Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  His hands beat at the counter behind him, pounding until a drawer handle broke, and the pain in his hands brought him back to himself with a muffled scream.

  “Augh—ah!” He punctuated it with a kick at the cupboard underneath the broken drawer, and if he’d been strong enough, that would have been a casualty too.

  “And what if it’s not Eljean next time?” Torrant was sobbing freely now, as he had not sobbed when he’d picked up Eljean’s lifeless body or when he’d kissed Trieste good-bye or when he’d awakened, warm and breathing, completely healed but dead inside. “Oh gods and Goddess, Aylan. What if it’s you? What if it’s her…?”

  He couldn’t finish that sentence. All he could do was slide down the abused cupboards onto the floor and sit, huddled, shaking, looking dismally at Aylan as his brother, his friend, his lover, slid down next to him, wiping uselessly at his own tears.

  “I don’t know,” Aylan said, leaning shoulder to shoulder with him. “Mate, I don’t know what to say. You’d think, of all people, you and I would know that sort of thing doesn’t come with guarantees….”

  “But some things should be sacred,” Torrant said, hating himself for still believing it. “Things like your old lovers or the woman who’s mothered everyone you’ve ever loved or the home you went out to defend….” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes again, willing the pain in his soul to simply go away, to stop hollowing him out like a Samhain gourd.

  “But what are we going to do about it?” Aylan asked logically. “We could leave it all behind. I’d go with you, you know.”

  Torrant snorted a little and laid his head on Aylan’s shoulder, the way they had been leaning on each other for the past year. “Where would we go?” he asked, willing to be led anywhere but in his own skin.

  “Everywhere. We’d explore. I’ve never seen Cleanth—you?”

  “No.” Torrant hiccupped a little, but it subsided.

  “There’s an option. How about the Garden Lands?” Aylan’s hand came up and stroked through the shaggy chestnut hair.

  “I hear they’re lousy with wizards,” Torrant said, trying for a light tone with his clogged voice.

  “You’d fit right in, then.” Aylan gave a slight smile.

  “That I would. What else would we do?” Aylan’s scent was comforting, as it always had been. The foggy thought passed that for this moment of peace, everything—the pain, the scars, the terrible wound—it had all been worth it, for Aylan to be here, talking him through the aching tangle of his own soul.

  “We’d drink, every day, until we couldn’t wake up without a pint, and shag anything that would stay still for us,” Aylan mused. He looked down at the no longer young man leaning on him for comfort. Torrant’s eyes were downcast, and his dark lashes fanned his cheekbones. Really, he was still just as appealing as he had been when they were eighteen, and he’d been unblemished and beautiful.

  Torrant looked up, his hazel eyes lighting a bit with humor and attraction. In spite of himself, Aylan lowered his face, just a little, toward the man who could still lead him to the stars’ dark and back. “And if no one else would stay still for us, we’d always have each other,” he said throatily, and Aylan nodded and swallowed. Hard.

  “I’d do it in a heartbeat, if you asked.” Oh, he would. The lure of such a life, nothing to worry about but the absolute surety of Torrant’s love, was nearly overwhelming.

  “It would be so easy, wouldn’t it?” There was a wistfulness there that all but tore Aylan’s heart in two.

  “Oh yes.”

  “Just the two of us.”

  Ah gods…. “Oh gods, yes.”

  Their faces were so close together, their lips were almost touching. The press of them would be so sweet, Torrant thought with a slam of yearning. Almost as sweet as Yarri’s lips had been.

  “You’d miss Starren,” he whispered, almost begging Aylan to tell him it didn’t matter.

  Aylan closed his eyes in pain. “I would. Terribly. I don’t even know if I’ll love her like a woman when she’s of age… but gods, I’d miss her.”

  Damn… damn and double damn. But Aylan was still not moving. “You deserve to see how that would work,” Torrant murmured, almost weeping with willingness to sink into what Aylan was offering, to settle for the comfort because the entirety of love seemed so damned hard.

