Shapeshifter

by Holly Bennett

  It was as Elatha finished, and the cheers and yells of the hunting party erupted, that Sive knew something was wrong. Elatha bowed and smiled his thanks, but the smile was a pale ghost of his usual merry grin and it did not touch his black eyes. Those eyes, sweeping the crowd as he held up a hand in salute, skittered over the top of her head and would not meet her own. Moments later they did come to rest upon something—or someone—at the back of the room. Sive craned her neck, trying to follow his sightline.

  Far Droiche stood in a shadowed alcove, a dim figure erratically lit by the flaring walltorches. Glittering eyes in a pale face. He gave a little nod in Elatha’s direction, his expression unchanging.

  Sive’s body drained of warmth, cold seeping into her bones where no cloak or fire could reach it. She looked back at her lover, not caring now if Daireann noticed. He was leaving, making his way slowly but obviously through the crowd of loud, back-slapping men that had gathered to congratulate him. Leaving without speaking one word to her!

  Never run after a man—at least not in public view. It was one of Grian’s bits of motherly advice, but Sive turned a deaf ear. Elatha had already reached the door. She jumped up from her bench, ignoring Daireann’s startled exclamation, and hurried after him.

  “Stop, please! Elatha! Just for one moment!”

  He was striding across Bodb’s lawns with a speed that left no doubt he was trying to get away. He did not break stride or look around at Sive’s pleas, nor at the sob of hurt and bewilderment that escaped her. But just as she slumped to a stop, he made the slightest gesture of his hand, almost too subtle to see: an index finger beckoning her on.

  Secrecy. He’s asking for secrecy, she realized, and she began walking again, slumped and slow as if she had given up, watching from under her eyebrows to see where he went.

  Elatha made a turn behind an outbuilding and disappeared. How to follow, without following? Sive forced herself to walk in the opposite direction and think. If Elatha wanted her to meet him, he must be headed somewhere she could guess easily, but others would not.

  He was waiting on the strand when she arrived. The lakeside had become a special place for them, but Elatha’s face when he turned to her was not the face of an eager lover.

  “You did not tell me you were promised to the Dark Man!”

  “The—? I am not. I do not even know who this Dark Man is!”

  “The sorcerer, Far Doirche. He says you are his intended.”

  The coldness was back now, cold that pimpled the skin on Sive’s arms and made her neck prickle. But there was anger, too, bracing as the wind off the water that lifted her hair and pulled at her skirts.

  “Well, he is not my intended. Nor has he made his intention known to any of my family!”

  The flare of anger faded away as Sive saw Elatha’s expression soften from accusation to sadness.

  “Ah, dear heart. I should have known. He lied to me.”

  He will not fight for me. She saw it in the slump of his shoulders, the resignation in his voice. The fire of his eyes replaced with pity.

  Elatha grabbed her arms, suddenly urgent.

  “Sive, listen to me. If you do not want this match, you must leave. Don’t wait until morning even. Just gather your people and go. Perhaps if you are not under his nose, his attention will fall elsewhere.”

  “But why? Why cannot I simply refuse him?” She remembered once again the pull of those green eyes, the threat behind them, and wondered just how possible it would be to refuse him anything. Elatha’s impatient snort came like an answer.

  “Do you think he is called the Dark Man in jest? He is a master of dark sorcery, Sive, and he does not hesitate to use it. Driven by his own will, he is, so hungry for power that no law or bond, not of friendship nor of blood, will temper his ambition. He has made it quite clear what will happen to me— and to you—if I am seen in your company again.” He looked at her now, and she saw that she had guessed correctly. He would leave her to Far Doirche, though it hurt him to do it.

  “Go away from him,” he urged again. “I cannot help you, and for that I am sorry. But I swear by the earth and sky I would rather be dead in the grave than see you in his hands.”

