Gossamer Axe (3 page)

Christa was dreaming of Ireland.

Curled up in her bed under a light sheet, the windows open to the cool night air and the distant sound of traffic on Colorado Boulevard, the harper dreamed of her girlhood in Corca Duibne. Once again she wanders barefoot and barelegged across the wide green fields, climbs the embankment about her father’s steading, peers through the hedge of crabapple and elder. She leans her back up against an old rowan tree and stares off at the sea, wondering if what the old storyteller said the night before is true: that the Summerland lies a league out and a foot above a tall man’s head.

And with the illogic of dreams, she knows at the same time that she is dreaming, that she is both Christa Cruitaire, the harp teacher of Denver, and Chairiste Ní Cummen, by this dream a little girl again, who sits on this earthen bank and wonders about the Summerland.

And she knows also that this is not Ireland. Ireland is the creation of another people, of another language. This is Eriu: land of the Goddess, land of the Gaeidil. There is still a king at Cashel, and Christianity is but a new arrival come to contest the rule of the Gods.

Christa’s hands clutched at the sheet, and for a moment she thought she saw her bedroom, the glow from the LED display of her clock radio turning everything into pale-blue abstractions, light from the almost-full moon patterning the wall with horizontal shadows from the blinds. But she wanted to dream. It was Midsummer, and she wanted to remember.

And she did. The rowan tree comes back, and the hedge, and the steading. The piquant smell of a wood-and-peat fire drifts through the clear air.

She is older now, no longer a little girl. Harpstrings have been often under her fingers these last years, and men and women come from distant steadings to hear her play. The sky is blue, the sea gray; and now she sees Siudb crossing the pastureland, running, her dark hair streaming out behind her and her tunic flapping about her thighs.

“Chairiste!” she calls. “Come and see! Father and Donal are out to catch the brown bull in the north field, and he is not coming, and father is so angry he looks like Cu Chulainn getting ready to fight the men of Connaught!”

But Chairiste, hurt and angry after yet another argument with her mother, does not reply. She waves to her beloved Siudb and motions for her to come up on the bank.

Arms about one another, the two young women look out at the sea. The harper of Denver wept in her sleep at the touch of her friend’s hand and the feel of Siudb’s brown hair mixing with the copper and red of her own. Siudb had been gone for a long time. Dreams were all Christa Cruitaire had left of her.

“Mother is talking about marriage,” says Chairiste.

“Is she leaving your father then? I cannot say but that it would be a good idea, with himself holding to the old ways and your mother taking up the new.”

“No, she is not leaving father. She wants me to marry.”

Siudb looks shocked and hurt at the same time. Her hand tightens possessively on Chairiste’s shoulder. “Is that not your choice? Her people have the ear of many kings, but they have not recast Brehon Law yet.”

“That is what I think, and that is what father thinks. But it seems the Christians do things differently. Mother wants me to be a Christian.”

“But you are not a Christian!”

Chairiste plucks a piece of tall grass and, in the timeless manner of children who stand gawkily at the door of adulthood, chews absently on the sweet stalk. “I want to be a harper. Mother disagrees: Christian women stay at home and tend their men.”

“And so?”

“And so I have decided to run away to the harpers’ school to the north. People say that I play well, and maybe I do. But I want to do more than just make music. Any
timpanach
can do that. I want to learn to heal, to work magic with the harp. I cannot learn that here.

“I am thirteen, I have been proclaimed a woman. I am old enough to be taken as a student. Sruitmor is the master of the Corca Duibne school, and I saw him once at the Great Fair. I heard him play, too. He seems…” Chairiste smiles, impulsively presses her lips against Siudb’s cheek. “He seems a strange man. Like a Druid, and yet not. Stern and kind both.”

Again, Siudb tightens her hand on Chairiste’s shoulder. “If you are running away, then so am I.”

“But, your singing—”

But Siudb’s hand fades, and Chairiste has only enough time to throw her arms about Siudb before the bedroom in Denver came back, flickered in and out of existence as Christa blinked at it with tear-filled eyes, then vanished again as the harper buried her head in the pillow and willed herself to sleep—and dream—again.

Midsummer Night. Crickets. Bonfires showing starlike at the tops of surrounding hills. Song and laughter across the miles, across the fields and pastures.

O dear Goddess, not this! Gracious Mother
—

Older by four years again, Chairiste and Siudb, having leapt the flames of the fire together, scamper away from the light. Under their arms they carry the harps that they painstakingly built during their first year of study. They are rude instruments, made by inexpert hands, but their tone is sweet.

