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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