Chapter 119

Musings on the Nature of Life and Death by a Friendly Oak Tree

Jenkins is nowhere to be found. I push my way through the dewy ghost garden, and nudge open the front door of my cottage. The kitchen is as I left it. Perhaps I should go back to the glade?

“Well that didn’t last long,” comments my mother from her shelf.

“What?” I ask, looking up at her skull in surprise.

“The body,” she says with a sniff. This is particularly impressive because there is an empty cavity where her nose should be. “The body, the hair, the beau.”

I glance down at my bones. I should put something on. Running around skeletal is oddly freeing, but I am the Queen of Einheath. I have an image to maintain. With that in mind I start up the ladder to my loft, in search of a fresh gown, when I pause. “What do you mean beau?”

“The gentleman who’s been leaving you flowers,” my mother says. “What did you do to chase him away? Not that I’m surprised.”

I set my jaw and keep climbing.

“He is not a gentleman.” I pull a skirt out of the wardrobe. Too colourful. I toss it aside and reach for another, this one a sombre, comforting black. “He’s a tree spirit and he is not courting me!”

“Well not anymore.”

I should have known that even in death, even after all I have accomplished, my mother still does not see my life as complete without a relationship. Now she is disappointed that a haunted oak tree is no longer clumping about in my garden treading dirt into my blight. She is being totally and utterly ridiculous.

“Have you seen Jenkins?” I shout down the ladder.

“Stop changing the topic,” she says. “And no I haven’t.”

Pulling on a blouse I fasten the buttons in their holes with vicious energy. It hangs loose from my skeletal frame, a far cry from the luscious shapeliness I sported just yesterday. Growling under my breath I go searching for the smallest cumberbund I have, and fasten it tightly. That looks a little better.

I descend the ladder in a dignified flounce of petticoats.

Where is Jenkins? I’m sure he is more than capable of taking care of himself as a lich but I would like confirmation that my plan was successful. I look in all his favourite spots and at last locate him, seemingly sound asleep in his cupboard. I should have looked there first.

His skeletal head is resting on a bed of ghost catnip which he must have snaffled from the garden. Is he asleep? Is it even possible for a lich to sleep? Jenkins seems to be giving it an excellent try. It is strange to see him as a skeleton. He is the wrong colour, but like it is with me his appearance will be constantly in flux.

He seems to be well enough, and peeps at me sleepily when I scratch the bone of his head. The glowing sapphire of his eyes suits him. Three large white whiskers protrude from the smooth bone of his cheeks. Some skin is growing back already, so he is not completely skeletal. In fact he is less skeletal than I. It seems he has his own ways of serving the Whisperer.

“Are you alright, Jenkins?”

The good boy purrs at me and settles his head back down into the mess of catnip. Clearly he is busy. I take the hint and leave him to his… whatever it is he is doing.

A fine pair we are. But the sight of him happily, bonily curled up in his nest eases the ache in my heart. He will be by my side forever. At least until I confront the Whisperer.

Now Jenkins is a lich, I have no excuse not to get on with that particular project.

I need to track down the strange cult of people who worship this dead goddess and find out how she died. Friar Julian, the elven shopkeeper… Elding and Tora, and the beastie: these are my clues. It is a pity I cannot return to the fairy lands and consult with the elven fortune teller. I have an inkling she might have been a good source of information. But I made my pact with the summer queen, and I will keep it. On the other hand… perhaps I could send her a message with the crows? Invite her here for a consultation? Surely that would keep my oath intact?

There is a sound at my front door, and I leap up, startled

“Perhaps that’s him!” yells my mother.

“Shut up, mother,” I growl, “or I will grind you down to a fine powder and use the dust as bone meal for my roses.”

Given our manner of parting I think it is highly unlikely to be Herne. I clench my fists. What if, in my enthusiasm to crush the summer queen, I accidentally swept up Herne’s soul in my greed? What if he is dead and I ate him?

Suddenly fearful I yank open the front door, almost pulling it off its hinges..

It is Herne. The tree spirit stands in front of me, surrounded by his own private bees swarm, leaves budding gently in his beard.

A small moan of relief escapes me.

Paralyzed with awkwardness, I stare as he gestures to the old shoe he has left on the doorstep. Dribbling fresh, loamy forest soil it has a single peony protruding in pride of place from the ankle.

“A flower,” he says, “alive.”

And with that he starts to sidle away.

“Thank you. I-”

I can positively hear my mother’s nosiness vibrating through the cottage. If she had ears they would be the size of an elephant—large and flapping in my direction. I vow to bury her upside down in the compost for a bit and step into the garden, pulling the door shut behind me. A modicum of privacy.

“I thought you might not come again? After - after the party. I thought you might be dead?”

“Why?” he says. “I thought you liked death, evil dead woman?”

If I had eyelids I would blink. “I mean. Death isn’t the end. Not necessarily.” I gesture to myself. “If you died, I would be sad. I could bring you back though. If I knew. I could make sure you never died.”

“Everything dies,” Herne frowns. A bee flies out of his left ear. “Some things just take longer than others. Do not remove me from the cycle of life against my will.”

