by Prue Batten
‘Needlewoman is sad. Thy sighs make willows dance.’
Adelina jumped and turned to the voice behind her. Maeve Swan Maid stood in her elongated black beauty, a stark column of loveliness with an expression Adelina could not read.
‘You’ve come back. Is Lhian...'
Maeve broke in. ‘Thy Faeran friend is faraway. Fret not, Threadlady.’
‘Thank Aine.’ A weight lifted from the pile of cares and woes Adelina carried.
‘Thy thanks are misplaced, mortal maid. Thou would do better to thank I and my sister maid who so kindly loaned a cloak to thy friend. Thou should speak in realities not hypotheticals. If Aine gave a care, She would help thee escape this prison and bring foul Other-killer to her death, she who murdered one of my sisters!’ Maeve moved from behind the seat to sit by Adelina, making sure none of her midnight blackness touched the mortal.
‘I know, I’m so sorry for your loss. But she spoke to me Maeve, as she died.’ She repeated the dying swan’s words and Maeve’s eyes darkened to the endless colour of death. She said nothing and Adelina squirmed, plucking at the strings of courage to ask a question. ‘Maeve, can you tell me where Lhiannon is?’
The woman shook herself from her shadowed revery. ‘No, but be assured Faeran is forever safe.’
Adelina watched Maeve’s swan-like neck turn as the dangerous eyes fixed her with a gaze that in the past may have produced shivers. But in her desperate state, all she wanted was for the swan-maid to feel some sadness for her, just as she felt wrenching sadness for the swan-maid’s loss. But it was not to be.
‘Souls begin journey across western seas to Faeran healer in Veniche where he shall wait. Fate decrees.’
Around Maeve and Adelina the birds had set up a loud chorus as the sky softened to dusk, the embroiderer marveling at the way her life was turning on its head. All those who would help her were Other. Her would-be, could-be friends were unbelievably Other.
‘Threadneedle Lady, thou wouldst do well to begin to plan thy escape. Ugly manservant will have thee as soon as thy gaoler’s back is turned and sooner rather than later for she comes and goes with great frequency. As to the woman, thou must surely have a plan for retribution?’
‘Not precisely...’
Maeve Swan Maid hissed as she stood, a column of fury. ‘Thy heartbreak is not as consuming as thou would have us believe. Thy lover was killed! Does that mean nothing to thee? And the witch-mortal killed Others who were thy friends. It matters to Others even if it does not matter to thee?’
‘Of course it matters,’ Adelina brought a fist down hard on the arm of the bench. ‘I would kill her here and now if I could.’
Maeve’s head flew back and she gave a harsh laugh like a swan’s cry. ‘Thou says! Thou says much but does little, Stitcher. Why dost thou not plan so-called retribution, woman? Do it, rather than think it. Dost thou still repudiate our offer to help thee avenge thyself on foul killers?’
Adelina thought for a moment. She had many vengeful ideas. ‘Maeve, your offer is generous,’ she prevaricated, ‘but I must do this myself, I swear. It is necessary for my soul.’
The swan-maid shrugged her shoulders. ‘Remember this, Threadlady. Thou hast sworn to me. Thou hast given thy word to an Other. Thou must carry out thy pledge on pain of equal punishment. Dost thou understand?’ Her eyes burned into Adelina’s. ‘And thou would do well to take help if it is offered. Thou will never get away from here otherwise. Evil Other-killer has many ugly tools at her disposal, more eldritch than one such as Stitcher could ever dream. She has soul-syphon. Keeping prisoner is easy pickings. Thou must hearken or thou will end up in pieces like Maeve’s sister maid.’ As she uttered the last words, Maeve walked to the water without looking back, shape-shifting and becoming a graceful black bird that glided away to the other side of the lake before launching itself into the darkening sky where it was hardly to be noticed.
Luther hovered close when he took Adelina back to her room. Inebriated, he brushed her with lingering fingers. Sick at the thought of her blatant vulnerability with Luther possessing the key to her room, she pulled a coffer to the door and jamming hard against the wood, knowing it would do nothing to stop the bull that was the man.
