Circles of Stone

“The spirit of the valley never dies. It is the root of heaven and earth.”

SYLAS STEPPED BEYOND THE threshold and gasped. It looked for all the world like the inside of a house, but instead of walls there were planes of living timber; in place of doors there was a honeycomb of oddly shaped openings, all seeming to be part of the tree, rather than cut by hand. Covering the floor there was a carpet of fine, spongy green moss, which felt luxuriously soft beneath the feet, and the hallway that he was now standing in – for that was what it seemed to be – was lit by lamps set into natural alcoves in the walls, so that it was well lit and cosy.

Sylas and Simia dipped through the nearest opening and saw to their delight a room set out with a table and chairs and alcoves containing cups, saucers, plates and all manner of things they might need to serve a meal. In a recess at their side there was bread and cheese; in another, all kinds of fruits; in another still, what looked like a cured ham wrapped in a waxy cloth. All this was lit by two more lamps and natural light that came in through a large slit high in the external wall. In the far corner, they could hear the tinkle of flowing water coming from a depression in the floor and when they looked they saw the glistening surface of an underground stream. Set neatly to one side was a pitcher and a set of glasses.

They rushed into the next room and found what seemed to be a lounge or parlour, but instead of a sofa the mossy floor was raised in one corner to form a comfortable platform covered with an even thicker layer of moss, to which someone had added a scattering of colourful cushions. They resisted the temptation to jump on it and ran into the next two rooms, where they found similar platforms that had been made into beds, with thick eiderdowns and feather pillows.

“How did they know to get this ready for us?” marvelled Sylas.

Simia lay back on a bed and closed her eyes blissfully. “Filimaya always kept at least one room ready for visitors in the Meander Mill. Not that I was ever allowed to stay in any of them.” She yawned. “Yep, I’m definitely going up in the world.”

Sylas grinned and laid his bag down, before heading to the dining room where he cut himself a piece of bread and ham. He took it with him to the lounge and sat back on the surprisingly soft and warm sofa, biting contentedly into his sandwich. He devoured it in seconds and then settled back to relax.

He smiled to himself as he thought how different this was from Gabblety Row – from the bricks and beams and winding corridors, from the growling roads at its corner and his uncle’s grubby little apartment. He laughed at the thought of his uncle Tobias. What would he make of all this? He imagined that accountant’s brain trying to make sense of it all, make it all add up, like a good tax return. Well, nothing about this world added up. It would defeat his uncle absolutely and completely, and something about that made Sylas happy.

He yawned and put his hands behind his head. What was his uncle doing now, now that he had no one to run his stupid little errands, no one to snipe at, no one to blame?

His eyes were just beginning to close when he heard a movement in the room.

He opened his eyes. Simia was leaning on what passed for the doorframe, chewing on an apple.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked disapprovingly.

“What do you mean? I’m relaxing – I thought that was what you were doing!”

Simia was incredulous. “Isn’t there a curious bone in your body? I mean, here we are in the great Valley of Outs, and all you want to do is have a kip?”

Sylas stared at her for a moment and then managed a weary grin. “Come on then,” he said, hauling himself to his feet and brushing off the crumbs. “Let’s go explore.”

In the forest the sun was just setting, painting the trees with pink and orange, which only added to their magic and beauty. Walking alone they were free to wander and gaze all about them, to take in the sheer scale of the towering trees. But they also tried to look beyond roots and trunks and branches to find any sign of the town Filimaya had mentioned. And the more they explored, the more they discovered.

They saw the first of the townsfolk in the crevices and folds of tree trunks, in dark openings that now, in the failing light, showed themselves to be entrances to warm, glowing sanctuaries, where people sat around tables and laughed and chatted, where children played and argued and readied themselves for bed. And they saw homes in other, more unusual places. Sylas was the first to see one beneath the roots of a grand old tree, partly in the folds of the tree and partly underground. Then Simia saw one high in the canopy, nestled in the crook of four intersecting boughs, wrapped all about with a lattice of branches like a giant nest. But these branches had not been cut or placed or woven. They were alive. They had grown that way.

