He knew the power at least that drove him— he believed it was the same as drove Dubhain, and, well knowing how fickle and touchy the bright Sidhe were, and how treacherous it might be to have them put any wish, good or ill, on this house, he wanted most of all to avoid conversation with the young man and not to account for themselves or their travels.
So he wrapped himself in the blanket, leaned forward without a word to the youth,disposed his clothing beside Dubhain’s and sank back again, snuggled against the fire-warmed stones. He was sore and aching from his exertions, for all Dubhain’s ministrations; and now that the shivers were all out of him, now that the youth had given up pointing swords at him, and now that he had the young couple’s leftover supper in his stomach, he found himself slipping headlong toward the dreadful edge of sleep.
He did not want that. He did not trust the place that far. The youth had sat down in a chair at the table, watching them without a word— he watched them a long, long while like that, as if he believed they might perform some miraculous transformation like the Sidhe in the fables; and Caith leaned his head back against the stones, feigning sleep, eyes mostly shut.
The young man was never, at the same time, far from the sheathed sword he had rested by the door, while Firinne remained modestly behind her curtain, tucked in for the night, Caith supposed.
Beside him, Dubhain stretched like a cat and began a soft snoring— the Sidhe could indeed sleep, if it pleased them, and his own pleasure pleased Dubhain, at any time, the wretch; but no Sidhe had to snore, for what Caith knew, and what he knew was considerable. Dubhain was being mortal for the night, noisily, as it were, laying the business on thick as butter, and Caith yearned to shake him until he rattled; but, oh, Dubhain would never take that quietly, no, Dubhain would wake the house and the nearest neighbors with his contrition, so Caith bore with it, and tried not to listen to it, or to think how much he longed for sleep... and dared not have it.
The youth never moved, and there was no sound from behind the curtain, while the storm spattered the shutters and a leak from the thatch started plunking rhythmically into a bucket set, no longer oddly, between the table and the wall... a tame little leak, a steady one; and another started, which spatted onto the warm stones of the hearth, where the cant of the stones channeled it into the fire. Not a bad roof, it was, and no bugs in the house: the young couple were good householders— Caith approved their industry and the woman’s bread-making, that had not a smidge of grit in it that he had found. Good cheese. Thank the ewe, as well. He began to be comfortable in the house. Folk who set out their bucket when it rained were not slovens, and most bandits were not careful housekeepers... no bandits that he had met, at least.
So peace to the house, Caith wished them, and tried to have a kindly feeling toward the young man trying so hard to keep himself awake, and to be both hospitable and fearsome. The lad had not his practice at sitting watch, that was soon clear, and had not an uneasy conscience, more to the mark, to keep him awake. The lad’s head began to nod, sank and jerked up by several turns, over a long while.
Then, brave lad, he quietly gathered up the sword from beside him, wrapped his arms about it for a prop and stayed awake half of another hour, before he nodded off.
Caith rested his eyes, that much he dared, Dubhain being beside him; but sleep tonight he still dared not, not at all sure he could keep from nightmares after the fright he had had in the woods, and not wanting to alarm the house, please the Badbh, with his terrors and his foolish outcries in his sleep, for pride’s sake, if nothing else.
So he lay listening to one storm pass, and heard its sister move in a little time later, not unusual for the mountain heights, where one cloud and another could sail along behind a ridge and surprise a traveler who thought the weather fine and safe. He heard the thunder walk above the roof and listened to the wind shriek around the eaves— heard the thumping of something against the house, one of the hanging stones that would hold down the thatch, he decided, swinging on its rope against the stone wall.
Meanwhile the water plunked on into the bucket and onto the hearth, and that little stream ran red and gold to its meeting with the fire, that ruffled and thumped in the wind down the chimney. Another ill-tempered spatter of rain struck the door and the shutters, but the sister-storm moved on, too, across the deep glen and away, muttering.
Caith stirred to feed the fire from the woodstack from time to time— the lad by the door was oblivious by now— and Dubhain had given up on snoring, truly asleep, it might be. The fire and the night was all his own, and he settled back in quiet and comfort.
