Shapeshifter

by Holly Bennett

  SHAPESHIFTER

  HOLLY BENNETT

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2010 Holly Bennett

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

  any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

  recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be

  invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Bennett, Holly, 1957-

  Shapeshifter / written by Holly Bennett.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-158-6

  I. Title.

  PS8603.E5595S53 2010 jC813'.6 C2009-907264-5

  First published in the United States, 2010

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2009942219

  Summary: In order to escape the sorcerer who wants to control her gift of song,

  Sive must transform herself into a deer, leave the Otherworld and find refuge in Eire,

  the land of mortals.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book

  on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing

  programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through

  the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British

  Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover artwork by Juliana Kolesova

  Cover design by Teresa Bubela

  Text design and typesetting by Nadja Penaluna

  Author photo by Mark Peter Drolet

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, STN. B

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  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

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  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Printed on 100% PCW recycled paper.

  13 12 11 10 • 4 3 2 1

  To my mom, who taught me that diving into a good book

  is one of life’s great pleasures.

  CONTENTS

  Map

  Preface

  Part I: Sive

  Part II: The Dark Man

  Part III: Oisin

  Pronunciation Guide

  The Legend of Sive

  PREFACE

  Those of you who have read The Warrior’s Daughter will already know about my love affair with Irish mythology. But for the newcomers among you, here’s a bit of background:

  Two thousand years ago, Ireland was inhabited by the Iron-Age Celts. Much of what we know of their lives and beliefs comes to us through the wonderful stories that somehow survived in oral form through many, many generations until finally they were written down by early Christian monks (who were supposed to be copying out the Bible).

  Full of adventure, tragedy, magic and raw human emotion, these stories seem to me just begging to be brought alive for a modern audience. But since I am so often drawn to the secondary characters—the ones you don’t hear so much about—rather than the heroes, and since I love making up stories rather than just retelling them, my approach has been to imagine an “untold tale” that lies behind the legend.

  Shapeshifter is the story of Sive, a young woman from a magical realm who was the hero Finn mac Cumhail’s first wife. At first I thought it was a story about fear and lost love. But as I got to know Sive better, I realized that it is really a story about courage, and about love’s transformative power. Like any good character, there is more to her than first meets the eye.

  For curious readers, I have included a version of the ancient legend of Sive on page 242.

  The year Sive became a woman, two things happened that would shape the course of her life:

  She found her animal form.

  And the dark druid, Far Doirche, fixed his eye upon her.

  PART I

  SIVE

  ONE

  She woke in the early dawn, the light still only a promise in the dissolving darkness. The woods called to her.

  Sive had never been an early riser. In the otherworld land of Tir na nOg, there is no need to cut short the sweet ease of sleep. But this summer, the hush before sunrise filled her with expectancy. She loved to watch the world wake up, to see the leaves glow golden in the sun’s first rays. She left her warm bed, slipped out of the sleeping house and took the path to the forest.

  By the time the sun spilled its bright warmth over the world, she was sitting in her favorite spot, a fallen log coated with moss as soft and deep as her mother’s silk cushions. It rested at the edge of a dark spring-fed pool. Soon, when the sun was higher and the breeze came up, the pool’s surface would dance with ripples and light. Now it lay still and smooth as polished copper. Many animals and birds came to drink at the pool, but Sive was no longer elated when they appeared, or disappointed when they did not. She was content just to sit and watch the water and breathe the fragrant air.

  SHE HAD ROAMED THESE woods for years, ever since she had first told her father about the longing in her heart. To take on the form of a creature wholly different, to be utterly changed and yet yourself—this, she thought, was a true marvel.

  “How is it done?” she had asked, and then added in an eager rush, “And don’t be saying I’m too young to understand. I’ve lost my first two milk teeth, and that means I’m no longer a baby.” Triumphantly, she pulled down her bottom lip as proof.

  Derg peered at the pink, gummy gap and nodded solemnly. “So you have, indeed. Then I will tell you the truth: you won’t find your shape until you grow up, Sive. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do the work that comes before.”

  “What work is that?”

  “You must spend time in the fields and the forests, with the creatures there. Watch them, listen to them. Learn to understand them.”

  As he talked, Derg pulled his young daughter onto his knee and played with the copper-gold waves that already reached halfway down her back.

  “To become an animal, you must have a sense of kinship with the wild creatures,” he explained. “Shapeshifting begins with the ability to place your heart and mind within an animal’s skin. Only then will the skin itself take shape.”

  Sive pondered this and then squirmed around to face her father. Her lovely face was intent.

  “How do you choose which animal to become?”

  Her father laughed.

  “You don’t, daughter. Most of us have but one animal form; we become the animal most like our inner spirit. It’s true that the greatest shapeshifters can take on the form of several beasts, but always there is something about each animal that speaks to the essence of the person. We cannot become what is foreign to our nature.”

