by Prue Batten
‘Our father was as embittered and a brute with it, Finnian.’ Liam commented. ‘You had one and I had the other. It’s too much of the twinning, I would say. Curse is not too finer point to put on it.’ He put his arm across Finnian’s shoulder and the weight of it pleased Finnian. No longer was this a shadowman who passed across his life like a welkin wind.
He looked out over fields of pale wild flowers. ‘What sustains you here?’
‘The same as when we lived. It’s no different. And we watch.’
‘Watch what?
‘That world.’ He gestured beyond the lake with a sweep of his arm. ‘It is how we knew what was happening with the Cantrips and what would eventuate.’
‘One would think you are the Fates.’
‘Perhaps we are, who knows?’ Liam was noncommital.
‘And I?’
‘You have a role to play in the future. I don’t tell you anything you don’t know.’
‘Liam, the charms must be destroyed and we are ready.’
Liam replied with equanimity. ‘Then you will find a lake.’
‘Another one?’
‘Yes but this one has no end and no beginning and nothing can be taken from it. Ever.’
‘Where is it?’ asked Finnian.
‘Not far,’ replied his brother.
Lalita sat staring at nothing in particular and Finnian watched her tattooed hand stroking the growing mound of her belly after he returned from his talk with Liam. He knew today was a harder day, that she found it difficult coming to terms with this unlife. Despite the fact that people moved in and out of their existence and engaged with them gently, smoothing the way, she struggled with where she was; the undefined palette of the trees and the ferns, grass and flowers biting deep into her artist’s sensibilities, the massive sense of loss almost unseating her some days.
The baby was growing bigger, Lalita’s breasts filling out with the milk that would sustain the child and Finnian desired her all the more. He moved to sit with her and took her hand in his own. ‘It is time now, Lalita. I know where we have to go. It’s not too far, can you walk?’
‘Of course I can. I’m not an invalid and besides it’s good for the babe. Better to walk than float like a ghost.’ She gave a small smile. ‘Do you know, that’s what I thought it would be like. Ghosts and trailing white shapes, greys and silvers not just at night but all day as well. But there is none of that. It’s a pale place, but not completely unbearable. It’s cultured and life is not harsh. There is only one thing that concerns me.’
They had begun to walk in the direction that Liam had indicated and Finnian prompted. ‘What would that be?’
‘There are no children. Is there a separate islet for little ones? We all know that children die.’
‘There is another place, Lalita, for mortals and their children. This is a place of mature people because Others live many long years before meeting their bane and coming to the isle.’
‘Always? They never die in childhood?
‘Very rarely.’
‘Then if this is the Others’ haven, why am I here?’
‘Loved ones of Others are here, Lalita, even if they are mortal. Besides, you are a carrier of Other charms. It puts you here where you belong.’ By my side. But he didn’t say and he could see she struggled.
‘But what’s to become of our child? Will it grow amongst shades of people older than itself? If that’s the case, it’s a penalty unearned for sure. How lonely it will be here with no peers to play with. What does that inevitably do to a child?’
In truth Finnian had worried on this as well. His had been an empty life, as had Liam’s and he would not wish that on a babe of his own and yet he must. ‘We must think the child will be cherished here. It’s not a harsh place.’
But loneliness is darker, deeper and more wretched than one can imagine.
The path wound through weeping silver-pear trees and was easy walking. It traced itself along the side of a rivulet that frothed over stones and around corners. The pleasant sound made music on the air because there was no birdsong in this land of shades and it was something they both missed more than they could imagine. Like the sound of dogs, or cattle lowing in a field, or ewes in a withy and the shepherd counting yain, tain tethera… the stuff of life.
‘Finnian,’ Lalita pulled him up and as she spoke he realized she thought the same thoughts. ‘Do you think we would settle better if we had actually met our deaths? That we would be grateful to live in this half world?’
‘Perhaps.’ He daren’t tell her that he wondered if they might both go mad pining for a life they couldn’t have. He just prayed for the imminent birth of the child, something to divert them and in which to divest their emotional wherewithal. They continued to walk, the paperweights clinking in Finnian’s pocket, reminding him that if he hadn’t come, if she hadn’t come, Eirie would still be at the mercy of the malign and malcontent.
They pushed under the final arch of the walkway of silver pears and the lake within a lake lay before them. It stretched to infinity and Lalita gasped. ‘This isle that is our home must be the size of a world.’
