The silence draws out. The little gray ones start to fade away, merging into rocks and sand and water as if they were the stuff of dream.
Sibeal rises to her feet. “Wait!” she calls softly.
Eyes turn in her direction.
“Cathal is no coward,” she says. “What he needs is an explanation. Do not judge him before he has heard it.”
They seem to be waiting for more.
“Is it not true,” Sibeal says, “that within the margins of this isle your Queen holds total sway? If her power is sufficient to keep Mac Dara at bay, might it not block the spells and charms of any mage who entered her domain?”
The faces of these beings are obscured by the shadow of their hoods; the bright eyes give little away. But I sense a warming, a softening. “It is true, wise one,” one of them says. “Mac Dara’s son will leave the confines of the isle without the Golden Queen. Beyond the barrier of our cliffs, he will be free of the restraints her presence has placed on him.”
“But—” Cathal says, and his voice is less guarded now, “Sibeal used a druid charm to make light, in the underground passage. Why was her magic not blocked?”
“Aaah.” They make the sound as one. It is a sigh, and a song, and a deep and fervent prayer of thanks. “She is the goddess-friend. She is the one who sees true. They are blessed, the wise woman and the one who walks beside her. But for them, Mac Dara’s son, you would not be here. You would not be here to receive our gift.”
“A gift.” Cathal sounds as if, even for him, this is all too much to take in. “What gift is that?”
The small beings move, breaking the circle around him, and converge in a huddle. They resemble a collection of weed-covered rocks. In this place of stone and water, they blend seamlessly. At length one of them glides forward, stopping before Cathal. It stretches out what might be a hand. I cannot see what it offers.
“Take this.” It is the one with the sharp, emphatic voice. “Guard it well. Use it well. The time is coming when Mac Dara must be challenged. He must not continue to stir the seas with his capricious hand, or spoil a realm that once was peaceful and just. No, don’t speak”—when Cathal was ready to argue—“only listen, and take heed. You are too ready to say this is not your task, you cannot do it, you will not do it. One way or another, it must be done. Without you, it cannot be done. But a quandary vexes you; we understand that. This talisman is our Queen’s token. It will protect what you hold most dear until your task is complete. Wear it around your neck on the voyage home, and the Sea People will guard your vessel from the storm.”
Cathal has taken the tiny item in his long-fingered hand, and is examining it in the moonlight. “Thank you,” he says. Nothing more.
“Come forward, Bright Heart,” says the being.
I look at Sibeal; they must mean her.
She shakes her head. “It’s you they want, Felix. Go on.” She releases my hand.
I walk down the pebbly shore, the crunch of my footsteps an intrusion in the quiet of the night. Now I am beside them, and scarce able to breathe for the strangeness of it. The being stretches out its hand again. The hand has three fingers, and is as soft and gray as the creature’s cloak. On its palm lies something that might be a shell, or a stone, or an artifact. Such is its gleam, I think the moon has lent it some of her light.
“For you,” the being says, and, inverting its hand, drops the talisman on my palm. “Not for yourself. Not for the wise one, for she has no need of it. She carries her protection within her. This is for your daughter. Use it wisely. Guard her well.”
I am unable to ask the question that fills my heart. I cannot speak a word. I close my fingers around the talisman. I bow to each of them in turn. A silent prayer fills me, a prayer made up of hope and fear and hard choices.
By the time I am sitting beside Sibeal once more, the beings are gone. They have not vanished in a puff of smoke, simply faded back into their surroundings. Cathal has taken his talisman and gone to the other end of the shore, where he sits alone on the rocks with his hands around his knees. We will not disturb him; not tonight.
“Felix?” Sibeal asks in a low voice.
“Mm?”
She does not answer. I think perhaps she is crying. “I didn’t tell you, but I saw her. Our daughter. I saw her in visions, twice. That was the cruelest thing.” The tears flow in earnest. My wise druid is, at this moment, adrift and helpless.
My throat is tight; my eyes brim. I open my hand to examine what lies there.
