Child of the Prophecy

  “Very well,” said Father calmly. “Fetch a broom, sweep it up. Then tell me why you failed.” There was no judgment in his voice. As always, he wished me to judge myself. That way I would learn more quickly.

  “I—I let myself think about something else,” I said, stooping to gather up the knife-edged shards. “I let the link be broken. I’m sorry, Father. I can do this. I will do it next time.”

  “I know,” he said, turning back to his own work. “Practice this twice fifty times with something unbreakable. Then come back and show me.”

  “Yes, Father.” It was too cold to sleep anyway. I might as well spend the night doing something useful.

  I was ten years old. I stood very still, right in the center of my father’s workroom, with my eyes focused on nothing. Above my head the fragile ball hovered, held in its place by invisible forces. I breathed. Slow, very slow. With each outward breath, a tiny adjustment. Up, down, left, right. Spin, I told the ball, and it whirled, glowing in the candlelight. Stop. Now circle around my head. My eyes did not follow the steady movement. I need not see it to know its obedience to my will. Stop. Now drop. The infinitesimal pause; then the dive, a sweep before me of glittering brightness, descent to destruction. Stop. The diver halted a handspan above the stone floor. The ball hung in air, waiting. I blinked, and bent to scoop it up in my hand.

  Father nodded gravely. “Your control is improving. These tricks are relatively easy, of course; but to perform them well requires discipline. I’m pleased with your progress, Fainne.”

  “Thank you.” Such praise was rare indeed. It was more usual for him simply to acknowledge that I had mastered something, and go straight on to the next task.

  “Don’t become complacent, now.”

  “No, Father.”

  “It’s time to venture into a more challenging branch of the art. For this, you’ll need to find new reserves within yourself. It can be exhausting. Take a few days to rest. We’ll begin at Imbolc. What apter time could there be, indeed?” His tone was bitter.

  “Yes, Father.” I did not ask him what he meant, though it troubled me deeply that he seemed so sad. I knew it was at Brighid’s feast that he first met my mother; not that he ever spoke of her, not deliberately. That tale was well hidden within him, and he was a masterly keeper of secrets. The little I knew I had gleaned here and there, a morsel at a time over the years. There was a remark of Peg’s, overheard while I waited for Darragh under the trees behind the encampment, unseen by his mother.

  “She was very beautiful,” Peg had said to her friend Molly. The two of them were sitting in the morning sunlight, fingers flying as they fashioned their intricate baskets. “Tall, slender, with that bright copper hair down her back. Like a faery woman. But she was always—she was always a little touched, you know what I mean? He’d watch over her like a wolf guarding its young, but he couldn’t stop what happened. You could see it in her eyes, right from the first.”

  “Mm,” Molly had replied. “Girl takes after her father, then. Strange little thing.”

  “She can’t help what she is,” said Peg.

  And I remembered another time, one summer when the weather was especially warm, and Darragh finally grew impatient with my persistent refusal to go anywhere near the water.

  “Why won’t you let me teach you how to swim?” he’d asked me. “Is it because of her? Because of what happened to her?”

  “What?” I said. “What do you mean?”

  “You know. Your mother. Because she—well, because of what she did. That’s what they say. That you’re frightened of the water, because she jumped off the Honeycomb and drowned herself.”

  “Of course not,” I replied, swallowing hard. “I just don’t want to, that’s all.” How could he know that until that moment, nobody had told me how she died?

  I tried to dredge up some memory of my mother, tried to picture the lovely figure Peg had described, but there was nothing. All I could remember was Father and the Honeycomb. Something had happened long since and far away, something that had damaged my mother and wounded my father, and set the path forward for all of us in a way there was no denying. Father had never told me the tale. Still, it was an unspoken lesson built into everything he taught me.

  “Time to begin,” said Father, regarding me rather severely. “This will be serious work, Fainne. It may be necessary to curtail your freedom this summer.”

  “I—yes, Father.”

  “Good.” He gave a nod. “Stand here by me. Look into the mirror. Watch my face.”

  The surface was bronze, polished to a bright reflective sheen. Our images showed side by side; the same face with subtle alterations. The dark red curls; the fierce eyes, dark as ripe berries; the pale unfreckled skin. My father’s countenance was handsome enough, I thought, if somewhat forbidding in expression. Mine was a child’s, unformed, plain, a little pudding of a face. I scowled at my reflection, and glanced back at my father in the mirror. I sucked in my breath.

  My father’s face was changing. The nose grew hooked, the deep red hair frosted with white, the skin wrinkled and blotched like an ancient apple left too long in store. I stared, aghast. He raised a hand, and it was an old man’s hand, gnarled and knotted, with nails like the claws of some feral creature. I could not tear my eyes away from the mirrored image.

  “Now look at me,” he said quietly, and the voice was his own. I forced my eyes to flicker sideways, though my heart shrank at the thought that the man standing by me might be this wizened husk of my fine, upright father. And there he was, the same as ever, dark eyes fixed on mine, hair still curling glossily auburn about his temples. I turned back to the mirror.

