Sister Emily's Lightship

by Jane Yolen

  “A gift!” I reminded myself out loud, beginning to shiver, not from fever but from fear. What if I had arrived without a gift? The king, a fat slug who was so obese he had to ride his charger sidesaddle, would have had my father exorcised by his priests if I forgot to gift his child. Exorcism on a male fey is very painful for the essence is slowly drawn out and then captured in a bottle. Imagine my dear, gentle father corked up for as long as the king or his kin liked. It was too horrible to contemplate. One of Father’s brothers had been exorcised by a Kilkenny abbot and was still locked up in a dusty carafe on the back shelf of the monastery wine cellar and labeled Bordeaux, 79. As that was a terrible year for wines, Father does not expect anyone will ever uncork him. Father visits once a year and they shout at one another through the glass. Then Father returns whey-faced and desperate-looking. But only a human can free Uncle Finn. Father, alas, cannot.

  Is it any wonder that I turned right around and ran back into the pavilion to the storeroom in which the trunk stood?

  The oaken trunk was locked with a fine-grained pinewood key but the key was only for show. The trunk was bolted with a family spell. I spoke it quickly:

  Come thou, cap and lid.

  Lift above what has been hid,

  All out!

  The last two words were done in the shouting voice and the whole, as with all magic, made my head hurt. But as the final note ended, the top of the trunk snapped open.

  I peered in and at first thought the trunk was empty for the tatty Cloth was working again. Then, as I looked more closely, the Cloth suddenly failed around the edges and I saw the tip of the spindle.

  “Blessed Loireg,” I said with a sigh, praising my great-great-aunt, a patroness of Hebrides spinners. I reached down and the spindle leaped to my hand.

  Clutching the spindle to my breast, I ran out the door and along the winding forest paths towards the castle. Since it was morning, and I being still weak with fever, I could not fly. So of course I was very late. The christening, begun promptly at cock’s crow—how humans love the daylight hours—was almost done.

  I had wrapped the Cloth about my shoulders for warmth and so, on and off, I had been invisible throughout the trip. A cacophony of crows had noticed me; a family of squirrels had not. A grazing deer, warned by my scent, had seemed puzzled when I did not appear; a bear, pawing honey from a tree, was startled when I popped into view. But by the time I reached the castle the Cloth was working again and so the guards did not question my late entrance for they did not know I had come in.

  I stopped for a moment at the throne room door and peered around. The king and queen were sitting upon their high gilded chairs. He was—as I have noted before—fat, but Father said he had not always been so. Self-indulgence had thickened his neck and waist and the strong chin that had marked generations of his family repeated itself twice more, the third chin resting on his chest. On the other hand his wife, unsoftened by childbirth, had grown leaner over the years, vulpine, the skin stretched tightly over her cheekbones and marked with lines like a plotter’s map.

  Before them was a canopied cradle, its silken draperies drawn back to reveal the child who was, at present, screaming in a high-pitched voice that demonstrated considerable staying power. My father and brothers and sisters were encircling the cradle where Father, having just conferred his gift, was still bending down to kiss the squawling babe.

  I stepped into the room and had passed several bored courtiers, when the Cloth suddenly failed, revealing me before I had time to recomb my hair or straighten my bent wings or paste a smile across my mouth. I had two bright spots of fever back on my cheeks and my eyes were wild. I looked, my eldest sister later told me, “a rage.” But at least I did not shout. In fact, it was all I could do to get out a word, what with all that running. Stumbling forward, the spindle thrust out before me, I almost fell into the cradle. I accidentally stepped on one of the rockers and the cradle tilted back and forth. The infant, its attention caught by the movement, stopped crying.

  Into the sudden silence, I croaked, “For Talia—a present of Life.” And I pulled on the black thread that was wrapped around the spindle. But I must have pulled too hard on the old knotted thread. It broke after scarcely an inch.

  Everyone in the court gasped and the queen cried out, “Not Life but Death.”

