Flann sees no

There was nothing about pregnancy that Catan did not love.

Her fatigue offered her an excuse to retire to the solitude of her room and dream about her baby. Her morning nausea had permitted her to lie an extra hour in her warm bed and nibble on toast – and dream about her baby – and her swollen feet allowed her to do no more work than sitting by the fire and sewing – and dreaming about her baby.

Even the stretch marks that were already starting to appear delighted her: her belly could not grow fast enough for her, and it was some satisfaction to see it could at least grow too fast for her skin. She could even imagine the dark streaks on her flanks had been left by Paul’s worshipful fingertips, and the thin stripes on the sides of her breasts had been graven for the benefit of tiny fingers not yet born.

The most unbearable part of pregnancy was the simple fact that it lasted nine months, when her arms already ached to hold the skittish little creature who stretched and kicked and hiccupped in her belly, and her eyes were so often wet with their desire to see the tiny face – to see and to know.

Fortunately, when her arms most ached and when her eyes were dripping tears, she had her darling niece close at hand.

“Who’s my favorite birdie?” she babbled. “Who’s my wee white hen? Who’s my favorite snack?” she asked as she brought the baby close enough to bite.

She caught Liadan’s fat hand between her lips and pretended to mouth it. The baby squealed and snatched it away, laughing silently after her fashion, which consisted of panting like a dog while grinning like a baby bear.

It was an endearing laugh, and a fortunate one for her to have: she had never yet smiled for her mother, and if Flann had ever heard her laughing for some other audience, Cat thought the poor wounded mother’s heart would have broken clean through.

“Just a taste?” Cat pleaded. “Just a nibble?”

Liadan leaned her head down to Cat’s face to slap it with her hands and slobber over it with her wide-​​open mouth.

“Not of me!” Cat giggled. “I’m not fit to eat! Fie! What an idea!”

Liadan laughed her breathy laugh as if she quite understood the joke.

“What a minx!” Cat scolded. “It’s a hornie wee devil you are!”

“She is not a devil!” Eithne protested with strange vehemence, though it was not out of keeping with her late strangeness.

They all stared. Even her cat stopped washing itself and looked up at her.

“It’s a lovely wee angel she is,” Eithne grumbled.

“Aye, though her halo does snag on her horns,” Condal giggled.

“No horns does she have!” Eithne sobbed. “Look at her! She looks just like an ordinary baby! No wings or horns is she wearing!”

Eithne’s cat laid its front paws in its mistress’s lap and anxiously began to mew and knead.

Condal looked uneasily up at Cat, but Cat was not in the mood to reason with Eithne, so she was forced to annoy Condal instead.

“Don’t be teasing your sister, Connie,” she sighed. “Of course she looks like an ordinary baby – what else is she? Besides the wee white hen of me?” she cooed and returned to nipping at the baby’s paws.

“I believe she does have angel eyes,” Condal declared loudly, as if she meant to rile up one or both of her sisters. “But it’s the devil’s own grin she’s having. Did you see how she was flirting with Cousin Aengus the last time?”

“And how you were flirting with Cousin Finn?” Cat retorted.

“And how she was a-​​winking at him,” Condal continued as if she had not heard. “And a-​​grinning her gummy grin, smiling slyly as the devil’s cat with the cream still on the whiskers of her?”

She gave the cat’s tail a sharp tug, eliciting the yowl she had likely desired.

Catan braced herself for Eithne’s anger, outrage, or tears, but there followed only a weird silence. Even the cat merely tucked its tail beneath its haunches and watched her.

Eithne was staring up into the empty hallway with a pallor that was strange even on her – almost as if she were seeing someone who was not there.

Then Catan was shocked into admitting someone was.

“Was she smiling at Aengus?” Flann asked dazedly.

Catan braced herself for anger, outrage, or tears, but there was none of this.

There was worse. There was Flann’s trembling, hopeful smile. There were Flann’s wet eyes.

“We didn’t know you were home!” Cat whinnied.

