Tales of Arilland Page 4

  She followed him to the top of the hill that overlooked the Wood, recalling the many evenings she had sat with Bane and Aurelia or softly sang along while they serenaded the sunset. Harvest had a small voice, like a chickadee, but her notes still rang true. Aurelia had the voice of a whippoorwill, throaty and loud, with seemingly endless stamina. Bane’s voice was a dove’s, low and haunting. When he sang of love it made her yearn, and when he sang of loss it made her cry. Harvest placed a hand on the cool, smooth bark of the tree where she had sat to watch him, an invisible silhouette against the moon, and she felt both those things. The wolf huffed to get her attention and she followed him down the hill, into the Wood.

  The pair of them made good time, for all that she was so heavily pregnant and he was so terribly impatient. The wolf would growl every time she had to stop to rest, but she knew him for the old man he was and could tell it was all bluster. He growled as well when she paused to look for herbs: greens to keep her strong and flowers to keep her nourished and roots to keep the baby from kicking his way out of the womb before she was ready. Before her beloved sweetheart fulfilled his promise.

  They walked in fits and starts until dusk of the next day, or when the trees grew so thick it was hard to tell when day ended and night began. Harvest found a mossy patch on the north side of a large tree that seemed the least rocky and bug-infested. She sat with her back to the tree and crossed her arms over her belly. She wished she had thought to bring a blanket, or a slice of bread, or a chunk of cheese, or her sanity. She wished she had something of Bane’s with her, something that might draw him like a lodestone. Something that might speak to him if he could no longer understand her words. The baby flipped over inside her, settling down for the night and reminding her that she did have something of Bane’s. The most important thing of all.

  She shivered again and the wolf approached her, slinking out of the shadows with his head and tail down to show that he was not a threat. Not knowing the proper way of things, Harvest risked stroking the wolf’s muzzle with a gentle hand. The shock of white stared up at her like a third eye seeking deep into her soul. His charcoal fur was thick and rough and smelled of pine and grass and dirt and musk and blood and strength and ferocity. You have some of that strength in you, baby. One day you will grow up to be this strong. She sighed. And one day, I hope your beloved is not chasing you into the Wild Wood.

  The wolf knelt down and laid that giant, dark head full of teeth in her lap. Harvest stroked his fur absentmindedly and let his warmth seep down through her legs and up through her belly into her neck and shoulders and arms. Still worried, yet safe from harm, Harvest let herself sleep.

  It took Harvest and the wolf less than five days to reach Bane’s rock, as they were tracking prey and not lost or wandering or falling asleep and waking up somewhere else every other evening. And all the strength and all the stamina Harvest had been absorbing from the moon and the wolf and the Wood suddenly left her. She stretched her arms up until she felt her shoulders pop, pulled her husband’s fiddle down from the rock, and collapsed. The tears she shed over the mahogany fell in the same places as the tears he had shed over her, before he had transformed into a beast that did not keep promises because he no longer knew what promises were.

  Grief and fear and sadness overtook Harvest, seizing her body in violent spasms, and the babe—rightfully so—decided he wanted no part of it. Harvest screamed into the empty daylight. The wolf snapped at the air in frustration. The ground beneath her, already damp with her tears, now muddied with the babe’s rushing preamble. “Come back to me,” she whispered to no one. “Sweetheart, come back to me.”

  The old wolf was gone even before she finished speaking, leaving Harvest alone with only the wind and the air and what courage she was able to summon between bouts of racking pain. Her baby was tearing her body apart, her husband had shattered her heart, and she had clearly lost her mind. She wondered how much of her soul had to be torn away before even the gods didn’t recognize her anymore. She wondered about the color of the sky, and exactly how much grass she could pull up with one handful. She thought about her own mother, and Bane’s. She thought about the tune they played to sing down the sun, the tune that called the wolves. The fiddle reminded her of the melody, but she couldn’t remember the words through the pain, so she made up her own.

