Aelfden falters for lack of fire

Not a fortnight had passed since the Abbot had last seen Flann in strikingly similar circumstances. The gentleman was not the same, and Aelfden had been awoken from his sleep this time, but if he was not mistaken it was even the same hour.

He was feeling something like annoyance, unworthy as the sentiment was. In the last fortnight Flann had tried to marry herself to two different men, and if she thought he would now blithely marry her to this elf…

She was suffering, he knew, and her suffering was real. However, he also knew well how one could cause oneself to suffer needlessly. Her struggles were only sinking her deeper in the mire.

“What does this mean, Flann?” he asked ominously. He did not think gentleness was what she needed now, but a firm hand.

“What this means is,” the tall elf began at once, “she had a secret too big for her, and she told it to me, and it is too big for me also. Therefore we tell you.”

Aelfden’s tired head swung heavily to the side, leaded with disappointment. He had thought better of Flann; he had believed there was something especially fine and keen about her, in spite of the evidence. He had thought they dwelled together on some slightly higher than earthly plane, where he had never met a woman and which he had shared with few men.

But he knew of only one “secret” a young lady could tell to a man – or an elf – which would require the immediate intervention of a priest, and it was common and coarse enough a tale. He had heard it told so many times.

“And the secret is,” Osh continued, “she has met her sister Eithne’s husband. And her sister’s husband is the demon Dre.”

Aelfden’s head swung up again and back, and his body nearly followed after it in an arc. Long after that name was spoken it still rang in his head, like iron struck upon hollow iron, and it singed him out as far as his fingertips with its shower of sparks.

He made a breathless moan and stepped away, but the elf came after him, swinging horror right and left like a hammer.

“He showed Eithne his wings and made her believe he was an angel of God.”

Aelfden let his arms drop and his body rock with the blow. He too had been so fooled once, and he had spent the last five years trying to efface his folly.

“And so did his friend Sebastien try to make believe the same with Flann.”

The name whacked hard against him and rebounded. Aelfden croaked, “Bastien!” after the elf, and the echo came back in a long arc and struck again him with the same stunning clang.

He should have known! The young man was too clever! Infernally clever! Sebastien’s cutting criticism had been slicing away at Aelfden’s latest manuscript until the result scarcely resembled what he had originally had in mind – something heretical, perhaps – just as the demon Eight had done with On Time.

“And the demon has taken Eithne away, and he said he will hurt her if Flann tells. But you see, Flann is wise and knows to ask for help. And now you must help us, Father.”

Aelfden gasped, “Help you?” before he remembered that he was the priest here and not the prey, and his immediate intervention was required.

“Perhaps it is too late for Eithne – ” Osh began.

Flann moaned, “No!” and Liadan whined with her, but Osh silenced them both merely by lifting a hand.

“We shall see what to do for Eithne later,” he said gravely. “Now it is time for Flann. This Sebastien, he tries and tries to get to her, just as the demon Dre tried to get to her sister Cat. And he will not stop until he has her, or until he sees he may never have her. Now, you shall do as you did for Cat and my son Paul.”

Aelfden peered past the elf at Flann, trying to read her gaunt face. Flann had seen… Flann had said… could it all have been an invention meant to trick him into marrying her to the nearest willing male? Disappointed as it would make him, it would have been the least terrible truth.

“Did you see him?” he asked the elf.

“I saw nothing,” the elf said. “He made me to sleep – ”

He caught Aelfden’s arm as the man turned his attention away and tried to look behind him again at Flann.

“Sleep!” he cried, almost in a sob. “Sleep, so I do not wake, while she is in such danger! And time and again! How often did he come? And how often she cried in the night, and I never hear? You see, it is not because I am lazy and do not care.”

His voice briefly softened, and he released Aelfden’s arm so that he might turn to touch Flann’s. When he turned back to Aelfden, his face was haggard again.

“Help us now, Father. I do anything. Make me a Christian elf like my son so your God will help me protect them. Marry us tonight in the Christian way so this demon Sebastien cannot have them.”

This passionate plea concluded, he lifted his head defiantly, but – surprisingly – Flann did not. Her eyes did not challenge Aelfden to contradict her as they so often did. Nor were they were anxious or ashamed at having been caught in a deception. They were nothing at all: dull and leaden.

If anyone was attempting to trick him, it was not she. She seemed grateful she was being led.

“Flann,” he said with grave gentleness, for he thought she might already have had too much of a firm hand. “What do you think of this idea?”

“She is in danger!” the elf gasped.

“She must consent or there can be no marriage!” Aelfden barked. “I explained as much to your son!”

The elf sucked in his breath through his nose, but he made no retort.

“Flann,” Aelfden began again in Gaelic, “is this what you would like? Would you not like to speak to your sisters, and plan a little wedding in the church as Catan had?”

“My sister Eithne was not granted time to plan a little wedding in the church,” Flann said hoarsely, “and where is she laying her poor wee head tonight, and beneath whom her body?”

Aelfden closed his eyes and tried to translate each of her words back into a comforting Danish. Something about the Gaels and their Gaelic made every utterance seem a terrible curse or a parable or a prophecy.

Osh meanwhile was as restless as a stalled beast, and even if he could not have understood the words, he must have understood the names.

“And you, Flann…” Aelfden began.

But he did not know what he meant to say. His thoughts were cooling, congealing, and growing dull. He needed Flann’s fire to rouse him into counteraction. He needed the fine, keen, defiant girl who had stood up so boldly for her sister. He could not understand why she did not stand up for herself now.

After a long silence, Osh said stiffly, “If she does not want me, that is something besides, and we speak another time. Tonight you shall still get your water and make me a Christian as you did my son, and also as you did this tiny lady here, before my eyes.”

Flann gasped, “If I don’t want you, Osh?” She batted his arm feebly with the back of her hand. “Fie! What an idea!”

“You would be a Christian regardless?” Aelfden asked warily.

“I do anything if it can help,” he replied. “If you baptize me to protect me from demons, I can protect these ladies.”

Flann peeped, “Osh…”

Osh reached a hand behind himself to touch her own seeking hand, but he did not turn his head. Nor did he lower it, and with his eyes he coldly challenged the Abbot to contradict him.

These elves Aelfden had known were proud creatures even when they pleaded for help. They were noble creatures even when they kneeled to be baptized. They came into the Lord’s tent not as refugees but as warriors, to beg the honor of wearing His banner before going out to continue their fight against the evil that plagued them.

And it was to Aelfden they addressed their plea.

Perhaps his mother had named him well, though she had never known him. Perhaps it was his nature, as the elf Lar had said. Perhaps he had been sent to this valley to bring the Gospel to these last British pagans. Perhaps he was the Saint Patrick of the elves.

“Kindly wait here while I fetch what I need,” he said.

“Do not be long, Father,” the elf warned. “The demon Sebastien sleeps in your abbey, if demons do sleep.”