The talisman is like a little moon. Pearlescent, glimmering, radiant with light, it is wafer thin and hard as shell. There is a tiny hole close to the rim. A vision. Our daughter. I would thread this on a silk ribbon for her to wear around her neck. For a moment I allow myself to imagine it, as I lift her dark curls out of the way and tie the bow, and she says, Thank you, Papa.
“Sibeal.”
She says nothing.
“Sibeal, I must tell you how I feel. I have held back; I have tried to match your self-restraint, but I cannot do that any longer. It is time to tell the truth, to speak out. Sibeal, I love you.” She bows her head as if these words set an intolerable burden on her slender shoulders, but I have begun now and I must go on. “I respect your vocation; I honor your link with the gods, your druidic wisdom. But I love you as a woman; I love you as the one woman I want to spend my life with. I love you as a tree loves rain; I love you as a flower loves the sun. Sibeal, I know your feet walk a path toward the nemetons and a celibate life.”
Gods, my heart is going like a drum; my skin is all cold sweat. Still she sits there, eyes down, hands in her lap. “I know you are convinced this is the one future the gods have determined for you. But . . . ” I draw a shaky breath. “I cannot believe there is no alternative, no way by which we could be together, you and I. I would honor, love and cherish you all my life, Sibeal. I would protect you. I would walk with you step for step, wherever you chose to go. I know in my inner heart that the two of us are meant to be together. I believe that if your gods rule otherwise, they deny an essential truth.” I pause; Sibeal lifts her head and looks at me. She is deathly pale. The moonlight shows me her bright eyes, full of tears.
“There, I have said it. I have told the truth. I want you to do the same, Sibeal, even if it breaks my heart. It hurts me to see you there, closed up within yourself, holding your feelings tight lest they disturb that druidic calm. If you think me presumptuous, if you think me misguided, tell me so. If you find my words offensive, shout at me, rail at me, strike me if you will. And if you can for a moment entertain that your future might follow a different path, one on which I might walk beside you, speak of that now. I challenge you, Sibeal. Or would you spend your whole life shut in and locked away, like the kernel of a nut that never ripens? You give much of yourself; you are full of compassion and wisdom. But if you never let that other self flourish, the one who weeps and rages and doubts, the one who once melted into my arms as if seared by the same flame as I, then you will not lead a full life, not even if you are the wisest and most devout druid in all of Erin. That is the opinion of this poet, scholar and fool who never learned how to keep his mouth shut. Please, Sibeal. Please let me hear what is in your heart.”
She gives a great, choking sob and folds her arms around me, and I gather her close.
“I’m sorry,” she says with her face against my breast. “Felix, I’m so sorry. I don’t see any way it can be. You speak as if this were easy for me, and it’s not. When I thought you were drowned, I . . . it was . . . I’ve never considered abandoning my vocation before. At that moment I was only a breath away from it.”
My heart is leaden. I hear in these words that she will not be diverted from her path. Yet her body tells me what her mind will not allow her to say, that mind so trained to control. I feel in her embrace that she wants me as I want her; that we are a perfect complement, two halves of one whole. Oh, Sibeal, let go. Let go for just a moment.
“The gods still need me,” she says.
“There was Svala and the skin . . . I could not have spoken to her as I did without the gift the gods have granted me. How can I set their will aside for my own selfish ends?”
Selfish. It does not feel selfish to me, but absolutely right. Sibeal lifts her face to mine and I kiss her. Our first kiss, and likely our last. I taste salt tears and the aching delight of what might have been. And still, even now, I cannot keep silent. “Ask yourself this,” I say. “When your every breath is taken in reverence, why do your gods choose to punish you so?”
We are two nights on the serpent isle. Liadan is scoured clean; clothing and supplies are brought ashore and laid out to dry in the sun. Water casks are replenished from the spring. Stocks of hard bread and dried meat are checked for the voyage home. A new sea anchor is fashioned from rocks and cunningly knotted rope.