A man should be easy in such a house. Even he could be, for a little while before the dawn. And he let himself slip further than he had thought he would dare, just to the very edge of slumber. The young householder had stirred once, and tucked his sword closer, perhaps trying a while more to keep awake, but he posed no threat, Caith decided, and by small moments, and especially on the edge of morning, he let himself slip over the edge of sleep.
Immediately he was sorry, because in his dream he found himself in a woods. A sidh existed here, as one such stood in Teile. Each was a mound within the woods, each supported two uprights and a slanted stone to rest above it. They were passages to each other, and they were the same. When he looked at it he did not know what land he was in, whether looking in or looking out. That was how it confused a man.
He was alarmed, for it was very seldom his dreams brought him to this sight, the heart of either woods, and always it betokened some meeting. He wanted to return, now, to the cottage fireside, but when he tried to do that in his dream, faery was all about him, a mazy woods the secrets to which he did not know, and out of which, against the Sidhe’s will, he could never escape, nor prevent what waited for him to witness.
A pond and a stream existed just the other side of the woods, in the midst of a broad meadow, and he drifted toward that meadow as if every path now bent itself to bring him here... as perhaps it must. He came to the bank of what seemed an ordinary stream, but when he stood on it and looked down, the view in that stream was starry vastness and a giddy fall to forever awaiting any failing of balance on the dew-wet grass. It might be death to fall into it. It might be a passage more fearful than the sidh offered him. A mortal willing to stand on the very edge of this stream and wish with all his heart would see in that starry gulf anything in the mortal realm or in faery.
And he had no dearth of foolish wishes. He stood there, at risk of that unthinkable fall, and as in all his other dreams he immediately wished for that vision that hurt him most— a pleasant glen far to the north, a boy growing, and a man becoming, and a woman he might easily have loved. It threatened him not for what it was, which was everything it should be. It threatened him because he was forevermore a creature of the Sidhe, and this was the hold they had on him: that they could damn him to destroy this place by his very longing for it, and by his desires, and by his mortal weakness. The boy who might have been his brother, the young man who might have been his friend, the woman who might have been his wife— with the little gift he had of the Sight, he had surely Seen what he would bring on them if he had his own way— and when he so much as dreamed, as now, of possessing that place regardless of the danger, the leaves of faery turned black when he touched them, the grass smoked under his feet, the golden fruit turned to worms and corruption under his fingers.
He waked without passing back through the sidh, and knew that tears were running on his face. He wiped his arm across his eyes, felt the rough blanket of a stranger’s generosity wrapped about him, and opened his eyes on a place which for the moment, he could not recall— as he could not recall, most alarmingly, what might be that shadow suddenly looming against the fire.
But it was only Firinne, bending and offering him a cup of milk, her pale hair a halo against the firelight. He held his blanket about him and took the cup. Outside, a lark was singing in precious foolishness. And his heart beat in a longing as deadly for the peace of
this place as it was for the one in his dreams.
“Thank you,” he whispered. Waking was their secret, between them. Beside him Dubhain either slept or wandered free in that way trustful Sidhe might. Ceannann drowsed in his chair with his sword still in his arms, his fair head fallen against it.
“Would you more?” Firinne asked, when he had drunk half the cup, and he was not sure she meant the milk.
Prudently he shook his head, only looking at her— an exile could do that much, surely, and a good wife could forgive a stranger his moment’s foolishness. But she was staring at him, too, gazing into his eyes longer than any giving of a cup warranted, and he wondered if he had altogether mistaken her meaning. The fire crackled with a new-laid stick of wood and the heat burned his shoulder, but he could not readily find the will to move, conscious as he was suddenly of his nakedness, and his position as a guest under this roof. For a moment he imagined himself staying in this place a day or so, and seeing how matters would go between them. Perhaps she was unhappy in this desolate place. Perhaps in a day or so he would find Firinne alone... and ask her what her thoughts were, or enjoy what favor a neglected wife was willing to give, if that was the story here, and if that was what the Sidhe had brought him here to do, and if that was why the dream of the sidh.
