Chapter Twenty-one
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE BLACKBIRD
With the blood of the Crow still upon
Shaneal, slowly at first, but soon getting the hang of it with soaring flight
she crossed the river. On and on she went and didn’t seem to tire and gained to
high mountain fringes of The Bede’s Demense. She fed and rested simply and
briefly and for days she followed the undulations of the River Grule as Peth.
To the surprise of a small urchin boy she asked him if he knew the direction to
The Cottage of the White Rose. For a
moment the boy stared dumbfounded by the blackbird but blurted out.
‘
‘You don’t want to go there- The
Caretaker’ll have you in his pot before you know it.’
Shaneal laughed. ‘He’d have to catch me
first. So please tell me if you know, my brother is held prisoner there and he
has no-one to help him but this little Blackbird.’
The child told her the little he knew, which
wasn’t much, as had hardly ventured from Peth.
In thanks and as he finished his instructions Shaneal sang a song for
him and flew away. He watched her go and
whistled to himself her tune.
Peth was a long way from the Cottage but she
was anxious with haste and did not allow herself to rest. The Cottage was in
darkness when she finally arrived, dark all except for a dim light from the
kitchen window. Looking in through the window, hunched over and ragged, old
beyond his years Dalrosse sat at the kitchen table.
Beside him on the floor a beautiful woman with
long blonde hair was asleep, her thick lips white with froth and spittle. With
her bill she tapped futilely on the closed window. Dalrosse and the woman did
not stir. She wondered what she could to rouse them, tap, tapping on the
window. She hopped off the window sill and flew about the cottage looking for a
way in. Ashe thankfully found a window barely open, yet wide enough for her to
get in.
At first she did not notice The Caretaker on
his rocking chair, but the creak of the wood tipping back and forth as he
breathed, snored and snorted alerted Shaneal to his presence. Hastily, her
heartbeat fluttering with anxiety she found her way to the kitchen, to her dear
Dalrosse and perched on his shoulder. How was she going to wake him without
making a noise that would awaken The Caretaker?
Shaneal suddenly had an idea. Gently at first for fear of hurting Dalrosse
she started pecking his cheek. He
mumbled muffled words in his sleep but didn’t awaken. She pecked a bit harder, yet still he slept.
Finally, in frustration, she pecked his cheek until she drew blood. His eyes
opened in shock. She thought he was
going to scream.
‘Shh. Dalrosse it’s me. You’re with me.
Shaneal. Just shh or you’ll wake him.’ His once bright purple eyes were misted
over like low clouds over a lovely lake.
Irritated he wiped the blood away she had drawn from his face, then
turned and focused on the blackbird.
‘Shaneal? You’re not Shaneal.’
‘I might not look like her, but a lots been
going on since we last saw each other. Crow sent me to help you.’
The half-devoured head of Xhanu was still on
the kitchen table and Dalrosse with his dirty ragged fingers tore some flesh
from it and urgently stuffed it into his mouth.
‘Dalrosse, stop it,’ she said quietly.
He wasn’t listening, still chewing the first
mouthful he grabbed another fistful of Xhanu’s flesh and stuffed it into his
mouth. Angrily Shaneal stabbed him with
her beak, his arm rose up to strike her away, but she flew deftly to the
ceiling of the kitchen. Half-heartedly
Dalrosse took another handful of the dead High wasp, chewed and swallowed his
face yellow with nausea and sunk back into his chair and sleep.
Fluttering about the room she remembered the
woman and wondered who she was. She landed beside Marayela who was softly
snoring almost soundlessly, her chest barely lifting with breaths, perhaps
Shaneal half thought she was dead.
Unexpectedly the woman lying in a feotal
position started to convulse spasmodically then her body became rigid as if her
spine had become a steel pole. She began
to retch and vomit Xhanu’s undigested flesh projecting from her lips and
cascading down upon her body. Marayela then lurched back into stillness. Her green eyes opened wide only the blinking
of her eyes movement coming from her.
