by Jack
‘I might see if I can keep a sip of mead down,’ I say in a whisper. ‘Long time since I ...’
‘Here,’ says Aisha, holding out the cup. ‘Tomorrow is a new day. A new dawn.’
I can barely speak, but I must. ‘This is a gift beyond measure,’ I say, taking the cup. She knows I’m not talking about the mead. ‘I’m not up to much just now, and I may never match it. But I’ll do my best.’
Raven no more, I came to rest
Then set forth on another quest.
What might I be before the end?
Brother, husband, father, friend!
My brother’s patience shielded me
And Aisha’s courage set me free.
“Twas hope that saw me come at last
Out of the shadows of the past.
As I take up my harp again
I do not sing of death and pain.
In my song, love and courage rise.
These are the gifts that make us wise.
* * * *
Afterword
‘’Twixt Firelight and Water’ ties in with my Sevenwaters series, of which the fifth novel, Seer of Sevenwaters, will be published in December 2010. Thanks to the remarkable longevity of the Tuatha de Danann, the story of Conri and Ciarán spans almost the entire time frame of the Sevenwaters books, which cover three generations of the (human) family. Two of the most commonly asked questions about the series are: What exactly is Fiacha? and: What happened to Padriac? This story answers both those questions. I was finishing “Twixt Firelight and Water’ when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The story’s triumphant happy ending reflects my vow to stay positive in the face of challenge. It’s a tale brimful with courage, hope and love. The story’s title comes from a folk song, ‘The Tinkerman’s Daughter’, written by Mickey McConnell.
— Juliet Marillier
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* * * *
Isobelle Carmody is an award-winning speculative fiction author, with many books and short stories to her credit She won a Golden Aurealis for Best Overall Novel for her book Alyzon Whitestar and an Aurealis award for Best Short Story for ‘Green Monkey Dreams’ from the short story collection of the same name. She received a White Raven and an Aurealis award for her book Greylands. She won the peace price and was joint winner of the CBC children’s book of the year for older readers for The Gathering and she was shortlisted for both Obernewtyn and The Farseekers in her Obernewtyn series. She won the NSW Premiers prize for Angel Fever, a talking book of the year award for Scatterlings and an industry design award for Little Fur and A Fox called Sorrow, both of which she illustrated. She is currently working on the last book in the Obernewtyn series, The Sending. She lives with her daughter Adelaide and her partner Jan, who is a Jazz musician and poet, between their homes in Prague in Eastern Europe and on the Great Ocean Road in Australia.
* * * *
The Dark Road:
An Obernewtyn Story
Isobelle Carmody
Hannah had walked so many days that it felt as if all else had been a dream, and yet she saw no end. The road stretched before her, dark as had been foretold, though not in any way she had imagined, and all around it sand flowed away to the horizon in every direction. Sometimes it covered the road in a pale grainy tide, or mounded up over it in great mute stubborn dunes, so that keeping to it was not always simple. She must sweep the sand off it with a rough broom she had made up for that purpose out of her store of foraged wood, or burrow through sand hills, for while the road went straight for days at a time, it had three times turned inexplicably as if whoever made it had suddenly changed their mind about where it ought to go. Hard to imagine the mind that had commanded the making of such an indelible thing, being uncertain of its destination.
But the road was the product of a world dead and gone. The desert might not even have existed when it was made and the rare sudden turns might once have served some purpose that time had erased. There was a chilly thought, for it might easily be that the road would come to nothing. Certainly nothing seemed more likely than something, let alone a city.
Yet what else was she to do but go on? She had run out of water a day past, and food three days before that. If she turned back, she would not survive the journey without food or water. Nor would she survive much longer going forward without them.
As well as being hungry and thirsty, she was very weary and one of her knees had begun to ache in an ominous way. That was old age for you. Things wore out. She would have liked to stop, but dusk was the goal she had set herself and it was only middling afternoon.
You can always go on longer than you think you can.
That had been one of Mellow’s sayings and it came to her now in his slow, soft voice. It was the first thing he’d said to her. She’d thought herself footsore back then when they had met on another road, long ago, though in truth she had been more heartsore than anything else. She had felt herself to be old then and to have walked far, though she had only been twenty-four and walked a mere sevenday or so and some of the time she had ridden in carts.
Mellow had come behind her, herding some goats up the road; coddling them along before him with soft taps of his stick. He had walked so quietly that when the goats had surged soft and warm and musky around Hannah, just as she slowed to a weary stop, she had thought them wild. ‘Hello goats, I think I have to stop,’ she said, made a bit stupid from the hot sun and the long walk.
‘A body can always go on a bit further than they think,’ their master had told her kindly as he stepped around her. ‘You might stop here, only there is a place up ahead where there is a stream. I’ll water the goats and then make a fire and tea there. You’re welcome to join us.’
She was too weary to be haughty, and besides she felt foolish having been caught talking to his goats. The young herder did not press her to accept his offer, which would have put her back up and made her wary. He just nodded and went on in his slow quiet way, walking heavy and gentle at the same time like one of those greathorses they bred in Murmroth.
