Osh is brought beyond such bounds

Osh held his breath and nibbled gently at Flann’s ear with his lips, testing it all the way around its shell-​​like curve. Her ears were round as an elf’s would be only on the day of her birth, but crisply perfect, like soft baby ears crystallized into a final form.

To an elf such as Osh, she seemed almost as deaf and blind and helplessly fragile as a newborn. She was a winsome, soft-​​clawed cub grown to wolf-​​size – a round-​​eared, wide-​​eyed baby grown into the full-​​breasted, narrow-​​waisted body of a wife.

She was worthy of every sort of caress Osh knew how to give, passionate or paternal, and if he ever longed to truly have his finger gripped in a tiny fist or sow a crop of kisses along the chubby folds of a baby’s neck, there was Liadan, and there would be the children Flann would give him…

“Osh, Osh, Osh!” Flann squeaked with her panting breath.

He had scarcely noticed he was breathing again – it had seemed so warm and right – but now he could feel her fear all the way down into his own lungs.

He exhaled slowly, shedding her panic between them and breathing his calm into her.

“I think I’m a-​​fainting,” she whimpered apologetically.

He tightened his arms around her body, pressing the breath out of her – hers and his. “And now?” he murmured.

She hesitated, scrupulously testing her balance by rocking her weight from heel to heel before answering. “It’s coming and going,” she declared. “We could be sitting down a while…”

“Do you suppose I shall let you fall?” he smiled.

“No…”

He tipped her back until she began to lose her balance and was obliged to arch her body against his and cling helplessly to his shoulders, as he liked.

“Do you not like to be held so?”

Her smile was such that he knew she would have laughed merrily and perhaps made a joke if he had asked aloud. But a whisper was another thing.

She hesitated again, testing, tense in her arms and all her body. She did not quite know what she wanted. Then, all at once, she went limp as a wilted flower, draping her body back over his arm.

Her hair slipped back across her breast, and after her first sigh he saw she was holding her breath, as if saving it or sweetening it for him – as if she knew and understood.

The candlelight on her collarbone traced two curved lines coming together, and a shadow beneath it narrowed to a point: a living heart made of body and shade – a secret message for him.

It was nearly more than he could bear. He swept her drooping body up and brought her face close to his so he could catch her breath – but she had seemed so dearly elf-​​like for a moment that he had forgotten she was a woman.

Her little cry of surprise met his lips just before her lips did, startling him into an instant of immobility and even breathlessness. She did not seem to notice, or if she did she took advantage of his hesitation to kiss him, with all the awkward daring of a little girl kissing her first little boy.

But she was a woman, and like a woman she twined her arms around his neck and moaned softly into his mouth. This was more than he could bear.

He caught her jaw with one hand, and with the other arm squeezed her breath out of her. He breathed it in to the depths of his lungs, forcefully, dragging her inside of him as if they were already in the bed and he inside of her. Again she gasped and cried out, as he had desired.

Until he had come to live with his son and his son’s wife he had never dreamt there were such passionate creatures as these fragile, helpless, exotic women. Even the raunchiest kisór slut never made a sound: it seemed an elven lady simply could not be brought beyond such bounds of pleasure she could no longer control her voice. And yet – even knowing her husband’s father and sister could hear – his Cat-​​daughter had never quite managed to be silent.

Until the demon had begun making him sleep so soundly he could not even dream, there had been nights when Osh had driven himself weary and wild wondering how it would be with Flann.

But again his chest began to ache as he felt her fear battering him: her panicked panting trapped and helpless inside the deep, slow breathing of his lungs.

He lifted his head away from hers and let her breathe.

“I’m not well,” she choked and coughed, “truly, I’m not well,” pitifully and pleadingly.

“You are,” he murmured. He watched her mournfully for a moment and added, “You are only frightened.”

He could almost wish she would notice nothing, fear nothing, feel nothing but what an ordinary woman would feel with an ordinary man. He would secretly tuck a little part of her away inside of himself, to warm himself when she was out of sight, to cherish when she was away…

But he knew it would not mean as much if she did not know or understand.

“My darling…” he began hesitantly. Then he had another idea. “A cridhe…”

She smiled. “Which sister of me was teaching you that word?” she asked suspiciously.

