Chapter 29 The Seventh Moon
The Seventh Moon
Aurienne
Aurienne’s data for September’s Bédríp moon spoke of healings in fairy dwellings: groves and caves, fairy trees, fairy forts, fairy rings—all of which was in line with Widdershins’ hidden abode.
She determined the Fairy Glen at the Isle of Skye would be her destination.
In a strange twist, the Fairy Glen was the site of the Monafyll Stone’s original discovery.
The Stone had been found by accident: a walker had sat on a rock and a bit of moss had slipped off.
The walker noticed strange carvings in the rock.
The local authority had been called in, followed by the village archaeologist, followed by runologists from the universities, followed by a horde of scholars from various disciplines, including, at one point, Professor Widdershins.
Excavations revealed not only the Monafyll Stone but also the remains of a stone spiral curling around it. The Stone was preserved in situ, in the centre of the helix at the Fairy Glen.
In preparing for this seventh healing, Aurienne would’ve liked to have spoken with Widdershins again—but properly, this time, not an interrogation with the looming threat of a Fyren over her shoulder.
She wanted to tell Widdershins about Osric’s incredible healing and Widdershins’ own role therein.
She wanted to dig deeper into the provenance of his translations.
She wished to advise him of her plans to investigate the Stone’s healing pilgrimage with a far more scientifically rigorous approach, and publish something, and clear his name.
She sent missives to Widdershins’ former university, his colleagues, his limited friends and family, and received nothing but notes, exasperated or indifferent, that he was nowhere to be found.
At a loss, she searched for him at his old cottage and found it abandoned.
Nothing had been packed. No neighbours could point her to where he’d gone.
Widdershins had disappeared from the face of the earth.
On the night of September’s Bédríp moon, Aurienne got ready to go to the Fairy Glen. She laced up her boots. Pulled on her cloak. Tucked the hagstone into its usual spot between dress and clavicle.
How strange to be preparing to heal oneself. How different. And how odd to be going out at the full moon and not have acerbic exchanges with Osric to look forward to.
As though summoned by her thought, smoky seith touched her tācn.
Osric’s deofol.
The last time they had spoken, the deofol had warned her about the Dreor, and Aurienne had promised to leave Swanstone, and broken the promise immediately, and almost caused Osric’s death.
After a moment of hesitation, she raised her tācn to let the deofol through, fully expecting—and deserving—hissed malevolence between the wolf’s sharp teeth.
Dark seith curled in wisps as the deofol took shape.
For once, her teeth didn’t make an appearance—only golden eyes amid shadow.
Aurienne and the deofol observed each other in silence.
Aurienne found the stare-down unnerving.
She would have preferred the usual insolence over this wordless assessment by a demonic seith-wolf.
“Have you come to rebuke me?” asked Aurienne. “There’s no need. I’ve already received your master’s ire.”
“I’m not here at his behest,” said the wolf.
“He doesn’t know you’re here?”
“No.”
Aurienne, nonplussed, asked, “Then what do you want?”
“What would you do if you saw him again?”
That was a matter between Aurienne and her heart. “Rather an intrusive question.”
The wolf was solemn. “Things between you two cannot end in a farewell.”
“Everything ends in a farewell,” said Aurienne, snapping her satchel shut.
“You’ve done too much for one another. Threads connect you, after such things. They cannot be severed by goodbyes. Killings and life savings tie you together. Hearts. Souls. Futures.”
“I won’t see him again. He made his wishes clear.” Aurienne turned away so that the pain in her face wouldn’t be visible.
The wolf vanished, then reappeared in her field of vision. “Would you want to see him again?”
“Why?”
“I think you should.”
“I don’t understand why you would be encouraging me to maintain the connection.”
“Because I know what you are to him.” A shadowy ear flicked backwards. “But I don’t know what he is to you.”
Again Aurienne turned away. Again the wolf materialised in front of her. “What is he to you?”
Aurienne was tempted to snarl away the question, but it wasn’t posed with impertinence. It was tinged with sincerity.
She therefore gave a sincere answer. “Raw, bleeding regret.”
The wolf went silent. Shadow flickered and wreathed around her eyes like black flame.
“I need to fix myself before I see him again. There’s a wound I won’t stop touching and so don’t allow to close.” Aurienne’s fingers went to her clavicle, where the hagstone lay. “I’m going to heal it tonight.”