  “I do,” Aylan said sadly. “You’re right—I am a good man. I deserve to have the whole thing—the moon-destined mate, the entire family who loves me, the passel of children to worship. You taught me what a good man can have, mate. It’s your fault.” His head dipped that last bit and touched his lips to Torrant’s, and then again. He lingered, and Torrant felt the wanting build in his chest.

  Then Aylan pulled back. “You taught me what a good man can have—and you’re the best man I know.”

  Torrant made a sound between a pained laugh and an exasperated sob, and he went back to resting his head on Aylan’s shoulder. “Ah, brother, it was not to be—but it wouldn’t have been bad.”

  “But we deserve a chance at wonderful.” The conviction in Aylan’s voice made the hollowness in Torrant’s chest warm a little.

  “Absolutely.” They were both quiet then, and they heard the back door open and Yarri’s waddling tread squeak across the floorboards of the living room.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Torrant said without looking up from the worn floorboards.

  “You didn’t follow me,” Yarri said quietly, and Torrant met her eyes with sad humor.

  “You were going too fast, beloved. I… I got winded halfway out there today.” He flushed, feeling weak and lame. “I’ll have to work a little to get my wind back.”

  “I’m sorry.” Yarri grimaced “I should have thought. But you’re wrong. It was my fault. I told him he could stay.” She wiped the back of her hand across her face. “And I saw that Trieste didn’t come with us, and I didn’t go back.”

  “And he told you he didn’t take orders from you—I was his captain.” A self-derisive smile tainted Torrant’s thin features for a moment. “And I said we’d come for him.”

  “Oh hey—can I get in on this party?” Aylan asked, all sardonic bitterness. “Because I was the wanker who ran into a knife and bollixed up a plan that had a prayer’s chance of working!” He shook his head. “And damn Spots anyway. I… I saw her staying, but you were in my arms, and I couldn’t go fight with Trieste when Starren was there….”

  Yarri shook her head and stomped her foot awkwardly. “Both of you, stop it. I took his gift! Don’t you see? You two can’t blame yourselves for Eljean, because that’s what I took with it!”

  Torrant made a sound in his throat and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Come here, beloved. Come take my hand.”

  Yarri lumbered over and bent to take his hand, and then, looking into his sad, repentant hazel eyes, she gave a sigh and sat next to him, the three of them huddling on the floor like children telling secrets after a game of jacks. He wrapped his arm around her while still leaning on Aylan, and they sat like that for a few moments, their quiet sadness as palpable as the smell of the stew coming off the stove.

  “Aylan and I were thinking about running away together,” he said lightly. Only he and Aylan would ever know how near a thing it really had been.

  “You just said you couldn’t walk out to the beach,” she returned, some humor seeping into her tone.

  “I’ll get better!” he replied with comic dignity.

  “So will this,” she murmured, and she sighed a little, happily, when his arm tightened around her body, under her breasts and over her belly.

  At that moment, Lane walked in from the porch outside and regarded the three of them with only a little surprise. “I guess the pain storm broke,” he said quietly, going to the cold box and rooting around for some chocolate preserves to put on the cookies Yarri had baked that day.

  “We were trying to decide whose fault it all was,” Aylan supplied helpfully, looking wistfully at the cookies
.

  Lane walked a cookie, dripping with fudge, over to him and then handed another to Torrant and one to Yarri. “Which part?” he asked, licking the chocolate from his fingers before going back to the counter and icing four more cookies to put on a plate. He went back to the cold box and got out the milk in the time it took one of them to answer.

  “The worst part,” Torrant said at last. “The part where our friends died, and Trieste was… savaged… and our whole world fell apart.”

  “Ah.” Lane sat down with his milk, took a drink, and offered the glass to Aylan. “That’s easy—it was my fault.”

  Aylan spit milk out his nose.

  “No, it was!” Lane protested, no twinkle at all in his eyes. “I was so busy watching Bethen, I didn’t realize how fragile my baby was. There’s no excuse, really—she just seemed to be holding the world together with worsted yarn and a pair of sticks, and I was so upset over Bethie….” His voice faded, and he met their eyes carefully.

