The moon had glossed the lake with a sheen that reflected the heavens back on themselves. Trees fringed its edge; tall pines dipped and nodded in the faint breeze cascading down from the ponderous hilltops. These hills stood guard over the sprawling habitation known as Winterseam. Snow had come early to this aptly-named settlement, and the young girl who stood looking out into the darkness enjoyed the shimmering contrasts around her.
She allowed her long, thin fingers to slide along the lowest branches of a slender birch, removing the icy crust and leaving naked bark where before had been a cloak of diamond-white snow. The cold bit at her bare hands, but she didn’t mind; she was of hardy stock. Her clansmen had farmed this region for centuries, becoming so attuned to the land and the changing year that they were as much a part of it as the trees that provided them with wood or the lake that supplied their fish. She was of this place; its essence sang through her blood and found an outlet in her lyrical voice. For a child of eight, she had a remarkable ability to create songs without accompaniment. They flowed from her like an effervescent waterfall, dropping clear notes into the ears of any fortunate listeners.
Her voice was silent that night, for she had not come to give a performance. The child’s intention was to find better entertainment than her own limited repertoire. She knew that there had been the promise of activity by the Dead Stream for days now. A ring of mushrooms had sprouted several weeks after they should all have been gone, and they had flourished and grown beyond all natural expectations. Her biggest worry was that Lachlan, her brother, would happen across them and attempt to pick the fleshy fungi. Her fears had been unfounded, for no one ever strayed towards the Dead Stream unless they had good cause to do so. The last time one of the clan had ventured in the direction of the dirty water and treacherous mud banks had been when the white bull had gone missing and they had to search every part of the valley, including all the places they usually avoided.
No, the child was quite sure she was alone and would be able to enjoy the magic in peace. Her family did their best to acknowledge the realms beyond their own, but in truth, they were very half-hearted about it. She knew that had they paid more court to the Urisk, they would not be struggling with the roof for the sixth time in as many weeks. No matter how many times they attached the sods of earth, they still came loose in the slightest breath of air. Her father cursed the turf for being too thin and lacking substance; he did not listen to his young daughter as she advised him to leave out extra milk and perhaps some bread. He was a man who believed in only one being beyond his own experience, and that was the Christian God and his son the Christ child.
They had not believed her when she said there was something wrong with Ruairidh’s pretty new wife. She had seen the young woman bathing in the lake; seen her webbed toes and the way she thrust through the water like no human she had ever seen. The child knew what she was, yet she was unheard, for who wanted to hear that the son of the chieftain was married to a Selkie. These creatures were beautiful, but often mournful, and longed for the sea with all their heart. She thought it was cruel of Ruairidh to keep the seal pelt buried beneath their home, away from his wife and her freedom. Had the child been braver, she might have dug up the pelt, brushed the Scottish mud from it, and returned it to its pitiful owner.
Rowena, for such was her name, born under the pale full moon of a November night to a mother who had made much use of the Rowan’s bark to alleviate her sickness during pregnancy, slithered along the banks of the stream and caught hold of some roots to bring her progress to a halt. Dark hair obliterated her sight for a moment before she pushed it back and had a clear view over the mouth of the stream as it disgorged into the main body of the lake. The moon was a kind mistress, she reflected as she watched its light lend a magical lustre to the water. The sun, he was harsh, burning away the top surface of the lake and creating a haze that hid all. He left the grass and the trees parched and dying, he harried the clouds and sent them scudding away; he hated the clan at times, of that she was sure. Her dark eyes looked up and felt the full benevolence of the white circle that bathed the settlement in much-needed light.
It was only the beginnings of a rustle and then it was gone. A bell-like sound fluttered through the night chill, yet Rowena paid it no attention. If she flattered them into thinking that she was interested, they would taunt and tease and she would see nothing. The first time she had witnessed such a thing, she had squealed with delight and then found that her hair was being pulled with such force she felt it would be torn from her head entirely. Hidden hands had pushed her into the stream; prodding, sharp fingers digging at her bones mercilessly. Any ordinary child would have abandoned the scene, screaming for their mother, but Rowena picked herself out of the stream and found that within minutes she was dry.
