Participles and Portents (77)

Of Sealing Wax and Cracked Cups

She could not begin to imagine sleeping.  She was torn between wanting to stand in the doorway and count the rise and fall of her children's chests, memorizing the details of their sleep, and slipping out the door to the strand to see if he was there.  She felt caged in her room.  After everything that had happened, it seemed empty.  It seemed too calm.  Her fingers rose to her lips, she could almost still taste the combination of seawater and blood against her cheeks and tongue.  Her fingers fluttered to her throat remembering the thickness, the lack of air, the desparate need to reach beyond that and find her boys. 

She saw them then, the three birds, wrapped together, wing over wing, like a sculpture, like the brooch Aiofe had made.  They had looked so protective of each other.  Then the connective stare that had singled out her bird.  She would have recognized that haughty piercing black eye anywhere, she thought.  The image slipped from the three birds to the granular dissolution of the three beautiful children as the King had risen from the sea, his age rolling from him in waves as he moved foward, reaching toward them.  A shimmer of amber, indigo, crimson and emerald, ephemeral, yet there, glinted in the half-light.  Aiofe hovered, she could see the tears in the young woman's eyes, the tremble on her lips as the King turned but briefly to take her hand before surging forward to his children. Then the srange dissipation of them all, like sea-spray confetti in the wind.  They simply broke apart into scattered multi-colored droplets and were gone, leaving the waves lapping at the cavern's lip and Lin shivering there in the water.

She flashed to the strand then, the anxious minutes they waited until the grey hound was flung out of the sea, its graceful shape belied by the howling that turned to racking sobs as Sean lay naked upon the shore.  She grew warm at the memory of Roary moving quickly to help him up and drape his coat over him.  They had all moved together, supporting Sean and facing the sea.  The waiting.  In her memory the wait seemed like hours though she knew it was only minutes.  Finally the sea had cast Ian out.  She remembered with a shudder how violent it had seemed and the shock of his hand torn open as it was.  She cast back to the image of Sean handing over the coat as he bent to cover his brother and whisper to him.  Ian with nothing to say as yet, just that terrible look of hunger in his eyes.  Then Fiona, bubbling over, handing a quilt to Sean and pulling them together, rubbing them down, clucking over them.  Lin joining, still overcome with relief, almost falling into them.  Solace, she thought, and home.  Dancing slowly in a family embrace with Fiona and the boys, until a feeling of absence made itself known, and Sean and Fiona had pulled Roary in to join them.  She smiled remembering the look they had exchanged, one of joy that things had ended well, and one perhaps of promise?

She slipped on her coat and picked up her shoes. Carefully opening her bedroom door, she made her way to the boys' room and peeked in.  Leaning back onto the doorframe, she sighed, enjoying the sight of them whole and together under this roof wither herself and her mother.  She wondered if Ian would speak tomorrow and what he wold have to say.  Was his experience something too horrible to speak about?  And what of Sean, who had fallen asleep with tears still wet on his cheeks?  She paused to take a long, sweet breath.  She would worry about their tomorrows tomorrow.  Tonight she was going to see if Roary was indeed waiting on the strand.

She felt light as she slipped out the door.  A feeling of being totally centered seemed to add lift to her whole body.  It was if she had lost both years and pounds in just the last few hours.  She was tempted to skip she felt so giddy, but held herself back given the rough terrain.  Still, when she rounded onto the strand and saw the figure in the moonlight, she could not hold herself back.  Her simple gait became a loping run.  For a brief moment she thought, "I do really hope this is him." That was just before she launched herself into the shadow's arms.  When its head bowed to claim her lips and the heart uncurled from her belly to wind down to her toes and up to wrap around her spine, she knew exactly who had caught her in the moonlight.

Clinging to each other with the music of the waves making a strident offset to the racing of the blood in their veins, they could have been ghostlike vestiges of the past.  Lovers lost upon the strand of time itself, had it not been for the modern cut of their clothing.

Lin leaned back in his arms and gazed into his eyes. "Vacation is just about up for the boys.  Their plane leaves in just two days."

"Aye, well at least it's humans that will be flyin'," he grinned.

Her serious countenance did not waver.   "Yes, it's just that with all that has happened, I think I will have to go back with them.  I was planning to stay another month, but I am not sure I can do that now.  Who knows what they have really been through?"

Roary peeled away from her.  He had nor really thought about what would happen when the quest was over.  He knew the boys would go home.  He even thought Fiona would go at some point.  But somehow he had never pictured Lin anywhere but here. Running a hand through his mane of curls, he looked down at the sand and the rock.  "Aye, no one knows.  But perhaps, ye'll find out more on the morrow and can make this decision then?"  He asked with a hopeful lilt at the end.

