Folklore

The stories described many different types of waterhorses haunting the lakes and rivers, the pools and oceans of Erith, but of all of them, the Each Uisge was the most ferocious and dangerous. It was one of the most notorious of all the unseelie creatures that frequented the watery places. Sometimes the Each Uisge appeared as a handsome young man, but usually it took the form of a bonny, dapper horse that virtually invited mortals to ride it. Once on its back, no rider could tear himself off, for its skin was imbued with a supernatural stickiness. If anyone was so foolish as to mount, he was carried with a breakneck rush into the nearest lake and torn to pieces. Only some of his innards would be discarded, to wash up later on the shore.

"But if we must pass through the Twenty-Ninth Keep, beware. For years a redcap was wont to skulk therein, and he maybe lurks there still. If so, then doubtless his cap is by now quite faded. In this unoccupied region it must be a good while since he coloured it with redcaps' favourite dye and he will welcome the sight of mortals."

Imrhien had scarcely set foot beside him when a hoarse yell cracked the silence like an egg, and a yolk-yellow brilliance flooded their eye- sockets. When their vision adjusted they made out a short, thickset old goblin with long, prominent teeth. His skinny fingers, armed with talons like eagles, were wrapped around a spitting fire-brand in one hand and a pike-staff in the other. Grisly hair streamed down his shoulders. He glared at the intruders with large eyes, fiery crimson. His feet were clapped into metal boots, his domed head jammed into a dull red cap. They saw, at his back, a sooty fireplace, a chopping-block and an axe. On a stone table, a bantam rooster crouched dismally in a wicker cage.

The folklore of Britain gives us many species of supernatural seducers, male and female, some harmless, others lethal. The latter include water-sirens or drowners, mermaids, the Lhiannan-Shee or Leanan Sidhe (which means "The Fairy Sweetheart"), the baobhan sith and the Ganconer (the Love-Talker).

The Ganconer, whose embrace is fatal, makes a cameo appearance in the pages of THE BITTERBYNDE. In case you have not yet been introduced to him, here he is.

He was clad in bleached linen, buckled over with half-armour in the soft grey tones and pure white highlights of silver; chain mail and plate which lent him the air of a dire machine of metal, or a carapaced insect or a cold-blooded sea-creature, yet within this casing, his excellence was obviously superlative.

Darker than wickedness was his hair, falling unbound past his shoulders. As compelling as forbidden pleasure was his countenance. He stood looking down at her from eyes as black as sloes, eyes as alight with passion as her own - a passion matching in intensity, but very different, had she but known it.

And to her now, any man not possessed of this exact stature, this frame, this hair and skin and eyes, was insufficient. Never had she beheld anything more desirable, and she willed the moment to last for all time, that he might never leave her sight.

"What maiden wanders here?" he said, or sang, and she did not think to ask his name, nor why he cast no shadow. He did not smile; his look was sorrowful, like that of a brilliant poet precociously doomed - a sadness which, if it affected his comeliness at all, enhanced it.

Then he began to speak again. The words of ganconers were enchantment in its true meaning; snares to the senses. Hearkening to the puissance of his syllables, Viviana did not notice the skew of the narrative or its menace, its obscenity. Inside her, a bird sang shrilly, its beak perforating her heart.

"You shall find me," added this vision of male allure, "Breath-taking."

He drew closer and she felt a chill like the utter coldness of a marble tombstone. A phantasmal mist rose out of the trees and twined about them, shutting out the world.

"Silken of flesh," he said, provocatively brushing her cheek with a long finger, "Hazel of eye and rose of mouth." His fingertip trailed across her lips. She trembled, distracted by his ardency, his nearness. The outline of his face was carved in alabaster against the spilled ink of his hair. Sloe eyes looked into her wide pupils, through her vulnerability to the well-spring of her psyche, and where they looked, a wound opened and began to bleed.

"But why so thirsty -" he concluded softly, drawing away a finger on whose tip stood out a cloudy bead of pear juice, "Beloved?"

He filled her embrace with his passion, her mouth with his kisses, her eyes with his blinding hair, her thought with chaos, her lungs with his breath.

And that breath was as icy as a comet's heart.

© 2001 Cecilia Dart-Thornton