This Water

by Beverley Farmer

  The waters of this rocky strait are wild and turbulent and its seabed a graveyard. For all that they have the skills of wayfinding that swans are born with, though not they, and longer experience of riding the winds than any true swan, their great wings are a danger to them in such a world. The spell had no power to bind them to each other. Caught up in a stormy updraft, buffeted by a sudden gust, toppled by a high wave, they could be lost on the open sea for days at a time; and, worse, if by some mischance they lost sight of each other in this wilderness, they might never find each other again.

  We must have a meeting place, says the eldest, to make for, should we ever be blown away out of sight of each other. It must be above water in all weathers and easy to find. Shall it be the seal rock?

  Her brothers agree. They are all familiar with that great black claw of rock that juts up out of the sea, bare and icy or covered in seals in their season, lolling like hounds in the sun and brawling and basking.

  So, if we are ever separated, we must make straight for the seal rock as fast as we can, and wait there, rather than waste our strength searching in a trackless wilderness. That is all we can do, wait for one another, forever, if needs must.

  In no time at all the first storm of their three hundred years of storms has descended on them, a long way away out from the seal rock. Blinded, hurtling, heaving herself on hour after hour, fighting for height, for breath, the eldest makes her way there through torrential rain, only to find it bare of life. She huddles under a ledge until the storm has blown itself out and by that time the day is drawing in, and in the bleak sun over the waters in every direction there is still no sign of any other swan.

  The sun is low and red when a winged figure appears high above, reeling, and hovers, and lands at her side, and is the eldest of the brothers. Their joy is very great, as is their fear as they wait for the twins in the lengthening shadows. The moon is up before another shred appears in the last of the daylight, the first of the twins, wavering and battered; the moon is high by the time they catch sight of a last speck in the silver, pitching and stumbling in and out of the night water, and the second twin sags down in their midst at last.

  As of old, she spreads her wings and clasps them around her first two brothers, as full of joy as she has ever been in all her long life, sheltering the last one under her breast, and closes her eyes in sleep. For the first of many times they will wake welded to this rock as one great swan made of ice and snow.

  After every storm these shores are littered with driftwood and heaped seaweed and here and there a glob of amber, the same dim gold as the winter sun. Sometimes there is a white corpse thrown on the shingle, a skin boat tangled in the kelp, or a drowned seal. There are always birds, wry-necked, with here and there a sodden swan, a sprawl of stinking tatters of plumage and bone with, day after day, a live swan drifting in circles nearby as if anchored there, blank with loss, the sight of whose desolate vigil strikes to the heart these other swans whose worst fear is separation. In the spring thaw more and more carcasses come to light as the veil of ice melts away. Only they do not die. Only their mortal wounds heal. Their short summers are alive with seabirds among whom they four pass unnoticed, until one golden day on the shore of the strait they see a company of riders, who turn to marvel at the sight of them; and sure enough, these are the king their father’s men, and the high king their grandfather’s, sent out to find what trace they may of the children. This is a joyful reunion as they hear of their family’s doings and send messages back, and a great thing, as they say (though it has its bitterness), to know their people are well and happy and missing them sorely nonetheless.

  The winters bring snowstorm on snowstorm. Starving, they take refuge in a sea cave, and sometimes in hollows in the ice shelf that has formed on the shingle of a beach. In the depths of the worst winter they are ever to undergo in a frozen world where even the sea is solid, the eternal fog as dense as water, they are driven on to the seal rock and stranded, buried under a furry cape of snow, fused and transfixed in a swoon of ice. When the sky clears they are still standing, a white beacon on a white rock that glints by day and by night as well, faint as a ghost. When the full sun comes back and the thaw sets in, the ice softens and melts, trickling, freezing again, needles of ice, dripping. Slowly, blinking, they come out of their long trance and see between crusty lids the slabby desolation of the sea. They are one ache of bone and sinew, frostbitten and too numb, at first, to lift their wings or the black webs clamped into icy rock. When they do prise themselves apart, before they know it, with a shrill scream, they are tearing their webs, their trailed wingtips, shedding rags of flesh, blood and feathers in the ice. They arch their necks and threads of blood crawl down over them into the slurry. At the sight, falling back on the red rock to catch breath, wounded, speechless and still too stiff and weak to fly, as clumsy as the fledglings they never were, it is as if they are back in that first day at the lake when the spell was cast, the net of betrayal, the blood. They sit huddled in their capes of feathers, swelling and shrinking with every heavy breath, pulsing aloud, alive in the weak winter sun in a spangled cobweb, in pearls of ice.

  They only know when their time is up on the northern strait by the strong compulsion that again comes over them, and they are more than ready to obey and leave this sea of harsh water and stone forever, for no matter what further hardships.

  Their way takes them across the whole green land, its mountains and rivers and lakes, against the wind at first, a seethe of wild wind, so that before they are even halfway across their wing beats are feeble and their minds dazed. They lift higher to cast about for water, since in their tiredness there is no hope of reaching the west by nightfall. And all at once they see the lake, and know that they are not far from the hills on the river and their father the king’s castle, and as one they swerve to fly there, to catch their breath and rest and pass a little time with their loved ones.

