The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2)

by Prue Batten

  ‘My brother, yes.’ But he chose not to pursue that path. Instead, ‘I am done here. I am in sore need of my island.’ He looked down at her hands and longed to hold them in his own.

  ‘You won’t stay in Faeran then? To follow your destiny?’

  ‘Destiny is over-rated, Adelina. It is after all what I make for myself, what any of us make I believe. It is merely that I prefer mine to be amongst mortals whom I love best. There is a resonance there, that none of this...’ he waved his arm about, ‘could ever provide. Besides which there is callousness they dress up as their code, their morality, which grates on my soul. I prefer the morality with which I am most familiar.’

  He watched her head turn and the hazel eyes deepen as she studied him. ‘I remember saying the same thing to Liam once, you know. And forgive me if I say this but in an entirely alternate way, you are more like your brother than you can imagine, Phelim. He rejected Faeran in a similar way and with inordinate obstinacy in the face of duress. He and I had an understanding you know, as friends do.’ She told him her side of the story of Ana and Liam and he listened as she berated herself for the guilt she had heaped upon his brother only minutes before the death of the woman he had loved.

  The woman he had loved. The words fitted him as they had fitted Liam. Steeling himself for brisk rejection, he took the slim fingers in his own. ‘Don’t chide yourself, Adelina. He made his choices as he thought best. As we all do if we can. He was lucky to have Ana’s love returned. In the end it’s all any of us want.’

  She allowed her fingers to remain in the broad cup of his hands and he thought he would remember the feel of them forever. He tried to single out one thing that made this woman the focus of his esteem and affection. But there was no single thing. It was an abundant package of courage, beauty, artistry, intellectual capacity and simple sexual attraction.

  He took another risk. ‘The kind of love you had for Kholi - I envy you that. Mutual love.’ He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice, for her sake as much as his.

  ‘But Kholi is gone now.’ Adelina sighed. ‘And I must make my way alone with my soon-to-be baby.’

  ‘You shall never be alone, Adelina.’

  Surprised, she looked up at him and he smiled, hiding his feelings. ‘You’ll always have the hob. He’s your protector for life.’ So saying and in the midst of his little joke, he kissed her fingers as lightheartedly as he could manage and looked at her over the top of her knuckles as his lips brushed gently. She blushed and didn’t draw away, feeling herself taking a step forward.

  But the moment flew past as the hob whirled in on his agile legs to insist, sink me, that Adelina come for her afternoon’s rest. Or else, he said.

  She laughed, eyes shining with merriment. ‘Yes you’re right! He’s like a nanny and nurse and I’m his charge. The sooner the babe is born the better and he can divest his infinite energies on it rather than me.’

  ***

  Thus the days passed. Most often I had an urge to do nothing. Jasper and Gallivant would visit me along with the enigmatic Phelim whom I found I wanted near me more and more. They cossetted me, made me laugh and then when they left, I would stroke the walnut box and cry, but my tears were soft like spring rain rather than the wracking storms of other times.

  As each day sank behind the Barrow Hills, I did more of nothing and I swear the robe and the empty book chided my lack of diligence. I didn’t care.

  And then one day it was as if the wind changed, sweeping through the household of my mind and body like a new broom. I decided to begin the last book and stitch any last bees onto the robe, tie in any loose threads and tidy my sewing-box.

  They say it happens before labour – nesting, ordering one’s house, only I didn’t have a house or a nest and something motivated me to believe the robe with its library would suffice.

  That night my waters broke and the next day my daughter slithered into Jasper’s arms kicking frantically.

  We sat two days later - Jasper, Gallivant, Phelim, my little Isabella and I - under the arbour in the walled garden. Gallivant held my infant, talking some Other language to her and Jasper laughed as she poked out a tiny tongue through cupid’s lips. I had just completed some more writing in the little book and I turned to Jasper as I slipped it into the pocket of my jacket.

  ‘Why did you charm the book?’ I asked.

