and Falling, Fly

by Skyler White

  She poked him again. “That means you love your work.”

  “I love—” Dominic caught her hand midpoke. The sun was sinking, taking its warmth with it. The night would be cold. “I used to think knowledge and love were linked,” he said to her soft fingers. “I thought we could only hate what we could not comprehend, and that I loved knowledge.”

  “But now?” Her fingers interlaced with his.

  “Now, I think the opposite.” He bravely met her bottomless eyes again. “Now, I think, I love a mystery.”

  “Love to untangle it? Solve it?” Her eyes were gloaming gray, the color of the darkening Irish sky behind her, and as vast.

  “Now I love learning, not knowledge.”

  “You love what you don’t understand?”

  “I love not understanding.” Olivia did not look away. Dominic remembered her piercing teeth in his throat and the soft ashes of his death. He remembered her searing embrace in the place between consciousness and death, where every touch from her had wracked him, but where he fought to stay. He would shoulder his curse again happily—face infinite deaths, to stay alive to her. He looked at their clasped hands.

  The last flaming sliver of sun sank below a distant hill, and Olivia shivered. “What about you?” he asked, his voice tight. “What do you love?”

  She stayed silent a while, then lifted his arm by the hand she held and wrapped it around her slender shoulders. “I used to complain,” she said quietly, “that I wanted only impossible things.”

  “But now?”

  She rested her dark head against his shoulder. “Now, I think I want what I have.”

  “You’re talking about acceptance, choosing things as they are?”

  “No.” The night was darkening quickly. Dominic strengthened his grip on Olivia’s small body, tucking it against his own. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew it would be twisted in the delicate knot of brows and forehead he had seen before when she faced danger. “What if mysteries want to be understood?” she asked softly against his chest.

  “If they were understood, they wouldn’t be mysteries.”

  “I know.”

  “So it’s a good thing the curious are inept, huh?”

  “Love blinds them,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Yes, he loved her. And it blinded him. He closed his eyes, and could still see her angelic face.

  “I actually did recognize you,” she said shyly. “I’ve seen you in the papers. You’re the brilliant American neuroscientist. My god-mother gives money to your university in America. You came over here to do some work for her, but were brutally attacked in the process. You’ve been in a coma.”

  “That’s not who I am. I am Reborn, cursed through generations—”

  “You’re not cursed!”

  “And you are the angel of desire—”

  “Dominic!” Olivia sprang from the wall to face him, her deep eyes reflecting the light of the just-rising moon. “Stop!”

  “Olivia…” He hesitated. If he believed her, if he was just a scientist—and there was no proof otherwise, since Trinity had retrieved nothing from his blood-soaked machine—if he believed her, how could he explain the welter of emotions, desire and terror, tenderness and rage, scouring him? He stood beside her and closed his eyes.

  Her long, cool fingers wrapped his still-bruised ones. “Why did you close your eyes?” she whispered.

  “I don’t need them now.”

  “When I close my eyes,” she said, “I get dizzy.”

  Dominic peered into hers again. “Neurological?”

  “A side effect of cult-deprogramming hypnosis.” She shrugged. “Or a very long fall.” Her steady gray eyes held his, her hands soft but strong in his own. She was asking him for something impossible. But he already knew he would give her anything. His life, his blood, his belief…

  “That must have been very difficult,” he said stiffly.

  “Yes.” She bowed her forehead to his chest, and Dominic put his lips against her smooth hair in a devotional kiss. “But no more difficult than what you’ve been through—the attack, the coma…”

  “It’s been a hard month,” he agreed.

  “But now?” she turned her face up to his. It seemed to be their question.

  The moon, rising behind him, touched her upturned face with its ash fingers, drawing her in a monochrome of mystery and shadow.

  “I don’t know,” he said simply.

  “Do you need to?” Her eyes were moonlight, and he was tumbling into them.

  “Not anymore,” he said. She blinked black lashes, and he was flying upward in her sheltering arms through shattered glass, bending to her raised lips and bottomless eyes. “Olivia…” He touched her elbows with his fingers, and she stepped toward him. The weight of her brought to ground for him was more than he could stand. It had been easier to die.

