Sleeping GreenJ.A. Prentice
5000 words The hole in the Hedge was barely big enough for her to crawl through, and the branches scratched at Emerith’s back as she went, the mud slick beneath her. There was a moment where she thought she would be stuck, earth and branches holding her vice-tight, but she squeezed through, weaseling up and out into the cold clear of the night, beneath the shining stars. The vastness of the towering Hedge blocked Sleeping Green from view. Good riddance, Emerith thought, making a valiant but futile effort to remove the mud from her coat and winter trousers. She had no desire to lay eyes upon the village again, not until she had her story. It was a story she was seeking, here in the wildness of the hedgelands, where Things Happened, as they had not happened in the dullness of Sleeping Green for many a year. Sleeping Green lay at map’s edge, linked to the rest of the world by a wisp-thin road winding amongst the slumping hills. Wattle-and-daub houses puffed smoke from their hearth fires, encircled by quiet gardens. In their midst was the great rock, a towering of stone, capped in moss and grass and thin, broken-necked trees thrown back and forth by the roaring wind. It was the rock that had made her who she was, the sight of it at sunset, the strange shadow-shape. She had needed to find the words for it, to define it, to express it and not reduce it. Emerith was filled with the love of words, the shape of them on her tongue, the feel of them in her heart, the sound of them in the air. Sometimes they came to her, a butterfly alighting on an outstretched hand, and other times she had to fight for them, scratching at the hard nothing until at last a word came breaking through. A word was a story in itself, she thought sometimes, with meanings buried deep and layered. Yet her audience, such as it was, did not agree with her. They were reluctant to accept her at all, a pig-farmer’s daughter still with the smell of troughs and mud about her. Such a person, the locals held, should have no truck with storytelling. Storytelling was for the wandering folk who came to the village, folk of air and water. Here they were earth, solid-rooted, and should hold respectable, useful professions. It was well enough for an entertainer to tell a story in the inn as they passed through—not that much story could be heard over laughter and cider spilling—but you could not eat words. But she was a storyteller. She felt the itch of it always, even when she could not scratch it. Three nights ago, with a tankard of courage burning in her, she had shared her work. Her great story, that had ached in her so long. “In far-off lands,” she had begun, “they whisper still of the deeds of the great sorcerer and his love...” “What do you know of far-off lands?” Noll had called out. Noll, whose eyes jeered even when his lips were still, who looked always like a bull pawing at the earth. “You who was born right here and has never so much as walked a league outside it?” “The great sorcerer and his love,” she had continued, but she knew even before the next word that she had lost them, that she could not get them back. She told her story, stumbling through it, through islands and magic and curses, and all the while hearing each cough, each swig of ale, each chair scooting across the floor. She finished in an awkward mumbling of happy-ever-afters, aware of all the eyes upon her, the sweet wine of poetry turning to the morning’s regretful achings. “You call that a story?” Noll demanded. “A story has a meaning, or at least a jest. All you said were words.” Are words not enough? Emerith had wanted to yell, but she knew already his answer. “No poet has ever come from Sleeping Green,” Old Dem had said, drinking by the bar. How like a tomcat his little sips as he nursed his cider, drinking it slow. His words also were slow sips. He spoke with a quiet everyone could hear. “There are no stories here. It’s easy, up in the cities or out in the wilds. The stories seep into you, I reckon. Here, there’s nothing to seep.” “Then I’ll go,” Emerith had said, trying not to flush with anger, with tears. “I’ll go and find a story.” 
When Emerith had been small, she’d found the hole in the Hedge. She had tried to peer through the hole, to catch a glimpse of death, of fear, as children always did. Yet she had been too full of mother’s warnings to take the step. The Hedge was the edge of the world, beyond it only wildness and terror. Beyond was winter, and teeth, and claws. Beyond was death, certain as tomorrow. But neither had she told anyone of the gap. If she had, it would have been filled in at once, and all the danger sealed away. So it had stayed, year upon year, as she had grown older. The smallest of gaps, the smallest of promises, but it held her in its spell. 
