Spirit of the Mist

by O'Kerry Janeen

  Muriel folded her hands around the stems of her bouquet of flowers and stared down at them. “I have a water mirror. Do you know what that is?”

  He nodded slowly. “I have heard of such a thing. A dish of the finest bronze, or even gold, filled with pure water and placed where the moon can light it.”

  “Some of the most powerful work solely by the light of the stars. But mine is a basin of bronze that takes the cold water of the sea and stirs to life when the moon shines down. It shows me things that are important…things that are worth knowing.”

  “So your water mirror revealed my boat coming ashore?”

  “Your little boat did not come ashore, Brendan. It was headed straight for the cliffs.”

  “Then…how…”

  “I called out to two of my friends of the sea. If I am able to draw strongly enough on the power of the water, they will hear me, and do my bidding if they can. Last night I asked them to bring your boat from the cliffs to the beach…and so they did.”

  “Dolphins,” he whispered. “Dolphins brought me ashore.”

  “They did. And I am grateful for their help.”

  “As am I.” He smiled. “Then your powers are not limited to the mirror.”

  “They are not.” Now it was her turn to walk a few steps to look out over the sea.

  Brendan followed, and she could feel the heat of his presence as he moved close behind her. “Please, Lady Muriel,” he said quietly. “Tell me about these powers of yours.”

  She took a deep breath, then wrapped her cloak more closely around her shoulders against the sudden chill of the wind. “It is the power of water,” she said after a moment. “Especially the water—and the creatures—of the sea. Only rarely will any other sort of water respond to me. By far, the greatest power lies with the sea.”

  He was so close that she could feel the blaze of his body at her back, on her side. “My own powers are those of sword and spear,” he said. “I have spent little time on the subtler arts. But I do know that a water mirror shows nothing to most who try to use it. Only someone who possesses an inborn magic and the skill of long practice can see the images that the mirror displays.”

  Brendan paused. Somehow she was aware that he was smiling. “I knew that you were special when I looked up and saw you reaching for me where I lay in that wreck of a boat…but now I see that you are far more special than I knew. How is it that you come to have the power of the sea and its creatures, and the wisdom to use a water mirror?”

  Muriel turned a little, facing the wind and keeping watch on Brendan from the corner of her eye. “My mother had this power,” she said. “My two sisters had it, too. I am simply one more of my family who has a little of the old magic.”

  He nodded again, and looked closely at her, but still she kept her gaze out on the distant white-capped waves. “You said that they had this power, as if they no longer do,” he said. “You already spoke to me of your mother’s passing. But what of your sisters?”

  Now she gave him a sudden stare. There was genuine curiosity in his blue and brown eyes, and sympathy in his gently curving mouth. “You are quite right, Brendan. My sisters had this power once, as I do, but no more.”

  “What happened? How is it that the power left them?” She started to speak…and then halted. “Come with me. If you truly want to know, I will introduce you to my sisters…and then you will understand.”

  It took a bit of searching, but at last Muriel found her two sisters. They walked barefoot in the cold, wet sand of the narrow beach, each carrying a basket. They kept their eyes down, searching for small shelled creatures and fresh strands of seaweed with which to fill their baskets, keeping their plain brown and gray skirts lifted clear of the surf.

  As the high gray clouds drifted in from the sea, Brendan paused at the rocks above the shoreline while Muriel went on ahead to greet the other two women.

  “Moreen! Moina!” she called, and the women paused in their work to look up at her.

  He studied them, as he might any attractive women. Both were slender and fair, as Muriel was, with the same noble features and long dark hair. Yet there was something very different about these two.

  It was not just that they were older than Muriel, though it was clear that she was the youngest. Muriel’s hair blew back from her face in shining black waves; theirs hung down their backs in dull, tired braids. Her skin was flushed and fair and vibrant, while their faces looked so pale they were almost gray, as if half the life had been drained away.

  And the eyes… Muriel’s eyes were the deepest blue, and as lively and flashing as the sea on a clear, windy day. But her sisters’ eyes were so quiet, so somber, so gray, that there was scarcely any life in them at all.

  As Muriel stood between the two women, Brendan slowly walked toward them, increasingly curious about the obvious differences between the siblings. Clearly they were related by blood. But what could have happened to cause Muriel to be so changed from her sisters?

  “Moina. Moreen,” said Muriel, placing a hand on the arm of each. “This is Brendan. He is…a guest of the king. He would like to meet my older sisters.”

  Brendan strode to them, standing tall and smiling, and bowed to each one. “It is an honor to meet you, an honor to meet this lady’s sisters.” He glanced from one woman to the next, trying to catch first Moreen’s eye and then Moina’s. “Each of you is as lovely as the other. I would be quite content to set out yet again in my little broken curragh, if it again meant that I would meet Muriel and her sisters.”

  He gave them his warmest smile, but the two women only regarded him with a kind of empty silence. “Our husbands are waiting,” said Moina, with a glance at Muriel.

  “We will leave now,” added Moreen.

