by Lari Don
“Performing in the middle of the night is a very different skill from performing during the day, or in the evening. Bringing the night alive. Making the blackness breathe. Using the power of the dark to make the music stronger. Those are the skills I need from you at midsummer.
“So I will give you the soloist’s spot, but only if you will have a midnight lesson with me tonight.”
Helen frowned.
“Stay here with me tonight. Play for me at midnight, play for me until the sun rises. Then you will be my soloist for this concert and, I’m sure, for many others.
“If you do not give me that commitment,” she flicked her hair over her shoulder, “then I will give the solo to someone else.”
Helen patted the pocket of her clean jeans. She wished she was still wearing her manky jeans, with the fragment of the Fairy Flag in her pocket. She wished she still had the power to see through glamour.
Then she realized she didn’t need the thread to give her that power.
She could see clearly what she was being offered, without any magic at all.
Helen was being offered what she wanted most of all, but to get it she had to sacrifice her chance of finding a way to save both James and herself.
She looked closely at the Professor. Who was she? What was she?
That didn’t really matter. What mattered was what she was trying to do. The Professor was trying to keep Helen here all night, rather than in the forest with her friends, for the same reason that the Faery Queen had sent her to Skye. So she couldn’t search for an alternative to playing tomorrow night.
Helen smiled. The Professor looked relieved.
But Helen had smiled because now she had hope. If queens and professors were trying to stop her finding an answer, that must mean there was an answer out there.
She smiled wider and opened her lips to say “no.” Her voice caught in her throat. It was was hard, really hard, to turn down a solo spot that she wanted so much.
The Professor was staring at her. “Come on, Helen. Is the decision so difficult to make?”
“No, it’s not difficult. Thanks for the offer … but I can’t accept it.”
The Professor frowned. “I hope you don’t regret that decision.”
Helen packed away her fiddle and bow, then opened the door. “I won’t regret it. Thanks for all I’ve learnt, Professor.”
She left the study, went back to bed and slept a calm restful sleep, at last sure of what she needed to do that night.
She woke up just in time for the school’s first rehearsal with the soloists. In the barn, with the stuffed animals set up in a row like an audience, Professor Greenhill ignored Helen and fussed over her soloists. Stewart on cello, Catriona on pipes, Juliet’s friend Amelia on flute, Tommy on bodhran drum and, of course, Zoe on fiddle, fizzing with excitement.
Helen stood at the back of the violin section trying to ignore the wolf staring at her with glassy eyes. After a good afternoon’s sleep, she was wondering if she’d overreacted this morning. Surely Professor Greenhill wasn’t conspiring with the Faery Queen? She was a well-known academic. Surely the offer of a night-time lesson had been a genuine attempt to help Helen adapt to different ways of playing.
What a daft thing to do … throwing away the chance of a solo!
Helen gritted her teeth as she watched Zoe put rosin on her bow with a flourish and pride that should have been Helen’s.
Then she saw the Professor’s narrow pink heels teeter about the dust and rubble of the barn, never picking up any dirt, and reminded herself that she would have the rest of her life to play solos, but only if she found a way round the Faery Queen’s demands tonight. The Professor’s solo and Helen’s desire to play it were distractions, just like the quest for the flag.
That evening, for the first time, the Professor conducted the whole orchestra. When Zoe began the violin solo, the Professor stood high on her pointy toes, peering into the back of the barn, to look straight at Helen. Her tight smile was not pleasant at all.
Helen was scribbling: In a bad mood. Leave me alone, by her name on the clipboard, when Alice came down the stairs and glanced at the form.
“Are you upset about the solo? Going for another early night?”
Helen grunted.
“Don’t worry. No one will come hunting for you. Every player understands disappointment.”
Helen grinned as Alice turned away, then stomped loudly up the stairs, tiptoed back down and crept out of the side door.
She rushed breathless into the clearing ten minutes later, gasping, “The Faery Queen isn’t hijacking the summer school!”
