Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  “Harlots get what they deserve!” the priest replied, obviously shocked that anyone would object. “If you came to service, you’d know they’re all tainted by the whoring moon anyway. It’s you who’s at fault here, coming into my house, attacking my good name—”

  In a blur of human skin and snowcat fury, Torrant hurled across the room and slammed the priest against the wall. The man’s gasp carried spit, but he stank of fear and that was more revolting than the spit. “Tansy, priest? Are you going to tell me that quiet, mousy child asked for your attentions? Are you going to tell me she asked for a baby in her belly when she knew her father would as likely turn her in the snow for having it? Are you going to tell me she wanted you so badly she would rather stick a piece of wire between her legs to try to cut you out than tell a soul how you’d defiled her? Tell me that, priest. Tell me your last lie.”

  “I’m a man of the gods! I’m sanctified!” His face was white, but Torrant could smell the rancid stink of the fear-tainted blood pounding through his veins. “If you kill me, you’ll go to—”

  “I don’t believe in your hell, priest, but you do, and you already think you’re going. I’m just going to send you on your way.”

  Torrant didn’t remember much after that, or at least that’s what he told himself. When he came to himself as a human, he could see his horse, terrified and miserable in the cold, hitched in front of Tansy’s family’s house. Torrant tasted something wet and salty, and when he realized it was blood and it wasn’t his, he fell to his knees and vomited more blood and meat and skin into the snow. When he was done, he looked at it, steaming in the freezing night, and he might have stayed there until he froze to death, except Heartland nickered softly. If Owen Moon had taught him anything, he’d taught him to never neglect a good horse.

  Carefully he made his way back home, only to find Aylan on his porch, covered in snow and looking so lost and alone Torrant wondered how the two had managed to find each other on a night such as this.

  “I need to put the horse away,” he said faintly over the wind. Aylan nodded, and Torrant was back in a few moments. He’d put his sheepskin coat and gloves on during the trip back, but it hadn’t done much good, and as he sat down on the cold stone of the front stoop and wrapped his arm around Aylan’s shoulders, he wondered if he was going to have to carry him inside before they both froze into ice and sorrow on this joyless night.

  He looked at Aylan’s red-chafed, hollow-eyed face and leaned his head closer, just to warm his brother with his breath, and he noticed the even spread of dried blood spatter tracing its way from the bottom of Aylan’s jaw to his eyes and across his forehead.

  “There’s blood on your face, brother,” he said quietly.

  “It’s innocent blood,” Aylan responded hollowly and then turned toward Torrant, really looking at him for the first time. What he saw made tears start—the first tears, had Torrant known it, that he’d shed since he’d fled the Troy home in Clough, four days before. “There’s blood on your face too, brother.”

  “Mine’s not so innocent,” Torrant said thickly.

  They touched foreheads, wrapped shivering arms around each other, and Aylan said, “Oh Goddess, Torrant, the things I’ve done!”

  And Torrant’s shoulders shook, and their embrace tightened, and in a moment they were shaking, sobbing, howling their separate griefs into an indifferent black night.

  EVENTUALLY THEY had to come in. The warmth of the house was a shock, but it wasn’t until Torrant’s fingers came to life with a burst of surprising agony that he realized how close he and Aylan had come to allowing their pain to destroy them.

  Aldam had left tea on the stove, and Torrant poured a mug of it, pressed it into Aylan’s icy hands, and then settled down to work. He ignored Aylan’s swearing and halfhearted attempts to push Torrant’s hands away as he wiped the incriminating blood off Aylan’s face.

  “How long were you out there?” he asked quietly. Aylan’s little cart and his horses were inside the stable. The horses had been quiet and comfortable, not at all as though they had just been put in the stalls and were still warming up.

  “I spent part of the time in the stable,” Aylan chattered. “I-I couldn’t come in and talk to Aldam. I just couldn’t.”

  Torrant grimaced. “He’ll know soon enough, for me,” he said. “But I’m such a coward. I’m just that much happier I won’t have to tell him.”

