A Journey of the Heart

by Catherine M. Wilson

  "Just as anything could happen in Merin's house between now and then."

  She met my eyes. "That's true," she said.

  I may have meant to say something more, but her gaze distracted me. In her eyes I saw a look I had never seen before, a soft look that caught at my heart. I touched her cheek with the backs of my fingers.

  I would have kissed her if I hadn't heard a noise outside. Maara heard it too, the crunching sound of footsteps in the snow. She listened for a moment, then gestured to me to stay where I was. She sat up and peered out the doorway of the shelter. I tried to see past her, but her body blocked my view. She turned and pointed at my bow. I had already reached for it. I had just room enough in the tiny shelter to string it. Then I handed it to her, and an arrow with it.

  Maara nocked the arrow and sat very still. After a long silence I heard another cautious footstep. A pause. Two more. Maara drew the bow and let the arrow fly. Something ran crashing through the thicket. Maara leaped after it, and I scrambled after her. We followed the crisp tracks of cloven hooves until, not far away, we found the body of the deer.

  Maara handed me the bow. "Do you have your knife?"

  I had left it in the shelter. I ran back to fetch it, and she gutted the deer where it lay and carried it back to our campsite. She set me to skinning it while she built a fire. Then she cooked some of the deer's liver, the first fresh food we'd had in days.

  After we had eaten, Maara scraped and trimmed the hide while I cut some hazel wands and made a frame to stretch it on. We set it by the fire, where the heat would dry it and the smoke would help preserve it. Then we began cutting up the meat.

  We had always worked well together. By now we were so used to each other that we were able to anticipate almost every move the other made. Vintel had taken Maara's knife, so we shared mine, and she would often reach for it at the same moment I held it out to her. That morning I took pleasure in the harmony between us, surprised that until then I had taken it for granted.

  It was midday before we were ready to travel. The meat added considerable weight to our packs, a weight we were glad to bear. The deer would feed us for many days.

  In spite of our late start we covered a lot of ground that day. The snow was no more than ankle deep, and the trail we followed wound gently downhill. Soon we would leave the hill country behind. As always we spoke little, keeping our attention on our surroundings, but the memory of what had passed between us the night before tempted my thoughts away from the world around us. For most of that day I walked as through a mist that hid everything but the woman who walked beside me.

  By late afternoon we were in the wilderness. It was a very different place than I remembered. No animals scurried in the bracken. They snuggled in their burrows now, lost in winter sleep. Snow had not fallen here, but the air was cold, and the north wind cut through our clothing.

  Darkness fell before we found a sheltered place to camp. Maara built a fire by a rocky outcrop that blocked the wind and reflected the fire's heat back to us. Although there were few trees here, I managed to gather enough deadfall to feed our fire through the night. Then I cut soft heather for our bed and laid it out between the fire and the rock.

  We made a good meal of venison and oat cakes. While we ate, we talked a little, of the country we had passed through that day, of where we would be traveling tomorrow, of the weather. While we talked together as we always did, I found myself listening for something else, although I couldn't have told either Maara or myself what I was waiting for.

  After supper Maara cut more strips of venison and hung them over the fire to smoke. Then she looked around her for a moment, as if she had forgotten what she meant to do, before she reached for the deerskin. She began to work on it, to make it supple.

  I could have found some work to do. Instead I sat and watched her. The fire lit her hands and face as she leaned close to it. As I watched, it seemed that she grew smaller, as if she were moving away from me. I rubbed my eyes, and the world looked right to me again, but fear sent prickles down my spine.

  Fear of what? Nothing was amiss. We sat across the fire from each other as we did every night. This night was no different.

  But it should have been.

  I began to doubt myself. Had I misunderstood or misremembered? Had I indulged in wishful thinking? What had happened between us the night before? When I asked her to share her past with me, I hadn't intended to reveal myself, but in spite of my intentions, my love had sprung out at her like a lion springing at its prey. I was surprised I hadn't frightened her to death. Then I remembered waking in her arms, the look she'd given me. Although I may indeed have frightened her, I knew my love for her was not unwelcome.

