The Sleeper, The Singer - Part Two

Part Two of Two - Fantasy Short Fiction

NOTE: This is the second half of a two-part fantasy tale.

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Photo by Isaac Burke on Unsplash

Pim decided that she would begin with the books. It seemed only correct to do so.

In the evenings, when the night would draw in over the Sleeper’s cliff-crag island and supper was over and the peat fire was the only glow by which to see, Pim would sit on the hearthside trunk with her books in a stack beside her and she would read aloud, slowly and methodically, shaping each word to its deepest meaning. 

While she read, Singer sat on his stone table and worked at whatever task he had settled upon for the night, whittling or carving or crafting. For the first few nights of this he hummed his usual melodic tunes, not seeming to pay her any mind at all, thinking perhaps they were both happy with their own noise. But one night, he did not hum, but seemed to listen. A twitch of an ear, a pause in the carving the only sign that he was trying to understand the words, that perhaps there was something in them he recognized.  

 The days passed in something like peace. Every day, Pim would find a measure of beauty in wandering the island’s cliffsides and groves of coastal trees, becoming a regular companion of the shorebirds, or perching somewhere to watch Singer at his fishing. But every evening as night fell she would pass the shrine with the old emblems crumbling to dust and her heart would squeeze, remembering. 

This task is mine. It is work that no one else can do. 

One night, the darkness drew in upon what had become a familiar scene: Singer at his craft, Pim at her books, reading aloud. But something was different, and Pim could feel it. Singer was restless, his movements distracted. She had never even seen him so much as frustrated, before, but tonight he was deeply unsettled, a tension that simmered rather than snapped. 

Finally, he could seemingly take it no longer. Singer set aside his craft and stared at her, soft eyes steely, thick ear twitching.

She stopped reading and met his gaze, the firelight flickering against the walls of the stone tomb. His long fingers trembled as he lifted one hand to point at the book in her lap. 

It was a book of verse, very old. The book had belonged to her grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother. On the back cover Pim could feel the emblem etched there, faded yet holding strong, which kept the book intact after years and years of loving use. 

Singer stared at her, as though waiting. 

Pim read the last verse again, one of the final stanzas of a longer poem: 

O turning tide, O trembling heart 
Draw near, and open-lipped declare 
The anthem of the clarion
In Pexdarelle the fair…

Singer stopped her with a gesture of his hand. Then, he climbed down from the stone table and approached her, his expression unreadable. 

For the first time since her arrival Pim was afraid. She leaned back against the cold stone, unsure of what he would do. He had always been too gentle for her to notice the sharpness of his teeth, the length of his claws. It would take very little, only a moment, should he mean her harm. 

The beast’s nose quivered as he drew near and then, in an act that surprised her, he sat down at her feet, beside the fire, and pointed to the book once more. 

With a shake in her voice that she could not control, Pim repeated:

O turning tide, O trembling heart 
Draw near, and open-lipped declare… 

And while she read, she heard a sound, and glanced up to see that Singer was mimicking her words, shaping them with his own lips, a whispered murmur as he followed the verse, weaving it like a spell before the fire. He was concentrating hard, his stare distant. 

 She finished the poem with her heart pounding, and when she looked up again Singer’s dark eyes were haunted, as though surprised by his own recollection of these ancient words. He had followed a trail of lights through the dim, unfamiliar trees, and found himself unexpectedly at home, again. 

“You remember such speech, Singer?” Pim asked, quietly. 

But Singer did not reply, did not motion with his head or his hand. Instead, he merely stood on shaking legs and left the stone temple of his silence and his long centuries, vanishing into the night beyond the door. 

Pim stayed awake as long as she could to wait for his return, but he did not return that night, and soon enough she left the trunk beside the hearth and drifted off in the branch-built heather bed as the fire died away with no one to tend it. 

*******

The next morning was cold and clear. 

Pim rose with the sun, wrapped herself tightly in her woolens, and went out to find Singer. 

Thankfully, he was not difficult to find. From her high vantage on the cliff she could look down and see him seated on a piece of driftwood on the beach where he kept his fishing gear and tackle, her own rowboat upturned nearby, the gulls reeling overhead. 

As Pim descended the stone stair to the beach, even from a distance she could see something…different, about him. Something about the shape of his posture, perhaps, or the color of his fur. But it was too slight to put a finger on. 

