A Dance with Fate

by Juliet Marillier

  “Feeling more comfortable?” Dau withdraws his hand, stands up, and moves away. “You might want to put more clothes on before Corb decides to walk in.”

  “Dau?”

  “Mm?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anytime.”

  I look across and see a smile on his face, not the supercilious smirk he used to favor us with on the island, but a natural sort of smile. Maybe I should offer to sleep on Corb’s pallet in the stables, especially now Dau is getting through the nights quite well. It would be easy enough for Corb to fetch me if I was needed. But I don’t offer, and Dau doesn’t make the suggestion. As I adjust my clothing and tidy up my hair, he sits on the bench saying not a word.

  22

  DAU

  The thirtieth day since Liobhan and I came to stay at the stables, and spring is advancing into summer. There are new foals out in the fields, so Corb tells me, and lambs. I am getting stronger. Liobhan and I spend a good part of the morning on our exercise. We rehearse some carefully planned throws and contests of strength, but those feel more like dancing than fighting. I’m ready for a proper fight, I know it. But Liobhan says no.

  She’s seen Seanan riding out to that place several times, sometimes with one of his henchmen, a big fellow called Ultán; sometimes on his own. Sometimes smoke rises, sometimes not. Sometimes he stays there for an hour, two hours; sometimes he returns quickly. I hear in her voice that she scents a mystery and is driven to solve it. I tell her to leave it alone and to be glad my brother is well occupied.

  When we work in the stable yard—not all our activities can be carried out in the makeshift training area—we usually get an audience of two or three, whichever of the fellows happen to be working there at the time. Sometimes they ask Liobhan to demonstrate a move or teach them one. When she agrees, I suspect it’s only so she can make me rest without having to give me an order. I’m sick of being reminded to take things slowly, not to risk damaging my eyes further, and so on. All right, I can’t see. But I know where things are; I can feel and hear and make decisions for myself. Liobhan’s caution is becoming irksome.

  It’s started to rain, just lightly. We’re going through our exercises in the stable yard so that if the drizzle becomes a deluge we can get quickly under cover. Working in the wet is part of the training on Swan Island, since we must be able to perform capably under any conditions. The ground beneath our feet is slippery now, but we know how to adjust for that.

  There’s quite a bit of noise. While we push up and hold, push up and hold, Liobhan explains without a trace of breathlessness that there seems to be a leak in the thatch, just above the stall allocated to my father’s prized broodmare. The mare is being moved, and the fellows are putting a ladder against the wall outside so someone can climb up and attempt a repair job, even though the rain’s still coming down. “Morrigan’s britches,” she mutters as we extend our hold to a count of twenty, “the way they’re going about it, someone will end up with a broken leg. Or neck.”

  Just after she says that, there’s a shout from up on the roof, or more of a scream. Gasps from the lads down close to us, and then Mongan’s voice, shouting, “What’s wrong?” And someone up there yelling back, “He’s cut himself! Bad!”

  One moment Liobhan’s still beside me, and the next she’s out of her pose, up and away. I hear her running across the yard.

  “Give me that cloth! Quick!” It’s an order. Then the sound of someone scaling the ladder, fast. I don’t need to be told who it is. Isn’t her father a master thatcher? There’s a babble of talk all around me now, so I get a running account of what’s going on. Liobhan up on the roof, balancing like a cat. Liobhan getting one of the two men up there to press a wadded-up cloth on the other one’s wound—a thatching knife is sharp—while she ties on a makeshift bandage. I can hear her voice, but not the words. Her tone is calm, practical, intended to convince the injured man that despite all the blood, he’s not going to die; he’s in safe hands.

  Then they have to get him down, and he doesn’t want to come. Shocked, no doubt, sent up there to do a job he wasn’t trained for. There’s absolutely nothing I can do to help, except maybe holding the base of the ladder while they get down. But they don’t need me; other men, men with eyes that work, are already in place. I stand there, completely useless, listening to the fellows around me.

  “Frozen. Can’t move.”

  “How’s she going to get him down?”

