The Moonshawl: A Wraeththu Mythos Novel (11 page)

‘But anyway, we walked on,
already tipsy. Gadda said to me, “Rin, you hear that?” and I said “What’s that,
Gad?” and he said, “just listen. Tell me you can hear that.” So we both stood
quiet, just the sound of our breathing, and I heard a faint mewing sound, like
an animal in pain. “Creature in a trap,” I said, taking a swig of shine. “Is
it?” Gadda said. “Sounds like no creature to me.” But still, he shrugged and we
carried on walking along that old cutting – nasty places in themselves, the
human tracks.

‘As we walked, we were joking
and pushing each other around, but then Gadda stopped and said, “Listen, Rin.”
The sound had got louder, a terrible weeping it sounded like now. “Somehar in trouble,”
Gadda said. He lurched to the side of the cutting and began to climb. I got
watered up with this bad feeling and called out to him, “No, wait!” but he was
gone like a rabbit, so I had to follow, him being my friend, and all.

‘We came out into Mawna’s
Meadow, which was where we’d been heading anyway, there being a great old barn
there, full of fresh hay. But in the middle of the field, we saw a figure with
its back to us, letting out these awful sounds. Gadda said, “That’s no har”,
and I knew what he meant. It was a human woman, her hair sticking out all over.
I could just
tell.
There were still old humans sometimes who lived among
the hara of the villages, looked after until the end. The woman before us gave
off this air of being very ancient, and oh, the grief that came out of her; it
was the most terrible thing I ever heard. It made you want to cry, and run
away, and go to her to comfort her, all at the same time.

‘Gadda said, “We must help,” and
started to trot forward, but I went after him then, quick as I could, and
pulled his arm. “No! Don’t! Run!” He looked angry, but then he was looking back
at me, and couldn’t see what was before us – the shape ahead slowly turning
round. I knew we must not see her face. “Just run, you roon wit, run!” I dragged
him back into the cutting and we ran so fast back the way we came it was like
we were flying. And all the time that awful shrieking rang in our heads.

‘We ran till we got home, and
then neither of us felt like drinking any more. “It was the banshee,” I said
and Gadda nodded, his hands braced on his thighs, his head almost between his
knees. We were too scared to part, so Gadda came to my bed and until morning we
just hugged each other, and couldn’t sleep.’

I had been almost hypnotised by
Rinawne’s tale and had to shake myself out of it. ‘That’s an amazing story,’ I
said.

He shrugged. ‘Yeah, it’s a good
one. Not much use to you as it’s not of these parts, but I was never so feared
in my life. She brings death, you know. She would’ve taken a soul, but maybe
only a human one, I don’t know. We never found out, and we couldn’t tell our
hara; we’d have been punished for sneaking out.’ He paused, chewing on a grass
stem, then said, grinning, ‘But you know, to this day I wonder what her face
was like.’

‘I’m wondering too,’ I said.

Rinawne got to his feet. ‘Well,
we have your forest glade, what else do you need?’

‘A field,’ I said. ‘Near to the house,
so the festival can finish up there.’

‘There are plenty of those.
Let’s pick Dôl Cartref, the Home Meadow, since there’s a path to the gardens
from it. It’s used for the horses, so it’s grass not crops. We can shift the
nags for a night, since a few of them have a hankering to eat harish flesh.’

‘I’ve known horses of that
type,’ I said grimly.

We both laughed.

I stood up and Rinawne took me
in his arms. I didn’t resist. ‘Don’t leave it too long,’ he murmured, kissing
my brow. He was one of the few hara I’d met who was as tall as I am and didn’t
have to stand on a box to kiss my brow. ‘I’m not being selfish,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve
a feeling you need it.’

I sighed and leaned against him.
‘It’s like another kingdom to me now.’

‘This I can tell.’ He hugged me.
‘Come on, let’s look at the meadow.’

I’d expected an invitation to dinner at the Mynd as
before, but after we’d walked round the field, deciding where the procession
should pause and ritual actions performed, hidden from the house by towering
elms at its border, Rinawne said, ‘So when do I get the pleasure of a meal
cooked by you, Ysobi?’

‘I can’t match your board,’ I said.