  “Olivia, I know we’ve just met…” Tears stood in her eyes, dark puddles of gratitude in the night. He took a shuddering breath and tried not to clench his hands too hard around her delicate arms.“By one of those strange coincidences that put two American tourists at an obscure Irish abbey, but I”—her eyes were like the midnight clouds, deep and distant and they soundlessly spilled twin, twisting shadows down her moon-burnt cheeks—“but I think I’m falling…”

  “Dominic…” She closed her eyes and swayed in his hands.

  “… in love with you, and I…” She opened her eyes.

  Nothing in this world, beneath, or above it, could have kept his lips from hers. It was the only way to say it. Everything he could not speak, he said, and heard her confessions in the bones of his shoulders where her hands coiled, like Eve’s snake, over his back.

  “It must be the moon,” she whispered, smiling.

  She was better at this than he would ever be, better at straddling worlds, spanning truths. He pushed the tears from the warm, pale planes of her perfect face and curled his fingers into her black hair. And his second kiss said only one thing. When she drew her lips away, she slid her fingers into his hand and stepped over the wall behind them. He followed in the wake of desire.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked.

  “I don’t have one. I got a ride with a man who owns a hotel nearby.” Dominic’s voice was parched, inadequate to speak over his howling need.

  “I’m tired of hotels,” she said, walking warily past the cows in the dark, holding his hand. “But I have the address of a great little bed-and-breakfast in Cashel.”

  “Legends?” Dominic asked. He had reserved a room there a month ago, when he first made his travel plans, when he thought Gaehod might let him stay on the surface. He’d booked it for four weeks. They might still have a room in his name.

  Thunder growled in the darkness, and Dominic looked into the fathomless sky, remembering the last time he had followed her out of this field to their waiting bikes. He had wanted her then, but had fought against it, furious with her delusions and with his own. He had wanted her then, and she had thrown it in his face.

  She was the angel of desire. He had never had any choice but to want her. He wanted her still, wanted her now, but as the silent black clouds above them gathered rain to spill, he knew Olivia had been right then, too. Desire is an angel. It can get us closer to God, can raise us out of despair, out of Hell, out of death. Desire is immortal, and inherently impossible. As impossible as love, but Dominic loved her all the same.

  ———

  The Rock of Cashel rises like a blasted tree stump across the narrow lane behind Legends Bed-and-Breakfast. I’m nervous, and slip my hand into Dominic’s when he gets out of the car. Now that a lifetime of waiting has ticked down to hours, I find it blotched with doubt and anxiety. What will it be, finally, to open my arms, my lips, and my body to love?

  Dominic is hungry, but it is ten o’clock, and I don’t know if we will be able find a restaurant open in Cashel. I only want to touch my lips to his again. His full-moon kiss in the abbey’
s black grass had tasted timeless, of gardens and memory, of lilacs and the cool, sudden spring rain that made us run together, laughing, the last few yards of cow pies and cold iron gate to my car. I slipped once, but he caught me, and the smell of warm field and wet night stayed with us in the rental car’s sterile plastic interior.

  Huddled on Legends’ doorstep now, he puts a protective arm around me and knocks a second time. An American voice shouts, “I’ve got it!” from behind the wood and brass, which opens in a gust of peat smoke and candlelight. I step in at once, past the heavyset man holding the door wide, but Dominic is rooted at the threshold.

  “It’s him!” the man shouts over his thick shoulder, “Dominic’s made it! Come on in, my boy, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you!”

  Dominic doesn’t move. He’s staring at the jowly face before him with something between shock and terror. “Why are you here?” he asks, soft and dangerous.

  “Dominic, why don’t you come inside?” I plead, “I’m sure…”

  “Francis,” the man supplies for me.

  “I’m sure Francis can answer all your questions.”

  A slow smile cracks Dominic’s handsome face. He takes his searching eyes from the corroded face and looks straight at me. “Somehow, I don’t think so,” he chuckles, but he steps into the cozy entryway and claps the man’s meaty back. “Professor Dysart, this is Olivia.”

