Magic Three of Solatia (4 page)

True to her word, Sianna taught Dread Mary the old songs like “In the Meadow Green and Early” and “My Love Is an Apple of Sweet Delight.” Sianna’s young mind held the memory of every song she had ever heard. And though sometimes she added new words or whole verses to a tune, such was her kinship with each song that no one could tell where the old words left off and the new ones began.

The seawitch and the girl sang the Seven Psalms of Waking with great gusto each morn. All the bold gypsies’ songs and devil-defeated songs were the mermaid’s special delight. But the seawitch learned more than just the songs, though she could not have said what.

To learn all of Sianna’s songs, the witch taught her more than she had meant. Usually they sat side by side at the water’s edge, for it was easier for Dread Mary to stay in her fishtail. One day, as they sang by the water’s edge, the witch said, in exchange for a particularly lovely tune called “A Morning in May,” “I will tell you my button lore.” It was all she had left to teach.

So she told Sianna of the Magic Three, the silver buttons that each gave a wish to the wearer. And she talked of other buttons known of old—the Button of the Great Magus, which granted the bearer the gift of invisibility; the Button of Delight, which, when consumed, lent reality to dreams; and the Button of the Sisters Drear, which, when dissolved in sweet wine, caused painful death.

“But are they just tales to frighten children?” asked Sianna, for she had learned from the witch that much of magic is merely that. “Or are they real? You yourself have told me that truth and tales are ofttimes mixed.”

“Well, as to the others, I cannot say for sure,” said the witch. “But I seem to recall that I once knew a prince who had the Magic Three.”

“How could you forget something as important as that?” asked Sianna.

“Some things you forget because you cannot help it,” said the witch. “And other things you forget because they cannot help you.”

“I remember a song about the Magic Three,” said Sianna, almost to herself. “But I am not sure I recall all the words.”

“Sing it,” commanded Dread Mary. Then in a softer tone she added, “For as you remember, I shall remember. One helps the other limp along.”

So Sianna began the song of the Magic Three.

Sad news there came to the king’s own son,

Sad news to his father’s throne,

For Madame the Queen had sickened and died

And left them all alone.

And did she leave them gifts of gold,

All from her dowry,

Nay she has left them naught for love

Except the Magic Three.

And One is for a mighty wish,

And so be Two and Three,

And she has left them to her son

And dived below the sea.

“But I never knew it meant buttons,” said Sianna. “Isn’t that strange.”

As the witch sang the words back to her, Sianna put her hand in the pocket of her jacket and fondled the buttons she kept there. They were her only past, for with Dread Mary there was but the present day. And without thinking what she was doing, Sianna brought out one of the buttons and began to rub it with her finger. A bit of the black rubbed off. Below it the button gleamed dully.

As if in a dream, Sianna recalled her father saying, “Let me remember the cruel sea when I see them.” She knew that she could answer him now, “The sea is not cruel.” For cruelty and compassion were on either side of the scale and the one would balance the other.

So as the witch continued to sing back her song, and as she absently corrected the tune or the words, Sianna took up a handful of sand and water and scrubbed at the button some more.

Finally she polished it with the sleeve of her jacket till it gleamed. It had a design on it—a single fish. When she held it up to the sun, the silver button caught the light.

“What do you have there?” asked the witch, breaking the song in the middle.

“It is one of my buttons,” said Sianna. “See, I have polished it. It has a fish on it. Isn’t it pretty?”

The witch moved closer to the girl. “Give me,” she cried, and snatched it out of Sianna’s hand.

“But it is mine,” said Sianna, her voice shocked and full of tears. “It was the first bargain we made.”

“Little fool, it is one of the Three,” said the witch. “I remember it all. It is mine.” And with a mighty splash, she dove back into the sea.

S
IANNA STOOD BY THE
water’s edge and called over and over for the witch to return. But she did not. And when the moon began to rise, Sianna walked slowly back to the coral house. She went inside and sat down to think.

