Shapeshifter

by Holly Bennett

  And then the winter settled over them. Men cooped up too long can grow restive and quarrelsome, but Finn kept his men busy with training and challenges and patrols. At night the feasting hall was raucous and high-spirited. Sive could hear them sometimes long after she had retired to the white house to sleep. Yet there was poetry and music too, and Sive enjoyed singing with Finn’s musicians. The food grew worse as the months passed, but the music improved steadily.

  The call had come on the last new moon. Invasion on the coast, by the men of the Northlands over the sea.

  “It’s not far,” Finn had told her. “An easy day and a half to the bay of the River Liffey, and we’ll still be plenty fresh for the fight.”

  He turned to her then, his face grave. “Promise me you will not leave the walls of the dun until I return, however long that may be.”

  “I won’t. You know I won’t. Don’t worry, Finn. I am safe here.”

  “You are my heart,” he murmured, and his kisses chased the Dark Man from her thoughts.

  It was not until he was taking his leave that the new fear struck at her.

  “Finn…” She clutched at his powerful arm. For the first time she fully realized he might not return. A mortal man: how easily he could be killed, how terribly fragile the skin that shielded him. Men of the Sidhe died in battle, occasionally. But unless they were killed instantly, there were few wounds that could not be healed. Here there were no magic waters, no mending spells, no silver hands. There was terrible pain, injuries that left men crippled and broken, and death. Death as common as nettles.

  “Be careful,” she said, unable to find any words to match the enormity of her vision.

  He saw it. The blue eyes crinkled in gentle amusement.

  “Never fear, girl. It is not my time to die, not yet.” He placed his index finger under her chin and tilted her head so she met his gaze directly. “It is given me to see things other men do not. I will be back here, alive and well.”

  She nodded mutely, not trusting herself to speak again without tears.

  All these men’s wives and lovers, she thought, as she watched the long line of men striding through the gates and down the road, disappearing into the wooded slopes of the hill and then visible again, now just small dark shapes, snaking across the outlying fields. All of them saying goodbye, over and over, not knowing if it’s for the last time. How do they bear it?

  A SMALL HAND plucked at her cloak. “Ma says won’t you come inside now, Lady Sive, and warm up by the fire?” Earnest gray eyes peered up from within a frizzy halo of hair.

  She was chilled. Sive had a new appreciation for the rough deerhide that had protected her through three Irish winters, now that she had only her own soft skin and woven cloaks against the weather. She smiled at the girl.

  “Thank you, dearie. That sounds like a good idea.”

  A haze of peat smoke hung in the air of the house and stung her eyes, but the fire’s red glow and blooming heat made up for it. Searc had pulled a chair up close to the hearth, and she settled Sive into it now, fussing over her as though she were a fragile invalid.

  “You must be careful, m’lady, not to overtax yourself or give the baby a chill.”

  Sive smiled. She had been in Eire long enough to see that the household women hardly slowed down at all until the very end of their pregnancies. She had seen a hugely pregnant woman heaving tuns of ale into the storeroom, and another cutting peat bricks with her man on a windy day spattered with rain. But they treated Sive like an exotic flower that might droop and drop its petals at any moment.

  “Thank you,” she said as Searc tucked a blanket around her knees and pressed a warm mug of sweet mead into her hands. “I’m fine, really.”

  Goll’s wife came by soon after and was easily persuaded to join Sive at the fire. She set about entertaining Sive with stories of their men’s adventures and exploits, peppered with her own dry commentary. That was one thing the same in both worlds, Sive had been glad to learn—the mixture of admiration, irony and bawdy humor with which women talked about their men. It was from Ana she learned what had actually happened between Daireann and Finn, how Daireann had made him curse and abuse his men so vilely that all but Caoilte had left him in disgust, and how poor Caoilte had spent the day running all over the country chasing down the Fianna and persuading them to return, until at last Finn came back to himself and could apologize and explain. Ana laughed till the tears ran down her broad cheeks, repeating the outrageous things Finn had yelled out under Daireann’s spell, and that gave Sive courage to broach a new subject.

