Heir to Sevenwaters

by Juliet Marillier

  “The villagers saw that they had made a mistake in thinking there might be a place for the boy among them. He was a human being, sure enough. But he didn’t know it, and it was beyond them to teach him. Not wanting simply to let him go, for that seemed no more right than keeping him locked up, they asked the local druid for help.

  “Now druids, as we all know, see deeper than the surfaces of things. That’s one of their strengths, and another is the ability to be still and quiet; the gift of great patience. They can sit in one spot all day and never get bored. If a man’s head is crammed full of lore he’s never short of the means to entertain himself. The druid asked the villagers to lend him a cottage with a well-fenced patch of land, and he took Wolf-child there with him and shut the gate after them.

  “It took him a long time, but eventually the druid earned the trust of his young companion and was able to teach him certain things. Wolf-child learned to keep himself clean, not in the way a wolf does, by licking or rolling or swimming, but by the use of a cloth and a bucket. The boy learned to drink from a cup and eat from a platter, though he was awkward with a knife or spoon. He learned to sit on a bench, but preferred the floor. The druid encouraged him to stand more upright, to walk on two legs not four, and was partly successful. As for human speech, that was far harder. The druid sensed the boy could understand quite well, but Wolf-child found shaping words with his mouth difficult. One word he learned easily. He would stand by the gate, a gate fastened by an iron chain which his wolfish fingers could not manipulate open, and point toward the forest. ‘Out,’ he would say, his tone somewhere between speech and barking. ‘Out.’ ”

  It seemed to me this story was not going to have a happy ending. I was not sure I wanted to hear the rest of it, but I was not in the best position to slip out of the hall unnoticed without offending Willow. There was no fault in her storytelling. I just wasn’t in the right mood to hear something sad. With Mother lying upstairs so desperate to hold onto her unborn child, and Father looking so weary and grim, I could do without a tale of a boy who was unlikely to do well in either world, that of well-meaning, ignorant humankind or of animals governed by their instincts. I glanced toward the main door as Aidan brought Willow a cup of ale. Maybe I could take advantage of this pause to vanish outside until the story was finished. As my gaze fell on Cathal my heart missed a beat. Stark and plain on that narrow, guarded face I saw the wretched aloneness of the wolf boy. I saw his recognition that he would always be outside, other, never quite a part of the community on whose fringes he dwelt. I saw that it hurt beyond any pain.

  A moment later, Cathal realized I was looking at him. With what must have been a formidable effort of will, he relaxed his features, the thin lips forming their usual derisory smile, the expression conveying nothing more than a general desire to be somewhere else. The dark brows rose as if to question my apparent interest in him. I imagined him saying, Haven’t you got anything better to look at?

  Willow had taken a mouthful of her ale and set the cup down. “Of course, the druid had tried to find out whose son this wild boy was, but his enquiries bore no fruit,” she said. “The girl who had left her child out for the wolves was long forgotten. Wolf-child was nobody; a conundrum; a puzzle. The druid, patient man as he was, had a longing to return to his cave out in the forest, his own place where he could sleep under the oaks and make his prayers beneath a canopy of bright stars, unbounded by wall or enclosure. Given years, he might teach the feral child skills sufficient to allow him a place on the very edge of human society. Whether that was right or not was a question one might be a lifetime answering. The boy would grow up neither wolf nor man. His mother had done him no favors that chilly night when she decided to abandon him to fate.

  “Now,” said Willow, “there are many possible endings to this tale, and the one that suits you best may not be the one I like. There might be one for a warrior and one for a lady and one for a boy of Wolf-child’s age. So we’ll have three tonight, and you will help me tell them. Let us begin with the warrior, for we have a good supply of those here. What about you, young man?” The storyteller was looking at Johnny.

  My cousin smiled. “Aidan is both warrior and bard,” he said. “I delegate the task to him.”

  “Very well,” Willow said. “And how would Aidan finish this tale?”