Helen glanced round, looking for Lavender. She was awake, perched on Yann’s shoulder, her bandage still pristine white. Helen reached out for the fairy and Yann passed her down.
Helen explained as she unwound Lavender’s bandage. “The Professor has been organizing this concert for the midsummer revels!”
Sylvie, who was sitting on the lowest branch of the beech tree, dressed in her grey fleece again, with no bandage on her arm, said sarcastically. “Obviously! Didn’t you realize that? Why else would the best young musicians in Scotland be here, now, playing that magical music?”
Helen frowned up at Sylvie. “When did you work that out? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Yann laughed. “We worked it out about five minutes ago. Your Professor is either enchanted or in league with the Faery Queen.”
Helen nodded. “The Professor tried to keep me there this evening with the promise of a solo part … but I turned it down. Can you flap your wing, Lavender?”
“You turned down a faery bargain that would have fed your ambition?” asked Lavender. “Good for you.” She winced as she stretched her wing.
“So I realized that if everyone is trying to stop us doing something this evening, there must be something we can do.”
“No,” said Sylvie. “This has gone on long enough. This is no longer a quest, nor an adventure. This is now a war. I will not let you go over to the enemy, human child, because you have healed me, and I don’t want to fight you. So I cannot let you play for her tomorrow.”
“That’s okay. I’m not going to play for her tomorrow. I’m going to find someone else to play.”
“No! If you find some other living breathing musicians for her, then she’ll still have her party and she’ll still be invading my forest. All you musicians must leave Dorry Shee before midsummer night, then her party will flop and she’ll leave.”
“But then she’ll take James with her!” Helen yelled in frustration. She passed the fairy back up to Yann, so Lavender could exercise her wing without being shouted over.
Sylvie shook her head. “You’ve done well to keep the boy human for such a long time, but he was lost the moment they laid hands on him. He may have forgotten his family by now.”
“He remembers jam sandwiches. And his family haven’t forgotten him.”
“You cannot save him, because I will not let these revels go ahead.”
“You? On your own?”
“No. Me, my brothers, my pack…”
“Sylvie, this boy is someone’s brother too.” Helen tried to speak more calmly. “I promise if you will help me tonight, then once James is free, I’ll help you drive the faeries from the forest.”
Sylvie looked down her long nose at Helen. “What use is that promise? What use is your help? Everything you have touched so far has failed.”
“So you don’t need to worry about me succeeding tonight then, do you?” Helen’s voice rose. “If everything I do fails, then I might fail tonight too. But I’m not going to give up until I’ve tried. Will you help me?”
Sylvie jumped to the ground, landing softly on all fours. “I will listen … then decide.”
Yann said, “We will all help. First, tell us exactly what the Faery Queen said to you last night. I would rather hear it from you than from him,” he gestured at Lee, standing at the edge of the clearing.
So Helen, Lee, Yann and
Lavender crowded round the fire, Sapphire shuffled to sit nearby without squashing anyone, and Sylvie sat sceptically further away. Helen wound the bandage gently round Lavender’s wing again, and explained, “The Faery Queen wants a living breathing musician. It doesn’t have to be me. I can betray someone else to her and still get the boy; she would be amused by that. But I won’t buy the boy’s safety at the cost of anyone else’s. Except mine, of course.”
“And we will not let you do that,” Yann insisted. “There must be an alternative.”
“I had planned to give her a recording and even the equipment to play it on, but the words ‘living breathing’ cancel out all the alternatives I had come up with. She will accept nothing but a real live musician.”
“Does it have to be human?”
“You mean like a selkie singing? I couldn’t do that to another fabled beast. They would be trapped with that awful woman forever.”
Yann scraped his hoof at the edge of the fire. “So you will only give her another musician if you can be sure you’re not putting that musician in danger?”
“Yes, so we’re looking for a musician talented enough to play for them and strong enough to walk out of their mound; someone used to the ways of faeries.
