Blindsighted Wanderer

by E. Hibbs

  He held a hand to his forehead. It was aching terribly, and he vaguely remembered the meodu that he had drunk at the Fotáni inn. He let out a small groan. A hangover was something that he definitely didn’t need. Then he vaguely remembered the shimmering Lake-creature that he had saved... had she been real at all?

  Then he realised that the surroundings were different. He was no longer in the pit, but a cave.

  “How in God’s name...?” he muttered.

  “I must say, for a human, you sleep deep enough to rival an Asræ.”

  Raphael spun around and suddenly noticed her – Merrin – standing at the mouth of the cave – where his eyes had been only seconds before. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his head, and felt a little better realising that she was real.

  As she had the day before, she stared at him coolly. Raphael frowned and got to his feet.

  “Did you carry me here?” he asked in disbelief.

  She nodded. “I am stronger than I might appear to you.”

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  Merrin cast her eyes to the sky fleetingly. “Since midday, I should think,” she said, and then her voice took on a sarcastic sharpness. “I marvel at your ideas of helping me, as you so eloquently put it: slumbering on whilst the sun was overhead.”

  Raphael blushed and pressed his lips together anxiously. “I am sorry.”

  She studied him in silence for a long moment, then turned her head away and gazed out through the trees. Raphael followed her line of sight, and realised what she was looking at.

  Barely ten paces away lay the shores of the fabled great Lake, that he had long ago told Silas to never go near. Its surface rippled and shone, as though every tiny droplet, fused with billions of others in its depths, held its own light. The leaves seemed edged with silver: like a frost of moonlight, and not too far away, on a small shore, tiny pebbles of charcoal-coloured stone glistened with the water lapping up around them.

  He slowly approached the mouth, giving Merrin a wide berth so as not to infuriate her.

  “It’s beautiful,” he breathed, and caught Merrin glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

  “Indeed,” she said stiffly.

  She laid her head gently against the rocky rim of the cave. A faint wind blew down and lifted her hair, raising its long green strands to billow around her face. As they cleared her back and shoulders, the full length of her long fin was revealed, jutting out of the shimmering gossamer fabric of her dress. It ran from the base of her skull right down to the small of her back.

  Raphael watched as the celestial light reflected off her smooth skin like diamonds, and the ever-shifting white patterns ran over her limbs; hands; feet; cheeks. Her eyes seemed like stars as they gazed out across the watery expanse: he counted sixteen separate shimmers in their purple depths. The longing on her face was undeniable.

  “Why do you not return?” he asked her. “It is night now; the sun has gone. You’re safe.”

  Merrin went very still. “And yet you remain.”

  When Raphael didn’t reply, she sighed and carried on.

  “I cannot return,” she told him. “Not for another three days.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I am above the Surface against my will. It is only under this next full moon that I may go back to the Lake.”

  Raphael nodded, and he noticed Merrin watching him with a sideways look, as though she was waiting; daring him to ask how she had come to be here. But he didn’t, and instead inquired about the small fleet of boats that he had seen on the grey-shingled beach.

  The wind dropped and Merrin’s hair settled back down over her chest. “You ask a lot of questions,” she said. “They were made before the Wall. Humans once used them to fish in the Lake. There were fewer of them then – humans – so it did not harm Her. We let them. Or, my Father did: the late King Zephyr. To save cutting down the trees over and over again to make more, we sealed all of the vessels with our magic. It made them impervious to the damage and decay that the years would bring.”

  Raphael kept his eyes on her. “You speak as though you remember this time for yourself.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him. Her eyes were still sharp, but they were not like knives as they had been.

  “That is because I do,” she said. “And a lot more besides that. But enough of this! Why have you stayed here? You need not watch over me any longer, and my Oath to you is well fulfilled. The longer you remain, then the harder it shall be to find your brother, and that is why you dared cross the Wall in the first place, am I correct?”