  He glanced up and down the deserted beach, as if Far Doirche’s eyes might even now be upon them. “We cannot risk speaking again. I will walk the strand and return by a different road. I wish you well, Sive.” But the sorrow in his eyes told her he foresaw a different fate. She watched the tall shoulders move away from her, knowing it was for the last time.

  “Elatha—wait!”

  He turned, reluctantly.

  “Why does he want me?”

  “Do you not know?” Elatha raised his hands in a half-stifled gesture that seemed to Sive both angry and defeated. “You have a power he does not. The Dark Man wants your voice.”

  He turned again, and this time he kept walking until he disappeared from view.

  SIX

  Sive Remembers

  Of course he did not forget. When the Dark Man sets his sights on a thing, there is no forgetting.

  I could not bring myself to tell my parents what had happened. My mother accepted the easy explanation—that I was home early, and prone to tears, because of a failed love affair. She said only, in her practical way, “Don’t take it too hard, love. The world is full of men. It doesn’t do to bind yourself to the first one who comes down the path.”

  My father is a better listener, and he must have sensed there was more to my tale for he sought me out in private and gently gave me the chance to say more. But why worry him about something that might not come to pass?

  So I thought. Now I wonder if those thoughts were truly my own, or if Far Doirche had somehow bound my tongue.

  Autumn was blown away by a snowy winter, which melted into spring, and still he did not come. And I began first to hope, then to believe that I was safe from him. By the time the night air was nipped with the first hint of autumn frost, I hardly ever thought of him.

  And then he came.

  THE THREE FRIENDS ambled down the lane, their arms filled with the last autumn blooms, crowns of wound-wort and cranesbill circling their heads. They chatted and laughed as they walked, perpetually young, glowing with health, apparently free of care.

  A tall man stepped into the road in front of them. He must have been standing behind a tree trunk or in the shadows of the shrubbery, for he seemed to appear out of the air. Two of the women started, their smiles of greeting guarded, but the third stood frozen, her flowers fallen heedless to the ground. Her hazel eyes were wide in a face drained of color.

  “Hello, Sive.” The man’s smile was easy and disarming, and Sive’s companions, not seeing her reaction but only his warm greeting, relaxed in the knowledge that he was no stranger after all. The green eyes took them in, crinkling in amusement. “I’m very sorry, ladies, to have taken you by surprise. I did not mean to alarm you.”

  Courtesies completed, he spoke now only to Sive.

  “I’ve just been to speak to your father.”

  Sive knew with dreadful certainty why he was there. Yet she heard herself say stupidly, as though compelled to act out the charade, “What about?”

  He offered a fond, slightly reproachful smile. “Why, about you, my dear. I have asked him for your hand.”

  So it had come. Fear roiled in Sive’s stomach and poured into her legs, turning them weak and watery. She barely understood his next words.

  “Your father received me graciously and acknowledges that my offer for a bride price is very generous. But he says he must discuss it with you first. So I will give you a few days to consider.”

  This was Far Doirche’s way, Sive was learning. He painted a picture of gentle courtesy, but behind it lay the threat, hard and inescapable.

  Far’s smile took in the other women now, enlisting their support. Then the green eyes fell on Sive, drilling into her.

  “I hope very much that you will favor my suit, and that I will return to good news.”


  With a quick nod of farewell, he strode down the road behind them.

  Sive’s friends burst into excited chatter.

  “He’s so handsome!”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “Will you say yes?”

  Sive did not reply. Mechanically, she bent down and began to gather up her fallen bouquet. When she finished, she risked a glance back at the Dark Man.

  The laneway was empty.

  YOUR FATHER RECEIVED ME GRACIOUSLY. Was the response genuine, or had her father been stalling for time? One look at Derg’s worried face in the doorway told her that he did, indeed, know what Far Doirche was.

  “Thanks be you are back,” he said. “You are in danger, daughter.”

  “I know,” she replied. “I met him on the road.”

  “Did he touch you?” Derg’s voice was sharp with anxiety.

