We gathered on the shore to say our farewells, and there Finbar did something that terrified me more than all his words of warning. Reaching up, he took off the amulet from around his neck, the smooth, holed stone with its runic imprint, and placed the cord over my head so that I wore the charm against my heart.
I raised a hand in protest—no, it is yours, Mother gave it to you—but he was already turning away and I could not see his face. It had been a gesture of terrible finality. In all my life I had never seen him without our mother’s gift around his neck.
Farewell, until next time. Farewell, dear one.
I had told Simon he could end his story any way he wanted. The choice was his, I’d said; there were as many pathways as the threads of a great tapestry, and he was the weaver. Oh, but my story. Why couldn’t I do this with my own story? Why must the strands of this tale form a fabric of violence, turn the red of blood and betrayal, take the way of corruption and anguish and parting? With the clear-eyed confidence of an innocent, I had lectured Simon on the need to take control of his destiny, never thinking to find myself helpless before its blows, not two years later.
Finbar always was a seeker after truth, and I was to discover his vision had not played him false. It was later, though, that it happened; so much later that I had dismissed his warning from my mind and was going about my business as usual, enjoying the warm weather, for half a year had passed and it was almost midsummer again. There were two shirts stored away and the third was half sewn. From my cave, I watched the path of the sun and I saw the gradual ripening of the berries, and I believed my brothers would come any evening now. Perhaps tonight. There were swans on the lake, some with half-grown children; out there somewhere, maybe Conor watched me with human sight as he drifted in his cloak of white. Linn learned to catch fish in the shallows, a rare trick for a dog. Her patience amazed me as she stood stock still in the water, eyes fixed on an unseen quarry, until the silvery prey edged close enough for one fatal snatch. While she practiced this new game, I spun and wove and plied my needle, and the shirt was lacking but its right sleeve.
Then in one day, so quickly, everything changed. The sun lured me out of the cave, and I went down to sit on the rocks by the lake, in the afternoon, and took my needlework with me. I dabbled my hot feet in the water, rolling my toes over the fine pebbles. There was a group of swans not far offshore, floating, preening, fishing leisurely. I thought they were waiting. The sleeve was quite tricky to attach, and I bent over my needle, ignoring the barbs in my fingers through long practice, wishing yet again that I had concentrated better when one of the servants had tried to teach me plain sewing.
I had forgotten Linn until I heard her bark, somewhere back along the lakeside. She was headed home from hunting, I thought. It was late for her to be still out. Then the barking started again, and there was a sharp note of warning in it. I got up, shading my eyes as I sought along the shoreline and up between the trees for a sight of her. There was nothing. A moment later I heard a voice cursing, and her barking ended in a horrible, gurgling yelp, and then there was silence. A cold feeling moved up my spine. I started up the path toward the shelter of the trees, treading as softly as I could. My senses were sharpened by fear, but even so, the men were too quick for me. There were three of them, one coming through the bushes behind the cave entrance, slack-lipped smile showing uneven, yellowish teeth. In his hand was a bloodstained knife. Another suddenly behind me as he dropped down from the rocks, grabbing me around the neck, the foul smell of his breath filing my nostrils. And behind them, one more familiar, whose voice rang out loud, uncontrolled, half excited, half distressed.
“Faery girl! Don’t hurt faery girl!”
What came next is very hard to tell. Indeed, I have told it but once before, when I needed to, and I will tell it this time only because it forms a strand in the fabric of my story, and it wove itself into what came after. I have tried to blot their words and their actions from my memory, but I cannot. They said and did terrible things. I suppose it did not take much time to be over, but it seemed long, so long; and their words were burned into my head, scars like Simon’s that never quite healed.
“So this is your faery girl, eh, Will? Looks like flesh and blood to me. And a nice ripe little piece at that! Get an eyeful of this!”
He put his hand to my tunic and ripped it open right down the front, exposing my body from neck to ankle. I tried to cover myself, but found my arms pinioned from behind.