  The king stood up and roared, “Seize her,” but of course at that moment the Cloth worked again and I disappeared. In my horror at what I had done, I took several steps back, dropping the spindle and the snippet of thread. Both became visible the moment they left my hand, but no one could find me.

  Father bent down, picked up the thread, and shook his head.

  “What damage?” whispered Mother. Or at least she tried to whisper. It came out, as did everything her family said in haste, in a shout.

  “Indeed,” the king cried, “what damage?”

  Father took out his spectacles, a measuring tape, and a slide rule. After a moment, he shook his head. “By my calculations,” he said, “fifteen years, give or take a month.”

  The king knew this to be true because Father’s family had a geasa laid upon them to always tell the truth.

  The queen burst into furious sobbing and the king clutched his hands to his heart and fell back into his chair. Baby Talia started crying again, but my eldest sister surreptitiously rocked the cradle with her foot which quieted the babe at once.

  “Do something!” said the king and as it was a royal command, my mother had to obey.

  “Luckily I have not yet given my gift, Sire,” Mother began, modulating her voice, though she could still be heard all the way out to the courtyard.

  Father cleared his throat. He did not believe in that kind of luck.

  But Mother, ignoring him, continued. “My gift was to have been a happy marriage, but this must take precedence.”

  “Of course, of course,” murmured the king. “If she is dead at fifteen, what use would a happy marriage be?”

  At that the queen’s sobs increased.

  Father nodded and his eyes caught the king’s and some spark of creature recognition passed between them.

  Mother bent down and retrieved the spindle. Father handed her the bit of thread. Then she held up the thread in her right hand, the spindle in her left. With a quick movement of her fingers, she tied the thread back, knotting it securely, mumbled a spell which was really just a recipe for bread, then slowly unwound a much longer piece of thread. She measured it with a calculating eye and then bit it through with a loud, satisfying snick.

  “There,” she said. “Talia shall have a long, long life now. But…”

  “But what?” the queen asked between sobs.

  “But there is still this rather large knot at her fifteenth year of course,” Mother explained.

  “Get on with it. Get on with it,” shouted the king. “You fey are really the most exasperating lot. Say it plainly. None of your fairy riddles.”

  Mother was about to shout back when Father elbowed her. She swallowed hastily and said, “It means she shall fall asleep on her fifteenth birthday…”

  “Give or take a month,” my father inserted.

  “…and she shall sleep for as long as it takes for the knot to be unraveled.”

  The queen smiled, smoothing out many of her worst wrinkles but adding several new ones around the mouth. “Oh, that should be no time at all.”

  Mother smiled back and said nothing, but the smile never reached her eyes. She had had no geasa laid on her tongue.

  Father, ever honest, opened his mouth to speak and Mother elbowed him back. He swallowed hastily and shut his mouth. Lies take spoken words, at least according to the restriction of his fate.

  Just then I became visible again, but at that point no one really cared.

  Fifteen years can be a long or a short time, depending upon whether one is immortal or not. Princess Talia spent her fifteen as though she had an eternity to enjoy, learning little but how far the bad temper she had inherit
ed from her father could take her. She had the gifts of beauty and wit that we had conferred upon her and they stood her in good stead with the company she kept. But she was rather short on gratitude, kindness, and love, which take rather longer to bestow than a morning’s christening.

  I spent the fifteen years reading through the L section in Father’s library. I discovered I had an aptitude for Logic, which surprised everyone but Father. I also studied Liturgy, Lepidoptery, and Linguistics; I could do spells in seventeen tongues.

  My eldest sister seriously questioned this fast accomplishment. “If you can never leave this land, why do you need more than one language?” she asked.

  I could not explain the simple love of learning to her, but Father hushed her. “After all,” he said, “when fifteen years are up…”

  “Give or take a month,” I added.

  “…Things may be very different around here.” He smiled but would say no more.

  On her fifteenth birthday, Talia summoned all the local fey to her party except for me. I had been left off of every guest list since her christening. My sisters and brothers were jealous of the fact, but there was nothing they could do about it. Even fairies cannot change the past.