They walked further into the forest and saw more and more of these strange dwellings high in the treetops, some beginning to glow with flickering lamplight. But what was even more magical was that they saw people walking from one to the other along the tops of the largest boughs, as though ambling through the roof of the forest was the most natural thing in the world. The more they looked, the more people they began to see, until they realised that the entire canopy was connected by a network of walkways. Some people walked quickly along the great branches, rushing to a late appointment or to get home for dinner; others walked beside a companion, chatting or taking in the evening air. One woman even walked along reading a book. But what Sylas found most surprising of all was the sight of children running between these great trees without a care in the world.

“Why aren’t they scared?” he murmured, shaking his head in disbelief.

Simia followed his eyes and shrugged. “Nature wants to help us,” she said matter-of-factly. “Remember what Merimaat told me that time? When I was trying to cross the river on stepping stones?”

Sylas remembered well Simia’s story of Merimaat – the great, lost leader of the Suhl – her strange words sticking clearly in his mind: “They aren’t trying to trip you,” she had said of the stepping stones, “they’re trying to help you.”

“That’s what the Suhl are brought up to believe,” Simia continued, “that Nature is part of us and we are part of Nature. She’s on our side.”

Sylas looked back up into the treetops in time to see an entire family walking almost directly overhead, laughing and joking, the children racing each other to the next trunk.

“Well they believe it, that’s for sure,” he said, under his breath.

They walked on, and as the sky grew darker they began to see a galaxy of orange lamplights dotted throughout the trees, casting a beautiful, magical light across the forest floor.

Soon they had reached the steep incline to one side of the Valley of Outs. They pressed on, hoping to climb high enough to look down on Sylva. At first they made good progress through the tangle of bushes and branches, but then, quite abruptly, the ground levelled off.

Sylas stopped. “This can’t be the top,” he said, glancing about. “We’ve only just started.”

Simia pushed past and parted some branches. The ground ahead fell away. They shared a look.

“Odd,” said Simia.

She pushed through the undergrowth and strode down the slope. “Come on, it must go up again in a bit.”

They set out once more but had only walked a few steps when they came to a halt.

There, beyond a few branches of trees, was the valley they had just left behind. Lamplights blinked in the treetops, the occasional dark figure wandered through the canopy and just ahead was the stream they had crossed only minutes before.

Simia turned on her heel and marched past Sylas with a look of fierce determination.

“We must have circled back somehow. Come on!”

Sylas opened his mouth to say something, but then just turned to follow. They had only walked a dozen paces through the thicket before the ground again seemed to be levelling out. Again they reached a clearing, and again they saw the ground falling away, and as soon as they started down the slope they stopped in astonishment – for there, through the bushes and wood smoke, were the same lamplights, the treetops and the familiar stream, babbling in the half-dark, seeming almost to mock them. They were back where they had started.

“I think I know what’s happening here,” said Simia, smiling suddenly. “You know why they call this the Valley of Outs?”

Sylas shook his head, perplexed.

“Because no one but the Suhl can find their way in. They always find themselves walking out again!”

“Right …” said Sylas, trying to get his head round it.

“Well, isn’t this just the opposite? I mean, we’re inside the valley, and perhaps the same magic that keeps other people out—”

“… is keeping us in!” exclaimed Sylas, a smile spreading across his tired features. “So however many times we try to climb this hill, and whatever point we try from, we’ll always find ourselves walking back into the Valley of Outs!”

Simia put her hands on her hips and grinned. “Exactly.”

Since they had gone as far as they could go, they sat down on a bed of dry leaves and gazed through the branches and bushes to the valley below, framed by the dark silhouettes of the two vast hills. The moon and stars lent everything a trace of silver: the distant hilltops, the curls of smoke rising from hundreds of fires, and somewhere below, only just visible through the fingers of the forest, the glistening surface of the lake.

For the first time they felt the true power of this place: the ancient and unfathomable magic that bound it together, from root, to trunk, to treetop – the magic that now held them close and would keep them safe.

“It’s like a dream,” murmured Simia under her breath.

