Malcolm sees a few things

The crystalline snow rattled like handfuls of sand against the window of Malcolm’s bedchamber. Iylaine was warm and dry, but she shivered at the sound, for she knew her father was taking the snow in the face.

Death had seemed like a brooding third presence in the room over the past days. She had thought she fought against it. She had begun to think she had won, for Malcolm was sleeping quietly now, and his head was cool. She had thought that death had gone skulking away in disappointment and that the danger had passed. But if it were even now loping across the snow, following in the tracks of her father’s horse?

He had crushed her in a mighty hug before he had left. That had comforted her in some way, but left her disappointed. It had seemed then that, if only he had squeezed a little harder, he might have burst something malignant that was growing inside of her, slowly suffocating her from within. But afterwards he had tried to kiss her, and she had turned her face away from him. Then he was gone.

She couldn’t admit it to him – she couldn’t fit the words past the thing that was suffocating her – but she hadn’t wanted him to go. Certainly not now, only two days before Christmas. The last time she had spent Christmas apart from her father, she had been too young to remember.

Iylaine lifted the trailing edge of her embroidery to her eyes to dab away a pair of tears. It was only a belt for Dunstan – she was as far behind on her gifts as she was every year at this time. Dunstan, she thought with a scornful sniff, would probably like his belt better than not if he knew that a young lady had cried into it, but he would never know. Even a boy would be less mortified than she to being seen crying; she certainly would not admit to it when there had been no witnesses.

She glanced up quickly to reassure herself of Malcolm, but his eyes were still closed. His eyelids seemed as heavy and opaque as a baby’s. His lashes were short but dark and very thick, like his brows, and they lay like darker shadows at the heart of the shadows that had gradually fallen over his eyes since he had taken ill. She saw now why he always grumbled about the shadows of her own face.

It was for him that her father had gone – or for his father and his twin brother, rather, since they did not believe that much could be done for Malcolm. They had tried to hide it from her, but they had not reckoned with her ears. She had heard their talk – she hadn’t needed to see them shake their heads. The tell-​​tale rash of camp fever had appeared across his chest. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew now that it was grave. They did not think his father would arrive in time.

It was Alred who had talked the King into allowing her to stay with him. Alred liked to say that she was the only reason he still walked the earth, for she had been the only one to believe in him when all the rest had thought him hours away from death. She had been a child then, and she did not truly believe herself responsible for his recovery, but she was pleased to let him think so if it meant she could stay with Malcolm. From the first moment she had laid a hand on his hot face, she knew she could help him.

Her first attempts had been unfortunate and had seemed almost to hurt him. She had realized quickly that a boy was not a branch, and one did not coax the fire in a boy into concentrating itself at one end or the other of him. The best thing seemed to be simply to lay her hands on him, and let the fire go into them.

Malcolm only knew that her hands were cooler and more soothing even than damp cloths, and when he suffered most he would beg her to come and lay them on his face. He, at least, had the courtesy to close his eyes and sleep then, or pretend to. 

The King, on the other hand, found these proceedings greatly amusing, and she would have hated him for his jokes about Malcolm pretending to be ill for the purpose of convincing young ladies to attend him at his bedside – but then she would hear how he would sigh once he had gone out and closed the door, and how he would stand silently before the tall window at the end of the corridor for a long while afterwards.

The last few days had been difficult. Malcolm had not always been himself. He had frightened her with his sudden laughter, and the eager way he spoke to people who were not there in a language of which she understood but a few words, and the way he paused and stared intently into nothing, as if he listened to their replies. It pained her to see him raving like this – Malcolm, who never said a word without first weighing the cost!

But he had fallen into a sort of stupor around noon, and she had dared approach him again. She had sat a long while on the edge of his bed with her hands on his cheeks and neck and wrists. It had been a long fight against the fire. It always flared up again as soon as she moved her hands away. For a long while she had sat and held his face in her hands, watching the snow fall outside as if the thought of cold would help her extinguish the fire – or as if the heat she drew from Malcolm could be sent across the miles to warm her father.

The King had found her thus the last time he had stepped in, but he had not joked then. She thought he had seen Malcolm’s stillness as a bad sign. She had been frightened too, at first, but she worried no longer. The fire had gone out, and he only slept.

Though she was exhausted and would have liked to have slept herself, she had taken up her embroidery again. She had lost much time sitting with Malcolm, and although she hated stitching, and despite her excellent excuse, she was too proud to face Christmas without a gift for everyone she loved.