  But once they are overhead there is no sign of life at all but a mound here and there, a crown of standing stones, open empty tombs on hilltops and in the grassy loops of rivers. Beyond in every direction there are only long falls of water and stone, and woodlands deep under moss and bracken, birch and beech, oak, ivy and alder, a green tangle of living forest. Now as never before, circling and circling ever lower, they are stricken with the full force of being alone of their kind in the world. At last one of the brothers says that they might as well swoop and dash themselves to shreds here and now on the stones and sleep the sleep of the dead with their loved ones who are gone. But their sister argues that the spell is too strong and that while it lasts they are bound to their swanhood and can take any wound, even a mortal wound, and suffer an agony of pain, and never die of it or anything. And if it were not so, they would have died long ago in the strait. The other two are in two minds. We know we are not free, she says, to lay down the burden of ourselves and our sorrows here or anywhere. But we are late and we must rest tonight. So let us stay and see what we may see, and roost in the loop of the river. And in the morning say our farewells and go where we are bound. As soon as we are free of the spell, let us come back if we can. Shall we be our old selves again and take up our lives where they left off? How shall we live all alone, otherwise? But until then the western sea must be our home.

  The ruins are wilder than they looked from overhead, a whole hillside of rubble that has weathered like the trees in their last leaves, and are as haggard as the trees, under the moss and lichen-dapple, tufty with grasses. No one can be living here. With full hearts they tread through the great castle of memory, the maze of stone and ivy, of high autumn seed heads, blackberries on brambles, mushrooms, gossamer. They leave only to go skimming the river at twilight to feed, flying back under the full moon to find the ruins translucent now in the dewy light, the parapets, the gateway and the tower, and the white owl whose nest was in the tower, as ever swooping noiselessly down. The grass is thick with moss where the great hall was, and the stone well is open to the sky. The shaf
t bores down through the dove cave whose only light spills in from the well, but for the way in, with its studded oaken door and flight of stone steps, and the window out to the sky, the ledge their old lookout, and they leaning out on the doves’ threshold and only wishing that they too had wings and could fly. Cave after cave, but not in this form can they go down where the sun made a crown of fire of the well mouth, filling the dovecotes hewn into the walls with shadow on shadow; by lantern light the spiders slept in cracks against their own vast shadows in webs as still as the stone; on rainy days the cave filled with spray around a splash of waterfall echoing down in a rushing as of thousands of swans. Tonight the moon is in the well, a milky egg.

  The vigil they keep is long, the silence unbroken by bird or beast.

  They have seen all there is to see and there is no solace here. Even so in their sorrow they are loth to tear themselves away, and first they must fly over to the high king’s castle, only to find there not even ruins, only a high mound of green fur. Night is falling on the western shores by the time they fly in, low and heavy, to see that this place too is thick with green fur, and here is a small haven, an island of cliffs full of nesting seabirds and at the foot, jagged rocks with a great swill of dark sea surging. Swathes of silver shining inland are a lake soaked in moonlight, and on this water they land and roost at last in a sheltered reed bed.

  There are laceworks of quiet water on this coast, lakes and rivers and bays among islands, with cliffs or long strands of shingle, or white sand, mile on mile heaped in skeins of rich seaweed, old gold and crimson, moss green and peat brown, like flung fishnets, or dresses, made of drowned velvet and silk and hanks of hair.

  Of all the islands and headlands rich in bird life on these outer shores, and all the lakes, this is the one they are drawn to. There is no telling it from the maze of other islands, apart from a tall black stone, not of this island but set there in a time before time as a seamark or a gravestone. It draws them, they having grown up far away among such stones standing guard in circles. Even so, they make their nest on the far side.

  Whether it is the peace and shelter after the ravages of the strait, or their long and ravaged lifespan, or the scar of their horror at having passed over and seen no trace of their old life, as if it had never happened, unless in dreams, here they have soon lost all track of time. They no longer remember the past or have any hope for the future. If they dream at all, they are afloat in the abyss, lost, alone, stranded in the dark. Nor do they wish to die. They are becalmed in time. Whatever keeps them bound to the fabric of their swanhood is too strong for death.

  They have not lost their voices but have little need of speech, knowing each other’s mind of old. As for the songs they once made and sang with so much love and sorrow, the life has gone out of them. From time to time they may still sing an old song on the wing, but seldom a new one. Their life has become one stream of image and sound, smell and taste, cold touch of weed, and warm, of feather and air, and heavy, of water. Only now and then does any of them dream of being a child, a pillar of ice, a turbulence in a silky lake of blood, only to awaken to a new shock, a desolation.

  The music here, the everlasting, everchanging music of this water and air, these birds and insects and grasses and leaves, is music enough. They ruffle their white translucencies across the lake, so bound to it that they are themselves, like their reflections, almost water. Four heavy heads sunk and weighted in the weeds, steering, four keels rimmed in bubbles.

  Waterlogged, this sealskin boat, this island run aground in a high sea.

  Welded to the rock we were one snowy swan, an ice nest of four swans.

