Eithne sees her own

Now that she slept alone, Eithne dreamt of the dead. They shuffled up to meet her at the mirror of her sleep, cradling amber-​​colored fire in the cups of their eyes. Their fogging mouths blackened the silver. Their fingers slimed the glass.

Eithne had never seen a human corpse that had lost its lineaments. She had never crossed carcass left to rot beneath the sky nor cadaver the earth had disgorged. Her dreams were cobbled together from human forms draped with what she knew of decay: the hedgehog’s bristly bloat; the drum-​​taut, leathern skin of a dead cow; the yellow teeth that pierced through the rat’s fly-​​scrabbled face. She made their scent from the taint of rotten meat. Their touch was the squelching cold clay of the tarn.

They were not her dead; she did not know them. They did not come to plead or to accuse. They came on a dare, and simply stared until she frightened them with her alive. Then she would wake to find herself writhen and wound in her sheets like the dead.

But tonight, while she yet slept, Sweetdew’s frantic yowls tolled down the hallway and shattered the glass. Eithne woke to the sound of shuffling and opened her eyes to the flicker of amber-​​colored light. One of them was still coming.

It honked her name as it rounded the corner: “Eithne!”

Tonight it was her own dead. It was the corpse of Cian.

Its knees bent at unlikely angles, and it dragged each foot like a dead weight of its own, but it was coming towards the bed. Eithne was paralyzed. She could no more flee than a reflection.

Valiant Sweetdew trotted into the room as quickly as her sagging belly let her trot, and she bared her teeth and hissed at the body.

“But look, she’s already awake!” it croaked. Its rotten lungs wheezed like bagpipes. “Eithne, my sweet! My own love!”

The monster gingerly released its hold on the rough stones of the wall and let its weight swing free until it leaned its knuckles on the straw mattress of the bed and loomed over her.

Its smiling lips were cracked and shrunken. Its face was both gaunt and bloated, both livid and flushed. It was coming to kiss her.

At last Eithne’s limbs came unstuck, and she scooted back against the wall. Still, she could no more scream than a face in a glass.

“Eithne!” The creature panted with weak laughter. “It’s Cian! Aren’t you knowing your own man?” It turned to ask the cat, “Do I look so very dreadful?”

Sweetdew yowled and sat herself down to stiffly lick her shoulder in scorn.

The Cian-​​monster laughed gingerly again and smiled at Eithne. It settled its hip onto the bed, and suddenly, with the crease it made in the blankets and the rustle in the straw, it seemed more alive than dead. It was only her own man.

She whispered, “Cian?”

He smiled wearily at her with his chapped lips.

“She says she has seldom vomited less appetizing apparitions than myself,” he translated. He added over his shoulder, “That seldom stops you from lapping them up again, Mistress Sweetdew!”

Sweetdew grumbled into her fur.

Eithne fell flat on her back and tittered deliriously. “Cian! I thought you were dead!”

Cian pushed himself up and flung out his arms like a swavering drunk swearing himself sober.

“Eight days I was saying!” he protested. “And I made it in – how many?”

He had misunderstood her dead, but Eithne chose not to correct him. She threw off the blankets and leapt up as on a Christmas morn. She would no more sleep alone.

“Five days, lad! And you may be counting them, for I was saving the shells of my eggs to show you. Ten!” she said proudly.

“Ten eggs!” he croaked.

He threw out his arms grandly again, but this time she rushed between them and made them an embrace.

He was shaking all over. If it was only laughter, it was the silent kind.

“Ten eggs!” he whispered hoarsely. “Let me be feeling you, lass! You must be fat as a grub!”

He felt her all over, crushing her only briefly in one kind of hug before adjusting his arms to squeeze her in another kind. She squeezed him back, hard enough she hoped he felt it through his heavy coat.

“Perhaps a bit fatter!” she gushed. “I’ve had little to do besides eat and nap and knit!”

They swayed and spun slowly together like mated spiders dangling from a strand.

