The Isles of the Blest

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “I want to go back to the Hill of Usna. Just long enough to see those who love me, to assure myself they are all right. Long enough to see if there is anything there for me. One last look, that is all I really need. But I need that very much. Tell me: Is it possible?”

  “It is. I think. The Sidhe travel back and forth quite easily. It would be a small matter to send you if they wanted to do so. But you have become very important to them. I do not know if they would willingly let you leave even for a heartbeat. Not until you have agreed to become one of them.”

  “As you did?”

  “As I did. But what am I now that I remember again?” Whim asked in bewilderment. His eyes were still smaller, his ears had almost lost their points altogether.

  “I cannot tell you,” said Connla. “But I will take you with me. Whatever our fate, as fairy or mortal, we can share it together.”

  “I would like that,” Whimsical replied with simple trust.

  Instinct warned Connla not to go to Blathine with his request. She had worked so hard to bring him here, she would not be easily persuaded to let him have even one look back at the land he had left.

  But Finvarra was another matter. The king of the Sidhe himself had said the fairy folk owed Connla a debt.

  “Whim, do you know the way to Finvarra’s palace?”

  “I do indeed.”

  “Then guide me there,” Connla requested. “I have a payment to collect.”

  With Whimsical at his side he crossed the verdant hills, the flower-starred meadows, the sparkling brooks of the land of the ever-living. Its beauties called out to him from every side, but he kept his determined gaze fixed straight ahead. At his side, Whimsical was quiet as the little fellow had never been quiet before.

  “If you happen to catch sight of Blathine,” Connla told him, “let me know at once. I would not want her to intercept us.”

  But Blathine did not appear. Connla wondered if she had already read his thoughts and knew his intentions. If so, would she attempt to stop him?

  If not, did that mean she was not thinking about him all the time? Because she did not love him?

  His poor skull ached with all its human thinking and questioning.

  The spires and turrets of Finvarra’s palace gleamed brightly in the distance. Connla began to walk fast so that Whimsical’s shorter legs had to trot to keep up with him. When he noticed, he lifted the little man effortlessly onto his shoulder and carried him, with Whim’s hands knotted into his fiery hair to hold himself steady.

  Until he arrived at the palace gateway, Connla had forgotten about the maze of interior rooms. How would he ever find his way through them to Finvarra?

  But Whim guided him effortlessly. “I have been in this land where no time passes much longer than you,” the little man said. “I have often visited Finvarra’s palace. Turn left here, then go up those stairs. No, right—no, left again. Down the passageway. Across the courtyard. Through the arches.”

  Following his passenger’s directions, Connla soon arrived at the great audience chamber where he and Blathine had found Finvarra before. Once again the high seats loomed empty, and he paused before them, wondering where to look next.

  Once again the king of the Sidhe materialized at his back.

  “What is it you want of me, Fiery Hair?”

  Connla whirled around. His eyes scanned the face of the magical monarch, searching for some sign of the warmth he had found there after his battle with the dragon. But Finvarra held his features impassive. Broad forehead, long and slender nose, a curved mouth above a narrow chin. Eyes abnormally large and brilliant, piercing in their gaze.

  “You said you owed me a debt and I have come to collect,” Connla announced.

  “From me? And what can I give you that you do not already have?” Finvarra folded his arms, drawing himself up to his full height so he could look almost levelly into Connla’s eyes.

  Refusing to be intimidated, Connla replied, “I claim the one thing I do not have, the ability to travel beyond the Isles of the Blest and back to the realm of mortal men.”

  “So.” Finvarra did not seem surprised. “So no matter what we do for you, you remain ungrateful.”

  “I am not ungrateful. I just want...”

  “You want everything and no one has that,” Finvarra told him, “—not even the Sidhe.”

  “One trip back to my birthland, is that too much to ask in return for what I have done?”

  “You have the right to ask it,” the king agreed. “But you must accept the consequences. Here, we are spared consequences, but in the realm of men they become a factor to consider. And you, Whim, what part do you take in this?”

