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Tilting her head to one side and half closing her eyes, Edie thought it resembled the entrance to an enchanted castle and tenderly ran her hands over the surface of the roughly hewn stone.
‘Here is the oldest part of the museum,’ Miss Ursula’s hushed voice informed her. ‘About this doorway, whilst my sisters and I withered with age – enduring the creeping passage of time, the rest of the building burgeoned and grew. This was the earliest shrine to house the wondrous treasure of the three Fates. We are very near now, very near indeed. What can you sense, Edith? Tell me, does it call to you?’
The girl stood back and studied the wooden door that was framed by the arch. Its stout timbers were black with age and although they were pitted and scarred by generations of long dead woodworm, they were as solid as the stone which surrounded them. Into the now steel-hard grain, iron studs had once been embedded, but most of them had flaked away with the centuries, leaving only sunken craters behind. The hinges, however, were still in place and Edie’s exploring fingertips began to trace the curling fronds of their intricate design, until her hands finally came to rest upon a large, round bronze handle.
At the bottom of the door there was a wide crack where the timbers had shrunk away from the floor and a draught of cold, musty air blew about the child’s stockinged legs – stirring the shreds of web that were still attached to her.
Edie wrinkled her nose when the stale air wafted up to her nostrils, but the sour expression gradually faded from her puckish face and she took a step backwards as the faint, mouldering scent entwined around her.
The smell was not entirely unpleasant, there was a compelling sweetness and poignancy to it, and she was reminded of the roses that had been left to grow tall and wild in the gardens of bombed-out houses – their blooms rotting on the stem.
She had adored the wilderness of the bombsites. In the time of the Blitz, the shattered wasteland had been her realm and of all the fragrances which threaded their way over the rubble, the spectral perfume of spoiling roses had been her favourite.
The tinsel threads woven into her pixie-hood glittered for a moment as the haunting odour captivated her and, watching her reactions, Miss Ursula smiled with approval.
‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘I see that you do sense it. Nirinel is aware of you, Edith, and is calling. If I needed any further proof that you were indeed one of us, then it has been provided.’
Crossing to the corner where the armour leaned against the panels, she lit an oil lamp which stood upon a small table and returned with it to Edie. Within the fluted glass of the lamp’s shade, the wick burned merrily and its soft radiance shone out over the elderly woman’s gaunt features, divulging the fact that she was just as excited as the child.
Then, with her free hand, Miss Ursula took from a fine chain about her neck a delicate silver key but, before turning it in the lock, she hesitated.
‘Now,’ she uttered gravely, ‘you will learn the secret which my sisters and I have kept and guarded these countless years, the same burdensome years that robbed us of our youth and which harvested their wits.
‘No one except we three have ever set foot beyond this entrance. Prepare yourself, Edith, once you have beheld this wonder there can be no returning. No mortal may gaze upon the secret of the Fates. Your destiny will be bound unto it forever.’
Without taking her silvery blue eyes from the doorway, the girl said simply, ‘Open it.’ Then she held her breath as Miss Ursula grasped the handle and pushed.
There came a rasping crunch of rusted iron as slowly, inch by inch, the ancient door swung inwards.
At once the stale air grew more pungent, yet Edie revelled in it. Holding the lamp aloft, Miss Ursula ducked beneath the low archway.
The darkness beyond dispersed before the gentle flame, revealing a narrow stone passageway which was just tall enough to allow the elderly woman to stand.
‘Have a care, Edith,’ Miss Ursula warned. She lowered her hand so that the light illuminated the ground and showed it to be the topmost step of a steep flight which plunged down into a consumate blackness.
‘This stair is treacherous,’ she continued, her voice echoing faintly as she began to descend. ‘The unnumbered footfalls of my sisters and I have rendered each step murderously smooth. In places they are worn completely and have become a slippery, polished slope.’
Down the plummeting tunnel Miss Ursula went, the cheering flame of the lamp bobbing before her and, keeping her cautious eyes trained upon the floor, Edie Dorkins followed closely behind.
Deep into the earth the stairway delved, twisting a spiralling path beneath the foundations of The Wyrd Museum. Occasionally, the stonework was punctuated by large slabs of granite.
