Sir Eleri tends the flowers in her garden.
Cool, grey-green world of vegetation made brilliant with crisp mountain air! Sweetness of a thousand growing things wrestling their way up through the earth; press of heavy black dirt beneath her fingernails!! The reward for a life well lived. There are no dragons now to slay, no enchantments to be broken; she has used the days well.
Sometimes the villagers will make the walk up the hill to rest their arms upon her garden gate: they bring her homebrewed ale and ask her opinions on the best way to grow goldenseal or ward against trolls coming up from the valleys. Sometimes they come simply to pass the time of day. Respect lingers in their voices, honour in the eyes. They know what she has seen, and all she has done. Sometimes the children come – no honour in their eyes, little scamps! – and giggle at her funny ways, bring cakes from their mamas’ kitchens and beg her for stories. Let them giggle. Their company keeps her young.
Othertimes she kneels in the dirt, solitary as winter, and soaks in the quiet.
In the silence the birds come. Her reward, in her retirement, as fine as any treasure from any king. The trees rustle with the sound of old women whispering gossip at church, and into their great arms birds settle: fat, soulful wood pigeons; dolorous crows in their mourning garb; jewel-flashes of goldfinches and bramlings. Dusty, common blackbirds, who in their mischief perch on her shoulders and nestle their beaks through her hair, shrieking at its silver threads. Feisty robins squabbling over worms. Speckled wrens teasing the squirrels who nest in her trees. Pheasant cocks boasting their waistcoats of shimmering brilliance; the odd kite or sea eagle blown in from the western seas, wheeling overhead. And, one day, the tiny bird with plumage the colour of fire.
That’s different. That’s something new.
It flits on the outskirts of the flock: nervy amongst this motley, squabbling crew. Head downturned. Eyes averted. A stray whisp of fire amongst so much combustible bark and bracken. It lingers in dark, pooling shadows of oak and elm as if embarrassed of its great iridescence, which blazes still despite its owner’s bashfulness. No native bird this, its shy manners are exotic, alien. The other birds ignore this foreign presence, and in return for their tolerance the bird forebears from feeding, not to steal a single seed or bug from another wanting mouth. It merely opens its bruise-coloured throat and sings – such an unnaturally low trill, and so sorrowful, that it shakes all the leaves in Eleri’s garden.
For three days the bird sings its plaintive dirge, and on the third Eleri takes a handful of seed and kneels before the smokebush where this little flame hides. Her worn hand stretches out, and the bird pecks almost apologetically. ‘I’m sorry,’ it croaks: its voice low and distorted, as if escaping through water. ‘I didn’t mean to put you out, I was just so hungry…’
There is no answer to this. Nonetheless she stays crouched by the smokebush for a very long time, until every last seed is eaten.
The second bird she doesn’t notice until a week later: she brings a spade down too sharply against a stone with a metallic shriek, and the explosion of blazing feathers nearly blinds her. The agitated bird spins out from its hiding place and circles the cottage fifteen times – twenty times – crying out in distress. Only when she removes herself to the far end of the garden does it settle back into the branches of a yew tree. ‘You scared me,’ cries the bird, ‘oh, you took me by surprise is all. Please don’t hurt me.’
“I won’t,” Eleri says, while the fingers of grey morning mist twist about her ankles. The rest of the flock chitter mockingly; she waves an arm to silence them. “I won’t hurt you.”
The second bird peeps with gratitude. It appears entirely oblivious to its fellows’ derision. ‘I’m sorry. I was at fault, I was overreacting. I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.’ Its little head rolls back with an apologetic trill; its brother settles alongside it and raises its own voice in sympathy.
To her garden they come: these sad little creatures with their feathers of flame. With their sweet songs, and their apologies just for being alive.
When the tenth arrives Eleri gets up off her creaking knees: she stores away trowel and spade, the great straw hat that shields her eyes from the sun. Now she draws out cracked leather boots and travelling-cloak, blanket and water-costrel and pack. And the sword hanging over the fire.