"I suppose.  Perhaps I am just over-mothering and assuming the worst.  Perhaps they just padded about, and the worst they went through was eating a raw rabbit or two."

"Well, 'tis possible."  He moved closer,  close enough to put his hands in her hair.  He loved the silk of it on his fingers.  Then he kissed her again, kissed her long and deep, trying to put into the kiss all that he was not able to say, all that he hoped she already knew.

She rose into the kisss, pressing herself closer.  She moved her hands inside his overcoat, pressing her hands against chest, rubbing the rough wool of his jacket.  Feeling the heat of emotion pressing through her, she balled her hands in the fabric and heard a soft crinkle.  She moved her hands under the jacket, seeking more touch, more heat.  The kiss became a moment of its own.  It became almost a being of its own.  It was as if they created a blend of themselves in the flow of that caress.  His hand stroked through the silk of her hair, followed the outline of her face, settled into the curve of her neck and pulled her closer, though there seemed no distance to spare.  Around them the sea continued its ceaseless battle with the rocks as the moon bathed everything in its blue wash, a silent presence, watching all, absolving all, encouraging all.

Lin let her mind release itself completely into the embrace.  She let her senses take over her will and reveled in the absolute freedom.  Beneath her palm she could feel the roughness of his chest, the hair curling under the cotton of his shirt.  The heat leaking through to saturate her senses.  It was indescribably seductive.  She circled her hand, intent on the feel of the texture and heat, pulling back sharply as the edge of her hand was sliced.  "What in the world?"  She spun her hand inside his jacket and pulled at the offending piece of paper.  Just as he reached to stop her, it came free and edged into the bite of the moon's omnipresent glare.

The shock of what she was seeing made her rigid, speechless.  Her body hard-braked from passionate heat to blank, empty cold.   He stood silent, one hand caught at the nape of her neck, the other fallen at his side.

"No, please tell me no," Lin rasped as a tear began its slow trail from eye to chin.

Still he said nothing,  He could think of nothing.  His guilt, now exposed, was etched on his face.  When she finally looked at him, when the silence had waited too long, she knew there would be no salving answer.

"It was you.  I never lost it.  It was you.  And when you were done with it, you left it in the spare room.  Why?  Why would you steal my thoughts?  Why would you sneak in and take my past from me without my choosing?"  Her voice rose steadily as she cast her accusations, lobbed her questions at him, until finally waving her poem in his face, she locked onto his eyes.

Still he was silent.  He had no explanation that made sense.  What could he give this woman that would make stealing her privacy all right?

"Why?" she practically screamed as she pummeled him in the chest with her fist.

He caught her hand with both of his.

'I ha' no reason that makes what I did right.  I searched the cottage for the brooch. 'Twas me burden then and I failed.  I found yer little book, I thought it might help me wi' the riddle.  After that, after I began the readin' o' it, I should ha' stopped. But I dinna'.  An the poem?  I loved it.  I still do, though not as much as I do its author."

She stared at him.  how could he talk about loving her in the same breath as betraying her?

"I don't know how you were raised.  But love and betrayal of trust don't live side by side in my world.  I guess I helped you enjoy a little adventure.  I do hope I was entertaining enough for you, a big strapping thief like yourself.  As for the poem, sorry, but an author's work is their own and unless it is published, it is only read by those they trust."  She pushed away from him , crumpling the slip of paper and pressing it into her pocket.  The tears were freely cascading down her face now.  "I really didn't think I could hurt more than I did before I came here.  At least not more at the hands of a man.  Congratulations, Bookseller, you've proven that theory wrong."  Then she turned and began to run back along the path.  This time there was no lightness to her step.  Her gait looked more like the disjointed efforts of a broken puppet forced to finish its performance by a mad puppeteer.

"Lin, please don't, no like this," she heard him calling. She could swear she heard a crack in his voice.  He was a damn good actor, that one, should have gone out for the Irish national stage, she thought as she let anger take over the emptiness that threatened to consume her.

Alone with the moonlight and the sea, Roary let the guilt wash over him.  He had been carrying it for far too long.  Perhaps he should have told her ealier, when Aiofe had first appeared.  But that would not explain why he had read on or why he had kept the poem.  No, that could not be explained.   He looked down at his hands.  They were empty now, as empty as the arms that had so recently been full.  He felt drained of purpose and drained of honor.  He could go after her, but to what end?  He had betrayed her trust.  Some things can never be undone, not even with a twist of magic.  He pulled his collar up and headed for home, back to his empty flat and the yawning stacks of books.  His shop seemed liked very small solace after all that had just taken place.  The idea of his days spent idly running it and chatting up the odd tourist and his neighbors seemed an eternity of solitude.  He heaved a sigh.  Perhaps it would do him some good.  Given time, solace may turn to peace of mind at some point even if it doesna fill the heart.