  “Morrigan’s britches, if he keeps struggling like that he’ll have all three of them over the edge.”

  I taste blood: I’m biting my lip. I want to be up there. I know exactly how it should be done. I could do it, even the way I am now. But who would say yes to a blind man?

  Mongan shouts, “Liobhan, you and Lughan get him over toward the ladder between you! One of you fellows climb up to the top and wait. You can brace him as he comes down.”

  Sounds of movement up there. The injured man is whimpering; terror has turned him into a small child. I know that feeling. I could help him. I could help save him. But I can’t move.

  “Dagda’s bollocks, that woman is strong,” someone comments.

  “Not scared of heights, is she?” observes someone else.

  A subdued cheer goes up. I gather they’ve reached the top of the ladder, where a brave volunteer—I think Caol—is waiting to support the injured man on the way down. Brave because there’s a strong possibility the man will thrash about and send both himself and anyone close on a fast drop to the courtyard.

  “Stand underneath,” Mongan says. “Be ready to catch.”

  Some of the men around me go to do this; I stay where I am, knowing that even this simple duty will be considered beyond me. I stand there as Caol and the injured man reach the ground without mishap. I stay there as Lughan comes down, and lastly Liobhan, whose arrival is greeted with more cheers, as well as offers of ale or mead.

  “Will you see to his hand?” asks Mongan.

  “He’s best treated by the infirmarian from St. Padraig’s,” Liobhan says. “The wound may need stitching up. I’m not trained to do that kind of thing.” A pause. “You should take him there straightaway.”

  “Will you come with us?”

  “I’m not welcome in the house. Corb will go.” Her tone changes; becomes warm and reassuring. “Take a few deep breaths, Tomas. You’re going to be fine. The monks will look after you. Can you walk over to the house if Corb helps you? Good man.”

  And just like that, it’s over. Liobhan lets the fellows congratulate her and go over what happened for a bit, then the rain gets heavier. She tells them she wants to wash her hands and change her clothes, and they let her retreat to our quarters. I follow; I can find my way now. When I get there, there’s nothing for me to do but sit on the edge of my pallet while she goes out to the pump to wash, then comes back in and puts the kettle on the fire.

  “Danu save us,” she observes mildly. “You realize the hole in the roof still isn’t fixed. I should go and do it now, while the ladder’s up. Just needs a couple of pegs replacing, and I’ve got them. Stuck all of Tomas’s bits and pieces in my belt before we came down.”

  I don’t say anything. Right now, my thoughts are darker than they’ve been for a long while. I’m not sad, I’m angry. Just who I’m angry with—myself for being so useless; Liobhan for doing everything so capably and for charming everyone, and for sounding so bloody cheerful; or fate for completely wrecking my life—I don’t know and I don’t care. Who cares about the wretched roof?

  Liobhan’s changed her mind about making a brew; I hear her take the kettle off the fire. “Now,” she says. “Before someone else decides to have a try and ends up with a slashed hand or worse. Dau?” She’s moving about, fetching things, getting ready.

  I say nothing.

  “Will you come and hold the ladder for me?”

  She thinks she’s
being kind. Letting me feel useful. “There’ll be plenty of lads lining up eagerly for an opportunity to help.”

  “They’ll have realized they’ve still got their own work waiting to be done. Come on, Dau. Let’s get this finished.”

  Despite myself, I follow her back out into the rain and across the courtyard. Maybe she’s right about the lads; I hear a voice or two in the stables and the sound of hoofbeats as someone leads a horse out, but nobody speaks to us as we go over to the ladder. I know nothing about thatching. It does seem unwise for Liobhan to go up there by herself, especially now it’s so wet, even though she seems to be able to turn her hand to just about anything and make a success of it. But I’m not going to start an argument. I hold the ladder as instructed and she climbs. What happens if she cuts herself? How is it she’s so sure she won’t make a mistake? Was I like that before I went blind?

  Liobhan’s on the roof now; her weight is off the ladder. Something falls, striking my shoulder before landing with a thud on the ground by my foot. She curses from up above. I reach down and grope for the fallen object. The thatching knife. Dagda’s bollocks! Just as well it didn’t fall blade first.