She had no shyness toward him, that was plain; he was not, he flattered himself, an unhandsome man. She smelled of spice and flowers, of grass and wood-smoke, she smelled of home and hearth and welcome, like the woman he loved in Teile, except, to his possessing Firinne, there existed only the one barrier—
Ceannann stirred from sleep. The chair thumped level on the floor, the very crack of judgement, and Firinne flinched away.
As did he. “I’ll dress,” he said, setting the cup beside him on the stones. He had already been fool enough for one day. Adultery might lie easier on a man’s conscience than murder, but it so easily led to murders, and if the Sidhe thought to lead another mac Sliabhan into that old story, by the Badbh, they could find themselves another goat. This one was for the open sky and the hills, before he deserved the fate the Sidhe had tried to give him. This one was for escaping this house as quickly as his legs could carry him, if there was still escape possible from what the Sidhe designed... for he feared, he feared with the strength of premonition that he had indeed just grazed past some darkness that touched on the Sidhe’s business, if it was not the business of that beast downslope, and he could not be out of this young couple’s house quickly enough.
He reached out a discreet arm to retrieve his clothing, modest as any maiden, and, having recaptured his shirt, he nudged Dubhain sharply in the ribs, and passed him the half-drained cup as Dubhain lifted his head. “Drink, rascal, and thank this good wife.”
This he said as Ceannann watched him from the corner.
“Thank ye,” Dubhain said in all solemnity, sat up, leaning on one hand, and drained the cup to the last. Then he stood up with his blanket gathered about him, returned the cup to Firinne and bowed with extravagant courtesy. “Thank ye indeed, woman, and again, and the third time.”
The color came and went in Firinne’s face at that fey saying. She retreated in confusion toward the door, saying that she had to see to the livestock, and lifted the bar as Caith hastily pulled on his shirt. He intended now to dress and have them out the door while she was out of the house and about the chores— and before Ceannann could ask him any close questions.
But Firinne stopped cold in that doorway. Her hands rose up before her and fluttered down helplessly to her sides. “Oh,” she said, and “Oh,” and: “Oh, Ceannann, it’s taken the fence, oh, the poor things, Lugh defend us!”
She rushed out into the wet yard and Ceannann ran after her, sword in hand. Caith gathered himself to his feet in sickened surmise what the poor things might be, and what manner of creature might have taken a fence down last night.
“Damn,” he said under his breath, and to Dubhain: “I warned you, I said we should sleep in the shed. Our luck has struck them, and they did not deserve it, Dubhain, they in no wise deserved this.”
Dubhain hit him in the ribs. “Hae the sight of her addled your wits, man? Come, dress, that lad has a sword. Will ye contest him mother-naked? They will be in no good mind toward us.”
Caith belted his plaid about him in haste, not pausing for his shoes— caught up his sheathed sword on his way to the door to see what the damage might be, and whether there was help to give.
“Caith,” Dubhain protested, and got before him in the doorway.
But there was no need of his hurrying and no help he could give the couple, who stood amid the overthrown rails of the sheep pen. Rain-hammered tufts of wool lay everywhere, hung in sodden clumps from the railings, made islands in the puddles that lay like lakes about, where something heavy had trod.
“I was awake!” Ceannann was protesting to Firinne, “I was awake the night long, it never could have come so quietly. They’ve burst the pen, that’s all, they’ve but lost a bit of hide breaking the fences, they’re gone over the hill—”
”No!” Firinne cried when he seemed determined to go that way looking for them; she caught his sleeve and held him with both her hands. “No, no, and no!”
“And how shall we live without them? What shall we do?” Ceannann prised her hands from his shirt and she took hold again. “Leave be, Firinne, they’ll be lost and cold, I know them, I know where to hunt them!”
