There was something familiar about it, he noticed. Straining his eyes to make out details as they dropped ever lower, he thought he could almost recognize the green and rolling plain. He almost knew the mighty forest, the purple mountains. Their names were not strange; he could shape the syllables with his tongue and in his own language. Surely they would come to him in just a moment.
But before he could speak, Blathine said over her shoulder, “Prepare yourself, my hero. Word of our coming has already reached my people and they have prepared a welcome for you.”
Then, Connla saw a blaze of bonfires leap from hilltop to hilltop and he heard the sound of singing rise up to him through the clear air, and the names he thought he remembered were forgotten. He was coming home to a strange land amid strange people and his eyes grew wide with wonder.
The horse cantered down through the last few eddies of air until its hooves made thunder on green turf. By the time it halted, a crowd had gathered at the site.
“Blathine!” someone cried. “Connla of the Fiery Hair!” came another voice. Hands reached up to lift the riders down.
Connla was astonished to hear himself greeted by name. He had thought surely his capacity for astonishment was already exhausted.
But Blathine’s people not only knew his name, they seemed to know all about him. He overheard one say something to another about Conn of the Hundred Battles, and caught snatches of yet another conversation concerning Connla’s own reluctant successes on the battlefield.
The inhabitants of the new land clustered around him, feeling his arms, murmuring admiration for his hair, fingering the fabric of his tunic. They were not aggressive, merely insistently curious. Every one wanted to touch him in some way, and each time one did, he felt the same tingle he had experienced when Blathine touched him.
The sensation was delicious, like tiny bubbles rising in his blood.
Immersed in the crowd, Connla could get no clear idea of what individuals looked like. Faces seemed to blur and all their voices sounded similar, like Blathine’s silvery tinkle. But once they had guided him to a bench at the edge of an immaculately kept lawn and indicated that he was to sit there and make himself comfortable, he had an opportunity to study his new acquaintances.
They were not a tall people. Indeed, heart-high Blathine was the tallest among all the women he saw. Slender and well formed, the fairy folk moved with innate grace. When they walked, they flexed the arches of their feet so strongly that they almost seemed to spring from the earth, as if every step were the movement of some dance. Men and women alike had this characteristic; Connla saw no children.
This began to puzzle him. Ten tens of people had assembled on the lawn to welcome himself and Blathine, and among so many there should have been at least a quarter as many children. But the Isles of the Blest, at his first impression, were peopled only with adults.
Sitting beside him, chatting with her friends, Blathine heard his thought. “If no one dies, we need no children as replacements,” she said to Connla.
As always, her ability to read his mind startled him, and for the first time it made him slightly uncomfortable. If she could stroll inside his head at will, he had no privacy at all.
This thought, too, she heard. Smiling, she patted his hand. “You have only to ask me to go away and I will,” she said reassuringly.
Preparations were underway for a festival to celebrate Connla’s arrival. A number of lovely young women came forward with ropes of flowers, which they used as decorations, swagging them from the branches of trees that stood at the perimeter of the lawn. Birds of a dazzling whiteness fluttered onto these flower ropes and perched there, singing. A gentle breeze rippled across the countryside, setting the leaves to dancing and causing the taller grasses to nod in rhythm. Everything was lighthearted and gay, no cloud darkened the sky, no weed threatened the perfection of the lawn.
No time passed.
Connla sat on his bench and Blathine’s people came up to him, introducing themselves. Some had unpronounceable names, others called themselves after birds or flowers or character traits. One such was an endearing little fellow with pointed ears. “I am Whimsical,” he told Connla. “But you may just call me “Whim” if you like.”
The fairy folk included Connla in their conversation with Blathine, gossiping cheerfully about various things that had happened in her absence, commenting on this or that mutual acquaintance, asking Connla his opinion of their land or their bird music or the clothing they wore.
