The Light-Bearer's Daughter

by O. R. Melling

  A tremor passed through Aróc, the only indication that she had been caught off guard. Reaching behind her cloak, she unsheathed two scimitars in a silvery flash. Then she knelt before the King and laid them at his feet.

  “My loyalty unto death, Liege-Lord.”

  It was because of Aróc’s courage and the King’s response to it that Dana decided she would speak at last. It was now or never: she would ask for his help to find her mother. Taking a deep breath, she went to stand up.

  But before Dana could move, the King struck the arm of his throne with such force that the report rang through the hall like gunshot.

  “The truth! That is all we have when the darkness falls. My harper will make music and I will tell it!”

  A ripple of unease raced through the assembly. Eyebrows were raised. Anxious looks exchanged.

  “What will you tell, my Lord?” his harper called out.

  All gasped in horror at the King’s reply:

  “The tale of my woe.”

  t happened in the early summer, when the hawthorn boughs were laden with white blossoms like brides, and the sun had melted the last snows in the lee of the mountains. On that soft bright morning, the fairy Queen of Wicklow went a-maying with her ladies. Eastward they journeyed, into the rising sun, tripping lightly over rust-colored bogs, down into leafy valleys, and up grassy hillsides. The Kingdom was an endless garden: beautiful were its trees and flowers, its lakes and streams, sweet the music of the birds on the branch and those in the clear air.

  When they reached the sugared peak of Little Giltspur, in sight of the blue sea, the Queen’s ladies chose a sheltered place to hold their picnic. They fashioned a bower with the mayflowers they had gathered as they went. On a cloth of white linen, they laid out seedcakes dripping with honey and crystal glasses of cool elder wine. Then they called to their mistress to join them.

  The Queen only laughed and waved them away as she ran down the hillside. For she was chasing two butterflies, a Holly Blue and a Clouded Yellow. Soon she had left her ladies behind, as southward she flew in pursuit of her quarry. After a time, she came to an old forest that crested a high ridge. Below her fell the steep slope of a glen cloaked with oak and ash. On the valley floor flowed a narrow stream and, bordering the stream, a stretch of gray road.

  The fairy Queen did not see the road where mortals drove their noisy vehicles. Having no interest in the other world, she had never paid heed to its denizens; for she lived between the layers of their days and behind the veil that they seldom pierced.

  She spied the little Blue hiding in a holly tree, and tagged him fair and square. When he flew off, she began her hunt for the Yellow. Then she heard the music. It drifted through the air toward her, high silvery notes, dipping and gliding like the very butterfly she sought. Head tilted on her shoulder, eyes closed, she listened. The tune was like nothing she had ever heard before, powerful and beguiling. Following the sound, she moved lithely through the trees, drawn downhill, irresistibly closer.

  When she came to a clearing halfway down the wooded slope, the Queen hid behind a bramble bush. Purple berries draped her ears and throat like jewels. Peering through the greenery, she gazed at the young man who commanded the glade.

  He was dark-haired, with long curls that framed his lean features. His eyes were hazel, the color of acorns; his skin, a golden tan. He bowed his slender body as he strained to make music, his red lips pressing against the silver flute. Serenading the trees around him, he delved deep into the roots of sound before surging upward into tremulous trills flickering like leaves in the sunlight.

  The Queen was enchanted by what she heard and what she saw. The Queen was enchanted by the music and the man.

  She began to sing.

  At first he couldn’t hear her. The sweet notes that issued from her throat like a siren’s song were so low that his ear could barely detect them. Yet his soul resonated as if it were being played upon, and he strove to mirror that secret sound in his music. Only after a while did he realize that the inspiration was coming from outside of him and not from within.

  He stopped playing.

  She continued to sing as he stood entranced, hardly daring to breathe, listening and looking and finally spying where she was.

  Behind a leafy bough was a pale and beautiful face with eyes like stars. His heart felt faint. A strange languor crept through his limbs. He felt his blood slow as if he were dying; but if this were death what bliss it was and he welcomed it gladly, surrendering to his doom. She stopped singing when she saw that he had found her. Like a bird startled on the branch, she went to flee.

  • • •

  He called out to her in a voice filled with longing.

  She was doubly caught now.

  A faint motion shook the air, like a veil being drawn aside, as she stepped from the shadows and into the sunlight. She wore a gown of pearl-pale silk that swept the ground. White flowers crowned her red-gold hair that shone like fire.

  Enthralled by this vision of a glimmering girl, he ignored the trace of fear that tremored in his mind.

  They stared long at each other, fairy and mortal. Both did not really know what the other was. Both were caught in the mystery of being.

  He struggled to find speech.

  “Hi.”

  She greeted him in her first tongue, the airy language of the sky.

  They looked at each other, baffled.

  “Did you say hello?” they asked together.

  “What?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Frowns of frustration.

  “Where are you from?” he tried again. “What language is that?”

  With a sudden smile, she reached out to touch his forehead. A gentle caress.

  He shivered.

  “There,” she said, in English. “Is that better?”

  “How did you do that?!”

  Her dazzling smile again. All thought abandoned him.

