Daughter Of The Forest (18 page)

“We ask for guidance,” said Finbar. “We bear our lights within, and sometimes the path is clear. But often they are dim, and we cannot trust even our own. Spirits of the forest, spirits of the water, ghosts of the air, beings of the deep and secret places, help us in our time of need. For ahead is darkness and confusion.”

His words sent a shiver through me. Had he seen something of our future?

“I heard a tale once,” I said, “of a hero who came to grief, after long journeys and mighty deeds, when he met a monstrous creature with jaws like iron, and the strength of three giants. The hero was torn limb from limb; and when the monster finished with him, the parts that were left were strewn far and wide. So he had a shin bone that lay in a deep cave where water dripped constantly down the walls; and his hair was blown by the east wind till it tangled in a hazel tree in a far off corner of the land. His skull was used as a drinking bowl for a time, then abandoned in a stream, which bore it to the very shores of the western sea. A wild dog carried off his little finger bones to feed its young. And after a time, there seemed to be nothing left of him. Years went by, and tiny pale toadstools grew where his leg bone lay, and the leaves of the hazel grew around his bright hair. On the sea’s rim, his skull filled with soil, and in it sprouted and flourished the seeds of wild parsley; and through his finger bones, where the pups had left them white and clean, grew spears of crocus. And they say, if ever a traveler plucks the wild parsley, and takes the bark of the hazel tree, and the secret toadstools, and mixes them with crocus from the patch of forest where the hero’s last bones lie, a powerful spell will come to life. The hero will be reborn, not as he was before his destruction, but many times stronger in body and spirit; for he will be filled with the strength of earth, sea, and air. I think of the seven of us as the parts of one body. We may be torn asunder, and it may seem as if there is no tomorrow for us. We may each travel our own path, and we may fall and be broken and mend again. But in the end, as surely as the sun and moon make their way across the arch of the heavens, the strength of one is the strength of seven. Don’t forget what our mother said, as she lay dying. We must touch the earth, we must look into the sky and feel the wind. Like pools in the same stream, we must meet and part and meet again. We belong to the flow of the lake and to the deep beating heart of the forest.”

The candles were lower now, and we fell into silence. It was a time of year when spirits were very close, for it was less than two moons to midwinter day, and I could almost catch small voices in the shadows around us. Padriac had not spoken again, but he placed his hand on Cormack’s shoulder briefly, and Cormack nodded. And Conor said to his twin, very quietly, “I’ll come back over to the barn with you, for a while.”

“Thank you,” said Cormack.

Finbar stayed behind when all the rest had gone. He sat staring into the fire. The mood was somber. Despite our brave words, we were looking into an abyss.

“What are you thinking, Finbar?”

“Something I cannot share.”

I moved closer to the fire, thrusting my hands into my pockets for warmth. The smooth surface of Simon’s carving fitted exactly into my palm.

Tell me. Tell me what you see
.

I tried to look into his mind, but there was a barrier there, a dark wall around his thoughts.

I cannot share this. I will not frighten you
.

I caught an image of myself as a small child running barefoot through the forest in dappled sunlight.

Are you afraid
?

A feeling of intense cold. Water. The whistling of air past the body, the strangest sensation of falling, flight, falling. That much he revealed to me. Then he shut it off abruptly.
I cannot share this with you
.

“You cannot close yourself off from the whole world,” I said aloud, exhausted already from the attempt to break into his mind pictures. “How can we help one another, if we have secrets?”

“Sharing my last secret didn’t help you much,” he said flatly. “Or the Briton. I wonder now how much my efforts to undo my father’s work were worth. You were hurt, and the boy—his fate was little better for my interference. Perhaps I should cease meddling. Perhaps I should accept that our kind are all killers under the skin. If the lady Oonagh wants us as playthings, what’s the real difference?” He gave a crooked smile.

“You don’t really believe that, Finbar!” I was shocked; could he have changed so quickly? “Look me in the eye and say it again.” I took his face between my hands quite firmly. And when I met his gaze, his eyes were as clear and farseeing as ever.