  “Of course.” Muriel stepped back to let them go, holding the trailing ends of her rectangular cloak out of the rushing waves. “I will see you both this evening, as always.” She watched them as they walked back up the rocky path to the dun, lifting their heavy baskets with one hand and holding up their long skirts with the other.

  They never looked back, and in a few moments they were gone.

  Brendan turned to Muriel. “What is wrong with them?” he demanded. “Are they truly your sisters?”

  She walked toward him, climbing up on the higher ground toward the rocks. “They are.”

  “Lady Muriel—you are as filled with life and strength and beauty as a young dolphin flying through the surf. But they have none of your vitality, your energy. It is as if all the color of life had faded away and left them empty, somehow. What happened? Have they always been this way?”

  She shook her head, still gazing after them. “They have not. Both were lively young women of excellent wit and unsurpassed beauty—far more beautiful than ever I could hope to be. Moina was a skilled mistress of the water mirror, and Moreen could speak to the creatures of the sea whenever she wished. And they would answer.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Muriel turned to meet his gaze. “They got married.”

  “Married?” Brendan looked up at the two women just as they disappeared over the top of the hill. “I should be surprised if your two older sisters, who would surely have at least some of your beauty and spirit, had not found husbands. But it is clear to see that whatever spirit they had has somehow been drained away from them, taking their beauty with it.” He shook his head, still looking up at the hilltop. “It is a troubling sight. Are you truly telling me that they became this way after they married?”

  “I am.”

  “How is that possible?”

  Muriel folded her hands and walked a few steps past him, away from the sea, looking down at the sand and shells and scattered seaweed as she considered what to say. At last she turned and stood among the rocks, closing her eyes and listening to the rushing of the waves.

  “It has always been so in my family,” she began. “Long ago, so long that none of us knows exactly when, a woman of my family was renowned as one of the
greatest mistresses of magic. The water mirror, command of the creatures of the sea, even some foreknowledge of the future—all these were hers, and more. And though she had such powers, she was a good and noble woman who helped her people when she could and never used her magic to harm anyone.”

  “As you, too, use your magic only to help those who need it.” Brendan smiled, then sat down near Muriel on one of the boulders. “But what of this lady who was your ancestor?”

  Muriel nodded slowly, gathering her thoughts. “She met a man, the story goes, a strong and handsome man, a man whose beauty turned her head and whose voice and words filled her thoughts. She found a stronger magic than her own: the magic of a man who wanted her, a man whom she loved in return.

  “Though he was a stranger, and her father and mother begged her to wait until they better knew his home and family, she would have none of it; she would marry her handsome warrior without delay, fearing that he might find another if she waited. So marry they did, and he took her away to the fortress of his own king, far across the countryside.”

  “So she married in haste,” said Brendan. “Did she not know her husband as well as she thought?”

  “She did not,” answered Muriel. “Her husband was indeed a handsome and powerful man, but he was only a warrior…a fighter and little more. There was no room for gentleness or courtesy in his heart, and only the smallest of kindnesses. He considered his wife to be well treated so long as she had sufficient food and woolen gowns and a cloak to keep the chill out, and the opportunity to share his bed each night—or whenever he chose.”

  “He did not love her,” said Brendan, his voice quiet.

  “He knew nothing of love, and had no care to learn.”

  “Yet she, too, was resourceful and strong, even as you are. Why did she remain with such a man?”

  Muriel smiled a little. “As you might imagine, it was not long before she knew she would have a child. No one could blame any woman for being reluctant to leave her husband at such a time…even a husband who thought of her only as his servant and bed partner, never as the woman he cherished, the woman he loved.

  “She tried to use her magic to persuade him, just a little, to allow something like love to be a part of him…but this only enraged him when he learned what she had done, and he ordered her never to use her magic again.

  “To keep peace in her house—and to protect her child—she agreed to do this, though even now it makes us shake our heads and wonder how she could have come to such a state. Yet nothing is more important to any woman than her children, and in time she found herself the mother of five daughters—daughters who, like herself, had the power to command the sea and the rivers and the rain.

  “Then, one terrible night, her husband and a few of his friends spent the evening with too many skins of blackberry wine and decided to set out for a race in their curraghs. There was a storm offshore and the waves were rising, but they thought it would only add to their sport. And so it was that this woman saw her husband, the father of her five children, smash onto the rocks of the bay in his little leather boat.

  “Without hesitation she ran into the sea and threw herself into the surf, calling on the waves to calm them, calling on the dolphins to come and save her drowning husband. And even as she struggled against the storm and the cold, the waves near the rocks did lessen, and the dolphins did come and lift her husband safely to the shore.

  “But, by the time the creatures could return to rescue her, even her great strength and powerful magic had reached their limits. The waves threw her up on the rocks where the dolphins could not reach her, and it was nearly dawn before the storm lessened enough for the men of Dun Farraige to go and retrieve her broken body from the rocks.

  “To their shock, she still lived, though as they lay her down on the soft sands of the beach and her weeping daughters gathered around, the druids told them she would not be among them for long.

