Moon Song (32 page)

‘I know,’ he replied.

‘Yes …’ She pulled enough away from him so she could see his face. Hers was smiling. ‘You were there. You played the threads.’ Her lips brushed his cheek. ‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ she told him.

‘What now?’ he asked.

‘He’s becoming butterfly soup,’ she said, on a half chuckle. ‘Or rather, Tristan soup. He has to remake himself and then be reborn again whole.’

‘How long’s that going to take?’

‘Until the moon rises again, so they tell me,’ Isoldé replied. ‘I’m going on what the Faer folk and the Powers are telling me. What do they tell you?’

Mark realised he’d forgotten to ask again, blushed. His eyes went slightly out of focus then flicked back. ‘Yup, same,’ he said. ‘I’m not used to this asking thing yet. I nearly screwed up at the beginning, then Pan came and sorted me out.’

‘Me too!’ Isoldé said ruefully. ‘I’m so used to sorting everything out for myself that it’s weird having helpers, only needing to ask in your head and then finding yourself doing and saying the right things even though you didn’t know you knew them.’

‘Too right,’ Mark agreed. ‘It’s like when I’m playing the organ, the ordinary organ. I get a similar feel when I’m playing really well, as though I’m being played rather than playing of my own will. When I practice it’s usually sort of me-in-charge, then, when I perform I let go and just run with it.’

‘Sounds like you’re better used to it than me.’ Isoldé snuggled against him again.

‘But what do we do with this, with the cocoon, the Tristansoup?’ he asked. ‘Do we just leave it here? Do we stay with it? What?’

‘We could go to the cottage,’ Isoldé said practically. ‘We brought coffee and sandwiches, we could have those while we think about it …no, while we ask about it,’ she corrected herself, grinning. ‘Old habits die very hard,’ she finished as she let go of Mark and made to collect Tristan’s paraphernalia bag. The altar she left.

The pixie sat beside Tristan now.

‘We’ll be here,’ he told them. ‘There’ll be nothing to see, not until tomorrow, and there’s others waiting to show you things. You’re not needed here. Go to the cottage.’

‘Come on,’ she took Mark’s hand, led the way down the path towards the cottage, leaving the chrysalis in the head-stone grove.

Gideon soared over the moors above Caergollo. Raptor sight gave him a full view of the grove and all that went on there below. He feathered the fingertips of his raven-wings, tilting slightly and banking down closer, then tumbling head over heels with a loud “Cark” just for fun before stalling to rise again over the treetops. Raven was his favourite form for flying, ancient, wild and tricksy …like himself. He screamed again into the wind as he plummeted down from low cloud height to overfly his prodigies. He looked on Isoldé, and Mark too, as his phenomena, his bright stars and his enfants terrible too. They were good but they were hard to manage, as were all creatures that thought for themselves and asked questions. Asking questions, not taking what he said at face value was important. He wanted their knowing to be in their bones, not rote-learned in their heads and all befogged with thinking, if they questioned him, fought him even, then they would know because they knew intrinsically and not just because he told them. Gullible folk were no use at all.

They’d done well. Tristan was cocooned now, gone back into the spiritual atoms of his being to coalesce again into his full self, to put all the pieces of his soul back together. Gideon had sighed with pleasure as he watched Isoldé find and take the soul-part in its smoky form and blow it back into Tristan. He knew, he’d rummaged about inside her brain and her mind, that she’d never done such a thing before. There were wisps of memory from the druid uncle and the Hindu boyfriend of how shamans did this. Isoldé had caught hold of those memories and woven them with the on-the-job knowing she was pulling from the threads and she’d done it successfully.

And Mark …well, he’d done great. Gideon hadn’t seen the
threads played as a cathedral organ before. He had to chuckle, most folk would take it as a Christian symbol but the organ was just a great musical instrument, full of all the tones and notes, very appropriate for weaving the threads of the universe. Idly, as he soared again, Gideon wondered how this experience would change Mark’s organ playing in the everyday world. That it would change there was no doubt. The experience was in Mark now, a part of him, he was not the same person he had been while driving up to the grove, his soul was larger now and more inclusive from doing the work. As he wasn’t a dunce he would grow into that larger size, that greater experience, and make it a part of himself. Sailing out across the cliffs now and over the sea, Gideon sighed with pleasure again. Yes, his prodigies were doing very well. It was time now to go down and be with them again, show them some more. The most dangerous part was yet to come and even Gideon didn’t know how that would end.

