A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (41 page)

He as
ked what they should call him.
‘Nicholas
,’ she said without hesitation.
‘It’s a strong
name, neither Raji nor Færan.
Traveller I believe.’
And what is the poor little boy but a traveler on the edge of life.

Lalita could feel herself sinking after Nicholas’s birth, focused unhealthily on the child, obsessed with him, telling him stories filled with colour and light every minute of the day.
If you can’t live over the
re, then you shall know of it.
Your father read books, I shall tell you stories.
But it was not enough and she spent hour upon day thinking on what could be done for her son born on the Isle of the Dead.
‘Finnian,’ she propositioned him, knowing if he denied her she would leave him and the isle, no matter the cost.  ‘Finnian?’

‘Yes.’ His brow
creased.

‘I want you to listen to me.’
As she spoke the infant cried from his basket, a sound like a plea
.
‘I want Nicholas to r
eturn to The Ymp Tree Orchard. To Phelim and Adelina.
He needs to grow in a real world, not here where he has only the sounds of old voices and even older stories.’

His voice explode
d and she was reminded of cracked tiles and Fahsi. ‘No, I won’t! Never. Lalita, you’re unhinged.’
He snatched
up the crying child and left.
But she knew she was right and she knew that he knew as well, for much of the future lonliness of Nicholas resonated with his father.

He was gone long and patience that
had be
gun calmly and with vindication
h
ad transformed to desparation.
Her breasts were bursting when he chose to return, the infant bl
issful and asleep in his arms.
He passed the babe over and the child, smelling the milk, began to nuzzle against Lalita’s damp tunic.

‘Lalita, t
here is only one way from here.
If he leaves we shall never touch him again a
nd I am not sure I can do that.
He is my son.’

Her heart skipped as Nichola
s pulled away from her breast.
A slight burp bought a smile to his bow lips
and tears filled Lalita’s eyes. ‘Yes, he is your son.
A son cursed by his great grandmother.’

Finnian turned away from her and loo
ked out over the Lake of Mists.
His
voice cracked when he replied.
‘We are anchor
ed here forever.
Would you give up the years of watching him grow?’

Her emotions, on a knife-edge since the bi
rth of the child, fizzed over. ‘Aine Finnian, grow for what?
To end his life lonely, unfulfilled, never having laughed and loved and fought and
cried with others of his age?
I am not that selfish and I’m surprised that you who has known greater lonliness and cruelty than an
y man has a right to experience
should want the same for
your
own son.
He is an innocent,
here through no fault of his.
He must surely be able to leave.’

‘But he is cursed, Lalita.
Isolde cursed him and he must be protected.’

She shook her head, her heart beating a tattoo of bitt
ersweet lost and found in one.
‘He is cur
sed if he stays here, Finnian. Don’t you see?
A half-life, silence,
all the things she predicted.
Better he has a life with Phelim and Adelina and with Isa
bella who shall be his friend.
Think an
d you will see that I’m right.
He
must
be given the chance to have a full life, not one of shadows as ours has
become.
And he can only have that if
we are able to send him back.
Please.’

Finnian looked at her with sadness and r
egret and she held her breath.
Finally he nodded and they kissed over the head of the babe as the tale end of a rhyme chanted from her m
emory.

‘To where to follow, none can return.

The hardest lesson thou must learn.’

He handed her into the boat, she and Nicholas, and they glided to the s
hore where Phelim stood alone.
She passed the babe to him and that thread that had stretched and nearly cut her in half previously as she proceeded to the island of unlife, sawed away at her middle and she whispered to herself the old rhyme,
I am La
lita Khatoun, Arifa protect me.
I am Lalita Khatoun.
She tucked the
nightime
paperweight in amongst the soft wool of his blankets but she could not speak to Phelim because her throat had
thickened into a stifling knot.
She turned away and climbed back into the boat, not looking at her child at all, sinking onto the deck and burying her head on h
er knees.

She heard Phelim promise things and she heard Finnian reply but it flowed over her and she was glad when she felt the boat r
ock as Finnian climbed aboard.
Only as the boat began its return
journey did she dare to look.
Back to the far off banks as the mists swirled o
ver the pearl and silver lake.
She heard the Caointeach cry and knew it was for a mortal passing somewhere but
this time it didn’t upset her.
It was the sound of a real world and Nicholas would grow in amongst mortals and Others of subs
tance, not shades of the same.
Relief s
oftened the edges of her pain.
Her son would be free and would grow in a ho
me filled with light and life.

She stared up at the sky as the boat continued its unimpeded journey onwards and a quarter moon gazed back, part
nered by two glimmering stars.
Their reflection
sparkled in a rippling trail right to the shore where she knew her small son rested in loving arms and where a nightime paperweight lay by his side as a gift and a reminder - a memory of what had been.

The End

References

1.
          
The Art of Medieval Manuscripts
by Humaira Husain (Ed)  Hamlyn  London  1997

2.
         
The Illuminated Alphabet
by Timothy Noad and Patricia Seligman  Simon and Schuster  Australia  1994

3.
         
Spirits, Faeries, Gnomes and Goblins
by Carol Rose  ABC-Clio Ltd  Oxford  1998

4.
        
The Age of Enchantment
by Rodney Engen  Scala Publishers Ltd  London  2007

5.
         
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi  USA  1999

6.
         
Myths and Legends: an Illustrated Guide to their Origins and Meanings
by Philip Wilkinson  DK Ltd  London 2009

7.
         
Botanica and her love-potion arrows were inspired by the inimitable Puck in William Shakespeare’s
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’

8.
         
Irish-English Dictionary
–
www.englishirishdictionary.com

9.
         
‘I saw he
r stare on old dry writing…
’ from the poem
‘The Gift of Harun Al Rashid’
by William Butler Yeats

10.
      
‘The Ladymoon came down one night…’
Anonymous.
This poem was related to my mother by my grandmother and
subsequently to me as a child.
I cannot find any reference to it in my research.

***

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