by Lisa Klein
“Why do you look at me that way?” I ask her. We are sitting in a small coracle, fishing in the loch with nets on long poles. A sleek, glittering fish noses my net, then darts away.
“There is so much you don’t know,” she muses, shaking her head slowly.
“Then tell me!” I tease, wanting to see her usual smile.
“Do you know that your eyes are blue, and yet gray, as when a cloud is reflected in the loch on a sunny day?”
I peer into the water where my reflection is broken up by ripples. It scares me to look where the water is so deep it is black. I sense something lurking there, something as unknowable as the time before I could speak. Mother is right. I know almost nothing. But it is not the color of my eyes I wonder about.
“Tell me where this water comes from, and the creatures who live under it.” It is the only question I can put into words just now.
“I will,” she agrees. “You are old enough to learn the ancient wisdom.”
Mother tells me how, ages and ages ago, the god Guidlicht lay with his wife Neoni, and from her womb the earth and skies rumbled into being, the mountains and valleys, fire and winds and water, and everything that lives, from the humblest creeping bug to the great leviathan of the sea.
“All these creatures, because they sprang from the same source, Neoni, partake of each other. So each person’s nature mingles the traits of different plants, animals, and elements.”
I feel my mind expand with amazement and wonder. “What makes up my nature?” I ask.
“Alas, Albia, I cannot see it. You must be the one to find it out. All I can advise you is that it is mixed of good and ill, and that you must feed your better traits that they may grow stronger than your worse ones.”
I do not understand this, nor do I know how to discover my own nature. Instead I study the nature of others. The eagle that can seize a single mouse from the moor shows keen-sightedness, but in flying so high, it also shows ambition. It is the nature of the spiky hawthorn to protect the birds that nest there and to stab any other creature that strays too near.
What is Helwain’s nature? She is like the black, harsh-voiced crow and the bent moor-pine with its rough bark. She is like the elder tree from which her staff is made, for she used its magic to cure my lameness. Once she was generous of heart, like the skies that shed rain, but now she is the dry stalk in the drought, withered by her own unkindness.
My mother, on the contrary, is all good-natured. Being light and strong as the reed, she tolerates hardship. Cheerful as the golden broom-flower, she can love even the ill-natured Helwain. Nurturing as the mother bird who feeds her chicks, she is easy for me to love.
But something begins to change between us when I am about thirteen winters old. In just a few months, I grow until I stand nose to nose with her. I no longer want to sit on her lap. Sometimes I hide in order to be alone or dally behind when we are walking together. I speak rudely to her, then look away so I will not see the hurt in her eyes. If she tries to soothe me with stories, I say that I am tired of her old tales.
Now I see that even Mother’s nature is mixed. She is the twining ivy that holds fast to what it grows upon, sometimes choking it. I want to be free of her. But how? Everything in nature depends upon something else. How could I survive on my own?
Thus I am tied to my mother and to Helwain as well. She and I are like two rams butting heads until our horns lock together. She stares at me with hard eyes and demands to know what is in my head. I stare back and refuse to tell her. When Mother is not around, she presses me harder still.
“The warrior with the painted arms we met on the moor. Do you ever see him in your thoughts?”
A noise like a hive of bees fills my ears. I do not want to remember that night. I press my fingers to my eyelids to keep away the dreadful images.
“Why do you ask me? I have nothing to do with him!”
Helwain picks up her heavy scrying stone and sets it on the table before me.
“Look and tell me, what will he do?”
The stone is round, with facets of shining quartz that scatter the light in a thousand directions. I close my eyes.
“I do not care about the future. You cannot make me see it.”
But Helwain takes my head, forcing my nose to the stone.
“What … will … he … do?” she repeats. Her arms tremble as I push back against them. I am surprised by her strength.
“I don’t know!” With a thrust of my hands, I send the scrying stone tumbling into the fire. The ashes and embers scatter and thick smoke billows up.