  “What is your animal, then?”

  Derg hesitated. Derg Dianscothach—Derg of the Quick Speech—was not a man of great power or ancestry, but his keen eye, quick understanding and artful tongue had earned him a place as the king’s counselor, messenger and, sometimes, spy. It would not do for his animal form to become common knowledge.

  “It is secret,” he said finally. “Can I rely on you to keep it safe?” And with Sive’s solemn nod, he bent and whispered into her ear.

  AT FIRST HER FATHER went with her to the woods. He taught her how to mark her path to keep from losing her way and which boggy, dangerous places to avoid. When he was convinced Sive could wander safely, he gave her leave to go alone—despite her mother’s objections. But it did not take her long to notice the magpie that flitted from tree to tree, seemingly
paying no mind but never far from sight. She complained about the way Derg watched over her, but she felt safer for it too.

  She was so tense and eager on those first excursions that her very presence frightened the beasts away. She would strain her eyes and ears and nearly tremble with alertness and rarely saw more than a tomtit. Any unsuspecting deer or otter that did come into view would bolt the second it noticed her presence. “Be easy, Sive,” her father would advise. “Be one of them. You would not get all excited if your sister walked into the room.”

  Perhaps not, she thought. But I would not be easy either.

  Sive’s half-sister Daireann was not the pleasant companion Derg saw. He thought it was kindness that prompted the young woman, on her rare visits from her father’s home, to take the time to play and talk with a little girl. But Daireann was a subtle tormentor, one with a need to feel grand by making others—even children—feel small. Sive had learned to be on her guard, to wait for her sister’s honeyed sting.

  There was a game they played. “If I were an animal, what would I be?” Daireann would ask, and Sive would try to think of something clever and beautiful for her sister: a fox, a champion’s horse, a falcon. But although her sister preened at the flattery, it did not soften her tongue.

  “Daireann says I will be a rabbit,” Sive told her father now. “Or a mouse.”

  “Does she indeed?” Derg considered this apparent insult.

  “Perhaps she says this because you are quiet and small.” He smiled at his daughter and shook his head. “But I believe she is wrong. You do have a gentle nature, something timid, perhaps, at times. But you are also strong and beautiful. Courageous too, at need.”

  Sive glowed at his words. She had known better than to argue with Daireann, but she knew her father was right. She knew, too, what animal called to her above all others.

  If it were given to her to change shape, she would become a deer.

  ON THAT STILL MORNING, Sive was alone. Her father had not flown with her since the winter, for Sive’s mooncycles had begun and Derg knew her first change would not be far behind. That was a thing requiring solitude and not for another’s eyes to witness.

  She was not even thinking of shapeshifting. She simply rested in the peaceful stillness that many hours in the woods had taught her. It was this peace, she had learned, that allowed the creatures about her to relax in her presence and go about their business right under her nose. She let the swell of early birdsong fill her, let her eyes be lulled by the gentle motion of the leaves floating on the pool.

  The underbrush trembled, and a red doe stepped into the clearing. She froze, lifting her black nose to check Sive’s scent. Sive remained still, feeling the doe’s caution and her curiosity, feeling her thirst. After a long moment, the deer picked her way down the muddy slope to the pool. And then—Sive could not keep her heart from tripping faster in a rush of delight—a young fawn, dappled with its white baby spots, came after its mam. All spindly legs and wide brown eyes, he braced himself on the bank beside his mother and lowered his muzzle to the water, whiffling uncertainly at its cold touch.

  It was a moment of pure magic, watching that fawn learn to drink. Sive was filled with joy, as though it were her own baby’s clever trick, as he stopped trying to suckle at the pool and instead lapped slowly with his tongue.

  The fawn looked up from his drink, water streaming from his muzzle, and noticed Sive for the first time. It was comical how he started and stared. His mam startled, too, at his movement, and Sive thought they would both fly off, but after a quick check of the wind, the doe went back to her drink. Reassured, the fawn gazed at the girl and then with a friendly little tail flick began to skirt the pond toward her. He was unafraid, as though ambling over to meet one of his mam’s herd mates. Sive was enchanted and then suddenly alarmed.

  If a fawn so young became familiar with her shape and scent, he might lose the fear of men that was his only defense against the hunters and their dogs. She saw him, confused and frightened, surrounded by the snarling hounds, and her heart twisted. It was her baby, her own, crying out as the sharp teeth sank into his neck.

  Before she could jump to her feet and scare him off, before her intention to do so had fully formed, the change took her. The world rippled and blurred in her vision. Her body was lost to her in such an utterly strange gust of streaming sensation, blood and bone and flesh all swept into hurtling flux, that she could not think of it as her own. She was formless, and then she was sucked into the alien shape like molten metal flowing into a mould.