She thought about all the witch had taught her, the spells and the simples, the language and lore of the sea. But mostly she thought about consequences. For she knew that, though the witch had one button, she still had two. But she did not know what she should do.

She did know, however, that she would have to guard the remaining two buttons from the witch. “They are my mother’s, after all,” she thought, for she needed a reason for her vigilance. “Isn’t it strange that all this time I had the power to return home close to my hand.” But she also knew that she did not yet
really
know how to use that power.

Then Sianna fell asleep and dreamed that the witch was standing by the door of the coral house gazing down at her with her lost memories found.

The witch remembered Melinna of beauty and song. She remembered Prince Anggard, who must surely now be king. (The one memory she did not have was of any time passing). She remembered how well she had loved, how much she had given, and how much she had hated. Her bitterness welled up inside her like a salt spring.

“Magic has consequences,” Dread Mary mumbled to herself. But, she wondered, what consequences should she fear? If all she planned took place on the far shore of Solatia, then how could it disturb what she loved on the isle? She wondered this but did not see that merely by snatching the button from Sianna she had already begun the wreckage of all she loved.

So she twisted the button in that certain way, left, then right, then right again. As she twisted it she said out loud, “Magic One of Magic Three, grant the boon I ask of thee.” And the button twisted by itself under her fingers.

Remove the king upon the throne,

And turn his living heart to stone.

Another king put in his place

To be the last one of that race.

As she said the words, Dread Mary smiled. She did not know that the king she cursed was not the king she remembered but a descendant of his cousin many times removed. But so great was her vengeful passion that she might not have cared had she been told. Dread Mary’s face at that moment was indeed dreadful to see as she laughed with the knowledge of what was to come.

There was a loud clap of thunder round the isle, though the sky was clear of thunderheads. A clap of thunder as the button twisted in her hand once again. And then the button ran like quicksilver through her fingers and was gone.

Dread Mary smiled again in Sianna’s dream and turned back toward the water.

But it was no dream. The thunder wakened Sianna fully, and she watched in the rising sun as the witch pulled on her fishtail and plunged into the sea.

D
OWN TO THE SEASHORE
Sianna raced, hoping to stop the witch. She called to her but there was no answer. Then Sianna heard a horrifying rush of noise as if the ocean were sending its greatest monsters ashore. Bearing down on her was a great wall of a wave. She had no time to call or scream before it swept over Outermost Isle and carried her once again into the sea.

This time she kept her skirt and jacket on, though the fingers of foam tried to snatch them away. She fought against the motion of the wave as it bore her from the isle.

Even as she fought, she was aware that the wave was rolling on past the Triades, past the Mean Isles, past the Inner Isles, toward the Solatian strand. She struggled to reach into her pocket so that she might twist one of the buttons and thus assure her safety. But the weight of the water kept her arms at her sides, and so she rode at last like a sea-wrapped cocoon on the crest of the mighty wave.

The witch had heard the boom of the wave as it heaved itself up out of the deeps. She had smiled to herself as she saw in her inner eye the wave sweeping over Solatia’s shore. For she knew this must be a tide called up by the magic to remove the king from his throne.

But as the foot of the wave churned the deeps and sent muddy reminders into her cove, Dread Mary, who had been Melinna, remembered the rest.
The consequences.

A sudden cold fear struck her. She rose to the surface and looked around and saw the wave as it moved toward the Solatian shore. Then, turning slowly, she looked behind her to the isle.

The little coral house and Sianna were no more.

Melinna, who had been Dread Mary, swam quickly to the beach. She heaved herself slowly onto the shore like an aged and brittle thing. She sloughed off her tail and on two weakened legs wandered about the isle. The strand was scoured clean of life, many trees broken in two. The golden lark circled disconsolately looking for its nest. Slowly the seawitch returned to the seaside and knelt by her fishtail. And for the first time in three hundred years, she began to weep.

