Dantalion learns how long

“Eithne!”

The word seared Dantalion’s throat as it wheezed out of him in a whisper. His lungs were on fire. He was speaking torrid smoke.

He tried to sit up, but he fell back at once onto his elbows, horrified by the sense that the straining muscles of his abdomen were about to squeeze out the contents of his bowels in a pulpy slurry. He tried to pull his knees up beneath the blankets, but it felt as if he were raking his feet through a bed of orange-​​hot coals.

Most horrifying, most terrifying, most painful of all, he did not know where Eithne was.

He moaned, “Eithne!”

The word burned, but this time it made a sound.

He heard Eithne’s own voice in reply. “Cian’s awake!” she gasped. “Come be meeting him!”

He could not see her, but she was not far. He began to shake and shiver. He began to sweat.

Eithne appeared suddenly in the hallway, grinning with all her dimples.

“Cian, you’re awake!” she squealed.

In spite of its aches and agonies, his body thrilled as ever at the sight of her. His galloping heart throbbed a little harder. His stomach fluttered, on top of its ominous churning. His cheeks flushed brighter than his fever. He was alive, and in love.

“Look!” She lifted a little gray bundle to her cheek and grinned still more widely.

Dantalion looked, and saw only her smile. “Eithne!” he whispered.

Somehow he lifted his arm, and when he found her too far away, somehow he managed to sit up. Still he could not reach her.

“Sweetdew came back!” she gushed. “She didn’t run away after all!”

Dantalion did not remember that Sweetdew had ever gone anywhere. He vaguely recalled her saying something about his feet some time ago. He wished he remembered what, for they were now on fire.

His most recent memory he clutched only in shreds: the thought, as he had surrendered to his body’s terrible need to sleep, that he would have a grave problem upon awakening.

“She simply went off to bear her wee kitties alone,” Eithne babbled on, “but she brought them back in the night! Two wee babies did she have – just like me!”

Her shyness overcame her suddenly, as it sometimes did when she spoke of her babies, and she closed her eyes and stroked the kitten over her blushing cheek.

Dantalion’s stomach was gurgling ominously and his throat was tinder-​​dry, but his most urgent, most painful need was to hold this girl. Strangely, however, her sudden shyness made him shy.

“Why, how cunning of Sweetdew!” he croaked.

He managed to pull up his knees, but his legs were shaking beneath the tented blankets.

“Isn’t she?” she giggled. “And you’ll never guess what we’ve named them! Rua, bring the wee kittie in!” she called over her shoulder. “Cian wants to see!”

The elf! That was it! What had he done or said to her? He remembered only that she had seen him face to direful face. She! That prissy, peevish girl! Even Vash had not been permitted to see, though if any mortal elf deserved a glimpse it was he.

“Guess!” Eithne said brightly.

Dantalion took too deep a breath and was forced to hold it until his eyes watered with the strain. His lungs so burned that he feared what would happen if he coughed.

“You said I never shall…” he whispered as he exhaled.

“You must at least try!” she chirped.

She shook her hips saucily as she spoke, teasing him with her body as well as her words. He felt scorched from throat to toes, and still he wanted her more than water.

“Cute – and So-​​forth,” he wheezed in two short breaths.

Eithne made a victorious squeal. “No! Rua, come!” she commanded. “I told you he would be saying that! Cute and So-​​forth!” she mocked in a manly voice that was deeper than what remained of his own. “No, good sir, we thought of that already. It’s a fine thing to be called Cute, we were thinking, but imagine how poor So-​​forth would feel, being called So-​​forth all his days!”

“Black and Batty, then?” Dantalion ventured.

Eithne stopped swaying and stopped smirking, and for a moment Dantalion had the idea that if he reached out he might have grabbed her.

Then she began to sway slowly again as if the rolling joints of her hips were coming unstuck. 

“If she has two more kitties, we shall name them that!” she said approvingly. “But it’s too late now for these. Mittenface is the name of this wee kittie here, and the other… Rua! Bring the other kittie in!” she pleaded. “Cian wants to see!”

