The Shadow Isle

‘I’ve not seen anything like that before, either.’ Dougie shook his head in bafflement. ‘It looks like glass, though.’

‘It’s got no bubbles in it,’ Berwynna said. ‘So Uncle Mic said it can’t be glass. It comes from fire mountains, whatever they are.’

‘Well, he’s the one who’d know.’ Dougie turned to Angmar. ‘Could I have a look at that, my lady? I’m curious, is all.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ Angmar said.

When Angmar set the pyramid down in front of him, Dougie picked it up and examined it, turning it around in his fingers. Tirn made a comment, which Angmar translated.

‘Don’t look into it too closely,’ she said. ‘It’s a rather odd thing. You don’t want to stare at it for too long.’

Dougie glanced at it out of the corner of his eye and saw the ordinary daylight in the great hall shining through black crystal. There’s naught to this, he thought, and looked directly down into the black depths through the squared-off tip. He heard Marnmara’s voice, coming nearer, sounding annoyed at something. He wanted to look up and ask her what the matter was, but the stone had trapped his gaze. He simply could not look away. Inside the black glow something appeared, something moved – a man, a strange slender man with pale skin, hair of an impossibly bright yellow, eyes of paint-pot blue, and lips as red as cherries.

The fellow was standing in the kitchen garden of Dougie’s family steading. He seemed to be staring right at Dougie, then turned and walked through the rows of cabbages till he reached the pair of apple trees by the stone wall, but the trees, Dougie realized, were young, barely strong enough to bear a couple of branches of fruit. The strange fellow stopped and pointed with his right hand at the ground between them. Over and over he gestured at the ground, then began to make a digging motion, using both hands like a hound’s front paws.

‘Dougie!’ Marnmara shouted his name. She grabbed his shoulder with one hand and shook him.

The spell broke. He looked up, dazed, unsure of exactly where he might be for a few beats of a heart. Marnmara turned to her mother and Tirn, set her hands on her hips, and began to lecture them in their own tongue. Tirn spoke a few feeble sounding words, then merely listened, staring at the table. Angmar, however, argued right back, waving a maternal finger in her daughter’s face. When Dougie put the pyramid onto the table, Marnmara stopped arguing long enough to snatch up the gem.

‘What did you see in it, Dougie?’ Marnmara said.

‘A strange-looking fellow standing between two apple trees. You might have warned me that the thing could work tricks like that.’

‘I didn’t know it could.’ Marnmara smiled briefly, then spoke to Tirn in their language. He looked utterly surprised and spoke a few words in reply. ‘He says he told you not to look into it.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Dougie said. ‘My apologies.’

Dougie decided that he didn’t like the way everyone was staring at him. He stood up and held out his hand to Berwynna.

‘I’ll be needing to go home soon.’

Together they walked down to the pier. Although he’d never seen the boatmen leave the great hall, there they were, manning the oars, ready to take him back across. Dougie shook his head hard. He felt drunk, but he’d only had half a tankard of Diarmud’s watered ale, and then another half of Angmar’s decent brew – hardly any drink at all.

‘Are you well?’ Berwynna said. ‘You’ve gone pale.’

‘I saw the strangest damned thing in that stone of Tirn’s. It was like a dream, some fellow pointing to the ground over and over. He seemed to think it was important, that bit of earth.’

‘Do you think it was a spirit?’ Berwynna turned thoughtful. ‘They say that spirits know where treasures are buried.’

‘Well, so they do – in old wives’ tales and suchlike. I wouldn’t set your heart on me finding a bucketful of gold.’

She laughed, then raised herself up on tip-toe and kissed him farewell.

The kiss kept Dougie warm during his long walk home, but the memory of his peculiar experience kept the kiss company. After he’d brooded on what he’d seen for a mile or two, the look of the fellow in the vision jogged his memory. He knew something about that fellow, he realized, but he’d forgotten the details.

Domnal Breich’s steading lay in a narrow valley twixt wooded hills. Over the years he’d built his family a rambling stone house and barn, surrounded by kitchen gardens and set off from the fields by a stone wall. The two apple trees of Dougie’s vision stood by the gate, at least twice as high as they’d appeared in the black gem. When he let himself in, he paused for a moment to look at the ground between them – ordinary enough dirt, as far as he could tell, soft from the recent rain and dusted with spring grass.

Domnal himself came out of the barn and hailed him. Although he still walked with a swagger, and his broad work-worn hands were as strong as ever, his dark brown hair sported grey streaks, and his moustache had gone grey as well.

