Cricket's Song

by Michael A. Hooten

  “It wasn’t seeing Lord Roansfal again, was it?”

  “No.” She smiled grimly. “He wanted to be with me tonight, but I told him it wouldn’t be wise.”

  “Then your anger...”

  “It’s not anger.”

  “‘Woman is a jewel of many faces,’” he quoted.

  “True. But all the planes, no matter how different, are interconnected.”

  He nodded to her wisdom, but remained silent.

  “You are hardly a simple man, either, my respectful young bard. I have seen you cut through the knots of my problems like a sword, and I have seen you dissect a personality in seconds, and yet by your own words you have cursed yourself a fool.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “You had better figure it out.”

  He plucked out the simple melody of a sword dance while his mind raced. “A challenge, then, with the rewards being...?”

  “No promises, no challenges. The die is cast and all the pips are showing.”

  He continued the melody, keeping it sparse and mocking as he sifted their conversation, word by word. His bardic mind had captured every nuance, and as he picked it apart piece by piece, he felt the warm glow of victory, although he kept his features bland. He cut the music off with the flat of his hand. “Would you mind telling me why I upset you so?”

  “Oh, so close,” she said. “But you know the answer.”

  “My lady has me at a disadvantage.”

  She did not answer, but began to undo the artfully concealed catches on her stiff lace dress. “I love music, in all forms,” she said, “But my power, as I think you know, has other sources.” She was down to the waist, and although she wore a silken shift underneath, Cricket could feel his chest tightening. “It waxes and wanes in the season, reaching its height at Samhain and Beltain, when I feel capable of anything, anything at all.” She stood and stepped out of her dress, laying it carefully over the arm of a nearby chair. The white fabric, though not sheer, clung to her curves in a way that shamed mere nakedness. “Play!”

  Almost involuntarily, he began “Lover’s Knot”, a slow dance that Elhonna moved to gracefully. Cricket began having trouble keeping the tune when she leaned close and stroked his cheek.

  He was drowning in her magic. Elhonna was using his own music, his own power, to siphon his will. He wanted her; his desire burned across his brain like a fever, but he could not stop playing, not yet. The queen intended to make him wait for the pleasure of release.

  Enthralled, Cricket yearned for her touch even while a part of him screamed defiance. He stood up, still playing, but joining her in the dance.

  She spun behind him, running her hands across his shoulders and back, then around to his chest. He could feel her shift against him and the heat of her skin underneath.

  His head hurt, and his groin ached; he closed his eye but could still see her, and knew suddenly how it would end: they would make love, not tenderly, but like rutting animals, and in the end he would be her slave.

  “No,” he moaned, trying to fight. The heavy pull of her magic forced his eyes open but could not stop his tears. “No, not like this.”

  “Like this,” Elhonna purred into his ear. “I want you, Cricket, and you will be mine, even if I have to drag you down to hell to have you.”

  “This is wrong. Your power should not be used like this.”

  She smiled and reached for his harp.

  Cricket said, “I’m sorry.” Reaching deep inside, he called forth the will to play the Chord of Laughter.

  Elhonna stopped, her eyes wide with horror even as she began to chuckle. Backing up, she started laughing deeply, holding her stomach. She gasped and hiccuped, but could not stop. “I can’t breathe,” she guffawed, falling to the floor.

  Confused, Cricket stilled the strings, but the power remained thick around them. Elhonna’s breathing echoed loudly in the silence, and Cricket started forward to help her, but stopped when she looked up at him: her eyes shone with hatred, and her hair stood up on its own.

  “I curse you,” she grated. “I curse you with all the power of Glencairk. May you wander the earth without rest until you play for the King of Faerie and serve the Prince of the Dead!”

  A thunderclap rocked the room as Cricket felt the geis take hold, compelling him out the door. With a supreme effort of will, he stopped himself on the threshold. “Why?” he asked.

  The queen said nothing, just glared at him until he could resist no longer, and left.

