Child of the Prophecy

by Juliet Marillier

  That day I felt a strong need to be occupied, to channel my thoughts into the strictly practical. So, when my chamber was bare and clean, I went to the place where we kept our small supply of food, and took the fish the girl had brought, and a few turnips. The fish was already gutted and scaled. My father and I were not cooks. We ate because it was necessary, that was all. But I had time to fill. So I made up the fire, and let it die down, and then I roasted the turnips in the coals, and baked the fish on top. When it was ready I took a plateful down to the workroom for my father. But the door was bolted from the inside. I could not hear his voice chanting or speaking words of magic. The only sound was the harsh cawing of a bird within the vaulted chamber. That meant Fiacha was back. My heart sank, for I disliked Fiacha intensely. The raven came and went as he pleased, and when he stayed in the household he always seemed to be staring at me with his little, bright eyes, summing me up and finding me less than impressive. Then he’d be suddenly gone again, without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps he brought messages. Father never said. I did not like Fiacha’s sharp beak or the dangerous glint in his eye. He pecked me once when I was little, and it hurt a lot. Father said it was an accident, but I was never quite so sure.

  I left the food outside the door. There was a rule which need not be spoken, that when the door was locked, one did not seek admittance. Some elements of the craft must be exercised in solitude, and my father sought always to deepen and extend his knowledge. It is too easy for an outsider to judge us wrongly, to see a threat in what we do, simply because of a lack of insight. Our kind are not always made welcome, not in all parts of Erin, for folk tell tales of us which are half truth and half a jumble of their own fears and superstitions. It was not by chance that my father had come to live in this distant, remote corner of Kerry. Here, the folk were simple souls whose lives turned on sea and season, whose world had no place for the luxury of gossip and prejudice. They had accepted him and my mother as just two more dwellers in the bay, quiet, courteous folk who left well alone. And everyone knew a settlement with its own sorcerer was the safest of places to live in. My father had quickly demonstrated that, for one summer, soon after his arrival in Kerry, the Norsemen came. All along the coast there were tales of their raids, the brutal killings, the rape, the burning, the stealing of women and children, and there were tales of the places where they’d come in their longships and simply moved in, taking the cottages and farms and settling down as if they’d a right to. But there was no Viking settlement in our cove. Ciarán had seen to that. Folk still told the story of how the longships with their carven prows had come into view, rowing in hard toward the shore with so little warning there was no time to flee for cover. The sunlight had flashed on the axes and the strange helms the men wore; the many oars had dipped and splashed, dipped and splashed as the fisherfolk stood frozen in terror, watching their death come closer. Then the sorcerer had walked out onto a high ledge of the Honeycomb with his staff of yew in his hand, and raised it aloft, and an instant later, great clouds had begun to roll in from the west, and the swell had risen till white-capped breakers began to pound the shore. The longships had begun to struggle and list, and the neat rows of oars were thrown into confusion. Within moments the sky was dark with storm, and the ocean boiled, and the folk watched round-eyed as the vessels of the Norsemen cracked and split and were torn asunder each in its turn. Later, children found strange and wondrous objects cast up on the shore. An armlet wrought with snakes and dogs, curiously patterned. A necklace in the shape of a tiny, lethal axe threaded on twisted wire. A bronze bowl. The shaft of an oar, fine-fashioned. The body of a man with pale skin and long, plaited hair the color of wheat at Lugnasad. So, there was no Viking settlement in our cove. After that my father was revered and protected, a man who could do no wrong. When my mother died they grieved with him. All the same, they gave him a wide berth.

  All that long day my father stayed in the workroom with the door bolted. When at last he emerged to take up the plateful of food and eat it abstractedly, not noticing it had gone cold waiting for him, he looked pale and tired. Sitting by the remnants of my small cooking fire, he picked at the congealing fish and had nothing to say. Fiacha had followed him and sat on a ledge above, staring at me. I scowled back.

  “Best go to bed, daughter,” my father said, and coughed harshly. “I’m not good company tonight.”

  “Father, you’re sick.” I stared with alarm as he struggled for breath. “You need help. A physic, at least.”

