Daughter Of The Forest (75 page)

Finbar looked him straight in the eye.
Sometimes the way is dark
.

There is a light within
. Conor put out a hand and touched his brother on the brow, very lightly. Then he turned and put his arms around me, hugging me so tight I could hardly breathe.
Farewell, little owl
.

I fought back tears, for I knew this was his path and he must follow it. He puded the hood over his head, and took up his staff of birch wood, and the three of them went down the path into the forest, and in the space of time it took for a tiny cloud to blow across the sun, they were gone.

The men were deep in discussion one evening after supper. Liam had just returned from a visit to Seamus Redbeard. He had brought back a pair of wolfhound pups, and news. Now they were planning some sort of expedition, which they did not bother explaining to me. Even Red had been drawn in, and I halfheard their words as I sat by the fire, yawning over my mead.

“Seamus is no longer young,” Donal said bluntly. “Has he the will for this, and can he hold on long enough?”

“He won’t be without help.” Liam’s tone was weighty. “We’ll make sure of that. I will not see Eilis’s son raised in a household at enmity with mine.”

“These territories are spread very wide,” Red commented, studying the map unrolled on the table before them. “Don’t you fear that Seamus, given control of the other holding as well as his own, may turn against you in an attempt to claim all for himself?”

“Seamus has always been loyal, and he knows our strength,” Liam replied. “It is in his best interests to oversee Eamonn’s estates until the boy reaches manhood, and to retain Sevenwaters as his ally. He is the child’s grandfather; his claim will be hard for others to challenge.”

I was not sure I wanted to hear anymore. In particular, I knew I did not want to hear exactly what was planned for Eamonn himself, for there seemed to be no place for him in the picture they painted. So I got up and went to light a candle, thinking to retire to bed, and as I looked over toward the main doorway I caught Finbar’s eye just before he slipped away outside. It was very late, and he had no outdoor cloak. And there was that odd, wild look in his eyes. But perhaps he only wanted to be alone, as we all do from time to time. Maybe he would be back soon. I waited, watching the door. Time passed, and the men talked on, and Finbar did not return. At last I could wait no longer. I spoke to Red quietly, not wishing to alarm my father for nothing. The two of us took our cloaks and boots and a lantern, and we set out to follow Finbar’s path.

It had been raining but now the air was clear and damp. His footprints were easy to track on the soft soil, all the way to the secret cove on whose upper bank the small birch tree grew. But my brother was nowhere to be found. We moved up and down the shore for a while, searching by lantern light until the moon emerged from her veil of cloud and cast a cool glow over the forest. On the very edge of tte lake, where the last footprint marked the margin of white sand and clear water, something caught my eye. Red held the lantern and we tent to look more closely. There was my mother’s amulet, with the cord stid intact; and a few shreds of woven fiber, that might have been starwort; and a single white feather. But of Finbar we saw not a trace, not that night, nor the next night, nor from Imbolc to Lugnasad. He had vanished as truly as if he had indeed changed again. But you could not go back. I knew that. I did not believe, as many did, that he had simply walked into the lake and frowned. His tale, I sensed, would te the strangest of all. I only hoped that, one day, I would te shown the truth of it.

They were all leaving. It was ad changing. There was still no word from Diarmid and Cormack, no news of their quest nor of the lady Oonagh or her child, though I knew Liam had sent messengers and made enquiries from Tara to Tirconnell. In my heart I feared for them, and I thought I saw the same fear reflected on my father’s face. And now Padriac was building a boat, down by the lake. We didn’t see much of him, or the lads that were helping him. It was a pity, he said, not to be able to fly, not that he really remembered it, not properly, but he now knew there were wider lands, and farther seas to explore, and that was what he would do, when his craft was ready. He looked at maps, and made charts, and studied old books. I remembered what Finbar had said once about this youngest brother.
He will go far. Farther than any of us
. I had not thought this was what he meant. And he was so young; too young, I told him, to think of sailing away and leaving us.

“I’m older than you,” Padriac pointed out. “And you’re having a baby. That makes me an uncle. I must be old enough.”