“How about that then?” said the other, almost drooling in his excitement. He fumbled with his belt. “Prize piece of fresh meat! Just the way I like it, young and juicy. Should be very tasty.” He turned to the simpleton, who was whimpering on the edge of the clearing, wringing his hands. “Leave off, Will! Your turn will come, lad. Big boys first.”
“Don’t hurt! Don’t hurt faery girl! Don’t hurt doggy!”
But they did. “Shut him up, will you?” said the first one, and the second one gave the boy a clout over the ear that sent him moaning to his knees.
Then, while the one held me down, the other spat on his fingers and shoved them inside me, and I sank my teeth through my lip, holding back my scream, and felt blood and tears wet my face as he pulled down his pants and forced himself into me. It hurt; it hurt so much, and I had no voice to curse him. I tried our old trick, tell a story to block out the pain…her name was Deirdre, lady of the forest…I screwed my eyes shut, not to see their red, sweaty, excited faces…if you were very quiet, as quiet as a…as a mouse, you might see her…I tried and tried, as it went on and on, and one shuddered and pulled away, and the other took his place. “See, not a word out of her! She loves it, don’t you, little slut? Some faery girl; this one’s mortal enough, belongs in the farmyard, she does. Best thing that ever happened to her, I’ll be bound.”
…the willows would rustle, as she went by…He was huge inside me, too big; I could not believe how big. The other gripped me around the chest, fingers bruising my flesh, hot breathing into my ear…in her cloak of deepest blue, and on her hair a crown of little stars…he thrust and thrust, until I thought I might split open, until I thought I would faint with the pain…she would…she would walk under the tall oaks and she would…The story slipped from my grasp, and there was only the awful, endless pounding, and the ugly voices, and the rising scream that threatened to burst out of me, however hard I clenched my teeth shut.
“You wouldn’t want her to handle you,” said the first one. “Seen the paws on her?”
“She’s a faery girl, ain’t she?” said the other. “Maybe her mother was a toad.” Gales of coarse laughter.
At last it was over. He groaned and relaxed and pulled out of me, and the other let go, and I collapsed in a heap on the ground, arms wrapped around my head.
“Come on, half-wit,” said one. “This is your big chance! Come on then! Bet you’ve never done it before, eh farm boy?” He gave me a kick in the ribs. “She’s ripe for it, aren’t you, toad girl? Never said a word. Just what you wanted, wasn’t it? Well, there’s plenty more where that came from, don’t you worry.”
“Hurry up,” said the other one. “She’s going to pass out. Not much fun then.”
But the simpleton was weeping, and I heard him turn and crash away through the forest in the general direction of home.
“Curse him,” said one. “He’ll blab the whole thing out if he gets back first. Come on, no point in hanging around here. We’d better catch him. She’ll keep for another time.”
“Bye, sweetie,” said the other one, disgustingly. He gripped my hair, pulling my head up and leering in my face as he bent over me. “Sorry to desert you so soon. We’ll be back for more, sugarplum. Feel this.” He forced my head between his legs, rubbing himself into my face, and I gagged and choked and struggled to keep silent.
“Oh, by the way, your dog’s up the hill there,” said the other one, sniggering. “Bit the worse for wear.”
“Gave me a nasty bite, he did,” observed the first
one, dropping me to the ground again. “Vicious brute.”
Their voices faded away under the trees, and I lay there, unable now even to weep. Then a strange wind came up, and all the trees began to rustle and thrash about, though on the ground all was still. It was as if a darkness had fallen over the forest.
I don’t know how long I lay there. It grew steadily darker, but whether it was the day drawing onto dusk, or part of the strange, foreboding silence that overtook my home that afternoon, I could not say. I was lost in my misery. Above me the trees moved and sighed in the wind, and there were voices in it. Sorcha, Sorcha, they whispered. Oh, little sister. On the ground, nothing stirred. The birds were silent.
After a while, there was no choice but to move. I was bleeding; and there was Linn. I could not hope that she would return to me, running down between the trees with her joyful tail held like a banner in the breeze; but I must at least find her before nightfall. And I needed water.
