Minstrel of the Water Willow (2 page)

The purity in
notes soothed his soul, especially when he could not see Erin for
many days, the snow outside piled too high for a walk.

Often, when
the weather was again good, he took an instrument with him, to
softly pick out notes upon the boulder under the willow.

After a week
of challenges in the stone enclave in the mountains, he played for
the Guild. They would decide if he possessed a true gift. While
other boys and girls proved themselves in the art of healing, in
cooking and baking, in fighting, in riding and chopping, and many
other fields, he tuned the big harp he had decided to play. Now
that it had come to the point of choice, he understood music was
his life.

He recalled a
morning Erin had not come down to the water, standing instead
frozen on her high ground. That was the morning he believed himself
alone and played with his heart and soul on offer to the ether.

She heard the
music. She heard
him
. She was entranced.

He loved her
even more after that day.

Taking his
place in the centre of the flame-flickering park, he played that
same song, the one that meant only Erin to him, his long fingers
supple and quick. He did not sing words, humming instead under his
breath, for this was about the purity of the tones, not the
abilities of voice.

When the last
note died away, there was utter silence.

And then
rolling acclaim.

He passed his
testing. He was a minstrel.

At age twelve
he travelled west with his father and uncle to trade carvings for
seeds, and there saw a host of humans. While he was not marked as
Fay, for he donned the clothing humans preferred, as disguise, he
marked them. So many; all different. So loud; terribly demanding.
He also overheard many discussing the raiders as heroes, while many
denied the existence of other races.

His father was
right. It was best to stay away. Humans should not see them.

Erin,
meanwhile, grew up. He watched her almost daily. At first he did so
because he desired to find a way to break the Fay directive, to
become her friend, and thereafter he watched because he needed to
discover the differences between him and her. Those differences
were soon evident.

He played for
her when he could safely take the lyre with him. When he did, she
would for an age gather the water for the day’s needs, scooping
carefully and slowly, pouring those small scoops into the larger
urn with nary a sound.

They shared
similarities too. She was as lonely as he was, growing up without
siblings or friends. She entertained herself as he did, the natural
world her playground. As he watched her, she watched everything
else. The small creatures of their world made no distinction; furry
friends perched as much on her hands, shoulders and lap as they did
on his.

Her father
created furniture, which he hauled west in a wagon once a month.
They chose the cottage due to its proximity to the trees, but the
man was careful in his selection. He felled only as necessary and
never in the same place. He never farmed for oats and thus the
surrounds grew ever wilder and lusher. Erin thrived in it.

When Erin was
twelve, a tree falling in the wrong direction crushed her father,
landing as it did on his chest. He died almost instantly. Erin and
her mother were grief-stricken for a long time, and they had
nowhere to go and thus stayed on in their cottage. Raising chickens
and growing vegetables, they managed to live, although they were
poorer every year that passed.

Kell noticed
her mother’s hollowed cheeks and desired with all his being to help
them. His father beat him for the first time when he suggested it.
His mother was sad.

Erin was a
mesmerising sixteen when her mother died after a brief illness of
her lungs. A stranger came to the vale then and took Erin away.

That stranger
took away his heart also.

For years he
returned to the shadows of the willow, but she was no longer there.
Never had he been so angry.

He denied his
music for a long time.

For love of a
child a heart endures

E
rin
reappeared ten years later.

In the years
between Kell travelled as a minstrel, honing his craft and gaining
a following. Soon he was welcomed into every village, every town
and tavern, eating well and meeting many new friends.

The girls of
all races began to look at him speculatively, while a few women
told him he was a pretty lad, such lovely golden hair, such clever
fingers.

He shied
away.

Lying in the
long grass beside the water, he stared into the clouds overhead as
musical octaves swirled in his thoughts. Rain threatened, but it
was not yet cold. Hearing rustles on the opposite bank, Kell rolled
onto his side … and froze.

His first
sight of Erin as an adult was spellbinding.

At twenty-six
Erin was a beautiful woman. Her curls were now waves of honey glory
and her hazel eyes were full of intelligence. She had been educated
and knew herself.

She was also
sad.

Beyond
entrancing, her skin was sun kissed with pretty freckles, her lips
full and pink.

“You cannot
stay here, Erin,” a man’s voice sounded.

Kell pressed
himself flat, hoping they would not see him. As ever, he wore the
forest colours, but his hair was unmistakable in its fairness.

“I am staying,
uncle. This is my home.” Her voice was husky, raising shivers on
Kell’s skin.

“You will be
alone! How will you raise the child?”

Child?

Kell noticed
then the rounded belly. Erin was pregnant. Terrible jealousy
flooded into his veins … and, instantly after, grief. She could
never be his.

“I have funds,
uncle, and soon I will have the vegetables growing again. I will be
fine.” Her words were then lost to distance as she moved away from
the river.

The uncle left
that same day and Kell assumed his daily watch once more.

Why do so when
she clearly had another suitor? It was utter obsession on his part,
he realised, and yet could not break the habit, the need.

He saw her
grow bigger with child and wondered who the father was, jealousy
eating at him constantly.

Fury came when
he understood she had left her new life behind to return to the
silence and isolation here, for the father of the child had turned
his back on her. He had probably paid her, which was how she had
funds.

How
dare
the man abandon the mother of his child?

Erin needed
someone to love her, not deny her.

Thereafter he
played his music on the edge of hearing under the willow.

His reward was
her smile.

