Three Wells of the Sea Series Box Set: Three Wells of the Sea and The Salamander's Smile

by Terry Madden

  When they finally reached Lyla’s tree, he was forced to let Dish fall like a sack of grain. The landing was soft, for the ground was covered in moss and bluebells.

  Dish dragged himself upright and leaned against the silver trunk of the hazel. He laid his hand against the smooth silver bark, drew a deep breath, and finally said, “Look around. If people are coming here, they should be trampling the plants down.”

  “I’m not a hunting dog, Dish.”

  “Just use your eyes. That’s all.”

  Connor waded through some brambles, moving toward the burial mound. When he first came to Merryn’s farm five years earlier, he had been captivated by the fact that some Iron Age chieftain was buried on her property. But when he started using geological survey maps, he discovered that burial mounds like these were all over the place, some just more visible than others. This one was no different than the rest, probably pilfered many times from the Middle Ages to the present day. No exposed doorway remained. It had likely collapsed with the inner chamber.

  Burial mounds, or sidhe as they were called in Ireland, had long been considered to be portals to the Fairy world, inhabited by the Aos Sidhe, the Fair Folk. But Connor agreed with Merryn, it probably all started when someone managed to make it across to the Five Quarters through one of these things.

  This mound was covered with waist-high ferns and saplings. But there was something, a narrow path where the foliage had been trodden down. Like a game trail, wide enough for a fox. Peavey could have been down here as easily as anyone else.

  Connor followed the trail to the top of the mound. A hawthorn grew there, the traditional tree of the Fairy Folk. Here he found something interesting. He’d seen clooties, little strips of cloth, tied to trees near holy wells, crossroads, burial mounds, many times. People asked for prayers to be answered, or cast spells with them, and left cloth, corn dollies, or herbs. But these weren’t exactly clooties. Long strands of hair were tied to the branches of the hawthorn like someone had tried to climb through and gotten their hair caught. They shimmered in the sun like spider silk. Blond, black, gray. So not from one person. And they weren’t just snagged, they were tied to the branches with purpose.

  “What the fuck,” he muttered. He called down to Dish, still leaning against the tree, “You never excavated this burial mound?”

  “Yes,” Dish replied. “They used ground-penetrating radar and decided it had been robbed long ago. It’s collapsed inside.”

  “That doesn’t stop the Google Earth treasure hunters.” Connor followed the trail that dropped down the western side of the mound to the brook. He yelled back, “People are leaving their hair up there. You should excavate this thing. They wouldn’t see a well with radar.”

  “I’ll be sure to get on it tomorrow.” Dish was as sarcastic as ever.

  Connor followed the brook back toward Dish. The foliage on either side seemed untrodden. Dish was lost in thought, his forehead knotted as he stared at the ground. He looked so much older than he had six years ago. His sharp features had grown sharper, from distinguished to tragic, gaunt and wasted like the muscles of his legs.

  Connor tried to break the spell saying, “Why would somebody tie their hair to the tree up there?”

  “I don’t know. But they’re looking for something.” Dish picked up a fallen catkin that looked like a white wooly caterpillar and spun it like a little helicopter. Golden pollen drifted from it like a cloud of fairy dust. A distant smile creased his face. “They’re looking for the same thing we’re looking for.”

  “You’ve come here before,” Connor said, sitting down beside him.

  “Of course. I used to sit under this tree and read when I was a lad. It felt as if the tree… embraced me. I can’t explain.”

  “Because it’s Lyla.”

  “It isn’t Lyla, nor Lyleth. It’s a way across, a ferry, and nothing more.” Dish pointed at the freshly turned ground five yards away. “And Merryn will grow until her soul’s roots find a way through the darkness. Until she draws breath on the other side.”

  “How long?” Connor asked.

  “Time means nothing between worlds. It’s impossible to say.”

  “This blood magic,” Connor said. “It’s dark stuff, right? I mean, what kind of negative energy have I stirred up by doing what Merryn asked?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” Dish said.