‘Been at the island?’ Domnal said.

‘I have,’ Dougie said. ‘Here, Da, a thing I want to ask you. Do you remember a tale you told me – it was on my saint’s day, a fair many years ago now, and we went riding up to Haen Marn’s loch?’

‘The tale about Evandar, you mean, and how he saved my life?’

‘That’s the one! It was a snowy night, you said, and you were lost.’

‘Lost and doomed, I thought, truly. But he was a man of the Seelie Host. The cold meant naught to him. He took me to Haen Marn, where they kept me safe for the night.’

‘What did he look like? I can’t remember.’

‘He was tall and thin with bright yellow hair and eyes of the strangest blue, more like the sky just at twilight than an ordinary colour. A well-favoured fellow, but there was somewhat odd about his ears. They were long and curled like the bud of a lily. Ye gods! It’s been seventeen years now, but I can still see him as clear as clear in my memory.’

‘No doubt, since he saved your life.’

‘He did that, indeed, by getting me to Haen Marn and its hearth.’ Domnal paused to chew his moustache in thought. ‘You know, there’s somewhat that I still don’t understand. That night, I could have sworn that the island and its loch lay south of Ness. But the next time I saw it – in the spring, it was – it lay to the north, where it is now.’

‘If it could fly here from Cymru, why couldn’t it move itself again? Maybe it didn’t like its first nest.’

Domnal shrugged. ‘Mayhap so,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t explain it any other way.’

‘No doubt. My thanks, Da,’ Dougie said. ‘I was just wondering.’

That’s who I saw, Dougie thought, Evandar! He was frightened enough by the magical gem to consider avoiding Haen Marn from that day on, but he knew that he never could. For one thing, there was Mic and the profitable trips down to Din Edin. And of course, for another, there was Berwynna.

That night, when the family lay asleep, Dougie still waked, thinking over the vision in the gem. His curiosity had been well and truly roused. Through the narrow slit of window he could see the moon, full and bright in a clear sky, its light a further temptation. He wondered, in fact, if somehow Evandar had meant him to look into the gem at the full moon. The wondering prodded him to action. Although he shared a bed with his two younger brothers, Dougie as the eldest had the privilege of the spot on the edge. He slid out of bed without waking them, put his plaid on over his nightshirt, then climbed quietly down the ladder of their loft.

The dogs, asleep at the kitchen hearth, roused enough to sniff the air and recognize him. With a wag of tails they settled themselves again and went back to sleep. Dougie crept through the dark kitchen, barked his shins on a bench, stopped himself from swearing, and very carefully unbarred the door. It creaked, but no one called out at the sound. He slipped out into the moonlit farmyard, then took his boots from the doorstep and put them on.

A shovel stood leaning against the hen house. Dougie fetched it, then strode over to the apple trees. In the shadows cast by their branches, he found it hard to see, but he dug as carefully as he could to avoid damaging the tree roots. He’d not gone more than a foot down when the shovel clanked on metal. Dougie laid it aside, then dropped to his knees and felt around with one hand in the damp chilly dirt. His fingers touched something cold, hard, and dirt-encrusted. By feeling around he found its edges, then dug with both hands. Finally he managed to pull free a casket, about three feet long and two wide.

Behind him lantern light bloomed. Dougie twisted around to see Domnal, dressed only in his long nightshirt, walking over, a candle lantern held high.

‘What damned stupid thing are you –’ Domnal said, then stopped, staring. ‘God’s wounds! What’s that?’

‘I don’t know, Da.’ Dougie scrambled up, carrying the casket. ‘I had a dream, you see, about Evandar. He was telling me to dig here between the trees. I tried to ignore it, but it kept gnawing at me, like.’

‘Oh.’ Domnal lowered the lantern. ‘Well, let’s take it into the barn. I don’t want to wake your mother.’

His father’s sudden meekness troubled Dougie’s heart. He’d just lied to his Da, he realized, but somehow he hadn’t wanted to tell him about Tirn’s strange gem on Haen Marn – he just hadn’t, though he couldn’t say why.

In the barn Domnal hung the lantern on a nail above a little bench. Dougie laid the casket on the bench, then found an old sack and used it to wipe away the dirt. Its long time buried in the wet earth had turned the casket so green and crusty that he couldn’t tell if it were silver or pot metal. When he tried lifting it, the lid came away in his hands. Domnal took it from him.