  “Nonsense.” His expression was grim. “There’s nothing wrong with me. Go on now, off to bed with you. This will pass. It’s nothing.”

  He had not convinced me in the slightest.

  “Father, please tell me what’s wrong.”

  He gave a brief laugh. It was not a happy sound. “Where could one begin? Now, enough of this. I’m weary. Good night, Fainne.”

  So I was dismissed, and I left him there, unmoving, staring into the heart of the dying fire. As I walked away to my chamber, the sound of his coughing followed me, echoing stark through the underground caverns.

  She arrived one morning late in autumn, while Father was away fetching water. I made my way out, hearing her calling from the entrance. We had few visitors. But there she was; an old lady wrapped in shawls, trudging along on foot with never a bag or basket to her name. Her face was all wrinkled and her eyes so sunken you could scarce see what color they were. She had a crown of disheveled white hair and a very loud voice.

  “Well, come on, girl! Invite me in. Don’t tell me I wasn’t expected. What’s Ciarán playing at?”

  She bustled past me and on down the tunnel toward the workroom as if the place belonged to her. I trotted after, hoping my father would not be too long. Suddenly she whirled back to face me, quicker than any old lady had the right to move, and now she was gazing intently into my eyes, as if assessing me.

  “Know who I am, do you?”

  “Yes, Grandmother,” I said, for although she seemed quite different from the elegant woman I remembered, I could feel the magic seeping from every part of her, powerful, ancient, and it was plain to me who she must be.

  “Hmm. You’ve grown, Fainne.” Clearly unimpressed, she turned her back on me and continued her confident progress through the darkened passages of the Honeycomb. Before the great door of the workroom, she halted. She put her hand out and gave a push. The door did not budge. Carven from solid oak, and set in a heavy frame which fitted tightly within its arch of stone, this entry was sealed by iron bolts and by words of power. My father guarded his knowledge closely. The old woman pushed again.

  “You can’t go in there,” I said, alarmed. “My father doesn’t let anyone go in. Just him, and sometimes me. You’ll have to wait.”

  “Wait?” She lifted her brows and gave an arch smile. On her ancient features, it looked hideous. Her eyes bored through me, as if she wished to read my thoughts. “Has your father taught you this trick, how to come out of a room and leave it locked from the inside?”

  I nodded, scowling.

  “And how to unlock such a door?”

  “You needn’t think I’m going to open it for you,” I told her, my voice growing sharp with anger at her temerity. I felt my face flush, and knew the little flames Darragh had once noticed would be starting to show on the edges of my hair. “If my father wants it locked, it stays locked. I won’t do it.”

  “Bet you can’t.” She was taunting me.

  “I won’t open it. I told you.”

  She laughed, a young girl’s laugh like a peal of little bells. “Then I’ll have to do it myself, won’t I?” she said lightly, and raised a gnarled, knobby hand toward the heavy oak panels. She clicked her fingers just once, and a bright border of flame licked at the door, all around the edges. Smoke billowed, and I began to cough. For a moment I could see nothing. There was a popping sound, and a creak. The smoke cleared. The great door now stood ajar, its surface blackened and blistered, its heavy bolts hanging useless where t
hey had fallen away from the charred wood.

  I stood in the doorway, watching, as the old woman took three steps into my father’s secret room.

  “He won’t be happy,” I said tightly.

  “He won’t know,” she replied coolly. “Ciarán’s gone. You won’t see him again until we’re quite finished here, child; not until next summer nears its end. It’s just not possible for him to stay, not with me here. No place can hold the two of us. It’s better this way. You and I have a great deal of work to do, Fainne.”

  I stood frozen, feeling the shock of what she had told me like a wound to the heart. How could Father do this? Where had he gone? How could he leave me alone with this dreadful old woman?

  She was standing in front of the bronze mirror now, apparently admiring herself, for she took out a comb from a pocket in her voluminous attire and proceeded to drag it through her wild tangle of hair. Despite myself, I moved closer.

  “Didn’t Ciarán tell you about me, child? Didn’t he explain anything?” She stared intently at her reflection. I came up behind, drawn to gaze over her shoulder into the polished surface.

