by Nancy Werlin
But she owed it to them all to look. To see.
So she did, for as long as she could bear.
The Elfin Knight smiled at Lucy with his white, white teeth. "I told you, Lucinda," he said, "that I would see you again soon."
Now she looked at him. "I remember," Lucy said steadily. She remembered too the Elfin Knight's terrible words about Zach, and about her baby. Once more, the horror of it all shocked through her—and gave her new strength.
She wrenched her gaze away from the Elfin Knight. She looked at her plow again. She remembered what she was doing, and why. She thought she could hear, just below the wind, the lapping of the oncoming tide.
She pushed desperately, blindly, at her plow. And she felt the goat's horn's tip break. She grabbed for another to swap it in.
As she knelt, the Elfin Knight was beside her. His breath warmed her cheek. It smelled of cinnamon mixed with something more tart, something indefinable and enticing.
"You belong to me, Lucinda," whispered the Elfin Knight. "It's meant to be. And you will like it, more than you know. I can make you like it. Do you know that?"
Lucy fumbled with the clasp to release the old goat's horn. She had barely enough strength to pull it out of its place. As she struggled to fit the new horn onto the plow, the stream of words into her ear continued.
"I admire you, Lucinda, and your exciting defiance. You play the Game well. I won't punish you after all. Aren't you glad to hear that? Aren't you relieved?"
The clasp on the new horn snapped into place. But just as Lucy rose, a contraction swept through her. She cried out. "Poor, pretty Lucinda. Stop struggling. It's so hard, and it's useless. You will fail. Don't you see how close the tide is now? You cannot finish."
Using the wheelbarrow, Lucy pulled herself upright. She grasped the handle and panted as the contraction ebbed. She didn't want to look at the tide, but she couldn't help it. She did.
"You see?" whispered the Knight.
Panicked, Lucy pushed again at her plow. It was heavy, so heavy.
"Stop now," whispered the Elfin Knight. "Put it down. There is just enough time to go to your husband. Don't you want to do that? I know you are fond of him. Don't you want to say good-bye? I will not blame you for it, sweet Lucinda. Go to him."
Lucy could no longer calculate how much time was actually left. Not much, she knew. The tide was close. She also no longer had any clear idea how many rows she had yet to plow.
The Knight was whispering, whispering. Desperate, she drowned him out in her mind with the only thing that came to her. Music. That cursed ballad.
She sang to herself, first in her head, and then aloud, a whisper against the wind:
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
Always he'll be a true love of mine
She pushed through another row. She seeded it. She hardly noticed that she had altered the lyrics, but she felt attached to her new line. She sang it to herself again, pushing the words against the whisper of the Elfin Knight in her ear.
Always he'll be a true love of mine. She kept a picture of Zach in her mind as she sang it.
She managed another row.
Always he'll be a true love of mine
Then her song was interrupted. The voice of the Knight insinuated itself again. She could not drown it out.
"If you stop now, Lucinda, I will do something for you. Something you would like. Something you will be very sorry later to have refused."
"What?" Lucy panted. "What would you do for me?" She grabbed her measuring cup with unsteady fingers and scooped up corn dust to seed the row she'd just finished. She struggled to get her song back. The next verse of the song had formed in her head—there—she knew it—it was her version, her very own version—she would sing it—
Tell him I've made him a magical shirt
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Without any seam or needlework
Always he'll he a true love of mine
Again, she fixed Zach in her mind.
But the Elfin Knight's voice was insistent. It forced itself upon her. "Here is my bargain," he said. "You will not be like the others," he said. "You will live forever, with me. As my true love. I can make that happen. You can have what Fenella refused. Didn't you always want to be a faery princess? I know that you did. Most girls do. Now you can be. You're more sensible than Fenella, aren't you?"
Always he'll be—
Lucy's song cracked in two.
"Ah," the Knight said. "I finally have your attention, sweet, stubborn Lucinda. What do you think of my offer?"
She could not ignore him. She could not afford to. "But—my baby—in eighteen years, it would be her turn—"
"If you willingly come with me after her birth," said the Elfin Knight, "if you will be my true love, I will not need your baby in eighteen years. She can live out her human life. Your husband can raise her, as you planned. They can do what they wish. It would make no difference to us."
Lucy clutched the handle of her plow. Was he sincere? Could he be sincere? Was this a trick? Or was it her best hope? She was so tired. She could hardly think.
"Be mine," said the Elfin Knight. "Be my true love, and I will let your husband and your baby go free. My curse will end."
"They'd be safe," Lucy whispered. "You promise?"
"Yes," said the Elfin Knight. "I promise. If you stop your work, if you give up, they will be safe."
CHAPTER 54
From where Zach stood above Lucy on the shore, watching her, he had no way of knowing exactly how she was doing. But at some point he guessed she was in labor. He had been to the childbirth classes. He saw the times she paused and bent over sharply at the waist, clutching the handle of the wheelbarrow. He was in a better position than Lucy to time the contractions.
There was a particular moment when he realized for sure. Lucy had paused. She was not only clearly in pain, but was also staring fixedly into the middle distance. Something about her stance, the position of her back, the lift of her head, alarmed him. He took several steps toward her before he caught himself.
