With many fair and loving speeches, the three of them confirmed their attachment to each other, and after kissing one another good night they retired to their couches.
But as she drew up the coverlet, Jarred’s mother whispered to the darkness, “Perchance he was afraid of losing loved ones who could not share the gift.”
The next day, the village of R’shael prepared to celebrate a visit from its sons and hold a wake for those who had not returned. In keeping with custom, each household contributed a dish to the feast. By evening, all was ready.
On tables set in the shade of the palm trees, the villagers set dishes containing seven types of flat bread, fried aubergine casseroles, yogurt sauces, balls of dough stuffed with beans and spices, dried fruits, rosewater pastries, dates, nuts, and other flavorsome fare. As if re-enacting the feast that had sent them on their way, the guests of honor uncorked the stoneware amphorae they had carried all the way from King’s Winterbourne, and drinking vessels were passed around. The village erupted in a jollification of eating, singing, kumiss-drinking, and dancing.
The village damsels had been disappointed when they discovered Jarred was married, but they made his new wife welcome and considered Jewel, the marsh girl with the astonishing blue eyes like her mother’s, to be enchanting.
“Are the streets of King’s Winterbourne really littered with diamonds and rubies?” they asked the other young men. “Did you bring some back for us?”
“We are forced to admit,” said Gamliel, “the folk in Narngalis are not as wealthy as we had been led to believe, but nevertheless we are treated well, and we enjoy our new lives.”
“And in Narngalis do they have the same language as normal folk?”
“Of course! They speak the common tongue of Tir, just as all men do, else how could we understand one another? Admittedly, the words sound different rolling out of the mouths of the northerners, for they pronounce as if each sound were made of crystal. Indeed ’tis a pleasure to hear them talk; it makes our own way of speaking seem quite flat and countrified. Moreover, they use princely phrases like ‘Marry!’ and ‘By my troth!’”
The visitors were then badgered into mimicking the refined accents of the Narngalish, to the amusement of their friends.
“Are you married, conjuror?” the village girls asked, clustering around Michaiah as he juggled and performed his illusions.
“Not yet, so let’s see which of you can please me best,” he said, before appearing to swallow one of the juggling balls. “Who will be first to bring me another bowl of kumiss?”
But they pelted him with olive pits instead.
“I am pleased I returned in time,” Jarred said to the damsels.
“What is your meaning?”
“You warned me if I was away for too long, you would all be haggard crones when I got back. In any case I did not forget any of you, so you owe me sixpence.”
“Ah, but you got married,” they argued, “therefore we shall not pay!” To Lilith they murmured, “Do not mind our banter. We welcome you as our new sister.”
As always during such festivities there was much glee, interspersed with some small quarrels induced by inebriation. In high good humor the villagers mingled underneath the shadows of the palm fronds, enjoying the plentiful food. Not even the slight tremor of the ground that came shuddering through the desert at sunset could dissuade them from their junketing. It turned out to be one of the many familiar minor quakes common to the region, and caused no damage.
The visitors’ days at R’shael passed swiftly, for delight filled every hour. Too soon it was time to depart.
Sayareh spoke privately to her son. “Well,” she said, smiling, “long ago I could never have imagined such happiness as now fills me. If I have done anything worthwhile in my life, it has been this: to raise you in health of body and mind, independent enough to go confidently into the world, capable enough to perform such labors as bring you reward, and compassionate enough to love profoundly and be loved in return.”
“You have done many more worthwhile things than that!” Jarred protested gently. “Are you sure you will not accompany us to the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu? The offer still stands.”
“I would have liked to dwell under the same roof as you and your new family,” Sayareh replied, “but you have made a life for yourselves in the water-rich lands, and for my part, I would prefer to live out my days in familiar territory, among old friends. That is my choice, made easier by the certainty that no matter how far you are from me, you will be secure and happy. Go now, with my blessing.”
The parting was bittersweet; many a promise was made, many a tear was shed. At length the travelers were on their way, often turning around in the saddles to wave a hand one final time before they lost sight of the village.
Lilith and her family had not yet returned to the marsh by the time Lantern Eve rolled around in Otember. Although well into Autumn, the weather had remained warm. Lantern Eve Day was a holiday. Many of the Marshtown families were frolicking in the waters of Bullfrog Lagoon, a benign body of water noted for its lack of wights and water snakes. Sunlight languidly dappled the water, while deep amid the ferns, hidden amphibians were scratching the humid airs with a ratchet sound, as of a wooden stick drawn across a ribbed surface. Frog percussion mingled with the laughter of humankind and the twittering of tiny warblers among the marsh grasses, the peaceful soughing of the breeze.
Beneath an osier willow, Eoin sat watching Odhrán Rushford with his wife, Cuiva, and their three children, who were splashing and cavorting off the edge of a gentle bank in the swimming channel. Cuiva was holding her youngest child, Ochlán, in the water, swinging him about so that he crowed with delight. In the deeper waters, Odhran was towing Ciara, who clung to his shoulders. Her brother Olsin was kicking in the shallows, making an effort to swim.
Eoin rose to his feet and went in search of his father.
