I’d sung to flatter them, aiding and abetting their self-deceiving. To flatter them stupid, for perhaps that way, I’d thought, I might be able to strike some new bargain. I hoped some inspiration would come to me, trusting the music, and the muse in my head.
But now I found I sang no more of that. I had begun instead to sing of what I saw lying there, putrid, in their eyes.
Colum had taken his chance, praising the golden-haired woman. Now I took mine. We neither of us had a choice. The poet’s right—and curse.
Over and over. Not able to stop. I sang about those dreadful things within them. Till the beauty was all mingled with the stench and terror, and the filth hammered down into the beauty. And there they were, those hellgirls, with their fox-skins lying on the ground, sitting elbow to elbow, listening in a trance.
Now was the hour, like the last time in the legend, for my best friend, or my brother, to stand below us on the slope and cast the spear. Up through arms and hearts and breasts and necks. After which he must come striding with the beheading sword to finish our task. But I have no one like that. All my lovers and kin are under the hollow hills. All I keep is the past, and a Speir-Bhan up in the gallery of my mind. Plus my guitar, which is not a harp.
Yet, singing the horror to them, I saw them change, those three on the hill. Not from fox to girl, but from beast to human. I saw their eyes sink like six red suns covered by white skies of lids and thunder-burning clouds of lashes. Then they got up. They stared at me, but now with their closed eyes.
I could never have stopped what I was at. The music and the voice came out of me, and I hung up in the air and watched it all.
In that manner, I saw how they began, the tears that slipped out under their lids. They were ghastly tears, as the eyes were ghastly, the color of old, sick blood. Yet tears they were. I heard them, too, maidens whispering, but like dead leaves on a dying tree. They spoke of their father, some demon-lord, I didn’t properly catch his name—Artach, or something like that—they spoke of a childhood they had never had, of a mother they had never seen, of wicked things done to them, of misery, and a life like night without stars or a lamp. There was nothing in their voices to match the tears. No sorrow. They had no self-pity, being pitiless, but even so, most evils spring from other evils done, and they were no different in that.
Down their faces fled the soiled tears, then the talk stopped, and in unhuman screams they began their emotionless lament. They rushed about the hill, snatching and scratching at each other, yet avoiding the spot where I sat as if it would scald them. They shrieked now like foxes, now like owls—and now, worst of all—like children in fear, perhaps the very ones they had preyed on. But they were not afraid, not unhappy—it, too, was worse, they were damned, and they knew it.
I couldn’t end my song. On and on it went. It made me ache, my hands bleed, throat all gravel, and it broke me down. I could do no other than play and sing, and witness them as they screamed and ran in circles, weeping.
Then, oh then, I understood. I had done the work of two. I had tranced them with music, and with music also I had pierced their hearts of steel, and now, by music, too, I took their reason, and they lost their heads.
If there had ever been a bargain at the whim of the Fair Folk, or if demons had only got the scent of Colum, and so of me, these three had no further use for it. They did not care now that they were alive, or what they were.Did not even care to be girls, or foxes that slaughtered.
The wind came up the hill. It smelled of wheat and moonlight, and furled them up like the dead leaves they were. They blew away with it, down the slopes, over the tree-hung heights and valleys of my imagined Ireland. And on the ground they left the fox-skins lying.
Only when their three figures were gone from my sight into unmeasured distance, did the song leave me. I’m glad to say I remember not a word of it. If I did I would, trust me, never write it down.
My numb hands fell off the guitar, which they had covered with my blood.
At last, in the silence under the sinking moon, I dared to pick them up, those flaccid, forgotten skins. They were, all three, briefly like that cape of my grandmother’s, which had so scared me in my fourth year, and with the same demonic, frightened eyes of leaden glass. And then, they fell apart to nothing.
The moon though, as she set, blinked, yellow-blue.
I WAS ON THE TUBE, of course. It was very crowded for a Thursday night.My hands were clean and healed,my throat not raw. The Speir-Bhan was shambling down the carriage, an unsober old hag with dirty hair. She plumped herself beside me and said, in ringing tones that made most of the carriage look up at her, “ ’Ere, luv, tell us when we gets up Holland Park.”
