Twixt Firelight and Water Read online

  The red-haired man almost smiled. ‘Fiacha is an old friend,’ he said. ‘Far more than an ordinary raven, as you can perhaps see for yourself. My name is Ciarán.’

  That startled me. I scrutinised his features anew, seeking signs of my father. This was a handsome man, strong-jawed, the planes of his face well-defined, the eyes deep and watchful. Ciarán. There was a Ciarán in the tales of family, a half-brother born of a sorceress, who had been spirited away from home and had not returned until after my father was gone. The sorceress had been one of those others, the ancient races I was not quite sure I believed in. If this was the same Ciarán, his mother had come close to destroying my father’s family. But no, this could not be the man; he was far too young.

  ‘I’m a druid,’ he said. ‘The nemetons where my kind live and work are not far from here. Fiacha and I are spending a few days alone in quiet meditation. A respite from my teaching duties. I am responsible for the novices.’

  ‘Then I’ve interrupted your time alone.’

  ‘As to that,’ Ciarán said, organising a cook pot, water, beans, herbs with a deftness obviously born of long practice, ‘my visions have been troubling. I want no more today. I would welcome your company, if you wish to remain with us.’

  I asked no questions until the supper was cooked and we were eating it by the fire. Night was falling in the forest around us; birds sang their last farewells to the fading light. The raven, Fiacha, sat hunched on a tree stump nearby, his unnerving gaze following every mouthful from bowl to fingers to lips. If he was hungry, why didn’t he fly off and catch something?

  ‘Do you know the Sevenwaters family well?’ This seemed a safe way to broach the subject.

  Ciarán glanced up from his meal. ‘I do.’

  ‘You mentioned that you are a druid. Can you tell me if there is a man called Conor among your number? He would be old, over sixty by now.’

  A silence. Then he said, ‘Why do you ask?’

  There seemed no particular reason to hold back, so I came right out with it. ‘My father’s name is Padriac. He’s Conor’s youngest brother. I would be interested to meet Conor, and perhaps the current chieftain and his family. That’s if I get to the keep. Father told me family can find their way in this forest, but I can’t say it’s been easy.’

  ‘You are Padriac’s daughter?’ A smile of delight and wonderment transformed Ciáran’s sombre features. ‘Then you will most certainly find your way. In any case, Fiacha and I can guide you to the keep, as I said earlier. No hurry. For now, let’s enjoy our meal and the quiet of this place, and perhaps exchange a tale or two. I did not know your father. He left Sevenwaters when I was an infant. But Conor is still here. My brother is chief druid, in excellent health despite his years, and much respected. He will most certainly want to meet you.’

  My mind was working hard. My brother. ‘Forgive me,’ I said, ‘but does this mean you are indeed the same Ciarán who was born to the chieftain of Sevenwaters and a ... a ...’ I seldom found myself short of words, but this was delicate.

  ‘I am that Ciarán. My father was Colum of Sevenwaters. My mother was one of the Fair Folk.’ He spoke plainly, as if this knowledge were in no way extraordinary.

  It went some way to explaining why he looked so young. Father’s tales had taught me the Tuatha de Danann were a long-lived race and kept their youthful looks into old age. Observing the calm expression on Ciáran’s face, the relaxed, graceful hands as he passed me a chunk of bread, a wedge of cheese, I considered the likelihood that along with her longevity he had inherited his mother’s facility for magic. A druid. Were druids something akin to mages?

  ‘You spoke of visions,’ I said. ‘What kind of visions?’

  ‘It is part of our discipline to practise the use of still water — a scrying bowl, or a pool — for this purpose,’ Ciarán said. ‘We may see past or present; we may see a possible future. We may be shown what might have been. Or nothing at all. Some folk have a latent ability. Several in the family have a strong natural gift. We do not always use water. Images may be present in the smoke from a fire, or we may see them after fasting, a vigil, a time of bodily denial. Unspoken truths may visit us in sleep.’