  The fawn hesitated, one tiny hoof raised, as the stranger seemed to waver and grow dim. Then the figure came clear, and he could both smell and see her properly: a nearly grown fawn, a doe. He bucked a bit, playfully, and frisked over to her side.

  Sive Remembers

  I didn’t dare move, my four legs as uncertain and untried as a newborn’s. I thought my eyes had been injured in the change, for I had never dreamed the world could look so different. The lush, deep greens were gone, replaced by a yellow-brown wash that tinted everything—grass, leaves, tree trunks, even the other deer—shades of the same dun hue. Only later did I notice how brilliantly blue the sky blazed overhead and how clearly I could see into the shadowed places even in the dimmest twilight.

  The triumph of what I had done thrilled through my blood, and the terror of it too. It had happened without my effort or will. What if I could not change back? Panic rose up in my breast, and I might have tried to claw my way out of my new skin if not for the fawn. He nuzzled beside me, nosing my flank as though checking for milk and then backing up awkwardly to find and lick my muzzle. The wonder of it pushed away the fear, and once I stopped being afraid, I understood that returning to my own form would be as simple as willing it.

  I looked again through my new eyes, recognizing anew each familiar feature of the clearing. I stayed there all morning—so much to learn, there was. The air a complex stew of smells I didn’t understand, far-off sounds so sharp and clear it seemed every moving thing in the forest was right beside me. The strangeness of losing my upright view, of a body stretched out parallel to the earth. So many legs! I thought they would tangle and trip me, but once I dared take a step with one hoof, the rest followed and I could soon walk easily around the pool.

  When the sun was straight overhead—a time when all real deer rest hidden in their secret beds—I ventured away from the pool to explore the forest. I leapt over logs, I drifted silently through dark spruce groves, and when at last I came to a long bare slope, I ran. The swiftness, the power—it does not seem such a marvel to me now. But on that first day, flying could not have been more thrilling. It is a memory I cherish still, despite all that followed.

  TWO

  Wondrous though it seemed, shapeshifting was a minor magic compared to the power Sive’s mother, Grian, had passed on to her. It was clear almost from the time Sive could lisp out a tune that she had the gift of song. The court women would call her over to their crying babies, and she would murmur a silly singsong child’s lullaby, and they would first fall silent and then fall asleep. By the time Sive had ten summers, Grian was teaching her a proper repertoire, and after a battle or raid they would go together to sing to the wounded warriors, replacing their pain and anguish with the sweet mercy of sleep while the healers worked their magic and made them whole again.

  Grian was not always the most attentive of mothers, but she trained her daughter carefully in the ways of the gift— to modulate her voice to bring weeping or giddy laughter or bright shining love to a listener, and then to ease it back so an audience could be entertained or soothed or moved without being overcome. And always, she and Derg both drilled into the girl the responsibility that comes with such power.

  “It is no light trick to overwhelm a person’s soul,” said Grian. “Be sure you do it for right reasons, for there is no taking back what is done.”

  SIVE HAD OFTEN JOINED her mother for a song or two at a feast or gathering before being shooed
away to bed. And she had given whole concerts for audiences of children and waiting women, even for small groups of nobles from her own sidhe. But now she was a woman, and she was about to give her first performance for the king himself and for his feast guests.

  Of course she was nervous. The guests were looking for art, not magic, and though Sive knew she could not fail to stir their emotions, they would still see well enough if the music was faulty. Grian had rehearsed her endlessly, until their voices in duet seemed to pour from one mouth, and Sive’s solo pieces were burnished to a high sheen.

  “One last review?” her mother pressed, on the afternoon of the feast. And Sive, who had been dutiful and uncomplaining through long days of practice, dug in her heels and shook her head.

  “No more, Ma. If I do not know them now, I never will. I am going for a walk to settle myself.” Grian was high-strung and flighty of mind, all the more before a performance. At this moment, her very presence scraped on Sive’s nerves.

  Grian pressed her lips together, unhappy to see her daughter leave the house. “Be back in good time,” she called. Sive couldn’t blame her for being worried. She had a longstanding habit of disappearing into the woods.

  THE LIVELY CROWD, the illustrious guests, the poets and harpists—none of them could lure Sive’s mind from the singing to come. Not even the ambitious young warriors showing off their feats and tricks in the courtyard captured her interest for long. It was her first big test, and she was intent on proving herself worthy to sing alongside her mother. The crowd’s warm response was a good sign, but only when Grian had smiled her relieved approval and whispered “Well done!” in her daughter’s ear, could Sive relax and join in the gathering.

  With the entertainment done, the food and drink came out in earnest. When the stars were bright in the night sky, the nobles would sit down to the king’s high feast. But until then, the great side tables that lined the hall were heaped with a changing array of meats and dainties, enough to appease the mightiest appetite.