The Unfinished Land

The Ravine

WIDSITH AND REYNARD stood on the porch while the trees rustled and leaves and sticks rolled and skittered by. The old woman, to Reynard, still seemed to be speaking—but the voice was not hers. It belonged to the wind in the forest.

“Let us take two horses from the stable,” Widsith said. “We must be swift.”

The time it took to walk to the stable was short, but the twilight was already dense. Reynard looked upon the place where he had seen the childers, but they were not present, nor was the keeper.

As they led two horses from their stalls, Reynard asked, “Is Guldreth an Eater?”

“She hath not their habits. But she is almost as old as Queen Hel, if Hel were still alive.”

“And we are just above the mud?”

“We are.”

“And you loved her? How is that done?”

Widsith crossed himself just like a Spaniard, then excused the gesture with a swift pass of one flattened hand. “Mount,” he said. The horses received them with flicks of their withers, and they nudged them into a run. They were going to the beach where the blunters stored their boat, Reynard thought, but Widsith took a turn in the deep and twisted woods, and instead they pushed along a well-traveled trail for a couple of hours in darkness and dappled moonlight, the horses seeming to magically feel their way to where Reynard smelled ice… a strange, sour kind of ice.

And then they came upon the southern end of a great cleft cut or split in the land, sunk by several dozen yards below the trees and the broken tops of stone walls. Chill air poured from the cleft, air that seemed to nip and tug at Reynard’s hair and skin. He felt something strange and dangerous in the cold that lapped and surged before them.

“This is the Ravine,” Widsith said. “Pacted Eaters dwell here much of their time, near enough to partake of Zodiako and the surrounding towns and farms. It is their due.”

Reynard stared into the Ravine, his face crooked by a curious sensation—that he knew this place, that he had been here before. The Ravine curled like a serpent between two crenellated ridges, once carved by an old river and now edged by clumps and ribbons of forest and filled with a long, strange, broken glacier. “Are you here to beseech Eaters, to demand that they save your wife?” he asked.

Widsith shook his head sadly. “After what she hath asked of Valdis, the sealing of all her years, such a request is bootless. They have not the power now.”

“But the Eaters have been tasked to serve us, if what you say be true. How can she seal herself from them?”

“That, too, is part of the pact. None can force beyond a point the will of a woman, or any human.”

“I thought Eaters were all-powerful!”

“Powerful, but they serve. They did not make the pact. ’Twas made for them.”

“By the Queen of Hell?”

Widsith grinned sadly at him. “I think thou hast not yet got the right of that.”

The horses did not like the air from the Ravine any more than Reynard did. Widsith did not urge them on. “We await here,” he said. “Our appointments arrive on no human schedule.”

Reynard peered into the shadows. “I see nobody.”

“Nobody is here, at the moment. What is it that thou dost see?”

They dismounted. “A scarp covered with sharp stones.”

“Aye, and what else?”

The horses anticipated no profit in chewing the rank grass and bushes that grew around the Ravine, so they scuffed their hooves and hung their heads.

“Ice in strange forms,” Reynard said. “Perhaps last year’s snows.”

“This ice cometh not from snow. It is shaped by the peculiar talents of the Eaters within. What else?”

Reynard suddenly clutched his chest, as if his heart pained him. “I know the ice cometh not from snow. I know about the talents of Eaters. I do know this place!” His tongue numbed with the stupid audacity he felt. “How is that possible?”

“Thou’rt sharing something, methinks.” Widsith said. “Likely thy muse hath supplied thee with impressions—a thing many of us have felt at times, if it suits the Eaters.” His own face took on a crooked look. “Canst thou journey through the memories?”

Reynard closed his eyes and stretched out his arms, as if to avoid bumping into obstacles. “I see it deep,” he said.

“Tell me what thou seest.”

Reynard tried to explain, but his words tripped him up.

“Just remember,” Widsith said. “Words will arrive.”

“I am walking, but not walking.”

“Of course. Thy mind moveth, not thy body.”

Reynard kept swinging his arms like a loose-limbed puppet, but did not move his feet. Sights and narratives arrived in broken continuity, but assembled and formed histories, rides, walks, whose details were more than elusive. Not finding the right words, he seemed to stumble onto other words—Nordic-sounding words. “Is this from the girl, the young Eater?” he asked. “From Valdis?”

“Likely,” Widsith said. “Though neither young nor much like a girl anymore. Hath she taken a fancy to thee, young fisherboy?” He smirked like the old sailor he had just been.

“I do see it…”

His mind journeyed deeper into the Ravine.

“There is much at the northern end,” he added. “Have you been there?”

“I have, but not directly, and not on a horse,” Widsith said.

