A Promise Broken

by Lynn E. O'Connacht

  “See?” he whispered, pushing some of Eiryn’s hair behind her ear with his free hand. “You’re a good girl.”

  Eiryn tugged her hair back. If her hair was over her ears, no one could see them. No one could say mean things about them.

  Arèn-minnoi pointed past her head at the mirror, almost touching it. “What do you see?”

  Eiryn twisted in his grasp to look up at him, confused. “Myself… And you.” She wriggled a bit. Was she supposed to see something else?

  “And what do you see when you see yourself?” he asked. Eiryn didn’t understand and she didn’t like the sound of his voice when he spoke next. “Look into the mirror, Eiryn-dai.”

  She did, but only because Arèn-minnoi would be angrier if she didn’t. She tried to melt into him, become big soap bubbles of shining colours just like dai. All she could see was herself: eyes puffy from crying, her dark hair all tousled, and a grey dress that was dirtier than it should have been and cleaner than it could have been. She tugged at her hair again, but Arèn-minnoi grabbed her hand and held her wrist. Eiryn whimpered softly; it hurt. Arèn-minnoi eased his grip a little, but the memory still stung.

  “No.”

  She fought him then, because she wanted to run and hide and he wouldn’t let go. He held her and pressed her against him and she beat at his arms and back and kicked at his legs and yelled, but he didn’t let go. She struggled and fought until she was all fought out and leaned against him, still beating her fists against his back but without any force to it.

  “What do you see that makes you hide who you are?” he asked, voice so much like dai’s that she could almost believe dai was holding her now. But she wasn’t. It was only her uncle.

  Eiryn didn’t answer him; she didn’t know how. Even though Janyn’s ears looked the same as hers, the boy always told the other children how they meant her father was gaodansoi and she wouldn’t ever be kerisai. She didn’t understand that, why he called her bad things, why some people didn’t like her.

  She sniffled. “Shh, shh. Everything’s all right.” Arèn-minnoi stroked her hair. “It’s… hard not to like who you see in the mirror, and you can’t always change it. Not the way you want to.” Eiryn didn’t understand why her uncle held her more tightly or sounded like he was about to cry, but she hugged him and sniffed into his shoulder. “Hiding won’t make it better for you, asafai. Do you know what I see?”

  Eiryn shook her head. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to know, but Arèn-minnoi gently turned her about and made her face the mirror anyway.

  “I see a little girl who will grow up into a beautiful young lady. I see a little girl who cares very much about others and who always puts herself last, and I don’t think she realises that the most flattering thing she can do for people is to be herself.” He paused, just a moment. “And I see a man who loves his niece very much.”

  Sniffling, Eiryn wiped at her nose. Arèn-minnoi pulled a piece of cloth out of one of the drawers and did the same. He used the corners to wipe at Eiryn’s tears as well. She’d relaxed a little, though. Arèn-minnoi didn’t hate her.

  “Do you know what I think, Eiryn-dai? I think children like Janyn are cruel to that girl because they see something they envy and it’s the only way they can get at her.”

  He put Eiryn down on the ground and spun her around until she was facing him. He was smiling, but even Eiryn could see it wasn’t from his heart. Her uncle was sad and she didn’t understand why.

  So she hugged him and said, “I see my favouritest uncle in the mirror” and first he barked a laugh and then he hugged her, pressing his face against her cheeks and thanked her, and she thought she could feel him crying too.

  When someone knocked on the door, Arèn-minnoi gently pushed Eiryn away from him and rose. She stayed where she was, tugging her hair back into place. No matter what her uncle said, Eiryn felt safer this way. She could hear him greet someone and then Radèn-minnoi’s voice answered. For a moment, she froze. Then she bounded over to her own bed to fetch Innas. Sitting herself down against the foot of it, she pushed her doll’s hair away. Innas had no ears at all. Would Janyn-minnoi be less cruel if she didn’t have any ears either?

  “Ryn?”

  The girl turned to look at Radèn-minnoi and squeaked. His right eye was swollen, and a completely different colour from what it was supposed to be be. Eiryn dropped Innas and rushed over to him to hug him tightly, sobbing softly into his shoulder.

  “Aya, Ryn. I didn’t think you’d miss me that much.” There was amusement in his voice, but Eiryn didn’t think there was anything very funny to laugh at. Radèn was hurt and it scared her that he got himself into situations that actually hurt him. She might be the youngest child in the palace, but she didn’t need to be as old as the other children to know that some of those scrapes Radèn got into because of her. Like this one.

