Chương 114: The Lone Fetch

A week had passed since Miriam had begun sword training in earnest. She remembered how unsteady she had felt when she first started training under Cian, how unused to this sort of combat she had been. That feeling was long gone now, and all that remained was to improve her control over the weapon she'd been given. Eoin called his sword style the Way of the Unbroken Channel. It wasn't the sort of sword fighting people in this quadrant were used to at all.

He claimed to have learned it on the far north side of the Fourth Ring - a journey of years to reach. When he demonstrated its full grace and splendor, it was hard not to be captivated. Even Ultán grew silent as he watched, impressed. Unbroken Channel was a style made for the fórsa wielder. It was a two-sword style, but unusual in that the swords were the same size. Many similar styles had a longer sword in one hand and a shorter one in the other, for flexibility in combat.

Unbroken Channel was all about continuous offense. Whoever devised this way of fighting wanted constant threat directed at their enemies at all times. When he demonstrated, Eoin was a whirling blur of deadly blades, but Miriam found it to be almost as beautiful as the dance forms he'd demonstrated in Solas's basement.

"We've never really talked much about your life," Miriam said absently, fórsa-dry at the end of a training session.

"Why is that?"

"Well, you never ask," Eoin joked, but his face fell a little.

"Also… there's just so much of it. Certainly I could regale you with stories from my last five hundred years or so quite clearly, but… a lot of it before that is sort of… foggy."

"Really?" Miriam perked up.

"That's fascinating. I suppose it makes sense though. There was a point in time as I was getting older as a human that I forgot lots of things from my early life. Took me a whole day to remember the name of my first boyfriend one time. Even though he was a backstabbing scumbag," she muttered as an aside.

"That's not the whole story," a voice from Sol's mouth said. Miriam rolled her eyes. Solas had decided to join the conversation.

"And what is the whole story?" Solas leered at Eoin.

"We live long in the Tír. That is true. The High Sidhe from the upper Rings most especially. But never was there a Selkie at two thousand years old who looked as young as Mr. Daithi there. He's figured out some way to stay young while the years pass by. Wouldn't we all like to know that secret?"

"Really?" Miriam took another look at Eoin. If he were human he wouldn't have seemed a day over thirty.

"I suppose I just thought it was normal here. I suppose I don't have a sense of ages yet."

"Our friend Ultán seemed an old man, didn't he? He's a Selkie too - did you know that? A fascinating life, our Ultán has had! How a Selkie ended up a master of the desert is quite a tale. But he is only six hundred and fifty years old. A babe compared to our Eoin!" Solas grinned wickedly.

"I'm afraid Solas is right," Eoin admitted.

"I don't seem to age. I assume he's also right that something in my past years would hold the secret to how that came to be, but I honestly do not remember it."

"The man discovers immortality and forgets how it's done?" Solas spat.

"Likely."

"Well, once I had it, I didn't need it anymore, did I?" Eoin spun his water sword in his hand absently.

"Maybe I spent hundreds of years trying to find it. Maybe I was old for a while and became young again. I just don't know. One thing I do know…" his face darkened.

"When King Cianán began contracting me some years ago, he acted as if we had met before. It's possible my inability to age is somehow related to him."

"Why do you think so?"

"He's the only other person I've ever met that doesn't really show the passage of time. Except he remembers everything - I'm not sure he could forget if he wanted to. Makes for the holding of some very long grudges. Or, as he told me he was doing when we met, paying back some very old debts." Eoin shook his head.

"Either way, I've made my peace with not remembering. All my knowledge stays - I remember facts and formulas I learned when I was in my nineties perfectly. It's just the memories that go." There was silence in the workshop for a moment as Miriam tried to imagine a life you couldn't recall the origins of. Eoin didn't know where he was going, didn't know where he came from… it seemed an odd existence to be so protective of. She stretched.

"I'm going to take a walk. Maybe I'll have recovered enough fórsa by the time I get back so we can continue." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Eoin nodded.

"Actually I think it's time we discussed our… other project. See you when you get back." Miriam walked outside of the workshop, stretching luxuriously in the sun. Even the sunshine in the Second Ring felt richer than the First had. She often had to force herself to move when the Dryad in her wanted to just stand like the tree she was bound to and just soak up the rays. Which she did now, walking slowly around the lake. The Merrow village felt so different from Lathair Maol.

