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To the waters and the wild

For your Backstories or one-shots set in the past, before November 1880 and the start of the Chronicle.

To the waters and the wild

Postby Christine Daye » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:20 am

((content warning: themes of domestic abuse))

“Come away, o human child…"

Moving like an old woman, Róisín picked up her sleeping baby from her cradle, and wrapped her snugly in a blanket. Biting back gasps of pain, she limped through the house as quietly as possible. A pause, a whispered prayer, and the latch opened with the barest click.

Róisín looked up and down the darkened road, and, casting her shawl over her head, hobbled down the winding path, and away. Prayers were on her lips, whispered with each breath:

“Blessed Virgin, help us…. Holy Mary… Mother of God… pray for us sinners…. now and at the hour of our death... Our Lady… guide and strengthen… Star of the Sea… forgive me… save my child….”

Midsummer, and the night was ablaze with stars, the half moon a bright shape in the sky. The air was never still, not that close to the coast, and the wild Atlantic. But the smell of salt on the breeze was a familiar comfort to Róisín. The smell of home. She followed the worn track past the drystone walls, the stunted and wind bent trees, casting faint and eerie shadows in the moonlight. Up to the top of the cliffs, across the sheep cropped turf, where the rath was.

For those not of the area, it wouldn’t have looked like much. A half ring of low earth, grassed over and studded with wildflowers, enclosing a semicircle of ground. The ring of the earthworks was cut by the edge of the cliff, backing against the fall into the rocky sea, many tens of feet below. A scholar would have sighed, marked it down on their map of such places, and moved on to a bigger, better preserved site.

But for those who lived in the area, those who knew the stories - well, they knew better than to trespass there, and even worse, to do so at night. For wasn’t it only a few years ago that Séamus O’Dwyer had fallen to his death from these very same cliffs? Sure, he was a drunkard, but it was a long way out of his way to go for him, on his way home from the pub. As for the music - well, no one believes that, now do they? Do they?

Tonight, there were none to witness, none to cross themselves, or try to stop her, as Róisín carried her month old baby to the rath. As she made her way, step by painful step, to the very edge of the ring fort, to the gap in the earthworks that once, perhaps, had held a gate. To the boundary, the edge, the line between Here and There. And at that edge she stopped, her nerve failing her, as the baby started to cry, sinking down onto the dew wet grass, shushing and rocking her child.

“...ssshhh… mo chroí… hush now, mo ghrá… all is well… all is well… I won’t let him hurt you… I’ll never let him hurt you...”

“What is it you have brought me?”

The voice rang in Róisín’s head with strange echoes, and she looked up with a start, clutching her baby to her breast, reflexively making the sign of the cross over them both.

The speaker was a woman, but taller than many men, richly dressed, thin and willowy, with angular features, and all the strength and sharpness of a sword blade. Alien and other, not of this world. Fae. She simply smiled at this display of piety.

“...my lady…” Róisín murmured. “I beg your forgiveness… but I seek… I seek…”

Her voice faded away as horror crossed her face. The realisation that she could picture the face of the man, the Fae Lord, the faery harper, but his name was gone. Humiliation twisted like a worm in her gut, and the faery woman looked on in amusement. At the young, desperate woman, with the staring baby in her arms.

This close, the strain and pain on Róisín’s face could be clearly seen. Lines of hurt and worry drawn on her face, stealing her youth and beauty. Dark shadows of bruises on her wrists, around her throat. Marks of a man’s hand, a man’s violence and anger.

“He’s not here… but you are… and with a baby, no less.” The faery-woman’s tone was deliberately light, but she looked at the baby with barely hidden longing.

Róisín’s face crumpled, like she was going to cry. The baby in her arms started to whimper too, only to be hushed once more by her mother. The faery-woman tilted her head, looking at the pair like they were a puzzle to be solved. A cipher, a mystery.

“...please…” Róisín’s voice was a whisper. “...please… help my child…. I fear that… that my husband will kill her…”

“Your husband? Not her father?”

Róisín hung her head in shame, a crimson blush darkening her cheeks like a bruise.

The faery-woman laughed, long and low.

“Oh, you don’t know, do you? Oh, my brother… what have you been up to?”

The tone was musing. Then, a command:

“Let me see the child.”

Wordlessly, reluctantly, Róisín handed her daughter over.

