In the morning, the farmer’s daughter came to milk the cows in there and found him. She ran shrieking to the cottage. ‘There’s a dead person in the byre, papa!’
The farmer, his sons and his wife hurried out to see. They thought he was a girl at first, until they carried him back to the cottage and saw the finely formed organ between his legs. The farmer’s wife made a sign to protect herself from spirits. ‘It’s a man-woman,’ she said. ‘A faery messenger.’
‘We must put it back where we found it,’ one of the sons said to his father. ‘Its people will come for it.’
‘It’s near dead,’ said the daughter. ‘I’ll fetch a blanket.’
As the family debated what to do with their unearthly visitor, Variel groaned and writhed and opened his golden eyes. The family gasped as one, which under other circumstances would have been comical. Variel put his hands over his face and made a terrible sound of despair. Bravely, the daughter went and wrapped the blanket round his shoulders.
‘Who are you?’ asked the mother.
Variel stared up at them helplessly. Their odour, their physical strength, their animal forms virtually made him feel sick. He shook his head and closed his eyes, hot tears squeezing between his lids.
‘Are you of the faery?’ asked the farmer, gruffly.
Variel shook his head. He could not speak.
‘Obvious what this creature is,’ said one of the sons proudly. ‘A freak. Probably from one of the travelling fairs. Probably got lost, and separated from its people. Is that right, stranger?’
Variel could sense these people desperately wanted answers about him. He was weary, sick and afraid. He nodded his head. It seemed the best thing to do. And they accepted that.
The farmer’s daughter’s name was Phoebe. A kind-hearted soul, she took Variel into her care, nursing his constantly solidifying physical form back into health. Variel simply lay on a low cot in Phoebe’s room, staring at the far wall for three days, watching the sunlight and the moonlight cycle and slide and feeling himself change, become clay. He lay there thinking about what his angelic father had told him and how all those words were becoming truth. He was conscious of the heaviness of his body, the unweildy solidity of his flesh. He could smell himself beginning to emanate the animal odours of humankind. He could feel all that was magical about himself draining away.
On the morning of the fourth day, Phoebe woke before dawn as usual to attend to her chores and then, as sunlight burned away the grey, came to bring Variel a bowl of cereal foamy with warmed milk. Previously, Variel had been unable to stomach more than a mouthful, so Phoebe was rightfully surprised as she watched her unearthly charge heartily consume half of the bowl before clutching his stomach with a groan. ‘You feel better today then,’ she said, eyes round as coins. Variel had not spoken to her yet. She had to sit down when he said,
‘Yes. In a way, I think so.’
What a strange voice this person had. ‘What are you?’ Phoebe asked. ‘What is your name? Where do you come from?’
Variel remembered what Lailahel had told him about humans pelting him with stones and thinking him a freak. He was unsure of what to say and merely opened and closed his mouth a few times.
‘You are afraid,’ Phoebe said. ‘Don’t be. You are among friends here. We will not harm you or send you back, if that’s what you’re afraid of.’
‘No-one can send me back,’ Variel said, and told her his name.
Phoebe seemed content with that for the time being and offered him some of her youngest brother’s clothes to wear.
The family gathered for breakfast and, for the first time, Variel joined them. The kitchen was dark and pungent. Dogs and cats continuously put their paws onto Variel’s lap where he sat, begging food. Variel was afraid of them. He was less than an animal in this world, for even animals knew the way of things here and how to behave. He was also uncomfortably aware of the curious glances cast his way, disgusted by the brutish table manners of Phoebe’s male relations. Even though Phoebe tried to encourage him to drink a glass of apple juice, he dared put nothing in his mouth, for fear of bringing it right back onto the table.
At length, Phoebe’s father pushed his plate away, uttering a resounding belch of satisfaction and announced, ‘Mother, it is not right that wench, strange as she is, should be dressed up as a boy. See to her togs and have Phoebe show her the chicken runs.’
Thus Variel learned that in this world at least he was destined to be a she, however odd, and from that moment it was true things became easier for him.