She’d had no intention of stopping. She was still angry-hearted at the way Evander had ordered her away, and sorrowful at the things his mother had said to her, for they had been too much of duty and the future as her mother’s words had always been. But most of all she was aching because of her mother’s letter burning a hole in her pocket. Too many contrary things to feel, to leave room for fending off the amorous advances of a stranger.
Almost an hour on, she found Mellow sitting over a nice little fire between the road and a stream. The smell of tea and bread toasting floated to the road and crooked an inviting finger at her. Stomach rumbling, she went over the damp tufty grass. He told her his name and asked hers, then matter of factly he asked if she’d a mug of her own or would share his. So she got out her blue mug. He took it from her hand.
‘It’s a pretty thing,’ he murmured, admiring the glaze pattern with his fingers before filling the mug with tea. She blushed with pleasure, for while she’d never mastered the sculptor’s hammer or chisel, nor been over much of a potter, her glazes and designwork had been a matter of pride.
Later, he told her he’d guessed it was her work by the way she held it. He said little and saw a lot, Mellow. He was the utter opposite of handsome, dark-haired, copper-skinned Evander with his unexpected two-coloured eyes and gloomy, complex moods. Mellow had soft brown floppy hair, shy, watchful, smiling eyes and a quiet gentleness that had won her friendship. But it was his kindness that won her heart, all the more because it did not stop at humans. He was kind to beasts in general, though he had a special fondness for goats, which many farmers sneered at keeping, calling them wayward and difficult.
After the tea and a bit of inconsequential talk, they’d put out the fire and gone on walking slowly up the road together. Mellow said very little, but his company was soothing and later that night when he stopped to make camp, she accepted his invitation to stop as well, for he was right when he spoke of the dangers of the road to lon
e travellers. Nevertheless she had stayed sitting up stiffly by the fire, saying she would not sleep. Mellow did not try to reassure her, but only said goodnight and wrapped himself peacefully in his blanket, telling her there was no need to set a watch as the goats would let him know if any thing came near, human or beast. He closed his eyes and soon snored softly. She watched his eyelids twitching after a while, and wondered what he dreamed.
Near morning, she called herself a fool and lay down and slept too, though not deeply and not well. When he woke her, they ate some porridge she made and went naturally on together. Three days later they reached the turnoff to Arandelft. Mellow said he must go that way and asked if she would want to come with him. He was visiting his brother’s farm to drop two of the goats. He’d stay a night and be up to Guanette village just beyond the mountains by the next night. His own place was between Guanette and the Darthnor mine. In those days there was no Darthnor village and the miners camped out or went home to lodgings in Guanette.
But Hannah’s mother had written of Guanette village and of the strange birds for which the village was named, and hearing it was just beyond the range of mountains ahead, she was eager to get there and so refused his offer. They’d taken a friendly leave of one another and she had gone on alone, finding to her surprise that she missed the farmer’s unassuming companionship.
A few weeks later, she’d seen him in Guanette. She had taken work at an orchard, fruit picking, and had come to town with some of the other women to the Moon Fair. His face had lit up at the sight of her but there was no surprise in his expression. This told her that he had known she was there, which meant he had asked after her. The realisation made her blush but it was dark and he only asked if she had heard any news of her mother.
‘She lived here for a while,’ Hannah told him, grief making her curt, for she had truly thought to find her mother here. ‘She was the beekeeper at Tarry’s farm.’
‘The old woman they called the moonwatcher,’ Mellow said, eyes widening a little. ‘I saw her a few times when I was a boy and roaming, She had a way with bees. You could have sworn they did as she bid them.’
‘I was told that she left when she was ill,’ Hannah told him. ‘They would have kept her on but she would not stay when she could not do the work. She said the old ought to take themselves off like beasts do when they are near to dying. She was last seen heading up to the high mountains.’
‘I can ask about for you,’ Mellow offered gently. ‘See if anyone took her in.’
‘She would not have let them,’ Hannah said.
Mellow let it go at that, and invited her to have some mead and pie with him. He had not offered meat from the spit because he remembered she did not eat it. One thing led to another and when the picking season ended, she went to work on Mellow Farm where there was a wheel and a kiln and a few tools left over from when there had been a pottery. It was a small farm but well cared for, and the beasts and men and women that worked there were all contented. Hannah found contentment among them, living out the simple rhythms and hard rewarding work of farm life. By the end of wintertime, she had replaced all of the rough pottery in the household and there was a little over to sell at the Moonfair so that she could buy cloth for a dress and a few bits and pieces she needed.
At the fair, she sold the pots and then walked with Mellow to see what was on offer. She spotted a cat and its kittens in the back of a Travelling Jack’s wagon and slipped around into the shadows to croon at the pretty things. Mellow reached out and petted her hair as if he couldn’t stop himself. And when she set down the kitten she was holding and turned to look at him they were eye to eye for she was tall. He was red and she felt her own cheeks hot, and that made her smile. Seeing it snipped some thread holding him back and with a soft sigh, he gathered her into his arms and kissed her tenderly, then with gathering hunger, until she found herself winding her own arms about his neck.