  I’m missing my sweetheart

  My sweet heart does miss

  The sound of his voice and

  The feel of his kiss

  The wind it blows colder

  The day’s light grows dim

  But damned if I’m having

  This babe without him!

  Harvest laughed loud, giddy, hysterical, frantic, and on the next wave that lifted her back off the ground, she saw the wolf pack surrounding her. There was too much love and too much hate and too much of every other emotion warring inside Harvest for her to pick one. As there was only a half moon peeking through the twilight clouds, the female who spoke to her changed only her face so that her words might be understood. She sat neatly, with her long tail wrapped around her paws like a canine sphinx with a mouthful of knives.

  For a moment, the pain was so sharp Harvest could not feel her legs. She broke a sweat maintaining a level voice. “Let him go.”

  “Our cousin runs with us by choice,” said the face.

  Harvest bit the inside of her lip until she tasted blood. She refused to lose her courage in the face of her adversary. As the pain tore through her in deeper, more frequent bursts, she repeated the only words left to her.

  “Come back to me,” she asked the sky, for she knew not which wolf in the pack was her husband and that pain dwarfed the babe’s like a tear in a rainstorm. The charcoal wolf—her wolf—nudged one beast forward and she saw that its eyes were blue-green, not yet the bile amber-yellow of the rest of the pack.

  “Come back to me,” she said to him. Her husband recognized her with those still-human eyes—eyes that had traveled just as hard a road as she—but she could tell he did not understand her words.

  “Come back to me,” she whispered once more. It didn’t matter that he had left her. It didn’t matter that he now wore a skin of fur and walked on four legs. It didn’t matter that she had been forced to walk leagues to track him down. He was here and the babe wasn’t born yet; there was still time to keep his promise.

  “If he returns to you,” said the sphinx, “he will forsake every part of his wolf blood.” The bitch had the nerve to preen after her statement. Had she been within arm’s reach, Harvest was sure she could have snapped her neck.

  Harvest lay back on the rough ground. Invisible thorns pushed their way into the ends of every nerve in her body. She took deep breaths and saw pinpricks of light. Beyond them, a few bright stars sprinkled across the heavens like the rocks under her spine, stars she had wished on since she was old enough to know what wishing was for. “Go then,” she said to those stars. “For he has now forsaken me.”

  A wolf approached her, but it was the charcoal gray. The elder brushed her neck with his muzzle, then leapt over her seizing body to follow the tails of the pack that had already left him behind.

  Harvest broke her nails in the dirt and concentrated on the wind and the air and the babe tearing its way out of her. Courage, little one, she told it. It’s just you and me, now. Wind and air and pain. Breathe. Wind and air and pain. Breathe. Wind and air... and a hand on her forehead. She opened her eyes to see Bane standing over her, scrawny and shaggy and smelly. His blessedly furless skin was riddled with angry scratches and bruises as deep and purple as the skin beneath each of his blue-green eyes, and it was the most beautiful sight Harvest had ever seen.

  The remnants of his wolf magic fled from his palm into her body, Harvest could taste and feel and smell and live it as it waned, healing her heart and filling her womb before it died completely. As her burdens lifted, the babe escaped her body in a rush of fluids. Bane wrapped his son in the blanket he had left behind and the three of them lay
quietly together under the stars.

  In addition to a certain amount of strength, stamina, and the ability to see in the dark, Bane lost his voice. He still spoke a little, but his words growled out from low in the back of his throat. There would be no more singing for him. He could still play, though, and when the rest of his memories came back to him, he accompanied his mother to the top of the hill in the evenings to sing down the sun. Harvest made the journey as well, carrying baby Hunter until he was old enough to walk. She sang as well, and though her voice never carried the force of Aurelia’s, it grew from that of a chickadee into a lark.

  It was spring before any of the wolves dared show their faces. When one did, it was that of the charcoal gray elder. He came to them at the full moon, and it seemed that his coat was sprinkled with far more white than Harvest had noticed previously. She was glad he had returned, so she could properly thank him for fetching her and protecting her. Bane was less happy about the wolf’s presence.

