A Promise Broken Read online

  “She can’t keep this one, Eiryn. Not this time. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

  But Eiryn didn’t want to ‘understand when she was older’; she wanted to understand now. Why couldn’t she understand now? Amaru-dai had promised her that she’d come back. Kerisaoina always kept their promises. Always. How could her mother break a promise? Why did she break it now? Keilan-minnai was trying to explain, but Eiryn was too tired to pay attention and let the words wash over her. Amaru-dai was out there, calling to her. If she went to bed, she’d wake up and find it was only a horrible dream, wouldn’t she? If she strained to catch whispers from the windows…

  Tiredness momentarily forgotten, Eiryn bounded over to the windows. Through the panes she could see the harbour and the bay and, further in the distance, the mountain peaks of the mainland touching the clouds, but she didn’t care. The rain was still pouring down and obscuring her vision even more than the spider’s web linking panes together, but that was okay. She was looking for the bubbles that had floated around her mother. Perhaps if she could see them, they’d come to her and if she could just catch one of them dai would always be with her.

  Keilan-minnai’s arms wrapped around her. “She’ll be with you, child.”

  Eiryn didn’t react. What could she say? What could she do? Dai wasn’t there. She was gone. Not even the bubbles were left. Eiryn sniffed. She wanted her mother back and she was very, very tired.

  “But you cannot go with her.”

  Eiryn craned her head up to look at the woman hugging her, frowning slightly.

  “It’s all right to cry.”

  And so the girl did. She twisted in Keilan-minnai’s grasp and flung her around the woman’s neck. Eiryn pressed her face against the woman’s blue dress. Perhaps, if she was good, Keilan-minnai would let her go back to the drab courtyard and whatever bits of her mother remained there. The woman sang a farakaoina, low and soft, but for once Eiryn didn’t care what it was for.

  When Eiryn thought she felt something sticky on her skin, she held Keilan-minnai tighter, but the feeling passed as quickly as it’d appeared and Keilan-minnai didn’t seem the least bit alarmed. The touch brought whispers with it, though. Whispers of fasaoi that carried dai’s voice, calming and soothing. Eiryn gradually stopped crying, straining to make out the words.

  “Eiryn?”

  The girl looked up at Keilan-minnai for a moment, then stared beyond the woman to where she could almost discern the figure of her mother. Eiryn stretched out her hands. “Dai!” she cried, then “Amaru-dai!” and the vision of her mother shook her head and pressed a finger to her lips before vanishing. Eiryn was left with Keilan-minnai and the fasaoi whispers. She could almost hear her mother’s voice clearly enough to make out the words. All she had to do was follow them and she’d know, and be with her mother. If dai could go there, why couldn’t Eiryn? Who decided on that?

  “Eiryn,” Keilan-minnai’s voice sounded again, louder this time. Eiryn shook her head until the whispers were driven far enough away that they didn’t distract her from the woman beside her. Fasaoi ebbed all around them and Eiryn knew that it was waiting for her to pay attention to it again. “You cannot follow her, Eiryn-dai.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Of course you are. Shh. I’ll call Mayry-minnoi to undress you and put you to bed.”

  Eiryn hugged the woman tighter. “I don’t want you to go.” If Keilan-minnai left, perhaps the faintness of her mother would leave too. The whispers had only started after the woman’d sung a farakaoina. Eiryn thought the whispers were saying they wouldn’t leave her, not ever, but she didn’t trust them. Dai’d promised to be back by morning too, and she’d left forever. She wasn’t about to let her mother break another promise if she could help it.

  “I want dai,” she whispered while Keilan-minnai scooped her up and carried her into her uncle’s bedroom. Though she’d visited Arèn-minnoi’s chambers often enough with her mother, she’d never been inside the bedroom before and Eiryn looked around curiously. Unlike the room where her uncle lived and worked, the bedroom was a sea of softness and colour. The bed reminded her of a calm wood, all brown and green, with grey pillows that made her think of rocks, except soft and fluffy.

  Keilan-minnai set her down on the carpet and Eiryn took her slippers off herself. She was a big girl already, but the sash, even halfway undone, still escaped her and Keilan-minnai untied it for her and pulled the blue dress over Eiryn’s head. The carpet tickled underneath her bare feet and the fasaoi wrapped around her like a woollen blanket. It took Keilan-minnai a moment to find a night-shift and Eiryn didn’t really want to wear it, but she let the woman pull it over her head anyway.