‘What’s inside?’ Domnal said. ‘It looks like old rags.’

‘So it does,’ Dougie said. ‘I wonder if there’s somewhat inside them?’

One at a time Dougie peeled away the swaddlings – wads of rotten cloth on the outside, then a layer of oiled cloth, then layers of stained but sound cloth, until finally he came to a sack of boiled leather. Inside lay something solid and flat. Another casket? But when he slid it out, he found a book, bound in white leather, stained here and there from its internment. A black dragon decorated the front cover.

Dougie was too disappointed to swear. ‘I was hoping for a bit of treasure, Da.’ He opened the book, but in the candlelight all he could see was page after page of writing.

‘I wasn’t,’ Domnal said. ‘When Evandar’s involved, you never know what you’ll get, but you can wager it’ll be a strange thing.’ He took the empty casket and held it up to the light, twisting it this way and that as if he were looking for a maker’s mark. ‘It’s too filthy to see anything.’ He set the book down on the bench. ‘Put that book back in, lad, and we’ll hide it under some straw for the morrow.’

‘Well and good, then. Do you think this belongs to Haen Marn?’

‘I do. The night he saved me, Evandar told me that he needed a messenger, and it was going to be my son, when I had one. I’m supposing he meant someone to bring them this.’

‘And why couldn’t he have taken it over himself?’

‘Witches can’t travel across water, nor the Folk of the Seelie Host, either, or so I’ve always heard.’

‘So he needed a man to do his ferrying for him. I suppose that makes sense of a sort.’

‘Naught about Haen Marn makes sense.’ Domnal smiled with a bare twitch of his mouth. ‘I think me it might be dangerous to forget that.’

Dougie went back to bed. He woke just before sunrise, got up and dressed for the second time, then went out to the barn in the cold grey light to feed the cows. His brother Ian arrived soon after with his milking stool and pails. Dougie fed the horses, turned them out into pasture, then returned to the house to talk with Jehan. He found her in the kitchen, kneading a massive lump of bread dough.

Over the years she’d borne eight children and done plenty of farm work as well. She was stout and her hands were a mass of callouses, but despite the grey in her red hair and the lines around her green eyes, Dougie could see how beautiful she must have been when his father had won her.

‘I was thinking of going back out to Haen Marn today, Dougie said. ‘Will you be needing me for aught?’

‘Not truly,’ Jehan said. ‘But you know, it’s time you married your Berwynna and brought her home.’

‘I’d like naught better, Mother. Berwynna says she wants to marry me as well. It’s Lady Angmar who’s dead-set against it. She doesn’t want Berwynna to ever leave the island, not for a single day. She keeps saying it’s too dangerous.’

‘It is the local folk she fears? Once you two were married by Father Colm in the chapel, then all this stupid talk about witches would stop.’

‘It’s not that. She won’t explain why.’

‘You’re sure she has a real reason, then?’ Jehan frowned at him. ‘Or does she look upon us with scorn?’

Dougie shrugged to show that he didn’t know. He was suddenly afraid, wondering if his Wynni was a witch, after all. His father had told him that witches couldn’t cross water, hadn’t he? Jehan paused to push a stray lock of grey hair back behind her ear with her little finger.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Dougie said. ‘This very day, I’ll ask Lady Angmar about claiming my Berwynna. If she says me nay again, I’ll keep after her and see if I can find out if she truly doesn’t want the lass to leave the island or if she thinks I’m not worthy or suchlike.’

‘Well and good, then.’ Jehan looked up from the kneading. ‘You might as well know the truth.’

Before he left, Dougie put a clean shirt on under his plaid, then fetched the mysterious book from the barn. Since he was going to Haen Marn anyway, he figured, he might as well run Evandar’s errand for him.

Towards noon Lon brought a bucket of fish into the kitchen hut behind the manse. Berwynna put on her oldest tunic, wrapped a fragment of stained, fraying plaid around her for a skirt, and set to work cleaning the catch. Marnmara’s six cats rubbed round her ankles and whined. The orange brindle leapt up onto the workbench with its usual dirty paws. When she yelled and swatted, it jumped down again. Berwynna chopped off the fish heads and tails with efficient strokes of her long knife, then tossed them down at varying distances to give every cat a chance at this bounty. She gutted the fish, then threw the innards to the mewling horde as well.

