Wednesday, 24 February 2016

My Chime Child



My Phelim was a chime child, born on the stroke of midnight, a miracle of all sorts. My seventh son as well, a favourite of the Fair Folk some said, and I kept an eye on him from his birth day, watching him when he mounted a fairy mound or skirted the edge of the wild woods tangled around our pasture. He was a solemn child and a silent one; when he emerged red and shining into the world I asked the midwife if he was ill. I had never had a child so silent come into the world, nor one that did not twist in the goodwife’s arms.  Searched for blue lips, a blue face, the signs of strangulation in my son but I saw only his dark small lashes, thin as black thread, curled atop swelling cheeks. His breathing was hushed as the sea on a windless day.

He continued to be quiet. He spoke few words growing, and while I understood, for the few words he spoke were always more important than the many words my other sons and my husband ever spoke, my husband found it disconcerting. I did nothing to assuage his worries when I impressed upon him that it was a good thing that Phelim could get by one one word where everyone else needed five. Silence was not for this life, my husband said. Silence was for the grave. And to mimic the grave whilst alive beneath the sun was a mockery of life. He tried to coax sound from Phelim with threats, and when Phelim did not yield, with the birch switch. Each slap of the switch against Phelim’s back had me biting my tongue. I could not bear to hear it but it felt like betrayal to retreat to the garden. So I listened from the other room. I had heard the switch before, against my other children, but when my husband beat them their cries drowned it all. This was a lone sound, a slice in skin and in the silence, a bloody pendulum. A sound like earth splitting, the chaotic pulse of the ocean. When it was done I heard Phelim climb to his feet unsteadily, like a foal with spindly legs, but there was never a sob to hear.

Phelim continued his chores while the blood dried on his back and let me wash it away with cold water and said nothing but to thank me and apologize for the ruination of another shirt. He apologized for my husband as well, though my husband was never there to see it. He was a birch switch himself, a thin sapling, a bone whittled soft and smooth by time, pliant and unbreakable. It was not hard to love Phelim for that, except that my love was hand in hand with my fear for him. But fear strengthens love as much as it hardens the task. And it was nothing to my pride.

They came late on a summer night. When one day was tipping into the next, a tumble of stars wheeling above our wheat and the drapery of the woods. The sort of day had passed in which the sky was blue as cornflower, the air crisp with the scent of apples and grass seed. It bled into a night sleepy with birdsong and warm with firelight. There are always lanterns on the farm and in the garden on summer nights. My boys had always stayed up late in the summer, unless a sharp word from my husband has sent them to bed. But there were no sharp words for any of them this night but Phelim. It neared midnight and he was inside with my husband and the birch switch. I was alone in spotting the first of them, though I did not know who they were at first. Now that I recall it, how could I have mistaken them for an ordinary band of knights? Who else has steeds the colour of smoke, with manes dark as the soil in the bottom of a river? Who else wears armour black as laquered ebony, or cloaks the colour of silver ferns? Who else, in the heat, would drape beech white caparisons upon their horses’ flanks and who wore, fastened to their coats, bronze pins twisted in such mesmerizing shapes? Who else blinked with eyes of different hues, one eye a dark deep brown, like the shadows of the woods, and another like moonlight on the surface of water?

The procession came from the woods, though I had not heard them until they appeared at the edge of our fields and flowed toward us. They did flow, a river of them, rippling horse muscle and heavy cloaks. They were mostly men, and my sons, who would normally had pressed their chests forward and their shoulders back, tilted their chins up at though they could look down upon men on horseback, did nearly shrink back. They could sense the arcane and wilderness in these men. And it was not until one of them looked directly at my sons that I did realize what riders were approaching our cottage. I would not dare hold my arms up in front of my children. I would not dare challenge the Hunt before they had spoken.