The noise summons her Morgan in from the kitchen. Her man, her great handsome lunk of a lad, who forged her first blade when she was only a maid. Handsomest lad she’s ever laid eyes on: even now, even with lines creasing out from his eyes and those fine, tuggable curls of his now gone entirely grey. He stands in the doorway to their bedroom and watches her pack. “Off again, are you?”
She nods.
Morgan crosses the room, but only to press his lips against her brow. Hot enough to burn. “I’ll do you up something to eat on the road. Don’t forget to wrap up: there’s a storm brewing off west, they say.”
Eleri folds a hand into his jerkin and tugs him down to kiss him, hard, until he blushes like a boy. Good, sweet lad. She’s never once left home without Morgan waiting behind her: keeping the forge burning, strengthening her sword-arm. “Keep a light burning for me, cariad.”
-
Back in her younger days - far back in the mists of time, she is not above a little self-mockery – Eleri could swing herself into the saddle and fly into the wild like the western wind itself, her red hair streaming behind her as a pennant for all to see. Impetuousness of youth! Now her treacherous joints protest and the saddle, humiliatingly, must be cushioned for her comfort; her knotted hands can only grasp the reins but lightly. Though spring turns everything soft and slow Morgan insists on swaddling her in woollens. If some rogue dragon did stumble upon Eleri it’d have the devil of a job just digging through the knitwear.
The village children insist on walking behind her for the first couple of miles, as an escort. It’s embarrassing.
Still, as the horse plods over the unending, craggy line of the dark slate hills, Eleri admits that it pays to be a woman her age. Not all her peers have done so well. As a young thing any tavern she stopped at in the middle of a quest would have seen her face any number of brawls, or innkeepers with too many hands. Now they see her greying hair and must bow and call her ma’am; she always gets the best chair by the fire.
She prefers to sleep out-of-doors, though, when her arthritis allows. Up in the lichen-robed hills where the air is clear, the great bowl of the sky broken open above. Just her, and the stars raining down overhead.
And when she lies back, the birds come. They sing to her.
Their voices blend in tremulous unison: low with grief and fear, the sounds of mourning. They accept the seed she offers and dart around the fire, too close to the flames for her comfort; in the day they fly just far enough ahead that she might follow comfortably. At night they sing, and after a time they cluster together and fall silent, and sigh.
It is enough, Eleri realises, that they have someone to hear them: their songs of such absolute, aching weeping.
“Who are you?” Eleri murmurs, and cups her hands so the birds might settle there, one by one. They rest in her hands and they shiver, as if tender touch is something foreign to them. “What is it you want from me?”
-
The town is a commonplace one of broad cobbled streets and a maypole in the square: she’s visited the sort enough times. Rosy-cheeked children and hawkers selling powered griffins’ teeth for your lumbago. Has Eleri visited here before? Maybe that business with the master’s daughter absconding through the sewers with a minotaur, or that incident with all the town children cursed to dance until their feet bled. It’s so long ago now; she’s travelled too much to recall.
Eleri pays an innkeeper outside of town handsomely to stable her horse and then ventures in afoot, bent almost double and leaning upon a gnarled stick bought for such a purpose – it never pays to advertise too readily. She complains audibly about the state of her poor feet and receives nothing but kindly smiles in return.
The birds twitter with approval at her disguise, though they’ve refused to direct her further since reaching the town. They merely perch on her shoulders, singing and making anxious comments about how tired she must be.
Eleri is not tired. She explores the town without trouble: in her disguise she is the picture of a withered crone crumpled by fate and time, the sort that might, in the stories, repay your kindness with good fortune. The townsfolk respect the rules of how these things are done. Her avine companions are accepted as the foibles of an old beggar-woman, and she receives hot soup and sympathetic condescension from a dozen different doors: butcher, baker, candlestick maker. This entire town is bland with the satisfaction of the good life. She’s never been here before, she realises, for life here is good and easy and impervious to all wrongs. This kind of smug self-confidence could see off a dozen dragons.
