Into The Spirit

by Marie Harte

  * * * *

  “He’s burning.” Mrs O’Brien pulled her hand from Aaron’s forehead and replaced it with a damp cloth. Cool water streamed over his closed eyes and down the sides of his face, wetting his pillow.

  “Should we send for the physician again?” Molly asked, frowning as she set a bowl of water on the night table.

  Mrs O’Brien compressed her lips into a tight line and nodded brusquely. “With a fever like this, I fear, if it doesn’t break soon, it’ll kill him.”

  Molly slipped out of the room, leaving to see to the summoning of the physician, which would unfortunately involve someone riding out in the rainy night to attempt to locate him.

  Mrs O’Brien dipped her finger in the wine glass, coating it in burgundy liquid and touching it to Aaron’s lips. The wine beaded there and he showed no response as the drop of crimson liquid broke and trickled down his chin. His lungs crackled as he exhaled, and made an equally disconcerting sound when he drew breath again.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall, and Molly appeared. “William has gone to fetch the physician.”

  Aaron stirred against his pillow, his wine-stained lips cracking. His mother reached up to push away a lock of hair that had fallen across his face, but dropped her hand when he exploded into a violent cough, his chest heaving and crackling as blood flew from his mouth, flecks of it dotting his lips and landing on the quilt.

  Molly hurried to the bedside and peeled the washcloth from Aaron’s forehead, dipping it in the bowl again and wiping the blood from his lips before replacing it.

  “Do you want me to fetch the rest of the family?” she asked Mrs O’Brien tentatively.

  “Aye, I suppose you’d better.”

  Chapter Six

  Caitlin paced the manse’s front lawn, her pale skirts swinging around her legs. A gnawing sense of desperate fear filled her and her fingernails had long since pressed little half-moon shaped marks into the edges of her palms. The rain still fell, as relentless as her agony. She’d tried the door again and again, and failed each time. Why couldn’t she get in? If there were any rules to this wretched new existence she’d been forced into, she couldn’t seem to figure them out. First she’d been able to enter the manse and now she could not. She could touch Aaron, but she passed right through anyone else… It was madness!

  Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance, echoing the alarm some morbid sense of intuition was sounding within her, and she cursed it. Not only was she unable to enter the manse, but a sense of wrongness—a certainty that something was going very badly inside—had settled deep in her bones. The closeness she’d felt to Aaron less than an hour ago had evaporated, leaving a gaping hole in her heart. It was as if a chasm separated them, and she knew something terrible was about to happen to him on the other side. She had to get to him. Had to. She was sorely tempted to tear her hair out silver handful by silver handful, and scarcely restrained herself from doing so.

  It’s Aaron, a knowing voice in the back of her head kept saying. He’s not doing well. He’s…

  No, she would not think the rest. He wouldn’t die. He couldn’t. He had to recover.

  But he won’t, the voice said, he won’t.

  Overwhelmed with misery and anxiety, Caitlin screamed, the sound breaking the night’s silence and ripping it to shreds. With each second she keened, she grew more and more sure of Aaron’s impending death. She cried louder and louder, the sound carried on the storm’s wind, whipped over the countryside. A flash of movement in one of the manse’s first floor windows caught her eye, and she turned just in time to see Cormac O’Brien materialise behind its frame, regarding her with a grave expression.

  Seized by a desperate impulse, Caitlin dashed for the door. It was as immovable and impassable as ever. She stood at its threshold and cried for Cormac to open it, to let her in so she could rush to Aaron’s side and be a part of his last moments of life. He proved as unyielding as the door, watching her for another moment before turning away, leaving her to grieve Aaron’s fate and her own powerlessness. These raging inadequacies were highlighted by memories of the brief time they had had together, threatening to drive her to her knees. She screamed again and the house’s windows rattled, shaken by the driving rain and perhaps, she thought, the sound of her voice. Somewhere behind them, Aaron was dying—the knowledge was as much a part of her now as her silver hair and moon-white skin.

