Osh comes up to say goodbye

“Oh, lord, don’t you look fine?” Lena cooed.

Even his grand new tunic could not have broken through Lena’s usual reverent timidity, Osh well knew, and the mere sight of him could not have provoked such breathless, blushing giggling.

It was simply that Lena was still giddy from her laughter of a few moments before, though Kraaia’s had abruptly fallen flat. Osh had feared it would, and still he had come upstairs with the trembling hope that it would not.

“I look like a man!” he scoffed.

“A fine man!” Lena giggled. “Kraaia, doesn’t he?”

Kraaia did not look up.

“In this case, I suppose my elf dignity can bear it,” he sighed. “However, ladies, do not ask me to wear a kilt and boots someday. I swear to you, I will not.”

Kraaia snorted to herself. Osh heard.

“Even if Flann asks you?” Lena wheedled.

“Not even if Flann asks me,” he insisted.

He stepped inside and scuffed his sole on the floor, trying to distract his ears from the laughter ringing up from below. He wondered briefly whether Flann ever would ask him – whether she would look admiringly on him if he did. He wondered whether he was too much an elf to be man enough for her.

He looked up and chanced to see Benedict smiling shyly at him, and he brightened to declare, “Not even if Penedict asks me!”

Benedict and Lena laughed.

“Why don’t you wear your elf clothes?” Kraaia mumbled.

Osh softened. “Because, Kraaia, my elf clothes are getting old, and I do not have any elf tailors to make them new.”

“You don’t need an elf tailor – just take them to an ordinary tailor and have a pattern made.” She did not look at him, but she turned her head just far enough to the side that her hair flattened over her little ear and revealed its form.

“Only if you make the sewing,” Osh said. “You make a fine job on this pillow.”

Since he was speaking of something on the floor, Osh thought that he might dare sit beside her at that level. He sank down silently and folded his legs so carefully beneath him that one might have supposed she was sleeping.

“It is almost done, or not?”

“Almost,” Kraaia groaned in weariness. Still, she stroked her hand gently over the smooth newness of her work, in a gesture Osh knew heart-​​wrenchingly well. “The last seam is the hardest since it’s right-​​side out,” she explained.

“And also since it is already stuffed,” Lena supplied.

“Ah! That is good to know,” Osh said. “If Kraaia sews my clothes someday, I shall take care to not be inside of them.”

Lena laughed so loudly that Kraaia dared softly snicker behind her raised shoulder. By the time Benedict joined in, Osh could scarcely hear the laughter in the hall.

Meanwhile he sent his hand out subtly to stroke over the fading trail of Kraaia’s warm hand on the cloth. Pride, he thought he read, though the big stuffed square was a simple thing. Love for the wolf she scarcely knew.

Subtle as he thought he was, Kraaia must have noticed. “Do you think she’ll like it?” she asked plaintively.

Osh pulled his hand back into his lap and hid it in the other. “I think she will like it most because you made it for her. I think she will be so happy. She will not believe anyone makes such a fine bed for her. She will say, this is not for me, this must be for Osh.”

Wise Lena had gone silent, but even she was not wise enough to guess that she only made the squeals and giggles in the hall seem louder. Someone with many jangling buckles seemed to be darting, and someone in lady’s boots seemed to be ducking away.

A chair was squeaking rhythmically, and Osh imagined Paul as he had left him: slouched in his chair in bored incomprehension, one long leg crossed over the other, and now with his dangling foot twitching impatiently. Osh would have to hurry.

“And it is so fine, I may just tell her it is mine…” he murmured.

“Do you want one?” Kraaia asked.

He heard a slight catch in her breath, and he realized she had startled herself with the offer. He had been thoughtless – he had not intended for her to hear it as a desire. He wondered what he ought to say next.

He heard Cat squeal and laugh at someone’s wickedness, and the rhythm of Paul’s bobbing foot never faltered. Cat could flirt wildly beneath his nose, and Paul never flinched except to tease her.

Paul was bound to his wife, as Osh was not, and nevertheless Osh thought he would not flinch if Flann ever flirted beneath his nose. It was simply that she seemed to forget he could hear her flirting from afar. Or perhaps she remembered very well.

“Will I be made to sleep on the floor when I misbehave?” he asked shakily. He wiped his hand over his face. He did not want to go to Nothelm. If he stayed behind, he would be too far away to hear.

Then he heard Kraaia sigh. Ashamedly he brought his attention back around to her. Why should she be disappointed?

Then he remembered Christmas, and her squawking insistence that no one had better get anything for or expect anything from her. The mere word seemed to terrify her. The mere idea made her heart pound and her eyes dart in search of exits.

