by Ian Whates
Capturing me with enthusiasm, he arranged chairs so that I was literally caged in a corner between fireplace and bookshelves. He drew up his seat opposite, plump legs spread wide apart, passed me a glass of wine, and leaned in with his bloodshot eyes gleaming.
A waft of alcohol-laden breath almost felled me, mitigated only by the fact that I had imbibed more liberally than is my usual habit. Especially at this hour of the day.
“Ah, dear boy. Nephew – name? Name?” He snapped his fingers, as if to jog his memory.
“Great-nephew, sir,” I replied. “Thomas.”
“Thomas!” he said heartily, although I’m fairly certain he had only a fuzzy recollection, in this sprawling family, of whose son I was. No matter. “For the love of heaven, call me Uncle! None of this ‘Great’ nonsense – I need no reminder of how deep into my dotage I am!”
“Surely not so old, sir,” I replied. He spoke over me as if I were someone to talk at, rather than to.
“Splendid wedding, eh? What a spread! Splendid! Now if I could only remember the bride’s name…”
“Hetty,” said I. “My sister.”
He was roaring with laughter or just… roaring. “Hetty! Wonderful girl! So many weddings, they all blend into one long… wedding! Ha!” He took a big gulp of his drink – he was on brandy, I noticed, so I obligingly refilled his glass from a nearby decanter. Perhaps, if I were lucky, he would pass out.
He poked me in the chest with a plump finger. “You’ll be next, young man!”
Oh, not again. Perhaps I would be next, but at present I was too busy studying law to concern myself with romance.
“But Uncle, you are a bachelor, are you not?” I said this light-heartedly. He was a man of cheerful disposition, I’ll grant him that. One only had to mention that the sky was blue, or that a particular door had a particular style of doorknob, and he would hold forth all day on the subject.
However, when I uttered my rather too intrusive remark, he went silent.
Astonishing. This never happened, to my knowledge. I rubbed my left ear, wondering if I had momentarily gone deaf. Then, after a pause of a good five seconds, he started up again.
“Indeed, young man, a confirmed bachelor all my days.” His voice went low and gruff. This surprised me, too, since his habit was to bellow. “And I know what everyone thinks: what woman would have a garrulous, fat old fool like me? But I tell you, Thomas, I was once young and handsome, with a fine figure like a willow lath and the modest income of a cloth merchant’s son-and-heir to my name. I could have had my pick of gentlewomen. It was not for want of opportunity, I assure you.”
“Why, then, did you deprive a lady of a fine husband?”
“Oh, I had my reasons. It’s quite a story – and one I’ve never had the chance to tell. Damned annoying, that. I never get past the first few words and someone stops me in full flow, declaring they have some essential task to do or an important person to meet, or that dinner is served, or some such nonsense.”
I cleared my throat. I swallowed hard. “I should like to hear your story, Uncle,” said I.
“True love, dear boy.” He leaned forward, hands braced on his knees, his face uncomfortably close to mine. “Love was my undoing. I fell desperately, hopelessly in love with a woman who could never be mine. After her – no one else ever could or would compare. After her, all other women were shadows.”
“That’s… terribly sad,” I said in all sincerity. “It’s tragic.”
“She wasn’t human, you see. She was one of the faerie folk. A goddess, in fact.”
This was the point at which, I surmised, my uncle’s captive audience would suddenly remember a pressing engagement or an imminent repast. However, I had committed myself to listening and, to be honest, I was rather intrigued. Who doesn’t like a good fairy tale?
“A goddess?”
“And possibly a madwoman.”
This addition was startling. He tapped me on the knee and sat back in his chair, apparently pleased to have shocked me.
“Mad?” I said.