So Variel learned the lore and customs of working the land. She found that, after a while, it came as a natural and enjoyable thing to do. She did not mind the long hours or the hard toil and found her new human body became less of a burden as time went on. With Phoebe’s encouragement, she began to take care of her appearance, and took joy in the lissom athleticism of her form. Slim as a whip she was, sinewy as a boy and fast as a hare. She could wrestle with Phoebe’s brothers and not be bested, she could fell a tree with the heaviest axe and still be a fey, languid beauty in the lamplight at dinner. The family came to adore her and could not remember what the days had been like before the flame of Variel’s presence had come to warm their home.
Variel could not believe that the world of men could offer such pleasures as she now beheld. The miracle of life, the changing banner of the seasons, delighted her and filled her with awe. As an angelic being, isolated in the realms of light, she’d had no thought for the Great Goddess of the Earth. Now, Variel embraced her as did all the farming families in the community.
One night she and Phoebe went down to the pool hidden in a sunken spinney in the farthest paddock. It was the night of the full moon and Phoebe wanted to bathe naked in the waters to entreat the Goddess for the powers of attraction. There was a young lad working for a neighbouring farmer for whom she’d developed a craving. Variel was happy to comply with her friend’s wishes. Indeed, she looked upon Phoebe as a sister now. As she sat on the bank of the pool, watching the farmer’s daughter raise her wet, pale arms to the sky, Variel reflected on how long she had been in this place and for the first time was visited by a pang that reminded her of Jadalan. He seemed a creature of her dreams nowadays, an insubstantial idea that bore no relation to her life as she now lived it. Her past life had become similarly unreal. Now she was a young woman, with a young woman’s needs and feelings, if not possessed utterly of a young woman’s physical form. This was what the Goddess had decreed and Variel considered that the Goddess was indeed a benevolent Being to have so tolerated her on the Earth. It was almost as if she’d been rewarded. How wrong Lailahel had been and yet, how right too.
Phoebe came swimming to the water’s edge. ‘You seem thoughtful, Variel. Are you all right?’ she asked.
Variel smiled. ‘I was thinking of my father,’ she replied.
‘Do you miss him?’ Through veiled remarks made by Variel, Phoebe had gleaned Variel had been found in such a distraught condition because of being exiled from home by her angry parent. It was a subject they rarely discussed, for Phoebe sensed it gave Variel pain to think about it.
Variel wrinkled her brow. ‘Miss him? How odd. I never thought of it that way. I suppose I do, but there’s no point grieving. I’ll never see him again.’
‘What was he like?’ Phoebe asked carefully. From Variel’s dreamy expression she was thinking the father must have been a wild and handsome creature.
‘He was an angel,’ Variel replied, laughing. ‘I was an angel too and he kicked me into the world of men.’
Phoebe laughed too. ‘You are a strange one, Variel. Your sense of humour is peculiar at times.’
Variel frowned. ‘No, I lied. I was not kicked into the world of men. It was my choice. I loved a man. I followed him. But now it’s like a dream.’ She turned and stumbled away from the water, one hand to her eyes, the other blindly reaching forward.
Perplexed and concerned Phoebe scrambled from the water, her wet skin gleamin
g like silver, and hurried after her, not even pausing to dress herself. ‘Variel, stop! Come back!’ She ran after the swiftly marching Variel and laid a restraining hand on her arm.
Variel spun around, shaking her arm from Phoebe’s hold. ‘Am I human, am I?’ she demanded angrily.
Phoebe was frightened and confused. Had Variel gone mad? ‘Of course you are,’ she soothed, and then remembered the weird, shimmering body she had found in the byre, the odd sexuality of it, the alien feel of it. ‘You are now,’ she amended.
Variel snarled. ‘Don’t be so sure!’ she snapped and then with another lightning change of expression began to cry and raised her face to the moon. ‘Goddess, what am I? Can I truly live here in contentment? Am I worthy of such a thing? Or will I one day petrify and shatter and break like a crystal shard? Oh, help me! Help me!’
