Faerie Heart

by Livi Michael

  No one knows how old Myrna is. Mabda is her daughter, and she already seems old. And no one knows where Myrna came from. My mother said that she was a little girl when the People found her, separated from her clan. A little wild girl, dressed in skins. And whether her people had all died in the hard winter no one knew, but they never came back for her. She couldn’t talk, except in animal noises. She could growl like a dog and bay like a wolf, or grunt like a pig, and the animals understood her and she understood them. And she could do magic. She could draw out the shape of the land in the dirt with a stick, and track wild deer for a hundred miles by scent alone. When she called down the rain it came.

  Her people didn’t live in huts, my mother said, but followed their animals around, like we used to in the First Days. And it’s true that Myrna does not like to be inside. She sits always at the doorway of her hut, even on the coldest day, chewing her herbs into a paste and spitting them out again. She uses the paste to heal our wounds or keep off illness, and she uses her stories, she says, to heal our spirits.

  At last, when my arms and neck are one long ache, the pulp sets so that Myrna can cut it with a knife and lay strips of it on a flat stone. When it has dried hard it will be ready to store for the winter – a little strip of summer sun to see us through the cold and dark.

  ‘It will be a long dark, this year,’ Myrna says, following my thought again. ‘In two or three days the first rains will come, then the winds. Then the long rains will begin.’

  I don’t ask her how she knows. That’s another of the gifts she brought from her people to ours. She can sniff the weather for days to come. Because of her we began storing food early. Beans and turnips and garlic are gathered into the storehouse with barley and other grains, and soon another pig will be slaughtered. I hope it isn’t ours – the pig I have fed from my own plate, who has pushed her warm snout into my hands and given us three piglets. But so much food is needed to see the People through the freezing nights.

  Myrna hands me another basket of berries and I sigh gustily and sit down again, thinking about Digri and Arun and Peglan and Ogda gathering them and playing on the edge of the forest.

  ‘You would rather be out there, eh?’ she says, looking at me keenly with those sightless eyes. I would rather be outside anywhere, hunting for bird’s eggs, gathering sticks for the fire, than indoors. She knows because she was just like me. When she was my age, she had no home, only the herd.

  ‘What was it like then?’ I ask her suddenly. She knows what I mean.

  ‘It was no different,’ she tells me. ‘There was wind, and rain and snow. The ground was as hard then as it is now, and the forest as dark.’

  But I want to know more. ‘Tell me about the magic, Myrna,’ I ask her.

  ‘Humphh,’ she says scornfully, spitting seed.

  ‘My mother says you could fly.’

  ‘Hrrummph!’ says Myrna, spitting some more. It’s not the answer I was hoping for.

  ‘Can I do magic?’ I ask her. ‘Can you teach me?’

  ‘What do you want to do magic for? You want to fly like a bird and swim like a fish?’ she says, and I nod eagerly.

  ‘Maybe the bird looks at you and thinks, I wish I was like her.’

  I snort. ‘I don’t think so,’ I say.

  ‘Why not?’

  I stare at her. ‘I can’t fly, I can’t swim underwater, I can’t tunnel for miles under the earth. I can’t do anything!’

  ‘You can watch and learn and hear things in your mind. You can dream, and paint the dream on to a wall. You can weave baskets.’

  ‘That’s not magic,’ I say.

  ‘Magic has many forms,’ says Myrna. ‘It’s nothing separate. It’s the wind in the night and the dust on the path. It’s the moss on a stone and the shadow of a cloud.’

  But they’re just the ordinary things. That’s not what I mean by magic. I frown, not understanding.

  ‘But Mabb’s real,’ I say.

  ‘Real as you and me. Realer, some might say. Longer I live, the more I don’t think we’re real at all. Only the magic.’

  I’m getting confused by all this. I try again.

  ‘Have you seen Mabb?’ I say.

  ‘I’ve seen her,’ she says. ‘And so have you.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  Myrna snorts again. ‘No use being able to see, if you don’t know what you’re looking at.’