At the cottage above the waterfall, Mark halted at the threshold. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘Not yet, not now.’

Isoldé stopped beside him, the door half open.

‘It was his private place,’ Mark told her. ‘It would be like walking in on him making love.’

Isoldé saw the tears come. She held him, understanding some of what was going on inside.

‘We could go down to the kieve?’ she suggested.

Mark nodded, turned back and led the way down the steep steps into the roaring silence of the kieve.

They settled on a log-seat off to one side in the shelter of the cliff, silent for the moment, while the coffee and food brought them back to some feel of normality.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mark began. ‘Just couldn’t do it.’

‘Not a problem,’ Isoldé said. ‘I’ve a feeling we’re supposed to be here anyway.’

They sat silent again for a little while.

‘Did you see that rhythmic pulse ripple through the cocoonthing?’ Mark asked her. ‘Every few seconds the colour would change, darken slightly as it did? What was all that about?’

‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think it really is like butterfly-soup though, he has to change, remake himself, in order to assimilate the lost soul-part again.’

‘It’ll be a day and a night until Tristan wakes, emerges …and then what?’ Mark said.

‘Then he must sing,’ she said. ‘And you must record him so the album is complete. It’s his voice will do the trick, so the Faer folk tell me. Nobody else will do.’

‘And then he has to go back to the Isles of the Blest.’

‘Yes …and I have to take him,’ Isoldé said.

‘Oh ye gods!’ Mark turned to her, grabbing her hands. ‘I don’t want you to go. Or if you have to then I want to go with you.’

‘Not possible,’ said a voice from above them.

Looking up, they saw a raven perched in the branches of an ash tree above them.

‘Gideon?’ Isoldé asked.

The raven spread his great wings and floated down to stand beside them. Then the morphing began, it was amazing, like watching a film …but this wasn’t a film, Mark reminded himself, this was real life. Everything happened at once. The shimmering black feathers became brown, weather-tanned skin; the whole creature grew, expanded, lengthened; the claws became feet in soft leather boots; the eyes shifted shape and colour from round black pits to almond-shaped gold with vertical pupils. That was weird. It ensured that Mark knew in his bones that Gideon wasn’t human, even if a lot of the time he assumed human form. This was a creature of another world.

All this passed across Mark’s brain at the speed of light, yet seemed to take forever. He blinked, he was sat beside the Gideon he knew, hunkered down on his haunches beside them.

‘You can’t go, Mark.’ Gideon said softly. ‘You have to hold this end of the bridge.’

He paused, looking away as Mark frowned at him. ‘We’ve not done this before, well not in our living memories. We cannot hold the bridgehead. Wrong sort of stuff, wrong sort of matter. Ours is too close to the matter of the Isles, not like how it is here. Yours is Earth-stuff. Ours is only partly Earth-stuff and only a small part at that, just enough for us to manifest here.’

Mark was frowning still. It almost sounded as if Gideon was talking a sort of physics. Isoldé was eyeing the shifter too.

‘Why did Mark have to weave the threads’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t you, or Pan, or whoever, do it?’

Gideon smiled wryly. ‘I keep saying it, don’t I? You’m a quick study.’

‘What?’ demanded Mark. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I can’t weave the threads here, on the everyday Earth,’ Gideon
said. ‘I can weave them in the Isles, in Otherworld, but not here.’

‘Tristan knew that too, didn’t he?’ Isoldé asked.

‘Uhuh.’ Gideon nodded.

‘That’s why it was so wrong of him to die before his time, wasn’t it?’ she went on.

Gideon nodded again.

‘If you don’t know how you fit with all the worlds, if you aren’t yet awake and aware, then when you suicide it doesn’t really matter too much, doesn’t have too many consequences to things other than yourself. You can get away with it anytime,’ Isoldé went on.

Again, Gideon nodded.

‘But if you know, know how you fit into even the non-human part of the everyday world, let alone the unseen worlds, then you also have the ability to know how your death will affect all that. And if you know the unseen worlds as well …’ she left the sentence hanging.

