[Sevenwaters 04] Heir to Sevenwaters

by Juliet Marillier

  “Get lower down, here.” There was a sort of shelf, a level space well sheltered between big boulders but partly open to the hillside below. Cathal set the two bags down there. “I’m going to climb higher and see if I can get a better view. Don’t put your head up above these rocks unless I say it’s safe.”

  For a little, all was quiet. I spread out my cloak and tended to the child, my mind on last night’s odd visitor. In view of the difficulties we’d faced today, I’d been stupid to refuse the creature’s offer of guidance. If I’d handled things more cleverly I could probably have persuaded it to take both me and Cathal onward. I hadn’t even asked if it knew where Finbar was. My brother . . . His image was fading in my mind, the soft infant features, the fuzz of dark hair becoming no more than a vague memory, a blend of all the human babies I had seen. The child in my arms, with his sharply angular limbs and his fragile body of twisted withies and leaves, was far more real now. When Cathal had heaved me onto his shoulder and Becan had been caught between us for a moment, I had felt a gut-twisting anguish at the thought that he might be crushed. “I won’t let anyone hurt you,” I murmured. “Nobody. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

  I’m not sure which I heard first, Cathal’s shout or the deep, rumbling sound of shifting stones. It happened in an eye blink. One moment I was sitting cross-legged with the child in my arms, watching him drink; the next, the boulders that surrounded our small haven were moving inexorably toward me, trundling forward of their own accord as if to roll right onto me. I sprang to my feet, dropping rag and water-skin to clutch Becan against my chest. “Cathal!” I screamed, and backed away as the wall of stones bore down on me. Frantic, I looked for a way around, under, over, but with the child in my arms there was no getting back to the path. The only way I could go was down the hill. The slope was not too steep to negotiate, but it was uneven, studded with smaller rocks and patched with slippery-looking mosses. A moderate distance below me, bushes formed a screen. There was no telling what lay beyond them.

  The rocks grumbled, grinding against one another. “Cathal!” I screamed again, then fled down the hill, supplies abandoned. I snatched one look over my shoulder as the boulders reached the edge of the shelf and teetered there, rolling up to the lip then falling back as if to tease me. If they came over I had no chance at all of dodging them. Becan and I would be obliterated.

  “Clodagh!”

  Somewhere up there beyond the outcrop, Cathal had heard me. I glanced back again but could see nothing of him. I scrambled sideways, trying to keep my purchase on the tricky slope.

  A boulder tipped over the edge. With a crunching, splitting noise it toppled down the hillside, not following a logical path, but hurtling straight toward me with apparent intent, as if an invisible giant were playing skittles. I froze, unable to make myself move either way. The missile passed a hairbreadth from me. A warning. Not left. Not right. Straight down.

  Heart hammering, I ran down the hillside as Becan began a belated protest over the interrupted meal and the headlong, jostling movement.

  “Clodagh!” yelled Cathal, sounding closer this time, but now I could not look, for other stones were coming, to left, to right, leaving me no choice at all but to take a middle path. I pelted directly toward those bushes. Something passed in the air above me, something on wings, dark and heavy. I ducked, shielding the baby as best I could, then ran on. Ahead of me, the stones crashed through the line of greenery and disappeared beyond. The creature circled and returned, swooping low over my head with a cry, driving me on. With the child pressed close, I ran between the bushes and fell headlong into nothingness.

  In a heartbeat of time everyone I cared about flashed through my mind: my sisters, my parents, Johnny, Aidan . . . Becan, who would die with me; Cathal, whose story I would never learn now. Finbar, lost forever in the Otherworld . . . Down, down I fell, the air ripping at my hair and snatching at my clothing as I clutched the baby close, trying to curl around him in a futile attempt to cushion his landing. My guts turned to water; my heart was too terrified to beat . . .

  We landed, not in a welter of smashed flesh and splintered bones, but with a springy thump that did no more than drive the air temporarily out of my chest. My eyes were squeezed shut. Every muscle in my body was screwed up tight. Now I felt something under me, holding me up, a pliant surface like a net. The voices of birds were all around me. A cool breeze was blowing my hair over my face. Becan was squalling. I opened my eyes.

