The Magic Three of Solatia Read online

  While they were resting, Sianna made up a song for the seawitch that went like this:

  My mother is the sea,

  And from her I have come.

  She feeds and comforts me.

  Her water is my home.

  She rocks me when I sleep,

  She holds me when I ail.

  She’s big and wide and deep

  And never shall she fail

  To comfort me, to come to me,

  Drifting down, derry derry down.

  My mother is the sea,

  And to her I shall go

  When aught shall trouble me,

  Seamother she will know.

  She holds me when I drift,

  And cushions every fall.

  For giving is her gift,

  Forgiving is her all.

  She comforts me, she comes to me,

  Drifting down, derry derry down.

  When Sianna had finished, the mermaid clapped her hands with delight. “Another trade, dear child.”

  Sianna was silent for a moment. She feared the witch might want the buttons back.

  But Mary, sensing her fear, said, “No, no. Here is my trade. You will teach me the songs of the shore, and I will teach you the spells of the sea. For ever, it seems to me, I have loved singing.”

  Sianna said, “But how long shall such an exchange take? I fear that my father’s poor heart is breaking while he waits for me on the land.”

  The seawitch looked away. “Let the man be unhappy then. For it is not only women who are born to weep.”

  Sianna answered, “How can you say that? I do not want him to worry. Oh, sea mother, he is but a poor button maker. But if you take me home, he will make you buttons enough to fill the entire sea.”

  Mary reached out for the girl’s hand and held it to her breast. “Little songbird,” she said, “do you know what it is like to be lonely? I do not think I knew until you came how empty my life has been. You are here and here you shall stay.”

  Sianna began to weep. Till that very moment she had thought of Mary as her friend. She saw now that she was not the witch’s friend but her prisoner, for true friendship—like true love—does not seek to bind.

  The mermaid was upset by the tears and wanted to stop them. She said slyly, “When you know as much about magic as I do, then perhaps you will be able to find your own way home.”

  “Do you believe so?” asked the girl, hope in her heart again.

  “Oh, yes,” replied Dread Mary, “though it may take a long long time.” And only she knew that she lied.

  “Then it is a pact,” said Sianna. “And you will see, I will be a most apt pupil.”

  “Here is your first lesson. And it is the most important lesson of all,” said the witch. “Magic has consequences.”

  “Consequences?” asked Sianna.

  “Yes,” said the mermaid. “All of nature is in a delicate balance, the good with the evil, the soft with the hard, the weak with the strong. If through magic you create an imbalance, nature itself will right the scales. So whatever you do—for good or evil—it will be counterpoised. If you forget all else, forget not this.”

  Sianna nodded.

  The witch smiled. “Come then, little bird. Teach me that seamother song.”

  9. A Year of Spells

  THUS A YEAR MOVED slowly for Sian, far away on the Solatian shore. Never a word passed his lips, for never did a sign from Sianna come from the sea. And his eyes were as salty with tears as an ocean wave.

  On the Outermost Isle, the year moved swiftly for the girl and the witch. They traded song for spell and spell for song. And no one could say which had the best of the bargain. For each bit of magic that Sianna learned, she gave a song of love or sorrow in return.

  Sianna learned the language of seals and which weeds of the sea took away pain. She was taught how to make a poultice of sea mustard and how to draw out poison with a fishbone lance. She discovered that every living thing has two names, one it is called by the people and one it is called in a spell, and that the spell name is so powerful it could command even the sharp-toothed shark. The only thing she could not learn was to breathe under the sea.

  But mostly Sianna learned that magic has consequences. That every strong action leads to a strong reaction, that every up has its down, that there is no evil that does not have a balancing good, nor a good that does not sow some evil in its turn. And finally, what Sianna learned about magic was that it was best not to use it at all.

  True to her word, Sianna taught Dread Mary the old songs like “In the Meadow Green and Early” and “My Love Is an Apple of Sweet Delight.” Sianna’s young mind held the memory of every song she had ever heard. And though sometimes she added new words or whole verses to a tune, such was her kinship with each song that no one could tell where the old words left off and the new ones began.

  The seawitch and the girl sang the Seven Psalms of Waking with great gusto each morn. All the bold gypsies’ songs and devil-defeated songs were the mermaid’s special delight. But the seawitch learned more than just the songs, though she could not have said what.

  To learn all of Sianna’s songs, the witch taught her more than she had meant. Usually they sat side by side at the water’s edge, for it was easier for Dread Mary to stay in her fishtail. One day, as they sang by the water’s edge, the witch said, in exchange for a particularly lovely tune called “A Morning in May,” “I will tell you my button lore.” It was all she had left to teach.

  So she told Sianna of the Magic Three, the silver buttons that each gave a wish to the wearer. And she talked of other buttons known of old—the Button of the Great Magus, which granted the bearer the gift of invisibility; the Button of Delight, which, when consumed, lent reality to dreams; and the Button of the Sisters Drear, which, when dissolved in sweet wine, caused painful death.

  “But are they just tales to frighten children?” asked Sianna, for she had learned from the witch that much of magic is merely that. “Or are they real? You yourself have told me that truth and tales are ofttimes mixed.”