‘Then you have as much obligation to that as you do to the humans around you that you love, and the place you live, and the creatures who share your life,’ Mark continued. He stopped, thought a moment, then started off again. ‘I can weave the threads because I’m human. And I know a bit about them. And I know a bit about what all this is and how I fit into it.’

‘That’s right,’ Gideon said. ‘So how is the moonpath built?’

Isoldé chuckled in spite of herself, she was feeling both excited and scared. ‘It’s built of threads,’ she said. ‘But …and this is a guess …I suspect those at this end are made of Earthstuff and those at the other end, in the Isles, are made of whatever it is over there. Does the stuff sort of change as it gets nearer Earth, further from the Isles?’

Gideon grinned. ‘You know, you’re a real pleasure to work with.’

He stretched out a claw-like finger and gently stroked the back of her hand. A shudder ran through her, his sensuality very
evident. She wondered what Mark thought, she could tell he’d seen, knew. Somehow, it didn’t bother her. It had happened, it had been pleasurable for that instant and now it was gone. And it hadn’t changed her feelings for Mark one iota. She looked at Mark, he was actually grinning.

‘Do I pass?’ he asked Gideon.

The shifter burst out laughing. ‘With honours, cum laude!’ he replied. ‘Thank all the gods. It’s good to have you to work with.’ Gideon held out his hand to Mark, looking him right in the eyes. Mark took the hand, there was a moment’s pause, each gripped the other, then they let go.

‘Music crosses a lot of boundaries, doesn’t it?’ Mark spoke to Gideon directly now.

‘It does.’

‘It’s part of the Logos, is that it? Part of “the word”, the sound, the note, all that stuff various esoteric babble goes on about?’

‘Yes.’

‘So …Tristan’s singing …my playing …whoever’s music …all that is part of how the word, the Logos, gets out into the world, to people who aren’t yet aware, consciously aware, of all this stuff. That’s part of why people like music so much too, isn’t it?’

‘It is.’ Gideon’s face was more serious than either of them had ever seen it before. ‘Tristan knew all this …but his physical pain and mental longing were so great his personality took over and he couldn’t resist. That’s why he walked the moonpath that night and left his old body at the bottom of the cliff. Being in his personality-self made him act like a child and not talk to us. He was afraid we would say no. His mind had gone small, squeezing out all his lifetime experience of us and transforming us into severe parents who wouldn’t understand. He ran away, trying to steal a march on us, but all he did was screw himself up. And us too, of course.’ Gideon paused a moment, then went on. ‘So you’re right, Mark, you can weave the threads though music, as
could Tristan. And we need you to be very sure you hold the threads of the moonpath so Isoldé can return after she’s brought Tristan back to where he should be. Once you’ve recorded him.’

Gideon stood up. Suddenly, Isoldé was aware of how far the sun had moved. When they had come here it had been early morning. Now, from the way the shadows fell, the sun had moved to late afternoon. She cocked an eyebrow at Gideon.

‘Yup,’ he said. ‘Time can do that. We need to get on. You have a job to do.’ He was speaking directly to Mark. ‘You know how to do the recording. You’ve got the stuff you need?’

Mark nodded. ‘It’s all in the truck. I’ve got all the portable kit in a bag. Is it time?’

‘It’s time,’ Gideon said.

They followed him back to the grove.

The clear pure tones of Tristan’s voice spun out across the air. Tristan sat on the head-stone, eyes near shut, a half-smile on his face, hands moving gently on the harp as his body swayed with the rhythm of the song. He had given Isoldé his drum.

‘Here, you can play this,’ he’d told her, laughing at her astonished face.

‘I can not!’ she’d replied. ‘I’m a beginner, I’m not good enough.’

‘You are so,’ Tristan had mimicked her Belfast accent which had become very pronounced as she’d tried to refuse the instrument. ‘And they think you are.’ He pointed down at the group of little folk, all carrying their own drums, who stood clustered about her heels.

Isoldé started, she’d not seen them and nearly dropped the drum as she jumped, then tried not to tread on any of them. There was a wave of laughter as they got smartly out from under her feet.

‘Come on, girl, we’re wasting time,’ Tristan said. ‘We need to get this song done tonight and the moon is already rising, coming to hear her song. She must give her approval.’

It was a very different Tristan who had broken his way out of the chrysalis soon after Gideon had brought them back to the grove.