Chapter 34 #2
At the last moment, his wings flapped, and his terrifying descent slowed enough for him to land in front of me. Hard.
We both nearly slipped down the slanting slate tiles. But I managed to hold on to him and the wooden post of the bell tower.
“Oh, Nin!” I cried.
“Can’t fly. Need to build up my strength,” he shouted desperately against the harsh wind blowing across the church.
But when I felt the roof shake and whipped my head around to see Kesh landing, I knew we wouldn’t get the time Nin needed to heal.
Kesh stood on the opposite end of the roof. Snow fell sideways, knifing through my clothes as I pressed myself against Nin, not knowing what to do. But if I had thought he would save us again, I was mistaken.
All we could do was huddle together and wait like sitting ducks while Kesh approached. And when he was halfway toward us, I glanced at the church grounds below, a field of white, studded with graves. Panic flared.
“Oh, Little Brother,” Kesh shouted tauntingly. “Did I hurt you? Did I break one of Father’s laws? Whatever will you do?” He tugged open his shirt collar to reveal a pair of opal pendants. “Can’t go home and tattle, can you?”
“Give it back!” Nin roared.
Kesh grasped one of the pendants and jerked the chain until it broke. “This, you mean? Why don’t you try to fly down and get it. I’ll keep your nurse company while you do.” He tossed the pendant over the side of the roof, where it fell into the snow below, and disappeared amongst the graves.
“NO!” A look of anguish marred Nin’s face.
But Kesh just laughed. Then he continued walking the roofline like a tightrope, coming toward us. “I should’ve done this years ago, Little Brother.”
Only a few yards away now. I looked at Nin, who gripped the top of his thigh where Kesh had struck him.
I’d never seen him in such pain. His eyes were dark when they flicked to mine.
“I cannot,” he said, two words that were almost lost in the roar of the wind.
But I knew what he meant. He couldn’t fly again yet.
I didn’t know what to do. So I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed.
Mammy, please help us. I’m begging you, if you can hear me, we are going to die if you don’t do something—
Nin’s body went rigid. I opened my eyes, heart filled with fear, to find both Nin and Kesh looking upward into falling snow. When I turned my face to the sky, I saw what they saw.
Something was coming.
Black dots streaking toward us through the white snow. The dots made a combined shrill noise that sounded like fury.
Like vengeance.
Inside the snow rode three winged black horses. They galloped through the air and flapped their wings, and I was so aghast and distraught by the sight of them that it wasn’t until they were nearly on top of us that I realized the flying horses carried three women.
Three warriors. They bore shields and armor, and their hair flew loose behind them.
One led the others, a cape of white fur fluttering behind her as she rode hard, head low as she gripped the mane of her shaggy, antlered mount.
Like the two behind her, she wailed an ululating war cry—a type of keening I’d only heard from immigrant women in my father’s tenement, women who sang over the bodies of their dead.
These women weren’t wailing over the dead. And they weren’t riding through the storm.
They were the storm.
I’d never been afraid of Nin and his world, not really. But I was afraid now.
Especially when Nin made a noise next to me and wilted against the bell tower.
“No, no, no!” Kesh cried out.
The female riders descended as they approached the roof. The two women flanking the leader conjured glowing spears from thin air, and as they flew toward the roof, they swooped down near Kesh before he could take off and fly.
Both women stabbed their spears into his chest as they rode past.
Bones broke.
Kesh swayed on his feet, weeping. His wings flapped once, then wilted.
The two riders turned around and made another pass over the roof. One of them held out her arm as she rode by Kesh, grabbed him by one arm as if he were a doll, and threw him over her saddle.
“Kesh!” Nin cried out in pain. As if his brother hadn’t just been trying to kill him. He stumbled, trying to get around me, reaching out for the last of the riders, who shook the roof like thunder when her black mare came down upon it.
That’s when I realized it wasn’t a horse at all but a reindeer with fuzzy antlers. Ornamental metal beads dripped from its saddle. I’d never seen an animal so big, so majestic.
The woman slipped off the beast and stalked down the roof toward us in her flowing white furs.