The balls of her eyes turned to the Blackbird. Whispering, she asked:
‘What new torture are you?’
Instead of trying to explain Shaneal sang a
soft sweet song, one of calmness, full of melodious peace, compassionate and
healing.
A smile, as if Marayela had never smiled
before, slipped onto her lips. Slowly
she sat up, held out her hand and Shaneal landed upon it.
‘Who are you?’ Marayela asked. When Shaneal spoke she wasn’t surprised. If
crows can talk why not blackbirds?
‘I’m Dalrosse’s sister. Can you help me wake
him up?’
Marayela stopped smiling. ‘He’s been like
that for days. The Caretaker has filled him with his sickness, Dalrosse’s
remembers nothing about himself. He just
does what he’s told- I’m much the same.’ Each word she spoke was punctuated by
heavy breaths. ‘The Caretaker will wake soon and find new fun in us. You should leave before he wakes.’
‘I won’t leave without Dalrosse.’ She
twittered. ‘Nor you.’ Shaneal flew back to the kitchen table while the Bede’s
maid slowly got to her feet and walked to where Dalrosse lolled in the chair
unconscious.
‘Can you sing to him? Wake him?’
Shaneal tried but seeing her brother in such
a dreadful state and the hideous head of the Wasp made her song a cacophony of
grief. Marayela tried shaking his shoulders, but he just sat unable to be
roused. His tight lips smiling as if he
was held in a dreamstate.Perhaps enthralled by one of Jon Esierk’s stories.
Then from the other room there was a loud
coughing and the sound of The Caretaker spitting out his phlegm. They heard him
stand and start walking toward the kitchen. Marayela told the Blackbird to hide
while she resumed her place on the floor. Shaneal didn’t know where to hide,
but an opened cupboard door seemed better than anywhere. There was plenty of room within since besides
a few candles and some flints there was little else.
Shaneal felt an age of forgotten fire, she
felt within her the pent up anger of the days in her father’s Inn, each day a chore. In her too was the thought of her little
brother and all the fun they had on the beaches of Leme, but the fire was
stronger. Yet, as she dwelt in the
Blackbird form, a cool wind swept over her, like a memory of the first time as
a little one that ventures into the blast of a gale. A sweet cloud of song
spoke sweetly in her mind.
You are the fire it sang. You are fire, a gift from the Crow. Unleash the fire and stop the torments of
whom you Love, he is precious to us, and in his despair he waits for your hope
unleash the fire in and raze to the ground this accursed place.
But, how?
She wondered, then she felt a spasm of hurt at one moment wrenching
inside her then a second later returning within her, filling her womb, soaring
through her blood vessels. The spasms subsided and she seemed to grow larger,
filling the kitchen cupboard, and growing more until she seemed to fill the
whole cottage, her blackbird eyes shone with the fire that was growing within
her. At once her attention was fixed
upon The Caretaker.
Shaneal emerged from the cupboard and flew
in circles about the abhorrent man, at first he tried to catch her but she was
too swift and the faster she danced about him smoke issued from his nose and
ears, from his fingertips and then from each pore of his skin. Then he erupted into a statue of flame,
flailing his arms about trying to batter out the flames. He fell upon the table, setting alight the
carcass of Xhanu. Shaneal called to Marayela
to help Dalrosse up and to get him out of the cottage. At first the Bede’s maid stumbled to her feet
in surprise unable to look away from the fire eaten man. Yet she, despite her sickness and weariness
of heart, she rushed to the Shouel’s side and lifted him from his chair and
half carried him out of the cottage, Dalrosse numb legs dragging behind him as
if he were unwilling to depart the white cottage.
Now Shaneal was not a blackbird, but a
firebird and the air about her was filled with flame. The kitchen was an inferno of intense heat
and blinding orange. The Caretaker had
ceased thrashing the flames from his body and lay prone, dead on the kitchen
table.
It is enough, the sweet cloud of song
melodious in her head and Shaneal diminished once more into the form of a
blackbird. She flew from the cottage and
went to Dalrosse lying in the unkempt garden.