  “So it was mine, because I was too weak to keep Starry from going to Clough, and if she hadn’t….”

  “That’s shite!”

  “Bollix!”

  “Uncle Lane!”

  The chorus of protests drowned out however he would finish that sentence, and he looked at them with a faint smile.

  “You can’t play that game, my children,” he said quietly, “because you’ll be playing it for the rest of your lives, and that would be a shame. Sacrifices were made so you could be here, living happily. It dishonors your friends to waste them.”

  Torrant was the one who met his eyes, tears breaking in his own. “But it hurts. It hurts to know they were hurt for us.”

  “They chose to be hurt for you,” Lane corrected, “and you need to choose to live for them.” He looked away, his own pain breaking in his eyes. “My wife spent months telling me that staring at the stars’ dark and wishing you were there was no way to honor the people who made the trip. ‘We’ll be there already, Lane!’” he mimicked, doing a fair impression of Auntie Beth. “‘We know what it’s like! You need to be bringing us stories of your side of the river!’ And so I am. I’m remembering the way Starren looked like every other girl there tonight, and how happy she was to see her friends. I’m remembering the way Cwyn flirted with Aln, and then with Aln’s sister, and then with a married couple from the ghettoes, all in the same sentence. I’m remembering Stanny and Evya and how they told each other secret jokes during the entire meeting. And when it comes time to join my Bethie, I’ll be able to tell it all to her. Because that’s the only reason I can think of that she had to go and I had to stay.”

  They were all quiet then. A whole new pain warmed the kitchen, and Lane offered them all another cookie. They shook him off at first, but he pressed again.

  “Eat, my lost children,” he chided. “Sweetness—sometimes it’s what you live for—a little bit of sweet between the bitter. It can make all the difference in the world.”

  Torrant looked up, the word catching his attention. What was I, then? Eljean had asked him after that first, mistaken night. Sweetness.

  “Thank you, Uncle Lane,” he murmured. “I think I will have a cookie.”

  Sweetness.

  Remembering to Sing

  Triane will wander, and sometimes is lost

  If we follow her brothers, in spite of the cost

  She’ll be there to greet us, wherever she roams

  Triane will wander, but always comes home.

  TORRANT frowned at the words in front of him, not sure if they rang true. They meant exactly what he wanted to say, he thought, but they were… bald. Bald and barefaced. They needed dressing up, and he played with his lute strings to see if he could decorate the poetry a little.

  “No, no,” Yarri murmured from her knitting chair in their downstairs bedsitter. “I like it.”

  She came in behind him and put her hands on his shoulders as he sat sideways on the bed, and he leaned back against her, laughing a little when her growing belly butted at his head.

  “They grew again today,” he said softly, and she bent and kissed his recently trimmed hair.

  “They grow every day,” she told him wryly. “I think one of them just shifted so his arse is sticking out.”

  “If he’s anything like your brothers, he’s probably beating the tar out of his twin behind your belly.” Torrant rolled his eyes and appreciated the quiet moment between them. They had been stealing them back, these heartbeats. Every day there were more of them—moments of the silent understanding that had filled their hearts for all their lives. Torrant treasured them now, as he hadn’t before—he’d spent too long with an empty heart. Every little warm thing that filled it again was golden.

  “Are you ready to go?” she prompted, not sure if these walks were a good idea or not. He always seemed so pale and drawn by the time they were done. He swore he was getting stronger, but… but she had seen him, his life leaking out breath by breath. If he so much as panted, she looked to his shirt to see if he was bleeding again, and then to his lips to see if they were flecked with red.

  “Absolutely!” he replied, with enough cheerfulness to let her know he was aware of her reservations. “We might see the sky tonight, you know.”

  It had been foggy every night for the last few weeks as they’d gone walking—and Torrant had realized how long it had been since he’d looked to the sky, marked the progress of the moons and the diamond-bright velvet foil of the stars.

  He did remember the dawn he’d felt his beloved conceive, though. Maybe that was enough.