  “You have been a good friend to me here. Can I ask you something?”

  Ana was a down-to-earth, plainspoken woman. She would settle the uncertainty that had been stopping Sive’s tongue.

  “None of the women ever ask about my life before I came to Finn. I’m not sure if that’s because I should not talk about it, or because you don’t want to pry?”

  Ana sighed. “It’s both, my dear. We want to know it all—of course we do. Sometimes I’m so curious about you that I think my head will burst open if I don’t ask!”

  “Then why don’t you? I don’t mind telling.”

  Ana shook her head, her full lips pressing together as if holding in a crowd of questions. “It’s not for ordinary people to know about the Secret Lands,” she said darkly. “It’s dangerous to know too much. Our men find their way there now and again, and it’s few that ever return. It’s only the druids and suchlike who can survive so much magic.”

  Sive considered this, wondering what to say. Surely talking about Tir na nOg was not the same as going there. Besides, the men who didn’t return were as likely to have fallen in love and been permitted to stay as to have met a bad end.

  She was saved a reply by Ana’s hand on her arm. “There is one thing though,” she said, her eyes glinting with excitement. “Do you still have the dress you came in? They say it was more beautiful than anything a queen would wear here.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Sive. “No, for pity’s sake, it’s only a few steps.”

  She was halfway to her chamber when she heard the yelling outside.

  “What? What is it?”

  Searc was at the doorway, listening. She turned to her mistress, her plain face shining.

  “It’s the Dord Fiann! They’ve heard the horn of the Fianna, Lady. The men are returning!”

  Sive snatched the blanket from her chair as she passed by and threw it around her shoulders as she hurried to the gate.

  THE SWEET NOTES of the horn floated on the air, announcing his homecoming. He smiled in anticipation. By the time he came within sight of the gates, she would be watching for him.

  The two dogs ranged about him as he strode up the hill. Hard to look the returning hero at this time of year, he reflected wryly, when you had to skirt around patches of sucking mud on the path and mince across slippery crusts of half-melted snow.

  The track emerged from the wooded slopes of the Hill of Almhuin into the cleared area surrounding the dun, and a cheer went up from the walls. He waved, scanning for a willowy figure with hair like red gold. There she was— waving with both arms, her hair a bright banner in the sun. He had forgotten how beautiful that hair was.

  A little farther. Would they wonder why he came alone, without the Fianna? Sive would not. She would think he had run ahead in his eagerness to see her. And so he had.

  He could see her clearly now, arguing, it seemed, with the great fellow towering beside her. He had his paw laid over her arm, and she pulled against it.

  He smiled. She would come to him. He waved again, only for her this time, and then flung his arms wide in a gesture that could only mean one thing.

  Sive disappeared from view, and in moments the gate opened and she came flying out to him. Her belly sailed before as she ran, heaving with each step like a ship in a swell.

  A bolt of rage took him by surprise. What was it to him who the vixen lay with? Yet the sight of that belly, filled with the
get of the interfering mortal who had somehow stood between him and his prize—that was maddening.

  Her steps faltered. Losing her breath, no doubt, from that load she carried. Still, he must be more careful. He had come too close to giving himself away. He smiled, pulling the great form of Finn mac Cumhail more firmly over his own face, pouring his concentration into a demeanor of loving delight.

  She continued toward him. But even as he reached behind to snatch up his rod and raise it high, she gave a cry and veered awkwardly, sliding in the slick mud.

  He could not believe how instant her change was. Before he could bring down the rod over her shoulders, before her slithering turn could become a fall, she was a blur of red-brown fur, leaping away on four slim legs.

  Far’s rage was no longer contained, but roared from his throat in a torrent. The illusion melted away, and he stood revealed, no longer the coarse warrior of the Gaels but the green-eyed, subtle sorcerer with the monstrous will.