He found Earnán, as usual, mending fishing nets on the pontoon landing in front of his cottage. Weeks had passed since the two had parted on bitter terms. Since then they had avoided conversation. Neither of them had told anyone else about the words that had been spoken on Willowlinn, but bad blood existed between father and son. That fact exerted much anguish on them both, who had ever been close in friendship.
Eoin seated himself beside his father on the wooden stage.
“Good Lantern Eve to you,” he mumbled.
“And to you,” said Earnán, watching his son from the corner of his eye as he stitched. Gladness flooded his heart.
For a time they sat silently thus. Across the water, a white-faced heron walked its skinny yellow legs up the arch of a half-submerged log and stood absolutely still. Below, its reflection and that of the log were patterned in perfect symmetry.
“We parted in wrath last time we spoke,” said Eoin tonelessly.
His father nodded.
“Let there be no bitterness between parent and child,” said Eoin. “It is for the son to obey the father.” He broke off, inhaled deeply, and subjoined, “I will find a wife.”
Then Earnán, perceiving his son’s humbleness and weight of sorrow over losing Lilith, shook his head. “I will not lay that burden on you,” he said. “Marry when you choose, to whom you choose. Or not, as it please you.”
Amused at this turnabout, Eoin uttered a short bark of ironic laughter. Earnán too smiled.
“Áthair,” said Eoin, “we shall see what the Fates shall bring. But for now, I am content our old friendship is reinstated.”
Earnán nodded his agreement.
That night the children of the marsh donned painted masks and went from cottage to cottage carrying lanterns made from hollowed-out mangelwurzels known as punkies. From within each punky, a candle flame shone out through a picture etched into the outer rind. As they collected sweetmeats from the cotters, the children sang,
“’Tis punky night tonight,
‘Tis punky night tonight,
Give us a candle, give us a lig
ht,
’Tis punky night tonight.”
Afterward they congregated at Beacon Island for the judging of the best punky design. A bonfire was lit on the island, into which superstitious unmarried damsels threw pairs of apple pips or nuts, chanting,
“If he loves me, pop and fly,
If he hates me, lie and die.”
The explosion or sizzling of the pips or nuts was taken as a sign of impending marriage, whereas if they lay restfully burning side by side it was supposed the union would not take place. Every year brought hot debate as to whether the signs ought rightfully to be read the other way around. It also entailed argument as to the forgotten origins of the ceremonies: some said Lantern Eve had been invented to pacify the wicked marsh wights; others theorized that Otember 31 used to be the last day of the old year and it had survived in altered form when the calendar was changed by some ancient king or druid. Even Eolacha could not be sure of the truth.
The rituals of Lantern Eve were drawing to a close and the bonfire was burning low when a watchman’s barge came gliding out from between two islets. Within the vessel, surrounded by bags and packages, Lilith, Jarred, and Jewel were seated. Weary were they, but joyful; all eager to regale their friends with tales of their journeyings and their time spent with Jewel’s grandmother and great-aunt in far-off Ashqalêth, where the burning wind called the Fyrflaume swept across the sands from the Stone Deserts.
At the sight of Lilith coming home, laughing in the bows, Eoin felt his heart shrink, squeezed to become adamant in his breast, as of old. Then he knew for sure that if he could not have her, he would never marry.
After their return from Ashqalêth, Jewel’s father was often absent. The family’s fortunes had not improved. There was little or no work available for him in the wetlands, so after exhausting all possibilities he sought employment farther afield, as a shearer in the sheep lands skirting the marsh. Shearing being a seasonal task, it only brought income during Spring and Autumn, yet Jarred would not turn down any work offered him.
During the dark hours he might have bedded down in the shearers’ huts with the other itinerants, but he refused to countenance long separations from his family. This meant he must come home late every evening, walking on Carter’s Way, a road that stretched along the top of the long dike wall that entered the marsh from the northeast. Each night, with his new sheepdog Tralee at his heels, he would pass through a veritable ballroom of will-o’-the-wisps.
Oisín and Ciara, the two eldest children of Cuiva, were especially pleased at Jewel’s return. These three were firm friends and companions. As they grew older, their comradeship waxed, as did the strength of the bonds between them. As a trio they were free-spirited and independent. Like many children raised in wide, wild places, their enterprise was impossible to curb. By the time Jewel had reached the age of nine, they took to venturing on their own throughout the marsh in search of novelty and entertainment, or in the course of carrying out their daily tasks, or sometimes to avoid them. Their parents would not have allowed them to go, only they would not chain them, and they could but hope the children had hearkened well to their instruction about all perils both natural and eldritch, and how to shun or avert them.
The marsh, however, was so filled with supernatural comings and goings that, despite the clandestine habits of wights, it was impossible for the children to avoid them all. Indeed, they secretly delighted in the thrill of unexpectedly spying eldritch manifestations. Of the three, Jewel and Oisín were the most eager for adventure, yet Jewel’s recklessness was tempered with reason whereas Oisín was inclined to act first and ponder later.
This was to prove his downfall.