At one point a length of copper pipe, encrusted with verdigris, projected across the tunnel and Miss Ursula was compelled to stoop beneath it.
‘So do the roots of the modern world reach down to the past,’ she remarked. ‘Yet, since the well was drained, no water flows from the drinking-fountain above.’
Pressing ever downwards, she did not utter another sound until she paused unexpectedly – causing Edie to bump into her.
‘At this place the outside presses its very closest to that which we keep hidden,’ she said, bringing the lamp close to the wall until the young girl could see that large cracks had appeared in the stones.
‘A few feet beyond this spot lies one of their tunnels. A brash and noisome worm-boring, a filthy conduit to ferry people from one place to another like so many cattle. Perilously near did their excavations come to finding us. Now, when the carriages hurtle through that blind, squalid hole, this stairway shakes as though Woden himself had returned with his armies to do battle one last time.’
Miss Ursula’s voice choked a little when she said this. Edie looked up at her in surprise but the elderly woman recovered quickly.
‘It is most inconvenient,’ her normal clipped tones added. ‘Thus far they have not discovered us, yet a day may come perhaps when these steps are finally unearthed by their over-zealous probing. What hope then for the unhappy world? If man were to know of the terrors which wait to seize control of his domain he would undoubtedly destroy it himself in his madness. That is what we must save them from, Edith. They must never know of us and our guardianship.’
Her doom-laden words hung on the cold air as she turned to proceed.
‘Still,’ she commented dryly, ‘at least at this hour of the night there are no engines to rumble by and impede our progress.’
Further down they travelled, until Edie lost all sense of time and could not begin to measure the distance they had come. Eventually the motion of her descent, joined with the dancing flame, caused her to imagine that she was following a glimmering ember down the throat of a gigantic, slumbering dragon. Down towards its belly she was marching, to bake and broil in the scarlet heats of its rib-encased furnace. A delighted grin split the fey girl’s face.
‘Pay extra heed here,’ Miss Ursula cautioned abruptly, her voice cutting through the child’s imaginings. ‘The steps are about to end.’
As she spoke, the echo altered dramatically, soaring high into a much greater space and Edie found herself standing at the foot of the immense stairway by the mouth of a large, vaulted chamber carved out of solid rock.
Miss Ursula strode inside and Edie saw that the curved walls of the cave were decorated with primitive paintings of figures and animals.
‘Stay by my side, Edith,’ Miss Ursula told her. ‘This is but the first in a series of chambers and catacombs, do not let your inquisitiveness permit you to stray. It might take days before you were found.’
Edie toyed with the exciting notion of wandering around in the complete subterranean darkness but was too anxious to see where she was being led to contemplate the idea for long.
Into a second cavern they went and again the echoes altered, for here great drapes of black cloth hung from the ceiling, soaking up the sound of their footsteps.
‘Gold and silver were those tapestries once,’ Miss Ursula commented, not bothering to glance at them. ‘Very grand we were back then. Several of the chambers were completely gilded from top to bottom, there were shimmering pathways of precious stones and crystal fountains used to fill the air with a sweet tinkling music. There was even a garden down here lit with diamond lanterns and replete with fragrant flowers and fruit trees, in which tame birds sang for our delight.’
The elderly woman pursed her lips contemptuously as she proceeded to guide Edie through the maze of tunnels and caves.
‘However,’ she resumed, ‘the passage of time eventually stripped the pleasure of those decorous diversions from our eyes. Weary of them at last, we allowed the hangings to rot with mould, the jewels we gave back to the earth and the garden was neglected until the bird song ceased. For us there was only one great treasure and we ministered to it daily. Now, Edith, we are here at last.’
They had come to a large gateway which was wrought and hammered from some tarnished yellow metal. Raised in relief across its surface was the stylised image of a great tree nourished by three long roots and Miss Ursula bowed her head respectfully as she reached out her hand to touch it with her fingertips.
‘Behind this barrier is a most hallowed thing,’ she murmured with reverence. ‘Throughout the lonely ages my sisters and I have served it with consummate devotion and now you too shall share the burden. Behold, Edith – the Chamber of Nirinel.’
Swiftly and in silence, the gate opened and suddenly the darkness was banished. A golden, crackling light blazed before them and Edie screwed up her face to shield her eyes from the unexpected, dazzling glare.
