by Prue Batten
‘Maria Island in the Pymm Archipelago. He is a shepherd, repudiating Færan because of what he sees as the fickle gameplaying of Others and I can understand. His own introduction to the Other world was bleak and cruel and he saw the love of his life treated with appalling lack.’
‘Does he know of me?’ I have a living brother…
‘Yes. I sent a message when I became aware of your entry into the search for the Cantrips.’
Jasper lapsed into a silence that filled Finnian’s heart with dread. ‘And?’
‘Nothing. He didn’t reply. Mind you, it wasn’t that long ago, two months, maybe less.’
Finnian’s heart shriveled, the shadowy lack of confidence and self-belief creeping forth. ‘He doesn’t want to know because I am one of those he detests.’
‘Perhaps, perhaps not. There could be any number of reasons that he hasn’t replied. In any event, after we have dealt with the Cantrips and Isolde, you must go with Lalita to Maria Island.’
We? We? I shall deal with the charms and with Isolde and as for Lalita…
But he said nothing, not wanting to admit Lalita’s passionate dislike of him. That she would run a thousand leagues from having him as a companion on any journey, let alone one that took them close to her special, her vulnerable, her most perfect niece. He could almost hear Isolde’s delighted laugh at his pain.
‘Go and see Lalita, Finnian.’ added Jasper. ‘She’ll be asleep but it would be comforting if you sat with her. I have things to do and must have some peace as I deliberate the future of those.’ He gestured over his shoulder with a thumb so that one would hardly have thought he cared over much what the charms represented.
Finnian went to scoop them all into his hands. ‘Then I shall take them until you need them.’
‘Dear boy,’ Jasper stood and held out his own hands. ‘Give them to me. I shall place them somewhere safe.’ The eyes pierced Finnian as if they read his mind, seeing his plans in plain view. He stood perfectly still, almost defying the old man. But then he tipped the paperweights into Jasper’s hands and they made a clucking sound. Laying the strips on top, he left, pulling the door to, trailing a frayed cloak of sensibilities behind him.
Comforting for whom? She won’t want me and I will like as not be discomforted in her presence. But as he walked to Lalita’s room, he wondered at all the healer had told him, not least of which had been how he knew of all that was passing.
One day as Jasper had stared at his mirror, leaning back in another of his scarlet chairs and sipping red wine, he saw Finnian in the reflective depths. There was no doubt in his mind that he was Liam’s twin. He began to scry – to use the cards, the sticks, runes, anything and everything that could give him a history of this other part of the pair. He discovered Isolde was Finnian’s grandmother, a personal history hitherto unknown, although her reputation was like a scar through Færan. He scried her obsession and was forced to sit on the sidelines these last months and watch and hold his breath and hate the malevolence of Others. He cursed Fate for laying down such cruel prophecies for three brothers, brothers he could not help and that Fate had decreed must dance to their own tune.
And yet, he said, if Fate and force had not intervened, maybe Finnian would have fallen by the wayside – swallowed by the arms of the Black Madonnas.
I would. Of that there’s no doubt. But I met a woman of silver, ivory and midnight and I met a mortal called Ibn, but mostly I met a scribe…
He leaned against the doorframe. Lalita looked like a piece of translucent porcelain – the cracked object so casually referred to by Jasper and which he maintained was easy to mend. He watched her chest rise and fall as if he needed to see for himself that she breathed. Then he examined her face from that uneasy distance. When he spoke, he knew he had little hope of holding any feeling back.
‘We are connected you and I, Lalita. I have family… my brother is stepfather to your niece. How you would hate it, wouldn’t you?’ He shifted as if he stood on hot coals. ‘You risked everything just then and for what? For a child you don’t know? Is that what family does? Erases all sense, all intelligence?’ He muttered a curse in Færan, smouldering as he stood there a moment longer and then walked away. He wanted to sit by her, to take her hand in his but he knew she hated him, thought he was invidious and capricious and he could not bear the rejection. Not on top of Jasper’s revelations. He was shaken to the very roots of his being. Family and not of Isolde’s ilk.
