Moon Song (13 page)

‘Damn!’ Isoldé stopped again. She hadn’t asked for the job of finding the lost song and apparently rebirthing Tristan, had she? Uncle Brian would say she had.

‘No such thing as victims in work with Otherworld,’ he would tell her, ‘only volunteers.’

‘I must have been drunk when I signed on for this,’ she muttered, starting walking again. ‘Certainly didn’t read the small print.’

‘What small print?’ said a familiar voice, out loud this time.

Isoldé stopped, looked around. She’d arrived back at the plank bridge without noticing and down by the stream on the other side, was Mark.

‘Hello you,’ she called, stepping onto the bridge.

‘Don’t forget to ask,’ he called back.

Isoldé stopped in mid stride. ‘Bother! Do I have to?’

‘Always a good idea.’ He’d stood up now and was grinning at her.

Isoldé rolled her eyes, tapped her foot on the wood three times and asked permission to cross. The water below her did a big
plop!
making a bubble in the silky surface. She stared at it
then glared at Mark. ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ she growled.

Mark helped her down the bank.

‘Room for two on the old log,’ he said. ‘What’ve you been up to or is it secret?’

‘No-oo,’ Isoldé shook her head. ‘I don’t think it’s secret but it is strange.’ She looked at him. ‘Maybe not to you, you grew up here, but it feels strange to me.’

‘You met Gideon, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, but how did you know?’

‘Saw it in a dream,’ he said.

That silenced her. What, yes what, on earth had she got into? Mark let her find her own space.

‘You know he’s a shapeshifter, a real body-changer?’ she asked him.

Mark nodded.

‘Oh.’

Isoldé sat staring at the stream for a while.

‘I don’t know how to tell you so it’s going to come out all splat.’ She paused, swallowed. ‘Tristan died too soon, too early. He hadn’t finished the Ellyon song cycle. There’s one last song to write.’

Mark had gone a bit pale but was otherwise taking it well. ‘The Moon Song …’

‘Yes …and …he has to come back,’ Isoldé continued, ‘to write the song.’ There was a long pause. ‘And …I have to bring him back.’

She stared desperately at Mark, wondering what he would say, willing him to say something. That last bit was so strange, so like things out of story books. Like the princess going to look for the bluebird, she thought to herself, just hope I don’t have to scale ice-mountains. And I’m not a damn princess, maybe that makes me immune …but she wasn’t holding her breath.

Mark still wasn’t saying anything …she saw he was crying. She’d been so worried about herself she hadn’t seen him. She put
her arms round him now. He buried his face in her neck. After a few minutes he pulled away and sat looking at her, rummaging for a handkerchief. He blew his nose. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

That was the last thing Isoldé had expected him to say. He smiled, seeing the confusion in her face.

‘I knew he was going to go, to die, when I went off to Japan,’ he said. ‘He told me so, even. And there was nothing I could do although something inside said it wasn’t right, was the wrong time. Not that he shouldn’t do it, I don’t mean that and I would never deny him his choice, but that his timing was wrong. He was secretive, a Scorpio. No-one ever saw the songs until he was ready. Oh, I’d hear them about the house as he was making them, see post-it notes of words and phrases as they came to him dotted about the kitchen. Mrs P used to dust under and around them rather than dare move one.’

Isoldé grinned with him at the thought.

‘So, you telling me he’d not finished, has to come back, isn’t altogether a surprise. No.’ Mark shook his head at the question on her face. ‘I didn’t know or not until the letter. I just knew things weren’t right. What you’re telling me makes sense, feels like the bits of the puzzle are slipping into place. Or some of them anyway.’

‘How’s that?’ Isoldé prompted as Mark seemed to go off into thought again. He came back.

‘I’ve heard him about the house since I got back from the Japan tour, after he was dead. Smelled him too, his scent and his perfume and the Tea Tree oil he used on the sores. I’ve never seen him though, nor has Mrs P, although she says she’s heard him too. Nobody had seen him until you did that first Saturday night.’

Isoldé leaned her shoulder into Mark but looked away at the stream. ‘I dreamed of him, you know,’ she said at last. ‘On the night he went. I saw him. I watched him climb the hill and go out across the Stitches to the tower. Watched him step off onto the
moonpath. He didn’t fall, just gradually became a little black dot moving against the moon-gold path, until he was gone as the sun came up over the hill behind and wiped the path off the sea.’