‘That’s not the point. I’d like
to sit in the tower at night and look over the land.’

I gave him a stare to show him I
wasn’t that stupid. He certainly wasn’t going to allow me to “leave it too
long”, but how could I expect otherwise from an impulsive creature like
Rinawne? Inwardly, I sighed, then came abruptly to a decision. ‘All right. It
might not be as good as you think likely, but all right.’

‘You are a master of seduction,’
he said. ‘When?’

‘Tonight.’

‘Might as well get it over with
then, eh?’ He grinned.

‘Might as well.’

‘I have things to do this
afternoon,’ he said. ‘I’ll come over later, about eight o’clock. Is that OK?’

‘Yes, that’s fine.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re a
wonder.’ Then he sauntered off towards the house.

I stood in the field for a
moment, staring at the grass, also mindful of the horses eyeing me from some
distance away, some of whom yearned to be meat-eaters. Was this the right thing
to do? I felt coerced, yet not. If anything, I felt like I’d tumbled into a
stream and the current was carrying me; seemed best to go with it, see where it
led.

I went down to Ludda’s farm to order a chicken and
to replenish my stock of vegetables; for the last day or so I’d been living on
toast and eggs. I also requested a bottle of Ludda’s best honey and herb
liqueur. I knew he made it for Wyva, who had a vast collection of locally-made
liqueurs, and that it was probably supposed to be just for him, but Ludda only
gave me a wry look and agreed to supply the bottle. After that, and making
preliminary preparations for dinner, I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote
up the stories Rinawne had told me. I couldn’t use them for anything at the
moment, but I believe nothing that might be of use creatively should be thrown
away or forgotten.

I felt extremely nervous and
considered that part of my punishment in Jesith had been a kind of ‘unharing’. Slowly
and by degrees, the desire for aruna had faded away from me, almost as if I’d
been given a drug to kill it. I didn’t for one moment think any of my friends
and family in Jesith had done such a thing, but that’s what it felt like.

This had happened, I realised,
even before I’d visited Kyme and the last fateful episodes with my nemesis,
whose name I don’t want to speak aloud or even write. And yet somehow I
did
want to write about what had happened, as if to purge some of it before Rinawne
came to me. I wouldn’t tell him any of this to his face, but would imagine him
now as I wrote; a silent listener with no memory. Out came my notebook. I sat
at the kitchen table, put a title at the head of a blank page: My History.

I’d had a towering reputation in Jesith once, and
throughout the surrounding lands, but this had been destroyed, my character
questioned. How? Through aruna, through love, or the emotion to which we give
that name. I’d seduced one of my pupils... No, that’s wrong, we seduced one another.
But anyway, I should have known better, because he was mentally scarred by
early life traumas. Without meaning to, I’d tormented him emotionally, because
I hadn’t been in the position to care for him, only to roon him secretly behind
my chesnari’s back. He had been, perhaps still was, indescribably beautiful,
irresistible, an attribute with which his hurt psyche couldn’t cope, because of
the attention it drew to him.

Unfortunately, this har hadn’t
wanted a casual relationship, such as many enjoy outside of their chesna bonds,
and with their chesnari’s blessing. Like Rinawne, he had been relentless, but
in this case he had been unswerving in his determination to have me completely,
to remove Jass from the picture. Unhinged, of course. This ended with him
trying to kill himself, messily, right at the time when my son’s pearl was
being delivered. Out of feelings of guilt and responsibility, I chose the wrong
bed to sit beside and things went from bad to worse.

The young har, his mind battered,
had been sent away in disgrace, to be educated in Kyme, to be disciplined and
redesigned. The hara in Jesith saw him as a manipulative and selfish idiot, a
soume shrew, who targeted weak, older hara who should know better. I’d been
left behind to try and mend the mess, not at all successfully. You see, the
worst thing about it was that my speciality in teaching was to enhance the
arunic arts, to use aruna as magic and for self-development. Hara looked at me
and saw an egotistic fool, who used his position to take his pick of young hara
coming to him for education. It really wasn’t like that, but that’s how it
looked. I was judged. They didn’t pelt me with stones, or have me whipped, or
even make me stand before a jury of my peers to receive punishment. They simply
avoided me, crowded round Jassenah, the pious martyr, and judged me with their
eyes. Left me out in the cold on winter’s nights while they raised their
Natalia cups to my chesnari and my son.