In his room, he flung himself in a chair, the idea of family so difficult to comprehend. His plans began to dissolve, his resolution as nebulous as the fog. But I cannot give up. Must not give up. A sense of being trapped by a destiny he had dreamed of began to irritate him like an itch and then a full-blown pain. But it is family. Outside an owl called as the moist air drifted in through the open window on a light breeze, the smell of honeysuckle and nicotiana accompanying it.
He gazed through the window, trying to seek answers through the beneficent fog. But the shroud waxed and waned, fading to white, then thickening again – nothing, something, nothing . . . nothing, nothing, nothing. He searched every fold of the miasma as if solutions to everything should reveal themselves – answers to the question of a relationship with his brother, answers to the question of his abortive relationship with Lalita, answers on how best to destroy the Cantrips. But uppermost in his mind was the need to destroy Isolde despite the ramifications. No solutions appeared and he pulled off his clothes and slithered into Jasper’s lavender scented bed.
He dreamed but the fragments drifted, smudged by a shifting veil and he could never make out what lay on the other side. It wasn’t a nightmare, nothing as evil as those the night-ghasts dropped over innocents – no, this was a dream of wafting shapes, of shining waters, of pearly river-mists. He turned over in the bed and heaved a sigh, wishing in a moment of wakefulness that he could be lulled by a Black Madonna but a voice drew him along a starlit pathway until he could see her, her silver hair floating in a welkin wind.
‘Finnian, come to me, I would talk.’
He lifted his head, dark gaze meeting inscrutable scrutiny. Her dress ebbed and flowed and he drowned in the glistening of stars. Struggling to the surface, he spoke. ‘Moonlady, I found them. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? But tell me, why did I bother? The old man is powerless so the charms are as vulnerable to malign hands as ever. And Isolde still follows. You used me.’
‘No, the choices you made were your own. It was all I hoped for. And there is yet another to come with as far-reaching consequence as those you have already endured.’ She moved and the organza folds of her gown whispered like the sighing of a breeze. ‘You must choose with wisdom. But then again, you may choose to follow a lesser path.’
‘Why do you always speak in circular riddles? Can you not be unequivocal just for once? I haven’t the time to play your games.’ He rolled over in the bed and turned his back on her, as he had once before. But she tapped him lightly on the arm and he recalled the lovely Primaflora.
‘Impatience achieves nothing.’ She spoke sweetly and any admonishment was lost in the soft tones. ‘The fast road is often the doomed road.’
‘The road I am following is doomed anyway. Leave me,’ he muttered. ‘I’m tired.’
‘But I do not stop you from resting, Finnian. You stop yourself. Perhaps your agitation shall only be eased by the decisions you make in the future. Fate has laid out a path for you. Heark to what I say.’
‘Bain as, Moonlady,’ he sighed.
‘Goodnight, muirnin.’
A touch feathered down his cheek and he wondered at the paradoxical warmth in those fingers. But then perhaps it was only a gentle night-breeze through the open window…
‘Old man,’ Finnian called to Jasper who walked along a path in the walled garden in the soft light of early morning.
‘Less of the old, Finnian,’ Jasper responded as crisply as if the air had turned to autumn.
Finnian allowed the barb to slide away
and pulled up alongside, adjusting his stride to the slightly shorter one of his elder. ‘Is there a lake here?’
Jasper stopped and his gaze on the younger man intensified. ‘As it happens yes. Why?’
‘I just wondered. No particular reason, although I thought I heard swans and knew we were too far from the river.’
The mists had cleared a little through the gardens, but further away, any distant view was completely shrouded and Jasper dragged his staff through the fine gravel of the path that wound under archways loaded with lavender and carmine sweetpeas. He drew two runes. ‘The Færan runes for coincidence and conundrums, for what is life but a series of interesting or not so interesting coincidences and problems to be solved?’
Finnian met the gaze of his wise and acerbic companion and raised his eyebrows.
‘Ah, yes, the lake.’ Jasper gathered himself together. ‘It’s at the far northeast end of the Ymp Tree Orchard, about a mile away. We call it the Lake of Mists. It is,’ he paused briefly, ‘an Other place.’
‘Mists you say?’