  Some time passed before anything changed, although it was still dark and raining. Just when Caitlin was wondering if the night would ever break, if the sun would ever splinter the darkness and shed light on the world again, the front door of the manse swung open. She stared, her eyes going wide and her heart leaping into her ragged throat. The entrance gaped, empty. She ran for it, a wail dying on her lips as she crossed the threshold.

  “It is time, Bean Sidhe.” A voice, coming seemingly out of nowhere, startled Caitlin when she entered, and she turned to discover Cormac O’Brien standing to the side of the door, his expression grave. “I had thought to shut you out and keep my great-great-grandson here with me, but, damned though I may be, I cannot wish a similar fate upon his soul… It is time.”

  His gaze drifted towards the staircase, and Caitlin’s followed. The first floor was oddly still, its silence unbroken. The family must be upstairs, she realised, with Aaron. So should she be.

  She drifted up the stairs, feeling more than ever as if she were navigating a dream, an insubstantial being trapped in an ever-changing realm of nightmares. Still, she was vaguely hopeful as she climbed—whatever happened, she would be there, and that would certainly be better than keening out in the rain, leaving him to face death without her.

  ‘It is time…’ Cormac’s words haunted her as she started the second staircase. He had known…but what did he expect her to do? What could she do that they couldn’t, a mere shadow, it seemed, in the land of the truly living?

  There were stories of banshees escorting the dead into the afterlife, of course, but the idea only made her want to laugh, and not with good humour. The next life? She wasn’t even capable of opening a door in this one. She was no angel of death—she wasn’t even human. Desperately confused and feeling wholly inadequate, she entered the third floor corridor.

  The soft rush of anxious murmuring filled the hall, confirming Caitlin’s theory of where the O’Brien family had vanished to. She found Aaron’s bedroom door hanging halfway open, and the room crowded with his kin. Mother and sister, father and brothers—they were all there, as was Molly. There was no sign of a physician. An air of uneasy expectation surrounded those who had gathered—plainly, they were expecting the worst.

  Caitlin noted that the beef tea and wine on the night table had been replaced with a basin of water, into which Molly was dipping a blood-spotted rag. When she’d wetted and wrung it, she draped it over Aaron’s forehead, the drops of water it leaked mingling with beads of sweat. His chest rose and fell slowly beneath a thin sheet and the crackling tempo of his breathing was the loudest sound in the room.

  Caitlin drifted through the crowd, slipping through their bodies as if they were no more substantial than mist, feeling her body chill and waver. When she reached the bedside she extended a hand to touch Aaron’s and found it reassuringly solid beneath her own. Whatever barrier had been between their skin earlier that night was gone now. His flesh was soft on the top of his hand and lightly callused underneath, burning with fever no matter where she felt it. His breathing was so thick that he sounded like a drowning man, and, though his eyes were shut, his brows were knitted with the effort of drawing breath. His lips were slightly parted and tiny flecks of red blood dotted their inner rims. She closed her hand around his, feeling his pulse beat against her palm ebbing with alarming irregularity. And then his eyes opened.

  Caitlin gasped. His eyes were wide and blue, open all the way this time and no longer rimmed with red. The dark circles were gone from beneath them, too, but hadn’t they been there a moment ago? Strangely, none of the other O’Bri
ens were stirring. Even as Aaron rose from the bed, pushing aside the sheet, they remained silent.

  “Caitlin.” Aaron’s voice was strong, and the laboured sound of his breathing was gone. He was clothed, too, she noticed, in a clean shirt and breeches, much like the ones he’d been wearing on the day they’d been caught in the rain together. He’d been bare beneath the sheets a moment ago… Where was that man, the one with blood-stained lips?

  He was still there, Caitlin saw when she turned to the bed, though his chest had stilled and a tense silence had replaced the sound of his breathing. Molly reached out and pressed a hand tentatively into the hollow of his neck.

  “He’s gone,” she said after several moments of silence, pulling the damp cloth from his forehead and dropping it back into the bowl.