  “Well, as to the others, I cannot say for sure,” said the witch. “But I seem to recall that I once knew a prince who had the Magic Three.”

  “How could you forget something as important as that?” asked Sianna.

  “Some things you forget because you cannot help it,” said the witch. “And other things you forget because they cannot help you.”

  “I remember a song about the Magic Three,” said Sianna, almost to herself. “But I am not sure I recall all the words.”

  “Sing it,” commanded Dread Mary. Then in a softer tone she added, “For as you remember, I shall remember. One helps the other limp along.”

  So Sianna began the song of the Magic Three.

  Sad news there came to the king’s own son,

  Sad news to his father’s throne,

  For Madame the Queen had sickened and died

  And left them all alone.

  And did she leave them gifts of gold,

  All from her dowry,

  Nay she has left them naught for love

  Except the Magic Three.

  And One is for a mighty wish,

  And so be Two and Three,

  And she has left them to her son

  And dived below the sea.

  “But I never knew it meant buttons,” said Sianna. “Isn’t that strange.”

  As the witch sang the words back to her, Sianna put her hand in the pocket of her jacket and fondled the buttons she kept there. They were her only past, for with Dread Mary there was but the present day. And without thinking what she was doing, Sianna brought out one of the buttons and began to rub it with her finger. A bit of the black rubbed off. Below it the button gleamed dully.

  As if in a dream, Sianna recalled her father saying, “Let me remember the cruel sea when I see them.” She knew that she could answer him now, “The sea is not cruel.” For cruelty and compassion were on either side of the scale and the one would bal
ance the other.

  So as the witch continued to sing back her song, and as she absently corrected the tune or the words, Sianna took up a handful of sand and water and scrubbed at the button some more.

  Finally she polished it with the sleeve of her jacket till it gleamed. It had a design on it—a single fish. When she held it up to the sun, the silver button caught the light.

  “What do you have there?” asked the witch, breaking the song in the middle.

  “It is one of my buttons,” said Sianna. “See, I have polished it. It has a fish on it. Isn’t it pretty?”

  The witch moved closer to the girl. “Give me,” she cried, and snatched it out of Sianna’s hand.

  “But it is mine,” said Sianna, her voice shocked and full of tears. “It was the first bargain we made.”

  “Little fool, it is one of the Three,” said the witch. “I remember it all. It is mine.” And with a mighty splash, she dove back into the sea.

  10. The Wish

  SIANNA STOOD BY THE water’s edge and called over and over for the witch to return. But she did not. And when the moon began to rise, Sianna walked slowly back to the coral house. She went inside and sat down to think.

  She thought about all the witch had taught her, the spells and the simples, the language and lore of the sea. But mostly she thought about consequences. For she knew that, though the witch had one button, she still had two. But she did not know what she should do.

  She did know, however, that she would have to guard the remaining two buttons from the witch. “They are my mother’s, after all,” she thought, for she needed a reason for her vigilance. “Isn’t it strange that all this time I had the power to return home close to my hand.” But she also knew that she did not yet really know how to use that power.

  Then Sianna fell asleep and dreamed that the witch was standing by the door of the coral house gazing down at her with her lost memories found.

  The witch remembered Melinna of beauty and song. She remembered Prince Anggard, who must surely now be king. (The one memory she did not have was of any time passing). She remembered how well she had loved, how much she had given, and how much she had hated. Her bitterness welled up inside her like a salt spring.

  “Magic has consequences,” Dread Mary mumbled to herself. But, she wondered, what consequences should she fear? If all she planned took place on the far shore of Solatia, then how could it disturb what she loved on the isle? She wondered this but did not see that merely by snatching the button from Sianna she had already begun the wreckage of all she loved.

  So she twisted the button in that certain way, left, then right, then right again. As she twisted it she said out loud, “Magic One of Magic Three, grant the boon I ask of thee.” And the button twisted by itself under her fingers.

  Remove the king upon the throne,

  And turn his living heart to stone.

  Another king put in his place

  To be the last one of that race.

  As she said the words, Dread Mary smiled. She did not know that the king she cursed was not the king she remembered but a descendant of his cousin many times removed. But so great was her vengeful passion that she might not have cared had she been told. Dread Mary’s face at that moment was indeed dreadful to see as she laughed with the knowledge of what was to come.

  There was a loud clap of thunder round the isle, though the sky was clear of thunderheads. A clap of thunder as the button twisted in her hand once again. And then the button ran like quicksilver through her fingers and was gone.

  Dread Mary smiled again in Sianna’s dream and turned back toward the water.

  But it was no dream. The thunder wakened Sianna fully, and she watched in the rising sun as the witch pulled on her fishtail and plunged into the sea.

  11. The Great Wave

  DOWN TO THE SEASHORE Sianna raced, hoping to stop the witch. She called to her but there was no answer. Then Sianna heard a horrifying rush of noise as if the ocean were sending its greatest monsters ashore. Bearing down on her was a great wall of a wave. She had no time to call or scream before it swept over Outermost Isle and carried her once again into the sea.