The faery-woman accepted the baby carefully, cooing softly as she parted the blanket to look at the child’s soft features. The baby regarded her curiously, large dark eyes staring.

“...yes, little one… yes… you are special, aren’t you… it’s almost a pity… poor child… the sins of the father…”

The baby screwed up her little face and squalled.

“...hush, little dreamer…” the faery-woman soothed, as she parted the front of her gown. “... here…”

And she put the baby to her perfect breast and nursed her.

Róisín looked on, a mixture of despair, horror, and bleak determination on her face.

“Will you take her? Will you keep her safe?” she asked the faery-woman, desperate. “My husband… he wanted a boy… he’s a drunkard… he’s already…. one night he’ll come home in a rage… I know he will... and… I won’t… I won’t be able to...”

Róisín couldn’t bear to finish the thought. She scrubbed at her face with her hands, angrily wiping away the tears.

“Help her. I beg you. I will give you anything. Anything.”

The faery-woman smiled, serene and content, an expression of bliss on her face as the baby suckled.

“You offer? Of your own free will? Knowing what it means?”

Róisín nodded, biting hard on her lip, not trusting her voice.

Long moments, as the waves crashed against the cliff face, as the breeze caught the edges of Róisín’s shawl, the strands of curly red hair that had escaped from behind the woven fabric. Then the faery-woman sighed, and said in tones of deep regret.

“Alas, that I cannot take her, no matter how much I wish. But your Virgin Queen protects her, your Sacrificed God protects her. Your prayers have not fallen on unheeding ears. This little songbird has a destiny that I cannot take from her. I can give her my blessing. And I will.”

The faery-woman looked wistful. For a moment, the mask of her beauty slipped to reveal the sorrow of centuries.

“... I always wanted a child…”

Milk-drunk, the baby was now fast asleep, making little suckling movements as the faery-woman handed her back to her mother.

“Be brave, and be strong, little mother. Teach her to sing for us, and she will sing with the voice of angels. Give her a harp, so she can take our music, awaken other dreamers. Bring her to the hidden places, the boundaries where your world and ours meet. Do this, and she will play and sing and dream and grow, and one day… well… she will find the truth… and it will free her… or destroy her… but this I swear… it will not be your husband who kills her...”

The faery-woman sighed, and reached out with one long-fingered hand to stroke the baby’s cheek, gently, in farewell.

“My blessing upon you, little dreamer, for the love of the child that I once might have borne… had but the world been different… and the Sons of Man less cruel...”

Her gaze sharpened and she stared at Róisín, cold and hard.

“Time to get your baby home to bed.”

It was a command, and Róisín knew better than to disobey. Despite the fear, churning in her gut, demanding she run, she backed away carefully, murmuring polite thanks.

“...thank you… thank you… may the old gods and the new bless you…”

The faery woman watched Róisín go, a dark shape moving slowly and painfully across the fields.

“The old gods are dead and gone… and the new care little for my people… but your little dreamer… she could change that all…”

~

Back at the house, Róisín tucked her baby back into the cradle, looking lovingly at her as she slept.

“I will protect you, my little girl. No matter the cost. I swear it, by the old gods and the new. My little dreamer, my changeling child. My Aisling.”
Christine Daye - Malkavian neonate, harper and mezzo-soprano


Courteous, Acclaimed

Favoured by Antigone, Ashwin Major

Last night she came to me, my dead love came in

((OOC - Sarah Callaghan, sorcha.ni@gmail.com))
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Christine Daye
 
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Re: To the waters and the wild

Postby Christine Daye » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:21 am

((content warning: themes of domestic and child abuse))

“...to the waters and the wild…”

Memories and the dreams of memories. Were they real, those times that Mama would wake her as a child, take her by the hand and lead her to the clifftop, to the rath? Or to the old oak tree? Or to the mass stone, that slab of weathered granite at the top of a hazel-crowned hill?

Some had to have been real. Like the time when she stumbled and fell and cut her knee on a stone, and cried all the way to the top. Or the time when it rained, and her shawl was soaked through, and still wet the next morning, despite having been hung up by the fire to dry.

