Shapeshifter

by Holly Bennett

  Marga’s own figure was rather solid, Sive observed, a shape more common among mortals than her own people. A great wave of longing swept over her—for Finn, for her house on the Hill of Almhuin, for all the friends and servants who had welcomed her. For her child.

  “Lady Sive? Are you well?” Marga was peering at her, round blue eyes under brows furrowed with concern.

  Sive felt the corners of her mouth lift—a death grin, it felt like, rather than a true smile, but apparently it looked real enough, for Lady Marga’s face lit up in relieved response.

  “Of course,” Sive heard herself saying. “I’m so sorry— I was just cloud-walking. A little tired from the journey, I suppose.”

  “I quite understand,” said Marga. “Here—try some of this.” She pressed a silver goblet into Sive’s hand. “My own recipe, very reviving. Oh, and have some honey babies.” She winked, leaned in and whispered, “You must build up your strength, for when you have a green-eyed honey baby of your own.”

  The thought made Sive weak with nausea. Yet she felt her cheeks dimple and blush, and her hand reached for the rich sweet and popped it into her mouth.

  THE NEXT EVENING some twenty guests filled Donal’s cramped feasting hall. A small gathering, not many more than would assemble for any ordinary meal back in Sidhe Ochta Cleitigh, but as much care had been put into this event as for any great feast. The room glowed with the soft light of many candles, fixed into elaborate wrought-iron chandeliers suspended from the ceiling. The candlelight was reflected in the gold and silver plates, the metal inlay on the ceiling, the jewels of the women and the gleaming armbands and torcs of the men. The guests were richly arrayed in colorful silks, flowing sleeves, intricate hairstyles, sweeping cloaks.

  Sive’s dread grew with each bite of their elegant dinner. How many times, in the bogs and gloomy forests, had she yearned to be in just such a place, surrounded by the lighthearted chatter and bright, beautiful company of a feast night? And now she walked among her people as their betrayer, her return an evil mockery of her dreams. In her head she screamed out a warning to them all, cried to them to flee, to stuff their ears, to cast her out. And still she ate and smiled and nodded and chattered with the rest.

  Soon enough the moment came. Donal had invited a harpist to entertain his company, but that would not forestall what was to come. It was common for guests to take a turn, and sure enough, as the last sweet chord of the harp’s latest tune lingered in the air, Lady Marga turned to Sive and said, “You have a lovely voice, as we learned last night. Would you favor our guests with a song?”

  Sive Remembers

  Even as I felt the pretence of a modest smile jerk at the corners of my mouth and felt my head nodding assent, I was determined to defy him. Had I no will of my own? I was not like Oran, taken by the Dark Man as a young boy, beaten and terrified into submission until he could conceive of no alternative. I was strong from my years in the wild. My son was dead or gone—free, either way, of Far Doirche’s grasp. There was nothing binding me to life, and I would let him crush my brains before I sang to these people.

  A great hand scooped me from my seat and propelled me toward to the front of the hall. I did not fight it. My hope was to take Far Doirche by surprise, to feign compliance but keep going, right through the small doorway to the side which the harpist had come through. The harpist smiled his welcome and I nodded in return. But my mind was all on the doorway behind him, and on hardening myself against the Dark Man’s will.

  I had not taken two steps past him when the pain stabbed into my head—skewers behind my eyes, fire burning through my skull. This was not the simple barrier that had kept me from the latrine—it was the Dark Man’s fury that fell upon me, his rage at being crossed.

  I fell to my knees, clutching my head. My face was slippery with sweat and tears. A terrible noise ripped the air—my own tortured screams. It was as though he was flaying me from within. My mind scrambled after something, anything, to hold on to. Finn swam into blurry focus—my Finn, so courageous and proud—but the Dark Man cast him out with a lash of fire.

  Then came Oisin, my beautiful shining boy, and in my anguished sight it seemed to me he stood untouched by Far Doirche’s wrath and called to me. I clung to that image—clung with all my strength—until with a roar Far sent a curtain of fire leaping up between us, and I lost my senses.