  “Do you want to come to the beach with Keilan-minnai and myself?” he asked.

  Eiryn nodded into his neck, unwilling to let go. Radèn pulled himself free anyway and slipped a hand around hers. Uncertain, Eiryn looked up at him. Would Arèn-minnoi really let them go? Right now? They hadn’t had any supper yet. They might miss it.

  She stumbled as Radèn led her out of the room because she wasn’t paying much attention. Her uncle was reading at his desk, mumbling under his breath like he always did. At the door, Radèn called out that they were leaving and her uncle wished them a good time without even looking up. He did raise his hand, though. Eiryn saw that.

  Radèn led her through the corridors and hallways down to Keilan-minnai’s chambers and knocked, but no one responded. Eiryn frowned and knocked too. Nothing happened. “I guess she’s in the library,” the boy muttered and pulled a hand through his sandy hair.

  “You lied!” Eiryn shouted, pulling her hand free from his. She balled her fists and looked up at her friend. It was wrong to lie. Keilan-minnai didn’t even know they wanted to go to the beach. “You lied to Arèn-minnoi!” He’d lied to her too.

  “Shhhh. I didn’t, Eiryn-dai.” The boy sighed. He rubbed at his swollen eye and winced. “Ow. I asked Arèn-minnoi if she’d mind taking us and he said it was all right.”

  Eiryn crossed her arms, uncrossed them again and stomped her foot. “You lied. You did! Lying is bad, Radèn-minnoi.” She tried to put as much of her mother’s scolding tone into her voice as she could, but she didn’t think she’d managed it.

  Radèn-minnoi only shrugged. “Think so, if you prefer. Come on. The sooner we find Keilan-minnai, the sooner we can go. She’s probably in the library.”

  When he started to walk away, Eiryn didn’t follow. She watched him go, angrier with him still for the length of time it took him to realise that she wasn’t moving. He was almost at the end of the hall when he noticed. Eiryn quickly spun to face away from him. Now, she didn’t want to go to the beach at all. She tried to open the door, rather than knock on it like she was supposed to, but she still couldn’t reach the handle. She hated that, hated being small, hated Radèn for lying to her.

  “Silly girl,” Radèn-minnoi remarked as he stopped beside her. Eiryn pretended she’d known he was coming and wasn’t startled by his voice. The boy knocked again and then pushed at the door until it opened slightly.

  “Keilan-minnai?” he called. “Are you there?” Eiryn thought she heard a muffled groan and Radèn pushed the door open further. He took Eiryn’s hand again and she pulled back a little, but Radèn ushered her inside anyway. “Keilan-minnai?”

  There was no response. The room was empty. Unlike her uncle’s chambers a floor up, this one opened onto a small garden and Eiryn couldn’t see the sea at all. All she saw were hedges walling the garden off from the rest of the world. The floor inside was carpeted wall to wall with elaborate patterns and Eiryn was tempted to take off a shoe and wriggle her foot into the fabric. The room looked so different from her uncle’s chambers, so much more like her mother’s. Colour was everywhere, thrown together without any regard for whether anything match
ed. Radèn-minnoi led her further inside until they found Keilan-minnai in a corner, bent over a page of paper. When Radèn-minnoi called her name, again, Keilan-minnai started and looked up at them.

  The woman’s brows creased and she pushed a black curl out of her face. Then she redid the tie that had kept her hair back without taking her eyes off Radèn. “What happened?” she asked.

  The boy shrugged and Eiryn found herself hiding behind him. “A game gone awry.” He’d lied again, but Eiryn was too scared to tell him off a second time. “Will you take us to the beach? Arèn-minnoi said it was all right.”

  “Oh.” The woman glanced down at the piece of paper. “Actually…” Eiryn squeezed Radèn’s hand tightly enough that she could feel his bones. She didn’t want to lie to Arèn-minnoi. “I suppose I could do with some fresh air,” the woman said and sighed. “I’m going cross-eyed looking at this text and it’ll be dinner time soon anyway.”

  Eiryn jumped and tried to clap her hands together, but Radèn’s arm was in the way; she hadn’t let go. He was laughing, though, and took Keilan-minnai’s hand with his free one. Eiryn moved to take the other hand when Keilan-minnai wriggled her fingers at her. “Ready?” the woman asked and Eiryn and Radèn both nodded. Then Keilan-minnai sang.