“Cursed child, spawn of wickedness!” Helwain shouts, slapping me across the face. “Ungrateful wretch!”
“I hate you—you foul witch!” I shout back, coughing on the smoke.
I run from the house and into the sheepfold, where I curl up with the lambs. Their warmth stops my trembling. But I can still hear Helwain screaming.
“She hoards the Sight! She will destroy, when she could save!”
I begin to weep silently. I know my nature now. My heart is colder than the loch-water with hatred of Helwain. I am the cruel mockingbird, the bitter wormwood, the wrathful destroying fire. There is nothing good in me.
“What do I see? A new ewe in the flock!”
The cheerful voice awakens me and I sit up, rubbing my eyes. My cheeks are stiff with dried tears, and flecks of hay fall out of my hair. Colum leans on a staff, regarding me with his head tilted to the side. He wears a tunic cinched with a belt, sheepskin leggings, a pointed cap, and a bundle on his back. A waterskin, a slingshot, a pipe, and a horn hang from a strap across his chest.
“What did you do that your ma made you sleep out here?” he asks.
“No, the question is, why are you here?”
“It is Beltane, the first of May, and I am taking your sheep to the summer pasture, remember?”
Scrambling to my feet, I stumble against Colum, for my leg has gone numb. “I’m coming with you,” I decide just then.
At the doorway of the roundhouse, Mother looks up; she knows. Without a word she gathers my clothing, a blanket, and food, including a small bag of oats and a honeycomb. Helwain is asleep, snoring like a dragon.
“I will walk with you as far as Pitdarroch,” Mother says, putting on her cloak.
Colum, whistling, leads the sheep, all crowding each other on the path out of the Wychelm Wood. Mother and I follow. I don’t know what to say that will not offend her. I wish she would try and persuade me to stay or at least hold my hand. But there is only silence and a space between us. When we come to the oak tree, the sun is rising, tangling us in the long shadows of its gnarled limbs.
“Helwain does not hate you,” Mother says in a weary voice. “She is angry at what she cannot change. The feeling is far older than you are. Do not hate her … or me.”
Her pleading brings tears to my eyes.
“Albia, there is more that I must tell you, if you are to understand her.” She pauses. “If you are to know yourself.”
“I am listening,” I say. My voice sounds hoarse after so long a silence.
“There are four worlds created by Guidlicht and Neoni. We live in the Now-world. In the Under-world live the spirits of the dead, and in the Other-world live faeries, merpeople, and dragons,” Mother explains. “The fourth world, the Asyetworld, contains all that has not yet come to pass. It is visible only to those who have the Second Sight.” She lifts my chin with her hand. “Helwain believes you have the Sight, that you can see the future.”
I turn my head aside, unwilling to admit, even to my mother, what I have already seen.
“It is a dangerous gift, Albia. Those who have it are often tempted to misuse it.”
“Mother, why are you trying to burden me?” The words burst from me. “I only want to go away for a while.” I press my forehead against the rough bark of the oak tree.
“You may go. But first, listen. This ancient tree—and others like it that are bent by the winds and scorched by l
ightning—holds the four worlds together by its roots. And there, at Stravenock Henge, when the sunlight pours between the stones four times during the year, the borders between the worlds dissolve, and all their creatures mingle.”
In the distance I can see the stones. Their ragged tops are lit by the sun, their bases hidden in the mist.
“I don’t doubt that these are magical places, Mother. But what do they have to do with me?” I sigh, weary of her wisdom.
“My sisters and I come here to greet the gods, but we are not gifted. You, Albia, are different.” Her voice is low and urgent. “Come back to this place, when you are ready to know the truth and use its power wisely. Daughter, farewell.”
She touches my arm. My eyes remain fixed on the stones. When I look away from them, my mother is gone, vanished into the pale shroud of mist.
I hear Colum whistling. He stands on a sunlit hill, waving his arms for me to follow him.
