Cian loses count

Dantalion had given his word, but he thought one hundred strokes far too few. It was the first time Eithne had permitted him to brush her hair – and it was she who had offered, she who had asked. Fortunately her hair was long, and he could make his one hundred strokes last.

He made it as far as the seventy-​​second stroke before she spoke.

“Cian?”

He gathered up her hair at the nape of her neck with his left hand so that he could still hold onto it after he had finished the seventy-​​third. “Aye, Eithne?”

“Will we be staying here for a time?”

“Plenty of time for Sweetdew’s ‘precious babies’,” he replied, quoting his wife, but glaring down at the cat to warn against any smirking commentary on his use of the word ‘precious’.

“I know it,” she said, “but in the springtime, are you thinking?”

“And why not into the summertime?” he smiled fondly, believing she might have been worried about her own precious babies.

“Or at least through the winter? Are you knowing?”

He glanced back at the window and sighed. Eithne’s first attempt at weaving cloth with magic was unraveling in the wind, and he did not doubt he would wake to find nothing but a heap of crinkled thread on the floor.

“I expect we shall be here many months, Eithne. Long enough that I shall not dare move you even when I may.” He released her hair and let his hands fall into his lap. “I am sorry,” he added.

He had not noticed how closely Sweetdew was watching him until the cat dropped her head and began placidly washing herself again.

“It’s no matter,” Eithne peeped. “I was simply wondering whether this place was more like our camp or more like our home.”

Dantalion permitted himself a grimace, since she could not see. “Our home?” he croaked.

“I was thinking, if it’s our camp, we only need make it comfortable. But if it’s our home we might to try to make it nice.”

He whispered, “Nice?”

“Mightn’t we? We needn’t repair the entire castle, but we might fix up a few rooms, nice and snug. Here’s our kitchen, and we could put glass in the front room since it gets a southern sun, and there we may sit and practice my magic. And we could have a warm room with a bed, couldn’t we?”

Dantalion lifted the brush again and pulled it slowly through her hair.

“You can make a bed with magic, can’t you?” she asked.

“That is one of my highest priorities,” he said dryly.

To his surprise, Eithne heard his joke and giggled. “Then you had better be making it your own self, as it had better be sturdy,” she said wickedly.

“Indeed!”

“And you can make pretty things just as well as plain, can’t you?”

“I shall leave that up to you.” He waved the brush back at the window. “You are already well on your way to making lace curtains, I bid you notice.”

Again she laughed. “When I first learned to sew with my wee hands it was no prettier.” She lifted her hands and let them fall with a sigh. “I’m like a little girl again with my magic.”

Dantalion returned to his brushing, though he was not certain whether he had gone as far as seventy-​​five.

“And in the springtime,” Eithne said dreamily, “will you show me how to make flowers?”

“Flowers are made from seeds, dear girl. They are living things. We cannot make flowers with magic, any more than we can make a chicken.”

She tossed her head and scoffed, “Ach! Chickens again!”

Dantalion batted at the ends of her hair with the brush, wondering how foolish he was about to sound. “If it were the springtime,” he mumbled, “I would bring you some flowers when I go to get some chickens.”

“Buy some chickens,” she corrected.

“I shall leave a coin,” he sighed. “But you shall have your eggs.”

“Ach, Cian! I can eat rabbit just as well.”

He glanced over at the basket, though he already knew that between those half-​​dozen and the eggs they had left outside in the cold, he had no more than a week in which to find a pair of laying hens.

“Sweetdew says you must have your eggs,” he pouted.

“I think Sweetdew was wanting eggs for her own self!” Eithne laughed. “Next she’ll be saying I’m needing a cow for the cream!”

“She will be needing milk and cream when she starts nursing,” Sweetdew mewed. “So you had better start thinking of where you want to pasture your herd, temanyeh.”

“Do you see?” Eithne laughed, though she could not have understood.

Dantalion snorted. “Then Sweetdew has made a foolish mistake by claiming you needed them. Anyway, I shall be making you eat ever more until you start getting fatter instead of thinner.”

He took her wrist between his thumb and finger and slid his hand up like a bracelet as far as it would go beneath her sleeve.

“When I was first knowing you, I could scarcely wrap my fingers around your wrist, and now they go halfway up your arm.”

“I’ve been sick in the mornings…” she said weakly.

“Then you shall eat your first egg at dinner time, but you shall have your eggs, even if I must ride out to get fresh ones for you every week.”

“Ach, Cian!” she groaned. “Why don’t you just lay them yourself? You’re such a mother hen!”

