Lily

by Patricia Gaffney

  The wind blew and battered at the cottage all night. Lily began to think of the wind as an enemy, something mindful of her that meant ill will toward her and those under her protection. She spoke soothingly to Gabriel when an especially violent blast shook the house and jolted him out of his sleep, but it was herself she was trying to console. The cold was bitter and could not be kept out. When the last of the peat beside the hearth was gone, she put on Meraud’s old coat and went outside to get more. Meraud stored it next to the house under a slanting, makeshift roof that kept rain and moisture from soaking the absorbent turf. For the first time, Lily took full, panicky note of how low the pile had grown. Meraud had cautioned her to burn it slowly, but she hadn’t obeyed—couldn’t obey, because the cold was killing and brutal and she refused to let her friend suffer from that as well as everything else. Swallowing a dark fear, she filled the fire basket with as many of the heavy blocks as she could carry and hurried back inside.

  Toward morning, the wind dropped. Because her body ached, Lily had abandoned the hard chair and stretched out next to Meraud on the floor. The novel silence woke her. She lay quietly for a moment, pondering what had changed. Suddenly she sat upright, aghast, and hovered over the silent, utterly still figure under the blankets beside her. As she watched, fists pressed to her teeth to drive back a moan of despair, Meraud abruptly drew in a deep, choking breath and released it. Lily’s whole body went limp; her shoulders shook and tears of relief poured down her cheeks onto Meraud’s clasped hands. She wanted to sob and sob for hours, forever. Instead she got up and rebuilt the fire.

  Despite the new calm, the cold grew worse. She spent the day massaging Meraud’s arms and legs and feet and hands, trying to warm them. Once, turning her, she noticed that the underside of her body was slightly darker in color, as if her blood were settling. What did it mean? She didn’t know.

  When she wasn’t sleeping, Meraud drowsed peacefully in a dreamy half-world, murmuring of long-ago memories and reminiscences. Lily thanked God that she was not in pain. Sometimes she was perfectly clearheaded—precious times to Lily, who was fighting her terror of abandonment as hard as she was fighting her grief.

  “Lamb,” Meraud said in the afternoon, stilling the hand that was bathing her face with a damp cloth, “you can’t stay here after I’m gone. Take Gabriel with you and go.”

  Lily felt as if an ice-cold hand was sliding down her back, caressing her bare skin. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered.

  “I’ll never leave you.” She smiled, so sweetly that Lily’s heart clenched. “Forgive the one who hurt you so badly.” Lily leaned closer, certain she’d misheard. “Soften your heart and be patient. Wait for him to see who you are.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t know what you mean. I’ll never see him—”

  “Be gentle, Lily, even though he’s a fool. What good is being right if you’re alone? Let go o’ your pride, child, and you’ll be happy.”

  Gabriel got up from his corner by the hearth, stretched, and padded over to them. Sitting on his haunches, he blinked down at his mistress, who wrapped her hand around one of his powerful forelegs and smiled at him.

  “You’ll watch out for ‘er, won’t you, Gabe?” Gabriel yawned. “Stay with him, Lily, or you’ll get lost. Hear me? You’ll get lost.”

  “I won’t get lost.”

  “Good-bye, I won’t be able to talk to you again. But I’ll always be with you.”

  “Meraud. Meraud.”

  She’d fallen asleep.

  That night, dozing in her chair, Lily came fully awake all at once. Instantly her eyes found Meraud’s in the smoky dimness; she was leaning toward her on one elbow, her arm stretched out. Lily scrambled up. Falling on her knees beside the old woman, she took her hand. The icy fingers were tense in hers, communicating a vital message. Neither spoke. Lily’s swollen heart was bursting, but she didn’t cry. The shining tenderness in her friend’s gentle eyes dimmed as she watched, so slowly, and she was retreating, moving back and away. Lily squeezed her hand tighter, tighter, desperate to hold her. But a milky film blinded the old eyes, and the thin, transparent barrier was impenetrable. Meraud slipped away.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Lily pressed her palms to the moist earth and wept. “I couldn’t lift the magic stones. I tried but I couldn’t, I was afraid for the baby. Oh, Meraud, I’m so sorry.” Sobs shook her, the first she’d allowed herself since she’d been alone. It had taken all day yesterday to dig this shallow trough of a grave inside the stone circle; she’d sat up with her friend last night, and buried her this morning, dressed in her good dress and wrapped in blankets. At first Lily had been afraid that, because of the baby, she couldn’t bury her in the stone circle at all. But then she’d discovered how pitifully light the old woman was, and in the end she had managed it with heartbreaking ease. But the special stones were too heavy; Pater was dead, and Lily couldn’t lift them. The fact that she didn’t understand Meraud’s wish to have them was irrelevant: she’d made a promise and she had failed.