  Chapter 19: Faerie

  Cricket left the palace almost running; between the geis and his own fear, he felt the need to move as fast as possible. In the courtyard, CuChulainn jumped up in eagerness, and Cricket managed to stop long enough to hug the big dog. As he stood there, grateful for the love and strength of his friend, Cricket could feel the compulsion pounding inside him. He began to twitch, and CuChulainn whined at the strangeness he sensed.

  “We have to go, boy,” Cricket said, walking as slowly as he could towards the gate. “At least, I do. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, or even where I’m headed, so I wouldn’t blame you if you left, but I... I could use your companionship.”

  CuChulainn pressed against the young bard, bringing a sense of hope into his heart. Cricket buried his hand in the shaggy fur and left the palace grounds.

  They headed down the Grand Avenue towards the South Gate. Cricket could feel the geis inside him shouting, Hurry! Faster! but he kept his pace as slow and easy as possible. The empty street echoed his footsteps, and he stared at the buildings around him, trying to memorize every feature in case he never returned. Taris, the center of Glencairck both spiritually as well as physically, had become his home, and tears momentarily blurred his vision.

  Byrn and Wylla sprang to his mind, and he tried to turn his steps towards the White Owl. He went right and made it as far as one street over before feeling himself compelled south again. “Please,” he murmured. “Just for a moment, just to say goodbye.” He managed to make it two more streets over, but when he tried to go north on Pear Street, a wave of vertigo washed over him. “No!” he cried. He could see the White Owl, dark but familiar, and he reached towards it. The world went momentarily blank, like wiping a rag across a slate; when Cricket came to himself again, he was back on the Grand Avenue within sight of the South Gate. No longer having the strength to resist, he stumbled forward, leaning on CuChulainn and weeping with frustration.

  The kern on watch, whether because of the hour or the magic of the geis, barely noticed the bard and the wolfhound as they left Taris and headed towards Cairnecht.

  For two weeks, Cricket staggered south and a little west, stopping only when he dropped from exhaustion. The geis drove him unmercifully, and when CuChulainn brought him rabbits and squirrels, he ate them raw because he couldn’t stop long enough to make a fire. The weather deepened towards winter, with a cold wind that pressed against Cricket’s back.

  Man and hound avoided the few people on the roads, and they gave wide berth to the towns on their path. Cricket, unable to bathe, knew he looked barely human, covered with road dust and hunched under the weight of his harp. He couldn’t seem to stop crying, and the tears cleaned two tracks down his cheeks.

  They entered a wild and haunted part of Cairnecht where few people lived. Even the surrounding cantrefs refused to claim it, because ghosts and spirits wandered through it, disturbing not only man and beast, but tree and grass as well. Cricket and CuChulainn passed through low, rounded mountains covered with fantastically twisted forests of oak, ash and yew. Willows grew thick around the streams, and their long, dangling branches waved whether the wind blew or not. In the frequent meadows, tall blocks of granite and bluestone stood like random sentinels, obviously not natural, but looking as though the land had retreated from around them.

  Late one evening, with only the afterglow of dusk and the rising moon to guide him, Cricket made his way into a low, treeless valley that appeared unaffected by the season. Even
in the dim light the grass glowed green, especially on the small hill in the center. As he approached, it seemed to grow in size so that when he stood at the foot, the hill towered above the surrounding mountains.

  The geis faded enough that Cricket could stand and study the preternaturally bright slope before him. CuChulainn whined softly, and Cricket buried his face in the thick gray fur. “Stay here as long as you can,” he said. “But I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so...” The geis urged him towards the faerie hill, but he fought it. “I’ll miss you, boy. Be safe.”

  Standing, he made sure that Linnaia hung securely on his back, then he squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. Without a backward glance, he started up the hill.

  He felt the magic envelop him like a fog, thick and heavy. He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other while the geis pressed him onward. The soft, springy grass underfoot gave him a burst of energy, and he quickly covered several hundred feet.