Through the entrance Miss Ursula strode, her figure dissolving into the blinding glow until finally the child’s sight adjusted. She stared at the spectacle before her in disbelief and wonder.
The Chamber of Nirinel was far greater than any of the caves they had passed through. Immense and cavernous was its size and Edie stumbled forward to be a part of this awesome vision, in case it was abruptly snatched away from her goggling eyes. Into the light she went, absorbing every detail of the scene before her.
Fixed to the vast, encircling walls a hundred torches burned, casting their splendour over the richly carved rock where, between the graven pillars and sculpted leaf patterns, countless stone faces flickered and glowed. All manner of creatures were depicted there and the untutored Edie Dorkins could only recognise a fraction of them.
Edie gurgled in amusement and hugged herself as the dancing flames made this chiselled bestiary appear to peep down at her with curious stares – even the monstrous serpents seemed to be astonished at her arrival.
‘And why shouldn’t they?’ Miss Ursula’s voice broke in, reading her thoughts. ‘The poor brutes have had an eternity of looking at me.’
Edie laughed, then curtseyed to the silent, stone audience, craning her head back to see just how high the carvings reached up the walls.
It was then that she saw it, the titanic presence which dominated that cathedral-like place. Her mouth fell open at the sight and the giggles died in her throat.
From the moment she had entered the chamber, Edie had been aware of a great shadow which towered over the cavern but not till now did she realise its nature and she froze with shock.
Rising from the bare earthen floor and rearing in a massive arc into the dark heights above, where not even the radiance of so many bright torches could reach, was what appeared to be the trunk of a gigantic tree.
Up into the impenetrable gloom its colossal girth soared, vanishing into the utter blackness of the chamber’s immeasurable height where it straddled the entire length of the cavern before plunging downwards once more, to drive through the furthest wall.
So monumental were its proportions that Edie could only shake her head, yet she noticed that no branches grew from that mighty tree. Only gnarled, knotted bulges protruded from the blighted, blackened bark, like clusters of ulcerous decay, and in places the wood had split to form festering and diseased wounds.
Slowly, Edie rose from her crouching curtsey. That withered giant was the source of the deliciously sickly scent and she took a great lungful before tossing her head and considering the forlorn marvel more closely.
‘What killed it?’ she asked bluntly.
Miss Ursula put her arm about the girl’s shoulders.
‘You are mistaken, Edith,’ she said softly. ‘Nirinel is not dead – not yet. A trickle of sap still oozes deep within the core of its being and, while it does, so there is hope.’
Leaping forward, Edie ran over the mossy soil until the gargantuan arch of putrefying bark loomed far above her. Shouting gleefully, she began to twirl and dance with joy.
‘The tree’s alive,’ her high voice rang within the cavern. ‘It lives, it lives!’
‘Again, I must correct you,’ Miss Ursula told her. ‘This is no tree. It is but the last remaining root of the mother of all forests. We are in the presence of the last vestige of the legendary World Tree – Yggdrasill, which flourished in the dawn of time and from which all things of worth and merit sprang.’
The child ceased her dancing and stared up at the immense, rearing shadow.
‘This is a sacred site,’ Miss Ursula breathed. ‘But come, Edith, I will explain.’
Where the massive root thrust up out of the ground, a circular dais of stone jutted from the floor. Upon this wide ring, which was covered in a growth of dry moss and rotting lichen, the elderly woman sat and patted the space at her side for the girl to join her.
‘I shall not begin at the beginning of things,’ she said. ‘For that time was filled with darkness. My tale commences when Yggdrasill first bloomed and the early rays of the new sun smiled upon its leaves.
‘In that glorious dawn, the World Tree flourished and it was the fairest and most wondrous sight that ever was, or shall ever be. In appearance it was like a tremendous and majestic ash, but many miles was the circumference of its trunk; its three main roots stretched about the globe and its branches seemed to hold heaven aloft. Like a living mountain it rose above the landscape but its great magnitude cast no despairing shade upon the ground below, for Yggdrasill’s foliage shone with an emerald light and in its cradling boughs the first ancestors of mankind were nurtured.’