  Startled to hear himself so addressed, Whimsical twitched nervously atop Connla’s shoulders. The little hands tightened in the bright red hair. “I am going with him,” Whimsical replied in a slightly strangled voice.

  “Are you now?”

  “He loves me, I am his friend,” Whim said defensively.

  “Love. Mortals are obsessed with it,” Finvarra sounded puzzled and contemptuous at once. “Is not Blathine’s love enough for you, Connla?”

  The young man stiffened. “Does she love me? Do the Sidhe love?” He had not been able to bring himself to ask Blathine that question, but he did not hesitate at this moment to ask it of the king.

  Finvarra smiled a cryptic smile. “Put that question to her yourself.” He raised one hand and drew a circle on the air. Within the circle there was a shimmer and a shiver. Then the circle enlarged to an oval stretching from the height of Connla’s shoulder to the flower-carpeted floor—and Blathine stepped through, into the room.

  “Ask her,” Finvarra commanded.

  Connla’s voice seemed stuck halfway up his throat. He shaped the words with his lips but could not put enough air behind them to force them out. Watching him, Blathine twitched her lips with amusement. “Cowardice on the part of Connla of the Fiery Hair?”

  “I am no coward,” he answered hotly, relieved to find he could speak after all. “And I will ask you. Blathine, do you love me?”

  The fairy woman cocked her head on her slender neck and gazed at him steadily. “I can work thirty-seven different kinds of magic,” she said. “I can enchant and beguile. What more do you want of me?”

  Connla moaned. “I want your love!”

  Blathine turned toward Finvarra. “What am I to do?”

  But the fairy king had no advice to offer.

  Looking back to Connla, she said softly, “You ask for something which has no color or taste. You ask for a magic so powerful it cannot be caught in the petals of a rose, or sprinkled with the dust from stars. You were loved, Connla, on the Hill of Usna, but you walked away from it to be with me and accept what I offered, delights more easily obtained than love. You have known the Isles of the Blest; would you trade all they hold for the pain of mortal existence?”

  “Yes ... no! I do not know!” he cried in anguish. “I only know I must go back at least once, so I can weigh the two! I am held by the love of my people, and as long as that exists I cannot cut totally free of it and be with you completely, even if that is what I choose!”

  “And is that what you choose?” she asked relentlessly.

  He dropped his head. Whim ran a sympathetic hand over the shining hair.

  “What say you, Blathine?” asked the king. “You brought him here; it is up to you to give him his answer.”

  “I will hold him, then!” she said with fire in her voice and sparks in her eyes; her opaque, obsidian eyes, blazing into Connla’s.

  “You do not love me,” he whispered more to himself than to her.

  Finvarra stirred. “But there is no pain on the Isles of the Blest, Blathine. I cannot let you give pain to this man to satisfy yourself.”

  “You said it was my choice!”

  The king’s smile was sorrowful. “I did not say ‘choice.’ I said it was up to you to give him his answer. We are the Sidhe; we have no choices.”

&
nbsp; It seemed to Connla’s watchful eyes that Blathine’s face grew subtly older. Her slender shoulders rounded, just a little, and looked more vulnerable. So vulnerable he longed to take her in his arms and tell her it was all a mistake, a game; he did not really intend to leave her even for an instant.

  Be strong, my son, whispered that familiar voice at the back of his head. His mother’s voice. Be strong just a little longer. You are not hurting her; she cannot really be hurt. All the pain is felt by those you left behind on the Hill of Usna.

  With an effort Connla kept his hands at his sides and did not reach out to Blathine.

  Finvarra said, in a grave voice, “The debts of the Sidhe are always paid. Just know this, Fiery Hair: the way we pay our debts does not always meet with the satisfaction of our creditors.”

  Turning, he strode across the hall, calling over his shoulder, “Come with me now if you would make your journey.”

  Blathine held out her round white arms to Connla. “Stay with me,” she said in a voice like stars chiming.

  “Whim?” Connla craned his neck so he could look up at his friend.

