The Isles of the Blest

by Morgan Llywelyn

  Connla told him honestly, “I do not mind, I suppose, since death is not permanent. But I did not try to evade it. What happened to me just happened. My head stayed alive.”

  The king of the fairies pursed his lips. “Bad. Very bad. There must be no magic but ours in this kingdom. Come with me. We will find Blathine and have you fixed.”

  The words “have you fixed” had an unpleasant ring, which Connla did not like. He tried to hang back, but Finvarra pinched his shoulder between a thumb and forefinger of astonishing strength and pulled the mortal along with him. “This is for your own good,” the fairy king said.

  “The last time someone claimed they were doing something for my own good,” Connla protested, “they killed my mother!”

  Finvarra would not listen. Irresistibly, he dragged Connla after him up a hill and across a meadow, down a slope and through a brook and up another hill, until the battlefield lay spread before them once more. The silken pavilions were still in place, the colorful banners still flying.

  There were no dead bodies to be seen, of course. Everyone was up and about, talking of the war.

  No time had passed.

  Holding his captive firmly by the shoulder, Finvarra led him to the tent which was Blathine’s. She emerged at once, so beautiful that for a moment Connla forgot his predicament, forgot everything but the exquisite creature who was smiling at him so radiantly. He reached out to her but Finvarra jerked him back.

  “Not yet,” said the king. “We have a problem here.”

  Blathine raised her eyebrows, delicate as a butterfly’s antennae. “The only problem I can see is that you are keeping someone from me who wants to come to me.” Her tone was icy.

  “Connla was killed, well and proper,” said Finvarra. “His head was cut off cleanly and rolled some distance from his body. When the battle was over I had to hunt for it, in fact, to reunite the two and give him the good news of our victory. But he had refused to die.”

  Blathine turned to stare at Connla, who suddenly felt guilty over this apparent breach of etiquette. “I do not think I was dead,” he murmured. “I cannot be certain, having never been dead before. But—”

  “But he could still see and hear and think, by his own admission,” Finvarra interrupted. “So he was not dead. Fiachna’s claim to have slain him is negated and the whole issue of the war is clouded.”

  “Beheading is definitely terminal,” Blathine told Connla in a slow voice, looking at him hard.

  “So I always thought,” he assured her.

  “Why did you not die?”

  He searched his memory, trying to find an answer for her. “When the sword bit through my neck, I thought surely I was dead. Then—then a sort of strength seemed to come to me, from somewhere. And I found myself having a strange conversation with an ant about life and death. The ant claimed one does not die as long as one is being remembered—”

  “—and loved,” Blathine finished for him. “That is how it is with mortals, Finvarra! I see what has happened here. Someone in the world from which I brought Connla Fiery Hair is still thinking about him and loving him.”

  Finvarra was displeased. “We cannot allow it. His people should have forgotten him long ago. Just how long has he been with us, Blathine ... in mortal time?”

  The fairy woman wrinkled her brow. “I am no good at sums,” she said. “But it has been many seasons. More than that; many years, I am certain. All those who knew him are old now.”

  Connla was shocked at her words. No time had passed! He had only been in the Isles of the Blest for this one radiant day, a day without night or weariness. How could she possibly claim that years had elapsed back home on the Hill of Usna?

  “My father, Conn of the Hundred Battles,” he asked eagerly. “Is he still alive?”

  The expression on Blathine’s lovely face changed to one of annoyance. “How would I know?”

  “Can you not ... work some magic? See him? You used to be able to see me, did you not?”

  “I did. I could. But why should I? What has he to do with you now? He is an old man and you are young. You will always be young in the Isles of the Blest. Your existence goes on here with us. What happens to him does not concern you anymore.”

  Connla thought of the ant, hurrying to get back to its colony, where its only life was one of hard and probably thankless labor. Yet the colony was its life.

  “I would know of my people,” he said aloud.