‘It is a world and I had not realized.’ A world in which we can make a life. Perhaps all will be well. ‘Look there, a boat.’
Finnian led the way along the shingled shore and Lalita climbed awkwardly over the stern of the dinghy and settled herself as he pushed off into the silken water. The shallows sparkled but as he paddled out, the lake floor dropped away and the water became not merely dark but an opaque black.
Lalita shivered. ‘Depthless,’ she muttered as she wrapped her hands over her belly.
Finnian ceased paddling and they wallowed gently in the waters as a welkin wind blew about them. He reached into his pocket and the paperweights clicked and clacked as he drew them forth. The weak unlight grazed over the sides of the pieces of glass and they lost some of their splendour.
‘In truth they seem mediocre.’ Lalita watched as Finnian held them over the side of the boat.
He had thought to drop them, but a shape floated beneath, a shape of dark and light, of lithe hair and pale features, and where the insipid light touched the water, of diamond and silver flashes. Moonlady? Finnian wondered if this whole tragedy could have been avoided if this was indeed the Moonlady and his temper began to soar. He lifted his arm away as if to prevent the wight, the shape, whatever she was from having the paperweights.
‘Finnian, give them to her. Let’s get this done.’ Lalita grabbed his arm, the boat rocking and as they almost lost their balance, he let the first paperweight drop. The woman of the water fielded it, holding up her other hand. Finnian let the second one go and it sank with a tiny plop so at odds with its horrendous contents and the woman caught it. They disappeared into the depths as she opened her hands, allowing them to sink beyond sight – to the end of the world perhaps.
‘What about my hand? What should I do?’
The pale woman came alongside the boat and held her hand out of the water, palm uppermost, inviting Lalita’s into her own. Finnian could see Lalita’s chest rising and falling and he wondered if she would be pulled into the water to be dragged down into the endless deep. But he knelt by her side and took her hand in his own, guiding it towards the woman.
She slid her palm underneath Lalita’s, a shiver of a movement, barely there, and Lalita trembled in Finnian’s hold. But then the woman swam away a little and with a faint smile she flipped a skein of dark sapphire drops high into the air and dove deep, down down down until all that showed she had been was a trail of damascened bubbles. Lalita stared at her once again unmarked hand and collapsed against Finnian sobbing. He knew she cried for lives lost, for what they had given up and he could do nought but hold her and love her.
***
Sometimes when she sat on the edge of the Lake of Mists, staring over to the far shore where lay life, sifting the sands through her fingers, she would pretend she was an hourglass. As the grains dropped to fall in a heap unde
rneath, she would say to her unborn child, ‘Another minute of this unlife gone, little child. I am sorry for what I shall inflict on you in this place of shadow. For Isabella would have been your friend, your family, even your redemption. Will you ever forgive me, I wonder?’ The thought of Isolde’s curse had sent out tentacles earlier and they began to cling and to grow and she despised the pain they caused as they suckered and gripped.
Her child slipped out easily one silver night. She barely felt a pain and the infant lay in her lover’s arms. ‘A son, Lalita. We have a son.’ He glowed with the joy of a father and she couldn’t bear to say that the infant was cursed, that by living here, he would have a half-life, precisely as Isolde had predicted.
He asked what they should call him. ‘Nicholas,’ she said without hesitation. ‘It’s a strong name, neither Raji nor Færan. Traveller I believe.’ And what is the poor little boy but a traveler on the edge of life.
Lalita could feel herself sinking after Nicholas’s birth, focused unhealthily on the child, obsessed with him, telling him stories filled with colour and light every minute of the day. If you can’t live over there, then you shall know of it. Your father read books, I shall tell you stories. But it was not enough and she spent hour upon day thinking on what could be done for her son born on the Isle of the Dead. ‘Finnian,’ she propositioned him, knowing if he denied her she would leave him and the isle, no matter the cost. ‘Finnian?’
‘Yes.’ His brow creased.
‘I want you to listen to me.’ As she spoke the infant cried from his basket, a sound like a plea. ‘I want Nicholas to return to The Ymp Tree Orchard. To Phelim and Adelina. He needs to grow in a real world, not here where he has only the sounds of old voices and even older stories.’
His voice exploded and she was reminded of cracked tiles and Fahsi. ‘No, I won’t! Never. Lalita, you’re unhinged.’ He snatched up the crying child and left. But she knew she was right and she knew that he knew as well, for much of the future lonliness of Nicholas resonated with his father.
