Darkness Descending

At last, after what seemed not nearly long enough despite repeated encores, the band put down their instruments, called their last good nights, and escaped. Leofsig and Felgilde reclaimed their cloaks and joined the stream of music lovers pouring from the hall.

Outside, the stream divided. Many couples, instead of going straight home, ducked into doorways in dark side streets to continue what they’d started on the dance floor. Hopeful but not expectant, Leofsig started to swing down one of those alleyways himself. He thought Felgilde would steer him back toward their houses. Instead, with a throaty chuckle, she followed.

Heart pounding, Leofsig found a doorway no one else had. He wrapped his cloak around both of them, though nobody could have seen much in the darkness anyhow. Felgilde’s mouth found his as his hands roamed over her. He slid one under her tunic; it closed on the smooth, soft flesh of her breast. She sighed and kissed him harder than ever.

He rubbed at her crotch with his other hand. He’d never tried that before; he’d never thought she would let him try. “Oh, Leofsig,” she whispered, and spread her legs a little to make it easier for him. And then she was groping him, too, through his tunic and his drawers. He grunted in astonishment and delight. It was hard to remember to keep his hand busy.

Felgilde whimpered and quivered. Her hand squeezed him painfully tight. A moment later, groaning, he made a mess in his drawers. Everything down there was wet and sticky, and he didn’t care at all. “I like Ethelhelm’s music,” Felgilde said seriously.

“So do I,” Leofsig panted. Now he really did head home.

If he couldn’t bring Vanai to Gromheort, Ealstan wanted to go to Oyngestun. He wondered if he wouldn’t be able to see her again till the next mushroom season. He was sure he’d go mad long before then.

But if he did go see her, the first thing he’d want to do would be to find someplace where they could be alone. He knew that. He wondered if it would make her angry. He hoped not, but he couldn’t be sure.

Maybe letters are better after all, he thought one morning at breakfast. Vanai had opened her soul, or at least some of it, to him, and he’d tried to do the same with her. He really felt he knew her now, which he couldn’t have said when they lay down together in the oak grove. He marveled that she kept living with her grandfather, who in her letters sounded even more difficult than he’d seemed when Ealstan briefly met him a couple of years before. Ealstan didn’t quite understand why Vanai and Brivibas had fallen out--she never did make that clear--but he was sure he would have fallen out with the stiff-necked old scholar, too.

And maybe letters aren’t better, he thought. He couldn’t stroke a letter’s hair or kiss its lips or caress it. He couldn’t. . . Thinking about all the things he couldn’t do with a letter made him forget his morning porridge altogether, and he’d only been picking at it before.

“Hurry up, Ealstan--you’re going to make both of us late.” Sidroc snorted. “There! For once I get to nag you, not the other way round.”

“I think it’s the first time ever,” Elfryth said. Ealstan’s mother sent him an anxious glance. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Recalled to himself, Ealstan proved it by gulping his wine and inhaling the porridge left in his bowl. He still finished after Sidroc, but not by more than a couple of spoonsful. Elfryth looked happier. Ealstan got to his feet. “All right, cousin, I’m ready. Let’s get going.”

They both exclaimed when they went outside. Sidroc said, “My nose is going to freeze.” He wrapped his cloak around himself in a dramatic gesture, but that did nothing to protect the organ in question.

“Look!” Ealstan pointed to windows. “Frost!” Frost didn’t come to Gromheort very often; he admired its delicate traceries. Then he rubbed his nose. Like Sidroc’s, it was turning frosty, too.

He spent the first couple of blocks on the way to school shivering and complaining. After that, he resigned himself to the weather and went back to thinking about Vanai. That warmed him at least as effectively as his cloak. It also made him oblivious to Sidroc. He’d long wished for something that could do that, but it irked his cousin. Sidroc gave him a shot in the ribs with his elbow and said, “Powers above, you haven’t heard a word I’ve told you.”

“Huh?” Ealstan proved Sidroc right. Feeling foolish, he said, “Try it again. I really am listening now.”

“Well, why weren’t you before?” Sidroc demanded. “Half the time these days, you go stumbling around like a moonstruck calf. What in blazes is wrong with you, anyhow?”

I’m in love, Ealstan thought. But since he’d been rash enough to fall in love with a Kaunian girl, Sidroc was the last person he wanted to know it. If Sidroc knew, he could endanger Ealstan himself, he could endanger Vanai, and he could endanger Leofsig, too. Ealstan set his jaw and said nothing. He did try to pay more attention to what his cousin said, which struck him as more trouble than it was worth.