  I smile and say hello, and together we follow our enthusiastic escort through a deserted bar into a small dining room. A cheerful cry greets us, and a small, round woman with a blazing white corona of hair rockets to her feet.

  “Mom! ” Dominic sounds stunned, but a broad grin is melting every hard angle of his face. Dominic’s attention is completely arrested, but even through the confusion I feel another’s eyes on me. I face the sculptured blonde across the table directly.

  She whispers “uncanny” under her perfumed breath, as Dominic holds out his arms to the white-haired woman. She stands by the seat she sprang from, her fingers gripping its high, cushioned back.

  “Dominic.” She braces herself between the chair and table. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re my mother.”

  “You remember? From yesterday?”

  “From my whole life, Mrs. Maeve Gonne O’Shaunnessy.”

  “My maiden name!” The tears welling in Maeve’s eyes give them a preternatural gleam in the warm firelight. “I didn’t mention it yesterday. Are you…”

  “I’m fine. Completely myself again. My memory came back last night—”

  Maeve launches herself at her son. “You didn’t know me! Didn’t know my first name! We looked at photo albums. I brought them from… Oh, Dominic, I’m just so glad!” Arms full of soft, shaking woman, Dominic smiles over her head at me, and beyond me to Dysart, who stands awkwardly beside me.

  “Mom”—Dominic gently unpeels her from his chest—“I’d like you to meet Olivia.”

  Tears flow freely down Maeve’s smooth cheeks, but she turns her clear blue eyes to me with a brave smile.

  “Hello, Olivia,” she whispers.

  The emotion is too much for me. I was strung out when we got here. Now, with Maeve still clinging to Dominic and Dysart shuffling uncertainly, I start to giggle. “My boyfriends’ mothers usually don’t start crying until after they’ve met me.” It’s a stupid thing to say, but Maeve smiles deeply, and I know she sees me as I have never been seen by a woman before.

  “I’m sorry… joking,” I whisper.

  “Not at all. I’m sorry, my dear. I’m new to this. Dominic has never introduced me to a girlfriend before. I’ll try to do better next time.”

  “There’s not going to be a next time,” he says softly into her wild hair.

  “No,” she says. “I didn’t think so.”

  She turns her face up to look at him, pats his cheek with a wrinkled hand. Then she turns back to the table and sits down again, looking completely at ease. She’s the only one.

  “Yes, well…” Dysart clears his jowly throat. “A few more introductions here. Dominic, I know you’ve already met our quaint hotel’s celebrity guest, Madalene Wright.”

  The queenly blond woman across the table from Maeve, who is still searching my face, smiles cordially and raises a glass. “I believe I may be the only person here they both already know. Of course, there’s my professional connection to Dr. O’Shaughnessy, and Olivia”—Madalene’s keen eyes scan my face hungrily—“is like a daughter to me.”

  Dysart beams across the table at Madalene. “I believe everyone in the world knows you. Or wants to. Right. Only one more person for the kids to meet then,” he exclaims, wedging himself behind his vacated chair and Madalene’s to rap briskly on the swinging door behind him. “He’s listened to us all fretting about you for hours now, our miraculously generous host—”

  The kitchen door swings open. Beside me, Dominic’s intake of breath rasps like a sword unsheathed. The G is on both our lips, but the old man stops us with a glance. “Gaehod,” he says, “the innkeeper. So lovely to meet you both.”

  His rolled-up white sleeves and pin-striped trousers are partially covered by a crisp white apron. He hands an impressively populated cheeseboard to Dysart and pushes a loose tendril the color of snow and blood back from his face with a familiar impatience. “I’ll just clear a spot on the table, Francis…”

  The table is actually two of the B&B’s three dining tables dragged into a central column. Covered with a patchwork of white tablecloths, it is littered with opened wine bottles and emptied bread baskets, which Gaehod collects as he speaks.

  “I’m so glad the two of you could join us. So nice to have young people tonight. I’m rather old-fashioned, you see, and fond of the old rites and rituals. This is Walpurgis Eve, the night before May Day, and I am long in the habit of marking the occasion in the old style with whatever guests my humble establishment has collected for the evening. I hope you’ll join our feast?”