  Whimsical shrugged. “Your choice, human,” was all he said.

  Connla hesitated a long, long moment, in which he was almost certain time did pass ... then he broke into a run, following Finvarra.

  As he passed beneath the arches he heard Blathine’s voice call out to him, “Return to me. Do not forget!”

  He ran out. A dreadful pain began burning in his breast.

  Finvarra led the way from the palace, and no sooner were they outside than they found themselves on the beach. The same silver sand glinted with the same placid beauty; the waves rolled in gently, as if no dragon lurked beneath them. At the very edge of the water a boat made of crystal rode the shimmering surface of the water, tied with a golden chain to a piling of red wood.

  “This boat will take you back to your birthland if that is your true desire,” Finvarra said.

  “Who will guide me? I am no ocean voyager.”

  “You still know so little about us,” the king murmured. “The boat itself will guide you, of course. It knows the way. Both of you can entrust yourselves quite safely to it and be certain you will reach the shores of the mortal kingdom in due course, unharmed.”

  Connla looked longingly at the boat. It seemed very small for such an adventure, but it boasted a golden mast and a striped silken sail and there was an adventurous slant to its hull that tempted him. “How will we get back again?” he asked. “Will the boat return us just as easily to the Isles of the Blest?”

  Finvarra chuckled without amusement. “Foolish human. I can never understand your kind. You want a guarantee; you make magic impossible.

  “I will tell you this. I guarantee you will reach your first destination safely, but whether or not you can ever get back here even I cannot say. If you go, the risk is yours.”

  Connla hesitated. “And if I stay?”

  The king’s expression was unyielding. “If you stay, we will not ask you again to become one of us. We have a limited capacity to accept rejection. If you stay, you will retain all your memories and all your pains; all your human qualities, save only the ability to die.”

  “You have already lost much of what you might have had,” Whim said. “And so have I!” he added. “But ... oh, Connla, I think I remember the right way to tell a joke!”

  “Save it,” Connla advised him. “We may have need of something to make us laugh all too soon.”

  Finvarra stepped back. “You have made your decision.”

  “I have. Like the Sidhe, I find myself with no choice. I have already gone too far to turn back.” He walked across the white sand, feeling it crunch softly under his feet, and stepped into the boat.

  Finvarra followed him. At a clap of the king’s hands fairy minions attired in spangles of seashells and seaweed ran forward and untied the golden rope from the pier. At once the crystal boat moved beneath Connla’s feet like something alive, and began to nose its way outward to the open sea.

  “Connla, wait! Wait!”

  Blathine was running down the beach, waving her arms. Her hair had escaped its silver fillet and streamed behind her like a cloud of night. Her face was open and naked as Connla had never seen it before, and as the boat carried him ever more swiftly away from her he thought he saw love in that face.

  Then he was too far out; her features were no longer distinct.

  “Turn back!” he ordered the crystal boat.

  It took no heed.

  Helpless, Connla stood in the stern and held out his own yearning arms, reaching back toward the receding island. He could see now that it was, indeed, an island—a magical island with green woodlands and flowering meadows and the spires of gleaming palaces rising into a forever-summer sky. And on its beach the most beautiful of all women called and called to him, with longing in her voice.

  “What have I done, Whim?” Connla moaned.

  “Just what I would have expected,” his companion replied, “if I had remembered sooner what it is like to be a human being.”

  “I am sorry I got you into this.”

  “Do not be sorry for my sake, Connla. You did not force me. I came of my own choice, so I suppose there was something mortal left in me in spite of everything. Even a spark that small would have made me discontent, sooner or later. Perhaps I was never truly meant for the Isles of the Blest.”

  “But you were happy there when I found you,” Connla reminded him.

  Whimsical clambered down from his shoulders and took a seat in the prow of the boat. “I was not unhappy,” he said. “Because I had forgotten unhappiness. But I am not certain it is the same thing as being happy. The Sidhe never worry themselves about such fine points.” He let out a tremendous sigh for such a small person. “When we reach your homeland, do you suppose there will be something to eat? All at once I feel a terrible gnawing in my belly, like a great tooth chewing its way from back to front.”