  He sighed deeply and grimaced. ‘The book is poisonous to touch, Adelina. Rajeeb would have it so, as a reminder to all mortals to respect Others and not challenge them. We claim to be seelie as much as mortals are good but in all of us there is both good and bad and some are simply unable to control the latter. This is the ultimate reminder perhaps.’

  ‘That’s all very well but how is the book poisonous?’

  Gallivant had rocked Isabella to sleep and I noticed he shook his head and tsk, tsked as I posed the question, peaking my interest even more.

  ‘It is the touch of the surface, immediate and excruciating death, to which you alone are immune, so that the readers of your little books must peruse every other single one in perfect order. You know the history of the Raj, how violent it has been, the terrible tortures and punishments that went with past regimes?’

  I nodded my head.

  ‘Then you will know the crime of murder was as brutally punished there as anywhere.’

  My heartbeat raced. Already I could see where Jasper was heading and I felt Phelim’s hand seek mine amongst the folds of my skirt and I held onto him for grim life. ‘What did Rajeeb do to Severine, Jasper?’

  He answered immediately. ‘Rajeeb did nothing to her, Adelina. It is important you know this. But the Djinn Council did. She was put to death, mercifully.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘Because what they did after, those djinns, was truly macabre.’

  I said nothing, undoing my hand from Phelim’s grasp and avoiding his eyes. I just stood and took Isabella from Gallivant and hugged her to my heart. Jasper’s eyes looked directly at me and I could read nothing in them - no desire for me to try and understand, no apology.

  ‘She was flayed, Adelina. As many transgressors in the past have been in the Raj. The cover of your book is the murderer’s skin.’

  Epilogue

  The house split apart at that moment. Gallivant raced after Adelina as she and Isabella fled to their room. And Phelim stood, the early morning light catching the colour of his hair. He looked at Jasper, could barely disguise the anger filling the very marrow of his bones. ‘I shall leave Jasper, immediately. I want a horse and then I shall be gone.’

  Jasper sighed, sorrow cutting through his soul. He nodded. ‘There is a tall grey mare in the stables. She would suit you and carry you far. Take her.’

  Jasper felt he had enough of life. He sat for a moment and thought about the two fine boys who had grown to men of unusual and appealing qualities. How he had lost one and now was losing the other, all because of a way of life that suited neither.

  Liam, that troubled young man who had craved affection, the Faeran who was disturbed more by lonliness than any other single thing. It had set up ripples of yearning in him, rings of emotion that agitated the flat calm of his young life. Each ring eddied across the surface, unsteady, noisy, bursting against the outer edges of his existence with a hard slap to cause such disruption, such grief.

  And Phelim. He desired solitude to the same degree that his brother fiercely rejected lonliness. He craved the pleasant silences of such an existence, the peace. Not for him the race to get away from uneasy quiet and seek a game, a distraction amongst the mortals of this world. Then again thought Jasper, it wasn’t silence in Phelim’s life that wrapped itself around the soul. It was the absence of chatter that mattered, enabling him to experience a sense of equanimity in which to absorb every nuance of his island existence. To be able to hear a leaf fall and glory in the soft pink lining of a lamb’s ear - small things, the essence of an easy contentment.

  They were two men, two brothers who existed at po
lar extremes. And yet the strength of their difference made them utterly similar. Neither could or would ever find the answer they sought in Faeran. Mortal life had claimed them with its simple lack of artifice and how Jasper grieved.

  But he had to ask. He had to know. Even though he could never change the outcome and it hurt him like salt in a wound, he wanted to know and he leaped up and hurried to the stable, his long, angular walk covering the ground in strides that left an imprint of sorrow behind - crushed and broken grasses and wildflowers lying in his wake. He found Phelim saddling the mare and like a man with a scab that must be scratched, he burst out, ‘Why Phelim? This is where you should belong. You are Faeran, you are Other.’

  The face Phelim turned toward Jasper was as bleak as the sky before a rainsquall. ‘Not by choice. All I have seen derived from Faeran has been selfish indulgence of the most damaging kind. Cruelty. If I could, I would kill the djinns who made a book for Adelina from the skin of the woman who represents nothing but pain and torture to her. And you! How could you give it to her? Can you imagine what it must be like to hold a woman’s skin in the palm of your hand, to imagine how they got it off Severine? Aine, it beggars the mind. Sir if you were not my elder, I would...’