He whispered her name.
But then Lucy straightened. She lifted the wheelbarrow and turned away, determinedly, from the empty space at which she'd been staring. She began plowing again.
For several minutes, she moved as if frenzied. All the deliberateness she'd shown earlier was gone. One more row, done.
But now he could see that she staggered each time a contraction took her. She slowed. She broke a goat's horn and had to swap in another one, and she did it so clumsily and ineptly that he wanted to scream with fear. This was no longer the graceful, physically confident Lucy that he knew, the Lucy who had continued to train hard into the eighth month of her pregnancy. This was someone near paralysis with exhaustion.
Every so often—the intervals were random and oddly spaced—she'd stand still. But she did not seem to be resting. She seemed almost to be conversing with some invisible person. She gestured weakly. She seemed to ask a question.
She was giving herself pep talks, Zach thought, in his more hopeful moments. But in his less hopeful ones, he wondered if she was hallucinating. If the madness might be descending. Or it could be fever; it would be a wonder if she didn't catch pneumonia out there. There were in fact so many things to be afraid of that Zach hardly knew which to settle on.
But his most immediate worry was the tide. Lucy had stopped turning her head to check its position. And it was coming in, visibly moving closer, now covering the rows she had plowed earlier. There was still time, Zach thought. It was enough time, if Lucy had been moving at her original pace.
But she wasn't.
Then, with only three rows left, she simply stopped plowing. At first Zach thought she was having one of those momentary rests. She again seemed to be talking to herself. But the moment elongated. And then Lucy turned in his direction. She half lifted a hand, as i
f to wave. She let go of her plow and took a few steps toward him.
The tide was only a few feet behind her.
He shouted at her. "Lucy, no! Go back! You can finish!"
But she continued on, away from the unfinished plowing and sowing. Toward him.
He thought he heard soft laughter in his ear.
He moved. He raced down to the ocean floor, to Lucy. He met her halfway, just as another contraction gripped her. He grabbed her and held her upright, seeing up close the rigid pain on her face as she endured the contraction. Then her eyes focused on him, and her lips moved.
"I'm having the baby, Zach." Her voice was the barest thread above the wind. "It's started."
"Yes. I could tell. But you can do the plowing and sowing first. Come on."
"No!"
"Yes!"
It was the most difficult thing he had ever done. His rational brain was screaming that he was wrong, all wrong. That he ought to carry Lucy away right now to the car. To the hospital. That would be the safe, the right thing to do. Forcing her to finish the plowing was all wrong, and dangerous too, because surely Lucy herself knew best what she could and couldn't endure.
Evil, he found himself thinking. And arrogant. You're putting her at more risk. The words pushed at him, insistent.
But he did it anyway.
Lucy fought him, with all her feeble remaining strength. "No," she whispered. "Let's go to the hospital. That's what's best. I don't need to finish. I have to have the baby now!
"No, you don't," said Zach grimly. "First you finish this. Trust me, Lucy. I have a clearer head than you do right now."
"No," Lucy said. "I know more than you do—"
"You're delirious, and no wonder. Just do as I say. Don't quit."
He positioned Lucy's limp feet on top of his and walked her back to the row she'd abandoned. "You can do it," he said. "I'll help."
She was crying. "Please, let's stop," she said. "Please."
He steeled his heart. "No."
"If you help," she whispered, "it's useless anyway."
"We don't know that. Anyway, it's better than not finishing. So, if you don't do it, I'll help you. That's your only choice. Do it alone, or with me."
He made her stand behind the wheelbarrow, still with her feet on top of his. There was no time to lose. He put his hands over hers and pushed her, supporting her body from behind. The plow went forward.
Too bad if it wasn't allowed. Too bad if it was cheating.
He could feel the moment in which Lucy stopped fighting him. He felt her draw some strength into herself. She stood on her own again. She pushed at the plow by herself again. She didn't need his hand holding hers as she sprinkled the corn dust. He was just behind her, with her, touching her. But except for those few steps, those few inches of plowing when he'd supported her, she did the rest on her own.
The whole time, he kept talking to her. "You're strong, Lucy. Mind and body strong. You can do this. You can."
At one point, Zach thought he heard her humming, or singing, just below the noise of the storm. He recognized the tune, though he could not quite hear Lucy's words. It was that ballad. Was this what she had been doing before, when she seemed to be talking to herself? Had she been singing?
He hated the ballad. But if singing it helped Lucy, if it motivated her, then so be it. He joined in, leaning close to Lucy's ear. Unwilling to sing the terrible words he knew so well, he spontaneously altered them slightly into his own version:
Tell her she's found me an acre of land
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Between the salt water and the sea strand
That makes her a true love of mine
Tell her she's plowed it with just a goat's horn
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
She's sowed it all over with one grain of corn
Yes, she is a true love of mine
And her daughter forever a daughter of mine
They finished just as the tide began to lap at the row closest to the shore. Then, at last, Zach was able to lift Lucy completely into his arms. Behind him, he left the wheelbarrow with its goat's horn plow, and the empty sack that had held the corn dust. The water was over Zach's ankles. Then, suddenly, it was swirling at his calves. But seconds later he was on the shore, with Lucy safely cradled against him.