Long brown hair whipped around a pale face with narrow eyes.
Bells chimed around her fur boots with every step.
A silver battle breastplate covered her torso beneath the white furs, and a glowing spear was strapped to her back.
When she got to the part of the roof where Kesh had once stood, she tossed an angry glance over the side to the ground below, and she spit.
“Eadni,” Nin called out weakly. And then again, more urgently. “Eadni!”
I didn’t know that word, but I understood the weight of it. And all at once I understood who she was.
It was Nin’s mother.
The Queen of the Dead had finally come to save her child.
Shock poured through me as the woman raced across the roof and opened her arms to Nin.
He fell against her while she murmured something in a foreign language full of melodies, folding him up inside her fur cloak.
I could hear him weeping through the storm, and it made my heart twist to see him so vulnerable.
The embrace they shared was personal. I felt like an intruder watching, but I couldn’t turn away.
Her long brown hair was festooned with red feathers like the one in Nin’s boutonniere, and when she released him from their long embrace so that she could look him over, she inspected him with concern—the same way my own mother would after I’d fallen and scraped my knee.
Then she looked across the roof at me.
It was like seeing Nin for the first time, all over again. All my instincts told me that I was looking at the impossible. The surreal. The fantastic. And a terrible trembling consumed my body.
She spoke to Nin in words I couldn’t hear through the wind, holding his face in her hands, I could hear the worry in her tone, as well as Nin’s deep voice arguing.
And after more weeping and another embrace, she peered at me again with curiosity.
But she didn’t approach me. Nin nodded, and then he turned away from her and limped back to me.
The strangest expression twisted his face, and worry sprang up in me again. What was that look? I’d never seen him wearing it before. But when he got close enough for me to reach for him, I finally understood.
He was going back home with his mother.
“No, please,” I whispered, my heart blossoming with grief that overrode all rational thought. In the back of my mind, I knew I should be elated for him. He was free, and his brother had not killed him in this world, and that was the most important thing.
But I couldn’t control my own heart.
“Come with me,” he said simply, wrapping his arms around me. And when I embraced him in return, his wings expanded, and he kicked off the roof and flew.
He flew us away from the church while his mother stayed on the roof with her reindeer. I twisted in Nin’s warm embrace to see her as we descended, not understanding what was happening.
Nin landed in the snowy churchyard amongst the graves. The moment his boot touched the ground, he became unsteady and stumbled.
“Here,” I said quickly, helping him sit on a nearby snow-covered concrete bench, stretching out his wounded leg.
“Molly,” he said in a rough voice. “I have to go home now.”
My stomach dropped. I had known it. Had known that he must. But I didn’t want him to go. My chest felt as if someone had tried to stuff it with sawdust. I had to swallow several times to even find my voice. “Can you… Do you have the strength to travel to your world?”
He nodded. “My mother will help. She’s very powerful. I’ll travel back with her handmaidens.”
“They’re Valkyries,” I whispered.
“Some call them that. They choose who dies on battlefields and ferry their souls to my father’s kingdom.”
“Is that where they’re taking Kesh?”
He nodded. “He broke many laws. My father will decide his fate.”
“You never told me there were Valkyries—you never told me you had wings!”
“There is so much I haven’t told you. I thought we’d have more time…” He picked up my hand and held it in his lap. “This is not how I envisioned our parting.”
“I don’t want any kind of parting! You told me you wouldn’t leave me!”
His face fell. “I know, I know. This isn’t what I want. But I must go, Molly.”
I understood. Of course I did. Even as I glanced at his wounded leg, wondering if I could fix it. I couldn’t. Our time had run out.
His fingers squeezed my hand too hard, but I didn’t care. Endless tears spilled down my cheeks. It was all too much, too fast.
Funny, but at that moment, I would have given anything to be trapped inside Riverbend Manor again, just to be able to be with him.
I gazed up at his beautiful face. “You can’t leave,” I told him through my tears. “I don’t know how I can go back to the hospital now.”
“Molly, it is your function. You love being a nurse.”