She had lain abed after the night in the inn, watching dying smoke drift through the thatching, with the words echoing in her head. It was Dem’s words that pricked hardest, though they had been meant kinder than Noll’s. Noll’s jeering she could take, but Dem’s slow pity was agony past enduring. When she dreamed that night, she dreamed of the hole in the Hedge yawning like a great mouth and her sliding, sliding, sliding down and out, out into a world of stars and rivers and thorns. When she woke, she had known what she must do. 
So here she was, beyond the Hedge, picking herself up in the wild past the borders of her world. Here she’d find her story, or die in searching. She looked about for a trail amongst the tangle of the Hedgelands. Far as she could see were trees, black and leafless, and thorns and vines woven tight. Strange mosses crept over strange stones, and lichens swallowed leafless trees whole. Emerith brushed off lingering thorns and fallen leaves and set out, north and straight, beneath rows of high trees. Ahead, the forest grew thicker, branches grasping tighter together. There she would find the story, she knew. Where the woods were deepest, and the shadows darkest, and the eyes brightest. 
How long she walked she did not know, but the stars overhead remained constant, a twinkling in moonless, cloudless black, even as the branches laced tighter and tighter to block them from sight. Even leafless, they made a many-halled cathedral, passageway upon passageway, lined with tapestries of crawling lichens, yellow-gold and purple pale and rust-red. Among the branches, birds roosted, and watched with bright eyes, but made no songs, no chitterings or chirpings. This was a silent place, broken only by her own feet’s treading. At last, when she reached a clearing between the branches, a place where starlight fell pure and unshadowed, she could walk no longer. She lay down, with her head upon a hollowed log, and let sleep take her. Sunlight would guide her better than starlight when she awoke. In her dream, Emerith sat upon the summit of the great rock at the heart of Sleeping Green, and felt it breathe beneath her, a gentle rising and a falling. She looked down upon the village and the vastness of the Hedge stretching east to west. Beyond it, where her sleeping body lay now, was only a shadow, deep beyond all scrying. And in the shadow, she felt the pricking of two burning eyes, black as the night about them, and a wind, like a terrible warm breath upon the back of her neck… She woke with a start. There was a fox looking down at her, its nose almost touching hers. Behind it, the sky was still dark, still full of stars. Had her sleep been so brief? Or had she slept away the whole day, lying here in this clearing? Or was there no day here in the endless wild? The fox jumped back as she rose, dark eyes glinting. It made a soft sound, almost thoughtful, and Emerith laughed. “I have some food,” she said, “if you like it.” She reached into her pocket and produced an apple. She took a bite, then threw the rest to the fox. It sniffed, then devoured it, snout smeared in apple-juice. Emerith sighed. “I don’t suppose you know any stories, do you?” “A hundred and one, fellow traveler,” said the fox. “And some handful even true.” Emerith stared and wondered if dreaming still clung to her. But no, a pinch of her skin hurt, and the cold still bit. No dream this, but waking, unless the two were the same in this place. “You talk!” she said, which was a foolish thing to say—what a useless poet, she chided herself, to have no better words. “As do you. I do not remark on it.” “But you’re a fox. I’ve never heard a fox talk before.” “Perhaps one never had anything worth saying to you.” That did not seem right, but it seemed as much an answer as she would receive. Above, the stars wavered. A chill passed over her, though there was no wind. The fox twitched its nose, and sniffed at the air. “It is abroad tonight.” “What is?” “The hound.” Emerith remembered her dream, dark beyond dark, two eyes piercing. Perhaps she was still dreaming after all despite pinch and cold. Perhaps that was how this fox spoke, as no fox ever had before. The fox regarded her, as though weighing