Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

Teardrop made enough noise walking across the pebbles to give Britha warning of his approach. She turned to look briefly at the strange creature. He was carrying an earthenware jug. Britha went back to staring at the stars, wondering if she should be insulted that men thought alcohol was the solution to her problems.

‘I found this,’ Teardrop said. ‘What sort of raiders leave the good uisge beatha ?’ he took a pull of the clear liquid. ‘It’s good,’ he managed.

Britha took the jug off him and took a long swig.

‘I don’t like the sky now,’ Britha finally said.

‘Your vision?’

Britha nodded. ‘It seems angry and hateful now.’

‘I think it’s like your gods, cold and uncaring.’

‘No, our gods hated us. We would give them everything just so they would leave us alone.’ Teardrop turned to look at her. ‘Or so the stories handed from mother to mother go.’ She handed the jug back and he had some more. ‘Do you have gods?’ she asked. He smiled.

‘You know enough of us for one day, I think.’ Both of them looked up into the night sky. ‘We need to know,’ he finally said.

He certainly knew all the masks , Britha thought, just the right word magic to get what he needed. When to be listened to, when to be feared, the caring mask, the one he was wearing now. Was he using this mindsong on her as well, she wondered, because she wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell someone, and he was, after all, from the Otherworld as well. He wouldn’t, couldn’t judge.

‘Fachtna is an arrogant fool,’ she said instead.

Teardrop laughed. ‘Yes, but you must have met warriors before.’

‘Her name was Cliodna,’ Britha said. ‘She was a selkie.’

‘I have heard the name.’

‘One of the seal people, skin changers.’ Though now that she thought about it, she had never seen Cliodna in her seal form.

Teardrop looked a little confused. ‘And you drank her blood?’

‘No, I told you. Though she may have used her blood to heal me, or I may have dreamed it.’

‘Then… you were lovers?’

Britha turned to look at him defiantly. People feared those who behaved differently to them. Britha had never been able to differentiate between the desire for men and the desire for women. She could not understand why people would cut off half the oppurtunities for beauty and pleasure. Teardrop looked momentarily surprised but there was no judgement there. Then he looked amused.

‘What?’ she demanded.

‘Fachtna will be dissapointed,’ he said.

‘She turned different, angry, hateful.’ Britha hated that a tear rolled down her cheek in front of this stranger.

‘She lived in the water a lot?’

Britha nodded.

‘It sounds like she was an elder child of the Muileartach.’

‘And the gods are hateful,’ Britha said bitterly.

‘Bress is harvesting sorrow. Did she push you away?’

Britha nodded again, cursing more tears.

‘She was probably trying to protect you. She knew she was changing and there was nothing that she could do about it.’

Britha said nothing. She tried to look at the hateful sky and not the dark waters. Teardrop had learned long ago that the best thing at times like these was to let the tears run their course. He looked out over the waters to the south. He knew that that way lay Bress.

Finally Britha wiped away her tears, took the jug from Teardrop and had another long pull.

‘It was a great gift she gave you,’ Teardrop said. Britha nodded.

The following day was grey and overcast as well. The rain was light but constant, the kind that soaks through and then chills down to the bone, except today Britha wasn’t feeling it. She felt stronger, faster, more aware than she had at any time she could remember. She felt amazing except for the dull ache of loss in her chest.

‘Does the sun ever shine in this land?’ Fachtna demanded cheerfully as he dragged a log boat he had found in the treeline down the pebbles towards the Black River. Even so early, he was already annoying Britha. The uisge beatha pain in her head was not helping her tolerance either.

‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ Britha asked.

‘I think I know how to work a boat,’ Fachtna said.

‘If this is anything like the Tatha, then the currents and tides will be treacherous. We need an experienced boatman who knows the waters. Besides, their god lives in there and he will be angry now his people are dead.’

Fachtna stared out at the water, seeming to concentrate, then he knelt by the side of the river and placed his hand in the water and concentrated some more.

‘Come. We will break spears and give them to the river,’ Teardrop said.

Britha looked over at him. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he was just trying to humour her.

‘I know this river now,’ Fachtna said, standing up. ‘We will be fine.’

Maude had held her as she sobbed while Uday, his expression difficult to read, had made her hot chocolate liberally laced with cheap whisky. They were near strangers to her, and her sister had hurt them – Uday certainly had no reason to trust her – but they looked after her. Made sure she was okay.

Later Maude was curled up on the sofa snoring gently, her head in Uday’s lap. He was stroking her hair as she slept. Being held had become too much for Beth and had just made her cry more, so she had moved to the ancient but still comfortable armchair, bringing her knees up to her chest as she sipped another Irish hot chocolate. Her face was still streaked, her chest still hurting from crying. Some tough ex-con , she thought. Then more bitterly, If it had been the other way around, the only crying Talia would have done would have been to call attention to herself.

Uday reached under the sofa, making Maude stir in her sleep, and pulled out the bayonet. The blade was clean. Uday held it in front of her.

‘I don’t like this being here,’ he finally said.

‘It was my great-grandfather’s,’ Beth said. She wasn’t sure why.

‘I don’t want violence brought here. Do you understand?’ He was still holding the bayonet, staring at the blade.

Beth looked down. ‘I’m through with it. She’s dead. There was some weird stuff… There’s nothing I can do.’

‘Arbogast,’ Uday said quietly, not wanting to wake Maude. Then he handed the bayonet back to Beth. ‘I almost wish you’d killed him. Piece of shit.’ There was a barely restrained fury in Uday’s whisper.

‘You knew him?’

Uday shook his head. ‘I was just around to try and help Maude pick up the pieces afterwards. Oh, it wasn’t rape – too genteel and manipulative for that. May as well have been for what it did to her self-esteem. All the bullshit justifications from your sister dearest. Look, I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m glad your sister is out of our lives, her and all those other Black Mirror arseholes.’ Uday lapsed into a brooding silence. Maude had shifted on the sofa but was still asleep.

‘It was bad enough after she turned a trick – days sitting in here just sobbing, a couple of attention-grabbing pieces of suicidal talk, but it was when someone at uni found the film she’d made with Talia. Because of course their Internet porn habits are just a reflection on the dirty girls in the films,’ Uday spat bitterly. This was anger that had been stored up and nurtured, Beth thought. ‘Of course, Talia revelled in the notoriety. Made it out to be some kind of a statement of how clever, interesting and nonconformist she was.’ A tear leaked out of Uday’s eye. ‘A different story for Maude. All the looks in lectures, in the corridors. The guys deciding she was easy, so they could say what they wanted to her and she would jump into bed with them, somehow forgetting that the porn industry exists because of people like them. All the girls sitting in judgement. A slut to some, a threat to others, or just a poor example helping to objectify the sex. Everyone just so pleased that they weren’t the target, and we’re supposed to be the clever ones. University’s supposed to be a place to experiment. It’s the twenty-first century and apparently a gal’s reputation is still what matters. What a load of shit.’