  “With her last breath, my ancestor placed this curse upon her family: that no woman of her line should marry an unworthy man, or else she would find that she no longer had any power of magick at all. None of them, she swore, would end up as she had, wasting her life and her magick on a man who had neither love nor respect for what she was.

  “She commanded her daughters to marry only kings, for she hoped that a king could not hide the mistreatment of his wife the way another man might…and being a king, perhaps he would hold enough truth, enough justice, enough strength on his own, to let him cherish his wife’s magic as much as she herself did. It was the best hope that she could give them.

  “The years passed by. Of her five daughters, the four eldest did not heed their mother’s words. As women so often do, they chose their mates solely with their hearts and not their heads, and married the first men who kindled the flames of attraction within them—men who were not bad, but not good either. They treated their new wives well enough but even so, it was not long before the women found their magic starting to fade.

  “Soon these four young women, once so lively and strong, had no magic at all. They spent the mornings and the evenings of their days bent beneath the weight of endless wooden buckets of water, and the nights suffering at the hands of their husbands.”

  Brendan closed his eyes, and for a moment he turned away. “And they lived out their lives in this way? It is a very sad story.”

  “There is a bit of hope. The youngest daughter, remembering her mother’s words and seeing what had happened to her sisters, did wait until she could be the wife of a king. Her powers remained, as did her beauty and liveliness, and it has been so ever since among the women of my family.

  “Only those who marry kings retain their youth and spirit and powers of magic. The others—those who marry ordinary men, or worse—become as my ancestors became, as my sisters have become.”

  There was a silence between them for a time. Then Brendan stood up and walked around to her, and took hold of one of her hands. Gently touching the side of her face, he said, “Such a fate will never be yours, Lady Muriel. That I can promise you.”

  “I have already promised it to myself,” she said, looking steadily into his blue and brown eyes.

  The wind blew cool and damp as they returned together to the dun, just as the rain began to fall.

  Chapter Five

  When the sun began to set, Muriel walked alone to the edge of the sea and peered up at the sky. It was as clear as an evening was likely to be in Eire, with just a few high clouds drifting off to the north and none to be seen on the western horizon.

  She felt great relief at the simple knowledge that the sky was clear and the nearly full moon would soon be rising, for there was nothing she wanted more right now than to use her water mirror to learn a very important truth.

  There would be no better time than tonight. Muriel dipped her leather bag into the edge of the sea, allowed the rush of the surf to fill it with cold water, and then made her way back over the sand and the rocks until she reached the dun.

  She went into her house and shut the door.

  Alvy snored softly in her warm nest in the rushes, but Muriel had not even tried to sleep. She sat on a bench beside the stone border of the central hearth, working by the glow of the fire and a flat seashell lamp with a little rush light burning in it, trying to pass the time by spinning a basket of fine wool, trying to occupy her mind by thinking that perhaps she would attempt to dye this lot in the purple-blue that was her favorite—the same color as the spring gentian that grew among the rocks—but it was difficult to keep her thoughts on such ordinary things as spinning thread and making pretty gowns.

  The flame in her lamp flickered and went out. It had burned its tallow-soaked reed all the way down to the bed of sand in the shell. Muriel got another reed and used the coals of the fire to light the lamp again.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the window but saw only black sky and stars. Never had the moon traveled so slowly. It dawdled in the east, shining down only on the land, forcing Muri
el to wait and wait as it made its slow journey across the clear night toward the sea.

  Never, it seemed, had she spun such a great amount of thread as she had on this night.

  When her lamp burned out again, she lit another—and when it went dark a third time, she got up and walked to the table beneath the window.

  The high white moon was just beginning to show itself. The black sky around it was sprinkled with bright stars. Muriel reached below the table into the heap of rushes, pulled out her water mirror and her damp leather bag, and poured the seawater into the polished bronze basin.

  Before the water had even settled, she held both hands over it and lowered her fingertips to touch its cool surface. As she did, the moonlight filtered down so that it shone directly through the window, casting a faint blue white glow over the water in the basin.

  She let the water become still around her fingers. Brendan, she thought, closing her eyes for a moment. Brendan.

  Muriel gazed down at the mirror and slowly lifted her hands. The water quivered and then became still, shining in the moon’s glow…and then the images began to form.

  She saw a misty gray cloak in the darkness, moving softly as a tall man made his slow and aimless way around the inner wall of the dun. Apparently she was not the only one who could not sleep this night.

  Muriel waited until she saw him walk out of the shadows and move across an open grassy space, a space that was lit by the radiant moon. Brendan, she thought to him again.

  This time he slowed then stopped.

  She placed her hands beneath the basin, feeling the cold of the seawater through its etched bronze sides. Show me who you are, she said in her mind, and stayed perfectly still as the moon shone down on both him and the water in her mirror.

  In the bowl, a new image formed: Brendan’s face in the summer sunlight, framed by golden brown hair that was well past his shoulders, his one blue eye and one brown eye shining as he laughed. As he swung up onto a big gray horse, Muriel realized that he wore a heavy gold torque at his throat and golden armbands and rings at his wrists and fingers, all gleaming bright in the light of the sun.