The teasing has lessened as she learned to control her reaction. Now, she could attend a gathering and not receive so much as a hiss in her ear. Sometimes they were subdued affairs, and Rowena had not yet grown to understand why some were and some weren’t. The lights that skimmed the stream promised something of a celebration tonight; lashes of blues and lilacs danced across the surface of the gloomy water and she settled herself behind a gorse bush. Within minutes the air was filled with the rush of wings and a high-pitched cackling soured the air. Seven figures were creating a web of light as they flashed furiously through the trees and then stopped to hover over the water. Their wings were the source of the coloured light, and Rowena smiled to see such prettiness. It was a glamour on them, she knew, that made them seem pretty. When their wings stopped dancing and they were not in the mood to shine, they were the ugliest little things imaginable. Their skin was the colour of aged lichen, with bumps and lumps covering their small, pinched faces. It was their dancing and music that made up for their visual deficiencies, however. It transfixed her, brought her to a new world in which anything was possible. Most importantly, it made her forget the chores of the farm. Here, she did not have to rise early to be kicked by the cows she attempted to milk. Sheep did not shun her or horses lead her a most un-merry dance around a mud-weary field.
The tiny fiddles and pipes picked up a new tune, faster, more urgent. It rippled through the bare trees and followed the stream, fanning out and covering the lake with sound. Rowena moved slightly, disturbing the shimmering magic. This was a new development; seldom did they allow their music to bleed beyond the Dead Stream. A heaviness obscured the moon and she looked heavenward to see a blustering blackness toying with the white light. This mass then swooped down and the furious music was replaced with high-pitched shrieks and screams. Bewildered by the sudden confusion, Rowena struggled to her feet and tried to retreat into the safety of the trees, but she slipped against the smooth ice and fell backwards. The exposed roots prodded at her back and made her gasp in pain and the sharp sensation mingled with the chill of the ice melting through the rough fabric of her dress.
The darkness was swinging down, falling closer and closer towards her. The fairy music had been replaced by what sounded like a million bees swarming above her; the buzzing intense and vigorous. The host moved as one although it was not one, something she realised as it paused, regrouped and then noticed her. She could not quite understand how something that resembled a black plume of smoke was capable of noticing a small, human child, but it swelled before her, breaking into several strands as parts broke away to follow the terrified fairies that were busily fleeing the scene.
What had previously been mere cold air was now filled with a different tang; sweetness filled her nostrils and made her cough bright clouds of breath into the atmosphere. She finally found her feet and forced herself to stand and face the interloper. Shoving a handful of hair from her face and trying to stop her teeth from clattering together like hooves on hard ground, Rowena looked directly at the top of the plume and spoke.
“Whoever you are, you can let me be. I’m just a wean from the village and nothing to you. I’ll let you in peace if you let me in peace.” Her chin tilted upwards in a gesture of bravery, even though her heart was careering around her chest.
The plume flickered a little, waving around as if convulsed, and then it fell to earth quickly, spreading itself along the ground at her feet. If Rowena had not been so fright-struck, she would have said it was laughing at her. She stepped back “ the blackness was about to touch her toes “ and waited for a good opportunity to run for safety.
“What form would you have me take?” The voice was brittle, almost fragile. It came from somewhere just below her right ear; glancing down she could see that a faint stream of the black thing had reached her and was quivering just short of her shoulder.
“You can take whatever form you like. I do not care. You’re not from this place and I think you should go back to where you came from.”
“They were not wrong about you.” The smoke swirled higher, forming a circular cloak around her, eddying, bewitching. It faded from black to grey and then to silver, all the while giving off the odour of deep earth sluiced with a brackish tang. “You can see it at the back of your eyes; defiance.”
“Let me alone!”
She stepped back and then yelled as if scalded. Her shoulders had made contact with the silver matter and had felt the burn of its power.
“I see I am alarming you. Let me become more acceptable to your narrow experience.” It retracted, forming a narrow trunk that seemed to collapse in on itself. From this dense mist a dappled cloak suddenly burst forth, dark as the smoke had been but infinitely more corporeal. A hooded figure emerged, carried high on the back of a fine black horse, its face obscured by the thick fabric. With a breath of wind, the last of the smoke vanished leaving something in its wake that was tall and forbidding, but no longer intangible.
“I am here to see you safe home, child.” It was a female voice, charred with an accent that Rowena did not recognise.