  She sat back on her heels, wiping her cheeks with the back of a dirty hand. What prayer should she say? None she knew seemed quite right. So she sang one of Meraud’s hymns—weeping, then almost laughing, poignantly aware that her voice was easily an octave lower than her friend’s. In the middle of the song, Gabriel came and leaned against her. She put her arm around his shoulders, thankful for his sturdy company. When she finished the hymn, they sat together a little longer. “Good-bye, I love you,” Lily whispered. The cold, which had relented in the last two days, had returned on a sleety wind, and it was growing dark. She climbed to her feet slowly. “Good-bye,” she said again. She hated to go, to leave Meraud here all alone. But she was freezing. She took a step back, another, then turned and walked blind-eyed down the hill.

  The cold worsened in the coming days and the grim moorland seemed to take on a new reality, one that did not wish Lily well. She stayed close to the cottage, occasionally conscious of her own oddness but not alarmed by it. Nothing was the same. What had been real was gone, and what was left had a sinister reality which she knew, in a deep, fatalistic sense, she could not escape. Perhaps Devon’s true punishment was to drive her mad. The idea appalled even as it intrigued her. Sometimes, behind the wall of numbness she’d erected between herself and memories of him, she could feel the fiery heat of a blinding, spitting fury. But numbness was better.

  She stopped sleeping at night, but kept the fire up, fearful that otherwise she really might go mad. Sometimes she could sleep in the day, in a slant of sunlight if the sky was clear, huddled in a tight ball on the rush mat if it was not. Her thoughts were wild and dangerous; they frightened her. She wondered how Meraud had found peace and friendliness in the same heavy, earthen objects that seemed to her to warn of anguish and disaster. She felt as if she were under the spell of something unwelcome and unkind. She could no longer control her mind, and it had become a struggle to see the mundane in everyday objects—furze, peat, wood, stone. Everything had a second self and it was hiding, whispering—malevolent. Gabriel became her last link to normalcy. He followed her, stayed with her, watched her—and sometimes she fancied it was Meraud who looked at her out of his dark, placid eyes.

  But his quiet presence was not enough to calm her. As near as she could tell, it was the middle of January now. If that was true, she was about six months pregnant. She had enough food to last until spring, but not enough fuel. Meraud had told her to leave, but she was afraid. Then one day, after waking from a dream that left her panting and terrified, she went outside and saw wickedness and danger in the sculptures around the cottage. Meraud’s beautiful sculptures. That night she made up her mind to go.

  The next day she packed all the food she could carry and put on all the clothes she could wear. “Come on, Gabriel,” she called when he hung back in the doorway. “Come!” The dog didn’t move. She went back and squatted in front of him. “We have to go now,” she said softly, patting the knobby bone on top of his huge h
ead. “It’s all right, we’re not really leaving her. She’ll still be with us. Come on, boy.” She straightened and walked away, but when she looked back he was still there. “Gabriel, come!” She started walking backwards. “You come!” she called, trying to sound angry. She set her bag of food down and clapped her hands. He just stared at her, looking patient and wise.

  She put her hands on her hips and spoke to him firmly and at length. When he still wouldn’t move, she heard herself threatening him. “I’m going to beat you if you don’t come this instant!” she shouted, then wondered if that sounded as absurd to him as it did to her. She gave a groan of frustration and walked back to him.

  “Please come, Gabe,” she pleaded, bending over to look in his eyes. “We have to go or we’ll freeze. I need you. Won’t you come?” She moved back a little. “Please,” she coaxed, holding out her hands. He turned his head to his right, and she imagined for a second that he looked disgusted. A plaintive moment passed, and then he raised his sunken hindquarters, shook his head, ears flapping noisily, and trotted after her.