Marayela stood over him. She saw
there was a look of indecision on the face of the woman from the Demense.
Shaneal asked her what was wrong.
‘The Roses.
We cannot let the Roses burn.’
Leaving Dalrosse and the Blackbird she ran back into the cottage. Moments
passed then minutes. Dalrosse was
beginning to come round to consciousness when Marayela appeared from the
cottage the glass box with the red and white rose in her hands while the rest
of her was on fire. With her last few
steps she placed the glass box beside the Shouels body, stumbled fell back as
the fire completely consumed her body.
She emitted a scream as if all the beauty and energy of her life was leaving
her body. Then she was silent and was no
more.
The Forgotten Way.
Dalrosse was cold. He knew cold: it seemed to remain with him
even though he couldn’t remember the word. Yet, upon the Shouel the sunlight
shattered down through the red drenched upper branches of the trees that
bordered the marshes of Muem. The heat
too beat down without care, hot air flowed over him in waves, but within him
Dalrosse knew only cold, though he was incapable of remembering the word only
the meaning of it raged in him.
Above flew Shaneal, a little ahead. She felt she was leading Dalrosse along on a
taut rope. At first as they left the environs of the burning cottage she was
unsure where to take her brother. He
looked so ill like a cobwebbed shadow; she could hardly look at him. Cold,
stinking sweat poured from him and he stumbled after her, clutched within him,
shaking. Perhaps with terror, as if he were in a place so far removed from
Shaneal that she could not bear even to imagine it.
The
pain within had long since driven him mad, yet he had no words pain, nor could
he cry out for help, or find the necessity to scream. All there was the cold, wrapped about him
like a deceptive blanket, each step he carried on he carried the pain with him.
The angel, who had sparked the fire within
Shaneal, had whispered that she should head for Paternor and find a healer there
called Schriven. As the trees diminished the nearer they came to the marsh
Shaneal flew higher and saw how desolate and mud-blackened Muem marshes
were. She wondered how far it was to Paternor.
The marsh went on to the horizon, its stink was overpowering as if it were
sweating mud.
Shaneal flew into the encroaching night that
seemed to reflect the desolation and still emptiness of Muem, Dalrosse followed
behind. Almost as soon as he stepped into the marsh he was covered in mud,
sometimes he floundered, became a being made of mud, his hardly conscious eyes
blank, yet he struggled on after the blackbird while within there was only the
cold, a wind shrieking through him, twisting and ripping any thought of
emotion. Yet he continued
Through the night they slowly went forward
to Paternor. By morning it seemed they had barely advanced a few miles, the
woods still visible behind them while Muem stretched on, an endless sea of dirt.
Dalrosse fell to the soft ground exhausted and was taken by a deep sleep,
curled up; sleep the only cure for the madness that had taken him.
As Dalrosse slept Shaneal flew on
ahead. Soon there was a sharp tang of
salt in the air,
she flew higher, exhilarated by her own
swiftness as she sped over the bog, and then,
there just on the edge of sight a blue
diamond of water. There was still a long way to
travel.
She flew back to Dalrosse. His
breathing was slow, sometimes she thought she
could hear his voice muttering, yet
couldn’t hear what he was saying. He would grab a
handful of mud as if it were clay and in
his dream-locked mind his hands were kneading
and sculpting an image from the edge of his
soul.
*************************
She perched upon
him as he slept until he awoke with the darkness. He rose, as if bidden, hardly
aware of the dried mud he was caked in. Once more she took flight and Dalrosse
stumbled back into the marsh.
Four nights and days passed before they approached the edges of the
marsh and the city beside the sea. Each day Shaneal perched upon him as he
slept. Each night her heart seemed to break as she watched the nightmare
creature of the mire he had become, struggling on without choice or reason. He
would fall as the first light entered the morning and sleep until the darkness
came. To comfort him, or perhaps herself, she sang sleeping songs and old songs
that they’d sang when she was a child by the lake. Each night she saw how he
seemed to grow sicker, floundering more in the sticky mud, he seemed so much
more humbled by a great weight falling upon him, he never lifted his head as if
he could force his feet on by looking at them.