“In the belly of that beast,” Caith said, walking out into the yard despite Dubhain’s objections, and pointed with his sheathed sword toward the deep glen. Hope hurt when it was vain, and there was all too much of wool about, with the railings scattered wider than any escaping goat or sheep could fling them. “The beast from the woods came in the dark and the thunder, man, it came in the height of the storm, and all of us did sleep last night, never deceive yourself. I saw you.”
“Fool,” whispered Dubhain, and turned about to face him, close at his shoulder. But it was said. Ceannann came striding toward them, his own sword in hand, and Ceannann lifted that sword and swept it in a gesture around the glen at wide.
“Are you hers? Has she sent you? Is it to swords now, and now that we have no hope and no livelihood, you come to murder us in our beds?”
“Boy.” Caith held wide his hands, putting his still-sheathed sword clearly far from his drawing-hand, despite Dubhain’s anxious pull at his sleeve. “I outran that thing last night, and no one sent me. I bring you no harm at my own wish, the gods know. You and your wife have done us nothing in the wide world but good, and I swear to you I know nothing at all of any woman who might have sent us— I know nothing of her, nor ever wish to know.”
“‘Know nothing of her!’ It could never pass our wards before!”
“Forgive me. I’ll be on my way, in the absence of welcome, I and my lad.” Caith held his hand up, trying to disengage. “I offer ye no quarrel, for any reason.”
“You’re no chance travelers. What brought you here? What do you require of us?”
“Naught but the freedom to cross your yard, naught but to walk along the ridge there, and away from your land. Sheep-stealers we are not, lad, and if we were bent on mischief, we were inside to do it while you slept.”
“Liar!”
“Have done!” He turned to go in, saw a flash of metal in the tail of his eye and spun back, his sword up crosswise. Sheath clashed with naked blade, and he shoved Ceannann back angrily and hard. “Have done, I say! I’d spit you, boy, and that would be worse to this— wife— of yours than a dozen goats in that thing’s belly. — Tell him, girl!”
“Please!” cried Firinne, trying to set herself between Ceannann and him. “Please! Take our food and go, go away, please! Oh, Ceannann, don’t, don’t. It’s mad, they had nothing to do with it at all, they said it was abroad last night, it was the thunder covered it—”
”It drew about it its ain silence,” said Dubhain. “For cup of milk, for hearth and bread I return ye truth. It crept up after us,
it cast a silence about itself so that it had no need of thunder, but closer than the pens it durst not come, because of the wards, the rowan boughs.” Dubhain swept a hand toward the door and window. “Me, ye welcomed. Had it rapped sae politely as we, would ye have guested it sae fair as us and fed it milk and fine bread?”
“Lugh save us!” Firinne said, and made a warding-sign against the Eye, while Ceannann backed away, the sword sinking in his hand.
“Faery,” said Ceannann. “They are Sidhe!”
“Only he,” said Caith, putting Dubhain behind him. “You need have no fear of him. You gave him a cup and he took it. Peace be on your house.”
He turned his back to their aggrieved faces and, with the assurance Dubhain’s eye was on them, went back inside to put on his stockings and his shoes and put his shirt to rights, Dubhain holding them from the doorway the while.
And it did occur to him, while he was inside alone, to raid the stores the couple had hanging from the rafters and steal food for their next meal. Of clothing Dubhain owned no more than he stood in, kilt and shirt, feet all bare, never a crumb of provisions to his name, never a thought to a next meal— while he himself walked the world little richer, except the sword and his thorn-torn cloak.
Nor was he ever doomed to be richer, Caith thought with a sigh, slinging the cloak about his shoulders, and taking a last look about the table and the cup sitting there— they had not a cup or a plate to their name, either, and the young freeholders had several. A cup would be very welcome, on cold mornings, and so would a pan to cook with, twice so. A meal for the evening would go very well.
But he sighed and shook his head, and walked out the door with Dubhain in close attendance, Dubhain trying to plead something with him, but he was not listening. His eyes were on Ceannann and Firinne standing in their ruined sheepfold, the young couple looking at the ground around about, as if they hoped even yet they might find some track, some evidence of an escape.
Faery Moon Page 11