“I am home!”
“How touching. How brave. My dear human child.” She removed the hood from her head and Rowena could not stay the gasp that fell from her mouth. Here was a creature the like of which was not seen in Winterseam. For all the darkness that had surrounded her, this woman’s hair was of the brightest yellow and bound around the forehead with thin bands of gold so that it formed three tresses. Two curled up and about her head while the third fell away out of Rowena’s sight. It framed a wide brow which topped dark eyebrows; an alarming contrast to her hair. Rowena had to stare deeply into her eyes before she realised what was so unusual about them; there were three irises in each. When the woman made to speak again, scarlet lips parted to reveal a line of teeth that quite took the child’s breath away. Only children had such bright, whole teeth in her village. Most adults had worn theirs down by the time they reached full adulthood and had blackened them on a diet of dark fruits and ale.
“Who are you and what do you want of me. I was doing no harm. Just watching the wee ones like I do.” Her natural defiance reasserted itself, making her brave in the face of this unknown threat.
“Your little friends have angered my companions, as you can see.” She reached out a long arm in the direction of the fleeing fairies, the cloak splaying out in the wind. The horse shifted its position slightly at the movement, causing the woman to place her hand upon its neck in a gesture of deep patience. “They will learn a lesson from this night; you cannot steal Sidhe gold and expect to get away with it.”
The words made little sense to Rowena; she had no knowledge of Sidhe, or of gold.
Gold was a foreign thing to her clan, a metal they saw little of.
“That still doesn’t tell me what you want with me.”
“Want with you?” Her words dripped like melted butter into the cold night. “It is not a question of want. I am Fedelm, one of the Sidhe, and a prophetess. I do not have wants.” She drew closer, her cloak fluttering towards Rowena, tantalising in its denseness. “Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild with a faery, hand in hand, for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”
“You speak in riddles,” she replied. “I will go nowhere with you, least of all to the waters. I know what happens to us when we are dragged beneath the waters by the fairy folk.”
“Then you will know that your fate lies there. You will know that there will be a lake and beside that lake will grow a monument to magic. You will know that each time you pass by this meagre water’s edge” “ here she gestured to the lake in the near distance “ “you will feel the pull of it in your heart and in your mind and you will know that you have turned from a path on which you were destined to tread. You will know, human child, that within your body there flows our blood. You will know that there is more beyond your inadequate life of simple toil and struggle.”
Rowena looked into her triple irises and saw towers and the fluttering of a banner. She was given a small, swirling vision of a life less mundane. Rolling around in triplicate was her future and yet she could not fully grasp the import of what this strange and beautiful creature was telling her.
“My future is with my family. I will marry a farmer and will live with him and our animals here. There is nothing beyond this valley for such as me.”
“My child, there is always more than the eye betrays. One day you will see it all spread before you like a banquet on which you shall feast. But I see that you are not ready and will let it be for now. Mark well the way the wind sighs about us and the warmth you feel within your heart, for this is your legacy. You are part Sidhe; time will bring you back to us.”
“This makes no sense!” Rowena suddenly felt a violent shift in her heart. The fear she had initially felt was dying and the first prick of belonging punctured her skin. “You do not speak plainly.”
“In time, child. It is a great and tiresome thing for we Sidhe to leave our home and cross the water. One of us will come back for you; if you are not ready then, we will wait until you are. Good night, child. Sleep well in your bed, for the morning awaits you.”
She left. One moment her golden hair lit the night and the next she had dissolved into the ground at her feet. Rowena blinked a few times to makes sure her eyes did not betray her, and sure enough, the woman was gone. Silence reigned across the valley, giving away nothing of what had just occurred. With a weight on her shoulders that she could not shift, Rowena made her way home. She stole silently into her bed and enjoyed the rough kiss of the blankets as she struggled to find warmth on that cold night.
In time, she forgot the woman. The warmth of the strange fairy’s presence left a shadow on her soul and scarred the girl with a vague longing for something she could not possess; for the most part she managed to ignore it, but sometimes it caught up with her and she would look towards the hills and wonder what she had denied herself.
Home by Magical Maeve
Chapter Notes: Written for Celestial Melody for Ravenclaw House's Secret Santa exchange. Her wonderful prompt asked for a Founder, fairies and imagery.