Phoebe was concerned that one of her brothers on his evening chores might hear the commotion and come to investigate. She dragged the protesting, wailing Variel back into the hollow, where the night breeze ruffled the surface of the pool. The water grasses rattled as if the Goddess herself was concerned at what was happening. ‘Get into the water!’ Phoebe ordered, tearing Variel’s clothes from her back. ‘Come on: hurry! Get into the water!’ Above them, a vast, pale moon sank towards the trees at the edge of the meadow.
Shivering and weeping, Variel removed the petticoats and undergarments that were gifts from Phoebe’s mother. ‘Do not look at me,’ she said.
Phoebe turned away her face. She did not look back until she could hear Variel splashing into the pool. Crouched down below the surface, only Variel’s face showed above the water, her eyes wide and black, her white-gold hair floating around her head like wet silk.
Phoebe stepped into the pool and held out her hands, of which Variel took hold. ‘Pray,’ Phoebe entreated. ‘Pray, Variel, pray! Don’t lose it all. Gain more! Pray!’
Phoebe’s hands ached from the iron grip of Variel’s weirdly strong limbs. Tears squeezed from between Phoebe’s eyelids with the pain. The water felt like ice around her legs and stomach. Everything hurt and Variel’s face was pinched into an ugly expression of helpless pleading, of determination, of angry strength. Suddenly, with a final agonising squeeze of her hands and a shuddering gasp, Variel threw back her head and, releasing Phoebe from her grip, raised her arms to the sky. With a fluting peal of triumph, Variel rose up from the water, her wet hair clinging to her body, and Phoebe backed, splashing, towards the bank, wiping her face. It was as if she beheld an embodiment of the Goddess herself. From between the strands of Variel’s encompassing hair, proud, blooming breasts jutted like perfect fruit; an area that had been rather devoid of swelling before. The waist curved in as if carved from perfect wood and, as Variel strode through the water to the bank, Phoebe could clearly see that was no longer the slightest evidence of masculinity between her legs.
Wild-eyed, Variel stood upon the bank. ‘I have been answered!’ she cried, fists clenched and raised above her head.
Phoebe scrambled up the bank. She could not speak. She knew she had witnessed some kind of miracle but it had been so awesome, so strange, she was unsure whether gods or demons had been responsible for it.
The next morning, Phoebe was awoken by a chilling cry from Variel’s bed. In an instant she hurried to her friend’s side, throwing back the blankets, fearing some reversal of last night’s event.There was no need to worry. Clutching her stomach, Variel struggled from the bed, where the bottom sheet was stained with red. There could be no mistake. Variel was truly a woman. The Goddess had visited her with the indelible mark of femininity. As the earth, as the beasts, as the birds themselves, Variel was one of the Goddess’s creatures now. A fertile female. It was then that she knew it was time for her to seek the city of Ashbrilim.
The family were hardly pleased that Variel wanted to leave them. At breakfast, she told them she must seek the city of the king. She was grateful for all the help they had given her, and one day hoped to reward them for their troubles, but she knew she had a destiny and had to fulfil it.
‘What business do you have in Ashbrilim?’ asked Phoebe’s father.
‘I must find the man I love,’ Variel said. ‘I made a promise.’
Reluctantly, the family gave her provisions and fondly wished her farewell. Phoebe wept openly and begged Variel to return to her one day. This Variel promised to do, if she was able. She too was sad to leave her friends, who had given her so much, but she had a purpose and could not deny it.
For many days and nights, Variel travelled to Ashbrilim. Along the way, she questioned people about Jadalan. ‘Does the king have a son?’ she asked.
‘Of sorts,’ she was told. ‘Though some say he is not quite of this world.’
Variel was then sure that Jadalan had found his way home. She had only to present herself at the palace for them to be reunited.
However, once in the city, Variel quickly discovered that a common person simply could not walk in through the gates of the palace. She spoke to the guards on duty at the main entrance and said she had come to see Jadalan, the son of the king.
‘There is no such person,’ said one of the guards. ‘The king’s son is Ailacumar.’