Osh was dreading the day: he feared he would wake Christmas morn and find her gone. But what if she were merely ashamed because she had nothing to give?

“Sometimes you sleep on the floor, lord,” Lena reminded him. “After dinner times, when you play on the floor with Penedict, and next thing you know…” she said ominously.

“Ah!” Osh smiled. “That is something else. That is a nap, Lena, not a sleep. For a nap, I like only a small square pillow for my head.”

He nodded sagely, and Lena snickered. “That is something else!” she repeated mockingly to Benedict, trying to make her light, soft voice sound deep. Benedict laughed, as he did at Lena’s every joke.

Kraaia only pinched an edge of her pillow and ran her fingers down the seam. She was so thoughtful, however, as to forget herself and turn her full profile towards Osh, and Osh thought this a good sign.

Downstairs at that moment the chair made a long, strained creaking, and Paul’s dangling foot hit the floor. Osh imagined him stretching out his long legs and hanging his arms limply over the sides of the chair in weary impatience. Osh was only supposed to have come up to say goodbye.

“What will you ladies cook for supper?” he asked softly.

Lena waited a moment for Kraaia to speak before replying, “It is a secret.” She paused again for dramatic effect and snickered, “Because we do not know it yet!”

“Ah!” Osh sighed. “So I don’t know, do I save a small hole at supper? Perhaps I shall sneak back when they start dancing, and have a snack with you ladies.”

He heard Kraaia whisper, “Shús mínrí” to herself – “small hole” – and then she seemed to realize she might have been heard. She turned her head almost far enough for Osh to glimpse the curve of her far cheekbone and said defiantly, “Whatever it is, it will be good.”

He agreed, “I am certain it will” – because she would make it, though he could never tell her so.

She turned her head again, perhaps farther away from him than before, and her heavy hair eclipsed her face entirely. She twisted the edge of the pillow between her fingers and picked at the seam with her thumbnails.

“Better than whatever they’ll pitch at you at Nothelm,” she muttered. “Slop with slop gravy.”

Osh knew better than to defend the Nothelm cooks or to correct her manners. He was learning the hidden language of Kraaia: she hated most what hurt the most.

Osh sighed so deeply that the candles guttered in his slow breath. He had thought he would have until Sunday dinner to deal with this particular hurt, but he had not counted on the arrival of the sisters’ cousins or the “little friendly supper” they would provoke on the part of the Duke. What could he say to her tonight to make her believe she still had friends?

As he wondered, he heard Flann and Feradach gossiping about something so far back in the hallway as to almost be in the kitchen. He wondered whether they had thought they needed privacy, and why. At this distance and through walls and floors their Gaelic was all but gabbling. The few words he recognized were of the most infuriatingly useless sort – “and”… “eventually”… “something”…

Meanwhile Kraaia picked savagely enough at her seam that she stopped abruptly with a gasp and inspected the pad of her thumb.

“Did you hurt you?” Osh blurted. He nearly threw his arm over her shoulders, and only stopped himself in time to plant his hand awkwardly on the floor behind her, as if he had meant to lean.

“No,” she huffed.

Osh passed his opposite hand down the far side of his face. He was sweating. He could not concentrate on two young ladies at once. He told himself Kraaia was the one who needed his attention.

He swore to himself that he would not fail to speak tonight to Hetty or to Alred or to whomever it would take – even to Lady Gwynn. He swore to himself that he would never again sit at a table where Kraaia was not welcome. But tonight…

Downstairs Flann and Feradach had gone strangely silent…

While he was not watching, Kraaia stealthily slipped an overlooked pin out of her seam. Osh only looked up in time to see her stick it into the pincushion at her side, so slowly one might have thought the little red velvet ball was a sleeping animal she was trying to stab.

“Kraaia…” he faltered.

She lifted her hand carefully from her sewing basket and pushed her hair back from the hidden side of her face in one stroke, as if her entire gesture had been meant to slip a stray strand out her eye. She did not want him to see she was hurt – even by the prick of a pin – but she leaned a little closer to him and seemed to listen.

He did not want to go. His throat ached from hours of tightness, and if Kraaia so much as looked at him he was not certain he would know how to hold back tears. She had not looked him squarely in the eyes in three days.

Then, in the soft babble of the conversation in the hallway, a single word caught all his attention, like a gilded leaf floating by on the turbid stream of Gaelic: Kraaia.

Flann said it plainly enough – “gabble gabble Kraaia, gabble gabble,” – but Feradach’s chortling reply was sinister as an owl’s, and he spoke the name so tautly Osh could almost hear a beak crunching through bone. “Kraaia!”

