A Rush of Wings, page 8
Rowenna’s stomach dropped out of her. She had no idea what they should do. She’d only been glad, for a single fleeting moment, to see her brothers in their human shapes. But that gladness had burned clear away, replaced by nausea and guilt. In a way it was her fault, that they’d come to this. If she’d warned them about Mairead, perhaps none of it would have happened. If she’d been truthful from the start, they’d have been better prepared. And if she’d been able to do anything but stand helplessly by the night Mairead died… but that line of thinking led only to despair. With a wrench, Rowenna brought her mind back to the present.
“I’ll mind the sail and the stern oars,” Duncan muttered, and pushed past her to the back of the yoal. Liam and Finn huddled together in the center of the small boat. Gawen had retreated to the bow at its front, as far away from the family squabble as he could get, and sat hunched over, a pained and brooding figure. Rowenna could not bear the way Duncan and Liam and even little Finn looked at her, so she went hesitantly to Gawen instead.
“Can I sit?” she asked softly.
In answer, he shifted on the taft—one of three board seats running across the width of the yoal. Gawen’s breath caught as he moved, and Rowenna glanced at him. He was pale, sweat beading on his forehead, and his hands shook ever so slightly.
Rowenna bit her lip. “God in heaven, stray, I’m sorry about all this. Are you going to be all right?”
“Well, I was recently a bird, and I’ve never had that happen before, so I’m not entirely sure.” There was no accusation behind the words, only mild humor, and Rowenna went weak with relief.
“Not that,” she said. “The rest of you. You were a heap of broken pieces at the base of a cliff only days ago.”
“Truth be told, it feels like I’m dying,” Gawen confessed. “But I’m not, and sooner or later I’ll mend, so there’s no need to fuss. Are you all right?”
Rowenna looked away, fixing her eyes on the last of the fading evening light. “I’m not the one who’s cursed now.”
“Aren’t you? You couldn’t speak when we were swans, could you?”
“No,” Rowenna admitted reluctantly.
“That’s a curse.”
“It’s not the same,” Rowenna said.
“Still.”
She stole a glance at Gawen. Now that he was sitting quietly, he seemed a little better, one hand resting on the gunwale, his gaze on the horizon.
“It wasn’t me,” she said suddenly, her voice low and desperate. “Tell me you believe me. I need someone to believe me.”
“You know, I drowned once,” Gawen told her instead. “My family’s land is all the way across the country, on the western coast. Our keep was in view of the sea, and on fine days in summer, the village boys and I lived in the water.
“The summer I was nine I swam out past the breakers. We’d been told not to, but someone had set it as a dare, and I’ve never had much sense. I went out to where the seabed dropped away underneath me into endless black. It felt like flying at first, or like being reborn as a star, hanging above that bottomless water. And I wasn’t so far that I couldn’t swim back to shore, or call out to my friends and be heard.
“So I stayed there to show off. Floated about and taunted them for not having the nerve to follow where I’d gone. I was shouting my fool head off when something grabbed me by the ankles and pulled me under.”
Everything in Rowenna went tense. They were forced to sit so close together on the taft, Gawen felt her stiffen. He gave her the ghost of a smile and shook his head. “I’m here aren’t I, scold? You know this story comes out all right in the end.
“Of course I fought, though I couldn’t see what it was that had hold of me at first. My lungs were filling with water, and everything was going dark by the time I got a glimpse of it. And it was me. My own face staring back at me, with wicked satisfaction written across it.
“I suppose I’m luckier than most. Another moment or two and I’d have been finished, dragged down and hidden somewhere for the fish to gnaw at, until finally even my bones were gone. But my sister, Sibyl, was like you—a cailleach. A wise woman, who can hear some part of the earth or the water, and speak to it in turn. The sea had been speaking to her since she was just a babe in arms, and at only thirteen my mother had been schooling her in craft for years.