The snow still fell, but softly now. The flakes were thick and furry and slow, and their white mass in the air grew dim as the afternoon darkened into evening. She prayed that her father had already found a warm place to sleep for the night, and something hot to eat for himself and his horse, but she expected he would ride as far as he could, as long as there was light to see. She saw him – alone and cold, his ugly, well-​​beloved nose dripping into his icy mustache, his hands numb around the reins. She saw him – her father, so far from her – a black speck moving across the great white as it faded into the great lavender, the great violet, the great night.

She wiped her eyes with the end of Dunstan’s belt again and bit her lips to stop their trembling. She would not cry. No – it was only that the light was growing too dim to see, and she was straining her eyes over her embroidery until they grew teary.

She reached over to the lamp on the table beside her and pinched the wick until it flared into flame. She licked the soot from her fingers and wiped them on her dress, and then she picked up her needle again. She had almost finished the belt, and then she could quickly stitch up the purse she had already embroidered for Gwynn, and then–

“Baby?”

She gasped and looked up. The dark gold of Malcolm’s eyes shone out of their shadows, and he was squirming out from under the blankets. He had seen her cry! What if he thought she had been crying about him?

“What did you just do?” he asked softly.

“Nothing – I mean – my eyes were hurting from sewing in the dark, that’s all.”

“How did you do it?”

“What?”

“Light that lamp.”

“I – ” He had seen her light the lamp! What a fool she had been! She had thought him asleep – she had been thinking of her father and had scarcely realized Malcolm was still there.

“Did you make it burn?”

“How are you feeling, Malcolm?”

He smiled. “Curious.”

“You were quite raving, you know. You were talking to people who weren’t even there, and you didn’t know anyone. And you were seeing things.”

“Things such as little elf babies making lamps burn by touching them?”

“That sort of thing,” she nodded.

“Aye,” he smiled weakly. She did not think he believed her, but he seemed too tired to dispute the matter.

“Would you like a drink, or something?”

“Something,” he muttered and shifted uncomfortably on the bed until he sat up against the headboard. “I’m hurting everywhere, Baby,” he sighed. “Now, what was I saying when I was talking to invisible elf babies?”

“I don’t know. You were talking in Gaelic.”

“Was Aengus here? Or your Da?”

“Aengus said you were only talking to your family. And my Da isn’t here. He went to get yours. And your brother.”

“What?” He looked up at the window, which was growing furred on the outside with the snow.

“They thought you would die.”

“The devil I would! So he went out to risk his own life in this weather?”

Iylaine bit her lips again.

“Mind,” he said, having realized his error. “Aengus made the same journey last year in such weather, and Maire too. And your Da is a stronger man than Aengus.”

“He is?”

“He has to be, to put up with a temper like yours.”

“His is as bad!”

“So, he will simply throw a tantrum in the snow, and see if it doesn’t let him alone afterwards.”

She smiled briefly at the thought.

“That’s a handsome handkerchief you’re making, Baby, for wiping your eyes. But isn’t it rather long and skinny for that?”

“It is not a handkerchief! It is a belt! And it is a present! And I told you, I wasn’t crying – my eyes were only hurting from sewing in the dark.”

“Is it for me?”

“No! I wouldn’t make your present right before you, you blockhead.”

“Is it for Bertie-​​boy?”

“No! It’s for Dunstan.”

“Oh, Dunstan. Hmm! Dunstan! I wonder about this sewing-​​in-​​the-​​dark story, now. I hadn’t thought of Dunstan…”

“Oh, that’s fine! You think that if I make something for a boy, I must like him!”

“No – only if you make him something and you cry over it.”

“I told you, I was not crying, you stupid cheesehead! And anyway, I was crying for my Da, not for Dunstan.”

Malcolm laughed. “You were not crying, and you were crying for your Da? Poor Baby cry-​​baby!”

“Shut up, you stupid beetlebrain boy!”

“What are you thinking to give me, Baby mine? And more importantly, did you cry over it?”

“I shall give you a cat to eat your tongue, that’s what!”

“But did you cry into his fur?”

“Malcolm!” she shrieked and stood. “You stupid, stupid – ”

The door opened and the King’s head appeared around the edge of it. “This is a new treatment for fevers,” he said wryly.

“It works well,” Malcolm said from his bed.

“So I see.”

Iylaine gathered up her sewing, blushing and furious. “If you’re so much better, then I shall leave you.”

“But Baby!” Malcolm wailed.

“And you will have nothing for Christmas from me!”

“Oh, I shall like that very well!” Malcolm laughed as she stormed out. “You cry over nothing all the time!”