Indeed, as he had already noticed, their clothing was most strange. A few wore sheer robes similar to Blathine’s, but many draped themselves in leaves or mosses and some wore odd, flashing garments that seemed to be plaited moonbeams. For jewelry, they wore not only gold and silver and colored stones, but also seashells and feathers and random bits of spiderweb pearled with unmelting ice. Fairy footgear was just as varied, ranging from barefoot to Blathine’s delicate slippers, to great clumping boots of an indeterminate substance too shiny to be leather.
All of this attire was put together in the most artless way so that no two people were dressed alike and each costume seemed to reflect its wearer’s distinct personality.
Connla began to feel very badly dressed, with nothing but a nondescript tunic to cover his body.
No sooner had this thought occurred to him than his new friend Whimsical came trotting up with a great cloak spread over his two arms, a piece of glowing fabric the exact color of new copper. “This is for you!” Whimsical announced with a delighted grin.
Standing up, Connla draped the cloak around his shoulders. The material was unlike any he had ever seen. Warm to the touch as if heated from within, it seemed to ripple against his hands like an animal seeking to be caressed. But if he closed his fist upon it, it pulled away of its own accord, refusing to be treated roughly. As soon as the cloak settled around him he felt taller, broader, safer, more sure of himself ... and also more sensitive, more aware of every nuance in the atmosphere around him.
Blathine nodded approvingly. “The cloak becomes you,” she said.
He stroked it—gently. “This should be warm on the coldest days.”
“Coldest days? We have no cold days here!”
“Do you mean it is always summer?”
She shrugged. “Not summer, not winter, not spring, not autumn. We have no need for seasons, as we do not plant.”
Connla glanced at the sky, lit with the same unvarying light he had observed since first arriving. “Doesn’t it even get cooler at night?”
“No night. Since we do not sleep, we do not need darkness.”
She had indicated this before, but now the full weight of its meaning began to dawn upon him. “Do you mean it’s just like this, all the time?”
“Of course,” Blathine replied. “In the Isles of the Blest the sky is always blue and cloudless and the light is always strong enough to cast shadows, but never so strong it hurts the eyes.”
“And you do not eat or drink...”
“Ah, some of us do. In some ways. Like butterflies sipping nectar, some of us have requirements,” Blathine told him.
“What of me, what will I eat here?”
“We will get another apple for you. You will never be hungry or thirsty.”
Connla remembered the earlier apple; then he remembered the incredibly delicious taste of the roasted hare he had eaten on the island of grass. True, he had had to kill the animal—but how good it had been! How crisp and crackling the golden-brown skin, how sweet and gamy the firm flesh! Was he never to eat a hare again? Or roast pork from a well-hunted boar? Or cold buttermilk in an olivewood goblet, or golden mead brewed from fragrant honey ...?
A sense of loss washed over him.
Six
BLATHINE PRESSED CLOSE. Her breath was as fragrant as honey-mead; her warmth was like the warmth of summer. “You have lost nothing of value, Connla,” she whispered, “by comparison with what we offer you here.”
Looking down into her eye
s he found himself believing her and his depression lifted. She was beautiful; she was his. He now lived in a land without death and pain, in a place where no one need ever go hungry or fear the dark—or be sacrificed in a wicker basket to cruel and indifferent gods.
Connla of the Fiery Hair was a brave man. His distaste for battle had not been due to a lack of courage, and now he demonstrated that courage by taking a deep breath and plunging fully into his new life as if leaping into a cold lake.
“I accept all you have to offer, Blathine,” he told the fairy woman. “And gladly! You will see no more sadness in my face and hear no complaints from my lips. Do I see a set of dancers forming over there? Come, let us join them and dance together!” He grabbed her hands and tugged her toward the group.
With a merry laugh Blathine joined him. “We will dance,” she said. “And never get tired!”
