Shapeshifter (8 page)

What would happen next—how she would regain her own form without summoning the Dark Man’s attention— she could not say.

Coming out of the mountains through a gap that led her northwest between wind-scoured slopes carpeted in tough brown heather, Sive came to a river valley dotted with farms and small round houses. She was spotted and hunted once as she skirted its edge, searching for a place to cross. But her speed was too great for men on foot and their few hounds, and she soon left them behind. It was not being eaten that worried her so much as the fear that news would spread of the strange doe who kept her spots in winter. For there were many among her people who walked in the mortal lands from time to time and who might carry such a rumor back with them to Far’s ear.

It was a dark, wet, cold country. As far as Sive was concerned, the sons of the Gael were welcome to it. She saw them sometimes, wrapped in cloaks and blankets, bent into the wind or hunched under the rain. The winter she knew—brisk and fresh, with a dusting of snow to sparkle in the sun and dress the world in a clean white beauty—was a thing glimpsed only on rare days.

Her goal was the northwest corner of the country, as far as possible from anyplace she had ever been in her own world. She traveled blindly, never sure of her route. The geography of Tir na nOg and Eire might be similar, but Sive’s knowledge of the land was founded on roads and settlements more than natural landmarks. She avoided human dwellings except when hunger tempted her into the orchards or fields, where she could scrape away the snow to reveal late windfalls or new winter barley, or when the only river crossing she could find was a manmade ford.

Eventually Sive came out of the forested hills and valleys into the empty flat interior where few people lived. It was a land broken up by lakes, rivers and wetlands, making any kind of straight route impossible. For many days she picked her way through treacherous bog, the ground spongy wet and laced with freezing waterways that might seem only a few inches deep and yet sink her to the hocks. There was little to eat and nowhere dry to sleep. When the ground finally rose enough to drain and become firm under her hooves, rushes and heather giving way first to shrubby brush and finally to woodland, she barely had strength left to search for shelter. The low sweeping branches of a yew tree caught her eye; she pushed into the hidden space within and slept.

The days were becoming longer, the cold not quite so chilling, when Sive came to a great lake, the far shore a ghostly shape in the morning mist. She traced it north all day and watched the water narrow into a long finger. The smell of human settlement teased at her nostrils: peat smoke, cattle and sheep manure, garbage. It grew strong as twilight fell, and soon she was skirting pastures dotted with sheep. Retreating into the woods, she waited for darkness.

When twilight had turned the world—and herself— into gray shadow, Sive sidled through hedgerows and riverbank willows until she came upon a little cluster of round thatched houses perched on the near side of the river that flowed into the lake’s northern tip. At the water’s edge, a pair of flimsy narrow boats was tied to a tiny wooden wharf. The settlement was silent, the people closed into their houses, doors barred against the cold.

Sive could have remained invisible and followed the river’s course until she found a place to cross on her own. But she decided not to. There was something she had to try, something that might persuade her to stay in this rough land.

Quickly, before nerves and second thoughts could sap her resolve, she changed.

TO STAND ON TWO legs again! The pleasure of it, the sweet relief, nearly undid her. It was so long since she had been herself. Weepy and weak with emotion, Sive wrapped her arms around a willow trunk and pressed her face into its wet bark until her legs felt able to hold her.

The cold hit her next. Sharp and raw, it cut through her thin dress and bit deep into her skin.

If the Dark Man could track her here in Eire, how long would she have? She had no wish to be trapped in a tiny hut. But she had to find out, and she could not stay unsheltered in the winter night, shaking like an aspen leaf.

Outside the door of the largest house—a building Sive might mistake for a storage shed in her own land—she took a deep breath. “Grant me my father’s easy tongue,” she prayed, and knocked firmly.

“Aye, hold on!” a deep voiced boomed from within. The door scraped open abruptly, the voice already demanding, “What is it, then?”

The words dried into astonished silence as the man regarded her. Sive’s first impression was of strength— broad shoulders, broad face, thick brown hair. Yet as the man took in her delicate gown, her milky skin unlined by age or hardship, his eyes turned wary. And Sive, in turn, became frightened, realizing she knew nothing of these people. Did they even honor the laws of hospitality? Would they drive her away—or worse?