  I’m silent then because I don’t know what she means. Then I start thinking about the wolf in the forest. What would it be like to stare into the forest through those yellow eyes? Would it look like the forest I see? I try to imagine it now, hunched over my basket of slimy berries, and all at once I can see a different, wilder forest, tangled at root level, full of shade and patches of light. Every rustle, every movement means something. Just like the wolf, I can see the forest staring back at me. Then in a moment, everything shifts, and I am the eyes of the forest, and it’s looking through me.

  Keri, it says.

  ‘Keri?’ says Myrna, bringing me back with a jolt. She’s looking at me with her head cocked to one side. ‘Where’ve you gone to?’ she asks, but I can’t answer. I look around the hut, surprised to find I’m still here. Firelight dancing on the pots and Myrna’s grey plaits swinging near my face.

  ‘You’ll be falling into them berries,’ she says. ‘Time to weave some baskets.’

  She drains the last juice from the berries into a bowl, and puts a handful of rushes into it and swishes them around. Then she shows me a basket she’s been weaving – half finished with the stems of rushes sticking out from it like the rays of the sun. She pulls up a stool to the door and we both sit by the doorway. Afternoon light slants in.

  Myrna hands me a plain, undyed stem and shows me how to weave it in and out of the dyed ones, so that the colours mingle and twine, spreading outwards.

  ‘Like seeds growing,’ she says, and I remember that every basket she weaves tells a story.

  ‘Will you tell me a story?’ I ask her.

  ‘What kind of a story?’ Myrna says.

  ‘About Mabb,’ I say, and Myrna shoots me a look.

  ‘What about her?’ she says.

  ‘Well…’ I have to put my question carefully. ‘If you wanted to find her, where would you look?’

  Myrna pegs up a rope, so that we can hang the coloured rushes on it.

  ‘You don’t go looking for Mabb,’ she says. ‘She comes looking for you, if she wants you.’

  I wish she would, I think, but I don’t say it.

  Myrna hears me anyway. ‘You don’t know what you’re wishing for,’ she says, very stern. I look away from her, and start weaving my rushes. No matter how I try, I can’t weave them as tightly as Myrna.

  Myrna settles herself back on her stool and says, ‘She doesn’t look the same, Mabb, not two times running. She comes when you least expect her, and she looks like the thing you least expect. You’ve probably seen her every day, but you don’t know how to look.’

  I look up at her then, squinting earnestly through the sun. ‘Tell me,’ I beg.

  Myrna glares at me with her filmy eyes. ‘Haven’t I told you already?’ she says. ‘Don’t all my stories tell you how dangerous she is? I’ve told you, many times, but you don’t hear.’

  It seems like a cold shadow has fallen between us, over my heart. I remember the moths by the water-lily pond, and the wolf. ‘I do,’ I tell her.

  It’s not that I think Mabb isn’t dangerous – she is – dangerous and wild and beautiful. I don’t know why I would want to see her; I can’t explain it. But without all that danger, without the wildness, life is just so – ordinary. Sometimes I just want something to happen.

  Myrna’s looking at me with her lips pressed together. ‘Like putting your hand in the fire,’ she says, and I hang my head. Then she nods to herself and sighs, as though blowing the past away.

  ‘Tell me a story anyway,’ I say timidly.

  Myrna grunts. ‘Too many stories,’ she says. But then s
he begins.

  ‘A long time ago,’ she says, ‘a woman of the People gave birth to a beautiful baby boy.’

  Lu, I think. He is the most beautiful of all the little ones. Not Ogda with her plain, screwed-up face. Not Derry, who is a great fat baby who hardly moves.

  ‘He was so beautiful, the woman feared that the faeries would grow jealous and steal him. She wouldn’t leave him or set him down, but bound him to her with strips of cloth. She’d already lost her husband, you see, and the baby was all she had.’

  ‘How?’ I say, interrupting.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How did she lose her husband?’

  Myrna glares at me. ‘Them that listens, finds out,’ she says. And she nods at my basket, meaning I should get on with it.