“I would give it up in a heartbeat if it meant I could stay with you.”
His face was anguished as he pulled me into his arms. I cried against his chest while he held me, utterly blindsided by the strength of my feelings.
Maybe Mammy had been right all along. If I’d known that allowing myself to feel all this would later cause such pain, I might have kept my distance from Nin.
That’s what I told myself. But it wasn’t true.
“Will we never see each other again?” I asked.
He pulled me from his chest to cup my cheeks in his hands, and he spoke in an urgent voice. “Once I get back home, I will heal quickly. You can pray to me, and I will hear you.”
“I can?”
He nodded. “People pray to me all the time. I can’t respond, but I will hear you. And once I’ve healed and gotten my strength back, I will return to you. I’ll be able to cross over to your world for brief periods.”
This alarmed me. “When?”
“I don’t know how long it will take me to heal,” he said, stroking my cheek with his thumb as he looked into my eyes. “But remember that time doesn’t work the same way in my world.”
“If it takes you a couple of weeks to heal, how long will have passed in my world?” I asked him. “Will I even be alive anymore?”
He didn’t answer. He just bowed his head and rested it against mine.
And I knew then that the answer was not one I wanted to hear.
“Is that the end of our story, then?” I asked miserably.
His eyes sharpened with seriousness as he clasped the back of my neck, tilting my face to meet his. “Our story does not end. My love for you knows no time or place.”
Love. The word was a dagger to my heart.
“What’s the point of anything if we cannot exist together within the same time or place?” I asked.
He made a frustrated noise, as if he were trying to communicate something that I wasn’t understanding. “Listen to me, Molly. It will be okay.”
“How?” I said, exasperated. “None of this is okay!”
“Molly,” he said, brow lowered and hand holding my chin firmly.
“I cannot predict the future. I would be lying if I said I know how our story continues. But I can promise you that I will do anything to get back to you as soon as I am able. I will do anything to find you again. Even if I must abandon my throne.”
“You cannot do that. You’re like me. You love your job,” I said, giving him a soft smile.
“I love you more.”
I threw my arms around him, and we held each other, both miserable, both wanting to eke out a few more precious seconds together.
To press our hearts together one last time.
His wings expanded and folded around me, blocking out everything around us.
I breathed him in deeply, smelling oranges and sunshine.
He rained kisses on the back of my neck, and between them, I felt his tears fall on my skin.
But as the wind swirled snow around us, I felt the ground shudder. When Nin’s wings drew away to fold back, we pulled apart. I turned my head to see his mother, leading her mount through the snow toward us.
A tenderness softened her piercing eyes as she looked upon us. I could see the love in her heart for Nin, and her worry.
And I knew it was time.
I tried to wipe the tears from my cheeks, but they just wouldn’t stop. Anguish squeezed my throat as I helped Nin to his feet, propping him up so that he wouldn’t stumble. And I walked him toward his mother, but stopped a few feet away.
Her regal mount snorted, bells jingling on its harness as it stood, patient and waiting. She held out her hands to Nin, beckoning. He shuddered, hesitating for a moment. Then he slowly let go of me and set his hand atop hers.
I watched in silence as she made quick work of setting him upon her saddle sideways with her heavily muscled arms. Before she mounted, she paused for a moment and said something to Nin, who translated.
“She says that she only found us today because you prayed to your mother.”
There was something like kindness in her gaze, a gentleness beneath all her armor and strength.
She didn’t speak a word to me. She just put one hand over her heart, and she canted her head to me—just one slight bow, but one that she held for a moment.
Then she turned around and pulled herself up onto her mount in front of Nin.
Her reindeer snorted, pawing the snowy ground as he prepared to fly.
I looked at Nin through bleary eyes, as he huddled next to his warrior mother. “Look for us in the night sky. Our story is unfinished. I will find you again, Molly O’Rinn.”
And with a loud cry from his mother, the reindeer pushed off the ground and dove into the air. I watched below as they traveled. For a moment, they looked like dark stars, streaking through the snow.
Then the snow consumed the darkness, and I was alone in the churchyard.
Alone in this world.