Beyond the Pale: A fantasy anthology (27 page)

And the blunt fact is, I was worried.

I chose a warm bright morning to go out looking for him, the kind of
morning no one could resist. On a day like this, anyone in his right mind would
long for home and for happiness; anyone would swallow his fear and his pride and
bow to the inevitable, get the worst of his homecoming over with. Or at least,
he would be tempted to. If I could meet him halfway, drawn from whatever cave
he was hiding in by the smell of new wildflowers and the glittering sea, I
could bring him home to face us all. The world never looks so bad on such a
day.

I left my sword behind as well as my coat; a rare thing for me to do,
but that was the atmosphere in the sky and the breeze. The closest caverns of
any depth were about two miles to the north of the dun; however the seas raged,
however hard the storms whipped the waves against the cliff, in the blackest
depths of those rock-holes there was always dry sand and safety. It seemed the
obvious place to begin my hunt; and only after I’d checked them thoroughly
would I search the bleakest furthest edges of the moor. I didn’t see the point
of prolonging this, and I was confident I’d find the boy.

Instead, I found Lilith.

I called her name, and rode down the narrow gully in the rocks onto the
hard sand. She waved, but didn’t get to her feet to greet me. The reason was
quickly obvious: the kelpie-colt lay on the sand beside her, its forelegs
tucked beneath it, its newly-bridled head resting peacefully in her lap. When I
dismounted and walked the last few yards
—
my horse refused to go a single step closer
to its oh-so-distant cousin
—
Lilith
glanced up, her grin impish, her face flushed with delight.

“Look!” she whispered. “I’ve tamed him!”

“Yes,” I marveled. “You have.”

For all I knew of kelpies and for all I knew of witches, there was
something innocent and delightful about the scene. She was a ragged little wild
thing, dark and intense; it was a crafty brute with a relentless thirst for
flesh; but all I could think of as I watched them was old paintings of maidens
and unicorns.

She stroked its head in wonder, tugging at its ears, combing its silky
forelock with her fingers. And suddenly I was more than accepting; I was glad
that after the terrible end of Dornadair, and her inconsolable desolation in
the days afterwards, she’d found another companion.

“He’s very beautiful,” I smiled. “Make sure he’s fully tame before you
bring him near the dun.”

“Of course I will. Thank you, Griogair!” She bent her head to the
kelpie again, crooning, and reached for her pouch, drawing out a small chunk of
meat. The creature shifted its head to take it delicately from her hand,
gulping it down before taking her second offering. She stroked it as she fed
it, caressing its cheekbone, its neck, its gills.

I don’t know why the first shiver of cold certainty rippled across my
skin; perhaps it was her contentment, the utter obliteration of her grief;
perhaps it was the realisation that she and her little bow had graduated to
bigger game. The chunks of flesh she fed it were torn from something far larger
than a pigeon, and as the kelpie nickered, peeling back its upper lip to sniff
for more treats, I saw tiny threads of woven fabric caught on its canine teeth.

I snatched for the next morsel as Lilith took it from her pouch, but
she held it away from me, shaking her head solemnly, and gave it to the
creature. I was certain there were strands of wiry black hair stuck to the
meat.

“It’s better if I feed him,” she said. “For now.”

“Lilith.” The blood in my veins was snow-water. “Have you seen anything
of Ramasg? I thought he might be in the caves.”

She looked over her shoulder, very calmly, at the slit of darkness that
was the first cave mouth. I almost thought I could hear the cliff breathing; I
shook off the fancy.

“No,” she said. “I think he was here. But he isn’t now.”

Everything she said was not quite a lie, and not quite the truth. That
was what I’d thought the day I first met her; that was what I thought again the
day I said goodbye to her, lifting her onto the bay pony’s back.

At least, I tried to lift her; but she clung to me, her eyes wide and
tearless but her grip tight enough to crush my spine. I turned helplessly to
Leonora, who reached out a hand to the child.

“Come along, now. You’ll like Kate, I promise.”

Lilith wouldn’t look at her.

With a sigh, Kate herself dismounted, signaling her two escorts to stay
on their horses. She came over to Lilith, who remained pressed to me, and she
crouched close beside her, making the girl meet her eyes.

“You’ll be happy with me,” she promised. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Her pale hand stroked the child’s cheek gently, rhythmically, till at
last Lilith’s eyes seemed to focus, staring hard into the queen’s. Many a grown
Sithe had flinched under that gaze, but Kate didn’t.

