by Terry Madden
Bronwyn had tried to convince Dish to go back to England, saying he could live with her family. But Dish later told Connor, “I’d rather live with sixty smelly lads than my sister.” After Connor’s experience with Bronwyn, he would have to agree.
By February, Dish was back to teaching. They moved his classroom to the lower floor of Austin Hall and built ramps so he could get up and down the steps. They also moved his dorm room downstairs and put Connor in the room beside his.
Connor had become his unofficial “pusher.” In fact, Father Owens gave him special dispensation from tardiness because he pushed Dish to and from class, lunch, etc. Dish could really get just about everywhere by himself—his arms were getting beasty. But Connor still came with him, more because he wanted to than because he needed to.
One day after school, Connor was pushing Dish back to the dorm when he raised his hand and jingled some keys.
“I hear you fancy my car,” Dish said.
“‘Fancy’ isn’t exactly the right word.”
“Let’s go for a drive.”
Connor could swear his heart stopped for a full minute. Drive Dish? How could he do that?
“Yeah,” he said, “Okay.”
Connor helped Dish into the front seat and loaded the wheelchair in the trunk. He slipped into the driver’s seat and ran his hands over his pants to dry his sweaty palms.
“There’s a bike path that runs along the beach,” Dish said. “I thought perhaps you’d take me down there.”
Connor worked up the words. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
Dish gave him a wistful smile. Connor knew where he wanted to go, and he would have given anything to be able to take him there.
The fog was rolling in and felt cool on Connor’s face. They didn’t talk for the longest time. He just pushed the wheelchair along the path; the rubber wheels gritted over the sandy concrete, and Dish stared out at the ocean. A bright star pulsed on the horizon. It looked like a jewel hanging over the purple tumble of fog. Connor wondered if people in the Otherworld looked at the same stars. Was their day lit by the same sun?
Connor had to say it. “The threshold of night.” He knew Dish was thinking it.
A long silence answered him. Finally, Dish said, “So it is.”
Another long silence.
“I called the bookstore,” Dish finally said. “They told me a young man had come by and purchased the book I ordered.”
Connor stopped walking. It was time for the talk. Thank god.
He pushed Dish over to a picnic table and set the brake, then sat down on the bench beside him.
“I was hoping you’d ask about it.”
“Connor, we have some things to sort out. You need to understand that what happened to me was completely out of your control. You can’t blame yourself—”
“I know that now, but—” Connor had nothing to lose now. But how to ask it? “Do you think they’re okay?” He let the question settle between them.
Dish’s eyes flitted to the waves, and he pursed his lips as if trying not to answer. “We have to believe they are, don’t we?”
“You remember—”
“I remember.” The burden of those memories was clear. “And I know why the gods bless us with forgetfulness from one life to the next.”
Connor had so many questions he couldn’t stop them. “You were looking for that well, because you remember this symbol?” He pointed to the water horse still coiled around Dish’s wrist. “Merryn told me all about it. How she took the picture and all. It’s why you came to California, isn’t it?”
“It’s quite the opposite, really. As I grew up, the only memories I had of that place came like snapshots. From dreams, from poetry. I remembered a longing, and that was about all. When Merryn told me about the stone, I believed if I could find it, I could find my way back there. I would find what I so longed for.” Dish squinted against the setting sun. “I came to California to end my obsession.”
“But it followed you,” Connor said.
“I suppose, for some reason, it did.”
“And now you remember everything about your life on the other side?”
Dish nodded sadly. “Everything.”
“Ned said they took you back because you had a job to do over there. What job?”
Dish sat straighter in his wheelchair and ran his hands up and down his dead thighs. “I made a perfect mess of my life there, Connor. I got another chance. Let’s leave it at that. You have the book?”
Connor launched into a long, convoluted tale about Ned and the moving well and finally admitted he’d traded the book and every photocopy he’d made of it to Ned in exchange for a one-way pass to the other side.