There it had been like everyone was just sort of waiting. There was joy, and drama, and heartache, but it all just seemed to be killing time. Perhaps it had been because while they all had things they could do, there was nothing they had to do. Cian would never let any of them starve. In this village things felt very much the opposite. The Merrow wrung as much as they could out of every moment. It wasn't always fun or enjoyable, but they were always busy, urgency motivating their every step.

Isolation was both a boon and a curse to them - a boon in that Shorinu left them alone, didn't try to dominate or control them. A curse in that if something in their ecosystem failed it was always a potentially fatal threat. Miriam felt like Luíseach would have felt more at home here than she had back on Cianán's Walk. Miriam couldn't say which she preferred. It was easy to look at the Merrow hard at work and assign virtue to it - that the act of work in itself justified their own existence.

To strive was a thing worthy of pride in and of itself. As much as this existence felt earned, it also felt hollow. The villagers often went to bed exhausted every night. There were no late night discussions over drinks. Few games, unless you were children, and even then only until you were old enough to contribute. It was an existence Miriam had experienced before, in some lean winters and troubled springs.

And, while striving to overcome it had created bonds among her people that an easy life could never have matched, they were always relieved when hard times passed. In Lathair Maol, on the other hand, people were eager to express themselves, to seek out meaning and purpose beyond daily toil. They often enjoyed plays written by the locals, music led by Kelly and her part-time minstrels, art created by villagers who, in the absence of existential crises, began to imagine some of their own.

Miriam wondered how different either existence would be if isolation was not at the center of them. Sometimes safety came with too high a price. Miriam came upon Elder Devral standing with her back to the lake, looking into the Fetchwoods. Her expression seemed troubled.

"Good afternoon, Elder," Miriam said politely.

"There is a Fetch standing at the edge of the wood, watching us," Derval said tersely.

"A Fetch?" Miriam looked. There, she could barely make it out, but it was there - a human shaped gray blob standing among the trees.

"They don't do that normally?"

"They do not," Derval said.

"We have an understanding with the Fetch that goes back generations. They are always looking out, to the world outside. The lives of the Merrow have meant very little to them in the past." She looked pointedly at Miriam.

"And you think this is because of me?" Derval shrugged.

"The only thing different at this moment than any other is you and your friends. You walked the Fetchwoods and survived. That can't have gone unnoticed by them." Miriam stared out at the shape in the forest.

"Well, why don't I go talk to it?"

"Talk? To the Fetch?" Derval looked at her as if she were insane.

"Why in the gods' names would you want to do that?"

"They can't hurt me," Miriam said.

"And if they have such an interest, perhaps I can satisfy their curiosity and convince them to stop staring at you." Derval shrugged.

"It's your life to gamble. Just because you escaped a volcano once doesn't make you fireproof." Miriam ignored her and began walking towards the Fetch. Even though it was already motionless, at Miriam's approach it seemed somehow to freeze, as if unexpectedly in the sight of a predator. As she drew near the gray blob reformed to show her own face, with a large arrow in her chest.

"You don't have to do that," Miriam said flatly.

"You won't scare me." We do not choose to do it. It just happens. The voice echoed in her mind, soft and sad.

"Fine. Why are you watching the villagers?" We are not. We are watching for you.

"Why?" Many reasons. You frighten us. You excite us. We want what you have, but are reluctant to name what it is.

"Do you have a name?" Miriam very resolutely did not avert her eyes, but talking to a doppelganger of her own corpse was not getting any less disconcerting. No. But I am Eldest. At least, I have gone longest without dying. We think that is the same.

"Well, it's good to meet you, Eldest. I think you're disturbing the Merrow, though." We understand. It is our nature to be disturbing. But we also have another reason to seek you out.

"What?" There is a woman who has walked the perimeter of the Fetchwoods three times around now. She shouts things into the trees. Your name is among the things she shouts.

"A woman?" Fear quickened her blood.

"Was she a pixie? With platinum hair?" No. A Banshee. She sings out names, but in a way that also sound like threats. Mirim's heart sank.

"What names?" She says Miriam. Eoin. Róise. Then again. Miriam. Eoin. Róise.

"Not Cormac?" Miriam bit her lip in concern.

"Why ask for Róise but not Cormac?" I do not know who Cormac is.

"Right." Miriam breathed deeply to calm herself.

"The edge of the wood, huh? What direction is she now?" The Eldest Fetch pointed behind it.

"Ok," Miriam took a step forward, then stopped, looking at the Eldest.

"I'm going into the Fetchwood. I assume your people know better than to accost me?" The wise ones do, but all peoples have their fools among them. Miriam shrugged and continued walking. If Onóra had found them, they might have less time than they hoped.