The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2) (4 page)

Chapter Six

‘Remember twenty-eight years ago I found you by the sea?’ Ebba dared not even look at Phelim’s face. If she did she knew her courage would fail her and thus she ploughed on. ‘Well I knew immediately why you were there and what you were, but for my own selfish reasons I told no one and now I must. Phelim, you are of the Faeran.’

Phelim snorted like a horse, a grin beginning to creep across his face. But on observing Ebba’s expression, he stood up, flinging the chair back to move out of her ambit.

She raised a quieting finger and shook her head slightly, aware that one step back was a whole gulf between he and herself. Desperate to ignore her fears, she continued. ‘Days before I found you, there was a Faeran progress through the island. Things happened - children were taken and changelings left in their places, girls suffered the pining sickness, cows’ milk curdled, crops had patterns scattered through as if an Other dance had taken place. I was frantic ameliorating all the trouble. And when I went to gather herbs and grasses from the shore, there you were. Some absent-minded mother had left you - they often do this type of thing, it is well documented in our histories - so busy enjoying themselves they forget about the babe.’ She took a breath. ‘But at all costs I decided no one must know you were Faeran because I had found you and I loved you instantly. So I spread a story, you know it well. I would not have you discriminated against for being Other nor returned to those who would not care for you. Thus it was a case of putting as much about you as I could, to deter the most ardent hunter.’

She sighed and scrabbled at threads of her hair that fell from underneath the woolen twist.
‘And there was one, believe me. Every year for five years, Jasper the Faeran Healer - he would come and search the isles and I would lay carlins’ charms about your person and about the house. I would wash you and your clothes in herbs. You would have the amber around your neck - it was the gentlest charm to your Faeran sensibilities, and I would use carlin-tongue. I longed to surround your crib with silver but it would have wounded you to the core. And when Jasper came, I would put you in a group of other infants and children to confound his senses. I was sure he would discover you; such was his skill. I would plead with Aine to keep you safe for you were my little son.’

A tear escaped, slipping across the top of Ebba’s skin like water across velvet. Glancing at Phelim’s eyes, she saw confusion, disbelief, and something else she couldn’t bear to think about. ‘It worked, because after five years he never came back. Then it was a question of guiding you away from your Other birthright to a mortal life. As I hoped, our life rubbed off. Occasionally you spoke Traveller when I had taught you not one word, and Faeran as well. But to all whom you met you were indeed Ebba’s stepson, child of my dead sister.’ She stopped for a breath and looked at her audience. ‘Forgive me?’

‘Aine, forgive you?’ He raked fingers through the wavy hair. ‘Why Ebba? Why did you do it? Why not give me back?’ His voice hardened. ‘Why wait so long to tell me something of such colossal import?’

A fearsome emptiness curled around the carlin. She had thought her beloved stepson would accept the reasons for her actions with the equanimity that had dominated his life. Her hopes had blown away in the fierceness of his response and all she saw fluttering in the air about her was disbelief and anger.

‘Why not tell me when I was young?’ He stamped away across the room and back again. ‘I don’t want to be Other. I want to be me, Phelim the shepherd, the man everyone knows. I have no greater aspiration beyond being the best I can be. People out there,’ he waved an arm,’ they respect me and like me. What do you think they would do if they found out I was Other? You obviously thought it enough of a problem when I was young to shield my real identity. They’d fear me, wouldn’t they? Never call me by name, they’d exclude me.’ He stopped and tapped the table with a taut finger. ‘But there’s a thing, how in all these years if I am Other, have I not left the minute someone spoke my name uninvited or thanked me for something?’

‘Perhaps Phelim is not your real name.’ She cringed as her stepson choked, even his name suspect, and the pain that grabbed her heart almost crushed it.
I can’t do this, I can’t. The truth is too cruel.
‘But you must,’
she could hear the urisk say.

‘As I said,’ she continued
, though her heart hammered. ‘I made sure you were inculcated with mortal ways and mores from the minute I held you in my arms. That and the charms I laid about you. As happens when one spends a long time with someone, one absorbs their ways, their life. You were an infant, Phelim. You had no time to
be
Faeran. You were like a piece of clay waiting to be moulded on the wheel and I chose to mould you as a mortal.’

‘You must have powers verging on the unbelievable then, Ebba. To fool the Faeran for this long.’ His tone was bitter and it was such a shock. ‘And now, you have ripped the rug of my mortal life from underneath my feet and made me a different person. How dare you?’