Everyone here is very nice, very pleasant. They tell her so themselves. Nothing bad could happen here, not in a place like this.
So why have the birds led her here?
By the fifth day, Eleri finds herself thinking that if she doesn’t find something wrong with this place soon she’s going to give the next flaxen-haired maiden she finds a damn good slap.
It’s late morning when she approaches the next kitchen door, leaning theatrically upon her staff as she goes. The sweetness in the air announces the garden before she sees it: a fine arrangement for one caught in the city’s limits, small but healthy. Herbs grow in lush, tangled messes, and between their foliage blossom flowers that swell almost luminous, even in the sunlight. A perfect medley of green! – olive, chartreuse, emerald, jade, loden. Verdancy in its entirety. Someone has put every inch of their heart into this lovely place.
She’s been distracted too long. The door is open and a tall young man stands politely before her – though all are young to her now and this lad must be past thirty, already a little wear to his face and a shy, good-natured expression. Broad hands, strong frame. Above her head the birds begin to sing.
“Hello, dearie,” Eleri says. “I’ve been walking ever such a long time, oh my feet, and wondered if there a soul in this house with enough pity to give an old widow woman some water?”
Clearly bemused by her theatrics, the young man nods: he brings milk and apples and a slice of ham pie. Though nimble in this hospitality, he’s unlikely to be a servant, for the fine cut of his clothes proclaim him the master of this house. Good pie too. Eleri says so, and through gestures the man professes to have made it.
“I like a man who knows his way around a pastry,” Eleri says approvingly. “My husband now, God bless him, makes an oggie that could bring you to tears. Ever tried one? Well now, you certainly should: though not to say this isn’t a fine pie right here. Mustard and bay leaf, am I right? And a few cloves? You’re a dab hand with a side of pig and some pastry, Mister Baker.” She’s becoming increasingly aware that this is not so much conversation as soliloquy. “Not much one for talking, are you?”
With an apologetic smile the man gestures to his throat. As he does so a flame-coloured bird lands on his shoulder. ‘Sorry. So sorry.’
Oh, Eleri thinks. Oh dear.
-
Magical practitioners and wise men say there’s a subtle difference between the one who has seen their voice stolen, and one who has willingly given it away.
The distinction is subtle, but nonetheless there, they say. It is all a matter of perspective in how one treats the sufferer. It’s all a matter of motivation, and of psychology. Should one care for the aggrieved as a mere patient, or is it fitting to induce them to take responsibility for their own failure? Was the sufferer aware of what mess they were stumbling into – and if so, should we not save our efforts for those who have had their voice stolen unknowing? Is one dealing with a victim, or one complicit in black magic, or a fool?
Eleri, who never had much time for formal learning, thinks this all just a matter of talk. Down to brass tacks, you have a soul who should have a voice, but does not. That means there’s a problem needs fixing.
That’s all that matters.
-
As spring yields to summer’s patient urgings Eleri spends her days in the small city garden with her new friend. She digs waterways to better irrigate the plants while Daniel tacks up netting to keep off hungry sparrows – Daniel, his name is Daniel, so Eleri hears from a neighbour who shakes her head sadly over the poor unfortunate.
“Well then,” asks Eleri, “what’s the matter of his misfortune?”
I’m sure I don’t know, the neighbour says primly, in the tone of one devoutly occupied with minding her own business.
If I’d done nothing but mind my own business, Eleri thinks darkly, there’d be a dozen villages in the mountains now destroyed by wyrm-fire and dark enchantments. And that’s just for starters.
