Juliet Marillier - Heart's Blood

“My baby!” shrieked the little girl. “I need my baby!”

“Come and get her, then,” taunted Aislinn, her voice reedy and ragged, as if it cost her dearly to disobey Anluan’s command. “Come on, you’re supposed to be brave, aren’t you, little spy? Just run over and grab your precious baby. Didn’t look after her very well, did you? She’s only a bundle of rags now.”

The little girl stood shaking, trembling, full of the urge to rush across and snatch back her darling, but holding still because she had promised. Beside me, Anluan drew an uneven breath. All hung in the balance. One word wrong, one gesture out of place and we would fail again. We could not ask the child to do this a second time; there had been a note of utter terror in her voice.

Gearróg muttered something and let go of Aislinn. Cathaír held firm. Gearróg stooped to retrieve the bundle, then moved into the center of the pentagram, kneeling to put the kerchief in the child’s hands. She was sobbing with fright. He picked her up; settled her on his hip. “It’s all right, little one,” he said.“We’ll do this together, you and me. A game of pretend. We’re pretending to be brave dogs on guard, like Fianchu.” He gazed over at Anluan and nodded as if to say, You can go on now .

No going back. No thinking beyond this moment.

“Egruser!” Anluan called. “Egruser!” and as he spoke the ritual words a scream ripped across the circle, a wrenching wail of anguish: “ Nooooo!” Even as she fought against the charm, Aislinn faded. Shadows danced.The torch blew out, leaving the circle in near darkness.The wind gusted again. The leaves shivered on the trees; the pattern of sand went whistling away across the flagstones.

From one breath to the next, the host was gone. Between the points of the ritual star the spaces were empty. In the center, a stalwart figure stood with feet planted and head held high, and in his arms was a smaller person, whose hair was no longer gossamer-white but dark as fine oak wood.

“Magnus,” said Anluan in a voice unlike his own, “light the torch again.”

“Gearróg?” I stepped down, not quite sure what I was seeing there, but knowing I had just witnessed an act of such selfless courage that it took my breath away.

Light flared as Magnus touched the torch to the brazier and lifted it high.

“By all the saints,” he said in tones of awe.

Gearróg set the child down and she ran to me. Her hair shone glossy brown in the torchlight; her face was rosy.When I lifted her, she felt warm and real. Gearróg was examining his hands, moving his feet, touching his face as if hardly able to believe he was still here.

“I’m . . .” he said, disbelieving. “I can . . .”

Without a word, Anluan strode across to throw his arms around the guard. Olcan fetched another torch, and it became apparent that something truly astonishing had occurred. Here before us were two living beings: a little girl of five, a sturdily built man of perhaps five-and-thirty. Blood flowed beneath their skin; their bodies were solid flesh. Gearróg put a hand against his chest.“Beating like a drum,” he said in wonder.“Sweet Jesus, my lord, you’ve wrought a miracle.”

“If this is a miracle,” Anluan said, his hand on Gearróg’s shoulder, “it is not my doing. I cannot believe such a wondrous change could be made by speaking a charm whose origins lay in a dark work of sorcery. This . . . this transformation was not wrought by my fumbling attempt to reverse Nechtan’s spell, but by your act of selflessness, Gearróg, and by the child’s loving trust.” He looked across at me, and at the girl in my arms. I saw that after the long and testing day, he was close to tears. “We must find you a name, little one,” he said. “We cannot have a daughter with no name.”

“It’s late,” I said, struggling to grasp onto the real world with its practical challenges and its comforting routines. “She should be in bed.” Emer, I thought as I carried our new daughter indoors. If Anluan agreed, we would give her his mother’s name.

Nobody had much to say.The immensity of what had occurred had set a deep shock in all of us.We were too stunned to feel joy at our success, too awestruck to absorb the consequences of this night of deep change. Each of us took refuge in ordinary things, the little things that help us deal with what is too large for our minds to encompass. Gearróg carried the child over to Anluan’s quarters while Magnus found a small straw pallet and a blanket or two. She was asleep even before we laid her down in this improvised bed. I tucked the embroidered bundle in beside her. Anluan went to the chapel to check that all was well with the wounded and their attendants, and returned to say that even the most sorely injured was holding his own. Gearróg offered to stand guard overnight while we slept. Anluan thanked him gravely and said he would not dream of it. If Gearróg was concerned for our safety, we would promise to bar the door until sunrise. “You, too, must sleep,” he said.

“Sleep,” Gearróg muttered in astonished tones. “I haven’t slept in a hundred years.” A vast yawn overtook him.

“Come on, then,” Magnus said from the doorway, where he stood with Olcan. “We’d better find you a bed. The three of us might share a jug of ale first, eh?”

Anluan closed the door, pushed the bolt across, stood very still a moment without turning.

“Are you all right?” I asked him. Magnus had brought us a candle; its wavering light sent shadows dancing around the chamber. Someone had tidied the place, straightening the bedding and removing the remnants of that desperate effort to save Anluan’s life.The memory of it would be with me forever.

“I think so, Caitrin. So much has happened today, I may spend the rest of my life making sense of it all. Such immense change. I feel as I’ve been turned inside out and upside down. And yet . . .”

I sat down on the edge of the bed and began to unfasten my bodice.

“And yet, all I seem to be able to think of is what an opportunity I will be missing tonight, since I am too weary to do more than climb under those covers, put my arms around you and fall fast asleep.”Anluan sat down beside me and bent to pull off his boots.

“There’s always tomorrow,” I said. “Let me help you with that.”

Summer

Irial’s garden is full of color: honeysuckle cloaks the walls, the beds of lavender are alive with bees, the gray-green foliage of the giant comfrey bush shelters our heart’s blood plant, which has sent up five stems this season. The birdbath hosts a crowd of chattering sparrows. Streak, the terrier, races madly around the path, pursued by a muddy-looking Emer. Our daughter is growing apace; her hair is long enough for plaits, and she has lost two baby teeth. Nechtan’s All Hallows rendered death to Aislinn.Anluan’s All Hallows has given our daughter and her protector full and natural life.

I watch them through the library window. More than a year has passed since the day I first came up the hill to Whistling Tor and met a man with hair like fire and skin like snow, a crooked man who shouted at me and almost frightened me away. Now here I am. That crooked man is my beloved husband. We have our daughter and another child on the way. And I have my first commission, copying a book of classical verse for Fergal of Silverlake. Fergal wants decorated capitals, ornate borders and a touch of gold leaf, and he will pay appropriately. The work is going well. It is a joy to take up my craft again after so long, to lose myself in the intricacies of it and to see a thing of beauty flowering on the blank page before me. I’ve had to ban Emer from the library. With the best intentions in the world, she enters any room like a miniature whirlwind with Streak generally not far behind, and there are precious items here, Irial’s notebooks, my writing materials, and the other documents now stored away in boxes.We have put the dark history of Anluan’s family behind us, but we will never forget.