‘Dare, dare!’ A flinty light burst into flame inside the carlin. ‘I dared because if I had left you there as a babe you may have died.’

‘Why?’ he asked emptily. ‘Was it my bane to die as a babe? If so, patently I owe you. I must be the first Faeran to escape their bane.’

‘Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Phelim.’

‘Then what does exactly, becaus
e I’m damned if I have a clue.’

A sparking silence hung between them, so much said, so much still to say.

‘Surely in all this time, something of Faeran would have shown itself.’

She could detect the faintest plea in his words as if she should say,
No, you’re right, there wasn’t
and they could forget about it all. ‘Think Phelim,’ Ebba’s voice flattened as the weight of the night’s revelations grew heavier. ‘You spoke Traveller and Other when I had taught you not one word and you have mesmered unconsciously.’

‘No, never!’

‘Are you sure? Some animal, a person even?’ Ebba nudged his recall.

There was silence and then Phelim’s eyes widened a little.

‘And there have been other things.’

‘What? Worse than a mesmer?’

Ebba nodded her head. ‘Your relationship with women. I had always to remedy them. There was something of the Ganconer in it all.’

‘No!’ Phelim sat with a thump. ‘They would have died.’

‘Indeed. Thus my help and like the Ganconer, you never returned to same woman twice.’

‘The Ganconer! But his victims die, I am a murderer.’

Ebba rushed around the table and folded him in a fierce grasp, laying her cheek on his head. ‘No my son, no. You never hurt a soul knowingly. I refuse to believe you would
ever
do so. Listen to me. You may be Other but nothing changes. You can control this and be in charge. And perhaps the urisk is right, perhaps it is your destiny to courier these souls to Jasper, if only to prove to yourself that it can be done your way and not the Other way.’

Phelim’s sadness hung in the air like a torn bannerol as he pushed her away. ‘Perhaps,’ he whispered. ‘Leastways I have no choice. Besides, whether I do it or not, life will never ever be the same.’

‘Oh, Phelim.’

‘No
, don’t. I don’t wish to talk about it anymore and I shall leave tonight. The sooner I leave, the less chance I shall hurt anyone.’ He stood and walked to the door. ‘I’ll get a boat Ebba, and you set about collecting supplies.’

‘Phelim, please!’

But he shook his head and left and Ebba was surrounded by the silence of recrimination. She grabbed her staff and banged hard on the floor but all that came from the top was the sound of wind and the crisp crackling of ice... the southerly still blew.

Chapter Seven

Phelim hunkered down, his arm over the tiller, the port sheets in his hand. He had let the mainsail out as far as he dared and had added a small foresail and the two canvases lifted the little craft atop the wave. It skimmed, the only sound being the whine of the wind in the stays, the odd flap as a sail ruckled and the swish of the bow wave. A fine spray blew in his face as he crossed the ocean almost abeam to the wind.

Faeran!
He cringed, all the skin that he had grown over his lifetime stripped off and an ugly, bloody sight to be seen by all. His self-belief had cracked and splintered and he wondered if Ebba truly had any idea of the mountainous shock she had delivered. His world had tilted utterly. All he could think of was the suspicion and the fear rampant in mortals’ views of Others. He wouldn’t have countenanced any of it by choice. He couldn’t believe that in twenty-eight years he never had reason to believe that he was anything other than the mortal stepson of the carlin. Never. He burned with disgust at his own naïvety and with anger at Ebba for her untimely, hurtful revelation. Pulling hard on the ropes so the movement rocked the dory off its steady tack, he turned to survey the pale moon heading rapidly to the west. The southerly breeze chilled and he turned up the collar of his jacket and tried to burrow deeper into the warmth of his gear as if he were trying to hide from Ebba’s confessions. Gauging the time was right to tack he pulled hard on the tiller. The canvas cracked and smacked and the shackles rattled fiercely as they rolled in the rigging and took the strain of the swinging dory, Phelim dragging in the starboard ropes so the craft could head northerly through the waters.

He looked at the black water speeding past, thinking on the men who fished the waters and then remembered the story Ebba had told him as a babe, of Mathey Trevalla of Zennor and he could hear her voice as if it were yesterday, lulling him into a child’s warm cocoon of sleep.