  “I’ll come back dow—” Liobhan calls, but I’m already climbing. A pox on all of it, I’m going to be useful if it kills me. Which, one might say, it just nearly did.

  “Dau—” she protests, then falls silent. I reach the top of the ladder. Holding on with one hand, I pass her the knife, handle first.

  “No comment,” I say. “Do you need me to stay up here and hold things for you?”

  “Go back down. Please. You’re making me nervous.”

  “Your father wouldn’t be impressed by your safety measures.”

  “Shut up, Dau. Go back down.” She’s furious. That makes two of us. I climb down with a red rage in my head. I didn’t count the steps coming up, and I don’t judge them right going down. I’m only a couple of rungs above the ground, but I slip, I drop, my foot slides out from under me and I crash down in a heap. A sharp pain shoots through my ankle, and when I get up the leg won’t hold my weight. Shit! Just what I need right now. I haven’t called out. I won’t. I won’t be weak. She said stay and hold the ladder, and that’s what I’ll do. I sink my teeth into my lip. I clutch the ladder so hard my hands hurt. My ankle’s throbbing. I feel dizzy, as if I might pass out. Let those men in the stables not see me making a complete hash of the one simple job I was given to do. I imagine grabbing the thatching knife when Liobhan comes back down and using it to slit my own throat. Ending the pain in one flamboyant burst of red. I imagine my brother Seanan talking, afterward. Oh, Dau. He was strange even as a boy. You know he killed his own dog. With a knife. Something wrong about him from the start.

  “Done, as best I can.” Liobhan steps down beside me. “It’ll need fixing properly later, when the weather clears. But at least I’ve stopped the leak. We’d better get this ladder—” She falls abruptly silent. “Dau? What is it?”

  “Nothing.” My voice comes out as a growl. I try to walk away, but I can’t. The best I can manage is a hobble, and I can’t do it without gasping in pain. “Curse it!” As if the humiliation weren’t enough, now I have to endure her sympathy, her strong arm in support, her brief lecture on not overdoing things because that will only set back my progress. I let her help me. I let her talk. It’s only when we’re safely back in our own quarters with the door shut behind us that I pick up the first object I can lay hands on, an earthenware bowl from the table, and hurl it at the wall, where it smashes into a thousand pieces.

  23

  LIOBHAN

  Wretched Dau! He was doing so well. Now he’s sunk in his dark place again and refusing to make the slightest effort to climb out of it, with or without my help. He puts me in mind of some trapped creature, either spitting and snarling when anyone approaches or shut off in a terrible silence.

  I’ve tried to be patient. I’ve had to, to stop him from damaging the ankle further instead of resting it. But my patience is running thin. What is it with him? We were working as friends, fighting this fight side by side. We were getting somewhere. I thought we were. Now he won’t even try to conduct a normal conversation. He has to be bullied before he’ll wash himself properly. There’s a struggle over the drafts every time he takes them, an argument about whether there’s any point to any of it and why don’t I go off and attend to my own business. I hate this. I hate being angry. A Swan Island warrior doesn’t get angry about this sort of thing. Besides, Dau’s a Swan Island warrior, too, and he should know better.

  I make sure the drafts go down. I tend to his eyes and endure the muttering commentary about how useless it is. I try not to spend too much time alone with him, because seeing him like this makes me feel like a failure. It makes me sad. And if I’m sad I can’t get myself through this wretched year.

  The lads from the stables, Caol and Padraig and the others, take turns keeping an eye on Dau so Corb and I can escape from time to time. That means I can run through my exercises or go for a brisk walk or help the grooms with holding a difficult horse. Rescuing Tomas and mending the thatch won me Mongan’s approval. As long as the lads get their own work done, he doesn’t have a problem with them helping us.