‘But that’s not the only time you dreamed of him.’ Now it was Mark’s turn to prompt her. He stroked her hair.

‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ she said.

Mark continued stroking, his lips brushed her hair above the ear.

‘He came to me,’ Isoldé began. ‘Like a lover. Wanting me. One night, in Exeter before I met you, I woke from the most amazing orgasm, like the old stories of the incubi. And then the letter …’ she trailed off.

Mark never stopped stroking her hair, his fingers never faltered throughout her speech. They didn’t now. ‘I’m not angry or jealous,’ he said. ‘Do you love him?’ He paused, then went on. ‘I love him. I always loved him. He was my brother. There was something about him, charisma, but it was so strong. And he was so generous despite the autocratic bits.’ He smiled softly, nuzzling her hair. ‘I love him still.’

It was a strange bond between them, their love for each other and their mutual love for Tristan. Brother to Mark and a role model for his life, for Isoldé he had always been an inspiration. Now it appeared he had clay feet, had got it wrong. And they would have to set it right.

‘Did Gideon tell you how you’re supposed to bring him back, do we have séances or something?’ Mark asked her.

‘No …’ She shook her head into his shoulder then pulled away. ‘But I have to go there …’

Mark stared. ‘Go where? To the Isle of the Dead?’

She nodded.

‘How? …Follow Tristan …on the moonpath …’ He answered his own question.

‘Don’t know yet. They’re going to help me, Gideon said. You have to help too.’

Thank all the gods for that, Mark gave silent prayers. He’d been terrified she would do this thing on her own, that he would be left out. ‘When do we start?’ he asked.

‘Soon …I think.’

Mark paused, trying to grasp all the implications. This was so soon after they had come together. He had imagined a quiet, gentle time while they got to know each other, drifting gradually into permanence. He knew, had known that first night when he sat in Cathedral Close with the mouse and the cat, that he wanted Isoldé, for always, for life, and beyond life too. But he’d thought of it as a normal, personal thing, a relationship that would grow and blossom and fruit. It seemed they were being pitched together, going headlong into an adventure which was beyond anything he knew out of the realms of story. Her too, he suspected. And how could he refuse? He loved Tristan. He loved Isoldé. And Otherworld asked it of them.

Isoldé watched him thinking. What would he do? Or she? She snuck her hand into his. ‘I think we’ve got a job to do,’ she said, paused. ‘I …I love you, Mark.’ She stopped again, he didn’t interrupt. ‘I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I’ve never felt this way before, I’m not used to it, I’m out of my own control. Something is lifting, carrying me. It’s like falling in a river and being carried off on a journey to places you didn’t know existed. It began with the sparrow. I think I knew then. But I was expecting a slow, gradual journey, not this. It’s like the waterfall itself.’ She waved a hand back towards the kieve. ‘Tumbling and crashing down the fifty foot of cliff into the basin. I can’t hear myself think with all that’s happened just this morning.’

‘That’s how I feel too,’ Mark said. ‘I love you. It was instant, when we first touched hands after the sparrow. I was expecting slow too, not this helter-skelter. But I love you. That’s not changed.’ He stopped. They looked at each other.

The light flickered and grew as the fire waxed. The wood wives crouched about the flames, feeding them with twigs and fir cones, green branches and pieces of root. The flames and smoke twined together, rising up into the sky.

The eldest one took the root pieces from her bag and fed the fire. Her round body was like a root itself, strong, full of goodness, brown-skinned. She was wrapped in robes and shawls of mossy greens and browns, their edges faded yellow like old leaves, they folded round her in layers like the leaves of a plant. Her warm, kind face crinkled into folds like the petals of an old rose.

The next wife took the green branches, threading them in to the fire from underneath. This one was young and slender, her blue-white skin shining wetly in the light of the fire, the silverblue hair hanging down around her long pointed face, pointed elfin ears were half-hidden under it. The blue-green silky robe twisted and rippled around her like the threads of a waterfall.