Maeve’s dark grey words had her almost like a jelly - dark grey because in truth nothing would ever be as black as the words that had told her Kholi and Liam were dead. But worse now, she had pledged to an Other and forfeited her own life should the pledge fail. She was threatened on all sides and as she trembled staring out at the dark sky, she thought of Lhiannon and how she had not demurred once as she began her dangerous journey. She had not let anything stop her.
And what hast thou done? Sat and embroidered for thy gaoler. Allowed thyself to be hit, bullied and provoked. She could hear Maeve as surely as if she sat by her shoulder. I am pathetic, she railed. But as the souls make their way to the northern waters, this will be my turning point. She faced the wall near the door. ‘Hola, Mr. Goodfellow, hola!’ There was a hint of begging in her voice. ‘I need you.’
***
And so I pleaded. I could no longer continue alone. I needed a friend, I knew it the minute Maeve spoke to me. My heart had lifted with hope at the ridiculous thought she might be my helpmeet, someone familiar to whom I could vent my angst.
And whilst Maeve’s cool remove was a disappointment, I remembered the friendly gleam in the hob’s eye. It had potential...
Chapter Six
‘Remember twenty-eight years ago I found you by the sea?’ Ebba dared not even look at Phelim’s face. If she did she knew her courage would fail her and thus she ploughed on. ‘Well I knew immediately why you were there and what you were, but for my own selfish reasons I told no one and now I must. Phelim, you are of the Faeran.’
Phelim snorted like a horse, a grin beginning to creep across his face. But on observing Ebba’s expression, he stood up, flinging the chair back to move out of her ambit.
She raised a quieting finger and shook her head slightly, aware that one step back was a whole gulf between he and herself. Desperate to ignore her fears, she continued. ‘Days before I found you, there was a Faeran progress through the island. Things happened - children were taken and changelings left in their places, girls suffered the pining sickness, cows’ milk curdled, crops had patterns scattered through as if an Other dance had taken place. I was frantic ameliorating all the trouble. And when I went to gather herbs and grasses from the shore, there you were. Some absent-minded mother had left you - they often do this type of thing, it is well documented in our histories - so busy enjoying themselves they forget about the babe.’ She took a breath. ‘But at all costs I decided no one must know you were Faeran because I had found you and I loved you instantly. So I spread a story, you know it well. I would not have you discriminated against for being Other nor returned to those who would not care for you. Thus it was a case of putting as much about you as I could, to deter the most ardent hunter.’
She sighed and scrabbled at threads of her hair that fell from underneath the woolen twist. ‘And there was one, believe me. Every year for five years, Jasper the Faeran Healer - he would come and search the isles and I would lay carlins’ charms about your person and about the house. I would wash you and your clothes in herbs. You would have the amber around your neck - it was the gentlest charm to your Faeran sensibilities, and I would use carlin-tongue. I longed to surround your crib with silver but it would have wounded you to the core. And when Jasper came, I would put you in a group of other infants and children to confound his senses. I was sure he would discover you; such was his skill. I would plead with Aine to keep you safe for you were my little son.’
A tear escaped, slipping across the top of Ebba’s skin like water across velvet. Glancing at Phelim’s eyes, she saw confusion, disbelief, and something else she couldn’t bear to think about. ‘It worked, because after five years he never came back. Then it was a question of guiding you away from your Other birthright to a mortal life. As I hoped, our l
ife rubbed off. Occasionally you spoke Traveller when I had taught you not one word, and Faeran as well. But to all whom you met you were indeed Ebba’s stepson, child of my dead sister.’ She stopped for a breath and looked at her audience. ‘Forgive me?’
‘Aine, forgive you?’ He raked fingers through the wavy hair. ‘Why Ebba? Why did you do it? Why not give me back?’ His voice hardened. ‘Why wait so long to tell me something of such colossal import?’
A fearsome emptiness curled around the carlin. She had thought her beloved stepson would accept the reasons for her actions with the equanimity that had dominated his life. Her hopes had blown away in the fierceness of his response and all she saw fluttering in the air about her was disbelief and anger.