Edie gazed up at the vast root, vainly trying to imagine the unbounded size of Yggdrasill.
‘The first civilisation was founded about the eastern side of the World Tree,’ Miss Ursula continued, ‘and Askar was it named. In that early time there was no sickness and its people knew no death. All were content and Askar flourished and thrived.’
Miss Webster’s voice trailed off as she stared into the flames of the torches.
‘Was you there then?’ Edie asked. ‘Is that where you’re from?’
The elderly woman smiled gravely. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘My sisters and I were born in that silvan shade.
‘Yet there were other beings who roamed the globe,’ she continued, shivering slightly. ‘Before the first blossom opened upon Yggdrasill, unclean voices bellowed and resounded in the barren wastes of the ice-locked north.’
Edie grinned and leaned forward, eager to learn more. ‘Was they monsters?’ she demanded. ‘Is that where Belial came crawling out?’
‘No,’ came the patient reply. ‘Belial was much, much later and compared to them his evil deeds are like those of a mischievous schoolboy. Although he will one day pour fire upon the world – they shall come after. They were here before and they will be here at the utmost end.’
Relishing every word, Edie squirmed and rested her dirty chin upon her hands. ‘Who are they then?’ she urged.
‘Spirits of cold and darkness,’ Miss Ursula breathed. ‘Drawn from the freezing waters when the world was formed, who clad themselves in chill flesh as giants terrible to behold. In a desolate, forsaken country where none of the World Tree’s roots had delved, they dwelt. A great gulf and chasm which stretched down to the very marrow of the earth, separated their unhallowed realm from the main continent and over the never-ending darkness they reigned absolutely.’
Miss Ursula paused to gaze up at the huge, decaying root and clicked her tongue with irritation.
‘You and I can only suspect the extent of their fury when the first light burst forth to herald Yggdrasill’s unfurling,’ she said. ‘They had considered themselves to be lords of an echoing darkness and now their dominion was threatened by this unlooked for challenge.’
‘What did they do?’
‘Sought for ways to destroy it,’ Miss Ursula told her. ‘For it was prophesied that as long as there was sap within the smallest leaf of the World Tree, their previous lordship and tyranny would be denied them. So began the building of the ice bridge to span the great chasm. Malice and loathing seethed in their frozen hearts but the people of Askar were unaware of the peril which awaited them...’
‘Oh, Ursula!’ cried another voice suddenly and, with a jolt, Edie turned to see Miss Celandine and Miss Veronica standing by the gate.
Their gaze fixed upon the withered root, the two sisters shambled inside. Then, leaving Miss Veronica to lean upon her stick, Miss Celandine skipped forward – clapping her hands in delight and cooing dreamily.
‘It’s been so long since you let us come down here!’ she declared reproachfully. ‘You are a meanie, Ursula – you know how I adored Nirinel so. Why look how shrivelled it has become. We must anoint it with the water like we used to and make it hale again.’
Anxiously, she trotted over to where Edie and her sister were sitting, then checked herself sharply and gazed at the circular dais in consternation.
‘But, the well!’ she gabbled in a flustered whine. ‘Such neglect. Ursula – what has happened? Why is nothing the same? First the loom was broken and now this!’
Clambering up beside them, she feverishly dragged the dead moss away and Edie saw that the stone platform was embellished with a sumptuously moulded frieze overlaid in tarnished silver and small blue gems. But even as she admired the decoration, Miss Celandine’s knobbly hands pulled away a great swathe of mouldering growth and there in the centre of the dais she uncovered a wide and precipitously deep hole.
Over the brink Miss Celandine popped her head, casting handfuls of the dead lichen down into the darkness – waiting and listening for the resulting splashes. But no sound rose into the cavern and a look of comprehension slowly settled over the woman’s wrinkled face.
‘I... I had forgotten,’ she whispered in a small, crestfallen voice. ‘The waters are gone, aren’t they, Ursula? The well is dry, it is, isn’t it?’
Her sister nodded. ‘The sacred spring dried up many, many years ago,’ she said wearily, as if repeating this information was an hourly ritual. ‘And every last drop of the blessed water was drained fifty years ago in order to vanquish Belial.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Miss Celandine sighed in regret. ‘So we can never heal Nirinel’s wounds. It makes me woefully sad to see it shrunken and spoiled. Oh, how lovely it was when we first arrived, how very, very lovely. Veronica, do you recall? Veronica?’