  We were in a tree, perhaps a stunted form of willow. It grew from a tiny pocket of soil lodged in a crack of the cliff face down which we’d plummeted. Its roots must have delved deep to hold it in so tenuous a spot. Its tangle of branches, stretched out over the void, had caught us. Spring’s new growth had cushioned our landing. We were safe. We were alive.

  A moment’s elation; a moment’s recognition that this was an amazing gift. Then I looked around me and my heart sank. There was no way out. We were trapped. The roots of the tree had found a purchase on the cliff. For human feet there was no space at all. I could see no shelf or ledge to which I might scramble, even supposing I could traverse the horizontal trunk while holding the baby in my arms. Try that and I would fall, taking Becan with me. Peering downward through the foliage, I saw the canopy of the forest below us, and a silver ribbon that might be quite a large river. A cold hand of terror clawed at my belly. Birds circled down there, pale dots against the deep blue-green of the distant trees. We had fallen perhaps halfway down the cliff. Above us the rock face reared high, its surface steep, sheer and devoid of any chink wide enough to accommodate so much as a clurichaun.

  I fought back panic, scrambling for solutions. Cathal, at the top . . . I had heard him shouting before. Perhaps he was lying crushed and broken up there, victim to those sinister rolling boulders. If even the stones had minds of their own in this place, what chance did we have? Stop it, Clodagh. Make a plan. I did not think this had been an accident. Someone had set things up so I would fall. Perhaps it was a test. If the Fair Folk intended me to undertake this journey and to rescue my brother, there must be some way I could get out of this situation. Cathal was a good climber; he’d been nimble as a squirrel the day he’d rescued Coll from that massive oak. I eyed the cliff face again, with its sheer surface and complete lack of useful ledges. The most agile climber in the world could not do it. Stop shivering, Clodagh. Show some backbone. It was hard with the baby’s frightened screams assaulting my ears and that endless drop below me, only one false move away.

  “Make a list,” I muttered to myself. Back home that trick had helped me stay calm in a number of panicky situations. I made an inventory of what I had on my side. I was unhurt, apart from the scratches and bumps I had borne before this particular disaster. Becan was distressed but seemed unharmed. I had a small knife in my belt. The list of what I didn’t have was longer: no bag, no food, no water. No rope. No Cathal. Even if he was all right, he might not be able to see or hear me from up there. And what could he do anyway?

  If this had been an old tale, friendly birds might have come and borne us to the foot of the cliff, or a magical doorway might have opened by the roots of the willow. It wasn’t going to happen here. When I had refused the only offer of aid that had come my way in this realm, I’d probably doomed myself to die in this tree. Worse, I’d have to watch Becan die first, the child I had brought all this way in a futile attempt to do the right thing. He would look at me with that expression of utter trust and I wouldn’t even be able to give him water. “A pox on it,” I muttered. “I won’t give up. There must be a way out.”

  A shout from the cliff top. I craned my neck and made out a tiny figure in a pale shirt, standing between the screening bushes and the sudden sharp edge that I had not seen until I was over it and falling. My heart soared, defying logic. “Here!” I screamed. Perhaps Cathal could fetch help—a guard post, he’d mentioned a guard post—maybe someone would have a rope or something—No, I was being stupid. There was no guard post. There we
re no helpful folk here. The cliff was too high, too steep, impossible . . .

  Cathal jumped. It was a bold, athletic move, controlled in every particular. He used his long limbs to ensure a particular path to his fall. In the few moments it took for him to come down, I saw that he was aiming precisely for the tree in which I sat perched. He landed beside me, his weight making the branches dip and shake with some violence. I clung to a limb with one hand and held onto Becan with the other. Then I drew a shuddering breath, the first I had taken since I saw him leap.

  “You utter, utter fool,” I whispered.

  “You’re all right, then,” said Cathal, his tone marginally less steady than usual.

  “We’re not hurt. But there’s no way down from here. Why on earth did you do that?”

  “Shall I climb back up and head off home? You prefer to be alone?”

  I shook my head, trying to smile.