  The woman in the mirror stared back at me. She might have been sixteen years old, no more. Her hair was a glossier, prettier version of mine, curling around her shoulders with a life of its own, a rich, deep auburn. Her skin was milk-white, so pale you could see the faint blue tracery of veins on the pearly surface. Her figure was slender but shapely, with curves in all the right places. It was the figure I had tried to create for myself that day when I went down to the camp. I had thought myself skillful, but beside this, my own efforts were paltry. This woman was a master of the craft. I looked into her eyes. They were deep, dark, the color of ripe mulberries. They were my father’s eyes. They were my own eyes. The old woman smiled back from the mirror, with her red, curving lips and her small, sharp white teeth.

  “As you see,” she said with a mirthless chuckle, “I’ve a lot to teach you. And we’d best start straight away. Making you into a fine lady is going to be quite a challenge.”

  For as long as I could remember, it had been the two of us, my father and I, working together or working separately, the day devoted to the practice of the craft. Our meals, our rest, our contacts with the outside world were kept to what was strictly essential: the fetching of water, the gathering of driftwood for the fire. Fish accepted from the girl at the door. Messages entrusted to Dan Walker. I had had the summers with Darragh. But Darragh was gone, and I was grown up now. Those rimes were over. My father and I understood each other without much need for words. Sometimes he would explain a technique or the theory behind it. Sometimes I would ask a question. Mostly, he let me find out for myself, with a little guidance here and there. He let me make my own mistakes and learn from them. That way, he said, I would become more responsible, and retain those things I most needed to know. Indeed, in time this discipline would lead not just to knowledge, but to understanding. Sometimes, when we had mastered a new skill or solved a particularly challenging puzzle, I could persuade him to come walking with me up to the stone circle, or out along the clifftop. During these brief respites I would coax him to speak of matters outside the craft, and I might glimpse a smile on his lips, a warmth in his eyes. I treasured such times as rare jewels, for I loved my father, and wished above all to dispel the sadness that seemed to shadow him even on the sunniest day. I strove to please him in every way I could, and especially by study and hard work, which he seemed to value above all. I wanted to make him happy and perhaps, once or twice, I did. It was an orderly, well-structured existence, if somewhat outside the patterns of ordinary folk.

  My grandmother had quite a different method of teaching. She began by telling me Ciarán had neglected my education sorely; the least he could have taught me was to eat politely, not shovel things with my fingers like a tinker’s child. When I sought to defend my father, she silenced me with a nasty little spell that made my tongue swell up and grow fuzzy as a ripe catkin. No wonder she had said she could not live in the same place as her son. One of our most basic rules was that the craft must never be used by teacher against student, or student against teacher. My father would have recoiled from the idea of using magic to inflict punishment. Grandmother employed it with no qualms whatever. I hated the way she spoke of him, of her own son.

  “Well,” she observed as she watched me eating my fish, her eyes following each scrap as it traveled from platter to lips, “he’s taught you shape-shifting and manipulation and sleight of hand. How much good will those skills be to you when you sit at table with the fine folk of Sevenwaters? Can you dance? Can you sing? Can you smile at a man and make his blood stir and his heart race? I thought not. Don’t gape, child. Your education’s been quite inadequate. I blame those druids, they got hold of your father and filled his head with nonsense. It’s just as well he called me when he did. Before I’m done with you, you’ll be expert at the art of twisting a man around your little finger-clumsy, plain thing that you are. I’m an artist.”

  “I have learned much from my father,” I said angrily. “He is a great sorcerer, and deeply respected. I’m not sure we need your—artistry. I have both lore and skills, and will improve both as well as I can, for my father has given me a love of learning. Why spend time and energy on table manners?”

  She laughed her young woman’s laugh, so incongruous as it pealed from that wizened, gap-toothed mouth.

  “Oh dear, oh dear. It stamps its little foot, and the sparks fly. The first thing you need to learn is not to give yourself away like that, child. But there’s more, so much more. I know your father has given you a grounding in the skills. The bare bones, so to speak. But you can achieve great things at Sevenwaters if you make the most of your opportunities. I’ll help you, child. Believe me, I know these people.”

