by Annie Bellet
“This world is too strange for me,” Áine said, “I never thought I’d wish for a world where I’m the oddest thing in it.”
She tucked the little horse into her pack and took out her breakfast. As she walked toward the mountain she fought down images of the twins. Idrys’s lips on her own, the gentle touch of Emyr’s hand as he adjusted her stirrup for her first riding lesson. The wooden horse in her pack lent her strength and she trudged toward the mountain with renewed determination.
The mountain was further than it looked but after hours of walking under a warm summer sun, Áine reached where the monolith left the ground. It looked to be a giant tower of solid stone the width of many houses that rose into the sky far above her head. Birds circled its crown, forming dark wheeling shapes. Áine skirted the base, searching for holly trees.
They were easy enough to find. Two old holly trees grew together out of a hollow at the base of the mountain, next to a burbling spring. The trunks leaned in, the branches above with their dark-green, sharp leaves forming the mantle of a doorway. She could only see solid stone beyond, however.
“Another fey riddle, I suppose,” Áine said, mostly to hear the sound of a human voice. “I have a feeling I’ll be well and weary of these by the time the tasks are finished.”
She examined the stone between the holly trees. It was rough and composed of many small flecks of black, grey, and white, some of which glinted in the afternoon sun. Seren had said this was the door that would lead Áine to the fairy smith. It had to be the door, and Áine once again cursed under her breath that she hadn’t thought to stay and ask better questions. Seren, Áine was sure, had known exactly the sort of unnerving effect her naked skin would have.
Knew it would remind me of her and the twins before I met them, remind me how they learned the joys of flesh.
Áine sat back on her heels and sighed. She hadn’t come this far to be stumped by yet more stone.
It’s a door, so why not knock? The thought was ridiculous and Áine smiled. Well, she wondered, why not? Tesn had always told her that there was rarely anything to lose in trying.
The stone rang with a strange hollow tone as she beat her fist on the door with more force than she’d meant. “Please,” she whispered and then cried louder, “please, open this door.”
Horrible grinding echoed from within the mountain. Tiny pebbles jumped from the crags of the stone above and danced down in shower onto the leaves of the holly trees. The rock between the holly trunks cracked and fell apart. Áine brushed at the dust and peered within, a desperate hope awakening in her belly.
“Who wakes me from my slumber?” From the gloom within came a voice as graveled as the debris under Áine’s feet.
Áine jerked back, then gathered her courage. She stepped into the doorway and nearly fell as the floor cut away abruptly into a flight of stairs. She laid a hand against the rough wall and walked carefully down until her feet rested on flatter ground. Hesitating there, she considered and called a little ball of light.
The light revealed that she was in a large hall. The ceiling lay in shadow beyond the reach of her glow, but Áine could make out tables against the near wall and a huge hearth across the cavernous room. The room was very cold and smelled of dust and ash. She saw no one.
“I am Áine, I greet you,” she called out, shivering.
“No need to shout, girl.” Part of the thick chimney peeled away and revealed itself to be a man unlike any Áine had ever encountered.
He was twice her height with skin that looked more like stone or bark than flesh. He lumbered into the brighter light and peered at her with rheumy eyes. From this close, she could see the wiry grey brush of his beard beneath a pocked, bulbous nose.
“Forgive me,” she stammered. “I do not mean to disturb you, but I seek the Trahaearn who lives beneath this mountain.”
He made a harrumphing noise and shrugged his massive shoulders. Áine realized that some of what she’d thought might be skin was actually a hide apron sewn around with pockets and loops for tools. Charcoal smeared it and dust trickled like water off his shoulders as he moved.
“I am Trahaearn. What do you want, girl?”
Better to make this true. “I need you to forge two clasps, the kind used in making a thing that breaks a curse. Please,” she added, “I am willing to do whatever you ask in return.” Áine swallowed hard. Who knew what a giant might ask for, but she was quickly learning that little in Cymru-that-could-be came free. That is not so different from Cymru-that-is, she thought and her heart agreed.