‘Why not tell me when I was young?’ He stamped away across the room and back again. ‘I don’t want to be Other. I want to be me, Phelim the shepherd, the man everyone knows. I have no greater aspiration beyond being the best I can be. People out there,’ he waved an arm,’ they respect me and like me. What do you think they would do if they found out I was Other? You obviously thought it enough of a problem when I was young to shield my real identity. They’d fear me, wouldn’t they? Never call me by name, they’d exclude me.’ He stopped and tapped the table with a taut finger. ‘But there’s a thing, how in all these years if I am Other, have I not left the minute someone spoke my name uninvited or thanked me for something?’
‘Perhaps Phelim is not your real name.’ She cringed as her stepson choked, even his name suspect, and the pain that grabbed her heart almost crushed it. I can’t do this, I can’t. The truth is too cruel. ‘But you must,’ she could hear the urisk say.
‘As I said,’ she continued, though her heart hammered. ‘I made sure you were inculcated with mortal ways and mores from the minute I held you in my arms. That and the charms I laid about you. As happens when one spends a long time with someone, one absorbs their ways, their life. You were an infant, Phelim. You had no time to be Faeran. You were like a piece of clay waiting to be moulded on the wheel and I chose to mould you as a mortal.’
‘You must have powers verging on the unbelievable then, Ebba. To fool the Faeran for this long.’ His tone was bitter and it was such a shock. ‘And now, you have ripped the rug of my mortal life from underneath my feet and made me a different person. How dare you?’
‘Dare, dare!’ A flinty light burst into flame inside the carlin. ‘I dared because if I had left you there as a babe you may have died.’
‘Why?’ he asked emptily. ‘Was it my bane to die as a babe? If so, patently I owe you. I must be the first Faeran to escape their bane.’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Phelim.’
‘Then what does exactly, because I’m damned if I have a clue.’
A sparking silence hung between them, so much said, so much still to say.
‘Surely in all this time, something of Faeran would have shown itself.’
She could detect the faintest plea in his words as if she should say, No, you’re right, there wasn’t and they could forget about it all. ‘Think Phelim,’ Ebba’s voice flattened as the weight of the night’s revelations grew heavier. ‘You spoke Traveller and Other when I had taught you not one word and you have mesmered unconsciously.’
‘No, never!’
‘Are you sure? Some animal, a person even?’ Ebba nudged his recall.
There was silence and then Phelim’s eyes widened a little.
‘And there have been other things.’
‘What? Worse than a mesmer?’
Ebba nodded her head. ‘Your relationship with women. I had always to remedy them. There was something of the Ganconer in it all.’
‘No!’ Phelim sat with a thump. ‘They would have died.’
‘Indeed. Thus my help and like the Ganconer, you never returned to same woman twice.’
‘The Ganconer! But his victims die, I am a murderer.’
Ebba rushed around the table and folded him in a fierce grasp, laying her cheek on his head. ‘No my son, no. You never hurt a soul knowingly. I refuse to believe you would ever do so. Listen to me. You may be Other but nothing changes. You can control this and be in charge. And perhaps the urisk is right, perhaps it is your destiny to courier these souls to Jasper, if only to prove to yourself that it can be done your way and not the Other way.’
Phelim’s sadness hung in the air like a torn bannerol as he pushed her away. ‘Perhaps,’ he whispered. ‘Leastways I have no choice. Besides, whether I do it or not, life will never ever be the same.’
‘Oh, Phelim.’
‘No, don’t. I don’t wish to talk about it anymore and I shall leave tonight. The sooner I leave, the less chance I shall hurt anyone.’ He stood and walked to the door. ‘I’ll get a boat Ebba, and you set about collecting supplies.’
‘Phelim, please!’
But he shook his head and left and Ebba was surrounded by the silence of recrimination. She grabbed her staff and banged hard on the floor but all that came from the top was the sound of wind and the crisp crackling of ice... the southerly still blew.
Chapter Seven
Phelim hunkered down, his arm over the tiller, the port sheets in his hand. He had let the mainsail out as far as he dared and had added a small foresail and the two canvases lifted the little craft atop the wave. It skimmed, the only sound being the whine of the wind in the stays, the odd flap as a sail ruckled and the swish of the bow wave. A fine spray blew in his face as he crossed the ocean almost abeam to the wind.
