A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (40 page)

The craft began to glide back over its watery path, not a ripple or a wave di
sturbing its strange progress.
A thread stretched thinner and thinner as the distance lengthened, a pain cutting through her middle as if she would
be sliced into two halves.
She heard Fi
nnian gasp and sag beside her.
But Liam shouldered them both and like Ebba only days before in her daydreams, he whispered
‘It will pass, it will pass.’

The thread snapped and the boat swept on and they lost sight of the shore and their earthly brother as a familiar mist thickened and curled around the stern, hiding everything from view.

Chapter Twenty Four

The island existed in a watery palette of colours, washed as if there was a veil of organza between the scen
e and the eye of the beholder.
Often there were mists and at night it became hoary as a frost, in
shimmering greys and silvers.
But a profound harmony existed, with no care or trouble or very little that woul
d disturb souls that had come.
In the beginning, Finnian and Lalita lived in a cocooned somnolence, as if some greater thing protected them from a sense of loss, allowing them time to adjust to the m
omentuous thing they had done.
That they might be saving the Eirish was one thing and sat lightly, but that they had given up everything that mattered, including an infant’s heritage, weighed like a thousand stones and Finnian had been glad of that temporary insulation.

‘Why did you not tell me when yo
u knew?’ he asked.

‘I thought you would use it to keep me safe.
’ Lalita sat enfolded in his grasp. ‘
But then the family arrived and the charms transferred the
mselves and there wasn’t time.
Are you angry?’

‘No,’ he replied as his hands smoo
thed over and over her stomach. ‘How can a father be angry?
I am sad that it will be born here, that we are here, but we have no choice now and we shall love it more becau
se of the strange circumstance.
But I tell you, my dearest Lalita, if being born here protects the infant from Is
olde’s malediction, I am glad.
More than I can say.’

It seemed she had been happy with that as she said nothing and he refrained from mentioning it again, choosing to watch her
child and his grow inside her.
He thought often of Isolde’s attempt to speak in that last moment but finally let it go as Time moved on, trying hard to believe that the curse was limited to those words Isolde had spoken aloud.

He spent many moments talking to his brother, Liam listening with an intensit
y that resonated with Finnian.
He was reminded of the one-sided imaginings of his youth.

‘Bitter,’ he finished one day after detailing the last of his life with Isolde.

‘Our father was as embittered
and a brute with it, Finnian.’ Liam commented.
‘Yo
u had one and I had the other.
It’s too much
of the twinning, I would say.
Curse is not
too finer point to put on it.’
He put his arm across Finnian’s shoulder and the
weight of it pleased Finnian.
No longer was this a shadowman who passed across his life like a welkin wind.

He looked out ove
r fields of pale wild flowers.
‘What sustains you here?’

‘The same as when we lived. It’s no different.
And we watch.’

‘Watch what?

‘That world.’
He gestured beyond the
lake with a sweep of his arm.
‘It is how we knew what was happening with the Cantrips and what would eventuate.’

‘One
would think you are the Fates.’

‘Perhaps we are, who knows?’ Liam was noncommital.

‘And I?
’

‘You have
a role to play in the future.
I don’t tell you anything you don’t know.’

‘Liam, the charms must be destroyed and we are ready.’

Liam replied with equanimity.
‘Then you will find a lake.’

‘Another one?’

‘Yes but this one has no end and no beginning and
nothing can be taken from it.
Ever.’

‘Where is it?’ asked Finnian.

‘Not far,’ replied his brother.

Lalita sat staring at nothing in particular and Finnian watched her tattooed hand stroking the growing mound of her belly after he ret
urned from his talk with Liam.
He knew today was a harder day, that she found it difficult com
ing to terms with this unlife.
Despite the fact that people moved in and out of their existence and engaged with them gently, smoothing the way, she struggled with where she was; the undefined palette of the trees and the ferns, grass and flowers biting deep in
to her artist’s sensibilities, t
he massive sense of loss
almost
unseating her some days.

The baby was growing bigger, Lalita’s breasts filling out with the
milk that would sustain the child
and Fin
nian desired her all the more.
He moved to sit with her
and took her hand in his own. ‘It is time now, Lalita. I know where we have to go.
It’s not too far, can you walk?’

‘Of course I can.
I’m not an invalid and b
esides it’s good for the babe.
Better to
walk than float like a ghost.’ She gave a small smile.
‘Do you know, that’s wh
at I thought it would be like.
Ghosts and trailing white shapes, greys and silvers not just
at night but all day as well. But there is none of that.
It’s a pale place,
but not completely unbearable. It’s cultured and life is not harsh.
There is only one thing that concerns me.’

They had begun to walk in the direction that Liam had i
ndicated and Finnian prompted.
‘What would that be?’

‘There are no children.
Is there a s
eparate islet for little ones?
We all know that children die.’

‘There is another place, Lalita, f
or mortals and their children.
This is a place of mature people because Others live many long years before meeting their bane and coming to the isle.’

‘Always?
They never die in childhood?

‘Very rarely.’

‘Then if this is the Others’ haven, why am I here?’

