The woman said in clear Latin, "Arthur will drown both you witches."
"What are those words she says?" Elana asked me.
"Latin. She talks Latin." Elana had never heard Merlin's Human songs or ancient stories.
"Does she understand what we say?"
"I doubt it."
"Ah." Elana looked down at the now unconscious form with a new sort of interest. If the woman could not talk to us or under stand us, she was not even of Human value; she was a wounded wild creature we had found. Elana suggested, "We could eat her."
I said, "Leave her to Mellias." He was the hunter.
But I laid hold of her loose braid and pulled from it three bronze strands, each finer than the finest wool thread ever seen. These I braided together and thrust into my pouch. Elana asked me why I did this. I could only shrug. Sometimes my spirit told me to do things, and I did them, not knowing why.
I rose. Elana crouched a moment more, looking up at me, and I noticed how like she looked to our victim: the same pale skin (though not as pale), light hair, tall build. It was not the first time I had thought Elana might have Human blood.
She stood up, holding the cut pieces of ribbon and girdle. We wrapped our invisible cloaks carefully about us and stepped away, moving from shadow to shadow, breaking no twig.
Behind us, the tall white woman in the white tunic lay heaped under the apple tree, breathing as though asleep. She was no threat to us or Apple Island or the Fey forest. When Mellias finished with her he would make sure of that.
Flitting past Counsel Oak I heard his leaves murmur a name: Arthur.
I had heard that name before, long ago. I had heard it whispered in the night when Merlin and the Lady thought I slept. I had heard it muttered in the courtyard as I braided reeds on the doorstone. And once, coming swiftly into the courtyard, I had heard the Lady say it clear as a cuckoo. "Arthur! A good thing it was we gave the sword to your Arthur."
I paused on the trail, grasping at memories like dreams. This name Arthur…Bear Man?…conjured up a Human hero, an armed giant astride a huge horse, one of whom Merlin might sing a Latin lay.
Arthur will drown both you witches.
Most likely Arthur was a common kingdom name?
Under my shirt, Otter Mellias's crystal warmed my breast.
Smiling, Otter Mellias stepped into my path.
Mellias was smaller than I, thinner, sprightlier. He wore quiet dun deerskin, invisible as our cloaks, but sunlight woke new winking lights in his braid, at his neck, wrists, and ankles. I had never seen gems before, but I knew that these were gems, and I knew whose they had been.
I said coldly, "Mellias, that Human back there. What will you do with her?"
He smiled at me close-mouthed, shielding his fierce canines. Well I knew that Mellias liked me. I thought I might like him, too, at the next Flowering Moon dance. I was feeling ready, maybe…almost… for my first lover.
"Niviene!" He murmured, "You are jealous of my bronze girl."
I shrugged this off. "She is the first Human to set foot here since the Romans. The Lady will not be pleased."
"The Lady is like an Old One, from before the Humans came. I respect her magic endlessly. But she is my friend. Almost like you, Niviene. So do not fear for me."
I recoiled as though from a rearing adder. "Fear! I fear for none, Mellias—least of all for you!"
"Good. You have no heart, Niviene. One of these days your power will rival the Lady's." Mellias looked past me to Elana. "What do you think, will Niviene dance with me when the moon flowers?"
Elana, behind me, must have answered him with her fingers. He laughed. "One of you girls, think of me! I think of you all the time. When you see the moon rise in flower, when you hear drum and pipe, remember me. Either one of you. Both of you." But Mellias's brown eyes clung to mine.
For the space of a haughty sigh I looked away and Mellias vanished.
I said to Elana, "Let's go home."
Lady Villa is built of earth's bones; rock. Yet not rock as it lies in earth, but what the Lady called "dressed rock." As a child I thought it must certainly have been formed by magic. I could not believe that Humans had raised it, stone by stone. But so the Lady said.
I cried, "Humans have no magic !"
"Be not so sure, Niviene. Remember, Merlin is half Human. Human druids and witches work magic. Then too, the strongest power in the world is a Human mystery of which we Fey are ignorant."
I stared up at her.
"Well. Every creature has its own mystery. But as for this villa, Humans built it as they usually build, with hands and iron tools."
Disbelieving, I looked around at the thick stone walls, the flagged floors on which I had learned to walk. "Those villagers out there in the kingdom did this with their hands?"
"Their great grandfathers did. But it was not their idea. They built it for the Romans who lived here then."
"Where are these Romans now?"
"They went away. Then the forest moved in, and the boar and the bear and the Fey. Nothing remains here now of the Romans but this villa and the apple trees."
For many years no one had sheltered in the villa. It stood out, stark white stone against the green or dun island. Looking across the lake, neither friend nor foe could fail to see it. So the villa housed bats, owls, and adders till slowly, gently, it sank back into the forest. Kind vines crawled over it. Lichens greened the harsh white stone. Apple saplings and alders crowded against its walls. And one day the Lady, heavy with child—with me!—looked across the lake and saw the villa only because she knew it was there.
