LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

won’t you let me teach you how to swim?’ he’d asked me. ‘Is it because of her? Because of what happened to her?’

      ‘What?’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘You know. Your mother. Because she – well, because of what she did. That’s what they say. That you’re frightened of the water, because she jumped off the Honeycomb and drowned herself.’

      ‘Of course not,’ I replied, swallowing hard. ‘I just don’t want to, that’s all.’ How could he know that until that moment, nobody had told me how she died?

      I tried to dredge up some memory of my mother, tried to picture the lovely figure Peg had described, but there was nothing. All I could remember was Father and the Honeycomb. Something had happened long since and far away, something that had damaged my mother and wounded my father, and set the path forwards for all of us in a way there was no denying. Father had never told me the tale. Still, it was an unspoken lesson built into everything he taught me.

      ‘Time to begin,’ said Father, regarding me rather severely. ‘This will be serious work, Fainne. It may be necessary to curtail your freedom this summer.’

      ‘I – yes, Father.’

      ‘Good.’ He gave a nod. ‘Stand here by me. Look into the mirror. Watch my face.’

      The surface was bronze, polished to a bright reflective sheen. Our images showed side by side; the same face with subtle alterations. The dark red curls; the fierce eyes, dark as ripe berries; the pale unfreckled skin. My father’s countenance was handsome enough, I thought, if somewhat forbidding in expression. Mine was a child’s, unformed, plain, a little pudding of a face. I scowled at my reflection, and glanced back at my father in the mirror. I sucked in my breath.

      My father’s face was changing. The nose grew hooked, the deep red hair frosted with white, the skin wrinkled and blotched like an ancient apple left too long in store. I stared, aghast. He raised a hand, and it was an old man’s hand, gnarled and knotted, with nails like the claws of some feral creature. I could not tear my eyes away from the mirrored image.

      ‘Now look at me,’ he said quietly, and the voice was his own. I forced my eyes to flicker sideways, though my heart shrank at the thought that the man standing by me might be this wizened husk of my fine, upright father. And there he was, the same as ever, dark eyes fixed on mine, hair still curling glossily auburn about his temples. I turned back to the mirror.

      The face was changing again. It wavered for a moment, and stilled. This time the difference was more subtle. The hair a shade lighter, a touch straighter. The eyes a deep blue, not the unusual shade of dark purple my father and I shared. The shoulders somewhat broader, the height a handspan greater, the nose and chin with a touch of coarseness not seen there before. It was my father still; and yet, it was a different man.

      ‘This time,’ he said, ‘when you take your eyes from the mirror, you will see what I want you to see. Don’t be frightened, Fainne. I am still myself. This is the Glamour, which we use to clothe ourselves for a special purpose. It is a powerful tool if employed adeptly. It is not so much an alteration of one’s appearance, as a shift in others’ perception. The technique must be exercised with extreme caution.’

      When I looked, this time, the man at my side was the man in the mirror; my father, and not my father. I blinked, but he remained not himself. My heart was thumping in my chest, and my hands felt clammy.

      ‘Good,’ said my father quietly. ‘Breathe slowly as I showed you. Deal with your fear and put it aside. This skill is not learned in a day, or a season, or a year. You’ll have to work extremely hard.’

      ‘Then why didn’t you start teaching me before?’ I managed, still deeply unsettled to see him so changed. It would almost have been easier if he had transformed himself into a dog, or a horse, or a small dragon even; not this – this not quite right version of himself.

      ‘You were too young before. This is the right age. Now come.’ And suddenly he was himself again, as quick as a snap of the fingers. ‘Step by step. Use the mirror. We’ll start with the eyes. Concentrate, Fainne. Breathe from the belly. Look into the mirror. Look at the point just between the brows. Good. Will your body to utter stillness … put aside the awareness of time passing … I will give you some words to use, at first. In time you must learn to work without the mirror, and without the incantation.’

      By dusk I was exhausted, my head hollow as a dry gourd, my body cold and damp with sweat. We rested, seated opposite one another on the stone floor.

      ‘How can I know,’ I asked him, ‘how can I know what is real, and what an image? How can I know that the way I see you is the true way? You could be an ugly, wrinkled old man clothed in the Glamour of a sorcerer.’

      Father nodded, his pale features sombre. ‘You cannot know.’

      ‘But –’

      ‘It would be possible for one skilled in the art to sustain this guise for years, if it were necessary. It would be possible for such a one to deceive all. Or almost all. As I said, it is a powerful tool.’

      ‘Almost all?’

      He was silent a moment, then gave a nod. ‘You will not blind another practitioner of our art with this magic. There are three, I think, who will always know your true self: a sorcerer, a seer and an innocent. You look weary, Fainne. Perhaps you should rest, and begin this anew in the morning.’

      ‘I’m well, Father,’ I said, anxious not to disappoint him. ‘I can go on, truly. I’m stronger than I look.’

      Father smiled; a rare sight. That seemed to me a change deeper than any the Glamour could effect; as if it were truly another man I saw, the man he might have been, if fate had treated him more kindly. ‘I forget sometimes how young you are, daughter,’ he said gently. ‘I am a hard taskmaster, am I not?’

      ‘No, Father,’ I said. My eyes were curiously stinging, as if with tears. ‘I’m strong enough.’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, his mouth once more severe. ‘I don’t doubt that for a moment. Come then, let’s begin again.’

      I was twelve years old, and for a short time I was taller than Darragh. That summer my father didn’t let me out much. When he did give me a brief time for rest, I crept away from the Honeycomb and up the hill, no longer sure if this was allowed, but not prepared to ask permission in case it was refused. Darragh would be waiting for me, practising the pipes as often as not, for Dan had taught him well, and the exercise of his skill was pleasure more than duty. We didn’t explore the caves any more, or walk along the shore looking for shells, or make little fires with twigs. Most of the time we sat in the shadow of the standing stones, or in a hollow near the cliff’s edge, and we talked, and then I went home again with the sweet sound of the pipes arching through the air behind me. I say we talked, but it was usually the way of it that Darragh talked and I listened, content to sit quiet in his company. Besides, what had I to talk about? The things I did were secret, not to be spoken. And increasingly, Darragh’s world was unknown to me, foreign, like some sort of thrilling dream that could never come true.

      ‘Why doesn’t he take you back to Sevenwaters?’ he asked one day, somewhat incautiously. ‘We’ve been there once or twice, you know. There’s an old auntie of my dad’s still lives there. You’ve got a whole family in those parts: uncles, aunts, cousins by the cartload. They’d make you welcome, I’ve no doubt of it.’

      ‘Why should he?’ I glared at him, finding any criticism of my father difficult, however indirectly expressed.

      ‘Because –’ Darragh seemed to struggle for words. ‘Because – well, because that’s the way of it, with families. You grow up together, you do things together, you learn from each other and look after each other and – and –’

      ‘I have my father. He has me. We don’t need anyone else.’

      ‘It’s no life,’ Darragh muttered. ‘It’s not a life for a girl.’

      ‘I’m

Скачать книгу