She smelled of port. I explained she was on the wrong tube line.
Philosophically if copiously she swore, and at the next stop, hic-cuping, she left the train.
Months later, not even on a night of full moon, I dreamed I put on the skin of a black fox, and ran over the hills of a vague, perhapsIreland.And though I avoided killing anything be it a sheep or a man, a rabbit or a baby, with my teeth, yet I learned from this dream the lesson of my success, why Colum had not succeeded, maybe why the heroes had. It wasn’t only music, but also the spear and the sword. Not only courage, or honor, but unkindness. Not only talent, but the emptiness with which talent pays for itself. It is, you see, the mirror that reflects best the flaws it is shown in another.
For them, they never came near me again. Nor she, the Speir-Bhan, though I will suppose she’s there, up there in my brain, where they generally sit.
As for Colum’s book, I never read another sentence, not even his leather accounts. I burned it that autumn on a handy neighborhood bonfire. A shame, but there.
For the mortal foxes that steal now and then into the gardens at the back of the flats in Branch Road, I remain one of those that feeds them, dog food and brown bread. Their coats are russet, their eyes the color of whisky, the uisge bheatha,Water of Life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The legend of Aeritech’s Daughters and the heroes with harp and spear is to be found in Irish myth of the twelfth century and earlier; Colum’s song, and many other references, are based on Irish sources, poetry and prose, between the ninth and sixteenth centuries. The idea of a Speir Bhean, or Aisling, is still current.
I would like to thank Beryl Alltimes for helping to clear the way to this, and the Wolf ’s Head and Vixen Morris for undoubted inspiration, for invaluable guidance, Barbara Levick of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, and especially, for his insights on the Gaelic, Professor Thomas Charles-Edwards of Jesus College, Oxford. However, all errors, liberties taken, and flights of fancy are mine.
AS IS OBVIOUS from the dedication of this tale, I do indeed have Irish blood (though less than that of the narratrix, just as I am quite a few years older), and am very proud of my Irish connection. That side of the family hails from what I call the Ghost Coast—the west of Ireland—County Clare. After this, of course, fiction parts from fact, but not entirely. You must judge what is true and what fantasy—as so must I.
Tanith Lee 2002
Troubles
BY JANE YOLEN AND ADAM STEMPLE
The pub stood on the corner of a residential neighborhood like a dirty old man in a raincoat. A decrepit yellow sign advertised, IRSH MUIC NIGHTLY, the letters that weren’t missing altogether sagging toward the ground.
I approached the pub cautiously, as I did any new steading, and sniffed the entrance thoroughly before opening the door.
The doorman was old, squat, wrinkled, and toadlike, much as I would appear if I had not taken precautions. He asked me for identification but, as I had none, I waved a hand at him, and we spoke no more of it.
The front door emptied into a well-lit room that had only a long bar and a few pool players mulling about. I didn’t see the One I was supposed to meet. But there was no hurry. My kind have infinite patience.
Stepping past the doorman, I went immediately to the bar. The pub was bigge
r on the inside than I had suspected. The long mahogany bar split the room into two healthy sections: well lit with billiards and a jukebox on one side, dim and dirty with a live band on the other.
“Pint of Guinness,” I said to the bearded man behind the bar, and he shuffled away to fetch it.
When he returned with my drink, and I had waved at his request for payment, I moved to the side with the band.
As I scanned the room, I sniffed my drink. They really have no clue how to pour it in this country. But the magic of the black nectar can survive far worse than a long boat ride and an unsteady pour and still be better than most of the swill they peddle in this young land. I took a deep draught and felt almost at home. I scanned the room again.
This time I spotted him, cloaked in darkness, near the low stage. He was absorbing the energy of the band. And there was a fair amount to absorb. They were a three-piece of hairy ruffians, two of them crouched over guitars that seemed too small for their bulk, and one, his right wrist wrapped tight in an Ace bandage, pounding manfully on a bodhran. They finished “The Boys of the Old Brigade” and ripped into a speedy version of “The Merry Ploughboy,” stopping in the middle of every chorus for the crowd to shout, “Fuck the Queen!”
