The Well of the North Wind

by Steven, Kenneth;

  *

  Afterwards they remembered. The day Colum washed their feet. The day of the storm when he went out himself to meet the boat. The day of the coming of the white horse . . .

  Fian slipped away on soft feet from the circle. He had been on the edge anyway and in the shadows; had it not always been that way? He came outside and it was starlight, and as he looked towards the north he saw green flickerings in the sky. Did the heavens themselves know that Colum had died?

  For once he did not know where to go. Because he had nowhere, he found himself going down to the sea behind the chapel. He came to the place where he had drawn for the children in the sand, but the tide was high and so he crouched there, on the grassy bank above. He would remember the Colum he had known. Already they were spinning him into legend, and from their stories would be lost the anger and the laughter and the wrong. He had said himself that he was a man who stumbled after God. They would give him golden feet. Fian thought of the time he swept a refectory table of its dishes, of the anger he had for a man who had overslept. And he remembered how he himself had been falsely sent away.

  But he knew just the same that he had loved Colum, and that his one regret was that he had never told him. He had loved him despite everything. All at once, gently, he felt a hand on his back. He thought it would be Ruach or Neil or Cuan, and he was glad they had chosen to seek him out.

  ‘Would you come with me?’

  He turned round and it was Baan. For one moment they looked at each other, frozen and silent. Then Fian answered as he rose to his feet and held her gaze. Trembling, she reached out her hand to him and it was open.

  She took him up onto the moorland, to the place where Mara was buried. He still saw the scar where the spades had cut, but it was healing.

  ‘I wanted to find orchids,’ Baan said. ‘They were her favourite and they are ready now.’

  Together they picked them in the coming night and as he stood with her a dam broke within him and he cried at last. He cried without shame, remembering and missing. They cried together and carried back armfuls of white orchids to mark her grave. And he saw it: this was a whiteness that was stronger than all the dark. The night would not put it out.

  When they were done they came down to the settlement and he thanked her, his voice low and shy. She stretched up her hand and touched his cheek. She did not speak and yet it was as though he heard her say: There will be no more between us.

  He was alone and he knew it was well into the night but there was no tiredness in him. He looked at his hands and he felt things in them; he felt their restlessness. And he smiled. He had made a promise to Mara that he would draw something for her. And the promise was still to be kept.