The Girl from the Sea: Shaman series, #0

THE GIRL FROM THE SEA

Jessica Rydill

To Vicki Mihajlich with love

Kindle edition first published in 2019 by Midford Books. Second edition 2020

www.midfordbooks.co.uk

Copyright © 2019, 2020 Jessica Rydill

Cover design by Greta Paliulyte

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved.

The twins played amongst the rock pools, looking for crabs and occasionally stopping to splash each other. No-one else visited this cove, and they had it to themselves. The fishing port lay round the Cap to the east, tucked out of sight by the stony fishbone flank of a Calanque, grown from eroded limestone.

They were barefoot, having taken off their shoes and stockings and left them at the foot of the cliff, out of reach of the exploring tide. They had been coming here since they were tiny, and they knew the currents and the moods of the bay so well that they did not need to discuss them.

Aude swam in from the open sea. She paused some distance from the shore, treading water and watching the stranger children. Ever since her family moved to the village of Sankt Eglis a few weeks ago, she had been longing to explore this new landscape; in the forest where she had lived, pine cones fell and lay undisturbed for years, and bones would be found only after the winter snows melted.

Her older brothers had warned her against the dangers of swimming by herself, but Aude had ignored them. The sea called to her as if it was her natural element, one that had been waiting for her all her short life. She felt lighter than a spirit, bathed in fathoms of warm, blue water. Warm and clear; if she looked down she could see the seabed below her feet, though it was too deep for her to touch.

In her old home, the books she borrowed from the castle library described the adventures of long-dead seafarers, who set out to sail the world and its seven oceans: the Northmen who travelled many leagues in their ships called Drakkar with a carved dragon on the prow, until they found a new land further south, and sprang ashore to claim it.

This land known as Lefranu: home of the Franj, though in those days it was part of a forgotten empire. The Northmen had conquered a province, settled down, and become farmers and knights, lords and peasants; but some had travelled inland, further east, in search of new fiefdoms, land – and brides.

Aude had loved to listen to the stories told by her mother and the other women of the household. But those adventures had seemed impossibly remote when she was walled up behind stone ramparts, which themselves were guarded by trackless woodland full of green shadow and wild animals. A place where the leaves did not fall in autumn and the pines whispered together, echoing the voices of doves.

The waves held Aude like a warm hand. She had thrown off her clothes and left them on the beach, confident that this deserted place would be for her alone. Since her family moved into the Bastide, the fortified farmhouse her father had inherited from a distant relative, they had been busy scrubbing floors, brushing away cobwebs and killing spiders. There had been no chance to visit the local village, and her father and elder brothers had insisted that those were men’s matters, in which the women of the family were superfluous.

Aude escaped at the first opportunity. She refused to think about her former home; too dangerous, those thoughts. At thirteen years old, she had been reborn into a new world in the South, where the sea was balmy, its salt bitter on her tongue, and the sky an arc of taut blue, a colour she could not name since there had been nothing so fierce, so burning, in the North.

The foreign children showed no sign of leaving. Aude splashed her hands in the water. Unknown currents could carry her out of her depth. She had learnt to swim with her friends in the river at home, where they were forbidden to go. She knew this was different; not bounded like a river, it stretched to the horizon, and its farther shore was invisible. Perhaps it carried on to the end of the world.

She could see them from here: a boy and a girl. They were sallow-skinned, with a tinge of gold from the early summer sun. She tried to work out what was odd about them. Unlike her, they were fully dressed, except for bare feet. Both wore black; the boy had black trews with a white shirt, the girl a black dress with white sleeves – an overdress with a chemise, perhaps. Though skinny, they looked strong and vigorous. They seemed to be infused with darkness, as if they had been steeped in vanilla pods, or locked away in a larder with cinnamon and cloves.

Aude decided to venture closer; she wanted to see how near she could go without them seeing her. If they noticed her, she would be gone in an instant. Something about them piqued her curiosity. Not just their appearance; they seemed to be playing in silence, except when one laughed out loud, or yelped as the other splashed them. She could not imagine playing with any of her brothers so comfortably; even the one nearest her in age was busy with ‘men’s matters’, learning to hunt and ride a horse and wield weapons.