“It’s all right, Sorcha,” he said gently. “I have been thinking hard, that’s all. I have not changed my tune so much. But my mind tells me there is a great ill about to befall us; and I wonder if our strength is enough to withstand it. I wish you were safe somewhere, not here in the middle of it all. And I need to rely on my brothers; I must be able to trust them, all of them.”

“You can trust them,” I said. “You heard what they said. We are all of a mind, and we always will be. Whenever one is in trouble, there will be six to help.”

“Their business is torture and death. How can they be of a mind with you, or with Conor, or myself?”

“I can’t answer that. Only—only that, if you believe the tales, it’s in the nature of our people to go to war and to kill, just as it is to sing and play and tell stories. Perhaps they are two halves of the same whole. I know that we seven are of the one family, and that we only have each other. It has to be enough.”

But there had been one brother missing; and when I opened the door for Finbar to go, we saw him, down the long hallway, as he slipped silently from a bedchamber that was not his own. She was concealed behind the door where she stood to bid him farewell, but we saw her white arm stretch out, and her fingers move softly down his cheek, and then Diarmid padded barefoot away, his face as dazzled and unseeing as some lad bewitched by faery folk. Finbar looked at me, and I looked at him; but we never said a word.

So they were married, she in her long gown of deepest russet, and my father looking at her as if there was not a soul in the world but the two of them, while all around them the family, the guests, the men of the garrison, the servants and cottagers muttered and exchanged sideways glances. I stood there in my green gown with my hair in ribbons, and by me my six brothers in a line. It did not seem to me a proper ceremony at all. In the tales, such things were done in the open, under a massive oak, and there would be playacting and mock fighting and riddles, and the druids would come out of the forest to perform the ritual of handfasting. There were none of the ancient ones at my father’s wedding, and no concession to the old ways. Perhaps the lady Oonagh came from a Christian household, but there was no way of telling, for none of her folk were there. Father Brien spoke the words tranquilly, as was his way, but it seemed to me his face was drawn, and his tone remote. As soon as the formalities were over, he packed his cart and left. A feast followed, with a laden board and flowing ale. And the next day things began to happen.

Eilis was taken ill, something she ate, they thought, but it went on too long, and I was called to her. Her face had lost its rosy plumpness, and she was purging and bringing up blood. I sent a boy for Father Brien, but he did not come, so I held her head and talked to her, and walked her up and down the room, and when she was done I made up a mixture for her, and sat by her bedside until she dropped into a fitful doze. Liam hovered outside, and so did Eilis’s father, muttering under his breath.

I stayed with her through the night, and did what I had to. The next day she was weak but seemed a little brighter. She needed rest, and careful nursing. It was something she ate, sure enough. I recognized the symptoms of monkshood poisoning, and I knew it was no accident. The amount must have been precisely calculated, for a person could survive only the very smallest dose of this lethal substance. The intent was mischief, not murder. I could not tell how the root of this herb had made its way into the wedding banquet, and so specifically onto one person’s platter. And I was not about to accuse my new stepmother aloud, though her eyes were on me as Seamus Redbeard took his hasty farewells. A covered litter was made ready, and he bore his daughter away home to Glencarnagh. Liam questioned me intently, with a white rage on his face that I had never seen before; but I cautioned him, reading the lady Oonagh more accurately than he. She knew enough of my skills to realize the source of Eilis’s mysterious illness would not be undetected for long. An accusation was just what she expected, for what better to drive a wedge between father and son? Besides, I told Liam, Ellis would be safe now. She was a strong girl, and I had caught the poison early. Better if she were to return home, for a while at least.

Diarmid had a black eye, and Cormack a nasty gash on his cheek. Perhaps a certain piece of information had not been kept entirely secret after all. In this matter I would not interfere, though I saw Diarmid watching her, watching her, and growing a little thinner and paler every day, like a man who has tasted faery fruit but once, and is eaten up by his craving. My father’s face bore a shadow of the same look, though he went about his business more or less as usual. Oonagh sat at the table, her smile serene, her eyes commanding. People scurried nervously to obey her. Everywhere you turned, it seemed she was there, watching. The men-at-arms gave her a wide berth.