“Just as I was imagining you, love,” he whispered into her hair. “I thought of naught else…”

“And Qatal made this little bed for me,” she announced, proud to speak of the demon to show how brave she had been. “For there’s a wee bit of a draft on the floor, and I was a wee bit cold sleeping without you! With a hammer and saw was he making it!” she gabbled. “And I directing!”

Now she was certain he laughed, though it was a wheezy affair.

“Qatal built a bed with you directing?” he asked. “And were you teaching him knitting, too, my own love?”

“No… but I shall if you think it isn’t improper,” she said slyly.

He wheezed harder. He wheezed and wheezed until Eithne could no longer be certain he laughed. She turned her head and rooted kitten-​​blindly through the tumble of their mingled hair, searching for his cheek.

She quavered, “Cian?”

The soft word touched a hidden spring, and his body folded and burst away from her like a trap springing shut. He hacked and coughed, clutching at his chest with one hand and flailing with the other at the air he could not breathe into his spasming, collapsing lungs.

“Cian!”

Eithne dared not burden him in his struggle with so much as the weight of her little hand. As always when she was uncertain, she looked to the cat.

Sweetdew had stopped washing and watched Cian with her paw still raised. Even the cat was petrified. Eithne knew then she was right to be afraid.

At last Cian managed to straighten slightly from his stoop, but he lifted his hand only part-​​way from his chest, ready to clap it back again in case another storm struck him. Between the weakening clenches of coughs, his breath wheezed like bagpipes squeezed almost flat.

Eithne whispered, “Cian, you’re ill!”

Sweetdew slowly licked the side of her paw, watching.

Cian swayed and shuffled backwards like a drunk until his shoulder struck the wall, and he could lean.

Eithne followed, peering up into the shadow cast by the hand he held to his eyes.

For the first time she saw the details that she had mistaken for death in his features, and she found them still more sinister on a living man.

His lips were so cracked and stiffly scabbed that he could scarcely close them together, and they made his protruding teeth look as long as a rat’s. The corners of his mouth were flecked with dried phlegm. His nose and upper lip were slimy and crusted, too, and the skin around his nostrils was red-​​raw. His chapped cheeks prickled with a rash.

When he lowered his hand she saw that his eyes were a bleary pink, and his black lashes stuck out like spikes from the bloated lids. His viscous tears had congealed in the corners like clabbered cheese, and his fingers had smeared a few clumps out across his cheek. Perhaps he did not feel them there. Perhaps he no longer cared.

Eithne had never seen a sick man abandoned to his sickness. The ill and the dying in her family were cared for and kempt to the end. She had not known a man could begin to decompose before he died.

She noticed him glancing vaguely behind and below him, and she realized he was looking to sit. She gently grasped his arm and led him to her pile of cushions before the fire.

“Qatal hasn’t hammered me a chair yet,” she apologized as she helped him open his coat. “Let’s be getting you out of this and sitting you down here, love, and Sweetdew and I shall help you take off your boots.”

“Sweetdew will?” he asked hoarsely, but he smiled.

Eithne forced a giggle. “She’ll chase the laces.”

She kneeled before his knees, prepared to impishly shake the trailing end of a lace, but she found them knotted and swollen and crusted with ice. She laid her hands helplessly on her thighs for a moment and stared, wondering what she would find beneath the leather.

“When’s the last time you were taking off your boots, lad?” she asked, trying not to sound alarmed.

Cian swayed as he roused himself to speak. “Sabbath morn…”

“But Cian… it’s almost Tuesday,” she whispered.

Cian seemed unaffected by the idea. She began to see that he would not offer a comforting explanation.

Meanwhile Sweetdew came slinking up to sniff at the laces. Eithne bent her head and picked at the hard lump with her fingers, but she could not even discern the strands through the mud and frost.

Discreetly she picked up the paring knife beside her, and to distract Cian she spoke to him as she began to pare.

“Were you making it to Loch Leven, then?”

“Aye, love,” he said wearily. “And it’s a long way to ride with that ox-​​wit beside you, lowing unceasingly.”

“Where is he, then, that one?” she frowned. “Why wasn’t he riding back with you again?”

