The Wandering Fire (18 page)

“Not that one,” Finn said. “Leave that one.” He wasn’t sure why, but something told him it should be left, and Dari, as always, obeyed. They took a handful of corandiel, with a yellow narcissus for color, and went back home. Vae put the flowers in water on the table and then tucked Dari into bed for his nap.

They left behind them in the wood, growing in the strange place, that one blue-green flower with red at its center like blood.

He was still restless, very much on edge. In the afternoon he went walking again, this time toward the lake. The grey waters chopped frigidly against the flat stone where he always stood. They were cold, the waters of the lake, but not frozen. All the other lakes, he knew, were frozen. This was a protected place. He liked to think the story he told Dari was true: that Dari’s mother was guarding them. She had been, he remembered, like a queen, even with her pain. And after Dari was born and they came to carry her away, she had made them put her down beside Finn. He would never forget. She had stroked Finn’s hair with her long fingers; then, pulling his head close, had whispered, so no one else would hear, “Take care of him for me. As long as you can.”

As long as you can. And on the thought, as if she had been waiting, annoyingly, for her cue, Leila was in his mind.

What do you want?
he sent, letting her see he was irritated. In the beginning, after the last ta’kiena, when they discovered that she could do this, it had been a secret pleasure to communicate in silence and across the distances. But lately, Leila had changed. It had to do, Finn knew, with her passage from girl to woman; but knowing this didn’t make him any more comfortable with the images she sent him from the Temple. They kept him awake at night; it was almost as if Leila enjoyed doing so. She was younger than he by more than a year, but never, ever, had he felt older than Leila.

All he could do was let her know when he was displeased, and not answer back when she began to send thoughts of greater intimacy than he could deal with. After a while, if he did this, she would always go away. He’d feel sorry, then.

He was in a bad mood today, though, and so, when he became aware of her, the question he sent was sharp and unaccommodating.

Do
you feel it?
Leila asked, and his heart skipped a beat, because for the first time ever he sensed a fear in her.

Fear in others made him strong, so as to reassure. He sent,
I’m uneasy, a little. What is it?

And then his life began to end. For Leila sent,
Oh, Finn, Finn, Finn
,
and with it an image.

Of the ta’kiena on the green, when she had chosen him.

So that was it. For a moment he quailed and could not hide it from her, but the moment passed. Looking out at the lake, he drew a deep breath and realized that his uneasiness had gone. He was deeply calm. He had had a long time to accept this thing and had been a long time waiting.

It’s all right
,
he sent to Leila, a little surprised to realize that she was crying.
We knew this was going to come
.

I’m not ready
,
Leila said in his mind.

That was a bit funny: she wasn’t being asked to do anything. But she went on,
I’m not ready to say good-bye, Finn. I’m going to be all alone when you go
.

You’ll have everyone in the sanctuary
.

She sent nothing back. He supposed he’d missed something, or not understood. No help for it now. And there was someone else who was going to miss him more.

Leila
,
he sent.
Take care of Darien
.

How?
she whispered in his mind.

I
don’t know. But he’s going to be frightened when I go, and . . . he hears voices in the storms, Leila
.

She was silent, in a different way. The sun slipped behind a cloud and he felt the wind. It was time to move. He didn’t know how he knew that, or even where he was to go, but it was the day, and coming on toward the hour.

Good-bye
,
he sent.

The Weaver grant you Light
,
he heard her say in his mind.

And she was gone. Walking back to the cottage, he already had enough of a sense of where he was about to go to know that her last wish was unlikely to be granted.

Long ago he had decided he would not tell his mother when the time came. It would smash her as a hammer smashes a lock, and there was no need for any of them to live through that. He went back in and kissed her lightly on the cheek where she sat weaving by the fire.

She smiled up at him. “Another vest for you, my growing son. And brown to match your hair this time.”

“Thank you,” he said. There was a catch in his throat. She was small and would be alone, with his father away at war. What could he do, though; what was in him to deny what had been laid down? These were dark times, maybe the very darkest times of all. He had been marked. His legs would walk even if his heart and courage stayed behind. It was better, he knew, to have the heart and soul go too, to make the offering run deeper and be true. He was beginning to know a number of unexpected things. He was already traveling.

“Where’s Dari?” he asked. A silly question. “Can I wake him?”

Vae smiled indulgently. “You want to play? All right, he’s slept enough, I suppose.”

“I’m not asleep,” Dari said drowsily, from behind his curtain. “I heard you come in.”

This, Finn knew, was going to be the hardest thing. He could not weep. He had to leave Dari an image of strength, clean and unblurred. It was the last guarding he could do.

He drew the curtains, saw his little brother’s sleepy eyes. “Come,” he said. “Let’s dress you quick and go weave a pattern in the snow.”

“A flower?” Dari said. “Like the one we saw?”

“Like the one we saw.”

They hadn’t been outside for very long. A part of him cried inwardly that it wasn’t enough, he needed more time. Dari needed more. But the horsemen were there, eight of them, and the part of him that was traveling knew that this was the beginning, and even that the number was right.

Even as he looked, Dari holding him tightly by the hand, one of the riders lifted an arm and waved to him. Slowly Finn raised his free hand and signaled an acceptance. Dari was looking up at him, an uncertainty in his face. Finn knelt down beside him.

“Wave, little one. Those are men of the High King, and they’re saying hello to us.”

Still shy, Dari lifted a small mittened hand in a tentative wave. Finn had to look away for a moment.

