Damn her. I hoped she would not break her foot as she hopped over a fallen tree, balancing on it briefly.
I sighed.
No, I was not like Dana. God knew what I was.
I swiped hair off my face, spitting at some strands in my mouth, hugging myself as I made my way to a drier patch of grass. What was I? What would I be? What had I done? Not much. That last question I could answer. Not much at all. Unless suffering was actually doing something. That I had done plenty of.
I had always suffered.
Everything was a strange struggle. I was not sure why, but there it was. It is true I was selfish, for there were so many people who lived with poverty and pain, who were ill with some incurable disease. There were plenty of those. Our medicine left so many people without answers and hope, yet I was physically healthy. People had no homes and endured abusive parents. At least I had a wealthy home and loving parents. I smiled briefly at Charles, my father as he was rolling his eyes at a patch of slick muck before us. He wore a heavy woolen coat, which was spattered with mud. I shook my head. It does not work like that. We don’t care about the others, not as deeply as we should. We tell them we are sorry should they share their misfortunes, but we aren’t really. We are only happy their suffering is not ours. And so, despite all that was good and even splendid in my life, I still suffered.
The reasons for my suffering were strange. I did not understand them, not really. There was more to it than being shy. My misery was profound, unfathomable, and so hard to bear. I wanted to enjoy life. I really did. I did envy Dana her pretty friends and the frequently changing, hugely handsome boyfriends. I wanted all of that as well. I did not wish to be unhappy, but it was impossible to be anything else. The misery ran deeper than the seemingly mundane issues any young woman might go through. For a long time, I had questioned happiness. Was it something of a myth?
The closest I ever got to the answer was in a dream.
I could not fully remember the dream, but I remember I had been happy. You know you can die in a dream, right? You can fly like a hawk or fall from great heights. I dreamt I was happy. It was a carefree, brilliant feeling of utter contentment. I was sitting on a horse, of all things. The wind was whistling, and there was not a soul in sight, and that is all I remember, except for the blissful joy of contentment, of a purpose. Oh, I yearned for that feeling when I woke up, for months I did. I would dream the dream later on, but that memory of freedom stuck with me, and so I knew the difference between what I did not have, and what I thought Dana did have. There was happiness out there, just not for me. I wanted the dream, but no, waking up I returned to the world where I had no plans nor will to make any and felt restless and lost except with Dana. Always had. I was lonely but could not find any friends.
Dana was my salvation.
Despite her many impressive skills and the many friends and suitors, she always found time to be with me. She would help me when I was sad. Sometimes she forced me to the beach with her and there she laughed and dodged the waves while I smiled at her from the shallows. Occasionally she appeared in the salon, where Father was training me with a sword. He had no son, and I wanted to learn and so he had taught me with a longsword. I was clumsy, the weapon heavy, but it was the one thing I truly loved. There she faithfully cheered me and complimented my progress. How she charmed others, she charmed me. I loved her. She was my sister. Is. She was my anchor to life.
But she could not save me from myself. I was so unhappy and didn’t know why, then.
Soon I was being excluded, even ridiculed in the village. I think that was inevitable, though, while being a brooding sister of the most popular girl in the village gave me some protection, there are always those who don’t belong and they get the short end of the stick eventually. There are always the odd, crippled members of the pack that others shun and mock. I never thought I would be one of them, despite being a recluse. I tried to take part, occasionally, at least. I took part in celebrations, in church activities. I smiled at people and listened and spoke when I had to, but that did not stop the curious, critical beasts from smelling my weakness, from smelling my issues. I am not sure when the heavy brunt of daily mockery began, but at some point people started avoiding me and I stayed in our home as much as I could, studying Father’s many books. I remember one time, when I was speaking with a child I did not know, a nice boy who asked me for directions at the market. People stopped to stare at me strangely, some snickered and others whispered to their friends, and I knew I was the target of their amusement. I was eleven, I think. I ran away in shock and checked if there was something stuck on my back. Mud? Hay in my hair? Pig shit on my shoes? There was not.
It was Shannon they laughed at.
