Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [0]
A Faerie Strand
Louise Hawes
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illustrations by Rebecca Guay
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Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston 2008
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Text copyright © 2008 by Louise Hawes
Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Rebecca Guay
All rights reserved. For information about permission to
reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South,
New York, New York 10003.
www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com
The text of this book is set in AT Hadriano Light with Norlik Ital.
The illustrations were created with graphite and paint and digitally enhanced.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Hawes, Louise.
Black pearls : a faerie strand / by Louise Hawes ; illustrations by Rebecca Guay.
v. cm.
Contents: Dame Nigran's tower—Pipe dreams—Mother love—
Ashes—Evelyn's song—Diamonda—Naked.
ISBN-13: 978-0-618-74797-9
1. Fairy tales—United States. 2. Children's stories, American. [1. Fairy tales.
2. Short stories.] I. Guay-Mitchell, Rebecca, ill. II. Title.
PZ8.H3126B1 2008
[Fic]—dc22
2007041166
Manufactured in the United States of America
QUM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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This book is dedicated with love to
Regan and Stephen.
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Contents
Dame Nigran's Tower
1
Pipe Dreams
35
Mother Love
69
Ashes
105
Evelyn's Song
137
Diamonda
165
Naked
189
Dame Nigran's Tower
Flying had come naturally to her. When she'd grown of age and joined the ceremony in the grove, Tabbatha Nigran found her body lifting even before the words were done. She had lost herself and the others each time she'd spun into the night, turning like a thistle, up and up. There were no words for what she felt then, nor did she try to find them. It was simply the reason she lived, the place she had to go, the answer to every question she would ever ask.
Daughters of the Moon,
children of the Night,
rise like dew together
until the morning's light.
When Tabby chanted with her companions, she could scarcely sort her voice from theirs. The song was like a braid, binding them together, joining them in the sacred rite:
The owl's cry is our anthem,
our altar is the sky.
The Great Mystery is our Mother
to whom now, sisters, fly.
Held fast in the wind's strong arms, tumbling through the lacy mists of clouds, Tabby seldom gave a thought to landing, only let her heart swell like the moon, only set her face to the west, where she fancied the sun lay in its dark bed. Landing always came too soon on those magic nights. And it always stung. Not in a physical sense, of course. For it was not the actual coming down—the crisp, almost smug way her toes found the ground—that bothered Tabby. It was the return to earth and to the small minds and shriveled hearts that waited for her there: to the pack of dogs that chased her when she left the house, and to the filthy, rheumy children who parroted singsong rhymes—"Witch, witch, fell in a ditch, set her hair on fire."
Tabby never thought of herself as a witch, nor had her adoptive sisters ever used the word. They called themselves Wise Women, and she knew no way but theirs. The coven had taken her in as a babe, had given her love and a home and the sweet, wild joy of flight. That joy, they told her, was neither sorcery nor heritage. It was the gift of every woman who comes to her first blood when the moon is full.
She left the coven before her seventeenth summer and found a place as a weaver's apprentice. When the old woman died, Tabby stayed on in her teacher's humble cottage, but her neighbors could not forget where she'd been raised. No women brought her handiwork and no men came courting.
Tabby knew better than to try to change things. She kept to herself instead, tending the lush garden behind her cottage gate. Everything there brought her solace: the peonies, their great heads crisscrossed by delirious ants; the four o'clocks, slow to wake but glorious till dawn; the sweetpeas and primroses, unruly as children. Even the kitchen plants filled her with pride when she tended them mornings, her hands diving like pale fish among