  ‘One night a great storm blew up. It rattled all the pots on the table and blew out the fire. The woman sat in her chair, holding her baby, and singing songs to calm him because he was restless.

  ‘All night the storm raged. The wind moaned and there was the sound of branches scratching the walls of the hut. The woman was feared for she knew that the forest had crept up around them, its wet branches slapping the walls. Then the river rose up and pressed its mouth against the windows.

  ‘“Give the child to us,” it moaned.

  ‘“Go away!” cried the woman. “You will never have him.” And as soon as she said this, a blast of wind blew the door right open. The woman leapt up and put the baby in his cot to keep him warm while she pressed the door back and shut out the water that was streaming through. She could see that the little hut was entirely surrounded by forest and river – all the other huts had disappeared.

  ‘When she turned back to the room, Mabb was there, holding the baby and smiling. Her eyes were like rain on the river, and her gown ended in pools of water on the floor.

  ‘“I will keep him safe,” she said.

  ‘“No!” cried the woman. “He is mine!”

  ‘“You can have more children,” Mabb said. “I want this one.”

  ‘The woman fell to her knees. “Please!” she begged. “Please don’t take my baby!”

  ‘Mabb looked at her with eyes like frost on stone. “What can you give this child?” she asked. “Sickness and hunger will come. In one year, maybe two, he will be lying in the cold earth. Is that what you want for him?”

  ‘The woman sobbed aloud and Mabb touched her cheek. “If he comes with me,” she said, “neither sickness nor grief nor pain will hurt him. The rain will not touch him, nor the wind chill. What can you give him compared to that?”

  ‘The woman raised her face to Mabb’s. “Love,” she said.

  ‘For a moment Mabb’s face flickered fierce as lightning. “I will love him,” she said.

  ‘Then the woman wept. She tried to clutch Mabb’s skirts, but they slipped through her fingers like rain. She begged Mabb over and over not to take her baby.

  ‘Mabb stood, tall and terrible. Then she said, “We will see about your mortal love. If you can keep watch over this child for three days and nights, you may keep him. But mind, you must not take your eyes off him, or he is mine.”

  ‘Before the woman could speak, Mabb raised her hand, and the room shifted around her, then she was gone.

  ‘The woman blinked. The child lay in its cot, sleeping peacefully. A cold blast of air rattled the door. Without thinking, the woman moved to shut it. Then she remembered with a pang of fear, and ran to her baby and bound him to her with strips of cloth. And in that way she did all the tasks of the house, raking the fire, boiling the porridge. Then she sat in her chair with the baby at her breast, and rocked and murmured him back to sleep, though she did not dare to sleep herself. And so the first night passed.

  ‘The second night was much harder. The woman could hardly keep her eyes open. She chewed bitter herbs to keep herself awake. The baby cried and she fed him. He grew fretful, strapped to her breast, so she put him in his cradle and stood over him, her head nodding and jolting up again. And so the second night passed.

  ‘But by the third day she felt like she was in a dark dream, neither waking nor sleeping. She even began to think she’d dreamed Mabb and the promise she’d made. As she fed the baby her head nodded forward, so she stood up once more and put him back in his cot.

  ‘The wind murmured at her through the chinks in the wall. “Help me, dear wife,” said her husband’s voice, and she ran overjoyed to the door, for she hadn’t seen her husband since before the baby was born, since the day he’d left to go hunting. She flung the door open but there was nothing there. Terror struck her, and when she turned back to the cot there was only a turnip’s grinning head, wrapped in a blanket.

  ‘The woman cried aloud in grief and fear, but there was only the rattling of the wind and hail. Then she picked up the turnip head in its blanket and said:

  Turnip head, turnip head,

  Lying in my baby’s bed,

  Tell me where you came from.

  And the turnip head spoke to her and said:

  Through the gates of the wind and the door of the rain, On the journey of stones, and back again.

  Then the woman wrapped another blanket round her, and, taking only a short knife for protection, she set off with the turnip child in her arms and her face turned into the wind and rain.’