Contrary to popular opinion, Daniel is neither stupid nor downhearted. He’s a cheerful young man who spends much of his time nurturing his garden, carving wood in his workshop, or in the kitchen – Eleri was right, he does have a dab hand with all things pastry – tending to matters always in the same neat fashion and expressing pleasure through a soft hum in the base of his throat whenever something goes right. He bustles, and hums, and through such activity very nearly drowns out the slow and creeping silence working through this house like a mist.
He doesn’t seem to mind Eleri’s company: indeed, from the grin that broadens his face whenever she visits Eleri flatters herself that he even enjoys it. She is even, in time, permitted the privilege of minding whatever is on the stove while Daniel attends the business of showing customers through to the workshop (the townsfolk seem to respect his craftsmanship, if not his unfortunate personage). When someone collects their order he will inevitably return glowing with such pride that the ancients, should they have ever seen him, would have thought a new sun-god had alighted to earth. He will lift his hands up to cup the birds and kiss their quivering, fire-coloured feathers with joy.
‘It is enough,’ trills one. ‘It is good, it is enough.’
Eleri does not ask about the birds. She suspects Daniel understands their existence even less than she. Sometimes one’s desires are buried so deep, and blaze so bright, that they must make themselves known or their bearer will perish.
To fill the silence Eleri inhabits the role of chattering old woman. She sits in the garden, learning from Daniel the correct way to carve yew and elm and so make the wood come alive – she must take his offerings with gratitude, she will show him only respect, not charity – and in return she offers him her company, and her stories. Tales of dragon fire and giants and madmen flying through the trees; wild witches in the grey, drenched, tangled woods; swordplay and daring-do and quests always ending happily ever after.
At her tales he laughs and he laughs. It’s a lovely, gurgling sound. She is grateful that that much has not been stolen from him, at least. If I’d had a child, I would have loved it to have such a laugh, Eleri thinks, though that one joy has been denied her and Morgan.
“You’re a good lad,” she always says. “With a lovely laugh. If you wanted to say something now, just in a whisper, I bet you could. I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
At this his lovely laugh will dim, and he will glance over his shoulder, and something in this light and airy house will grow stale. The silence stirs, like the slow creepings of some colossal wyrm. ‘Can’t,’ the birds cry. ‘Happy here. Can’t.’
There is shadow here. The sort only found in the lairs of the worst kind of monsters. It is not the trifling lust for gold or blood that drives these creatures, Eleri knows. Only the desire for power over another living creature. She has scented that desire before, thick and oily as firesmoke, and once one knows it one can never forget it.
So it is here. That unspoken song of control. And there is fear also, secret in the edges of Daniel’s shy smile.
Only once does she meet the wife. Lovely as the dawn, with as slick and metal a smile as any wyrm Eleri ever slain. “Visiting these parts?” she asks. The hand that cups Eleri’s shoulder in welcome is silk-soft. “Well, you’re most welcome at our hearth for as long as you need.”
Daniel comes to stand beside her: his smile is broad, hopeful, but his stance is not that of a husband beloved. It is that of a penitent. Footsteps over eggshells. Waiting only for reproach.
“Your husband has been kind to an old woman,” Eleri says in an ancient’s croak.
“I’m glad to see he’s good for something.” Her hand smooths over Daniel’s shoulder and Eleri sees the almost imperceptible shiver that passes through him, and the violence cushioned in a gentle touch. The woman seems to smile at the flame-birds: Eleri wonders if it pleases her to hear them weeping, a reassurance that her husband, so caught, is not going anywhere.
Sir Eleri would like to run this woman through with her sword and make an end of it, but she knows you can’t do things like that these days.
There is shadow here, and a dragon at the heart of the keep. But the thing about dragons is that they can be slain.
“You’re a good lad, Daniel,” she says once the woman has left. “Don’t you forget it: you’re a good lad.” But Daniel just smiles softly and returns to his baking. The birds flitter plaintively around his head.
-
Beyond the town walls there are fields, copses and glades, rivers that come down singing over the rocky hills bearing sewin and minnows and beavers in its watery hands. There is also wild garlic and river-oysters to be foraged for the kitchen.