The third was very young, thin, skinny, a little taller than her companions, smooth skinned like a beech sapling. Wisps of clothing clung round her like cobwebs, the green-gold hair tangled and blew around her face. She fed the fire with bright twigs and flowers.

The fourth wife was older than the young one and younger than the old one. Tall and slender with autumn-coloured vines wound through the red hair that fell around the pale cream skin of her face. Ripe cherries hung from her earlobes, her dress
rustled with brown and orange leaves. She fed the fire with fruits and nuts that crackled and spat in the flames.

‘I gived her the sight, Mother,’ the young one said.

‘Aye, and I gived her the hag-stone. Her’ve took it,’ the old one said in her turn. ‘Tis round her neck. Young Mark gived ‘er a chain and it hangs there between her breasts.’

‘Right over her heart …’ the young one said.

‘That’s right, my lover, that’s right. Her’ve got the holey stone,’ the one in blue agreed, feeding more green branches into the fire. The smoke itself took on a blue tinge.

‘And we took from her too,’ the young one said. ‘I took one of her hairs, long, golden tis.

‘The swallows took it back in time, wove a dream for Mark,’ the red one added.

‘So they met,’ the young one said. ‘And a tear trickled out from under her eyelid. You took it, Mother, caught it on your claw.’

‘I did.’ The old one fished in a pocket and held up a little bottle she’d pulled out from under her leafy skirts.

‘And what is us to do wi’ that?’ the blue one asked.

‘Tis the water,’ said the green one. ‘The moon’s fluid. It comed from her sight, she will see.’

The red one fed more fir cones into the fire. ‘Aye …she’s a good girl and she will see, but she don’t know what she be doin’, not yet she don’t. Nor she don’t know what we do neither.’

‘That’ll come,’ the blue one finished up.

The old one put out a wrinkled claw-finger and pulled a burning root out of the fire. It was shaped like a tiny spiral, a wriggling worm, a wormlike child. She blew on the glowing root-coal, it whistled out a weird cry, singing, spinning outwards. The wood wives blew against the root-coal, blowing the sound back inland, towards Caergollo.

Isoldé stirred in her sleep, found herself within a dream, stood in the kieve. A wild, weird whistling sound spun around the bowl
of rock, making it sing. There was a cry within it, almost a human cry, almost but not quite. It reminded her of a seagull, or a cat, making the strange call that reminds of a baby crying.

Isoldé stood, turning her head to catch up with the cry as it sang round the rock-bowl. With a final whistle it was gone, seemingly sucked up into the waterfall. Her ears were ringing with the silence now the sound was gone, even the roaring of the fall was out of her hearing spectrum, it made her dizzy. She turned back to the fall. There, on the rock arch where the water fell from the cauldron into the pool, were sat four women. They seemed to be of different colours. The oldest was all moss-browns and green. Next came a silvery-blue one, younger than the first, not old at all; as she sat on the arch she seemed to blend with the thin waterfall behind her. Next was a gold-green figure, like a young beech tree growing out of the rock. At the end, a figure coloured all the fires of autumn sat coiled on the arch. She crooked a finger to Isoldé.

‘Come!’ they all whispered to her.

Isoldé heard the call inside her head.

‘I am coming,’ she replied.

The women all seemed to smile.

The roar of the waterfall came back to Isoldé then. She stirred out of sleep, woke, sat up abruptly. It was daylight, just, with the old full moon hanging in the turquoise sky. The two lights, the sun and the moon in the sky together …twilight. She got up softly and went out.

Isoldé crept out again early on Sunday morning. What was all this stuff, having to creep away without Mark first thing in the morning? She liked mornings in bed with her lover, why wasn’t she getting any now? It’s this damned song, she muttered in her head as she strode out down the path to the sea.

She got to the open cliffs and the waterfall and there was the hare again. Once more the hare came right up close, sniffed her, then it sat down beside the waterfall. Isoldé sat down beside her and the hare shifted again, Isoldé watched it happen. The hare’s face changed shape, her eyes stopped bulging in the way that rabbits and hares eyes do and became human; her ears shrank, her paws began to turn into hands and her body became human.

The hare-girl smiled at Isoldé, then she realised she hadn’t done her teeth and looked away, putting a paw-hand in front of her mouth. When she looked back the transformation was complete. ‘I need my song,’ she whispered.