Egelric saw the faint look of annoyance cross Malcolm’s face when he turned at the sound of feet tramping through the long grass. No doubt he had earned that look over the years.
Malcolm had long since turned his face away by the time Egelric came to stand beside him. Both were silent for a moment, and both stared at the back of the blonde head that shone in the sun some distance away.
“What are you doing, Malcolm?” Egelric asked finally, feeling strangely awkward before the boy.
“Watching.”
“Mind if I watch with you?”
Malcolm grunted, which Egelric took for permission.
“What does she do?” he asked after he had sat and arranged his long legs before him.
“She sits.”
“That’s all?”
“Sometimes she looks up at the sky. Sometimes she looks down at the earth.”
“I thought she might run or play or something.”
“Not she.”
“Oh.”
After a long silence, Malcolm continued. “If I sit far enough away, sometimes the animals will come to see her. A rabbit will come, or a squirrel. And all sorts of birds.”
“What does she do with them?”
“Nothing. She doesn’t pet them, or try to touch them. They come and smell her, just as animals do other animals. The only thing she does, sometimes, is take hair from her head and give it to the birds for their nests.”
“Those must be fine nests,” Egelric said, and found his throat tight.
“Some of the birds are quite insistent,” Malcolm chuckled. “They chatter at her and seem to demand it. Sometimes I almost wonder whether she doesn’t understand their language. Once she said to me that she wished she – ” He stopped himself and looked warily at Egelric, as if he had momentarily forgotten to whom he spoke, and his smile snapped back into a straight line. “ – did,” he finished, and he looked back at the girl.
Egelric nodded and returned to watching her as well. The faint breeze could only lift her hair strand by strand, and they floated in a sort of gossamer halo around her head, glinting golden in the sun. Indeed, she seemed as beautiful and strange and untouchable as a saint to him. But he had once understood her language.
“Does she ever talk about me?” he asked wistfully.
“Aye.”
“What does she say?”
“Nothing but good. She is very proud of you.” He paused for a moment and then leaned his head close to Egelric’s. “She has consoled herself with the idea,” he hissed, “that if you don’t have time for her, it is because you are a great man and are busy doing great things.”
“I thank you for not telling her otherwise,” Egelric muttered and hung his head.
“As if I should enjoy breaking her heart,” Malcolm whispered.
“What would she do if I died?”
Malcolm’s eyes went wide in anger and alarm. “Keep your voice down or say it in Gaelic!” he hissed.
“She can’t hear us.”
“Sometimes I wonder! If you die, it’s following you down to hell I shall be, and dragging you back to her!”
Egelric thought he should be amused by the absurdity of the scrappy boy’s threat, but he found that he was only abashed. Malcolm meant it.
“Her mother hanged herself,” Malcolm continued. “What will her father do? It’s a craven dog you are – may the devil eat your tongue and the cats your eyes!”
“I shan’t do anything,” he sighed.
Malcolm grunted and folded his arms across his chest.
Iylaine sat as still as ever, and only the dancing glints of gold around her head made her seem real and alive at all.
“I thank you for watching her,” Egelric said softly, in English again.
Malcolm grunted.
“The day will come when she will thank you for being what I was not. And I shall hate you for it.”
“You don’t already?”
“Only myself.”
Malcolm turned to him and lifted his eyebrows in a certain expression of long-suffering that he had inherited from his father.
Egelric could not help but smile at the resemblance. “I believe that a month or two with you and your father will do me good nonetheless. None of my nonsense!” But he turned away with a sudden pain at the realization that those were not, in fact, the words of Colban.
Chapters
That struck me.