‘Indeed. My boy, I’m hungry. Let us break our fast and you can tell me what you plan to do.’
Piles of toast waited to be buttered and spread with conserves and Finnian found he was hungry, more than he had been for a long while. ‘I take it you haven’t found a method of disposal yet.’ You must not, Jasper. He chewed on a piece of toast and spiced orange preserve.
From Jasper there was fulsome silence and Finnian looked up until the old man answered. ‘No,’ he said as he lifted a crust of toast to his mouth.
‘And shall you?’
‘Certainly a way shall be found, yes.’
‘When?’
‘When it reveals itself. Aine Finnian, you are as impatient as was your twin, Liam. Everything had to happen yesterday and if not there was hell to pay.’
The mention of his brother sucked the air from Finnian’s lungs and his food stuck in his throat. ‘And what about Phelim? Is he so hasty?’
‘Far from it,’ Jasper’s irony cascaded over Finnian’s head. ‘He spends time thinking things through and weighing up the pros and cons.’
Not so different then. A little bit of each. Suddenly the need to see his older brother was paramount. But the door opened as he went to speak again and Jasper stood, pushing his chair back.
‘My dear. How good to see you. You look so well, doesn’t she, Finnian? And in Adelina’s hand-knits too. Are you ready for some sustenance?’
Lalita entered, ignoring Finnian and edging past him to the chair on the other side of Jasper. She wore Raji jodhpurs and a Traveller’s knit, woven by knowledgable hands in some twisted cable. She had pulled her hair into a high bunch that swung as she walked. Finnian dragged his eyes away and concentrated on the cider in his tankard.
‘I am hungry, yes. Jasper, what did you do to me that I have no pain at all? I tell you, I wonder if everything that occurred was just a bad dream, a nightmare even.’ Her comments, directed across the table at Finnian, were nothing if not deliberate. ‘I must thank you,’ she nodded her head at Jasper.
‘I’m delighted. I’ve found great success in the healing of all broken things, Other and mortal.’
Finnian could feel Jasper’s eyes on him, as if his desperate emotional state was being included amongst those ‘broken’ things. He squirmed in his chair.
‘Here, muirnin,’ the healer continued, ‘have some of Margriet’s toast, she makes her own bread and the toast has a way of it that it keeps warm. Honey, marmalade, berry preserve? Oh and there’s butter from my own cow.’ He fussed around her like a parlourmaid. ‘Now tell me, what are your plans?’ The two chatted, Lalita ignoring Finnian as if he didn’t exist.
Finnian played with his food and as the meal progressed, tightness etched across his forehead. The muscles hardened, his head aching with tension and the meal he had enjoyed turned to ashes in his mouth, the cider tasting as stale as old water. Finally Lalita’s deliberate manner drove him to throw back his chair and leave the room.
The gelding picked its way between the espaliered peaches and apricots of the orchard. Protected by the mists, Finnian sat in the saddle oblivious to the fruit and its fragrance, to the blossom and of the thick clover that brushed and bruised against the horse’s hooves. When he glanced up he noticed the ever-present vapour ebbing and flowing ahead and behind. He expected to look down a row of trees and see a dark nightime scene with an even darker figure in the middle of it but there was only the impenetrable fog, layers of it winding in and out through the orchard like flowing rivers of pewter-coloured ribbons and threads.
Anger at Lalita rushed through his mind, pushing rationality before it. If Jasper had been close by, he knew the old man would have said there was an underlying arrogance as well because it was a Færan trait to believe that one was always right, that one had the upper hand. But to Finnian, it had nothing to do with his own arrogance and everything to do with Lalita’s spontaneous actions and her inane misapprehensions. Damn her to hell, she hardly deserved a minute of his attention.
But Isolde. He knew he could never avoid the reckoning which sometimes sped toward him like a herd of wild horses and at other times, when the misty enchantments cosseted him, as if he had all the time in the world to prepare for it. But time or not, the idea of wilful destruction now sat like a lump of phlegm in his throat, choking him.