  Aidan cleared his throat. He’d been taken off-guard. “I would like to see this boy make something of himself,” he ventured. “In my story, the druid persisted in his patient training of his young charge, and in addition he sought the help of the local nobleman”—he nodded courteously in my father’s direction—“who should perhaps have been the first person consulted by the villagers. When the nobleman came down to see the lad he brought his own son, a warrior in training. They came on horseback, and while the nobleman discussed matters with the druid, the young warrior took his first steps toward befriending Wolf-child, for they were close in age, if not in understanding. Wolf-child growled at the horse, which laid back its ears and twitched its tail. All the same, that day the wild boy learned something he had not quite realized before. In this fine young man he saw a vision of himself as he might be. From that day things began to change more quickly for Wolf-child, for now he wanted to learn, to grow, to become a man. I would leave the story at that point, where this boy so cruelly abandoned found that he had a real future ahead of him.”

  Willow nodded. There was no telling what she thought of this ending for her tale. “And you, young man?” she asked, looking at Coll.

  “One day the druid left the gate open,” Coll said, instantly taking up the challenge. “Maybe by mistake, maybe not. When he remembered and went outside to chain it up again, Wolf-child was gone. And whether the wolf pack took him back as one of their own, or whether they turned him away because he’d been among humankind for too long, nobody ever found out. But sometimes, at dead of night, when the wolves howl at the moon, folk in those parts say they hear another sound mingling with the wolfish voices—the cry of a man whose heart craves what he can never have.”

  A stunned silence fell over us. I eyed my young cousin with new respect. I knew he loved stories, but I had never heard him tell one before. This had been a strong ending. I looked over at Cathal, wondering what he had thought of it, but he wasn’t there. At some point after Willow had cut off her narration so abruptly he had left the hall.

  “And you, Clodagh?”

  I started in surprise as the old woman addressed me. One for a lady. She expected me to provide the third version. The ending that sprang to my mind was even darker than Coll’s, and I would not tell it. “The others were very good,” I said, playing for time. “I cannot better them.”

  “Better?” Willow queried with a smile. “There is no better or worse with stories, only different. What would you make of this? How would you resolve it? With sorrow, with gladness, with learning?” That look was in her eyes again, the same I had seen when she told the clurichaun story. It was a look that challenged me to understand, to take from the story some kind of learning that was not obvious. I was unable to grasp what she meant by it. My mind went back to Cathal’s stricken face, his haunted, lonely eyes. He’d been upset beyond anything the tale might have conjured. Why?

  “The druid, of course, would learn from the situation, however it ended,” I said. “It is in a druid’s nature to do so.” A shadow moved by the doorway; Cathal was still there listening, but hovering on the threshold as if he was not quite sure whether he wanted to hear or not. Suddenly I was determined to do this well and not to end the wretched tale in the misery and failure that seemed to me inevitable. But I would not make it unrealistic, as Aidan’s version had been. The damage done to Wolf-child could not be so easily undone. “The druid knew he could not continue the way things were,” I said. “It was too late for the boy to go back to his wolf clan. After those seasons away, the pack would no longer accept him as one of their kind. He would look wrong, smell wrong. The boy would miss them, of course. They were t
he only family he had known. What was the alternative? Perhaps, eventually, the druid might teach Wolf-child to be a man. Was that such a great thing that it merited the erasing of the wisdom this boy had learned among the wolves? His adoptive kin had given him much, and the druid saw that here in this locked enclosure whose high walls shut out the forest, those strengths, those instincts, that bright knowledge would continue to ebb away. Was it right to replace those gifts with skills from a culture of which the boy might never completely become a part? How could such a wild one learn to love, to work, to provide for his own? But Wolf-child could not go back. It was a problem to vex the best-trained mind.