her. Then it bowed its head. “You fed me, word-weaver. That is a sacred bond, amongst travelers. Walk with me. I shall show you our place.” Into brambled dark the fox sped, weaving orange beneath moonless stars. Emerith chased after, stumbling between the trees, their branch-fingers cold and scratching. Beside a tree stump the fox stopped. There beneath was a yawn of earth, and dark below. “Here it is,” the fox said, “which few outsiders have seen. The palace of foxes.” “Will I fit?” Emerith asked. “Only one way to know,” the fox answered, and darted down the hole. Emerith took a breath, tasting the strange air of the hedgelands, cold and dry, then climbed down after the fox. The tunnel was tight, squeezing upon her, roots brushing against her hair, her cheek, and yet she crawled on without stopping. The pressing dark extinguished the starlight above—but though it was darker than the surface, the new dark was more comfortable, not desolate as the hedgelands above. A gentle darkness. The tunnel opened out and Emerith stepped out into the palace of the foxes. Down in the earth it was, not deep-delved, but amongst the grasping roots, a warm den lit only by the eyes of the many foxes watching. The Prince of Foxes walked at their heart, larger than they and older. It was not by his fur that the age could be seen, for he was orange as a year-old kit, but by his eyes—eyes which had seen stars long dead. He came to his throne, which was carved from the wood of a living root, and stood upon it, looking straight at Emerith with those eyes so burning. “It has been many years since a walker has come among us,” he said, in a voice made for firelight and storytelling. “Welcome, traveler. Sit, and be welcome in our court.” Emerith sat, and about her the kits began to nuzzle and toy, pulling at the edges of the coat, pawing her trousers. The Prince of Foxes watched them with a grandfather’s delight. “My mother told me stories of you,” Emerith said. “The Prince of Foxes, who was cleverer than any hunter, who stole the crown of the Man in the Moon and tricked the Merciless Knight into fighting his own shadow.” The Prince laughed. “Aye, and many other stories also. Some true and some false, though I will not say which ones.” “The hole beneath the Hedge is yours,” Emerith realized. The Prince nodded. “Yes. Though none but I and my kin have used it till this night. Now we shall have to block it up again.” “Why?” Emerith asked. “Because your Hedge does not exist without purpose. It is a border between realms. And there are things that should not cross over.” “Like the hound,” Emerith said. All the foxes hissed, the kits scurrying away from her. The Prince fixed her with those burning eyes and Emerith flushed with shame, though she did not know why. “Of these lands’ great dangers,” the Prince said, “he is nearest. From the moment you crossed into this realm, you have walked in his shadow. He walks in dog’s shape, a great black dog with eyes blacker still. He was someone’s creature once. There was a hunt—a Great Hunt, such as there will never be again—and he was the pride of it, with keen nose and biting jaw. But long ago the hunt ended, and his masters went away, and all his chains were broken. Now he hunts still, but his own private hunt. He is a devourer, with hunger never sated.” Emerith felt the chill in his words, as the warmth drained from the foxhole palace. “Then why open the way? Why give him the chance?” “Why did you come here?” “For a story,” Emerith said. The Prince smiled a fox’s smile, all cunning. “Then our reasons were the same. But we have both been greedy. If you have found the crossing, then he may follow. Let this be story enough. Tomorrow, I will block the gap.” “Yes,” Emerith said. “Of course.” One of the Prince’s servants led her up and out, back into the deep woods, back to leafless trees beneath moonless skies. “You know the way?” the fox asked her, nodding to the south. “I do,” Emerith answered. Satisfied, the fox scurried back down, back into the palace among the roots, amongst their kin. Emerith looked at the southwards path, towards the solidness of the hedge, and Sleeping Green still dreaming beneath the great stone. And she walked north. 
