He dipped his head in a half-bow and returned to the backstage tent.Trick, the jester, sat in Roni’s chair, scrubbing furiously at his face with a rag to remove the last stray smears and dots of make-up.His smiling eyes lit up at the sight of Llewyn.
‘A grand show tonight!’he said, flourishing the rag.‘Damon sure knows how to write to the audience’s taste, don’t he?And Siwan.Whoo!I’m nearly weeping here, Llewyn.Why’ve we kept that songbird in a cage so long?Oh, and did you see how much Jareth brought in?I never thought my reflection would smile back from so many pieces of gold at once!’
Llewyn grabbed the basket of juggling balls and shoved it into Trick’s lap.‘When she finishes the song, you take over.’
Trick’s smile turned to a confused frown.He gestured dramatically to the sides of his face.Half his talent was in the elasticity of his expression, a tool he wielded to hilarity on the stage and now used to make Llewyn feel like an idiot for what he was asking.‘I’ve just removed my face, Llewyn.’Sides, on the schedule she plays three songs, then Harwick goes out to toss some heavy stuff around, then Tula shows off the various shapes she can twist into, and then if there are any stragglers, Spil and I go and turn a few cartwheels and juggle.That’s the plan, Llewyn.Right now, I’m angling for some dinner.And I’m going to eatwell, considering we’re suddenly quite well off.’
‘That’s the problem,’ Llewyn said.The tenor of Siwan’s gittern had shifted, adding a hopeful note to the melancholic minor as the song progressed towards its ending.‘The lady who gave Jareth that pile of gold has designs on Siwan.’
Trick cocked his head, his expression suddenly grave.‘What do you mean, “designs”?’
‘She’s some sort of sorceress, and she’s paying the girl far too much attention.’Llewyn could not overcome his fear, but he could harness it, direct it away from violence.Be better, at least, than the Grey Lady.‘I don’t know what she intends, and I don’t mean to find out.Will you help me, Trick?’
‘What are you going to do?’Trick demanded.
‘Not sure yet,’ Llewyn lied.‘But I need Siwan off that stage.Afanan and I will think of something.’
If Trick knew he planned to spirit Siwan away with nary a word, he would never cooperate.This was the problem with getting attached to people—they got attached to you, too.But in those first days of the Grey Lady’s absence, when he had been in shock, left adrift and alone, the troupe had provided structure and comfort.By the time he’d put his head on straight enough to think things through, it had been too late to take Siwan away without ripping her heart out—to say nothing of the resistance he would face from the people, like Trick, who had come to love her.And now, he would have to do that anyway.
Trick sighed, his entire face sagging in resignation, and tossed the make-up rag onto Roni’s desk.‘All right.Hand me one of those masks.I’m not going out therenaked.’
Siwan’s song returned to one final refrain.She held the last note, imbuing it with an aching yearning for a better world, full of better, kinder men, while she played through the melody one final time.The note faded.Silence held for a long, slow breath before the audience burst into applause.
Siwan took a deep curtsy, then plucked a few testing notes and tweaked the tuning of her gittern.
‘Go!’Llewyn snapped at Trick, who was tying a motley mask—a dog wearing a floppy hat—to his face.Siwan beamed at her audience, who had begun to demand a second song.Trick flounced on to the stage beside her, already tossing colourful balls in high, lazy arcs.
‘One more round of applause for Siwan the Blackbird!’Trick cried.‘The lovely lady requires a moment of repose, but I’m sure she will be right back with another wonderful song!’
Siwan spun to glare at him through the darkened lenses of her mask.He managed, somehow, to shrug in the middle of juggling and jab his chin in Llewyn’s direction, then shot his own glare at the musicians sitting at the foot of the stage, who hastily gathered up their instruments and stumbled into the familiar upbeat rhythms of ‘The Ploughman’s Jig’.Siwan hesitated a moment longer, her knuckles white around the neck of her gittern, then walked to join Llewyn backstage, each step carefully measured to conceal her fury.
‘What?’she snapped.
There was no formulation of words that could convince her.Few, if any, that would not stoke her smouldering fury.
‘There’s a sorceress in the crowd,’ Llewyn said.‘She caught sight of us on the hill this morning.She’s taken an interest in you.’
Siwan tossed her hair and planted a hand on her hip.‘Some women like pretty girls.’
‘Not that kind of interest.Whether as an agent of the Grey Lady, or for her own reasons, she’s fixated on you, and she knows you’re more than you seem.She’s a danger.I hate it, Siwan, I really do, but she’s connected you to the troupe.We have to leave.As soon as we possibly can.Gather your things.’
She stared back at him, the lenses of her mask catching his reflection in the lantern light, casting it back at him like an accusation.‘If you’re afraid of her, you can go.I’ll be sad, but you were never comfortable in the troupe anyway.’
‘You’re not understanding—’
‘I understand perfectly well,’ she snapped.‘I feel little twinges of it, too, you know.Echoes.’She pulled the chain around her neck, uncovering the palm-sized shard of ghostwood she always wore, broken from the end of his sword.‘We’re tied together, Llewyn, by this.When their eyes are on you I feel that itch on the back of your neck.I know you’re meant for shadows.For the forest.Not the stage.ButI am, Llewyn.I’m not fully mortal, but I’m not fully gwyddien either.Thisiswhere I belong.My home.Even if it isn’t yours.’
‘Not fully gwyddien, not fully human, and more than both, lest you forget,’ Llewyn said, his patience strained.That very moment the sorceress Fola might be on her way towards the backstage tent, her strange staff and the markings on her hands readied to unleash unknown, terrible powers.‘You may have forgotten what you are, but that woman out there has an inkling.We need to get away from her.’
‘What I am?’Siwan tore the mask from her face.Her yellow eyes burned, brighter than the lanterns.Anger gave the angles and planes of her face a menacing, shadowed cast.‘And what is that, Llewyn?A singer.But she doesn’t care about that, does she?Nor do you.’
‘Of course I do,’ Llewyn protested.This wasn’t how he’d wanted the conversation to go, yet a sinking feeling in his gut told him that it had been an inevitable end.His fear and her frustration had stirred old resentments to the surface, swallowed time and again for the sake of harmony and politeness.‘But you can’t forget what you carry.What it can do.You were young, but—’
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ she seethed, baring her teeth.‘But you won’t let me be anything else, will you?I’ll always be that child on the altar, victim to the monster looming overhead.And you’ll always be the gwyddien taking off his ring, the Grey Lady never more than a pace from catching up with you.’
‘Siwan—’
‘I don’t want to hear this, Llewyn,’ she said firmly.‘I don’t want to talk about this.Not ever again.Afanan and I have a handle on it.Trust us, and let that be enough.Now we’ve left poor Trick out there to juggle for a full five minutes, and I’ve two more songs to sing.’