  Talia called her party a “Sleep-Over Ball” and announced that everyone was to come in nightclothes. Talia herself ordered a new gown for the occasion that resembled a peignoir, with peek-a-boo Aleçon lace and little pink ribbons sewn in strategic places. She was much ahead of her peers and had a positive genius for seduction. There was not a male member of the peerage who had escaped her spell and several fowlers and a stable boy were languishing for love of her. Even my oldest brother Dusty, who had rather common tastes, was smitten and planned to go to the party with a handful of crushed pennyroyal in each pocket, to keep the magic—as he put it—“close to the seat of his affection.”

  “Affliction,” I said.

  Dusty smiled and tousled my hair. He was smitten, but not without a sense of humor about it all.

  Father and Mother were allowed to beg off since this was to be a party for young folk.

  We three watched from the pavilion steps as the twelve flew into the moonlight, the wind feathering their wings. As they passed across the moon, like dust motes through light, I had a sudden fit of shivers. Father put his arm around me and Mother fetched me a shawl. They thought it was the cold, you see.

  But it was more than that. “The fifteenth year,” I whispered, “give or take a month.” My voice was thinned out by the night air.

  Father looked at Mother and they both looked at me. Whatever I had felt, whatever had made me shiver, suddenly communicated to them as well. Mother said not a word but went into the pavilion and emerged moments later with a hat and a long wool scarf for me, an Aran Island sweater for Father, and a muff for herself. She had bad circulation and flying always leaves her with cold hands.

  We closed our eyes and spoke the spell.

  Far frae earth and far frae barrows,

  Up to where the blue sky narrows,

  Wind and wildness, wings and weather,

  Allie-up together.

  Now!

  As I lifted into the air I could feel the beginnings of a magic headache coming on, and my shoulders started to hurt as well. I have always had weak wings, but they are adequate for simple travel. We landed at the palace only minutes behind my brothers and sisters, but we were already too late. The sleeping spell had begun.

  There was a cook asleep with her hand raised to strike the scullery and she, poor little wench, had been struck by sleep instead. It had happened at the moment of her only retaliation against the cook, which she got by kicking the cook’s cat. The cat, unaware of the approaching kick, was snoring with one paw wrapped around a half-dead sleeping mouse.

  Along the hall guards slept at their posts: one had been caught in the act of picking his teeth with his knife, one was peeling an orange with his sword, one was scraping his boot with his javelin tip, and one was picking his nose.

  The guests, dressed in nightgowns and nightshirts, snored and shivered and twitched but did not wake. And in the midst of them all, lying in state, was Talia, presents piled at her feet. She blew delicate little bubbles between her partially opened lips, and under her closed eyelids I could see the rapid scuttling of dreams.

  My brothers and sisters, immune to the spell, hovered above the scene nervously, except for Dusty who darted down to the bed every now and then to steal a kiss from the sleeping Talia. But, as he later admitted, she was so unresponsive, he soon wearied of the game.

  “I am not a necrophile, after all,” he said petulantly, which was a funny thing for him to say since right before Talia, he had been in love with the ghost of a suicide who haunted the road at Miller’s Cross.

  Mother put her fingers to her mouth and whistled them down.

  Father announced, “Time for a family conference.”

  We looked in every room in the castle, including the garde-robe, but there were sleepers in every one. So we met on the castle stairs.

  “Well, what now?” asked Mother.

  “It’s Gorse’s spell,” Dusty said, his mouth still wet from Talia’s bubbly kisses. He hovered, pouting, over the steps.

  “Of course it is Gorse’s spell,” said Father, “but that does not mean it is Gorse’s fault. Don’t be angry, Dusty. Just shake out your pockets and sit down.”

  Dusty did as he was told as Father’s voice was very firm and not to be argued with. As soon as the grains of pennyroyal had touched the ground, his mood lightened and he even sat next to me and held my hand.

  In fact, we all held hands, that being the best way to augment a family conference. It aids the thinking, it generates energy, and it keeps one’s hands warm as well.

