Authors: Bevan McGuiness
The Awakening
For Lindsay
The first time she saw him, he was standing dawn watch on the wall.
He was a big man with coarse, almost brutish features. His untidy black hair was whipped back by the bitter wind that blew in from the sea. From his shoulders hung the dark blue cloak that identified him as a member of the City Guard. He walked slowly along the rampart, watching the endlessly heaving sea.
The young woman shivered and pulled her cloak tighter around her. She had lived in this fortified town all her life and the sea was ever part of her soul. Its constantly changing moods, its colours and its energy both frightened and compelled her. Often, she would come out onto this part of the ramparts just to stand and watch the sea as it moved in its never-ending quest, always moving, never still. This day, like so many others, she came to stand and watch.
Seeing the strange man, she stopped and pulled back, hiding in the darkness. He walked towards her with the smooth, easy tread of the warrior, ever alert, ever ready for violent action. His hand rested familiarly
on the hilt of his sword, his grip steady. As he walked by her, he nodded, grunting a companionable greeting, turning his face towards her slightly. Startled, she smiled briefly. The smile, albeit fleeting, transformed her face, taking it to one of startling beauty. He walked on, neither pausing nor hesitating in his steady pacing of the wall. She watched him go on his way.
With the sole exception of the Coerl—the ranking Soldier in charge of the City Guard—never before had one of the guards as much as acknowledged her. It was one of the results of living in a closed community, that a reputation once gained, be it fair or otherwise, was nigh on impossible to escape. So it was with this woman. As a child she had been regarded as a ‘strange one’ with her lavender eyes and unpredictable moods. It was often said of her that she resembled her father, the Southern Raider who, it was believed, had taken her mother by force.
It had happened during one of many lightning-fast raids that had been so common at that time. The Southern Raiders had grown bold, even attacking the coast of the Empire of the World. They came at night with their swift black warboats and brutal war axes. The strangled cry of a sentry, killed by a single vicious blow, had been the town’s first warning. His was neither the first nor the last life snuffed out that blood-soaked night, but that particular raid also brought to the town a new life. Some time later a poor woman of the town gave birth to a fair-haired, lavender-eyed daughter. To her daughter, she gave the name Hwenfayre, which in the language of the islands from where she herself came, meant
child of the sea
, for as she said, ‘This child is none of my
doing, she is got from the sea.’ Thus it was that Hwenfayre came into life, never truly wanted, nor truly understood, for many things are told of the evil of the southerners who raid the coastal cities.
As a girl, she grew up knowing only veiled hints and innuendo. Her hair grew long and wild in its neglect. All the girls around her had the dark brown hair and olive complexion common to the people of the land, but Hwenfayre, with her pale skin and fine, white-blonde locks, shone as a lantern in the dark among them. It mattered not where she was or who she was with, Hwenfayre never blended, never fitted, never faded into the background. Yet she never seemed to make a great effort to do so. Her strangeness was not just a result of her appearance. There was something distant, something ‘other’ in her that drove others away. The other girls, as befitted the women of a poor town, displayed the properly demure, submissive attitude required of them by their men. Hwenfayre behaved exactly as she pleased, or, more precisely, exactly as she saw fit in any given situation. Even her mother, in one of her rare talkative moods, had commented, ‘Hwenfayre, could you at least
try
to act like a normal child? You might even make a friend if you wanted one.’ But this meant little to Hwenfayre.
Another man had seen this brief, apparently inconsequential meeting between girl and guard. The Coerl sighed as he stood motionless, hidden in the shadows. He had watched this scene played out many times before. Hwenfayre often came onto the wall at this time, just before the sun’s rays took the sea’s inky-black swells and turned them blue. She
came to watch the change from darkness to light and the sea’s transformation from a thing of shifting black mystery to a manifestation of blue-green beauty. He stirred as he waited for the next stage of the morning’s drama to be played out.