So they danced and laughed and Connla was introduced to more inhabitants of the Isles of the Blest, some of whom had come across a narrow stretch of water from a nearby island belonging to the same realm. Their little boat was drawn up on the shore, bedecked with flowers and sporting a painted sail. “When we have danced all the dances anyone knows,” they told Connla, “you must come with us to our island and see how lovely it is. This one shines, but ours sparkles!”
Some of those who lived on Blathine’s island frowned when they heard this. “Your land is no more comely than ours,” they argued.
“It is!”
“It is not!”
A third group injected itself into the discussion at that point. “Our island is more fair than either of these,” said a hawkish man with lavender-colored eyes. “I grow tired of hearing these claims of superiority, when everyone knows my place is best.”
Now there were three groups glowering at each other. Connla was puzzled. Turning to Blathine, he inquired, “How many Isles of the Blest are there?”
“No one has ever been able to count them. Sometimes it appears as if just one land rises from the sea; sometimes the surface of the ocean is speckled with them like freckles on a sun-kissed face. They are all one land, really, joined by the connecting web of fairy power. My people are the Sidhe—you pronounce it Shee in your coarse tongue—and very strong, you know. Everything concerning us is gilded with enchantment to disguise and protect us from the eyes of mortals. So even our lands are a puzzlement.”
Connla scratched his head. “Even to yourselves?”
She was laughing at him. “Of course!”
She was in a good mood but it was obvious her friends were not. The argument had grown hotter. Some men were knotting their fists and others were muttering in threatening undertones.
The foolishness of the burgeoning quarrel was apparent to Connla, and he stepped forward to try to stop it. “Why should you be angry over such a trifle? I am certain all your islands are beautiful, especially if, as Blathine tells me, they are really just parts of one land. You are friends and brothers and countrymen; there is no need for one to claim superiority over another.”
The hawkish man favored Connla with an icy glare from his lavender-colored eyes. “You are a fool,” he said. Between one heartbeat and the next, a knife materialized in his hand, a strange glowing weapon with a jeweled hilt and a rippled blade.
Connla sucked in air, and his belly—moving back from the menace of the knife. The hawkish man advanced immediately, making patterns in the air with the point of his blade.
“This is not my fight,” Connla protested.
“Of course it is,” the other replied. “You are a warrior, are you not? Welcome to war!” So saying, he leaped at Connla.
As if this had been a signal, the crowd exploded into battle. Every fairy man seemed to have had a weapon hidden about him somewhere, and now they attacked each other with wild impartiality, arms swinging, fists clubbing, knives and swords and spears doing deadly work. Connla was so taken aback, he could not at first even defend himself. Of all the unexpected things which had happened since he came away with Blathine, this was the most surprising to him.
These people obviously meant to kill him. In spite of all the things the fairy woman had said about the Isles of the Blest.
With all his heart, Connla wished he had stayed home.
Something pressed against him for just a heartbeat, something as intangible as a memory. Above the rising tumult he thought he heard a voice. It was not Blathine’s silvery voice, yet it was somehow familiar. This one was phlegmy and tired ... it almost reminded the young man of his mother’s voice. Fight, it sighed. And fear nothing. You have thrown away the blessing of death.
At those words a heat ran through Connla, like the remembered heat emanating from a wicker basket atop a faraway, long ago hill. He ran forward to meet the lavender-eyed man. He had no weapon, but snatched one from someone else in passing. A short sword, it was, of a design he did not know but with a satisfying balance and a good weight to the hilt. Protecting himself, he drove the sword straight at the fairy man who had attacked him, and saw blood spurt.
The lovely lawn became a scene of carnage.
No matter how hard Connla fought, there always seemed to be more angry men coming at him. He fell back, gulped frantic lungfuls of air and returned to the fray, trying to catch a glimpse of Blathine somewhere beyond the lunging bodies and bobbing heads. More than anything else, he wanted an explanation. If he was going to die, he at least wanted to confront her first and have her admit her lies and trickery.