  “Perhaps you should,” Finvarra agreed. “They are obviously thinking of you, so they are concerned in some way, Blathine.”

  She thrust out her lower lip, as ripe and red as the sweetest of cherries. “They just want to take him from me, that is why they keep interfering. We have only to wait a little longer and they will all be dead and leave us alone.”

  Connla said, “My mother is dead, but she has not deserted me.”

  “I did not desert you,” Blathine reminded him. “Is she more precious to you than I am?”

  “No one is more precious to me than you are,” Connla said hastily. “But she is my mother. Do you not feel such ties with your own mothers?” As he asked his question, he looked from Blathine’s face to that of Finvarra, but all he received in return were blank stares.

  Then he remembered. Since arriving in the fairy realm he had seen no children.

  “You do have mothers?”

  Blathine and Finvarra looked at each other.

  “We do,” Finvarra said at last. “Or did. Long ago. But we live so long, we drift away from one another and form new groups, make new friendships ... we have not been children, any of us, for a very long time.”

  Now they were speaking of time. Connla grasped the familiar concept eagerly. “How long? How long ago were you born? And are children ever born here any more? If so, when?” Once he began asking the questions, he could not stop. He recalled Blathine’s early comment about needing no children for replacement, since no one died.

  The king of the fairies stroked his jaw reflectively. “The past is a haze,” he said. “The future is a mist. On the Isles of the Blest we see the Now, and that only. As for children, we occasionally have a few; a very few, just for the novelty of it, because the new ones bring such brightness with them. But birth is a most rare event among us.”

  “You and I could have children, then,” Connla suggested to Blathine.

  “A woman of the Sidhe and a mortal man? It has been done,” she admitted. “But not by me. And I certainly would not consider having children with someone who defied our laws!” she added with a startling swiftness, bringing the subject back to its original point.

  Finvarra nodded. “You speak wisely. You might find a child blooming in an unfolding flower, but if this Fiery Hair were its father, who can say how it would behave? We cannot welcome rebels into our land. There are enough here already,” he murmured darkly.

  “Connla, if you would stay here with me, you will have to become one of us in all possible ways,” Blathine said. “That includes giving up your ties with the other world, the mortal world.”

  “I did not seek to keep them,” he protested. “It just happened.”

  “Then we will make it un-happen,” Finvarra said with determination. “We will work a great magic upon you so that no memory of the Hill of Usna or your people is left in you. We will separate you from your past as cleanly as if we made the cut with a blue sword.”

  Connla felt a faint shiver run up his spine. “Can you do this?” He did not like the idea of having his past cut away. He had chosen the Isles of the Blest of his own free will, he thought; that should be enough. He should not have to suffer the destruction of his memory, for there were bright places in that memory, moments of happiness and joy he did not want to lose.

  He had not counted those moments among his treasures until just now, but suddenly they seemed very valuable and he clung to them with a fierce determination.

  By the set of Connla’s jaw, Finvarra recognized the degree of the mortal man’s resi
stance. The king of the Sidhe sighed. “Why could you not have brought us someone easier, Blathine?”

  “I did not want someone easier. Someone pliable and weak would never stand out in a crowd, but always melt into it. This one shone like a separate sun from the first moment I saw him and I wanted him and no other.”

  Her words filled Connla’s heart with joy, for surely she was expressing a powerful love for him. But if to enjoy that love meant giving up all memory of other loves, of his parents, his homeland...

  “You would forget all the pain you ever knew,” Blathine whispered in his ear, her voice sweet enough to make stones weep. “You would never again be tormented with visions of a wicker basket burning on the Hill of Fires. No sadness would linger in your thoughts, no grief, no sense of loss. With all ties cut and your memory wiped away, you would awaken as we are—in a realm where every morn is springtime.”

  She ran her tiny, thrilling hands up Connla’s arm to his shoulder, then bestowed the tenderest of caresses upon his face and throat. He felt a blush burn up his neck and into his cheeks. Finvarra was watching.

