JULIET MARILLIER
Daughter of the Forest
Book One of the Sevenwaters Trilogy
To the strong women of my family:Dorothy, Jennifer, Elly and Bronya
Contents
Three children lay on the rocks at the water’s edge. A dark-haired little girl. Two boys, slightly older. This image is caught forever in my memory, like some fragile creature preserved in amber. Myself, my brothers. I remember the way the water rippled as I trailed my fingers across the shining surface.
‘Don’t lean over so far, Sorcha,’ said Padriac. ‘You might fall in.’ He was a year older than me and made the most of what little authority that gave him. You could understand it, I suppose. After all, there were six brothers altogether, and five of them were older than he was.
I ignored him, reaching down into the mysterious depths.
‘She might fall in, mightn’t she, Finbar?’
A long silence. As it stretched out, we both looked at Finbar, who lay on his back, full length on the warm rock. Not sleeping; his eyes reflected the open grey of the autumnal sky. His hair spread out on the rock in a wild black tangle. There was a hole in the sleeve of his jacket.
‘The swans are coming,’ said Finbar at last. He sat up slowly to rest his chin on raised knees. ‘They’re coming tonight.’
Behind him, a breeze stirred the branches of oak and elm, ash and elder, and scattered a drift of leaves, gold and bronze and brown. The lake lay in a circle of tree-clothed hills, sheltered as if in a great chalice.
‘How can you know that?’ queried Padriac. ‘How can you be so sure? It could be tomorrow, or the day after. Or they could go to some other place. You’re always so sure.’
I don’t remember Finbar answering, but later that day, as dusk was falling, he took me back to the lake shore. In the half light over the water, we saw the swans come home. The last low traces of sun caught a white movement in the darkening sky. Then they were near enough for us to see the pattern of their flight, the orderly formation descending through the cool air as the light faded. The rush of wings, the vibration of the air. The final glide to the water, the silvery flashing as it parted to receive them. As they landed, the sound was like my name, over and over: Sorcha, Sorcha. My hand crept into Finbar’s; we stood immobile until it was dark, and then my brother took me home.
If you are lucky enough to grow up the way I did, you have plenty of good things to remember. And some that are not so good. One spring, looking for the tiny green frogs that appeared as soon as the first warmth was in the air, my brothers and I splashed knee deep in the stream, making enough noise between us to frighten any creature away. Three of my six brothers were there, Conor whistling some old tune; Cormack, who was his twin, creeping up behind to slip a handful of bog weed down his neck. The two of them rolling on the bank, wrestling and laughing. And Finbar. Finbar was further up the stream, quiet by a rock pool. He would not turn stones to seek frogs; waiting, he would charm them out by his silence.
I had a fistful of wildflowers, violets, meadowsweet and the little pink ones we called cuckoo flowers. Down near the water’s edge was a new one with pretty star-shaped blooms of a delicate pale green, and leaves like grey feathers. I clambered nearer and reached out to pick one.
‘Sorcha! Don’t touch that!’ Finbar snapped.
Startled, I looked up. Finbar never gave me orders. If it had been Liam, now, who was the eldest, or Diarmid, who was the next one, I might have expected it. Finbar was hurrying back towards me, frogs abandoned. But why should I take notice of him? He wasn’t so very much older, and it was only a flower. I heard him saying, ‘Sorcha, don’t –’ as my small fingers plucked one of the soft-looking stems.
The pain in my hand was like fire – a white-hot agony that made me screw up my face and howl as I blundered along the path, my flowers dropped heedless underfoot. Finbar stopped me none too gently, his hands on my shoulders arresting my wild progress.
‘Starwort,’ he said, taking