  She didn’t wait for a reply before swallowing hard and turning to him. Her face had relaxed slightly.

  “I want to thank you.” Her voice was rigid, but underneath the surface he could tell that she meant it. “I was very rude last day, and I apologise for it. But you must understand that I... I...”

  “Don’t like trespassers?” Raphael finished, with the hint of a smile playing on his lips.

  What looked like a thousand potential answers snapped across Merrin’s face, but in the end, she nodded. “Exactly.”

  Raphael sighed and scratched the back of his neck. Merrin’s amethyst eyes threw him a glance up and down, and then she briskly circled away. He kept his own eyes on her.

  “I have never heard any being speak so fluidly as thee,” he told her.

  Merrin raised a hand, resting it gently on the stone of the cave mouth. “It comes from millennia,” she replied simply.

  Raphael took a step closer. His curiosity felt like a cup overflowing inside him. “How many years old are ye?”

  She looked back at him. “Many more than you.”

  He couldn’t help but stare. Despite her definite differences from any human, her form was young and her face faultless: everything about her at first glance spoke of youth. But the more he looked at her, the more he saw. Her eyes were deep and immeasurably wise, as though they should belong to the oldest woman.

  “But you appear so young,” was all he could think of, and even as he said it, he realised how ludicrous he sounded.

  Merrin raised one eyebrow and her fin waved gently. “Appearance is deceptive,” she replied, a hint of bitterness in her tone. “We appear the same age, give or take one year, two perhaps. But I remember the time when the first ancestors of all humans who now dwell in the Valley managed to struggle through the mountains and happen across this place. That was over a thousand years ago.”

  Raphael had never known exactly when their forefathers had come to the Elitland – the history stretching that far back was long forgotten by all of the Valley-folk. Even the exact time of the building of the Wall was becoming blurred to some, and losing itself in the meanders of time. Shock mingled with awe on his face.

  “A thousand years...?” he repeated, aghast.

  “Yes,” nodded Merrin. “And yet I was only half the age I am now.”

  Raphael shook his head in amazement, opening and closing his mouth as he struggled to find something to say in reply. Eventually, all he managed was, “By God. That is incredible!”

  “What is incredible?” she asked. Her eyes had not strayed from him.

  “Why, how your kind can survive for such a time!” Raphael said. “Your typical man may count himself lucky if he lives to be forty!”

  A strange look came over Merrin’s face, as though she was thinking of something else, and singling him out in it. But she didn’t say anything, and after a few moments it melted away, back to her cool neutral gaze.

  “My kind live;” she said quietly, “just as anything else. Time passes no faster for us. As we appear to you, to have so much life; in contrast, to us you appear to possess so little. That is... one of the reasons... why relationships between us have been...” she swallowed, “strained.”

  Raphael frowned as she spoke. It sounded almost as though she was taking her answers and then forcing them to fit around what he was saying.

  By this time, he had come
to stand very close to her, and his eyes had glazed over. He felt his heart beating heavily, pulse in his ears. He couldn’t tear himself away from this amazing, gracious, striking being before him.

  “God,” he whispered, barely aware of what he was saying, “you are beautiful, Merrin.”

  Her face suddenly flamed, and the expression of rage that had clouded her features when they had first spoken returned in an instant. She turned her back on him, and her webbed fingers clutched at the cave wall so tightly that Raphael thought he heard the stone crack.

  “Do not say that,” she growled.

  Despite everything his common sense screamed at him to not do, he laid a hand on her shoulder. Beneath his fingers, her muscles tensed alarmingly.

  “But you are,” he insisted. “I would not lie to you.”

  “Lies mean nothing to me.”

  He immediately heard something else under her words: something that he had never sensed in her before. Pain. Deep, gut-wrenching, heart-tearing pain; of a kind he couldn’t name or comprehend. It shocked him so much, to come from one as beautiful and strong and fierce as she, that he spoke.