Osh grinned at her in relief. “Your Cat-​​sister,” he said eagerly. “I ask her, what are some pretty things I can say to you when you are angry at me, to make you stop to be angry. And no tricks, I said to her! I hope it does not mean ‘wart’ or something such?”

“You were right to mistrust my sister,” she giggled. “But it is a pretty thing to say. It means ‘my heart’.”

“So she said! And there I told her to stop telling. I say to me, this word is the word for Flann.”

“Another secret message for me?” she asked shyly.

He winked at her.

“How do I say something pretty in your language?” she asked, more shyly still.

Osh was startled to feel a misting of tears in his eyes. Flann had never shown an interest in his language before this night, and he had not guessed how much it would mean to him.

“How do you say ‘heart’?” she asked.

He snorted. “Érím, but it does not mean anything beside this thing in your body. If you try to be romantic and call an elf this name, he will look at you like I say to you, ‘Oh, my liver!’” He rolled back his eyes and sighed rapturously like Lady Gwynn.

She laughed and hugged him. “Oh, my kidney!” she giggled rapturously. “But how do I say ‘my love’?”

“Él dal. It means ‘my husband’, also.” He stroked her hair back from her face and whispered, “It means ‘my life’, also.”

He reached behind her head to push back the hair on the other side, tucking it behind her round ear. It always surprised him that such an ear could hold hair at all, and he admired its shell-​​like beauty for a moment. Then he dropped his arm and sighed.

“This is what I wish you to understand, Flann. Your Abbot says, by this marriage before God, we are made one flesh. This is what the men do. But we are not made one life. This is what the elves do. I want this, too.”

“Like Paul and Cat?” she asked timidly.

“Better and sweeter and stronger and older. You will see.”

“But you’ve never told me…” she mumbled.

He had never told her because he had been hoping desperately she would ask – so desperately he would have leapt at the merest murmured mention of a desire to learn more about the customs of the elves. But she had not seemed to care, nor even remember he had spoken of it once.

“It is the most beautiful thing,” he said painfully. “Beautiful enough even for you, my beautiful one. But I am a painter, not a poet, Flann. How can I tell…?” Then he had another idea. “So!” he smiled. “I tell it to you like a bedtime story, like I tell my little children sometimes, except no bears as Paul always liked.”

She laughed as prettily as child. “Strictly no bears,” she agreed. “I was never liking the bears.”

“I tell you the story of the beginning of all things, and there were no bears then, even if you like,” he winked. “So–once upon a time, as my Lady Gwynn likes to hear – there was nothing except the great, dark, water, which is called vash. Forever and ever there was only water, until suddenly there came – and no one knows from where – earth and air. And the air, he was called Lir, and the earth, she was called Sina.”

“They were a boy and a girl?” she giggled. “This is a story for Lady Gwynn.”

He clucked at her interruption and went on. “And Lir, he was rising through the water like a bubble, and Sina, she was falling through the water like a stone. And what do you suppose happened?”

“They met!”

“Yes, for otherwise there would be no story to tell nor Osh to tell it. They met, and they were very surprised. Sina said, ‘What are you? I cannot move through you.’ And Lir said, ‘It is because I am not water and you are not water.’ Sina said, ‘I believed I alone was not water.’ And Lir said, ‘I, too.’ And they were glad to find they were not alone.”

“So romantic!” Flann gushed.

Osh finally allowed himself to chuckle at her. It was not romantic at all, with Flann’s interjections, but he was no poet, and more than sighs he liked to see her laughing.

“But then they were very sad,” he said, “for they saw that Lir was rising forever, and Sina was falling forever, and it meant they would never meet again. They tried to cling together, and Lir found a little hole in Sina and tried to put him inside.”

Flann squealed and laughed aloud.

“Flann!” he groaned.

“Perhaps it’s not a story for Lady Gwynn after all!” she giggled.

“And if I tell you Lir found he could not fit himself all the way inside?” Osh asked wearily, but his cheeks were pink with delight.

Flann simply squirmed with the sort of girlish giggles he had overheard in her bedroom when she used to whisper with Cat in the weeks after Cat and Paul were first truly married.

“You see,” he continued sternly, “they found they could not cling together for long. But they loved so much, they did not want to lose everything. So Lir left a little part of himself inside of Sina before she fell away.”