They talked until the sun sank into the sea.
Dish told him about Ava and Lyleth and his nephew Talan. But when he talked about that last day, about leaving Dylan and Lyleth on that island, it was clear that worry was eating him up.
“The water horse was with them,” Connor said. “How could they lose?”
When he saw tears in Dish’s eyes, it was impossible to stop his own. It felt good to cry.
“Can you take me to the place where you found the well?” Dish asked.
Connor wiped his nose on his sleeve, got up, kicked the brake off the wheelchair, and pushed Dish down the bike path. It was getting dark. “I left your flashlight in the car.”
On the drive to the mansion, Connor asked questions about the mysterious Old Blood that Merryn told him about. They were exiled through the third well, trapped here with no way to get back.
“If these guys are so magical,” Connor was saying, “how could the Ildana take them in battle?”
“There’s much to be said for steel,” Dish said. “The Old Blood saw it as the will of the land when Black Brac killed the guardian. So, they made peace, crossed over, not knowing they couldn’t return by way of death. I tracked down some old folktales about a people who swam through a well as silver fish and climbed out as people on the Isle of Anglesey, Ynys Môn.”
“That’s where druidism started,” Connor added.
“How do you know that?”
“I did some reading while you were asleep.” Connor pulled up to the overgrown weeds and chain-link fence in front of the deserted mansion and parked the car. Looking over at Dish, lit by the dull interior light, he asked, “Did you think the well could take you back to Lyleth?”
“At the time, yes. Now, I know better.”
Connor had to pry the chain-link gates open with a tire iron so he could get Dish’s wheelchair through. Dish carried the flashlight and Connor rolled him down the walkway that led to the pool area, leaves crunching under the wheels.
“This well couldn’t be the third well of the sea,” Connor was whispering, “because there’s no stone here, right?”
“This is just a life well,” Dish said. “There are many, on this side and the other.”
Connor recalled the laundry list of well types he had found on the Internet.
“If the water horse marks the well, why do you have one on your arm?”
“I was—I mean, Nechtan was a king born into a long line of kings descended from Black Brac, the one who convinced the Old Blood to make peace. Every king of his line wears this tattoo.” He held up his wrist.
Connor digested this for a bit. “Why did Ned want the picture of the stone, then?”
“To make bloody sure wankers like us don’t find it, I should think.”
Connor lifted the latch on the rotting gate and dragged it open across the walk. The pool area was just as he had left it, littered with Ned’s cigarette butts and beer caps. He rolled Dish across the deck to the edge of the empty fishpond.
“You wrote the runes around the edge?” Dish traced the flashlight beam around the well.
“I used Iris’ lipstick—and lipstick has oil in it. Shit!”
“What is it?”
“It’s chemistry!”
Connor was on his knees, br
ushing away fallen leaves, gum wrappers and cigarette butts. “Now, I just need some water.”
At the bottom of the big pool, Connor found stagnant rainwater. He scooped some in a beer bottle and brought it back to the well.
“What are you doing, Connor?”
“Lipstick is made of oil. When I wrote on the stone patio, it should have soaked in. If I dampen it, we might be able to see the runes as darker spots, because water and oil don’t mix. It’s like a negative image.”
“Give it a go.”
Dish held the light while Connor sprinkled water over the stones. The runes appeared like disappearing ink, the darker outlines of the stick figures barely visible in contrast to the wet stone.
Dish pulled a pen from his pocket, held the flashlight in his teeth, and copied the runes on a flattened take-out carton.
Connor looked over his shoulder as Dish read them aloud. Speaking the words with reverence, he almost sang in that language of the other side. Connor could hear the snap of flames in Dish’s words.
“But what does it say? In English?”
Dish was lost in thought, his eyes fixed on the dark horizon where the ocean lay. He ran his hands through his hair and finally looked up at Connor, worry written on his face.
“What is it, Dish? What does it say?”
“It’s a prophecy,” Dish stated.
