Author's Note: The title of this chapter derives from a traditional song, The Unquiet Grave. I take the view that Ivy's 'colours' are partly derived from her last faint vestiges of sight, and largely from synaesthesia (An acquaintance of mine at university used to hear voices and sounds as colours. She wouldn't tell me what my colour was, though!)

3: In Greenwood He Lies Slain

It seemed to Ivy that all of Covington had turned out to welcome her home from her adventuring. Weary, muddied, bedraggled - yet elated - she made her way through the throng, bearing the precious medicines.

They jostled against her, asking question after question, so rapidly that she could scarce separate the speakers' colours from each other, and scarce had chance to answer.

- "How did you find your way through the woods?"

- "What are The Towns like?"

- "Did you find Those We Don't Speak Of?"

- "Did they try to harm you?"

"Yes, there was one," she said breathlessly. "It gave chase, but I outwitted it, and it fell into a pit!"

"You killed it?" asked a small boy, marvelling at her courage.

"I – I suppose I did..." She could not be certain: all she knew for sure was that it had fallen and had been unable to pursue her further. "But I must to the Widow Hunt's, with the medicines! Is Lucius ?"

"He lives yet!" said her older sister Kitty. "Father and some of the Elders are with him now."

The boy bounded ahead to tell them of her return and of her brave deeds. Kitty wept on her shoulder, relieved to have her home again. She had deliberately spoiled Christop's breakfast in revenge for his abandonment of Ivy – although she was glad enough at heart that he had returned unharmed.

But when Ivy reached Lucius's house, she sensed that something was amiss. Her father, and Alice Hunt, and Dr Crane (Kitty's father-in-law),greeted her warmly and praised her. And yet... a heavy fog was muting all their colours. Mr and Mrs Percy were there too (faint, faint - she could scarcely see the dim glow about them), but they spoke only a clipped, formal farewell before leaving to walk home in silence.

"I shall speak with you later, Robert!" said Father as they departed.

"Will they tell Noah that I am returned?" Ivy asked. "I know he has done wrong; I know he is in the Quiet Room, but... I should like him to hear of this."

"Yes," Father said quietly. "He will be told."

Dr Crane cleared his throat in apparent disapproval.

Of course, she thought: I should not speak of Noah in Mrs Hunt's presence. It is not seemly, given the grief that he has caused her.

"Now, Ivy, let us see these medicines..." The doctor took the package from her.

"The man I met in The Towns was very kind. His name is Kevin. He seemed to know what was needed at once. There was a strange noise when he went away, but he came back very quickly. I think he may have used some sort of railroad." Father had taught about the railroad in school. Being unable to see the pictures in the schoolbooks, she found it hard to understand how it worked, and since there was not one for miles around, she had paid little attention to the subject. She did remember, though, that steam locomotives ran faster than a horse, and were noisy and smelly.

There was a pause: she guessed that Dr Crane must be reading the labels on the bottles. "Good! Well done, girl! Well done indeed!"

"We should go home now," Father told her. "Victor has work to do."

"But I should like to stay here. To be with Lucius."

"You are weary and bemired from your journey, daughter: you need to rest."

"Lucius needs me!"

"Our good doctor can do more for him at this time. You shall come back later, once you have bathed and eaten. Your mother is making cobbler – for I'm sure you are in need of a hearty meal!"

And he put his arm around her shoulders, and guided her home - for she was, in truth, very weary.

After bathing, and changing her clothes, Ivy ate two large helpings of cobbler, and dozed awhile beside the fire.

When she awoke, she was aware of her father sitting in his chair facing her: his presence, or 'colour' as she sometimes tried to define it. There seemed a charge around him, like the atmosphere you sometimes feel before a thunderstorm.

"They tell me," he said gravely, "that you encountered Those We Don't Speak Of; is it true?"

"I met one – which gave chase. I had fallen into a hole a little before then, and found the place again – there was a large and twisted tree-stump, which I knew by touch. So I stood a moment, asif to play the Stump Game, then stepped aside sothat it was the Creature that fell. It was not far from the start of the overgrown path."

"I see..."

"But Father – what you said before, about the Creatures being farce – "

"That was the lie, my dear: I did not want you to be afraid. What hangs in the Old Shedare but dried carcasses, the hides of Creatures we slew many years past, in the days before the Truce." He laughed a little. "None of the Elders left the village while you were gone, that I do assure you. And none are missing."

And yet... She knew instinctively that he was concealing something. Had he not also told her that The Towns were filled with greed, and wickedness and cruelty? And then she had met with Kevin, who was good and helpful, and knew where to find medicines, without even taking her grandfather's watch in barter. She no longer knew how much to believe fromher father'slips.

"You were right, Ivy. You should stay the night at Mrs Hunt's. Kitty will take the little ones home with her to the Cranes', so that they will not disturb you when you return."

"And you, Father?"

"I must speak with Robert Percy, then with August Nicholson. Council matters, that is all."

Ivy walked arm-in-arm with her mother over to the Hunts' cottage. "Are you going to stay, too?"

"No," answered Tabitha curtly. She knew - in such a small community, how could she not- the looks cast between her husband and the Widow Hunt. She endured with a sad dignity - but she did not actively seek out the widow's company. "I - I'm going to call upon the Percys. Vivian wants someone to pray with her this night... She is... in low spirits."

"I understand."

"She has suffered enough through that child over the years... She blames herself for - for what has happened."

"But there lies no blame on her!"

Tabitha bowed her head. "She thinks she might have broken the news of your betrothal more... tenderly. He was the last to hear of it."

