Chapter 4
2020 Words
4
We returned to the house for a feast of fish. I napped until the appointed hour when I was roused from my slumber by a gentle but firm hand on my shoulder.
I buried my face in the pillows of the bed. “Go away. The sun’s not up.”
Xander’s soft chuckle floated over me. “The sun is several hours away, but our meeting with Dreail is very soon.”
I creaked open an eye and glared at him. He looked perfectly awake and handsome in the light of the candle he held in one hand. “How do you do it?”
He tilted his head to one side. “How do I do what?”
I sat up and rubbed my bleary eyes. “How can you be so gorgeous all the time?”
Xander smiled and offered me his hand. “I find that being among among friends and the woman I love have a profoundly positive effect on my physical features.”
I snorted and took his hand, and he pulled me up. “Flattery will get you-” My mouth opened wide in a yawn.
“Would you like me to carry you down to the beach?” he offered.
I glared at him. “I’m sleepy, not paralyzed, now let’s go get spooked.”
I took his hand and dragged him out of our bedroom on the second floor. We had a great view of the beach from the windows, a beach that was at that time alight with a large bonfire captured in the center of a ring of large stones. Large, long logs surrounded the stones, and on one of them our group found Dreail.
He stood as Xander, Spiros, Darda, and I approached. “Good night to you all.”
Xander bowed his head as he steered me onto one of the logs. “Good night to you, Dreail. What tales have you brought for our enjoyment?”
Dreail resumed his seat and eyed us with his keen old gaze. “You mentioned you were wanting to hear about banshees, but what kind of tales were you wanting? Something I heard as a lad in the ports of the world? Or maybe something from my own adventures?”
“Perhaps a local tale will be a good start, and one rooted in history,” Xander suggested.
Dreail’s face fell and his voice grew quiet as he gravely nodded his head. “I know the one you’re wanting, My Lord. Don’t think ol’ Dreail has forgotten it, for that is certainly one from my own life I won’t forget till my dying day.”
Goosebumps speckled my skin. I scooted closer to Xander. “So it’s a true story?”
He gave a nod. “Aye, My Lady. True as all of us sitting around this camp fire.” He glanced over his shoulder to the cliff on the left. “And as true as the day I saw her jump. Of course, she was dead already, but I didn’t know that.”
I yelped when I felt something touch my left arm. Xander chuckled beside me as he finished wrapping his arm around me. “Should we avoid this tale?”
I glared up at him, but cuddled closer. “I’m just cold, that’s all.” I glanced at Dreail and nodded. “Go ahead. I want to hear it.”
He pursed his lips and gazed into the fire. The crackling flames cast long, dancing shadows over his face. “Twas five and a half centuries ago that I first heard the tale of the banshee that haunted the northern cliff. Even then it was an ancient story passed on from my great-grandfather through the line down to me.”
My eyes widened. “How old are you?”
He picked up the poker and stabbed at the fire. “I will be celebrating my five-hundred and sixty-first birthday this year, My Lady.”
I glanced from him to Xander and pointed a finger at him. “And you’re how old again?”
“Over three hundred,” he reminded me.
“What is the tale, Captain Dreail?” Darda spoke up.
He tossed another log into the hungry fire and held his hands out. “The bay wasn’t always so peaceful. There used to be quite a bit of fishing along these shores before the rich folks come in with their money and built up the houses as they are. Twas the way most people made their living then. The ships with their white sails would go out into the ocean as big as a cloud and come back like plumes of smoke as each caught their catch.”
I tilted my head back and watched the plumes of smoke rise from the fire and sail into the dark, star-lit sky. Dreail raised his arm and cut the plume in two, parting them like the water parted the cliffs. “It is a simple life, but dangerous. The seas are unforgiving. They resent a fisherman catching its fish, and bring storms to remind the people to watch their greed.” He curled his hand into the smoke. The plume separated into bunches that bumped together like the rocking waves of a stormy sea.
I caught my mouth hanging open and snapped it shut before I glanced at the others. Spiros and Darda were likewise enraptured. Xander met my gaze and smiled before he pressed a finger to his lips and pointed back at our storyteller.
“A young woman, a maiden of the fields, fell in love with one of the men of the sea,” he continued as the smoke merged into the plume once again. “They were to be married in the lord’s house, the one in which you’re staying. Then a storm came. Twas a terrible strong storm that battered the bay and broke apart the docks. The ships sailed in from their fishing with their sails torn to pieces. The young woman stood on the beach with many other folks and looked for the ships. Out of the two dozen that left that early morning, five were missing. Her lover was aboard one of them.” He stretched out both hands and his fingers danced across the smoke. Short white figures formed and appeared to be looking into the bay. “She waited through the long day, and still nothing was heard of the missing ships. Everyone took them for lost and told the young woman to do the same. She wouldn’t hear none of it and rushed onto the northern cliff.” His hands moved faster through the smoke. A small cloud ran through the dark sky above the plume. “The winds were at their strongest. None dared follow her to the mouth of the bay where she stopped on the edge. Something in the water caught her attention. Twas a body of a young man floating on his back.”
