The Isles of the Blest

by Morgan Llywelyn

Huge fingers grabbed the fiery, silken hair. Connla felt himself being lifted into the air with excruciating pain, as if every hair on his head were being jerked from its roots. But before his own weight pulled his body free of its scalp, the giant closed his other massive paw around the young man’s waist and gave him a pinch, testing to see how much fat he carried.

  Warriors in fighting trim carry no fat. The giant peered myopically at his captive. This was, he realized, no morsel for a feast. He dropped the tough, lean human to the ground and growled in a voice like rocks grinding together.

  Connla scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could and ducked behind a drift of stones deposited by the sea. It offered little shelter, but it felt good to have any sort of barrier between himself and the horrid creature who had almost eaten him.

  The unappeased giant swung his head from side to side, sniffing the wind. Then the little pig eyes in his square skull lighted with pleasure. “Unnh,” grunted the monster. “Unnh-unnh-unnh!” Forgetting Connla, he began a shambling run down the beach.

  Connla saw a distant crowd depositing a bundle at the water’s edge; then they turned and ran away. The giant did not pursue them but made straight for the sacrifice they had left.

  Before he knew it, Connla had shouted an angry oath and was chasing the giant. He was young and lithe and his horror lent speed to his legs. He caught up with the monster just as it stooped over a baby wrapped in a shawl. Without hesitation Connla leaped into the air, snatched the infant from the giant’s fingers and started to run away with it as fast as he could.

  A howl of baffled fury followed him. The earth shook as the giant set off in ponderous pursuit. Connla could smell its foul breath as it panted, gaining on him with every stride.

  Connla caught a glimpse of Blathine and the horse as he raced by them, but he did not dare stop. Only when he was too far away did he wonder why he had not just leaped onto the horse and urged it into the sky. Surely the magical creature could have flown off with all three of them, eluding the monster.

  But it was far too late for that now. He had no option left but to run. Perhaps, if he doubled back...

  He could not. As if it read his thoughts, the giant moved with him, blocking him. Nothing remained but a long stretch of empty beach, with the sullen sea on one hand and an increasingly sheer rise of dark cliffs on the other.

  Connla was young and strong, but he was only mortal, and soon his lungs would fail him.

  The baby in his arms began to wail in terror. No more sacrifices, Connla promised it silently, saving his breath for running. We will go into the sea together before I surrender you to that.

  He ran on until, in all that barren landscape, something caught his eye—a glimpse of pattern that did not belong to sea and stone. A fisherman’s net, torn and discarded or blown far from its rightful owner, lay cast up on the beach.

  Stooping as he ran, Connla seized an edge of the net. When he glanced over his shoulder he could see how close the giant was to him. He made a desperate feint to the left and then ducked back to the right, pulling the net behind him and raising it as he ran.

  One huge foot stepped into the center of the net before the giant realized what was happening. Connla jerked with all his strength. The giant lost his balance. Massive arms flailed the air. Changing direction adroitly, Connla managed to entangle the giant’s feet and ankles so securely in the net that the clumsy brute could not free itself. With a crash like a tree falling, the monster measured his length on the pebble beach.

  As granite, the giant was impervious to many things, but in his temporary fleshly shape he required air to breathe. The shock of hitting the ground so hard knocked all the air from his lungs with a mighty whoosh. Seeing him dazed, Connla swiftly laid the baby down and ran to get the biggest rock he could lift. He stood over the fallen monster and brought the stone down with all his force on the big square skull.

  The giant rolled his eyes and raised one hand in protest, but it was too late. Connla was fighting not only for the baby’s life but against his own fear. With a yell, he smashed in the giant’s head.

  Then he dropped his arms and stood panting.

  “You killed the creature during the only time it could be killed,” he heard Blathine say. “By sundown it would have become a boulder again and no simple stone could have destroyed it. Even the sea, in all these centuries, has not worn it away appreciably.” She was sitting on the horse, looking down at Connla of the Fiery Hair. Her smile was sweet, her face as calm as if she had not just witnessed violence.

