There was only one thing worse than facing the Hedge Maid again: the certainty of being torn apart and eaten alive by the pack of dogs chasing him.
He could hear them getting closer. He had no choice. He plunged ahead.
CHAPTER 50
After a frightening race along the trail as it tunneled in places through the dense growth, the landscape opened somewhat as he reached some of the more open stretches of water. The trail, never more than inches above the muddy water, was gradually taken over by tangled roots, sticks, vines, and branches all woven together into a mat that made a walkway of sorts. Without it, the solid ground of the trail in places would simply have vanished beneath stretches of duckweed. As it was, the pathway of sticks and vines barely cleared the surface of the dark brown water.
Henrik worried about what would happen should he slip off the trail of tangled shoots and branches. He worried about what waited in the water for the unwary, or the careless.
He was so tired, so afraid, that only raw fear kept his feet moving. He wished he could be back, safe, with his mother. But he couldn’t stop or the hounds would get him.
While the stick and vine walkway was in places wide enough for several people to walk abreast, much of it was only wide enough for one person. In those narrow places where it became a bridge over stretches of open water, there were sometimes handholds or even rails made of crooked branches, lashed by thin vines to supports sticking up out of the tangle of wood underfoot. The whole thing creaked and moved as he made his way farther out onto it, as if it were a partially submerged monster displeased to have someone walking on its back.
Henrik couldn’t tell for sure how far the hounds were behind him because sound carried so well across water. He wondered if the dogs would have a hard time of trying to walk on the mat of tangled vines and branches that made up the bridge through the watery world. He wondered if maybe their paws would slip down between the woven mass and get caught. He hoped so.
Mist prevented him from seeing very far into the distance among the moss-draped, fat-bottomed trees. As mist closed in behind him, he couldn’t see very far back the way he had come, either. Among the snarl of roots snaking out from the nearby trees he could see eyes watching him.
He moved toward the center of the stick and vine bridge when he saw something in the water pass close by. What ever it was dragged a torn, fleshy mass behind. There were bite marks all over the pale, decomposing meat. There was no way to tell what animal it had come from, but by the size of the splintered bone hanging from the trailing end, it looked to have once been fairly big. He wondered if it was a human thighbone.
Henrik glanced down, nervous about how low the branch bridge rode in the water. It moved and swayed in a sickening way as he raced along it. He didn’t know if it was a floating bridge, or if it was supported from underneath. What he did know was that in most places it barely cleared the surface of the water. He worried that something might reach out, grab him by his ankle, and drag him into the murky water.
He didn’t know if that would be worse than being caught by what pursued him from behind, or worse than what waited for him ahead. He desperately wanted to avoid any of those three fates, but he could think of nothing to do other than to plunge ahead, running from one threat, avoiding the second, and into the arms of the third.
His legs grew tired as he raced onward across the endless bridge through the gloomy swamp. Unseen animals called out, their sharp cries echoing through the mist and darkness. It seemed that he was crossing a vast, shallow lake, but since he couldn’t see very far, it was hard to tell for sure. Big round leaves, something like lily pads, rode above the surface of the water in places, standing up as high as they could, hoping for a touch of sunlight that probably only penetrated the canopy on brief, rare occasions.
Several times Henrik slipped. The railing saved him. By the more distant barking, he judged that the hounds were having trouble keeping up and falling back. Still, they were back there, coming for him, so he dared not slow down.
As it grew darker, he was relieved to finally encounter lit candles along the bridge. He didn’t know if someone came out to light them at nightfall, or if they were always there and kept burning. They had been lit the last time he had come this way with his mother. As dark as it was in among the looming stands of smooth-barked trees, they would be a help even in the day.
The farther he went, the wider and more substantial the bridge of tangled branches and vines became. The trees all around, standing up out of the water on snarls of roots, crowded in closer together. The vines hanging down from the darkness above, too, became thicker, some of them looping between trees and staying above the surface of the water. Many eventually became overgrown and weighted down with plants climbing up from the water or tendrils curling down from above. The growth to each side became so dense that it once again seemed that the bridge tunneled through a rat’s nest of branches, vines, and bramble. The one constant was the murky water to each side. All too often he saw shadows move through the depths.
The candles become more plentiful as the stick bridge went farther in through the dark tangle of undergrowth. The candles were simply placed in crooks in the tangle of branches and sticks.
The occasional railings after a time developed into structures curving up from each side that seemed to be protecting the bridge from the encroachment of the thick undergrowth, or maybe from what lurked in the water. The walls, thick at the bottoms, thinner as they went higher, in places topped over the bridge with encircling branches that almost felt like claws closing in from overhead.
The candles grew so plentiful that at times it almost felt like passing between walls of fire. Henrik supposed that the bridge didn’t catch fire and burn down because it was so wet and slimy. Slick green moss and dark mold covered most of the woven mass of roots, twigs, branches, and vines. It made the footing treacherous.