Good Republican stuff, if you go for that. But far too loud for me.
I caught the One’s attention by blowing a breath of the Old Country toward him. He turned slowly, raised his head, his eyes like lamplights, and motioned me to join him. Shaking my head, I pointed to the band, then my ears. He mimed earplugs. I could have silenced the band, but magic in new surrounds always leaks out around the edges. No need alerting other Powers beforetime. So, in return, I gestured to the front of the bar, but he shook his head.
If we were at an impasse already, it did not bode well for our negotiations. A few more rounds of gestures, and finally he got up, walking toward me, then past me, his cloak still keeping him invisible to the mortals.
I followed him to a stairway in the far corner of the bar, a stairway that I hadn’t seen before. We walked down into the basement, which, surprisingly, had a full-length bocce court. Quickly, I scanned the room for signs of Lars or incubo, those familiar spirits of the Latium, but there were none. I smiled to myself. Perfect!
Turning, he dropped the spell of darkness and grinned at my genuine surprise. There, underground, closer to his natural habitat, he grew more substantial. His skin had less pallor, his hair was long and golden, as were his eyes. They glowed with power. He was no mere underling sent to parley but a true prince of the Unseelie Court. I could not decide whether this was a good thing or no.
“Tiocfaidh ar la,” he said in Gaelic. His voice was gravel.
“Our day will come,” I agreed, careful not to put too strong a stress on the first word. Then I pulled up a chair that was made gray as a toadstool by the dim light, and sat.Negotiations may take a minute or a millennium, but no one ever gets through them on his feet. If this violated protocol, I did not care. Prince or no prince, I was going to sit.
Above our heads, the thump-thud-thump of the band and its fans was a bit annoying. But at least it was no longer a dagger in the ear.
“Well,” I said.
“Well,” he answered.
We were talking. It was a beginning.
COMING TO THE UNTIED STATES, as we call it in Eire, takes more than courage for any of the Sidhe. Crossing that amount of water— by boat or by air—is difficult and painful. Yet airplanes are full of us on every flight. The reason is simple. The world’s power center is now here, and no longer on our green isle. If we wish to continue to be a part of the world’s destiny, the Long Passage must be endured.
And the Long Negotiations, as tricky a passage as the ocean,must be endured as well. Or so said my superiors who had sent me over.
So there was I, in the dark bottom of a dirty pub, a band of mock Irishmen above me pounding out the old songs with execrable accents and no sense of history.
I cast one baleful eye at the ceiling and began to wave my hand.
My opposite number touched my thumb, halted me. “We need them,” he said, “for cover.” His own accent was subtly altered, having lived so long here among them. I detected a bit of the Viking in it, a hint of Thor. The twin cities are full of trolls.
About that touch. I do not allow many to touch me and live. And certainly not those of the Unseelie Court.Not even a prince. But these negotiations were about the fate of all the Fair Folk, not just some minor border dispute between the courts. This was about the continuing existence of the race of the Sidhe. For we are few and humanity many, and even old enemies within the Fey now must unite if we are to remain in this world and under the hill. Or so say my masters.
I pulled my hand down.Muttered under my breath. Pictured my companion’s body flayed and bleeding at my feet. The image calmed me.
The band played on, now singing something quieter, a tune I didn’t recognize. Hardly Irish at all.
“Well,” he said.
“Well,” I answered.
The negotiations continued.
Before either of us could clarify these opening gambits, I felt another presence enter the bar like a cold shiver down the spine that ended with a tickle in the loins.
Bean Sidhe, I thought. Bean Chaointe. The wailing woman. Squall crow.
My companion felt her, too, and looked alarmed. His eyes widened, and he stood, starting toward the stairs. But he was not as quick as I. A prince he might be, but I had learned my trade from Cuchulainn so that I might be sharp in both the faerie world and the world of men. Before he got a single step up, I grabbed him and pulled us both away from the stairs. It is no touch if I initiate it.