She peeled open the soggy leather of one of the boots. Cian’s wool sock clung wetly to his bony shin.

“I left him in Dunfermline,” Cian muttered. “He would be spending the night there, though it was scarce noon.”

“It’s safer not to travel alone, lad,” Eithne scolded idly. She sawed off the other knot in one lump.

“What am I fearing?” he asked dreamily. Then he roused himself enough to grumble, “Besides, I could not have stood another quarter hour of that imbecile. ‘Look at that, Cian! Look at this, Cian!’” he bleated, trying to imitate Araphel’s boyish joviality, and sounding more like a goose imitating the whinny of a mare. “‘Say, Cian, were you ever thinking…? Say, brother, were you ever noticing…?’”

Eithne giggled to hide her disgust as she pulled off the first boot. She had never smelled a rotting human leg, but she knew the odor of bad cheese. Sweetdew sneezed and backed away, flicking her paws at the stink in feline disapproval.

Eithne sat back and stared. Everywhere the boots had rubbed the socks, the damp wool had all but felted. She feared what she would find beneath.

“You might have stuffed a sock into his mouth, lad,” she suggested thoughtlessly.

Sweetdew meowed and mumbled, causing Cian to lean forward to see what was happening at the level of his feet.

Eithne tried to block his view with her trailing hair. “What did she say?” she asked warily.

Cian frowned and tipped his ankle to the side. “She said I might have finished him off for good if I had stuffed him with one of these. I wish I had thought of it. I don’t smell anything!” he complained to the cat.

“Mayhap your nose is a wee bit stuffy, lad,” Eithne told him. “Let’s be taking these off you, and Sweetdew and I shall wash your feet.”

Sweetdew yowled in protest.

“With your tongue!” Cian threatened her.

He sat back and chuckled gingerly at his joke, leaving Eithne a chance to remove a sock out of his seeing.

She was almost surprised when she was able to peel it off in one piece. The flesh beneath was blue-​​white and spongy, and it bore the deep imprint of the knit, making the skin seem a second sock stretched over the tendons and bones. Everywhere the sock had rubbed the foot, the skin had all but scraped away, and it glistened with open wounds that scarcely bled.

“Are you feeling your feet, lad?” she asked gently.

The only life-​​colored patch of skin was the hotly pink big toe, and when she touched it, a wad of pus spurted out from beneath the nail.

“I felt that,” he frowned.

“You may have a wee bit of the frostbite, I’m thinking,” Eithne ventured.

She did not like the way Sweetdew was warily circling the clammy feet, as though she feared them.

Eithne stood and wiped her hands on her nightgown. “Let’s be standing you up again if we can,” she said shakily, “and getting you undressed, and Sweetdew and I shall tuck you straight into bed.”

His head lolled wearily as she pulled him to his feet, but once up he threw his arms around her and tried to bury his face in her hair.

“Eithne!” he groaned. “Eithne! Let me smell your hair!”

Sweetdew meowed and meowed as she trotted in a tight circle around their feet.

Eithne did not know what she had said, but she did not like it. “Sweetdew, whisht!” she scolded.

She shoved her arms between their bodies and yanked at the collar of Cian’s shirt. It opened easily, for the laces had not even been tied, but before she could pull it off, Cian staggered and clumsily embraced her.

“Eithne! Let me into your hair, love! Let me die in your hair!”

Eithne’s pounding heart was pierced by pain, as though it had snagged on a thorn.

“Nobody is going to die in here!” she wailed.

She tugged and jerked at the sleeves of the shirt, but Cian did not lower his arms to help her.

“Let me into your hair!” he moaned.

Eithne stamped her bare foot and barked, “Cian, hold still!”

Startled perhaps, for a moment he obeyed, and Eithne yanked his shirt down his arms, baring his body in an instant. His chest was slickly wet and sanded with the tiny, colorless nodules of a rash. His trickling sweat smelled sour and coppery.

Her few seconds of stunned paralysis were time enough for him to grab her again, and he held her so tightly her clean nightgown stuck to his skin as she squirmed. Even through the wool she felt the incandescent heat of his body. His galloping heartbeat rattled her own breast like a drum pressed against a drum.

