The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2) (26 page)

Adelina’s gaze had never left Severine’s face, that mouth that had issued the command to kill one and another and another. She smoothed the robe over her belly and picked the folds up in her fingers to stand directly in front of the woman. In the silence of the ballroom, the silk whispered and rustled, saying
‘You’ll find out.’
Severine glanced at the robe, her eyes drifting over the detail. Fear and raging envy lay like a shadow in her eyes. And despite her manner, her lips trembled, her eyes widening as Adelina spoke with irredeemable finality. ‘Rajeeb, take Severine. Take her.’

Severine began screaming, her arms struggling as Rajeeb enfolded her in a fierce clasp. He nodded at Adelina and in an instant he
had disappeared with the murderer.

The crowd cheered
with ecstatic hollers and clapping, an ovation as good as one would give for an inspired performance at an opera or concert. Adelina swallowed on the nausea. An accessory to murder then... she facilitated it. How ironic. She waited for Liam’s voice to come from the Afterlife and say, ‘
See, it is never black and white, is it?’
And the Lady Aine, what would she think of her earthly supplicant now?

The music struck up, a ge
ntle waltz, and the satisfied crowd, relieved the mortal had gone to her death, began to sway, to smile, to laugh and immediately to forget. Such is Other, such is Faeran.

As the orchard blossoms swirled in the musical zephyr, Jasper saw the twisted shape of Luther on the floor and with a flick of his hand, mesmered the man into some purgatorial never-land, as far from the sensibilities of Faeran and mortal as could be.

Phelim stood immobile, aghast at what he had seen, at what he had heard, at what
he had done. Where now was the shepherd, where was the half-time mortal?
Lost,
a voice whispered inside his head.
Lost.

‘Phelim,’ Jasper appeared by his side. ‘You have grown these past weeks. I think your brother would ha
ve been proud. You are a true Faeran!’

Phelim
let his response drip from lips, bound up in acid and ice. ‘I have no wish to be I can assure you. As to my brother, he is unknown. I have no family other than Ebba the carlin, to whom I shall return.’

‘Then you do the memory of yo
ur brother a grave disservice.’ Jasper admonished.

‘I neve
r knew him.’

‘That was not his fault. But that aside...’ the crowd swirled past and
Jasper invited the three to follow him to chairs at the edge of the sparkling room, ‘you owe the memory of your brother some respect and affection.’

‘I am not aware of him. He is less familiar to me than the souls I carry.’

‘Ah, but you see, you are familiar with him. For it is his soul you carry. Liam of the Faeran was your brother. Give me the bag, Phelim. It is time for them to go home.’

Beside him
Adelina moaned. ‘The bag of souls!
You
had the souls; you knew all along that Lhiannon was dead. Why did you not tell me? She was my friend and I deserved to know. I thought you were my friend too, Phelim.’ She cried his name, disillusionment and hurt in equal measure falling upon him and piercing his senses as sharply as an arrow from an enemy.

As Adelina spoke, a cloud filled her brain and a wave of fierce contractions swept over the surface of her belly. The child, in the thick of a pincer-like hold, kicked hard and the cloud in Adelina’s head became dense and black. She subsided onto the parquet floor of the ballroom, the robe pooling in a milky puddle around her and Others swirling around like breeze tossed blossoms in an orchard.

Chapter Forty Seven

The Ymp tree orchard mended. As it had done for Ana, so it did for Adelina. The months of mental and physical anguish could have ended her pregnancy but instead she slept as Jasper wanted her to do and time passed. As he said to Gallivant, ‘Hob, stop pacing. Time heals.’

The hob heaved one of his many sighs and walked out amongst the budding and blossoming fruit trees where one could scream or rant or even weep quietly for a woman who even though she was a mortal, had been as brave as she could be.

Phelim found him there as the pale blossoms fell about him and he sat down. For a while there was silence broken only by bees, birds and the breeze. Finally, Phelim shifted. ‘This is a despicable, tawdry world, Gallivant.’

‘I know,’ the hob nodded a miserable head. ‘You won’t stay will you?’

‘Gallivant I am not Fae
ran. Not in the way of Others. I know I can mesmer and speak Other, Traveller and a dozen Eirish dialects but my heart is on Maria Island, on the farm with my sheep and Ebba. It’s a gentle existence whereas the life of Others as I have experienced it is fraught with double standards and malicious games. I have done terrible things to women, I have seen Severine taken to a ghastly retribution as a crowd cheered. I have watched Adelina being manipulated and made ill with Faeran games. It disgusts me.’

‘But Liam was you
r brother, he was the heir to Faeran when it was thought you were dead. Have you not a responsibility to take up your legacy?’

‘The world of Fae
ran functions without me and from what I have heard, functioned without Liam as well, as he was as keen as I to live amongst mortals. At any rate my friend, I have made my decision and shall not be moved.’