  “Why are you here?” he snapped. For all that he was pure human now, he acted more like a wolf than before.

  “I have come to ask your forgiveness,” said the elder. “Our female trapped you, and in doing so, she put you in danger.” He looked down at the babe Harvest cradled in her arms. “She put all three of you in danger.”

  “I want nothing from you,” Bane growled.

  “The gift is already given,” said the elder. “Whether or not you use it is up to you.”

  “What is it?” asked Harvest.

  “The gift is the song,” said the wolf. “We took much from you that made you valuable, and for that we must give something in return. Balance must be maintained.” He motioned down to the fiddle that hung at Bane’s side. “Play the song you know,” said the elder, “the song with which you farewell the day. The song with which you called the wolves. If you play the song as you walk through the Wood, no harm will come to you.”

  “There is no song,” said Bane. “I can no longer sing.”

  “The magic is in the melody,” the wolf said to him. And then to Harvest, “The words are yours alone.” He placed a palm on Bane’s chest. It startled him out of his scowl, but he did not flinch away. “You may not have yellow eyes, cousin, but you still have a golden heart. Perhaps one day you will find forgiveness there.” He let his hand fall. “Not today. But one day.” He turned to leave, but Harvest stopped him.

  “What of our son?” she asked. “Will he experience the same thing when his first child is born?”

  “It will not take him as strongly and it may not come at the same time,” said the elder, “but he will have to make a choice one day, as all young men do.” Harvest mirrored her husband’s scowl and the wolf laughed. “Worry not, little mother. Your son has your strength. He will survive. We all will.”

  Bane and Harvest watched the wolf walk across the garden and into the trees until the shadows swallowed him. Bane lifted his fiddle to play the song once more and Harvest added the words—her own simple words in her clear, simple voice.

  And just as it should, son

  Our happy tale ends with

  Our family three and

  A wolf for a friend

  If life makes you lonely

  And trouble’s your boon

  Just sing this wolf song

  By the light of the moon

  Bane drew out the last note almost longer than the night itself. When Harvest turned to look at him he stared back at her, his golden heart smiling through his blue-green eyes. She cradled their babe in one arm, and the other hand she held out to him. “Sweetheart, come in to dinner.”

  Bane lowered his fiddle, slipped his hand into her soft, delicate palm, and followed behind them.

  Blood and Water

  Love.

  * * *

  Love is the reason for many a wonderful and horrible thing.

  Love was the reason I lived, there in the Deep, in the warm embrace of the ocean where Mother Earth’s loins spread and gave birth to the world. Her soul was my soul.

  Love is the reason she came to me in the darkness, that brave sea maiden. I remember the taste of her bravery, the euphoric sweetness of her fear. It came to me on wisps of current past the scattered glows of the predators.

  The other predators.

  Her chest contracted and I felt the sound waves cross the water, heard them with an organ so long unused I had thought it dead.

  Help me, she said. I love him.

  The white stalks of the bloodworms curled about her tail. We had a common purpose, the worms and I. We were both barnacles seeking the same fix, clinging desperately to the soul of the world. Their crimson tips brushed her stomach, her breasts. They could feel it in her, feel her soul in the blood that coursed through her veins. I felt it too. I yearned for it. A quiet memory waved in the tide.

  Patience.

  My answer was slow, deliberate. How much do you love him, little anemone?

  More than life itself, she answered.

  She had said the words.

  I had not asked her to bring the memories, the pain. There is no time in the Deep, only darkness. I could but guess at how much had passed since those words had been uttered this far down. Until that moment, I had never been sure if the magic would come to me. Those words were the catalyst, the spark that lit the flame.

  Flame. Another ancient memory.

  The empty vessel that was my body emptied even further. I held my hands out to her breast, and there was light.