  “Clodagh,” Cathal said, “you’re right, we do have very limited choices here.” He glanced down between the branches, then back at me.

  I did not have to look to see the river winking up at me, a narrow, bright strand in the green. “Don’t tell me,” I said as my heart turned to ice. “We have to jump.”

  “Correct,” he said, rising precariously to his feet. “There’s only one way out: straight down. And I think we should do it before we have time to think too much. You hold onto the child and I’ll hold onto you. If we aim for the water we have a good chance.”

  Brighid save us. Perhaps he’d forgotten that I couldn’t swim. I stood, wobbling. I held Becan tightly with my right arm and put my left hand in Cathal’s. His grip was warm and strong.

  “I’ll look after you,” Cathal said. “You’ll be fine and so will Becan. Shut your eyes if it helps.”

  “No, I . . . Oh, gods, Cathal, I don’t think I can do this . . .”

  “You can do it, Clodagh. Take a few deep breaths. It’ll be over before you know it.” He was as pale as linen. Perhaps, despite his apparent confidence, his stomach was roiling with terror just as mine was.

  “You will keep hold, won’t you?” I might land safely, but if he let go of me I would drown and so would Becan.

  “I will,” he said. “You know, there were a lot of logical reasons for staying up at the top. But logic doesn’t seem to be playing much of a part in my decisions any more. And just in case . . .” He bent his head and kissed me. It was like the last time, only not like it. The touch of his lips on mine thrilled through my body as it had then. The fact that we were perilously balanced and about to make a suicidal leap made no difference. But this kiss had a promise in it, and a farewell, and regret, and trust, and all manner of secrets that might be uncovered if only there were more time. We drew apart, and it seemed to me his breathing was as unsteady as mine, but his grip on my hand stayed firm.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “On the count of three, then. One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  And away down. Down, down. His hold on me the only anchor to reality. Becan’s screams snatched away by the speed of our flight, dissipating in the air as we hurtled through it. The cliff a blur of gray, brown, blue, black. A glimpse of Cathal’s face, ashen white, his eyes huge and shadowed, his dark hair flying up from his brow. His cloak, catching the wind, billowing out to reveal the treasury within. The green glass ring glinting, though there was no sun in the sky. My heart drumming in my breast, sounding a litany of regret. If I die now, I’ll never get to know him properly. If I die now, I’ll never have children of my own. If I die now, I’ll have failed everyone . . .

  I had just time to draw in one good breath before the water took us. We plunged deep, the chill of it shocking, and instantly I lost hold of Cathal’s hand. Becan, oh gods, Becan . . . Clutching the baby tightly, I kicked my way up to the surface, a long, long way up, to emerge with lungs bursting. I sucked in a panicky breath before the water closed over my head again. My gown and cloak were leaden, their folds dragging me down. I flailed with one arm, kicking wildly, desperate to stay afloat. There was a sharp pain in my chest. Becan, Becan . . . I couldn’t get my own head above the surface, let alone hold his little face clear. The current carried us along, the forested banks moving past swiftly as I struggled in the middle of the river. Get swept too far and I had no chance of finding Cathal again. Water went up my nose and down my throat. I couldn’t breathe. Becan . . . He was immobile in my arms, probably already drowned.

  I slammed into something, painfully, and grabbed hold. A fallen tree lay halfway across the river, a mass of debris lodged in its dead branches. I held on like grim death, inching myself up until I was half in, half out of the water. Becan’s pebble eyes were glassy, his mouth sagged open. He looked no more than the lifeless manikin everyone at home had believed him to be. Terror gripped me. He couldn’t die, he mustn’t die, not so little and so helpless . . . “Cathal!” I shrieked, but my voice was drowned by the rushing of the river. “Cathal, help!” I turned my head one way, the other way, desperate for some sign of him, but there was nothing.