  An hour later she was lost. She had come here from Bovey Tracy, which was east, but beyond that she knew nothing of the way. There was no track, no path, and the day was dreary, the watery sun obscure behind a gaunt line of clouds. How had Meraud found the way? And there was no one to ask, no living creature anywhere. She veered suddenly at the sight of a badger, dead in a patch of stitchwort she’d almost walked on. Her pack was heavy, she’d brought too much; her back ached already. Gabriel walked behind her, not leading the way at all. When she would turn around to look at him, he would stop dead and stare back, hopefully, as if to see if she’d come to her senses yet.

  After another hour it started to rain. The sun was completely hidden now and she could not tell east from west. Mist flowed in the gullies, white as a stream of milk, rising and thickening as she walked. The ground became soggy and treacherous; her unease turned to fear. She realized she was walking uphill, but she couldn’t tell toward what. All at once a rocky outcrop appeared, whiter than the white mist, jutting up from the rough moorland scrub like a skull. The rock had a crack, large enough to squeeze into and take refuge from the wind.

  But not from the rain, and in minutes she was drenched. The fog closed in. Waiting for it to clear was frustrating, maddening, and finally unbearable. She stepped out into the white world and began a slow, careful descent.

  “Which way, Gabriel?” she asked hopelessly when her footsteps leveled off. The mist had lifted a little. In front of her the moor looked greener, slightly smoother. She hefted her pack and set off in that direction.

  A mistake. The squishy turf ought to have warned her, but she knew nothing of bogs. One second she walked on solid ground, the next she stood thigh-deep in frigid water, her feet encased in mud that wouldn’t release her. She shouted out, clutching her bag to her chest. Behind her, Gabriel barked excitedly. The bog stretched out as far as she could see, pea-green, steaming like a pudding. The longer she stood still, the deeper she sank. She got out at last by leaning backwards and pulling her legs out slowly, one at a time, straining against the oozing suction that wanted to hold her.

  She found a stick and used it to prod and poke at the ground, but deception was everywhere and the mist was her cleverest enemy. Unable to see, she went into the bog again and again, a dozen times, until she was weeping with despair and helpless terror. She found a patch of firm ground and sat down, perhaps to die, for the marsh was all around her now. The secret was never to descend, when the mist lifted enough to see, toward the smooth, safe-looking pasture lying low, for that was where treachery lay. But the mist rose and fell purely to trick her, over and over, and she knew it would win in the end. She put her head on her knees and sobbed.

  A damp snuffling on her neck warmed, then chilled her. She lifted her head. Gabriel sat beside her, watching her with his impassive, infernal patient look. “Why aren’t you helping me?” Lily whimpered. “Meraud said you wouldn’t let me get lost. Oh, Gabe.” She put her hand on his thick neck and bent her face to his, needing another creature to weep with. But he jerked away and backed up a step. She stared resentfully into his unfathomable eyes. “What? Will you lead me to safety? I don’t believe you.” He waited, tail out straight, face tolerant-looking. She muttered an obscenity, an actual obscenity, and got to her feet. “Lead on, then, you …” She trailed off, ashamed.

  Gabriel led her out of the bog. She didn’t believe it until she’d walked for more than a mile on nothing deadlier than squelchy moss. But where were they going? The fog had lifted all at once, as if the whole planet had risen above the clouds. But now hailstones hissed in the bracken and the biting wind chilled to the bone. They passed a pool, slate-gray in the flying sleet, ominous and drear. She saw the bones of a dead lamb, and ringlets of wool scattered around it by the crows; farther on a sheep’s skull leered at her from the peat. Gabriel trotted ahead, head down and purposeful, occasionally stopping to wait for her. Rubble from the granite tors around them made the going rough. She stumbled for the third time, landing heavily on hands and knees, and this time she didn’t get up.

