“…beato Joanni Baptistae, sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis, et vobis, fratres…”
Abbot Aelfden’s thoughts had come to rest like a lake in a valley, but the words still flowed from his mouth like a spring. He was doing what he had sworn he would never do. He was sleepwalking through a Mass.
“Do you… smell something?” the Abbot murmured.
He was not certain that he did himself, but was not smell the only sense that could detect a presence long after it had ceased to be? It was the closest word he could find to describe this sensory memory, for was not smell the sense that could make one live again moments long past?
“That’s not good enough!” the blind elf howled.
Aengus had been speaking with his customary soft tone, and the Abbot had not heard what was not supposed to be good enough.
Since her child had come to dwell in her, Flann’s nights were spent in long and dreamless drowsing, wrapped in a silken shadow. When she slept she could not be awoken, though by now her family was no longer alarmed. She would wake, they knew, when her body or her baby was ready.
But now, though the night was still dark, she was already wakening. She was floating up to light like a baby spider clutching her first filament, lifted bodily by an imperceptible breeze.
Lor stopped again and listened. It was not that he had heard something, but rather that he had the idea that there was something he should be hearing.
He heard only the chattering and the scolding of the birds, who had been convinced by the last two balmy days that spring had already arrived. He heard only the deer who fanned out across the men’s fields in the pre-dawn hour. He heard only the wind, which after gusting all night from the southwest had suddenly turned northwesterly, blowing his hair into his eyes from behind.
Malcolm stalked up the road with strides so long and so hurried that his entire body bobbed in time with his limp.
The sun was setting behind the heavy clouds, and the air was already as cold as midnight from blowing over snow.
“Ach, Flann,” Maire said gently as she waddled into the hall. “I didn’t know you were here.”
She stopped some distance behind him, for there was something intimidating about the silhouette before the fire. Even at rest, her husband’s boisterous cousin usually stood with a playful tilt to his body, as if he might break into a dance at any moment.
Lady Margaret ran into the dining hall with a filly’s heedless grace.
“Conrad!” Her softly-pitched cry seemed intended as a shout that would nevertheless not be heard in the next room. “There you are!”
“I’m not bothering you, am I?”
Gwynn made herself as winsome as she knew how. This, given her natural daintiness and delicacy, was winsome indeed, and Leila smiled.
Myrddin did not intend to flinch, but his body recoiled reflexively as the demon came swooping down upon him. His body did not realize that Dantalion could not permit himself to harm it.
“Oh, sorry,” Dantalion purred. “I seem to have blown a bit of snow on you.”
“‘The turd seldom falls far from the horse’s ass,’ as my esteemed sire used to say.”
“You were the turd, lord?”
“And now I am a horse’s ass! Makes one think, doesn’t it?”
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