  “The druid taught his charge one more skill. He managed to convey that the desperately desired out might be attained if Wolf-child was prepared to tolerate a kind of leash, a strong cord to tie his wrist to that of the druid. He trained the boy to this as if he were a dog, hating what he was doing but seeing no other way to keep Wolf-child by him long enough for the boy to understand his intentions. If he simply opened the gate, Wolf-child would flee. That must end in disaster, one way or another.

  “The morning after Wolf-child had learned to accept the leash, the druid arose early, packed up his small bundle of belongings and went out to the gate. Wolf-child was already there, staring out into the forest. The druid fastened the leash around the boy’s wrist and around his own. He opened the gate.

  “They went out together, Wolf-child pulling hard, almost toppling the older man. He could have got away, for he was strong, but the druid had his measure by now and spoke calmly, reassuring the boy by his tone. They walked a long way, far enough so that Wolf-child began to sense they were not going back. The druid saw a change on the features of his companion, an awakening, a brightening, as if the gray veil of despair that had lain over the lad since the time of his capture were slowly peeling away. They climbed to the higher reaches of the great forest, where frothing streams gushed down from rocky fells above the tree line and a stand of guardian pines threw the hillside beneath into deep shadow. Up and up they climbed until they reached the cave where the druid had his solitary dwelling. Beside the entry a rivulet flowed into a round rocky basin whose rim was softened by ferns. Rowans grew close; holly formed a protective barrier.

  “The druid set down his bundle. With his free hand he reached into a pouch at his belt and brought out two bannocks and a slab of cheese in a cloth. He set these items on a flat stone. ‘My home,’ the druid said, pointing to himself, then to the cave entry, sweeping his hand around to encompass the little clearing, the pool, the rocky chamber. ‘Go free,’ he added, slipping his knife out of his belt and cutting the leash that bound Wolf-child to him. ‘I will be here. Home; food; shelter.’ He tried to show, with gestures, what he meant. Who knew how much the boy could understand?

  “Wolf-child had stood very still while the leash was severed. The druid had felt the tension in the boy, every part of him strained for flight. As the length of leather cord fell, broken, to the ground, Wolf-child remained where he was for a long moment, and in that moment a look passed between him and the druid, a look that was as animal as it was human. That look was too complicated for me to explain to you. An instant later Wolf-child was off into the woods, a blur of movement gone almost before the druid had had time to take in what had happened.

  “Now I might end the story there,” I said, adopting something of Willow’s own style, “but that would leave my listeners dissatisfied. So I will tell you what came next. The druid was right about the wolves—they would not take this lost son back into their clan. The boy hung about on the fringes for days, trying to edge in, to slip himself back among them unobtrusively, but the clan leader kept him off. The wolves would not attack the boy. They knew he was not of ordinary humankind. But they could not receive him as one of them. It was too late for that. Perhaps, even if he had remained among them, this would have occurred anyway when he began to grow into a man. They sensed the danger innate in his kind. Wolves have no sentiment. That he was raised by one of their own meant nothing at all.

  “After some time, the druid noticed that he was no longer quite alone in his secluded corner of the forest. Wolf-child would slip in from time to time, hesitating on the edge of the clearing, wary and pale. The druid began to divide his rations into two and set one half out on the flat stones by the rowans. At first Wolf-child would snatch his food and bolt. But as he regained the ability to trust, he would come to squat near the round pool and eat while the druid ate. The druid began to talk to him. A long, long time later, Wolf-child began to answer, not in growls and whining, but in words. And that was the start of a whole new story.”

  I was done. Willow bowed her head courteously in my direction, giving me the recognition due from one storyteller to another. I felt my face grow warm with pleasure.

  “Very good, Clodagh,” Aidan said. “I like this ending far better than mine.”

  “You have something of Conor’s storytelling gift, Clodagh,” put in Father with a smile. “This tale, in all its versions, has a great deal to teach us.”

  As a discussion of the story began, I got up quietly and left the hall. I had heard enough about the boy raised by wolves. It was a sad tale whichever way it worked out. If such a thing occurred in real life, the lad would probably be dead before he ever reached the age of manhood. Indeed, the she-wolf would likely have seen the newborn child not as a cub to be nurtured but as an easy supper. I had enough to worry about without dwelling on such things. Besides, there was something else I felt compelled to do.