Chapter 6
The Shieling
Albia
We walk for two days, pausing to let the sheep graze and sleeping on ferns in a hollow in the earth. Finally we come to Colum’s bothy in the middle of a wide wold, a dwelling of sod and sticks with a ruined roof. I help Colum gather bracken and reeds and watch as he weaves them together and repairs the bothy. He is barely two years older than I am, but he knows how to build a shelter, how to hunt for food, and how to find his way using the sun and stars.
Away from Mother and Helwain and the brooding wychelms, my discontent blows away like smoke on the wind. Around me sheep gambol on the flower-strewn hills. Colum teaches me their names: Binn is the one who gives the sweetest milk; Bard’s bleating is like music; Mam’s wool is soft as a cloud. Gath will ram anything with his horns. Colum shows me how to use a staff to draw the flock together and what sounds will soothe them.
“You’re a natural shepherdess,” he says one day as I approach him carrying Binn and Bard, one under each arm. They are not much heavier than Helwain’s brindled cat.
“They were wandering too near those rocks. I was afraid they would fall.”
“They’re sheep, not bairns! They won’t fall,” Colum says, laughing. “You have a lot to learn after all.”
I had been proud of myself for fetching the sheep from danger, and Colum’s criticism stings. “Well, you can’t even make an oatcake that doesn’t taste like dust,” I counter.
“Oh, you think not?” Colum grabs his fire-kit, drills a stick into a piece of wood until sparks fly, then blows them into a flame. “We’ll each bake a farl and see whose is best.”
I mix some oats with Binn’s rich milk and secretly add a bit of the honey Mother gave me. Colum and I glare at each other as our cakes cook side by side in the small iron skillet. When he tastes my farl, his eyes widen and he stares at it. I smile in triumph.
“What did you do to it?” He drops it back in the skillet. “You put a spell on it.”
Suddenly angry, I kick the pan off the fire, scattering ashes and embers.
“I have nothing to do with Helwain’s magic!” Tears burn my eyes, but I hold them back. “That is a simple farl made with milk and honey. You are a fool to think there is any harm in it.”
Colum is silent. After a moment, he picks up the oatcake from the ashes, brushes it off, and eats every crumb.
“That is the best farl I ever ate,” he says solemnly.
Still trembling, I eat the oatcake Colum made. It disturbs me to think how quickly my anger flared up, how hot my nature is, like a fire.
“This one is good, too,” I say meekly.
“If you like the taste of dust,” says Colum with a glum smile.
Suddenly we are both laughing. I can’t stop, though my sides ache. I think that Colum and I are like two lambs of the same litter. We wrestle, play, and sometimes nip each other, but easily forget our hurts.
While the sheep graze on the green and plentiful grasses, Colum plays on his pipe and teaches me songs. My favorite is about a lad and a lass who meet in a dream. The haunting tune carries the words deep into my mind.
I see you now with the moon in your hair
And the dew on your lips. O nevermore
May I waken to find
That I’ve left you behind
In the cold dark enchantment of air.
I feel something stir in me, loneliness mixed with a nameless longing. I think of Mother’s kisses, but that does not satisfy me. I try to imagine putting my lips to Colum’s face and the idea makes me giggle.
When we tire of singing, Colum tells stories. I never knew there were so many goblins, giants, princes, fathers and sons, faeries, and silly fools, more than in all the tales Mother and Helwain have ever told me.
One day a lone shepherdess by the name of Caora wanders by with her flock. Her hair falls in curls as fine as the fleece on her lambs. Her supple limbs remind me of a willow tree. She and her sheep stay with us for most of the summer. One night the three of us recline beside a loch whose islands seem to float in the mists rising from the water. Frogs hidden in the reeds send up their hollow croaking. The hour is late, but on the shieling, a summer night is never entirely black, even when the moon is hidden.
“It’s a perfect evening for stories,” Caora says. “True ones.”
So Colum tells about the Greentooth of the River Nairn, who called his little cousin, a bairn barely able to walk, to the water’s edge, pulled her beneath the surface, and devoured her.