  “But I can’t see Merryn as some kind of evil sorcerer type. She’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”

  “Good and evil are matters of degree and intention,” Dish explained. “A sword can cut both ways; it depends on who wields it. We’d better get back before it rains.”

  “Let me just take a look farther downstream,” Connor said.

  He got up and went back to the brook. Distant thunder sounded, and Connor felt the first few drops of rain on his face. The stream was narrow enough to jump across in some places, and in others, it stalled into deep pools where the water boiled with the current. The remains of a fishing weir slowed the flow into a channel that slipped over black stones.

  A bright flash of sunlight danced over the shallow water for an instant before a cloud passed over. The pale image he saw beneath it must be the reflection of a cloud. But as he drew closer, it became clear there was an object lying just below the surface of the water, wavering with distorted, refracted light.

  He bent closer, unsure of what he saw. So white, it was incongruent against the dark stones at the bottom of the brook. Like a tomb effigy of white marble, it was a statue someone had cast off into the brook. Water slipped over it in laminar sheets; small breasts almost broke the surface. The chiseled folds of a gown of stone encased the perfect form of a woman, her lips slightly parted as if to speak or cry out. It must have been moved here from a church crypt. Stolen maybe. Was this what the strange people were looking for?

  He stepped into the water and reached down. As his fingers met smooth stone, it softened under his touch. He jerked his hand back, feeling like he’d deposited a bit of his life force on the marble flesh. But the spot he had touched looked like it had thawed. It had turned to the color of flesh. He put two fingers on the statue’s shoulder and when he drew his hand away, the places where his fingers had touched left a bright stain. There on the image’s neck, it looked like skin. He touched the face, then lips, and felt the softness of flesh under his fingers.

  He called to Dish who was out of view behind some bushes, “I found something… strange.”

  When he turned back to the statue, he ran his hands down the solid arm, and marble turned to flesh. Once partially freed, the woman moved with lightning speed and clutched at her throat as if she were drowning.

  Connor touched her body, running his hands over her as quickly as he could until she sat up and gulped for air, both hands at her throat. He watched color pour into her cheeks, not just the color of a blush, but the most vibrant tones of flesh, like a stained-glass lampshade lit from within. And from her eyes came starlight.

  Calling for Dish, he stumbled backward and fell onto the bank.

  “What was that?” Dish’s voice seemed so far away.

  Scrambling back to his feet, Connor watched the woman rise from the water, her wet gown revealing a form of very definite beauty. He was paralyzed by the sight of her. Dish was yelling something, but Connor couldn’t understand. Wide-eyed, the woman knelt beside him, reached out and placed her palms on his cheeks. Her hands weren’t cold as the brook water, but warm with life.

  “Who are you?” he managed to ask.

  She drew close, and kissed him.

  He let his arms close around her as a rush of heat spread through his body, then a flutter of wings, like a moth, moving from her lips to his. Something beat inside his mouth. He tried to turn and look toward Dish, but as he did, his vision fractured and he drifted like powdered sunlight. He didn’t float on the surface of the water, but sank. Deeper and deeper, far beyond the bottom of the brook.

  His vision was
filled with a watery void, brackish and thick, and the sun was a distant, brown beacon.

  Chapter 9

  Connor’s voice sounded much more distant than just beyond the thicket where the brook ran. “I found something…” Some words followed that Dish couldn’t make out.

  “What was that?” Dish called.

  Nothing but the sound of splashing came in reply.

  “Connor?”

  Dish waited for an answer, picturing Connor prodding some poor water creature with a stick.

  “Connor?”

  How long had he been down there?

  “We must get back to the cottage before Peavey arrives.”

  With no reply, Dish decided the only option was to crawl. He pulled himself along on his elbows across grass and ferns and daffodils, cursing as his arms were snagged by wild rose thorns, until he reached the edge of the thicket above the brook. He was out of breath from the exertion, and Connor was nowhere in sight. However, standing there in the water in a sodden gown of dark homespun, a woman was bent over the water, searching it for something.