Then, to the brother who was all his joy, he said calmly, “I want to run and catch up with them a moment, little one. I have a thing to ask. You wait and see if you can start the flower by yourself.”

He rose then and began to walk away so his brother wouldn’t see his face because the tears were falling now. He couldn’t even say “I love you” at the end, because Dari was old enough to sense something wrong. He had said it so often, though, had meant it so much. Surely it had been enough in the little time he’d had. Surely it would be enough?

When Vae looked out a while later she saw that her older son was gone. Dari had done a thing of wonder, though: he had traced a perfect flower in the snow, all alone.

She had her own courage, and she knew what had come. She tried to do all her weeping first before going out in the yard to tell her little one how beautiful his newest flower was, and that it was time to come in and eat.

What broke her in the end was to see that Dari, moving quietly in the snow, was tracing his flower neatly with a thin branch in the growing dark while tears were pouring down his face without surcease.

In the twilight he followed them, and then by moonlight and their torches. He even got a little ahead, at first, cutting through the valley, while they took the higher ridges. Even when they passed him, torches, and a red flame on his right, they did not hurry; he was not far behind. Somehow he knew he could have kept up, even if they had been making speed. He was traveling. It was the day, the night, and nearly, now, the hour.

And then it was all three. There was no fear in him; as he’d moved farther and farther from the cottage his sorrow, too, had faded. He was passing from the circles of men into another place. It was only with an effort, as they neared the Wood, that he remembered to ask the Weaver to hold fast on the Loom to the thread of the woman, Vae, and the child, Darien. An effort, but he did it, and then, with that as the last thing, he felt himself cut loose as the fire blazed to let the horn sound and he saw and knew the kings.

He heard Owein cry out for him, “
Where is the child?
”
He saw the woman of the flame fall down before Cargail’s hooves. He remembered Owein’s voice, and knew his tone to be fear and unease. They had been so long asleep in their cave. Who would lead them back into the starlit sky?

Who, indeed?

“Do not frighten her,” he said. “I am here.” And walking forward from the trees he came past Owein, into the circle of the seven mounted kings. He heard them cry out for joy and then begin to chant Connla’s verse that had become the ta’kiena, the children’s game, so long afterward. He felt his body changing, his eyes. He knew he looked like smoke. Turning to the cave, he spoke in a voice he knew would sound like wind. “Iselen,” he said, and saw his white, white horse come forth. He mounted and, without a backward glance, he led Owein and the Hunt back into the sky.

It came together, Paul thought, still twisting inside with the dazzle and the hurt. The two verses had come to the same place: the children’s game and the one about Owein. He looked around and saw, by the moonlight, that Kim was still on her knees in the snow, so he went and, kneeling, gathered her to his chest.

“He was only a boy,” she wept. “Why do I cause so much sorrow?”

“Not you,” he murmured, stroking her white hair. “He was called long ago. We couldn’t know.”

“I
should
have known. There had to be a child. It was in the verse.”

He never stopped stroking her hair. “Oh, Kim, we can reproach ourselves fairly for so many things. Be easy on the ones that are not fair. I don’t think we were meant to know.” What long premeditating will, Paul thought, down all the years, had been farseeing enough to shape this night? Softly he spoke, to frame it:

“
When the wandering fire

Strikes the heart of stone

Will you follow?

Will you leave your home?

Will you leave your life?

Will you take the Longest Road?
”

The ta’kiena had become skewed over the long years. It wasn’t four different children to four different fates. The wandering fire was the ring Kim wore. The stone was the rock it had smashed. And all questions led to the Road that Finn had taken now.

Kim lifted her head and regarded him with grey eyes, so like his own. “And you?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

To anyone else he might have dissembled, but she was kindred in some way, set apart as he was, though not for the same thing.

“No,” said Paul. “I’m too frightened to even weep.”

She read it in him. He saw her face change, to mirror his own. “Oh,” she said. “Darien.”

Even Diarmuid was silent on the long ride home. The sky had cleared and the moon, nearing full, was very bright, and high. They didn’t need the torches. Kevin rode next to Kim, with Paul on her other side.

Glancing at her, and then at Paul, Kevin felt his own sense of grievance slipping away. It was true that he had less to offer here, demonstrably less than his marked, troubled friends, but neither did he have to carry what, so manifestly, they did. Kim’s ring was no light, transfiguring gift. It could be no easy thing to have set in motion what had happened to that boy. How could a human child have become, even as they watched, a thing of mist, diffused enough to take to the night sky and disappear among the stars? The verses, he understood, something to do with both verses coming together. He wasn’t sure, for once, if he wanted to know more.

Paul, though, Paul didn’t have a choice. He did know more, and he couldn’t hide the fact, nor the strain of wrestling with it. No, Kevin decided, he wouldn’t begrudge them their roles this once, or regret his own insignificance in what had happened.

The wind was behind them, which made things easier, and then, when they dipped down toward the valley around the lake again, he felt it grow milder and less chill.

They were skirting the farmhouse again, retracing their path. Looking down, he saw there was a light, still, in the window, though it was very late, and then he heard Paul call his name.

The two of them stopped on the trail. Ahead, the others kept moving and then disappeared around a bend in the hill slope.

They looked at each other a moment, then Paul said, “I should have told you before. Jennifer’s child is down there. He’s the young one we saw earlier. It was his older brother . .. so to speak . . . whom we just watched go with the Hunt.”