The fighting grew more intense. Like all battles, it developed a rhythm of its own—thrust and parry, advance and fall back—which Connla knew and understood. He found himself shoulder to shoulder with fairy men who seemed to be on the same side he was, and who laughed aloud with the joy of battle. He was not accustomed to thinking of battle as fun, but it seemed that these men did. Their attitude began to infect him. When he struck a particularly good blow and his companions cheered him, Connla found himself smiling and feeling proud, accepting a wink of congratulation with unexpected pleasure.
No time passed.
The fight went on and on. Men bled and died and were trampled, but Connla managed to stay on his feet, though he had received several wounds. If he was still alive when the battle was over, he knew those wounds would hurt. But in the excitement of the moment they caused him no pain; their only effect was to make him anxious for reprisals.
When he next drew away from the center of the conflict to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his eyes, he noticed that very few men were left standing. Not enough to conduct a decent battle at all, really. And those few survivors had begun to swing their weapons in a most desultory fashion, as if any real interest in the war had gone out of them and they were merely going through the final motions of an insignificant ritual.
It occurred to Connla that no one would notice if he just walked away.
Then a deep bellow of sound roared out upon the air, swelling to fill it, crowding out the noise of metal striking metal and the grunts of men hitting men. A man wrapped in a cloak of spotted fur strode into the center of the battle area, holding a huge curved shell to his lips. When he blew upon the shell, the sound trumpeted forth again and the remaining fighters thrust their weapons through their belts and stepped back from one another.
“The battle is over,” announced the shell-player.
A lighthearted mood took hold of the survivors. As if their fellows were not lying bleeding and dead at their feet, they began chattering to one another, laughing, gesticulating, carrying on as if nothing had happened. Connla could hardly believe his eyes.
Blathine came up to him. “Did you enjoy the battle?” she wanted to know.
“I have never enjoyed battle. I do not like killing others, it makes me sad. Such a waste...” He held out his hands, palms open, trying to communicate his feeling to her.
But, for once, Blathine did not seem able to read his mind at all. “You are being ridiculous,” she told him. “Why get upset about something of no importanc
e? You just had a good time, did you not, using your strength and skills and seeing how good you were? Come, now it is time to enjoy something else.” She caught him by the elbow in a grip of astonishing strength and steered him away from the scene of the battle. But he looked over his shoulder at the dead, and in his heart Connla wept.
“This was not my fight,” he said to them softly. “I did not want to harm any of you.”
He could not understand how the war had happened.
He wanted to take time to salute his slain enemies for the valiant warriors they had been.
He wanted time to grieve for them as was proper, though he had not known them personally.
But he was carried away from them on a cresting wave of fairy folk, who were as happy and festive as if nothing had happened.
Connla felt a growing anger. Blathine had tricked him with her lies and promises, bringing him to a strange place he could not hope to understand, to live among callous people whom he could never learn to like. Even her radiant beauty seemed to dim as he thought of the way she had fooled him. He tried to pull his arm away from her.
“Be careful of your wounds!” she said, with that shimmery laugh of hers, as if wounds were a mere joke.
He paused to consider his wounds, the knife thrust he had taken to his ribs, the chop of a sword against his shoulder, the slam of a stone against his skull. But, to his surprise, he still felt no pain. He pulled aside his coppery cloak then, and studied his body intently.
There was no blood showing. No cut, no bruise, no abrasion anywhere.
When he raised his fingers to feel his head, he found no bump.
Blathine was laughing very hard. “Have you already forgotten what I told you? Look back!” She turned and waved her arm toward the scene of the recent battle.
No corpses littered the earth. Men unmarked by blood were getting to their feet, shaking themselves off. A few bent over to collect severed limbs or fingers. As Connla stared with a gaping mouth, they held these parts against their severed flesh and the members reattached themselves, new skin quickly spreading to cover the jointure. Within a few breaths’ time, men who should have been dead were whole again and coming to join the festival.
The Isles of the Blest Page 7