Everything was an enemy. Everything was too hard. I did it very slowly. My clothes, torn and filthy. I never wanted to touch them again. I dropped them next to the fire. I was desperate to get clean again, but I was afraid to go down to the lake. There was a bucket of water and a harsh cloth, and I washed their filth from my body, shaking and shaking, though the day was still warm. I washed and washed, and when the water was all gone, I went on rubbing my body with the cloth until the skin was red and sore. There was quite a lot of blood; I felt detached from this, dealt with it as well as I could, then wrapped one of the old cloaks around myself and went on up the hill, my legs unsteady, the trees blurring and dancing before my eyes. She’s going to pass out. Not much fun then.
I reached the top of the hill, and almost tripped over Linn, who was lying across the path where she had fallen, her jaws still holding a scrap of fabric from the man’s tunic. Her teeth were bared in a last grimace of challenge, and her eyes stared blindly up at the sky. Her brave tail lay limp in the dirt. Her hair was drenched with blood from the long, slicing wound across her throat, and small red pools formed among the rocks and ferns. I suppose it was a good death for a dog, to lose her life in defense of the one she loved. I only knew my friend was gone, and now I was really alone.
She was a big dog, and I was still quite a small girl. Nonetheless, before dusk I carried her back to the cave mouth, and laid her down on the grass. Then, trembling from head to foot, I crept into the smallest space I could find under the rock wall, and wrapped the cloak all about me, and I tried to make my mind as quiet as a feather in the breeze and as still as a stone. But my body shook and shivered, and my spirit was full of fear and hatred and shame. I thought that I would never be clean again.
At dusk they came. I heard their voices and I did not move. They knew what had happened. I thought later, if it had indeed been my brothers I had seen before, drifting out there on the tranquil waters, how it must have been for Conor, seeing it all as it passed, unable to act until the sun set. They exchanged words in low, furious voices.
“Diarmid? Cormack?” Liam queried.
“No, let Cormack stay here and tend to the dog. I will go. This task is mine.” Finbar’s voice was shaking.
Then, peering between my fingers in the half light, I saw the three of them take cloak and knife from the cave, and slip away into the forest with death in their eyes.
Conor knew where I was. I felt his mind reach out to touch mine, but I drew deeper into myself. He did not approach me, not yet. Padriac, blinking back tears of rage and confusion, set about rekindling the fire and lighting the lamps and heating water. Cormack’s face was like a carving in stone as he took the spade and began to dig a resting place for the bloodied remains of his dog.
After a while, Conor came over to sit near my bolt-hole. I remember still the feeling of solid rock at my back, how I pressed myself in tight against the wall, curled in on myself as small as I could, biting my knuckles, one arm up over my head in protection. I remember wishing the earth would absorb me, take me in and soak up the hurt and guilt and the wretchedness. I was full of hate; hate for the men who had done this, hate for the innocent who had led them to me, hate for the lady Oonagh who had driven me to this lonely place. I hated my father for his weakness. I hated my brothers as well, for not being there when I needed them. Besides, they too were men, and so how dared they try to make it better?
But Conor sat there, not too close, and talked to me in his quiet, measured tone, and the fire Padriac had rekindled spread its golden light on tree roots and ferns, and even into this tight rock crevice; and after a while I looked out through the tangle of hair that covered my face, and saw the sorrow and love in their eyes.
“Will you come out, little owl?” Conor said gently. “We have but a short time in which to help you.”
It was hard, very hard. I could scarcely bear to let them touch me. Padriac had a deft hand, having helped many a sick animal in his short years, and, shuddering, eventually I let him tend to my injuries. Finally, wrapped in blankets despite the night’s warmth, I lay by the fire and they spoke in low voices as the fragrant smell of healing herbs rose in the night air.
Cormack’s grim task was finished, and he returned to the fire. “Linn’s been dead awhile,” he said soberly. “Whoever did this would be well away and out of the forest by now. Our brothers cannot track them down and return here before daybreak. They would better have stayed and helped us here. Perhaps we could have taken Sorcha to some place of safety.”