For I was, indeed, with child. She would te born near the festival of Meán Fómhair, the autumn equinox; and I knew she would have hair the bright copper of the beech leaves. Red was anxious, with a tendency to fuss over me as if I were some delicate plant to be sheltered from all harm. I laughed at him, but I did as he asked. Spring came and the weather grew balmy, and still there was no news. Then one day my father set out on a journey of his own.

“My boys have not returned,” he said. “It is for me, now, to seek them and to return them safe here, all three. This is my quest,” he added as first one and then another offered to go with him. “In bringing them home I may undo some of the wrongs I have laid on my family. I leave you in good hands, my daughter,” he said, kissing me on the cheek and clasping Red by the arm in a brief, strong grip. “My household is well governed, and my people protected. It is time for me to say my farewells.” He touched his cheek to Liam’s and grasped his hand, and he embraced Padriac, and then he was gone, vanishing down the track in the plain workman’s clothes he had chosen, and I hoped he would not find the trail too cold, where his little son had been taken.

So, one by one, my brothers went away from Sevenwaters. We had always said we would be there one for another, as long as we lived. We had always said that, like the seven streams from which our home took its name, we were all parts of the same whole, and our lives would be interlinked. That nothing would drive us apart, though the greatest distance might separate us. And yet, soon there would be only Liam and me left here. Intense, driven, Liam channeled his energies fiercely into restoring what our father had almost let slip through his fingers. Unsmiling, tireless Liam, working as if possessed, demanded and received an unswerving loyalty from all his people. He had cause to be grateful, grudgingly, for the presence of Lord Hugh in his household now. For it was Red who sorted out the disputes between one settlement and another, while Liam was closeted with Seamus Redbeard discussing the finer points of their strategy. It was Red who saw to the revegetation of the land the lady Oonagh had devastated, explaining to the folk how you must plant before you harvested, and what trees would grow most quickly, to ensure a good supply of usable timber in years to come. It was Red who saw to the cottagers, and brought in new stock, and taught the people how best to mend stone walls and repair thatched roofs. By spring, Liam admitted reluctantly that he didn’t know how we’d managed without him.

At Meán Earraigh, when night equals day and the earth comes forth in her spring raiment after the long chill of winter, I took Red out by the lake and up through the woods to a place long unvisited. Here Father Brien the hermit had lived his solitary, ordered life. Here the children of Sevenwaters had learned strange tongues and secret symbols. Here I had first tended to Simon, and the seeds of one part of my story had been sown. I had explained to Red that this was a place I must go before I could be at ease. A place where an old friend had lived, once.

Red frowned on the idea of my riding forth, fearing harm to me or my unborn child, and agreed to go only if he might carry me before him on his own horse, where, he said, he could keep an eye on me. So we rode leisurely up between the great oaks, and he fell silent at their towering strength, and the sheets of gold that hung from their upper branches, where the sacred herb found its home in their shelter. The day was fair and warm, with a fresh breeze that tossed little clouds about the sky. The cave was empty, its shelves bare, and the tiny cottage deserted. If there had once been a scent of illness and fear over this small home, it was gone, and the slanting sunlight invested cave and cell with a warm stillness that suggested both were waiting, only waiting for another to come and take up tranquil, silent residence. We sat on the rocks under the rowan bushes, and shared the water and bread and dried fruits we had carried with us. The horse grazed contentedly on verdant spring grass.

There was no need for words between us. When we had finished eating, Red came and sat behind me, wrapping his legs around mine, and his arms around my waist, so that I could lean back on him, and he laid his large hands very gently on my stomach, where the swelling made by the growing child was still barely discernible.

“This place holds memories for you,” he said at length. “What happened here touched you deeply.”

I nodded. We had never spoken of Simon, not since I myself had left Harrowfield. But I thought of him often. There was a terrible irony in his story, for I feared the brother who had always wanted the land and the authority for himself, who had always hated being second best, had found, once he was given the unexpected, the wonderful gift of Harrowfield for his own, that what he really wanted was something else entirely. For it was his fate always to desire that which he could not have. But Elaine had seemed a wise, strong girl, and she loved him. Maybe that would be enough.