  At Whim’s words Connla realized he was also hungry. They must be moving out of the magical sphere already.

  And the light was starting to fade. Night, which neither Connla nor Whimsical had seen for a very long time, was creeping over the sea. They tilted their heads back and looked up.

  At the forgotten stars.

  Thirteen

  THE CRYSTAL BOAT raised its own sail on its own mast, adjusted its course, knifed smoothly through the water. Waves broke over the prow and sprayed the voyagers with mist, but the stability of their vessel never faltered. It made its way across the ocean at night as surely as an owl returning to its tree in the forest.

  Connla felt inexpressibly weary. He slumped in the stern, one arm draped across the gunwale, and dozed. Each time he drifted off he shook himself awake again to examine the sensation of sleep; the almost forgotten sensation of sleep. How strange to sink into that cushioned formlessness!

  “Whim, are you sleeping?”

  “Uh ... eh ... I was. I think I was. Sleeping. Indeed, I was! How strange.” Whim sat up and knuckled his eyes. “Where are we?”

  The sea lacked signposts or landmarks. Connla gazed over an expanse of unrelieved gray-green. “We are heading toward the sunrise is all I know,” he answered.

  “Sunrise?”

  “Look!” He extended an arm.

  The sun came out of the sea to the east in a great flaring blaze of crimson and gold. Surrounding it, the sky was incandescent. The light hurt the eyes of the two men, making them blink. “Oh,” gasped Whimsical. “I had forgotten how gorgeous it was!”

  “So had I, Whim.”

  The smaller man winced. “Please do not call me that.”

  “I thought it was your name.”

  “I do not believe it is. I almost remember another name...” Whim paused, groping. “Not yet. But it will come back to me,” he said with growing assurance.

  The boat went on.

  Time passed.

  Rising ever higher into the sky, the sun cast a friendly
warmth and then a fierce heat that was reflected off the water in an angry glare. Connla searched the crystal boat but found no supply of either food or drinking water. “I hope we make landfall soon,” he said.

  “I remember beer,” Whim remarked in a dreamy voice. “And ale. And moist brown bread with a few unbaked kernels in it, crunching between my teeth.”

  “Be quiet, you are making me hungrier.”

  The other ignored him. “And roast meat and boiled meat. And kale. Remember how good and bitter and sweet kale is, with a lump of butter melting into it?”

  “I will throw you out of this boat,” Connla warned.

  “And cheese. Now, that was lovely. I liked it very soft, not too old, with a little smell of goat about it.” Whimsical sighed. “Black currants were good with that. My children used to eat black currants until the juice ran down their chins and stained them like purple beards.”

  “Your children!”

  “Oh, I had children. And a woman. Such a plump, gentle woman.” The small man’s eyes glowed. “Before the sickness took them I had a lovely family.”

  “The sickness? Did they all die?”

  “I believe they did; it is all coming back to me now. They died, and I cried out my hatred for the cruel fates that took them from me.”

  “And I have made you suffer anew,” said Connla remorsefully.

  The other man squinted at him through the glare. “But perhaps there is another plump and gentle woman in this land of yours, eh? Perhaps I might have more children, another family.”

  “If we stay. I do not know if I mean to stay.” Connla thought of Blathine and felt his heart constrict; his breast still hurt with the pain of leaving her. “I am just coming back to see my loved ones once more.”

  “What if we cannot leave? What if the boat will not take us back? I do not know the way and I am certain you do not, either.”

  Connla had no answer but one. “If Blathine still wants me she will bring me back,” he said.

  “The Sidhe do not take kindly to rejection,” the man who had been Whimsical reminded him.

  A thin green line appeared along the horizon. The boat moved swiftly forward and the line lifted to become a wooded slope, with the inward curve of a basalt cliff below. As if it were guided by expert hands, the crystal boat glided into a narrow inlet which provided a perfect landing, and they felt the boat’s bottom grate on solid shore.