“Well, then.” My attempt at brisk confidence fell something short. Maraid was crying and so was I. “Let’s make a sisters’ pact right now.” I headed for the pantry, where I filled a small bowl with suppertime leftovers—a little pease pudding, a scoop of soft cheese, a handful of dried plums.
“What are you doing, Caitrin?”
I set the bowl before her, then poured two cups of ale. “This is the agreement. You eat, and while you’re eating—I mean properly, not just playing with your food—I’ll tell you a story. Tomorrow, the same, but I’ll tell some of the story each time you feed Etain too.” Fianait had taken the baby away to settle her for the night. I would enlist Fianait’s help in the morning.
“A story? What story?” Maraid eyed the little meal without enthusiasm.
“An exciting one about a girl who runs away from home and goes to . . .You’ll have to start eating to find out where.”
“All right.” She picked up a single dried plum; I did not speak until she put it in her mouth and began to chew. A fleeting smile crossed her face. “You never used to be so bossy, Caitrin.What happened to you?”
“This girl,” I said, holding my ale cup between my hands, “had been very frightened; so frightened that she had lost sight of what was real and what wasn’t. So frightened that people thought she was out of her wits. She felt all alone in the world; she thought everyone she loved had deserted her.Then one day, out of the blue, she found the courage to flee. She ran, she walked, she took rides, she slept under hedges and in the shelter of haystacks, until the day a carter dropped her off in the middle of nowhere and drove away without a word.”
Intent on the story, my sister had stopped eating. I waited, eyes on the bowl.
“Bully,” Maraid said, getting up to fetch herself a spoon. “And then what?”
I told her how the girl had met two friendly strangers who had vanished when they were most needed; how she had prayed her way into a fortified village; how she had raced off up a hill in pursuit of a man named Magnus, and had been helped by a gnomelike person and a giant hound.
“And then,” I said as my sister put a piece of cheese in her mouth,“she wandered into a lovely little garden, all overgrown but full of bright flowers and singing birds, with a birch tree in the center, and a bench on which lay a book. Nobody was in sight. She wandered about, seeing how cleverly the plants had been chosen, and there, in a corner under a comfrey bush, she saw a clump of heart’s blood.”
Maraid made a little sound; she knew what a treasure that herb was.
“She stooped to admire it, and at that moment a commanding voice rang out behind her:
“Who was it?”
“That must wait until next time.” I wanted to be sure I had captured her or this experiment might be short- lived. Her grief was deep; it would not be easily healed.
“Was it an ogre? A beast? A handsome prince?”
I smiled. “Not exactly.”
“Is this a true story, Caitrin?” Maraid had eaten almost everything I had given her; now she was sipping her ale.
“I’ll let you make your own judgment. I haven’t told it to anyone else. If I did, most folk would think I really was mad.”
“That’s what Ita told me, Caitrin. She said that after I left here, you became completely unhinged. She said you couldn’t even keep yourself clean. She told me you bolted with only the clothes on your back. She said you were never coming home.”
“I don’t suppose she told you that Cillian came after me, and found me, and tried to force me back here.”
Her eyes went round. “He
“Tomorrow,” I said. “It’s a long story.”
As summer became autumn my sister began to mend, along with the house in which we had been raised with such love and hope. The milestones were small but each was cherished: the first time Maraid smiled; the first time she offered to help prepare a meal; the day when Fidelma and Brendan decided we could cope without them and returned home. They told us we would be welcome in their house any time we wished to pay them a visit, and I offered the same invitation. Their kindness had been a remarkable gift.
Fianait and I scrubbed the house from top to toe. We aired bedding and set flowers on windowsills.We baked bread, brewed ale and made preserves. I hired a boy to help with the outside work, and he whistled as he replenished the wood pile and dug over the vegetable patch. Slowly our old home began to get its heart back, and my sister hers.
As Maraid’s cheeks regained their rosy blush and her body began to fill out, Etain blossomed, turning before our eyes from a pale waif to a bonny, healthy babe. The fretful crying ceased. She bellowed for her meals, drank with enthusiasm, then slept in blissful silence. I liked to set her free of her swaddling cloths and see her kick her legs and stretch her arms as if eager for what the world might have to offer. I loved to watch her sleeping, for there was a tender mystery in the little face in repose, closed lids concealing secret thoughts beyond the comprehension of all but an infant new-minted. Looking at Etain, I longed for a child of my own.
There came a day when I passed the open doorway of the bedchamber and heard my sister talking to the baby as she fed her.
“He made the most beautiful music, Etain; he had a voice that would melt the heart of a stone statue, and his fingers on the harp were as light as swallows in the sky. He was the best papa you could ever have had, my love, the best in all the world. His eyes were just like yours, green as grass and bright as dewdrops. Never say he’s gone. Only that he’s nearby, and watching over us every moment of the day.”
I tiptoed away, eyes streaming, knowing a far greater milestone had been passed. As I stood in the courtyard trying to compose myself, the longing for Anluan stabbed sharp as glass in my breast. I would never hold his child in my arms; I would never lie with him and experience the joy Maraid had had in Shea. My body ached for that loss.