  Aylan’s face went tight. “I’ll have to tell Lane in the spring,” he said hoarsely, as though just realizing it. “Maybe I’ll have the courage to tell you then.” His voice almost broke again, and his fingers shook as they clenched the mug.

  “Sh… shhh….” Torrant took the mug away and rubbed Aylan’s bare, red fingers and then, with a smile, he took Aylan’s hands and put them under his shirt. He held them against his chest under his sweater with a gasp, because they were still colder than the core of his body.

  Aylan tried to pull his hands away, but Torrant held firm. “I’m not,” Aylan protested, and he closed his eyes tight, holding in more tears. “I’m not. I can’t….” He shook his head, and his voice, hoarse from his grieving outside, became thick again. “I’m not clean, brother. I’m not—you shouldn’t let me touch you.”

  “I’ve got blood on my mouth, Aylan,” Torrant whispered. “Three guesses how it got there.”

  AYLAN PULLED one hand away—only one—and took the cloth from the table. He had to lean in to wash Torrant’s face, and his fingers especially shook as they outlined that upper lip.

  “You’ve never used your body for anything but what the Goddess intended,” he said. “I’ve… I’ve used mine so badly, I don’t know if she’ll ever let me use it again.”

  Torrant smiled under Aylan’s fingers, an attempt at humor that thawed Aylan’s soul a little. “That body was made for hard use, brother,” Torrant joked sadly. “Remember, we used to change together for fencing.”

  The memory was sweet, and Aylan closed his eyes to keep it, but when his eyes were closed, all he could see was a white room stained in scarlet. He started to shiver more violently, and to his horror a whimper came out of his mouth. He struggled against the closeness, against contaminating a beloved friend with his own polluted flesh, but Torrant pulled him closer, almost violently.

  “Let me heal you,” he murmured. “Please. I was supposed to heal, not… what I did tonight. Let me heal someone. Let me heal someone I care about.”

  “I can’t,” Aylan almost sobbed. The thought of the physical act itself almost made him ill.

  Torrant pulled Aylan against him and nuzzled his temple, a sympathetic laugh tickling the hairs against his brother’s perfect ears. “I’m not talking about making love, Aylan,” he said. “I’m talking about comfort. Come to bed, lie next to me. Let us hold each other. The other thing, it will come or not come, but I will never be afraid of you.” Aylan made a protesting sound, and Torrant’s embrace grew stronger. “My beloved friend, there is nothing you can do that will make me not want to touch you.”

  Aylan nodded, weakening, and allowed himself to take strength where it was offered. He straightened so he could nuzzle Torrant’s temple. “If I could want anyone right now, it would be you,” he whispered, “and comfort sounds like more than I deserve.”

  “Shite….”

  “Hush—and there is nothing you can do that will make me not want to touch you. Please, sleep next to me, brother. Please comfort me. I have nothing else.” He pulled his voice back under control, and Torrant pulled him into the bedroom.

  “I have a bed?” Aylan said in surprise when the lamp went on and he saw the sturdy, if rough-hewn, frame with the darned and newly ticked mattress next to Torrant’s larger bed frame. Pansy had even finished the sheets—and Aylan didn’t seem to mind that they were bright gold.

  “And a drawer—Aldam and I will rotate in here. Whoever isn’t on call gets to sleep in here with you, and whoever is on call gets to sleep in the room closer to the front room.” Torrant st
oked the embers in the fireplace and started pulling off his clothes, laying them to dry on the chair by the fire. The room was snug—he and Aldam had seen to it—and they had used the trees nearby to cut paneling and finish it.

  “You two have done a lot of work on a place you don’t intend to live in.” Aylan looked around in new appreciation.

  “I think Aldam will stay,” Torrant replied, more than a little sadly. “I think he dreams of changing this place, so a woman needn’t be afraid of walking in the woods by herself, and then bringing Roes here as his bride.”

  “And you?” Aylan asked, taking his outer clothes off and draping them on the chair in Torrant’s example. The snow had caught him unawares. In Dueance, Clough’s capitol, it was converted to slush in short order. He had not worn nearly enough layers, and his undergarments were soaked through. He grimaced, even as Torrant’s sardonic eyebrow prompted him to strip to the skin before squirming into Torrant’s bed and scooting to the wall. Torrant was still wearing his long johns, which were still dry.