Feeding the island took hard work. Despite the presence of so many large beasts in its water, the loch supplied netsful of fish all year long. Berwynna suspected that some sort of dweomer made the loch unusually productive, but neither her mother nor her sister would confirm her suspicion nor deny it, either. Man and dwarf, however, do not live by fish alone, as old Otho was fond of saying. The local villagers and farmers paid for Marnmara’s healing services with produce and what little grain they could spare. Mic’s coin bought beef, oats, and barley from the farmers on the richer lands to the south. Occasionally the boatmen managed to kill a deer. As well as medicinal herbs, Marnmara raised vegetables in her garden, and apple trees grew around Avain’s tower.

‘Wynni!’ Marnmara stood in the door of the kitchen hut. ‘Dougie’s just come across to the pier.’

‘Oh ye gods!’ Berwynna said. ‘Here I stink of fish.’

‘That won’t bother him. He’s besotted.’

Still, Berwynna scrubbed her hands with a scrap of soap and rinsed them in a bucket of well water. She wanted to change her filthy old clothes, but as she was hurrying towards the manse, she saw Dougie, just coming up the path, his tousled red hair gleaming in the sun. Under one arm he carried a bulky packet, wrapped in cloth.

‘There you are!’ Dougie said, smiling. ‘Ah, you look beautiful today, lass!’

‘My thanks!’ He is besotted, Berwynna thought. Thank God! ‘It gladdens my heart to see you, too.’

‘Good. I’m hoping to have a bit of a talk with you and your mother.’ He paused for a grin. ‘About us.’

Berwynna’s heart leapt and pounded. ‘Indeed?’ she said. ‘Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t know what there is to talk about.’

He merely grinned and reached out to catch her hand.

They found Angmar in the great hall, where she was sitting at a window with mending spread out on the low table in front of her. Dougie laid his parcel on the table, then bowed to her.

‘What’s all this?’ Angmar raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Usually you just sit yourself down without so much as a by-your-leave.’

‘Uh, my apologies, my lady.’ Dougie’s face turned a faint pink. ‘I’ve brought you a very strange gift, and I was hoping that we, I mean Wynni and I and you, could have a bit of a chat.’

‘If you’re going to ask me if you may marry her, save your breath. I’ll not agree.’

Dougie winced.

‘I don’t want her living off the island,’ Angmar continued.

‘Truly?’ Dougie said. ‘Or is that me and my kin aren’t grand enough for you?’

‘What? Naught of the sort! Dougie, I know not how or why, but in my soul I do know that me and mine will cause you grief one day. I’d beg you to put my daughter out of your heart.’

‘Mam!’ Berwynna could stay silent no longer. ‘But I love him. I want to marry Dougie.’

He turned her way and grinned. When Berwynna held out her hand, he clasped it and drew her close.

‘Wynni, heard you not one word of what I said?’ Angmar flopped her mending onto the table and scowled at both of them. ‘Avain did see much grief –’

‘What she sees in the water isn’t always true,’ Berwynna said. ‘Sometimes it’s wrong, or else it comes true in some odd way that’s more of a jest than anything. Well, doesn’t it?’

‘True enough.’ Angmar paused for a long sigh. ‘But –’

‘Besides,’ Berwynna hurried on before her mother could finish, ‘if you won’t let me leave the island, why can’t Dougie come live here?’

‘And what would your family say to that, then?’ Angmar glanced at Dougie. ‘With you the eldest son and all?’

‘They’d take a bit of persuading,’ Dougie said. ‘But I’d keep at it and wear them down in the end.’

‘Still, most like it be too dangerous. The isle be a jealous place, and I doubt me if you belong to it the way we do.’

Berwynna felt tears gathering just behind her eyes. She gave her mother the most piteous look she could manage and willed the tears to run. Her mother sighed with a shake of her head.

‘Wynni, Wynni! You children don’t understand, and there’s no way I can make you understand, truly.’ Angmar hesitated for a long moment. ‘But whist, whist, child, don’t weep so! Here, let me discuss this with Marnmara. But I’d not hope too much, either of you.’

She picked up the mending again and frowned at it with such concentration that Berwynna knew they’d been dismissed. She snuffled back her tears and wiped her eyes on her sleeve while Dougie patted her shoulder to comfort her. Hand in hand they went outside and sat down together on a wooden bench under an apple tree. Above them the white flowers were just peeking from their pale green buds.

‘Well now,’ Dougie said at last. ‘So much for the grand speech I’d stored up in my mind. I never got a chance to speak any of it.’

