by Liam Reese
Old Haega was startled by Croenin’s bluntness, but knew that what was coming was inevitable. She walked to the far side of her cottage, where a trunk sat beneath a thick quilt. Lifting the quilt and dropping it on the floor, she stirred up a good bit of dust, and waved it away before opening the trunk’s lid. Out of it she pulled a large, black candle and a large pane of glass. She brought both to her kitchen table and beckoned Croenin over, setting up the pane in front of the candle and lighting it. She and her grandson stood close together, as they both stared into the candle, Croenin in confusion and his grandmother with intent. The pane of glass was curved, magnifying the flame before their eyes. Before he could ask what was happening, Croenin began to see images in the flames. He stared, mouth agape as he saw a hallway with stone walls lined with torches. The image faded and in its place the image of a large bedroom appeared. As the image began to become clearer, Croenin could make out three figures. In the corner of the bedroom stood a tall, dark-skinned man, looking somewhere outside of what the flame showed. Sitting so that only her profile could be seen on the large, plush canopy bed at the center of the room was a young woman with olive skin and long, wavy black hair. One of her hands played with the red curtain of the bed while the other played with her necklace. Her hair was being combed and braided by a slight young girl with wild curls. Croenin leaned closer to the flame to get a better look at her, knowing it was the sister he had lost.
He held his breath and watched the tiny figure in the flame as she worked, grey eyes downcast and focused. She was dressed like a lady in a long, green and silver brocade gown with rings on her fingers. Her thin fingers worked quickly, braiding the young, darker-skinned woman’s hair and wrapping the braids around each other in an elaborate updo. When finished, she stepped back and bowed, looking to the man in the corner, who followed her out of the range of the candle flame. When she disappeared from view, the image began to fade, leaving only the dancing flame. Croenin stepped back and looked at Old Haega.
“What was that?” He asked quietly, still staring into the candle’s flickering flame. Old Haega drew back, dragging the pane of glass from in front of the candle.
“Fire scrying, looking at things elsewhere using the energy of a flame.” She tapped her fingers on the glass, looking intently into her grandson’s eyes.
“How can you do that?” He whispered, eyes widening. “Can my mother do it?”
“No, she can not,” she held up her hand, stopping him from interrupting as he opened his mouth to ask another question. “And I do not know if you can do it either. Sit down and I shall tell you a bit about our family.” She walked back to the chairs in front of the fireplace, sitting in the wooden chair once more and waiting for Croenin to sit in the large chair across from her.
“Before the Age of Oryn, when the Sidhe ruled large swaths of these lands and Man lived in darkness and ignorance, the Sidhe held the knowledge of magic, and blood filled with it.” Old Haega took a deep breath and continued. “That is the principal difference between them and humans, after all. They can change their own appearance at will, as well as the appearance of all around them. They can fly through the air like the birds of the sky, make trees walk as people do, form gold and precious stones from plain pebbles on the ground…anything they fancy they can bring into being. And many ran wild with their powers, tormenting humans for fun, driving them further and further behind fortifications. The walls you see around our village? They are all that remain of the larger walls that were built to keep the Sidhe away from those who could not defend themselves. The larger walls were filled with Oryn rather than clay like our current walls. Yet, some Sidhe still managed to slip through, unaffected by the Oryn.”
“What does this have to do with our family?” Croenin interrupted.
“It has everything to do with our family, for one of those who slipped past the wall stole my grandmother away from her family.”
“And she escaped from them?” Croenin’s eyes widened.
“That she did. She was a clever one, and made her way back to her family. Yet, they did not want to take her back in.” She looked into the flames of the fireplace, deep in thought.
“Why wouldn’t they take her back? Weren’t they happy to see she was alive?” Croenin asked, frowning.
“She was with child,” Old Haega responded, sighing. “The child of the Sidhe who stole her away.”
Her grandson gasped at that. He hadn’t known it was possible for a Sidhe and a human to have a child. He had never seen a Sidhe, after all, and always imagined them as monsters by the meager descriptions he had heard from the other villagers. He knew their eyes were large, fingers long, skin stark white or varying earthen colors. He had always imagined them as tall, thin, skeletal monsters and couldn’t imagine what a cross between a human and such a creature would look like. Old Haega cleared her throat, bringing her grandson back into the moment, and continued her story.
“While her family wanted nothing to do with her, a young village lad, who was smitten with her before she was taken, offered to marry her. She accepted, and was able to pretend the child born to her was her husband’s, as it looked like any other child. The trouble only came later on, as the child began to grow older. He was queer, almost perpetually silent and serious, and the other children avoided him as if by instinct. As he matured and began to speak more, it became obvious that he held knowledge that was impossible for him to have.”