Sweetdew rolled about on the rug and laughed as wildly as a cat could laugh. Dantalion was about to feel insulted, but Eithne broke into wicked giggles, and he realized she had been teasing him. Then he dared lean over and kiss her cheek, for though a girl might kiss and caress him and pretend to love him, he did not think she could feign such laughter, nor tease him affectionately if she felt no affection.

Eithne swatted him away, but affectionately. “Have you reached one hundred, sir?” she asked, trying to sound stern.

“Aye…” he said, since he thought he might have…

“No, he has not!” Sweetdew squeaked.

“Back to work, lad!” Eithne ordered.

Dantalion lifted her hair away from her neck and brushed through it a few times from underneath, as he had often watched her do. But he mouthed, “How many?” at Sweetdew, hoping the cat had been counting.

Sweetdew sniffed as disdainfully as a cat could sniff and turned her face away.

“But mayn’t I plant flowers in the yard?” Eithne asked wistfully. “It will seem so lonely and sad with only the broom on the hills.”

Dantalion stopped brushing. His innocent wife wanted to plant flowers at the door of a prison. His unseeing wife wanted to put glass in the windows of the entry and sit “nice and snug” through the winter, never dreaming she sat directly over the barrel-​​vaulted crypt that had been his cell. He had scarcely slept all the last night through, knowing it beneath him.

“Unless you like the broom…” she mumbled after a while.

“My dear love,” he sighed, “plant all the flowers you like, wherever you like, if it pleases you.”

“Wouldn’t it be sweet if I could have some of the flowers from home?” she asked shyly – so shyly he thought she had meant it as a request.

Dantalion’s stroking hand came to rest in her hair like a spider in its web. The man he had named Cian had fine white hands with long, tapered, almost feminine fingers. They could not have less resembled his own broad black hands, and Cian’s prettily rounded nails were to Dantalion’s claws as petals were to thorns.

And nevertheless this delicate, deerlike body would have to cage him in for as long as he could keep it alive. If Eithne scarcely trusted these hands, he knew she could never learn to love his own.

“It’s a far way you’re asking me to ride for flowers,” he grumbled, bitter and angry at his inability to indulge her.

“But you wouldn’t have to go far,” she said with a timid eagerness. “There’s a whole hillside of flowers from home a-​​growing up behind the Duke’s castle. Cousin Egelric brought them back long ago, and planted them there for a woman he loved then. I think it much sweeter than a bunch of cut flowers, don’t you? Cut flowers are like to saying ‘My love is fair now but soon will die.’”

Dantalion choked and grabbed great handfuls of her hair, and he brought them to his nose like bunches of flowers, and lifted them higher to water them with his eyes. His innocent, unseeing wife did not know what she was saying.

“Don’t you think?” she sighed, all unknowing. “Cousin Egelric’s flowers lived even longer than his love for that lady. And no more is she living there, and no one sees them now but the bees.”

Dantalion picked up the brush again. He had entirely lost count, but his hands needed something to do besides their helpless shaking.

When he dared, he swallowed and said, “I shall bring you the flowers from the hill, Eithne, and I shall even bring you the bees. But if you’re wanting what Cousin Egelric gave, it’s disappointed you will be. There’s nor flower nor weed in Scotland that will live longer than I shall love you.”

Eithne’s neck relaxed, and the next stroke of the brush tipped her head back and to the side until he could see the edge of her cheek. Was she blushing? Was she smiling? Was she rolling her eyes? He watched her nervously, wondering how foolish had he been and whether it had been worth it.

“That was too easy,” Sweetdew grumbled.

“What did she say?” Eithne asked softly.

“She said that was very prettily said,” he told her.

Sweetdew yowled, “I did not!” and swatted at his leg with her claws.

Eithne laughed. “What did you say, darling?” she cooed. “I thought it was prettily said indeed.”

Dantalion looked down at the cat, waiting for her to say her piece so that he might tell it to Eithne and hear her laugh again.

But Sweetdew suddenly swept back her ears, puffed out her tail, and hissed through her chattering teeth at something behind him. Reflected in her eyes he saw a weird blue light, and over the room he saw its strange shadows.

For an instant he believed that Cian was about to die so that the lionlike being trapped inside of him could save his wife from rape or worse. And for an instant he was bitterly sorry, for it was Cian his wife truly loved.

Then he had another thought, and he only rolled Cian’s eyes and sighed.

“Cousin,” a mournful voice called out from the doorway. “I need your help.”