And when she wanted or needed to be, Kate was simply enchanting. I’d
seen my monarch many times; I had spoken to her, laughed with her, argued with
her, carried out her wishes; and still, every time I saw her my gaze could only
linger. Her tall paleness; her intense amber eyes; the summer sunlight striking
flakes of gold from her chestnut hair. I did not love her, except as my queen,
but more than enough people did; and the adoration she inspired had kept her on
the throne for centuries. There was no one her equal, no one to compete with her;
or no one, I thought with a glance at Leonora, who had the desire to do so.

“Give her to me, Griogair.” Kate smiled at Lilith, running a hand
through her hair.

“Not me that’s holding onto her,” I muttered dryly. But even as I said
it, I felt the child’s grip loosen very slightly.

“You know well I’ll take care of you,” said Kate. “Don’t you, Lilith?”

The girl hesitated, then nodded.

“And you know you can’t stay here. You know that, after what you did.”

She nodded again, silent, though her expression was without shame or
remorse.

“Griogair doesn’t want you to go.” Kate slipped her fingers into
Lilith’s behind my back. “But he has no choice. He can’t keep you here. I’m
sure you can come back when you’re grown. In fact, I promise you can. I’ll
bring you back to Griogair in a few years. Yes?”

Lilith looked up at me, studying my face for the longest time. And
then, at last, her arms slipped reluctantly from around me, and Kate brought
her hand forward, their fingers entwined.

“I’ll miss you,” I said truthfully, as Kate stood up and put an arm
round Lilith’s shoulders.

The girl only nodded. Niall Mor brought the pony around once more, and
this time I lifted Lilith onto it with no effort. Kate sprang lightly onto her
own dappled mare.

“It’s for the best, Fitheach,” murmured Leonora, clasping my hand in
hers. “It’s all we can do. The clann won’t tolerate the child now.”

Lilith had turned back to watch us as the escorts led the way out of
the gate, and her unnerving gaze met Leonora’s. I can’t say for certain that
anything passed between them, but I’d swear they Saw each other properly for
the first time, and that words were exchanged.

Something twitched at the corner of Leonora’s mouth as we watched them
ride away, something that might have been a smile.

“And the kelpie?” she asked, as the gates swung shut behind Lilith and
the queen.

“Gone,” put in Niall. “Nobody’s seen it since... Well. Since that.”

“It’ll come back to her.” Leonora sounded not entirely unsatisfied.

“So long as it doesn’t come back here,” muttered Niall as he walked
away.

“He’s right.” I put an arm round Leonora. “So I don’t like the look in
your eye.”

She shook her head thoughtfully. “The child went about things in a bad
way, but she wasn’t wrong. She’s a witch but she’s also a Sithe. We were closer
to the waterhorses, once.”

I rubbed my temple. “I knew I didn’t like the look in your eye.”

“Then don’t ask me questions.” She smiled and kissed me. “And you
needn’t be so regretful, Griogair. It’s true; she’ll return when she’s older.
And I’ll bring you news of her when I go to Kate’s dun in the autumn.”

“The autumn?” I frowned. “If you’re leaving me again so soon, you owe
me some time.” I tightened my arm around her waist, suddenly longing for her.
Leonora, Rochoill, destroyer of all my sadness.

“I know I do.” Her smile was a touch smug, making me laugh. “I’ll see
you at sunset.”

“So long?” I was hungrily disappointed, but I knew there was no point
arguing. It would be all the sweeter for a delay, anyway. “Where are you going
now?”
~Rochoill
?

But she had already shuttered her mind as she flicked me a last amused
glance.

“To the shoreline, Griogair, my love,” and her voice was already a
bewitching lilt. “Down to the sea to sing.”

SOUTH

~

by Gillian Philip

Ice lies in a thin slick across the bay, but he
’
s in the water anyway.
The boy always is. Just like his grandmother.

It might as well be the other side of the earth: her side of it. A late
and overcast day in
monochrome,
so there’s only white,
and spikes of grass and tree, and the hills drawn in charcoal streaks with
scribbles of gully in between. Not so much snow, now.

The world
’
s only colour lies in the beam of the Land Rover
headlights
—
sick yellow of winter grass, a few dull pink
yards of road. I switch off the engine and the lights too. Creak the door open
into silence, and walk down to the shore, tightening my scarf round my neck. Cold
burns my throat when I call to him.