  “No.” Sive was confused at his long exhalation of relief. What did that matter? Derg took her arm and pulled her into the house.

  “Come and sit with me. We are backed into a foxhole, with little time to find our way out.”

  She had barely made contact with the cushions when he began.

  “How do you know this man?”

  “I don’t know him,” she protested. “I have hardly exchanged two words with him. But he noticed my singing.”

  “At Bodb Dearg’s?”

  Sive nodded, her throat going tight with the memory. “He warned Elatha away from me.”

  Her father sighed again. “So that was it. Sive, do you know what he is?”

  “Elatha calls him the Dark Man and says he is a sorcerer. He said Far Doirche must want to use my voice for his own ends.”

  Her father was grim now, his pleasing voice gone harsh. “That must never happen. You must never be in his thrall.”

  The word alarmed her. “Why do you say that—in his thrall?”

  “Sive, you would not be his wife. You would be his slave, your own will overpowered by his dark arts. You have seen his hazel staff?”

  Sive thought back to their encounter on the road. Yes, he had carried a staff.

  “With a touch of that rod, Far Doirche can bend a person to his will,” Derg continued. “Only the oldest and mightiest among us have the power to resist. He is required to leave the staff outside when he attends gatherings like Bodb Dearg’s or enters a dwelling place, and so far he has complied. Otherwise it would not be long until the people simply scattered at his approach or met it with a host of spears. He wears a pleasant, ordinary face and so there are still many who do not know his true nature.”

  “The way he asked you so properly for me.”

  Derg nodded, his lean face tight and angry. “As if he would hesitate to take what is not given.”

  He leaned forward, underlining the import of his next words.

  “You must understand this. With you, he could subdue his victims by the dozens—perhaps hundreds. His reach would become as long as the distance your voice carries. He could approach a gathering of chieftains and send you singing before him.”

  Sive saw it now, pictured the horror of it. She would sing for her master, whether she wished it or not, and powerful men would fall down in sweet sleep. The Dark Man would be free to wander among them with his hazel rod, turning them into an army of unwilling slaves. How many men would he harvest, traveling from one corner of Tir na nOg to the other, before word began to arrive ahead of them and some defense devised?

  Tears stung her eyes, and she pressed them back, along with the despairing inner voice that whispered, There is no escape. This will destroy you. There was no time for weeping or despair, not now. Not yet.

  “Will our own king not protect me?” Sive asked, though she knew if her salvation were that simple her father would long since have suggested it. Instead, he shook his head sadly.

  “If I were blood kin to the king, one of his sept, then he would be obliged to come to your defence at my request. But he would not prevail. There are none in this sidhe with the power to resist Far Doirche’s enchantments and disguises.”

  Sive wanted to hide her face in her mother’s skirts, as she had when she was a tiny child frightened by a wasp or a clap of thunder. But Grian was far away, visiting her sister Niamh at their father Manannan’s Underwave palace, and Sive was far beyond the little girl whose greatest worry was an insect sting.

  “How did you get on with Bodb?”

  Sive forced herself to come back to the moment and her father’s voice.

  “He welcomed me graciously enough, but we didn’t really speak after that.” Not the answer Derg had been hoping for, she saw.

  “And Far associates you with that place. He may expect you to seek protection there.” Derg straightened up. “Well then, I think your course is clear. You must go to your grandfather. Manannan has many enchantments and protections against unwanted guests. He holds me in poor esteem and has been cold to your mother since she left Bodb, but he does not bar her from his house, and I am sure he will not turn his back on her blameless child. You will be safe in Underwave.

  “But you must leave now. When Far comes, I will tell him you are walking the woods and delay him as long as I can. But the time may come, if I cannot escape his rod, that I am forced to tell the truth. By then you must be long gone.”

  Sive Remembers

  I never made it to my grandfather’s hidden island, nor even to the strand where the entrance to his undersea realm can be found. I had hardly traveled for half a day and was only beginning to emerge from the fog of confusion and fear, the hasty preparations and instructions, the tearful goodbye. Would I ever see my father again, or would we be forever divided by my grandfather’s enmity on the one side and Far Doirche’s lust on the other?