Pim came to sit beside him, and he did not shift away. His fur was glittering with dewdrops; it was clear he had been sitting here all night. Even up close she could feel the difference in him, but could not put it into words. 

No matter, for he was the first to speak. 

“I…remember,” he said. Despite his words being unpracticed his voice was rich, kept smooth and bright over the years by his constant humming. “I confess…I tried not to. Words have never served me well.”

Here he paused, drew in a breath, closed his eyes. 

“But,” he continued, “you appear to need words with me. So words we shall have.”

It had not occurred to Pim that he might have been trying to ignore her attempts at bringing him back to himself, and she ducked her head in something like shame. 

“I am sorry,” she said. “But yes, I do need words with you. Without them, I cannot finish my task and go home.”

Singer nodded, opened his eyes, gazing out at the sea. “I see, now. Was the last one of you so long ago? It does not seem so, to me. Time flows fast, here, and sweet as a spring.”

“You should not have had to feel the passage of time at all,” Pim replied. “In your sleep, centuries would pass like seconds. Like a dream.”

“Oh?” Singer turned to her, then, and cocked a furry eyebrow in dark humor. “You have slept so long, then, to know?”

Pim shrugged, chastened. “No, but…I have been told as much.”

Singer made a noise in his throat, but his eyes were not unkind. “You mortal lot still have a prophecy, I suppose. And what does it say?”

Pim had never heard anyone speak so flippantly of the prophesied future, and did not expect as much from the Sleeper himself. She blinked. “Oh, well…that you will save us all, one day. That you must sleep until you’re needed.”

“As a weapon? An ally? An avenging spirit? A dreamer who will weave a new future in his sleep, and wake to make it true?” Singer laughed, then, a rumbling sound that made the sea-softened driftwood seat below them tremble. “For hundreds of years my fate has been guessed and oracled and etched into stone, a new one every few centuries. And for what? How long must I wait, to wake and to live? I am weary of sleeping. I am weary of guessing.”

Pim did not have an answer. Her tongue was heavy and her mind raced. If the Sleeper refused to sleep, then the future was in her hands, and she was letting it crumble to dust like the old emblems in the shrine. It was too late for her—that fate had been sealed, long ago—but what of the rest of the world?  

“When I woke,” Singer continued, softly, “I thought…I truly thought that it was finally time. That my waiting was at an end. But no one was here to claim me. No one was here to tell me how I may finally save the world, or perish trying. I was alone. At first, it was madness. Terrible madness. But slowly I came to love it: the quiet, the ease, my thoughts, my song. My words failed me, my skin furred like grass on the crags, my nature transformed as it sometimes does. Time passed, and it was beautiful. To never sleep, and every moment a dream.”

Singer paused, and then turned to her again. “I have not asked your name.”

“Pim,” she replied. “Is the name I was given, rather.”

“And you have given me the name ‘Singer’. I like it. I will keep it, if you permit me. All of my past names are too old and misshapen, no longer fit.”

In spite of herself, Pim smiled and nodded. “I can understand that. I leave a wake of names behind me, too. You have been a generous host, Singer. But I…I hope you understand that I cannot leave, yet. For the good of the prophesied future. It is my task.”

Singer sighed, and he stood. 

“It seems to me,” he said, “that prophesies and futures can wait. I am off to catch our breakfast, for no good can come of an empty table between friends.”

Pim watched him as he strode off, and it was only when he receded into the distance, climbing the stone stair, that she put her finger on what looked so different about him.

His ears were not so thickly furred, and his hands and feet were not so savagely clawed. It was as though they had diminished, just slightly. 

It was as though they looked more human than animal, by the barest fraction. 

*******

By unspoken agreement, the Sleeper and the woman moved through their day much the same as they always had. After eating a breakfast that was more silence than words—an unexpected re-acquaintance, a transfiguration of what-had-been—they parted ways, the Sleeper to his tasks and the woman to her walking. 

Pim found herself on her usual route through the cliffsides, deep in thought, witnessed in her wanderings by the same puffins and murres she herself used to watch.

Despite the beauty of the day and the triumph of a Sleeper who could now speak, Pim’s thoughts were sharp and sore, a pebble in her boot that would not shift. 

Her plan had worked, yet it was a hollow victory. What good was it to speak to him, if he could not be convinced to let her do what she was sent here to do? 

Conflict stirred within her. When the Sleeper and his tomb had been an illustration in a book, a figure of oracle, it had been easier to imagine her quest. 

Journey here, perform the emblems, and return home. 

