“Olcan, I know you are not part of the host, but something much older. Are there others like you on the Tor?”
A strange smile then, sad, accepting, proud.“I’m the last of my kind in these parts, Caitrin. I’ve heard tell of others far to the south, but that might only be a story.”
“That’s sad for you. Haven’t you been tempted to travel there, to seek them out?” I did not ask if he had ever had a wife and children, a family, or whether he had wanted one.There were so many stories in this place, and most of them sorrowful.
“You’d like to make things right for all of us, wouldn’t you, lass? I’m content enough here on the Tor; it’s my place, has been for far longer than you can imagine.The host, Nechtan’s spell, the whole sorry business, that’s only a bump in the road for me. Still, I’d like to see the lad happy. I’d like to see him make something good out of all this.”
“The lad—you mean Anluan?”
“He’s got a lot to contend with.We all need to stand by him, help him see this through.”
“I plan to do that, Olcan. Let me ask you—” But there was no asking about the voice Gearrog had mentioned, or about Muirne’s strange attitude to the current crisis, or about a number of other things that were exercising my mind, because Anluan was in the inner doorway, leaning against the frame, looking too weary to do so much as sit down at the table, let alone address a formal council in just a few hours.
“Caitrin?”
“I’ll be off,” muttered Olcan, and clicked his fingers. Fianchu snatched up a last crust and was away out the door after his master.
Anluan and I gazed at each other across the kitchen.
“Finished for now, yes.” He came over and sat down on the bench, then put his elbow on the table and rested his brow on his hand. “He believes I can do this. But hope is such a tenuous quality.To feel it and then to be denied what one most longs for . . .Better, surely, not to hope at all, than to open the heart to a hope that is impossible.”
I had stilled in the middle of putting the herbal mixture into the cups. I set the spoon down. Surely he wouldn’t turn back now, change his mind about this, after showing such strength? “No, Anluan,” I said, my heart thumping.“That is quite wrong.You must let hope in, then instead of simply waiting for good things to happen, work as hard as you can to achieve them.The goal someone hopes for can be anything: writing a line of perfect script, or baking a pie, or . . . or raising a child well, despite the odds. Or standing up for what is right.”
He had lifted his head. In this light, his eyes were the hue of ultramarine, an ink that rivalled heart’s blood for rarity. I could not read his expression. I only knew that from now on I would not look at him without wanting to touch. I wondered whether he could see this on my face. “I thought I’d make Magnus’s favorite restorative draft,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush. “This seems an appropriate time for it.”
Anluan watched me as I finished preparing the drink.“Raising a child well,” he mused after a while. “You mean Magnus?”
“I was thinking of him, yes. He did a good job with you, against quite extreme odds. At least, that’s how it seems to me. And my parents raised me and Maraid well, first the two of them together, and later Father on his own. I was luckier than you. I didn’t lose him until I was already grown.” I felt my throat close up, reluctant to let the words out. I heard the familiar trembling in my voice, but this time I was determined to say it. “He collapsed in the workroom one morning. By the time I went down to join him, he was lying on the floor dead. He hadn’t even been ill. After that, I . . . I was not myself for some time.”
“Come, sit by me.”
It was easy, then, to move to the bench beside him; natural to sit close enough so that from time to time, not quite accidentally, his thigh touched mine. We sat thus awhile, watching the steam rise from the two cups and listening to the sounds from outside: Eichri arguing amicably with one of his brethren, Rioghan issuing orders, Fianchu barking.
“About hope,” Anluan said.“There is no point in hoping for what can never be.”
“That’s true. But sometimes we do that anyway. I know about impossible hope, Anluan. After Father died, I prayed that time would go backwards. I prayed that I would wake up and find that it had all been a bad dream. I longed for him to be alive again and the others gone.”
“Others?”
“Cillian and his mother.They came to take charge of everything when Father died. Ita—Cillian’s mother—told everyone I was out of my wits. Perhaps it was true. It was a mad kind of grief, it took up every part of me. I wanted the whole world to go away. If I could have crawled into a shell and hidden for the rest of my life, that’s what I would have done.”
Anluan reached out to lay his fingers against my wrist for a moment. It was the most tentative of caresses, and yet my pulse raced at his touch.“But you are the bravest person I’ve ever met, Caitrin,” he said.
“I wasn’t brave then. I had to make myself face up to my fears. The hardest step was the first: deciding to run away from Market Cross. The most frightening thing was not my father’s death, not Cillian and Ita, but the . . .”
“Tell me,” Anluan said.
I took a deep breath. “It was me, the way I shrank down after it happened, the way I lost myself . . . Like falling deep into a well.” I had dreamed of that, over and over: the yawning hole, the clutching hands, the long, long way down . . .“I started believing what they said about me, that I was useless, hopeless, crazy . . . I even believed that when Cillian beat me, it was because I deserved it . . . If people say those things often enough, it starts to feel true.”
“You’re shivering,” Anluan said.
“I’m all right.”