And Flann laughed. She laughed lightly, carelessly; and to Osh’s grim experience her lightness and carelessness seemed cruel. So had she laughed when Paul had complained about the way her cousin had spoken to Kraaia. “It’s time she learned how to flirt!” had been her pronouncement then.

Kraaia moved slightly, waiting, and the candlelight sheen on her gilded head caught Osh’s eye and reminded him that he was supposed to be speaking.

“Kraaia, before I go tonight, I simply want to ask you one thing.”

Kraaia humphed. Behind them Lena had discreetly pulled Benedict onto her lap, and she was whispering a song to him and silently clapping his little hands together.

“I ask you: will you promise to not run away tonight?”

Kraaia laughed sharply. “As if I would tell you if I meant to!”

“That is what I ask you to tell.”

“Promise you’ll be good!” she crooned. “What kid has ever said, ‘No, thank you, I think I’ll be bad!’ They just do it! ‘No, thank you, Osh! I think I’ll just burn the house down. Goodbye!’”

She laughed and darted out her hand to flick her fingers at the candle flames until Osh pushed her arm gently down. Her laughter went down with it.

“If you think you will be bad, or run away,” he said patiently, “then do not promise. I do not tell you to promise, I only ask you. I do not want you to make a promise you will not keep. Better no promise.”

“What’ll you do if I don’t promise?” she asked warily.

“Worry.”

She laughed.

As if in echo, Flann laughed in the darkened corridor below, and Feradach answered with a deep chuckle. Cat and Lugaid were only talking plainly in the hall beneath Paul’s nose. Indeed, from the pained creaking of the poor chair, Osh supposed Cat must have been lounging in Paul’s lap while she chatted.

“Only for tonight, Kraaia,” Osh said softly. “Will you promise for one night? Tomorrow is another time.”

“What?” Kraaia gasped. “Are you going to make me promise every night?”

“Unless you believe you can promise one time forever. That is a hard promise to do.”

Kraaia laughed again, but something in her laughter seemed to have snapped or shifted, and she shook her head indulgently at his eccentric ideas. When she sighed in conclusion, she even shifted her weight, and leaned a little closer to him.

“I’ll promise anyway for tonight,” she said gruffly. “So you don’t have to worry and you can go have your big fun. I’m not going anywhere anyway. Lena and I shall be too busy cooking up a big supper and making a big mess for Dina to clean up when she gets home.”

“Or Dina gets home early to help make it,” Lena giggled, and Benedict squealed for his part.

“We’ll be having more fun than you anyway,” Kraaia concluded smugly.

She gripped her knees and rocked herself drunkenly like one of Benedict’s round-​​bottomed toys until she bumped against Osh’s chest, and there – except for an inch or two of air she put between them again – she stayed.

She still had not looked him in the face, but Osh was satisfied. She was creeping back to him in her own way, eyes averted, like the skittish, wounded little wolf-​​pup she was.

“But we shall save you a snack if you want – you may dine upon our crumbs!” she said grandly.

Lena and Benedict laughed.

Osh knew better than to ask Kraaia whether she wanted him to come. If asked, her fierce pride would oblige her to say no.

Perhaps, he fantasized, he simply would not go. Perhaps that would be the most eloquent way to tell the Duke everything that needed to be said. He and Kraaia could go together in the morning to settle the rest.

And meanwhile he would “help” her and Lena in the kitchen, by getting in the way as much as possible, and stealing as many “small bites” as his belly could hold, until they chased him out with wooden spoons and rolling pins and regrouped in the kitchen to laugh until they cried. It would have been, as Kraaia had threatened, more fun than he would have had at Nothelm anyway.

But in the silence he left open while searching for the right words, he heard someone already laughing in the kitchen – someone already giggling behind her hand…

Osh knew the sound of those giggles, and he knew the weight of that hand. He knew the warm darkness of the kitchen when all the lights were out but the fire, and how it practically pushed shy bodies together in the shadows, and how they clung like webs when they met.

He did not know the language or the voice of the man, but he was well-​​acquainted with the sound of a whisper reflected off the whorls of Flann’s little ear, and the warmth of reflected breath purling back over the whispering lips, and the sweet scent of her neck and hair that was even then settling on that other man’s tongue.

Osh twisted away from Kraaia and wiped his sweaty palms on his knees in preparation for getting up.

He did not know what he was feeling. The elves had no name for it, and it was no comfort to him if the men did. It was a roiling, silty flood that obscured all but the highest peaks of his landscape. When he surveyed it he scarcely knew who he was.

For the first time in many winters the elf Osh wanted to paint ugly things. Like Kraaia, he wanted to paint the walls with blood.