Simple. 

But now…

Groaning with frustration, Pim faced the wind, looked down the bluff to the patch of trees where she knew Singer would be making his rounds, checking his traps. She could not see him, but she felt that he was there in the trees, a heartbeat and a voice and a pair of gentle eyes. And the tomb was a home, in its own way, warm with a hearth and alive with Singer’s sweet songs. 

Alive, alive, and awake!

What rotten luck. 

Pim carried this turmoil with her through the day and into the evening until they were sitting again beside the hearth. Only this time, Pim refused supper, and curled herself onto the branch-bed instead of the trunk. It was softer than usual; Singer had replaced the old heather with new. 

The beast was seated on the stone table, carving a new piece, long curls of bark falling from his knife onto the stone floor carpeted with rushes.

“Will you not read tonight?” he asked, finally.

“No,” Pim said. “I read to wake your words. I’ve done that.” 

Silence. Then, finally, Pim sat up, wrapping the pelt blanket around her shoulders as she stared into the fire. 

“Singer,” she said, “what happens if you die? Can you die?”

He smiled softly. In the firelight his features fluttered, ghosts of his past lives seeming to appear and then vanish again, and from one moment to the next Pim fancied that she could see what he would look like with a man’s face, but it would pass.

“It has been a long time since I died,” he said. “I scarcely remember. But of course, I can die. It is only that I return. But whether here or there, or as myself, I do not know. I don’t remember. It was too long ago, the last time.”

It is only that I return. 

A pang of something—envy?—seared white-hot through Pim’s veins. 

“To return,” she said, softly. “What a miracle that would be.”

Singer shrugged. “I have known nothing else. Miracle? Maybe.”

“Miracle,” Pim said, firmly. “Does death cause you pain?”

Singer shrugged, again. “As I said. It was too long ago to remember. But yes, I have died many times over.”

Pim nodded. 

“I, too, have died a few times over,” she said, quietly. “Two. And I am waiting on the third. The last.”

Singer finally set down his work, turned to look at her. “What ails you, Pim?”

She rubbed her eyes, felt the emblems in her satchel burning like embers. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she said, hating the way her voice mewled like a child in the dark stone hovel but unable to stop it. “I am here to perform the emblems, because it was tasked to me to do. I am singularly qualified, because of…because…well, it is in my hand to protect the certainty of the prophesied future, and I…I did not expect…”

Tears, burning, unholy. Pim sighed, slipped her fingers across her face quickly, but the tears fell faster than she could catch them. 

“I need this,” she said. “This certainty.”

“Why?” Singer asked, and his voice was gentle but the question dropped like a challenge between them. 

“Because, I…because fate has wounded me.”

The hearth popped, sizzled, whined. Singer waited.

“It is believed by those I serve,” Pim said, “that those wounded by fate are most qualified to protect it. I once lived a happy enough life. But fate arrived in fire, and took,” here, her voice slipped, “my lover and my child. Thus was I made qualified for this work.”

She set her chin against the pain, but it still sat like a weight on her chest. 

“And so, you see,” she said, “certainty is the only true virtue, Singer. Without it, there is chaos, and I cannot accept that. Fate and fire are sure. If I…if I cannot ensure the prophesied future, then…I am good for nothing else.”

Her voice shriveled to nothing as the words came out in a hoarse whisper, uninvited. 

“So. So…you must sleep. Damn you.”

Bereft, Pim pulled the blanket even tighter around herself, reached up with a shaking hand to loose her gray-stricken hair from its braid—mute witness to her sorrows—and leaned her face on her arms, too exhausted and confused and afraid to weep. 

Failure, was the word that would not leave her. Wounded by fate, chosen by an oracular sect of power and wealth beyond imagination, trained thoroughly in the craft of the emblems… only to fail at the feet of the Sleeper himself. Awake. Alive and awake and beautiful and singing on this lonely island in the sea, with his woodcarvings and his shorebirds and his peace. His peace. His arms full.  

His arms full. 

Damn him. 

Pim lay down and turned her face to the stone wall, shivering despite the warmth. She had not been warm since fate had wounded her, emptied her arms, stolen her songs, made her feet heavy. Leaden. 

I do not dance, anymore. I used to dance.

But no more.

She did not hear Singer slip from the stone table, approach on slow, cautious feet. She did not hear him sit on the rush-strewn floor beside the branch-built bed. 

