C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

Oisín settled into a hummock across from her, smile flitting across lips thinned with age. “It’s only in our youth that they can dress us and make of us a semblance of what they are. You carry Myfanwy’s gown well, better than I ever wore their fashions, and I have not been young for a long time.”

“How long?” Lara cleared her throat, trying to erase the crack in her words and her discomfort at asking the question.

Another smile danced over the old man’s mouth. “Oh, forever, to be sure, by the reckoning of those such as you and I. Eight hundred years,” he added more softly, and gave a shrug as easy as a younger man’s. “Perhaps longer. Time here is not the same.”

“Eight hun—” Lara broke off, staring at the old man.

He spread his fingers, promise of a story, and made a song of his answer. “Another truthseeker of human origin might have sought the heart of ancient legends, delving into their truths, but that seeker would have lived a life unfulfilled, Lara Jansen. Legends are born of men, and men must die, and with them the truths only they can tell. Not even the strongest of magics can draw honest tales from the dead: memory is too fragile, and deeds done to greatness are easier remembered as wonders, even by those who did them. You’ve chosen a wiser path, creating beautiful things for the world around you. There is joy in that, where there is rarely joy in truth.

“But here I am neither dead nor mortal, and so I can give you a truth that no one in the world we both came from will know or believe: it is, after all, only part of another story.

“There are things that open passages between the worlds. Magic, such as that which brought you here, but mortal words, as well: poetry or song, when it’s crafted just so. I was a poet even before I came here, and that gift let me glimpse my lady Rhiannon across the breach between the Barrow-lands and our own home world. I followed her here. They will say in the stories that I fell back to my own world a blind old man, but in truth I stepped back a youth with all my own strength still mine.”

“But time had passed you by,” Lara whispered. “How much time?”

“Enough. Enough that I no longer knew the young men, or even their grandfathers. We were less careful in the keeping of years then, but when I heard my own name in a song about the fair folk, I knew that it had been time enough that I no longer belonged with mortal kin. I began to write again,” he murmured, “and in time the walls faded a second time and I returned to the Barrow-lands. Here I was granted immortality, but even Seelie magic isn’t enough to hold youth on a once-mortal frame.

“I have not been young in eight hundred years,” he said again, then smiled on a sigh. “But I lived among the Seelie, not yet old, for such a very long time before that.”

“Forever,” Lara said in a small voice, and the unwelcome ache of truth rang through it.

“Forever,” Oisín agreed. “There’s my tale, Truthseeker, and now I have yours to spin for you. It’s my own fault you’re here, and for that I offer apologies and gladness. If we have time, I would like to hear what’s become of the world I left; there have been no visitors in so long that I’ve lost all sense of it.”

“I don’t think I’d know where to begin.”

The old man’s smile came again, a comfortable expression, as though he’d long since given up regrets and found pleasure in each moment as it passed. “My story for you is the more important. Did young Dafydd tell you of the prophecy?”

Lara’s eyebrows arched. “Young? How old is he? And, yes, some kind of chant that I don’t remember. Except the part about breaking the world. I can’t do that. How could I do that?”

Oisín, wryly, said, “Here, everyone is young except for me.” His voice dropped into a singsong, losing the music of his earlier tale. “Truth will seek the hardest path, measures that must mend the past. Finder learns the only way, worlds come changed at end of day . I know,” he added, amused. “The poetry lacks. My own work is, I like to think, better, but these are words that come to me in fits, as visions of the world to come.”

“But that’s not what Dafydd said. He said—” Lara pressed her fingertips to her eyelids, trying to draw up the memory. “The first part was the same, but the second part changed. Something about … spoken in a child’s word , because he apologized for that. Spoken in a child’s word, changes that will break the world. That’s what he said. Why did it change?” She glanced up to find a frown etched between Oisín’s eyebrows.

“Prophecy … flexes. It alters as circumstances do. Changes that will break the world, spoken in a child’s word, or finder learns the only way, worlds come changed at end of day. There’s something gentler about the newer version, is there not? Though I fear either way this land will not be what it was, Lara Jansen, when you are finished here. If you meet any other seers, ask them for a foretelling. The differences may be important.”

“If I meet—Am I likely to?” Lara stared at him, uncertain if interest or fear dominated her emotions.

“No,” Oisín said, suddenly genial again. “The gift is as rare as truthseeking, and no one else in the Seelie court bears it. Still, you’ll return to our world, and we mortals have a knack for surprising even ourselves.”

“I think I’ve had enough surprises for one day. What do the rhymes mean?” Lara shook her head before the ancient poet spoke. “You can’t tell me, can you?”

“Not the way you would like me to, no.” He leaned forward, offering a hand. Lara put her fingers into his, surprised at his warmth, and at the strength with which he imparted comfort with a squeeze. “I could tell you of mystical journeys and unfolding power, but I think even the most literal-minded of truthseekers might gather that much from the prophecies.”

“I did finally learn to understand metaphor,” Lara admitted. “‘Truth will seek the hardest path’ sounds straightforward even to me. Truth is always a hard path. But if I’m supposed to be truth, then what about the new line you just said? Who’s the finder? Do your visions show you pictures?”

“Only words, I’m afraid. Stories have only ever been words to me, even before I lost my sight to age. Your path will lead you to the finder, or you will become what you seek, and we will bend or break with the changes wrought.” A finality came into his voice, like a bell tolling the end of some solemn service. Lara caught her breath, searching for questions that could be given quick, easy answers, but the music and the moment passed before she could voice any. Rueful with defeat, she looked around the wooded copse surrounding them and shook her head.

“Well, right now the truth is going to have a hard time seeking the path out of here, because I wasn’t paying any attention when I came in.”

“That,” Oisín said lightly, “I think I can help you with, Truthseeker. There is a path, a true way through these woods, and your eyes should be able to find it. Most could not.”

“All I can do is tell if someone’s lying, Oisín. I can’t even do that if they think they’re telling the truth.”

“Have more faith,” murmured the old man. “Close your eyes and look for the light.”

Lara shot him a skeptical look that went unheeded, his blind gaze serene enough to hint at laughter. She pulled a face, drily certain that Oisín would know it, and closed her eyes as she muttered “Look for the light” to herself.

The forest’s silence closed around her as her lashes came together. Wind trickled through trees, disturbing leaves, but there were no other sounds: no distant traffic, no whine of airliners, no voices raised in laughter or debate as there were at any hour in Boston’s streets. She had never known quiet to be overwhelming, but in the Seelie forest it had a presence of its own, surrounding her, cushioning her, pressing at her.