Gull tends to the three survivors. He makes me drink a potion brewed with seaweed and a brown powder that he carries in his healer’s bag. I do as I’m told. Since this vile mixture can stave off the illness that nearly killed me before, or so Gull tells me, I drink it as readily as I might the finest mead. I was given a second chance at life when Sibeal found me half drowned on Inis Eala. I fought a fight then, for Paul, for the men abandoned here. Now the mission is fulfilled, and it seems a new challenge lies before me. Perhaps I must summon the courage to live my life without her, and to live it well. But I will not accept that, not yet. Bright Heart, they called me. I am still fighting.
On the third morning we assemble on the shore, all of us, waiting to be rowed out to Liadan. The weather is calm, the sky cloudless. The men have worked hard, and all is shipshape. It is time.
We board. For a moment all are gathered on the deck, and Gareth steps up before us. His features are grave, and I wonder what he will say. A rallying speech, maybe, or a reminder that while we are at sea, his word is law. But all he says is, “Friends, we’re going home.”
Under oars, we head out to the perilous channel. We catch no glimpse of Sea-Father and the Golden Queen, but as we pass through the narrow, high-walled passage, I sense their large eyes on us. We emerge to open sea. A kindly wind fills Liadan’s sails, and she makes a course to the south, and Inis Eala.
CHAPTER 14
~Sibeal~
We had made the voyage from Inis Eala to the serpent isle in five days. The homeward trip took much longer. We were not harried by storms or driven off course by howling gales; quite the opposite. After one day’s brisk sailing, nature decided to remind us that it was summer. The clouds departed. The air warmed. The winds took a rest. We floated, trailing our new sea anchor, for six days before a northerly came up. The crew raised Liadan’s sail, the square of woolen cloth bellied out, and to the accompaniment of cheers, we headed for home.
I had been seasick only for the first day or two. After that I kept myself busy helping Gull tend to Thorgrim. Indeed, I kept myself very busy. I managed to present an outer shell of calm, lending a hand wherever I might, sitting in silent prayer, keeping myself to myself. Under that still exterior I was a stew of raw feelings, and every day they bubbled closer to the surface. There was, in truth, no silent prayer. When I sat cross-legged with my eyes closed, I could neither pray nor meditate. All I could think about was Felix. The passages of lore that had once come so easily, the patterns of breathing I had been able to summon in the most difficult situations had slipped away; they were beyond me. When Felix was up on deck, fishing with Sigurd or talking to Cathal, I longed for him to come back so I could look at him. When he was close by, the merest glance brought back the thrilling sensation of his lips on mine, and the desolation of stepping out of his embrace. I could hardly bring myself to speak to him, lest I break down completely. Ciarán would have been horrified.
I was not too preoccupied to feel pleasure at our survivors’ progress. Thorgrim was managing to keep his food down, and looked better by the day. Though weakened by his ordeal, Donn had from the first been eager to work. Gareth had asked him to join the crew, allocating him tasks that were within his reduced capacity. As for Colm, little ailed him physically that rest and good food would not quickly mend. His mind was a different matter. Felix listened patiently to the boy’s endless recounting of what had happened, what he had seen, what he had felt, and reassured him that his old life waited for him back in Munster, and that in time the nightmare would fade.
As Thorgrim’s condition improved, we learned that he had known Knut in Dublin. “Knut had a wife and children there,” Sigurd translated, to our astonishment. “But he was in trouble twice over. He owed money, a lot of money. Although he was a fit, able sort of man, there never seemed to be any funds to mend the house or clothe the little ones. Too keen on a wager, Knut was, and on women other than the one he was wed to. Things came to a head with his wife, and he took to her with his fists. Seems he forgot that she had five brothers. He left Dublin in a hurry, with no intention of going back, and headed for Ulfricsfjord in the hope of getting a place on a ship. He was almost lucky. He would have stepped off Freyja in the Orcades and made a new start, if the boat hadn’t been swept off course.”
“Danu save us,” murmured Gull. “So when he saw Svala on the shore he thought he’d found himself the perfect replacement for his wife. Not only was she beauteous beyond compare, but once he’d helped himself to a piece of her skin, she was biddable and silent, too. No wonder he was so keen to win a place on Inis Eala, where folk valued his skills and nobody knew about his past. It must have seemed perfect. And no wonder he was so desperate to keep Felix quiet.”
