like this ending,’ said Simon. ‘Try another.’
I thought for a bit. ‘What if he went to war, and came back to find his brother had died, and all the lands were his?’
Simon laughed, and I didn’t like the harshness of it. ‘How do you think he would feel about that?’
‘Confused, I should think. He gets his heart’s desire, which is to take his brother’s place. But for ever more, he thinks about those years he wasted, envying his brother instead of getting to know him.’
‘His brother wasn’t interested,’ said Simon flatly, and I thought I’d come too close to the mark. I concentrated on the wreath I was weaving. Leaves of russet, deepest brown, golden yellow. Some were already fragile, the last trace of summer slipping away from their skeletal bodies. Berries red as blood. He watched me.
‘Sorcha,’ he said after a while, and it was the first time he’d used my name instead of ‘witch’ or ‘girl’ or something worse. ‘How can you believe in these tales? Giants, and faeries, and monsters. They are a child’s fantasies.’
‘Some may be true, and some not,’ I said, threading a long pointed leaf under, and through, and around itself. ‘Does it matter?’
He got up, and I heard the change in his breathing as he swallowed a gasp of pain; silence meant control.
‘Nothing in life is like your stories,’ he said. ‘You dwell in your own little world here; you can have no idea of what exists outside it. I wish –’ he broke off.
‘Wish what?’ I asked when he did not go on.
‘I would almost wish that you should never discover it,’ he said with his back turned to me.
‘Don’t you think I have begun to?’ I stood up, the little wreath in one hand. ‘I have seen what they did to you. I have listened to you crying for help. And you have told me yourself such stories of cruelty that I must believe them true. You have hardly thought to spare me.’
‘You shut that world out, with your tales.’
‘Not entirely,’ I said as we began the slow walk back. ‘Not for you, or for myself. The tales make it a bit easier, that’s all. But you will have to talk about it eventually, if you are to heal and return home.’
Father Brien had given him a strong stick of ash, and he used it to help him walk; he was still painfully hesitant, but he moved along now without my support. Here, the path was thickly covered with fallen leaves, and the tangled network of bare branches let cold light through to touch them with gold and silver. Linn was ecstatic, digging and sniffing here and there. A bird called; another answered.
‘Will I ever be able to sleep again?’ he asked suddenly, taking me by surprise. My answer was guarded; I had seen those taken by the Fair Folk, how their madness never quite left them by night or day, how the whirl of memories in their heads gave them no peace.
‘It might take a long time,’ I said gently. ‘You have made some progress; but I cannot lie to you. Such damage does not heal easily. You may be your own best helper, if you choose the right path.’
Simon’s body was healing. He had been young, and strong, and resilient, and he was winning the fight against the damage and invasions of that night and the evil humours that had followed. After a time he began to walk without the stick, and he exchanged his first few words with Father Brien, almost without noticing. I greeted each small victory with joy. A kind word, an attempt to do something new for himself, a spontaneous smile, each was a priceless gift. Once the healing process took hold, it gathered speed, and I began to believe we might eventually be able to send him back to his own folk.
It was clear, however, that he could not yet leave our care. Late autumn weather was closing in and the nights were longer and colder. And Simon could not yet shake the demons that beset him during the times of darkness. Over and over, his torturers visited and tormented him, and he fought them, or fled from them, or gave himself up to their mercies. One night I got a black eye out of it, when he rose from his bed half-asleep and tried to escape out into the night. Between us, Father Brien and I stopped him, but I caught the full force of his arm across my face. In the morning he would not believe that he had done this. Another time he caught me off guard, waking before I did, suddenly and in terror, but silent for once; and he had the knife in his hand and turned in on himself before I was aware of it. How I moved fast enough I’ll never know, but I grabbed his wrist and hung on, and screamed for Father Brien, and the two of us tried to calm him, while he wept and raved and begged us to kill him and let that be an end of it. And slowly, slowly I spoke to him and sang to him until he grew quiet and almost slept, but not quite. He had stopped talking, but his eyes spoke to me, and their message was plain. He understood too well what the future would be for him, and he asked me why I would not end his pain. What right had I to refuse this?
I had told him many tales. But I could not tell him why I believed he must live and grow well and move on. If he scoffed at the tales of Culhan and the old heroes, the sagas of the folk from the west, if he found the stories of the little folk and the tree people odd, though I myself had seen their work with my own eyes, how could I expect him to believe his destiny and mine were somehow linked in what the Forest Lady had told me? He would never believe that I had seen her myself, there in the clearing in her cloak of midnight and the jewels bright in her hair. Simon was of another folk entirely, a practical, earth-bound people who could credit only the evidence of their own eyes. And yet, if ever I met a person who needed to let the magic and the mystery of the old ways flow through his spirit, it was him. I used it to heal him whether he knew it or not, but without his own faith in himself it could go only so far. Until he could be convinced of a reason to live, we could not safely let him go, even if his body was well enough mended, for he would not last even the first night without us.
I tried to talk of this with him, but he shut me out whenever I drew close to his home, or his family, or whatever it was that drove him. At first he was, I think, adhering strictly to his soldier’s training, which had held him silent under torture and which was born of the feud between our peoples. I was the enemy; I should know nothing of him that might give me the advantage, or put his kind at risk. However, those nights of torment, which we endured together whether we wished it or not, changed both of us. Towards the end he recognised me, somehow, as part of his world, and at the same time he knew I was neither of the one side nor the other in this long struggle. With my herbs and my stories, I was to Simon some strange, alien kind of being, but slowly he began to trust me just a little, despite himself.
Father Brien was making plans as best he could. Time was passing and still the night terrors persisted. Wet weather had come on, and I could not keep up Simon’s walks; he was restless now, confined to the cave even by daytime, and he vented his frustrations on me by arguing every point. Why must he eat and drink when I told him – what was the use? And, frequently, why did I not go home and play with my dolls, instead of experimenting on him? Why should I bother mending his outdoor clothes, when he would never be fit to do other than lie around being tormented by a crazy girl and a pious old fool? After a while he was driving both of us mad, but at least Father Brien had the luxury of retreating to the cottage to write or meditate. I had made a promise to Simon and I was stuck with him.
I was trying to sew, and kept my eyes on my work as Simon paced around me.
‘What are you doing anyway?’ he demanded, looking more closely at the over-tunic I had in my hands. ‘What is that?’
I showed him. ‘You will hardly notice it,’ I said. ‘But it will help to protect you. The rowan tree is one of the most sacred; such a cross is sewn into all my brothers’ garments, when they go to war.’ The red thread with which I had bound the tiny rowan cross showed like a drop of blood against the cream wool of the lining. I bit off the thread and folded the tunic, and it was like any other garment.
‘I’m not going to war,’ said Simon. ‘I’m hardly fit for it any more. And maybe wasn’t then,’ he added in a lower voice, turning away from me.
I placed needles and thread carefully back in their box. ‘What do you mean?’