One rode ahead of the rest, in an evergreen cloak that bled over the flanks of his monstrous, jet horse. The horse was pressed against others, but no horse rode abreast of him. They danced in restlessness as they slowed, and in the horses’ sweat I could see muscles that spoke of days of racing, or nights of racing. The green-clad knight was straight as though he were a tree erected in the saddle- so proud! His features- sharper than any knife blade. His mouth was a cruel line cut in his pale face, set with both amusement and the weight of great age, a face that was a warning as much as it was intrigue. His hounds snapped at his feet, at the horses’ hooves, but he paid them no mind. They were silent docks, though their teeth struck against one another with a sound like flint against stone. I was drawn to them all, these knights, at once. It is easy to be drawn to the Fair Folk. It is easy to mistake their beauty for sugar, but monsters often wear beautiful faces. I was weary and foolishly enchanted at once. I was glad my husband was indoors so he would not see my flushed cheeks and twisting fingers.

If Phelim had been outside he would not have spoken a word. He would have let his silence bring this conversation into neutral ground. He would had stood upon this land and told the Fair Folk with only his glance whose it was. My son Noein leapt to the ground beside me just before the knights were close enough to heard and whispered furiously in my ear, voice a well of admiration and apprehension. Should we get them wine, mother? Will their horses want water?

I meant to shake my head, but had to consider the questions carefully. It would not do to refuse the knights anything, but they had asked for nothing as of yet. We had no wine fit for them, and their taste in wine was probably more than any human could offer. We had only the wine we bought from a neighbour, dark as a seed deep in the soil, dark as shade, but not enough to tempt the knights, surely. They were used to drink that I could not imagine, and I was nothing but an initiate in the ways of conversing with them. I could not begin to think of how to explain that I did not have wine fir for them. I considered sending Noein inside to retrieve some, so that I might explain it better, but the pulse of the birch switch against Phelim’s back in the house distracted me. It might not be clear what was happening, for Phelim was, as always, silent, but my husband did make up for it. No more than a few seconds at a time passed without a shout, a jeer, or insults that made the night more jagged than birdsong did. I heard only some of it, but it was enough to make me flush anew in front of the strangers. Did Phelim think he was worth the salt on the table? Did he think his flesh any more valuable than the swine on our plates? He had another’s eyes, not his, and a body too frail and thin to work the land properly. A disappointment, Phelim had been, since he’d been born that night so many years ago.

Shame filled my throat with heat as the shadow of the black horse descended on my garden. There was no gate to the garden, only a gap in the fence, though the knights did not come through it. Of course the knights could hear what was passing inside, but they said nothing of it. Their black and silver eyes were fixed upon myself and my children.

“Madam,” said the green-clad knight in a voice as clear and cold as water. His face was dark and even more sharply cut by the light of the lanterns. He looked like a god, a creature born of the fire and the forest atop a steed as dark as rock. His gaze made me shiver. “I have a thirst, as do my men. And our steeds. We will take any water you have, if you have some to spare?”

I did not believe it wise to be inhospitable and I did not believe in it, moreover. I treated them as I would have any guests. I did not have to tell my children to mind their tongues, though I wished I had taught them to mind their stares. I was astonished none of them choked on flies as they gaped. Once their maws were shut and my daughters were ushered out of the way, though they did not stop gazing at the men, we watered the horses and watered the knights. The hands the took the drinks were young and graceful, as fluid as water themselves. They were not the hands of those that handled timbre or rock or churned dirt. There were calluses upon their palms from gripping reigns, and red strikes across their fingers where they had twisted their fingers too tightly in the manes of their steeds. They looked shaped around the riding of these horses. The knights looked grateful for the water, young and easy as my boys. They requested water for their hounds too, and though their hounds were silent they snapped their jaws warningly as my boys came forth with water and left it at the horses’ hooves for the hounds to drink.

The green-clad knight did not thank me but he did look satisfied. He tapped his belt as though he would produce a coin from it, from one of the pockets of his tunic. Instead, he said, “Our hounds are restless and easily distracted. And they have grown in number. I need someone to tend them for the next year before the winter weeds them out and returns them to a manageable number. Would you be able to spare one of your sons, Madam, for the task? I should return him again, when we ride back in the summer.”