She did not weep salt tears as humans do, but tears of purest water. And she wept until she had wept a crystal pool. Then she dove into it without her tail and never came up again.

The wave was hasting toward the Solatian shore, breaking fleets and fish with its foam. It flung itself onto the castle on the cliff, covering king and courtiers and all.

And when the wave had retreated, it left many injured, the king and all his cousins broken on the stone steps down to the sea, and Sianna at her father’s door.

“A life for a life,” said Sian when he heard his daughter’s tale. Except for her name, which he had cried into her hair over and over again, these were the first words he had spoken in a year.

“But it was not the life she sought,” said Sianna.

“Still, he was not a particularly good king,” said her father with finality. “Perhaps his son Blaggard will be better.”

“Perhaps,” said Sianna, gazing out the window as she sewed the remaining two brightly polished silver buttons to the underside of her petticoat. “Certainly all our lives will be better.”

“And how say you that?” asked Sian.

“It is the consequences of the magic,” said Sianna. “Good balancing bad.”

“I do not see how that will affect our lives,” said Sian.

“But it has already, dearest Father,” said Sianna with a fond smile. “The very first thing that Mary promised was that she would give me back what was mine. And you and Solatia are mine. I do not think she truly meant to keep that promise. But she loved me, and so this good balances her act of snatching away the button.” She did not mention the power of the other two or that she knew how to use them.

“And I can help renew the lives of all who still live,” she continued, “with the things that the witch herself taught me. The sea has many riches, and I can show all Solatians how to share them.”

“And can you explain how the evil of the wave has been balanced in the kingdom?” asked Sian, though he thought he already knew.

“Because the wave has taken away the rusted relics of the war. Because the people can return to the land. And because there is but one heir to the throne, so there need be no more disputes over who shall be king.”

“But how can the evil of killing the king and his courtiers be balanced?” asked Sian.

“Perhaps his son, Blaggard, will be a better king,” said Sianna. “Or perhaps, if he is indeed the last of his race, what comes after will be better for us all. I do not know. For knowledge of what is yet to come is never granted to any man or woman alive. And the dead surely have no need of it. But this I was taught and this I believe—such evil will certainly be balanced.”

“Well,” said Sian with a strange catch in his voice, “
my
life will be the better for this magical balancing.”

“How so, darling Father?” asked Sianna. She turned her face to him and smiled a sweet smile.

“Little songbird, it is simple. I have my daughter back. As if it had to be said. I have my daughter back as wise as she is beautiful, to lighten my days with her knowledge and her songs.”

And Sianna’s voice followed him out with a song as he went back to work in his shop.

Here ends Book I

Book II is for David

I
N THE KINGDOM OF
Solatia, where the sun rose first on the lowland farms, there ruled a young king. He was handsome but he was hard. His name in the old tongue was Blaggard,
or jest of the king,
for he had been born late in his parents’ life. When his father heard of him, he had remarked to the queen, “Surely this is but a jest.”

Those who loved him or feared him—which were one and the same to him—called him simply Gard. And they named him Gard the Guardian. And Gard the Great.

But his enemies, and they grew in number as his days upon the throne, called him Blackguard. And Bleakard. And the Bleak One. They talked this way only in whispers, for it was said that he had eyes at each farmyard and ears in each hall.

Both his enemies and his friends knew little of the king. His father had hated the sight of him, for he felt the boy’s very existence mocked his old age. So the king had sent Blaggard away. The boy was banished to beyond the mountains, where he lived with wizards and warlocks. And as a young prince he had learned their ways.

But Blaggard was impatient, and so never learned the most important lesson of all, that magic has consequences. And because he never learned it, he used wizardry where wisdom should have served. Until at last he had forgotten what wisdom he might have had. It was said, even by those who loved to praise the powerful, that Blaggard had been born under an evil star. However, he was not purposelessly evil. Rather, he coveted power, for as an apprentice magician and an exiled prince, he had lived long in power’s shadow. So he played friend against friend and brother against brother to get power.