  I shivered. He sounded so matter-of-fact. I watched him as he passed a slice of cheese to Fiacha, who snatched it from the outstretched fingers and swallowed it in a gulp. ‘How long has the bird been with you?’ I asked.

  ‘Long. Fiacha has seen me through many trials. Folk think him ill-tempered. He has his reasons for that. Time after time he has aided me in the cause of good. He has worked with me to battle the forces of darkness. And indeed, to quell the darkness within. Our mother ... never mind that. Let us exchange a tale or two. May I know your name?’

  ‘Aisha. It is a name from my mother’s country. He brought her here once, he said, when his sister was dying. But they didn’t stay. Father was changed by what happened to him when he was young. He wanted to live his own life, far from this place.’

  Ciarán nodded gravely. ‘I, too, went away,’ he said. ‘I made a choice to return. I have my brethren. I have the family, though I do not dwell among them. I have Fiacha. I have my memories and my visions.’

  He was a man of such controlled demeanour, it was only the slightest break in the mellow tone, the very smallest change in the eyes that hinted at suffering, regret, a depth of sorrow I had no hope of understanding. As Ciarán spoke, Fiacha flew across to perch on his shoulder again, almost as if offering comfort.

  ‘Clearly your father wed and had at least one daughter,’ Ciarán said, entirely calm again. ‘Is he in good health?’

  I grinned. ‘Robust health. Thrice married, and a father of many children, the newest a babe not long out of swaddling. Beloved in his home village; owner of a significant trading fleet that is mostly managed by my half-brother these days. My stepmother is a woman of four and twenty. She loves Father dearly. He made a good life for himself.’

  ‘And taught his children to speak Irish like natives.’

  ‘He said the stories wouldn’t sound right in Galician.’

  We sat in silence for a while. I felt suddenly edgy. I had plenty more questions to ask, but it seemed to me there was something unspoken, something weighty that the druid knew, and the bird knew, and I didn’t. I held my tongue. Ciarán had been perfectly courteous and open, and there was no reason at all to suspect him.

  ‘What of you, Aisha?’ he asked. ‘Have you a family of your own, a husband, children?’

  Kraaak. The sound conveyed a desire for the conversation to take some other turn, or to cease so we could all sleep.

  ‘It’s uncanny,’ I murmured. ‘That bird speaks a language I can almost understand. No, I have neither. I’ve never felt the need or the wish for a husband, and as for children, the kind of life I lead hardly has room for them.’ As I spoke, I thought of Mercedes and her many sisters, cousins and aunts. At all times of day and night there tended to be a bevy of women in our house. If I had produced a child or two, there would have been no shortage of doting substitute mothers. ‘I don’t really want them,’ I said, making myself be honest and thinking, not for the first time, that darkness and a campfire encourage all manner of confidences between strangers.

  Ciarán nodded. ‘A child is the most precious gift of all,’ he said quietly. ‘But you cannot understand that until you have one of your own.’

  This idea was familiar from the little talks I got from Mercedes and her kinswomen, lectures that had become increasingly frequent as I approached the age at which I might as well give up thoughts of motherhood. I had not expected it from Ciarán. Nor had I expected him to say it the way he did. ‘But you’re a druid,’ I blurted out.

  ‘I was not always a druid. Nor was Fiacha here always a raven.’

  This was getting beyond the acceptable borders of oddity. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That is a tale for another day,’ Ciarán said. ‘Let us have something else instead. Has your father told you the saga of the clurichaun war
s?’

  He was an expert storyteller. While I had heard the clurichaun tale before, Ciarán had his own version, droll and witty, and I was soon captivated. I told a tale in my turn, about a princess and a drowned settlement. He told another, and all too soon it was time to settle by the campfire for the night. I fell asleep still smiling. The raven roosted above us, a deeper patch of shadow.

  The next day we struck camp and walked on, and as we walked we told more stories: the voyage of Bran, Cruachan’s cave, the dream of Aengus. The prince who kept his dead wives in a closet; the spurned lady left to starve in a tower, her ghost thereafter scratching at the window every night and keeping the household in terror. Fiacha punctuated our tales with his hoarse cries. Time was not softening his evident disapproval of his master’s new travelling companion.

