The Shadow Isle

‘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?’

‘That of the Seelie Host,’ Tirn said.

Berwynna made the sign of the Holy Rood.

‘Truly?’ Angmar quirked one eyebrow. ‘Now, I myself have seen such letters before, and they were made by someone as much flesh and blood as you are.’

Tirn face’s turned scarlet between his tattoos and scars.

‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘You must know about the Ancients, then. Some call them the Westfolk, others the Ancients. Do they dwell in this country, too?’

‘I know not,’ Angmar said, ‘but they do dwell in my homeland. Indeed, the father of my daughters did have Westfolk blood in his veins.’ She leaned back to study his face. ‘I think me that you come from the place the Deverry folk call Annwn, not from Alban, no, nor Cymru nor Lloegr, either.’

‘You’ve caught me out, my lady.’ Tirn smiled and ducked his head in apology. ‘I didn’t want to say anything at first because I thought you’d never believe me. I didn’t realize that you too hale from Deverry.’

‘I come not from Deverry proper, but from the north of it, in the country known as Dwarveholt. Now, can you read that book?’

‘Alas, I cannot in any true sense. I can read well enough in three languages, but that of the Ancients isn’t one of them.’ Tirn raised his bandaged hand and pointed at the tattoo on his left cheek. ‘These marks? Among my kin they’re thought to bring good luck or the favour of the gods. They’re very old, and their meaning’s been long forgotten.’

Angmar continued studying his face, while Marnmara paged through the book, frowning at a bit of writing here and there and shaking her head over the lot.

‘What I can do,’ Tirn went on, ‘is sound out the letters, though I don’t know what many words mean. Well, truly, they’re not letters in the way that the holy book of this country is writ in letters. Each one stands for a full sound, what mayhap would take two or three letters in some other tongue.’

Everyone stared, puzzled, but Marnmara, who laid a finger on one mark. ‘This one?’ she said.

‘La,’ Tirn said, ‘and the next is sounded drah.’

‘Be you a scholar, then, Tirn?’ Berwynna said. ‘Father Colm does warn against the studying of books, saying it leads to sorcery.’

‘Does he?’ Tirn grinned at her. ‘He may be right, then, for the first time in his fat life.’

Berwynna began to laugh, then stifled the sound when Angmar glared at her. Tirn shifted his weight from foot to foot, then walked round to sit down on the same bench as Berwynna. She moved over to give him plenty of room. Angmar gave both of them a sour look.

‘Is somewhat wrong, my lady?’ Tirn said to Angmar.