Shannon amused them. My voice? My looks? Just something about me made them savagely cruel. It happened mostly behind my back. They never really confronted me, but they were always whispering when I could not see them. Soon, by the time I was fourteen, they called me crazy, whispering just loud enough for me to hear them. Not all did, of course. Those who did not know me spoke to me kindly, but the ones I saw every day, people we socialized with, met in the church and at weddings and celebrations … they drifted away from me. Dana was my relentless champion. She got the family in trouble when she punched a boy called Michael for calling me a mad cow. He was from a mining family that hated our wealthy farmer family anyway, and Father only switched her rear for it.
I loved Dana for that. And Father for his mercy.
Dana told me to ignore it and that everything was fine. She could not understand my issues, of course, but I often napped in her lap and felt happy there until Father came to take me to my own room. Before that, she would comb my hair and speak with me. ‘Shann. You gotta find a way to live this life. You just have to. I’m not going to be around forever.’
‘I know. I will. Sure,’ I told her, knowing I would not.
As it turned out, I was not crazy, but I shall speak more of that later.
Soon after the first incident, even Mother and Father began to think there was something wrong with me, and I overheard a discussion between them. Mother wanted to send me to live with her mother for a year. She lived two days away on the coast. Grandma refused, saying I was too young.
This went on until I tried to kill myself.
That took place on June 15th, 1813, two years to the day before our trip to meet Grandma. I was fifteen, and I’d had an argument with Mother that left me boiling with sorrow and anger, and my head was rippling with thrumming pain all that evening. I remember I felt hopeless and lost, alone and despondent, and the pain had been so terrible. But there was more. I had seen something frightening and strange in the reflection from my window. I remembered little of what that had been. All I remember was that it had been terrifying. Perhaps I was mad. Yes. I was, I thought then. In the end, I got up, walked to the grain shed and found a pitchfork. I placed it under my chest and thought about the end. I leaned forward, felt the tool pinch painfully and then it broke under me. I fell in hay and dust, and ran home. I never tried that again. I had scared myself shitless, but the thought did lurk there behind my eyes every day after. The dream. The happy, careless dream. I daydreamed of that dream. Perhaps I had dreamt of being dead, and there was peace and happiness there.
It was an encouraging thought.
It was a scary thought.
The truth was I would not be able to hang on for fifty years, feeling so unhappy. I knew it. I would seek death again. One day. Dana would not have to worry about me then.
I massaged my forehead as I strode up the hill. Two years to the day. And I was feeling strange again, miserable as hell. I had changed those past two years. Usually, I had suffered the silent and barely audible mockery, my growing feeling of inferiority and hopelessness with stoicism and sullen acceptance, but ever since the clumsy suicide attempt, I had grown more aggressive.
Dana. I needed her. Yet, I was growing more hostile, more upset at her. I would snap at her, and that day, I
wanted to run to her and stop her from … smiling? From being happy. I felt she was betraying me. I nodded to myself. I knew the reason. I was afraid I would lose her. While we were nearing the time in our lives when we would have to go our own ways. She would marry. She would move. I would be a spinster and a recluse. And she did not seem bothered about it. She loved me; I knew that, for she had comforted and been there for me all our life, but she had always told me she would not stay to do so forever. I was responsible for myself, and she was right.
I feared the changes about to take place in our lives.
‘Come on, Shannon!’ Dana shrieked as she turned to me. ‘You can’t be too tired, yet!’
Tired? I felt a tug of rage. My head was suddenly throbbing, as though there was a painful, twisted vein writhing inside my lobes. I glowered after Dana, briefly admiring her delicate features and then cursed myself for it. God, what was wrong with me? I felt something was coming, a storm was rising, and I feared it.
The wind blew as the old sailor turned to look back at us. He scowled, his hairy face not quite sporting a beard, but more like tufts of coarse hair twitching in annoyance as he looked on at our slow progress. I felt his eyes on me. There was something annoying about the old bastard as well. Ferdan, he was called. Drunk, and Grandma’s friend. An annoying idiot, I thought. Dana did not seem to share that feeling, for she was tugging on his frazzled sailor’s coat sleeve and he grudgingly followed her. I nearly slipped, going on one knee. Charles, my tall, wide father grabbed me, his strong arm pumping out, snake fast. I flashed a brief, dry smile at him and trudged on, adjusting my shawl.