Another guard laughed. ‘Perhaps she has come to offer herself as a bride to the prince! There’s enough of ‘em flocking here for that!’
‘Then she should get his name right,’ said the first. ‘We were told that Jadalan died as a babe. The new son is Ailacumar. Be off with you, wench! Look at you. You’re no friend of royalty.’The guards clearly thought Variel was mad.
Variel pondered the situation until nightfall. Then, because she was more agile than a human could be, she climbed an ancient oak next to the high wall that surrounded the palace gardens. She crawled along a wide limb that hung over the garden and dropped down onto the wide lawn beneath. The palace gleamed before her in the moonlight. She could see guards stationed around it. For while longer, she must think and plan.
At the back of the palace was an orchard at the end of the kitchen garden. Variel made her way to this place and climbed into an old apple tree, next to a clear pool of water. Here, she went to sleep and trusted that her dreams would advise her.
In the early morning, the head gardener’s short-sighted daughter passed by the pool and looked into it. She saw the reflection of Variel’s face in the water and mistaking it for her own, said, ‘Why, how beautiful I am! I should not be working in the garden. I shall ask my father to go to the king at once and tell him that I am the true bride he seeks for the handsome boy he calls a son, who sighs and sleeps so much.’
Variel had been woken by these remarks and looked down in wonder.She meant to speak, but the girl hurried off before she could do so. A short while later, just as Variel was considering climbing to the ground, the gardener’s wife happened to be passing and she also paused to look into the water. As her daughter had done before her, she mistook Variel’s radiant reflection for her own – the daughter had inherited short sight from her too. ‘Well, look at me!’ she declared. ‘I am beauty itself! Why should I be married to a mere gardener? I will go to the king at once and tell him I am the true bride he seeks for that boy he calls a son, who sleeps so much and speaks so little.’
A short time later, as the gardener went into his house for breakfast, he was faced with his womenfolk, who he could only presume to be demented. There they were in the kitchen, putting on finery and talking about being so beautiful they must wed a prince. To him, they looked the same as they always had. In between arguments with each other about who was the most beautiful and fit to become a princess, they told the gardener about how they’d seen their reflections in the pool that morning. Suspecting capricious magic at work, the gardener went himself to investigate the matter. He saw the beautiful face in the pool and looked up, spying at once the young woman hiding among the green leaves.
‘Are you a witch?’ he asked her.
‘No,’ Variel answered. ‘I am a lady from a far
land, and I have come to see the prince.’
‘Get down,’ said the gardener. ‘You are charming my womenfolk in strange ways, and it must not be.’
Variel climbed down out of the tree. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘You are most kind not to report me to the guards. Will you favour me further and tell me more about the talk I’ve heard, that the prince is to be married?’
Because she was so beautiful, and the gardener was charmed by her in a different way to the women, he told her that Prince Ailacumar was so listless, his parents had been advised by the palace physicians to find a bride for him, in the hope that vivacious female company might coax him from his lethargy. ‘Girls and women from all quarters of the world have come to the palace,’ said the gardener. ‘And now, I have heard, King Ashalan and Lord Jadrin have chosen a suitable bride. The wedding takes place very shortly.’
‘Will you help me?’ Variel said. ‘I am the prince’s one true love.’
The gardener stared at her, ‘I should think you mad,’ he said, ‘but I have never seen a girl like you.’
‘If you’ll take me to the prince, you’ll not regret it,’ Variel said.
Sighing, the gardener nodded and took her into the palace. They went to the room where the royal family took their breakfast, and here Jadrin and Ashalan sat with their adopted son, whose head was sunk on his breast in slumber. Variel recognised him at once as the one she loved. Also seated at the table was an exotic princess from a far land, who was indeed very beautiful, but she might as well have been a horse for all the notice Jadalan took of her.
‘What is this?’ King Ashalan demanded as the gardener ushered Variel towards the table.
‘This young woman claims to know the prince,’ he explained.
‘Indeed!’ said Jadrin. ‘You must tell us all you know of him, girl.’
The Thorn Boy Page 18