“All is not lost, then.” There was relief in the wolf’s dusky voice—relief and hope.
“What am I to him?” asked Aurienne.
“He has told you a thousand times without words. But if I must use words, you are the Fair Tormentor. The cruellest irony. The most beautiful sorrow.” The wolf fell silent for a moment. “And also raw, bleeding regret.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
The wolf faded away. “My name is Cinder.”
Aurienne took the waystone to the Slumbering Fern at the Fairy Glen, Isle of Skye.
This was, in a way, where it all began: it was the site of the Monafyll Stone’s discovery, which had led her to her preliminary research project on full moon healings, which had led Osric to her.
She stepped through the Glen. Eons ago, landslips and geological faults had exposed bedrock, which now protruded like bone through the turf. The earth had churned itself into strange landforms here, marvellous fairy castles and pyramids and the bulk of slumbering dragons.
Aurienne held up her tācn to illuminate her path. On either side, streams and small waterfalls gurgled through grassy ridges. She passed between stones like waves drawing themselves upwards to break and others humped like the barrows of the dead.
Her objective lay in the bare space of grass in the Glen below: a worn tracery of rings with, at its centre, the Monafyll Stone.
The spiral was a thread winding inward and, by the same path, outward, choked at this time of year by what was left of summer’s growth. Aurienne stopped at the spiral’s tail to wait for moonrise.
At the horizon’s edge, clouds made purple spires in a lucent sky. Stars blazed. The harvest moon rose, golden, lining everything in amber.
The only movement was the rising mist, hoarded by the valleys between stones, and released, with the coming of dusk, to billow dreamily in a small wind.
The hagstone that Amagris had given Aurienne lay, as it had for many years, against her clavicle upon its leather cord. She reached into her dress and held it. It was a flat grey stone the size of a coin, unremarkable save the hole that ran through it.
For many years, Aurienne had used the hagstone as a reminder that she had been hurt, as an albatross round her neck, as a warning against falling in love again.
She had not permitted herself to love again and thus had not permitted herself to be happy. One was meant to use a hagstone to keep bad dreams away. Mrs. Parson said it was keeping all dreams away.
In using it to remind her to escape sorrow, she had lost joy. In dodging a known pain, she had found a new pain.
She ran her thumb around the familiar contours of the stone. Mrs. Parson had told her to let it go. Amagris herself had been surprised that she still had it, and also told her to let it go.
It was time to say goodbye to it. It was time to untether her heart.
Aurienne walked the spiral at the heart of the Fairy Glen.
She did not know whether she walked slow or fast. Time was a dim concept in the spiral; there was only rock and moon and the wild poetry of the wind, whispering in her ears. The path was a gyre beneath her feet; a fern in a fossil, the slow-twisting opening of a rose.
The Monafyll Stone stood pale in the evening light, known only, until then, through diagrams, and later through the plaster cast. This was the real thing, not a drawing, not a cast. It felt like meeting someone important.
Fragrant meadowsweet, wild pansies, and butterfly orchids danced in the spiral, a bit of wildflower bravery at summer’s gloaming, in the waning year when all else was ending.
Aurienne grew dizzy. Felt away from herself. Simultaneously walked and watched herself walk, was both there and not there, making circles upon circles, round as the moon, laced by ribbons of fog, into the spiral’s centre, into the spinning vanishing point.
Revelation was in that spiral. In the translucent fog there were other places, lights, laughter, inviting a drifting across, a traversing.
The air was awake, changeful, swallowing sound; reality was fragile.
The spiral unravelled the veil, made it as translucent as a petal.
One step sideways could bring her through the gossamer.
This was the thin place she needed, the fraying between worlds, where the uncurable could be cured—where she had healed Osric and would now heal herself.
The full moon hung over her like a benediction. And there, at the centre of the spiral, between motion and contrary motion, between past and present, between mourning what was and hope for what could be, Aurienne tugged at the necklace.
The leather cord gave way with a soft snap.
What she felt afterwards was not sadness, nor was it joy. It was a divine relief.
It was over.
She could live again, her heart unshackled, her spirit unflayed.
She leaned against the tall Monafyll Stone, breathing in great breaths of free air.
The Monafyll Stone was cool through her cloak. She ran her hands over its familiar carvings. What hand had made the inscriptions? What being had etched the unknown tongue that had driven Widdershins mad? The serpent, the swan, the fairy tongue, all swam in her vision.