Vidar
Ifind the old man sitting in front of the cage the night before May Day. He’s boiling tea over a small fire. And for a moment I wonder if any time has passed at all – until he looks up. These are not the eyes of the old man who has played merrels with me and spoken sagely of his offspring. These eyes are wild and desperate.
“You are not the man I saw here last,” I say carefully. “He was here to hold a place for his grandson who hoped to win a bride.”
Pain fills this old man’s face, and it confirms my suspicions.
“You knew my grandfather,” he says, voice wracked with grief. “But of course – by those ears, you must be fae. But you cannot be the one he spoke of.”
“What makes that an impossibility?” I ask, sitting down and offering him a flask of spirits. He waves it away with a worried look. Faerie food does have a reputation, but it is only offered in exchange for the warmth of his fire. There are no gifts among the fae.
“Only that you are young and fresh, and he is fifty years and more dead. A good man. He spent his last days trying to help me. Trying to …”
He’s a broken man. I suppose he never discovered how to put his heart in her hair. I ought to feel triumphant about that. Any good fae would. But I feel an odd sympathy for the man. I, too, am marked by the Mayfly Seer. I, too, have spent the better part of half a century wondering at their strange rhyme.
Food, freedom, your ring to wear,
The sting of your kiss and your heart in her hair.
And I, too, may very well sit here – broken and despairing – when the Court of Madness rolls over this last corner of the world and eats up my soul.
I see myself in his agonized eyes.
“And what do you hope for on the morrow?” I ask, wondering if there is hope beyond heartbreak.
He looks for a long time at his hands before speaking. “I have but a fistful of years left. She has shown me that. But she has shown me no way to free her. I do not think she even wants to be free. She shows me how to keep our people safe, our enemies away, our food in the root cellars. But she does not show me herself.”
I shift uncomfortably. She has shown meallof herself. Perhaps more than she realizes.
“And there are no mortal women among your people with whom to propagate your line?” I ask dryly.
He waves a bitter hand. “My line is intact. My brothers and sisters have been fruitful. They are kings and queens, noble and strong. I am the madman who sails to the black isle for them every year and communes with the Mayfly Seer and brings back the knowing they need. And it has eaten me away. I go mad for her beauty. I have lived no life except in waiting for this one day a year.”
I draw back a little. I am deeply unsettled. Seeing him here like this is too much of a mirror of myself. Am I so pathetic? Have I pined away my life as he has over a Seer who shows me only what she wishes me to see?
He knows nothing of her except her beauty and elusiveness and his obsession has consumed him. I watch him twisting at the hem of his garment and revulsion rolls over me.
“Have you had dreams?” I ask, suddenly worried that perhaps what I thought was something unique is only something she gives to all who come to her.
“Dreams?” His laugh is mocking. “I have nothing but nightmares when I sleep at all. Nightmares of this unconquered cage and the woman from within who flees from me whenever my gaze meets her own.
I let out a long breath, feeling foolish that I am so relieved.
I shake my head at myself. I will not be him. On the morrow, I will offer the bee and take the vision and I will go home and defend the court she shows me, and I will put from my mind this Mayfly Seer forever.
I will not be a fool as this mortal has been. I will not presume to know her when all I know is a specter in a cage and not a living woman at all.
“Your time here is complete,” I tell the prince. “When next you come, you will bring your successor and show him how to see the visions, but you will not speak to the lady or see her visions yourself. After that day, you will sail away and never see her again.”
I do not know if it is pity that offers this or something else. The fire raging inside me is too hard to define. I do not know if it is envy or fury or despair.
His face is destitute. “Can you see the future then, too, fae lord?”
I snort. “This is not a vision – it’s an offer. A bargain you can make with me. I will set a geas on you – a geas of forgetting and you will forget why you have spent your whole life in this way and in exchange you will not return.”
He thinks about it for most of the night. We do not talk. I content myself playing five-card murder and that can be played in solitaire.
It’s almost dawn when he comes to me shaking and broken.