One Summer dusk, the three children were wandering homeward across Grig Island. They could walk barefoot here; no crowthistle flourished in the damp soil. A single, self-seeded apple tree grew near a weedy knoll. In its boughs, blackbirds warbled wild, inhuman melodies that defied memorization: alien and poignant to the ear, more akin to wightish music than the tunes of mortalkind. Down at the water’s edge, the frogs had already begun their nightly orchestrations: sonorous blomp bell sounds for the bass notes, rich and fruity; an uninterrupted creaking for the midtones; and a regular why? why? why? on a rising note for the treble section.
“I can see the first will-o’-the-wisp of the evening,” said Ciara, indicating the trees along the shoreline. A dim bluish light hovered there, bobbing slightly.
“And there’s another,” said Oisín, pointing. “How many kinds of willo’-the-wisps are there, Jewel?”
Jewel deliberated. Lilith and Eolacha had taught her well. “Of the seelie kind there’s Jacky Lantern and Joan-the-Wad. Of the unseelie kind there are hobby lanthorns, spunkies, hinky-punks, corpse candles, lantern men, and pinkets. Some of them are tricksy boggarts. Most are nothing but bogles, intent upon wickedness.”
The children’s feet swished through a lacework of maidenhair ferns. Detailed by the last stipples of daylight, the fine leaves resembled miniature flecks of pale green paint spattered through the mesh of a sieve.
“That makes six kinds of the wicked ones,” said Ciara somewhat fearfully, “and only two friendly ones.”
“I’m not afraid of any foolish marsh lights,” said Jewel scornfully. “They’re only predictable old wights with gas. Whenever my father is coming home along the Carter’s Way levee at night, he sees the lights of the corpse-candles dancing and hears their fake cries for help, but he just laughs and calls out an amiable good night. He’s never harmed.”
“Here’s fortune!” said Oisín suddenly. “A good red cap! A mite undersized, but it might fit me.”
They had indeed come upon such an object lying in the ferns. It was a cone-shaped stocking cap, rather lumpy at the pointed end, and Oisín had grinned broadly as soon as he set eyes on it.
“Don’t touch it!” said Ciara in worried tones.
“Hold your blather. I’m needing a new hat. The dogs chewed my old one after you spilled gravy on it.”
“’Twas not I who—”
“Leave it!” warned Jewel, as Oisín reached for the cap. But the boy snatched up the headgear and crammed it on his head, pulling it down over his ears as if to emphasize his defiance of his companions’ admonitions.
Instantly the cap began to twist and bulge in every direction. Oisín screamed. “There’s the biggest, angriest of all wasps inside this thing,” he yelled, “and ’tis killing me!” But despite all efforts he could not remove the cap from his head. He tugged and pulled and thumped at it, spinning about until he fell over from sheer dizziness. In the ferns he lay kicking, beating at his head and pulling his own hair while his two companions endeavored to wrench the offending millinery from his scalp. Eventually between the three of them they managed to drag it off.
In the space of a sparrow’s chirp, the red cap had somehow hopped out of their reach. Something zoomed out of it and fled away, carrying the cap with it and crying in a shrill voice, “You wiz told to let it alane!”
Then all the ferns rang with high-pitched giggles, and the children ran home as fast as their legs would take them.
“You’ll have found a grig’s cap,” said Eolacha as she administered unguent to the sore scalp of Oisín. “Grigs customarily dress in green and wear red stocking caps. I’ll warrant those merry folk were gambolling in the ferns when you three mortal children came by. Most of them would straightaway have put on their caps and vanished, as is their wont, but perhaps one was in such a panic at your approach that he pulled his cap too hard and tumbled into it as if ’twere a bag. He would have tried to remain motionless until you passed, but you spotted the cap.”
“And I wish I never had,” groaned the boy, rubbing his head.
“Most like the grig was as unhappy as you,” said Eolacha. “Most like he couldn’t breathe in there when you put the thing on your head.”
“We told him not to do it,” observed Jewel fervently. “Oh, poor Oisín!” She had taken up the patient’s hand and was stroki
ng it gently as though caressing some small animal.
“But it was funny when he did!” chuckled Ciara. The boy glared at his sister.
Not all the children’s encounters with wights led to such relatively innocuous outcomes, and conceivably, without the protection of her heritage, Jewel might not have reached adulthood.
Deep within the marsh rose a tall island called the Gordale. A deep, dark ravine clove the center of this island. The rock walls on either side, soaring to a height of sixty or seventy feet, stood only a few feet apart. The Gordale was popularly reckoned to be inhabited by a bargest. Children were forbidden to set foot in the place, and adults shunned it. Bargests were bogie beasts, sinister shape-shifters. They often took the form of large black dogs with long hair and huge eyes as brilliant as flame.
Late one afternoon, Jewel and her two young friends were boating near the Gordale, netting yabbies, which were plentiful in that region. As they scooped wriggling crustaceans from the water, they glanced often at the rearing walls of the island, stark against a leaden sky.
“What if the bargest comes out and gets us?” Ciara said. Believing herself secure, she enjoyed the frisson of fear that such prospects engendered.
The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 36