  The face was changing again. It wavered for a moment, and stilled. This time the difference was more subtle. The hair a shade lighter, a touch straighter. The eyes a deep blue, not the unusual shade of dark purple my father and I shared. The shoulders somewhat broader, the height a handspan greater, the nose and chin with a touch of coarseness not seen there before. It was my father still; and yet, it was a different man.

  “This time,” he said, “when you take your eyes from the mirror, you will see what I want you to see. Don’t be frightened, Fainne. I am still myself. This is the Glamour, which we use to clothe ourselves for a special purpose. It is a powerful tool if employed adeptly. It is not so much an alteration of one’s appearance, as a shift in others’ perception. The technique must be exercised with extreme caution.”

  When I looked, this time, the man at my side was the man in the mirror; my father, and not my father. I blinked, but he remained not himself. My heart was thumping in my chest, and my hands felt clammy.

  “Good,” said my father quietly. “Breathe slowly as I showed you. Deal with your fear and put it aside. This skill is not learned in a day, or a season, or a year. You’ll have to work extremely hard.”

  “Then why didn’t you start teaching me before?” I managed, still deeply unsettled to see him so changed. It would almost have been easier if he had transformed himself into a dog, or a horse, or a small dragon even; not this—this not quite right version of himself.

  “You were too young before. This is the right age. Now come.” And suddenly he was himself again, as quick as a snap of the fingers. “Step by step. Use the mirror. We’ll start with the eyes. Concentrate, Fainne. Breathe from the belly. Look into the mirror. Look at the point just between the brows. Good. Will your body to utter stillness…put aside the awareness of time passing…I will give you some words to use, at first. In time you must learn to work without the mirror, and without the incantation.”

  By dusk I was exhausted, my head hollow as a dry gourd, my body cold and damp with sweat. We rested, seated opposite one another on the stone floor.

  “How can I know,” I asked him, “how can I know what is real, and what an image? How can I know that the way I see you is the true way? You could be an ugly, wrinkled old man clothed in the Glamour of a sorcerer.”

  Father nodded, his pale features somb
er. “You cannot know.”

  “But—”

  “It would be possible for one skilled in the art to sustain this guise for years, if it were necessary. It would be possible for such a one to deceive all. Or almost all. As I said, it is a powerful tool.”

  “Almost all?”

  He was silent a moment, then gave a nod. “You will not blind another practitioner of our art with this magic. There are three, I think, who will always know your true self: a sorcerer, a seer and an innocent. You look weary, Fainne. Perhaps you should rest, and begin this anew in the morning.”

  “I’m well, Father,” I said, anxious not to disappoint him. “I can go on, truly. I’m stronger than I look.”

  Father smiled; a rare sight. That seemed to me a change deeper than any the Glamour could effect; as if it were truly another man I saw, the man he might have been, if fate had treated him more kindly. “I forget sometimes how young you are, daughter,” he said gently. “I am a hard taskmaster, am I not?”

  “No, Father,” I said. My eyes were curiously stinging, as if with tears. “I’m strong enough.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, his mouth once more severe. “I don’t doubt that for a moment. Come then, let’s begin again.”

  I was twelve years old, and for a short time I was taller than Darragh. That summer my father didn’t let me out much. When he did give me a brief time for rest, I crept away from the Honeycomb and up the hill, no longer sure if this was allowed, but not prepared to ask permission in case it was refused. Darragh would be waiting for me, practicing the pipes as often as not, for Dan had taught him well, and the exercise of his skill was pleasure more than duty. We didn’t explore the caves anymore, or walk along the shore looking for shells, or make little fires with twigs. Most of the time we sat in the shadow of the standing stones, or in a hollow near the cliff’s edge, and we talked, and then I went home again with the sweet sound of the pipes arching through the air behind me. I say we talked, but it was usually the way of it that Darragh talked and I listened, content to sit quiet in his company. Besides, what had I to talk about? The things I did were secret, not to be spoken. And increasingly, Darragh’s world was unknown to me, foreign, like some sort of thrilling dream that could never come true.

  “Why doesn’t he take you back to Sevenwaters?” he asked one day, somewhat incautiously. “We’ve been there once or twice, you know. There’s an old auntie of my dad’s still lives there. You’ve got a whole family in those parts: uncles, aunts, cousins by the cartload. They’d make you welcome, I’ve no doubt of it.”

  “Why should he?” I glared at him, finding any criticism of my father difficult, however indirectly expressed.

  “Because—” Darragh seemed to struggle for words. “Because—well, because that’s the way of it, with families. You grow up together, you do things together, you learn from each other and look after each other and—and—”

  “I have my father. He has me. We don’t need anyone else.”

  “It’s no life,” Darragh muttered. “It’s not a life for a girl.”

  “I’m not a girl, I’m a sorcerer’s daughter,” I retorted, raising my brows at him. “There’s no need for me to go to Sevenwaters. My home is here.”

  “You’re doing it again,” said Darragh after a moment.

  “What?”

  “That thing you do when you’re angry. Your eyes start glowing, and little flashes of light go through your hair, like flames. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

  “Well, then,” I said, thinking I had better exercise more control over my feelings.

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, that just goes to show. That I’m not just a girl. So you can stop planning my future for me. I can plan it myself.”