“She was like no human woman I had ever met. More akin to a ghost, doomed to haunt the netherworld, incessantly seeking something she would never find. I tried to help her… I offered myself to her service, a knight swearing fealty to his queen… and I wonder how many others she has driven to distraction over the centuries? I wonder…”
As he went on, he spoke to the air above my head, absorbed in his narrative to the extent that he forgot I was there. I was glad of a little space to breathe. Now I was the one who sat forward, trying to catch his words over the general hubbub of the room.
Bartholomew walked across the meadows beneath the full moon, or rather wove his way from the local hostelry towards his father’s house. All his drinking companions had scattered to their own homes along the lanes and now he was alone. The night was eerily bright to his bleary eyes. He barely felt the air’s chill, but he drank in the cold air as if it were water to sober him.
Frost was forming on every leaf, twig and grass blade. He could see frost feathers growing into long spindly crystals as he went, the fields turning from grey to white until the whole world glittered.
Presently he noticed a small deer watching him from behind the trunk of an oak tree. Prettiest creature ever seen. A pure white doe.
Bartholomew moved very slowly so as not to frighten her away. The world spun gently around him like a spider’s web, or a tunnel made of gleaming gossamer. Dizzy, he staggered. When he regained his balance, there was no doe beneath the tree.
In her place was a young woman.
He saw at once that she was not human. She was all in white fur with flowing pale hair, her heart-shaped face as pale as the moon, an aura flaring around her like snowy flames.
She was more than beautiful. She was lovely enough to put the angels to shame.
Bartholomew’s instinct was to run, but his legs turned to rubber and he tripped, sprawling clumsily at her feet…
Feet? Was that an owl’s claw peeping from beneath her hem?
He froze. Kindly she leaned down and helped him up, and the moment he looked into her shining eyes he was lost. Hers forever.
The universe seemed out of kilter, like a sinister reflection of itself, doused in a blue-violet hue against which she shone like pure light. A dim purplish corridor stretched behind her and he knew, with strange trance-like certainty, that she was standing on the threshold to the Otherworld. And so was he.
“Will you help me?” she asked. Her expression was sorrowful. She twisted her delicate bare hands together, fingers interlaced.
He couldn’t speak.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I am Estel. They call me the Lady of Stars, because I came into existence with the stars, and I was all alone for great gulfs of time… But I did not know I was alone until the Earth formed and I saw creatures begin to move upon its surface and the forests growing and falling and growing again…”
“My lady,” he croaked. He was overwhelmed by a desire to fall at her feet and cry with joy. Of course he’d read fairy tales, and ancient myths of gods and goddesses and the Otherworld. Nothing could have prepared him for the overwhelming reality of meeting this deity. None of those legends had touched the truth.
A doe. A simple girl in white. Yet she was the unknown goddess who came before all others. He did not need to be convinced. One look at her and he knew.
“I need your help,” she said again.
“My lady Estel, anything within my power I can do to help you, I shall do,” he answered.
“I’m searching for my lover. The dear true love of my soul.”
Her words gave him a jolt of disappointment – an irrational response, since he knew that she was far above him, too alien and magical ever to consider courtship from him, a mere commonplace human. This knowledge, however, did not dampen his longing to aid her.
There was such a thing as chivalry; an unconditional vow to help another out of pure love, with no hope of gain for
oneself. He made this vow to himself on the spot, never to be broken.
“I – I have seen no one, my lady,” he said. “I know these woods and meadows. I would have noticed a stranger. As for your consort, if he is a god who shines as you do – how could I possibly miss such a being?”
Estel dipped her head a little and clasped her hands in front of her. “You do not understand…”
“Bartholomew,” he said as she paused, prompting him to give his name.
“I have been searching for thousands of years.”
“Thousands…?”
What response could he make to this? Her presence was so gossamer-delicate that he feared she would vanish like frost if he blinked. And yet here she stood in front of him, so real and commanding that the rest of the world faded to nothing around her.
“I’ve hunted everywhere. All through the human world and all through the Spiral.”
“The Spiral?”
