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Date Posted: 16:56:32 08/09/08 Sat
Author: celtgirl
Subject: Here 'tis>>>
In reply to: celtgirl 's message, "Here's most of the rest of that scene with Brigit and her Nan. I'll post inside the first reply." on 16:31:34 08/09/08 Sat

copyright 2008 Cindy Brandner

While Nan made tea I looked about the cottage, as though I were seeing it for the first time. I felt as though my vision had shifted in some precipitous manner, and nothing was familiar. The cottage had always been my refuge, my true home and the place that enfolded me with security. Right at this moment though, I would have given anything to flee into the forest with the stranger. I gripped my hands together for they still tingled uncomfortably with the need to take the man’s hand. I knew I needed to be clear-headed to hear what Nan was about to tell me, I needed to re-orient myself within this temporal world. So I focussed on the tree that formed one corner of the cottage.

The oak grew within the back lefthand corner of the cottage, it had been here first and Nan’s own grandmother had merely built the cottage around it. As it grew older it twisted in great whorls, seeking perhaps the sun, which only shone upon its outer half. Much like her ownself, Nan always said, and claimed that when the last of the Moran women died, the oak would die with them. But it died sooner, and I still live, though perhaps Nan was right after all, for it may be that I am not, strictly speaking, part of that direct line of fierce, driven women. Or perhaps it could not bear the sorrow of the soil, could not stand alone when all else had fallen and decayed.

The floors of the cottage were broad-laid bog oak planks, worn dark and smooth through the years. The planks had been cut to interlock with their joints still intact, thus one had the odd feeling of being sideways in the world and walking up and down the trees. Softly grooved with the passage of time, they bore traces of all the women that had lived in this cottage, the spills of herbs and cauldron marks. It was a record of life: the first footsteps of children, and the last stagger of old age, the trace of chairs that had cradled old bones, and the light tap of a foot as it rocked the slumbering body of the newly born.

Nan sat and even as she relaxed into the chair, I could feel the tension that strung all the space around her tight as a fiddle’s first notes.

I was puzzled as she began to speak, for the words were familiar and the story one I’d heard many times. I did not see, at first, how this bit of family lore had any bearing on the man I’d seen.

She told the story as she had always told it, slowly, drawing the words out like the fine wool she spun from her fingertips, securing each strand firmly in place with detail until it was a whole piece.

“There were the three then, dressed all in green- one old, one young, and one neither here nor there. I was half-asleep, dozing by the fire, and did not know if I was awake or if I dreamed. They were small, shorter even than you an’ myself, an’ dark in the skin an’ hair. I knew they were of the auld folk, soon as I chanced to see them. An’ if I weren’t sleepin’ I knew it was best to pretend that I was, or risk bein’ blinded by them.”

“They stood about your cradle, an’ touched you in turn- one on yer wee head, one on yer heart and one on yer centre. An’ I knew then that ye were a changeling child, only that it wasn’t to be a bad thing an’ that yer gifts would always be out of the ordinary ways. An’ I knew that ye’d think it a curse most times, but that it would be the savin’ of ye in the end.”

I shuddered, as I always did, at the words ‘in the end’. For what end did she speak of?

“Ye were a quiet babe, to be certain, too quiet mayhap, an’ to be sure ye’ve always seen more than was comfortable for others.”

I nodded the strange feeling in my chest growing stronger, for I sensed she was about to add to the story, which no longer had the feel of a lovely fable designed to make me feel special.

“They’d claimed ye for their own, though ye’d never truly belonged to us, ye were neither kith nor kine, an’ all who held ye or looked into yer eyes knew it.”

“But none of us have ever belonged,” I protested. It was a family legacy to be apart, all the women of my family had been so, why was she saying that I was even farther out beyond the pale of kinship and community than she and my mother had been?

“No, we have not, that is true enough, but in many cases it was a choice for us- it’s not been a choice for you, Brigit, now has it?”

A flash of anger passed through me, my misfit status had been a point of some pride before, but to feel that I was a misfit even to a long line of misfits was something else altogether. And yet…I had to admit the truth of what she said, it was there in the way others glanced at me on a daily basis as I went about the village doing my errands, in the strange light I saw in men’s eyes at times, that caused them to look away with shame in their faces when I caught them.