  When she was ready, Eiryn clambered onto the bed herself and nestled atop the blankets so she could still feel her mother’s gentle arms around her, shift or no. She closed her eyes and barely felt it when Keilan-minnai covered her with another blanket. Eiryn found she didn’t care either because in the darkness, she could see the bubbles rising higher than they had outside and she could, almost, hear her mother calling her for a game in the gardens.

  “Aren’t you hungry, child?”

  Eiryn shook her head, pulling at Keilan-minnai’s grey sash. She felt like everyone in the banquet hall was staring at her. Everyone at their table certainly was. Eiryn wasn’t hungry and she wanted to go to bed. She liked it more. It was quiet and no one bothered her, and dai was there.

  Keilan-minnai sighed. “Arèn-minnoi?” Eiryn stood on her toes to peer at her uncle, keeping hold of Keilan-minnai’s grey leisure sash for balance. Her uncle was seated further down the table, nearer to the rysharoi. After a few moments, Arèn-minnoi inclined his head.

  “Can I go with her, doi?” Radèn asked, waving at Eiryn from his position next to his father.

  Eiryn waved back at her friend shyly. Radèn was one of the few people who actually listened to her and he never made her feel overwhelmed by anything. She didn’t miss the pout on the boy’s face when the rysharoi told Radèn he could visit after the meal, but she tugged impatiently on Keilan-minnai’s sleeve. She wanted to go. Though she felt bad that Radèn couldn’t come with her, mostly she felt relieved. It was the feast of the Autumn Stars and the banquet was filled with conversation and easy laughter. It made Eiryn’s head spin and her heart ache because she missed dai and she wanted to hide far far away until she never had to deal with anyone ever again.

  Keilan-minnai took her by the hand and led her back to Arèn-minnoi’s chambers. Eiryn lived with him now, but she didn’t like it much. She missed the chambers she’d shared with her mother, the whorls of colour everywhere and the paintings, the view out over one of the island’s beaches, the warmth and joy of it. Arèn-minnoi’s chambers were bare and boring. He’d allowed her to bring her shells and her clothes and her doll, but none of Amaru-dai’s paintings or carvings.

  Eiryn hated her uncle’s chambers, but when Keilan-minnai opened the door and gently pushed her inside Eiryn couldn’t think of any place in Lir she’d rather be. Dai was in these rooms. Dai was always in these rooms. Keilan-minnai sat Eiryn down in the chair that Arèn-minnoi had said was hers. It was big and bouncy, but she wasn’t allowed to jump on it. Not that Eiryn wanted to. She liked jumping on Arèn-minnoi’s bed much better. She wasn’t allowed to do that either, but Mayry-minnoi never told on her.

  “You haven’t eaten properly in days, Eiryn-dai. Are you ill?”

  Eiryn shook her head and yawned. She tugged her hair over her ears because Keilan-minnai didn’t seem relieved to hear she wasn’t ill. It stung. Why would Keilan-minnai want her to be ill? Eiryn startled against the woman’s hug. Unsure of herself, she hugged back. Keilan-minnai’s black hair tickled her face. Dai’d always said she’d wished her hair was curlier like Keilan-minnai’s. The woman’s voice was lower too, and much softer. Eiryn would have missed her words entirely, except that they made her feel sick with loss and she cried out to the whisper of her mother that was left.

  “You have
to be strong, Eiryn-dai.” Keilan-minnai held her tighter and the girl struggled until she felt so exhausted by the effort that she burst out crying. She didn’t want to be strong. She wanted her mother. She wanted to stay with her mother. Eiryn wanted games of tickle-monster and what-does-the-seagull-spot and laughter and farakaoina and noise. Her uncle’s chambers were too silent, too… empty. Eiryn hated the scratch of quills on paper, the scrape of chairs on stone. She didn’t want to be strong. She wanted to go home and be with her mother. “Your mother wouldn’t want you to follow her, Eiryn-dai. Not for a long, long time.”

  What did she know? What did she know? Eiryn could hear her mother clearly enough. She could hear dai even now, begging Eiryn to come with her and meet her little baby sister. That was what Eiryn wanted to hear, not the laughter of a year coming to its end without her mother’s voice among them, not the rhyming games nor the song displays nor the merchants’ hawking or the music carried softly on the breeze from the lower city. All she wanted was to hear Amaru-dai, promising her it’d be all right if only she’d follow. All she wanted was to find out how to follow dai.