Dear Goddess, no!

But the dream continues, unfolding methodically. It is a reckless, foolhardy thing they do, but they are young; and Chairiste sincerely believes that she can do anything, even unto listening with impunity to the music of the Sidh.

Go back, Judith. Go back. O Brigit, she doesn’t hear me! She can’t hear me. It’s already over.

They approach the fairy mound and hear the crystalline tones of harp and voice. Chairiste looks at Siudb, puts her finger to her lips, then kisses her. Siudb giggles. The full moon burns down on the land, laving the mound in silver.

Chairiste touches several strings of her harp lightly, trying to follow a strain of the Sidh music. There is magic there, more magic than Sruitmor can ever teach her. The sequence of notes turns outward, then in on itself. She feels her arms tingling. Yes… yes, this is it. There is something
here
…

Siudb gasps. The tall, silver-haired figure of the Sidh bard is stepping across the grass toward them, a gaping archway of darkness open in the hill behind him. His eyes glitter as though a piece of the moon lies in each one, and the harp in his hands glows palely.

He sounds a few strings. The mortals wilt before him.

In her bedroom, Christa screamed. “Judith! Run!”

But her friend was centuries away. Christa sat up, mouth dry, and switched on the bedside light. “Siudb,” she whispered. But the Gaeidelg name came uneasily to her tongue. She had been speaking English for too many years. It was much easier to call her lover
Judith
, to call herself
Christa
, to call her instrument not a
cruit
but a harp. The old names were gone, and the old ways along with them.

She hunched over in bed, hands to her face. “Judith. Judith.” But Judith was still with the Sidh, still a captive of that realm of twilight and shadow, still a dweller in that cursed palace of ice and moonlight.

The Realm was everywhere, and yet nowhere. Judith could have been within the reach of her arm, but that made no difference. She was with the Sidh. She was in another world, another universe.

Weeping, Christa looked out through her window at the full moon that was just touching the summits of the Rockies. “Goddess. Beloved Brigit. I stood in Your presence when I entered the circle of women and took the chalice from the hand of Your priestess, Aoine. My mother would not bring me. My father was allowed to by the good will of the women of my clan. You provided for your daughter then. Help me now. It’s been over two hundred years since I’ve touched her. I haven’t even seen her. O Mother of the
Cruitreacha
, guide me!”

On the nightstand beside her, the alarm went off in shrill chirps. She started and cried out before she realized what it was, then ruefully shook her head and silenced it. Time to get up.

Outside, the sky was turning blue, the moon fast disappearing behind the mountains as the sun rose to begin the longest day.

Siudb wanders through the shadowy meadows, seeing by the half light that pervades the Realm. Her gown whispers across the grass and the pale flowers. The gleaming fabric makes her mortal skin look dull and muddy, but even Chairiste was not flattered by the garments of the Sidh.

Near the center of the formal gardens, there is an alabaster bench by the side of a silent fountain. Siudb sits, face in her hands, thinking of Chairiste. There is no day here, nor really any night: merely a twilight, a continuing. Siudb finds that she cannot estimate how long she has lived among the Sidh, how long it has been since Chairiste, armed with Orfide’s best harp, pried open a gate into mortality and so escaped into a sunlit landscape that neither Gaeidil recognized.

Siudb shudders, remembering how Chairiste reached back for her. But the harper was not strong enough. She had learned enough of the magic of the Sidh to save herself, but she could not help another. Immortal hands seized Siudb and dragged her back into the twilight, and the gateway closed on Chairiste’s agonized face.

And is she dead then? Siudb wonders. Is Orfide certain? Or is he merely hoping?

She does not know. She knows, however, that she cannot die in this unchanging realm, and that if Chairiste has gone ahead into the Summerland, then she must return to the mortal lands herself, die, and so find her friend.

She looks at her hands. She has not touched a harp in a long time. Harps are forbidden her. Orfide is taking no chances.

“I will have to steal one,” she mutters. “And if Orfide likes it not at all, then he can go to the Christians’ hell.”

Showered and dressed, Christa descended the stairs to her studio. Outside, the garden glowed in the morning light, and she smiled at the trees and flowers as she removed the blue drape from the solitary harp.

With the drape removed, the harp shone suddenly in a blaze of burnished wood, jeweled inlays, and golden strings.

*day*

“Indeed, it is day,” she said to the harp. “Midsummer. Brigit bless you, Ceis.”

*bright*

The harp’s remark did not seem to require an answer, and after running a hand affectionately along its shoulder, Christa went into the kitchen to make breakfast.