Some must have been dreams. Like the time when she saw glimpses of the dancers, silver in the moonlight, swinging and whirling and cavorting through the trees. Or the time when she saw the giant of the hills shift in his sleep, and the world bent and twisted like it was underwater and for a moment she thought she was drowning, or worse, would fall up into the endless dark and star studded sky, up and up into the night black, ink black, death black…

...her Mama’s hand held her. Kept her safe. Mama was always there. Dreams or memories. Mama was always there. Sometimes old, sometimes young, sometimes dancing, sometimes wincing. Sometimes hobbling. But then again, sometimes so was she. Sometimes she couldn’t tell if it was her own pain, or her mother’s, or both, or neither. The pain, it was a constant dark thread in the tapestry of her dreams. Strong, then faint, then sharp, then dull. But always there, and always the protestations of love in a deep, male voice.

Dreams have their own logic. Pushing through thorns. Sneaking out in the darkness, with only the stars to light their way. Fires on the hillside. Sweet meadow flowers. The sharpness of wild blackberries on the tongue. Dreams and memories. Memories and dreams.

One thing was always the same. Always the same. Once they’d faced the dragon, once they’d tricked their way past the goblins, once they’d shared their meagre provisions with the hungry beggar-woman, they found themselves in the place where they had to be. And they would like back, her and Mama, lie back on soft earth, or sweet grass, or mossy stone, and listen.

The ear is attuned to voices, and it was always a voice she heard first, high and pure, singing words in a language that she didn’t know, but somehow recognised. She listened and heard, and the more she listened, the better she heard, the music swelling and growing in her head. Becoming more elaborate, strings and wind and brass and voice, beautiful and strange and magical. And, in dream or memory, they would let the music enfold them, caress them, comfort them. Let it sweep away their hurts and their fears, their angers and their worries. Their pain, their sorrow, their regret, their longing.

(What does a child know of such things? What does a child need to know of such things?)

She would carry it with her always, echoing in the recesses of her soul, seeping unconsciously from behind closed lips. The music of the Otherworld, the language that only she and her Mama would share. Sometimes strangers would hear her sing, and a start of recognition would cross their faces, for a heartbeat, two, longer. But then they would shake themselves, as if waking from a dream. And she would watch them slide back under. Back into the everyday, the here and now. The mundane world of tea and Christmas and the price of fish. But still she sang, her childish voice high and piping. Still Mama took her to the hidden places, the shadowed places. Still they watched the stars as the music swelled in their souls.

It never crossed her mind that to hear the music of Faerie was to be irrevocably changed. But if it did, what did it matter? These were only dreams of memories and memories of dreams.
Christine Daye - Malkavian neonate, harper and mezzo-soprano


Courteous, Acclaimed

Favoured by Antigone, Ashwin Major

Last night she came to me, my dead love came in

((OOC - Sarah Callaghan, sorcha.ni@gmail.com))
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Christine Daye
 
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Re: To the waters and the wild

Postby Christine Daye » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:22 am

“... with a faery, hand in hand…”

Christine stared out at the Atlantic waves, her gaze distant, singing to herself as she always did, her skirts lifted above her knees as the waves lapped around her feet. A child of eight, tall and skinny, with the wind pulling tresses of her long red hair out of its braid.

There was a splat, and a feeling of something wet and gritty sliding down the back of her neck. She yelped, and wheeled around, fists clenched in anger, to see her ten year old cousin standing behind her, his hands still covered in wet sand.

“Fintan! Oh! I’ll get you for this!”

She launched herself at her cousin, with the best of intentions of bearing him to the wet sand and treating him in the same fashion. But he was having none of it, and sped away with a whoop and a laugh.

“Can’t catch me! You dreamer!” he taunted.

Christine scowled in frustration and gave chase. Not so far away, Fintan’s little sister, Nuala, was drawing on the wet sand with a stick.

“Nuala! Help me!” Christine appealed, as she pounded after Fintan, but he was too fast.

The three children chased each other along the beach, laughing and shouting and squealing. At one point, Christine closed the distance enough to throw a handful of wet sand at Fintan, but missed.

“Now I’ve got you,” she crowed, picking up another handful of sand, for he had stopped running, and instead was examining a pile of flotsam, washed up above the high water mark. Something had obviously caught his eye, for he was pulling apart the tangle of broken driftwood, seaweed and rope.

Christine threw the handful of dry sand at him, only for the wind to take it and blow it back at her. She coughed, her eyes watering.