“I myself have seen the hag’s flowing green hair and her shilpit arms like those of a starveling,” says Colum, lifting his arms and wiggling his fingers. “She waits just beneath the water, and no one dares swim in the river or even put in a boat there.”
Seeing me shiver, Caora reaches over and squeezes my hand. Her fingers are cold, but I do not pull away. I’ve never met a girl my own age, and I am eager for her friendship.
“Will you tell a story now?” I ask her.
“I have seen a monster even more fearsome than the Greentooth hag,” Caora begins. Her voice is silvery, like a waterfall lit by moonlight. “A horse with fins on his legs, a huge mouth that steams like a kettle, and one fiery eye. Nocklavey is his name. Out of his back grows the body of a man whose huge head rolls from side to side. Most terrifying of all, he has no skin, so that you can see all his sinews and the blood that flows black in his veins.”
Caora’s eyes glow like golden orbs as she tells of Nocklavey rising from the sea and laying waste to the land.
“The monster seizes men with his great skinless hands and crushes them, and the breath of his terrible horse burns everything in its path.”
My heart is thumping as if I have been running hard. “Can anyone stop him?”
“He is afraid of nothing except—which is strange—fresh water.”
“I’ve never heard of this monster,” says Colum. “Could it have been a goblin instead?”
Caora does not reply, only draws back the long sleeve from her right arm. From shoulder to wrist the skin is scarred red and white, as if it has been burned away and grown back.
Staring at Caora’s disfigured arm, my first thought is that we are alike: crippled once and now healed. Then a colder certainty grips me, that one day I will meet such a monster.
Caora lays her thin hand on my knee. It is as weightless as a stack of feathers.
“Don’t be afraid, Albia. See, I survived Nocklavey.”
A swan glides out of the reeds at the edge of the water. The movement silences the grunting, gurgling frogs. I gaze at her whiteness and slowly let out my breath.
At the summer’s end I say good-bye to Caora and return to the smoky roundhouse in the woods. Once I am home, I realize how much I have missed my mother. I want to tell her everything about my new friend. But she seems wary of me and sad. She does not try to embrace me. I wonder, doesn’t she love me anymore? Then I realize that I am the one who has put the distance between us. I try to make it up to her by hard work. I help her carry peat from the moor and spread it out
to dry for the winter’s fires. I collect the water lily roots that make Helwain’s best black dye, digging in the shallow water until my hands grow numb with cold. During the winter we make clay pots and weave baskets from reeds and grass to sell in the village. We dye wool in a cauldron and the roundhouse reeks of the urine that sets the colors so they will not fade. I do my best not to complain.
By day Colum pastures our sheep in his father’s fields, and at night we bring them into the roundhouse for warmth. The winds from the northern seas sweep in like airy sheets of ice. Snow falls, deep and thick, and Colum must wait out the storm at our house. He and I tell stories around the fire while the noises and smells of sheep surround us.
That night I dream of Nocklavey, his huge hanging head, his skinless arms and fiery eye. I wake myself with a cry and find Helwain standing over me.
“Did you call out? What did you see?” she demands.
“I don’t know. Nothing,” I reply, avoiding her eyes.
“I heard you cry out ‘Nocklavey!’ ” says Colum. “You woke me, too.”
“I thought so!” says Helwain, her eyes gleaming. “That monster has not been heard of since the strife-filled days of King Giric. It portends a powerful scourge upon the land.”
“I only dreamt it because I was too warm by the fire,” I protest, showing her my arms damp with sweat.
Colum’s wary gaze shifts between me and Helwain. As soon as the sun rises he leaves, even though the snow is still deep. He says his father needs him, but I think he is afraid of Helwain.
In his absence, the winter’s gloom is even greater. It seems unnatural for me to be living in a remote wood with my mother and the foul-tempered Helwain. I long for the winter to end and welcome the trickles of snowmelt and the shoots of green that announce the spring.