My back to the wall and my bone knife to his throat, I whispered, “Why does the Washer at the Ford come here?” She was neither Seelie, nor Unseelie, presaging doom and destruction to all she sang, regardless of their house. She was without prejudice.Without mercy. I pressed the knife deeper, and he gave a strangled gasp. It was difficult not to just kill him, to pay him back for that earlier touch.
“I . . . I know not.” His face had turned the white of a winding sheet. No prince of any court likes to be held to the truth. But a bone knife to the great vein is the strongest of persuaders.
What he said smelled like the truth, but I distrust coincidence. It may work in the stories we send out to the world, but in real life it smacks of treachery. I took the knife away from his throat and pushed him toward the stairs.
“Let us go ask her ourselves then,” I said. “The both of us. Together.”
I thought he might turn and rush me. His eyes flared, and for a moment his breath stopped. But my weapon was still in my hand, and he had already tasted my speed. I may look like a toad, but I move like a snake.He thought better of it and gave me the back of his head as he stomped his way up.
I palmed the knife and followed close behind, so close I might be the tail of his coat or the shirt on his shoulders. So close I might be skin of his skin. Negotiations were one thing, but trust him? Never.
I WOULDNOT HAVE THOUGHT IT POSSIBLE, but the club had gotten even louder and smokier in our short time in the basement. The band was lost in an improvisation, fingers flying across their fretboards. One guitarist kept the song nailed in E minor while the other jumped from mode to mode, willy-nilly, with no respect for key or meter. The drummer, now playing acoustic bass, followed the lead guitarist closely, his right foot tapping on the offbeats.When they broke back into the chorus, I recognized the song.
It was Scottish.
I gave a mental spit of disgust. Scots are only secondhand Irishmen, and I guessed the band knew no difference. All the while, I continued looking for the Bean Sidhe.
Of course, I was expecting to see her usual flowing white robes and streaming hair, and for a moment was flummoxed when I did not spot her. And then, suddenly, I espied her on the small dance floor, oblivious to our presence. She wore a black half shirt emblazoned with the band’s logo and jeans so tight, I w
ondered she could move at all. But move she did. She whirled and wiggled, shook and shimmied, and half the audience—and not just the male half—watched her hungrily.
I spat for real this time.Not a lot but enough. Enough to keep the bad cess on her and off me.
She never noticed, having eyes only for the three on stage, especially the short blond guitarist with his long hair pulled back in a rat’s tail.
“My mistake,” I said, my voice hoarse with smoke and aggravation and the difficulty of uttering those two particular words. Sheath ing my knife, I added, “Apparently, the Washer sees something in these noise-makers that I do not.”
My companion, though still white with past rage, now seemed willing to forget about my violence to his person for the good of the negotiations. His eyes glowed once again, but a mellower gold.
“I have heard them before,” he said,meaning the band, their banner proclaiming them to be the Tim Malloys, a name that meant nothing to me. “Too loud, but they have talent. And they are good Republicans all. Supporters of the cause.” His eyes held a hint of green.
So he was a true believer then, a member of the black-or-white club, the all-or-nothing brigade, the my-side-ever-and-fuck-yours-to-Hell crew.Why any of us should care so deeply about mortal politics was beyond me. But I knew—for my masters had told me when I asked—that there was precedent for this.Why, the Sidhe had played a part in human warfare since the Battle of Clontarf near Dublin in 1014. No time at all in faerie terms, but centuries to the humans.
The Tim Malloys finished their Scottish song with an unbelievably cacophonous final chord, and the crowd squealed with glee.
“Happy Beltane all you pagan bastards!” shouted the big rhythm guitarist.
Is it really Beltane? I thought in surprise. I was not a great one for keeping time and hadn’t realized it was May Eve. Why would my superiors send me to negotiate on the eve of one of the three great festivals, when traditionally we of the daoine maithe would be fighting in great mobs, though all the humans would see was a great whirlwind lifting the thatch off a roof? Something was not right.
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