  Instead, Keilan-minnai held her, warm and there. When the woman finally let go, Eiryn ran to the windows to look out over the city and the bay. The skies were clear that evening, but the buildings of Lir were awash with colour, gleaming red, orange and gold in the setting sun. The city looked like the bubble-spheres that Eiryn had seen when she’d said goodbye to dai. So, softly, she asked, “Keilan-minnai? What were those floating bubbles?”

  She could see Keilan-minnai reflected in the window, just, so she saw the woman rise from beside the chair and stay standing there. “Bad things, child.” Keilan-minnai didn’t move. “Very bad things.”

  “Did dai become those bad things?” Eiryn asked Keilan-minnai’s fractured reflection in the glass, but it was the real woman who answered her.

  “She became many things. Come. I have to return.”

  Reluctantly, Eiryn left her spot at the window and followed the woman into the bedroom. She still didn’t like sharing a bed with her uncle. He wasn’t as cuddly as her mother. Though Eiryn had her own bed, it scared her. She wasn’t even old enough to have her own bed and she’d only slept alone once before, and then her mother had left her. She missed falling asleep in dai’s arms, hearing stories to guide her dreams across gentle seas. Mayry-minnoi had told her some stories before he, too, had left her with a promise to return. Arèn-minnoi only said ‘good night’ and left.

  Keilan-minnai was quiet as she undressed Eiryn and folded the clothes and the sash. Once in her shift, Eiryn snuggled under the blankets of Arèn-minnoi’s bed, and hugged Innas, her doll, close. “Will you sing me to sleep?” Dai almost always had, though no kerisaoina was ever supposed to sing for the pleasure of it; it could destroy the world. Dai’d never believed that, but she’d warned Eiryn all the same. Keilan-minnai sighed, but she did sit down beside Eiryn.

  Eiryn wriggled herself upright, the blankets refusing to move since Keilan-minnai was pinning them down. The woman smoothed some of Eiryn’s hair back and pulled out a gold pin she’d missed and sang. Eiryn tried to listen; she loved farakaoina as much as dai had because she loved to sing. She wanted to learn as many of them as she could. The farakaoina Keilan-minnai was singing was one that Eiryn had never heard before, but it made her too sleepy to pay attention.

  And then, just like that, Keilan-minnai was silent, the farakaoina cut off in the middle. Eiryn felt dazed, but the weariness was gone. Keilan-minnai’s voice was gone. Dai’s voice was gone. All of it gone, and Keilan-minnai sat next to her, rigid, staring hard at the window on the far side of the room. Eiryn scooted away from the woman to her uncle’s side of the bed, scared. There was a hardness in her chest that made it hard to breathe. “Keilan-minnai…”

  “Don’t sleep tonight, child.” Eiryn hugged Innas tightly and made herself as small as possible. She’d never heard Keilan-minnai speak like that before, cold and harsh. “Do you promise?”

  When Eiryn nodded, quickly and briefly, feeling all her muscles ache, the woman smiled at her. “Good girl,” she said reaching out to stroke Eiryn’s hair. “Do you know why you can feel dai all around you?” She’d paused only briefly before saying ‘dai’, but Eiryn caught the hesitation anyway. She made herself scoot closer to Keilan-minnai and buried one hand in the sash tied around the woman’s left shoulder. With the other she pulled Keilan-minnai and Innas into a hug. It didn’t make Eiryn feel less scared.

  Keilan-minnai kept talking, her voice even if still rough. “When kerisaoina die, a part of them joins all the other fasaoi around us. We see that as bubbles.” The woman paused. “You’ll learn more when you’re older.”

  “Aren’t the bubbles good things if they’re fasaoi?” Eiryn’s voice trembled, but she wanted to understand.

  “Oh, asafai… If someone used fasaoi to hurt a small cat, would it be a good thing?”

  “No…” Eiryn hesitated. “But Arèn-minnoi always says that fasaoi is only bad when people make it bad.”

  Keilan-minnai laughed softly, and ruffled Eiryn’s hair. “Your uncle would know. Remember your promise, child. Don’t break it, no matter how tired you are. I need to talk to Arèn-minnoi as soon as possible.”