“She was on the shore when I went under and told me later that the waves cried out to her, as if some great pain had wakened in them. The outcry was so sudden and so dreadful that Sibyl sent out all of her power and split the sea apart, water hurrying away to the north and south, leaving a long rocky swath of dry land where only ocean bed had been.
“The path she made cut straight to the place where the water spirit and I were locked in a death struggle. We were dropped onto a shelf of rock jutting out into the abyss, and Sibyl came at us in a fury. She could see well enough which of us was me and which was the creature—fuathan, they’re called, sly, evil-natured things that can change their skin and lay a curse and drown a grown man. Though the rest of the village children standing on the shore could see no difference between me and the creature, Sibyl knew. She gathered up sea earth and cut open her hand with a shard of coral and laid a work of earth and bone and blood so powerful on the fuath that it was driven back out to sea, and never troubled our shore again.”
Rowenna felt hollowed out by her own ignorance and gutted by her longing to be as capable as Gawen’s sister once was—to be enough for whatever came her way.
“How could she be so strong and yet still die?” Rowenna murmured.
Gawen raised one shoulder, in a careful, emotionless gesture. “We were rebels, all. My whole family and me. And some monsters you can’t fight, Rowenna, no matter how strong you become. Torr Pendragon held my own life and my father’s over my mother and Sibyl like a threat, and at the end, both of them walked to a witch’s stake without hesitation.”
He recounted that last without inflection, as if it had happened to someone else. As if it had been years ago, instead of mere weeks. For a long while, Gawen and Rowenna sat in silence, the yoal going up and down beneath them, the waves breaking ceaselessly against its sides.
“You ask me if I believe you, that you didn’t make this curse,” Gawen said finally. “Aye, I do. I’ve known despots and monsters and what some would call witches, and there’s more to this world than most care to see. But I’ve seen it, and I believe you.”
Silence fell between them, and for a long while there was only the lapping of the waves and the wordless singing of the wind.
Chapter Nine
At dawn, the maddening scent of peat and rain and smoke descended on them once more, and with a rush of wings, the boys became swans. None of them besides Gawen had spoken to Rowenna since they’d cast the blame for their curse on her, and she watched their transformation numbly. She tested her silence, too, trying to murmur a word and finding herself voiceless again.
The swans dozed, but not long after their change, clouds began to build on the northern horizon. They grew more threatening by the minute, until finally the first drops of cold, stinging rain hit Rowenna. She wrapped the oilskin tighter about herself and wished fiercely that Duncan was in his human form. Whatever the tension between them, he was better with a boat than most, and she knew precious little.
But she did know enough to trim the sail, ship the oars, and hold tight as the first gust of wind hit.
It lashed against the yoal, ruffling the swans’ feathers as they huddled together in the bottom of the boat amid growing puddles of bilge water. The waves roared against the hull, battering the little craft and threatening to swamp it. The fear in Rowenna was a wild thing, raging at the encompassing walls of her rib cage.
And then, through the wind’s furious howling, she caught the sound of its voice. Never had Rowenna welcomed that sound before, but here, far from home and caught on the storm-tossed sea, it was as welcome and beloved as reassurance from an old friend.
Rowenna, the wind wailed. Our love, our light, our dark-hearted girl.
At the sound, Rowenna’s fear subsided a little, and though she was still forced to cling to the gunwales to avoid being dashed from the yoal, the storm no longer seemed quite as terrible.
After what seemed like an eternity, her trust in the harrying wind was rewarded, for it drove the yoal on, and with a sudden sickening jolt, dashed it against the shore. Rowenna was thrown in among the swans, and then they were all tumbling out of the boat, onto unfamiliar earth.
Even through the driving rain, Rowenna caught sight of a world entirely different from the one she’d known all her life. Where the cliffs around Neadeala were craggy and the coves and harbors rock strewn, here a long, straight spit of sand stretched as far as the eye could see from one direction to another. There was something strange away inland, too—a dark, uneven thing hanging over the flat countryside like a shadow, hugging the horizon but keeping away from the coast.