  She would not escape, not this time. The mud bound her; the child’s weight dragged at her. The dogs—not Bran and Sceolan, but Far’s own bound creatures—flung themselves at her throat, and she could not shake free of them.

  It was the work of an instant to tighten the looped cord around her neck and drag her back into the woods.

  Finn’s men were pouring out of the gate, pounding after them. Far’s lips curled in contempt. Mortals. What did they imagine—that he would stand here and cross swords with them?

  Fog roiled up from the earth, oozed from the leaves of the trees, seeped out of their trunks. The air darkened to the blackness of deep night, though the sky above remained bright with sunshine. Strange sounds and cries filled the woods, seeming to come first from one direction, then from another. The frantic men blundered this way and that, fighting their way blindly through the woods, drawn by the illusion of a barking dog or a woman’s cries to one false trail after another.

  They would find no one. Far was gone, and Sive with him. She would never lay eyes on Finn again.

  Finn Remembers

  For years I searched for her. Through all of Eire, every mountain and hidden valley, year after year, I searched. I felt her loss through my waking and my sleeping, as though some evil magic had cut the heart from my chest, and I still living on without it. But the Dark Man had taken her to a place I could not follow. The gates of the Sidhe were closed to me.

  SIXTEEN

  Sive Remembers

  Finn was farseeing, but he could not see everything. He did not see that I would never hold him, or admire his blue eyes, or sing him to sleep again.

  When I understood how the Dark Man had tricked me, I was sure I would die of grief. I longed for it. But whatever all those tales of great love say, it is not so easy to die of a broken heart. The body betrays the heart and keeps it beating.

  Then one day the baby squirmed and stretched in my belly, and I wished for a mother’s hands to soothe and cradle him. My mind, which had been doing its best to fade away altogether, jolted awake as I realized the dangers of the birth to come. I still had one thing to live for: my baby. Finn’s baby.

  SIVE STOOD WITH hooves splayed, head down, as the contraction gripped her, clenched hard, and released. They were coming faster now. Time she was under cover.

  Sive did not know what had prompted Far Doirche to agree to her desperate offer. Pressed against the far wall of the shed he had shut her in, ready to turn if he so much as waved a toe over the threshold of the doorway, she had bargained for her baby’s life. “Allow me to bear my child, and raise him to the age of fostering and send him to his father,” she had begged, “and then I will take my woman’s shape and submit to your rod, and go with you.”

  “You are joking, I suppose,” he had said, and behind his smile the anger had been a white heat that licked at her like a flame. “Why should I not kill the child the day it is born?”

  “Because then you will have no way to compel me, and I will be a deer to the end of my days before I bend to your will.” The words so brave, while she had to clasp her hands behind her back to hide their trembling. It was only her singer’s training keeping her voice from betraying her. “Besides,” she had added, letting go of the defiance and softening her tone, “what is seven years to a man such as yourself? It will pass in a few nights’ sleep, with long centuries ahead for you to savor all your victories.”

  She had been sure he would see the weakness in her argument. But Far, who could work an illusion but hadn’t the fellow-feeling for true shapeshifting, knew nothing of its laws. And the law was this: she must have the baby in her true form, or he would be born a deer, and like the wolfhounds Bran and Sceolan, be doomed to remain a beast forever.

  Another pain flared, bit deep and eased away. But she was close now. When the contraction ended, Sive turned off the little track and began to make her way through the trees to the shelter she had prepared.

  It wasn’t much—just a hollow scraped under the splayed roots of a fallen tree, lined with bracken and screened with piled-up brush. A beast’s nest, it was, not nearly as comfortable as the cave Far had provided in this oddly spacious prison—a seemingly open woodland walled by such thickly woven spells that it might as well have been an island in the midst of a vast sea. Sive could not break through its invisible walls, nor had she ever seen so much as a moth pass through from the other side.

