‘Like them?’ My amazement was quite genuine. ‘Become friends with the family that destroyed my mother, and took away my father’s dreams? How could I?’
‘You’d be surprised.’ Grandmother’s tone was drily amused. ‘They’re not monsters, for all they did. And you’ve encountered few folk here, shut away with Ciarán at the end of the world. He did you no favours by bringing you to Kerry, child. You’ll need to be very canny. You’ll need to remember who you are, and why you’re there, every moment of every day. You cannot afford to relax your guard, not for an instant. There are dangerous folk at Sevenwaters.’
‘How will I know who –?’
‘Some will be safe. Some are harmless. Some have the power to stop you, if you give yourself away. That’s what happened to me. See that it doesn’t happen to you, because this is our last chance. You’ll need to beware of that fellow with the swan’s wing.’
‘What?’ Surely I had not heard her properly.
‘He’s the danger. He’s the one who can cross over and come back when it suits him. Watch out for him.’
I was eager to know what she meant. But try as I might, she would tell me no more that afternoon. Indeed, she seemed suddenly in a very ill temper, and started to punish me with sharp wasp-like stings for each small error in the casting of a spell of substitution. It became necessary to concentrate extremely hard; too hard to ask awkward questions.
I learned about pain that summer. My grandmother’s earlier tricks were nothing to the punishments she inflicted on me when she thought me defiant or stubborn, when she caught me dreaming instead of applying myself to the task in hand. She could induce a headache that was like the grip on an earth-dragon’s jaws, an agony that turned the bowels to water and drained whatever will I might once have summoned to aid me. She could pierce the belly with a thousand long needles, and cause every corner of the skin to itch and burn and fester, so that one screamed for mercy. Almost screamed. She knew I was young, and she would stop just before the torture became unbearable. What she thought of my strength of will she never said. I endured what she did, since there was no choice. My father could not have known she would treat me thus, or he would never have left me to her mercies. I learned, and was afraid.
She showed me, one night, a vision that struck a far deeper terror in me.
‘Just in case,’ she said, ‘you think to change your mind once you are gone from here. Just to erase that last little glint of defiance from your eyes, Fainne. You think I lied to you, perhaps; that this is all some kind of elaborate fantasy. Look in the coals there, where the flame glows deepest red. Slow your breathing, and shut out all else as you have been taught to do. Look hard and tell me what you see.’
But there was no need to put it into words. She must have read in my face the horror I felt as I stared into the fire and saw the tiny image of my father, his strong features contorted, his body twisted with pain, his chest racked with a coughing that seemed fit to split him asunder. Blood dribbled from his gasping mouth, his hands clutched blindly at the air, his dark eyes stared like a madman’s. My whole body went cold. I heard myself whispering, ‘Oh no, oh no.’ I might have begged her then, if I had had the strength to find words for it.
‘Oh, yes,’ Grandmother said, as the vision faded and I slumped back to crouch on the rug before the hearth. ‘It matters nothing to me if this is my son or a stranger, Fainne. All that matters is the task in hand.’
‘M – my father.’ I stammered. ‘Is he –?’
‘What you see is not now, it is the future. A possible future. If you want a different picture, it is up to you to ensure you obey my orders and perform what is required of you. Defy me, and he’ll die, slowly. You’ll do as I tell you, and you’ll keep your mouth shut about it. I hope you believe me, child. You’d be a very silly girl if you didn’t. Do you believe me, Fainne?’
‘Yes, Grandmother,’ I whispered.
The warm days passed, and the voices of children floated up on the summer breeze and made their way, laughing and shrieking, into the shadowy inner chambers of the Honeycomb. The curraghs sailed out of the cove in the dawn and returned at dusk, laden with their gleaming catch. Women mended nets on the jetty, and brown-skinned lads exercised horses along the strand, high-stepping over the mounded seaweed. I lay awake, night after night, listening to the distant lament of the pipes. Though Fiacha came and went, there was no sign at all of Father, and I began to fear I might never see him again. That hurt me terribly; and yet I did not want him to see what I was becoming, to witness my ill-use of the craft, and so in a way his absence was a relief. I hoped he would never have to learn the truth, that in sending me forth he sacrificed his only child to the most foolhardy and impossible of quests, where his own life was the price of failure. As for Grandmother, to her I was no more than a finely tuned weapon, a tool many years in the fashioning, which she would now employ for a purpose of such grandeur I still struggled to come to terms with it.
The summer was nearly ended. Grandmother had made practical preparations of a sort. My small storage chest now held two gowns of a slightly better standard than my usual garb of old working dress and serviceable apron. I had a new pair of indoor shoes as well as my walking boots. A man had made them specially, muttering to himself as he took measure of my misshapen foot. This was a trial. I would have blistered the cobbler’s fingers for him; but I needed the shoes.
I had not asked my grandmother how I was to travel to Sevenwaters. It was a long way, I knew that because Darragh had told me; nearly the length and breadth of Erin. But I had no idea how many moons such a journey might take. Perhaps my grandmother would work a spell of transportation, and send me north in an instant with my baggage by my side. In the end there was no need to ask, for one day Grandmother simply announced that it was time to go.
‘You’ll travel north on Dan Walker’s cart,’ she said, checking the strap which fastened my storage chest. ‘Very practical, if not altogether stylish.’
‘Practical?’ I echoed in dismay. ‘What’s practical about it?’
‘You’ll arouse a great deal less suspicion if you turn up with the travelling folk,’ she said drily, ‘than by manifesting yourself in your uncle’s hall amidst a shower of sparks. This way nobody’ll notice you. What’s one more lass amongst that great gaggle of people? Not nervous, are you? Surely I’ve worked that out of you by now. Use the Glamour if you must. Be what pleases you, child. These folk are only tinkers, Fainne. They’re nothing.’
‘Yes, Grandmother.’ Her words did little to settle the nervous churning in my stomach. I knew I must be strong. The task I undertook for my grandmother, her terrible work of vengeance against those who had slighted our kind, must be pursued with the utmost strength of purpose. My father’s very life was in my hands. I could not fail. I would not fail. Still, I was barely fifteen years old, tortured by shyness and quite unused to the world at large. It was this, I suppose, that made me such a subtle weapon. I must have seemed as innocuous as some little hedge creature that scuttles for cover at any imagined danger.
I took my leave of Grandmother. If she still harboured any doubts, she kept them to herself.
‘I almost wish I was coming with you,’ she sighed, and for an instant I caught a glimpse of that other manifestation she was fond of, an alluring, curvaceous young creature with auburn hair and pearly skin. ‘There must be fine men in those parts still, though there’ll never be another Colum. And I could still cast my net, make no doubt of it.’ Then, abruptly, she was herself again. ‘But I can see it wouldn’t do. They’d know me, Glamour or no. The druid would know me. So would that other one. This is your time, child. Remember what I’ve taught you. Remember what I’ve told you. Every little thing, Fainne.’
‘Yes, Grandmother.’
We walked out of the Honeycomb to the point where the cliff path stretched ahead all the way down to the shore and along to the western end of the cove, where Dan Walker and his folk would be making ready for departure. And there, dark-cloaked, ashen-faced,