“Some call it the Otherworld. Or the Land of Faerie, or the Aetherial realm. There exists more than the visible world, Bartholomew. There are many worlds, and I have sought my lover Kern in all of them.”
“My lady Estel, perhaps you should grieve for him, and cease your search.”
He thought this was quite a wise thing to say, but she looked unmoved. Not angry, not upset. Simply determined, her eyes burning like silver fire with her unshakeable obsession.
“I have found parts of him,” she said. “A strand of hair. Two small bones from his foot. Leaves from his cloak.”
She was, indeed, mad. An insane goddess!
“My lady, I don’t…” He tried to say that this was no evidence at all that she’d found anything of significance, but the words would not come out.
“Kern was lord of the forest, in the early days when Aetherials first took on living forms. I, who had always been alone, fell in love with him the first moment we met. And for centuries we were happy. But a male called Perseid, a cold prince from Sibeyla, the realm of snow, formed a desire for me. He tricked Kern away from me and tore him to pieces and scattered him all across the realms. What am I to do, but go looking for all the pieces? If I can make him whole again, he may return to life. And if he does not, at least he will be where he belongs again. With me.”
Bartholomew took in her words with a sense of wonder and despair. He recalled the story of Isis, who had gathered the scattered body parts of Osiris… but there had only been a few: fourteen or forty or thereabouts, according to which version you read. Leaves, hair strands, bones? How many bones were in the human body? Did an elfin body contain the same number?
“This is an impossible task,” he said.
“Do not say ‘impossible’ to me,” she answered coolly. “I have searched for countless aeons. I’ll go on until time itself ends. You have not even begun.”
“I wouldn’t know where to…”
“I keep being drawn to this place. I’m sure there is something here. If you would only help me, perhaps you will find the fragment of Kern that I cannot. Will you try?”
His heart gave him no choice.
“Of course. But how will I know?”
“Oh, you’ll know. Every piece is guarded. Every piece is inscribed.”
She drew on the air with her finger, and the twinkling white image remained for a second before fading: a spiral shape.
“And did you undertake the quest?” I asked, pouring my uncle more brandy.
“Oh, yes, I searched!” he said fervently. “I explored the forest for days until my clothes were damp rags. Miracle I didn’t freeze to death! At first the ground was like iron, but then the frost thawed and the earth turned to mud. I ate berries from the bushes, autumn berries so wrinkled and sour even the birds had left them. Looking back, I would appear to have lost my mind, but I couldn’t stop. I was under a spell. I had to undertake the hunt for her sake. I’d made a vow. The Lady of Stars held me in thrall.
“Just as I was beginning to despair, I saw something.
“I was on the bank of a stream, a tall steep bank with soil exposed where part of it had fallen away into the water: a tangle of tree roots and ivy. The object I spied was only a pebble, but it drew my eye because it was pale and smooth, while all the other stones were rough and grey. I plucked it out. My fingernails were already torn and full of dirt, so I cared nothing for the grime.
“I rubbed it clean with a handkerchief and there it lay; not a pebble but a little bone the precise size and shape of a small finger joint. And on it was engraved a tiny rune, a spiral.
“I enjoyed a full two seconds of elation before a – a thing flew at me. It was like a small dragon, but I cannot dignify it with that description. No, it was too hideous: a flying reptile with wings and fangs and poisonous yellow eyes. It was no earthly animal! Then I knew I had found something of value, for what was this, if not the object’s guardian?
“The monster came straight for my face, clawing at my eyes. It hissed. Its breath scorched my cheeks. I fell backwards and dropped the bone, but it would not cease the attack. Its whirring wings and dagger claws forced me down towards the water’s edge. However, I seized a fallen branch and defended myself, like Saint George fighting the dragon. I was no soldier – but for Estel’s sake I became a knight that day… and at last I struck that devilish, hissing thing out of the air. It fell, and landed in the stream, and moved no more.”