Within minutes, all the rows of Lucy's plowing and seeding were completely swallowed by the sea.
CHAPTER 55
They'd passed a hospital earlier, and Zach remembered exactly how to get there. The problem was that he wasn't sure they had the hour or more it would take in this weather. And so it was on to Plan B, a summer cottage that he'd seen half a mile back along the shore. He bundled Lucy into the car's passenger seat, told her what they were doing, and afterward had no memory of the drive to the cottage. It was a minute's work to smash one of the windowpanes so that he could unlock the window and get inside. It was another minute's work to help Lucy into a bedroom. He'd been anxious, wondering about electricity and heat, but then found that yes, the cottage had both, and they both worked. He would board up the broken window later, he planned. He'd leave money to fix it and to pay for what they used here.
The important thing, though, was to get Lucy out of her soaking clothes. He helped her, and then rubbed her with towels and got a blanket around her. He boiled water on the stove, even though he had no real idea what he'd use it for. He'd seen this done in some movie, though, and if he needed sterilized water—to clean a knife for cutting the umbilical cord? Was that it?—well, he'd be ready.
He also spent forty seconds in the bathroom, having a private panic attack.
Then he went back to Lucy.
She said hoarsely, "Zach. It'll be soon."
"I know."
He sat down next to her. He put both arms around her and pulled her close. Lucy clung to him. He put one hand on her cheek and tilted her face up gently so that he could look fully into her eyes. After a long, long look, he put his mouth on hers. He felt her lips cling to his. They were raw and chapped and bitten.
When he finally moved away—just an inch—he said, "You did it."
"I don't know. You helped. I couldn't have done the last bit without you." She was panting. "Does it count? Since you helped?"
"You did it," Zach insisted. "I'm your true love, right? I'm even wearing that ridiculous shirt. And I say you did it."
"Maybe," Lucy said. "I don't know—but I don't know that I didn't either. I feel—I feel so strange."
"Well, you're having a baby."
"It's not only that. Zach? Listen, Zach, I saw him out there. The Elfin Knight. He was there." Lucy gasped as a contraction took her. "I spoke to him. Did you see him out there too?"
"No. I'm sorry, Luce. I just saw you." He added hastily, as her face fell, "I believe you, of course. I think I could tell when you were speaking to him. But I didn't see him myself."
"I guess he didn't want you to. You believe me, though? That he was there?"
"Yes."
"He tried," Lucy said. "He tried to get me to stop. He said—he promised—he said if I—if I stopped—maybe it was a trick, I'm not sure—I wanted—I thought—it was why I stopped—" A little scream. "And Miranda—the other women, my family—oh, God, Zach—you don't know what happens to them—I have to explain—"
"Tell me later," said Zach. "Are you okay?"
It was a whole minute before Lucy could reply. "Yes. I-yes."
Zach faked confidence. "Good thing I was paying attention during childbirth class. And I learned some things over the years too, just from hearing Soledad talk. Let's walk, Luce, okay? I know that sounds bizarre after all you've done today. But let's try. Can you do that?"
"Yes." She could manage only one syllable at a time.
They started walking slowly back and forth across the room. Zach was able to watch Lucy's face in profile as they moved. The hours by the Bay of Fundy seemed almost a dream. But he knew they were not.
Still, she was so clearly his same sane, reasonable, pragmatic Lucy. He could tell she was deep in her thoughts, whenever the now-close-together contractions allowed her to think. And he could also tell that she was afraid.
Well, fair enough. So was he. And maybe it was best not to talk about it. Not to wonder if she had, in fact, succeeded in completing the tasks and breaking the curse, or if Zach's assistance had ruined it. What they had done was now done. Soon, in any event, they would know for sure.
And they had a baby's birth to get through. Right now, for Zach at least, that loomed bigger than the Elfin Knight.
Twice, in the minutes that followed, he pulled out his cell phone to check for reception. But the storm was still strong outside, and he got nothing. He knew Soledad and Leo would be in Canada by now. They'd be worried sick, and maybe even nearby, but helpless. He controlled an irrational surge of frustration. What was the use of a midwife mother-in-law if she wasn't around?
"Still—no?" panted Lucy, the second time he checked his cell phone.
"Nothing."
"Oh."
They returned to silence, and to walking. Then Lucy said, between pants, "I've got. Name. For baby."
"Yeah? What is it?"
"Dawn."
"Huh. Dawn. Dawn Greenfield? It's maybe a little, uh, agricultural."
"That's. Okay. With me."
"It's a pretty name. Okay, then. Dawn." The name was growing on him. Zach said it again, "Dawn." And then, impulsively: "Dawn Scarborough Greenfield? Should we do that? I like that."
A moment of quiet. Two steps across the room. Three.
Then: "Greenfield. Greenfield!" A pause. "Understand?"
"Yes," said Zach. "Dawn Greenfield."
"Good."
Zach remembered what Lucy had said before about conversing with the Elfin Knight. What had they discussed?
"Luce," he began. "You said before that—"