Sure enough, when the new guardsman had passed out of sight, Hwenfayre walked quickly out of her partially hidden niche and stood at the ramparts, staring out at the sea. After a few minutes, she took out a small harp from under her cloak. With a smooth, practised movement she caressed the strings, producing a rippling, almost ethereal sound. She began to play a haunting melody. Although the Coerl had been listening to that same song for several years, he had never heard it played by anyone else, nor had anyone ever been able to identify it for him. It was a strangely compelling, melancholy song that drew out his emotions in a way that nothing else could. He had often wanted to ask her about it, but whenever he spoke to her she would stop playing and flee.
For some reason, this morning seemed to be somehow different, somehow full of meaning. As if, in some way, anything left undone now would never be done. The Coerl hesitated, then stepped forward. Immediately Hwenfayre stiffened and stopped playing. But unlike previous times, she did not turn and run. Instead she slowly turned to face him, her harp held protectively before her breast, as a mother would shield a child.
‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘I just want to talk to you.’
Her eyes tightened suspiciously and she shifted her feet as if to take flight. In her every movement, she
reminded the Coerl of a frightened deer, trembling and prepared, tense with energy to be released in a single bound.
‘That is a beautiful song. What is it called?’ he asked slowly, softly.
‘What would one like you know of beauty?’ she answered. Her voice was gentle, almost lyrical. It carried a hint of exotic places, of sights never seen, of a world unexplored. It was a voice that could entice and bewitch.
‘Perhaps you could teach me.’ The moment the words left his lips he realised his error and instantly regretted it. Her face closed and her eyes went hard. She turned and walked swiftly away, not looking back. He wished he had the courage to call her, to somehow make her turn around, to take back, to erase his hasty words. But knowing how she would continue walking without even acknowledging his words made his courage wither and fade. Watching her disappear away into the shadows of the predawn, he felt a brief pang of indescribable loss.
As she hurried down the steps that led away from the wall, Hwenfayre put her harp back under her cloak. She paused and looked back sadly at the sky above the wall, lightening with the coming dawn. Another day had gone by without being greeted properly. Another day that must go on incomplete, ungreeted, unheralded. Somehow she knew how important it was for a day to be greeted and honoured. Now that another day had gone unrecognised, she knew that the hollow aching in her heart would be with her until she had the opportunity to welcome in the next dawn.
Behind her, and unnoticed by anyone, a tall, heavy-set guard with thick, unruly hair paused in his steady walk to turn and watch her go. A long, even stare and an unseen frown followed the fair-haired woman down into the dark streets. When she had vanished from view, he resumed his measured pacing. There was no one there to observe or comment upon the change that seemed to affect his whole bearing.
Scurrying through the suffocatingly narrow town streets with their overhanging buildings and dirty walls, Hwenfayre thought back to the two men she had met, albeit briefly, on the wall. She had surprised herself with her strong reaction to the Coerl’s almost certainly innocent remark. She realised as she hurried home that she had been confused by the new guard. There was something different, something compelling about him. Despite herself, she felt a desire to learn more about him grow within her.
With her mind otherwise occupied, Hwenfayre stumbled on a broken flagstone and almost fell. Instinctively she grasped her harp close to her breast. The harp was her most treasured possession. Cradling it protectively, she regained her balance and hurried home, all thoughts of guards and Coerls banished.
She walked swiftly through the streets, between the buildings that rose two or three storeys above the cracked and dirty flagstones and seemed to be closing in over the top of her. All the buildings in the Poor Quarter, where she lived, were joined at common walls, and it often felt to her as she walked along that she was intruding in the vast home of a large family
of which she was not a part. Every time she made her way along the streets she could feel the stares and hear the women who never bothered to lower their voices except when she was close enough to reply. Then they would fall silent and watch through hard eyes, with faces devoid of welcome, devoid of interest, devoid of any feeling whatsoever. But as soon as she walked past, it all started again.
‘Isn’t that…’ ‘There goes that…’ ‘Yes, I hear she does…’ ‘Where’s she going at this time of the day?’ The voices, the words, the rumours never stopped. Not having a husband meant Hwenfayre did not have the common tasks of the other women, the endless washing, the constant caring for a man and children, the need to be forever engaged in work. She had nothing to share with these women, old before their time and bitter with unrealised dreams. They in turn despised her apparent freedom and carefree existence that allowed her to be on the wall watching the dawn, rather than up working before the dawn’s early light brightened the skies.