Then Padriac’s animals began to sicken, and to die. First it was the old donkey, found cold and stiff one morning in her stall. We were sad; but she had lived out her allotted span, more or less, and we accepted her loss with a regretful glance at the empty corner. Next the mother cat disappeared, leaving her nest of kittens behind. Padriac tried to feed them, and I helped, but one by one they pined and weakened and their tiny lives slipped away. I wept as the last one died in my hands, its once bright eyes fading to a filmy gray. Two days later, I found Padriac beating his fist against the barn wall, his knuckles bloody, his eyes swollen with tears. And at his feet, the raven whose damaged leg had almost mended, whose brave plumage had grown glossy and healthy again; but now she lay still, her head twisted back strangely, her eyes fixed sightless on the wide expanse of winter sky. The old barn was empty. Padriac’s wordless grief and anger twisted my insides. He was consumed with fury, and we could not comfort him. For me, there was worse to come. I should have been prepared, but I was not.

The lady Oonagh had told me my trips to the village were to stop; it was unsuitable, she said, for the lord Colum’s daughter to be out and about the neighborhood like some tinker’s child, getting her feet muddy and mixing with all sorts of riff-raff. I must put all that nonsense aside, and start learning to be a lady. Music—now that was appropriate. I spent a morning performing to her on the flute, and, reluctantly, the harp, for she ordered our little instrument brought down to the hall. Fortunately, my father was occupied elsewhere that day. It quickly became plain to her that I had little more to learn. Sewing, then. She asked to see my handiwork, and I was obliged to confess that I had none. Oh, I could mend, and hem a gown or a tunic. But fine work had never been called for in this house of men. Oonagh showed me a veil of thinnest lawn, sprinkled with a myriad tiny birds and flowers. It was indeed beautiful; draped over her shining hair, it gave her the look of a queen. She would show me the techniques I needed for such work. It would take a great deal of time and application, so no more trips to visit the sick with a basket of lotions and drafts. Let someone else do it. “No one else has the skills,” I said without thinking. It was the simple truth. Oonagh’s eyes narrowed and her fine, arched brows tightened with displeasure.

“Unfortunate,” she said. “Then these people will do whatever they did before you came along, my dear. Be here with your needles and thread straight after breakfast tomorrow. We have a great deal of lost ground to make up.”

I lasted no more than a few days. My fingers, so deft at bandaging and mixing and measuring, were clumsy and awkward with needle and fine silk. Under her scrutiny I broke the thread, and dropped the needle, and stained the delicate fabric with blood from my pricked finger. I longed for one of my brothers to interrupt and rescue me, but they did not. Planning was underway for another journey beyond our borders, and they were consulting maps, or exercising horses, or endlessly polishing and sharpening weapons.

Even my father was preoccupied in the lady Oonagh’s presence and she did not like it. Something was troubling him. But I continued to ply my needle, and she watched me. Sometimes she asked questions, and sometimes she sat there in silence, which was worse, for I could feel her mind reaching out toward mine, as if she would know my most secret thoughts. I tried to shield myself from her, the same way Finbar had learned to veil his mind from me. But she was very strong, and if she could not read me direct, she was clever with words, and knew how to trap.

“Your father is busy these days,” she said pleasantly enough one morning, watching me as I stitched laboriously at a long stem in shades of green. “Planning to ride out again soon, he tells me. I had hoped he would remain longer at home, but men become restless.” She gave a little laugh, shrugging narrow shoulders in her blue velvet gown. “Wives get used to it eventually, I suppose.”

I hated her efforts to be chatty even more than her hostility. “It’s what they do,” I said, frowning at my needle.

“Still, it is barely a season since the last campaign,” said Oonagh, wandering over to the narrow window that overlooked the yard, where Liam and Diarmid were passing and passing again on horseback, practicing slipping sideways out of the saddle and back up again with sword in hand, a nasty trick they used occasionally in close combat, if what they told me was to be believed. It had a surprising effect on your enemy, they said. “One wonders what calls them away again so soon. More intruders on our borders maybe?”