“Cian!”

He moaned, “Eithne! Eithne!” and slid a grasping hand down as far as the back of her thigh.

“Cian, listen to me! You’re ill! You’re too ill for this, now!”

“I’m only ill from too much missing you,” he whispered.

She managed to squeeze her folded arms between their breasts, and she struggled to unbend her elbows with all her terrified might.

“You’re ill from not taking care of yourself, Cian! Fie for shame! And I was eating my every egg, and taking my naps, and eating my breakfast even when I was feeling sick – and meanwhile–you!”

Either the scolding or the mention of her own five days’ activities made him meek, slackening the feverish strength of his arms. She shoved him away. Her arms shook with the lack of strain.

“But you must be taking care of your precious babies,” he mumbled dreamily. He stroked the back of his jittery hand down her belly. “And your precious self.”

“And you must be taking care of your precious self, too,” she pouted. “Tell him, Sweetdew.”

Sweetdew only sat and lashed her tail.

“Riding from Dunfermline to Lothere in two days,” Eithne scolded. “With wet boots and an open shirt and – and did you even have your hat?”

Cian gingerly touched her tangled hair. “I had one…” he whispered thoughtfully.

“Fie! Helpless as a baby you are! You never should have left Araphel behind. You might have died!”

“And then?” he smiled. “Still I would have come back to you.”

A chill ran up Eithne’s arms and through her body, in spite of the fire, in spite of the fever of the man who held her. Her breath gusted out of her in a whispered word: “No!”

She imagined a corpse shuffling relentlessly across the moorlands and the borderlands, seeking her wherever she fled. She imagined a pair of amber-​​colored lights in the blackness of the night, following her across the miles.

“Ah but aye, my own love,” he whispered tenderly. “And if I die a thousand times, a thousand and one times will I return.”

“No, Cian,” she said firmly and low. She laid her hands on his shoulders and tried to hide her alarm at his feverish heat. “I do not want you to die. Now let’s be getting you undressed and into bed…”

He laid his hot hands on her wrists and stopped her. “Tell me it’s not the body you’re loving, lass,” he asked hoarsely. “I shall take another just as fine.”

“Cian…”

“You would still love me if I looked like another man, wouldn’t you? I would still be your man.”

His lips were too shriveled to pout; they only went slack. His jaw trembled slightly. She did not think it was from fever: she had not noticed it before.

Eithne thought she might even prefer his own black and batty form to some unfamiliar male, but she merely said, “Aye, lad, but I’m powerfully fond of this body before me. I’m only just learning the pleasures to which I may put it, and mayhap I won’t think it worth the bother to start anew with another.”

As she hoped, the mention of pleasures both appeased and inspired him, and though he smoothed her body sinuously against his, he struggled with her no longer, and he seemed calm and alert.

“Then we shall certainly endeavor to keep this one in working condition,” he said in a scratchy purr. “I am rather fond of it myself. But I shall love you just as well with another if anything happens to it. I love you beyond bodies, Eithne.”

“And I you,” she mumbled childishly, “but please don’t die, Cian.”

“You shall never be a widow, Eithne,” he said dreamily. “That I do swear. For as long as you’re living I will always come again, and be with you all your life.”

“But you’re too young to die,” she whimpered. “You might live sixty years. And how shall I ever explain to my sisters if I have a dozen different husbands who all tell the same jokes?”

“I shall try to think of new ones.”

He pulled his head away and smiled down into her face, but Eithne saw only the chapped lips, the oozy nose, the sunken eyes. He could make her a widow a thousand times.

Valiantly she tried to smile at him, and at last he saw her failing to smile. He held her away from him and touched the backs of his hot fingers to her cheek.

“Listen to me, lass. We shall live a long, long time together – sixty years or even more – and I shall be Cian all our lives if you take good care of me and make me wear my hat. If you’re eating your eggs every day,” he confided, “it’s the least I can do.”

She smiled weakly, thinking how she had loved him as she had arranged her empty shells in twin rows to show him, the little ends nestled into the cups of the big ends. She wanted him for her babies–this him. She wanted them to see their faces in his.

