Iylaine meets another cousin

“I shan’t hurt her,” Vash said to the young doe that stood over Iylaine’s body. “Go on back to your fawn.”

The deer hesitated, but she moved off when the owl opened his eyes and screeched softly at her.

“Oh, Vash,” Iylaine mumbled, too ill to be surprised at his arrival. “I have such a fever.”

He kneeled beside her and pulled her up into his arms. “And I am so cold,” he whispered.

“Oh, you are!” she breathed. “You’re shivering.”

“You shall warm me and I shall cool you.”

He pressed her cheek against his face, and she was startled to feel the wiry rasp of stubble grown too long even to scratch her skin. He had not shaved in some time, and she was uncomfortably reminded that he was a grown man of nineteen and not the laughing, lazy boy she had known.

When she was not with him, she still remembered him as that boy, and thus in her mind they were nearly the same age. She did not know what to do with a man such as he had become. Even fifteen-​​year-​​old Malcolm was too much for her.

She tried to pull her head away, but he only held it closer. And it was true that his skin was so cool…

“I found the stones,” she mumbled.

“I know.”

“I was away with my father in his country.”

“I thought so.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said.

“Shh… We needn’t talk, Iylaine.”

“But I missed you!”

“And I missed you. But we don’t need to say such things, do we?”

“Did you miss me? Because sometimes I think you don’t.”

“Iylaine…” he sighed and pulled her still closer. “Too much to say.”

She would have liked to have looked him in the face to speak to him. It was too close, this sitting with her head on his shoulder. She could not see him. She could not know what he would do.

“Are you crying?” she asked.

“Please don’t talk,” he said, but she thought she heard the tears on his voice.

“But, Vash…”

“Not now, please.”

He passed an arm beneath her knees and pulled her up to sit between his long legs, and then he wrapped his arms around her body and held her so tightly against him that she could only take shallow breaths. He held her surrounded, and he would have held her trapped if she had tried to struggle away.

She did not struggle. He was cold, as he said, and it was a relief to her hot body to lean against his. It was a relief to be held so tightly by someone who would not try to kiss her. It was a relief not to have to struggle.

They sat thus for a while, and she only knew how time passed because of the sounds of the many animals of the forest as they scurried and scrabbled along their nightly ways. Only they two and the owl sat still. Occasionally the owl would scratch his feathers or mutter to himself, but the mice and shrews that came to peer up at the silent elves from under a leaf or from behind a fern went away again undisturbed.

Then she heard a larger animal approach, and though it did not walk with the clumsy tread of a man, she thought it walked on two legs.

“Someone is coming!” she whispered.

“Shhh…” he soothed. One of her ears was already pressed against his chest, and he covered the other with his hand.

Then she could only hear his slow heart, but her own had begun to pound again in fear. He did not seem to be himself, and she was afraid he would not know danger until it was upon him. She tried to listen past his hand, but it was some time before the sound of steps came close enough for her to hear again.

“Vash…” she whispered anxiously, but he only squeezed her with one arm and caressed her ear through her hair with the hand of the other. His heart beat as slowly as if he slept.

The footsteps stopped, and she knew someone was near. She struggled until he released her head, and she looked up to see a young elf – she knew it was an elf – standing a short distance from them. He was darkly dressed, and only his pale hands and face and hair stood out against the trees.

“Aldakhla sishúr’úrú la? Vash?” the elf said mournfully.

“Vash! Someone is here!” she hissed.

Vash did not move, but only murmured, “Iylaine, this is your cousin Kiv.”

“Your friend?”

“Aldakhla tédimím dé dalürú la?” Kiv asked.

“What is he saying?”

“Ní télíkhúnsrín íríndí alsalím,” Vash muttered.

“What are you saying?” she whimpered, terrified at the strange speech and at the change in her cousin since the last time she had seen him.

“Come here, and sit, and speak English,” Vash said. “You’re frightening her.”

Kiv picked up a stone from the pile as he came to sit beside them. He held it a moment in his hand until it glowed with a soft purple light, revealing their faces.

Vash’s head snapped up and he snarled, “Not one of those stones, you – you – ” He leaned his head over Iylaine’s again and asked softly, “What’s a good insult for a stupid person?”

“Beetlehead?” she suggested.

“You beetlehead!” he finished. Iylaine giggled.

“What is wrong with this stone?” Kiv asked, and then he looked at the others where they lay at the base of the willow. “Oh… I understand. You have been telling her love tales. This is not the first time you have met. Oh, Vash,” he sighed and shook his head. “You are too bad for two.”

“You would do the same,” Vash said.

“Probably,” he smiled. Iylaine thought he had a sweet face when he smiled. “But I would tell my friend Vash.”

“Your friend Vash would not tell your father.”

“Do I ever tell your father what you do?” Kiv protested.

“Is he bad often?” Iylaine giggled, but she was working her way free of her cousin’s arms meanwhile.

“All the time,” Kiv said. “But most of the time he is too clever to be caught. Hereafter I shall not let him out of my sight.”

“But why don’t you both come to see me sometimes?” she whined.

“I shall tell you what I think, Iylaina,” Kiv said confidentially, but he cast a wary glance up at Vash as he spoke. “Even if I try to keep him away from you, he will see you more often than he should. If I simply let him come see you when he wanted, you would tire of his beetle head. I know I do.”

“But I could never tire of him! And I haven’t seen him at all since last autumn.”

“Last autumn! I do not know whether to scold you or compliment you, Vash.”

“I wish you would scold him,” she said. “I missed him!”

She turned her head to smile at Vash, but her smile died as she saw his face clearly for the first time. The beard was only the start of it. His hair was shaggy, his cheeks were thin, and his eyes were sunken in shadows like her own when she was long unhappy.

“Kiv, I think he is ill,” she said softly.

“Oh – didn’t he tell you? So he has been, but he is recovering.”

“But he is so cold.” She lifted her hands to his cheeks, and he closed his eyes and laid the weight of his head in them. There was such humility in the gesture that she was moved to silence, and she dared not take her hands away.

“Perhaps he ought to go home now and sleep,” Kiv suggested uneasily after a while.

“I shall sleep here,” Vash murmured.

“I think my arms will get tired after a while,” Iylaine said, trying to laugh, but she looked to Kiv for reassurance. He only looked at Vash with a faint frown of concern.

“Then I shall lay my head on your knee,” Vash droned.

Now Iylaine’s eyes were pleading. He seemed to have reentered the trance that Kiv’s arrival had interrupted.

“It would make a fine pillow,” Kiv said delicately, “but she will want to sleep herself. And she should sleep at home in her bed. And you in yours. You should go home, Vash. Your father has been worried about you.”

Vash snorted and lifted his head. “About what I might do, not about me,” he corrected.

“We all have been worried about you. Tell him he should come home, Iylaina. He will do it if you command it.”

“Oh, Vash,” she said, “you should go home and rest. We can see one another some other time, when you’re feeling better.”

“Do you command it?” he asked with a weary smile.

“Aye. You should go home to your father.”

“Very well,” he sighed.

“Is it always so easy to get you to do things?” she giggled.

“What did you say to me once? ‘It is for you, cousin.’”

“Oh, you have been seeing one another since a long time, I fear,” Kiv sighed and shook his head.

“Since I was six!” she laughed.

“Six!” he gasped.

“I shall tell you as we walk home,” Vash said, and he rose gracefully and helped Iylaine to her feet. “But first we shall walk with this lady to the edge of the woods, and she shall hold my hand, because I command it.”

“Does she do what you command?” Kiv asked.

“Not often,” Vash sighed.

“You two are too bad for four,” he laughed.