  Sive was not about to give birth in that cave, whatever the Dark Man had promised. He would sense her change, and what promise in any world would stop him from preying on her weakness? No, she must be hidden. There was nowhere she could go in Far’s “garden,” as he called it, where he would not find her. She knew that. She hoped only to slow him down by making him search. To change at the last possible moment, bear her baby, and return to four legs before he arrived.

  She sank onto her forelegs at the mouth of the shelter, then eased onto her side as a fierce pain radiated through her belly. She would stay and labor here, in the dappled sun—warmth for comfort, light for courage. When the time came, it wouldn’t take her a moment to scramble down into the scrape and pull a few branches across the opening.

  SHE NAMED HIM OISIN—little deer—but to Sive’s great relief that was the only part of him that spoke of deerness. He was a big, strong, eager baby boy, with his father’s blond hair and open smile, and the deep, clear jewel-like eyes of her own people. He was her only joy and a constant lowgrade terror, for babies are ever in need of care that only a woman with soft hands and clever fingers and a soothing voice can give, and though she longed to lose herself in these tender encounters, she could not. Every moment spent in woman’s form left her open to the Dark Man, and she never changed without ensuring she had a clear view, or a solid wall, in every direction. She cleared the area all around the mouth of the cave and did her mothering deep inside, so he could not take her unawares.

  At least she was adequately provisioned. The Dark Man did not intend for her to die in her captivity. There was little in the way of comfort, but there was fire and food and occasional fineries intended, she supposed, to tempt her away from the exile she had chosen. When the Dark Man came with these things, she would huddle against the back wall of the cave with Oisin and take her deer form, always keeping the baby behind her so that Far hardly got a look at him. Sometimes, when he came, he would speak softly to her, hold out a fine dress or a jeweled pin enticingly, but she would not respond. As time passed, his tone was more often threatening and angry than pleasant, but it was all the same to her. She cowered against the wall and prayed he would not harm Oisin.

  She never slept in her own shape but always as a deer, curled protectively about her baby, so he was able to snuggle into her warm flank and find her milk easily.

  And so Oisin survived and grew into a sturdy toddler with blond-white curls and a clear, piping voice that could already follow his mother’s tune.

  Sive Remembers

  My Oisin. He comes to me in my dreams some nights, and I awaken in the rustli
ng blackness before dawn with the imprint of his sturdy little body pressed against me, the feel of his mouth greedy on my breast, the heat and weight of his head and the sweet baby smell of him…And then comes the loss. The long, long years since I have seen his dear smile or heard the music of his laughter. Are you alive, my son, and running with the Fianna? Or did Far betray us and leave you, so young and helpless, to die?

  Oh, on those mornings, if I woke to the music of the hounds, I think I would give myself to them, for it does not seem possible to go on. Instead I run. I lose myself in blind flight and run until my hide lathers and my flanks tremble, until the last drop of my strength is spent. I run until thought is replaced by simple animal need, and I forget.

  THE YEARS DRIFTED PAST as they do in the Undying Lands, like leaves resting lightly on a river’s surface, seemingly still but soon carried out of sight by the strong invisible current. So it was for Oisin, who grew overnight, it seemed to Sive, into a lively boy who knew every ivied oak and rabbit run of their wooded pen. But Sive had never been so aware of time’s march, each fleeting year a step closer to the day the Dark Man would claim his due.

  He tried when Oisin was five, sending Oran to the cave as messenger since she would not take her own form in Far’s presence. “He will come tomorrow at first light,” Oran reported. “He says you are to be in your proper form, ready to go with him.”

  Oran, a boy no longer but a bony young man with wide brown eyes, did not try to disguise his sorrow as he recited his message. “I am sorry,” he told her. “I hoped you would escape him.”

  As had she. Her bargain had been necessary to protect her son, a mother’s instinct that could not be denied, however disastrous the consequences. And those consequences had seemed so far away. Surely Far would be overcome before they could come to pass, would show his hand once too often and set the Old Ones finally against him.

  Now Sive saw it would not happen. He was careful; he had kept his plans and his prize hidden from sight. But he would not have her yet.