  This time she kept her skirt and jacket on, though the fingers of foam tried to snatch them away. She fought against the motion of the wave as it bore her from the isle.

  Even as she fought, she was aware that the wave was rolling on past the Triades, past the Mean Isles, past the Inner Isles, toward the Solatian strand. She struggled to reach into her pocket so that she might twist one of the buttons and thus assure her safety. But the weight of the water kept her arms at her sides, and so she rode at last like a sea-wrapped cocoon on the crest of the mighty wave.

  The witch had heard the boom of the wave as it heaved itself up out of the deeps. She had smiled to herself as she saw in her inner eye the wave sweeping over Solatia’s shore. For she knew this must be a tide called up by the magic to remove the king from his throne.

  But as the foot of the wave churned the deeps and sent muddy reminders into her cove, Dread Mary, who had been Melinna, remembered the rest. The consequences.

  A sudden cold fear struck her. She rose to the surface and looked around and saw the wave as it moved toward the Solatian shore. Then, turning slowly, she looked behind her to the isle.

  The little coral house and Sianna were no more.

  Melinna, who had been Dread Mary, swam quickly to the beach. She heaved herself slowly onto the shore like an aged and brittle thing. She sloughed off her tail and on two weakened legs wandered about the isle. The strand was scoured clean of life, many trees broken in two. The golden lark circled disconsolately looking for its nest. Slowly the seawitch returned to the seaside and knelt by her fishtail. And for the first time in three hundred years, she began to weep.

  She did not weep salt tears as humans do, but tears of purest water. And she wept until she had wept a crystal pool. Then she dove into it without her tail and never came up again.

  The wave was hasting toward the Solatian shore, breaking fleets and fish with its foam. It flung itself onto the castle on the cliff, covering king and courtiers and all.

  And when the wave had retreated, it left many injured, the king and all his cousins broken on the stone steps down to the sea, and Sianna at her father’s door.

  “A life for a life,” said Sian when he heard his daughter’s tale. Except for her name, which he had cried into her hair over and over again, these were the first words he had spoken in a year.

  “But it was not the life she sought,” said Sianna.

  “Still, he was not a particularly good king,” said her father with finality. “Perhaps his son Blaggard will be better.”

  “Perhaps,” said Sianna, gazing out the window as she sewed the remaining two brightly polished silver buttons to the underside of her petticoat. “Certainly all our lives will be better.”

  “And how say you that?” asked Sian.

  “It is the consequences of the magic,” said Sianna. “Good balancing bad.”

  “I do not see how that will affect our lives,” said Sian.

  “But it has already, dearest Father,” said Sianna with a fond smile. “The very first thing that Mary promised was that she would give me back what was mine. And you and Solatia are mine. I do not think she truly meant to keep that promise. But she loved me, and so this good balances her act of snatching away the button.” She did not mention the power of the other two or that she knew how to use them.

  “And I can help renew the lives of all who still live,” she continued, “with the things that the witch herself taught me. The sea has many riches, and I can show all Solatians how to share them.”

  “And can you explain how the evil of the wave has been balanced in the kingdom?” asked Sian, though he thought he already knew.

  “Because the wave has taken away the rusted relics of the war. Because the people can return to the land. And because there is but one heir to the throne, so there need be no more disputes over who s
hall be king.”

  “But how can the evil of killing the king and his courtiers be balanced?” asked Sian.

  “Perhaps his son, Blaggard, will be a better king,” said Sianna. “Or perhaps, if he is indeed the last of his race, what comes after will be better for us all. I do not know. For knowledge of what is yet to come is never granted to any man or woman alive. And the dead surely have no need of it. But this I was taught and this I believe—such evil will certainly be balanced.”

  “Well,” said Sian with a strange catch in his voice, “my life will be the better for this magical balancing.”

  “How so, darling Father?” asked Sianna. She turned her face to him and smiled a sweet smile.

  “Little songbird, it is simple. I have my daughter back. As if it had to be said. I have my daughter back as wise as she is beautiful, to lighten my days with her knowledge and her songs.”

  And Sianna’s voice followed him out with a song as he went back to work in his shop.

  Here ends Book I

  BOOK II

  The Hollow Man

  Book II is for David

  Before

  IN THE KINGDOM OF Solatia, where the sun rose first on the lowland farms, there ruled a young king. He was handsome but he was hard. His name in the old tongue was Blaggard, or jest of the king, for he had been born late in his parents’ life. When his father heard of him, he had remarked to the queen, “Surely this is but a jest.”

  Those who loved him or feared him—which were one and the same to him—called him simply Gard. And they named him Gard the Guardian. And Gard the Great.

  But his enemies, and they grew in number as his days upon the throne, called him Blackguard. And Bleakard. And the Bleak One. They talked this way only in whispers, for it was said that he had eyes at each farmyard and ears in each hall.

  Both his enemies and his friends knew little of the king. His father had hated the sight of him, for he felt the boy’s very existence mocked his old age. So the king had sent Blaggard away. The boy was banished to beyond the mountains, where he lived with wizards and warlocks. And as a young prince he had learned their ways.