Trees dropped away like a lurch in her gut, a geography so brutal she felt it. The edge was a jagged tear, below it all a tumble, a fall held in suspension. Roots sticking into the air, boulders stabbing up, trunks at right angles. Over it all hung the shadow, seeping like water through an ill-made roof, a worming dark. At the bottom of the drop was a hole. Not small, as the gap under the hedge had been, but a vast well, circled by broken stones. Within, darkness waited, hungry. Emerith descended the slope carefully from rock to rock, stump to stump. At last she alighted on the earth, bare and grassless in all directions, desolate. She walked carefully towards the well, the lair. There would be a story. To have set foot in the lair of the Hound and lived to tell the tale. She would have to steal something, of course, for all great stories had some theft at the heart of them. Perhaps there would be some treasure—gold or silver in earth and darkness tarnishing, a great white jewel, a fallen star plucked from heaven long ago. Let them mock her then. Emerith the Poet-Thief. Emerith Fox-friend. Emerith-- “Emerith,” said the shadow. And Emerith felt the breath upon her neck. Not warm, as breath often was. A cold breath, like the first whisper of a winter storm. A promise of blight, and hard earth, and empty bellies. “Little tale-spinner,” the shadow said. “You are my creature now.” And though she did not want to, Emerith turned. The hound was not black. That was just what the foxes called it, for there were no words for the colour of the hound’s fur—if fur it could be called. It was the colour of alone, the colour of despair, the colour of the nothing at the very end. It was absence, and sorrow. “You smell of fox,” the hound said. “And failure. A child’s self-importance, a child’s greed, a child’s pride.” The hound’s voice was quiet, yet it drowned out all other noise. It was calm and measured, yet it quivered with rage. Emerith wanted to say something clever, something important, something that might stop the hound in its tracks. But she could think of nothing but her own fear, so great it shook her in a trembling fist. “You came from beyond,” the hound said. “From the world of sun and waking. If you are here, then there is a way. A door.” “No door,” Emerith said. “There’s no door.” “You lie.” The words bent her, broke her, shoved her face into the dirt and held her down. “The Hedge cannot be climbed. It cannot be walked around. You are here, so there must be a gap.” “It’s small,” Emerith said. “So small. You wouldn’t fit.” “I can fit through the smallest keyhole,” the hound said. How his eyes burned. Darker even than his fur, darker than night, darker than darkest dreaming. “I can make of my howl a whisper and of my body a wisp. Tell me the way, and I shall walk through it.” “I can’t.” Emerith trembled. “I can’t.” “You will tell me.” It was not a threat. Not a request. It was a Truth, and Emerith knew it soon as she heard it. She could never hold out—never. She was too weak, and he too strong. “A hole,” she said. “There’s a hole beneath the Hedge. Burrowed there, in the mud.” The hound’s teeth flashed, all knives and stabbing light. Emerith screamed, though they never touched her. “Your village is near,” the hound said. “For me, it is little more than a stride away. I will visit it. I will devour it, all of it. And you, I will keep here. To know what you have done, and how many will suffer in your name.” Emerith wept as chains bound her, chains dark as the hound itself, binding so tight she thought they’d crack her bones. They were cold, so utterly cold that she felt nothing else. She lay there, chained and broken at the mouth of the well, as the hound strode into the night, south towards the hedge, towards Sleeping Green. 
She lay there, cold and weeping, for centuries. All around the blackness pressed, and the chains squeezed tighter, whispering to her all her sins. By now her father and mother, her little sisters and her little brother, Noll and Old Dem, the pigs in the sty, the sheep in the fields—all would have been devoured. All would be gone. All the world gone, except for her. Only her, alone in the dark. By the time she heard the scampering feet, she could see nothing but shadow, feel nothing but cold. At first she thought them a dream, for there were no more feet, no more sounds, no more anything. Only her, and the hound, and the nothing. Then a tongue licked at her face, and warm fur brushed her cheek, and a voice made for firelight whispered in her ear, “Courage, walker. Courage.” “There’s nothing,” Emerith gasped, as though through deep water. “Nothing left. It’s been years.” “No,” the Prince said. “Only moments. He has just left.” “That’s not—” “Everything seems longer in the dark,” the Prince said. “But he has just left. He has not yet crossed the