“And someday,” he murmured hoarsely, “when you’re an old, old woman, with long white hair that’s smelling like stems of sweet grass in the winter, and when we shall have so many grandchildren of grandchildren that you will finish counting them on the Sabbath eve if you’re commencing the Sabbath morn… Then we shall decide that perhaps we’re a wee bit tired of the world, and we shall lie down side-​​by-​​side, and hand-​​in-​​hand shall die, just as easily as going to sleep. And hand-​​in-​​hand we shall go as far as Heaven’s door – ”

“And you’ll be showing me all the fairest spots along the way?” she asked shyly.

Like any foreign bride Eithne liked to imagine herself in her husband’s old home. When she slept at his side she dreamt of pink clouds and perfumed breezes, curving paths graveled with pearls, and nodding flowers that bore pure silver light in the depths of their cups.

“Aye, lass!” he smiled. “And take our time. And when we arrive, love, you shall go to the gate and say, ‘Let this angel in, in my name, for I have redeemed him with my love.’ That’s what you shall say, my own sweet saint. Will you?”

“And then we shall go in and meet the Lord?”

“Aye, love.”

“And then might we go meet my parents?” she asked softly.

“Aye, love.”

“And will you be begging my father’s forgiveness for doing injury to his daughter in her bed, and making her run away with you?”

“Aye, love,” he said with a wetly crackling sigh. “A thousand times shall I beg his pardon, and I hope I will have made you happy enough thereafter for him to forgive me.”

“And perhaps begging your own Father’s forgiveness, too?” she whispered reverently. “Even if you’re thinking you did no wrong, it never hurts to say you’re sorry, Cian.”

He pulled her head onto his shoulder and stroked her hair down her back. His damp hand snagged through her curls. She could feel his breath catching and easing, catching and easing as he fought to take it steadily.

“You may be telling Him so for me,” he whispered.

“I think you ought to be the one to tell Him, Cian,” she corrected gently. “But I shall go with you if you like, and hold your hand.”

She was thinking only of what she knew: of the many times she and Condal had gone hand-​​in-​​hand to their father, prepared to share the wrath that one or the other had earned with a lost comb, or a pilfered slice of pie, or a hem she had carelessly singed on the hearth. All Eithne knew of fathers was that they forgave.

But Cian clutched her curls in handfuls and drew in his breath sharply. It rattled ominously like a rake dragging through coals, and then stopped.

If he had meant to catch a sob he succeeded, but he had lost the tenuous rhythm that had staved off a cough. She felt him tremble as he fought to hold his breath. She remembered that she had to get him into bed.

“Cian…”

The bottled-​​up cough burst out of him; she felt its wet spray across her face as he spun away.

He fought with all his failing strength merely to gasp a breath, but the coughs came ever faster, rattling like rockfalls through his lungs.

The first splatters he tried to catch with his hand were merely watery phlegm, but by the time he lowered his arm out of dizziness or despair, the back of his wrist was wet and red.

Eithne tried to speak his name, but through her clenched teeth she only made a moan. Fearing for her precious kittens, Sweetdew had already fled.

At last the coughs slowed, perhaps because there remained him not even the strength to spasm. He swayed between his two broadly-​​spaced feet like a drunk about to fall over. He tried to spit into the fire, but the wad of frothy blood fell short upon the hearth. He bent forward and vomited next to nothing on the stones.

“Cian, lad!” Eithne whispered. Her lips were going numb; her own sibilance sounded strangely musical to her ears. The light of the world was contracting to a narrow tunnel that shone upon the living, dying body of her man.

He turned, and from the far side looked her in the eyes. He grimly wiped his mouth, smearing spit and blood down through the fine, dark hair on the back of his arm. He let it hang loose at his side and stepped up to embrace her with the other.

She felt her own slackly drooling mouth slide across his hot shoulder. She pressed her ear to his collarbone and listened to the strangely sibilant music of his lungs. His voiceless whisper was like bagpipes slashed.

“I will come again.”