I said nothing at first. I had given him water and it was not enough? I would rather have given him all of our wine and water. But how to refuse these knights and this man? I did not think his hounds would tolerate it if I refused him. These knights were not known for their benevolence. They did not move as midnight stretched around us. “I do not know how I can spare one of my sons, sir. Not with the harvest approaching. My daughters can not do all of the work. And I am not sure you would want one of them.”

It was too much. I snapped my mouth closed as soon as I had finished speaking. I had not meant to say so much, but it was too late. I had challenged them. They did not look challenged as their gazes wandered. The green-clad knight’s eyes lifted to the window beside our front door, as though he could see through our curtains. There was ice in his black and silver eyes. “Daughters speak more than sons. Sons often speak too much anyway. A quiet son, I would take. The hounds prefer the quiet. He would have no trouble at all.” He looked down upon me again. “Have you a quiet son?”

It was an offer to take my son. Both an offer and a demand. He could hear the birch switch as clearly as I could. When Phelim did appear outside and ask quietly what hounds were baying it was quite clear that he was to go with them.

I have known sorrow, but there is very little that compares to missing one’s children. And Phelim, my silent child, my precious child, my chime child, I missed him dearly. I wished to see the knights descending out of the forest again when the trees bled yellow and scarlet over the horizon, when the frost climbed the windowpanes and the snow feathered the frozen soil and the trees on the roadside. I wanted to smell horses in the air when spring arrived, but I only smelled the carcasses of animals that had died and frozen in the winter, thawing, and the green, growing scent of buds and blossoming brambles, and the musk of frisky animals. I missed his silence when I heard my other sons cry beneath my husband’s birch switch. I thought perhaps, in the summer, when he returned, it was their cries that had brought him back to us.

There were fewer hounds this time, as the green-clad rider had said there would be, and the same number of knights, though this time my Phelim had joined their number, atop his own black steed, dressed no less resplendently. He trailed after the green-clad rider, who stopped at our fence and did not cross the threshold but smiled with cold generosity at myself and my children. It was much too late to be calling, to be returning my son to me, but I would accept him at midnight or midday. “I did say I would return him, did I not, Madam?” the green-clad rider said. “Your son has been as silent as I have needed him to be. I would say that his time with us had sharpened that silence. If you find his quiet refined do not be alarmed.”

He gestured, and Phelim dismounted and strode toward us through the line of horses. My sapling boy had become a tree, lean but strong as a birch tree. In that year he had changed remarkably. I knew he had changed in more ways than that when I looked into his face and saw his eyes.

But I could not slight the knights. No matter how the sight of my Phelim frightened me now. “I am glad you returned him, sir. Thank you for doing so,” I said.

“You are welcome,” the rider said, and began to turn his horse away. He paused on the other side of the fence and turned back to Phelim. Phelim looked up at him, as though the rider had called, though he had not. The armour of the rider’s shoulder reflected light into his sharp face. “Remember what I said. Remember where you have been,” the rider said to Phelim. Phelim said nothing and though he was quiet, I was surprised. It was rude not to answer. But the rider did not look offended; perhaps it was he that had taught Phelim to become even more silent. Then the knight looked into the window of my husband’s cottage, as he had the year before, as though he could see my husband in the window. “Farewell, Madam. Good night.”


Then they departed. The hounds gnashed their teeth once more in my direction, soundlessly, though Phelim looked down upon them. When he did, they set their jaws and bounded after their masters. In a few moments the knights had vanished into the forest and there was nothing there to say that they had come and gone at all. Nothing but my new son, looking up at the sky as though there were something to see in it. He was quiet as the grave as we went indoors, as he took off his cloak, as he unstrapped the light armour around his shoulders. He was silent as he looked as my husband with his new black and silver eyes and when midnight struck he pulled a dagger from his belt and slit my husband open from neck to navel. My husband was silent as he fell across the dinner table. Phelim wiped the blade on the tablecloth as I wiped tears from my eyes and said not a word.

Art by Joao Ruas

Text by Lucie MacAulay

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