Flann is sure and the elf reassured

“Good morning, Friend,” Cat said with a deliberate good cheer. Her voice belied her words, and he suspected her smile must have likewise been untrue to her mood.

“Good morning, Cat,” he said softly, trying to find a middle ground of his own. He was both delighted to see her and nervous about what this meeting could mean – particularly if she had brought reinforcements.

“This is the sister of me,” she said. “Flann.”

“Flann!” he smiled and bowed. “I’m glad to meet you.”

“We’ve met before,” Flann said dully.

“But I think we have never spoken.”

“True.”

Never having spoken to her, he had no idea what she thought of his relationship with her sister. Her words and her voice conspired to tell him that she was not pleased. He was now more nervous than delighted; he could not imagine why Cat would have brought so unwilling a participant to any joyous reunion.

But he could only hope for the best and leap into the unknown as he did every day of his blindness. He had not yet learned caution, for he feared it would be more crippling than the bruises and scrapes and lumps that he endured, physically and otherwise.

“Won’t you come in?” he asked, still smiling. “May I take your cloaks?”

“Oh! Ah… we can’t stay long,” Cat said. “We’re only out for a little walk…”

“Did you walk all this way?” he gasped. “You should come in and warm yourself by the fire.”

Most of his experience with her kind had been with the sick. By now he had the impression that women were frail creatures indeed. He had to fight to keep from touching her, from patting her with his hands, from fussing over her and leading her to the fireside and to a cup of hot wine. She might not have minded, but Flann was watching.

“Only for a moment,” Cat said. “Perhaps Flann… perhaps Flann can sit a moment by the fire over there.”

“In the kitchen?” he asked. “Would you like to? Allow me to get you a chair…”

Flann brushed past him, murmuring, “I can get one.” Her heavy cloak still dragged a draft of cold air from outdoors along with it.

Now he was alone with Cat in the hall. He did not know whether this was a good sign or a bad sign. While he was still trying to make up his mind, Cat stepped up to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. Her cloak too was enveloped in a sheen of cold air, and when her hands touched his back she seemed surprised to find that he was not.

“You’re warm!” she sighed and melted against him.

He wondered whether it was the warmth of his body that she was feeling or the curls of flame in him that she was calling up with her touch. She seemed so blissfully unaware – and simply blissful.

He only said, “Then you shall stay a while and warm yourself by me.”

“I wish I could,” she sighed. “Friend, I must ask you a favor, but first I must apologize to you.”

“I would like to apologize to you myself, if only I knew what I had done.”

He tried to laugh, but he was prevented not only by his nervousness but also by her little hand, which came up and settled itself over his mouth. It was the closest he had yet come to kissing her: his lips against her palm.

“You did nothing wrong,” she said gravely. “My faith in you was weaker than my fear of a few little words, and it’s a shame upon the head of me.”

He could not speak, so he raised his eyebrows. She lifted her hand away but laid her head on his shoulder.

“I wish you would tell me what I said,” he murmured, “so I don’t say it again.”

“I hope you will say it again. If you say it then I shall learn it is nothing to fear.” She sighed and mumbled, “There are so many things you must teach me not to fear.”

That was precisely what he had so often thought, and what he was so eager to do. Moreover, Lena was not even in the house; she had wrapped up Benedict and taken him for a visit to the reeve’s wife. But there was Flann in the kitchen, glaring at him for all he knew. Was that why Cat had brought her?

Cat too suddenly seemed to remember her reason for coming. She lifted her head slightly and said, “Friend, will you do a favor for me?”

“I would do anything for you.”

Her face was so close to his that he could feel her cheek curve up in a smile. He did not have the courage to kiss the smile, but he turned his head and kissed the cheek.

She gasped and squeezed him tighter, hiding both cheek and smile away against his neck. Meanwhile he began concentrating on making the kitchen fire burn brighter, hoping that if she grew uncomfortably hot, Flann might be tempted to step outside – perhaps even take a walk up to the castle to visit the Duchess…

Once she had caught her breath, Cat pulled away from him again, far enough that he could not unexpectedly kiss her.

“Friend…”

“Cat?”

“Friend, Alred told me that you could – that you said you could – when you touched – ”

He smiled at her confusion, believing it had something to do with the word “touch”. He certainly hoped she would permit him to teach her to be unafraid of being touched.

But she was not thinking about that at all. “When you touched Lady Iylaine’s hand, you said you could tell that she was…” She leaned close and whispered “…expecting a wee one…”

“A baby?” he whispered.