Aude slipped through the shining waves, whose flickers of watery light seemed to abet her. She was closer to the shore now, where the sea-bed shelved upwards. To her left rose a cliff, where white seabirds wheeled, taller than the castle’s tallest tower. An eagle’s eyrie, or the home of gulls; she wondered whether it would be possible to climb the wall of pitted, ragged stone, and the thought frightened her. Too high, too far, even when there were birds’ eggs to be gathered.

She sank lower in the water, stalking her prey. She studied the boy and girl. He was darker than his sister, with inky black hair and smudges of eyes and brows. The girl’s hair, the colour of oak, hung down in two stringy plaits. Her face reminded Aude of icons depicting the Mother: a dark face in the secret cavern of the chapel. It belonged in another world, where the saints and angels were stiff and enamelled; their hands raised in frozen benison and their heads surmounted with gold.

Aude blinked salt water from her eyes. The boy was laughing; he had a wide grin and a long nose. Without warning, and closer than she intended, Aude sneezed. And the children saw her.

Aude tried to hide under the surface. Only her head and shoulders should be visible, but the water was so translucent she feared the children would have a clear view of her naked form.

They looked frightened, like roe deer startled by an unwary huntsman; ready to run. They caught hold of each other, watching Aude as if she were uncanny. The boy shouted at her, but she could not understand what he was saying; he was not speaking Franj, or even the local dialect she found so hard to understand. He sounded angry.

Aude trod water, puzzled by their reaction. They must be used to encountering other people in the bay: bathers or fisherman. She pushed the wet hair out of her face, wondering who they were.

‘My name is Aude,’ she called. ‘Aude d’Iforas. Who are you?’

The girl let go of her brother, and strayed to the edge of the beach.

‘Are you a mermaid?’ she said, shading her eyes against the light. Though she had an odd accent, she spoke perfect Franj. Aude laughed so much that she swallowed a throatful of water and sank. The girl gave a shout of alarm, and the boy dived into the water, fully clad, and swam to help her.

Aude did not want to be rescued, not with no clothes on. She tried to fight the boy off, but he seemed determined to bring her to shore.

‘Let me go!’ she shouted. ‘I know how to swim. How dare you!’

The boy backed off, runnels of water pouring down his cheeks. Aude glared at him, tempted to slap him in the face. Something made her hesitate; she was a stranger, alone and a long way from help.

The girl waded into the sea, and said something to the boy in the language Aude did not understand.

‘Who are you? What are you doing in our bay?’ said the boy, ignoring his sister.

‘What do you mean, your bay?’ said Aude.

‘Nobody comes here except us. The villagers never come. They say it’s haunted.’

‘I told you. My name’s Aude. My family just moved to the village. My father has land here.’

The girl called again, insistently; she sounded cross. The boy turned his head, and shouted a reply.

‘Are you foreigners?’ said Aude.

The boy gave her a strange look. She was not sure what to make of it; he looked suspicious, fearful and angry all at once.

‘We’re Wanderers,’ he said. ‘The cursed people. That’s why my family live on the headland. We’re not allowed a house in the village.’

Aude stared at him. She knew the story of the Wanderers, cursed by the Mother for killing her Son; they were doomed to travel the earth until His return, though some, like Aude’s own mother, whispered that it had been an unjust curse.

‘Yudi, is she a mermaid?’ shouted the girl. In Franj this time.

‘I don’t think so. I can’t look, because she’s naked.’

The girl on the shore screamed, and the boy shook his head.

‘That’s my sister. Our names are Yuda and Yuste Vasilyevich.’

‘I don’t think I can say those,’ said Aude. ‘How come you can swim?’

‘Mameh taught us to swim when we were little. I’ve never met anyone who swam naked before. I’ll lend you my shirt.’

‘Yudi, what are you doing?’ shouted his sister.

Aude watched the boy take off his shirt. She was reluctant to borrow it, but her clothes lay where she had left them, further along the shore. The boy thrust the shirt into her hand, and sneezed. On the beach, his sister was becoming crosser and crosser. Aude had to laugh.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘You’d better put on my shirt before Yuste’s head explodes.’

Aude pulled the sopping wet shirt over her head and wriggled into it. It seemed natural Yuda should take her hand and guide her to the sand, where his sister was waiting. Aude emerged, shivering in spite of the warmth, and hugging herself.

‘Yudi, what have you done!’ shouted Yuste. He pulled a face and replied without saying anything. Aude watched them, unaware that her mouth had dropped open. They were arguing in silence, waving their