“I know I’ve told ye this story many a time, Brigit, but here is what I left unsaid. There was a wee boy, there with them that day, he stood in the doorway, he didn’t come any further an’ I knew he belonged with the Others, for he didn’t look like any ordinary mortal boy, for all the dirt round about his face an’ hands. He looked as though he’d fallen down from the moon, so fair was his skin an’ the eyes on him would go through ye, like ice or water, dependin’ on whether he loved or disdained ye. But that day he looked only at you, or for you, I should say- as though he knew ye’d be there, as though he’d been waitin’ on ye for a very long time. The thing was that I’d seen that boy before, but only he’d been a man at the time.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling a fine pricking all along my spine.

“Brigit, does the description I’ve just given ye, sound anything at all like the man ye saw in the trees, tonight?”

“I-” I hesitated for a moment, for indeed the description fit, she had described him well and yet, oddly, I did not want to admit it. I felt angry, I felt, truth be told, jealous. What did she mean she had seen him as a man, he was years younger than her- I could tell even that much through the beard and hair. And how could she have seen the man, before the boy? It was ridiculous.

She was eyeing me shrewdly and I knew she had her answer, I only hope she hadn’t picked up on my anger, which was entirely irrational, but then the whole experience was irrational.

“Aye, I knew it,” she said grimly, and there was no satisfaction in her voice. “He’s come back for ye then, he’s bided his time to be sure, but I always knew this day would come.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice rising in distress. I didn’t understand what she was talking about, and it was starting to frighten me.

“What I mean is, to that man standing in the trees waiting for you, time has no meaning, it’s merely a loop for him and he can skip outside that loop when he so chooses- though I’ve no doubt he’s paid a price for such folly.” She looked at my face then and sighed. “I’m frightening you, and I mean to, Brigit, but I think I’d best explain better than I have.”

She stood and took the kettle off the hob, refilling our cups. Her eyes were a deep grey, the colour of the sky just before it sunders itself in storm. She sat and took a drink of her tea, but it seemed she barely tasted it, her thoughts far away and troubled. She was normally near to unflappable, and thus I knew the man in the trees had shaken her up very badly. The man that, for whatever reason, only I had been able to see.

“He has come for you many times, over many, many years, but never have you been ready for him.”

“Many years?” I echoed blankly. What on earth could she mean?

“Brigit, time is not a straight line, you know that well enough. All of life is circular, including death, that which was shall be again, and that which is to come has already happened.”

“Stop talking in riddles,” I said more sharply than I intended, but I wanted her to explain this to me in a fashion that made sense, and didn’t send skitters of ice up my spine.

“What did you feel when you saw that man tonight, Brigit?”

It was like her to ask a question in response to my own questions, I almost stamped my foot with impatience.

“Answer me, Brigit, don’t think about it, just tell me.”

“I- I felt that I knew him, had always known him- that I-” I hesitated over the next words, and yet I felt I’d never spoken anything truer in my life. “I have loved him before, loved him forever it seems.”

“Aye, I thought as much,” she said, though I didn’t have the impression she was necessarily speaking to me, but rather to a suspicion she had long harboured. She stood then and I thought I might very well scream in frustration, though I was still trying to sort out my own rapidly flying thoughts.

She walked to one of the many shelves, with their dark bottles. She reached up past them all, past the murky fluids that people whispered held the remains of things long dead or things that were not seen during daylight hours. I knew they were merely steeped herbs, medicines that were strong by virtue of their age and brewing. From the top shelf she took down an old chest, one I had often wondered about, but had never seen her open.

It had not been opened in years, for she had to jiggle the lock for a long time before the clasp gave. I could not see the inside of it entirely, but it did not look as though it contained much. My grandmother hesitated before she put her hand inside, as if she had long dreaded this moment, and indeed, as I would later find out, she had.

What she withdrew seemed simple enough, a rough plane of tree bark that had been flattened and smoothed on one side, so that it might be used as a writing implement. But what it held was nothing ordinary, for when she turned the smooth side toward me, her hand trembling, what I saw was myself in miniature.

The sketch was delicately done, considering the crudity of the instrument used to draw it. For the profile had been drawn with no more than charcoal, whittled down to a fine point, and applied with grace to the bark.

Mirrors were not a common household item in Ireland during those years, but my grandmother had a looking glass, that though wavy, gave one a clear reflection. This picture was not merely my likeness, nor even my doppelganger, but myself, soul and all caught with light and shadow upon a bit of bark. And yet I knew it was not me, knew it with a stark certainty.

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know entirely, Brigit, only that the picture is very old and has been handed down from woman to woman in our family for generations. You were about fourteen when I started to see the resemblance, an’ by the time you were seventeen there was no denyin’ that this woman an’ yerself were one in looks at least.”