  At first Eiryn didn’t pay much attention to the farakaoina that the kerisai was singing, but as it grew longer it drew her in further. Bits of it sounded terribly familiar and bits of it sounded utterly different to anything she’d ever heard. The world around them turned golden, or perhaps iridescent, or both. Eiryn wasn’t sure. She could feel something tugging at her skin and she pressed her eyes firmly closed. She’d promised. She’d promised. She’d promised.

  She didn’t open her eyes until Keilan-minnai’s low voice sang the farakaoina to its end and asked Eiryn for her shoes. Eiryn didn’t give them to her. Instead she stood frozen on the beach. She’d never been so close to the sea before. Dai’d always promised to take her when she was older and she hadn’t dared ask Arèn-minnoi. The water didn’t shine blue the way it did when she looked out the window of Arèn-minnoi’s chambers or her mother’s. Instead, it was lighter and frothing white at the edges where it met the sand. Inside the palace walls, Eiryn hadn’t noticed that it was a windy day, sending her hair whipping in all directions. It was much louder than she’d thought it would be too. She didn’t care. She was on the beach. Her feet sank into the sand a little and the grains spilled over into her slippers, tickling as she spun around to take everything in all at once. The whole city of Lir was behind them, shining like a giant pearl in the sun.

  Letting go of Radèn’s hand, Eiryn threw her arms around Keilan-minnai’s waist. The woman hugged her only briefly, telling Radèn to mind the sun, and repeated her request for shoes. Flustered, Eiryn complied. The sand was warm and tickled her feet even more without her slippers to keep the sand away. The wind was sharper than Eiryn’d expected it could be and she let Keilan-minnai tie her hair back with the ribbon the woman’d been using. Eiryn turned to face the sea again. Towards, and back. Towards, and back. Towards, and back. The water was still blue, but it was no longer still as a mirror. It moved.

  Eiryn laughed and looked for Radèn to tell him, but the boy wasn’t standing beside her anymore. Keilan-minnai was holding two sets of shoes in her hands and smiled. “Go on,” the woman said, though gull’s cry vied for Eiryn’s attention as she spun herself dizzy trying to find the bird in the sky. It wasn’t that hard to spot, but she’d never felt so giddy before in her life. Radèn forgotten, she ran after the bird to see where it was heading. Birds had nests. Perhaps it had a nest. Perhaps there were baby birds. She’d never seen one before, though Radèn always called her one.

  But Eiryn lost the gull when she stepped on something sharp. She yelped and jumped back, staring down. A long, thin and light pink thing was lying in the sand. Eiryn picked it up and dusted the sand off. It looked remarkably like a tiny horn with grooves spiralling upwards. Eiryn had never seen anything like it before and she ran back to Keilan-minnai to show the woman what she’d found.

  “What’s this?” Eiryn asked, holding out her hand with the pink thing in it.

  Keilan-minnai looked down, but she didn’t take the thing from Eiryn’s hand. “It’s a shell, asafai.”

  “Isn’t…” Eiryn said dubiously, staring at the thing in her hand. She’d never seen a shell like that before. Shells didn’t look like that.

  “It’s just a different kind, Eiryn-dai. Trust me.” Keilan-minnai paused a moment then said, “Can you sing me a farakaoina, please?”

  Eiryn pursed her lips and toyed with a strand of hair that the woman hadn’t caught in the ribbon. “Which one?”

  Keilan-minnai too thought before answering. “Whichever one you like the most.”

  The one she liked most? Which one did she like the most? Eiryn thought about it. She liked a lot of different ones. Keilan-minnai took the shell from her and put it in a small pouch hidden underneath the yellow sash around her waist and shoulder, but that didn’t really give Eiryn any ideas. Looking around the beach didn’t help either. Eiryn didn’t want to think about water and she didn’t know any farakaoina that did something with sand.

  There was one farakaoina Eiryn had found in the library that she was practising. She liked that one. It was hard. She had to keep her voice very, very soft and there were bits she couldn’t understand yet, so the whole melody jumped around. Arèn-minnoi would be angry, but dai’d always said it was all right to sing anything she wanted as long as she was careful and couldn’t use fasaoi yet. The farakaoina was also very, very fast, much faster than Eiryn was comfortable with. Her voice trembled as she went from note to note and tried to string the ends of the bits that were missing together into a whole that made sense. She wasn’t nervous; it was how the farakaoina went. Well. Maybe she was a little nervous, singing for a person who did not interrupt to correct and who was looking increasingly worried, but it was still how the farakaoina went.