By the end of spring he asked her to bond. They did not speak of wiving or wedding in the Land. Love had been an unexpected gift, for she’d never seen herself as lovable. The only one who had loved her, other than Cassandra and her mother, who had both gone away, had been Evander, and his love had more to do with wanting what he could not have. He always wanted things that were out of reach, ever since he was a baby. But Mellow was how she had imagined her father might have been. All kind humility and gentleness; never seeing his own worth.
In time Hannah had given birth to the two daughters her mother had foreseen for her. Bonny and sweet they had been and all three of them had wept together when Mellow died of a fever after rescuing a goat from a half frozen bog in the bitter wintertime.
‘Those goats,’ Nell laughed through her tears. ‘I always said he loved them to death.’
Hannah had been tempted to read the rest of her mother’s letter then, but she resisted and in time both girls were wed, Nell to a farmer’s younger son, Dace, who’d come to work Mellow farm after its master died, and Ivory to a clever dandy of a scriber from Arandelft, with a little house not too far from Mellow’s brother’s farm. Then came the first grandchild, Daisy. Looking at her, red and wrinkled and fresh as her mother had been before her, Hannah had a sudden memory of seeing her own mother gazing up at a moon hanging full and ripe over a red desert. She had not known she had developed the habit of gazing at the moon herself until Nell, seeing her looking up one night asked, ‘Will you go up into the mountains when you are old, like grandmama did?’ Nell had only been seven at the time, and a solemn and acceptant child, unlike pretty, demanding Ivory.
‘Not while you and your sister need me,’ Hannah had answered her solemnly.
* * * *
In the years before Mellow died, Evander came several times to the farm. The first time, he had searched her out to apologise for the way they had parted. He told her that his mother had been taken by Gadfian pirates as she walked along the shore one night not long after Hannah left. He was now leader of the Twentyfamilies. He was only twenty-one but the weight of the responsibility had steadied him and ground the sharp edges of his arrogance. His apology had been sincere and she had liked the earnestness with which he swore to do all his mother had asked of him. He told her somewhat wearily that although the Councilmen had been forced to honour the safe passage agreement his mother had wrung from them for the sake of a rich annual tithe, they had contrived to turn it into a ban on gypsies having any permanent home.
‘In the end it matters not,’ he had said. ‘We are looked upon with doubt and distrust by other folk.’
‘What of Stonehill and all your mother’s sculptings?’ Hannah had asked, for Cassandra had possessed a true and rare gift.
‘Many of the sculptures are still there simply because they would be near impossible to move safely, but no one lives in the buildings, for I have ensured that the place has an uncanny air. That stopped the treacherous Councilmen profiting from their perfidy. We call there often enough in our wanderings to tend the stone garden.’
‘Do you know why your mother bargained so hard to turn you all into homeless gypsies?’ Hannah had asked. It was a thing she had never understood.
Evander had given her a long look before telling her, with his new seriousness, that he did know, but could not explain it to her since it was connected to promises her mother had exacted of his when they were in the Red Land, before he was born. He was permitted to tell no one but the son or daughter that would one day take his place as Director of the Twentyfamilies gypsies. That hurt. Perhaps he saw it, for he told her he was to take a wife that summer, since he must have an heir. She had seen then that his feelings for her had not changed. She told him quietly that children were a great comfort in life. She had Nell then, a quiet babe in arms.
‘Your Mellow is a good man,’ Evander said, when they were walking back to the house.
Hannah knew he saw that in the way he had always had of seeing those sorts of things, but she only said, smiling to take the sting out of it, that she did not need telling.
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‘Do you mind if I call in from time to time?’ he had asked, but it was Mellow he looked at as they walked him to their front gate.
‘Some of my neighbours say gypsying folk need watching, but you are Hannah’s friend and as she tells it, your mother mothered her, so you come when you like. Pasture here in winter if it pleases you.’
‘That’s kind. We might,’ Evander had said.
‘He loves you,’ Mellow murmured that night.
‘Yes,’ Hannah said. ‘And I love you.’
* * * *
That had been all that needed saying. They had always spoken the truth to one another and where something could not be said, nothing was said and that was all right, too.
* * * *
Hannah had a sudden stabbing sorrow for the loss of such a man, and yet they had had a good long life together and he had died in his bed with his women weeping about him and his workers sorrowing honestly for him. The beasts had lowed and howled, too, though that was because of Hannah’s grieving, which they felt, save maybe for the goats that had loved him.
Evander had come back several years running after that first visit, though his troop, as they now called themselves, never did winter. Then one day Evander’s woman came riding up, red-eyed and stormy with sorrow, a little boy with two-coloured eyes like Evander’s riding behind her. Both were as dark-skinned as Cassandra and her son and many of those who had made that first journey with them. She told Hannah that Evander had died after a fall from a horse. He had been taken on his own command to be buried on Stonehill, but his last wish had been for her to be told of his passing.