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Chapter Seven: Cris de Coeur
There was a momentary transition from sleep to waking.Or from waking to sleeping.
He was neither sure, nor interested, which.
The change had proceeded so smoothly--whichever this was, awake or asleep--he had already forgotten what went before this instant. The world was warm and liquid and shimmering before his eyes in lazy ripples of sunny bedazzlement that made him quietly joyous, lusciously inert.
Beneath him, the smoothed rocks pressed against his thighs and chest. Above him the edge of the water against the sky made a mirror where another lolled, suspended an arm's length behind him, above him, some direction or other, close.
Not just the water, he thought. Everything is fluid here, even the directions. He felt the worn stones at his back, across his heels, as well, but he was not between them. If he thought about it, he could also see the water edge mirror below him, almost reach and touch his own image, wavering there in what must be a soft and sibilant breeze, just the other side of the edge.
Infants must feel thus, he mused.
On a whim, he opened his mouth and breathed in the water. No, not exactly. He tried to appreciate the experience more accurately. Surrender, yes that was closer, he had surrendered to the warmth and the gentle rocking, the molten, directionless flow of this demesne. It had entered him entirely, enjoined him to itself, like a lover. He tasted and breathed and saw only the shimmering light, warmed to the salty, almost blood-thick way of it, down his throat all the way to his belly where it smoldered like bright embers at the end, or the beginning, of a great fire.
He felt his thighs slip over the stones, over themselves, through the water, apart. And the water entered him there as well, sending sparkles of sensation skittering over all his surfaces and out onto the wavelets, lighting his reflection in the ripple-etched mirror above him.
Below him.
Within.
An urgent ease transfixed him then. He was at once entirely empty, entirely filled, as if his skin were insubstantial, only an edge, like the mirror, between himself and the world. Each new ripple, each wave, smudged the boundary a little more, sending him into multiple paroxysms of happy nothingness, blissful peace.
And all of it, so familiar, he wondered if he had ever been anywhere else or felt any other emotion than this absolute calm.
Then, without warning, he was torn, a quick agony. It happened so fast he could only remember the pain and not actually feel it. But even in memory, he knew the wound had been so great that he could not possibly survive it.
He didn't.
For now at least.
In his place, at the grotto pool's edge, two men hung, gasping.
The larger man leaned onto the rock edge, over his brawny arms, every labored exhalation a dreadful, howling moan.
The thinner man held to the side by his spiderish fingers, knuckles white with the strain, his chiseled face the color of cave lichens. He made no sound past the whistling labor of his inhalations.
When his breath returned, Duncan turned his head to stare at Adam. They were still alive. He didn't think they had been before, but they were now. Already the specifics of what had happened between them seemed to be rising with the smoke from the pond. The water had become almost unbearably warm and the lights and heaters seemed to have stopped functioning. There were only the emergency lighting backups glowing eerily from the ceiling.
Adam's long fingers finally slacked their grip on the poolside and he took a tremorous breath in. He turned to meet Duncan's gaze. A slow smile stretched below the prominent nose.
Duncan felt his own mouth widen. Then he began laughing, a round, joyous carol of blessed good cheer.
Adam just stared. "What?"
"Yes," Duncan answered the jest which Adam was only this instant beginning to fashion. "It was good for me, too."
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, the hissing, slightly nasal voice clanged like a tank against the inside of Ram's pounding head.
Hey, hey, hey, hey--
"Oh, shut up!" Ram moaned, writhing beneath the tangled bedding. "At least have the honor to wait until I am recovered, Connor."
The dead have no honor, Lizard. Nor would they honor such a sorry salamander as yourself, even if they did.
"Well," Ram pulled a pillow over her head and whimpered softly when she hit a sore spot on her right temple. "You just go ahead and enjoy yourself, you Ghostly Gael. This is as much recompense as you are bound to know."
You say that as if it won't happen again, Toad. Hey, hey, hey...there is compensation to not being ever able to kill your Serpentness.
"You just keep dreaming, Connor," Ram murmured weakly into the pillow. "You keep pushing me when I feel this bad and I'll hurt you."
You have already killed me, Snake Sister. How can you possibly hurt me now?
"Trust me," Ram tried another position. It didn't help. Duncan had been more than thorough. She couldn't even count the fractures. They were healing. Too slowly to suit, but she was in no shape to transform, even with Connor's incredible powers now her own. Duncan had just beaten her too badly and she would have to be patient.
A sudden notion took her and she giggled, very, very carefully. "I don't think I did Amanda's reputation any favors," she said when the spasms over her nominally functional ribcage had eased.
Well, Duncan will never be fooled by you again, harridan.
"I warned you, Connor," Ram threw off the pillow. "Your cousin is probably dead by now. Stop talking about him as if he were your own personal avenging angel. He couldn't even save himself with all the considerable help that was mounted on his behalf. So just shut up about Duncan. There is no more Duncan MacLeod, no more Adam Piersen. Gone, finito, caput........over, over, over."
Then let me go so I can be with him, Ram.