  He walked for several hours, feeling his strength draining slowly away. The top of the hill tempted him with its nearness, but refused to come any closer. Looking behind him, Cricket could barely make out the shadows of the trees below. He marked the position of the moon and continued his climb, counting his steps.

  After a thousand paces, he looked at the moon again, but it had not moved. Cricket dropped to his knees and pounded the hillside with his fists. “Let me in!” he yelled. The geis pounded at his back, and he tore at the grass in frustration. The rich, heady aroma of the loam underneath made him dizzy. The geis pushed, the hillside crumbled, and Cricket fell into darkness.

  He awoke in a tunnel lit with thousands of glowing jewels. He checked Linnaia, then himself, but didn’t find any damage. He put his hand on the wall to help him stand up, and a bright blue gemstone the size of both his fists fell out, hitting the floor with a musical chime. Cricket picked it up and looked at it, feeling the cold weight of it in his palm. Shrugging, he pushed the gem back into its place in the wall and started walking.

  The tunnel sloped downwards, and the jewels thinned until the walls were bare stone, but the light continued, although less colorful. The silence grated on Cricket’s nerves, so he started humming to himself. The sound echoed back, distorted and unnerving, and he stopped.

  After what seemed like a long time, the tunnel opened out into a wide cavern lit by some warm, soft light whose source was hidden. The ceiling, dripping with stalactites, seemed incongruous with the soft grass that grew all around. A large fountain in the middle trickled water from the mouth of a distorted beast, creating a soothing sound that made Cricket suddenly thirsty.

  As he approached the fountain, a tall woman appeared, dressed in a long gown of shimmering sapphire, her honey blonde hair caught in elaborate braids down her back. She held a gold pitcher, which she dipped in the water of the fountain. “Would you drink, fair bard?”

  “I would bathe, if I could, my lady.”

  “Go right ahead,” she said, but did not move.

  “If you don’t mind,” Cricket answered. “I would not disrobe in front of you.”

  “I will leave, but know this: if you drink of this water, you will have to win the permission of the Faerie King before you may return to the world of men.”

  Cricket laughed bitterly. “Is that all? Then let me drink until I am satiated, and fill my bottle besides.”

  The woman hesitated. “Are you so sure of yourself that you would take the chance?” she asked. “Not even Gwydion was so foolish.”

  Cricket sat on the edge of the fountain and dipped his fingers in the cold water. “Foolish or not, I am already condemned,” he said. “I am under geis.”

  “I see,” she said. “We wondered why you had come down so soon. We always expected you, but not until your powers had matured more.”

  “My pardons, lady; you seem to know me, but I do not know you.”

  “I am Etain, daughter of Oengus, the King of Faerie.”

  After Cricket had washed himself and his clothes as well as possible, Etain led him through a maze of tunnels broken by more caverns carpeted with grass. Some had fountains, some had trees, but all were empty of people. “Excuse me, my lady, but where are the infamous Faerie hosts?”

  Looking sideways at him, she said, “They are preparing to meet you.”

  “Am I really that important? Or that dangerous?”

  Etain considered his question. “You are a potential,” she said. “Some of us already love you, and some of us already hate you.”

  “Fairlin,” Cricket murmured. Looking up at his beautiful guide, he asked, “Which are you?”

  She shrugged, making her seem less intimidating. “I am like most of our people: undecided.” Looking around, she indicated a flat stone under a large willow. “We have some time. Let’s sit for a moment.”

  “As my lady wishes.”

  Etain did not speak for several minutes, but stared at the mouth of another tunnel across the way. “We fear your kind, usually,” she said. “Our dealings with you have been strained, to say the least. But bards are different. You are both more powerful and more compassionate, which means you could be our greatest ally, or our doom.”

  “Which was Gwydion?” Cricket asked.

  She smiled. “He was both, of course. He drew us out of our mounds to defend Glencairck, and many of us died. But at the same time, he strengthened our waning powers and showed us how to better defend ourselves.”

  “But you still don’t trust bards.”