Trahaearn clutched his belly and began to laugh. It boomed through the cavern and made little tools long resting under their layers of dust rattle and dance on the tables. Áine raised her chin and stared up at the shaking smith. Annoyance overrode all remaining fear and she stepped toward a table and slammed her fist down hard on the surface, biting back a wince as her sore fingers protested.
The fairy smith choked down his last bellow and sniffed. His eyes were brighter when he looked back down at her and he smiled, revealing teeth like old bone between grey lips.
“Well, girl. You wish to break a curse, do you? I laugh because this thing you wish is prevented by another curse entirely.” He chuckled again and Áine realized it held no true mirth. Then he called out in a language she couldn’t understand and torches on the walls flared to life.
Áine blinked and stared down at her dirty feet until her eyes adjusted. She could feel Trahaearn’s warm breath above her as his huge boots drew close. She looked up again.
He raised arms as thick as her waist and held his hands in front of her face for inspection. Áine gasped. His fingers were thick and curled in a painful and unnatural way. The swollen joints oozed from chapped sores. His nails were broken back to the quicks and grit filled every crack and hollow in his skin. His thumbs looked to be dislocated as well.
“Stupid girl. Don’t cry because no one told you my hands can’t hold a spoon much less a forging hammer.” He dropped his hands and turned away. “Go home.”
Áine was crying. She’d never seen hands so destroyed; she could only imagine that the pain must be unbearable. Perhaps not as unbearable as knowing you’re a smith who will never forge again. Only semiconscious of her action, she reached to her waist for her healer’s pouch and patted herself, confused for a moment, when it was not there.
“What happened to your hands?” Áine said, taking a step toward Trahaearn.
He did not turn back to her but spoke instead to the cold hearth. “I don’t suppose someone sane and biddable would have sought me out here, would they? Well, girl, go to the third table down there and tell me the thing you find wrapped in cloth-of-gold.”
Áine obeyed, wondering on her own sanity and supposing that, in fact, perhaps she was indeed neither sane nor biddable. She sneezed twice as she brushed away years or perhaps centuries of accumulated dust from the table. A cloth-wrapped bundle lay in a heap beneath the mess. Áine was unsure if this was cloth-of-gold since it held little color any more, but she lifted it and turned toward the hearth. The bundle was the length of her forearm but light in her hand.
“Unwrap it,” the fairy smith ordered, his back still to her.
Áine leaned away from the soiled cloth as she pulled it apart. Dust and grit billowed around her hands as she turned the bundle around and around to undo the swaddling and it took a moment for her eyes to make out what she held even as her hand gripped something smooth and cold. In her hand was a dagger, forged with more skill than any she’d seen before.
She dropped the cloth and examined the dagger, surprised to find a thing of iron in a Fairy place. The hilt was laid out with bronze and copper, its grip black and subtly textured. The pommel was crafted from jade, or coral perhaps, a delicate wing carved in filigree to look like the bridge of a haircomb. She touched a finger to the edge of the blade and was surprised to find it dull. She looked over at Trahaearn and saw that he’d turned and now watched her.
“The Daughte
r of the Wind commissioned that knife. It is the culmination of my skill, worked so that the iron would never touch the fey hand that wields it and light enough that a woman might slip it into her braid. It was not until I’d finished that I realized what I’d made. Once sharpened, that knife would be capable of killing any fey. The Wind’s daughter is petty, her ire easily raised. To give her a weapon such as this, well, I could not agree.” He stopped his story, staring at the knife and Áine wondered if he’d forgotten her presence in his reverie.
“She cursed you,” Áine guessed.
His head jerked up. “The fey do have a fondness for cursing. She willed that I grow as ugly as my mountain and filled my hands with twisting agony so that I might never hold a hammer again.” He sighed. “Put the knife away. I would help you if I could, please know that, girl. If you are cursed, the one who sent you here would likely know my circumstance. You’ve been set up to fail from the start I fear.”