  The stable crew learn that I can sing. They’ve already overheard me telling Dau stories. Now, eight or nine of them come over most evenings, bringing our supper and staying on afterward. I sit out in the stables with them, leaving the door to our quarters open and Corb in there with Dau, and I tell a tale or sing a song while they enjoy a jug or two of ale. Night by night the audience grows. It grows to include men-at-arms and gardeners as well as grooms and stable hands. Once or twice the master-at-arms, a spare, keen-eyed man named Fergal, comes to join us; from what he says, I gather someone’s been telling him about Dau and me and our combat practice. Sometimes I coax one of the men to tell a story. I ask all of them to join in the refrains of the easier songs, and if they don’t know tune and words, I teach them. There’s a magic in it. Not the kind that conjures up visions or turns something to gold or makes toads jump out of a person’s mouth. The kind that lifts hearts and sets a hopeful beat in them. The kind that coaxes a smile to a sorrowful face, and dries up tears, and tells a lonely man he has a friend.

  It doesn’t work on Dau. While the rest of us are gathered in our circle by lantern light, with the soft sounds of sleepy animals in the stalls behind us, he stays in our quarters. I place myself where he can hear me. That’s deliberate. And Corb makes sure the door stands open, even if Dau wants it shut. But Dau remains hidden. Doesn’t show so much as one little finger. Doesn’t speak of this to me or to Corb; doesn’t say a word to Caol or Padraig or Torcan, just lets it flow past as if he’s in some other world, a world where you can be bitter and silent and furious, but never happy. Never content. Never accepting.

  Would I be accepting if I were in his shoes? I hope I’d grit my teeth and get on with things. But I can’t be sure.

  One of the men-at-arms from our journey to Oakhill, Donn, is a regular visitor to our storytelling sessions. His two friends come with him, big, sturdy Canagan and bristle-bearded Morann, a man with a wide smile and a tuneful voice. It’s from them, one night, that I get some news.

  I’ve just finished telling a tale about the Otherworld. In it, a man with a withered leg hobbles into the woods, looking for flowers to weave into a garland for the girl he loves. His plan is to put it on her head at the midsummer revels and ask for her hand in marriage, though he fears she will say no—he’s a cripple, unfit to do a full day’s work, and she’s the prettiest girl in the village. Either Davan’s got foolish hope or he believes in miracles. He’s heard of some very particular flowers that grow deep in the woods. These blooms have a scent about them that fills a person’s mind with happy thoughts. No ordinary bluebells or snowdrops or primroses for Davan. Of course he wanders in too deep and finds himself in a mushroom circle, and all around him are strange wee
folk with big eyes and long noses and straggly beards. One of the wee folk asks him what he’s doing on their land, and Davan explains about the flowers and the sweetheart and the withered leg. So the wee folk—clurichauns, without a doubt, and full of tricks as such folk are—offer to show him where the special flowers are and to point out the smelliest of all. Davan, being an unworldly sort of man, goes along with this. They pick him a big bunch of flowers and wish him luck. He bursts into tears. That sets all of them sobbing and wailing until the forest rings with it. When they’ve all calmed down, the clurichaun chief asks Davan why he was crying, and the lad explains that even if the flowers were the most precious thing in all the world, Flannat will never agree to marry him with his leg being the way it is. He can’t walk straight, he can’t dance, he can’t safely carry his children about—not that he has any children yet, but Flannat is sure to be thinking ahead.

  The clurichauns are not impressed by this. They suggest Davan look for a girl who doesn’t care about the leg. But it’s Flannat he loves and wants. They’re all set to play a trick on him. Mend his leg, then tell him the price is an eye or a hand or his old mother’s happiness or something of the kind. But they feel sorry for the man. All he’s asked for is a bunch of wildflowers. And his tale made them cry; some of them are weeping a bit now, just from the memory of it.

  So they walk him to the spot where he can cross back into his own world, and they make sure he’s got a good hold of the flowers, and they bid him farewell, and as he steps out of the mushroom circle, the clurichaun druid gives a wee flick of his magical staff, and lo! Davan’s withered leg is as straight and healthy as his other leg, and he can walk as well as any man. Maybe there’s a price. Isn’t there always? But they don’t ask for it then. They watch Davan hop and skip and jump his way home, happy as a lark, and they go back to their secret clurichaun business.