He was gone long and patience that had begun calmly and with vindication had transformed to desparation. Her breasts were bursting when he chose to return, the infant blissful and asleep in his arms. He passed the babe over and the child, smelling the milk, began to nuzzle against Lalita’s damp tunic.
‘Lalita, there is only one way from here. If he leaves we shall never touch him again and I am not sure I can do that. He is my son.’
Her heart skipped as Nicholas pulled away from her breast. A slight burp bought a smile to his bow lips and tears filled Lalita’s eyes. ‘Yes, he is your son. A son cursed by his great grandmother.’
Finnian turned away from her and looked out over the Lake of Mists. His voice cracked when he replied. ‘We are anchored here forever. Would you give up the years of watching him grow?’
Her emotions, on a knife-edge since the birth of the child, fizzed over. ‘Aine Finnian, grow for what? To end his life lonely, unfulfilled, never having laughed and loved and fought and cried with others of his age? I am not that selfish and I’m surprised that you who has known greater lonliness and cruelty than any man has a right to experience should want the same for your own son. He is an innocent, here through no fault of his. He must surely be able to leave.’
‘But he is cursed, Lalita. Isolde cursed him and he must be protected.’
She shook her head, her heart beating a tattoo of bittersweet lost and found in one. ‘He is cursed if he stays here, Finnian. Don’t you see? A half-life, silence, all the things she predicted. Better he has a life with Phelim and Adelina and with Isabella who shall be his friend. Think and you will see that I’m right. He must be given the chance to have a full life, not one of shadows as ours has become. And he can only have that if we are able to send him back. Please.’
Finnian looked at her with sadness and regret and she held her breath. Finally he nodded and they kissed over the head of the babe as the tale end of a rhyme chanted from her memory.
‘To where to follow, none can return.
The hardest lesson thou must learn.’
He handed her into the boat, she and Nicholas, and they glided to the shore where Phelim stood alone. She passed the babe to him and that thread that had stretched and nearly cut her in half previously as she proceeded to the island of unlife, sawed away at her middle and she whispered to herself the old rhyme, I am Lalita Khatoun, Arifa protect me. I am Lalita Khatoun. She tucked the nightime paperweight in amongst the soft wool of his blankets but she could not speak to Phelim because her throat had thickened into a stifling knot. She turned away and climbed back into the boat, not looking at her child at all, sinking onto the deck and burying her head on her knees.
She heard Phelim promise things and she heard Finnian reply but it flowed over her and she was glad when she felt the boat rock as Finnian climbed aboard. Only as the boat began its return journey did she dare to look. Back to the far off banks as the mists swirled over the pearl and silver lake. She heard the Caointeach cry and knew it was for a mortal passing somewhere but this time it didn’t upset her. It was the sound of a real world and Nicholas would grow in amongst mortals and Others of substance, not shades of the same. Relief softened the edges of her pain. Her son would be free and would grow in a home filled with light and life.
She stared up at the sky as the boat continued its unimpeded journey onwards and a quarter moon gazed back, partnered by two glimmering stars. Their reflection sparkled in a rippling trail right to the shore where she knew her small son rested in loving arms and where a nightime paperweight lay by his side as a gift and a reminder - a memory of what had been.
The End
References
1. The Art of Medieval Manuscripts by Humaira Husain (Ed) Hamlyn London 1997
2. The Illuminated Alphabet by Timothy Noad and Patricia Seligman Simon and Schuster Australia 1994
3. Spirits, Faeries, Gnomes and Goblins by Carol Rose ABC-Clio Ltd Oxford 1998
4. The Age of Enchantment by Rodney Engen Scala Publishers Ltd London 2007
5. The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi USA 1999
6. Myths and Legends: an Illustrated Guide to their Origins and Meanings by Philip Wilkinson DK Ltd London 2009
7. Botanica and her love-potion arrows were inspired by the inimitable Puck in William Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’
8. Irish-English Dictionary – www.englishirishdictionary.com
9. ‘I saw her stare on old dry writing…’ from the poem ‘The Gift of Harun Al Rashid’ by William Butler Yeats
10. ‘The Ladymoon came down one night…’ Anonymous. This poem was related to my mother by my grandmother and subsequently to me as a child. I cannot find any reference to it in my research.
***
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