“That sea monster,” mused Sigurd, “the other one, I mean—if Svala could shed her skin and become human, does that mean it could, too? That thing would make quite a figure of a man.”
Felix kept busy, as I did. He talked to Gareth, to Cathal, to Sigurd, to Gull. He plied a fishing line and even on occasion helped with sailing the boat. He turned his hand to any task he was given. The crew treated him as a friend. And I watched him, seeing the fit, healthy man of my vision emerge from the shaken invalid by whose side I had kept so many anxious vigils. I had new vision now; I saw the strong shoulders, the proud carriage, the long legs and grace of movement. I saw him laughing, somber, reflective, purposeful. When I thought of the time ahead, I wondered how long it would be until I forgot these fine things; how long before he faded to a beloved memory, and then to nothing. Or would I keep his image in my mind forever, a piercing reminder of what I had sacrificed to follow my destined path? An alternative, he had said. How could he understand? There was no alternative.
Cathal made it his habit to take me up on deck at least once a day. Too much time in the hold was bad for anyone, he said. No doubt this was true, but he had another reason: he wanted to talk.
“Every day I expect it to happen,” he said to me the first time, as we stood together looking out across the vast ocean. A small flock of gulls had joined us as temporary passengers. They perched in the rigging, feathers ruffled by the breeze. “I expect my father to act. A storm; a mighty wave; a thunderbolt; an eldritch vessel crewed by uncanny warriors. If those little creatures on the serpent isle spoke true, the talisman should protect my loved ones and also keep Liadan safe on the voyage home. But it is a great deal to entrust in a tiny scrap of shell, however magical it may be. I cannot believe my father would not seize this chance to sink us. To drown me and have Clodagh and the child at his mercy. Why would he hold back when he has the power to stir the seas and conjure tempests? Why wouldn’t he meddle, when he has no scruples at all? He’s a man who kills for no better reason than to amuse himself. He’s a man who turns folk’s lives upside down without a second thought.”
I struggled to find the wise answer that would once have come so readily. “You are his only son. True, perhaps he is more interested in your child now. But he will not harm you if he need not, surely.”
“You don’t know him.”
“There is another possibility,” I said. Felix had just come up through the open hatch; he was heading to t
he bow to talk to Sigurd. He lifted a hand in casual greeting. The wind caught his hair and lifted it around his head like seaweed on the tide. What beautiful eyes he had, eyes of drowning blue.
“What possibility?”
I struggled to remember what I had been about to say. “Those little folk implied that someone must stand up to Mac Dara, and that the one to do it might be you. I know you have no intention of going back to Sevenwaters, Cathal. But you should consider the possibility that your father is holding back because he fears you. Because he fears your magic has the power to overcome his.”
“What about Freyja, the wreck, the losses?”
“There is no way to know if that was his doing. It was odd, yes. But there are many oddities in this tale, and not all of them are of Mac Dara’s making.”
“Mm.” Cathal fell silent for a while. Then he asked, “Sibeal, are you all right? You seem . . . not yourself.”
“I’m fine.” The sharp note of my voice made him narrow his eyes at me. “A little tired, perhaps,” I added. “This has taken a toll on all of us.”
More than half a turning of the moon after we had set out, we sailed past the reef on which Freyja had foundered and into the sheltered bay at Inis Eala. A crowd stood on the shore to welcome us home. Above the shouts of greeting came one penetrating sound: the shrill yapping of a little dog.
“It sounds as if she missed you,” I said to Felix, who stood beside me at the rail.
I do not think he heard me, for he was staring intently toward the shore. I followed his gaze and saw that among the familiar faces on the jetty was one that had not been there to watch our departure. He stood a little apart, a tall, still figure, his hair deepest auburn, his features gravely handsome. He was clad in an austere gray robe. Ciarán. He was already here. Time after time, in this testing summer, I had longed for his wise advice. Now I felt something akin to despair.
Seer of Sevenwaters Page 42