Sylas nodded and almost without thinking he raised a hand towards the overhanging branches and opened his fingers wide. In the same instant, the twigs and leaves swept aside like the curtains of a stage, revealing the valley, the lake and the twinkling skies in all their majesty.

Simia’s grin flashed in the half-dark. “Show off!”

Sylas laughed and started to close his fingers, but she reached out.

“Don’t,” she said. “Leave it.”

And so Sylas left the branches as they were, framing the most beautiful view either of them had ever seen.

They sat quietly, listening to the birds settling to roost and the animals of the night calling to the rising moon. To their surprise, these sounds suddenly faded, as though making way for something else. A moment later, they heard the sorrowful sound of a pipe. The music came from deep in the forest, and was quickly taken up by hundreds of instruments scattered throughout the treetops of Sylva: pipes, violins, guitars, horns, all playing as one.

Then the Suhl began to sing. Their words seemed to seep from the trees themselves, filling the valley with a mournful chorus:

In far lands of dark and high lands and low,

I hear songs of a place where none ever go;

Locked in the hills, ’midst green velvet folds,

A treasure more precious than gem-furnished gold,

For there dwell the Suhl, the last broken band,

There dwell the lost and there dwell the damned …

The thing throbbed and quivered, its glistening flanks oozing a sickening slime. It was a formless shape, a mess of organic sludge that barely cohered into a single thing. The tiny chamber in which it lived dripped the same oily filth and pulsed to the same quickening rhythm, as though it and the thing were one and the same: one sustaining the other. The air was thick and hot and wet. Trails of vapour rose and formed swirling, putrid clouds beneath the cave-like ceiling.

Suddenly there was silence.

The half-formed heart halted. The vapours ceased their constant movement.

The thing trembled. And then …

THUMP … THUMP …

THUMP-THUMP … THUMP-THUMP … THUMP-THUMP …

The thing swelled and receded. Something inside tensed and then a bulge moved beneath the glutinous surface. Then another: this time distinct and pointed.

The pulse accelerated, gaining volume, building and building, faster and faster until soon it was no longer a heartbeat but a rush of sound, a deafening percussion of panic.

Suddenly the thing erupted in frantic motion, twisting and stretching, turning and bulging. As the jelly was breached, more black mucous flowed down its sides and new vapours palled in the chamber.

And then, with a sudden surge, something forced itself upwards, striking the ceiling with a thud. It slewed to one side and then collapsed, slapping down into the ooze.

The heartbeat steadied and began to return to a measured pace. The walls ceased their throbbing altogether, for their work was done.

Something had been born.

It was partly submerged in the oily mire, so that it could almost not be seen. But in some strange contortion there was an arm and a hand – a human hand – and that hand rested against a human cheek. A woman’s cheek. It twitched, the little finger tapping against the fine dark skin.

And then, slowly, the hand began to clench. The fingers curled, and as they did so there was movement at their tips, beneath the fingernails. Slow and slick, the points of rapier talons emerged into the gloom. They grew and grew, until they were almost half the length of the fingers. Until they scratched the woman’s cheek.

The figure arched in a spasm of pain. She shrieked, her eyes wide and staring, the pupils drawn into narrow slits.

It was not a woman’s shriek. It was the screeching wail of an animal.

“If sorcery itself has form, it is the Black. The Black is all we cannot know; it is enchantment and it is despair.”

IT STARTED BEFORE THE first warming rays, in the darkness: a playful chirrup from a nearby branch, followed by an answering call. Then another, even nearer at hand, and another, building on the first, clamouring to be heard. Soon a mounting chorus filled the forest. Thousands of sparrows and swifts, finches and wrens, kites and kestrels, all raising their heads towards the crowning sun to welcome the new day.

And yet to Naeo, it was a strange, unwelcome sound – even now, even days after her escape. It was too clear and loud and shrill. In her slumber, she pushed at her heels and pressed herself even further back between the two rounded rocks, retreating into the shadows. And as the rays crept down the steps into her cave she coiled into a ball, wrapping her arms around her head, yearning for silence and darkness.

Silence and darkness were what she knew. They were her friends. They kept her safe.