I have of necessity condensed my uncle’s account. The telling took three hours, and the battle between my uncle and the yellow-eyed demon-dragon was a veritable epic, with much interplay and climbing of trees, not to mention narrow brushes with death before he finally whacked it out of the sky.
“Then I went down the bank and waded into the current to retrieve the finger bone,” Bartholomew continued, somewhat breathless by now. “Washed clean by the water, it was pure white, like a polished jewel. I have done it, I thought. I have found one little piece of her soulmate to give her hope! Alas…
“In due time I found my way back to the oak tree, but Estel was gone. I waited for hours, but she did not come back, not even when the moon rose again. Eventually I fell asleep, and was woken by my father and brother standing over me, scolding me for drinking too much ale and falling down insensible in a field in winter! To them, I had been gone for only one night. One night.”
I hardly dared suggest to my great-uncle that he might have dreamed the whole thing. In truth, it had been rather a fine tale, and I didn’t want to break the magic. I thought it a shame that people did not listen more closely before dismissing him as a drunken old bore. For him – unless he was the most astonishingly accomplished liar ever born – these unearthly events had really happened.
“But where was Estel?” I asked.
“Gone,” he said with heavy sadness. “Alas, I never saw my goddess again. Time after time I went out under the full moon, looking for her, to no avail. But I never stopped trying. And I never gave up the search for pieces of her lover, Kern. I devoted my life to her, and for nothing, but I don’t regret one single moment of it. Not a moment, young Thomas.”
His eyes half-closed. He looked exhausted and I thought he was near sleep.
There was a stir of movement around us, rousing him. The party was coming to an end. This meant that Hetty had already gone to change into her travelling attire, and that my encounter with Great-uncle Bartholomew could reach a natural conclusion.
“Thank you, dear boy,” he said, seizing my hand between his large, over-hot paws. “Thank you for letting me tell my tale. I feel… unburdened.”
He took something from his pocket and pressed it into my hand. I looked. It was a small slip of ivory that might indeed be a finger bone, inscribed with a tiny spiral.
By the time I started for home – at present, my student lodgings – dusk was falling.
We had waved Hetty and William goodbye and good luck as their airship rose gracefully into the blue afternoon sky, propellers whirring. Hetty wept and laughed, wafting her handkerchief at us. The craft
looked, I thought, like a giant red-striped humbug as it drifted and dwindled away. I felt a little strange as she disappeared over the horizon, floating happily towards her new life. I was glad for her, but also sad, oddly melancholy. She would always be my sister, but everything had changed. She was a married woman now, a clergyman’s wife, and perhaps, before long, mother to my nephews and nieces. What an extraordinary thought!
Would I become the eccentric uncle, entertaining them with supernatural tales?
Would I, one day, be flying off into the sunset with my dear heart’s companion at my side, my new wife, whom I have not yet even met?
And so I slipped away and proceeded on foot along ten miles of cart-lanes that wound between hedges, through the woods and across open fields towards my lodgings in town. I could have stayed with Mama and Papa, but I wished to clear my head, rather than have them talking at me all evening. Although my desire to marry was unformed and hazy, I knew with absolute certainty that I did not want to turn into another Great-uncle Bartholomew in my old age: eccentric and lonely.
An owl watched me from an oak tree as I wandered along. The moon was caught in the branches. The great arching black sky seemed to be a face looking down, as if the night sky was in fact the visage of a goddess with the stars of the Milky Way braided into her hair.
This was a beautiful illusion, awe-inspiring and more than slightly alarming. My heart began to race and stumble. I swore I would never drink so much, nor walk alone at night, ever again. I felt the smooth shape of the finger bone in my pocket and rolled it between my thumb and forefinger, as if it were a talisman against danger.
I saw no doe, although it seemed to me that the owl took flight and brushed me with its wings – a flurry of pale, knife-edged feathers.
Then she stood before me.
A small, slender woman in white furs. She glowed. Like a dewy cobweb at dawn, like moonlight on snow, she shone with her own light.