On this day, a day when she had not been able to herald the coming day and welcome it as she ought, as it deserved, she felt the sting of unshed tears. Unable to contain the sorrow, she sobbed and broke into a run.
She arrived, breathless, at the old building that she called home, where she had lived all her life. It had three storeys. Hwenfayre lived alone on the ground floor. When she was younger, two other families lived in the floors above, but they moved out and no one else had ever moved in. Closing the door behind her, locking out the stares and the whispers, she
busied herself with the business of the day. To occupy her days and keep body and soul together, she made and sold small pieces of jewellery in the bustling main marketplace. She collected small scraps of metal and brightly coloured stones, together with feathers and fabric, and fashioned them into complex patterns of interwoven spirals and curves. The brooches and earrings often reflected the moods of the sea. More than one potential buyer had commented on how they reminded her of the weather on the previous day, and more than one potential buyer had looked at who had made the jewellery and then hastily replaced it, scurrying away.
As she sat working, she allowed her mind to drift and roam freely through the distant paths of memory, along the softer trails of the remembered and the hoped-for. She wandered free and alone, past the sadnesses of her life to her childhood. For some reason, today she was drawn to the day, years earlier, when she found her harp.
It had been a hot, steamy day. Barely a breath of wind disturbed the air and there was a shimmer over the roofs. Hwenfayre had escaped the stifling heat of the town streets by stealing away to stand on the wall, watching the long languid swells roll in from the hazy horizon. Breathing deeply, she could almost smell the wonders that must exist beyond that mysterious line separating sea and sky. On such a day as this, when the horizon seemed to blur, Hwenfayre often imagined an intermingling of those two great forces, and for a time she could feel the sea on her skin by allowing the air to embrace her as she
stood. It was a wonderful feeling, imagining the sea stroking her skin, lifting her hair and caressing her face.
She stood still, arms spread wide, feeling the soft gentle breeze ruffle her hair and cause her skirt to billow and swirl slowly around her legs. The feeling of the loose-weave cotton moving against her skin always made Hwenfayre imagine she was flying. Far below her the waves, carrying the secrets of far places, called to her with enticing sounds as they lapped ceaselessly at the rocks. Hwenfayre looked down at them fondly for they had borne her soul on many wonderful journeys. As she looked, as if in answer a larger wave crashed into the rocks, sending a plume of spray high up towards her. A seabird cried mournfully as it drifted, wings motionless, ever higher on an updraught rising from the cliffs. It passed closer to the wall and Hwenfayre sent a silent prayer out to its spirit for a long and safe flight. The bird cried once more and wheeled back out to sea.
‘Hwenfayre!’ Her mother’s strident call shattered the afternoon stillness. ‘Hwenfayre! Now you come down from that wall this instant!’
Sighing, the fair-skinned girl with the long white hair turned from the sea, back towards the town and her tall, raven-haired mother. She was standing with her hands on her hips, in that particular stance that said ‘annoyed’ but not quite ‘angry’. Still, it was a stance to be obeyed, so the girl took one last look at the sea and skipped down the steps.
When she reached her mother’s side she sensed something unusual, something that hovered at the edges of being understood.
‘What is it, Mother?’ she asked.
‘What’s what?’ came the taut reply.
‘You seem…’ she paused, ‘upset.’
Yes, that’s it, upset.
‘I’m not. Now come with me.’ Her mother reached down and took Hwenfayre’s hand. Immediately she knew something was wrong, for her mother generally eschewed physical contact with her. It felt strange, and Hwenfayre could sense the tension from the fingers that gripped tightly and from the perspiration in the palm pressed so close to hers.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Home, there’s something I have to show you. Now be quiet and no more questions,’ her mother snapped back. As if in response to the question, she increased her pace and Hwenfayre was forced to skip along to keep up with her. They went the rest of the way in silence, ignoring, as always, the stares and mutters that followed them wherever they went.