  Somehow I managed to drag myself along the log until my feet touched the river bottom. I staggered up to the bank and laid the sodden, motionless Becan down on the sand, then turned aside to retch up the contents of my stomach. I looked along the river under the trees and out into the flow of the water. Empty; all empty. Cathal was gone. I blocked out the thought of him drowned or swept so far downstream he could not reach me. Right now I must save Becan. Dimly, I recalled an old rhyme for children about a dog that stopped breathing and a tiny magical woman who brought it to life by singing into its nostrils. If I could stop gasping and shaking I would try something similar, ridiculous as it sounded. I had nothing else. I bent over the baby’s still form. With every scrap of will I could summon, I steadied myself. I put my mouth over Becan’s and breathed for him. One, two; one, two. The forest shivered around me; the river passed on its way, the same as yesterday and the day before, oblivious to the small dramas of life and death that played themselves out on its banks. One, two; one, two. There was room in my mind for nothing more than this, the pattern of survival.

  I knelt and breathed until my limbs ached with cramp and my eyes stung with tears. He was dead. There was no point in going on. I had lost him. I had stolen him away and now I had let him die before he had the chance to know anything of the world but loneliness, terror and flight . . . All the same, I kept breathing. I couldn’t bring myself to stop. And at last, twisting my heart within me, Becan coughed, choked, twitched, breathed. Cried. That woeful sobbing was the loveliest sound I had heard in my life. My hair, saturated from its immersion in the river, dripped cold water down my face to mingle with the warmth of my tears. Nothing to wrap him in. Nothing to feed him with. But he was alive. For a few moments all I felt was sheer joy, and then memory returned. Cathal. Where was Cathal?

  “Clodagh!”

  My heart leapt at his voice. I turned my head to see him much further downstream, dark hair dripping, cloak swirling around him as he ran along the riverbank toward us. There was a look on his face that stopped my heart: he was sheet white, terrified, his eyes full of ghosts. “Clodagh, oh gods, Clodagh, you’re alive!” He sprinted the last hundred paces, stumbling over debris as he came, and flung himself down beside me where I sat with the now screaming Becan hugged against my breast. “I couldn’t keep hold, and then I couldn’t find you, and I thought . . .” His voice cracked. A moment later his arms came around the two of us, and I turned my face against his chest, closing my eyes.

  “I hate you,” I said indistinctly, slipping my free arm around him and pressing close. “How dare you make us do that? You’re crazy. Becan nearly drowned. I had to breathe for him, to bring him back . . . And then you were gone . . .” My heart was racing; my head was swimming. I held onto him as if he were a lifeline. It was impossible, now, to believe that we had actually done it; we really had performed that leap and lived to tell the tale.

  “I�
�m sorry,” Cathal said against my hair. “Sorry I made you do it, sorry I couldn’t keep hold, and sorrier still that we have none of our supplies with us. I hope it’s not too much further. You’d best have my cloak, Clodagh, and carry the child protected by it. And we’ll be putting that water rule to the test today. The rest of our journey will be determined by streams and ponds, since we have no vessel in which to carry a supply.”

  We disengaged ourselves and got to our feet. Suddenly, sharply, I became aware that I was soaked through and chill to the bone. Cathal was dripping, though his cloak had survived unscathed as usual, and when he draped it around me I felt the familiar sense of well-being the garment seemed to convey. A bruise was darkening on his cheek and his right hand was bleeding. While I fought my battle with the river, my companion had probably faced a similar struggle further down.

  “You forgot to bring the bags,” I said, only half joking. Now that my elation over Becan’s survival was dying down, the reality of our situation began to weigh on me: no flint, no honey for the baby, no dry clothing, no food . . .

  “An oversight for which Johnny would reprimand me, no doubt,” said Cathal quietly. It sounded as if his teeth were chattering.

  “Why did you jump from the cliff top? That was an act of sheer lunacy, Cathal.” I was folding the baby in the cloak, rubbing his back, doing what I could to get him warm.

  Cathal grimaced. “I assessed the situation and acted as I judged best. It seemed to me you might fall. The bags became unimportant.”

  “All that in a heartbeat.” He had paused on the cliff’s edge for no longer than that. “You could have been killed.”

  “When I couldn’t find you, I thought you had already fallen to your death. Then, when I saw you in the tree, I . . . Never mind that. So, now we’re in a predicament. I should be able to make fire without a flint. We’d best find a place of shelter first.”

  We looked toward the forest, dense, dark, forbidding.