Flann slips the snare

Since her child had come to dwell in her, Flann’s nights were spent in long and dreamless drowsing, wrapped in a silken shadow. When she slept she could not be awoken, though by now her family was no longer alarmed. She would wake, they knew, when her body or her baby was ready.

But now, though the night was still dark, she was already wakening. She was floating up to light like a baby spider clutching her first filament, lifted bodily by an imperceptible breeze.

She drifted up through the mother-​​web: a maze of light too bright for her six unlidded eyes to bear. The light quivered, for somewhere among the strands a body was being wrapped in a silken pall. The body did not struggle, but in reeling off his ropes the weaver shook the web.

She rose above it, little heeding the prey, but as she distanced herself from that radiance, she became aware of the dim red light of fire behind the lids of her two eyes. She was Girl-​​Flann, and she was returning to life.

And still the bed shook almost imperceptibly like the web. She could still hear the silken rustling of the weaver binding his prey, but gradually she knew it for the sound of an arm moving beneath bedclothes, the sound of a slow hand stroking a body that was not hers.

And she could hear her sister mewling in her throat as when she screamed in a nightmare. Flann’s dream filament snapped and she woke entirely. She would have to wake and comfort Cat.

Flann screamed as soon as she opened her eyes, but it was no mere mewling. This was no nightmare. There was a man kneeling at her sister’s bedside, his arm hidden beneath the blankets as far as the shoulder.

Her scream hit him like a fist, and he fell back against the wall in surprise.

Flann slipped her arm behind her sister’s shoulders and rolled over with her, pulling both of them down onto the floor on the other side of the bed.

“Flann! Your baby!” Cat cried in alarm as they landed. “It was – only a dream!”

The man leapt on the bed, and his head and shoulders loomed over them.

Then Cat began to scream as Flann had never heard her scream – not a high-​​pitched cry for help from human hands, but the moans of a martyr begging for divine mercy and deliverance.

Flann pulled her up and dragged her away, but they had nowhere to run but farther into the room and away from the door.

Cat was utterly disabled by her terror, so Flann found a certain courage in the knowledge that she would have to defend her alone while they waited for aid.

She also found a certain strength when Cat managed to squeal, “It’s the elf! It’s the elf!”

None knew better than Flann what her sister’s agonies had been last autumn. Whenever she had felt most helpless before her sister’s suffering, she had consoled herself by imagining how she would avenge herself upon the elves who had hurt her so.

She had no knife now to slash a second mouth across that tattooed face, but she had the rage to put herself between the elf and Cat and to shriek, “You shall not touch my sister!”

The elf drew back his grasping arms as if he feared even coming into contact with her.

“It’s for you I’ve come!” he called over her shoulder to Cat. There was such authority in his voice that Flann herself hesitated. “Tell your sister to go!” he commanded.

“You go!” Flann shouted. “To the devil!” She realized only then that he was speaking Gaelic.

The elf tried to lunge past her, but Flann leapt before him, and he stopped short again, cringing away from her.

He flung up his arms in an impotent rage. “Tell her to go! Tell her to go!”

Cat could not have told anyone anything at that moment. She crouched on the floor and clung sobbing to Flann’s legs, nearly dragging her sister down upon her.

“Get back, Cat!” Flann tried to kick her away. “You shan’t have her!” she cried defiantly, emboldened by the elf’s unwillingness to touch her. “You shall have to get through me!”

He stopped his darting and dodging and merely looked at her, for the first time staring into her eyes. He stood unmoving and appeared unmovable. The firelight lit his face from below, making of it a grim monument to malevolence.

Horror flowed over her like hot water, for she saw it was the face of Gils. It was the face of Gils with all the childish softness grown out of it, and with all the smiles and sweetness burned away.

The child they had feared Cat would bear would have been a brother to Gils. But perhaps that was what the monster wanted. Perhaps that was why he did not waste his time with her.

Cat had grown coherent enough by now to scream for her friend, but Flann scarcely heard her. The elf did not speak to her, but she was ensnared by his eyes. He did not move and he did not touch her, but he bound her fast, looping his own unbreakable will over and around hers until she was scarcely more than dozing on her feet.

But the door opened and rent the web that held her. The elf turned and cried, “Ah! I knew you were coming!”

Aengus had come straight from bed, taking no more than his sword, and at the sight of a naked man Cat began screeching wordlessly again as she had in her first terror.

“What are you doing in my house?” Aengus roared. “Flann! Step aside!”

“What are you to them?” the elf asked.

“Their cousin and their guardian on this night! Who are you?”

“He’s the elf that hurt Cat!” Flann cried.

She slipped away to join her moaning sister in the corner. The elf turned his head to glance at her over his shoulder, but she knew better than to look into his eyes again. Nor could she permit herself to look at Aengus in his nakedness, and so she fixed her eyes upon his sword.

As soon as she was well away, she saw the sword swing up and she saw it come slashing down. She saw – though she could not believe – the hand of the elf leap up to stop it in its stroke, close bloodless over the blade, and hold it fast.

“What are you, cousin to them?” The elf spoke a question, but his voice was a cry of triumph. “You are afraid! You are praying the guards will arrive! You are afraid for your wife and children! But you’re not so afraid that you can’t worry about appearing naked before these girls!” He laughed.

Aengus tugged on his sword, but the elf held it so still that he only jerked helplessly as if himself impaled at the other end of the blade.

“It’s nothing they haven’t seen before!” the elf snarled, viciously mocking though no longer laughing. “If I’m not mistaken, it’s nothing you haven’t wanted to show the young one already!”

Aengus gasped, and his violent struggle was suddenly no more than a reflexive twitching.

“Don’t look at him, Aengus!” Flann cried, fearing Aengus had slipped into the snare of the elf’s eyes.

Aengus stumbled back as if the elf had released the blade at last. But the elf had simply disappeared.

Aengus stared speechless and open-​​mouthed at the place where he had stood. Flann was transfixed, and even Cat had fallen silent but for her panting breath. For a moment there was nothing in the room but six eyes staring at the empty air and a sword that quivered as if it had come to life.

Then Cat let out a wail and threw her arms around Flann’s legs. Aengus remembered his body and hopped behind the screen to pull a sheet from the bed and wrap it around his waist.

Aengus had laid his sword on the table, but his voice quivered no less than the blade. “Did he… hurt you?” The hand he laid on Flann’s shoulder shook too.

“No, he… he…” Flann did not know how to tell Aengus what the elf had been doing to Cat. She did not even know what the elf had been doing to Cat.

Cat was in no condition to tell anyone anything. She groveled on the floor, sometimes on her knees, and sometimes on her hands and knees, sobbing, “I want my friend! Send for my friend!”

The danger past, Flann’s solitude seized and strangled her like a tightening rope. She remembered then that she had no one to send for. Cat’s friend would come, and she would still be alone.