  A smile flowed across Torrant’s features. His whole countenance seemed lighter for a moment, and Aylan felt, for the first time since the blood had spattered across his face in the dead white house, a sense of hope. “I want to be by the sea, with Yarri,” he murmured. “Every time I leave Eiran, it feels like the surf is calling to my blood.” His expression turned thoughtful. “Of course, if Yarri wants to live in Clough….”

  “Believe me,” Aylan said soberly. “No one wants to live in Clough.”

  Torrant’s eyes rested on his face for a moment, and Aylan could hardly stand the scrutiny. “No, I don’t imagine they do.” And with that, he blew out the lamp and crawled into bed. Aylan found him in the dark and pulled him close. There was a moment, when pale faces bumped in the dark, that they might have kissed, firm lips against firm lips, hot breath mingling, but they didn’t, and Torrant tucked his face into the hollow in Aylan’s shoulders, and they pressed together, shivering as they warmed each other’s bodies until they fell asleep.

  A Gentle Winter

  PANSY WAKENED them the next day with gentle footsteps and a snort of irritation. “Well, if I’d known you were going to share that bed,” she muttered, “we could have kept the other one in the surgery—the cot is killing me.”

  “I’m sorry, Pansy,” Torrant mumbled, rolling over and squinting at her. Aylan slept in large sprawl near the center of the bed, but since Torrant had always slept in a tight bundle at the side, it had worked out well enough. “We were cold clean through. We can work on getting you a decent bed.” Conrad and Rora had been thrilled at Torrant’s proposal—but their cottage was much smaller than the healer’s home, and they asked humbly if Pansy could stay with Torrant and Aldam. The young men had been warmed by their unspoken assumption that nothing untoward would happen with the young girl in their home. Perhaps they, too, assumed the two of them didn’t like women, but in either case it was acceptance and approval, and they got little enough of either.

  “That’s fine,” Aldam had assured them at the time, but with Aylan’s visit, the problem of space had come up.

  Aylan rolled a little and whimpered in his sleep, and Torrant looked at him in concern. They might indeed end up moving Aylan’s bed back for Pansy, because he wasn’t sure his friend could sleep alone anytime soon. Whatever Aylan’s pain had been, it was clear it would not fade in a day.

  “Why’re you here?” Torrant asked Pansy, squinting some in the spare, dark light of the morning after Solstice. Usually, the person who worked the night before got to sleep in the next day. It was Aldam’s turn to get up, and as Pansy had been working as a sort of assistant since she’d come to stay with them (besides being up to use the water closet at first light, she’d assured them sourly), she was usually better at running interference.

  “There’s people at the door. They’re… they’re the men who’re usually at the priest’s service, and they don’t look happy… but”—Pansy made a face—“they don’t have a rope or pitchforks either. Anyway, I thought you were the best choice.”

  Torrant nodded and scrubbed at his face with his hands, grateful the blood, at least, was gone. And then, because the hour itself was rude, he damned decorum and marched out to greet them wearing Aunt Beth’s hand-knit, long woolen underwear, making sure the flap in the back and the button in the front were both securely closed.

  “What did we do to you now?” he demanded crankily, playing up the sleep in his eyes as he stalked toward the door.

  To his eternal shock, the men all nodded their heads—humbly—and took two steps back. To his pain and discomfort, Tansy’s father was the one who stepped up to talk.

  “That priest—” The man turned red, and his eyes looked swollen from tears when Torrant had sworn no man in this Goddess-blighted piss hole could shed them. “—he done my baby wrong, didn’t he?” the man asked, and Torrant could no longer feign sleep.

  “Of the worst sort,” he replied softly, begging Aldam and Aylan not to hear. They were both hurt so much already.

  “My wife, she told me. She and Tansy tried to… tried to… to cut him out of her belly, and she died of it, and that you… it broke your heart?” And the man looked nakedly at Torrant, and Torrant had few words better.

  “Yes.” Ellyot, you’d best be showing her how to dance, he begged silently.

