Juliet Marillier - Child of the Prophecy

‘Yes, Father.’

‘We might start sooner than planned, I think. As soon as Dan’s folk are away we’ll take the next step. You can have one day’s rest. You’ve earned that much; we cannot afford more. Use the day wisely.’

There was no choice in it; there never had been. ‘Yes, Father,’ I said, and as we made our way up the cliff path and into the dark tunnels of the Honeycomb, I let the Glamour slip away and was once more my limping, clumsy self. I had done what my father asked. Why, then, did I feel so unhappy? Hadn’t I proved I could be what I pleased? Hadn’t I shown I could make people admire me and bend them to my will? Yet, later, lying on my bed, I stared into the darkness and felt an emptiness inside me that bore no relation whatever to spells, and enchantments, and the mastery of the craft.

It was a night of restless dreams, and I awoke before dawn, shivering under my woollen blanket, hearing the howl of the wind, and the roar of the sea as it pounded the rocks of the Honeycomb. Not a good day to be abroad. Perhaps Dan Walker and his folk would decide to stay a little longer. But it never did happen that way. They were as true to their time as birds flying away for the winter, their arrivals and departures as precise as the movement of shadows in a sacred circle. You could count your year by them. The golden times. The grey times. It seemed to me the voice of the wind had words in it. I will sweep you bare … bare … I will take all … all … And the sea responded in kind. I am hungry … give me … give …

I put my hands over my ears and curled up tight. It was supposed to be a day of rest, after all. Might I not sleep in peace, at least until the sun rose? But the voices would not go away, so I got up and dressed, not sure what the day might hold, but thinking I would make myself very busy indeed, and try to ignore the sick, empty feeling in my stomach. It was as I pulled on my boots that I heard, very faintly through the blast of the wind, another sound. A note or two, fragments of a tune over a steady, solid drone. The voice of the pipes. So, they were not gone yet. Not stopping to think, I grabbed my shawl and was away, out of doors and up the hill towards the standing stones, my hair whipped this way and that in the wild weather, the sea spray pursuing me as far from the cliffs as its icy fingers could stretch.

Darragh stopped playing when he saw me. He’d found a sheltered spot amongst the stones, and sat with his legs outstretched and his back to the great dolmen we called the Guardian, not disrespectful exactly, just blending in as if he belonged there, the same as the rabbits. I stumbled forward, pushing my hair back from my eyes, and sat down beside him. I clutched my shawl closer around me. It was still barely dawn, and the air held the first touch of a distant winter.

It took me a while to catch my breath.

‘Well,’ said Darragh eventually, which wasn’t much help.

‘Well,’ I echoed.

‘You’re abroad early.’

‘I heard you playing.’

‘I’ve played up here often enough, this summer. Didn’t bring you out before. We’re leaving this morning. But I suppose you knew that.’

I nodded, sudden misery near overwhelming me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I’ve been busy. Too busy to come out. I –’

‘Don’t apologise. Not if you don’t mean it,’ said Darragh lightly.

‘But I did want – I hadn’t any choice,’ I told him.

Darragh looked at me straight, his brown eyes very serious and a little frown on his face. ‘There’s always a choice, Fainne,’ he said soberly.

Then we sat in silence for a while, and at length he took up the pipes and began to play again, some tune I did not recognise that was sad enough to bring the tears to your eyes. Not that I’d have cried over so foolish a thing, even if I’d been capable of it.

‘There’s words to that tune,’ Darragh ventured. ‘I could teach you. It sounds bonny, with the pipes and the singing.’

‘Me, sing?’ I was jolted out of my misery. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Never tried, have you?’ said Darragh. ‘Odd, that. I’ve never yet met a soul without some music in them. I bet you could sing fit to call the seals up out of the ocean, if you gave it a try.’ His tone was coaxing.

‘Not me,’ I said flatly. ‘I’ve better things to do. More important things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Things. You know I can’t talk about it.’

‘Fainne.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t like to see you doing that – that – doing what you were doing yesterday. I don’t like it.’

‘Doing what?’ I lifted my brows as haughtily as I could manage, and stared straight at him. He looked steadily back.

‘Carrying on with the lads. Flirting. Behaving like some – some silly girl. It’s not right.’

‘I can’t imagine what you mean,’ I retorted scornfully, though I was struck to the heart by his criticism. ‘Anyway, you weren’t even looking at me.’

Darragh gave his crooked grin, but there was no mirth in it. ‘I was looking, all right. You made sure everyone would be looking.’

I was silent.

‘My father was right, you know,’ he said after a while. ‘You should get wed, have a brood of children, settle down. You need looking after.’

‘Nonsense,’ I scoffed. ‘I can look after myself.’

‘You need keeping an eye on,’ persisted Darragh. ‘Maybe you can’t see it, and maybe your father can’t see it, but you’re a danger to yourself.’

‘Rubbish,’ I said, bitterly offended that he should think me so inadequate. ‘Besides, who would I wed, here in the bay? A fisherman? A tinker’s lad? Hardly.’

‘You’re right, of course,’ Darragh said after a moment. ‘Quite unsuitable, it’d be. I see that.’ Then he got to his feet, lifting the pipes neatly onto his shoulder. He had grown a lot, this last year, and had begun to show a dark shadow of beard around the chin. He had acquired a small gold ring in one ear, just like his father’s.

‘I’d best be off, then.’ He looked at me unsmiling. ‘Slip you in my pocket and take you with me, I would, if you were a bit smaller. Keep you out of harm’s way.’

‘I’d be too busy anyway,’ I said, as the desolation of parting swept over me once again. It never got any easier, year after year, and knowing I would myself be leaving next autumn made this time even worse. ‘I have work to do. Difficult work, Darragh.’

‘Mm.’ He didn’t really seem to be listening to me, just looking. Then he reached over to tweak my hair, not too hard, and he said what he always said. ‘Goodbye, Curly. I’ll see you next summer. Keep out of trouble, now, until I come back.’

I nodded, incapable of speech. Somehow, even though I had learned so much this season, even though I had come close to a mastery of my craft, it seemed all of a sudden that the summer had been utterly wasted, that I had squandered something precious and irreplaceable. I watched my friend as he made his way through the circle of stones, the wind tugging and tearing at his old clothes and whipping his dark hair out behind him, and then he went down the other side of the hill and was gone. And it was cold, so cold I felt it in the very marrow, a chill that no warm fire nor sheepskin coat could keep at bay. I went home, and still the sun was barely creeping up the eastern sky, dark red behind storm-tossed clouds. As I walked back to the Honeycomb, and lit a lantern to see me in through the shadowy passages, I made my breathing into a pattern. One breath in, long and deep from the belly. Out in steps, like the cascades of a great waterfall. Control, that was what it was all about. You had to keep control. Lose that, and the exercise of the craft was pointless. I was a sorcerer’s daughter. A sorcerer’s daughter did not have friends or feelings; she could not afford them. Look at my father. He had tried to live a different sort of life, and all it had brought him was heartache and bitterness. Far wiser to concentrate on the craft, and put the rest aside.