  Myrna breaks off there, getting up stiffly from her stool.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask her.

  But Myrna only says, ‘Are you hungry?’ And I realize I am. Myrna takes the paste she made from the seeds and shapes it into rough circles. She bakes them on a flat stone on the fire, while I carry on trying to weave my basket. I’m desperate to hear the rest of the story, but I know Myrna won’t be rushed. She dribbles some honey over the little cakes, then I put the basket down, and we eat them in the doorway, and they taste good in the cold sun.

  ‘Did the woman find her baby?’ I ask, with my mouth full.

  ‘The wind and the rain grew worse,’ Myrna says, just as if she’d never stopped speaking, and crumbs catch in the bristles on her chin. ‘But the woman turned her face into them and battled on. She hadn’t gone very far when she came to a pond. The water in it was all whipped up by the wind and rain. The woman looked at her reflection, all broken up in the water, and said, “How unhappy I am.”

  ‘Then the water writhed and churned and a great fish rose out of it. It was spotted and spiny and it opened its great fishy mouth and said:

  Unhappy may you be,

  You are not so unhappy as me.

  The woman was terrified, and started to run away, but the turnip head said:

  Cut the fish from gill to fin,

  Flay it open and keep the skin.

  The woman was horrified, but she did as she was told, trying not to look at the great fishy eyes, or hear its gurgling breath. But when she’d finished, an old woman stepped from the skin, brown-spotted and bristly with age.

  ‘“Queen Mabb changed me because I would not bring babies to her,” she said. “Now you have set me free. Take the fish skin when you pass through the door of the rain.”

  ‘The woman thanked her as she rolled the fish skin lightly, and it folded until it was hardly there. Then she tucked it into the neck of her gown and carried on, turning her face once more into the rain.

  ‘She walked and walked on a stony road. Stones filled her shoes and the rain battered her and made her wet clothes cling, but she didn’t stop. And after a long time she came to a place where four roads met, and at the point where they crossed there was a thorn tree, and trapped in the thorn tree was a great black bird. And the bird cawed:

  Woe is me, woe is me,

  I am trapped upon this tree,

  Who will come to set me free?

  The woman looked at the turnip head, but the turnip head said nothing. So she put it down, then took her knife and set about the thorns. They tore at her cruelly, and ripped her hands, but at last the bird was free.

  ‘It tumbled rather than flew to the ground, because its
wings were torn. Then it pecked at the thorns that still stuck to its flesh and said, “Queen Mabb said I should stay until a wood had grown around me. All because I would not hunt for her, or bring her nuts and berries. Now you have set me free. What can I do for you?”

  ‘The woman picked up the turnip head and felt it jiggle in her arms. She turned a little away from the bird and the head said:

  Wring its neck and roast its feathers.

  Then we’ll pass through stormy weather.

  ‘Oh, the poor bird!’ I cry, interrupting Myrna. She only glares at me, then carries on as if I haven’t spoken.

  ‘What else could the woman do? She went to the bird and it didn’t try to get away. She wrung its neck quickly, then made a fire and roasted it until every last black feather fell off. The turnip head told her to weave them into a cloak so she did. And as soon as she draped the cloak around her, a great wind blew up. The woman was tossed and buffeted one way then another, and soon she was lifted completely off her feet. She flew into the wind in her cloak of feathers, and felt the earth rushing away from her, until she came to a place where the sky itself seemed to open, like a gateway. Through this she flew, and landed in a place where no wind ever blew, but the rain fell steadily.

  ‘So much rain fell that the land around her seemed to be dissolving, and the air itself turning to water. The turnip head jiggled in her arms.

  ‘“The fish skin, the fish skin!” it cried, and the woman slipped the fish skin on. She could feel it clinging to her, and she writhed and leapt into the water, swimming through the shimmering rain.

  ‘She swam and swam, until the sky, heavy with rain, pressed down on the water that was covering the earth. It was so heavy that she thought it would crush her, but a little way ahead she could see an opening in the rain, like a doorway, and she leapt through, and lay on dry land.