Having lived all her life in a place surrounded by treeless heath, it took Rowenna a moment to realize that what she saw was a forest. Without hesitation, she started across the sand for the strange and looming wood. The rain was frigid, and the night before, her brothers and Gawen had come back to their human forms in the nightshirts and breeches they’d transformed in. They’d need shelter if they shed their feathers and wings again. Rowenna had every intention of finding it for them before the change occurred.
It took far longer to reach the trees than she’d expected, and when she made it to the eaves of the forest, she couldn’t help but stare up, awestruck by their height. There was a pungent tang to the air too, and dead needles crunched beneath her feet. But before long, Rowenna’s attention was drawn back to earth as she realized the black swan was lagging behind. His gait was awkward and unsteady, and Rowenna went to the creature, dropping to her knees at his side.
Wordlessly she opened her arms in an invitation, and though the swan’s fierce red eyes were undaunted and prideful, nevertheless he came to her. She settled the creature in against her chest, his bird heart beating rapidly, and they carried on.
It had come into Rowenna’s mind that perhaps if she could only keep walking, eventually, by the time her legs gave way, things might be better. She might have outstripped all the troubles that had descended upon her like carrion crows. And while she knew the idea to be untrue, still she could not shake the compulsion. It at least felt like progress, to put one foot endlessly in front of the other. So she continued on through the pine forest, until the trees gave way a little and she found herself on a woodland path scored by the imprint of cart wheels.
But all along the cart road, shadowy shapes hung from the trees. As Rowenna drew up alongside the first, she stopped short, eyes widening in horror.
It was a body, clothes in tatters, flesh decaying and bones showing stark through ruined skin. Whoever it had been, their face was unrecognizable, having been picked at by birds. Rowenna peered down the path and realized that other bodies lined the road, stretching as far she could see. There were men and women and the smaller shapes of children. She looked and looked and could not tear her gaze from the tragic sight—not until the black swan in her arms raised a wing and shielded her face.
These must have been rebels and their families, Rowenna realized. Those who’d stood against Torr Pendragon and paid for it with their lives. But she could not stay and mourn them indefinitely—not if they were to find more shelter than the pine wood could afford. Carrying on, Rowenna fixed her eyes on the path, until the trees thinned out and gave way and she walked across open heath once more.
The storm clouds of morning had broken up, drifting in great banks across the sky, and the sun hung low ahead of Rowenna, dipping down to brush the horizon. Crimson light still bathed the moors, and Rowenna ceased walking. She set Gawen down and held her breath, waiting for her swans to change.
The sun sank and set, and darkness fell. Stars pricked to life across the indigo sky, and tears pricked behind Rowenna’s eyes. Perhaps the monster in her mother’s skin had lied. Perhaps the night before had been the single chance for her to reconcile with her brothers, and now the curse had taken hold of them irrevocably.
But then the earthy scent of home filled the air. Feathers were shaken off. Boys stood where birds had been a moment ago.
Anxiousness turned Rowenna’s palms clammy as she looked at them. Their change had come later tonight. And if Mairead had spoken the truth, it would come still later tomorrow, until their time in human form dwindled away entirely and left them swans forever.
She wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. Duncan, with his sailor’s eye for wind and weather, glanced sharply up at the sky.
“It’s late,” he said. “Yesterday there was still a bit of light left after we changed. What is this, Enna? Are we going to run out of time?”
“I don’t… I don’t know for sure,” Rowenna answered, faltering on the words. Her voice, stolen by day, came out unsteady at first, and then gained power. But she had no will to protest yet again that the curse was not of her making. “I’m afraid you might.”
“You can fix it, though, can’t you?” Finn asked, fear setting his child’s voice to wavering. “You did it, so you can fix it.”
All three of her brothers looked expectantly at her, Duncan and Liam with bitterness and reproach in their eyes as well. But it was Finn’s desperate trust that hurt Rowenna worst.
