Pierrot's Song

Chapter 1 - To the Fureys-2

It was the moon that woke him. Full and huge, it lit the mountainside like strange white sunlight. Sofia had rolled away a little and was lying face down, her cheek pressed to the rock on which she slept. Mina lay on her back, one arm flung out, the other curled in against Luka. He rolled onto his side to look at her. Such glances were cautious, rationed, during the day, because he did not want to make her uncomfortable, but now he could drink his fill. Then Mina opened her eyes. Luka pulled back, startled, but she did not see him or speak to him. She lay there, her gaze directed upward.

‘Mina?’ he whispered, and she didn’t move at the sound of his voice. Luka sat up, hugging his knees to his chest. Despite the thick wool cloaks they all wore, night on the mountain was unbearable without shelter. Why had they fallen asleep without considering this? A low moaning filled the air as the wind began to increase. Luka thought he should wake the others. It was already bitingly cold. If the wind grew too fierce they would be in serious danger, especially if it heralded a storm. Before he could move or speak, he noticed a light shimmering on the path up to the shale field. Standing, he walked toward it, his legs stiff from the unwieldy rock bed. The light was as tall as a person, and soft as moonlight. When he approached, it withdrew, drawing him up the path. He followed, his pace picking up as his waking body became more responsive.

Rounding the corner, he found himself at the shale field again. The light hovered at the field’s edge, and as he watched, it coalesced and Mina was standing there.

‘How did you …?’ he began, looking over his shoulder, confused. Mina raised one finger to her lip to silence him. She wore only petticoats and a chemise, though a moment ago he had seen her fully dressed and wrapped in her cloak.

Mina lifted a hand and pulled the chemise from her shoulder, laying it bare in a clear motion of offer. ‘Isn’t this what you want?’ She smiled, her gaze lingering on his.

‘How are you doing this?’ Luka demanded. ‘You’re asleep.’

The moonlight Mina beckoned for him to come closer. He took one cautious step, then another, noting without surprise that he could see through her.

‘You can have all you want,’ she whispered to him, sliding the chemise from her other shoulder. Her hand continued to sweep across her chest. ‘Come to me, Luka.’ Her voice, low and deep, was a promise.

He moved closer, almost at the shale now. As soon as he did, the girl of light retreated up the slope, just a fraction. Luka became aware of a presence behind him, but it was becoming difficult to think straight. Mina held out a hand to him. He raised his in response, taking another step. There was a footstep behind him, then another.

‘You fear you will never have what you dream of, don’t you?’ Mina whispered. ‘Why should that be? Why do others get to take what they want while you are left with only the longing?’

Luka found himself nodding. His whole life it seemed unbearable longing had walked beside him, making him wish for the impossible, making him aware always of how his life fell short.

‘But now you can have what you desire …’ the ghost girl tempted.

He stepped onto the shale. It shifted a little but held steady in a way it had not during the day. After he had taken several steps up, the footsteps behind him crunched onto the shifting ground too. Luka didn’t question how he could walk up the slope now, step after step, when it had been impossible during the day. His thoughts were only of Mina and what she was offering.

‘I will be yours,’ she said, and he followed.

His steps felt sure, the ground solid. Although the footsteps behind him continued, he was no longer aware of them. Mina was before him, glowing and beautiful, her eyes fixed on his. He would follow her wherever she might lead, he knew.

‘Luka?’

The voice, soft and sweet, broke into his dream walk for only one reason. He turned and looked back. How could this be possible? Mina stood at the bottom of the slope. She looked puzzled.

‘Sofia?’

Luka blinked and looked to his left. Sofia also stood on the shale, a step or two below him. She too was startled by Mina’s voice. Luka turned to look back up the slope, searching for Mina’s moonlight self. She was gone, and his tiny movement caused the ground underneath him to shift so quickly; only years of acrobatics training and a profound ease with his physicality stopped him tumbling forward onto his face.

‘What are you two doing? How did you get halfway up the slope?’

Luka and Sofia looked at each other, then at their feet. Cautiously, Luka peered over his shoulder. Though the path ahead had seemed straight as he followed the lure of the moonlight Mina, he seemed to have been trekking across the shale on a diagonal.

‘I thought I saw …’ he began, but shame stopped him saying more. Fully awake now, he knew what he had seen had not been Mina.

‘I suddenly knew the way …’ Sofia began.

‘It was a moving light …’ they both said together.

‘You were in a trance,’ Mina told them.

Luka felt subtle shifts in the shale beneath his feet. He willed himself to be as still as possible as stones slid over each other and fell down the slope.

‘Whatever it was, we are here, further up than we came before.’

Sofia looked ahead. When she finally spoke, the words came slowly. ‘Perhaps this is not a physical test. Perhaps it is a mental one. Perhaps this cave can only be reached by those who are able to walk in Tarya.’

