Osh makes an uncertain offer

“Don’t be putting your prayer book away just yet, now, Father,” Flann growled.

For a moment they were all transfixed – the Abbot, the elf, and the baby. Then Aelfden slowly withdrew the little book from his pocket and pressed it flat between his bony hands.

His patient eyes met Flann’s glare with a mildness that Osh admired. Even he grew nervous when Flann met the world with such a sharp stare, though she scarcely ever turned it against him. This was one of the precious little proofs of her love that he hoarded, for they were more easily believed than her occasional grand words and grander gestures.

“Shall we pray?” the priest asked.

“Aye, we shall.” Flann’s mouth curved into a smile sharp and menacing as a scythe. “You’re knowing the one, Father. ‘Those whom God has joined’ and so forth.”

She bounced her baby thoughtlessly until Liadan begin to whine in frustration at the jerking of the little hand she was trying to study.

Osh whispered, “Flann…” and bent his head towards hers, even at the risk of having that cold glare turned on him. He did not want it to happen this way – he did not want it to be a battle she would win. He had dreamt of something more like a surrender, or a retreat into the safety of his arms.

The Abbot sighed and then began a firm but gentle argument with Flann – in Gaelic.

Osh leaned his elbow against the fireplace and tried to watch the fire, but his annoyance could only bear a moment of the bright, cheerily snapping logs when Flann’s dark fire was seething beside him. He shoved himself away and walked – unnoticed – past them and into the room.

He understood little Gaelic, but the Abbot spoke it slowly, and he recognized the word “sisters”. He recognized “tomorrow”. He recognized names well enough that he understood “Eithne” and “Sebastien” even on Flann’s sharp, snapping voice. He knew the word for “demon” too.

His second betrothal was playing itself out without him, in a language he did not understand, for reasons that were not his reasons.

Nor was this sharp, snapping Flann the Flann he wanted. He wanted the little lady who had once bit her lower lip between her teeth in the shyest, sweetest smile he had ever seen. He wanted the true, trusting Flann who had once asked, “Are you thinking of marrying me?” full knowing what he would say – what he should have said – what he had wanted to say.

He would never know what grief she might have been spared if he had simply said it. He had not ceased grieving that shy, sweet smile since that day.

But he had done the thing he had feared, and given himself to her God. Now it seemed more difficult to give himself to her.

He realized abruptly that the Abbot was speaking in English, and to him.

“…who knows her, and as a gentleman, whether this is truly what she desires, or whether this is an act of desperation due to a distress I hope will soon pass?”

Osh opened his mouth, but he did not know what to say. This was precisely the question he asked himself every time she smiled at him, every time she took his hand, every time she stood on her toes to kiss him or lay her head on his shoulder. Every time he thought he found an answer, she did something to change his mind.

He tried to look into her eyes, hoping to see the truth, since whatever he saw now would have to stand forever in its stead. But Flann in a fury could not be turned aside from her opponent.

“That’s fine of you, Father, as a gentleman,” she sneered. “Speaking the Gaelic at me as if Osh weren’t here, and then to Osh as if I weren’t!”

Her voice was so shrill and her arms so tense that Liadan began to cry outright. Osh slipped almost unnoticed, almost invisible, between Flann and the priest and took the baby. Liadan calmed at once into sniffles and sleepy squirming. She, at least, surely loved and trusted him.

The Abbot was saying, “I already asked you the same question in a language I was certain you would fully comprehend.”

“And I already answered it!” she cried. “And I shall answer it again in English in case you weren’t fully comprehending: I want you to marry us now! Tonight!”

The Abbot sighed and walked two steps to the door and walked back again. “Do you have a ring?” he asked wearily.

“We don’t need a ring!” Flann shrieked.

“Flann, I don’t – ”

“Such lawyer’s excuses are unbecoming of you, Father! What next?”

Osh slipped his hand into his pocket, and his fingers into the little pocket in the lining, and his fingertip into the ring. At once his thumb fell into the now familiar habit of spinning it around and around, over the groove it had polished across his nail, turning and turning like the wheel that was Time.

“Because it’s Advent?” Flann barked. “Because we have no witness? We don’t even need a priest, I remind you!”

“Flann – ”

“We could simply go out of here and go back home and be marrying our own selves! And it’s sorry you’ll be then you wouldn’t be doing it properly!”

Osh had only wanted to be certain it was him she wanted and not the ring, and then she would have had both. But he could not lose another beloved lady to another monster. Flann in all her fury could never grow to hate him more than he would hate himself if he let her die.

“Flann,” the Abbot said softly, still patiently attempting to calm her with his own mildness. “I’m only asking–

“Liadan can be our witness!” Flann cried. “And we shall make our own vows if I’m not remembering them! And we shall take a – a – a stem of grass for a ring! Or a thread! And if you won’t – ”

At last Osh interrupted her in his elf-lord’s voice that was rarely heard but could not be ignored. “I have a ring.”