woods, let alone the Hedge. I am beside you, and there is still hope.” Emerith opened her eyes, and breathed in deep, breathed of the night and the smell of fox-fur and earth. Above, the stars were still shining. “I told him,” Emerith said, “I told him where the gap was.” “I know,” said the Prince. “And now you must set it right.” “How?” Emerith asked, through her tears. “How can something like that be set right?” Through the dark, the hound’s bark echoed, like a distant church bell ringing. “No blade will pierce his hide,” said the Prince, “and no chain will hold him. But one way still remains. Do you understand?” Emerith hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. I think I do. But I don’t—I can’t—” She hung her head. “I’m not good enough. Not clever enough.” The Prince touched his nose to her brow. “Those are his words. His weapons. Do not give them power.” “I’m not enough,” Emerith repeated. “You’ll have to do it. I can’t—” The Prince drew something from his fur, proffering it to her between the sharp of his teeth. A small leather bag, drawn tight with string. “Take this,” he said, words cottoned by leather. Emerith hesitated. “What is it?” “Take,” the Prince lisped, “and I will tell.” She took it. The weight in her palm was as nothing at all. She reached for the string. “No. Do not open it. Open it and the magic is lost.” “What is it?” she asked. “In this I caught the tongue of the greatest of dwarf skalds, bit clean from his mouth, and all his poet-magic with it. And the spell of the tongue is this: that the holder may make the listener believe anything the holder says, so long as they believe it true themselves.” “What good is that?” Emerith asked. “Convince yourself of the truth of what you say, however foolish, however mad,” the Prince said. “Speak it with sincerity, with genuine belief, and the hound will believe you.” With sincerity, with genuine belief. As though it were that simple. And yet—it was her only chance. Emerith took a deep breath and rose. “How far ahead is he?” “You will reach him before he reaches the village,” the Prince said, “but after he has crossed the Hedge.” Emerith nodded. “Then I’d best start running.” 
For the second time, she crawled beneath the Hedge, through the burrowed hole. It was just as it had been before. Had it not been for the pawprint set into the mud, she would not have known he’d come this way at all. She pulled herself free, breathing once again the night air of her world. All the stars were shining above, bright as diamonds, and the night was as black silk draped. Against it, the Hound towered, standing upon the village’s edge, a shadow vast and terrible. Emerith quivered, falling to her knees at the sight of him, at the feel of him. What was she, before him? A village babbler, foolhardy and talentless? She felt the bag in her hand, that little bag, its small magic, weighing as nothing. Nothing was what it would amount to against the Hound, his immensity. And then she saw the great stone, at the heart of her village, the heart of her home. And she remembered who she was, and why she had wanted to be who she was. She was a storyteller. “Hound!” Emerith gripped the bag tight and strode towards him, begging her knees to stop knocking, her heart to stop thudding. “Hound! You’re fool indeed to come here!” He turned his great head to fix her with those piercing eyes, and spoke in his loud whisper. “Little tale-spinner. I left you bound and broken. Are you so desperate for pain that you would seek me again? Did you wish to watch as I devoured your kin?” “I wished to watch as you were slain,” Emerith answered, fighting the part of her that wanted to sink to her knees and beg forgiveness, beg mercy, beg a quick death. Believe it, she told herself. Believe it utterly true. The hound laughed. “I? I who hunted ere the rising of the sun? I who made gods tremble at my cry?” He howled, and it was thunder. The skies shook. “What have I to fear here, in this little village?” “Did I not tell you its name?” Emerith asked. “What matters that?” “A name is everything,” Emerith said. “A layering of sound, of meaning, of beauty. A name holds ourself within it. The name of a thing is its soul. And the name of this place is Sleeping Green.” The Hound looked at her, then back at the village. “And why should that concern me?” “Sleeping Green,” Emerith said. “Ask yourself what sleeps, here at the heart of this place? Why, have you never heard the old fable?” The hound snarled. “I have no time for fables.” “Ah, but in fables are truths buried.” Emerith stood herself proud and tall, forced a smile upon her lips, let herself lie so well she believed it. “This is the tale they tell in the fields, the story they whisper in the dark, so old none remember its author.” She gathered up all her breath, all her courage, and spoke, as