“Aye! That’s right. Can you?”

“Of… course… But, Cat! You aren’t, you know!” He clutched her against him, horrified at the thought, and horrified that she had spent the last months thinking it.

She struggled in his arms, and as Lena had advised him, he immediately let her go.

It was nearly more than he could bear: he knew he had frightened her again with his heedless tongue, but he could scarcely convince his hands that touching her and holding her would only make matters worse. He held them low and out to the sides since he could not trust them between him and her.

“I know that!” she gasped after a moment.

He folded his arms across his chest and stuffed his hands into his armpits to keep them still. He could not see her, but he was certain she was trembling on her toes, only awaiting a movement from him to send her scurrying out the door as she had the last time.

“It’s for my sister I’m asking,” she said, more calmly.

He let his arms drop, but he decided he would not make matters worse by asking any questions.

“Could you tell?” Cat asked hesitantly. “For Flann? Whether she… is…”

“I suppose I could. If she’s like you.”

Her hand slipped into his. “Would you try?” she asked.

“If she will allow it.”

She led him into the kitchen, speaking to Flann in her own language as they went. He heard the legs of the chair scrape across the flagstones as her sister stood.

“What do you have to do?” Cat asked him.

“Only touch her for a moment. Her hand would do.”

“Give him your hand, Flann,” Cat said firmly.

He held his hand out before him, but no other hand fell into it.

Cat said something in Gaelic, perhaps repeating the command, but Flann only asked, “You can’t tell the father this way?” Her voice was cold, but it shook with something other than anger.

The elf was so surprised he pulled back his hand. “Of course not. How could I?”

Cat spoke again, and Flann’s hand sought his out at his side and yanked it up between them. She tried to jerk it away as soon as his clasped over it, but he held it tightly, with the thumb pressed against the back of it. He could feel the blood flowing between his thumb and fingertips like warm water over stones.

He had touched many sons and daughters of the men in the last weeks, and he had learned that they were not all like Cat. Some of them had no fire at all that he could find, and he thought that Druze might have been right after all. Many of the men were little more than deer.

But there were some that were different: Cat of course, Sir Sigefrith’s little son, and though he disliked to admit it, Egelric’s baby daughter too. His only explanation was that they had elves in their ancestry, like Elfleda and her son Finn, but although he knew Finn well, he could not now say how much of the magic in Finn was due to his mother and how much to Egelric himself.

Flann’s fire was what her sister’s had been once, when it had been small and pure, before it had been blended into his own. But Flann’s skittish fire did not rise up to meet his as Cat’s had. It hid itself away by sinking into her, soaking into her like water into stone.

He did not seek after it. He was looking for her child, and he found it – or rather he was found.

When he encountered it he believed he had been granted sight again: it was more light than heat, more star than sun. It was an unblinking eye in a blank sky, watching him; a point of white light illuminating a bare and boundless plain. He stared back at it, awestruck, until he realized with a pang that he could no longer say that Miria’s beauty was the last thing he had ever seen.

Then he realized that Cat was speaking to him. He flung her sister’s hand away, and the world went dark again.

“Friend?” Cat whispered, and not for the first time it seemed.

“Yes,” he said.

“Is she…”

“Yes.”

Flann moaned into the hand he had been holding, and Catan slipped past him to comfort her.

The elf rubbed his hands together slowly. He could not understand what Cat was saying. He did not speak their language, he was not of their race, and most importantly he was not a woman. He was about to suggest that he leave them alone when Flann pushed past him and ran for the door.

Cat clutched his shoulders and leaned against him, speaking up into his face. “I’m sorry, Friend! I must go.”

He heard the door open and slam behind him.

“Of course…” he murmured.

He felt the gust of cold air.

She stood on her tiptoes, bringing her nose up to the level of his, but she dropped down onto her heels again at once. “I thank you. I may need your help soon.”

“I would do anything for you.”

She popped up again, even more briefly this time, and when she landed she took a step away from him. Her voice was high-​​pitched and trembling like a shy child’s when she spoke. “May sunlight surround you, Friend.”

He felt something much like sunlight surrounding him, bathing him in heat and light. She had remembered something he had said the first time they had met, and not only remembered it, but understood that it was something more than words to him. Now he knew she loved him, and always had.

She stood on her toes a third time, and this time she kissed him.

It happened so quickly he did not have time to respond – she merely pressed his lower lip between her two for an instant, and then she scurried away, and the door slammed a second time.

But this time he did not need Lena to tell him she would be back.