“Mittenface?” Dantalion repeated dubiously. His attempt at disdain rasped his throat raw.

At last Lasrua glided into the room behind Eithne. In her two hands she clasped a squirming, squeaking little kitten, who nevertheless looked no less glad to be there than she.

“And Puppybundle!” Eithne announced pertly.

“Puppybundle?” Dantalion wheezed. “My dear girl, that is a bundle of cat!”

He tried to stare Lasrua into looking at him, but she glanced in turn at the fire, at the kitten, at the anxious little mother circling her feet, and finally back at the fire again.

“I know!” Eithne squeaked. “That’s why it’s so funny! Rua thought of it!”

“Eithne, you cannot be naming a kitten Puppybundle.”

“Can so!” She giggled like a naughty child, but her hips swayed like a woman’s at the level of Dantalion’s eyes.

He scarcely dared move his own hips for fear of what might be the accidental outcome, but more than anything he wanted to press Eithne’s hips down into the mattress – even if only with his arm – even if only for the pleasure of holding her there beside him. His body was all but dead, and nevertheless it all but frightened him with its alive.

“Eithne,” he panted, trying to distract his body with mere words, “you cannot be naming a kitten anything. It’s their mothers have the naming of them.”

“They do?” Eithne pouted.

“Aye, they do,” he said smugly. “What were you naming them, then?” he asked Sweetdew.

Sweetdew stopped trotting about in worried surveillance of her kittens and purred up at him.

He frowned. “What?”

“Mittenface and Puppybundle,” she mewed.

“No! You cannot!”

“Can so!” she squeaked.

Eithne laughed, having guessed if she had not understood. “She’ll be calling them that now just to get your goat, Cian! Aren’t they funny together?” she asked her friend.

Lasrua glanced aside and tried to smile, but it was plain she would have rather been anywhere but there. Dantalion wished she were.

“Do you want to hold them, Cian?” Eithne asked abruptly. “Here, Rua – ”

Dantalion gasped, “No!”

His heart was straining in his chest. His legs were shaking. His guts were melting. He had to put a stop to this while he still could.

“No bundles of puppies nor faces of mittens will I have in my bed!” he whispered hoarsely. “What I want is a drink of cold water. Lasrua, there is a stream outside. I am certain you will find it – ”

“But we have water in here,” Eithne protested.

Lasrua turned abruptly away.

“I want icy water,” Dantalion said. “From the stream.” He did not know how to make a croak sound like a command. He had to make do with a scowl.

“But I can go, lad,” Eithne whimpered.

“No! Lasrua shall go. I wish to talk with you, Eithne. Alone.”

Eithne turned away as well. Her head drooped so low that her braids swung freely away from her breast. Lasrua disappeared down the hall, bearing her kitten away, and Eithne and Sweetdew followed.

Dantalion lifted the edge of the blanket and tried to make sense of his body’s thousand aches and sweats and stabbing pains.

Nothing was visibly amiss aside from a rash on his chest. He leaned back on one elbow and slid his opposite hand beneath the sheets to attempt to rub the cramps out of his belly.

Eithne returned abruptly and caught him thus. He fell flat on his back in guilty embarrassment, but strangely no reflex of anger swelled up after it, and he only lay helplessly on the pillows and looked up at her.

“How are you feeling, lad?” Eithne cooed.

It seemed she had left all her weird and giddy girlishness behind in the nest of kittens, or else let it go out with Lasrua. She bent over him and stroked one gentle hand down his chest and onto his belly, dragging the blankets down with it.

He struggled and tried to sit up until she laid the other hand on his forehead. His body relaxed instinctively, like a kitten clutched in its mother’s jaws. He had already taught her many ways she might touch him, but he had never taught her this. He had never known about this at all.

For a moment, beneath the gliding strokes of her cool hands, he floated out of his bodily misery and into a dizzy bliss. Then she tossed the blankets down past his hips and examined his loincloth as she might have inspected a baby’s diaper.