“Prophesying what? You got to tell me what it says.” Connor was in front of the wheelchair, his hands planted on Dish’s shoulders. “It’s me, Dish.”
His eyes flitted from Connor to the runes and back. “Maybe it’s not meant for us to hear.”
“Only Ned would say that. Come on.”
Dish exhaled sharply and dragged the back of his hand over his mouth. “It says, ‘Cleave star and stone, Child of Death…’” His voice fell to a whisper, “‘Call the Old Blood home.’”
The riddle turned circles in Connor’s head. “What does that mean? Who’s the child of death?”
Dish was staring into the empty well. “It means… there are things not meant for us to understand.” He tucked the take-out carton in his coat pocket, clutched the rims of his wheelchair and started rolling back toward the car like he was in the Special Olympics.
Connor chased after him. “You mean it makes no sense to you either?”
“No.”
“Why do I not believe that?”
“We’d best get back,” Dish called over his shoulder. “It’s well past dark.”
Chapter 43
Summer had finally come to the Isle of Glass. Elowen thought she’d never feel warm again, but the black sand baked her back and a breeze played in her hair. Dylan had already set to digging the clams Lyl had asked them to fetch for supper.
Lyleth had left Talan’s court in early spring, for her master, Dechtire, was dying and the old green sister had asked for Lyleth. And where Lyl went, so did Elowen and Dylan.
Elowen liked this hive, and even decided to learn a few things taught only to greenwood babes—reading a coming storm, coaxing life from long-dried seed. But the thing Elowen liked best was the summer days here almost never ended, for the sun would dip just below the horizon in the southwest and hang there, like it was waiting for something.
“Get off your lazy backside!” Dylan called.
“We can’t set to work yet,” Elowen said. “We got lots o’ time.”
“But we’ve got the Battle of Cynvarra to know in three days.”
“You’re no fun at all.” Laughing, she pitched a fistful of sand at him and led him on a chase down the strand. When she felt him close behind, she plunged into the breaking waves, believing he wouldn’t follow because he didn’t fancy the cold. But when she turned, he was right behind her.
He caught her and they went under, laughing, water up her nose, the sea closing over them like the sky, dancing with green sunlight.
Elowen surfaced and fought the drag of the tide back toward the beach.
“Come on,” Dylan said, pushing wet hair from his face. He pointed at a figure far down the strand. “Lyl’s coming. We best get to work.”
Elowen followed him, but her eyes didn’t leave the figure moving down the strand.
“I want to tell him,” Elowen said. “More than anything, I want to tell him.”
“Tell who what? You prattle on like a loon.”
“Nechtan. He should know.”
“Maybe Lyl don’t want him to know.”
“O’course she does.” Elowen jabbed Dylan’s shoulder with a good punch. “She bears a king’s babe.”
Lyleth had stopped a good way down the strand. Shading her eyes, she looked out at the endless break of the sea, her hand on the swell of her child. In that moment, Elowen knew the price the green gods would ask and she wondered how long Lyleth had known, for she most surely did.
“C’mon,” Dylan said. “We’ve clams to dig.”
Elowen watched Lyleth step into the sea foam, a shimmering veil of sun jewels at her feet.
Picking up her clam bucket, Elowen followed Dylan, smiling.
“He knows.”
The Salamander’s Smile
Three Wells of the Sea Series – Book 2
Terry Madden
Copyright © 2017 Terry Madden
Edition Published May 2017
Digital Fiction Publishing Corp.
All rights reserved. 1st Edition
ISBN-13 (Paperback): 978-1-988863-13-9
ISBN-13 (Kindle): 978-1-988863-12-2
For Alan.
Prologue
Here once stood a lofty idol, that saw many a fight, whose name was the Cromm Cruach; it caused every tribe to live without peace.
He was their god, the wizened Cromm, hidden by many mists: as for the folk that believed in him, the eternal Kingdom beyond every haven shall not be theirs.