"Oh, ho, so it's 'Ram' now, is it?"
Please.
"I hoped I wouldn't have to tell you this so soon, Connor," Ram bent double and waited to regain some mastery over the pain, the right leg--Amanda's lovely long leg--down by the ankle, crooked and so purple it looked black in the low light of Cross' dungeon guest room. Ram breathed in. Cooking. Something yummy was baking in the Galley. They'd put her in the same room she'd used her last sojourn here, two decades past.
Wouldn't have to tell me what.
"You aren't going anywhere, Connor," Ram said softly. "Never. I can't release you. I haven't the power to do so, because you are the only power which remains to me, and because the part of me who could have let you go is already dead."
YOU HAVE CONSIGNED ME TO HELL!
Ram held her head in her hands and waited for the terrible reverberations to still. "I will be all too happy to let you take the tour around my hell, if you wish, Connor. I will be as merciful as I can be, you bothersome Scot, but do not tempt me to demonstrate the true dimensions of Pandemonium. You are sentient, you wander with me everywhere, you share in all that I experience, unless it is distasteful or hurtful. I do not think I heard you complain the other night when your cousin and I--"
That was disgusting.
"If you say so," Ram moaned and shifted to another uncomfortable position. "I just thought, bra' lad that you be, a little romp in the hay would be welcome."
If I'd ever considered doin' that as a lass, might have been, at that.
"Well, maybe if you behave yourself," Ram fell, rolled up in a tight ball, and cursed about Babylonians with porcine ancestry.
Yes?
"Oh--" Ram slowed her breathing and tried to think, "Oh, yes, I was going to say I could teach you how to take over."
What?
"You know," Ram sighed wearily, "So you could be a man again. I can't imagine what advantage that would be--well, maybe for peeing in the woods without splashing your boots."
Teach me.
"It's very difficult," Ram said.
Teach me.
"It will take a long time," Ram warned.
How long?
"Maybe two centuries if you are as bright as I suppose you to be," Ram closed her eyes and fought for oblivion, someplace away from the pain.
My sanity won't last that long.
"Probably not," Ram sighed. "But I will do my best to take care of you."
That is somehow nay comforting, Lass.
"Tell me about it," Ram snorted. "I'm crazy already."
"Are you finished talking to yourself?" a smoky, low baritone asked gently.
Ram jolted fully awake and tried to flee. It wasn't much of a retreat, perhaps twenty inches at most, all the way to the head of the bed. She bit back the scream which built in her throat and tried to focus.
Then the sadness which washed over her completely distracted her from the various shards of torment which Duncan had dealt her. "Joe," she said. It was partly question, partly greeting, mostly condemnation.
"Yes, Set," Mayor of Seacouver and sometimes blues singer, Joe Dawson, called her by the name she'd owned when they were man and wife. "Take this," he held out, first a pill, and then, a glass of water.
Ram took the pill, but neither elbow was mobile enough to reach her mouth. She gave it back and suffered the humiliation of being "fed" like a baby.
"I need your help," Joe said, setting the glass on the bedside table.
Ram shrugged, slowly. "Well at least you didn't start with Sweet's flight of fancy about how we were all going to live together and be happy ever after."
Joe's face fell. "She didn't."
"I suppose," Ram rolled out an overly dramatic sigh of West Isle proportions. "Lucille would try to go with her strong suit. And that would have to be seduction."
"Are you?" Joe asked as evenly as he could.
Ram let the pain twist her smile just enough to be truly awful. "Wouldn't you like that, Joe?"
"No," Joe replied. "But if that--"
"Go away, Joe," Ram closed her eyes. She was really going to like this pill if these beginning buzzes were any indication. Pain medication, what a useful idea. "I'm all out of the King's favor. No, wait--that isn't right.
"The King is all out of favors," she tried again. "No more Mr. Nice King. No more Guardian Angel duties. No more magic dust, make it all betters."
"Ram?"
"Yes?"
"Molly is missing. She has been missing since she left you at the Towers. I think she is in danger," Joe said it as simply as he could. Ram was a cheap drunk. Wasn't Sean the proof of that?
"Yeah, well don't you just wish," Ram flared her nostrils and tried to remember how disdain looked as far as one's mouth went. Maybe a raised eyebrow. "And that isn't taking the Chloral Hydrate into the sum either. I'd speak ill of the Old Warmeat, but it doesn't pay to speak ill of the--"
"You think they are dead, then," Joe said sadly.
"Yeah, they are," Ram reached an arm out and slapped more than patted Joe's false limb. "Sorry. They just couldn't be parted. Unlike some people."
"And you think Connor is dead also?" Joe asked.
"That one I know for sure," Ram slid down the head board to prone. "Why do you think Duncan bashed me? I killed his dad. What else could he do, but kill me back? I'm just grateful he was too angry to think about cutting me into pieces and tossing me down the plumbing. Now, that--" she lifted her head and the entire room spun round twice. "Whoa! Ummm, where was I?"