On the fifth day Paternor on the eastern coast of Fordeni Sea hove
into view. Dalrosse stared at the azure; diamond drenched sea and the white
towers of Paternor as if they were not there, then once more fell into a torpor
of sleep. Shaneal did not perch on him that day, but flew on weary wings to
Paternor and thought about how she would find the healer. Schriven. She
breasted over the gated walls of the city and sank into a slow dive landing on
an upturned cart of fruit in a busy market.
After the quiet and loneliness she had felt the last few days,
suddenly there were far too many people about.
She felt confused and completely unsure of what she should do. On the
paved road between vast arrays of markets stalls hundreds of people were
passing along. A river of bright colours and a festive air as they walked along
talking or singing, some went to buy food, others led children along. She wondered where they were going as she
jumped from the cart and started pecking at a red apple.
Dalrosse startled awake hot with the slime and stench of Muem about
him. Up ahead his bewildered eyes saw the city, the walls and towers blotched
pink and violet as they were painted by the rising sun. It seemed to the Shouel
that he had lost something, but a raincloud passed over the sun, leaving the
world dull, a monochrome seemed to dust the city and the roar of the gale that
had momentarily stilled in his mind returned and thought fell from him and he
was alone in the cold. He tried to get up, but slipped, yet from some strength
lost in his sub-consciousness he rose up again this time making a few steps before
he slithered back into mud. He lay there then wrapped in ice, unmoving
incapable of self pity.
Shaneal thought about approaching a few of the beautifully, tall,
dark skinned folk who rushed excited down the round, but they seemed a world
away and for a talking blackbird she felt somehow tongue tied. She almost flew
to a shoulder of market man who was cutting meat for the customer who had been
seduced by the smell. Yet, she didn’t. In
a way she was waiting. The Angel who had
raged the fire within her at The White Cottage she knew would help, though she
heard no voice within her heart or mind. So alone and desperate she felt, for her
only help and guide had abandoned her. Shaneal envisioned her brother. Dalrosse was
so ill. If only the Angel would come and
bring peace to her worries.
Perhaps there was a glimmer hope spreading through the fog that had
fallen upon her as she remembered Crow’s words: that without her beside him he
would always be in danger and with her tender care ail his song and bring hope
and imagining to him. And she knew then that at all cost save find Schriven and
get his help.
Now Dalrosse walked in another place. Here there was warm and soft breath on the sea
wind. Here he was freshly clean and his
eyes were drawn to the green waters. Here he was not alone, he laughed and
tousled with a world of friends, but in his smile and song as he stood on a
wide sea rippled beach Dalrosse kept thinking.
I’ve lost something. Over and over the words were repeated, hypnotic;
like a tune played in his Father’s Inn he could not stop singing. But, he smiled
and shrugged away the thought. ‘What have I lost, when here I have everything’
and he sang songs that raised to the blue lightening birds high overhead. Here
too was a hand that held his and he turned, there beside him a Shouel woman, divinely
beautiful, as familiar as an immortal thought. A broad smile was upon her
face. She kissed him, held his hand
tighter and they ran to the edge of the sea. There, she and he seemed to stand
in existence lifelong, diving and swimming splashing water and loving in the
salty water.
At times Dalrosse would look
back up the beach saw Shouel children in the sand and he knew instantly they
were his kin, as he watched even the littlest grew into maturity and
disappeared over a bank of sand to follow the course of their lives. She stood
with him once more at the edge of the sea, gripping his hand. She said.
‘What will we do now the children have gone?