The man did neither. Instead, he turned his head toward the dark interior and bellowed, “Da! You’d best come.”

There was no need to call. Peering over the wide shoulder, Sive could see a man already rising. She had a confused glimpse of others too—women, children—all silent and staring.

This was an old one, she realized. His shoulders stooped, hair grizzled and wiry and thin at the front, his face deeply etched. He looked inferior in every way to the strapping young man who had opened the door, yet it was he who would decide on her welcome.

One glance and he became brisk.

“You are half-dead with cold! Come in so, and we will speak in the warmth.”

Gratefully, Sive slipped over the threshold. The young man pulled the door shut behind her.

“Mara! Your cloak for the lady!”

A girl with wide gray eyes, not yet a woman but tall, jumped up from the pot she was tending. She approached Sive with her eyes cast down, holding out the cloak by her fingertips.

Sive thanked her gravely and drew the coarse wool about her shoulders. It was threadbare and in need of cleaning, but she snuggled into it as though it were the softest down.

“Now,” said the old one, reclaiming her attention. “I am Maine, and this is my son Brogan.” Both gave an awkward bob of the head, as though they were not much practiced at it. “You are welcome here, and if there is anything you have need of you have only to say the word, and if it is in my power you shall have it.”

Sive thought the woman at the fire—Brogan’s wife, perhaps—looked distinctly alarmed at these words. But no one disputed them, and so she took courage and spoke.

“I am Sive, and I thank you for your kindness. I—” She faltered and tried again. She had already decided she could not risk telling anyone her true plight. But there was no credible way to explain herself otherwise.

“I was traveling by night and missed my path.” She reached into her hair to pull out one of the gold pins that held the front pieces off her face and held it out in her palm. “I would gladly pay for food and a night’s shelter with this.”

She had said the wrong thing. Maine’s face darkened with anger.

“We have no great riches here, but we have never yet been so poor that we would charge a stranger for shelter. Why would you expect it?”

Sive hastened to apologize. “I have traveled far and do not know your ways. I had no wish to offend.”

He softened at once, and the look on him reminded Sive of her sister’s maid’s words:
They say mortal men can’t resist our women.

“It is too bad you did not arrive yesterday,” he said as he ushered her inside. “We killed a sheep and had a great feast with all the family.” The sweep of his arm made it clear the word included the other houses in the settlement. “Today we eat leftovers, but we will do our best for you.”

It was an awkward meal. The people were shy with her, and no wonder. Either they guessed that Sive was a woman of the Sidhe, or they must have thought her a madwoman, traipsing through the winter wilds in a summer gown. Either way, she thought, who could blame them for being ill at ease?

Still Maine did his best, introducing her to each of his family members: his wife and youngest daughter, and his son’s wife, her baby and two small boys. The women bustled off to finish preparing dinner, and some time later the family was hunched over their wooden bowls as though eating required every scrap of their attention.

It was a coarse and unappetizing dish—chunks of mutton and turnip bobbing in gluey oatmeal. The bread was fresh and hot though, and the ale surprisingly good. Sive praised both, winning a dimple of pleasure from the women.

But there was no conversation to be had, especially after Maine ventured to ask where she was going.

“You’ll have been heading to our chieftain’s dun, I warrant, where you can be received in proper comfort,” he said. “Did you get separated from your people somehow and veer off the main road by mistake? We can walk you back and set you on the right road on the morrow.”

Sive shook her head. “I am traveling alone, and—forgive me, but I cannot reveal my destination. But if you would help me across the river, I’ll be very grateful.”

If there had been any doubt of her strangeness before, there was none now. Even Maine was silenced.

A winter night is long, and once they had done eating and the women had cleared away the remains, the silence became oppressive. Sive was as uneasy as any of them, her nerves drawing tight as a harpstring as the Dark Man grew in her mind. Would he come? She pictured the door banging open, the black outline of his form filling the narrow space. As deer or woman, how would she get past?