“...oh… botheration…”

Nuala elbowed her aside, and went to prod at the tangle with her brother.

“What have you got there?” she asked her brother.

He grinned at her, gap-toothed.

“Treasure!”

And sure enough, it was a part of a painted plank that he pulled from the tangle.

“Let me see! Let me see!”

Christine joined her cousins at the tangle, pulling and searching. Until she cried out in pain, and pulled her hand back as if stung, something falling from her nerveless grasp.

Nuala looked at her worried. Both she and her brother had been given dire warnings to make sure that their strange, city-raised cousin was to come to no harm when they played at the seashore.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine… just… I think it was a jellyfish…” Christine said.

Both her cousins looked dubious, their sky-blue eyes regarding her with identical expressions. But Christine refused to show them her hand, holding it close to her chest.

Nuala’s gaze fell to the ground, and the thing that Christine had dropped.

“Oh…” she said in surprise, picking it up. It was a pebble, smooth and weathered, with a hole right through its very centre. “A fairy stone!”

“What’s a fairy stone?” asked Christine, her sore hand forgotten as she came closer to look.

“This is, silly,” said Fintan. But, ever eager to show off how much more knowledgeable he was than the girls, he explained: “It’s a charm against the Good Folk. A stone, with a hole all the way through it, found by water, yet completely dry. It’s magic, and if you keep it on you, it’ll keep the fairies from stealing you away.”

“Oh,” said Christine, absentmindedly rubbing her sore hand. “How does it do that?”

“Magic, silly,” Nuala replied, rolling her eyes.

“...oh….”

“I’m keeping it,” declared Nuala. “That’s my treasure. And Fintan has his painted piece of wood. Now all we have to do is find you something, Christine. Let’s go over to the rock pools, maybe we can find you a nice shell or something.”

Christine followed her cousins across the sands, unconsciously singing to herself and still rubbing at her sore hand. Her cousins rolled their eyes at each other, but they were used to her ways now. And besides, when she came to visit, she came with presents. They liked the presents. And she was family. That meant a lot. You could see it in the colour of her hair, though hers fell in waves, rather than their tight curls. In the colour of their eyes, though hers were the dark blue-gray of the sea before a storm, while theirs were the blue of the summer waters. There was no denying their shared blood.

Christine rubbed at the welt on her hand. A ring of raised and inflamed flesh, the same size and shape as the fairy stone.
Christine Daye - Malkavian neonate, harper and mezzo-soprano


Courteous, Acclaimed

Favoured by Antigone, Ashwin Major

Last night she came to me, my dead love came in

((OOC - Sarah Callaghan, sorcha.ni@gmail.com))
User avatar
Christine Daye
 
Posts: 908
Joined: Tue Aug 09, 2016 1:00 pm


Re: To the waters and the wild

Postby Christine Daye » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:25 am

((content warning: themes of parental child abuse))

“...for the world’s more full of weeping than you can ever understand…”

Gasping, weeping, she fled across the dark fields, crashing headlong through the brambles and hedges, scrambling over the walls. Heedless of her torn dress, her bruised and battered hands. Half blinded by tears, choking on sobs. Just running, as far and as fast as she possibly could.

She tasted blood as she crashed into the wall, her head whipped to the side by the force of his blow. He was drunk. He was always drunk. And when he was drunk, there was nothing she could do, but steel herself for what was coming.

She ran on, heart pounding the beat to the frantic music in her mind, swirling and engulfing her thoughts, rising like a tide, like a storm, like a nightmare in her blood. Stabs of pain in her side with each gasping breath.

“Useless… stupid… creature…” he slurred, eyes crossing. “...useless… no good…. why was I… was I cursed with you… stupid whore… of a wife… should have had a boy… should have had a boy…”

No more. She couldn’t take anymore. She couldn’t bear it anymore. Not that horrible, painful dance. The creak of the floorboard as he staggered home drunk. The shouts and imprecations, the fists, the bruises. And the next morning, the tears, the remorse, the promises.

“Christine… my daughter… forgive me… I’m sorry… it was the drink… always the drink… you look so much like your mother… I miss her so… I love you… so much… I just want what’s best for you… only ever what’s best…”

A shape loomed out of the darkness. Sanctuary. In the shape of the half buried mass rock, surrounded by the hazel trees. Hazel, for wisdom. For protection.