  “Do you know which bard visited our realm before Gwydion?”

  Cricket searched his memory. “Ossian MacFinn?” he guessed.

  “Yes, Ossian.” Etain looked down. “His mother was a Fairie lady. He stayed with us for two hundred of your years, and we thought he had left his human side behind him. He said he loved us, he married a faerie lady, and fathered three children with her. And then he left. No explanations, no apologies. He was simply gone.”

  Cricket said, “In his last song, he said he wanted to die, and that he couldn’t in Faerie. That he had lived too long, and wanted to sleep for eternity.”

  “I know.” Shaking her head, she said, “He could have told us that, though. Instead we had to find out on our own.”

  “Would you have let him go if he had told you?” Cricket asked gently.

  “I don’t know. It happened a long time ago, even by our standards. All I know is that bards cause us the greatest good and the greatest evil.”

  “And that’s why Fairlin tried to kill me?”

  Etain looked at him. “The woman you know as Fairlin is only one of our host who has tried to kill you. Fairlin’s father died the day you were born, and her brother taught Bres MacNeth the forbidden arts that he used at Gorsedd Ogham. Faerie has worked against you for a long time, Cricket MacRhodri.”

  Cricket grew very still. “My whole life? Faerie has hunted me my whole life?”

  “Not just Faerie. There are humans who have tried to make your life difficult, too.”

  “Yet your king wants to meet me,” Cricket said. “Even though some of his subjects would like to see me dead.”

  “You have to understand,” Etain said. “We are just like humans in the sense that we do not always follow the edicts of our king. Oengus has expressed his desire to meet you, and went so far as to ask me to escort you to him; I could have said no, but if I had, he would have found another.”

  “Why would you have said no?”

  “Because Ossian MacFinn was my husband.”

  The tunnels ended in a cavern so large that the ceiling was lost in a golden mist. Cricket found himself looking over a rolling plain where a colorful group of charioteers waited for them. The drivers, both men and women, wore their long hair in braids and held spears with jingling gold rings on the shafts. Cricket tried to ignore the hostile and curious stares as Etain led him to an empty chariot.

  The horses, lean and silver, leapt forward at Etain’s command, and she used no reins to guide them a
s they sped across the low hills. Cricket tried not to betray his fear, but his knuckles turned white where they held the edge of the vehicle. The wind whipped his hair around his face, momentarily blinding him.

  The company stopped suddenly, and Cricket brushed his hair back with as much poise as he could muster. They sat at the foot of the exact duplicate of the mound Cricket had entered through. Looking at Etain, he asked, “Is this one able to be climbed?”

  “Yes,” she said, slightly amused. “The magic outside is to keep people away. In here, you are expected, if not entirely welcome.”

  Cricket followed Etain as she started up the slope. The charioteers stayed where they were, and on impulse, Cricket turned and waved. They remained impassive, so he turned back and caught up with his guide.

  The top of the hill, flat and broad, held several hundred people clothed in more colors than Cricket had ever seen, making him feel very plain and dull. They stared at him even as they parted, leaving a pathway to the middle. Cricket tried not to stare back, but he could not help but wonder if Fairlin was one of the spectators. Etain seemed to read his mind, because she leaned over and whispered, “No one will hurt you here. Oengus may not be able to control all his subjects, but none of them would dare harm you in his presence unless, of course, he allowed it.” Somehow, Cricket was not comforted.

  They stopped before a throne of burnished oak, where a powerful looking man in bright purple raiment sat silently. His dark blonde hair was circled by a band of gold set with a single diamond the size of a robin’s egg, and his moustache fell below his chin. The Dagda stood to one side with his staff, and a woman holding a spear stood on the other. Etain said, “My lord, I present the bard Cricket, as you requested.”

  “Thank you, daughter,” he replied in a voice that cut through the last few mutterings from the crowd. “Well, Cricket... why have you come to my realm?”

  Cricket bowed low. “I am under geis, my lord, to play for you.”