That should have been the end of
it, but it wasn’t. Fate took me to Kyme a year or so later and of course the path
of my nemesis crossed with mine in that small community. Within the cloistered,
antique atmosphere of our city of scholars, I’d wanted him still, with a
yearning that was so profound it was unnatural. But I was bound somehow. I
couldn’t bring myself to initiate any physical intimacy between us, because I
felt there was only a snow-blank void where once my sensuality had been. I
could only torture him for my own loss and weakness.  Even though the sparks
took light once more, this was in an even more twisted and damaging way. The
torture was suppressed desire; far more subtle and dark. We should never have
met again, because our wounds from the earlier battle were still fresh. The
skin could be reopened very easily.

I went slightly mad; no other
way to put it. I punished that har for the way he made me feel. At times, I
wanted to break him, because I saw in his beauty the ruin of my life.
Eventually,
he
broke
me,
using harish powers that he had been
trained by me to use.

Cursed and physically shrunken, I’d
been taken back an invalid to Jesith by Jassenah, now regarded as High Martyr
of All Martyrs by our neighbours. My life from that day forward had been that
of the outsider. The other, I believe, came out of it better because he had
made powerful friends in Kyme.

Hideously cruel. All of it. Yet
desire had created the situation and had lit the bonfires that had heated the iron. 
My nemesis and I had been branded to the bone, and much had been lost. Thinking
of it now, I felt angry for both of us. No punishment should be so harsh. I was
first generation, perhaps hag-ridden by demons hidden so deep I was unaware of
them, and he, the young one, had been beaten by life before he even reached
Jesith for his education. Two damaged beings do not make a whole. We’d learned
that in the hardest of ways.

Sighing, I closed my notebook
and rubbed my eyes. Gwyllion had given me a new start. I hoped the same went
for him, wherever he was. Part of that new start was standing before the mirror
of what I was: har. We are told we need aruna, which is the current that
sustains us, physically, mentally and spiritually. Without it, what am I? The truth
was, I didn’t even miss it.

I realised only a har like
Rinawne was the right type to heal me in this regard. Irreverent, not
particularly emotionally engaged with me, simply wanting a distraction. He
didn’t come with a contract of demands and expectations I was forced to sign in
blood. True, he’d seemed jealous when he’d thought Gen might be trying to elbow
his way into my affections, but I thought that was only because he’d wanted to
elbow in first. Truly passionate love can be a heavy mantle, its lining laden
with gloom and despair, as well as ecstasy and longing. I believe only the
healthiest of hara can handle it correctly and without causing harm to
themselves or those they love. Looking in from outside, it’s like a disease
that turns the brain to cheese. I didn’t ever want to feel that way again.

Rinawne arrived around fifteen minutes late, during
which time a part of me hoped he might not turn up. Perhaps my lack of
eagerness had put him off. But no, at quarter past the hour I heard a
thundering rap upon the door downstairs and seconds later Rinawne came bounding
into the kitchen. I learned from then on that Rinawne would always let himself
into my tower without waiting to be admitted. Well, I suppose it belonged to
him more than it did to me, but I was used to the more restrained politeness
found in Jesith.

‘Door was open,’ he announced,
throwing himself onto a chair by the table.

‘Always is,’ I replied, stirring
pots needlessly at the range. ‘Do you think it shouldn’t be?’

‘I’m sure it’s quite safe.’

Over dinner, we both drank
copious amounts of wine, and talked of harmless things, mainly Rinawne gossiping
rather waspishly about the family, yet in an affectionate way. He made me laugh.

After dinner, I suggested we
move from the kitchen table. For the first time since I’d moved into the tower,
I’d decided to make use of the living room, which seemed a more suitable venue
for intimacy than downstairs. The day had been warm so there was no need to
light a fire, although part of me wished we could have had one. That would have
set the archetypal seduction scene: aruna in the light of a fire. Yet the living
room held the warmth of the day and, once the lamps were lit, became a cosy and
sensual chamber, where even the vainest of Wraeththu beauties would have felt proud
to bring his conquests.