Ivy did not reply. She thought: I had courage enough to venture to The Towns; why did I lack the courage for that?

She stayed all night by Lucius's bedside, holding his hand to comfort, while his mother tended him. The young man had been given some medicine, the dose to be repeated every four hours or so. At first he seemed feverish, and she feared that it had made him worse, not better; but by sun-up, he was sleeping peacefully.

Alice sighed. "You should go home and get some sleep yourself now, Ivy."

"Should we not first tell Dr Crane?" the girl asked.

"I doubt he will be back ere dusk. Your father and Mr Nicholson likewise."

"Why? Where have they gone? Father said he had Council business -"

Alice did not answer immediately. She was glad that the girl could not see the tension in her face, the evasive darting of her eyes.

"Your father - I - all of the Elders - we wished to spare you this, but it cannot be hidden... While you were gone to The Towns, Those We Don't Speak Of attacked by stealth."

"What?"

"They... burrowed up through the floor of the schoolhouse. Beneath the Quiet Room."

She gasped. "Noah ?"

"He was... abducted." Alice wrung her sinewy hands in the lap of her apron. What did another falsehood matter? The truth would have been too cruel. "We do not know where he is taken. Or if he lives. Your father has taken the doctor and Mr Nicholson to seek him in the woods."

Ivy gave a small cry, like a bird in a snare.

The last time she had met with Noah, she had beaten him for wounding Lucius. She had felt remorse for it in the hours, the days since. He had done a heinous wrong, yes; he had almost slain her beloved - his own dear friend, yes. But he had no more reason or judgement than a young child. And she would not have struck a child, or even a dog, so. The memory of his sobbing beneath her blows tormented her almost as cruelly as the colourless silence in the workshop when she had found Lucius stabbed, bleeding out his life...

"It is not possible," she said, trying to remain calm.

She was struggling to reconcile her father's contradictory explanations of the Creatures with her encounter in the forest. Perhaps he had indeed lied to her at the Old Shed Which Must Not Be Used, so that she would not be afraid; or perhaps...? If the Creatures truly were the Elders in farce, might they not have taken him themselves, in punishment for attacking Lucius? In which case, who or what had she killed?

"I wished no such great harm on him! Nor would Lucius wish it, if he -"

She felt a hand curl gently around hers on the quilt: a strong, warm hand.

"Ivy, what would I not wish...?"

"My dearest!"

And in a mixture of joy and grief, she buried her face in the pillow beside his. Her salt tears dampened his dark hair.

"The gnarled tree-stump... This must be the trap she meant," said Edward Walker, holding up his lantern: the shaded flame flickered through the rainy darkness beneath the branches.

The rubber mask of the Creature's costume stared up like a grotesque severed head amid the mud and puddles at the bottom of the pit.

"The boy can't have got far in the dark. He'd be terrified, and after such a fall, I doubt he has the strength," Dr Crane said.

Walker saw that the surface of the ground was disturbed, the grasses and low-growing plants trodden down. "But someone else has been here."

"Someone - or something!" Nicholson sounded anxious.

Someone or something carrying a burden. Ridged footprints, deep, but blurring in the rain. Following them to the bracken and trampled grass by the start of the overgrown track, they found remnants of the Creature costume: a few porcupine quills, animal bones and feathers; grey fur; shreds of scarlet mantle, cut with a blade - not torn; a piece from a shirt, also cut. All blotched with blood.

Victor Crane's heart sank. How many times over the years had he violated his Hippocratic Oath for the sake of that other oath which bound him to Edward Walker? The deaths he could have prevented, if only... The illnesses, the disabilities he could have treated, or at least alleviated, if only... These pathetic scraps of fancy dress were evidence of his failure as a doctor, as a man. But he clung to a hope just as flimsy. "Perhaps the man who helped Ivy...?"

"Perhaps, perhaps..." pondered Nicholson. "But that boy could betray us all if -"

"And who would believe him, of all people?" Walker said. "No, no... We can take some comfort from that." Thinking on his feet; thinking of another lie, another layer to the mythology... "From the blood, he must be wounded – perhaps dying or dead. Yes... As I said before. Dead. Killed by the Creatures. His death makes our stories true."

"And his parents?" asked Crane. "Is he to be dead to them also?"

"Especially to them." Walker smiled his disturbingly gentle smile. "It is kinder, surely, than to let them wonder and hope in vain."

On returning to the village, Walker convened a special meeting of the Council, which the whole village was ordered to attend. Only Alice Hunt, among the Council, was excused, to remain at her son's bedside. Ivy sat with her younger sisters, beside Kitty and Christop.

"Those We Don't Speak Of have devoured Noah Percy. He was no longer innocent enough for them to spare him." He held up the bloodstained piece of the missing youth's shirt. Ivy heard a collective gasp, sensed a collective shudder of dread and revulsion. "This is all that they left of him," her father continued. "It is a warning to all, to keep within the laws, and within our borders."

A thud, a clatter of a chair. Vivian Percy slumped to the floor in a dead faint. Mrs Clack, Mrs Crane and Tabitha Walker gathered around her as her husband helped her up.

"Oh, the poor woman!" exclaimed Kitty. "What a frightful shock! And poor Noah - But perhaps it is for the best, after all..."

But Ivy stared straight ahead, sightless, yet seeing more clearly than her sister ever would. Father was telling another falsehood. The lie was in his voice, changing his colour. And Noah?

Until just a few days ago, he had been her dearest friend, besides Lucius. She would know if he were dead.

He is alive, she thought; but she did not know whether to be glad of it, or fearful.

To be continued: Somehow I don't think he's in Covington any more...