The horse’s pace quickened as it began to sense familiar territory. Its head came up, ears pricked and it began to trot, then canter. Finnian gave it a loose rein until eventually it fetched up at the meadow fence from whence it had been taken not long since. An ear-splitting neigh shattered the bucolic peace, the horse’s body shaking as it shrieked forth and there was a drumming of hooves and an answering neigh as Lalita’s firebrand Raji mare pelted out of the vapours and across the field. For the horse’s sake, Finnian was glad it had fled safely to its home after decanting Lalita at the bottom of that fateful slope. The two animals nosed each other, stamping and giving high-pitched squeals of affection.
Such irony. Lalita’s mare and his gelding – such friends. He opened the gate and led the horse in, unsaddling it, slipping the bridle off and laying the tack on the fence. The two trotted away and as he shut the gate and glanced back, he caught a brief sight of them standing companionably nibbling each other’s wither. Their affection mocked him as he recalled Lalita’s neck and he glanced down at his scarred hands which Jasper had healed with charms and a foul brown potion. Everything seemed so pointless, every bit of it. If the old man had a clue to the destruction of the charms, it may have been worth it in the long run… after Isolde. But now?
He followed the grassy track and realized he had a choice. He looked back up the shrouded river. That way was the Gate. He could go back to the insidiously welcoming arms of Fahsi and be free. Of Lalita, of Isolde, of choices… of life. The idea tantalized him – so much temptation, so much to ease the loneliness and lack.
His eyes fell upon a feather as it floated past him in the other direction downstream, becoming lost in the fog. He could go that way. Back to the cold shoulder and guilt and the death of his grandmother. And the chance to meet a brother who may choose not to know him.
What choice?
He followed the feather.
He walked along the defile at the edge of the rivulet, the water chattering beside him, washing over pebbles and stones. He tried to think of nothing, but images alternately unsettling and comforting ran through his mind. He longed for peace, where the flow of thought would run clean away but it was not to be and thus aggrieved, he threw a stone far across the rill, his only idea that it had landed being a misty plop as it sank beyond sight.
‘Did that help your sore mood, Finnian?’
He swung around, his hand on his stiletto. A Siofra with abundant chestnut hair and a verdant hunting costume stood close by leaning on a perfectly proportioned long bow.
‘What would you know about my moods, Siofra, that gives you the right to com
ment?’
‘Hoity-toity, aren’t you? Come on, let’s walk. My cousin said you were an edgy man – like a springloaded crossbow.’
‘Your cousin? Ah, of course, let me guess, the magnificent Primaflora.’ Finnian was suddenly glad of any diverting badinage.
‘Indeed. She told me of your distrait and suggested if you came my way that I should help if I could.’
He studied the lovely Other who walked with him. There were none of the sharp edges of her glossy Venichese cousin. She glistened but her persona was like so much of the forests of Trevallyn – enchanting, promising much in enigmatic depths. ‘How did you hear so soon? Veniche is far from the Barrow Hills.’
‘Birds. They fly messages hither and yon for us.’
Finnian recalled the moment in Fahsi when he wondered if the Raji Others knew of him through Primaflora and the birds. ‘Then I am guessing you don’t hunt your feathered friends with that,’ he nodded at the bow. ‘Perhaps you hunt more interesting creatures.’
She laughed, that familiar avian trill. ‘Oh indeed – mortals. Siofra have the reputation of mischief and nuisance so it pays to enhance such an image. I take an arrow,’ she nocked one into the bowstring. ‘And then,’ she pulled the bow taut, arching her lithe back and sighting a far point across the rivulet through the mists, her slender arms stretched. ‘I fire.’
The arrow sang away over the busy water. There was a sharp cry and a slap and footsteps hurrying away, but they could see nothing.
‘A mortal,’ the woman said. ‘You see, mortals think it is a bee or a mosquito as my enchantment vanishes the arrow, and they are disturbed and do a little dance. But it becomes quite boring over time.’ She gave him a crafty smile. ‘Better when I dip the tip in this,’ she undid a pouch and pulled out a little bottle. ‘They will then, upon piercing, fall in love with the next living thing they see – bird or beast.’ She laughed. ‘Only yesterday, a damsel fell in love with an ass.’