  A stark hush followed this pronouncement, brief and broken by a shuddering cry from Mrs O’Brien. Several hands went out to her—Molly’s, Katrina’s and Squire O’Brien’s—but she reached out to grasp her son’s, folding it in her own.

  Caitlin turned away and found herself face to face with Aaron.

  “Caitlin,” he said again, and pulled her into his arms.

  He was warm—but not too warm—and unbelievably solid. For the first time since she’d awoken in the forest, Caitlin didn’t feel chilled.

  “Aaron,” she sighed. The beginnings of grief surrounded them, but all of that seemed to fade away as she met his eyes, clear and blue. She was just wondering where to begin, what she could possibly say to explain the past week and their current situation, when he kissed her. She simply melted into his arms for a few moments, shutting out the strange reality that surrounded her.

  “When I started bleeding,” Aaron said, “I thought for sure then I’d never find you.” He ran his hand through her silver hair, looking mildly perplexed but mostly awe-struck. “But you found me. I didn’t think… Well…” He kissed her again, placing a hand on either side of her face and drawing her to him. He tasted just as sweet as he had in the flower field, just before her disappearance. “I dreamt of you, you know,” he told her, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “I dreamt the most wonderful things.”

  “It wasn’t a dream,” Caitlin replied, “though it felt like one to me, too. I was here.”

  Aaron opened his mouth to reply just as a particularly loud sob echoed through the small room. He turned to look at his mother, whose shoulders were slumped so acutely that her head of auburn hair was barely visible. Her husband and Katrina held fast to either side of her, as if they could act as buffers against the grief. Judging by the way Katrina’s shoulders were trembling, she was crying, too.

  Aaron reached towards his mother, his outstretched hand passing right through her shoulder without so much as a ripple. He frowned, holding his hand aloft as if examining it for some sign of deficiency.

  “It’s like that for me, too,” Caitlin said, pulling his hand down and grasping it and relishing the sensation of having a solid hand to hold in her own. Whatever barrier had separated them before was gone.

  “I suppose we’re in a different world then, me and you,” Aaron replied, squeezing her hand firmly. He cast a glance at the bed where his body lay, and an odd expression came over his face. “I tried to find you,” he said, “to save you.” He paused, fixing Caitlin with a searching glance. “How did you…die?”

  “I didn’t,” Caitlin replied. “At least, I don’t think I did.” This assertion plainly served only to confuse Aaron, so she continued in her best attempt to summarise the situation.

  “That evening when you spoke to my father, I found a silver comb lying in a bed of violets as I was walking along the edge of the wood. I picked it up and then… I woke up a week later in the heart of the forest.” She shrugged, as if to show she knew it sounded ridiculous. You know the old legends,” she continued, “about banshees and silver combs? Well, there were strange women there when I woke, and…” She picked up a lock of her silver hair and eyed it uncertainly. “Your great-great-grandfather called me Bean Sidhe.”

  Aaron raised an eyebrow at the mention of his great-great-grandfather, and was silent for a few moments. Reaching out to stroke her silver hair again, he finally spoke. “Violets, you say?”

  Caitlin nodded, and he pressed his eyes shut, as if he was remembering. “I know the place,” he said. “I looked for you there.”

  Hearing the pain in his voice, Caitlin reached up to put her arms around his neck, leaning against him, enjoying the steady rise and fall of his chest against her breasts. “I’m here now.”

  “Aye, and if ye really were spirited away by the Bean Sidhe, then I suppose you’re here to guide me into the next life.”

  “Well…” Caitlin frowned, remembering the instructions the silvery women in the forest had given her. “I suppose I am.”

  ‘See him safely to the next world,’ they’d said.

  ‘It is time,’ Cormac’s ghost had said.

  “What now, then, my Bean Sidhe?” Aaron asked, pressing his forehead against hers.

  “I think we should leave the house,” she replied with sudden certainty, repressing a shiver as she thought of Cormac. “We’re not meant for this place any longer.” She let her hands slide slowly from his shoulders, trailing over the smooth plane of his chest and brushing his hips as she took one of his hands in hers.

