I look at the cage carefully. I have always been more interested in its occupant, but I see it for what it is. Ancient magic. And a magic not made for what they use it for, though I have not the gift to know how it was meant to be employed, only that it has been twisted by the mortals into this grim cage for one of their own.
“There was one before her – one other seer of our people,” the old man says. “But when I was a youth, bright and raging to live, the old Seer disappeared – taken by the Undertide, we say. Claimed, finally, by the waves. So, the mothers chose a new offering – Elkhana.”
I turn her name over and over in my mind like a boiled sweet. Elkhana, Elkhana. It’s a name fit for the fae. I want to say it out loud but fear I will betray myself.
The old man is still speaking as if he has not just given me a priceless gift. “She was a few years older than I. Just shy of marriageable age. A lovely girl but with her mind always far away from where her body worked and lived. I remember she did not want to go. The mothers were grim-faced for a week and then one day they were all smiles and they sent men to her house and she came out as she was told to do – calming her folk with gentle words. She did as she was bid, and we brought her to this cage and set her in it.”
“There is no door,” I say mildly.
“Neither need there be,” the old man says, looking grimly at the cage for a moment. “We landed the boat. I’d been chosen for rowing from the ship as I was young and strong. The mothers had given her a drink – something that made her slow and sluggish. They lifted her between them and threw her out of the boat as one might throw a heavy fish. I worried she would drown.”
He falls silent there, taking a bite of his sausage and a sip of ambrosia until the anticipation eats me up.
“And? What happened then?” I feel as if I almost know this story – as if someone had told it to me once before. And with the memory comes scraps of other memories – a girl running over the plains with her hair whipping behind her. A father holding her small hand in his. A little bird singing in the tree. Are they scraps of our shared dreams together? Or are they some of the visions she shared with me when last I was here? I know them as I know my own faded experiences.
“It was the only time I’ve ever seen these tentacles move.” He points to the carved black tentacles ringing the cage. “They reached out and snatched her up and pulled her under the waves. We waited nearly an hour to see what would happen – I am not ashamed to say I cried, thinking her drowned and her life wasted. And then the mayflies came, descending on the cage, and the mothers said all was well, and we left. And on the next year when we returned, there she was, hair white as the clouds of the skies and eyes distant. She showed our futures as the one before her did. And we lived or died for the knowing of them.”
I am no mortal to be dissuaded by his grisly tale. All magic takes a price. That this tribe chooses to drown their most beautiful stars and bind them to eternal servitude is not the oddest form of payment I’ve heard of.
“And your grandson wants to end this?” I ask. “How would he do so? Is she not bound now to the cage?”
“Oh certainly,” the old man laughs. “And she will live to see my grandson’s children’s children’s children. Elihein cannot succeed in his wish. Even if he did, another would take her place and who is to say they would not just choose her again? There is only one way to open the cage – a way told in our tales as a sop to those sent to the cage – a chance they may return someday. But it is impossible.”
“I have seen the impossible become possible,” I say mildly, drawing the merrels square and offering him the black stones from my pouch. He takes them happily, as keen to play as I am. I wonder if he has improved his game. He was always too aggressive when he was younger, and it made him far too easy to exploit.
“And yet, I doubt you will see this,” the old man says with a sly smile. He places his rocks with much more caution than he did as a younger man. He’s improved. “For the girl offered by the mothers must be an unmarried virgin.”
“Aren’t they always,” I murmur. For some reason, mortals are obsessed with offering up their most innocent to brutal deaths. We fae kill brutally, too, but we are less concerned with the innocence of our victims. Anyone will do for our cruelty.
“And the only way we know to remove her from her cage is to see her married,” the old man says.
“I would think that should be easy enough,” I say, but my heart is sinking. If his grandson comes here tomorrow and claims the Mayfly Seer for his bride, I will not get my answer – and I need it badly. On top of that, I have a strange emotion lurking in my heart. I cannot identify it and yet it keeps squeezing as if I have been caught somehow in a magical trap. It’s more than jealousy. It borders on despair. That’s an emotion I know very well indeed.
“Ah, but for our people, the groom must offer a series of gifts in order to claim his bride.”
I am imagining elephantas laden with sacks of gems, or eyes plucked from the gods offered on silken pillows. I am snickering to myself when he speaks, and his voice is singsong in quality.
“Food, freedom, your ring to wear, the sting of your kiss, and your heart in her hair.”
“That’s quite the list,” I say dryly.
“It’s metaphorical,” the old man says. “Usually, we just promise to give those things without any need to offer more than the ring and the food.”
“I’m surprised your women don’t refuse until the bargain is fulfilled,” I say, concentrating as I place my stone. “Ours most certainly would.”
He pauses until I meet his eye and he’s studying me. “I suppose it is a bargain of sorts, like those of your people. Perhaps your kind made this cage.”
My brows narrow. I do not know what he means.
“In order to marry the Mayfly Seer,” the old man explains. “My grandson will have to literally fulfill those vows. He must find a way to put his very heart in her hair.”
“Ah,” I say, understanding dawning. I realize I feel relieved. There will be no wedding. “No mortal would survive such a thing. And besides that, it goes against your traditions to offer her anything to have of her own.”
The old man is nodding. “And when he sees that, I will be here to help comfort him and steer him down a new path. If he wants adventure, there is always the legendary cup to seek.”
“Oh, the Court of Madness has that,” I say absently, neatly winning the game.
“What’s that?” the old man asks, his eyes wide.
“Shall we play again?” I ask quickly to disguise my words. There are things mortals shouldn’t know. And there are things fae shouldn’t want. And I’m afraid I’m breaking all the rules today.