The farther Henrik went, the thicker the mat of woven branches that made up the walls became until they eventually closed in overhead and he felt like he was inside a cocoon of twisted wood. He could see out only through occasional small gaps. It was getting dark, though, so there wasn’t much to see. Inside, the flickering glow of hundreds of candles lit the way.
When he realized that he didn’t hear the hounds anymore, he paused, listening for them. He wondered if they feared to venture out across the twig causeway and so had finally given up the chase.
He wondered if maybe he didn’t need to go on. Maybe the hounds were gone and he could go back.
But even as he thought it, an inner drive compelled him to move onward into the Hedge Maid’s refuge. As soon as he took a few steps, it was hard not to take yet a few more into the candlelit tunnel.
Finally, with supreme effort, he did force himself to stop. If he was ever to escape, now was the time. He turned and looked back the way he had come. He heard no hounds.
Carefully, tentatively, he took a step back toward freedom.
Before he could take another, one of the familiars, like a creature made of smoke, drifted through the walls into the tunnel of woven sticks to block his way.
Henrik stood frozen in terror, his heart hammering even faster.
The glowing form floated closer.
“Jit waits for you,” she hissed. “Get moving.”
CHAPTER 51
As Henrik made his way along the causeway made of intertwined vines, sticks, and branches that led him through the gloomy expanse of trackless swamp, the structure of the bridge became more substantial, in places incorporating stringy moss and grasses laced into it to help bind it all together. The floor broadened and walls grew thicker as well. In places the walls curved inward to close completely together overhead, as if it were growing that way naturally and of its own accord.
Before long the walls that had gradually grown from their beginnings as railings of sorts became a solid, integrated part of the structure joined all the way around overhead so that what had been a path, then an elevated walkw
ay, then a bridge, had evolved into a tunnel. That tunnel widened into a larger passageway that funneled him into a maze of chambers, all constructed the same way, of the same materials woven snugly together. The same entwined materials that made the floors and walls also made up ceilings just as thick and tightly woven. Living vines, with slender leaves and tiny yellow flowers, coiled up and through the walls, in places making the framework more green than dead brown.
Within the silent interior network of cavities created by the mass of woven branches, the outside world seemed a far distant place. Inside was a world unto itself, a strange place without anything perfectly flat or straight. It was all organic curves without any sharp corners, all natural materials, none of which looked man-made yet all of which were carefully crafted. It all formed softly rounded rooms with dished floors that were completely walled off from what was outside.
Henrik wondered if it would be possible to pull apart the branches and vines of the walls if he was forced to make a quick escape. It all seemed pretty solid, but still, it was just woven branches, twigs, and vines.
As he made his way through a bowled room, the familiar gliding along somewhere behind him, he moved closer to the wall to take a closer look. He glanced to the side and saw then that many of the branches making up the heavier parts of the matrix were studded with wickedly sharp thorns. Up close to the wall, he could see that much of it looked like it was made up of a thorn hedge.
Even if he were to decide that his life depended on making an escape, he didn’t see how he could get through the thorny fabric of the structure. These were not small yet troublesome thorns like those on a rosebush that would scratch arms and legs. These were long, iron-hard, sharp spikes that would mercilessly rip a person apart and soon impale them so completely that they would be held prisoner.
With the floating form of the familiar right behind him, watching over him to make sure that he didn’t try to turn and run, he passed through a series of rooms of various sizes, their way always lit by hundreds of candles. Some parts were only connecting tunnels where he had to duck to make it through. They were something like hallways in a building, with smaller side corridors going off in different directions.
One of the relatively large chambers they had to pass through contained what had to be thousands of strips of cloth, string, and thin vines all hanging down from the ceiling, all holding objects tied to their ends, everything from coins to shells to rotting lizards. They hung perfectly still in the dead air. Henrik bent low to pass under some of the dense, hanging collection of strange objects, holding his breath against the stench most of the way.
The entire structure moved and creaked as he made his way through the maze, his route lit by candles, as if to welcome visitors. It felt like he was walking into a giant, tubular spiderweb, something like those he’d seen at the base of logs that were meant to funnel prey inward to their death.
He knew, though, that it was worse than that. This was the lair of the Hedge Maid.
Candles by the hundreds if not thousands lit the place, and yet the darkness they tried to hold back felt oppressive. Sounds from out in the swamp were so muted that they could barely be heard through the thick thatch all around, but the wet, fetid smell of rot had no difficulty stealing in with the muggy air. The candles at least helped mask the smell somewhat.
As he moved deeper into the Hedge Maid’s inner sanctuary, several more familiars drifted in through the walls and gathered around to escort him where he needed to go. More likely, they were making certain that he didn’t turn back. Whenever he glanced up at them, they stared at him with the most sickly yellow eyes and he would immediately look away. Each of the seven, when seen up close, was as ugly as death itself.
