, deftly, in her hands. Tearing slightly here, bending the remains of a stalk there. Adding twigs she picked up from the ground with other leaves.
For the eyes, of course, she used small, glistening globules of spit, sparkling like polished horn.
For a brief moment, she admired her creation.
Then she let it fly off into the night.
*
Unfortunately for Cerissa, this time she had been seen. (For, of course, she had done this many times.)
If the young person watching that night had caught her performing her marvellous skills on previous occasions, he would have marvelled too at her creation of sparkling fish from reeds. Fish that would eagerly swim away from between her flicking fingers.
He would also have been astounded by the coming together of a frog from mainly frogspawn, a chicken chiefly from feathers, a mouse from the discarded food pouch of an owl.
Was she a witch?
Naturally, that’s what the watching boy could only wonder.
She didn’t seem like a witch.
She seemed like a normal girl.
A girl he had known for most of his own young life.
That was why he was here, of course. He’d followed her out into the dark woods, because he was curious.
Why did she always head off this way when they had finished playing?
Why did she always pretend to head for home – then, once she believed everyone had left, slip off onto the path leading between the trees?
This was why; because she knew that she would be either killed or exiled if anyone became aware of her abilities. Abilities she had so far kept hidden from everyone.
It was a profound responsibility, he knew, to be suddenly granted such power over her. The power of life and death.
He wondered what he should do.
He should tell the village elders, obviously. They would know what to do. How to treat Cerissa fairly, without allowing her own powers to bring distress to the villagers.
And yet – he was worried that the elders might not come to the right, fair decision.
He didn’t want Cerissa harmed in any way.
He liked her.
He liked her very, very much.
That was why he had followed her.
Why he had been so curious about where she slipped off to on an evening. Why he had noticed in the first place that she didn’t immediately head back to the village with all the other children.
He had suspected worse, in fact; that she had a boy she met secretly, one from another village. An older boy.
He was glad that that was not the case.
He wouldn’t tell anyone just yet.
He would think carefully first about what he must do.
He turned to leave: and then a leaf, full of malicious intent, drifted and fell across his forehead.
*
Chapter 2
It was indeed a profound responsibility, a dreadful choice he faced.
Cerissa was far too beautiful to die. Such beauty could not be wasted. It should be cherished. Cared for.
It was a beauty that should be his.
Could be his.
All he had to do was let Cerissa know that he had spared her.
That he cared for her so much, he would never reveal her dangerous secret.
As long as, of course, she was promised to him. As long as she remained faithful to him, he would ignore the fact that she was a witch.
He stepped out from his veiling covering of small bushes, long grasses and ferns.
‘Cerissa,’ he began – the name instantly dying on his dried tongue, in his gawping mouth, as a huge bear of nightmarish form loomed out of the encroaching darkness.
He couldn’t scream. For a moment he seemed frozen, expecting the bear’s huge claws to strike him dead. And yet – or rather because of this – he was unable to flee.
‘Aestus!’ Cerissa cried worriedly, calling out his name. ‘Don’t be afra–’
Cerissa’s cry was enough to drag him out of his stupor. He turned, ran back into the bushes, hurtling headlong and carelessly through the dark wood.
The bear looked down on Cerissa, its eyes of spit and chewed berries sad and questioning; he realised he had made a mistake.
‘Wait here!’ Cerissa ordered, rushing after Aestus.
The wood wasn’t the place to be this late in the evening, unless you had someone like Breni there to protect you.
She chased after Aestus as fast as she dared. It wasn’t just wild animals you had to be beware of; in the dark, everything beneath your feet became a potential trap that could send you flying, perhaps even break a few of your bones.
She was used to running though the woods and keeping as silent as she possibly could. Avoiding the overhanging branches of the bushes that would make the most noise. Skipping lightly over the undergrowth, landing on the firmest ground you could make out in the darkness.
Ahead of her, however, it sounded as if Aestus was wildly crashing through everything barring his way.
It was a sure way to bring down on you every beast around.
Even as Cerissa thought this, the chaotic crashing of branches and stems changed from being one that constantly spurted ahead of her to being one that instead had settled in a particular place, a thrashing of the same bushes over and over.
There were shrieking screams, quickly muted, infuriated growls.
Cerissa was too late.
