Juliet Marillier - Heart's Blood

“This is the curse,” I breathed. “Not being able to leave; being forever tied to these beings. Giving up your whole life to them.That is . . .” I could not find a word for it. Terrible, cruel, tragic: none seemed sufficient.

“Unfortunate?”

“Unfortunate indeed,” I said, “if there really is no remedy for it.”

“Remedy?”The word burst out of him, scornful, furious. He dropped my hand as if it might burn him. “What remedy could exist for this?”

I said nothing. I had hoped that after what had just unfolded, he would spare me his sudden bursts of anger. It had been too much to expect.

“Hope is dangerous, Caitrin,” he said after a little, his voice calmer.“To allow hope into the heart is to open oneself to bitter disappointment.”

That shocked me into a response.“You don’t believe that,” I said.“You can’t.”

“The curse condemns the chieftains of Whistling Tor to lives of sorrow. If there were a way out of this, don’t you think my father, or his father, or Nechtan himself would have found it? If we could run this household as other chieftains do theirs, sending emissaries, receiving visitors, employing stewards and factors to help us fulfill our responsibilities, matters might be different. But you’ve seen how it is. Nobody stays. Since Nechtan’s time, fear and loathing have kept them away. I don’t need false hope from you, Caitrin, only neat script and accurate translation.You can’t understand this. Nobody from outside can.”

He was wrong, of course. I knew exactly how it felt to be hopeless and alone. I knew about sorrow and loss. But Anluan was in no state of mind to hear it, nor was I prepared to lay my heart bare before a man whose mood could turn so abruptly from sun to storm. “If you think your situation is beyond remedy,” I said quietly, “why bother with translating the Latin? Why trouble yourself, or me, with reading the documents at all?”

He made no answer, simply stood there gazing towards the settlement as if it were a far-off, unattainable land of legend.

“There might be a description of what Nechtan did,” I went on.“There could be a key to undoing it.You have your life ahead of you, Anluan.You mustn’t spend it as a slave to your ancestor’s ill deed.”

“Come,” he said, as if I had not spoken. “You’ll be tired. We should return to the house.”

We walked some way in silence, save for the songs of birds in the trees around us and the soft thud of our footfalls on the forest path.About halfway up the hill I stopped to catch my breath.

“It’s so quiet,” I said. “So peaceful. If I hadn’t seen the host with my own eyes, I’d find it hard to believe there was anything living in these woods beyond birds and a squirrel or two.”

“They are here.”

An idea came to me, perhaps a very foolish one. “Are you able to—to bring them out and talk to them? They came to my rescue. I should thank them.”

Anluan’s eyes narrowed. “ Thank them?” he echoed. “It would be the first thanks they had ever received, I imagine. Curses and imprecations have been more common over the years. Besides, they acted at my bidding. Without my control the host might just as easily have set upon you.”

Very likely this was correct, but a stubborn part of me refused to accept it. If everyone at Whistling Tor, from its chieftain down, kept acting in accordance with the fears and restrictions built up over a hundred years, then Anluan’s gloomy predictions must come true and he would be the very last of his line. He would indeed be trapped, and his household with him. If there was any way to prevent that, we should surely do our best to find it.

“I’d like to try it, if you agree,” I said. “Can you make them come out again?”

Anluan gave me an odd look, mingling disbelief and admiration. He raised his left hand and clicked his fingers.

They did not flow forth in a mistlike mass this time, but appeared one by one, standing under the trees, as if they had been there all along if only I had known how to see them. When Anluan had brought them rushing to my aid they had screamed, wailed, assaulted the ears. Now they were utterly silent. Not creatures of ancient legend; not devils or demons. All the same, my skin prickled as I looked at them: here a woman carrying an injured child, there an old man with a heavy bag over his shoulder, his back bent, his limbs shaking; under an oak, a younger man whose fingers clutched feverishly onto an amulet strung around his neck. There were warriors and priests here, little girls and old women. The more I gazed at them, turning to look on all sides, the more of them appeared, until the forest was full of them. Ghosts? Spirits? Eichri and Rioghan could lift cups and platters, open doors, help around the house and farm. I had touched both of them, and Muirne, and found their forms solid, if unusually cold. This host was somewhere between flesh and spirit, I thought. Not specters, not living human folk, but ... something in between. Whatever had gone wrong when Nechtan performed his rite of summoning, this sad throng was the result.

My mind showed me Rioghan endlessly pacing the garden as he sought a way to atone for his terrible error. I looked on the forlorn faces, the stricken eyes, the damaged bodies, and a profound unease came over me. I sensed their sorrows, their burdens, their years of waiting for an end that never came. If they were ghosts, or something similar, they were unquiet ones, still on their journey to a place of peace.

The silence was broken by a rustling, a slight, restless movement. The host was waiting. I cleared my throat, not sure if I was afraid or not, only feeling the deep strangeness of it all. I glanced at Anluan. He was watching me intently, just as the others were.

“You’re safe with me,” he said, then lifted his voice to address the crowd. “This is Caitrin, daughter of Berach. She came to Whistling Tor as my scribe. She has something to say to you.”

An ancient man-at-arms put down his club and leaned on it. The woman with the hurt child sank to the ground and settled there, cradling it in her arms.A young warrior with a stain of red all across his shirt leaned against a willow, watching me with restless eyes.

I trusted to instinct and let the words form of themselves.“You helped me just now when I was in trouble,” I told the assembled host. “You did a good thing. I suppose each of you has a story, and I think some of them must be sad and terrible. I’m here at Whistling Tor to help Lord Anluan find out about his family’s past, and about what has happened here on the hill since”—something stopped me before I spoke Nechtan’s name—“since you first came here. I hope that a way can be found to help you. I hope that before the end of summer it will be possible to repay the good deed you did for me today.”

None of them spoke, but there was a universal sigh, soft and sorrowful, and then they dispersed.They did not walk away or wink instantly out of sight, but faded gradually until their forms were no longer discernible against the dark trunks of the trees or the green of the foliage.

“You speak to them of hope?” Anluan sounded both astonished and displeased, and my heart sank.

“There’s always hope,” I said. “There’s always a reason for going on.” Once, when she was called to the door, Ita had left a carving knife unguarded on the table. I could have done it. I could have plunged the blade into my chest. My hand had itched to seize the weapon.To end the pain ... to set myself free ... But I had not done it. Even in that time of utter darkness, somewhere deep inside me the memory of love and goodness had stayed alive. “There is hope for everyone.”

“Doesn’t the presence of these beings on the hill convince you that for some, life is without hope and the place beyond death still darker?”