She cast herself on the cold surface of the rock, and wept, her tears spotting the surface of the stone.

“Why are you crying?”

The voice echoed in her head, at one and the same time close and unfathomably distant. The music crescendoed as she looked up in shock.

Dark haired, pale-skinned, sharp-featured, he had the smooth and unlined face of a young man. But oh, his eyes were old. Old beyond imagining. He regarded her with a curious gaze, for all the world like she was a butterfly, fluttering prettily on a branch.

She bit back her sobs, pushing herself upright with a gasp of pain. Afraid, desperately afraid, the music seeped from behind her tightly closed lips, and he drew closer. Closer yet, as she held herself frozen in terror, the music rising and rising and rising, forcing its way from her mouth in a wordless, helpless song.

A touch on her bruised cheek, and she flinched. She watched as he carefully swiped a tear from her face onto one fingertip, brought it to his lips and tasted it, like it were the finest wine, the sweetest honey.

“...please… don’t hurt me…” she whispered, the words tasting strange in her throat.

He cocked his head to the side, considering.

“Now why would I do that, little dreamer? Why indeed, when I would far rather have you sing for me?”

From his side he pulled a small harp, made of white wood and silver strings, shining with its own light in the shadowed gloom of the hazel woods. His long, delicate fingers, caressed the strings, pulling from them strange harmonies. Strange, yet achingly beautiful. Liquid sounds of quicksilver and streams in the moonlight. Sounds that thrilled her, deep in the core of her being, the patterns of her soul.

“Sing for me, Aisling,” he murmured. His voice was soft, but there was no mistaking his command. And she could no more refuse than she could stop herself from breathing.

So she sang. Her voice rough to start, each breath a stab of pain from her cracked ribs. But she knew this pain. Knew how to sing through it. Lord knows, she’d had enough practice in her fifteen years of life. And even more in the past five years, since her Mama’s death.

“Mama… why did you have to die? Why did you leave me?”

It was a question that always remained unspoken, tinged with grief and horrific memories of a bloody childbed. Memories that she wanted so hard to forget, but never could, carved in blood and screaming in her mind.

She sang, not knowing what she was singing. Not caring. Only knowing that her voice merged perfectly with that eerie sound of his harp, with the music of the Otherworld, so close to the surface, here, in this place.

The stars moved above them as she sang, as he played, and there was no need for words. Until she realised that she was cold, more, that she was nearly frozen, and that her throat was raw, and that there was a lightening in the sky that gave promise of the dawn.

The harper smiled at her, bright and brilliant, as he dropped his fingers from the harp strings.

“Well done, my child. The harp suits you.”

She dropped her eyes, too tired now to do anything, even think.

He placed one cool finger under her chin, gently but firmly lifted until she looked at him with hazy and exhausted eyes.

“Be strong, little dreamer… remember, the willow yields in the strongest wind, while the oak tree tumbles, rent asunder, limb by limb…”

“...and it feels like thunder…” she whispered, taking up the lyric. “...looks like rain…”

He smiled again.

“You have been listening… good. Mark me well, little songbird. You must survive. For we shall come for you, when the time is right. And you will delight us with your music, and you will be kept in glory and honour. When the time is right. But you must survive until then. Until we come for you in glory. Do you understand?”

She didn’t, but she hurt, and she was tired, so very tired. So she nodded, her eyes crossing, closing.

“Remember…” his voice came from far, far away. “...the willow yields…”

She awoke to the sound of birdsong, her head foggy and her body aching. And, with nowhere else to go, she made her way back to the house she shared with her drunkard father. Back to her harps and her music, her books and her solitude, her practice and her pain and her persistence. But the music came with her, strong and powerful. Her haven, her protection, her obsession. And the faery harper’s words:

“....you must survive…. we will come for you… when the time is right…”

She sang softly to herself as she walked across the dew-dappled fields.

“....and it feels like thunder… looks like rain.”
Christine Daye - Malkavian neonate, harper and mezzo-soprano


Courteous, Acclaimed

Favoured by Antigone, Ashwin Major

Last night she came to me, my dead love came in

((OOC - Sarah Callaghan, sorcha.ni@gmail.com))
User avatar
Christine Daye
 
Posts: 908
Joined: Tue Aug 09, 2016 1:00 pm


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