“Her lover?” I guessed.
He nodded. “Aye, her betrothed. His empty eyes stared up at her. The sight drove her mad. She leapt into the stormy sea and fell onto his body, dragging them both to the watery depths.” He flung his arms downward and eradicated the picture. The smoke floated into the sky and disappeared out of view. He dropped his arms into his lap and shook his head. “That was the last anyone saw of their bodies. The tide never brought them home.”
“Only their bodies?” Spiros spoke up.
Dreail nodded. “Aye, for the spirit of the unhappy woman returned as a banshee. Her cursed soul walks the northern cliff during the worst of storms, and at the worst of it she makes her terrible cry before she plunges into the sea.”
I shivered. “How awful to have to go through that again and again.”
He set his steady eyes on me. “Aye, tis not a fate I would wish on anyone, especially after I saw it for myself. Twas a stormy morning that I took out the boat by myself, my father being sick with a fever and stuck in bed. My mother warned me not to go out. The banshee would come. I scoffed at her words. The tale was an old fable told to frighten children from the coast on stormy days.” He looked at the fire and shook his head. “If only I’d listened to her.”
“But you returned without harm,” Darda pointed out.
He lifted his head and frowned at her. “Not all harm is done to the body, My Lady. The mind can be just as scarred, and maybe worse.”
“They say telling your troubles is good for the soul,” Xander spoke up.
Dreail nodded. “Aye, it does no harm, and perhaps it saves another from my own stupid mistake. I took my father’s ship out. No one else sailed that day but me. The bay was a choppy mess of waves that rocked the boat something fierce. I couldn’t unfurl the sail more than halfway without fear it would be torn apart. Come midday the sun was blotted out, so I sailed home. It twas at dusk that I reached the opening between the cliffs and heard it. That horrible sound of agony.”
“Like the alarm from the barracks?” I guessed.
He met my eyes and shook his head. “No, My Lady. The call of the banshee is far worse. It sinks into you and clings to your soul like fog on a cold day, and there it stays as the wailing beats at your ears, driving you to the brink of madness.” He leaned forward and studied the fire with such intensity that I wondered if he would throw himself into it. His soft, low voice broke the heavy silence. “I begged for death that night, My Lady, if only that terrible wailing would stop. Begged for it rather than slip into the madness it threatened me with.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “What happened?”
He leaned back and stared up at the dark sky as though looking at the tops of the cliffs on that fateful day. “That’s when I saw her. She stood up on the cliff all clad in white, her dress clinging to her body and her hair whipping to and fro like a serpent. The cliff rises fifty feet above the water, but I saw her face as clearly as I see yours. It was terrible to behold. Her eyes were white and glowing, but empty like the treacherous whirlpools to the far north. Her mouth was open in that hideous cry of hers.”
“Did you not wish to flee?” Darda spoke up.
He shook his head. “I was caught, My Lady, caught in the grip of that terrible sound. It tried to pull me apart, but not like the giant mathair shuigh. This tore me apart from the inside. I cowered in the bottom of that boat praying for anything to end it, or me, and that’s when she raised her arms-” he straightened and stretched out his own arms, “-and with one long, final wail she fell over the other side of the cliff. I heard a splash and nothing more.” He dropped his arms into his lap and shook his head. “I was free of her cursed wailing and made for shore. One of my uncles met me at the dock to tell me my father had taken a turn for the worse. I reached his side a few minutes before the gods took him, and have never sailed the bay on a stormy day since.”
Our storyteller hung his head and we fell into a heavy silence. I pursed my lips and glanced up at Xander. He stood and caught the attention of all present as he bowed to Dreail. “Please accept my apologies, Captain. I had no idea the story effected you so and would not have asked-” Dreail raised his head and one hand, and shook his head.
“No, My Lord, I won’t be having that. I’m glad to be telling my tale to any who wish to hear it. All I ask is that you remember my tales and not go sailing on a stormy sea, for the banshee always takes her due against those who trespass on her sorrow.” He rose to his feet and groaned. “But perhaps that’s all for this night. You will be staying a spell, My Lord?”
Xander nodded. “Yes, for a few weeks.”
Dreail smiled and nodded. “Good. Plenty of time for more stories. I’ll bid you all goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” we softly returned.
The old captain turned away from us and shuffled southward down the beach, a lonely shadow beneath the dark night sky.
- Writer
