Catan is bothered

Catan was learning discipline of the mind. She could not truly “not think”, as she claimed, but she could keep her thoughts focused on nothing – on trivial things, on imaginings.

Often she thought of places rather than people, and not places she knew – for they were all populated – but entire dream landscapes where never men had trod. Sometimes she would soar over them like an eagle, far above the canopy of green and red and gold trees, the misty valleys, and the craggy hills. Sometimes she would slink through them like a cat, remarking every stem and leaf that stroked her flank, contemplating every pebble that passed beneath her paws. From bird-​​height or cat-​​height the world was bearable. It was life on the scale of people that she could not endure.

Life on the scale of five-​​year-​​olds was not much easier.

“Who’s there?” she called, though the knock came awkwardly enough and low enough on the door that she already knew.

“It’s just Wulf and Gils. May we come in?”

“Come in.”

The boys came in, grinning with all the sheepish good-​​humor of puppies trying to please.

“Can we come up on the big bed with you?” Gils asked. “For just a couple minutes?”

Cat gave the bed a feeble pat. “Come up, come up. Does Lili know you’re here?”

“Nurse thinks we’re with Lili and Lili thinks we’re with Nurse,” Wulf giggled as he pulled himself onto the bed by way of the blankets.

“That never lasts long, though,” Gils sighed.

“Girl-​​Flann went out,” Wulf announced.

“I know,” Cat said.

“And so we want to talk with you quick.”

“Girl-​​Flann never lets us,” Gils grumbled.

“Whisht!” Wulf hushed. “Cat needs to rest. But we won’t stay long,” he added and gently patted Cat’s arm.

Wulf’s face had Egelric’s own rough-​​hewn features overlaid with some voluptuous beauty that she was told he had from his mother. But Gils looked like nobody anybody knew. He simply looked like an elf. And there was something about the long, straight nose with a bump between the eyes. There was something about the eyes.

She knew that Gils was only a sweet little boy who could not yet even conceive of the harm that his kind had done her. Nonetheless it was his presence at the dinner table that so often prevented her from eating – or even from coming down at all. Nonetheless, she found his little hands to be clinging while Wulf’s were caressing. She found his smiles to be as subtle as Wulf’s were frank.

And it was the thought that she might even then be carrying the germ of some cousin or kin of his in her belly that prevented her from getting up from her bed and living. The uncertainty was perhaps worse than the fate she dreaded.

“We wanted to ask you about that blind elf you know,” Wulf said.

Cat’s mouth dropped open.

“Remember him?” Wulf added hopefully.

“Aye…” she croaked.

“Well, last night when he was here he said he wanted – ”

“He was here?” Catan cried.

Wulf glanced at Gils. “Didn’t my Da tell you?”

“No!”

“Now you’ve done it!” Gils groaned.

“But you told me he was here!” Wulf whined at his brother.

“He was here! But maybe Da didn’t want Cat to know.”

Cat’s back stiffened straight, pushing her head and shoulders deep into the pillow against which she lay. Her cheeks throbbed with heat, and she felt feverish and shaky – but it was nothing to what she had felt the previous evening. Then she had thought she had caught some dreadful malady on top of everything else that had happened to her, and alone in her bed she had shivered and sweated and ached, too weak even to cry for help. Then she had thought she was about to die – and that, paradoxically, had been the only moment in the past week in which she had not wished she would die.

“When was he here?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” Wulf said. “It was when I was in my baf. But he said he heard him.”

“I did!” Gils wailed.

“What did he want?” Cat asked.

“I don’t know. I hardly got to hear anything, ’cause Wyn came and found me and made me go upstairs to play. But he said he wanted to see his wife. Is that you?”

Cat bit her lips together, but her lips alone could not stop a moan.

“What did you have to say that for?” Wulf snapped.

“That’s what you wanted to ask her!” Gils protested.

“Not like that, stupid! Every time your big fat mouth gets us in trouble!”

“Look who’s talking, fish-​​lips!”

“Beetlehead!”

Cat wiped the palm of her left hand over her skirt, though she knew nothing could erase the scar that would be left behind when those thick scabs had fallen away. The elves Vash and Shosudin had left not a trace of the wound across her chest, but they had refused to heal her hand.

“Don’t cry, Cat,” Wulf said gently. “My Da won’t let him take you away if you don’t want to go.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted to ask her!” Gils cried.

“Will you shut up?” Wulf growled.

Cat swallowed her tears and asked, “What did you want to ask me?”

“We wanted to ask whether you would go live with him, if he’s your husband,” Gils said.

Cat clutched at the blankets beneath her to give herself the impression of being attached to something solid. “Is that what he wanted last night?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” Gils shrugged. “He wanted to see you, and Da said you weren’t his wife because a priest didn’t marry you.”

“But you see,” Wulf said soothingly, “my Da didn’t let him get to you.”

“But if you do go,” Gils said eagerly, “can we come sometimes to visit you in your cave? I wish we could live in a cave!”

Cat twisted her fingers into the blankets until her fingernails threatened to snap. Her clenched teeth alone could not stop her moan, “Noooo…”

There was a sharp knock at the door, and Cat threw back her head and shrieked, “No!”

Someone rushed in, someone broad-​​shouldered and dizzyingly tall viewed from the height of a woman lying on a bed – but it was only her cousin Egelric.

She knew he would not hurt her, but he was so self-​​conscious of his manhood these days that she could not help but notice it as he tried to creep around her. In his attempts to go quietly and not startle her, he suddenly had the looming presence of a Leofric.

Once he had seen that she was not in danger, he did not even look at her but only looked at the boys. He did not even speak to the boys, but only looked at them. For a man with the presence of a Leofric, that was enough, though the boys could not have been sensitive to the many layers of menace he presented to a helpless woman lying on her back.

Wulf and Gils climbed down from the bed, mumbling apologies to her and excuses to their father.

“I’m very sorry they got in here to bother you,” Egelric said to her in his deep, rumbling voice that was a little like Leofric’s too. “I don’t like to lock the doors in case of fire, but if you like…”

“Oh! Oh! That’s a good idea,” she whimpered. “I should like to lock my door, I think.”

Egelric frowned, but his eyes made him seem to be in pain.

Cat turned her face away. “I’m not afraid of fire,” she whispered.