It was folly to have come here, to think of passing the night in such a cage. But she had to try. If he truly could not find her in this world, then rough and raw though it was, she would learn to live here.

The baby was unsettled, her cries all the more shrill in the small house for the unnatural quiet, and Brogan pulled out a wooden flute and began to play. The melody was simple but pleasing, relaxing them all. The baby paused, distracted by the new sound, and as her mother began to sway back and forth to the tune her cries became whimpers and she let her head drop against her mam’s shoulder.

Sive had the tune by the second round and began to hum along, pleased to have something to share with her hosts. The music soothed her as nothing else could have, and the Dark Man’s shadow receded. If he came, he came, and she would try her best to evade him. But she would have this bit of music in the meantime.

Lost in her thoughts, she did not realize at first that the flute had stopped and only her own voice filled the dim cabin. Embarrassed at missing the ending, she looked up with a little laugh, only to find the entire family staring white-eyed, looking as though they might bolt as one from the house.

“I’m sorry.” Unsure what she was apologizing for, Sive settled for a guess. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your music. It’s just…it’s a very long time since I have heard any, and I joined in without thinking.”

More silence, until at last Maine cleared his throat and waded in. “You are a woman of the Sidhe, that is plain.” Sive did not deny it. “It is well known the music of the Sidhe will drive a man mad or senseless. Is it a spell you are putting over us?”

Now it was Sive’s turn to be indignant. “Would I do such a thing to people who have shown me nothing but kindness? There are some few among us who have such a skill, yes, but I was not raised to repay hospitality with ill-use of any kind.” The flare of anger faded, overcome by a deep, aching sorrow. The yearning for home was a hand squeezing her heart—for her lovely, sunny house with its rich colors and soft beds, for her mother’s voice twined with her own, one song rising into the morning, for the careless days of her girlhood. For people who understood her.

“I just wanted to sing,” she whispered.

It was the old woman, Sarai, who put things right. She rose stiffly from her stool near the fire, walked over to Sive and laid a hand on her shoulder. Sive looked up into milky blue eyes that met hers steadily.

“Your voice is the loveliest thing I have ever heard,” she said. “Will you sing to us a little longer?”

TEN

T
he night brought a wet, thick snow that steamed into heavy fog as soon as the sun rose.

“You cannot travel on a day like this,” said Sarai. “Stay another day with us and we will have a proper guest’s dinner with our kinfolk.”

“Stay! Stay!” The two young boys, so shy the previous night, gambolled about Sive like puppies.

She had been true to her word, had not laced her voice with the slightest enchantment. Still, music had its own magic. An evening’s singing had melted away the family’s edgy caution. She was welcome now from the heart, not from a host’s obligation. It was hard to turn away from that. Sive pictured herself, once again a spotted deer, vanishing into the fog. It was like ceasing to exist altogether.

And there was something else holding her here. The night had been long and anxious, Sive not daring to sleep for fear of being caught unawares. But the Dark Man had not come. Now, in the morning’s cheerful bustle, Sive tried to keep a stern and cautious mind. But hope grew in her like a seedling under a rock, creeping sideways unseen until it finds the place where it can leap up toward the sun. Perhaps he truly could not see her. Perhaps he was not merely delayed but actually unaware. It would take more than a day to find out.

THERE WAS NO BUILDING in the cluster of dwellings big enough to hold everyone, so Sive spent the morning following Sarai into one dark little home after another. By midday she had met the entire sprawling family, sung to two babies and a sick, bedridden grandfather, and sampled many bowls of tea and ale.

It was not clear to her where “dinner with the kinfolk” was to take place. Though the fog had lifted enough that the houses no longer looked like wavering illusions, wind and intermittent bursts of rain made it even more unpleasant outside.

Nonetheless, a pig culled from the herd soon hung spitted over a fire in the cooking shed while the women set themselves to baking and stewing. The children, gleeful at the prospect of two big dinners so close together, were put to work as well, but that did not keep them from wrestling and teasing and filling the air with their high spirits.