  Dusk fell on the second day, and we still had not reached Sevenwaters.

  ‘I thought this was only one day’s walk,’ I said as Ciarán stopped in a comfortable camping spot. A rock wall sheltered a patch of level ground, and there was a pool among stones, much like the one by which we’d camped the previous night. ‘I’m sure that’s what my father said.’

  ‘Sometimes it takes a little longer.’ Ciarán was calm. Out came the cook pot, the bunch of herbs, the flint and tinder. ‘Could you gather some dry wood while we still have light?’

  I busied myself collecting fallen branches and piling them nearby. I watched him building a fire, and after a while I asked, ‘Will we reach Sevenwaters tomorrow, do you think?’ He seemed a good man, but I could not help being a little suspicious. If he had told the truth about his identity, he was half fey. What if he was guiding me, not to the home of Father’s kinsfolk, but down one of those tracks spoken of in the tales, leading to the Otherworld? There were stories of people getting trapped in that uncanny realm for a hundred years. I might relish adventures, but the prospect of such a journey was a little too much even for me.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Ciarán said in answer to my question. ‘If not tomorrow, then the next day. If not the next, then the one after. Are you in a hurry, Aisha?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But I’m perplexed. One mile as the crow flies, I think you told me. It seems you’ve chosen quite a circuitous path, Ciarán.’

  He smiled. ‘The path is as long as the stories we tell,’ he said. ‘It is as long as it needs to be. Don’t concern yourself; we’ll reach our destination at the right time.’

  I could think of no appropriate answer. It would be sheer folly to strike out on my own; I had no choice but to stay with him. The evening passed. We sat by the fire and told more tales, wondrous, grand, surprising and silly in their turn. I achieved a minor miracle by coaxing Fiacha down from his branch and onto my shoulder. I could feel his claws through my woollen tunic.

  ‘Come, then,’ I murmured, holding my lure — a piece of the cheese the bird so liked — between my fingers. ‘Come on, I’m not so bad.’ The raven sidled down my arm, step by cautious step. I thought he would snatch the prize and fly off, but I kept talking to him quietly, as I had seen my father do with wild creatures, and he stayed there long enough to eat the morsel from my fingers. I reached slowly across with my other hand; brushed the soft breast feathers. The bird fixed his bright gaze on me, and my heart went still with the strangeness of the moment. Then, in an eye-blink, he was gone back up to his perch.

  ‘Ciarán?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Do I remember correctly, that you told me Fiacha was not always a raven? What did you mean by that?’

  ‘Ah.’ My companion settled himself more comfortably by the fire. ‘I imagine your father has told you many tales of Sevenwaters. You know what I am and can guess, perhaps, what my mother’s line has given me. I could tell you a story, a remarkable and sad one. You might find it easier to believe if I did not use words, but showed you instead.’

  My skin prickled. ‘Showed me? In pictures?’ I could not imagine how this might be achieved by night, in the middle of the forest.

  ‘In a vision. If you are open to it, I can reveal the story to you in the water of this pool. Indeed, that would be entirely apt, since the tale begins between firelight and water.’

  Fiacha ruffled his feathers, moving restlessly on his branch.

  ‘Why is he doing that?’ I asked, eyeing the bird. ‘Does he not want the tale told? Or is he merely complaining of hunger or a sore belly?’

  ‘He thinks he does not want the tale told,’ Ciarán said, apparently taking me quite seriously. ‘But there is no doubt that this is the time to tell it. I would guess you are afraid of very little, Aisha. There is no need to fear this. The challenge lies not in the tale itself, but in the choice it reveals.’

  ‘A choice for whom?’ I was intrigued. I had always prided myself on meeting whatever challenges came my way.

