Chapter 23 #4
“Very well. You?” she asked, her arms tightening around him.
“I have never been better,” he said, a smile in his voice. "Which you know is the truth because I spoke it easily in a realm where only truth can be spoken thus."
A little later Cuchulainn retrieved the mead and the bread and cheese.
He sliced the apples in half and put them on the stones to warm.
They filled the camp with the homey scent of cooking apples.
And then they sat on their makeshift pallet, naked, sharing her cloak as they ate and drank and talked.
“Do you think we’ll enter the Winterlands in the morning?” Cuchulainn asked her.
She swallowed the mead and nodded. “I know we will.”
“What should I know about the Winterlands? I mean, besides the fact that the worst of humanity will be found there. Will we have to fight our way to Curruid?”
“We would if I didn’t have a way around that.” Her eyes gleamed. “Thankfully, there are shadows aplenty in the Winterlands.”
His brows lifted. “You’re going to cloak us like you did the horse and wagon when the warriors from Tribe Catuvellauni ambushed us! You can do that as we’re traveling?”
“One of the benefits of traveling through the Underworld is the vast number of shadows held here,” she said.
“So what would be difficult if not impossible for me in the mortal realm or even in the Summerlands is easily accomplished in the Winterlands, where darkness reigns.” Scáthach took another drink of mead and then passed the skin to Cuchulainn.
“The spirits in the Winterlands will not be able to see us. We will be able to see them.” She shivered and leaned closer to him.
“You’ll need to ready yourself. What you see will be terrible. ”
Cuchulainn nodded solemnly. “The brutality of man can be terrible. But I have seen it many times.”
“What you’ll see in the Winterlands goes beyond that. Some of the spirits have been there for so many centuries that they have very little humanity left.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
She shivered again. “It means they are being absorbed by the realm. Those whose deeds have condemned them to the Winterlands will never leave. So eventually they become part of the realm itself. As you know from traveling through the Autumnal Realm, the Underworld is sentient.”
“Is it not possible that the absorbed spirits will allow others to escape? Perhaps just to sow chaos in the other realms?” Cuchulainn asked as he handed her the mead skin.
“No. The dead from the Winterlands are selfish. It’s the most consistent character flaw that all spirits who earn their way to that realm share—they have a particularly virulent form of greed that smothers self-awareness and empathy.
They believe the world is centered on them and their whims. They constantly strive to possess and control, even in death. ”
Cuchulainn nodded. “So their obsession with possession and control becomes part of the Winterlands.”
“Exactly. Those condemned to eternal winter are used to hold others like themselves in eternal confinement,” said Scáthach.
He took her hand, caressing her palm with his thumb. “It seems pitiable. Tragic even.”
“I thought the same until I entered the realm.” Her gaze went distant and she shook her head. “What I saw there altered my pity. It will yours, too. Though I can’t say my pity was erased, just changed. I still . . .”
“You still?” he said, prompting her when she didn’t continue.
“I still feel sorrow for them and hate that they are unredeemable. It has weighed on my spirit since I was a child,” she finished softly in a sad whisper.
Cuchulainn slid his arm around her and pulled her into his lap, wrapping her tightly in his arms until the tension their conversation had evoked loosened and she relaxed against him.
“I’m sorry I’m making you enter the Winterlands. I didn’t know—didn’t understand before now how difficult this would be for you,” he said.
She rested her head against his chest. “You didn’t make me do anything. I wanted to come with you and I’m glad I did. There is nowhere else I’d rather be than here with you.”
“Here where we have all the time in the world,” he murmured.
“Yes, love. Here where time works for us.”
Scáthach swiveled in his arms and kissed him hungrily.
Then she lay back and opened herself to him.
Cuchulainn wrapped her in his arms as their bodies joined again, fitting perfectly while they explored and discovered each other.
And the realm responded to the daughter of their beloved goddess, granting them the one thing they never had enough of in the mortal realm—time.
The night stretched on and on, filled with passion and the satiation of desire as well as a love so pure and beautiful that it healed that which obsession and selfishness had tried to break beyond repair.
And then, when their bodies were exhausted, together Scáthach and Sentanta slept deeply, dreaming of a future where they were just two people in love, not a queen and a hero who owed allegiance to others more than to themselves.