  I resisted the urge to shut my inner eyelids to it and reveled in the light’s painful beauty. It shone beneath her flawless skin like a small sun, bringing me colors...perceptions I had never dared hope to experience again. Slivers of illumination escaped through her gills and glittered down the abalone-lustered scales of her fins. Her hair blossomed in a golden cloud around her perfect face. And her eyes...her eyes were the blue of a sky I had not seen for a very, very long time.

  She tilted her head back in surrender and the ball of light floated out of her and into my fingers, thin, white and red-tipped, much as the worms themselves. I cupped her brilliant soul in my palms and felt its power gush through me. So long. So long I had waited for this escape. I had stopped wondering what answer I would give if I should ever hear the words again, ever summon the magic. When the vessel was full, when my dead heart beat again, would I remember? Would I feel remorse? Would I have the strength of will to save her, to turn her away?

  You will see him, I told her.

  She smiled at me over the pure flame of her soul.

  I was a coward.

  I pressed her soul into my breast. The moment the light filled me I became her. I could see my body through her eyes—translucent white skin marred by jagged gills, blood red hair tossed up by the smoky vents and tangling about the worms, black eyes wide, lips parted in ecstasy.

  I could see him in the back of her mind, the object of her affection. He was tall and angular, with sealskin hair. There had been a storm and a wreck, and she had saved him. She had dragged him onto a beach and fallen in love with him as she waited for him to open his eyes. She had run her fingers through his hair, touched his face, traced the lines of the crest upon his clothes. He was handsome and different and beautiful. When he awoke, he took her hand in his and smiled with all his heart. And when he kissed her, she knew she would never be able to live a life without him in it.

  In that small moment, as the glow of her soul dimmed into me, she told herself it was worth it.

  Once the transformation began, the pain pushed all other thoughts out of her head. Water left her as suddenly as her soul had left her, her gills closing up after it. The pressure that filled her chest made her eyes want to pop out. She clamped her mouth shut, instinct telling her that she could no longer breathe her native water. She beat furiously with her tail, fleeing for the surface.

  Halfway there, the other pain began. It started at the ends of her fin and spread upwards, like bathing in an oyster garden. The sharpness bit into
her, skinning her, slicing her to her very core. Paralyzed, she let her momentum and the pressure in her chest pull her closer to the sky. Part of her hoped she could trust the magic enough to get her there. Part of her didn’t care. It wanted to die, and knew it could not.

  That price had already been paid.

  Her head burst above the waves and she opened her mouth, letting the rest of the water inside her escape. Her first full breath of the insubstantial air was like a lungful of jellyfish. She coughed, her upper half now as much in agony as her lower half, not wanting to take that next breath and knowing that she had to.

  She lay there on the undulating bed that was once her home and let it heal her. She stared up at the sky until it didn’t hurt so much to breathe, until her eyes adjusted, until rough hands plucked her out of the sea.

  She was dragged across the deck of a ship much like the one from which she had rescued her lover, right before it had been crushed between the rocks and the sea. The man who had pulled her up clasped her tightly to him. He was covered in hair, more hair than she had ever seen in her life, and in the strangest places. It did not reach the top of his head, but spread down his face and neck and onto his chest. Perhaps it liked this upper world as little as she did and sought a safer, darker haven beneath his clothes. She reached out a hand to touch it, and he spoke to her. The sounds were too high, too light, too short, too loud. She did not understand them. His breath smelled of sardines. She ran a finger through the hair on his face, and he dropped her.

  Misery shot through her and she collapsed on the deck. Her hair spilled around her…and her legs. She stared at her new skin. It looked so calm and innocent, but every nerve screamed beneath it. Another man stood before her now, wearing more clothes than the hairy man and shiny things on his ears and around his neck. His bellow was deeper than the first man’s but still as coarse and profane, and still foreign to her. He crouched down before her and brushed her hair back from her face. He cooed at her. She touched the bright thing around his neck that twinkled the sun at her, and he grinned. His teeth were flat. She wasn’t threatened. Braver now, she pulled at the necklace. He let her slide it over his head and put it around her own neck.