  Connla felt drained. Turning away, he went to pick up the rescued baby ... and found nothing but a raggedy shawl lying on the beach. It held no trace of warmth from the small body, as if there had never been a baby at all.

  “Where is it?” he asked in stupefaction, looking this way and that. “Did the giant get it after all?”

  “Get what?”

  “The baby. The child those people left for the monster. I saved it, I want to know it is safe.”

  “What people?” Blathine asked him. “What monster?”

  “Why, there...” He gestured at his fallen foe, but no great body lay cooling on the beach. There was nothing but a huge pile of tumbled stones. And no matter how he looked, he could catch no glimpse of the little group of people who had carried the baby to the beach and abandoned it.

  Nothing in any direction, but stones.

  Connla felt his mouth go dry. “I do not understand.”

  She smiled at him. “Of course not,” she replied. “What is there that needs to be understood? Climb up, we have to continue our journey.”

  She held out her hand and Connla caught it because there was nothing else to do. He was twice her size, yet Blathine gave the gentlest little tug and easily swung him up behind her. No sooner did his legs straddle the horse than it leaped into the air and the clouds closed around them.

  Connla was still breathing hard. Surely he had run a long distance. Surely he had been frightened. He could feel it in his body as his racing heart gradually slowed. Yet nothing remained but the sense of depression that follows a nightmare. Could a man die from a dream? he wondered.

  “Men die for dreams,” Blathine said aloud, as if she heard his thoughts, “not from them.”

  The horse galloped on.

  The clouds parted to reveal a brilliant sun. Heat poured down on Connla’s body, soaking through his thin tunic and warming him to the bone.

  “We must be getting near the Isles of the Blest,” he said.

  “We have a little farther to go,” Blathine replied.

  “I suppose I’m getting anxious.”

  She chuckled. “You would hurry to a place where there is no time?”

  “No time? Have you no seasons then, no night, no day?”

  She looked over her shoulder at him and he marveled at the perfect curve of her lashes. He was so lost in contemplating their beauty that he did not think overmuch about her answer when she said, “Night is for sleeping, day is for waking. We do neither, so we have no need of night and day.”

  The horse galloped on.

  “Look down,” Blathine said.

  Bending slightly, Connla noticed a disturbance in the sea below. The water had changed color and was a dark blue-green here, as if some alien current ran through it. Some sort of creatures were leaping and playing in that current.

  “Are those big fish I see?”

  “Not fish,” Blathine told him. She gave the horse a murmured command and he flew lower until Connla could make out the details of the sea creatures. They had smooth, shining skins of silvery gray, and low dorsal fins. Their heads were blunt, with wide mouths permanently shaped into smiles. One of them suddenly rolled over onto its back and looked up at Connla.

  “What are they?” he asked in astonishment. “They stay close to the surface of the water and they cavort like playful horses.”

  “They are dolphins,” Blathine said. “A kind of whale.”

  “I do not know about whales.”


  “They know about you,” she replied. “Or rather, they know about mankind. They have an infinite capacity for forgiveness. There are those who think them foolish and others who think them doomed.”

  “They look very gentle.”

  “They are. That is their trouble.” She pointed one slender white finger with its perfectly shaped, pale pink fingernail. “There, that one. I think he would like to talk to you.”

  “I cannot talk to a fish.”

  “But they are not fish,” Blathine corrected him. “And of course you can talk to them if you wish. And if they are willing, which does not happen very often. They rarely think humans say anything worth hearing.”

  The horse swooped lower still so that they were directly above the big dolphin who had rolled over on its back. It grinned up at Connla, with a smile so unquestionably benign he found himself smiling back.

  “Go on, speak to him,” Blathine urged.

  “I am—I am Connla of the Fiery Hair, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles,” he said, feeling foolish and rather wishing there were some better way to identify his father.

