My Voice for My Heart

Chapter 15: A Gift and A Curse

Keela

Just when the edges of my vision began to haze, I was yanked to the surface of the lake. The flames were beginning to sputter and die, and Maeve was gone. I felt the undine's clammy arms around my arms, pulling me backwards, dragging me through the water. She hefted me onto the shore, leaving me coughing and sputtering.

"You're a fool," she hissed at me.

I flopped onto my side and stared at her. Her face, so beautiful this morning, was narrow and scaled. Rows of teeth and a tiny tongue tripped over her words, making them slither out of her mouth.

"I told you to leave," she continued. "Look at my forest! Look what you did."

"I didn't..." I coughed, pushing myself up.

Her hand sliced through the air toward me, and my words stuck in my throat.

"I don't want to hear your voice."

She walked through the water, pacing back and forth, her body twisting and turning musically. Her hands moved to her hair, and I saw her fingers were webbed. She stopped then, as if a thought had struck her, and turned to me. She smiled, a large lipped, fishy smile. "I will help you, though you don't deserve it."

I stood up, looking to the sky, searching the night for the swans.

I heard a snap and a wave of water soaked me from head to toe. "Pay attention!"

The undine had changed again back to her lovely, and false, human form.

"Change them back," I begged. "It doesn't matter what happens to me."

"If it didn't matter," she said, her lips curling in distaste, "then why did you hide? Why not save them when you had the chance?"

 
My throat closed. Why hadn't I saved them? Why hadn't I stepped forward and taken Maeve's attention from them?

"You couldn't have saved them," the undine replied, "but I think you should recognize your cowardice. It will make your task all the more difficult because you will need to be brave."

I met her stare. I would be. I would redeem myself.

She laughed, her voice rippling the water around her.

"There is a plant, yellow thistle, you know it?" 


I nodded, having once tried to pick the pretty flower with the fuzzy stems. The barbs had embedded themselves in my fingers and Iasan and Còiseam had patiently plucked them while Rab had soothed me and Finn distracted me with silly faces. Thinking about them made my eyes prickle.

"Stop blubbering," the undine chided. "I grow weary of you. You do everything wrong." 


"I'm sorry," I answered again.

"Your voice! Enough. Find the thistle, spin it into thread and make each of your men a shirt. You have nine months. One month for each man before they are forever swans." 


I nodded.

"And..." her eyes widened and sparkled, reflecting the lake and the stars. I stared into them, the blue bleeding away until they were as black and as infinite as the night, "you may tell no one. In fact, because your voice displeases me, all your excuses and your whining, you may not speak a single sound until the last shirt is completed and placed over the head of the man to whom it belongs."

"Do you understand?"

 
I nodded, swallowing the sob that was rising in my throat as I pictured each beautiful face.

"Good," she said, drifting forward.

She kneeled in the lake, lifting my chin with her wet fingertips. Her eyes were human again, and her face kinder. "I know it seems cruel, but you will be stronger if you can finish this task."

She stood up, stepping back into the lake. "Find a safe place to work. But leave me now. The morning comes and I find myself hungry. It would behoove you to go unless you'd like to be my meal."

I stood quickly, running to the edge of the charred and smoking forest. The undine regarded the forest sadly, her eyes traveling to each tree and caressing it the way my eyes did to the faces of the men I loved. She sank into the lake slowly, until only her head was visible. "Go," she called, "break the spell. Save them."