He smiled and stared at the sky that rained beauty. ‘Everything’ He
answered. Yes here there was warmth and a world enchanted, the future of a hand
that held, a glory of future. Then out of a edge of a surprise, the suddenness
of a grey, foreboding sky obscured the blue lightening birds and a storm crashed
the water and from the despair of the sudden dark a claw of cloud reached down
trying to wrench him from her soft hand. Pulling and pulling at him and a voice
growing louder and louder than the sound of the storm and the wall of rain, it repeated
and lisped a dirge of words, dark as an evil
litany of a Deathsayer the grip of the clouds grew and wrestled him from his love upon the beach
and he felt sick with loss. He took a final look at her face to remember ever
detail and the sound of her voice, her thin song in his ear and the touch of her
lips not enough for him to resist the giant fist of whirling cloud. And still
the voice grew louder and the words blistered his thoughts, commanding, calling
him up.
‘Dalrosse. I can help you,
only I. Dalrosse come to me now. I’ll always find you and you will love none
but. You will love none but me.’
Only the voice was Dalrosse’s world, his existence trembled in the
pauses between the words. He recognized
the voice, but not the poison that filled it, an inhuman warp of the simple
voice that he knew. Dalrosse knew fear. He needed to stand upon the beach again.
He had become demented with loneliness without her soft face before him, her
fingers grasping his hand. Then need was
gone and he awoke.
Dalrosse found himself once more on the verge of the marsh; ahead the
Fordeni Sea lay placid to the horizon. He lay shivering alone beneath the sun,
blackened by the days in Muem as if the marsh had created a being of mud and he
had been spawned and spat out by the marsh. His only memory was her purple eyes
and her hands that had lodged in his mind.
Her hand lifted him from the mud and led him to the gates of Paternor,
brother of the sea.
Shaneal still sat upon the fruit cart, her mind full of conflicting
thoughts, but then in an instance the air about her boiled with heat. Ripples
of growing intensity ripped and wrenched apart the atmosphere, cracking the
reality about her. She felt such a joy as it flowed over her as if there was an
almighty change in the world almost as if the ground about her had sung out in
exultation.
Now there was hope and clarity and she knew she would find the
Healer. Flying to the butcher’s cart words stumbled from her beak asking him
where she might find Schriven.
The butcher laughed. ‘Go follow the crowds. Soon, no doubt you will
find him. The Necroman burns today, but you better rush there before it’s all
over.’
‘The Necroman?’
‘Where have you been, Schriven of course, he set a palsy upon the
Lay Lord.’ The butcher explained. ‘What do you want him for?’ He asked, but
Shaneal had flown off on fast beating wings, over the heads of the stragglers
hastening toward to the execution of the healer.
The road dipped and wound it’s was down to Paternor Square. So many people were there. Ahead she saw in
the midst of the circular throng of people a figure dressed in white. He was tall, over seven feet, and with a lion’s
mane of sun whitened hair. As she
watched two soldiers stood either side of him then led him to the dark pole of
the stake. They hoisted him into position and tied him the wooden stake amidst
the wood of the enkindled bonfire.
So, she presumed, this must be Schriven. About the bonfire some of the folk cried:
‘No- Release him!’ While the rest, those more rowdy, drunk with
screaming and laughter cried incessantly:
‘Kill the Necroman.’ A further ten soldiers appeared and ranged
about the edge of the crowd in case the spectators got more unruly. Then three torchbearers
approached the base of the bonfire, they plunged their flames into the dry wood
as the Square vibrated with the ecstasy and the woe of the folk. Slowly the
flames took hold and minute by minute the flames reached up, orange whips fatally
tickling at Schriven’s feet. Schriven though did not struggle, or speak. He looked up the rooftop where Shaneal had
found a place to perch. For a moment, or even half a moment their eyes locked
onto one another’s and a thin smile filled Schriven’s face. Now, though, the fire was pure and
unstoppable and he was hidden by the smoke.
She hesitated, yet when their eyes had touched she knew what it was
that she should do.
Shaneal flew into the smoke and the lashing flames and there the Angel
returned to her. She became an icy storm, raining down sleet and sending forth
a blistering wind, she was the billowing gale that dissipated the flames.
When the smoke cleared and the flames had died there was silence in
Paternor Square.
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