  When Eiryn had reached the end of the farakaoina, Keilan-minnai asked, “Healing?” The woman was smiling, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Eiryn ducked her head and tugged on her hair, pulling tresses free of the ribbon that bound them. “I didn’t know you’d been taught that.”

  It took all of Eiryn’s willpower not to flinch and she dug her toes into the sand instead. “I taught myself,” she admitted softly. She didn’t dare look at Keilan-minnai, even though the kerisai didn’t seem angry. The woman was silent for so long that Eiryn tried to look up at her without moving. Janyn-minnoi could look and sound very friendly too, and he certainly wasn’t.

  “How?” was all Keilan-minnai asked.

  Eiryn didn’t answer. If Keilan-minnai wasn’t angry now, she was certainly going to be when she learned that Eiryn had been sneaking into the library on her own.

  “You have to tell me, asafai.”

  She didn’t want to. But when Keilan-minnai squatted down beside her and looked in her eyes, Eiryn told the woman anyway. She liked learning farakaoina. She didn’t understand all the words written along with them yet, but those farakaoina she could read and thought she could learn… Those she copied and practised when no one else could hear. She copied the words too, as well as she could. It was just like trying to draw something.

  “Oh, you lovely, lovely child.” Keilan-minnai laughed and hugged Eiryn; the girl blinked. “Your uncle will be so happy.” Eiryn wanted to ask why, but Keilan-minnai was already speaking before she could, “Now where did Radèn-minnoi vanish off to? You’d think he couldn’t hide against these rocks. You both need to wash your feet and you still need to change for supper, so we should go back.”

  Eiryn had no desire to puzzle out Keilan-minnai’s meaning, but she did want to see Radèn and know what he was doing and why he’d gone and whether he’d found any shells too. He’d wanted to go to the beach with her and then he’d left her.

  “Radèn-minnoi!” she called. She hoped that they’d helped Keilan-minnai be able to study no
w. And she’d stood on the beach. That was something. Maybe she could go again tomorrow. Keilan-minnai handed Eiryn her shell back and rose, stroking Eiryn’s hair as she did.

  “Radèn-minnoi Enrai’Kerra Enroi’Baesou,” the woman started, voice dancing over a farakaoina Eiryn recognised and couldn’t place. “If you don’t return within three minutes, we’re leaving without you!” Then Keilan-minnai knelt beside Eiryn and put an arm around her shoulder, pulling Eiryn against her. “And now we wait,” she whispered. The farakaoina had died away with the speech, but Eiryn doubted it mattered. It was fasaoi; Radèn would hear it anywhere. She looked at the shell in her hand and twisted it around to see all sides of it. It was pretty. Keilan-minnai shifted, putting her body between Eiryn and the wind. Eiryn leaned back against the woman. Maybe tomorrow she’d brave the beach again.

  From the distance, Radèn’s voice called out an apology. Eiryn looked over Keilan-minnai’s shoulder to find the boy running towards them. He’d untied his grey sash and was holding it like it was a big bag. If he’d been catching fish, Eiryn decided she’d be very angry with him. Poor fish!

  Keilan-minnai got up as the boy approached and Eiryn looked warily from her face to his. This time Keilan-minnai did look angry. “Really, Radèn-minnoi. What do you have there?”

  The boy was panting, resting his hands on his knees, sash-bag securely dangling against his knee. It didn’t look wet and no water was dripping onto the sand. “Shells,” Radèn huffed. “Eiryn. Minnai. Likes. Them.”

  “Well, you’re not taking them with you. Look what you did to your clothes!”

  Radèn-minnoi grinned and straightened, holding his arms wide. Eiryn couldn’t see what was wrong, but Keilan-minnai took the sash from him and dropped the shells down onto the sand in a colourful shell-fall. They even made sounds as they tumbled. Eiryn dove for them to pick out the ones she liked best, while Keilan-minnai fussed over the state of the cloth and the boy’s shoes. Most of the shells were just plain white ones, or white with little bits of brown, all oval-shaped. But some were lovely. There was one that looked like an orange star had been painted on it that Eiryn thought she’d give to Arèn-minnoi. Maybe he’d like it.