“What do you mean? Is death not part of the cycle?”

“A natural death, yes. I will become one with the earth. In time I will become something else. A blade of grass, or a flower or another tree. In time I will feel the kiss of the sun on my leaves once more. If you give me to the Whisperer you consign my spirit to the void.”

Silence falls between us.

“That is what is going to happen to me, isn't it?” I say, softly. “Eventually.”

“I assume so,” says the spirit. He looks at my downcast skeletal face. “But cheer up! It will not happen for many years, I hope, and you can visit me in my grove. Life is good, yes? Even in undeath?”

“It is very good,” I concede, feeling grouchy for reasons I do not fully understand. I thought this particular sadness was long since reconciled. “Perhaps I will live forever as a lich.”

“I hope not,” says Herne.

“What?”

“You are a parasite,” he says, “on the living. You feed off them and leave nothing behind but ash. While you live everything I love is in danger. My forest, my tree, my soil. My bees, my flowers. Everything.”

It feels like I have been punched in the gut.

Straightening my back I look down at the single, lonely peony resting on my doorstep. Its pink petals stand out stark against the blackened onyx of the garden path. Of the people mulch silently decomposing in the borders.

“Herne,” I say. “Why do you bring me flowers?”

“To distract you from killing things,” he says. “To try and save you. Is it working, dead Maud? I thought it might be working but then you went down to the fairy realm and planted the seeds of decay deep in the summer queen’s meadow. I lost many friends that day. I did not want to come back, but I do not want to lose more friends up here.”

Fat tears spill over the brown of his cheeks.

I stare at him, appalled.

My non-existent innards do strange things. Feelings fight each other in the cavity of my lungs. Words stick in my throat, choking me, suffocating me. I struggle for air, but I haven’t drawn breath in over six months. There is no way for me to breathe ever again, and it's best that I accept that, and move on.

“Thank you for the flower,” I say at last.

Herne bobs his head, eyes wet.

He reaches out one moss covered hand to touch my shoulder. His fingers don’t quite make it, and he slinks away back into the forest, leaving me to my sorrow.

I sit by myself in the garden for a long while.

I could have told him about my plans to destroy the Whisperer. I could have gotten a silver bell and told him everything under cover of its tinkling chime. Since my power comes from the Whisperer his death will likely mean mine also. Herne will have his desire. This is one aspect of my plan that I have deliberately not thought about, although it has been there, at the back of my mind like a tar-lined promise.

Of course, I am not afraid of dying. I am afraid of being nothing. Of it all being for nothing. But I will not let that happen. I should have told him, but it is safer if I do not.

Let him believe me to be a monster.

I am a monster.

I proved it in the fairy realm, and I will no doubt prove it again before I am done.

Jenkins wanders out of the cottage and headbutts me with his glossy black head. Gleaming sapphire eyes stare up at me, curious and worried. His sandpaper tongue rasps over my cheek. He always tries to groom me when I am sad, and the gesture makes me smile. Hang on-

Glossy, black head?

“Jenkins?”

The cat I saw in the cupboard was a skeleton. This cat, while unmistakably Jenkins, is lushly furred, thick and black and shiny with bristling white whiskers protruding from both fat cheeks. Jenkins as he looked in his prime. Better, even. Solidly muscled, well fed, fur gleaming. Around his neck is the velvet ribbon I tied at his liching.

But how did he gather so many souls so quickly?

Reaching out to pet him, my fingers go straight through his fur.

This Jenkins is as substantial as a wisp. I squeak in surprise.

Wisp-Jenkins gambols away, a cheeky look on his feline face. He runs for the old oak at the bottom of the garden, peers over his shoulder to make sure I am watching, and leaps lightly up the trunk. When he reaches the top, he soars out into empty air and just…stays there. Or rather he does not fall, but drifts, like a moonlit shadow, floating downwards. Springing again onto nothing he darts around the garden like a fleetfoot shade.

“Jenkins?” I say again. “Are you… a ghost? A spirit?”

Whatever he is, he is extremely pleased with himself. Wisp-Jenkins head butts me, purring up a storm. I try to scratch his ears but it is like petting air.

“Where is the rest of you, Jenkins?” I ask.

He prances into the cottage.

I follow along, and open the cupboard door.

Skeletal Jenkins lies just where I last left him, head resting on that pile of ghostly cat nip. He does not move as the pair of us look at his body.

“This is a spell?” Wisp- Jenkins purrs loudly. “Clever boy!”

How very interesting. It appears that Jenkins has his own way of bargaining with the Whisperer. What will he do with this ability?

As if he can hear the thought, Wisp-Jenkin's eyes narrow to gleaming, icy slits.

He darts away into the garden as quick as a blink. I follow him out in time to see him vanish into the gloom of the forest. Hunting, I assume.

Just as I decide I have probably seen the last of him for the night he is back. Jenkins is dragging something in his jaw. The thing in his jaws is as big as him and struggling but he has it firmly between his teeth. It is also gleaming gently, trailing translucent tentacles, and screaming softly. For a moment I can’t think what it is. Then I realise it is a magical jellyfish.

Perhaps I do not need to send a message to the elven fortune teller after all.