  While I watched her hands, my own were tightly clasped together. They were trying not to reach for her. Last night my heart ached with unspoken love. Tonight it burned in the palms of my hands.

  "Must we waste this time apart?" I whispered.

  She looked up at me, on her face a look of confusion mixed with shy delight. She had been waiting for me. I stood up and went to sit beside her. The deerskin lay in her lap. Her hands were still. I took both of them in mine.

  "I need to touch you," I said.

  Now that I was close to her, I longed to close even the small distance that remained between us. I leaned toward her and laid my head on her shoulder.

  "I need your arms around me," I said.

  She opened her arms to me, and I settled into her embrace. At first stiff and awkward, her body soon relaxed and welcomed me. Beside my ear her heart beat, strong and steady.

  "What do you need from me?" I asked her. I gave her time to answer.

  "I hardly know," she said at last.

  "This?"

  She held me closer. "Yes."

  "What else?"

  No answer.

  "When you think of something, will you ask me?"

  Her heart beat a little faster. "If I can."

  "Of course you can. Why not?"

  The rhythm of her heartbeat changed, became uncertain. "I wish I could speak as you do."

  "Why? What did I say?"

  "Beloved," she whispered. "That word has been in my ears all day."

  Now I was the one who had no words. What a gift it was that she would tell me such an intimate thing.

  "You are eloquent," I told her.

  Her lips touched my brow. I felt her smile. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath against the fullness in my chest. Beloved, I had said, and now she had said it back to me, not as an endearment, but as a revelation. Her words lit a flame that filled my heart with light. Warm and golden, it flowed between us, between her heart and mine. It drew my arms around her, stopped my words, my thoughts, so that for a time I felt as if we had stepped out of this world altogether. Then my heart began to ache, and I remembered Namet's words. Hearts break because they are too small to contain the gifts life gives us. My heart felt much too small. Perhaps both our hearts together might be able to contain this gift.

  "Come to bed," I whispered.

  When she let go of me, I caught both her hands in mine and kissed each one. Then I took her cloak from around her shoulders and spread it over the soft bed I had made for her. The fire's heat had warmed the rock, and our bed lay close against it. Although I could hear the wind moaning through this empty land, I didn't feel it here. In the shelter of the rock the air was still.

  Maara lay down. The fragrance of the heather rose up around us. When I lay down beside her, she reached for me. I resisted the temptation to fall into her arms. The palms of my hands still ached with the need to touch her.

  "Not yet," I said. "Turn over."

  She gave me a puzzled look, but she turned over and pillowed her head on her arms. I leaned up on one elbow and brushed her hair back, so that I could see her face. My fingers caught in the tangles.

  "I don't suppose Sparrow thought to pack a comb," I said.

  As gently as I could, I began to finger-comb her hair.

  Maar
a smiled. "Perhaps we shouldn't make ourselves too presentable. If we chance to meet someone, they might mistake us for trolls or goblins and run the other way."

  "They would mistake us for forest wights, more likely," I replied, as I picked bits of leaf and twig out of her hair.

  "What are forest wights?"

  "You've never heard of forest wights?"

  "No," she said.

  "Well, they're a bit like fairies, except they're only found in forests, of course."

  "Where are fairies found?"

  "The fairy folk live underground."

  "They live in burrows?"

  I laughed. "They live in the hollow hills, in vast caverns lit by a thousand lamps, where feasting and merrymaking go on for days on end."

  "Do they never come out?"

  "Only at night," I said. "They come out to dance in the meadows under the moon, but they seldom stay past daybreak." I had the worst of the tangles out of her hair now, and I began to run my fingers through it, to get it all going in one direction. "Did no one ever tell you about the fairy folk?"

  "Will you tell me?"

