The Faeries' Harp

16: Make Things Right

“Rhys! Wait just a second!” Saoirse calls to the young man running just ahead of her mare.

Rhys skids to a halt, more surprised than anything.

“Saoirse?” he asks.

“You’ll travel faster if you ride with me,” she offers. “Unless you want to learn how to fly, but I don’t think I’m good enough to teach you yet—”

“Why did you come after me?” he demands. “It doesn’t make any sense. You got what you wanted, coming here. You’ll never have to deal with your father and the suitors again. You’re free.”

“It’s my fault you’re in this mess to begin with. I can’t live with myself if I don’t help you get out of it. Climb on.”

“How is this even going to work with wings—”

“We’ll figure it out. Hurry, before those faeries come after us.” She helps him climb aboard Bergljot’s back behind her; a little experimenting reveals that she can fold her wings down so that they’re somewhat out of the way, and then they’re off again.

“I’m so sorry, Rhys. I really am,” Saoirse tells him. “If I hadn’t played that harp—”

“We still couldn’t have gotten home, at least, not the way we came here,” Rhys interrupts. “Maybe now that you’ve played the harp, that wall of vines is gone. You saw the harp-shape in them. Maybe it was the key we were looking for, after all. That’s what I wanted to find out.”

“You know the way, Bergljot?” Saoirse asks the unicorn. Bergljot whinnies an affirmative and picks up her pace.

“Thank you both, for your help. I don’t know if I could make it back there on my own. These woods are strange,” Rhys tells them. Even as he speaks, the trees seem to be pulling back, making a path for them.

“It is the least we can do, to help you however we can. Although, after what they’ve said…. What are you planning to do? If they spoke true, we cannot survive there. And I don’t think they were lying. Even the mean ones didn’t seem deceitful.”

“I don’t know. But without me, Ma will die. It’s only a matter of time. She can’t support herself alone, and with the debt collectors prowling about…. She’ll lose the cottage, the garden, everything.”

Saoirse rummages in her skirts with one hand while maintaining a steady seat on Bergljot’s back, a feat Rhys admires and envies. After a few moments, she produces a heavy leather pouch and hands it to him.

“Do you think this will be enough, to provide for her for a while?” she asks Rhys. The pouch jingles when he shakes it. Keeping one arm around Saoirse’s waist for stability, Rhys carefully opens the pouch to see it nearly full of silver coins.

“Oh, my word. Lord have mercy,” he breathes. Of all the things that have happened to him recently, this is perhaps the most shocking. “I’ve never seen so much money at once in my life.”

Saoirse giggles briefly at this admission, then bites her lip hard. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed. I just…couldn’t help it.”

“Of course. Rich girl that you are, it must seem like a trivial amount—”

“Oh, no trivial amount. I’ve been saving that up for a while, stealing a few coins at a time from Lord Rioghnan. But will it be enough for your mother, do you think? If not, I think I have more—”

“Keep the rest. If this is not enough to keep her in comfort for the rest of her life, it will be because she has been foolish with it, not because you lacked generosity. I’m not sure I can accept such a gift.”

“You must. I insist. My father has been too stingy with your village, with all the people he has power over, for far too long. You and your mother and your whole village deserve this and so much more, and it has been a long time in coming to you.” She sighs heavily, still guilt-ridden. “Had I known your situation, when we met there at the lake, I would have given this to you then, and you wouldn’t have gotten into this mess with me.”

“Please, Saoirse. Don’t blame yourself for this. You were right in thinking that I wanted the adventure. I’ve wanted one for a long time, but I could never leave because I had to take care of her and work to support the both of us.”

“Still, an adventure like this—”

“Is nothing like either one of us ever could have expected or imagined. But I still want the adventure. I just have to make sure she’s taken care of, that she won’t die because I’m off being foolish.” Carefully, Rhys closes the bag and attaches it to his belt, next to his knife.

“That’s very noble of you. She’s fortunate to have such a son.”

Rhys blushes, unsure of how to respond to such kind words, and silence blossoms between them. Saoirse closes her eyes, trusting Bergljot to take them where they want to go, and listens to the world around them. The trees are whispering again, different from before, and a new melody floats in the ethereal voices this time. The whispers and song are oddly familiar to her, like a memory of a dream. But what do they mean? What are they trying to tell me?

“Did you ever have any inkling of anything like this, growing up?” Saoirse asks Rhys. She’s partially just trying to make conversation, partially remembering her own recurrent dream of the harp in the river.

“I don’t think so,” Rhys replies. In truth, he doesn’t remember a whole lot from before his father left. He knows he’d been happy, then, and that his family hadn’t struggled so much to live, but ever since the man of the house walked out, hunger and want have overwhelmed all other feelings, and possible solutions to their plight crowded out most other thoughts. “Did you?”

“The dream of the harp…. Every night, I’d see it, and hear voices, like these voices in the trees, calling my name.”

“That’s…odd.”

“Maybe this was supposed to happen, this way. Maybe we’re supposed to be here for some reason.”

“Maybe you’re reading too much into things.”

Saoirse laughs, and Rhys smiles a little, glad he hasn’t offended her.

“Maybe you’re right,” she admits, “but this is the first time in a long time that I’ve felt like I’m where I’m supposed to be.”

At that moment, Bergljot slows to a walk, then stops. They’ve reached the clearing by which they first entered the fae realm. Now the wall of vines has an opening, something like an arched gateway bordered with flowering vines. The opening swirls with mist, tinged with rainbow.

“This is it,” Rhys breathes, sliding down from Bergljot’s back. A moment later, Saoirse joins him on the ground.

“You can’t go looking like that. I don’t know much about this place, but I’m sure that would be very much against the rules,” she remarks. Half of her consciousness is still focused on the voices in the trees. As they whisper and chant and hum, pictures flit through her mind of her and Rhys: a gesture, lips moving, a flash, a transformation. Is this what could be? Another lifetime? Can I do it, or are they just taunting me?

“Maybe, but what can we do about it? If these are our true forms, we were disguised before, but neither of us has any idea—”

“Shhhh. Let me try something.” She places her fingertips on Rhys’ forehead as she’d seen herself do in her mind and mutters a few words that she heard from the voices in the trees. To both of their surprise, a brilliant flash comes from her fingertips, sweeping over Rhys. He feels tingly, and when the light fades, his skin has lost the silvery tint, and he feels no wings behind him.

To Saoirse’s relief, when the flash fades, Rhys appears as he did when she first saw him, down to the stubble on his cheeks and the warm brown eyes that first drew her in, although now his eyes are filled with surprise and disbelief.

“What did you…. How did you….” he tries to ask, but the words for his question evade him.

“I’m not sure. I’ve been listening to the voices in the trees. I just had this feeling….” Saoirse explains. Her blue eyes seem deeper, somehow, than they did when she appeared human. She sees more, and sees differently, than I ever have, Rhys contemplates.

“All of this is very weird.”

Saoirse smiles. “You’re not wrong. But if you’re going to go, you should go now, and you can’t stay long. I don’t know how long that charm lasts, but it’s temporary.”

“Thank you.” He takes her hand and squeezes it briefly, then lets go and runs through the gate. In the same instant, Kyrie, Seamus, Aeowyn, Alastair, and two pixies burst into the clearing, startling Bergljot and Saoirse both. Bergljot positions herself between the fae and the gate, daring any of them to try to pursue Rhys.

“Oh, no,” Aeowyn groans. “We’re going to be in so much trouble.”