Hah! The perfect birthing den! Sheltered, defensible, and nearly invisible now. She heaved herself into the nearest coracle, poled across, and bore me just within the entrance.
There at the entrance a pebble picture is embedded in the floor. A graceful girl carries a basket among tall, foreign flowers. Her back is turned to us. Her light brown hair—like Elana's—flows down her green gown. Her feet are bare. Thoughtfully she touches a flower as she would touch a friend.
I was born on this picture. I learned to walk on it, and named my colors from it. I think my brother Lugh and I must be the only Fey children in the world who ever saw a picture—and such a strange picture, at that—of a foreign girl with foreign flowers. I think this picture prepared both of us for our unusual destinies.
I named the girl in the picture Dana. After "Mama," "Dana" was the first word I said. Later I asked the Lady why Dana and her flowers had no auras.
We stood together in the shadowed entry, looking down at Dana by our feet. The Lady said, "The artist who created her was Human."
"Human!" My childish ideas about Humans danced in confusion.
"Most Humans do not see auras. Many Fey do not."
I stared up at the Lady. At that time—now long, long ago—she looked very much as I look now. Though she seemed tall to my young eyes, in truth she was smaller than Mellias; her grave, quiet features were delicately molded as if from brown river-clay. Her black braid swung below her hip. At home in the villa she wore graceful linen gowns that Merlin brought from afar.
Her aura swirled slowly around her, a gently sparkling silver mist like sunny, windless water. It filled the dim entry where we stood; we were as though drowned in it, as if we stood at the bottom of a deep pool. I had no idea then that my mother's aura was extraordinary. I had not yet seen the usual narrow, muddy auras that herald small minds, or minds domineered by bodies—except, of course, for wild creatures. I knew the slow, green pulse of plant auras; the flashing, vanishing brilliance of bird or fish auras; and I had glimpsed from afar the wider, steadier auras of bear and deer. But I thought then that every thinking creature—Fey or Human— would naturally walk in a broad, bright mist like the Lady, like Merlin. If Lugh's aura was orange and narrow and sometimes muddy, well, that was because he was just a young boy. He, and his aura, would surely grow.
Not to see auras would be half blindness. How would you know what to expect of a
living being? How could you walk past it, or turn your back on it? You could not know what it felt, what it might do.
The Lady laughed softly down into my upturned face. "Niviene, your aura leaps like a flame! You love to learn."
I still love to learn.
As the lone, and often lonely, girl-child of Apple Island I imagined the girl in the floor picture, Dana, and chattered to her, till she rose up off the floor, turned and showed me her homely, gentle face. She drifted with me through the villa, a secondary ghost, a thought-form I myself projected. There were other spirits there.
At dusk I might meet a bent old woman straining under burdens. If I met her at the north end of the villa her burdens would be piles of clothes: laundry or sewing. At the south end she would struggle with a heavy sack of peas or beans.
In the courtyard I sometimes glimpsed a merry little boy about my own age. He pulled a little wheeled cart over the paving stones, or lined up dim carved figures on the rim of the dead fountain. Once I saw him jump about in the fountain, splashing invisible water.
Unlike the exhausted old woman, the boy seemed to notice me. He would pause in his play to stare in my direction. I tried to talk to him, but the Lady warned me.
"Do not encourage ghosts, Niviene. Give them no power."
"I want to play with him!"
"You are lonely. One of these days you will go free in the forest and meet living friends."
Doubtfully, I stared up into the Lady's calm, brown face. I knew a little about this "going free in the forest." My brother had told me somewhat on his rare, secret visits.
"Why secret?" I asked him once in sunshine, beside the fountain.
"Gods, Niv, the others mustn't know! They'd get sick, laughing at me." Graphically, Lugh acted out how sick "they" would get.
"Why?"
"Look, I'm not…I'm supposed to…I'm practically grown up, Niv."
"You are not." Lugh stood a head taller than me. I had to look up to him. But I had to look up to everyone, even my ghostfriend Dana.
"You know, I guard you. I keep dragons and Humans out of the forest. And I take care of myself. I hunt and steal for me. I find my night shelter, for me. I'm grown up, Niv."
I find my night shelter, for me. I thought of the Lady's bearskin cloak, wrapped around us both, of her warmth along my back, her arm over me, me curled into her warm body all the way.
I decided and declared, "I won't go free in the forest! Not ever."
"You'll have to," Lugh assured me.
"Not me."
"Everyone does. Even you."
But I decided there and then that I would always stay in Lady Villa. And in a sense, I always have.
After my birth the Lady stayed. The villa made a fine den. Sunshine poured into the protected courtyard. Not all the roofs leaked rain. You could sleep dry on a stormy night, warm in winter. And we were left entirely alone.
The Fey always keep a respectful distance, one from another. But with the Lady they kept also a fearful distance.