  “Complete happiness is what we are offering you, Connla,” the king of the fairy folk said. “You have only to agree to receive it. Mortals live out their brief lives and go to their graves dreaming of something that lies within your grasp, always feeling slightly cheated because they have never felt what you can feel forevermore.”

  “Forevermore,” echoed Blathine. “And it costs so little.”

  “Passage must always be paid,” Connla said, remembering the words Blathine had spoken to him on their journey here.

  Finvarra nodded. “Indeed. But you will find this a pleasant payment. We must begin the sorceries at once, however. Just say that you agree and it will be done so smoothly, so easily, you will feel nothing.” He smiled. The king of the Sidhe had a smile as bright as stars, as compelling as suns. When he smiled, his beauty was so dazzling Connla had to turn his head away.

  And in the moment when he turned his head away he saw that he now stood in the center of a crowd.

  The Sidhe had gathered around him in a circle many men deep. As variegated and brightly hued as a garden of flowers, they pressed in upon Connla. Each face he saw was beautiful in its own way. Some were fair, some were dark; some were plump and pink-cheeked, others were lean-featured and finely sculpted. This one had the visage of a fox, but with a merry grin. That one resembled a sea-aster growing in some salt marsh, with deep purple eyes and a mop of yellow hair atop a graceful stem of body. A third, draped in gauzy splendor, might almost have been a butterfly. But each was beautiful.

  Smooth-faced, blank-eyed, beautiful.

  Blank-eyed.

  Connla drew in a swift breath.

  In no fairy face did he catch a glimpse of memory. As effortlessly as flowers, the Sidhe lived for Now.

  Finvarra stepped closer. “Just say you agree,” he repeated.

  Why do they need my agreement? Connla found himself wondering. Or perhaps the idea had not come from his own head at all, but from a random whisper he heard on the wind. A whisper of a familiar voice, calling to him over a great distance, asking him to question.

  It might have been his mother’s voice. It might have been his imagination. But he listened.

  “We will not force you,” Blathine said, overhearing his thoughts. “It is not our way. You must choose, Connla, for yourself. You must make this final choice.”

  “Why do you call this a final choice?”

  Her laughter rippled like a brook skipping over stones. “Because once you are totally joined with us you will never have to make any more decisions. Does a tree make decisions? Do flowers?”

  “Or reeds in a lake?” Connla interposed.

  She gave him a penetrating look. “Even so. They have no choices to make because they have surrendered themselves to the natural world. So it is with us; so it will be with you. Just this one last, human decision, and you are free from all that forevermore.”

  Forevermore, whispered the voice on the wind.

  “See what you gain in return!” cried Finvarra. With a gesture, the fairy king scattered his people. They immediately fell to enjoying themselves in the countless ways of the Sidhe, all within Connla’s sight. Some formed musical groups, playing harps and lyres and pipes in irresistible harmony. One band of men brought forth trumpets of some shiny metal more white than silver, more bright than gold, and blew resonant notes that tugged at the very roots of Connla’s soul.

  Captured by the music, others began to dance. Fairy women in gowns as light as gossamer whirled and spun, holding out their delicate hands to entice various partners. Their hair drifted on the soft air as if it lay on water. Their round limbs were unfailingly graceful, and the joy they brought to the dance almost swept Connla’s heart away.

  Beyond musicians and dancers, another party was spreading what appeared to be a east. “But I thought there was no need for eating here...” Connla said.

  “Eating can be enjoyed as pure pleasure, and in that way we sometimes celebrate the delights of food,” Blathine told him. “See what has been prepared! Pitchers of honey-wine await us, and platters heaped with fruits unlike any you have seen before. When we wish to dine, we take our choice from the rarest products of the earth, since distance is no problem for us. And we have bakers who know how to turn grain into cakes so delicious and sweet they begin to melt as soon as your fingers touch them. The most delicate of foods await our pleasure, Connla. Do you not hunger for them?”