  “Now that I know what you are,” she said, “I may speak with you. Yet this is not the language born of the land, which my people use also. Are you not of Ireland?”

  “Taimse a foghlaim gaeilge, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “I’m hoping to learn more Irish while I’m here. I’m Canadian. Of Irish descent. I’m over for the year to collect tunes and work with local musicians. I’m a composer.”

  “Gabha an cheoil .” She clapped her hands. “Yes, I heard this in your art. You fashion pure sound into music. Ceol n’éan agus ceol an tsrutháin. The music of the bird and the music of the stream.”

  “A smith of music?” He repeated in English the title she had given him. “What a great thing to call me.” Her words fascinated him, for they brought the joining of his thoughts with the sympathy of his heart. “And you’re so right about what moves me! I practice in the forest to wake the sleeping muse. I never dreamed you would actually show up in person!”

  “An leannán sí faoi shuan? You call me this? The sleeping muse?”

  Charmed, she threw back her head and laughed merrily.

  The sound of her laughter shot through him like quicksilver, scalding his soul. He wanted to hear that laugh again, though he knew if he did he would be lost forever.

  His fingertips brushed the white blossoms in her hair.

  “Isn’t it bad luck to pick hawthorn in May?” he said. “I’m told it’s the flower of the Faerie Queen and she punishes anyone who touches it.”

  That laugh again.

  They sat down together on a fallen tree trunk. He played her some of his compositions. She sang along with them. He changed his melodies to suit her rhythms so that new tunes were forged, tunes that were both human and fairy. Tunes that were woven with the thread of new love.

  Phóg mé ar ais is phóg mé arís tú

  Gheill mo chroí don leannán síofrúil,

  Is thug mé cúl do gach aon dílseacht

  Nuair a phóg mé do bhéal.

  I kissed and kissed again

  Yielded to the fairy spel
l

  Left behind all love till then

  When I kissed your mouth.

  He recognized the ineffable truth that rose in his heart. “Come with me,” he said. “Be my love.”

  She was already losing her way; yet some part of her remembered as she made her last protest.

  “The life of your kind is but a fleeting moment, a raft upon the sea that leaves no wake, the journey of a single day through a sleepy country, a mist dispersing, a petal falling …”

  But her words drifted away as he kissed her mouth. And she yielded to the spell.

  She walked out of the Glen of the Downs that day, hand in hand with her mortal lover.

  He did not return to his homeland.

  She did not return to hers.

  s the last strain of the harp resounded through the hall, the King finished with a plaintive coda.

  What is love?

  It is a test beyond bounds,

  A leap over death,

  A thing everlasting.

  It is drowning without water,

  Grief in the hearty,

  A blade in the back.

  It is the four ends of the earth,

  A battle with a specter,

  Heroic deeds in defeat.

  It is the wooing of an echo,

  The wooing of an echo, Throughout eternity.

  Thus is my love and my passion,

  My devotion to she who is my life,

  My wife.

  Dana struggled to return the King’s gaze. She had expected a tragic tale about a queen stolen by a demon. Not this. Like an icy wave it had struck her: the realization of who the young musician was. And with great love and great pain, she had listened to the story of her parents’ meeting.

  And it was with great love and great pain that the Mountain King regarded her now. Great love, because she was the daughter of his beloved Queen and reflected some of her features. Great pain, because it was Dana’s birth that sealed the doom of his loss.

  “Thus you have heard,” he told her, “the tale that will henceforth be known in Faerie as The Wooing of Edane Lasair by Her Mortal Lover.”

  Dana shivered to hear her mother’s name said with such significance and sorrow.

  Lugh’s eyes darkened. The sorrow echoed in his voice. “I searched the heavens for my Queen and through the worlds, thinking she may have lost her way. Yet in my heart I knew some terrible thing had happened. The death of winter was in the air. And though I sought her far and wide, she was not to be found. What dark king had taken her? What demon kept her in his lair?

  “I did not think to look for her in the mortal realm, as she had shown no interest in humankind. They were too close to matter, too far beyond the lightness of her being. Then one day a yellow butterfly came to me and, even as his brief life faded, told of last seeing my Queen in the Glen of the Downs. I hastened there to seek some clue of her fate. To my joy and then my anguish, I found her at last; my anguish, because she wore human guise and, forgetting her true nature, had wedded a mortal man.

  “Incredulous and wrathful, I confronted them. I would strike down this man, take back my wife. But though I stood before her as her rightful husband, she did not know me. It was then I drew from their minds the tale of their union, and I saw both had fallen under a spell of love. What is more— and this, I knew, was the seal of my doom—they were awaiting a child.

  “I cannot describe the ravages of despair, the rages of jealousy, and the utter powerlessness I suffered. That she had gone to another pierced my heart like a sword. My grief and desolation were beyond containment. I was broken.”

  It was such a sad story that Dana wept with the King whose wife had been stolen by her father. She could see how all parties were innocent and how all had suffered.

  At the same time, she couldn’t help the glad feelings that mingled with her sorrow. With a thrill beyond measuring she began to comprehend that her mother was a fairy Queen and she a fairy princess! But her first and overriding emotion was one of relief. At last she knew for certain that it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her birth or some flaw of her character or some terrible thing she had done that drove her mother away and broke her father’s heart.

