The Faeries' Harp

21: Mysterious Ways

“Gently…. Easy does it…. There,” Kyrie coaches Saoirse as she and Seamus help lower Rhys to the island with the harp, leaning him against the ancient golden instrument. “There’s no way the power of whatever you play will miss him now.”

“If you can play it again,” Seamus adds, coming across as more skeptical than he meant to.

“I guess we’ll find out,” Saoirse answers coolly through gritted teeth. She’s too concerned about Rhys to waste any energy on arguing with Seamus or anyone else. She sits on the harp’s stool, takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes. Kyrie and Seamus hover a short distance away, meaning to give her space. Bergljot emerges from the forest at the river’s edge, followed by Aeowyn and Alastair. The four Flower Guards congregate on the shore a short distance from Bergljot, watching and waiting for Saoirse to begin playing the harp.

Saoirse listens to the trees and the river, silently asking them for guidance. At first, she hears nothing, just confusion and wind in the trees, the normal chatter of water running over rocks. However, the more she focuses and the more deeply she breathes, the more her heart rate settles, and then she hears the ethereal voices in the trees again, singing a new melody ever so faintly.

Her fingers seem to move across the harp strings of their own accord, creating a haunting and unsettling melody. The voices in the trees sing more loudly, harmonizing with Saoirse’s playing. The trees and the river, and even the rocks, seem to also be contributing to the music.

Rhys twitches against the harp. Saoirse plays a particularly strong chord and the charm she’d placed on him shatters and falls away, revealing Rhys’s faerie self once more. His dark blue wings pulse with ripples of gold, green, white, and light blue in time with the music that flows from the harp and their surroundings. The dark tendrils on Rhys’s skin throb with the ripples, slowly but surely receding back towards the imprint of the coin on Rhys’s palm, which is glowing red and pulsing steadily, like a heartbeat.

The faeries on the shore observe all of this as they hover, shivering because of the eeriness of the tune Saoirse plays.

“I can’t believe it. Who is she, really? How is this possible?” Aeowyn mumbles, staring enviously at Saoirse.

“Elowen said she’s likely the daughter of the Chrysanthemum Duchy,” Kyrie recalls. “Many from that line of nobility have been Lilac order, and almost all of them seem to specialize in magic connected to music in some way.”

“Still, she has no training. She didn’t even know she was fae just a little while ago,” Seamus points out. “This level of song-spell mastery is practically unheard of.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s doing, really. Her eyes are closed.”

“All the spells she’s used she heard first from the trees,” Bergljot’s voice echoes in the minds of the Flower Guards, startling all four of them.

“I thought you were being awfully quiet for a unicorn,” Alastair mutters irritably.

“Hearing them so clearly and being able to interpret them so readily is still quite a gift,” Kyrie addresses Bergljot. “Almost unheard of.”

“Unheard of is right,” Myghal interrupts, bursting out of the forest from the direction of the Faerie Queen’s palace with Elowen right behind him. “She’s mad talented, the lass is, even for Lilac Order.”

“What news?” Seamus asks them. Saoirse’s ongoing harp-song makes the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, and he would give almost anything for the song to end.

“Her Majesty is waiving the usual laws for these two, on account of their unprecedentedly odd circumstances,” Elowen replies. “She very much wants to speak with both of them.”

“Let us hope the lad lives, then.”

“Did some harm befall him in the mortal realm?”

“Tainted silver accidentally touched him,” Kyrie explains.

“And a human saw it,” Alastair adds contemptuously. “Will Her Majesty overlook that?”

“You can ask Her Majesty yourself, when we return to the palace,” Myghal answers, mildly perturbed by Alastair’s obvious ill temper. “How soon might that be possible, do you think?”

“She’s playing a healing spell, trying to help Rhys,” Kyrie answers. “It’s a long and elaborate one, but I think she should finish it soon.”

Almost as if on cue, Saoirse finished the song with a brilliant trill of harmonious strings, then slumps against the harp, utterly spent. She feels nothing when she hits the ground.

“D’you think she’s all right?” Alastair wonders aloud, flying quickly to investigate without waiting for a reply. All of his comrades follow directly behind him, leaving Bergljot standing alone on the riverbank.

“She’s alive but exhausted,” Kyrie determines after a brief examination of Saoirse. “Best not to try to wake her.”

“And Rhys…. This is incredible,” Seamus adds. While Rhys is still unconscious, the only evidence left on his body of his encounter with the tainted silver is a periwinkle scar of the coin’s imprint on his palm.

“Powerful spell she used,” Elowen remarks.

“We have to take them to the Queen, sooner rather than later. We must not test her patience,” Myghal urges.

“And how are we to do that, with them both unconscious?” Aeowyn questions. “I doubt we can carry them even a quarter of the distance.”

“Carry them to me, and lay them across my back,” Bergljot suggests in a way that feels more like a command. “I can bear them to the Palace of the Faerie Queen.”

“That, we can manage,” Seamus agrees. “Let’s not keep the Queen waiting any longer than necessary.”