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people have kidnapped my daughter, and lots of other children too, I think. I
don't know where they are, or what they're doing now. But I mean to look for
them and stop them. I know they will be in the Greek islands in late July or
early August. I don't know if they know about me, or if they care about me.
But if they do, or if they know about Emrys," he smoothed the sleeping boy's
golden hair, "they will try to stop us. They have no scruples. They may have
lots of children with them. They may have the child who will become Pan, or
they may think they do. And they will have other children who they are
prepared to kill. They are not afraid to make blood sacrifices."
"Are they Satanists?" I ask, horrified. Colin grimaces.
"Some of them may be something like what you would call Satanists. It really
isn't easy to explain.
And that isn't the best place to start from." It would be so great to think he
was mad and not believe a word of it. But I'm not so stupid as all that. I
stare out into the night. Do I really want to go with this man into real
danger? There will be other boats, other yachts needing crew, maybe not
beautiful hand-built gaff-rigged ketches but good boats all the same. But then
could I live with myself if I let him go alone? I
have to believe him. I sip my wine. It is up to me.
"How did they kidnap your daughter?" I ask.
"I don't know. Her mother has lost her magic too. I wasn't there." I wonder
how he came to keep
Emrys.
"You're separated?" It's a very conventional question to cause so much pain. I
didn't mean to make his face crumple like that.
"I was born in Ireland," he says, looking straight into my eyes. "I was
brought up in a children's home, I never knew my family. I always had a great
urge to belong somewhere. I always had magic, and
I taught myself to use it. I was vain and full of power, I thought it would be
mine forever. I did small things, like the language spell, letting me
understand and be understood in any language."
"Useful," I say, because he has left a space in which I must say something, I
feel dizzy in the intensity of his gaze.
"And when I was twenty, I found a spell in an old book, a spell that would
find me what I most wanted, the woman who would be the other half of my soul.
It was a great magic and not many people would have done it." He has so much
pain in his voice. "I wouldn't be content with girls I could find, girls who
wanted me. There were enough of them, but they weren't special. I wanted the
one who would be my other half in the Platonic sense."
"I've read the Symposium. And the Phaedrus."
"I called up there isn't really a word that I can use that would give you the
right idea. A spirit, anyway, and I asked it to show me the girl who in all
the world was the best suited to me in power and love. Well, in a cloud of
smoke it showed her to me. She was very beautiful, brown haired and white
skinned, and I fell in love with her immediately. Then she turned and looked
at me, and it seemed she saw me and I knew that in her real life she was
dreaming about me. I asked her, her, not the spirit. That was a bad mistake,
the spirit would have been compelled to tell me the truth. I asked her her
name and where she lived and told her I'd come as quickly as I could to find
her. Marie, Marie, lost to me forever."
He is weeping quite openly. I don't know what to say.
"She was French. I went there, to Grenoble and she was there."
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"Really?" I can't help it, it just slips out.
"Oh yes, really." I can't help believing him. "She came away with me, and we
loved each other. I
taught her magic. She had family in France, how was I to know? She never
mentioned that she was adopted. If it had been Ireland then I might have
thought. But our parents must have thought they had been so clever." He is
staring into the darkness now, his hand tight around his glass. "Between us we
had one and a half souls. We loved each other. We could do anything. But
she couldn't trust me. I did something something happened, and someone
died, not by my doing, not at all. She wanted proof that
I'd done what I said, and not killed him. And when I gave her proof the spirit
mocked us, and told us the truth about what we were."
He is silent for a long moment as if he can still see it in the darkness. Then
he turns to me. "Why am
I telling you all this?"
"She was your sister?"
"I wish I'd never found out." He searches my face for something, condemnation
perhaps, and does not find it. "She ran away from me. She returned to the
church. I Do you have any faith?"
"Not really," I say, honestly, surprised at being brought back to myself
suddenly from such a dark story. "My parents go to church back in the States,
but I stopped believing in any of it a long time ago."
"Oh, it's all true," he says, and shakes his head. "I follow the Old Gods, and
I am not the only one in the world who does, there are more than you'd
probably think. But I'm glad to hear you don't particularly love the White
Christ, because his age is ending and the new age is beginning. Great Pan will
be reborn.
And I want to make it the best age I can."
"I don't understand. If you say all the gods are real then what is one
goat-footed god more or less?"
He splutters with sudden laughter, then grows serious again.
"You say you've read Plato? You're familiar with that world view, with how
different the sort of thoughts were that could be thought then? Or,
well, in the simplest terms consider the differences between Greece and
America, in those sort of terms, what people believe affecting how they act.
The different customs and attitudes and expectations, the different sorts of
lives people lead growing up in them. Who could have imagined Christianity and
all that followed as an age, from just one more god?
That age is over now, whatever happens. And what happens next well, that is
our choice. There is a story that a voyager heard the nymphs mourning for Pan
on the day of the Resurrection. This cycle it will be the other way around."
Emrys stirs, yawns, and stretches. "Great Pan is not dead, Great Pan will
never die." he says, in
Greek, sounding as if he's quoting something. Then in English, "Can we go back
to
Sarakina now? I'm so sleepy. Are you coming, Jenny"
"Your choice." says Colin.
14. LADY OF SILENCES
Her laurel tree, her bear, her starting hind her veil of shadows thrown before
the hounds her sudden hedge of thorns, her arrow nocked, her smiling silver
face that knows her own.
Eleni sat among the other women, sewing a button on a child's jacket. She
enjoyed these Thursday afternoons they spent together in the shaded courtyard
of her house, making clothes. She liked the quiet talking, comparing their
work. She liked the sticky home-made vouvouki Dafni always brought, packed
loose in icing sugar, with clusters of nuts and fruit embedded in the sweet
glutinous rose and lemon jelly.
She enjoyed making lemonade and bringing it out to the courtyard on a tray
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with ice. She enjoyed the way everyone would exclaim over her ice and her
pretty jug and glasses. All the women liked her shady courtyard, with the
almond tree, the wooden chairs and the pots of bright geraniums. Eleni found
the sewing itself easy and relaxing, and had a great feeling of satisfaction
at seeing the pile of pretty garments they finished each week. At the end of
the afternoon Evadni would collect them all, and take them with her back to
the warehouse on the shore where all the made things were being stored until
they were needed.
Mostly the women would gossip as they worked, exchanging news of their friends
and neighbours.
Eleni would listen more than she talked. She didn't always know the people
they were talking about.
Unlike the other women she had not grown up on the island. She had come here [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]