One of the wood’s countless ravenous creatures had reached Aestus before she had.
*
Cerissa was running so swiftly she almost became the mountain lion’s second meal. She stumbled into the terrible scene as the beast prepared to feast on the boy’s now stilled and bloodied body.
Fortunately, Breni was almost instantly beside her, having ignored her command to wait as soon as he had heard the screams. He growled even more ferociously than the surprised lion, his looming presence, his slashing claws, enough to scare it away from the prey it had been looking forward to devouring only seconds before.
The lion whirled around on its hind legs, bounding off into the surrounding bushes. It was bewildered by the lack of bear scent, yet fearful enough to realise this wasn’t the time to try and work out the cause of his confusion.
It left behind Aestus’s badly mauled body, his small tunic shredded and bloodied, his drawn yet ultimately useless knife lying by his side. At least, Cerissa thought, he hasn’t ended up as the lion’s meal. There will still be something for his parents to mourn, to bury.
Resurrecting him was beyond even her skills. Besides, even if it were possible, would Aestus really appreciate being brought back to life inhabiting a gruesomely shredded body?
Now she was faced with a dilemma, however.
If she left the body here, some other wild beast would come and drag it away.
Yet if she headed back to the village and warned everyone what had happened out here, questions would start to be asked about why she had been out here in the first place. And even then, by the time everyone had made their way out here, Aestus’s body might still have been spirited away.
‘Breni, I need you to carry him,’ she said, having made her decision. ‘Treat him carefully; he was a good friend to me.’
Bending low, Breni picked up the crumpled remains of the boy in his arms of thick, strong branches. He obediently followed on behind Cerissa, who lead the way along the path heading back towards the village.
Reaching the outskirts of the village, Cerissa realised she didn’t dare travel any farther with Breni purposely striding beside her. She told him to gently lower Aestus down onto the rocky ground.
‘I’ll try and be back tomorrow,’ she promised Breni, reaching for the plain shawl he was mainly made up off.
She jerked the shawl free of the thick branches that had served as Breni’s arms and legs. The branches toppled to the ground, along with the claws of split reeds. With a shake of the shawl, Cerissa discarded the eyes, the teeth of white blossom on brambles.
Slipping the shawl about her shoulders, Cerissa ran towards the quiet village, screaming out her cries for help.
*
Chapter 3
Even in the poor light of their blazing torches, some of the villagers could make out signs on the ground that didn’t seem to fit Cerissa’s tale of dragging poor Aestus’s body back through the wood.
She claimed to have used a stretcher made of her shawl and thick branches. And yes, the branches were there. She also had a shawl.
But the tracks they found farther back from the rocky ground, where the hillside became the earthy boundaries that themselves soon transformed into the woods, weren’t of branches being dragged.
They were those of branches striding out; as if walking.
Such tracks made no sense, of course.
They searched deeper in the woods, warily letting Cerissa lead the way to where she claimed the mountain lion had attacked them. Once again, in the light of their torches they saw signs of an attack taking place here.
Yet once again, the signs of struggle failed to make any real sense.
Why were Cerissa’s footprints so clearly defined, rather than the confused, chaotic scrabbling you’d expect of a girl suffering a beast’s attack?
What were these strange marks of branches, branches that seemed to have been regularly spaced out as opposed to being dragged along the ground, as Cerissa claimed?
Some of the villagers gathered together in an increasingly terrified huddle.
The girl was out here every night!
How did she survive?
Wasn’t her mother unmarried?
Wasn’t it said that the passing stranger who had entranced her mother had been a wizard, of sorts?
Hadn’t they all heard tales of people who became wolves, bears – maybe even lions too!
They silently unsheathed their knives. Quietly and very carefully, they began to surround Cerissa.
Not quietly enough.
Cerissa heard them.
She saw their malicious intent.
In an instant, she was flying; but not in the way she had dreamt of earlier.
*
Chapter 4
Mima was exhausted, filthy.
No one liked going within a ship’s length of the evil smelling mess left by dragons. Yet someone had to clear it away: and that, unfortunately for Mima, was her job.
It could take a whole day to shovel a particularly large (and incredibly hot, too, which made it smell so bad!) pile into her donkey cart. Then when she got to the old quarry, she had to shovel it all out again.
