The Owl of the Night of Lethshire

‘One will always be journeying, always moving and changing,’ Verry uttered with the soundness of mind and great authority that can only be felt by a youth who has spent his first year abroad (and therefore seen most of the things there are to see in life) and who is ready to provide advice whenever it is necessary, as well as when it is not.

‘Even if you stay in the same place all your life, you cannot stop things changing about you. And so it is little use dwelling on lost treasures of the past,’ he concluded with a brisk, cheerful smile. His hands seized a long stick straying by the firepit. He picked it up and gave the coals a contented stir. The darkness was thick about them, but adventures were now long over. Home was drawing close and these woods were friendly and familiar, though they also felt a little odd, like good friends that one has not spoken to, or about, for a very long time.

‘I think, Master Everin,’ replied Samwel, ‘you perhaps like to give your mind and your heart to adventures – to the tasks you find set before you, and to the honourable characters with whose lot your own is cast. That is admirable, and useful.’ He spoke with quiet sincerity. ‘But I’m afraid it seems that I must give mine to places – to forests and rivers and misty mornings in the spring, and to frosty white places in winter, for my heart begins to yearn most painfully whenever I leave these magical things behind and try to continue on living without them.’ It was true that he had felt the pain of their recent troubles much more keenly than Verry. But despite this, a feeling of emptiness was growing on him – a queer sense of loss at the thought that there were ‘magical’ places in the world which he might never see again.

‘Well, tonight I am very glad,’ Verry went on, sure that such information was both necessary and interesting to his companions. ‘It is our own dear Lethshire that I now desire to see above all else, and to think that we now have but one day between us and her! Dragons and enchanted lands and foreign kings are all very exciting things, but I am sure I have had my fill of them for the present. It is for the sweet home of old that I most long for now – that long ago place when life was simple and full of safer adventures, the sort that always end agreeably, without risk of losing dinner or a dry comfortable bed when the night grows cold.’

There was silence for a moment in which Dale stared soberly, and seemingly more uncheered than the other three, into the fire. Little curls of smoke were slipping off the logs and drifting away quietly into the forest, ghosts of trees returning to the wood.

Then Beren spoke. ‘I cannot say I am relishing the thought of our return to the days of bore, as I call them,’ he said. But of course, he was much younger than his companions, even than Verry. His experience of their ‘adventure’ had been quite different, and so he could hardly be blamed.

They spent the night wrapped in their blankets, having thrown themselves in various attitudes of sleep about the fire. They watched the stars awhile – Verry and Beren briefly, before sleep gathered too heavy on their eyelids; Samwel for much longer. There was an unusual number of falling stars that night and he gazed at them with some amazement. At last, he faded into the foggy realm of dreams.

Despite all danger now lying safely far behind them, Dale lay awake for a long time. An aloof kind of uneasiness had begun growing slowly in his mind ever since they had crossed the Westerway River and turned their ponies’ heads home towards Lethshire, though he could not think why.

Time wore on and presently the stars above him grew old; it was that dead part of night when the blackness is very deep and homeless, belonging neither to one day nor the next. Unobserved, a great barn owl rose up and glided between the trees, giving a long mournful call. ‘Four travellers in the old forest!’ he said to himself. ‘And not a day’s ride out. They must be children of Lethshire, though why they should still be here seems queer to me.’ And he flew away to see his cousin.

When they woke, they found that the morning had dawned with all the gentleness and beauty of a misty sunrise followed by grey skies. A soft wind came wandering through the camp and about their beds which they speedily flung aside and bundled up.

‘Our last breakfast in the forest!’ said Beren. ‘But it is a pity the fire has gone cold. Perhaps we can stir it back to life yet.’

‘Stir the air into ashes and soot more likely,’ said Samwel. ‘But how about making yourself more useful and going to fill our pails. It’s a cold breakfast we shall have today.’

‘Very unfitting for the occasion,’ noted Verry, but he made a quick search for the pails nonetheless and when he and Beren returned, they were full to the brim and cold water was sloshing onto their bare toes.

However, he need not have worried. If it was a cold breakfast they took, it was certainly a hearty, if not a reckless one. There was very little thought of rationing now, and so when they had saddled and mounted the ponies and set out on that final road, it was with bellies full and content, and hearts light and happy.

‘I feel as though I could sing!’ cried Verry. ‘Hot baths tonight lads! Dale, you ought to be the king and march in the lead!’