The hob caught a handful of bl
ossom and sprinkled it from his fingers, watching it float like a dream to the ground. ‘I can understand. I would go with my Lady right now if I could.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I just hate goodbyes. It was bad enough yesterday with the souls. Death always smacks of the worst goodbyes. Sink me, I feel quite depressed.’

‘I thought it was one of the more gentle things I have experienced in this world of Others. It reminds me that not all is bad.’ Phelim’s face, dour
and drawn since the events of the trial, mellowed as he remembered.

They had been at Jasper’s house for a night and a day, and as the afternoon drew a curtain of dusky cloud across the sky, the sun casting indigo and gold shadow over the gardens, Jasper invited them to follow him to a large lake. Phelim watched the hob and the healer ahead of him, listening to their dulcet tones as something poignant drifted on the evening air. He looked back at the house and visualized Adelina resting, suspended in some Other induced state of slumber, restoring she and her babe. He would like to have sat by her but she had not met his eyes when he ventured to her room earlier in the day and he felt the air of resentment and disillusionment settle on him like a frost and had turned away from the cool encounter.

His long legs covered the mossy path in the wake of Jasper and Gallivant and he joined them as they stood surveying the lake. Secrecy emanated in misty vapo
urs from the watery sward and a welkin wind of unusual warmth rattled the beech leaves and sighed like a mother longing for the return of her prodigal child. It was as the self-same draught caressed his own cheeks that he noticed a tableau of such wretchedness he could not help but feel anguish.

Liam and Elriade
lay twisted as if they were two corpses afflicted with the worst rigor mortis. Elriade’s face screamed with unimaginable suffering, her eyes wide with profound fear, her hands clawing at her middle. Liam lay huddled over his waist as though he had shielded himself against a fatally deep swordthrust, his eyes screwed tight, his mouth set in a flat line from which Phelim imagined a cry would have longed to emerge if he had let it. But no, his brother would have been too proud and if the story were true, too relieved to be on his journey to the Afterlife and Ana,

to
give Severine even the remote satifaction at the pain and suffering she wielded. Phelim’s throat clutched.
His brother.
He walked as close to the platform as he dared, confronting the truth of a Faeran blood tie.

‘Touch him, Phe
lim.’ Jasper spoke quietly by his side. He hadn’t even heard the man approach, so lost was he in whys and wherefores.

He reached out his hand and touched the hair, felt its thickness, awed at its wine colour. The hob stood on the other side of the platform and
laid a crown of daisies on Elriade’s head, the beautiful mahogany curls dancing up in the breeze to lace through the decoration as if it had belonged to her forever.

Jasper unknotted the stained c
hamois bag, pulling at the cord, opening it wide, holding it over the two bodies, silent, not a word spoken - just the music of a dusk chorus of the sweetest birds, accompanied by harp-strings from some unseen player on the other side of the lake.

A milky skein of vapour emerged from the bag, the scent of lemons and lily of the valley. The vapour looped around Jasper and then undulated over Phelim’s shoulders and
down his arm. Later he would swear his brother had tried in some way to clasp his hand. A fanciful enough notion and the action itself was a speck in the infinity of time - there then gone, so that he had no time to react. In minutes the vapour had poured itself over the two bodies and for moments nothing happened but then the bodies drank in the dewy cloud like moss soaking up raindrops. They softened, straightening out with audible sighs, faces sweetly relaxed. The mist from the lake glided upward and shrouded the platform so that everything was shielded from view, the harp music hypnotic and gentle.

It cleared then and the lakeside three could see a barge of great beauty, its passengers lying serenely in its hull, disappearing across the lake toward a group of shimmering people. And because the hob and the healer and Phelim were Other, they could observe the seelie spirits who waited to meet their brother and sister and to take them away. The harp continued until the lake waters had stilled and the misty people had gone and Phelim knew that amongst the beauty and tranquility of such a thing, Liam would find Ana and he was content for him.

‘Indeed. S
ad and beautiful, even breathtaking. So you see it’s not really
all
grim and awful, is it? Sink me, look at me, I’m nice.’ The hob elbowed Phelim in the ribs. ‘Aren’t I?’

‘You are a veritable gentleman.
’ Phelim smiled. ‘But what of her, how does she do?’

‘She sleeps. Jasper says it is necessary for she and the babe to rest as much as she can be enticed to. I suspect he will encourage her to stay here until the child is born and for myself I think it will be a sensible thing to do. I couldn’t deal with birthings and such on my own.’

‘You plan to stay with her then?’

‘I’ll
stay as long as she wants me.’

‘Sometimes I think you are like a nervou
s prospective father yourself.’

The hob heard the envy in Phelim’s voice but tactfully ignored it,
saying, ‘I suppose I am and having said that I shall see how she sleeps, it’s getting late. Shall you come with me?’

‘No, I wish to sit for a while. My mind needs smoothing. There’s much to reconcile and I’m not proud of my actions.’

Gallivant patted the sitting man’s shoulder. ‘Don’t be so critical of yourself. Sink me man, you did what you thought was right. Besides, we all had bad thoughts!’

