Page 4 of Skysong

‘Then that is my choice to make!’ Oriane shouted. ‘I would rather put myself in danger than waste my life away here wondering!’

The words hung in the air between them, toxic, irrevocable. Her father seemed to crumple in on himself. All the anger drained from his face, replaced with a sadness so pronounced that Oriane wished desperately to wind back time and swallow her words before they surfaced.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t mean that, Papa. Please believe that I didn’t.’

‘You did,’ Arthur said slowly, not looking at her. His voice sounded hoarse, as if he’d forgotten how to speak. ‘And you should mean it. You’re right, Oriane. I need to let you make your own decisions.’

His eyes met hers. Their gazes were almost level, Oriane now nearly as tall as he.

‘But I want you to know the whole truth first.’

They sat together before the hearth. Arthur’s eyes were fixed on the fire, the reflection of its flames wavering in his glasses. Oriane’s focus was trained on him as she waited for him to speak.

‘You know you are descended from a long line of skylarks,’ he began finally. ‘Your mother, your grandmother, your great-grandmother – and every one of their mothers before them. It’s hard to trace them all, because most of them, like you, were born and raised and lived in hiding. And the reason the skylarks firstwentinto hiding is … not pleasant.’15

‘Tell me,’ Oriane said immediately. After a moment, her father nodded.

‘Many, many years ago, one of your ancestors – Elidia was her name – lived in the city, among the people. They knew who she was and what she did each morning, but for the most part they were respectful. Kept their distance. There was a small group of people, though, who became … fanatic. Entitled. They believed shebelongedto the people – that she shouldn’t be living a private life with her husband, but with them, among them, so they might see her every transformation and song.

‘Elidia’s husband grew afraid for her safety as the group became ever more zealous and obsessive. When Elidia fell pregnant, they decided to leave the city, so that she might give birth in safety and in secret. But the baby came early … and the people found out.’

Oriane sat frozen. She felt bound to her chair. Her gaze had narrowed into a halo around Arthur’s face, everything around it falling to darkness.

‘The baby was born in a small, locked room as the fanatics gathered outside and pounded at the door. Elidia and her husband were trapped. She was weak from the birth, so she insisted that he take the baby and run. There was a window – too high for him to jump from with the baby in his arms. But the night was coming to its end, and just as the door was about to break down, the baby transformed, ready to call the dawn for the first time.’

A log fell in the fire, sparks swirling upward with a hiss, but Oriane barely noticed.

‘Elidia’s husband tucked the bird away safely and jumped. The little lark sang as he pulled it out from his coat, then transformed back into the baby girl, and he ran away with her in his arms.’

‘And Elidia?’ Oriane prompted.16

‘The fanatics broke down the door as her daughter was singing for the first time. They realised that if she was still human as the day dawned, she must have passed her power down to her daughter … They surrounded her, demanding to see the child. Her husband could hear them shouting at her, closing in around her … They had treated her with deference once, but she was the lark no longer, and what cause had they to exalt an ordinary woman? She died there in that room, weak and bleeding and smothered by the people of her own city.’

Oriane swallowed the horror rising in her throat. ‘And the baby?’

‘The baby was safe. Her father took her far from the city and raised her in a small country town where no one knew who they were.’

‘In a town,’ Oriane repeated. ‘With other people … Not isolated like us?’

‘Not at first,’ Arthur conceded. ‘But your other ancestors … Well, as Elidia’s story was passed down, they came to believe that she had cursed them, somehow. After she died giving birth to the next skylark, every one of her descendants did too.’

‘But it wasn’t her fault,’ Oriane protested. ‘She didn’tcursethem, she was … she waskilled—’

‘I know,’ Arthur said. ‘But imagine it: your mother dies soon after giving birth to you. Her mother met the same fate, and her mother’s mother, and on it goes … What else would you be given to think?’

‘I don’t have to imagine it,’ Oriane murmured. Her father opened his mouth and closed it again, his head bowed. ‘And I do not think I believe in any such curse.’

The room fell to silence. The fire crackled and sparked, but outside the cottage, the night was still.

‘It has been this way for centuries,’ Arthur said finally. ‘Your ancestors have kept themselves, and their daughters, away from the17world so that the skylarks may keep their secrets and be safe. I’ve just been trying to keep you safe, Oriane.’

But Oriane’s mind was working quickly. ‘They all must have had some contact with the outside world, though,’ she said. ‘They all had daughters, didn’t they? How else could they have done so without …’ Oriane blushed. She had learned the ways of the world through books, of course, as she had learned everything else. But she never spoke to her father of such things.

But Arthur’s face had lit up, his whole demeanour changing. ‘That’s where our plan comes in. Your mother’s and mine.’ He didn’t wait for Oriane to respond before he barrelled on. ‘All the other skylarks, no matter how much they tried to isolate themselves, always had some form of connection to others. They always ended up meeting someone, sometimes falling in love, sometimes not, but always bringing the next of the skylarks into the world … And sealing their own death warrants as they did so.’

‘Is that how you and Mother looked at your relationship?’ Oriane asked, horrified. ‘As … a sealing of her fate?’

‘No,’ Arthur replied softly. ‘Your mother made the decision to have you more carefully than she had made any other. I tried to talk her out of it at first, but she said … She said she already knew you, could already feel your essence in the world, and she wanted to bring you into it. She knew …’ He paused, his words seeming to catch in his throat as a wave of sadness washed over his face. ‘She knew she would not be here to protect you, Oriane. But even before you were born, she loved you so much … She made me promise, made me swear, that I would make sure you didn’t meet the same fate she and all the other skylarks had.’

---