THE DARKEST PLACE OF ALL

If a dying man is offered help he really ought to take it....

There are dark places in the human mind, and Sir Andrew Bonce was in one.

Only yesterday he'd fallen from his horse and banged his head on a tree root, and that had started it. Before the incident he'd been a warrior on his way to battle (the raison d'être of all men in his world), siding with King Alfred against the renegades from across the raging seas and their brutal ways. Then, mid-jump, his horse had died unexpectedly and he'd fallen and now he was in a dark place and, to his chagrin, he couldn't move.

The first thing he did, upon regaining his consciousness (essential for doing anything) was go in search of another horse. The trouble was, he had travelled far (which had possible caused his horse's exhausted demise) and hadn't any idea where the nearest farmstead might be.

There was still a great deal of virgin forest in those distant days, and he was in one. It stretched for miles, seemingly in every direction, and the only paths through it had been there for ages and led in predetermined directions as decided by this or that creature of the wild, but he wasn't sure which predetermined direction he'd been travelling before his horse had pegged it. It could have been this way or that, or even a third. They all looked the same and there was no clue on the hard mud as to where his stupid old nag had last placed its hoof before death had claimed it.

“I'm lost,” he sighed to himself, and allowed his head to ache as he settled down to take a swig of rancid water from his leather bottle.

“Can I help you, sir?” came a voice out of the verdant foliage all around him. It was a female voice, quite sweet, he thought, and possibly submissive. All females should be submissive: he knew that much, even though his head did hurt.

“I'm lost,” he repeated, and “in a dark place,” he added.

“You're in the Great Forest, and unless you know your way through it you will never see green fields or open settlements again,” the voice informed him, and its owner revealed herself.

It was a hag, that much was clear, and old and wizened creatures with breasts sagging remarkably low behind a sackcloth frock and eyes that could possibly ignite a fire at ten paces are, he knew, from Hell itself.

“Who are you?” he barked.

“I am the keeper of dark places,” she replied, and cackled. “I am she who may guide you, or who may not. It all depends on you. I am the spirit of all places in the forest, the keeper of all spells....”

“You are a witch!” he barked. “And witches should be cast into flames, for they are servants of the dark Lord, the Necromancer, and they never do man any service worthy of the name!”

“I am your only guide,” she whispered. “Take me or leave me. Burn me if you must. I would enjoy a good burning for 'tis something I have yet to experience … but do that and your only guide from this dark place will be lost to you, and you will wander for an age or more, and even die here, old yourself by then, and all wars will be over, all chances for glory in battle will be lost to you...”

“You foul creature, guide me then, and when I am safely delivered to a place of reckoning I will have your burned...” he grated.

“That might be more reasonable than it sounds,” she spat. “If I offer you salvation, would it not be reasonable to expect you to be at least civil?”

“I have never been civil to womankind, and least of all hag-kind!” he glowered. “I would eat a maiden for breakfast or a fishwife for tea! I would dine the day long on the bones of a tart be she dressed like a crab in sauces and herbs or be she plain!”

“But I am no tart...” she giggled, and when he looked at her again she had transformed, by some magic, he knew not what, from the hag in sackcloth to a sweet maiden in broderie and lace who looked more like a high class courtesan than anything else. And her hair wisped about her shoulders like gossamer threads caught by a golden beam of sunlight. All trace of the hag was gone, every wrinkle, every wart, every dribble.

“Who...” he asked, frightened.

“I am she you would burn,” replied the woman, smiling sweetly. “Now let me guide you. The forest is older than the hills around it, and without my aid you will surely grow old and die within its ancient boundaries.”

“Lead me, and then die yourself!” he barked.

“Are you ever grateful?” she asked, still smiling the sweetest of smiles, revealing teeth that were as perfect and white as teeth might ever be.

“A man needs not thank a woman!” he shouted, and winced because it set his head off, aching again. “Now guide me...”

“Never!” she cackled, and though he hadn't taken his eyes off her he saw that she had transformed once more, this time into a raven with beady eyes and a bright cruel beak.

“Now!” he commanded.

But the raven gazed at him with the superior look that some birds have, and flew into the sky, between the almost overlapping branches and beyond his sight.

And he was left to his own devices in his own dark place.

“Here mister, have a drink,” said a tiny voice.

He looked, and it was a child wrapped in swaddling bands and lying in a wicker cot. “I love you,” it added.

“You … love … me?” he stammered.

The child giggled. “Of course I do!” it laughed, “for can't you see who I am?”

Sir Andrew Bonce shook his head, and winced at the pain.

“Silly man!” scoffed the child, “silly, silly man! I could have saved you, could have helped you, but you rejected me!”

“I did?”

“Of course you did! I am life! I am the future! I am hope! I am victory! I am all those things, but you rejected me!”

“I did?”

“Of course you did! You rejected me in favour of death in this dark place!”

And with those words the child disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived, and Sir Andrew Bonce shook his head once more, and that silly old head fell off. Over the ensuing weeks and months the flesh vanished as this or that creature of the wild grew fat on it, until his skull, whitened and bleached, grinned at the forest like a mad thing.

Very much like it once had been.