she had spoken to Nell and Old Dem, to her audience of an all-devouring hound. “They say,” she said, the Prince’s gift clasped tightly in her palm, “that there’s something asleep beneath the village. A giant, the children will say, and swear they heard him breathing when their ears were pressed to the ground.” The hound laughed again, a laugh like the jeering of Nell, a laugh that chipped at her. Yet she did not flinch, did not back down, did not bow her head. Oh, how her stomach lurched, how her heart beat, all those old clichés made truth, but she crested above them and stood firm. For now in that jeering she heard the brittleness, the weakness, the false front. Falseness against falseness. That she could play. That she could win, for to make of falseness truth was storyteller’s work and she was a storyteller, yes, she was a poet, no matter what Nell or Old Dem or some black dog thought. “Others say he’s a god,” Emerith continued. “Child of those elder gods of Fire and Ice, who in their raging wars raised up mountains and drowned seas. They say he settled down here to sleep, and over himself pulled a blanket of earth and stone, and let grass and wild moss gather as he rested. They say sometimes he stirs and when he stirs, all the land shakes. I’ve felt it myself, some nights. The whole land shaking under our beds. And when it does, we say ‘The Sleeper is restless tonight,’ and laugh, but beneath our laughing, we know—" “Old words,” the hound snarled. “Old stories. The gossiping of farmhands and butchers. What do they matter to me?” “Do you not hear the truth of them? The village folk do not know what it means, of course,” she said, “but I have a storyteller’s knowing.” “You, a storyteller?” The hound’s voice snapped at her, tugged at her, but this time she would not let it tear her down. “Aye, a storyteller!” Emerith said, striding forward, fighting her fear for each step. “You believe yourself so mighty, for you were so long a king in your realm of shadows and starlight, and you could imagine no power to match you here. But there is power here, in Sleeping Green, power in earth and sun to match any shadows. Do you think they’d truly set no guardian to watch the way?” “You lie,” the hound said. “You are a storyteller. Storytellers are all lies.” “And all truth,” Emerith said, holding the leather bag so tight she thought it might turn to dust. She shrugged, stepped aside. “But you need not take my word for it. You’ll know it soon enough.” She pointed to the great stone, to its grassy flanks, to the head nestled beneath the grass. “There he lies, Hound! The keeper of the Hedge, the watcher at its gate! A thousand years and more he’s slept, but now he’s waking! You can see it, can’t you? The grass rippling, as his breathing quickens. The earth trembling, as he starts to stir.” The Hound watched as the stone began to stir, and for the first time, Emerith saw the fear at the heart of it. It was a creature of despair, of shadows, of gnawing doubt. And now it fed upon itself, shrinking and slinking. “He’s coming,” Emerith shouted. “Hear now his heralds! Hear now his horns!” And as one, the roosters of the village began to crow, their voices joining as one. The Hound, the great and terrible shadow of despair, turned tail and ran. Emerith laughed as he vanished, a single darting ink-smear of sorrow, slithering snake-like beneath the Hedge, back out into his wild and desolate land. Through the gap, she saw bright eyes watching, for a moment. Then they too were gone, and she was alone on the edge of the village. She looked down at the bag, the Prince’s great gift. The greatest gift any storyteller could ask for, for any story to be utterly believed… Storytellers are all lies, the hound had said. Emerith lifted the bag again, felt the weight of it. A tongue surely should have been heavier… For a moment, her fingers brushed the strings. For a moment, she wondered. But it did not matter. Tongue or leaf or empty bag, it made no difference. The story rang of truth, and so it had power. Daylight rose slow over the great stone, red fingers grasping, and the stars fled the purpling sky. Beneath the new sun, Emerith walked home with the bag tucked into her pocket, whispering to herself scraps of new verse, delighting in the echo of words without meaning. |
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J.A. Prentice
J.A. Prentice was born in the United Kingdom, grew up in the California Bay Area, and currently lives in the Pacific Northwest. His short fiction has also been published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and This World Belongs to Us, amongst others, and he wrote the audio drama episode "The Undying Truth" for Big Finish Productions. He is active on BlueSky as @japrenticewrites.bsky.social.
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