Blast her brother Aestus, getting himself killed while out dallying with that wizard’s girl!
It had been ten years now since he had been attacked by the were-lion. A time when Mima had been too young to appreciate what his death would ultimately mean for her.
On the death of her heartbroken mother, her drink-soaked father, their small holding had passed to a cousin, the nearest male heir. It had been expected of the cousin that he would arrange an early marriage for her, but this had never materialised.
And now who would look at her?
Even the beggars stayed downwind of her!
Today, unfortunately, that wind wasn’t strong enough to carry the stench of the dragon dung away from her. It did possess enough strength, however, to unwittingly aid an innocent looking leaf to drift towards her, to help it land and stick to her sweat-sheened back.
Mima was used to large flies and insects constantly landing on her. That didn’t mean she liked it anyway. Reaching behind her, she swatted away from her back what she supposed must be a large insect.
The leaf dropped onto the top of the huge pile of wet dung Mima was standing on. And, as Mima diligently worked on removing the heap still blocking the road, the leaf was soon trodden deeply into the dragon waste.
*
Amongst the dark waste Mima was digging into, she spotted a sparkle of white.
Not purest white; it was covered in a sheen of dung, after all. Yet it was so much whiter than anything else around it, and therefore shone out like a star amidst the blackness of night.
She excitedly yet carefully began to use her spade to remove the waste surrounding the glistening object, hoping it was something she could clean up and sell (without ever admitting where she had found it, of course!).
Every now and again, something turned up in a pile of waste that someone, somewhere, could make further use of. Often it was a piece of armour, even a sword blade, but its state depended on how long it had remained in the dragon’s stomach before being ejected.
This was a horn, one of surprisingly good quality. One carefully hollowed out and polished until it shone almost like ivory.
Mima pulled elatedly at the top she had already uncovered, expecting the tapered mouthpiece to easily slip clear of its clinging dung: yet it held fast, perfectly immoveable.
She dug a little more around the horn, seeking the reason for its steadfastness.
It was still being tightly grasped by a hand.
Mima briefly recalled in horror.
It was thankfully rare that she came across the body parts of the people a dragon had eaten. Its stomach acids would eventually burn through anything, even the armour their victims had worn. Even so, it wasn’t unknown for a dragon who had overeaten to divest itself of unwanted material before it had been completely digested.
Bending, Mima began to prise the fingers from the horn – only for them to grasp all the tighter around it.
<
br /> The horn’s owner was still alive!
Mima began to dig as quickly as she could.
She didn’t have long: anyone buried in a pile of waste would either suffocate or overheat.
She was surprised that the man had survived such a huge pile falling directly on him. She had known of houses being crushed under smaller piles, of horse and riders being so swiftly engulfed they had died instantly.
At last she had uncovered enough of the poor man to help drag him clear of any remaining dung. He slipped from its embrace with a sickening sucking motion, a grunt and gasp of relief.
He rolled exhaustedly against Mima, covering her in his own slimy sheen. He coughed, spluttered, fighting for air.
He was a dwarf. It was his overlarge helmet that had obviously saved him from suffocating, the metallic chin guards having held enough air for him to breath up until now. It wouldn’t have lasted much longer however.
‘You should have more control over your dragons!’ he complained hoarsely as soon as he was capable of speaking.
‘They’re not my dragons!’ Mima retorted irately. ‘I only clean up after them!’
What an ungrateful little man, she thought!
‘Then why weren’t you quicker cleaning this pile up? I wouldn’t have had to suffer that dreadful stench for so long if you’d gone about your job properly!’
With that, he leapt down from the top of the pile of waste and began to irately storm off.
‘Well don’t say thank you!’ Mima shouted after him.
The dwarf turned, looked back towards her.
‘I didn’t say thank you,’ he said curiously. ‘Why would I say thank you to someone who was trying to steal my horn?’
‘I wasn’t trying to steal it! I didn’t think it belonged to anyone anymore!’
‘So my hand grasping it wasn’t a clue that it still belonged to someone?’
‘Oh yes, yes; of course, I should’ve known that there’d be a man still alive under three cartloads of dragon dung!’
‘Oh, all right, all right!’ the dwarf responded stroppily, holding out his filthy horn towards her. ‘Here; you can blow on my horn for a moment!’