  “Merrin, what happened to you?”

  There was an agonisingly long silence, and Raphael didn’t dare move or say anything more. She had gone unbelievably quiet, and he couldn’t even hear her breathing. Her fin was flickering down its whole length in tiny agitated quivers, moving so fast that he barely made out the individual movements.

  When he could hardly bear it any longer, she let out a hiss saturated with rage and agony, and then ran off. She moved as lithely as a deer, sprinting over the ground and then onto the Lake. Raphael watched in wonder, light springing up around her feet as she sped across the surface.

  He instantly decided it best not to try to follow. Merrin seemed incredibly distressed, and he smacked his forehead hard with his hand.

  “Stupid!” he growled to himself, and leant back against the cave wall. He pressed his lips together agitatedly.

  What was wrong with him? For years, he’d seen girls throwing him hopeful glances; batting their eyelids and giggling when he decided to return them the occasional well-meant wink. And now it seemed like he was doing the same thing as them, unable to take his eyes off her; saying things that he would never say!

  Now that she was gone, he seemed to be returning to his senses a little. The effects of the meodu were beginning to wear off, and although he’d always been quite good at recovering from drink, he had never been more grateful for such a talent.

  He had saved her, fair enough. To repay him, she had held herself to an Oath. Their dealings were done.

  There is no more reason to stay, he told himself. Night is settling in. By the time you get to the Wall again, everyone shall be asleep and you may cross it unseen. Silas is not here. She told you that. And she would know if he was, and would have told you. There is no place for you here, Raphael.

  Besides, whatever had come over him had been strange, but what place could it have? She was a Princess! He was just a poor farm boy, blindly searching for his silent brother. She was a being of the Lake, who had lived for thousands of years and would see many more still. She had a destiny: a country, down there in the dark depths. The lives of men would mean little to any of her kind. And from the way she acted, they meant very little to her indeed.

  Raphael sighed deeply, lost in confusion, and left the cave. He made his way down towards the lapping Lakeshore, but tripped on a root and sprawled onto his front with a startled yelp. He landed partly in a clump of reeds at the water’s edge, sending several frogs leaping in all directions, croaking in alarm. The reeds nodded their fat brown heads at him as he clambered onto all fours, exclaiming as he felt that the front of his tunic was now soaked.

  He peeled it over his head and wrung it out, watching ripples spread out across the shallows as droplets fell from the material. Then he hung it over a low branch nearby to air – despite the lack of cloud overhead, it was a warm night, and the water would be gone before long. So he sat back on his heels and stared out across the Lake.

  It seemed to possess its own immense power; something utterly magical that nothing on the other side of the Wall could match. It hung in the air like the lightest gas, giving everything its own shimmering light and making every single detail ten times sharper. The creatures who called this place home joined their voices in an eerie chorus: wader birds, frogs, shell ducks and mallards. Jays and nyhtegales sung out their melodies from the boughs overhead. A pair of swans glided effortlessly across the surface between the tussocks, the stars glistening in their wake. Overhead, the waxing moon shone down over all.

  He was completely awestruck. He remembered Abraham and Nalina telling him about how his forefather, Adrian, had dealings in the west. How the demons had struck him down with curses shortly before the Wall was built – built to protect everyone else from their wrath. But now that Raphael saw the forbidden place with his own two eyes, and thought of Merrin, he shook his head in disgrace.

  Evertodomus? Home of the demons? How could anything so beautiful be demonic? How could respect turn to fear in such a way?

  Something glinted next to him, and caught his eye. He glanced down, and blinked in surprise, grasping it and holding it up before him. It was the small bluish stone with the hole worn through the middle. It must have fallen loose from his tunic when he had taken it off.

  He licked his lips, and ran his fingers thoughtfully through his hair. He knew he had to find Silas. It had been such a long time now. When he finally found him, then he would hold him tight and be so thankful; the initial annoyance he had felt towards the wordless disappearance was long gone.