  Cathal was sitting at the top of the steps outside the harness room. He had his arms folded, his head tipped back against the door, his eyes half closed. He’d as likely bite my head off when I spoke as decide to confide in me. But someone had to talk to him; he was obviously feeling quite wretched. I had spent enough nights recently lying awake with my worries and missing Deirdre to understand what it felt like being alone and miserable.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” I said, seating myself on the middle step. It was cold out here; I wished I had put on my shawl. “What could there possibly be in a story like that to upset you so much?”

  “And good evening to you, too,” Cathal said in a murmur.

  I tried again. “For a man all too ready to scoff at the uncanny, you seemed remarkably disturbed. You left the hall before the ending. Before my version, anyway.”

  “You know how tedious I find these little entertainments.”

  I said nothing. Whatever that look on his face had conveyed, it hadn’t been boredom.

  “In fact,” Cathal said after a little, “I did hear your version of the ending. I thought it reflected your preference for your world to be tidy and controlled. Aidan made the tale end as a warrior would, with the wolf boy recognizing his manhood. Coll gave it the form of an ancient myth. Your version was a good compromise. But in its way as unrealistic as the others. This child was not wolf; he was not man. He was condemned to be forever outside.”

  My neck prickled. I opened my mouth to speak, but his voice, whip-quick, cut across my half-formed words.

  “Don’t! Don’t meddle!”

  I swallowed a question about his upbringing. It really was none of my business. But I did think talking might be good for him, and right now I was the only one available to listen. Something had put that terrible look on Cathal’s face tonight; something had made him the volatile, touchy creature he was.

  “In case the possibility had crossed your mind, I was not raised by wolves,” Cathal said into the silence. His tone was calmer now, but when I turned sideways on the steps to look at him, he was dashing a furious hand across his cheek. The flickering light from the torch set nearby cast odd patterns across his face. I saw tears glinting in his eyes, and turned my gaze away lest I embarrass him.

  “There is more than one variety of wolf,” I said.

  “You imagine a past for me that is far more complex and mysterious than the real one, Clodagh. Women are like that, or so I’ve
been told—they’re happier creating a fascinating tale than accepting the mundane truth about a person.”

  “If you think I spend my spare time dreaming up exciting stories about your misspent youth, Cathal, your capacity for self-delusion is more impressive than I realized. Besides, how can I accept the truth if I don’t know what it is?”

  “Why should you want to know? Have I ever asked you about your childhood?”

  “If you did, I’d have no reason not to tell you.” As soon as I had said this, I realized how wrong it was—any tale about Sevenwaters had to include the uncanny influence of the Fair Folk. I could imagine how Cathal would respond if I told him, for instance, that Conor and his brothers had once spent three years in the form of swans. “But you wouldn’t ask,” I added. “In your book, my story would be unutterably boring.”

  There was a silence, and then he surprised me by saying, “I’m sorry I called you that, Clodagh. These remarks come out sometimes, and once they’re spoken it’s too late to withdraw them. I did not know you then.”

  “You scarcely do now, Cathal. Nor I you.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. It’s my story that is the boring one. My mother was Aidan’s wet-nurse. He and I were born within days of each other and were suckled together. Aidan’s father is a good man. He saw that my mother would have difficulty in providing for me as I grew up, so he took me into his household as a friend and companion for his son. Thus I gained an education beyond what might be considered my natural entitlement in the scheme of things. I received a training in arms that allowed me to accompany Aidan when he went to Inis Eala. That’s the end of the story. I told you it was tedious.” His elbows were on his knees now, his dark head bowed. He was making his fingers into a knot.

  There was an obvious element missing from his story. At least I know who my father is, Aidan had said, taunting his friend. It was not something I could ask Cathal about.