  I never dreamed that he would find me so fast. We were a little way into a series of deeply wooded hills, cutting across the northern edge of the mountains that lie between my home and the coast. The track was loamy and soft, and we had slowed our horses so they could pick their way down a steep slope.

  The thunder of the hoofbeats pounding up behind us was paralyzing. Like a scream in the black of night, it was a sound of pure terror. Laisren and Ciaran—the two men who escorted me, trusted friends of my father—did not expect pursuit. They believed, as I did, that we had at least a couple of days before Far Doirche returned, that we would easily reach Baile’s Strand well ahead of him. They pulled up their horses in cautious curiosity and waited to see who rode in such haste.

  But I knew, knew as surely as if his rod loomed over my head.

  I kicked my horse hard, making him leap to the bottom of the gully and take the next slope at a laboring run. But where was I running to? Not far ahead, I knew, the land opened up, returning to gently rolling plains and light woods all the way to the hill of Tara. It would not be long until I was overtaken.

  At the top of the slope, I reined in, pulled my horse a little off the track and risked a look back.

  Far Doirche, astride a huge war horse in full trappings, was leaning over the saddle to wrench his spear from Ciaran’s chest. Laisren was on foot, in combat with Far’s companion—a mighty man in full war harness. I was heartsick, but there was no time for tears, for even as I watched, Far seated his spear and looked up the track to where I lingered. A triumphant smile creased his face and his eyes sought mine, but this time I looked away before he could trap me. I slid from my saddle.

  “Remember,” my father had told me, “your voice is not your only power. He cannot command the wild beasts.”

  I was afraid I would have trouble turning, but once a thing is learned well, it is never forgotten. In a heartbeat the world turned amber and brown, and the acrid smell of blood filled my nostrils. I had no need for track nor horse. My own legs were long and strong and could penetrate the deepest forest. I turned south and east, into the mountains, and ran until my legs trembled and the breath rasped in my lungs, until it was too dark for even a deer to see.

  SEVEN

&nbs
p; For four days Sive wandered the mountains. Avoiding the bare summits that would allow a keen eye to spot the movement of a young doe picking her way through the heather, she kept instead to the heavily wooded slopes and ravines where sunlight hardly penetrated. At night she sheltered inside the skirts of sprawling junipers or behind deadfalls, ears flared, starting at every sound. She had never spent a night alone. Now she knew the uneasy sleep of a creature who is hunted day and night, for she heard the wolves singing to the moon and realized there was more than Far Doirche to be wary of.

  Hunger finally drove her from the silent dark pine forest where she felt safest, to more open ground. It had become a constant, gnawing pain, as if her body was trying to eat itself from the inside. Food had always been an entertainment and a pleasure for Sive; now she was horrified to find herself light-headed and weak, to realize that her very survival hinged on clumps of grass and fallen hazelnuts.

  She followed the flank of the mountain to its lower slopes, where the pines gave way to oak, birch and hazel trees. The woodland grew busy with wildlife: red squirrels stuffed their cheeks with nuts and seeds, robins gorged on hawthorn berries, hare crouched trembling under the ferns. Sive found a trail punctuated with delicate hoofprints and deer scat and followed it cautiously. She cropped tall autumn grass at the edge of a clearing, not noticing how odd it was to find such sweet relief in a patch of weeds, thinking only of filling her stomach.

  In the late afternoon the land opened up to reveal a lake nestled between the mountains. In its waters the pale blue of the sky became a deep, brilliant indigo, startling in Sive’s vision after the tans and ochers of the woods. So peaceful and lovely it was that Sive could not resist its pull. She yearned to wade and drink in those blue waters, with the perfect reflection of the mountain peaks wavering about her legs, as though the hardships she had suffered could be washed away with the dried mud crusting her hooves.