  I tried to remember the stories I had heard about fairies. One came to mind, but I wanted to go over it, to make sure I had it all by heart.

  "I'll tell you about the fairy folk tomorrow," I replied. "Now it's time to sleep."

  I slipped my hand under her tunic and began to rub her back. She still wore the old sleeping shirt that she'd had on when she left Merin's house. It was soft with wear, warm with the warmth of her body, and so thin that through it I could feel the texture of her skin.

  With my fingertips I kneaded the muscles along her spine. As she relaxed, her breathing slowed, and I began to touch her with my open hand, making slow circles across her shoulders, across the small of her back. Her eyes closed, and my touch became a caress, meant to give her pleasure without arousing desire. Her breathing deepened. Soon she was asleep.

  "Beloved," I whispered, into her dreams.

  59. A Fairy Tale

  The cold woke me. I shivered and snuggled closer to Maara's warmth. She put her arms around me.

  "The fire's out," she said.

  "Did we burn all the wood already?"

  "No, there's plenty of wood. The rain put it out."

  "Rain?"

  Then I noticed the soft sound of rain falling all around us. Sheltered by the rock, we were still dry, but water was beginning to run in rivulets down the rock face.

  "It's almost morning," said Maara. "We might as well be on our way."

  It rained all day. Cold droplets ran down my brow, dripped off my nose, found their way under the hood of my cloak and trickled down my neck. I wondered how it was possible to be so happy and so miserable all at once.

  We didn't stop to rest, not even to eat. As we walked, we nibbled on stale oat cakes and smoked venison. By late afternoon, I was beginning to feel the cold, and I worried that we wouldn't find a place to shelter from the rain in this open country. While spending a damp night out in the open wouldn't kill us, I wasn't looking forward to shivering through a sleepless night.

  When it began to grow dark, Maara looked for a hillock that might serve as a vantage point. We scrambled up the nearest one, and from its top we had a view of the surrounding country.

  Through veils of rain and mist, it all looked the same to me, but Maara peered intently into the distance, as if she knew what she was looking for.

  We were exposed to the wind here, and now that I was standing still I began to shiver. I moved close against Maara's side for warmth. When she felt me touch her, she put her arm around my shoulders and drew me closer. The gesture took me by surprise, and the sudden rush of pleasure it gave me drove everything else out of my head.

  "Look there," said Maara. She pointed at something in the distance.

  "What is it?" I couldn't see a thing.

  "It can't be above half a mile," she said.

  I thought I saw what she was pointing at, a dark smudge against the lighter grey of fern and heather. It could have been anything.

  "Come on," she said.

  As we approached it, the smudge became first a jumble of stones, then the ruins of a cottage. I didn't stop to wonder who could have built a stone cottage in such a lonely place. However it had come to be there, I was delighted to see it.

  The walls were tumbling down and part of the roof had caved in. Fallen timbers blocked the doorway. We squeezed through a gap in the wall and stumbled through the wreckage until we found a corner where the roof only leaked a little and we were sheltered from the wind.

  While Maara used some of the old thatch to start a fire, I pulled from the rubble a few timbers still sound enough to burn. Soon our little corner was surprisingly warm, so warm that we took off our damp cloaks and tunics and hung them up to dry.

  Maara filled our copper pot with water and set it on the fire. When the water began to boil, she dropped chunks of meat into it, along with a handful of barley and some wild onions we had dug several days before. I added a pinch of herbs for flavor.

  "Are there any oat cakes left?" I asked.

  I was ravenous, and the stew would take some time to cook.

  Maara shook her head. "Don't spoil your appetite. We need a good hot meal tonight."

  I resigned myself to wait, staring glumly into the stew pot as if watching it would speed the cooking. I could feel Maara's eyes on me. I didn't need to look at her to know that if I did, I would see laughter in them.