Faeran! He cringed, all the skin that he had grown over his lifetime stripped off and an ugly, bloody sight to be seen by all. His self-belief had cracked and splintered and he wondered if Ebba truly had any idea of the mountainous shock she had delivered. His world had tilted utterly. All he could think of was the suspicion and the fear rampant in mortals’ views of Others. He wouldn’t have countenanced any of it by choice. He couldn’t believe that in twenty-eight years he never had reason to believe that he was anything other than the mortal stepson of the carlin. Never. He burned with disgust at his own naïvety and with anger at Ebba for her untimely, hurtful revelation. Pulling hard on the ropes so the movement rocked the dory off its steady tack, he turned to survey the pale moon heading rapidly to the west. The southerly breeze chilled and he turned up the collar of his jacket and tried to burrow deeper into the warmth of his gear as if he were trying to hide from Ebba’s confessions. Gauging the time was right to tack he pulled hard on the tiller. The canvas cracked and smacked and the shackles rattled fiercely as they rolled in the rigging and took the strain of the swinging dory, Phelim dragging in the starboard ropes so the craft could head northerly through the waters.
He looked at the black water speeding past, thinking on the men who fished the waters and then remembered the story Ebba had told him as a babe, of Mathey Trevalla of Zennor and he could hear her voice as if it were yesterday, lulling him into a child’s warm cocoon of sleep.
‘It is a well-known fact,’ she had said, ‘ that the oceans around us are filled with the most beauteous of all the water-wights, the Ceasg. They were often seen by tired sailors, driving milk white cattle from under the sea to feed on the shore among the dunes. Such a sight foretold of great sea-storms and thus sailors knew to seek safe moorings. Mortals returned this faith by freeing trapped the trapped Others from their nets and casting food and wine amongst the blood-red dulse and rocks of the shore so these half- mortal, half fish-folk could taste the beauty of the ordinary world.’
‘One such Ceasg was known along the coast of Trevallyn, her beauty being legend in the inns and taverns clinging to the rocky walls of the fishing hamlets. She had eyes of blue and hair as pale as the nacreous lustre of pearl and indeed it was these gems that forever laced through her divine locks as they waved in the wind or undulated in the wave.’
‘Along the pleated shoreline, close to the tiny fishing village of Zennor, she would swim to a rock and sit, the pearly mists hiding her from view as the fishermen
mended their nets, singing shanties and ballads.’
‘Mathey Trevalla was the son of a fishing family and he often sat, needle plying as he mended holes in the nets, his tenor voice singing across the bay, inviting the Ceasg into the waters close by to listen.’
‘It came to pass that selfsame Ceasg could no longer contain her own voice and with clear, bell-like tones she joined Mathey in a distant descant from her rock in the bay - a melody that brought tears to the eyes of the old fisherfolk.’
‘She swam to the shore and when she reached the shallows she stood, her tail gone and two graceful legs conveying her over the sands. Clothed in lithe, pearlescent silks, she reached Mathey’s side and sang a duet, casting a spell over the folk of Zennor so that when she left, they mused dreamily over their ales by the fires.’
‘Did ee hear her voice? By the Southern Lights, it were like a bell it were, like a bell that rings on yon frosty eve, clear and crystal-like. Like the wavelets on the shore, running across them pebbles, like ripples of sound it were.’ A leather seadog spoke to no one in particular as his stained yellow hand stuffed tobacco in his pipe and tamped it down.’
‘A crone picked up her knitting and scratched her scalp with needles, through the grey strands of her bun. ‘Did ee see her hair? By the blessings of the Zephyrs, it were like silver moonbeams. Like moonstrike on an autumn fern it were. Like the shallows when the sand glistens. Silver like a precious chaperon a Queen might wear.’
‘And Mathey sighed longingly. ‘Did ee see her walk? She were like a sea of harvest grass on Zennor Moor when the breeze do come. Like the ripple of wavelets when the Harmonies blow.’
‘But one ancient grandmother who was stone deaf and had not been magicked by the singing of the Ceasg, spied Mathey’s longing and poked him with her stick. ‘Mathey Trevalla, keep your fingers off that mermaid! No good’ll come of it, I’m telling ee. Thems that dally with a sea maid are not long fer this world!’