“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Red.

“Not really,” I said. Some things are best left unspoken, even to those one loves best.

We were silent a little longer, hearing the calling of a lark, high overhead.

“Don’t you regret giving it all up?” I asked. “Don’t you long to go back, sometimes?”

His hands moved softly against my belly. I thought, this child will be so loved, surely her path through life must be charmed, wide and straight, and full of light.

“How could I not be content with what I have?” said Red softly. “For I have so much.” And later, we returned slowly home under the great arching branches of the forest, and beside the ruffled waters of the lake, and up between the hawthorn hedges. The horse walked carefully, as if aware how precious a load it carried; and my husband’s arms were strong and gentle, around me and his child. And if the Fair Folk watched us, planning the next chapter in their long tale, we heard from them not a whisper, as we rode home to Sevenwaters.

Look for

Son of the Shadows

by Juliet Marillier
Now available in hardcover from Tor Books

Chapter One

My mother knew every tale that was ever told by the firesides of Erin, and more besides. Folks stood hushed around the hearth to hear her tell them after a long day’s work, and marveled at the bright tapestries she wove with her words. She related the many adventures of Cú Chulainn the hero, and she told of Fionn mac Cumhaill, who was a great warrior and cunning with it. In some households, such tales were reserved for men alone. But not in ours, for my mother made a magic with her words that drew all under its spell. She told tales that had the household in stitches with laughter, and tales that made strong men grow quiet. But there was one tale she would never tell, and that was her own. My mother was the girl who had saved her brothers from a sorceress’s curse, and nearly lost her own life doing it. She was the girl whose six brothers had spent three long years as creatures of the wild, and had been brought back only by her own silence and suffering. There was no need for telling and retelling of this story, for it had found a place in folks’ minds. Besides, in every village there would be one or two who had seen the brother who returned, briefly, with the shining wing of a swan in place of his left arm. Even without this evidence, all knew the tale for truth; and they watched my mother pass, a slight figure with her basket of salves and potions, and nodded with deep respect in their eyes.

If I asked my father to tell a tale, he would laugh and shrug and say he had no skill with words, and besides he knew but one tale, or maybe two, and he had told them both already. Then he would glance at my mother, and she at him, in that way they had that was like talking without words, and then my father would distract me with something else. He taught me to carve with a little knife, and he taught me how to plant trees, and he taught me to fight. My uncle thought that more than a little odd. All right for my brother, Sean, but when would Niamh and I need skills with our fists and our feet, with a staff or a small dagger? Why waste time on this when there were so many other things for us to learn?

“No daughter of mine will go beyond these woods unprotected,” my father had said to my Uncle Liam. “Men cannot be trusted. I would not make warriors of my girls, but I will at least give them the means to defend themselves. I am surprised that you need ask why. Is your memory so short?”

I did not ask him what he meant. We had all discovered, early on, that it was unwise to get between him and Liam at such times.

I learned fast. I followed my mother around the villages, and was taught how to stitch a wound and fashion a splint and doctor the croup or nettle rash. I watched my father, and discovered how to make an owl and a deer and a hedgehog out of a piece of fine oak. I practiced the arts of combat with Sean, when he could be cajoled into it, and perfected a variety of tricks that worked even when your opponent was bigger and stronger. It often seemed as if everyone at Sevenwaters was bigger than me. My father made me a staff that was just the right size, and he gave me his little dagger for my own. Sean was quite put out for a day or so. But he never harbored grudges. Besides, he was a boy, and had his own weapons. As for my sister, Niamh, you never could tell what she was thinking.

“Remember, little one,” my father told me gravely, “this dagger can kill. I hope you need never employ it for such a purpose; but if you must, use it cleanly and boldly. Here at Sevenwaters you have seen little of evil, and I hope you will never have to strike a man in your own defense. But one day you may have need of this, and you must keep it sharp and bright, and practice your skills against such a day.”