  When I opened my eyes I was standing beside the harpist, looking out over a roomful of smiling, relaxed people. The harpist was running his fingers experimentally over a tune, his eyebrow raised in inquiry. I ran my hand over my hair, amazed to find my forehead dry, my braids perfectly in place. I heard my own calm reply. I understood then that what I had just experienced had passed between myself and the Dark Man alone. No one had heard me cry out or seen me writhe on the ground. No one had noticed anything in the least amiss. There was that moment of stillness that alerts an attentive audience that the performers are about to begin, and then a cascade of plucked notes rippled over the harp and ended in my opening chord.

  And I sang. With no more will than a child’s doll, I sang until every man and woman in the room was overcome with peaceful drowsiness, and slept. I sang while Far Doirche went out to the place where he had hidden his hazel rod and brought it into his friend’s feasting hall and touched it to each sleeping head. Though it seemed to me that I wept and pleaded, cursed and shouted, the voice that poured out of me was warm and sweet as honey.

  The next day Donal’s guests joked about how strong Marga’s mead must be, for none could quite remember my singing or even taking themselves to bed. And each time Far Doirche spoke, I saw the deep luster of their eyes become dull and they would hasten to do his bidding.

  “A promising trial run,” he said as we left Donal’s house. But I was filled with a horror so deep the ocean itself could not drown it.

  I had done wrong to bargain with the Dark Man. It was folly to put my child’s life above the hundreds he would now enslave. But what mother could count any price too high for her own child? Even now, the only hope remaining to me was that Oisin lived.

  NINETEEN

  They had hardly returned when Far bustled away again, to Sive’s intense relief. He left Oran with a long list of chores, some so strange and sinister-sounding—replenish the crows, grind more bone—that Sive did not dare ask their meaning.

  “I’m off after greener pastures,” Far announced cheerfully, as though the entire household shared his enthusiasm.

  Sive had been in numb despair through the long, wet ride home, unable to face any thought at all. Now, with Far Doirche’s paralyzing presence gone, her courage returned.

  There had to be a way out, if only she could find it. Long into the night she paced the house, or sat slumped against the wall, knees drawn up and head cradled in her arms. She tried to recall every comment she had ever heard about the Dark Man. She reviewed everything she had learned about him during her long captivity—his pride, his secrecy, his indifference to women. Was there a weakness she might make use of ? She tried to summon her father’s cleverness, to look at her plight with the bright, curious eyes of a magpie. She confronted head-on the question that had haunted her these past years—why had nobody found her? Was her father even searching for her anymore? He would have been barred from entering their secret valley, she realized, just as she and Oisin had been barred from leaving it. For all she knew, the Dark Man had been able to shield it from sight entirely. But now—would word not get out that Far Doirche had taken a wife? Would Derg take up the search again? It was a long string of ifs to hang her hope on—too long. If word of her existence reached Derg, if he found her, if he presented Manannan and the other Old Ones with proof of Far Doirche’s treachery, and if they stood against him…how many people, by then, would be under the Dark Man’s spell?

  She could not wait for her father, or anyone else. It was her voice. She must find a way to still it.

  It was late, the deep silent black of night, when Oran clumped through the back d
oor. In the weak light of his lamp, Sive saw how his shoulders slumped with fatigue. Yet when he saw her awake, he came and sat beside her, setting down the lamp so it flickered and danced before them.

  “I went to the cave,” he announced. “The barrier is down. Your son is not there.”

  Sive was silent. She could find no words for the gratitude welling up in her heart. It did not mean Oisin was alive—she knew that well. But it was enough for her to believe he was.

  She rested her hand on Oran’s arm and squeezed in silent thanks. She thought again about the long oppression he had endured, and the risks he had taken to help her, and realized she had misjudged his strength.

  “Oran,” she murmured. “I must never sing for him again.” He nodded gravely. He had seen as well as she where the Dark Man was headed.

  “Yet wherever I turn, I can find no escape.” She peered at his pale face. “Can you help me think?”