“I came in the back… Were you a-​​flirting with Cousin Aengus, you sly thing?” she asked her daughter. “Were you winking at the fine man?”

“He certainly is a handsome man!” Cat crowed.

“And it was probably only gas…” Condal added weakly.

“Poor Aengus!” Cat sighed grandly. “That’s always happening to him…”

“Did she smile?” Flann asked. “Did you see her, Connie?”

Condal seemed suddenly to have found a very friendly interest in Eithne’s cat, and she did not answer.

“Smile for Mama, darling,” Flann cooed. “Show Mama how you flirt with the fine men!”

Liadan pursed her lips and twisted away from her smiling mother. Catan’s own heart seemed to be splintering with the strain of wishing happiness and joy and love at the baby in such quantities that she would be forced to smile. But smile she did not.

“You cannot be leaning in and asking her for one,” Cat said desperately. “It’s a sly one she is…”

Flann stood straight. “You’ve seen her?”

Cat squirmed and shifted the baby higher on her arm, bouncing her slightly, still praying for a smile.

“It may have been…” she murmured, not daring to lie outright before her sister’s canny eyes.

But even this small lie was enough to alert Flann. “You’ve seen her!” she accused. “And you, too!” she said to Eithne. “Haven’t you? And you, too! And who else? Everyone!”

“Now, darling…” Cat coaxed.

“For how long? Days?”

Flann looked at Eithne and Condal on the floor, but they both looked pleadingly at Cat.

“Weeks?”

Cat did not have time to formulate a reply.

Flann shuffled a few steps back from Cat and the baby and howled through her clenched teeth. It might have been the word “No!”, and it might merely have been an animal cry of pain.

Even before it had ended, Cat heard Osh’s feet scuffing on the floor upstairs as he hurried for the stairs. If only Osh had spoken Gaelic, she thought, he might have warned them to change the subject before Flann had come in.

Or, she thought regretfully, they might simply have listened to Osh in the first place and told Flann the truth long ago.

“I feed her on my breast!” Flann sobbed. “I hold her when she cries! I bathe her and dress her! I sleep with her! I love her!”

Osh looked pleadingly at Cat as he laid his hands on Flann’s flailing arms, but Cat did not know what to tell him. If only she had spoken the elven language, she could have simply said “She has learned Liadan has been smiling”.

Flann screeched and sobbed in Gaelic, “She hates me! She hates me!” until Liadan too began to cry.

Osh whispered little soothing things to her until she calmed enough to turn to him for comfort.

“They’ve seen her smiling!” she blubbered in English. “They all have! Even Aengus! And she never did for me! And no one told me!”

Osh was startled by his sudden understanding into losing his poise. White-​​faced and breathlessly whispering, at that crucial moment he only said, “Oh, my darling…”

Flann saw through him, too.

“You saw her smile!” she screeched over Liadan’s wailing. “You all did! You all lied! Nobody loves me! Not you! Not her! Not anyone!”

She clutched her stomach and groaned in such anguish that Cat drew back in an instinctive desire to protect her baby from anything that could cause such pain.

“What is so wrong with me? Why don’t I deserve…?” Flann sobbed as she stumbled for the stairs, so blinded with tears and so bent with pain that Cat winced in anticipation of seeing her crash face-​​first onto the steps.

She clattered uninjured to the top, however, and slammed the door to her room, leaving four silent people and one softly sobbing baby behind. To Cat’s surprise, Osh did not follow her, but shuffled over to a chair and dropped himself into it as if he had come a hundred miles to it and could walk not a step farther.

“I’m sorry, Osh,” Cat whimpered, though in shame she kept her face turned to the baby’s.

“Save that for your sister,” he muttered.

After a moment, Cat pleaded, “Won’t you go after her?”

“I listen.”

As he spoke he nodded his head slowly at no one. Cat had never seen him looking so old – not even before he had shaved off his beard for the love of Flann.

“I let her cry herself calm before I go. I give her time to think of what she wants to say. And I give me time, too.”