What do you mean?” Croenin asked as she paused in her story.
“He would tell the village elders when they would die, would know how many calves were to be born in a certain year, and what accidents would befall a person in their life. He would tell these things in the way most people would tell someone they expected a good crop in the coming season, except his predictions always came true. As soon as he came of age, he was forced to leave his village, and he wandered for quite some time, before joining the king’s army and fought the Sidhe with Oryn weapons that burned his hands nearly to the bone.” She stared wistfully into the fire. “Though I did not know about that until later. I was only told of his anger and bravery, though I now know that his anger was more at himself, anger at having been born caught between two peoples, two worlds. But, drive back the Sidhe he did, knowing in ways no other man could, where they hid themselves as the war dragged on. For this reason, they ignored his strangeness, the fact that he did not seem to age as he should, remaining young even as they grew into middle age.” She ignored her grandson’s look of amazement and continued to stare at the fire. “At the war’s end, he continued to wander for quite some time before he fell in love with a girl just as strange as him. They made an odd couple, him dark and brooding, scarred from battle, and she bubbly and light, beautiful as the dawn, I was told.” She sighed deeply here, looking up at her grandson. “But I would not know. I never met my mother.” Old Haega stopped here, and Croenin waited for her to continue. Yet, she remained silent. He cleared his throat.
“What does this have to do with the prophecy or with me and my sister?” He glanced at the fire and then back at his grandmother.
“My father was the Sidhe-blooded man who made the prophecy. It is from him I learned to see things in the fire, and it is he who told me to give the leather pouch to Raena, telling me that she would return it to me when the time was right. He was never wrong, my father,” she said, squeezing her old, gnarled hands into fists. Old Haega and her grandson were quiet for quite some time, each brooding. Haega thought about her father, the old man always fiddling with the bandages on his hands, never speaking to her unless to warn her of some inevitable danger or to alert her to some strange ability. She wished he were here now. He had prepared her for this moment her entire life, yet she did not feel ready. She looked at her grandson, who was pondering the implications of having Sidhe blood, of being inhuman. He realized this was most likely what made him part of the ominous prophecy, cementing his role as the would-be savior of man. He felt his grandmother watching him and looked u
p at her.
“The scar on my hand,” he began, fingering the patch on his palm in a way that reminded Old Haega of her father. She sighed, knowing the pain that would come to her grandson soon.
“It happened when you were a baby. Your father, excited to have a son, made you a small rattle from oryn. As soon as you held it, we all smelled your flesh burn. You screamed for hours afterward. Your mother was frantic, not knowing why such a thing would happen. I was forced to tell her what I told you.”
“What did she say?”
“She said nothing for a while, truthfully. Nothing until your sister was born.” She ran a hand over her face. “She knew. She knew that you two would fulfill the prophecy from the first minute your sister was born, just as I did. Though, she did not want to believe it. She did not believe it until you and your sister rushed in from playing with the other children one day, you yelling that she had stepped into a fairy circle.”
Suddenly, that day came rushing back to Croenin. He remembered the fear that gripped his stomach as he watched his younger sister dancing in circle of flowers. He remembered the long, moonlit walk he took with his mother and her throwing him into the mushroom circle in the forest. He remembered how he and his sister entered Old Haega’s cottage together for the last time.
“Where is my sister?” he whispered.
“Not where I put her. She is moving faster than I imagined she would,” she mumbled, as if speaking to herself. She glanced at her grandson’s confused face and continued. “I had placed her with a family a few villages over, an old cobbler and his wife who had lost every child born to them. How she has come to enter this place, I do not know. No doubt she has been scheming for quite some time to improve her station in life.”
“Does she… does she remember our childhood? Or is she like I was before coming here?” Croenin looked down and frowned.
“If she has managed to go from cobbler’s daughter to a servant in such a place, she no doubt remembers,” Old Haega answered gravely.
“But how? How could she get her memory back without help?”
“Because she has always been one step ahead of me. Do you remember what happened just after I asked you to pick up the small bundle on the table?” Old Haega stood then, returning to the trunk in the corner of the cottage. She dug through items Croenin could not see for a few minutes, before removing that same bundle that was his last memory of that fateful day. “Your mother lied to you,” she said, bringing the bundle back to him. “It did not contain herbs.” She looked at the bundle of cloth wistfully, and stretched out her hand, offering it to her grandson. “Open it. You will know what to do once you see it.”
Croenin looked at the bundle warily, not trusting it. His grandmother looked at him earnestly, and he took it from her. He glanced back up at her as he placed the little bundle on his lap. It was surprisingly heavy, even though it was only the size of his hand. Croenin began to unwrap the strips of cloth surrounding it, glancing back up at his grandmother every now and then. She wasn’t looking at him but kept her eyes focused on the little parcel on top of her grandson’s legs. It was wrapped up like an onion, layers of cloth strips wrapped around it beneath the thick white square of cloth on the outermost layer.
