“No, Eve!” shouted Lara from behind me. “Don’t do it! Don’t do anything else! They are surrendering.”
“Kill them, Eve! It’s a trick! They are not really giving up – you need to kill them now while we have the chance,” screamed Silas on the other side.
I gazed around wildly between the two of them, the sword held high and pointed towards the Riven.
“Eve, no, please!” Lara cried more beseechingly. “Yes, it is a trick – but it is one that is meant to trap you. Don’t fall for it. Remember that whatever you are seeing in them, isn’t real. Whoever they are appearing to you as, is just to try to control you. Don’t let them do that… Remember what that sword is for: what it can do and what it can’t. Please.”
I looked into the eyes of those who had attacked me when I was so small. My whole body shook with my desire to cut them down. As Silas kept roaring in one ear, it was the silence that Lara now maintained that was the thing I heard the loudest. She was letting me decide this moment, allowing me the space to feel what I should do. Time seemed to freeze. The raindrops seemed to linger in the air for longer. The arrows raining down on us from the beach sides seemed pathetically slow and easy to parry.
And I knew who I was. I knew what I would do. I screamed loudly as I dropped the sword to the ground, and dug its tip brutally into the earth. Drawing a blunt line. Let them come. Just let them try. If I cut them down in anger, it would take me ever closer to being a creature like they were.
Everything still seemed to be in slow motion as their pretence of surrender was shown to be the farce it was. They rushed towards us as one, snarling and snapping with their contorted faces. I didn’t move. And as I had known would happen, as soon as they got within a few feet of the line I had drawn, they bounced off some invisible barrier that had been created. They howled in frustration as they scrabbled and slipped on the nebulous surface that was keeping them at bay. And I knew what I could do. I gripped the sword hard again with both hands, and without raising its tip from the clodded earth, I dragged it along as I ran around the outside of our band, back down onto the beach, around the perimeter of every one of our group who was under attack. Running back up the other side, I completed the circle by returning to where I had started. I knew the line would hold as long as I was in possession of this sword.
“Look, Eve!” I heard Raul shout over the throng, and I turned my head immediately to the right position to pick him out.
“Look – look up there! He shouted, pointing wildly up into the sky.
I followed the line of his fingers, and suddenly stilled.
“It’s her, Eve – it’s Alette!”
It was. Even from this vast distance I knew that truth.
Enanti: the present
Completion
I saw her up there, a tiny figure right up on the cliff-side. She looked so inconsequential against that backdrop. Yet that was why we were all here – for this precious scrap. I could see the Beast approaching her, trying to take her out of view. I redoubled my efforts, slashing with renewed vigour at the living tentacles that were beginning to wrap around my legs once more. I couldn’t fly up there; it was too exposed. I was aware that any flight on my part would see me shot down in a storm of arrows. I wouldn’t get the chance to touch her. My wings, primed and powerful on my back, shuddered with agitation. What, then?
Shaking my head to clear my mind, I fought to focus. I knew we had a just a moment of time before this opportunity was lost to us. I stared wildly up at the cliff-top again, and caught my breath. She had wings! I had never noticed them before. A tiny set of dark wings adorned her back, visible only now that she had turned to face the approaching beast. It crept along the cliff-top towards her, certain of its prize.
“Fly!” I screamed up to her: “Fly down to me!”
The wind must have carried my words to her. She spun around, and looked towards me. The gusts whipped her dark curls about her head, and she smiled down at me. Her features were too far away to be distinct, but I knew she smiled. I felt it. It was as if she had been waiting for my invitation. That somehow the invitation itself made her invulnerable to the arrows stinging through the air. She stepped towards the edge, and for a prolonged moment she appeared to lean out towards the drop. I held my breath. She leapt, and everything slowed down. As she fell through the air, I willed her to open her wings, willed them to be big enough to carry her back to me.
“Use your wings. Open your wings,” I muttered through gritted teeth. She spiralled down and down, impossibly small in the buffeting wind. I thought she would smash on the cliff-face. Two, five seconds, ten and still she fell. Finally, finally her wings began to open, and caught her wild tumble. She descended more slowly now, gracefully, soaring down towards me. I felt the strangest sense of a memory, just out of grasp, but urgent, and growing. A shaft of light pierced the storm clouds. As it hit her wings, I gasped, and stumbled to my knees. Flashes of brilliant turquoise and indigo – a kaleidoscope of colour, image, knowledge and memory. I felt the world change. She glided slowly down and landed lightly, so lightly, in front of me. She smiled, tenderly stroking my wet cheek, as I reached for her.
“Hello, you,” I whispered.
“Hello, me,” she replied.
* * *
I am all I’ve ever seen. I am all I’ve ever been.
I am the avenging angel, I am the poet, the healer, the soaring eagle. I am the air, the endless sea, the earth, the fire. I am the dove, the raging tiger, I am strength, I am tenderness, I am the lover, I am the mother, I am the child, I am life.
I stand in the wind, and I am.
Acknowledgements
There are many to thank, and little space to do them justice. This book would be just a manuscript in my study at home were it not for Dan Hiscocks, and the whole team at Lightning Books. Thank you for feeling this story from the very first read, for having faith in it, and in me; for making it become a reality, and for allowing me to be as fully involved as I have been. I am very grateful. Huge thanks must go also to my editor, Clio. She has done a magnificent job in polishing up this story with her wisdom, her expertise and her honesty. It is far better for her contribution, and I shall be running to her with my next one.
Thanks, too, to my wonderful friends who read early versions of it, and were so generous with their support: Caroline, Jo, Emma Jane, Patrice, Charlotte and Stefan.
To my boyfriend Chris – who has put up with my rather obsessive mind while I’ve worked on the book, my scattiness, my woeful technical abilities and my limited time. Thank you – your support means a great deal.
I want to thank my family, my parents Bruce and Toni, and my sister Hannah, for always being there – not just for this. And my wonderful children, Raphael, Lochlan and Meredith: the centre of everything for me. Their support is the world. Their pride in me for creating this book has been unexpected and very precious to experience. While I have tried to limit the impact of all this work on them, I know they have had to put up with my slightly preoccupied mind at times, as well as some rather substandard dinners on occasion... Thank you x
Citations
List of works cited, with grateful thanks to the copyright holders:
Christina Rossetti, Echo, first published in Goblin Market and Other Poems, 1862, Macmillan
Edna St. Vincent Millay, excerpt from a letter to Witter Bynner (October 29, 1920), from Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, edited by Allan Ross Macdougall. Copyright 1952 by Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, www.millay.org
Thomas Moore, Oft, In The Stilly Night (Scotch Air), 1815
Lisa Hannigan, We the Drowned, from her album At Swim, released 2016, www.lisahannigan.ie
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923, Knopf
Kathee Miller,
Imaginal Psychology, lecture series, 2008, Pacifica Graduate Institute
Jill Mellick & Marion Woodman, The Art of Dreaming, 2000, Conari Press, www.jillmellick.com and www.mwoodmanfoundation.org
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 2004, Rider Press. Reprinted with permission of The Estate of Viktor Frankl, Vienna, Austria, www.viktorfrankl.org
Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam, 1926, Knopf
Carl Gustav Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1938, from Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 11, Routledge, www.routledge.com
Omar Khayyam, The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam, 1981, Penguin
Wendell Berry, To Know the Dark, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1999, Counterpoint, www.counterpointpress.com
Omar Khayyam, The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam, 1981, Penguin
Stefan Mørk, Dreams Fall Through, 2016, www.stefanmork.com
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