  The light flared, catching the deep shadows under his eyes, his gaunt cheeks. He looked exhausted.

  “You’re tired,” she said. “I should have realized. You’ve already made that long journey for me. Perhaps tomorrow—”

  Now it was his hand on her arm, staying her. “Sometimes fatigue brings odd ideas that escape a person in daylight. Tell me what you have tried already.”

  Sive summarized her day’s long, unhappy wandering.

  “So,” Oran concluded, “you cannot kill yourself because it is forbidden. You cannot leave this place without permission. You cannot change to your deer form. By the time word reaches your father or Manannan that Far has you, he will have an army of men at his disposal. And I will add that, in all the years of your captivity, there has been no word that I’ve heard of Finn setting foot in Tir na nOg, which makes me think the Dark Man has managed to bar its doors against him.”

  He sighed, running his hand through his dark hair and over his face. But Sive had an idea, a good one.

  “Oran!” She paused, unsure of how to put it, and then said it directly, remembering that he had not flinched away from talk of suicide. “You could kill me.”

  He shook his head. “Forbidden.” And then smiled sadly. “Also, I am not at all sure that I could bring myself to do it.”

  Oran stood up, stretched and yawned. “I’m going to fall asleep at your feet. Let’s brew this overnight, and perhaps our dreams will whisper an answer.”

  SIVE HAD NO DREAMS. She lay stiff on her pallet all night, her mind racing over the same dead-end roads, her belly in turmoil. By dawn, she was as drawn and pale as Oran.

  Oran skipped breakfast to catch up on his chores, refusing to allow Sive to help. She was limited, in any case, to the house and the path to the latrine. And so, again, she roamed the close confines of Far Doirche’s dark walls, wrestling with her fate. Only as the sun neared the top of the sky did she find some relief in building up the kitchen fire and filling the hanging pot with water to boil barley. By the time Oran returned the house smelled of grains and cabbage and the tiny wild onions she had found growing in a fragrant patch beside the path.

  He was pleased, she could tell. And hungry. He was halfway through his bowl before he came up for air.

  “I haven’t forgotten last night,” he said. “The only new thing I’ve thought of is that there are sometimes holes in his commands.”

  “Holes?”

  Oran’s brow furrowed as he tried to explain. “We are bound to follow his words exactly, but not necessarily his intention. Sometimes that leaves an opening he didn’t see.”

  Sive went over the commands he had given her so far. She didn’t see any openings. She didn’t even really understand what Oran meant. “I can’t…was there a time it happened to you?”

  Oran nodded. “That’s how I was able to tell your father about Finn mac Cumhail. Far Doirche told me to inform him if Daireann said where you were. He didn’t tell me to inform him if she said where you might go, and so I was able to hide that from him. Not that it did much good, in the end.”

  He went back to his bowl, scraping the last drops from the bottom, and then pushed himself up from the table. “I’m sorry, Sive, it’s not much. I’ll keep thinking.”

  The door was almost closed behind him when he thrust it open again and poked his head back inside.

  “How exactly did he say it?”

  “Say what?” Far had said many things, she thought impatiently, and then regretted it. Oran had no need to help her at all.

  “When he forbade you to turn to a deer. What were his exact words?”

  Sive thought back. It had been her first day in this accursed house. She was exhausted, muddy, thrumming with fear for Oisin. And the Dark Man had paid her no more mind than a sack of potatoes, except to throw his commands over his shoulder as he left.

  “You will not kill yourself. And you will remain in your woman’s body at all times.” She repeated the words back to Oran, who nodded thoughtfully.

  “In your woman’s body.”

  “Oran, what?” He had hold of something, she could tell.

  He cocked his head to one side. “Is the head necessarily included with the body, I wonder? And if not, could you turn just your head, and leave your body as it is?”

  Sive Remembers

  All afternoon I tried. To change one part only—it is impossibly hard. And the Dark Man’s prohibition was clamped over my body, hard as tree bark. My muscles trembled with the strain, the sweat ran down my brow and arms and between my breasts, my mind strained to escape the bonds of his spell. But I could not find the division between body and head.

