Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven (10 page)

The morning was another clear, clean day, and it seemed a day to ask the questions she had never asked before. Maybe not about the Tylwyth Teg, not yet but…

“Da,” she asked, as her father stoked himself with hot food to keep him on the water, “Why do you always sell half the catch in Criccieth? You could sell it here. Especially on those days when no one else brings in much.”

He stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth. “The long and the short of it is that in Criccieth I’m only one fisherman that only fishermen know, and not well, and only by ‘Daffyd’ and half of Wales is named that. No one cares who brings in fish, nor how many fish I bring in. In Clogwyn I’m Daffyd Prothero that everyone knows.”

“Well yes,” she admitted, “but—”

“It’s to keep you safe.” He practically bit off the words, as if he was afraid that to say more would be dangerous. This, from her da, who never let one word do when he could string out a sort of poem from many!

“Safe from what?” she asked. The next question she had never asked before. “Whoever would harm me?”

There were shadows on his darkly handsome face, and his brows knitted with unhappiness. “And why are you asking me this now?” he countered.

“Because it can’t be to keep us safe from Constable Ewynnog; you’ve been doing this all my life.” She twisted her fingers together, anxiously. “Da, if there’s something that is a danger, aren’t I old enough to know about it now?”

His mouth turned down in an unhappy grimace. “I—I can’t talk about it yet,” he said, finally.

Yet? What does that mean?

“Is it about my mother?” she asked. Still another question she had never asked. “Is there more about my mother you’ve not told me?”

This only increased his distress, and she was suddenly reminded again of the tales, the tales not only of the Tylwyth Teg and fanciful things, but of princes and frogs and fishermen, and how it was always best never to ask questions, for the mere asking of them brought trouble upon the asker. She had, as a child, thought it silly that the princesses and brides and other girls would persist in asking the questions they
knew
were forbidden—but now she knew first-hand just how impossible it was
not
to ask them. They burned in your mind, and ate at you, until you had to blurt them out or die from them eating at you.

She could feel all those questions, all those words, seething in her mind, as they had since she had awakened this morning, and she knew she could no more refrain from asking than she could refrain from breathing.

As for her Da, he looked startled as well as unhappy, as if he had not expected her to make that intuitive leap. And that, in a way, told her something; it told her that yes, this all did have to do with her mother.

“I can’t tell you yet,” he repeated, with an edge of desperation in his voice. “I will, I promise, but I cannot tell you yet.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” she asked, softly now. She put one hand on the hand that still held the fork. “Da, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, you know that. Is there—”

He was sweating now. “That’s—part of it—” he got out with difficulty. “There will be something. But I can’t tell you what. Not yet. Just… just forget the questions for now. There’s troubles enough without us looking for more. Aye?”

“All right,” she agreed, and he finished eating in a rush and was out the door as if he could not wait to be out on the water.

She watched after him—and at least he had not forgotten his kiss at the door, nor his wave as he pushed out to sea, but his leave-taking left her feeling uneasy inside. As if she had somehow broken another of those Tylwyth Teg-tale rules.

“Oh, oh, oh, silly girl that you are,”
said a voice full of merriment from somewhere near her left knee. She looked down. It was the seaweed girl again. She bit her lip, then, screwing up her courage, addressed the creature as she had not in years.

“And why am I a silly girl?” she asked.

The little thing tossed her hair, the movement making her seaweed-gown move as well, and revealing enough to make Mari blush. There was a fully formed woman under that weed, regardless that she was only two feet tall. “
There you go; you know, and you know that you know, that words are power and words can bind, but you go and tell your father ‘I’ll do anything to help you.’ It’s a good thing he is your father, or you could find yourself bound to serve him until white horses come out of the sea.”

She bit her lip harder. The creature was right. And then it struck her: if anyone was to know what the bottom to all of this mystery was, it would be the Tylwyth Teg folk!

“And what do
you
know about my mother?” she demanded.

The tiny green eyes twinkled, and was there a touch of… well, not malice but something with more darkness to it than mere mischief.
“And what will you give me for what I could tell?”

Oh dear. She had forgotten that. The Tylwyth Teg, at least in the tales, had no generosity of spirit. Nothing was ever freely given. A gift enraged them; it put obligation on them that they had not agreed to. They’d steal what they fancied, but not food. The old woman had said it was because there was salt in most food, and salt was holy, so
they could not steal it. You could leave food for them, though, and their rules let them have as much of it as they could eat in a sitting. If you put out bread and milk, say, they would take it, but would perform tasks to “pay” for it. Food was allowed. Put out more than that, without bargaining beforehand, and it enraged them.

So, what would a sea-creature want? Something it couldn’t get in the sea, of course.

“Bread and honey?” she offered, tentatively.

The little creature scoffed.
“That’s not enough for what I know,”
she said.
“You must do better than that.”
She grinned, and Mari noticed that all her teeth were pointed, like a shark’s.
“Secrets, secrets, oh, I do know them. Offer again.”

But though she pummeled her mind for something to offer, she couldn’t come up with anything. She shrugged. “We bain’t rich,” she said. “I’ve not got much, and most of what we have, I won’t offer without I talk to my da.”

The little thing wagged her head back and forth.
“You’ve more than you think, Mari Prothero. Pledge me a service!”

Oh no, she wasn’t going to be caught in that trap. You didn’t offer the Tylwyth Teg a “service” unless you were entirely certain of what that service would be, and even then you had to be careful lest you discover you’d bound yourself to them for years and years. “I’m not free to pledge a service,” she temporized.