  Mother looked up. “The knot,” she said. “We must remember the knot in the thread.”

  Father nodded. “The Laws of Correspondence and Balance…” he mused.

  And then I knew what to do, my reading in Logic having added texture to my spells. “There must be a similar knot about the palace,” I said. I let go of Dusty’s hand and stood, waving my hand widdershins. A great wind began to blow from the North. It picked up the pennyroyal, plucked seeds from the thorn, gathered wild rose pips and acorns and flung them into the air. Faster and faster the whirlwind blew, a great black tunnel of air.

  Blow and sow

  This fertile ground

  Until the knot

  Be all unwound,

  I sang. One by one everyone joined me, Dusty immediately, then my other brothers and sisters, and at the last Father and finally Mother. We spoke the spell a hundred times for the hundred years and, in the end, only Mother and I had the voice for it. My voice was husky and rasping but Mother’s was low and there was a longing in it compounded of equal parts of wind and sea, for the Shouting Fey came originally from the Cornish coast, great-great-great-grandfather being a sea sprite with a roving sailor’s eye.

  And then I dropped out of the spell with the worst headache imaginable and Mother ended it with a shout, the loudest I had ever heard her utter. It was so loud, the earth itself was shocked and opened up hundreds of tiny mouths in surprise. Into every one of those tiny mouths a seed or pip or nut popped and, in moments, they had begun to grow. We watched as years were compressed into seconds and green shoots leaped upward towards the sky. By the time the last echo of Mother’s shout had died away, a great forest of mammoth oak and thorny vines surrounded the palace. Only one small passage overhead remained open where the moon beamed down a narrow light. Inside the rest of the knotted wood it was as dark as a dream, as deep as sleep.

  “Come, children,” said Father.

  We rode the moonbeam up and out and, as the last of us passed through the hole, the thorns sewed themselves shut behind us over the deathly quiet. We neither spoke nor sang all the way home.

  Having read through the Ls in Father’s library, I turned my attention to the H’s, my choice dictated by the fact that the wall with th
ose books has a window that overlooks the orchard. The gnarled old trees that manage to bring forth their sweet red gifts every year fill me with wonder. It is a magic no fey could ever duplicate. And so now I have a grounding in Hagiography, Harmonics, Hormones, and History. It has been a lucky choice.

  One of the books I read spoke about the rise of a religion called Democracy which believes in neither monarchs nor magic. It encourages the common man. When, in a hundred years, some young princeling manages to unravel the knot of wood about Talia’s domain, I plan to be by his side, whispering the rote of Revolution in his ear. If my luck holds—and the Cloth of Invisibility works just long enough—Talia will seem to him only a musty relic of a bygone era whose bedclothes speak of decadence and whose bubbly breath of decay. He will wed the scullery out of compassion, and learn Computer Science. Then the spell of the land will be broken. No royal wedding—no royal babes. No babes—no inheritance. And though we fey will still be tied to the land, our wishes will belong to us alone.

  Father, Mother, my sisters, my brothers, sometimes freedom is won by a long patience, something that works far better than any magical spell.

  Granny Rumple

  SHE WAS KNOWN AS Granny Rumple because her dress and face were masses of wrinkles, or at least that’s what my father’s father’s mother used to say. Of course, the Yolens being notorious liars, it might not have been so. It might simply have been a bad translation from the Yiddish. Or jealousy, Granny Rumple having been a great beauty in her day.

  Like my great-grandmother, Granny Rumple was a moneylender, one of the few jobs a Jew could have in the Ukraine that brought them into daily contact with the goyim. She could have had one of the many traditional women’s roles—a matchmaker, perhaps or an opshprekherin giving advice and remedies, or an herb vendor. But she was a moneylender because her husband had been one, and they had no children to take over his business. My great-grandmother, on the other hand, had learned her trade from her father and when he died and she was a widow with a single son to raise, she followed in her father’s footsteps. A sakh melokhes un vynik brokhes: Many trades and little profit. It was a good choice for both of them.