One morning he
heard her screaming and realised she was in labour. He ran back to
his mother and told her to do
something
. Erin needed help.
His mother, to his relief, without questioning him, dressed as a
midwife and went to her aid, but told him to stay home. She exacted
a promise from him, or she would not go.

He paced
grooves into the rug while he waited, ignoring his father’s heated
words over his son again involving himself with the human.

Erin’s child,
a girl, was stillborn in a complicated birth, and Erin was herself
ill thereafter.

His mother
tended her for weeks, saying Erin had lost her will to live.

A month after
the birth Kell saw her return to the water’s edge for the first
time. Her cheeks were as hollow as her mother’s once were, her eyes
sunken in grief. She wore her heartache upon her face and she was
even more beautiful to him.

She stared
across at the willow, unblinking, without moving, saying not one
word.

He
understood.

Leaving her in
that strangely half-alive stance, he sidled out into the shadows
beyond the willow and ran home for his lyre. Returning in the same
manner, despite heaving breath, he played.

He played
loud. He allowed the music to be itself, to become something
living, to soar, to dance, to weave, to speak … to heal.

Erin collapsed
to her knees and wept.

His music
permitted her to acknowledge her inner suffering. Releasing it,
meant she was able to go on once more.

In the years
to follow, he did not see her laugh again.

To step from
shadows is to know light

S
torms
came and went.

A fire swept
through the valley and annihilated great swathes of land. Many of
the trees on the fringes of the forests all around succumbed,
although the deep regions remained untouched. Drought was supreme
for two summer seasons. The coldest winter in all memory
followed.

Erin remained
despite every tribulation. She had chosen to remove herself from
her society. After the death of her daughter she lost all interest.
He no longer cared much for his social circle either. The unhappier
she became, the more he withdrew from others close to him,
including his parents. Most days he hunkered, watching Erin. It was
a senseless obsession, but truth was there was no Fay woman who
drew him as much as she did.

While he was
older than she was in years, he appeared far younger, and thus kept
his distance. She would see him as a youth and would not understand
the years already in his mind.

How utterly
unfair. He wished he was human.

His music
suffered. More correctly, his reputation as a minstrel suffered,
for he rarely took to the circuit to play for others.

He played for
Erin, softly, on the edge of hearing.

Kell watched
her gradually regain her physical strength and her purpose for
life. He saw how she tended her vegetables in the fields in view to
him and noticed fat and healthy chickens roaming freely. She was
successful at both growing and rearing and soon had excess with
which to-trade for other goods. Twice a month she loaded her small
cart, and set off to market.

Often he would
then head into the smaller villagers and make music for his own
keep.

When Erin
turned forty, with fine lines at her eyes, he noticed how she gazed
across the river as if sensing his presence when he merely watched
her, when he made no lyrical sound. Was she as aware of him as he
was of her? If she was, never did she say a word, although once or
twice she did smile secretly.

His heart set
up an uneven rhythm when she did so.

Many of the
Fay moved into the highlands in those years, for more humans had
entered the valley. His parents too chose to relocate, but he was
determined to stay and thus took possession of his childhood home
as his own. His mother was sad, reading in him the signs of
unrequited love, knowing also the choice was his. He was considered
adult among his kind.

Humans,
however, would regard him as a youth.

At fifty-five
Erin broke her leg.

There was a
storm in the night and in the morning, as she collected water from
the river, a tree swirled unseen in the currents and swept her
roughly off her feet. She screamed, but managed to hold onto a root
in the bank. When the tree had passed, she attempted to clamber
from the water, but moaned from her depths instead.

He was in
quandary.

She needed
help. He needed to remain hidden.

That was when
she called out, “I do not need to see your face, but I have need of
your strength.”

Frozen, he
stared across.

She unwrapped
her scarf from around her neck and tied it over her eyes. “I will
not look, I swear. Fetch the cart, please. My leg is broken.”

Kell moved
across the raging current to her, his heart a beating lump of chaos
in his throat. She
was
as aware of him as he was of her, and
now he would touch her for the first time.

Lifting her,
he gently carried her to her cottage. She was light in his arms,
already frail. Inwardly he grieved; the time for them to be
together had already passed. It had never arrived.

He set her
down on the porch and went to hook horse and cart together. He
noticed how pretty her home was in trailing roses and flowering
honeysuckle. After placing the pillows from the seat on the porch
in the back of the cart, he carried her to them and gently laid her
down. Neither said a word the entire time and at no stage did she
attempt to lift her blindfold.

Driving to the
nearest farmstead, he loosed a whistle for the farmer’s wife.
Before she came out, he had vanished into the nearest stand of
trees.

“Erin? What
happened? Who brought you?”

“I seem to
have broken something, Ann. Can you help?” She had shifted her
blindfold down by the time Ann reached her side.

“Of course,
dear. Who brought you?”

“A boy. He
sometimes comes to collect eggs from me and arrived just when I
needed help. Poor thing is very skittish, probably ran into the
trees.”

Clucking, Ann
summoned the menfolk and they carried Erin inside.

Quietly, Kell
moved deeper into the forest. Eventually he went home to sit before
a dead hearth, staring at nothing.

His life, he
realised, slipped by. There was no joy in it, only this obsession
to mark the years of a little girl he fell in love with when he was
five years old.

Love
unattained is a soul’s sadness

W
hile
Erin was healing under Ann’s care, he tended her chickens and her
vegetables.

The farmer’s
wife was a good person. Erin was where she needed to be while she
healed.

When she
returned three weeks later, her leg stiffly bound and walking with
the aid of crutches, he continued to do care for her vegetables and
poultry, doing so before dawn, before she was awake.