That and the memory of Cam standing brokenhearted on the shore, not knowing the creature beside him was a monster rather than his beloved wife. Without her swift return, what would become of him? Yet even if she went back, what could she possibly do? And how could she begin to go about unraveling her brothers’ curse before they were bound to their swan shapes forever?
In spite of her doubts, she could not bear to see Finn looking so—as if all the world had been proved wicked, when before he’d believed it to be good.
“Yes,” she found herself saying, though the lie burned at her throat like a brand. “Of course I can fix this, Finny. It might take some time and some work, but I promise you—I promise you—that I’ll right what’s gone wrong.”
“You can’t right wrong with yet more wrong,” Liam warned, long shadows making his thin face seem ghostly. “We don’t want anything else wicked or unnatural done to us or for us.”
Rowenna was trying to be forbearing. But her patience was worn down to dust by carrying the weight of truth and the responsibility for resolving all the misfortune that had befallen them.
“Then you’ll have to keep your curse,” she snapped at Liam. “Though I doubt even your righteousness will be enough to rid you of it without help.”
Her breath was coming quick and hard, and she could feel herself edging toward some shameful loss of composure. It was Duncan who saved her, despite the tension between them.
“We can’t stay out here all night,” he grumbled, shivering in his nightclothes. “Wherever here is. We’ll have to carry on, until we find somewhere with enough shelter to keep us from freezing before dawn.”
“I know where we are.”
It was the first time Gawen had spoken since they’d resumed their human forms and Rowenna’s voice had returned. There was something in his words, some warning or trouble, that made all of them turn to look at him.
But all he said when faced with the Winthrops’ attention was “There’s a place we can shelter not far from here.”
It was slow going, following in Gawen’s wake as he limped doggedly on across the moorland. Once they crossed paths with a wizened old farmer leading a shaggy red bullock across the heath, and Gawen drew him aside. A few hushed words and some token or currency passed between the two.
“We’re nearly there” was all Gawen said as the farmer carried on.
At last he stopped them at the edge of a vast, fog-draped field. The mist parted for brief moments, then closed again, allowing only an occasional glimpse of the wide expanse of heather-clad flat land. Something woke in Rowenna’s bones as they approached the place—an ache and an itch and a wrongness, rising up from the land itself. The wind that pushed at the shreds of fog keened in the hollows and cried among the branches of the occasional twisted pines that dotted the field, but its voice was wordless.
No one spoke. The desolate air of the open land ahead of them was so pervasive, even Rowenna’s brothers seemed to sense it. Gawen stood a little apart from the rest of them, his jaw tense and his eyes fixed on something Rowenna could not see.
“We’ll have to cross it,” Gawen said presently. “There’s an empty church we can spend the night in on the other side.”
“I don’t like it,” Finn confessed, drawing closer to Liam. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“It’s Drumossie Moor,” Gawen said. “Your father and I were both here, only a month ago. This is where the Highlands uprising against Torr Pendragon finally died. Thousands of men met their end on this field, including my own brother.”
Finn shivered, eyes owl wide in his small, pale face.
“The dead can’t hurt you, Finn,” Liam said reassuringly.
“And I won’t let anything happen to you,” Rowenna promised. “I swear I’ll keep you safe.”
But when she moved toward him, her youngest brother shied away. “I don’t believe you. We had to leave home, didn’t we? And there’s something wrong with all of us now. I don’t like changing, Enna. It hurts my head, and it makes me forget things I wish I could remember.”
Stung by Finn’s words, Rowenna stepped back.
“We’ll all keep together while we cross,” Liam said. “So as not to get lost in the fog. Gawen, you’d best lead, since you know where we’re headed.”
Rowenna bit back a swift retort. She didn’t want Gawen in front of them. She wanted him beside her or behind her, in this place where the end of his old life had begun, when his brother was killed and his father captured and the Highland uprising put down. But if he’d been here before it only made sense for him to guide them, so she held her tongue.