“Well then, you won’t be hearing what I know.”
The Tylwyth Teg creature laughed.
“And if only you knew what I know you’d never need to bargain again, never fear some bumbling landsman lording it over his lessers, and never know want.”
She laughed again, mockingly.
“But ask your da. If you dare. If he’ll dare answer you. Oh, he’ll be telling you one day, but the day he does, it will be too late for you to be bargaining!”

And with that, she twirled around and vanished from sight—but her laughter rang out over the pebbly shore, growing fainter as she sped for the water.

Mari frowned, much put out. It was very vexing to have finally acknowledged that these creatures were real only to have them turn about and act like this. She restrained herself from shouting
after the creature. What would she say? “All right, just see if I don’t!” Oh that would accomplish absolutely nothing.

So very irritating. The vexation was enough to make her feel less afraid of them, because this one certainly wasn’t acting like a powerful and dangerous creature, but like a tormenting little brat.

She combed her hair back out of her eyes with her fingers, and went into the house. Uncanny creatures or not, mysteries could wait. She had chores to do. Just to begin with, that kelp-ash would need washing to get the salt out, and now was as good a time as any to get her buckets and go.

But when she went to the stream in the sheep-meadow to fetch fresh water, there were other surprises waiting for her. Two of them.

Again, these were tiny creatures, transparent as glass, and again, female. Instead of being clothed in seaweed, they were clothed only in their own hair, although they managed to be more modest that way than the little rude thing. They were clearly waiting for her, half-in, half-out of the stream, side by side, with their arms braced on the bank.

She looked around, nervously, to make sure there was no one about to see her talking with nothing. But there was not a soul to be seen, only the sheep. She looked down at the two—whatever they were. They didn’t correspond to any Tylwyth Teg that she recognized. They smiled winsomely at her.

“We are very glad you are willing to see us now, Mari,”
said one, in a voice that sounded oddly like the burbling of water over stones.
“It made us sad when you stopped wanting to.”

Wait… now… she
did
remember creatures like these, though she still had no name for them. These were some of her childhood playmates; these, or something very like these, had taught her to swim at an age when most children were barely toddling. She’d never told her father that; he’d probably have gone quite mad if she had.

“I didn’t know you were real,” she said, shamefacedly. “Da—”

“Oh, we know,”
said the second.
“And Mari, he wasn’t unhappy because he thought we weren’t real. He was unhappy because he knows we are.”

She stared at them, speechless, as they toyed with the grasses at the verge of the stream. “But—”

“It means something very important,”
said the first.
“Some—we can’t tell you, until your father does. But some we can say, and he should have. You have magic, Mari. Magic like the old Druids and older. You will be able to command the creatures of the water when you are taught. He should have told you. He should have seen you were taught. But he was afraid.”

Afraid? She felt a cold chill of fear herself. She didn’t blame him for being afraid! Magic? What had she to do with magic? What would she
want
with magic?

As if the little creatures had read the thoughts in her mind, the second answered her.
“Magic is a power like any other, Mari. Master it, and it becomes a tool in your hand, and when you have tools, you also have weapons.”
The water-girl looked about furtively, as if making sure
she
was not going to be overheard, and lowered her voice further.
“Listen and remember. This is important. Because you have this gift of magic, even though you are untaught, you are valuable to us of the Water. And that alone gives you power. Remember. It is power to bargain. There will come a time, soon, when you are presented with something that appears to be no choice. But you can bargain within that. So think well on that day, demand your choice, and make your bargain.”

She shook her head. “I haven’t the least notion of what you’re talking about,” she said, bewildered. “Bargain? What would I bargain over?” The only bargain she could think likely was in the market at Clogwyn.

“It makes no sense now, but it will then. Trust us, and remember!”
said the first, and the two of them suddenly dove down into the water and were gone.

She filled her pails and trudged back through the calf-high grass, beginning to regret that she’d accepted these Tylwyth Teg-things after all. At least when she’d thought they were bits of fever-dream, that was the
only
part of her life that didn’t make any sense.

Now… there didn’t seem to be much of her life that did, any more.

N
AN
held to her temper with both hands, and refrained from strangling that young ape Clive Waterleed. Clive, in his turn, glanced slyly up at her from beneath a fat comma of blond hair.

“What did I tell you, young sir?” she asked, severely.

“You told me not to put the ends of Jenny’s braids in the ink again,” he said. “And I didn’t.”

Of course he hadn’t. “You put the ends of Jenny’s braids in the paint,” she pointed out.

“You didn’t tell me not to do
that!”
he said, with an air of triumph.

Indeed he had. And indeed, she had not, specifically, told him not to put the child’s hair in paint. The
ayah
was even now scrubbing the blue out of one braid, and the red out of the other, while Jenny cried because her favorite dress was spoiled.

Nan wanted to pick him up and shake him until his teeth rattled. She didn’t remember
any
of the children she’d been in the school with who’d been as full of the devil as Clive was. Nor did she remember any of them being so persistently
nasty
to one particular child.

She gritted her teeth and grabbed both his shoulders. “Why do you
torment Jenny?” she asked, punctuating each word with a single hard shake—not enough to hurt him but enough to emphasize that she was very, very angry.

She had shaken the hair out of his eyes, and he stared into her angry face, blue eyes blank and guileless.
“I
don’t know!” he said, as if he was shocked that she would say such a thing.