She whirled about to look at the sister she had left by the gate, then gave a little yelp when she saw the expression on Miss Veronica’s face.
Resting heavily upon her cane, Miss Veronica was staring up at the tremendous root with a ferocious intensity that was alarming to witness. It had been an age since she had last been permitted to venture down here and now the sight of it was stirring up the muddied corners of her vague, rambling mind.
‘I see four white stags ahead of us,’ she uttered huskily, wiping a trembling hand over her brow and smearing the beauty cream which covered it.
‘I don’t want to follow them,’ she wept, edging backwards. ‘Let me return, I must... I... there is something I have to do!’
Lurching against the carved wall, Miss Veronica lifted her cane and waved wildly about her head as if trying to ward something away.
‘Urdr!’ she shrieked, staring at Miss Ursula with mounting panic. ‘Do not force me to go with you. I must go back – I am needed!’
‘Veronica!’ Miss Celandine called, hurrying back to her stricken sister. ‘You have nothing to fear. That time has ended. We are safe – you are safe.’
Her sister’s eyes grew round with terror and she threw her arms before her face. ‘Safe!’ she wailed hysterically. ‘We are old, ancient and haggard, accursed and afflicted from that very hour. Won’t someone save me? The mist is rising. I beseech you – before it is too late. Please, I beg you my sister. Release me! Release me...’
Her cries melted into sobs as she buried her anguished face into Miss Celandine’s outstretched arms.
‘Hush,’ her sister comforted. ‘Come back, Veronica, it’s over now – it is, it is.’ But as she soothed the crumpled, whimpering figure she shot a scornful glance at Miss Ursula.
Still seated upon the edge of the well, Edie Dorkins watched the elderly woman at her side and was astonished to see the extent to which her sister’s outburst had distressed her.
Sitting stiff and as still as one of the stone images which swarmed over the walls, Miss Ursula’s small, piercing eyes glistened with tears and Edie could sense her inner struggle as she battled to control her emotions.
Then, mastering herself at last, Miss Ursula rose and, clenching her fists until they turned a horrible, bleached white, said, ‘Celandine, take Veronica back to the museum. This is no place for her, the... the musty atmosphere is injurious to her. You know that neither of you are allowed down here, I shall lock the doorway behind me next time.’
It appeared to Edie that Miss Celandine was on the verge of retaliating with some choice words of her own, but she must have thought better of it for she turned and helped the weeping Miss Veronica to hobble out through the gateway.
‘It was her,’ Miss Veronica’s blubbering voice sniffed and warbled. ‘She made me do it. I didn’t want to come... I didn’t want any of this.’
Rigid and wintry, Miss Ursula watched them depart.
‘An unhappy family have you joined, Edith,’ she said keeping her voice level, hoping she betrayed nothing of the turmoil which boiled beneath her stern exterior. ‘My two poor sisters are wasting away in mind as well as body. Their lives and mine are bound closely to that of Nirinel – as it fades so, too, do we.’
Edie eyed her shrewdly. ‘And mine?’ she demanded.
‘The young will not perish as swiftly as the aged,’ came the unhelpful reply. ‘I do not foresee what is to come for the loom is damaged and the web was never completed, but I believe you shall be our salvation – in one way or another.’
The child looked down at her feet. Then she asked, ‘What happened to the ice giants? Did they kill the World Tree?’
‘The lords of the ice and dark?’ Miss Ursula paused. ‘The rest of that tale must wait. You have learned much this night, but now I am obliged to go and make certain that Veronica is settled. Let us return to the museum, I too find this environment disturbing. I have recounted all I care to for the time being and you must be patient.’
Edie jumped from the dais and took hold of Miss Ursula’s proffered hand, but the woman’s palm was cold and clammy. The girl knew that Miss Veronica’s words had shaken her more than she dared to admit and she could not help but wonder why.
Far above the subterranean caverns within The Wyrd Museum, all was at peace. Only fine, floating dust moved through the collections, the same invisible clouds of powdery neglect that had flowed from room to room since the day the smaller, original building was founded.