  Dominic and I continue to stand, silent and confounded. We nod, all our questions in our eyes.

  Maeve jumps up to take the wine bottles from Gaehod’s hands, and he gestures for Dysart to put the massive wooden platter into the cleared spot. The table rearranged, he turns his calm eyes back to us and smiles. “It would appear you got caught in one of our sudden April showers. You’re both quite bedraggled. Francis, do you have something Dominic might wear? Madalene, I’m sure you could assist your goddaughter?”

  Madalene’s eyes are blank only a moment before a surge of movement sweeps Dominic and me from the table. Madalene and the professor escort us apart—me to Madalene’s room, he to Dysart’s.

  “Is this color too much?” Madalene holds a deep red silk dress out to me from a narrow closet.

  “No,” I tell her truthfully. “It’s perfect.”

  She peels the tattooist’s plastic from my back without comment, and tenderly washes the no-longer bleeding skin. It’s sore where she touches it, but her eyes meet mine in the mirror, and we both smile. She zips the dress over the bright black lines and turns me full to face the mirror. Crimson flows across my body like a living thing, pouring over my breasts in subtle pleats, and lying flat against my belly. It both molds and reveals me, and the color is divine.

  “Thank you,” she whispers.

  Madalene fusses over me for half an hour, but I enjoy it. I feel like an American stereotype—a homecoming queen, or a bride. I tell her I don’t wear foundation, but she proves herself a magician in her preferred media, applying a weightless patina of blended neutral hues and contouring shades to my pale skin. “It’s going to take a little getting used to,” she says, holding my eyes in the mirror. I walk downstairs on her arm.

  Dominic makes a funny little noise—a sort of strangled gasp—when I reenter the dining room. Even if I hadn’t enjoyed Madalene’s ministrations upstairs, Dominic’s reaction would have made it worthwhile. Rising to greet me, his strong, capable hands touch the tablecloth, clasp before, and then behind h
im. He clears his throat.

  He’s wearing Dysart’s jacket, too tight across the shoulder, too short in the arm, and swinging around his lean body like a cape. His blazing eyes leave no doubt he desires me. My gaze, meeting his, is as hungry. Twinned, our desires claim and are claimed.

  His eyes touch both what is his and what is mine. As mine do. In a perfect balance of lover and beloved, a knot of interwoven freedom binds us. I hold out my hands to him, and he takes them gratefully, twisting his strong fingers into mine.

  Dysart has dragged up two more chairs, which he points to from his spot in the back corner. “Now have a seat, and let’s all catch up on each other’s stories!”

  “Yes, all right,” Dominic agrees, and we sit down together, our hands still clasped beneath the table.

  “The last time any of us saw you,” the genial doctor chides Dominic, “you were in the hospital recovering from a nasty head trauma. They were starting you on a new thiamine protocol overnight, so I was eager to see you, but when I arrived at the start of visiting hours, the charge nurse said you’d checked yourself out against medical advice. Dominic, there’s so much we could learn from your recovery… tests we should run, assessments…”

  “I know. I wasn’t thinking like a scientist, I guess.”

  “No.”

  “I was just grateful you’d left word for us,” Maeve interrupts.

  “I…”

  “Darling girl, that—Clare, was it—the nurse?” She glances across the table to Dysart, who nods confirmation. “Clare. She gave us this number. Said it was where you had been staying.” Maeve burbles on, “But Gaehod told us, when we phoned, that you had been missing for almost a week. We drove out hoping to find you here. Or along the way.”

  “We?”

  “Dr. Dysart was kind enough to drive me. I’m just terrified by the roads here! They’re so narrow, and all unmarked and confusing.”

  “The roads are different”—Madalene nods—“they’re really all tunnels through stone or grass. And I don’t think I’ve used my rearview once!”

  “No,” Dominic agrees, “because it’s to your left. But I thought you were leaving for New York, Madalene?” Something in Dominic’s voice lilts Bengali to my ear.