Conor glanced at his twin, and away. Cormack seemed calm; but his eyes were red, and his cheeks were smeared with earth where he had dashed away his tears.
“I don’t think so,” said Conor. “Sorcha cannot be moved, not tonight. For better or worse, she must remain here for now. As for the other matter, strange things happen in the forest at night. Especially this forest. People sometimes get lost in the dark, even on a familiar path. It’s not unusual for a mist to come up suddenly, and mask the true way, or for mysterious voices to lead a wanderer down a deceptive track. Glades can appear where there were none before, and tangles of branches suddenly fill a clearing. Many have died under these trees, and their bodies never been found.”
His two brothers looked at him, and then at each other.
“Mm,” said Cormack. “You’d know, I suppose.”
“I do know,” said Conor.
Padriac was boiling a pannikin of water with more herbs in it; the smell told me he was using self-heal, sometimes called heart-of-the-earth, and the spores of wolf’s claw, that herb of power which must be gathered with such care. They’d already made me drink, but my stomach rejected even what was good for it. Now I sipped again, but not too much. I had no wish to sleep, for no infusion could promise me a sleep without dreams. I watched the stars, and my brothers talked on in quiet voices. I am a healer; I was then, and I am now. Strange, then, how on that night I felt deep in my spirit that I would never be healed, as if I could never rise out of the well of despair. I had been there to help Simon, and others before him. But who was there to help me? Even my dog was gone. I watched the stars until they seemed to wheel and spin above me, until their images blurred with my tears.
It was stranger still that on that night I did not care whom I hurt. Conor’s face was white and drawn; he bore not just the burden of what had happened to his sister, the guilt of not being there to stop it, for they all felt that, but he knew at first hand my every feeling. He was tuned to my wordless curses and silent screams, my anguished sense of betrayal. You weren’t there. I needed you and you weren’t there. Such was the flood of emotion that there was no holding it back. My mind overflowed with pain and he took it all and never once spoke of it. But it could be read on his face. The worst of it was that I didn’t care anymore. My brother was a man too. Perhaps it was just that he should share the damage that men had done.
I must have dozed off briefly, for I remember waking with a start as Liam drove a bloodstained dagger into the earth by the fire and wiped his hands on his cloak.
The three of them had returned. Diarmid’s face was a mask of fury, Liam’s tightly controlled. Finbar sat apart, and he held his hands to the sides of his head, as if his thoughts threatened to burst it apart. His hands were dark with blood. At home, the Armsmaster Donal had drilled them with iron discipline. Even I knew a weapon must always be scrupulously cleaned straight after use; cleaned and oiled and put away safely. Tonight it was different. Their three daggers stood in the soil around the fire, and its gentle flicker showed the bright metal encrusted with their quarry’s life blood. It had been a hunt, not a battle. A swift, violent meting out of justice. I did not care how many they had killed, two or three. I did not weep for the innocent caught up in something beyond his understanding. It was late, too late. My body ached, and I was scared, and even with my six brothers around me, I was all alone.
“Oonagh will pay for this in blood,” said Diarmid, his voice thick with fury. His thirst for retribution had not been slaked by the killings. “I will draw the knife across her throat myself, if no other will do it.”
“She bears responsibility for this, though maybe not directly,” agreed Liam. “But this is not the time. We have done what we had to. Now we must look to Sorcha. She must go from this place, and straightaway. How soon can she be moved, Conor?”
They discussed me as if I were a piece in their game of strategy; a prized one, but still just an object to be maneuvered to best advantage. I lay there unblinking, silent in the darkness. My body was throbbing with pain, my mind endlessly replaying the thing that had been done to me. I didn’t seem to be able to stop this happening, and I almost wished I had taken enough of the herb to blot it out for a time with a drugged sleep, nightmares or not. My mind would not be still; I could not focus my thoughts on a story, or count the stars, or take in properly what my brothers were saying.
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