Children of the May (Children of the May Book 1)

Chapter Three: The Fellowship of the Dark

 

The floor I found myself on was much less calming than that of the Lake. I was on my knees, my hands plunged to the wrists in a gutter of cold water in the middle of the sloping floor. I heard the seawater slap against the outside of the hull and echo around the black void. The ship rose and fell much more slowly than my coracles – the ship’s greater heft resisted the waves.

Who’s that?’ said a strong voice ahead of me.

It was then that I felt the weak warmth of others with me in the darkness, and smelled their sweat and fear. I realised that the puddle I had fallen into might not be water, and jerked my hands away from it, disgusted. As I scrambled away from the gutter my left hand touched something fleshy and cold. I felt despair as I connected with clammy skin, and realised that I was touching the foot of a terrified girl. Close by my ear a baby started to cry, startled by the girl snatching herself away from my touch.

‘I said: who’s there?’ The voice was a boy’s. Deep, but still youthful. He had an accent like the knight of Erin who had spent a summer at the Lake two years before, trying to marry each of my sisters in turn. The boy in the hold was confident when he spoke. He was used to speaking to people, not just the fish, birds and trees that normally shared my one-sided conversations.

 A light flared – lit not with flint and steel, but seeming to spark by magic – and a single candle was burning at the far end of the dark space. The speaker held the candle. He sat with his back to the hull. Around me, just touched by the edges of the weak light were the forms of many children. They were big and small, from babies and toddlers to young men and women who looked almost adult in the dark. Having spent so much of my life alone the thought of being surrounded by so many bodies and seen by so many eyes made me panic. I couldn’t defeat my stutter to reply to the boy’s question. 

I tried to ignore the others and focus only on his face. He had a sharp nose, high cheekbones, and dark curly hair, cut below his ears. In the candlelight his eyes looked black. He was my age, perhaps a year or two older. He was smiling at me.

‘Who are you?’ he said gently.

Finally I managed to speak: ‘D-D-D-D-D-Drift of the Lake.’

I could sense fear on all sides, as well as in my own belly, but there was none from this boy. He nodded, and turned to the person on his left hand, who was briefly illuminated by the candle. Another boy, but fair, and as broad and tall as a big man. The dark boy whispered something to the fair.

‘You’re the Lady of the Lake’s son?’ said the boy with the candle, turning back to me.

‘I-I-I-I-I-I am.’

‘Do you have any of your mother’s magic, Drift of the Lake?’

I shook my head.

‘That is not the case,’ said another voice, with a foreign accent so musical I couldn’t tell if it belonged to a boy or a girl. ‘I can sense the magic in him.’

‘M-M-M-My family s-says boys don’t have m-m-m-m-m-magic.’ My mother had often told me that the abilities to breathe underwater and connect with other creatures were the only shadows of her power I had inherited. I had no reason to disbelieve her.