Reynard closed his eyes tight to see the high cliffs, and between them, heaves of pale, broken ice surrounding a winding path, connected by great arches draped with icicles the size of trees, in some places holding up scaly roofs. At least seven ancient castles clustered at the northern end, all in serious disrepair, remnants of past wars between opponents he could neither see, remember, nor understand. Most of those castles had been empty for a very long time—perhaps a thousand years, if that meant anything here. No Eater seemed compelled to do the work necessary to restore or repair them—since none wished to live there.

And none of their original inhabitants were still alive.

Along the entire Ravine stretched many arches, bridges to nowhere, carrying no traffic but hiding, under their parapets, little cubbies, small caves, compartments and apartments—some still filled, others having stood empty for long centuries. And some holes were filled by things neither living nor properly dead!

“The monsters Maeve talked about,” he said. “Have they come here?”

“Likely,” Widsith said.

“Many?”

The Pilgrim shrugged.

“This is an awful place,” Reynard said, eyes tight shut.

“Continue,” Widsith urged.

“I sleep! I dream!”

“But thou wilt go on.”

Valdis, young by the standards of other Eaters, had watched this place for centuries, but many mysteries remained. Some things had never been clearly explained to her.

“Eaters share!” Reynard said, dismayed. “They convene and spread their own lives!”

“Ofttimes Guldreth hath hinted at such, but seldom let me see. Thou art truly favored!”

“I see not how this be favor. How can such a being favor a mortal?” Reynard shook his head and stopped speaking. The pictures and stories came too fast. He squatted before the Pilgrim like a lost child, tears streaming down his cheeks.

The horses watched both with glazed eyes, as if about to fall asleep.

“That is a mystery I have no answer to,” Widsith said.

“You should not have brought me here!” Reynard moaned. “My soul is fretted! I have no protection, no purpose!”

Widsith sat beside him with a sigh of both impatience and sympathy. “I have faith thy thoughts and worries shall resolve.”

Reynard looked left, eyes still closed, and saw a corridor of memories, all dark, as if shrouded in night and despair. There was a permeating sense of loss all around the Ravine. So many still figures here and there, covered in ice or leaves, hiding in cubbies, frozen in sadness! They frightened him. Eaters, though in a way immortal, could sometimes simply lose interest in their necessary routines. And if they did that, within a few months or years, their sea-foam bodies, called by some meerschaum, along with their glassy skins, crumpled and fell in like old mummies. For an Eater, this was only a partial sort of death. A disembodied wisp remained for another few years and, sometimes, would pause people on the island’s roads and ask difficult, puzzling questions, frightening without means or intent—for such wisps were no threat, and in time, paradoxes and puzzles unsolved, themselves faded to night air and moonlight.

He shivered at the thought of meeting such a wisp. Widsith gripped his shoulder to stop the shivers from becoming convulsions.

In a way less marvelous than their lives and purpose, though no less explicable, Eaters did with water what insects do with silk. Over thousands of years, they had filled the Ravine with their homes, like sculptures in an age of ice, showing sometimes creativity, sometimes necessity, depending on their origins and natures.

“Are we invited in?” Widsith asked, caution foremost. “ ’Twould not do to trespass.”

Reynard opened his eyes. “I do not know,” he said. “But I feel her presence.”

Widsith patted Reynard’s shoulder. “This is but a small part of thy purpose. Lead on,” the Pilgrim said.

“I am here—and I am there!” Reynard whispered. He paid no attention to noises behind them. Widsith looked away from the Ravine, into the rocks and woods, away from the ice and cold, and saw men and women of their own kind gathering. Many had come from Zodiako, some wounded and on crutches, and others had come from farms deeper in the forests and meadows, all part of the trade that allowed humans to survive on this coast—to survive and support the Eaters.

“Eaters must eat as well,” the Pilgrim said, then quietly explained to Reynard the process. Mortal farmers and hunters traditionally approached the Ravine, during daylight, once each month, moving silently to refill the troughs and heap plates with the sorts of foods Eaters could tolerate, even desire—organ meats, wild animals that ate nuts and grass, dense black breads, cow’s or woman’s milk mixed with deer’s or pig’s blood. And on occasion, human blood itself—drained from someone recently dead. There was none such on this occasion. Those who died of violence were abhorrent to Eaters.

Widsith nodded to an old farmer and a hunter, bow slung over his shoulder and arrows in his quiver. Reynard viewed with some intensity small mountain animals, marmots and squirrels and rabbits, carried on a sled. The villagers sang a somber prayer of summoning. The farmers and townsfolk barely glanced at them, so intent were they on laying out their offerings.

“So few, this time,” Widsith said.