  We were lost at sea, sang the brothers, the swans, and now we have come home.

  Frozen worlds, even the sea gone thick in this fog as dense as water.

  Year on year the grey waves of water and sky seethe and boil up on the bare shores and the snow falls and the long nights are filled as if with wings, fiery green silent wings in the sky; then sky and water bask blue and limpid in the heat of the sun, and the land comes alive again. They find they have come to love the sea, they who as children never set eyes on it and as swans once underwent such torment, stranded in its vastnesses; here they are at home in its light, its salty glint, the tang of its estuaries, its boundlessness. Outwardly unchanged from that first fateful day, they have stayed in tune, at least, with the changing world. They have seen in passing, and never minded, the signs of change even here, as more and more skin boats have swum out across the sound, elbowing the water, and more fields of yellow and brown cloth have taken over the forest, and more houses shone out like lanterns in the night. Here too with every storm the seabirds fall thick as snow under the outer cliffs, wry-necked, swilling, picked to the bone. Skin boats tip up in a high sea and the men cry out and sink into silence. On a glistening strand a seal tangled in kelp turns out to be such a man, sleek and smooth, or torn open, and a line of mourners files down to take him up and bring him home. The swans have never seen such people before. Is this what lies ahead when the spell ends? So be it, they say.

  It takes an intruder to shock them wide awake.

  One still day on the eastern shore, a new pulse in the waters, soft splashes and creakings coming in closer, old sounds beyond memory, and out at sea is a fat seal, lurching, a nest of leather, dipping out of sight, then flapping in, and for a moment all their old hopes spring to life. But this is no caparisoned curragh out of the past. What leaps out is a shaggy man who throws in the oars, beaches the boat and drags it up; then he falls on his knees, bowing, and is off straight away foraging for wood, dead and living, to make a shelter by a quick stream for the night, thinking himself alone no doubt, and meaning to stay.

  Not that he is a threat to them, or any of the wildlife except fish. Unseen, unless the shadow of one them falls on him in the sun and makes him glance up at four flying crosses in the air, they keep watch on him at work week after week while he mends his nets and lines and baskets, and salts and hangs his catch in the sun and blows up a ragged fire of driftwood to cook on, crouching over it all the while with his hands out, rimmed with red gold. He bakes his bread on a hot flat stone and eats it hot or sometimes sopped in wine, or water when his wine runs out, cramming it down his throat. He mutters and chants on his knees for long hours of the day in a hoarse monotone. He shaves his crown and chin. Endlessly he fetches wood and water and armfuls of mossy stones. From time to time a heavier skin boat comes and goes on the tide, and men like him in hooded husky robes land with gifts of rope and sacks of grain, clay pots of honey and wine stopped with wax, and sea salt to dry his fish and green seedlings to plant for his soup. They help him lug stones with ropes and wedge them in place. This is a thick round wall they are building, with a square gateway. They all call each other brother though they cannot be brothers born, more a brotherhood in name, like warriors. One warm still day in the early summer the swans watch high overhead as yet another boat comes in with strips of sealskin for the gateway of this open ring that will be a house. The boatmen also have a wooden frame for him, an open doorway, and a bronze helmet with a long tongue swinging, that they rig up and hang, standing in a circle with bowed heads afterwards, chanting in chorus. As they row off he is busy pulling out long chimes of sound that roll reverberating all over the water, as the water is doing behind the little boat, wrinkling its skin and smoothing out to sea.

  What was that? a swan says, breaking a long silence of his own.

  Might it be the bell? says his sister.

  The what? He has forgotten.

  The bell to tell us when we shall return to our true selves!

  How? And when shall we? says the youngest.

  By and by, who knows how? We must wait and see what happens.

  But nothing out of the ordinary happens. By day the stranger rakes and waters the little garden he has dug and planted, stacks his driftwood and lugs his stones. The round wall grows inwards as it rises, until one day, at last, he and the boatmen loudly haul a f
lat capstone up over the hole at the top, and they hold another celebration. Now and then he takes a walk to the black stone. One day they hear a harsh tapping and follow the sound through the air to find him standing at the standing stone, chipping away. Now that he has a watertight burrow he keeps a fire going inside and hangs up his fish and long eels to smoke, and prays and sleeps, and they see less of him. The smoke of his fire threads up through a gap in the dome. Inside his song booms eerily from time to time. Having built himself a mouth like a stone bell, he himself is the tongue. The hollow bell outside sings its own song with a regularity they have come to love and rely on. As for him, he sees swans flocking here to his haven on the wings of angels and is glad. They wait for when he is away fishing before they crowd around the bronze mouth that sings so loud. When will it signal the change foretold? It hangs its head in silence. As always they keep their distance, but now they are singing again, more and more often. Far out over the water the sound carries, unearthly, and he in turn is transfixed on his bare island by the voices of children singing. The music is strange to his ears, now fluting, now more a wail, now sounding in long chords. When he strains he seems to hear a sprinkling of words, but none that he can make out. What if they are angels sent from heaven? May I be worthy, he prays, and may the song reveal itself in words of fire.