It’s not the world of mountains and woodlands she knows. So Eleri insists whenever they venture out. Out where the clear cool air slices through you with steel, and the smell of the peat bogs fills you up: the scent of rich, dark earth, wet animal, and the freshness of the rain itself. Where the woods are so deep and so ancient that the trees will swallow you whole, a lichen-thick throat, and press you down until you are as light and airy as a leaf in winter. Linger long enough and you will feel the green lay over your skin, and roots breathing beneath your feet.
Still. This is a start. She wants him to see that there is something beyond those town walls, and a kitchen muggy with silence, and the control of one meant to love you.
They walk for miles, until the sun bakes them through and the air turns light with the scent of summer grass. Eleri pokes through the hedgerows for seeds she can take back home; Daniel hunts for the pot, for chanterelle and elder and wild strawberries. This lazy summer heat causes him to sulk, and he’s prone to pausing for a rest before Eleri can even get up a good speed. It must be the town boy in him. When she scolds him for it he rolls his eyes and pretends not to hear.
She’s discovering more about this sweet-eyed lad. He’s melodramatic, he’s stubborn, he’s certainly no adventurer. He likes his home comfort. He’s creative in his work, he’s precise as a doctor. He’s tolerant of an old woman’s moods. He’s a good man.
“Still,” Eleri says once when they pause by a river, soaking their feet in its glass-cold depths, “even if you weren’t good, you still deserve the chance to speak for yourself.”
Daniel mimes flapping forefinger and thumb several times over in the play of a squawking bird: his sign for when she’s chattering on. He’s grinning though.
“Alright, alright. An old woman’s entitled to her opinion, isn’t she?”
She can’t pressure him; Eleri knows that now. She can only encourage, and he can only follow. He must. He must.
Sometimes when they return from these excursions Eleri sees Daniel’s wife at an upstairs window. Her vigilance is careful. She keeps a careful eye on her investment; there is, Eleri supposes, a sort of power in knowing her husband will return to her.
-
When on day she proposes their daily walk and Daniel shakes his head, pointing upstairs to his wife’s chambers, Eleri bursts into angry tears. She hasn’t wept so in twenty years.
“What,” she asks, “will you allow even this happiness to be taken from you?”
It’s unkind of her. She knows this is unkind. One does not demand of the prisoner why he has not yet transformed himself into a mouse and so squeezed between the bars. But it hurts to see him like this, and she cannot bear a hurt forever.
It hurts even more, to suspect it is her presence tightening the bars around him.
“Please,” she says, “come with me. We can find your voice again: there’s all manner of things we might try, and all manner of folk smarter than I who could help. But you can’t stay here. It’s killing you to remain in this house.”
The birds collect in the rafters: darting moments of sunlight in the shadows of this prison. Their song is wretched. They might as well be weeping.
“I don’t know what more to do,” she pleads. “It’s not right that you should endure this. I want to help you, if only you’ll let me.”
Daniel looks away, wordless. His silence remains, and she cannot break it for him.
Eleri shakes her head: she is suddenly and painfully conscious of how old she is, how tired of the world and its flaws she has become. Foolish, foolish old woman. “I can’t stay here,” she says finally, taking his hand, “and I can’t steal your voice back for you. I only wish I could persuade you that you’re worthy of it.”
She promises to come back; she promises to write in what little chicken-scratch she has. She promises she won’t abandon him, though none of this, Eleri thinks, is liable to do much good. She asks Daniel to forgive her: in response he hugs her tight. They both know there’s little she can do.
Eleri only wishes she was more certain of the fact.
It’s only when she’s ten miles out of town that Eleri realises she’s left her shawl in the kitchen. It doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.
-
It is always good to come home at the end of a long and bitter journey.