  “Hello?”

  She turned a frightened face to him and started to flee.

  “Wait!” He held up a hand in an attempt to stay her, saying, “There was a man here, tall, scruffy beard. Did you see him?”

  The woman’s wet hair was plaited in several intricate braids. Was she one of the people Mr. Peavey had seen in Merryn’s grove? Her gown was tied at the waist with a broad belt embroidered with interlace, and a leather pouch hung from it. The skin that peeked from under her attire, her face and hands, reflected the light in such a way that momentary flashes, points of colored light, flared intensely like tiny laser bursts all over her skin.

  Dish rubbed at his eyes.

  “Perhaps you saw my friend,” he repeated. “He can’t be far.”

  Dish shaded his eyes and looked across the brook at the pasture on the other side that vanished into the forest.

  “It’s not like him to take off,” he added.

  The dripping woman crossed the grassy bank and closed the distance between them. She squatted before him, smelling of mud and peat bog, her face close to his. She looked into his eyes as if she were trying to find a speck of dirt there. A leather cord dangled from around her neck and bruising showed on the creamy skin beneath it. Was it a noose? She couldn’t be more than sixteen, lightly freckled, and her eyes were bright green… He knew those eyes.

  Suddenly, her hands were on his face, her brow twisted in confusion that turned to excitement.

  “Nechtan? My lord king?” She spoke in perfect Ildana. “Your face is not your face, but I see you. I see Nechtan.”

  His heart raced. She knew him. “Aye.” And he knew her. A child’s face, dirty and thin, holding a sling and wiping her nose on her sleeve. “It’s not possible,” he said in Ildana. “Elowen?”

  Her skin seemed formed from the iridescent powder of butterfly wings. She was a vision, surely, and just as she’d come, she would dissolve into the breeze.

  “Why do you crawl about on your belly, my lord?”

  “Paralysis.” Dish took hold of her arm, feeling flesh and bone beneath, as she helped him to a sitting position.

  “’Paralysis,’” she repeated the English word.

  “How did you cross over?” His mind was racing. If she could cross, then perhaps he could do the same. And then what? Crawl up on the shore of that other world like a legless lizard?

  “Cross?” Her face was knotted as she gazed at the landscape around them. It must appear in black and white to her, he thought. She asked, “Where is this place?”

  Dish watched her confusion grow deeper.

  “You crossed over, Elowen. To the land of the dead.”

  She slumped to the ground beside him, defeated, yet she glowed with the vivid energy of that other world.

  “So it seems, my lord.”

  “But you’re not dead. You brought your body with you. How? Tell me how.” He gave up trying to quell the desperation in his voice. “Maybe it’s just some… dream. You and me dreaming at the same time.”

  “I did not dream this,” she said. Her hand went to her neck and found the ligature. “I felt what it was to drown, to lie at the bottom of a bog pool and watch for days through water. And then… he touched me.”

  “Who?”

  “The most beautiful man in two worlds.” Her eyes glazed over and she glanced around frantically. “Then he was gone.”

  “The most beautiful man?”

  “He touched me, and I could move. And then I was drowning again, so I sat myself up, and–”

  “And what?”

  “I kissed him.”

  “You kissed Connor?”

  “His name is Connor?”

  “Where has he gone? This man you kissed?”

  She ran back to the brook, waded in and frantically searched the bottom. “Gone.” She touched her lips, deep in thought. “Angharad’s little moth.”

  “Angharad?”

  “Your daughter, my lord.”

  **

  It required complex instructions to direct Elowen to the wheelbarrow stored in the shed behind Merryn’s cottage. The rain had begun to fall in earnest while Dish waited for her to return with it.

  Had this exchange been part of the blood magic Connor had worked? Lyleth always said that shaping the energy of creation always came with a cost to the caster. Was this the price Connor would pay for sending Merryn across? But what about Elowen?