‘It is a well-known fact,’ she had said, ‘ that the oceans around us are filled with the most beauteous of all the water-wights, the Ceasg. They were often seen by tired sailors, driving milk white cattle from under the sea to feed on the shore among the dunes. Such a sight foretold of great sea-storms and thus sailors knew to seek safe moorings. Mortals returned thi
s faith by freeing trapped the trapped Others from their nets and casting food and wine amongst the blood-red dulse and rocks of the shore so these half- mortal, half fish-folk could taste the beauty of the ordinary world.’

‘One such Ceasg was known along the coast of Trevallyn, her beauty being legend in the inns and taverns clinging to the rocky walls of the fishing hamlets. She had eyes of blue and hair as pale as the nacreous lustre of pearl and indeed it was these gems that forever laced through her divine locks as they waved in the wind or undulated in the wave.’

‘Along the pleated shoreline, close to the tiny fishing village of Zennor, she would swim to a rock and sit, the pearly mists hiding her from view as the fishermen mended their nets, singing shanties and ballads.’

‘Mathey Trevalla was the son of a fishing family and he often sat, needle plying as he mended holes in the nets, his tenor voice singing across the bay, inviting the Ceasg into the waters close by to listen.’

‘It came to pass that selfsame Ceasg could no longer contain her own voice and with clear, bell-like tones she joined Mathey in a distant descant from her rock in the bay - a melody that brought tears to the eyes of the old fisherfolk.’

‘She swam to the shore and when she reached the shallows she stood, her tail gone and two graceful legs conveying her over the sands. Clothed in lithe, pearlescent silks, she reached Mathey’s side and sang a duet, casting a spell over the folk of Zennor so that when she left, they mused dreamily over their ales by the fires.’

‘Did ee hear her voice? By the Southern Lights, it were like a bell it were, like a bell that rings on yon frosty eve, clear and crystal-like. Like the wavelets on the shore, running across them pebbles, like ripples of sound it were.’ A leather seadog spoke to no one in particular as his stained yellow hand stuffed tobacco in his pipe and tamped it down.’

‘A crone picked up her knitting and scratched her scalp with needles, through the grey strands of her bun. ‘Did ee see her hair? By the blessings of the Zephyrs, it were like silver moonbeams. Like moonstrike on an autumn fern it were. Like the shallows when the sand glistens. Silver like a precious chaperon a Queen might wear.’

‘And Mathey sighed longingly. ‘Did ee see her walk? She were like a sea of harvest grass on Zennor Moor when the breeze do come. Like the ripple of wavelets when the Harmonies blow.’

‘But one ancient grandmother who was stone deaf and had not been magicked by the singing of the Ceasg, spied Mathey’s longing and poked him with her stick. ‘Mathey Trevalla, keep your fingers off that mermaid! No good’ll come of it, I’m telling ee. Thems that dally with a sea maid are not long fer this world!’

‘But Mathey could barely wait for the morrow as his heart was trapped by the woman’s charms. At dawn he sat at his nets and began sewing, allowing his tenor voice to fill the morning air with a ballad of boats and fair maids and honorable and lasting love.’

‘She walked up the shore and joined him in a heavenly chorus. To those watching, the two were like charmed children of the Others, their beauty a sight to behold.’

‘Mathey’s eyes never left those of the sea maid and she held him by a thread of devotion the mortal folk feared could never be broken. She turned away, singing a song of her own people and walked to the sea, Mathey following blindly behind.’

‘As the waves lapped at her toes, the fine legs transformed to become the infamous tail, covered in discs of incandescent green. Mathey, mesmered, waded into the ocean singing the chorus to her lilting tune and the folk of Zennor called feverishly to their son. But he waded, deaf to their entreaty, deeper and deeper.’

‘Eventually the waters closed over his head and there was no sound except for the cruel sea against the shore. The maid in her feckless way swam off, leaving the mesmered youth swimming far and deep, diving, searching, calling, until weakness and waves conspired to drown the poor lad. The folk of Zennor found his body a day later on the rocks of Zennor Point and they buried him beneath a cairn on that same headland. And now on a foggy day and by the breath of a seawind, a silver bell tolls to remind the unwary of the melodic voice of the murderous Other who took away the life of Mathey Trevalla of Zennor.’

Ebba would conclude, brushing Phelim’s hair away from his forehead as his eyelids became heavy.

‘A mermaid found a swimming lad,

Picked him for her own,

Pressed her body to his body,

Laughed;

and plunging down

Forgot in cruel happiness

That even lovers drown.
It’s an old Faeran poem,’ she would explain the lines away,

‘feckless individuals!’