  Gabriel ambled back to wait. She blew on her scratched and bleeding palms and hugged her stomach, rocking herself. Her clothes were wet through; she was freezing. “Where are we going?” Her voice sounded pitiful even to her. Gabriel gazed off into space. She still had her bag of food, though most of it was ruined from bog water. “Are you hungry?” She opened the bag and spread the contents out, offering them. Gabriel looked down, then away. “I’m not either,” she admitted on a sigh. Nearby a stunted tree, dripping melancholy, looked grotesque against the winter sky. Afternoon darkness was setting in. Stiff-legged, she rose to her feet. Leaving her pack of food where it lay, she followed Gabriel into the deepening dusk.

  Later, she would never know how much later, she saw something in the distance that might be a cottage. Her legs felt like lead and her body ached from exhaustion, but she quickened her pace. A little farther on she slowed, and finally stopped. And started to laugh. The demented sound of it scared her, but she couldn’t stop. Gabriel looked back and grinned at her. They were standing in front of Meraud’s cottage.

  It was while she was lighting a fire in the hearth that the idea came to her. Shivering uncontrollably, she knelt for a moment, frozen fingers almost touching the flames, steam starting to rise from her sodden skirts, and considered her choices. It seemed to Lily that they had narrowed to two: die now, or die later. Because she was a coward, she chose the first.

  She had thought the peat was running low; the task of bringing it all in, load after load, changed her perspective slightly. But at last it was done: the enormous pile hulked on the fireplace hearth, dark and pungent and ready. Her plan was to burn every bit of it in one last, long, bone-warming fire, and when it was all gone, tomorrow or perhaps the next day, just to close her eyes and let everything go.

  She pulled Meraud’s chair closer to the flames and stirred them higher with her stick. She boiled a cup of tea. Gabriel plopped down beside her with a loud groan and put his head on his paws. She scratched his ears absently; with her other hand she rubbed her stomach. “I’m sorry, baby,” she said out loud. “I thought we could be safe. At least we’ll all be together and Meraud won’t be alone. It’s not your fault, Gabriel, it’s mine. I forgive you for bringing me back. I should’ve known you’d do it and not gone with you. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter anyway.” But it did, because she had wanted her baby to live. She put her head back and let the tears fall down her face, blurring the fire.

  She woke up from a sound sleep because she was perspiring. No wonder, she though; I have on so many clothes. She took some off, then added more peat to the fire. She heated up a pot of barley gruel and ate it standing up. When she was full, she set the pan on the floor for Gabriel. She made another cup of tea and sat back down.

  At midnight she woke up again, flushed from the heat. She went to the door and opened it. Wind rushed in, coo
l and fresh; it felt wonderful. The stars shimmered in a black, moonless sky. Gabriel trotted past her, panting. Meraud’s sculptures looked like immobile ghosts in the dark. She shut the door reluctantly and went to rebuild the fire, adding as much turf as the grate could hold. The pile of peat was burning faster than she’d expected—nearly half gone already. Good. With luck, she would use it all up by morning. Tired of the chair, she lay down on the rush mat, as far from the blazing hearth as she could get, and watched the play of firelight on the wall of mirrors across the way until her eyes glazed.

  She dreamt she was burning. The flames were famished; they devoured her body in seconds, stripping away layers of flesh while she grew smaller, smaller, until there was nothing left of her except her baby. He was a tiny, naked thing, sitting up in the thin air where her belly had been, impervious to the fire. He had Devon’s face. And she was gone, she had ceased to be. How odd, then, that she could hear Meraud’s voice so clearly. Wake up, Lily, it said in her ear, quavery and insistent. Wake up. She opened her eyes.

  The cottage was on fire. The mantel was gone; the stone chimney was invisible behind a wall of flame. While she watched, fire leapt in a hissing yellow arc to the diminished stack of peat on the hearth. It caught instantly. In the time it took her to scramble to her knees, it turned into a roaring, funneling inferno. There was no more air; with the last breath in her lungs, Lily screamed. But no—the dazzling glass wall was a mirror of the conflagration, not the fire itself, and she was not surrounded. She got to her feet and staggered toward the door. Fiery chunks of thatch rained down, scorching her hair, her clothes. She found the door. But with her hand on the hot rope handle, she dropped to her knees. The earth floor felt warm on her forehead; she gasped a chestful of smoky air and thought of burning to death. A natural cremation. Why not? But Gabriel was barking outside, and she couldn’t breathe. She yanked on the handle and crawled into the cold, sweet night on her hands and knees.