  He suddenly realised just how much he missed him. He loved all of his siblings, and Araena held the special place in his heart that would forever be shared with Julian – but Silas was the one who had always been there. He remembered Mekina, Selena and Uriel being born, but not Silas. For as long as both of them could remember, it had been the two of them; so different and yet so close, hardly ever arguing, finishing each other’s sentences, and having the relationship surely all brothers would hope for.

  His fingers closed around the stone. He would find Silas. But thinking of the Fotánis, and Julian, and that shadowy figure of Adrian Atégo, had triggered a new want in his mind. He had promised Merrin that once he left, he would not return, and he was a man of his word. So before she could hold him to it, he had to see her again.

  The night-music swelled up around him once more, and Raphael swallowed to loosen his throat before joining in. It felt like an age since he had sung, and his own voice lifted into the air.

  “Sweet loved-one, I pray thee,

  For one loving speech;

  While I live in this wide world

  None other will I seek.

  With thy love, my sweet beloved,

  My bliss though mightest increase;

  A sweet kiss of thy mouth

  Might be my cure.”

  When he had finished, Raphael glanced down at a sudden movement, and was alarmed to see two purple eyes watching him from the Lake.

  He leapt away in fright, collapsing onto his back. The Asræ chuckled – a sound like bells – and stepped clean through, standing on the water. Light emanated from beneath his feet and spread out like ripples. Raphael stared.

  “A melody well sung, young man,” congratulated the Asræ.

  Like Merrin, he was tall and slender, but powerful; with blue-green skin that shimmered with light. A long tunic-like garment, of the same white fabric that she wore, hung down to his knees in flowing folds. Emerald hair stretched to the bottom of his shoulder-blades, waving in the breeze. He had a physical appearance that Raphael would have compared to a human in their early twenties, so he knew immediately that this Asræ was several centuries older than the Princess.

  “Tell me, please,” he said, “what is it called?”

  Raphael swallowed, unable to tear his eyes away. “When the Nyhtegale Sings.”
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  The Asræ nodded. “How very appropriate! And one I have never heard before, I dare say!”

  He approached Raphael gracefully, eyes shining. Twenty-three sparkles burned from within them. His face was somewhat softer than Merrin’s, and the way he held his lips was as though the gesture that they knew most commonly was a smile.

  “A human in Zandor,” he remarked. “A rare sight indeed. I wondered if they would ever dare to come back.”

  “I have come only to seek my brother,” Raphael replied quickly. “I mean ye no harm at all, I swear to God.”

  “Now, now, there is no need to fear me!” the Asræ said. “What is your name, young man?”

  “Raphael.”

  “Then, Raphael, my name is Penro: Head Advisor to the Monarchy. Good night to you.”

  Raphael tentatively pushed himself back to a sitting position, and then rose to his feet – nowhere near as fluidly as the Asræ ever moved. Penro watched him with a slightly amused expression.

  “Merry meet to ye,” Raphael returned, unable to mask his amazement. Then he realised that this Asræ did not wear any woven gauntlets around his wrists.

  Penro suddenly took a small step closer. “Ah,” he said, noticing where Raphael had looked. “So you are the one who saved Her Highness’ life last morn. I thought it might be you – after two hundred years, two humans coming to the Lake is unusual enough, but two together... now that is unlikely in the highest sense.”

  Raphael frowned. “You knew I had helped her?”

  “Why, of course,” replied Penro. “I was the last to speak to her before she ran to escape the sun. I must honestly thank you, then. You do not realise what a boon you have done all Asræ.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “She is our future Queen. In mere nights, she shall ascend to the throne of Zandor. And she is the only remaining member of the reigning bloodline of the Royal Family of the Lake. She has no siblings or parents left; only cousins and one uncle, who are unrelated to the late great King and so cannot rule, anyways. Now do you understand what a great deed you have done?”