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.I wonder , she thought, whether there might be seelieocean-wights dwelling among us."Well," said Rohain, "I have not seen a mermaid, but I have glimpsed a silkie, I think.I hope to see moreof the eldritch sea-dwellers.""Now," said the Seneschal with a change of tone, "I have a question for you , m'lady.Would it pleaseyou to come down to the shore towards evening? There is to be a party and a music-making.The sealswill come near the true seals, the animals that live on the skerries around the island.You shall see them, if not the merfolk.""Why will they come?""They are attracted by any kind of music, even whistling.""I should be greatly amused by such a spectacle!"As the day waned, the islanders gathered great piles of driftwood and lit fires along the shoreside, thenplayed their pipes and sang their songs.Out where the breakers arched their toss-maned horses' necks,the seals assembled to listen, their soft fur glistening.Burly, wintry-haired Roland Avenel took hisbagpipes and walked along the shore playing traditional airs, splashing his bare feet among bubbledcrystal garlands of foam strewn like pear-blossom on the ribbed sand.This delighted the seals.Their heads stuck up out of the water, and they sat up, perpendicular.Anenchanting sight it was for Rohain eighteen to twenty-five seals gathered, all listening, facing differentdirections, and Avenel playing the pipes to them.Annie, a serving-girl from Tana, was among the congregated islanders.She touched Rohain lightly on theelbow, saying, "Most of those creatures out there are lorraly , my lady.Others are not."Rohain "Not lorraly? " She glanced eagerly toward the seals."Are silkies among them?""Even so!"The silkies were the seal-folk, the gentlest of sea-wights.In their seal-form they swam, but in humanlikePage 185form they were able to walk on land before returning to the sea.Despite that men were wont to do themgreat wrong, the silkies had always shown benevolence to mortalkind.They never did harm.On another day Roland Avenel, knowledgeable in the ways of silkies, took Rohain, Prince Edward,Thomas of Ercildoune, and Caitri down to the strand they called Ronmara.It was a long-light afternoon.The last rays were roseate, the wind temperate, and the tide at its nadir.Not far offshore, out of the searose numerous rocky islets formed from tall stacks of hexagonal stones jammed together likehoneycomb, a remnant of some past volcanic action.The water was deep on their seaward side andcrystalline in shallow bead-fringed pools on the shoreward side.There, the seal-folk played.The silkies appeared like a troupe of lithe humans: women and men, youths and maidens and children.All were naked, ivory-skinned.Some lay sunning themselves, while others frolicked and gamboled.Beside them were strewn their downy pelts.Eventually, catching sight of the spies, they seized theirsealskins and jumped into the sea in mad haste.Then they swam a little distance before turning, poppingup their heads, and, as seals now, gazing at the invaders."They are beauteous indeed," exclaimed the young Prince."Indeed!" Caitri echoed, boldly."'Tis little wonder mortals sometimes fall in love with them," said the Bard."Do they?" said the little girl, turning to him in surprise."But surely," said Rohain, "such love must be doomed from the outset! One dwells in the sea, the otheron the land.When lovers belong to two different worlds, how shall they be happy together?""They shall not," said Edward, rather sharply.Avenel nodded, his mien somber.Rohain was about to ask, How can you know? when she thought of Rona Wade.She fell silent.Shallow, flat waves played about her feet, rippling with gold scales of sunlight, each delineated by thekohl-line of its own shadow, as she watched the seal-people swim away.Three times a week, a fisherman's wife would come to the Hall of Tana with her eldest daughter,delivering fish for the tables.Her husband had a knack for catching the best.The woman's name wasRona Wade, and there was a strangeness about her, like the sea, and as profound.Rohain liked to try broaching the reticence of this gentle wife by speaking with her on the occasions theymet, but on subjects pithier than island gossip, she would not be drawn.Rohain could not help noticingthe webbed fingers of the children of Hugh and Rona Wade.They bore an affinity with those of Ursilla'sprogeny, however people wisely refrained from commenting on the likeness.The other island children, ifthey thought anything of these aberrations, envied them.Webbed fingers made for fine swimmers.It was obvious that Hugh's love for his bonny wife Rona was unbounded, but she returned it only withcool cordiality.Like Ursilla, she had been seen stealing alone to a deserted shore where she would toss ashell or some other object into the water.Upon this signal a large seal would appear, and she spoke to itin an unknown tongue.But Rona was not really like Ursilla.Page 186 After the conversation, the creature would slip back under the waves, its shape unchanged.Rohainguessed that Rona did not love Hugh, but she was fond of her husband and never betrayed him.There appeared to be much unreturned love on Tamhania, which the arrival of the visitors had served toincrease.Within a few days of her arrival, Georgiana Griffin, Dianella's erstwhile servant, had attractedthe attention of one of the island's most eligible young men.Sevran Shaw was a shipmaster and farmer.Island-born, he had traveled far over the seas of Erith on hisown sloop, trading profitably, before coming home to settle.Shrewd was he, sensible, good-humored,and comfortably well-off.Now in his thirtieth year, he had never married.Several of the island girls hadhoped to snare him, but he had not fallen in love until he set eyes on Georgiana Griffin.This refined lady,bred in the rarefied atmosphere of the Court of Caermelor, refused to hear his suit or to accept him as afriend.Weeks passed and his attachment grew only the stronger, although she avoided him and theyhardly ever met.It looked as if his love was ill-fated.Thus proceeded the secrets and the passions of the isle.Yet there were other mysteries on Tamhania-Tavaal, not of the affective kind, and these seemed to bemore easily solved.Through the island's only village ran crumbling granite walls, and rows of tall wooden piles driven into theground for no apparent reason.Some stood or leaned like branchless trees, others supported decrepitpiers and condemned jetties that stalked toward the water but finished abruptly far short of it, in themiddle of the air [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]