  Last light found me slumped with exhaustion and despair, too tired even for tears. It was Oran who coaxed me to eat a bit and shooed me into bed. “You look near to collapse,” he said bluntly. “You must rest.”

  “But if he returns—,” I protested.

  “If he returns, you will try again after he leaves,” said Oran. “Or”—he hesitated—“is it his spell that prevents you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. My head does feel different. I just can’t do it.”

  “So, it is a difficult feat. Yet you try to achieve it when you are half-dead from exhaustion.” He laid a hand on my shoulder gingerly, as if he feared overstepping himself, and spoke gently. “If it is possible to do this thing, you will need all your strength for it. Sleep now.”

  I woke in the waiting dark before dawn with a dream, or a dreamed memory, so vividly upon me I felt it in my very bones. I had dreamed of the time my father came to me and made me turn back my change to keep me hidden from Far Doirche. I had felt again the jarring pain of it, how the smooth flow became fragmented, each part at odds with the other, as the streaming transformation slowed and reversed.

  I lay quiet for a while, reliving every step of that memory. I knew now that different parts of my body could be affected separately from the others, and I remembered how it felt.

  I held on to that feeling as I prepared myself. This time, I knew I would succeed.

  TWENTY

  It was a glorious early summer afternoon. Far didn’t usually pay much heed to the weather, but it was hard to ignore a day matched so perfectly to his mood. The warmth that quickened the blood, the rain-washed luster of the leaves, the heady smell of growth. It was a day full of the promise of a new year. His year.

  For he stood at the very brink of his dream. All the study, the craft, the long seasons of patience and scheming had borne fruit at last. Not that he would lose patience now. No, stealth and care were in his nature. No fear that he would throw away the prize in a rash grab for power. Bit by bit at first, nibbling away quietly at the lesser chieftains and remote sidhes, until there was a secret army, his for the summoning.

  And then quickly, before there was time to organize resistance, the big festivals. Sive would sing, and they would all fall—all but the few great ones who were too strong for such tricks. Those, he would make peace with…for now.

  The father must not hear of her. In fact, Far would be wise
to dispose of the father as soon as possible.

  But first he would play with his new toy one more time. His target was perfect—a proper sidhe this time, not some little hole like Donal’s, but so swallowed up by dreary bogland that few outsiders could be persuaded to visit. Funny how even Manannan’s enchantment had done little to beautify the bog, Far mulled. He chuckled to himself. Doubtless it would seem lovelier when it was his.

  He kicked his horse to a trot, anxious to get home and get on with his plans. It was a bone-jarring, unpleasant gait, but nothing could mar his good spirits today.

  THE DAY WAS OLD when Far returned, though with the Solstice so close the sky was still bright and blue.

  “Oran!” he yelled as he banged open the door and strode in.

  Far swatted at his leggings, raising dust and the smell of horse and travel sweat. Sive’s nostrils flared at the acrid scent.

  “Oran, a bath! And a decent dinner!”

  The back door creaked, and Oran scurried up, panting.

  “Just in time, Oran,” Far said smoothly. “I almost had to punish your inattentiveness.”

  “I’m sorry, master.” Oran kept his eyes on the floor, waiting to be released to his duties.

  “A nice haunch of something tonight, yes? And a very deep, very hot…” Far stopped. He took a long, silent look at Oran. Oran did not move, but Sive could smell the fear rising from him. The tension in the room grew dense as fog.

  “OR-an?”

  “Master?” The boy risked a single, nervous glance.

  “What have you been up to?”

  Oran swallowed. “I’ve been doing the chores you left, master.” A truthful answer, but not the one Far sought.

  “Look at me, Oran.”

  And she was discovered. Just before Oran’s reluctant eyes met Far’s, they darted, helplessly, to the dark corner where Sive huddled under the eaves. Fleeting as thought, but Far caught it.

  He whirled on his heel and stared at the monstrous thing that was Sive, and it seemed to her that his eyes blazed into green flame when he saw what she had done.