Áine set the knife on the table and walked toward the fairy smith. “Aye, I’ve been set up, I know this. But there must be a way. Please. I have to free the men I love.”
“I cannot forge,” Trahearn cried as he advanced on Áine. She backed away at the bleak sorrow in his face. Her feet bumped against the steps. “Go, stupid girl. Go find another way. What you seek is not here. There is nothing here but broken things and bad thoughts.”
She backed up the stairs as he shouted at her; she backed away until the warm afternoon sun touched her back and she felt the fallen stones of the doorway beneath her cold toes.
“Trahaearn,” she began, holding out her hands in supplication.
“I do not know that name. I am nothing. Get out!” With a final yell, the smith shoved Áine through the doorway.
She fell onto the sparse grass and scattered stones as with a grinding rumble the fallen pieces of the door lifted up and reformed into a solid wall of rock once more. Áine sat for a moment in shock and then rose. She beat her fists on the door, calling out for the smith. Her hands bruised, then bled before she stepped away, heaving.
“Calm, Áine, review your options,” she told herself.
The options looked bleak. The sun was nearly set, the mountain throwing a long shadow across the barren landscape. She couldn’t return to Seren, not without those clasps. She had no idea how she might break the curse without the clasps and though she hated to trust Seren even a little, she couldn’t see her way through this without the Lady’s help.
“I cannot go back, and I cannot go forward.” Áine sighed. She was tired, dirty, and hungry. She turned to the bubbling spring and washed her face and aching hands in the cool water. She rinsed and refilled her waterskin and pulled out a loaf of Blodeuedd’s bread for her supper. Then, sinking down to rest her back against the sun-warmed stone of Trahaearn’s mountain, Áine stared into the sky as unfamiliar stars spread their blanket over the unfamiliar land.
* * *
“When there is so much to do, getting a little sleep always does a trick.” Tesn’s face wrinkled with friendly mirth.
Áine looked around her but shadows obscured the world just outside a little circle within which she and Tesn sat. “Am I dreaming?” she asked. She felt a leap of joy at seeing her mother, but her limbs wouldn’t move, wouldn’t obey her demand that she rise and throw her arms about the smiling old woman.
“Of course you are, love. We have a little time. Tell me the remedy for pain of the joints.” Tesn reached forward and patted Áine’s leaden arm.
At her touch Áine’s heart throbbed painfully and she blinked hard to hold in the hot tears that threatened. I miss you, she wanted to say, I’m lost mother and very alone. The warm compassion in Tesn’s eyes made speaking the words aloud unnecessary and Áine smiled back through the haze of her grief as she considered her mother’s question.
“Oil from evening primrose or kelp would help rebuild cartilage and bone, taken orally. A tea of nettle or hawthorn would assist in circulation, as would rubbing the joints with an oil of marjoram and rosemary. I’d use a poultice of comfrey or cabbage to help draw out swelling.” It felt good to recite these things. She’d learned them as a child and speaking her knowledge aloud gave her confidence. I am still a wisewoman, whatever else might come.
“Always, love, always.” Tesn nodded. “Remember your gifts, stay true to your heart.”
The circle started to fade, the gloom closing in. Áine’s eyes didn’t want to stay open. “Wait, mother, please.”
* * *
Áine woke to a weak predawn light and pain in her shoulders from where she’d slept crammed against the stone. Her nose was stuffed and her throat ached as though sorrow dammed it in a twisting knot. She took deep gulping breaths as her mind scrabbled to retain all the details of her dream. Every wrinkle in Tesn’s face, every impression of kindness and warmth. She thought then of Trahaearn’s swollen, cracked hands and recalled her initial response of reaching for her healer’s bag.
Áine stood and stretched, surprised at how rested she felt despite the nagging aches from sleeping on hard ground propped against a rock. She cast her mind back to her walk the day before, trying to recall what plants she might have passed. All the ones she thought of were either not useful or a long walk away.