  Eiryn nodded again and the woman rose. She fetched Eiryn’s dress and light grey sash, though she only helped Eiryn tie it around her waist and shoulder when Eiryn was about to wail in frustration because she couldn’t do it on her own. Dressed, Eiryn huddled on the big bed and wished her uncle was there. He’d stopped tucking her into her own bed, the one he’d had brought in for her. It always had blue blankets with embroidered stars and shells that Innas thought were the best blankets ever, but Eiryn didn’t want to sleep alone. If she did then her uncle would leave her too.

  By the time Eiryn realised that she wanted another hug, Keilan-minnai had already left the room. Eiryn called out anyway, but there was no response, so she let herself fall onto the bed in a heap and tried not to cry. She was frightened, even though the whispers were back now, soft around the edges of her hearing where they’d been growing stronger and stronger as Keilan-minnai’d sung for her.

  Eiryn could understand them now, though. Before she’d known that it was her mother calling for her and guessed at the words, but now she heard them. How could Keilan-minnai say that dai didn’t want Eiryn to join her when the girl could hear her mother’s longing so clearly? Eiryn shivered a moment and then went over to the tall windows into the main chamber. The sun was lower now and everything outside was slowly turning dark. It was very pretty, and the sea in the distance, shimmering with the sun’s reflection, looked still.

  Eiryn tore herself away from the sight and ran to the door leading out onto the corridors, but she couldn’t reach the handle. She managed to grab hold of it by jumping up, but the door still wouldn’t budge. After trying a few times, Eiryn went back to the window and looked out at the distant sun again. The sight of it drove every whisper but the voice of her mother to silence. And if Keilan-minnai wouldn’t sing her to sleep, dai certainly would. Amaru-dai promised it, promised they’d be together for ever and ever and ever.

  “I promised, dai,” Eiryn whispered. “I promised!”

  Silence.

  When Eiryn realised that dai wasn’t going to come back, she began to sob until she could hear her mother’s voice again. She’d promised she wouldn’t sleep, but she didn’t want to lose her mother. She didn’t. Dai was dead, and she wouldn’t come back. Eiryn could follow her, but… Keilan-minnai had said she shouldn’t and Arèn-minnoi wouldn’t like it if she did. Amaru-dai had always told Eiryn to listen to her uncle. But she wanted to be with her mother. Eiryn wanted to feel her mother’s arms around her, not those of Arèn-minnoi who scared her or Keilan-minnai who was nice to her. Why couldn’t they let her go to her mother?

  “Eiryn-dai?”

  Eiryn didn’t react to Radèn’s voice. She didn’t react when he hugged her. She did react when he cuffed her very lightly on
the head — she cried out and spun around, her angry words dying in her throat as he held out a small, woven basket for her. It was a very pretty rush basket: light in colour and with a purple-speckled cloth covering its contents. Eiryn looked up at him warily, then took the basket from his moon-pale hands. She smiled shyly. Radèn smiled back.

  Sitting down, Eiryn put the basket on the ground in front of her and folded the cloth the way dai would have: so the speckles were visible on top. Radèn shuffled a little closer, but she didn’t mind. He was always kind; it felt nice to be around him. Peeking into the basket she gasped. Shells! A whole basketful of shells. Some had a smooth pearlescent shine to them, but most of them were very rough. Pretty with their white and blues, pinks and reds, but rough. One of the shells had a dark-blue gradient and Eiryn took it out to study it in more detail. She liked the shape of it, reminiscent of a biscuit. Radèn had never given her a gift before. None of the other children had; they all thought she was too young to study and play with them.

  Shell still in hand, Eiryn flung herself up to give the boy a hug. “Thank you!” Amaru-dai had always promised Eiryn that she’d get to find her own shells at the beach when she was old enough to visit. Radèn’s gift wasn’t the same, but she loved it anyway. Even if she didn’t know quite what to do with herself now and she just held her friend more tightly, joy bubbling through her from her head all the way down to her toes.

  “Will you eat something?” he asked carefully. Eiryn nodded against his chest. “Arèn-minnoi will be pleased. I’m glad too.”

  Eiryn looked up at him, then buried her face in his shirt once more. Radèn was sweet. Amaru-dai had liked him too. The boy hugged her, then nudged her away and attempted to look at her sternly. Eiryn giggled because it make him look like he’d eaten a whole lemon.