Humans fear us Fey and leave us very much alone. They call us "the Good Folk," though we are not good to them; and "the Fair Folk," though we are dark. They never speak our name aloud: "Fey."
In much the same way, the mainland Fey feared my mother. They called her "the Lady," never by her name, Nimway. Their fishing coracles stayed well out from the island. Only those in great need sought her healings and prophecies. Till slippery Otter Mellias raised his neighboring cabin, Apple Island belonged strictly to her, Lugh, and me. Apple Island and Lady Villa trapped us and transformed us into a unit resembling a Human family, in which a growing child would grow a feeling heart.
The Lady's friend Merlin, a half-Human mage, was almost a part of this "family." He would come and stay, sometimes for a season, and then return to the outside kingdom.
Because he was half Human, Merlin had once had a family. He had even known his Fey father. I thought this stranger than his magic. From birth I had watched the Lady raise wind and call wild creatures, but I knew nothing of my father, or any other relative.
Merlin once whittled me a small whistle shaped like a thrush. Whittling, he told me, "My mother was Human. My father was Fey."
I stared from the wooden thrush to his intent face. The Human mother I could imagine: shared bed-cloak, warm breasts—a giant version of my own mother. But the Fey father…
So Merlin had been a child, like me?
At that time his hair and Human-style beard were brown, his thin shoulders straight. The slim white fingers that whittled my thrush were not of different lengths, like the Lady's, or Lugh's. Four of them were of one length, like mine. And they were all equally dexterous. All my young life I had watched those fingers shape oak cakes, scale fish, or sweep across harp strings. I loved Merlin's pale hands, and sometimes I flexed my own brown, even-lengthed fingers and tried tricks with them; but mine were less talented, stiffer, than Merlin's.
I asked him, "Were you like me, Merlin?"
He glanced a smile at me across the thrush-shaped whistle. "Yes, and no. I was small. I lived with my mother, and people left us alone. But…" He paused to study the whistle, over, around, and under.
"But what, Merlin?"
"I was Human, and I had power."
I understood. Small Merlin had magical talent. He dreamed true and talked with ghosts, as I could not talk with the merry little boy in the courtyard.
I said, "I see ghosts."
"You have power too. Very certainly, you have power, and will have more."
"Will I grow up magic?"
"I see you growing up powerful. You are Nimway's daughter, after all."
"I wish I knew my father."
"You Fey do not need fathers, Niv."
"How did you know your father?"
"We used to run off to the woods to see him. Always near midsummer time, when the Goddess smiles and Humans forget to scowl." Merlin handed me the finished whistle. "What does this wood tell your hands?"
My small hands cradled the thrush-whistle. "It says, Rain…" I pressed it to my cheek. "It loves rain, Merlin, and sun…but something's been eating it. It doesn't feel good."
"That's why I cut that branch out."
"But it's still alive."
"Not for long. See, you can watch the aura fade."
In truth, the faint green aura faded a bit farther as I watched.
A shadow moved over my head. I felt the Lady's vibrant presence behind me. Merlin said to her, "Small Niviene has power."
She murmured, "Naturally. She, at least, is mine."
After this, Merlin and the Lady trained me daily. Mage children learn the warts-off spell first of all, because it works so easily. I didn't know what warts were, but I learned the spell; and when Lugh next paddled home across the lake, amazingly, he had warts, and I cured them myself.
I learned to scry, first in water, then in fire. Soon I could scry all of Apple Island in a bowl of water: where basket reeds were thickest; how ripe were the beechnuts; in what bramble thicket a rabbit hid. I learned to cast a veil of silver mist around myself to keep wolf or bear at a distance. I learned to rub and warm my palms and set kindling on fire. ("You set a fire only in a fireplace," the Lady reminded me often. Even Fey children often play with fire.)
I learned, also, that Lugh could do none of these things. "Not even warts?"
"Not even warts, Niv. I've just got no magic."
Lugh had other gifts, Human-type gifts of body, heart, and energy. When he found me playing idly with an adder friend, he hurled a stone and killed it. No talk. No questions. Just action.
I looked up, surprised, slowly angering. "Why?"
"Don't you know these are poisonous?" He held the still-writhing corpse by its tail-tip. "Gods, he's as long as my arm! You don't play with these fellows, Niv."
"I do." I knew how to get along with them.
"Not any more. I'll tell."
"Hah! Go ahead. Tell. The Lady doesn't mind."
But Merlin did. "That's cal
led tempting the Gods. A good thing it is that you can deal with adders and do not fear them. But there is no need to court them."
Merlin leaned and took my small face in gentle hands. "You are here in the world for some reason, Niviene. Use your power and knowledge to protect yourself, not to take foolish risks."
I growled, "I'll give Lugh warts for telling on me!"
Merlin's smile smoothed my threat away. "Be glad that you, alone among the Fey, have a brother who loves you."
Merlin's Harp Page 2