  “I’m overwhelmed with joy,” Yarri said dryly, and Torrant laughed, setting the lute down carefully on their quilt-covered bed and starting for the stairs to the living room.

  Halfway up, he heard Roes say a rude word, followed by Aldam’s pleasant rumble—repeating the same word.

  Torrant’s heart went icy and his hands clammy. He came to a head-banging halt on the stairs as Yarri asked him what was wrong.

  “Roes is in labor,” he breathed, wondering if his neck was fluttering with the strength of his panicky pulse.

  “Well, good,” Yarri said with relief. “She’s been ripping our faces off all week. It’s about time!”

  Torrant didn’t have the words for her. He hadn’t told her about what he and Aldam had said on the beach…. The intervening time had been so peaceful he hadn’t wanted to resurrect any pain, for fear of destroying the tenuous pleasure of a quiet heart.

  He continued up the stairs more because his wife expected him to than because he felt any real bravery welling up in his chest.

  When he got there, he found the family in a predictably organized chaos. Starren was competently boiling water in the kitchen for their sutures and thread, should they need it. Lane was putting old linens and an oilcloth on the bed Roes and Aldam had been sharing in Lane’s and Bethen’s old room. Cwyn had just dashed out the door to tell Stanny and Evya what was happening, and Aldam and Aylan were holding on to Roes’s arms as she panted out another contraction in the living room.

  “I was… told…,” she panted, “that… I’d… have… some… warning—” She sighed. “—before this happened!”

  “I’ll get some linens,” Yarri murmured, nodding at the puddle of waters on the floor, and Torrant shook his head, a little bit of amusement coming to his aid and quieting the thunder of his heart.

  “Roes, one, maybe two women in ten start a birth this way—did you pick it on purpose?” he asked, coming over to take her other arm from Aylan. Aldam expected him to help, he thought, making the panic in his chest subside with a sheer act of will.

  The curse Roes aimed at him made him smile a little, and together the three of them made their way to the bedroom.

  Much like her mother, when Roes’s waters broke, her body sprinted toward the finish line. Not much more than two hours later, Torrant stood between her splayed knees and endured another round of ripe cursing. That part, he thought fondly as he cleaned off her body in prepar
ation for the baby, was all Roes—Bethen had hardly cursed at all during labor, even though the expression “Triane’s purple tits” had been one of her creations.

  Roes gave a protracted groan, and a little thatch of what would surely be red curls forced its way through a space that surprised him every time with its smallness, and Torrant raised his hands to help ease the baby’s passage to the world. It had all been muscle memory, until this moment—motions he remembered from years of working in the hills, from well more than a hundred babies delivered, many of them before he was fourteen.

  The muscle memory served him well until this very moment, when his hands started shaking so hard he could barely see them.

  “Aldam?” he said, leaching as much of the anxiety from his voice as he could.

  Aldam was busy holding Roes’s hand, and Yarri was on her other side. Together they worked in a strange sort of concert. Aldam assured Roes that everything was going to be fine, while Yarri assured her that the rest of the world were bastards and as soon as Roes got up from childbed, they would get together and annihilate whoever was responsible. Aldam’s way was the most peaceful, but Yarri’s way kept Roes focused through her contractions, and the din during the delivery was truly incredible.

  Aldam looked up and met Torrant’s eyes, and in spite of everything—his wife’s vociferous protests against the labor in general, his own excitement over the birth, the general chaos of the Moon household—Aldam knew exactly what was wrong.

  Roes didn’t notice when Aldam gave her hand to Yarri and moved around behind Torrant. Aldam made a delighted little “oh” sound that vibrated down to the soles of Torrant’s feet when he saw the baby’s head.

  Then he put his hands behind Torrant’s hands, holding them firm and steady, as Roes gave a titanic heave, and that little, oddly proportioned head was suddenly lying wetly in Torrant’s palms.

  The shaking stopped abruptly, and without a word, Aldam went back to his Roes in time for Torrant to say, “One more, Roes—and then we’re almost done with this nonsense, yeah?”