  “I went to kill that priest this morning.” Uh-oh. “But something else did it for me, and you been telling us all along, ain’t you? You been telling our women and our children that when we don’t pay no attention to the Goddess, well, then Joy don’t pay no attention to us, ain’t that right?” The man’s face was craggy, with sharp angles, broken veins, skin like rubble, and his gruffness would scare small animals and small children alike. But his heartbreak was as real as Torrant’s, as real as Lane’s would be, as real as Aldam’s or Yarri’s or Aylan’s, and Torrant couldn’t begrudge him the lateness of his epiphany. It wasn’t his place, not anymore, not in the face of such bare and vulnerable grief.

  “That’s right,” he said again, quietly, because there wasn’t anything else to say.

  “Well, she paid attention to that priest. Something of her ripped his prick off and ate it and ripped his heart out and left it on the floor next to him in the dark stomach of her Solstice, and we don’t want no more quarrel with her, you hear me?” Torrant paled, but nobody standing at his door in the snow seemed to notice. “And we wanted to tell you, you feel free to treat our women now. You’re the Goddess’s own, and we ain’t gonna stand against her no more, you hear? You tell her that, right?”

  “We don’t speak personally,” Torrant muttered numbly, but it didn’t matter, because he’d nodded his head somewhere in his shock, and the men took that as a definite yes. As a whole they ducked their heads and turned and filed away. Torrant closed the door and waited until they were long out of earshot before he turned for the back of the house and fled to the water closet to be violently ill.

  He leaned his cheek against the polished wood of the seat and was surprised to feel a hand pulling the sweaty hair from his brow and another one offering him a glass of water. Turning sideways, he saw Aylan was tending to his hair and Aldam was offering the water, and he wished for a moment he could be Ellyot, teaching sweet Tansy to dance.

  “You heard?” he said uselessly.

  “So did Pansy. I think she’s actually dancing,” said Aldam. “I didn’t know they knew how to dance here.”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Torrant groaned.

  “Well, you should think about dancing!” Aylan said lightly, grabbing him under the arms and hauling him up. “Thanks to you, I think the people here will be doing a lot more of it.”

  “Sure, until someone sends another priest!” Torrant snapped back, surprised that Aylan, at least, couldn’t see the repercussions.

  “But, Torrant, boyo,” Aylan replied with a fair approximation of Lane’s Eiran song in his voice, “they’ll have to wait at least until spring.�
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  A small smile peeked behind Torrant’s gray-faced misery. “They will, won’t they?”

  “Oh yes,” Aylan said, a satisfied smile on his face. “Imagine the damage we can do here before spring.”

  Down the hall and behind a closed door, they could hear Pansy singing loudly to the tune of a hymn she’d learned at the priest’s service, but using words it would have killed that vermin over again to hear.

  “Happy Solstice,” Aldam said brightly. “My gift isn’t nearly as wonderful.”

  Torrant rubbed his eyes and tried a laugh. It didn’t work, but with Aldam on one side and Aylan on the other, they walked him to the breakfast table, and he decided he’d have some time to make it work. And maybe Aylan’s laugh would come back as well—it was, after all, what healing time was for.

  AYLAN DIDN’T heal all at once. In fact, by the end of spring, Torrant wondered how much his friend had really healed at all.

  They moved the extra bed into the surgery and added some drawers, and Pansy told them once, in a quiet moment, that she’d never in her life had such luxury. She didn’t say it loudly, though, because Ernst, the stocky, terminally shy miller who loved her, had been there, and he was working fervently, even in winter, on building them a home.

  Their reunion had been a rocky one—but not nearly as rocky as it might have been before the priest’s death. In fact, the entire town had taken on a spirit of forgiveness in light of that mutilated body, and Ernst was much more inclined to believe Pansy hadn’t wanted the priest’s advances in the first place now that the miserable bastard’s important parts had all but disappeared. Together they planned every day about the new house, and since Ernst had a sleigh and could travel, he gave Conrad and Rora frequent updates on Pansy and the growing bulge at her stomach.

  “Will they tell the baby I loved him?” she asked Ernst anxiously, one bitter Imbolc evening, two months into the cold new year.