I wanted to go down to Grandma. She was watching over Rose, our four-year-old sibling, and if Rose let her, she would have dinner ready. Elder Shannon. She was my mother’s mother, an old hag; some might call her something out of old Irish fairy tales. She always articulated her words carefully. She smelled of the old people, with old clothes wrapped around her rotund body, covering most all but her hands and her wrinkled, fat face. She lived in her weather-beaten house on the rugged, ancient island of Anglesey. The family visited her, even if Mother did more often, for she was old and Bridget, my mom worried about her. Father did not mind the trips. He was moderately wealthy, our farm did well enough and could run itself for a few days.
We were the Crowthers. I was Shannon. She was Dana. As she reached the top I looked at her and for a strange moment of clarity, I knew things would change soon.
Dana reached the top.
CHAPTER 2
Ferdan was a grizzly old beast. He smacked his hairy lips, ignoring my father’s scowl as the smelly, wrinkled man tried to wrap his dirty arm around my shoulders, but I ducked away from the old bastard and looked at the sights. I sensed he was surprised, hurtfully so, but I was grumpy and not willing to acknowledge it. ‘It is a grand one, is it not?’ he asked after awhile with his thick drawl. Charles grunted. He had the same origins as Mother did, rooted there in the frontiers of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and we respected those strong roots. They followed us faithfully, we dragged them behind us like a natural burden, never letting anything change us nor cut these roots, and so they never actually broke. Looking at the rugged, ancient sights around us, it was easy to understand why.
The sight was indeed grand.
More than grand, familiar in ways we could never fathom, as if a thousand generations of Crowthers and McGannons, Mother’s family had stood on this very hill, staring dreamily at the surrounding waters and ancient stones, and we could dimly feel what they had felt.
Looking northwest, one could see the Irish Sea, blue and silver alternating like dull fish scales, the waves traveling lazily across the boundless horizon as they always had. The old man looked that way with a wistful leer, for he was once a sailor in His Majesty’s service and now a fisherman, creature more of the waves than the hills.
To the south and east, the land spread out. Down there, on the valley below a hill they called Mynydd y Garn, there were myriad emerald green valleys, some with yellowish, okra-colored stretches, flowers and small woods and pastures lined with hedges or old, stubborn stonewalls. The houses looked cozy, well tended, there were spots of gray and lazy blue water. A sight to please the eyes, no matter where the eyes came from. The English loved the land just like the locals, and many a wealthy farmer had moved in in the past decade.
‘Look, Shann, there’s Grandma’s place!’ Dana said with annoying eagerness, and I nodded and squinted that way. There were hills, barren but for the lush grass and a few incredibly tough trees, and nestled between two such gnarled trees was a house made of dark, red bricks. It was a large house, where we fitted well, and we all wondered how elder Shannon kept the place in repair and milked the two fat cows she kept.
The old man stepped next to Dana after my rejection and placed his dirty hand on her shoulder, squeezing it. ‘Aye, there it be. See? The farting cows? Specks of birdshit from up here. Hah?’ he said, and Dana just grinned at him. Here, again, she managed something I could not.
‘Charles, where’s Ireland?’ I asked, turning my back on Dana. I did not call him Father. Never had, and I knew it sometimes hurt him.
He pulled me next to him, pointing at the faraway ocean. The wind blew and long strands of my thick red hair flew to my eyes. Father helped remove them. ‘There, pretty one. Over there. Far but not so far,’ he grumbled.
Bridget nodded. ‘Not too far, dear. That’s where our family came from. Right across there,’ she said wistfully. ‘He was a Norseman and went to Ireland to viking a bit and then they came here. He found a girl and built a hall. Became a chief of a local tribe. So they say. Who knows for sure?’