Finally, Croenin unwrapped the last layer, revealing a tiny, impossibly thin dagger. He could not tell what it was made of as he held it up to see it better in the light of the fire. It looked as if it were made of stone, glinting a silvery, almost translucent blue as he turned it over and over in his hands. In the center of the hilt of the dagger was carved a seven-pointed star, and the blade of the dagger held runes Croenin could not decipher. Or could he? As he stared longer at the runes, he began to hear whispers too quiet to understand. He looked wildly around the room and the whispers stopped. However, they began again once he looked back at the runes etched into the blade.
The heart lies where there is still hope. Croenin dropped the dagger, bolting upright. He looked, eyes wide, at his grandmother.
“You hear it, then? He heard it too.” Was all she said.
Croenin almost asked who “he” was before he realized she was talking about her father. He bent to pick up the knife, using the white cloth that had surrounded it and the other strips to handle it, and breathing a sigh of relief when the barrier didn’t allow the whispers to return. Wrapping the dagger back up with the strips of cloth, Croenin looked questioningly at his grandmother.
“You said I would know what to do,” he began. “If anything, I’m more conf—” He stopped himself, and then he knew. It was with this strange, stone dagger that he would kill his sister. His grandmother watched the understanding spread across his face, the burden of what he was born to do settling across his features once more.
“Yes, you have the tool. Now you must find her.” Haega leaned forward and took the bundle from her grandson’s hands, placing it on the floor. She clasped Croenin’s hands. “Return to me tomorrow. I have more scrying to do to confirm my theory.” She stood, pulling Croenin up with her. “I am sorry to put such a load on you, my boy. I know that what you have learned here today is heavy, but I will be your help in all this.”
They embraced, and Croenin returned to the home he had shared with his mother and father since the day he was born. That night was quite different than the past few years they had shared together. Croenin’s parents looked almost sheepish as he walked through the door, no doubt feeling terrible guilt at how they had treated their son when their memories of his early childhood had been erased. Dinner that night was a quiet and incredibly awkward affair, he and his parents mumbling occasionally about their day. They went their separate ways after that, Croenin to his bed and his parents to theirs, trying to ignore the tension that made their small cottage seem even smaller.
The next morning, Croenin awoke early, just as the sun was rising to a faint wailing sound. He jumped out of bed, trying to discern where the sound was coming from. Throwing on pants and rushing outside, he found that the wailing was growing louder, being joined by sounds of crying and screams. Croenin ran now, following the sounds, heart thumping in his chest and limbs growing shaky with fear. Suddenly, he was pulled roughly to a halt and came face to face with Olond, a farmer.
“Don’t take a step further, lad. It’s not a pretty scene. Go back home and wait for your parents to return.” He warned. Croenin shook free of him, refusing to heed his words and wondering why his parents had left their cottage so early. He broke into a run once more, anxiety growing in his stomach as the screaming grew louder. His stomach dropped as he realized it was coming from Old Haega’s cottage and tried to see what was happening.
His vision was blocked by the crowd surrounding it, the women in the crowd crying and howling as they stared at something he could not see. The men in the crowd were silent, some with tears streaming down their faces. Croenin pushed his way through and almost retched at the sight in front of him. His vision went white as he stared at his grandmother’s mangled body. A hush fell over the crowd as he walked toward her, and he looked back, confused at the villagers’ angry faces. His father pushed his way to the front of the crowd, as his mother tried to hold him back, quietly begging him not to make a scene.
“You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?” His father’s voice broke with sadness, even as his anger bubbled forth. Croenin stared at him in shock, starting to stammer, but his father interrupted him. “She was trying to protect us! To keep the prophecy from happening! And you couldn’t help yourself, could you? You had to be a hero? I know we haven’t treated you well these past few years, boy, but couldn’t you have endured it just a while longer?” Tears began to fall from his eyes as he glanced at Old Haega’s body. Croenin didn’t understand. How could this have been his fault? His father saw that he didn’t know what was happening, and he turned, ignoring his wife and walking back into the crowd to fetch Raena.
“Read that,” he said, pointing at the odd markings in blood marking the side of Old Haega’s cottage. Raen
a shuddered, looking up at Croenin’s father with tear-stained cheeks. He pushed her slightly, urging her to follow his order. She clasped her hands together, looking pitiful, and Croenin felt for her. He knew how it was to feel helpless at his father’s hands. Raena took a few steps forward, squinting at the markings.
“Come and find me, brother.” She read, “Let us play once more.”