“You keep calling me your bard, which I’m not. I’m just a fiddler. But there have been real bards, haven’t there? Have any bards played for the faeries and escaped from them before? If we can find someone like that, we’ve found our alternative.”
Lavender nodded enthusiastically, much happier now her wing was supported again. “Do you have someone in mind?”
Helen shook her head. “I don’t know any bards. I thought you might.”
So Yann, Lavender and Lee started to name drop.
“Orpheus?”
“No, he’d just put us all to sleep.”
“Pan?”
“Not another stinky faun!”
“Thomas the Rhymer?”
“No, he went back to the faeries in the end. He might even be there tomorrow.”
“The Viking skald, Nornagest?”
“No, ever since the scare with the candle, he doesn’t like performing at night.”
Sapphire growled a suggestion, which made Sylvie laugh cynically.
Then they had run out of ideas. Helen wondered if she was going to have to play her fiddle tomorrow after all. She pictured her fiddle, an old instrument in a modern case, and remembered the story her grandfather had told about it.
“What about Ossian? One of his descendants made my fiddle … or so my grandpa says. Ossian was a bard in stories, wasn’t he? Is he real?”
Lee leapt up, his cloak bright with excitement. “Ossian! Brilliant idea! He is a true Celtic hero and bard. His poetry and music were so wonderful that Scottish songbirds still sing his songs. And he escaped from my people once before, from a mound in Speyside. He escaped unharmed with his harp still in his hand. He’d be perfect if we could find him!”
Helen sighed, realizing her own idea was no better than the others. “It will be impossible to find any of them! I was hoping for more modern bards. Someone playing in Glasgow or Manchester or Ibiza. All these names are from myths and legends. All these bards must be dead by now. Even Ossian must have played his harp hundreds of years ago.”
Lee nodded. “He played his first song, to warn his mother that his father’s hounds were hunting her, more than a thousand years ago.”
“If he’s been dead for centuries, he can’t help us tomorrow night.”
“He might not be dead,” said Lee. “The Celtic heroes were always offered the chance of eternal youth, so if Ossian chose to pay the price, he’ll be with the rest of the Fianna in Tir nan Og.”
“Tir nan Og?” Helen stumbled over the name.
Yann laughed. “Now that truly is a mythical place.”
“Where is it?” Helen asked. “What price do you pay?”
“In stories it’s the land of the ever young, found westwards over the sea, straight into the setting sun. It’s not real,” said Yann.
Lee disagreed. “It is real and he might be there.”
“What’s the price?” Helen asked again.
Lee answered. “The price of dwelling in Tir nan Og, where the apple trees bear both blossom and fruit all year, is your memory. You stay forever young, but you can’t remember your life on this land.”
“He’ll not be much use to us if he can’t remember how to play his harp!”
“No, it’s just the memory of self that goes. The fingers will remember their skills. The warriors still fight, the bards still play. He may not remember the names of the tunes he plays, nor where he learnt them, but he will still play like the famous poet and bard that he is.”
“Then let’s go west and find him.” Helen stood up.
No one else did.
“Come on!” she urged, starting to cover the fire with cold earth.
“But how do we get there?” objected Yann. “We only have one night.”
“Yes,” said Helen, “so we need to hurry, because the sun is setting. And we have to fly straight towards it. Come on!”
This time, everyone got up.
Chapter 16
“Where are we going, Helen?” Yann demanded.
“Tir nan Og.”
“But where is it?” he shouted after Helen as she ran to the forest edge.
“I don’t know, but if the Queen doesn’t want us to go, it must be possible to get there. So let’s find it.”
They all squashed onto the dragon’s back. Even Yann. “I’m not letting you lot go without me this time. Not when it’s always such a disaster.”
He kicked Sapphire’s wing joint with a back hoof as he clambered on. She growled a query.