  “She must’ve remembered,” Dana said softly. “That’s why she left. She must’ve remembered.”

  As the truth dawned on the fairy Queen’s daughter, the question arose.

  Where was she?

  That night, Dana lay in her bedchamber in the palace on Lugnaquillia. It was a lady’s bower draped with fine tapestries of unicorns in gardens and winged horses in the clouds. The high bed was frothed with white lace embroidered with pearls. A fire burned in the grate beneath a marble mantel. Ensconsed in the bed, Dana gazed up at the glass ceiling that looked out on the night. A star fell out of the sky! And then another! She could hardly contain the huge truth that overflowed her being. Her mother came from those stars and so did she! She was half fairy!

  She raised her hand, pale in the dimness. Concentrating, she tried to work some magic. A simple thing: a cup of cocoa.

  Nothing happened.

  “It is buried deep within you,” Lugh had told her, “like a hidden treasure. You must seek it out.”

  They had spoken of many things as they strolled through his gardens at twilight. The flowerbeds glowed in the dusk, emitting a sweet scent. The fountains splashed merrily.

  “I assumed you knew what you were,” he said, “as you ate our food without qualm. Because of the silver blood in your veins, it holds little power over you.”

  Dana’s grin was sheepish. “I ate ’cause I was hungry. And it all looked so good. I was always going to worry about it later.”

  That made him laugh.

  The biggest revelation concerned her mission.

  “Do you not know yet? The message belongs as much to you as to me, for it asks about your mother.”

  Where is the light to bridge the darkness?

  That was when Dana’s heart began to beat so rapidly that she almost fainted. The interconnectedness of things stunned her. That her mission, her message, and her wish to find her mother were all one and the same!

  “Do you know where she is?” she whispered.

  The King’s eyes dimmed.

  “I have striven all day to clear the webs from my mind. Too much was shrouded by the spell. There were times when I lay dreaming that I shared my Beloved’s torment; yet each effort I made to wake, so that I might help her, only caused the bonds to tighten. From what I recall, I believe she is a prisoner in Dún Scáith, the Fort of the Shades. How this came about I do not know, for it can only have happened when I lay bound in sleep.”

  “The demon!” Dana said suddenly. “Saint Kevin told me it’s been here before. Doing things as part of a bigger plan!”

  Lugh’s face twisted with anguish. “Her light is a great weapon against the shadow. Yet it must have taken her.”

  The same pain struck Dana. “We’ve got to save her!”

  Lugh laid a restraining hand on Dana’s shoulder.

  “I must kill the demon first. That is my duty. He has been found, lurking in human shape at the Glen of the Downs. It was already my intention to go this night to rid the Kingdom of him. Now I do it also for my Queen. Then I shall free her.”

  “You go for the demon,” Dana said fiercely. “I’ll go for my mother! Tell me how to find Dún Scáith!”

  She could see that Lugh agreed with her, though other emotions warred in his features.

  “Perhaps this is right,” he said reluctantly. “The mission was always yours.” He continued to struggle until he made up his mind. “So be it. But you must not set out until the demon has been vanquished. I would not have you harmed and nor would she, for you are the child of her heart. Rest tonight. I will send you a message when all is well. Tomorrow you will embark on the last stage of your quest.”

  Dana was prepared to obey him. For now. She had come to like and trust the King, despite the conflict of loyalties and the final twist in
the tale. There would be no reunion of her parents, no return to the family of her hopes and dreams. Her mother was not human but a fairy Queen, whose true husband was the King of the Mountain. With the innate sense of justice typical of the young, Dana accepted that it had to be this way, though she couldn’t help but be sad for herself and her father.

  He regarded her warmly.

  “You might have been my child, Dana. I shall always think of you as my stepdaughter in the mortal realm. Will you accept me as your fairy godfather?”

  That made her laugh.

  Now Dana turned in the bed and closed her eyes. A final thought wound through her mind before she dropped into sleep.

  No matter what happens, tomorrow I’m going to find her.

  he next morning, Dana didn’t stop to eat the breakfast that appeared in her bedroom. She dressed, grabbed her cloak, and ran downstairs to the hall. The first thing she noticed was the pervasive gloom. Some of the ladies were weeping. No one would meet her eyes.

  The harper came forward to give her the bad news.

  “The King has fought the demon throughout the night, yet still the battle rages.”

  She felt sick, sensing that the harper hadn’t told her the worst.

  “Is he all right?” she whispered.

  “His wounds are great,” came the reluctant reply. “He is in peril.”

  Dana bit back a cry. “I’ve got to find my mother! The message says she can fight the darkness. I need to go now!”

  The harper blenched. It was obvious he was torn.

  “The King has commanded we keep you here until he sends word. We cannot gainsay him.”

  “I’m not your prisoner!” she argued. “Look, the light is our only hope. All I need is someone to show me the way to Dún Scáith. If you can’t or won’t, how about finding me someone who will?”

  The harper’s face cleared. He bowed to her.

  “My lady, you have wisdom beyond your years. This I can do. Return to your own world. I will send you a guide.”