  Ciarán did not answer my question, but moved to kneel by the pool, stretching out a long hand towards me. ‘Will you try it?’ he asked. Fiacha turned his back on us. He could hardly have made his disapproval more plain. ‘You’ll need to sit beside me, here, and keep hold of my hand. Fix your gaze on the water, and you will see what I see. It may take some time. Be patient.’

  It did not take long at all. Images formed on the surface of the pool and in its depths, and while I held Ciáran’s hand I could see them quite clearly. I thought I could hear voices, too, though here in the glade all was quiet. Perhaps they spoke only in our minds. It was indeed a strange tale, and a sad one: a big brother and a little brother; a malevolent mother and a courageous father; true love turned to sorrow and loss; an ingeniously cruel curse. It was a tale that fitted neatly around the one I already knew of Sevenwaters, the story of the Lady Oonagh, who wed my grandfather and turned his sons into swans. Conri’s was a tale fit to bring a strong man to tears. When it was done, and the pond showed no more than a ripple or two, we sat for some time in complete silence. Glancing at the bird, trying to imagine what might be in his thoughts, I met a glare of challenge. Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. It came to me that I had been told this tale for a purpose.

  ‘A choice,’ I said flatly. ‘You’re offering me the choice to marry a raven.’

  Ciarán stretched his arms and flexed his fingers; he had become cramped, sitting so still to hold the vision. ‘Offering, no. Setting it before you, yes. I thought it just possible you might consider it.’

  ‘No man would want a wife who wed him out of pity,’ I said.

  The raven — Conri, if it was indeed he — gave a derisive cry. The sound echoed away into the darkness under the trees.

  ‘Is it pity you feel?’ Ciarán asked.

  ‘For the bird, no. He’s a wary, prickly sort of creature, and I wonder what kind of man he would be, if it were actually possible to reverse this — geis, is that the word? — by going through with a marriage. Who would perform such a marriage, anyway? What priest could possibly countenance such a bizarre idea?’

  ‘The one you see before you,’ Ciarán said. ‘Performing the ritual of hand-fasting is one of a druid’s regular duties.’

  I felt a chill all through me. He could do it; he could do it right now, tonight, and if the peculiar story proved to be true, I could free a man from a life-long hell set on him simply because he’d wanted to protect a child. And I’d be saddled with a husband I didn’t want, a man who’d likely prove to be just as irritable and unpleasant as the raven was. I wondered if I had in fact fallen asleep in the forest, and would wake soon with a crick in my neck and the nightmare memory fading fast.

  ‘What possible reason could I have for agreeing to do this?’ I asked, then remembered something. ‘Wait! Did you actually know I was coming? Did you guess who I was? He came to find me. Fiacha. He led me to you. Don’t tell me —’

  ‘Nothing so devious, Aisha. I did not know who you were until you mentioned your father. I had seen you in a vision, earlier, approaching this place. I sent Fiacha out to find you, thinking you might need help. Perhaps some other power has intervened to aid my b
rother here, for your arrival seems almost an act of the gods.’

  I thought about this for a while. Reason said I must give a polite refusal. A small, mad part of me, a part I recognised all too well, urged me to be bold, to take a chance, to do what nobody else in the length and breadth of Erin would be prepared to do. That impulse had led me into some unusual situations in my time. I’d never once failed to extricate myself safely. I considered the story itself and the odd bond between these two half-brothers. ‘I have some questions,’ I said.

  ‘Ask them.’

  ‘First — is it safe to speak his name now? To acknowledge that I know who he is?’

  ‘Quite safe. That part of the geis died with his beloved Lóch.’

  ‘Then tell me, how did you learn Conri’s story, and when? Was it like this, in a vision?’

  ‘Some of it was revealed to me in that way. But I knew already what had become of him. She told me. Our mother. There was a time when I went back to her. A dispute with my family drove me from Sevenwaters. There were aspects of our mother’s craft I wanted to learn. She welcomed me, little knowing the depth of my loathing. She gloated over what she had done to Conri; she thought herself ingenious. It was another reason to destroy her.’