*students*

“Not yet,” she called over her shoulder. “Susan’s my first, and she won’t be here for a while.” She heated milk on the stove and added oatmeal and a little chopped leek. “I’ll eat quickly and then I need to sit with you. I’ve an idea.”

*speak*

She stirred the porridge and left it to simmer. She had baked bread the day before, and she cut a piece out of a woman-sized loaf and put it in the toaster, set butter and honey on the table. “I’m thinking that I might be able to work with the tree calendar.”

**

“Hear me. Thirteen moons, thirteen modes—counting the plagal forms—from
beth
to
ruis
.”

*fourteen*

“Indeed, fourteen modes, but it’s that point I’m making. The moons begin with birth, end in death, and commence again with birth. Since the modes overlap the moons by one, I could work with an ascending melodic pattern that would mutate through the modes, starting with C ionian in the plagal form. I’d use the symbolism of the tree month as a basis for each mutation. When the moons would indicate rebirth, the superfluous mode would be B locrian, in the authentic form. Death again. If I could catch Orfide within the cycle, I could lead him into death… and leave him there.” Her voice held an edge.

Ceis sat silently, held upright in its polished wood support. It was essentially neutral in its loyalties. Existing only to be played, it allied itself with the player. It was more than capable of killing Orfide… if she herself had the strength, and the skill, and the raw power to defeat the Sidh bard—but she could feel that it was hesitating.

The response came at last. *anticipated*

The harp said no more, and Christa took her food to the table and put porridge and bread into her mouth, hardly tasting either. If the Sidh bard knew of the deadly cycle of modes, then he could easily nullify any magic she attempted with the idea. In fact, Orfide was subtle enough that he could possibly use the spell against her, twining her in her own music, forcing her to play the fatal strain against herself.

She tossed the idea on the rubbish heap of rescue plans that had been accumulating in the back of her mind since she had escaped from the Realm. Some she had actually tried. In 1811, in Cornwall, she had opened the gates and battled Orfide. And she had lost. Again, in Scotland in 1853. No success.

She felt herself running out of ideas. In order to win, she had to become as good a harper as Orfide. But the Sidh bard had nothing to do but play, and he had been playing since the beginning of time. Christa, though she could keep herself young and alive over the years, had to live as a mortal—eating and sleeping, working, paying bills.

She washed up, dried her hands carefully, rubbed a bit of olive oil into her nails. She needed something else, something so radically different that Orfide would never anticipate it, something with which she could wrench open the gates of the Realm and force the Sidh to give her lover back to her.

She entered the studio, picked up Ceis.

*age*

“Is it showing? Last night was hard, my friend. I’d not be surprised at all if I looked older.”

“help*

She smiled at the harp’s offer and accepted it. She had allowed herself a few additional years so as to survive better in a world that respected youth little more than it honored age, but overall, with the exception of dress and cosmetics, she looked much as she had when she escaped from the Realm. Judith would recognize her. It was important that Judith recognize her.

“tears*

She sighed. “A long time it’s been.”

*play*

She settled Ceis on her lap, rested it against her left shoulder. The tune she played was an old one, one that reminded her of her childhood with Judith. They had been close friends from infancy, and it had surprised no one that, as young women, they had fallen in love. Such an occurrence was unusual, but unremarkable. It was only the Christians who disapproved…

*Chairiste*

“I’m sorry, Ceis. I was thinking of mother.”

*play*

Her concentration was better this time, and the melody grew under her fingers. The sweet notes washed through her like a cool stream, leaching away the years.

“Not too much, old friend.”

*play*

In many ways, Ceis was wiser than she, and she had learned to trust it. But it was taking several additional years from her this time, and, linked with it in magical union as she was, she could not easily stop the process on her own. Under such circumstances, it was difficult to say who was playing whom.

The melody at last wound down, the final notes shimmering into the quiet air of the studio. Christa sat, a little stunned, the magic slowly clearing from her head.

When she felt she could walk, she set Ceis back on its stand and made her way shakily to the bathroom mirror.

She was almost shocked: she had not been this young in a long time, not since she had stumbled out of the Realm and into France of 1782.

“Old friend,” she said, “what have you done? I hardly look eighteen.”

*good*

“But why?”

Ceis was silent. The doorbell rang: her first student of the day. Hoping that Susan would not comment on her appearance, she threw the drape over the Sidh harp and ran for the door. Her steps were light, youthful, as though she were, once again, the young woman who knew nothing of Sidh palaces or American cities, but only the green meadows and pastures of Eriu.