  The truths belaboured Jasper, but the need to say something, anything, to ameliorate things burst from him. ‘Oh, Phelim, you are right. All you say is true and I dreaded the telling, let alone the giving. But if I had not given it to her, the djinns would have and with far less care than I.’

  Care?’ Phelim threw back the poles of the stall with a loud clatter, the mare’s head arcing up as he began to lead her out.

  ‘Yes, care. Better she heard it from me in the orchard in Faeran and not in the mortal world where no one could give her solace.’

  ‘And you think that she will stay now? Aine, you Faeran are such arrogant fools.’

  Jasper’s mouth grimaced but he replied anyway. ‘I hope she will, for a little. Just till she gets over this shock. Then she will go, I know, back to the world of mortals… the world you claim is best.’

  ‘I am not a dullard to claim that the mortal world is any better but it offers a disparity, a balance. There is the perfect and the rotten, the hot and the cold, the sweet and the sour. I have been nurtured from birth to experience that and that is what I crave, what she must surely crave.’ His black eyes never left Jasper’s as he continued. ‘I despise the absolute wilfulness of Faeran and prefer the naïve fallibility of mortals. I will never forgive the hurt Others have piled on her. You could keep her here for a lifetime and you could never ever heal what has happened. She needs to get away amongst her own for a healing to occur.’

  ‘And you will take her?’

  Phelim laughed, a sound as filled with bitterness as the kernel of an apricot. ‘Did you forget? I am Faeran. I am her worst nightmare. But I tell you this, just for your benefit. Faeran hasn’t lost me. No sir, because it never possessed me in the beginning and shall never, on my life.’

  Jasper sighed, the sigh of an old man who has almost had enough of everything. ‘But you can never be mortal, you have innate traits.’

  ‘I have lived years with those traits, mostly ignorant of them. Now I know what they are I shall endeavour to curb them or call them at my behest and never, ever to hurt. If it takes my life or is my bane to subjugate that worst part of my being then so be it. You cannot and will not gainsay me.’

  Jasper stepped forward and touched Phelim’s arm, feeling the instant recoil. Aine, it hurt like a scald to be treated so. ‘No, my boy, nor would I try because as I told your brother a long time ago, I am an odd Faeran. I believe that goodness shall find its own reward. And you Phelim, son of Ebba, have found yours. I have no right to destroy such hopes. I ask one thing alone and that is in the future, if you think on this whole tragic episode, that you will try and see my point of view and forgive me for I have loved you and your brother, and Adelina I loved as my very own.’ He clasped Phelim’s arm, squeezing with a fierceness brought of disappointment and affection in one. Saying nothingelse and receiving not a thing in return, he watched Phelim spring aboard the mare and ride away.

  He watched the horse and the man until they disappeared out of the Ymp tree orchard and Faeran and then turned to the house where he knew the atmosphere would be heavy with recrimination and bitter with an approaching lonliness he could not bear to countenance.

  ***

  I left Færan with my child, the robe and the walnut box almost immediately. I refused to allow Gallivant into the room and I heard him walk away, his quick footsteps echoing on the polished floors. Whilst he searched for Jasper, because that is indubitably what he intended to do, I hurried down the back stair, waiting until the yard was deserted and rushing to the mellow warmth of the stables.

  In minutes Isabella and I sat on Ajax’s back and I called Mogu to follow, my babe asleep in her sling in my front and the robe and our bare necessities in a bag on my back. Without a backward glance, for it would have been most hostile, I followed in the footsteps of Phelim. I could not bear to stay. The world of Others repulsed me and I wanted my child to breathe the clear air of my world. I pushed my huge horse and the camel to cover the ground quickly and spied my quarry not far distant.

  ‘Phelim,’ I shouted. ‘Phelim, wait!’

  He turned as we approached. I had not realized tears fell as I spoke to him, and he reached to wipe them, his fingers soft but creating a frisson I found both tender and enervating.