She closed her eyes. Her hands came together in the familiar gesture of the book of the Creator. Luka and Mina waited long, thudding heartbeats of time. Sofia’s foot slipped on the shale, but she stayed in place, though shale shifted all around her. After more heartbeats, the settling of stones lapsed back into silence. Then Sofia began walking with certainty up the slope. Nodding, Mina turned and grabbed the two bags of supplies, then returned to the edge of the shale field. Luka saw a familiar expression settle on her face, one she had worn many times during their healing sessions, and knew she was in Tarya. He used his own trick, a melody dancing through his thoughts, to make the world around him brighten as he too entered the other realm.

Moonlight spread across the shale, offering a clear path. One by one the three travellers followed its silver arrow without a trace of hesitation. Luka felt a tugging at his thoughts, as though the moonlight Mina still called him from a distance. This urge told him he was going the wrong way, that he should again veer to the right, but he resisted its niggling and instead focused on taking step after step along the moonlit path straight ahead.

Who is to say if time moves differently in Tarya’s realms? It may have been an hour or merely an instant before they stood beyond the shale, allowing their senses to shift back from a place of blazing, iridescent stars and vast swathes of velvet sky to the ordinary night. Mina’s steps became unsure and Luka caught her before she tumbled down the slope. She gave him a shy smile of thanks.

‘One step closer,’ Luka said.

Sofia turned uphill. ‘That was only the first test.’

Mina put a hand on her elbow. ‘You said it was a mental test.’

Sofia turned back. ‘At first I was following … a promise. Something long desired. I think if I’d given in to it I would have lost the path. Did you sense anything? You weren’t on the shale yet.’

Mina looked out over the night-dimmed fields of Litonya. ‘Temptation …’ she said in a low voice.

Luka glanced at her sharply.

‘In Tarya I could have power,’ she continued. ‘I feel that. But this time it was like … like that power was whispering to me. Telling me to shape the world as it should be. But it felt … corrupt. I don’t think it was the voice of Tarya.’

Sofia nodded. ‘I think we’re past it now.’

As one they looked up the slope. Ahead their way traversed giant, ragged boulders, heaped one against the other like bad teeth. There was no obvious path through.

Sofia sighed. ‘Well, I doubt we’d be able to sleep now, so we might as well keep going.’

‘If we tried to sleep here, we might roll down the shale and end up back at the beginning,’ Luka agreed, and began to climb.

At first, despite their tired limbs, the way was not too difficult, like climbing stairs built for a giant. Most of the boulders were hip high, so by helping each other they managed to make steady upward progress. They had to watch out for outcroppings of fierce rock on the boulder edges that snagged their clothing or scratched their hands. Fortunately, the moon’s glow highlighted the strange, fang-like protrusions, so they were able to avoid them for the most part.

Gradually they found themselves having to stretch farther to reach the tops of the boulders. Silently, Luka placed himself at the back, offering his hands for the others to use as a step with each new challenge, while Sofia clambered up first, her strong arms providing the leverage the others needed to climb the ever-increasing heights.

Long before exhaustion truly set in, they began eyeing the boulders with uncertainty. Each one was now larger than the next, and they were all head height. As the travellers climbed, they discovered the jagged teeth were too dangerous to stand on, so they had to search for footholds in the giant stones in order to keep going. The moon still aided them, highlighting gaps and indents, but tiredness made them clumsy. With each new stone they had to take time to examine its surface carefully, looking for the easiest path. Finding a way, they would glance at each other, seeking reassurance that this was climbable. Finally, at one looming rocky surface, they stopped, and their shared glances matched each other in despair.

‘It’s too high,’ Mina whispered.

The others stayed silent. There was nothing more to be said. They had reached a cliff and its sheer face rose to about twice Sofia’s height—and she was the tallest of them. Carefully, one tiny step at a time, they each turned so their back was to the impenetrable wall of rock. It seemed half of Litonya spread out before them. But it was what lay much closer that caused them to gasp. For the right side of the bed of shale ended in a sheer drop down the side of the mountain.

‘If we’d skidded the wrong way …’ Mina gasped.

The others could only nod. Luka remembered with horror how strong the urge had been to veer to the right.

‘Now what?’ Mina continued. ‘There seems to be no way forward, and the way back is …’

‘Precarious at best,’ Sofia finished.

Dropping their supply bags, Mina slid down the cliff wall to sit, her legs drawn in close and her face in her hands. Luka and Sofia sank down on either side of her. A stray night bird might have seen them hunched like prey, defeated. While they climbed, the chill of the night had not affected them, but now they were still, it quickly bled into their tired limbs. Without words, they huddled closer. Mina hugged herself and rested her head on her arms, eyes closed. Perhaps she slept. Sofia gazed at nothing, her thoughts turning inward, but she voiced no solution. Luka sat still as the cliff face, conscious only of Mina’s warmth down the length of his side. He looked out from the Fureys and saw the countryside laid before them, patchworks of fields and roads lit by the vivid moon. He had never seen Andon from such a height before. They had come a long way.