‘Thank you, I’d rather not,’ said Dale. ‘I’ll follow. I want to think.’

‘Good heavens! What is there to think about?’ But he turned forward again in the saddle and, giving up the matter, turned his attention to their peaceful surroundings and his general happiness and to the merry tune that was forming on his lips.

The road was wide, though rarely trodden as they could see by the grasses beginning to creep up in uneven places, and by the undergrowth that was slowly advancing over the edges of the path. Even small saplings here and there were growing up in the way. ‘The road is being eaten up!’ observed Verry, but Samwel hushed him quickly. Trees live a great many years longer than any other race of creatures, and one can never be quite sure what they are thinking or what they know. The travellers did not notice, but little whispers had begun to pass swiftly from leaf to leaf ahead of them towards Lethshire.

The road was descending gently, and after they had ridden for several miles in silence (except for Verry’s whistling), they felt the sky growing darker. Then suddenly a great gust of wind came swirling up the road, stirring up leaves off the path and driving them on ahead in a billow. Its fingers whipped through the travellers’ hair and lashed at their coats.

‘I think we ought to find some shelter,’ cried Samwel above the wailing of the gale. ‘It looks like we are in for a storm.’ The words had no sooner left his mouth than the rain came lashing down upon them. The ponies began blowing noisily and plunged their heads low, even as they turned them hastily off the road and away from the direction of the wind. There was little protection to be had in the forest. They were forced to wait out the worst of the storm standing amongst the general shelter of the trees.

The rain fell heavily for half an hour and when it finally lightened to a miserable and steady drizzle, they turned again to the road. ‘My boots are wet,’ Beren said a little regretfully.

‘Boots are meant to get wet,’ answered Verry. ‘But I’m certainly more miserable than you, for my socks are swimming,’ which was of course a little unfair, for that was what Beren had in fact meant.

The rain continued steadily all the morning. They took a rather cheerless lunch at noon while the ponies bit the grass and rolled on the ground. The contents of their packs were progressively growing wetter and there was little hope of getting the ponies very clean before they were saddled again. ‘Little rascals,’ said Samwel, though not unkindly. Presently the party went on again. Still the rain fell.

By mid-afternoon, the road had become slippery with mud. Their descent grew steeper and sometimes a pony’s hooves would make long precarious marks as he went sliding and tried to keep his balance. Even Verry’s spirits had apparently been dampened. ‘All bad things must come to an end,’ he said a little miserably to himself, to which Dale replied, ‘It is not much further now.’

When they guessed that the sun must be about three hours from setting, they stopped for a rest. The rain was almost gone. Only a light mist was falling now, though this of course did nothing to aid in drying the travellers or any of the baggage. The road had become narrower, or perhaps it was just more overgrown now. It was difficult to tell.

‘I wish that bird would stop staring,’ said Verry suddenly. ‘Uncanny fellow…’ He had paused in his eating and reached down to take a stone in his hand.

‘Don’t!’ said Dale hastily. ‘It is another owl. I think he is a daytime fellow, not a creature of the night. He means us no harm, I am sure. But he knows something, I think. Be careful how you speak. He may be of that race that will still understand our words.’

‘Another?’ said Samwel.

‘Yes, I saw… that is, I thought I saw… I mean, I think there was another watching us last night as we slept…’ Then he was silent, trying to remember. But the creature soon spread its wings and flapped away quietly through the woods.

Presently they began to leave the forest behind them. The trees were thinning, rapidly giving way to open grasslands. Still they rode downwards. Lethshire lay ahead and beyond that, the sea.

‘To drink and bread and bath and bed!’ Verry sang merrily. The clouds had begun to thin and the sun was casting a surreal golden glow about the sky.

‘And place to lay my weary head,’ Beren quoted as they rode towards the light.

‘Sweet Marigold,’ said Samwel quietly to himself. ‘I wonder whether she is waiting for me still.’ Then he was silent.

‘The fields and trees,’ said Dale. ‘Are the same as ever they were. Our journey’s end and home…

Oh Lethshire!

Greater than dragon adventure and sweeter than musical lyre!

At evening with twinkling lights and golden hearth fire,

Nobler than mighty bridge and king’s castle spire! Lethshire!’

But they were not to know. And so they continued down through the hills, their ponies stepping wearily but willingly and in their hearts a warm anticipation.