This time, however, the sight of such funny little homesteads and funny little people makes Eleri want to weep. Peaceful, ordinary -and dull, dear things, dull as ditchwater! Eleri had never been able to stay too long in this place as a youth. But dull, she now knows, can be good: when married with pure, solid decency. There are far worst things in this world than to be dull and steady and kind.
Such things she considers sadly, while the village children clamour around her for sweets and goblins’ skulls.
The final walk up the hill has never seemed so punishing, and once again Eleri realises with shock that she is getting old. She enters the kitchen and sees Morgan standing there; she almost permits the tears to fall at the sight.
“Hullo there, cariad.” The light that breaks over his face – well, you might have sworn it the first dawn after winter. “I’ve been expecting you this past week; you took your time of it, love. I missed you. Did you slay your dragon this time?”
Eleri almost runs through the kitchen and thrusts herself into his arms.
“Eleri?”
“Just hold me,” she says into his shirt, and feels Morgan’s arms tighten around her. “I don’t want to think of anything else but you for a long time.”
-
Sir Eleri tends the flowers in her garden.
You can’t slay every dragon. It’s a lesson every warrior must learn, but that doesn’t make the lesson any sweeter. She weeps angry tears into the earth and with them cultivates creeping jenny and woundwort and sweet woodruff: vigorous, stubborn plants bred to withstand the sorrows of the years. She tears up weeds with abandon and flings them onto the fire. After a few days Morgan finds her shouting at her roses for growing out of true and kisses her forehead. “Can’t fix everything, love. You know that.”
“I should be able to,” she mutters into his chest. She feels him chuckle.
So to the garden she returns. No wound to the soul cannot be assuaged by good dark earth and fresh mountain air cutting through the lungs; she finds her remedy in hard labour that burns through the muscles until all else is wiped out, in rain on the grass and the steaming cups of tea that Morgan brings. It’s not the first time she has suffered such defeat. Not all her stories are happy ones. It’s just that she didn’t tell Daniel the tales that ended poorly: she’d hoped he’d only have to think of happy endings.
Lady’s slipper; star-of-bethlehem; passing storm; ivory bells; lucky jims. Eleri tends them all. She scatters seed for the plump coal tits, and shoos at the starlings who try to pick at her seedlings. She does her work.
One day a flame-coloured bird is nesting in the branches of her old sessile oak.
Eleri glares at it.
‘The roses are in fine bloom,’ it offers. ‘Very fine bloom.’
“Thank you,” she says gruffly.
‘Will you plant the lily seeds from the valley?’
She pulls a face. “I think so, yes.”
‘You should.’ The bird, in defiance of all laws of nature, manages to scrunch its beak. It seems amazed at how many words are emerging from its rosy throat. ‘They’ll look very fine by your pond, I think.’
Eleri must concede, the bird is correct on this matter. It’s correct in its advice on how to tend the parsnips, on when the irises need more water, and when the smaller sparrows are sickening from want of food. She supposes it has years of silence to make up for.
When it arrives on the seventh day Eleri is waiting, prepared. ‘You should plant the mourning widows in the shade,’ it advises.
Eleri pauses. Tests the waters, just slightly, by pushing back. “I disagree. I like the look of them here.”
‘So you might,’ says the bird almost pettishly, standing its ground. ‘It’s your garden. But I’m telling you, mourning widows like the shade better than sun.’
And Eleri doesn’t ride out, and she doesn’t rejoice. But she does hope.
The young man arrives at the gate a week later: pink-faced, breathless, and with a look of brilliant, almost savage triumph in his eyes. Eleri straightens up, her smile broad. “Morgan,” she calls, “put the kettle on, and make up the spare bedroom too, if you’ve time. We have a visitor.”
Daniel holds up his hand, and within it Eleri recognises her red shawl. “I think,” he says quietly and then touches his fingers in marvelling wonder to his throat, “I think you left this behind. I should like to give it back.”
Through the garden the friends walk, through sprays of grass and tumbled petals, into the house.