On the banks of a river, a boy sees and hears a girl laughing, the most glorious music, and falls in love. Time, however, is not the same for them. Erin is human; Kell is something other.
Kell watches her from the shadows under the willow at the water’s edge, refusing to surrender to their differences. For Erin he plays the most beautiful music, for he may never speak to her and she cannot ever see him. Music becomes their words.
Love, however, cannot measure time. The minstrel maintains his vigil; his muse listens for his song, and both move through the years alone, until the day something changes …
Chapter 1
Laughter is a bridge between strangers
Lines formed an
intricate map upon her face.
She was old now, but to him she
remained ever beautiful. He knew the reasons for her wrinkles, what she had
endured in life. He had watched her since she was two years old.
Squatting under the willow where
the fronds swept the surface of the placid river, he observed her kneeling with
infinite care until she was able to reach the clear pond from where she drew
her drinking water.
So slow now, when it felt like
yesterday when she came squealing in happy abandon down to the water’s edge,
honey ringlets bouncing.
She peered around as if expecting
someone, but he knew she was alone here. She was not looking out for someone
expected. She had been alone a long time.
He was the only one who watched,
although she had never seen him. Sometimes, though, he had the clearest sense
she was still aware of him, despite her withdrawal in recent years. She no
longer concerned herself with living, only with dying, but in the past, when
her step was sprightlier and her eyesight clearer, she would gaze across the
expanse of the river directly into the shadows under the willow. Once she even
summoned him; she had known he watched. She had not looked at his face, but she
told him music meant everything to her.
He realised now she listened intently
to the natural silence as if hoping to hear the notes of life itself.
Closing his eyes, he wished he
had brought his small lyre to pick out gentle tones, to weave them into the
birdsong surrounding them.
Eighty years ago he was himself a boy, splashing in the
shallows in summer’s heat, when he heard the sound of laughter.
Instantly his mother dragged him
into the trees beyond where the shadows were dense, abandoning the cones and
twigs they had gathered for the hearth back home, but he saw her.
A little girl ran towards the
river with her mother trailing after, admonishing her to slow down.
“Kell, be quiet now,” his mother
had whispered in his ear, and he had not understood why.
He wanted to go to the girl. He
wanted to laugh with her. She was so pretty and so happy, so bright, so new.
She was not as careful as her
mother had warned her to be, and fell into the water. A tiny shriek of fear and
surprise drifted across to him. His mother was forced to hold him back when he
moved to go to her aid.
“Silly, look how wet you are!” Her
mother, laughing, pulled her out. “Come on, silly, let’s get you home and dry.
Are you hungry?”
They disappeared up the gentle
slope towards the old cottage no one had lived in for many years. They held
hands and laughed together as they went.
For a long time he thought her
name was Silly.
The cottage was not in view of
the river, but he had seen it once. In search of wild herbs, his father carried
him across the river that day and they passed it by. It was pretty, but needed
much care to make it a home again.
Later he realised her name was
Erin.
That was the day she went and
lost herself and her mother ran along the water’s edge frantically searching for
her daughter, calling, “Erin! Erin, where are you?”
That was also the day his father
yanked him forcibly into the shadows of the forest and told him never to return
to the river, to leave the mother and daughter to their lives. He had already been
to the water many times hoping to catch sight of her again, and he was told in
firm words that he had proven himself too rash to wander unsupervised.
“She is lost!” he shouted at his
father. “She will be scared!”
“Kell, she is human and we do not
speak to humans. They may not see us. I will watch over her until she is found,
but you will return home now.”
Thus was that also the day he
realised he was something other. Not
human.
It was the worst day of his life.
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