‘‘Culley. Time to come home now.”

I wait, used to it now, the tight slow thump of my heart as I wait for
him to not-come-back. One day he
’
ll be gone. One day,
like his mother.

Not today.

He hauls himself from the water, nostrils flaring open, cropped hair
stiff with salt against his long skull, bits of ice still glittering in it. He
towels his scalp with one hand, pulls on jeans with the other, tugging denim
over damp skin.

He smiles at me. “Grandpappy.”

“Culley. Your father is worried. It
’
s late.”
 

He looks at the sky, surprised. “I was just coming.”
 

Like a boy hauled from the slides in the play park, he
’
s
sheepish, apologetic, a little resentful.

The relief chokes my throat, so to pass the embarrassing moment I bend
to retrieve his jumper from the black rocks, and hand it to him. Unhurried, he
pulls it over his head; big as it is, it stretches across his overdeveloped
shoulders. He smiles at me again, his dark hair stiff with salt and frost but
already drying.

“I
’
ll take you back,”
I say.

“
Thanks. I
’
m sorry. It
’
s
hard to know the time.”
He scratches his scalp nervously, and the
frost-light makes the slight membrane between his fingers look thinner than
ever.

He
’
s a gentle boy. He doesn
’
t like to cause hurt,
regrets it when he so often does. I don
’
t worry for him. Not
much.

I keep the rifle in the Land Rover, but I know I won
’
t
need it.

~

His grandmother looked much the same, first time I saw her. Half-naked,
that is, not gentle. In that climate I thought she was mad, with nothing but a
silky-fur blanket clasped round her like a cloak.

I
’
d gone to watch the penguins because I had some
time off, and watching the penguins was a hobby for me, not work like it was
for Mal. He watched penguins and fur seals and sometimes leopard seals, when
there were any, when there was ice in the bay. They didn
’
t come in the warmer
weather. He watched them and counted them and made records, and because those
were the days before the internet, he sent data back home on the Inmarsat. I
helped him, when I wasn
’
t fixing things. He
loved his job, and I loved mine. You had to, or you wouldn
’
t be out on this lonely
outcrop of a godforsaken island.

The unexpected woman sat on a rock, watching the penguins too, and they
seemed more nervous of her than of me, but I wasn
’
t watching emperors any
more. I laid my binoculars down because I didn
’
t need them; she was
that close.

When they say blood runs cold it
’
s a clich
é, but there
’
s no other way to
describe it. She wasn
’
t supposed to be there.
I
’
d thought Mal and I were alone at this end of the
island, and I thought for a ridiculous moment she
’
d missed her cruise
ship and been left behind. Except that people off the cruise ships didn
’
t
dress like that –
half-naked under a silky-fur
wrap.

She turned her head and looked at me.

“Are you all right?”
I asked.

My gut had tightened with the fear of madness. It was well below zero
but her pale skin didn
’
t prickle with
gooseflesh and she didn
’
t shiver, not once. Her
hair was sleek and black and wet, and for a crazy moment I thought she must
have been in the water. But that
wasn
’
t possible. Not in her
skin.

“I
’
m fine,”
she smiled, “I
’
m
grand. Hello yourself.”

To step away from a near-naked woman, and one so beautiful: that would
have been the mad thing. And when Malcolm found out, as he certainly would the
next time we got garrulous with homesickness and rum, he
’
d never let me forget
it.

So I took a step closer instead, and saw that her hair wasn
’
t
black at all but an odd iron-grey, with a hint of what might have been
dappling. And though she was so tall and straight and slender, and her face was
a long reptilian oval – which isn
’
t to say it wasn
’
t
beautiful – her shoulders looked disproportionately powerful. She smelt
of the sea: of grease-ice and salt and tussac grass, and quite possibly
penguin-shit. I fell in love.

I said, “You
’
ll have to come back to
the base. You
’
ll have to come back with me.”

~

I
’
m a practical man. I
’
m not a scientist like
Mal; I’m an engineer. I fix things. I fix plumbing and generators and wireless
masts and chemical toilets, when they need fixing. So I
’
m practical, and I
’
m
rational, but where I come from they do have the seal stories. I thought the superstitions
and the myths and the legends all came from the same place I did. It never occurred
to me there could be others. I didn
’
t know there
’
d
be an equivalence, a balance in the round globe, a mirror image of the north,
if you like, which was the south.