As they made their way down a broader corridor, there were even more candles placed all along the twig walls, from the curving edge of the floor up the rounded walls higher than he was tall. The hall they were in, lit by the golden glow of all the candles, led them abruptly into a murky room with hardly any candles.
There didn’t look to be room for many candles in the shadowy room. The place was filled instead with jars and containers. Some of the containers were made of tan clay. The jars were far more plentiful and in colors from tan to green to ruby red. In hundreds of places, the woven sticks and twigs had been pulled apart enough so that jars could be stuck into the knitted stick walls.
What was in all the jars, Henrik feared to imagine. From what he could see through the colored glass, most were filled with liquid that was dark and filthy-looking, though a lot of it looked like muddy water. Things floated in the liquid among the dirt and debris. He tried not to look too closely at what those things floating in the jars might be. One jar looked to be filled with human teeth.
But the jars and containers were not what frightened him the most.
It was what was woven into the twig walls themselves, behind the jars, that had tears of terror running down his cheeks.
Woven into the walls were people.
He could also see them in the walls of the corridors going out of the room in various directions. At first, he saw dozens and dozens of people cocooned in the fabric of the stick walls.
The more he looked, though, the more people he could see entrapped farther back within the walls.
Some of the people were desiccated corpses, their mouths gaping open, their eye sockets sunken, the skin of their bare arms and legs leathery and shriveled. Other bloated bodies looked more freshly dead. The gagging stink of death left him hardly able to breathe.
But some of the people woven into the walls were not dead.
They looked to be in a numb stupor, hardly breathing, only slightly aware of anything going on around them. All were naked, but encased as they were by the weaving of thorny twigs and branches around them, it was hard to see much of them.
Henrik could see their eyes roll from time to time, as if trying to make out where they were and what was happening to them. An occasional soft moan escaped a hanging mouth.
When he turned from staring at all the dead and the half-dead people laced into the walls, he came face-to-face with the Hedge Maid.
CHAPTER 52
Jit sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, nested in a thatch of branches, watching him with unblinking, big round eyes that were so dark they looked black.
Her thin hair was only a little more than shoulder length. She wasn’t big. In fact, she was not much bigger than he was. Her simple sack dress showed that she had a rather straight torso. Her body looked more boylike than womanly. The skin on her thin arms looked to have seen little sunlight. It was hard for him to tell how old she was, but, despite her pale, smooth skin, he was certain that she was not at all young.
Her fingernails and hands appeared to be permanently stained, possibly from handling what was in the jars all around her.
He imagined, too, that the dark matter staining her fingernails might be the fluid leaking from the corpses woven into the walls around the room.
But what riveted his gaze, what had his heart pounding, what had his knees weak, was her mouth.
Her thin lips were sewn shut with strips of leather.
The leather thong was stitched right through the flesh of her lips, leaving holes that didn’t look like they had ever entirely healed. The stitches weren’t even. They looked to have been done haphazardly, with little care. The stitched strips of leather crossed to form “X”s over her mouth. There was only enough slack in the leather to allow her to open her mouth into a narrow slit.
Through that slit behind the cross-stitched leather thong, Jit let out an undulating squealing sound that didn’t sound human. It ran goose bumps up Henrik’s arms.
From having been here before, he knew that it was her language, her way of talking. While he didn’t have the slightest idea what the sound meant, he did know that she was directing it at him.
One of the familiars, missing a hand, he noticed, leaned toward him.
“Jit says that she is please
d to see you again, boy.”
Henrik swallowed. He couldn’t bring himself to say he was pleased to see her again as well.
Jit, her head bobbing, let out a low-pitched grating screech, punctuated with a few clicks of her tongue against the top of her mouth.
“Jit wants to know if you brought it,” the familiar said.
Henrik’s mouth felt stuck closed. He couldn’t make himself speak. Fearing what she would do if he didn’t somehow answer, he held out his fisted hands. He didn’t think that, after all this time, he could open them if he tried.
The Hedge Maid let out a soft raspy sound— half pule, half screech.
“Come closer,” the familiar said. “Jit says to come closer so that she may see for herself.”
Somewhere behind, there was a sound that made all the familiars pause and turn to look. The Hedge Maid’s black eyes turned up to focus into the distance behind him. Henrik looked back over his shoulder to see what had caught their attention.
In the distance, there was some kind of disturbance. Something was making its way up the hall that led into the chambers.
Candle flames wavered, their light flickering, and then they went out.
What ever it was brought darkness with it.
As it passed, the candles nearby all around it went dark. When it was beyond them, the extinguished flames slowly returned to life until they were once more fully lit.
It made it seem as if darkness itself were stalking through the tunnel of a hall, coming for them all.
As it came closer, pulling that darkness with it, extinguishing candles all around as it passed, the familiars cowered back behind Jit. Henrik could see the one without a hand trembling slightly.
Jit let out a long, low squeal and a few clicks. Two of the familiars gathered in close about her, leaning in, whispering. They nodded to more clicks and soft, grating sounds from deep in the Hedge Maid’s throat.