  To his surprise, he did. The appetite he had not felt since he ate the hare on the island rose up in him as if bidden by Blathine’s words, and his mouth watered. He saw the fairy folk spreading soft coverlets upon the grass and sitting down, passing the food from one to another, eating, laughing, kissing crumbs from the lips of their neighbors.

  “I am hungry,” he admitted.

  “We will eat, then,” Blathine assured him. “As soon as you agree.”

  “Agree?” He frowned; he had almost forgotten.

  “To the sorcery for severing you from your past,” Blathine said. “It must be done soon, Fiery Hair, or there is much you will be denied.” She gave him a long-lidded, lazy look, and he remembered the bower where he had held her in his arms. He remembered every detail of it, every sensation, every giving and taking.

  “I want to!” he said. “Ah, Blathine, I want to so much. But it is as if ... as if invisible hands are holding me back...” He tried to put all his longing in his eyes so she could see it.

  She stood so close to him her soft breath was in his nostrils. Setting one gentle hand on either side of his face, she searched his eyes with her own. Then she turned toward Finvarra.

  Her voice was sad as she said, “My Connla Fiery Hair is not quite ready.”

  “Mortals are stupid and stubborn,” Finvarra said. “I cannot understand them. They seem determined to hurt themselves.”

  Blathine nodded. “It is so. But we will not give up on this one, for he is too dear to me.”

  She turned back to Connla. “We will dance with the dancers,” she told him, “and sing with the singers. And when you are ready to eat the feast which has been prepared for you in my kingdom, you will tell me.”

  He understood her meaning. His first bite of food would be his agreement. No sooner had he realized this than his treacherous stomach began growling, demanding to be fed.

  Connla gritted his teeth.

  Blathine did not press the point, but took his hand and led him toward the nearest group of dancers.

  The music caught his feet like a net. Without any thought on his part, his feet took up the steps of the dance as if they had always known them; as if the fairies’ dance were an ancient pattern he had been born knowing.

  “I almost caught a glimpse of him just then!” Coran the Druid cried.

  “Where, where?” Conn of the Hundred Battles shouldered forward, taking up the druid’s space, trying to see with his eyes.

  At the old chie
ftain’s command, all those who had loved his son had assembled at the Hill of Usna. The druid had formed them into a circle, like the ancient circles of standing stones that dotted the land and still vibrated with long-ago powers. Holding hands and chanting. Connla’s friends had tried to summon a vision of him. And because it was not natural for them to stand perfectly still for a long period of time, they had begun to move their feet in a rhythm, a step; a dance.

  “There, there he is!” the druid shouted exultantly, waving the ash stick he always carried.

  A mist seemed to rise on the Hill of Usna, filling the center of the ring of people. In that mist there were other dancers, seen dimly at first; then growing clearer. But these dancers were moving with wild abandon, weaving in and out as if they were making a tapestry of the color and grace of their bodies.

  Among them, clearly visible for one heartbeat, was an exceptionally tall figure with hair the color of flame.

  “Connla, my son!” old Hundred Battles yelled with all his might.

  In the heat of the dance, Connla paused. At once, Blathine tugged at his arm, urging him to move closer to her and make his steps more lively. Still he hesitated. “I thought I heard someone call me,” he said.

  “You heard nothing. Wind in the trees, perhaps.”

  “Not wind. A voice, a voice I know...”

  “You see? Memories are haunting you again and making you sad. Be wise, my Connla, and make yourself happy by renouncing your past forever! Come with me now to the feast and let me feed you some of our fine soft bread made with currants. I will hold it to your lips with my own fingers, just so.” She bunched her dainty little fingertips together and, laughing, held them up to his mouth, trying to distract him. The musicians played louder and the dancers spun more gaily, trying to make Connla forget the voice he had heard. But he would not forget.

  “He is fading, he is gone,” Hundred Battles mourned. “Bring him back, Coran!”