  “You fly in the thin air,” commented the dolphin, “yet you are not a bird.” The creature’s voice was thin and high, like piping on the wind, but Connla understood it distinctly.

  “I am not flying, but riding a horse who seems to be able to fly,” Connla replied. Then, curiosity made him add, “Can you see the horse and the young woman who rides with me?”

  “Of course I can,” the dolphin told him, grinning its perpetual grin. “I can see everything. Only humanfolk are partially blind.”

  Fiery Hair was stung by the insult. “My vision is perfect!”

  The dolphin made a sound like laughter. “Do you think so? Tell me, then, human person: Can you see a spirit when it is not surrounded by flesh?”

  “Do you mean, like a ghost? I cannot.”

  “Ah,” said the dolphin. “Can you see the shape of the weather that is to come? Can you see its colors and patterns before it reaches you?”

  “I cannot.”

  “And can you see the light that creatures emit when they mean to do you harm?”

  “I cannot,” Connla said. “Though I wish I could. That sounds a most useful ability to have.”

  “We have all those abilities and more besides,” the dolphin told him. “As I said, only humanfolk are blind. But they probably have other gifts to make up for their deficiencies.” Suddenly the creature executed a perfect roll and then leaped high into the air, forming an arc of great beauty with its sleek body. “Beware the wind!” it cried out as it plunged into the waves.

  “What wind?” Connla looked around but the sky was clear, the sea calm. A more tranquil day could not be imagined.

  “If the dolphin warns us, there is a storm coming,” Blathine said, a note of urgency in her voice. “We must hurry on. Perhaps we can outrun it.”

  For the first time it occurred to Connla that her magic might have unguessable limitations. “Can’t your horse fly in storms?”

  She did not bother to answer, but bent low on the animal’s neck and spoke into its ear. The horse responded with a mighty leap upward and began galloping furiously along whatever invisible pathway it followed through the air. Yet at every stride Blathine kicked it with her little heels and urged it to go faster. Her hair pulled loose from its silver bindings and a cascade of black curls whipped across Connla’s face.

  They had raced on in this manner for a timeless time before the storm caught up with them. When it did, they were attacked with a howling wind and a mighty buffeting of air currents. The horse staggered, gathered its legs under it again and went on. Yet it was obvious the animal was having difficulties. Black clouds boiled up out of the sea and surrounded them. Lightning flashed in those clouds, spears of fire hurled by angry gods at war.

  Connla tightened his hold on Blathine’s waist.

  Though he could see nothing tangible, he could feel the effect of the unseen on the horse they rode. Sometimes it struggled up steep inclines, and at other times it seemed to plunge down invisible hills with such speed Connla’s stomach turned. All the while, the storm raged around them. From time to time the clouds parted and he could catch a glimpse of the sea far below, its angry waves lashed into froth.

  “Are you certain,” he cried out to Blathine above the shriek of the wind, “that no one dies in the Isles of the Blest?”

  “I am certain,” she answered. “But we are not there yet.”

  At that moment a particularly powerful gust clubbed the horse and sent it staggering sideways. Connla lost his balance. He felt his fingers slip from Blathine’s waist and grabbed futilely at her clothing, but it was too late. With a terrible slowness, he tumbled from the horse.

  Down through the air he fell. The sea waited below, opening its hungry maw to receive him in the trough of a giant wave. His legs ran in nothingness; his arms waved wildly. Down, down he fell, and fell. And fell...

  Until all of life seemed nothing but falling. Surely time had passed, a dreadful amount of time. He had had time to be frightened and time to take note of the various dismaying physical sensations caused by the fall. His legs had gone through their hopeless cycle of running until he realized it was doing no good and he stopped them. Still he fell. When he looked, the ocean seemed no nearer than it had before. He was suspended above it, suffering all the misery of a man falling to his death but not yet completing the plunge.

  Somehow that was worse.