‘It probably wouldn’t have mattered. Mam’s got one of her ideas, and my dear sisters are dead-set against us, too, from what she said.’

‘I don’t understand. What did she mean about Avain seeing things?’

‘Oh, she sees visions in a bowl of water.’ Berwynna looked down, saw a pebble on the path, and kicked it viciously away. ‘Since she’s a mooncalf, Mam and Marnmara say that the angels or the saints are sending her messages that way. I don’t understand, and I don’t agree, but you heard Mam.’

‘I did, and a nasty thing it was to hear. I’m willing to risk a fair lot of grief for you, but I don’t want you sharing it.’

‘Bless you! But I’m willing to run the risk, too.’

Dougie threw his arms around her, drew her close, and kissed her. She laughed in sheer pleasure and took another kiss, but just as he reached for a third, she heard a warning snarl of a cough behind her. Dougie let her go. Berwynna turned on the bench and saw old Lonna, arms akimbo, glaring at her. Dougie rose and bowed to the elderly dwarf.

‘I’ll just be leaving, then,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Fare thee well, my lady.’

‘I’ll walk with you to the landing.’ She spoke to Lonna in Dwarvish. ‘Could you tell the boatmen to make ready?’

Lonna made a sound that might have been yes, then turned and stomped off towards the manse.

‘Ye gods!’ Dougie lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I’m beginning to understand why you want to get out of this place, truly.’

‘Well, I don’t want to leave it forever. I just want to see more of the world than Haen Marn.’ Berwynna paused, glancing around her. ‘There’s not much of it, is there? Just one small island, and every now and then I get to go over to the mainland with Marnmara when she gathers wild herbs or if someone’s ill in the village. Once we got to go to your grandfather’s dun, too, when the groom’s wife was so ill. That’s all I’ve ever seen, and all I’ve ever known, and oh Dougie, I’m sick to my heart of it!’

‘I can understand that.’ Dougie patted her hand, then raised it to his lips and kissed it, fish stains and all. ‘Let me think about this, lass. Mayhap I can come up with some scheme to get us married.’

Berwynna walked him down to the jetty and saw him off. For a brief while she lingered on the pier and considered the boathouse, a roof and walls with lake water for a floor. A narrow walkway ran along one side to give the boatmen access to the ladder that led up to the loft where they slept. Besides the magnificent dragon boat, the island owned two coracles, a large one for the fishing, and a small craft that Marnmara and Berwynna used for their rare trips to the mainland. These hung out of the water from pegs on the boathouse walls.

The question, Berwynna decided, was whether she could creep into the boathouse at night, get the coracle down, and lower it into the water without making a splash or other noise that would wake the boatmen. Not likely, she thought. If only she could, she could row across and meet Dougie, and perhaps Father Colm would marry them before her family caught her. Even less likely, since he thinks I’m a witch. She picked up a stone and hurled it into the water as hard as she could, then turned on her heel and stalked back to the manse.

In the great hall the others had gathered around Marnmara, who had come over to Angmar’s table to look at Dougie’s gift. Angmar sat to her right, the mending unnoticed in her lap, while Tirn stood just behind Marnmara and peered over her shoulder. When no Mainlanders were around, the island folk talked in one of the two languages that Angmar called ‘our home tongues.’ Since Tirn knew no Dwarvish, they spoke the mountain dialect of Deverrian whenever he joined them. In fact, he seemed to know it oddly well, better than any of the rest of them. Berwynna sat down on a bench opposite her mother just as Marnmara opened the sack and slid out its contents: a book, bound in white leather, with a black leather piece in the shape of a dragon upon the cover.

Tirn gasped, tried to choke back the noise, then coughed. Marnmara twisted around to look up at him.

‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘For a moment there I thought it was a book I used to own. That one had a black cover with a white dragon upon it.’

‘Indeed?’ Marnmara said. ‘What sort of book might it be? A grammarie?’

‘What’s that?’ Tirn looked puzzled. ‘I’ve never heard that word before.’

‘A book of spells.’ Marnmara was trying to suppress a grin.

‘Ah.’ Tirn hesitated, caught, then shrugged. ‘Well, it was that, truly.’

Marnmara allowed the grin to blossom. She opened the book randomly, then frowned at the page before her.

‘Be somewhat wrong?’ Angmar said.

‘I did hope I could read this,’ Marnmara said, ‘but I’ve not seen these letters ever before.’ She turned round again and looked Tirn full in the face. ‘Except right there, tattooed on your skin. What language be they?’