I thought they made the seal stories because common seals look so
human: gentle and intelligent and empathetic. But those seals of the south don
’
t
look human. Or if they do, it
’
s another kind of human
altogether.

I should have thought. But I didn
’
t think. I didn
’
t
think at all in the months, turning into years, when Elin was mine.

~

Mal counted the leopard seals and studied them, and he loved them and
respected them, but he feared them properly too. He stayed out of the water
when the ice was in the bay, and he stayed away from the land
’
s
edge when the penguins flocked like a black-and-white buffet. He didn
’
t
want to be mistaken for one, he said, laughing.

Elin liked Mal. She laughed when he laughed, but I was never jealous.
It never occurred to me that she
’
d be unfaithful; she
was too possessive, too passionate for that. She didn
’
t want to go back, she
said, to the small fishing settlement on the other side of the island. She
liked scientists, that
’
s why she
’
d
come. She liked engineers too, and me best of all.

She got pregnant, of course. I hadn
’
t exactly thought to stock
up on supplies that might prevent that. I wanted her to leave the island then,
to come with me on the red-hulled supply ship when it next called. She refused.

Unnervingly, she refused any help at all. The pregnancy couldn
’
t
have been as long as it seemed; I must have lost count of the months. She was
restless and discontented, and liked to be alone, and one day she didn
’
t
come back for all my searching and screaming, or Mal
’
s. She simply
reappeared the next day with her infant.

She smiled, her dappled hair plastered to her head, but the dampness
wasn
’
t sweat, because when I kissed it and kissed it,
holding onto her fiercely, it smelt of seawater, and ice, and penguin-shit, and
blood.

I loved our baby so ferociously, fear settled into me and wouldn
’t leave. Children
change things. Not outwardly, though; not for a
while. I was too embarrassed to confide my suspicions to Mal, and I didn
’
t
want to argue with Elin, so as usual we
’
d sit in the evenings, all
three of us
—
four, with our quiet, ravenous daughter
—
and we drank rum and talked and laughed and
spoke about the fur seals and the supply ship and the weather coming in across the
razor-edged hills.

Elin got along great with Mal, but nobody stays on the base forever;
nobody, it seemed, except her. And now me, and our child. Mal
’
s
replacement, when he chose to leave, was a spiky little man called Thewlis. I
didn
’
t especially want a replacement for Mal, but then the
base didn
’
t belong to me or the others who came through. The
base wasn
’
t Elin
’
s. A replacement for
Mal had to come to count the penguins and the fur seals, to record them and measure
them and send the data back.

Thewlis respected the leopard seals as much as Mal did. He
’
d
get out of the water if there was one there with him. They weren
’
t
aggressive, only curious, but you never knew. You never knew, and you could
only remember Shackleton
’
s wild stories, and
take account of anecdote and an earlier, less scientific age.

Thewlis understood a lot less about children than about sub-Antarctic
fauna, but that was hardly his fault. He simply couldn
’
t understand us keeping
Sylvie in the wilderness. We beggared his belief, he said, when he got to know
us better. It was mad, bringing up a child here. And soon she
’
d
be of an age for school, and the nearest school was two islands away, and then
what were we planning to do?

I hadn
’
t planned anything, but I didn
’
t like to admit that
because I
’
d sound downright gormless.

Thewlis didn
’
t like or understand
Sylvie, but that didn
’
t stop him worrying
about her. She needed proper pediatric care and a decent education. He wanted
us to take her away.

That
’
s not quite true. I was useful; I knew the base and
its innards. He wanted Elin to take Sylvie away.

It
’
s not right, he
’
d say, stroking his
little beard, all concerned. It
’
s no environment for a
youngster.

Elin said that Sylvie ruined the environment for him; that was his
trouble.

“I think it
’
s only right,”
he told me quietly, one
evening after he finally browbeat me into agreement, the evening before the
red-hulled ship was due to dock again and take us north to civilisation and
nursery school and pediatricians. “The older she gets, the more she
’
ll
need to be away from here.”

I knew he wanted the bleak beauty of the place to be child-free, but I
also knew he was right. So I drank too much, and Elin stormed out in a temper,
pulling her fur wrap around her winter clothes and slamming the door. She must
have expected to be very cold. Indeed, she was gone all night and between alcohol
and anxiety I didn
’
t sleep at all. I turned over and stared into the
dark and worried till the palest streak of dawn let me get up.