  Throwing back his head he looked up, searching the sky for Blathine and the horse. The sky was empty. Worse, the sky was blue and clear and stormless. The black clouds that had surrounded them were gone, apparently taking the fairy woman and her mount with them.

  Connla hung in the sky in horror.

  When he looked down again he saw the sea gradually calming below him, returning to its customary pattern of deep, regular waves. Its color changed to a deep green, and a light seemed to shine deep down in the water, giving it a beautiful emerald translucence. But Connla got no closer to it.

  He was on the brink of despair. Of all the fates he might have imagined, Connla of the Fiery Hair never expected to die of old age while hanging in the sky without any visible means of support. He was neither cold nor hot, he discovered; neither hungry nor thirsty. He was not even tired. He was just ... there.

  He looked down at the ocean again and saw movement below him. A school of dolphins approached, arcing up out of the water and diving back into it. He envied them their element, though it would be fatal to him. He needed air to breathe and he had air, but what good was it?

  I have too much air, Connla thought to himself.

  And then, because there was nothing else to do, he went on thinking. If it is possible to have too much air, it is possible to have too much of anything we think of as good. There could be too much life, I suppose. Too much beauty. Too much peace.

  Suddenly he longed with all his heart for a cessation of the peace he was experiencing as he hung in the sky. To whatever random gods might be watching, he cried aloud, “Give me fear, give me terror, but let me continue my fall!”

  Connla dropped out of the sky like a stone.

  He had been close to the water after all, at least close enough so that he did not hit it with the impact of a man hitting something solid. Just a little of his breath was knocked out of him, but he could not breathe, anyway; he was beneath the surface. Water hissed in his ears. A soft tingle of bubbles rose up his skin as air escaped from his clothing. He felt as weightless as he had in the sky; only his surroundings were changed. When he opened his eyes the salt in the water stung them and he closed them again quickly.

  Then something nudged him, a solid form with a wonderfully comforting shape.

  The dolphin pressed itself against Connla’s body and rose to the surface, lifting him with it. As soon as his head broke free, Connla gulped at the air. Now it seemed precious; now it seemed he could never get enough.

  The do
lphins cruised very close to him, keeping him afloat with their clustered mass. They could not do so for long and he knew it, but he was grateful for the effort they made. “Are you ... the one who spoke to me ...?” he panted to the nearest creature.

  “I am.”

  “Thank you for warning us about the storm, then.”

  “My warning did you little good,” the dolphin observed. “You can do yourself some good, however, if you kick with your legs and swim on your own.”

  Connla did as he was told, though he had never tried swimming before. The salty water, though cold, had a certain degree of buoyancy, and he soon found he could keep his head above water even without a dolphin beneath him, holding him up.

  But why should he? he wondered. Would he not drown soon enough, anyway? Why prolong the agony?

  As if it had heard his thoughts, the dolphin said, “You love life, that is why you sought to flee from death to a place where there is no death. If you love life, you must keep worshipping the god of life with your body, which means you must fight to stay alive even when it looks hopeless. Give up, and life will turn its back on you.”

  Connla managed a quick glance sideways and saw the dolphin with its perpetual toothy grin swimming next to him, its eye bright with old wisdoms.

  He gulped another lungful of air and resolved to keep on swimming as long as he could.

  A shadow passed over head. The dolphin made a sound Connla could not interpret and suddenly dived, leaving him alone. All the dolphins disappeared at once, in fact. Connla felt a dreadful sense of abandonment and in that moment he might have stopped swimming ... but he did not. He kicked hard and took another strong stroke with his arms—his body was learning how to swim out of instinct now—and Blathine’s voice called down to him, “Reach up so I can catch hold of you.”

  The horse was no more than a spear’s length above Connla, its hooves treading the air just above his head.

  He reached up, though the move nearly caused him to sink beneath the surface. At once he felt a strong hand close on his wrist and begin to lift him. He could not believe the slender girl was capable of such strength, yet Blathine drew him up without apparent effort until he was able to swing one leg across the horse’s back.