  She had explained the little she knew of her trip between worlds, how Talan had strangled her and dropped her in the water. She had felt the cord cut her throat, felt the water in her lungs, and then looked up at a dawn sky through clear water. There was something about a moth that the child Angharad had deposited in her mouth. When she kissed Connor, the moth went to his mouth. But Dish wasn’t sure what made her kiss him in the first place. And why was Talan strangling young women and throwing them into the Red Bog?

  She finally returned through the pasture pushing the red muck cart.

  “Now tip it up so it stands vertically,” he instructed, pointing at the wheelbarrow. There was something satisfying about speaking the tongue of the Five Quarters again. It must be what foreigners feel when they meet a countryman. “No, right behind my back.”

  He gripped the rusting metal sides of the bucket and hoisted his rear into it.

  “You’ve no druada here to see to this ‘paralysis?’” Elowen said.

  “I’ve seen plenty. There’s no healing this. Now tip it back up and let’s see if you can move me.”

  She tipped the wheelbarrow slowly, and he tried not to shift too much and throw her off balance. He slid back until he was lying in the cart, staring into the falling rain and the dung that clung to the walls. Sheep dung was the least of Dish’s worries now. They had six years of information to share, but it would have to wait. Connor was… gone, most certainly crossed over.

  The radiant fire of Elowen’s face eclipsed the gray sky as she peered down at him. Like an icon of a saint, a rippling halo tried to contain her brightness. A few blonde curls had escaped the wet braids and turned golden. She had grown up indeed these six years.

  “A child was brought to Lyleth at the hive with this ‘paralysis,’” she was saying. “She worked on him daily for a year.”

  “Did he walk?”

  “In a manner of speaking, with sticks.” She set to pushing the wheelbarrow. “I’m not sure I can move ye, my lord.”

  “What happened to ‘dead man’? That’s what you used to call me. And it seems more fitting now than it ever did. Try pulling it.”

  She returned his smile, and turned around and attempted to pull the wheelbarrow like a cart.

  At last, she got it moving. The air-filled single tire made the going a bit easier, but Dish wasn’t light.

  “Tell me about Angharad.” He couldn’t wait for this. He had to know.

  “She’s a different child, she is.”

&nbs
p; “Angharad,” he said again. “‘One who is much loved.’ I’m certain she is just that.” He should know his daughter’s name; Lyleth must have whispered it to him in his dreams.

  The wheelbarrow stopped. Out of breath, with hands on her hips, Elowen looked down at him and said, “Your daughter is like none we’ve ever known. She has hair the color of a smithy’s forge fire, and eyes as wild as Lyl’s. But at six summers she’s like an acolyte what’s finished her studies. She’s—”

  “Death’s Child,” Dish finished for her. “And if I hear what you tell me, Talan has taken her as his ward, and he’s left you to drown in a bog pool.”

  “Not just his ward. His solás.”

  The trek began again.

  “His solás?”

  Dish could see nothing but sky and the golden fall of Elowen’s braids down her back. Was this exchange between worlds planned or accidental? Had Angharad sent Elowen for some purpose or was she looking for Connor? Fishing with Elowen? Or did she merely mean to save Elowen from drowning with thoughts to retrieve her later? They had nearly reached the upper pasture gate when he heard a car at the bottom of the long drive.

  “Bloody hell.”

  It was Peavey, certainly, here to look after the flock. Lies were never Dish’s area of expertise, and it seemed he had done nothing but lie today.

  “Stars and stones!” Elowen cried. “What in the name of the green gods is that thing?!”

  She was hunched down on the ground behind the cart.

  “It’s all right. It’s this world’s version of a wagon. No horses needed. Now, you need to get inside that cottage there while I speak to the man inside that wagon.”

  Elowen worked the latch on the gate and wheeled Dish through the stile and onto the gravel drive just as Peavey’s old Subaru completed the winding way from the road. She dropped the handles of the cart and ran for the house.