But she felt his heavy hand rest gently on her head, her gray-stricken hair under his fingers. More human than animal, by the barest fraction.  

Then he—the Sleeper, the Singer—softly lifted his voice to the hearth, the hovel, the sea and the stars and the resting shorebirds and the horizon and the distant dawn, a power enough in his voice to wake the very bones of the earth, yet under rein. 

Out to the horizon, and down into her heart. 

Pim slept.  

*******

Morning found her on the cliffside that she had so fallen in love with over the last few weeks, staring out at a bank of thick, gray clouds moving over the ocean. 

She had been busy at her tasks, ever since the sun was awake to watch her. She had gone straight down to the beach in the early light, turned over the repaired rowboat, prepared the driftwood oar Singer had made for her. She had packed up her satchel with her clothes, her books, and her woolens. She had tucked the bag into the bow of the boat, waiting. 

All was ready. All that was left was to say goodbye. 

Singer found her there and sat beside her, high enough over the sea that the gulls passed by below them. The emblems in their bag lay in her lap. 

“You are preparing to leave,” he said. 

She nodded. “I cannot finish this task. There is nothing else to do, except return.”

“What will you tell them?”

Pim looked out at the distant storm crouched over the horizon, wondered if it would soon arrive or if it would pass the archipelago by, completely. She did not relish rowing her boat in the tempest. 

“I will tell them that I have done what I was asked to do, so that they leave you to your solitude for another two hundred years of peace,” she said. “And the emblems I will throw into the sea.”

“But the prophesied future?”

Pim made a low sound in her throat, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “The future. I do not know. My foot has slipped, Singer. I only know that I cannot doom you to more silence, now that I have heard your voice. I just…I cannot.”

Singer considered this. “What is there for you, in the place you come from?”

“Nothing,” Pim said. “But it is a place where I am known. That will have to be enough.”

The silence then stretched, longer than either of them expected. It was time for her to say her goodbyes to this creature, this man, this strange immortal being who had been so gentle with her, who had made his home her own. He had shared his peace with her. All she had wanted was to finish her work, but Singer had been her friend. This, she had never expected. 

But before the inevitable farewell could fall from her lips, Singer spoke. 

“Could you not stay with me?”

Pim could not look at him. Could not think. Could barely breathe. 

The seabirds called below, wheeling, weeping. 

“They might send others to ensure the task was done,” Pim whispered. “They will certainly send another worker to do this task, centuries from now.”

“They may. They will. It is not a worry. There are songs enough to wake the earth, should it come to that. I would rather you stay than return to appease them.”

“Do you not prefer to be alone?”

Singer smiled. “I prefer always to be at peace. And we have found peace together, haven’t we?”

They had. Pim sighed.

“Singer,” she said. “I have only ever known fear.”

He smiled, and his eyes were a man’s eyes, deep blue and sea-bright. “And I have endless songs to sing. Perhaps, one day, you’ll dance upon these cliffs without a care. Worry not. I will teach you.”

He rose, then, and held out his hand for her, and he was even more human today than he had been the day before. She rose with him.

“There is much to do before the storm arrives,” he said. “Let us stow the rowboat in a safe place. Should there ever come a day when you choose to leave, it will be waiting for you. You are free, Pim. Now, let us prepare.”

And so they prepared for the storm, the Sleeper and the woman. He gathered extra peat for their fire and extra food for their table. She went down to the beach to unpack the rowboat and turn it back over, safe from the rain. To bring her things into the warmth of the stone hovel, once more. As she worked, she dreamed. Perhaps, on a calm day, she could row to the village on the biggest island and barter for seeds for a garden, grains for bread, linen for sewing. Perhaps, one day, Singer would show her the things in the trunk, would tell her his many stories. Perhaps, one day, she would forget that he had ever worn fur and claws at all.

Perhaps. 

Then, as the wind—winter-cold and sharp-toothed—rose with subtle threat, Pim stood at her favorite place on the cliffs—witnessed by the dark-eyed puffins and murres—and she cast the emblems into the sea, watching them fall, considering what was approaching from the distant horizon. 

She could not be certain of anything. 

But her arms—her eyes, her heart, her hands—were full.

Author’s Note

This story was a long-overdue elaboration on my first-ever piece of flash fiction posted here on Talebones, called Cliffsong, which can also serve as this tale’s epilogue.

What was intended to be a simple little one-off ditty captured my imagination, and it was such a delight to return to this world and give it a bit more detail.

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