  After a few minutes she stood up and came to sit behind me, and as I had done for her the night before, she began to finger-comb my hair. Her touch made me forget my hunger. When she had the tangles out, she ran her fingers through it rather longer than she needed to. I closed my eyes while pleasure rippled over the surface of my skin, until even my toes and fingers tingled with it.

  At last Maara stopped and moved away a bit, so that she could lean back against the wall of the cottage. She tugged at my shirt, and when I too moved back, she slipped her arm around my waist and pulled me close, until I was sitting between her outstretched legs, leaning back against her body, with her arms around me.

  "Is this all right?" she asked me.

  I nodded, breathless with surprise and pleasure.

  "It won't be long," she said.

  "What?"

  "Supper."

  "Oh."

  "In the meantime," she said, "you could tell me a story."

  In ancient days, the fairy folk were not, as they are now, estranged from humankind. It was not uncommon then for mortal children to see the fairies dancing in a field as they passed by. Even older folk, attending to their work, might look up and catch a glimpse of them, and some, returning home past the time they were expected, might give as their excuse that they had been invited to a fairy banquet and dared not refuse.

  Still, in the ordinary course of things, the two peoples had little to do with one another. While humankind tilled their fields and tended their flocks, the fairy folk lived in the wild places, nourished by the Mother's bounty. She satisfied their thirst with water from her springs that sparkled like gemstones and gladdened the heart like wine. She provided for them food of every kind. Forest and meadow bore fruit for them, and the animals came to offer themselves, the forest deer, the trout and salmon, birds and their eggs, each in its season. For the fairy folk, each day was a day of ease, and the nights were given to music and the dance.

  There was in those days a queen of the fairy folk whose heart chose a mortal man. Such things were not unheard of then. The hearts of fairies love as do the hearts of humankind, although their bodies neither join together nor bring forth new life, but for those who take a mortal lover, joy is brief, while grief is long, for mortal men must die, while the fairy folk do not.

  For many years, years that for the fairies seemed to pass as swiftly as a summer afternoon, the fairy queen and her beloved lived together as one soul, but as it must happen, one day time overtook him, and he died.

  Deeply
the fairy queen mourned him, and no one could comfort her, for none of her own people understood her grief. The fairies' life of ease and pleasure went on unchanged, while her own happiness was now lost forever.

  At last the fairy queen could bear her grief no longer. She left her home and wandered out into the wider world, where her path soon crossed that of an old woman, who knew her at once for a queen of the fairy folk.

  "You are far from your home under the hill, o queen of fairies," the old woman said. "What brings you out among humankind?"

  "Grief," the fairy queen replied. "I loved a mortal man, and he died."

  "Ah," the old woman said. "I too loved a mortal man. He died, and has been dead these many years."

  "How do you bear your grief?" the fairy queen asked her, and the old woman answered, "I found my grief impossible to bear until I remembered that I too will die, and when I do, my grief will end. Anything can be borne if one can see an end to it."

  The fairy queen could not hope for death to release her. "Is there no other remedy for grief?" she asked.

  "Perhaps there is," the old woman said. "If you would try it, come with me."

  The old woman led the fairy queen to a cottage in a meadow a little distance from a village. By the window was a chair, and the old woman bade the fairy queen sit down. Then she took her own cloak from around her shoulders and laid it upon the shoulders of the fairy queen. She drew the hood over the fairy queen's golden hair, until all that could be seen of her was her lovely, ageless face and her shining, golden eyes.

  "Stay and watch," said the old woman as she left her, "and learn that all bright things cast a shadow."

  It was then high summer. The village children came to bathe in the stream that ran through the meadow. Their laughter reminded the fairy queen of the laughter that echoed through her own great hall. Farmers too passed by her cottage on their way to till their fields, and she heard them singing at their work. All around her in the meadow, birds taught their fledglings how to fly, squirrels gathered seeds and acorns, flowers bloomed and died. Then came the harvest, and the farmers sang new songs as they carried the sheaves home to the threshing floor.