For him ingloriously they slew their hapless firstborn with much wailing and peril, to pour their blood round Cromm Cruach.
—Metrical Dindsenchas, poem 7
By the time the long twilight of the northern summer had descended, Talan’s men were loading slaves and ingots of silver onto their ships. After six summers of taking back what had been taken from him, Talan found the ice-born had not improved the defenses of their villages. No more than timber stockades and miners with pikes protected their silver, which Talan found easily, buried in an obvious souterrain.
The head of the jarl who had ruled this place hung beside the door to his hall, little more than a clapboard barn with carved beams and a sod roof. A trestle table filled the center of the room and servants wailed and wept as they served smoked salmon to Talan and his chieftains.
“They left the door wide open,” he said to Pyrs, and handed him a bowl of honey-creamed cloudberries. “Are they so ignorant?”
“I’d not count the ice-born among the ignorant,” Pyrs replied. “Stubborn perhaps, but not ignorant.”
The sound of soldiers taking what they wished from the village drifted with the smoke about the high rafters of the hall. Women’s screams, goats’ bleats, impossible to tell one from the other.
“Perhaps they thought your vengeance was sated after last summer.” The voice belonged to Maygan, Talan’s solás. She asked, “How much more do you need to be satisfied?”
Talan’s solás, his druí advisor and conscience these past six years, spoke with the voice of the land as if she knew what the gods of the Five Quarters wanted of him. Her ash-gray eyes were locked on his, and he knew ignoring her was not an option. Her plain face was set upon a weak neck, her mouth, a pale gash above a receding chin. Before he had become king, he had imagined that his solás would be a woman of uncommon beauty, uncommon wit and wisdom, one to be lusted after the way Nechtan had wanted Lyleth. There was magic in that desire; there’s magic in all desire. Yet Maygan surely wielded no magic at all.
“We have peace through strength,” Talan said. “Isn’t that right, Pyrs?” He clapped a greasy hand on the shoulder of the chieftain who sat beside him. �
�Our people prosper as never before. Tell Maygan, Pyrs. Do you wish to stop this retribution we serve to the very people who enslaved our own but six short years ago?”
Pyrs was still a handsome man, though past his prime, golden-haired, unscarred, and broad in the shoulders. It had been difficult to win his allegiance, for he had been Nechtan’s closest ally and friend. They had both subscribed to their own lofty code of honor which had left their lands in ruin. But Talan had offered Pyrs the chance for vengeance, the taste of which brings such sweet satisfaction that it seduces even the most deluded and honorable, Pyrs among them.
“We are in the right to take what was taken from us,” Pyrs agreed. “But Maygan speaks some truth, my lord. The score was likely evened some time ago.”
“And now we sow the seeds of pure hatred among the ice-born,” Maygan said. “We’ve paid our debt of pain. Now we take for the sake of taking.” She never had the presence required of her position, the commanding aura of one who spoke with the authority of the green gods. She said, “Soon they will seek their own vengeance on us.”
“Blood makes us strong, blood is our song. Kin from our past, blood binds us fast.”
It was the voice again, screaming inside Talan’s skull—probably spilling out from between his lips. By the looks of the faces at the table, it had taken his tongue and screamed the verse aloud. The voice came from the little man who had burrowed deep inside him and now he wasn’t sure if it was Talan or the little man who had spoken. The creature had been quiet for so long, Talan hoped he had left him.
Maygan gave him a horrified look, and the chatter of his captains down the table ceased, and all stared at him.
“Words of the Old Blood,” Maygan said. “Do you feel unwell, my lord?”
He could not be unwell. Not in front of his chieftains. “Weary,” he whispered, then clamped his mouth shut for fear something else would spill out.
He stood and navigated a path through the men who crowded the hall, pouring ale down their throats to nourish their own little men, those voices that make the decisions for each one—the puppeteer that draws the bow, that swings the sword, that rapes the girl in the village square, because this is war and war forgives all.