“Ach, it’s sure and certain he did,” she said, weakly trying to tease, though she was beginning to see the tragedy of the tale.

“And inside of her it grew and it grew until it came through and became every tree and plant and leaf we know, all rising out of the earth, and all living by the air. And Sina left a little part of herself inside of Lir, too: she let him carry away a fine, sparkling dust that was the breath of her body. And inside of Lir they became the stars.”

Flann was silent by then, and thoughtful, and sadly beautiful as he had always imagined Lir’s last glimpse of Sina to be, as she descended into darkness and he rose up with his light.

“Do you see?” He kissed the tip of her nose. “It is romantic after all.”

“Were they never more meeting?”

“They are face-​​to-​​face forever: the sky and the earth. But they do not touch.”

He waited for her to say more, but she was done with laughing and done with interrupting. And Osh was done with his story.

“Of course, we are made of all these things – earth and air and water and fire. But we elves with mostly air nature, when we love, the love of Lir and Sina is what we honor. We have a rite, too – like your Christian wedding, a little. But it is in the night when we bind ourselves together: one body together and one breath together. One life. Even if we never meet again, you will carry a little part of Osh inside of you forever, and I a part of you.”

He waited for her to see the beauty of this, but she was still seeing the tragedy.

“Why do you say so?” she whispered. “Why would we never meet again?” She lifted her arms to his shoulders and clung to him, as poor Sina must have clung to Lir.

“‘Even if,’ I said. Or perhaps we shall never ‘meet’ again because we shall never be apart again. That is what I think.”

She smiled feebly, and then she recovered her strength and smiled boldly. “What must we be doing?” she asked. “Mind, I think I’m knowing the ‘one body’ bit already,” she said slyly. “Though I hope that’s not the ‘small part of Osh’ I shall be having inside of me forever.”

Osh had grown so accustomed to the haggard, haunted Flann that her wicked joke surprised him into laughing aloud. He had almost forgotten how they had used to tease one another. They had teased so well that their passionate, pretended love had become real.

They both laughed until they merely looked into one another’s eyes and smiled, whereas in times of old they would have shyly looked away.

“But for a little while, you will?” he asked.

If he had asked aloud, she would surely have made another naughty joke. But a whisper was another thing.

She only nodded and turned down her eyes until her lashes cast two curved shadows on her cheeks: a secret message of surrender for him.

He pulled her close enough that he could feel his own breath blowing across her cheek.

“Life is in the blood and the body, too,” he whispered, “but its nature is breath. This is what I want you to understand. But English is not my language and not yours. It will be easier to show you than to tell you.”

She nodded, but she pressed her face so tightly against his shoulder that her cheek slid not over his shirt but over her cheekbone.

He turned his face as far as he could into hers, though even then her breath blew away beneath his chin. “Only trust me, a cridhe.”

He spoke as he would speak to soothe a baby, but her body’s trembling pressure against his body reminded him that she was a woman, and about to be his wife.

“Do not be frightened,” he whispered. “It will not hurt. And you will not faint. I will not let you fall.”

He stroked his hand firmly from her tailbone up her back, relaxing her body from hip to shoulder. When he reached the nape of her neck, she tipped back her head and moaned. This time he was ready.

He still had to undress her and himself and lay her down on the bed, but he wanted to test her and taste her first – he was wild to know how it would be if she welcomed him and went to him.

He saw it would be more beautiful than even the poet Sorin would know how to tell. He kissed her all over her face with his breath, and she made soft, hungry little mewing sounds as Liadan did when Flann could not open her dress fast enough for her. The dreamer Sorin could not even have dreamt such a thing.

Her exotic fire leapt up at last, and he breathed it in – hot as sunlight and dark as shadow. It was not earth nature, but it was everything a leaf loved. At last, he thought, the mystery of his unseeming name was solved. He was Osh because he was made for her.

For a moment he believed he was nearing such bounds of passion he would not be able to control his own voice – and then through her dark fire there tore a bright light like a blade.

Its long edge whacked against his face, blinding him at once in both eyes, branding its own image across his sight forever. His blood boiled to steam, his flesh flared and flaked away, and his bones collapsed into ash, like a dead leaf in a fire. There was nothing left of Osh but light and a bare and boundless pain.