  From that point on she took charge. I was used to lessons and practice. I was used to working long hours, and being perpetually tired, and keeping on regardless. But these lessons were so tedious. How to eat as neatly as a wren, in tiny little morsels. How to giggle and whisper secrets. How to hold myself upright as I walked, and sway my hips from side to side. This one was not easy, with my foot the way it was. In the end she grew exasperated.

  “You’ll never walk straight in your own guise,” she told me bluntly. “You’ll never dance without making a fool of yourself. No matter. You can use the Glamour when you will. Make yourself as graceful as you want. Have the loveliest feet in the world, if there’s need of them. The only problem is, it gets tiring. Keeping it up all the time, I mean. It wears you down. Why do you think I’m a wrinkled old hag? Our kind live long. Too long, I sometimes think. But I’m the way I am from being charming for Lord Colum all that time, keeping him dancing to my will.” She gave a sigh. “Ah, now, there was a man. Shame that little upstart Sorcha thwarted me. If she hadn’t done what she did, there’d have been no need for all this. It would all have been mine, and in his turn, Ciarán’s. Your wretched mother would never have existed, and nor would you, pet. Think what I could have achieved. It would all have been ours, as it should have been. But she did it, she outwitted me, she and those—those creatures that call themselves fancy names. Otherworld beings. Huh! Power went to their heads a long time ago, that’s their problem. Shut our kind out. We were never good enough for them, and don’t they love reminding us of it? Well, we’ll see what the Fair Folk make of my little gift to them. They’ll be laughing on the other sides of their faces when your work is done, girl.”

  I hesitated to ask her what she meant. She was quick to ridicule and to punish when she thought me slow or stupid.

  It was too late, Grandmother said, for me to learn to play the harp or flute. I refused to sing, even when she punished me by taking away my voice. I did well enough without it, being used to long days of silence, and in time she abandoned her efforts to extract any form of music from me. She discovered very quickly that my skills in reading and writing far surpassed her own. My sewing was another matter; she prono
unced it rudimentary in the extreme. Materials were found in a flash, fine silks, gossamer fabrics, plain linen to practice on first. By lantern light I stabbed my fingers and squinted my eyes and cursed her silently. I learned to sew. She watched me a little quizzically, and once she said, “This brings back some memories. Oh, yes.”

  There were other lessons she taught me, lessons I would blush to relate. It was necessary, my grandmother said, for I was a girl, and to get anywhere in the world I must be able to attract a man and to hold him. It was not just a case of learning a certain way of walking, and a particular manner of glancing, or even of knowing the right things to say and when to remain silent. Nor was it simply a matter of using the Glamour to make oneself more beautiful or more enticing, though that certainly helped. Grandmother’s teaching was a great deal more specific. It made me cringe to hear her sometimes. It made me hot with embarrassment to be required to demonstrate before her what I had learned. The thought of actually doing any of it made me recoil in horror. She thought me very foolish, and said so. She reminded me that I was in my fifteenth year and of marriageable age, and that I had better make the best of what little I had in the way of natural charms, and learn how to use the craft to enhance them as required, or I’d have no hope of making anything of myself. It was plain to me, as I struggled with these lessons, why my father had summoned her to guide me. If it was true that I needed to acquire these skills, to know these intimate secrets, then it was equally clear he could not have taught me them himself. There are some things a girl cannot discuss with her father, no matter how close to him she may be. But I lay awake at night, wondering at his decision, for Grandmother was a cruel teacher, and her presence in the Honeycomb cast a cold shadow on my days and filled my nights with evil dreams. Why had he gone away, so far I did not even know where he was? Was that in itself some kind of test? He had never left me before, not even for a single night. I was heartsick and lonely, and I was worried about him. He was my world, my family, my only constant. I needed him; he surely needed me, for there was no other on whom he bestowed that rare smile which lit up his somber features and showed me the man for whom my mother had left the world behind. Was he afraid of Grandmother? Was that why he had left me to her mercies? My dreams showed him gaunt and white, coughing painfully somewhere in a dark cave all by himself. I wished he would come home.