‘Loved ones of Others are here, Lalit
a, even if they are mortal.
Besides, you
are a carrier of Other charms.
It puts you here where you belong.’
By my side.
But he didn’t say and he could see she struggled.

‘But
what’s to become of our child?
Will it grow amongst shades of people older t
han itself?
If that’s the case, it’
s a penalty unearned for sure.
How lonely it will be he
re with no peers to play with.
What does that inevitably do to a child?’

In truth Finnia
n had worried on this as well.
His had been an empty life, as had Liam’s and he would not wish that on a b
abe of his own and yet he must.
‘We must think the
child will be cherished here.
It’s not a harsh place.’

But loneliness is darker, deeper and more wretched than one can imagine.

The path wound through weeping silver-pe
ar trees and was easy walking.
It traced itself along the side of a rivulet that frothed
over stones and around corners.
The pleasant sound made music on the air because there was no birdsong in this land of shades and it was something they both missed m
ore than they could imagine.
Like the sound of dogs, or cattle lowing in a field, or ewes in a withy and the shepherd counting
yain, tain tethera…
the stuff of life.

‘Finnian,’ Lalita pulled him up and as she spoke he realized she thought the same t
houghts.
‘Do you think we would settle better if w
e had actually met our deaths?
That we would be grateful to live in this half world?’

‘Perhaps.’
He daren’t tell her that he won
dered if they might both go mad
pining
for a life they couldn’t have.
He just prayed for the imminent birth of the child, something to divert them and in which to dives
t their emotional wherewithal.
They continued to walk, the paperweights clinking in Finnian’s pocket, reminding him that if he hadn’t come, if she hadn’t come, Eirie would still be at the mercy of the malign and malcontent.

They pushed under the final arch of the walkway of silver pears and the lake
within a lake lay before them.
It stretched
to infinity and Lalita gasped.
‘This isle that is our home must be the size of a world.’

‘It
is
a world and I had not realized.’
A world in which we can make a life.  Perhaps all will be well.
‘Look there, a boat.’

Finnian led the way along the shingled shore and Lalita climbed awkwardly over the stern of the dinghy and settled herself as he pus
hed off into the silken water.
The shallows sparkled but as he paddled out, the lake floor dropped away and the water became not merely dark but an opaque black.

Lalita shivered.
‘Depthless,’ she muttered as she wrapped her hands over her belly.

Finnian ceased paddling and they wallowed gently in the waters as a w
elkin wind blew about them.
He reached into his pocket and the paperweights clicked and clacked as he drew
them forth.
The weak unlight grazed over the sides of the pieces of glass and they lost some of their splendour.

‘In truth they seem mediocre.’
Lalita watched as Finnian held them over the side of the boat.

He had thought to drop them, but a shape floated beneath, a shape of dark and light, of lithe hair and pale features, and where the insipid light touched the water, of diamond and silver flashes.
Moonlady?
Finnian wondered if this whole tragedy could have been avoided if this was indeed the Moonlady
and his temper began to soar.
He lifted his arm away as if to prevent the wight, the shape, whatever she was from having the paperweights.

‘Finnian
, give them to her. Let’s get this done.’
Lalita grabbed his arm, the boat rocking and as they almost lost their balance, he
let the first paperweight drop.
The woman of the water fielded
it, holding up her other hand.
Finnian let the second one go and it sank with a tiny plop so at odds with its horrendous con
tents and the woman caught it.
They disappeared into the depths as she opened her hands, allowing them to sink beyond sight – to the end of the world perhaps.

‘What about my hand?
What should I do?’

The pale woman came alongside the boat and held her hand out of the water, palm uppermost, i
nviting Lalita’s into her own.
Finnian could see Lalita’s chest rising and falling and he wondered if she would be pulled into the water to be dragged down in
to the endless deep.
But he knelt by her side and took her hand in his own, guiding it towards the woman.

She slid her palm underneath Lalita’s, a shiver of a movement, barely there, and Lali
ta trembled in Finnian’s hold.
But then the woman swam away a little and with a faint smile she flipped a skein of dark sapphire drops high into the air and dove deep, down down down until all that showed she had been was
a trail of damascened bubbles.
Lalita stared at her once again unmarked hand and collapsed again
st Finnian sobbing.
He knew she cried for lives lost, for what they had given up and he could do nought but hold her and love her.

***

Sometimes when she sat on the edge of the Lake of Mists, staring over to the far shore where lay life, sifting the sands through her fingers, she would pretend she was an hourglass.  As the grains dropped to fall in a heap underneath, she would say to her unborn child, ‘Another minute of t
his unlife gone, little child.
I am sorry for what I shall inflict on you in this pla
ce of shadow.
For Isabella would have been your friend, your
family, even your redemption.
Will y
ou ever forgive me, I wonder?’
The thought of Isolde’s curse had sent out tentacles earlier and they began to cling and to grow and she despised the pain they caused as they suckered and gripped.

Her child slippe
d out easily one silver night.
She barely felt a pain and the i
nfant lay in her lover’s arms. ‘A son, Lalita. We have a son.’
He glowed with the joy of a father and she couldn’t bear to say that the infant was cursed, that by living here, he would have a half-life, precisely as Isolde had predicted.