The woods were a dark smear across the western sky over the rocky moor. There’d been hawthorn there, she knew, and perhaps licorice root. She’d seen no lavender, no marjoram, no devil’s root or peppermint. Nothing she could even begin to use out here on the moor. Just sparse grass, wild wheat and sticky crabgrasses, and rock. Plenty of rock.
Remember your gifts.
Rock! Áine started as though coming awake for a second time. She’d used rock to remove pain but rarely while traveling with Tesn. It was an old art and as hard on the healer as the patient. Áine recalled the last time with a pang. They’d taken the burden from an old man, leaving his family to say goodbye for as the pain passed, so did he.
I thought I understood their pain then. Aiee, I wish I still had so little understanding of grief.
Áine shook her head and retrieved her pack from the ground. She almost laughed at the irony of what she needed now. “Two strong stones. I’ll never be free of bloody rocks.”
She forced herself to drink more water and eat two apples along with half a loaf of bread. She’d need strength if her plan were to work at all. Áine wasn’t certain that pain caused by a curse could be lifted in this way, but trying was still better than weeping and wringing her skirts in defeat.
It was midmorning before she felt prepared. She stood in front of the holly trees and tapped again on the stone door.
“Trahaearn. Please, hear me,” she cried with more confidence than she truly felt. “I am a wisewoman, a healer. If I can lift the pain from your hands so that you might forge again, will you grant me my clasps?”
For many long breaths nothing happened and Áine started to despair again. Then a deep rumble shook the mountain and the doorway crumbled as it had the afternoon before.
“Stubborn girl.” Cold air and flickering torchlight greeted her with his graveled call.
Áine chose to interpret it as an invitation and walked back down the stairs and underneath the mountain.
Twenty-one
Trahaearn heard her out in silence, his craggy head bowed over his barrel chest. Áine laid the two rounded rocks she’d chosen from the moor on the nearest table and brushed off a bench to sit on.
“If you can do this thing, as you say, then yes, I will forge the clasps you need.” At his words the hope smoldering in her eyes lit aflame.
“Thank you,” she said, then hesitated and continued. “This is not permanent. I do not know how long the pain and swelling will stay away if I succeed.”
“To live without it, even for a little while, to craft something of beauty again, these things are worth much to me.” He raised his head. “Don’t diminish my own hope, girl, for it’s you that brought it to me.”
Áine stretched her neck, looking down
and away from him. “Let us begin.”
Trahaearn lowered himself to sit on the great bench opposite her and laid his right hand across the table with a puff of dust. Áine gently rested her own hand on his skin. The warmth of him surprised her; his skin felt like fine leather with rough lines hatched through it like scars. With a deep breath Áine let her mind sink beneath his skin.
The heart of the fairy smith beat with a deep, slow rhythm. Áine felt her own heart racing in comparison, her body rebelling against the calm strength of the man she touched. Beyond that throbbing pulse laid a terrible chill its steady power could not touch. Áine pushed herself toward that chill, down into his hand.
Pain assaulted her. It twisted as a snake twists, coiling and uncoiling as the curse’s venom filled the joints of his hand with unceasing torment.
Áine did not hear herself cry out, did not see her blank-eyed terror. Deep inside Trahaearn’s hand, she wrestled with the pain, its existence an affront to everything she stood for as a healer. She would not suffer this; the snake must be forced out. She resisted her own gifts enough to feel the hard stone beneath her other hand. Bit by bit she tugged at the pain, dragging it out of his twisted fist and into the uncaring rock. The serpent of pain within uncurled and sank away coil by coil.
Áine came back to herself as the stone under her hand cracked with a strange sound. Her face was gaunt with exhaustion and she had to lick her lips several times before she felt she could speak. She lifted her eyes from the cracked stone and her own pale hand to Trahaearn. He’d removed his hand from under her own and she’d not even felt it.
“Thank you, girl,” he whispered, his eyes wet but far more clear than they’d been before, the rheumy film all but gone and their pupil-less, golden depths visible now. His right hand was straight and perfect with long, strong fingers and clean nails.