Then they came around the final bend in the road and stopped short. The whole valley was a scene unfamiliar to them, and it seized their hearts in a cold grip of horror and disbelief. Before them lay ash and ruin. Where they had expected to see houses with windows glinting in the dusk, they saw only destruction and desolation. Where they had remembered flowered laneways and fences and painted barns, there was now emptiness. The fields, where they had once romped in the warm grass in summer with the butterflies and the sun, was now scarred with ugly slashes and holes, trampled by many hooves and boots, trodden down, striven upon and then withdrawn from in haste and disorder.

The travellers stood for a long while, held by some evil spell of dread. It was not until the sun was sinking low in the sky and glinting sharply in their eyes that they finally broke the silence.

‘What evil is this?’ Samwel whispered, white with horror. ‘And what has become of everyone?’ He could speak only simply.

Verry and Beren were strangely calm. They had an uncomfortable feeling that they ought to be a great deal more sobered and pained than they were at that moment, as is usually the way with those so young.

Somehow, they passed the night. And then the morning dawned bright and sunny and with an even sharper feeling of misery that struck at them cruelly and made their hearts go cold and their minds numb and black. They could not eat, but one by one without a word began wandering about the village, or at least where they imagined it had once lain. Samwel returned after an hour with something small and bright in his hand. ‘Marigold,’ he said with a choke in his voice, and then fell into grief too great for further words.

Dale left him and went down in the direction of the old main road. At some point he found several bottles of wine and a few smaller ones of stronger liquor amongst other rubble. Some were still full. Others had broken and their dark sweetness long since sunk into the earth. He had a brief glimpse of a memory. There had been, or at least he thought there must have been once, a time of song and laughter, balmy evenings and lively dancing, cheerful fiddle and jovial celebration. Then he sank to the ground and put his head in his hands. The day passed.

When dusk was drawing near, Dale still had not moved. Then suddenly, above the whisper of the grass there came a quick rustle of wings and a voice spoke to him, old and stately. Dale lifted his head and before him stood the owl that had watched them in the wood, or perhaps another of the same kind.

‘Dale of Lethshire,’ it said, for not only was it indeed of that ancient race that can still understand and speak the common tongue, but Grennald was his name and it was he who had dwelt a great many years by Lethshire and knew all its people by name, though none of them knew his. ‘My cousin followed your party a little while in the wood. You must have come from far indeed to have missed all the evil that has fallen upon your lands these past months. Is this so?’

‘I.. I don’t know,’ Dale said. His throat was croaking and he realised he had not uttered a word all that day. He did not stop to wonder why, of the four, it should be him with whom the owl should wish to speak. ‘I and my cousins have indeed been away almost a year, but when we left this place, it was… well… it was. And now… it is not. What evil is this!’

‘It is true,’ said the owl, for he had observed their departure many months before, though he knew little of the adventures that had befallen them since. ‘But there are a great many evils in this world, and it would take all this night and all the next day to tell of all things in their entirety that have in some way led to the destruction of your Lethshire. However, they do not, I think, matter greatly for the present. I can tell you, in short, that many troubles fell upon the shire. Some came directly by the hand of foreigners from the southern lands, though why they came is unknown to me. The quarrels of men are unceasing and strange to us, though you need not think we feel no sympathy; it is only that they are usually very different from our own.

‘Other evils (and these I think of as the worst kind) came by the hand of some of your own people, their hearts or minds having been turned and twisted somehow to the ways of your enemies. Still others played a part less wittingly. There was one, your cousin perhaps, who fled north several weeks ago, and after that a great army came. There was a terrible battle. But I need not say much more.’

‘Then were all lost!’ cried Dale.

‘No, not at all! The kingdom of the north had the victory and your people have been saved, on the whole I think. Though Lethshire as it was is now lost, of course. They have returned to the north whence they came many a long year ago, which might perhaps be for the best (for other reasons which you may hear about later).’

‘Then Lethshire is no more… Would you advise me to go north then? To Kingsshore? To the White City?’

‘Advice is a weighty thing, and not even the wisest always know when or how to give it,’ the owl said a little distantly. ‘I will go now and let you make your own way, which I think you will now be able to do. The birds of the air still talk, despite what the race of men believe, and word has reached us of all your doings. There is much I cannot see of the way ahead, but I think I can at least tell you to hope. All is far from lost! Farewell, Dale of Lethshire. You will find home yet.’

With that he spread his wings and left, for night was coming on and he was a creature only of the day, though he was always remembered among the descendants of Dale as the owl of the night of Lethshire, because it was he alone who had watched over the final days of that land before it sank into darkness.