  Aaron cast one last look at his grieving family and followed her from the room. The cries and muffled reassurances faded behind them as they travelled the empty halls and descended the lonely staircases, finding the first floor abandoned save for one man—or, at least, the ghost of one.

  Cormac O’Brien stood in the parlour, looking as if he’d been expecting their appearance. Caitlin eyed him warily, remembering how he’d somehow barred her from the house, locking her outside to go half-mad in the raging rain until he’d had a change of heart. He made no attempt to stop them as they moved towards the door, though, standing still and tipping his head slightly as they passed him.

  Aaron responded with a tilt of the head and a look of grim fascination, his hand still entwined with Caitlin’s.

  At last they reached the door and Caitlin’s heart thrilled as she wondered what might lie beyond it.

  “The storm,” Caitlin said as she and Aaron crossed the threshold, “it’s gone.” She glanced at Aaron and found that he, too, looked surprised. Behind them, the door was already shut, although she hadn’t heard it close. Before them, the countryside stretched out, bathed in sunlight so bright it ordinarily would have made her squint. As it was, she found that her eyes were strangely accustomed to it. Aaron gave her hand a squeeze and they started down the steps.

  “All that rain,” he said as their feet touched the ground. “It seems to have worked wonders for the land.”

  It was an understatement if there ever was one—the ground appeared to have erupted with foliage and scarcely a blade of grass was visible beneath a thick blanket of colourfully rioting blossoms. Caitlin was reminded of the wildflower-filled glade Aaron had taken her to just before her fateful encounter with the silver comb—only this one seemed to stretch on for miles and miles. A mountain ridge, richly purple and capped with snow, was just visible in the distance, skirting the horizon. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed that the O’Brien manse was gone, an expanse of wildflowers in its place. Caitlin gasped.

  Aaron followed her gaze and his eyes went wide with surprise. “You must really be Bean Sidhe. This isn’t any place I’ve ever known.”

  Caitlin gapedat him and their surroundings. The landscape might have been a painting, except for the fact that she could smell the wildflowers’ perfume drifting on a slight breeze.

  “I…” It seemed unfair to her that she should be credited with their arrival in this place. After all, all she’d done was walk out of a door, the same as he had.

  “It seems like Heaven,” he said, pulling her against him and wrapping his arms around her waist.

  A thick section of hair fell over Caitlin’s shou
lder and she was surprised to find that it was not silver, but a rich brown. She was also pleased to find that her skin no longer appeared silvery, but had returned to a more natural tone that was complemented by the golden sunlight. The only off thing about her appearance now was her ragged white dress. She pressed her face against Aaron’s shoulder, feeling more alive than she had at any time since touching the silver comb.

  He placed a hand behind her head, urging her to tilt her face upwards. She obliged and he parted her lips with his tongue, kissing her deeply. He gripped her waist firmly and, as the kiss stretched on, slid his hands down over her hips.

  Caitlin sighed when their lips parted and Aaron pulled her against him, nearly lifting her heels from the ground. The sunlight cast a golden fringe around the edges of his hair, so bright that it almost looked as if the ends of his locks had been set on fire. His touch was warm enough to justify the illusion, and, illusion though it was, it was obvious that he did, in fact, burn.

  Caitlin could sense it in the way he held her against him, and, as if that weren’t enough, there was the considerable evidence of his longing caught between their bodies, firm and pulsing against her belly. The feel of it transported her back to their time in the first wildflower field, and how close they had come to losing themselves in each other then. Now, she thought, reaching up to run a hand through his sun-warmed locks, they finally would. Her heart thrilled at the thought, its enthusiasm echoing through every fibre of her being, urging her to withdraw her hand from his hair and press it between their bodies, finding him there instead.

  She did.

  Aaron exhaled sharply, tensing as she pressed against the front of his breeches, grasping his stiff cock. He shifted his hips so he filled her hand, and she began to stroke it, much as she had back in his bedroom.