‘Ah yes. But yours were only thoughts, Gallivant. Mine were actions.’

The hob said nothing
but squeezed the broad shoulder again, then walked away through the blossoms, leaving Phelim alone with the iniquities of his guilt. He lay down in the grass watching the sky darken and the moon slide across the sky with her courtly progression of stars dancing attendance around her. Here a shooting star, there a sparkle. He named the stars in his mind and wished he could be as far from his guilt as those galaxies.

He had made choices between right and might and his innocence had shattered utterly. Even when he had become the Ganconer with the girl, he had redeemed himself. But this time redemption had not even a foot in the door and as the Far Dorocha, he had wanted to stab Luther to death and to seduce Severine into the midst of insanity. Choices he made willingly with never a care for right and wrong.

A voice sounded behind him, above him, maybe to the side and he sat up quickly. ‘Everyone lives with duality, Phelim, just as everyone lives with destiny. Life is constantly the making and taking of choices - between love and hate, good and evil, happiness or sadness. Our destiny propels us to make choices between the dualities. Ultimately our Fate is arrived at one way or another.’

Phelim looked at the ageless face of great beauty crowned by the pale, moonlit hair waving in the welkin wind, sparkles of diamonds icing through the tresses. Her midnight gown lay over his toes as she sat by his side, stars and moons wafting and waning.
‘Lady, everything you utter is an enigma. Do you mean that I can forgive myself my choices and that I have arrived at my wretched Fate?’

She chuckled, a sound that cosseted Phelim. ‘I am sure you thought your motive was pure, that you sought to protect a woman and her child. The baser side of your acts will be something you may have to learn to live with. As to your Fate, perhaps you have arrived there. Leastways you will know when you have. But I would tell you this. You walked with two men on two roads most recently. One almost overtook you and he has a hold on your coattails still.
I will tell you this much also - his is the way to Faeran. The choice you make is the one that may lead you to your destiny.’

‘Sha
ll I have what I most want then? That which I thought I would lose forever?’

‘Destiny Phelim, and you would know this as well as any, is not necessarily having what you want or finding what you have lost.’

‘But you said I would find what I had lost.’

‘And you may. But only you can choo
se. I would not do it for you.’

‘Lady, nothing you have said helps me. All I want is my home, the
small things, to see Ebba talk to the wind.’

‘Then choose that way. It may be that is your destiny. But Phelim,
truly the son of Ebba that you are, examine your heart carefully. Ask yourself, is that all you want?’ She reached over and opened his palm and lay something soft in it and then he heard her chuckle, like an arpeggio of harp chords and he became lost in midnight blue with flickering stars and moonlight.

Later, dew finally soaked through his coat and the chill w
oke him, something unusual in Faeran because it is rarely cold and uncomfortable. He stretched his arms away from his face, uncurling the palm on which his cheek had laid. There in the light of the sinking moon curled a copper hank of hair glistening like a promise of dawn sun. He shook his head, slipping the curl in his pocket, and with leaden heart and lost cause, retraced his steps to the sleeping house and tomorrow’s path of duality.

Adelina opened her eyes. Filling her gaze and hanging from a hook on the door was the stumpwork robe - as glorious, colourful and unique as ever. She stared at it. If it hadn’t protected Ajax at that most crucial time, she knew she would have burned it. But now she had just one more book to finish if she had the energy to write and bind it, and the robe could go to the Museo.

She languorously rolled her head over the pillow to face the window. Jasper sat on the window-seat, booted feet up and with his attention deep in a book.

‘Jasper?’

‘
Muirnin!
’ He shut the book with a snap. ‘Let me see you.’ He took her pulse and placed a strange thing like a hunting horn on her belly, bending to listen and then rubbing his ear ruefully. ‘That young babe, it knows how to kick. You seem well my dear, better than I thought after the troubles. It must be that Traveller’s constitution of yours.’

‘The baby? Kholi’s child?’

‘Excellent. You had some pain, due more than anything to the tension of your recent experiences.’ He rubbed his ear. ‘As I said, it is a real kicker. Do you think it is a boy?’

She smiled a watery smile. ‘Kholi would have loved a son.’

Jasper smoothed a hand over her forehead and into the curls lying around her face. The movement soothed and regenerated the feeling of calm that was so important for the next few months as the babe matured. ‘Adelina. Whilst you may feel anger and hurt toward me for what I did in that ballroom, I had a role to fulfil. If I had not, the crowd may well have taken matters into their own hands and Aine knows where you and the babe would be now. If you can forgive me, it may be as well if you stayed with me till after the birth. I would not like to see you take to the roads just yet.’

‘Jasper, I think it must all be in the past. I could angst over it and drive myself mad with recrimination and hate, but what is the point? My Ajax
lived because of a promise I made and even though I hardly acted in the spirit of that promise, I shall endeavour to make good as often as I can. So yes, I forgive you if there is anything to forgive, and I would like to stay. I’m tired. Besides, I no longer have a van.’