The old, gnarled man moved with Dana to stare at the sea. ‘Your grandmother knows, if any. Hook, the old bastards called this island, especially the Norsemen and Danes when they had an itch for a bit of robbing. And they did have that itch often, perpetually. They would sail from the north, see, there? Across there, hugging the coasts with their bleeding, fat traders and lithe drake ships full of rancid, bearded rapists and cowardly robbers, especially after the Irish didn’t let them rape and rob at will, and they lived here in the islands. Killed holy monks, the heathens,’ he said while spitting. He glanced at us, realizing he had potentially insulted our ancestors and finally spat again in embarrassment. ‘No offense to your ungodly relative, of course. I am sure he was a nice man and raped only rarely.’ He smiled gleefully at his own sarcasm, and Father bristled at him. Dana giggled at his brazen tone, but I did not.
Ferdan was madly religious. He hated Protestants and those who believed in the old gods with an unsurpassed gusto, and his holiness was curiously mixed with utter coarseness, and in my upset state his words aroused me, and I could not keep my mouth shut. No, I lashed out and some wicked part of me rejoiced. ‘Didn’t they think the damned monks were the heathens? Weak men? Unable to fight for their gold?’ I asked him.
Mother nodded though her eyes betrayed the shock at my tone. She made the sign of the cross and waved at me, and then she sighed as I looked away from her. Her short dark hair was blowing slightly in the wind, and she sounded worried as she spoke. ‘Shannon is right, even if she is out of line. We have Norse blood in the family and yes; they were not bothered by fears of foreign gods, only swords and spears set against them. They had little use for the repentance and the demands of our Christian God. They did not demand much from their gods, at least beyond their immediate and everyday needs. They had their high Odin, and powerful Thor and so many others, and those gods asked for little, except for men to live bravely. Nor did they hate any other gods and those who believed in them; not those Celts still worshipping their old ones, not even the Christian one. They came here for the gold and the land and even, perhaps, for some dangerous adventure. The rich churches were just too juicy to ignore,’ she said, echoing my grandmother. ‘They wanted riches, our relatives did.’
Ferdan spat again, his mouth dry of spittle and stared at me. ‘Be they damned relation to you o
r not, they were bloody thieves, savage murderers and filthy slavers they were, and God hated them. He does still, see? As much as he hates the French and Lutherans. But this place is special, and terror to the old gods and their misplaced servants.’ He pointed at the green space not twenty yards away.
Charles snorted, his long nose dripping. ‘See what, Ferdan?’
The man eyed Father carefully. ‘Know the history of this place? Eh? You were visiting here since forever, but I never brought you here.’
Mother nodded carefully, her small face pinched with worry at the tension between her husband and the fisherman. Father shrugged. ‘Nah. We visited here when they were young.’ He nodded at us. ‘Just didn’t ask you along. We know something. Fairy tales and stories. Sad tales. Why?’
Ferdan laughed deep, a phlegm-filled rasp that made me shudder. ‘Aye. Fairy tales. Well, them fairy tales ring true in Ynys Môn, so they do. The heathens in the ships? Your ancestors? They came later. There be people living in these here islands for thousands of years, and it was here where the old gods were finally banished from our lands. Here. On this hill. The Danes and the Norse were but serving echoes when they arrived.’
Father took a patient breath. ‘The Romans? Was it Paulinus? He was a heathen too, wasn’t he? Killed the druids or something.’ I nodded. Father had a modest library and I loved the stories of old times. Elder Shannon was ever speaking of the old myths and gods.
Ferdan snickered and gestured around himself, making a circle. ‘God works miracles, Charles my boy. Sometimes men like Quintus Veranius and Suetonius Paulinus, and their hard, heathen legions hold the sword smiting down the bastards. It is proper the snake eats itself. Over there died the last of the great druids of yon past. The knowledge died with them, the door was closed and the lies were gone and so we only have the Lord Jesus Christ, and his father, our one God.’ He stopped and still pointed at a particular spot on the rocky ground.
The Dark Levy: Stories of the Nine Worlds (Ten Tears Chronicles - a dark fantasy action adventure Book 1) Page 2