His outraged anger reared up and cried aloud, searing his lungs: “None of this! I need to talk with you!”

She shrank away against the wall.

To prop up his pitiful majesty he forced himself to make one last loud command, in spite of the pain in his chest. “Before that girl returns!”

Eithne mouthed, “Aye, Cian,” and scurried away to drag her pile of pillows up to the bedside.

“I told you never to leave this place!” he hissed.

“I never did!” she wailed. “I sent Qatal to fetch her here.”

Dantalion pulled up his legs and pressed his knees together to stop their shaking. His feet stung and burned no matter how he lay them on the sheets.

“And what happened to my feet?” he growled, as though it had been Eithne’s fault. He needed someone to blame, and something for which to blame her.

“You had a bit of the frostbite, lad.” She squatted on the edge of her pillows and hesitated for a moment before adding defiantly, “But Rua made the blood flow down to your toes again and saved them.”

“Now they hurt,” he huffed.

“Well, and that’s a good thing, for it means they aren’t dead. And she made all the water come out of your chest, too, and it was all pink and red, and filled half a pail. So you may be thanking her when she returns, for saving you.”

“Aye, thank her kindly, and kiss her, and send her on her way – is that what you were thinking?”

Eithne bit her lip. If she had been watching him, he might have believed she did it to disarm him, but she only stared at the hands she was rubbing over her lap. He felt a sharp pain in his chest that had nothing to do with his lungs.

“Was I ever saying you might have guests here, Eithne?” he demanded.

“Someday…” she whispered.

Her misery cracked through his ribs and twisted down towards his heart like a screw. There was not a man, woman, child, or chicken on earth he wished to see besides her, and yet she made him wish he could throw great banquets for her, and fill the ancient hall with her family and friends, and see her queen over them all in the old queen’s gilded chair.

And she made him angry, because he could not.

“Aye, someday, when the danger has passed,” he scowled. “Has it passed?” He slapped at his cheek. “Is it gone? Bring me a mirror!”

“It’s still there…”

“Aye, I thought so! Now what am I to do, Eithne? What am I to do?”

“Well,” she said meekly, “I thought you could be making her to forget, as you were me…”

“Making her to forget?” he sneered. “My dear girl, were you ever stopping to think on the difference between making to forget and stopping from remembering?”

“Is there one?” she quavered.

“Hmm, I don’t know! Is there a difference between catching the milk in a cup as it’s poured, or scooping it up after it’s on the floor?”

She said nothing, and he hissed in exasperation. Surely she was not so stupid as to think they were the same. His anger rose like a wave until it broke against the startling thought that she might simply have been afraid to answer. He was making her afraid.

“I shall try,” he grumbled.

She brightened and said breathlessly, “I’m certain you will know how. And even if she’s remembering a wee bit, I’ve told her how she mustn’t tell, and you may let her remember that much. And, Cian,” she blurted in a soft gust, “there’s one more thing I must be telling you.”

He rolled his head to the side and stared blearily at her. Her lip was trembling with fear of him, and he only wanted to kiss it.

“I told her you would find my cousin Malcolm for her,” she said. 

That was all. He sighed dismissively, but she bit both her lips between her teeth and anxiously waited.

He rubbed the sweat from his face with the back of his hand. “And so you were making promises in my name while I slept,” he mumbled.

“But it was to save you,” she whimpered. “I had to save you.”

He let his arm fall out to his side. “Come nigh to me, lass.”

She never rose from a crouch as she left her perch of pillows and crept into the bed beside him.

“Eithne…” he began.

She stretched and squirmed and finally settled. Her round cheek nestled into the crook of his neck, and her breath blew out across his breastbone. Her hand rested lightly on his hip.

Meanwhile he thought of the time she had spent alone, with neither Sweetdew nor even Qatal for company or aid. He thought of his bloody handkerchiefs and the pail of bloody water, and of the clean sheets and the clean loincloth he wore. He thought of her cool hands, and how they must have been touching him in this new way, all this time.

“How long did I sleep?” he whispered.

Eithne did not answer. She already slept.