“How long am I going to be up here?” Yann muttered. “How should I know? How far is it to somewhere that doesn’t exist? As far as we’re prepared to go before we turn back.”
“We’re not turning back,” said Helen. “This is one quest that’s going to succeed.”
Sapphire took off, so slow and low Helen was worried the dragon couldn’t fly with Yann’s weight. But as soon as Sapphire was out of sight of the lodge, she stopped scraping her scales along the top of the dark trees, swooped fast up into the air and headed west, towards the setting sun.
“Where are we going?” Yann yelled again.
Helen unfolded the tourist map of Skye and the other Hebrides, the edges flapping in the wind. “Which island is it? Will it be on the map?”
“Possibly,” Lee yelled back. “It won’t be called Tir nan Og though. Some stories say Rockall is the Land of the Ever Young. Can you find that on your chart?”
Sapphire grunted and Sylvie laughed. “Sapphire’s flown races to Rockall and back. It’s just a tiny rock out in the Atlantic. It’s not a magical retirement home for heroes.”
Lee tried again. “What about Holm or Fladda-chuain off Skye? Both of them are mentioned in Tir nan Og stories.”
Helen stared at the map, impaling the Western Isles on a silver spike to try to hold it steady. She shook her head.
“Holm is just a few hundred metres off the coast. Far too close to people and roads. Fladda’s a bit further out. Shall we try it first? Sapphire, please fly to Skye again, then find the northern tip of the main island!”
As Sapphire flew high above the mountains, Helen saw glens and lochs laid out below them, long deep lines scratched into Scotland like claw marks.
Sapphire had accelerated as soon as she had a destination, so Helen had to yell even louder. “We know where we’re going now, but what do we know about Ossian? How can we persuade him to help us?”
Lee yelled back, “He’s one of the Fianna, the ancient warrior band of Finn McCool. They defended the kings of Scotland and Ireland thousands of years ago.”
Helen frowned. “I thought he was a musician, not a warrior.”
“To join the Fianna you had to defend yourself against nine spears with just a stick and a shield, but you also had to comp
ose a song, memorise twelve books of poetry, sprint while taking a thorn from your foot, jump the height of your head, run through a wood without letting one hair be caught on a twig, and after being chased by all the Fianna and escaping unmarked, you had to hold your weapon without it trembling in your hand. Ossian could do all that, but he was the best of them at song.”
Now Sapphire was flying over the sea, over a narrow stretch of water tied down by the thin Skye bridge. Then she turned to her right, gently and slowly, so as not to dislodge Yann.
Helen asked, “Will the Fianna be the only people on Tir nan Og?”
Yann snorted. “We’ll never know. We’re never going to find Tir nan Og in the first place …”
Lavender murmured a more helpful answer in her ear. “There might be other, earlier, Celtic heroes there. Even more violent ones than the Fianna.” Helen felt the fairy tremble. “Look to your left. Do you see those spiky mountains?”
“Those are the Cuillins,” shouted Helen, glad to be able to answer a question rather than ask them all.
“The Cuillins are named after Cuchullin,” said Lavender. “A Celtic warrior who once fought for six whole days and nights in those mountains. I hope he won’t be there.”
Helen shook her head. “How on earth are we going to persuade these ancient heroes to help us?”
Sylvie growled, “Shouldn’t you have thought of that before we took off?”
Helen shrugged. “Let’s start by asking nicely. I’m sure a real hero will be delighted to rescue a wee boy from an evil queen.”
The Cuillins had vanished behind them into the fading light and they were now over the very north of Skye. Just a few miles out to sea, they found Fladda-chuain. The long thin island didn’t look at all magical, not even in the late evening sun.
Sapphire flew up the low spine of the island and back again. They saw a ruined chapel, but no other buildings. They saw a few scurrying black rabbits and some coarse grass, but no people and no apple trees.
“It’s not here,” grumbled Yann, trying to keep his balance as Sapphire swerved over the dark basalt at the north-west tip of the island.