  ‘Phelim, can we accompany you? I can’t stand to stay longer.’

  ‘Have you got the book with you?’

  ‘Yes. It can’t be destroyed, you heard Jasper say. So I shall finish it and give the robe to the Museo. It shall be a lesson to me every time someone mentions the robe and if the books are found and the story spreads then it will help other mortals to avoid the plague that is the Other world.’

  He grimaced and I wanted him so much to understand he was nothing like those we left behind, even if he had most recently fallen into their ways. ‘Not you Phelim, never! You have the generosity of the Travellers in your very soul. You will never be like the Faeran. I know you and I know you would die rather than allow such malignancy to be the stuff of your life.’ I chafed, eager to put miles distant between me and the Other world. ‘Can we go? Can we leave? I need to go from here and find somewhere gentle and calm for my Isabella and me.’

  And so he dismounted from the grey mare and pointing her towards the Ymp tree orchard, he tapped her rump and let her go. He took the bag from my back and put it on his own and then climbed behind me, taking Ajax’s reins and wrapping secure arms around me and the bundle that was my daughter.

  We traveled safely on the back of my big bay horse, on the back that was as broad as that of the unseelie Cabyll Ushtey. And we talked of revenge and why I couldn’t, shouldn’t, rant and rave to the world about the perfidies of the last year. Better to sequester the story in the robe, allow it to be found by accident.

  ‘Move on with your life, Adelina,’ Phelim advised, taking a hand off the reins and stroking Isabella’s head as if he fondled thistledown. ‘For the sake of this precious gift in your arms, move on.’

  Revenge had been so important to me as I began sewing the second half of the robe. In my head I had done terrible things to Severine and Luther. But other events - like Ajax’s almost fatal injury, having a child, and distance and time induced a merciful perspective in my headlong journey to murder.

  Besides, I said to Phelim, when all is said and done, I had wished for Rajeeb to take Severine, hadn’t I? Therefore I should have been able to accept anything, anything, they chose to do to her. But I did wonder if the book was a punishment, a backhanded gift to me because I hadn’t enacted my promise to the Others.

  These were the thoughts that rattled around in my head as Isabella, Phelim and I swayed along the road on Ajax’s back with Mogu pacing alongside. We threaded south toward Buckland and I lifted my head and turned around as I heard the bagpipe b
ellow of a donkey shrieking from behind us. It galloped pell mell with the hob astride, his legs and arms flapping, and skidded to a halt, dust enveloping us all in a brown fog. Gallivant jumped off and threw himself dramatically in front of us, a bulwark beyond which he would not let us proceed.

  ‘Sink me, Adelina, you can’t leave me behind.’ His face had the pleated and woebegone look of a child without its mother. ‘I may be Other and I know you despise us but think on mortals just for a moment and you will see we are no different. I am fond of you, Threadlady, and I love little Isabella - my life is the poorer if you reject me. Besides if I stay with Jasper, he will have me running all over Eirie searching for the missing cantrips. Already the house is filled with anger and ire. So let me stay, let me be your family. Please?’

  The hob’s eyes begged and I heard bells tinkling - those kindred spirit bells which I have mentioned in the past. I heard Phelim laugh, a heartwarming sound that filled the mortal morning with a joy unsurpassed. And I answered.

  ‘Oh hob, you do have a way, don’t you? Gee-up and let’s be gone, it’ll be dark before we reach Buckland.’

  The End.

  If you enjoyed Adelina’s story, and you feel inclined, an online review would be greatly appreciated. It’s one way that the online readers’ community learns of new books.

  Other books by Prue Batten

  The Stumpwork Robe, the first part of these chronicles.

  A Thousand Glass Flowers, a further book in the Chronicles of Eirie is listed for publication with YouwriteOn.com (UK) later in 2011, with a parallel release via e-book.

  The historical fiction/historical fantasy, Gisborne, will be available for e-release late in 2011. If you are a fan of the BBC’s interpretation of Robin Hood, this may well be a book you’ll enjoy, taking a completely different slant on the legend of Guy of Gisborne.