  “Uh-huh.” He did not ask me for details. We sat silent for a while, watching the gulls wheel above the returning curraghs. The sea was dark as slate; there would be a storm before dusk. After a while he started to tell me about the white pony he’d brought down from the hills, and how his dad would be wanting him to sell her for a good price at the horse fair, but Darragh wasn’t sure he could part with her, for there was a rare understanding growing between the two of them. By the time he’d finished telling me I was rapt with attention, and had quite forgotten I was cross with him.

  I was fourteen years old, and summer was nearly over. Father was pleased with me, I could see it in his eyes. The Glamour was tricky. It was possible to achieve some spectacular results. My father could turn himself into a different being entirely: a bright-eyed red fox, or a strange wraith-like creature most resembling an attenuated wisp of smoke. He gave me the words for this, but he would not allow me to attempt it. There was a danger in it, if used incautiously. The risk was that one might lack the necessary controls to reverse the spell. There was always the chance that one might never come back to oneself. Besides, Father told me, such a transformation caused a major drain on a sorcerer’s power. The further from one’s true self the semblance was, the more severe the resultant depletion. Say one became a ferocious sea monster, or an eagle with razor-sharp talons, and then managed the return to oneself. For a while, after that, no exercise of the craft would be possible. It could be as long as a day and a night. During that time the sorcerer would be at his, or her, most vulnerable.

  So I was forbidden to try the major variants of the spell, which dealt with non-human forms. But the other, the more subtle changing, that I discovered a talent for. At first it was hard work, leaving me exhausted and shaken. But I applied myself, and in time I could slip the Glamour on and off in the twinkle of an eye. I learned to conceal my weariness.

  “You understand,” said Father gravely, “that what you create is simply a deception of others’ eyes. If your disguise is subtle, just a convenient alteration of yourself, folk will be unaware that things have changed. They will simply wonder why they did not notice, before, how utterly charming you were, or how trustworthy your expression. They will not know that they have been manipulated. And when you change back to yourself, they will not know they ever saw you differently. A complete disguise is another matter. That must be used most carefully. It can create difficulties. It is always best to keep your guise as close as possible to your own form. That way you can slip back easily and regain your strength quickly. Excuse me a moment.” He turned away from me, suppressing a deep cough.

  “Are you unwell?” I asked. It was unusual for him to have so much as a sniffle, even in the depths of winter.

  “I’m well, Fainne,” he said. “Don’t fuss. Now remember what I said about the Glamour. If you use the major forms you take a great personal risk.”

  “But I could do it,” I protested. “Change myself into a bird or a serpent. I’m sure I could. Can’t I try, just once?”

  Father looked at me. “Be glad,” he said, “that you have no need of it. Believe that it is perilous. A spell of last resort.”

  It was no longer possible to take time off from my studies. I had scarcely seen the sun all summer, for Father had arranged to have our small supply of bread and fish and vegetables brought up to the Honeycomb by one of the local girls. There was a spring in one of the deep gullies, and it was Father himself who went with a bucket for water now. I stayed inside, working. I was training myself not to care. At first it hurt a lot, knowing Darragh would be out there somewhere looking for me, waiting for me. Later, when he gave up waiting, it hurt even more. I’d escape briefly to a high ledge above the water, a secret place accessible only from inside the vaulted passages of the Honeycomb. From this vantage point you could see the full sweep of the bay, from our end with its sheer cliffs and pounding breakers to the western end, where the far promontory sheltered the scattering of cottages and the bright, untidy camp of the traveling folk. You could see the boys and girls running on the shore, and hear their laughter borne on the breath of the west wind, mingled with the wild voices of seabirds. Darragh was there among them, taller now, for he had shot up this last winter away. His dark hair w
as thrown back from his face by the wind, and his grin was as crooked as ever. There was always a girl hanging around him now, sometimes two or three. One in particular I noticed, a little slip of a thing with skin brown from the sun, and a long plait down her back. Wherever Darragh went she wasn’t far away, white teeth flashing in a smile, hand on her hip, looking. With no good reason at all, I hated her.

  The lads used to dive off the rocks down below the Honeycomb, unaware of my presence on the ledge above. They were of an age when a boy believes himself invincible, when every lad is a hero who can slay whatever monsters cross his path. The ledge they chose was narrow and slippery; the sea below dark, chill and treacherous. The dive must be calculated to the instant to avoid catching the force of an incoming wave that would crush you against the jagged rocks at the Honeycomb’s base. Again and again they did it, three or four of them, waiting for the moment, bare feet gripping the rock, bodies nut-brown in the sun, while the girls and the smaller children stood watching from the shore, silent in anticipation. Then, sudden and shocking no matter how often repeated, the plunge to the forbidding waters below.

  Twice or three times that summer I saw them. The last time I went there, I saw Darragh leave the ledge and climb higher, nimble as a crab on the crevices of the stark cliffside, scrambling up to perch on the tiniest foothold far above the diving point. I caught my breath in shock. He could not intend—surely he did not intend—? I bit my lip and tasted salt blood; I screwed my hands into fists so tight my nails cut my palms. The fool. Why would he try such a thing? How could he possibly—?