I didn’t want to look at the picture anymore, and yet I couldn’t seem to stop doing just that.

“How is this related to the man I saw?” I asked, for he was still primary in my mind, and if Nan thought she was going to get away with sidetracking me with some long lost ancestor, she could think again.

“Because he was her lover, or her husband, I’m not certain exactly which, maybe both.”

“That’s not possible,” I said, feeling suddenly very angry with her, I wanted a straight explanation, not more mystery and subterfuge to deal with.

“Haven’t I just told you that time means little to that man? And he has come for you, Brigit. Do you know what this means?”

“Of course I don’t,” I said in a fury of exasperation. “I can see him, you apparently can’t now, but could long ago. You’re telling me this man hasn’t aged in decades and you expect me to understand what you mean?”

“He is of the Other, though for some reason he’s been cast out even from Their world- which makes him very dangerous indeed. I think he knew you in another time, perhaps even another place and he will not rest, nor go, until you are his again.”

“The Other- you mean the Good Folk?” I asked, trying to keep from letting my astonishment take over my face, and failing, it would seem, miserably.

“Yes, but not as you may have viewed them up to this point.”

Like most country folk my grandmother would not name them as Faerie, for it was ill to do so, and insulting to them as well. To call them directly was to summon them, and they might not be willing to come, but come they would and the summoner would pay for such impudence.

When I say Faerie, I do not mean the small winged folk of people’s imaginings, the gossamer creatures that show up in the pages of children’s storybooks. I mean the Sidhe, people taller than myself, fair as the dawn, who disappeared into the mists of time oh so long ago, but can be found still if one has the eyes to see them.

Myself, I had only seen things that might have been a trick of the eye or of the mind when it is tired. But exhaustion sometimes opens doors that the brain normally keeps locked like a steel trap against just such visions. But such things are easily explained away when one feels less vulnerable, and the light of day shines upon your shoulders and you are involved in the minutiae of keeping oneself and one’s loved ones surviving for another season. But once, once I had seen a man walking to my door, I had only glimpsed him for a second, but it was enough time to register that he was in the clothes of a gypsy, one down on his luck, or with no skill at the games of chance and fortune that the gypsies plied on we gullible folk. When I went to answer the door, for I had a loaf of bread and a cup of milk I could offer him, he was nowhere to be seen. I searched around the cottage, for he could not have gone far, but there was no trace of him. And yet…there was an odd energy on the air, a disturbance as of the wind moving the hairs on my neck and I knew then he belonged to another world, but had briefly crossed through some small portion of mine. Perhaps such things exist, shortcuts of a sort, phantom roads well traveled by ghosts, invisible to the human eye, except for a rare moment now and then, when one is caught unawares and hasn’t time to shield the sight.

Nan was not saying this was any phantom though. Truth be told, he had looked haunted certainly, but he had seemed real enough. I had felt his heat, I know I had. From the dead man who lived under the blackthorne trees, I had never felt any such thing, rather a great cold emanated from the ground there. But this man, this man’s blood called my own, bade it come to him to be warmed as his own…

I dragged my thoughts away, and saw the hard look on Nan’s face. She was not pleased at my inattention, or perhaps she was only still disturbed by the man’s presence.

“If you’re saying he’s not real, then why all the worry?” It felt like blasphemy coming from my mouth, he was real, for me there was no denying that, but I would see what Nan knew first.

“Brigit, don’t play games with me, we both know he’s real enough.” She sat and sighed, and I noticed that the silver-grey eyes, which I’d inherited, were dim with fatigue. I would make her some (?) for that, and insist that she rest. She had spent much time on the roads of late, visiting the sick, both those near and far, even those who lived in the hedgerows with nothing to guard them from illness but a damp woolen shawl, were treated by her for their various complaints.

“There is an old story, told me by my mother and by hers before, of a pale man with dark hair and eyes like crystal that seemed to see through the mists of time and space. They called him the Walker between Worlds, for he seemed to belong and exist only in edge places, near water or in the high tops of trees- the legends about him were ones I never heard outside our family, and yet, from time to time there would be a whisper here or there about a man who lived on the fringes of the forest, only glimpsed in the shadow of moonlight, so that he seemed more mythical than the gods and the fireside tales. But always those who had seen him, expressed a feeling of intense sadness, of a yearning, a longing that went beyond the mortal realm. I believe it’s this woman he longs for, I believe it’s you he’s been looking for all these years.”

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