"Is Molly dead, Ram?" Joe pressed, sensing his time for any coherent audience was fast running out.
"I don't know," Ram started to shake her head, but thought better of it. "I just told her to get out of my sight, that's all."
"Why?" Joe asked.
"Because she pretended to be my friend," Ram's lower lip began to tremble. "Because I believed her...right up to the moment your trap was sprung. My own stupidity, really. No excuse for it. Maybe Horse is right after all."
"Horse?"
"Master Cross," Ram yawned. "He says--what?--oh, yes. Master Cross says that loneliness is a dipsor--a depasaur--a despor--desperate..."
Joe tidied the sheets and the quilts around the body which appeared to be Amanda, or a battered version thereof. He was grateful she didn't look like the woman who had shared his life those many years ago. He was sure that would have made this little conversation entirely unbearable.
Not that it was all that bearable as things stood.
"It was a nice thought, Mary," Sean wished his words didn't sound so dead.
"Can I help you with that?" Mary asked.Sean jerked up from his tidying. "What? Oh, no, no I don't need--" he stammered. What he would not have given for that fine, assured tone that he had in the Library, speaking to Ram. "Just cleaning up, Mary. I can do it."
"I have every faith that you can, Sean. I just thought to keep you company is all."
"That isn't it at all, of course," Mary let herself down on the couch by the window. "It's starting to snow, Sean. Look!"
"You don't think the ground will freeze too fast?" Sean set down the dirty plates and came to stand by her, staring out the window.
"What a strange question, Sean," Mary turned away from the snow and stared up at her lawfully- wedded's face.
"If my parents are dead," Sean said calmly. "Then we will bury them here. The ground wouldn't freeze too hard, would it?"
"Oh, my God! Sean! What has happened?" Mary tried to rise, but her very round belly made that an all too elaborate process, so she instead patted the couch beside her and bid him sit down.
"Master Cross did not want to worry the guests," Sean gestured vaguely towards the ground floor where four bedrooms and one converted study held the overnight guests who were staying for Christmas Morning celebrations. The rest were ensconced in the lower levels of the compound, in the vast tunnel city of the Cross Estates.
"Sean?" Mary encouraged him back to the moment.
"Oh, well you know how we've been keeping Pops and Dahm apart from one another since the fire?"
"Yes, Sean."
Sean shifted and pulled his legs up to fold under him, his favorite way to sit. "You know that light show over the pasture just at midnight."
"Oh, yes," Mary smiled, "It was beautiful. Entirely unexpected--oh. Oh, no, Sean!"
"Pops must have gotten into the compound," Sean mumbled. Then he said more bravely, "I think they are dead. Both of them."
"Maybe it was another Immortal, Sean," Mary tried not to whimper. "I just can't believe something so awful could--."
"I can't feel them any more," Sean said stoically. "I thought Mother was gone there for a bit, but I feel her again now." He closed his eyes and pointed across the pasture, up the new river and down . "But Dahm was there," he pointed again. "And he just isn't any more. Nothing." He stopped suddenly. "Oh, I'm sorry," Sean scrambled up and began gathering the dishes again. "You have enough to think about, Mary. This is wrong. I shouldn't--"
"Confide in me?" she asked.
"No," Sean stacked the dishes in the sink and returned for more. The dinner party had been an on-your-lap affair all over this second level deck floor of the Frank Lloyd Wright copy of Falling Water, which was Cross' pride and joy. "You should be confiding in me, Mary. I know you must be sad that your mother did not come. I know you think you will die soon. You must be ticking things off: this is the last Christmas, that--" he nodded towards the window behind her. "the last snowfall. The last this, the last that--and all of it alone, more or less. I would be weeping all the time."
"No you wouldn't," Mary looked up at him with a respect he had never seen before.
"No?"
"You have just lost your parents, Sean," Mary said, far over the verge of tears herself. "And you have still the grace to care for my petty concerns, to elaborate them out in a touching bit of empathetic charity. And you stand there, brave and strong, picking up the slack, no matter how menial the task, with no weakness, no fear, as straight and strong as a shining knight."
Sean wished he were equal to her sudden gush of praise. He shrugged and grinned and leaned forward to hug her. "Hey!" he jerked back suddenly.
Mary put her graceful hands over her gravid belly, slowing the shake of her ready laughter. "You see, Sean. I am not the only one thinks you are something wonderful."
Sean sank down to his knees and tentatively laid his broad hands, so like his father's, over hers. Another kick.
"I know you don't believe me, Sean, but she is the one who will curse and bless all your days."
"Doesn't it hurt when she does that?" Sean asked in sheer amazement at the force of the bump.
"Sean, the only thing that hurts," Mary leaned forward and held his face in both her hands. "Is that I will not be here to see the two of you find each other in all the ways that will make your life complete."
"Mary," Sean had heard this all before, and, as before, it seemed almost an insult, a belittling of the way he felt about her.
Beneath his hands the baby kicked so hard, Sean's hands bounced off Mary.
"Poor Sean MacLeod," Mary said in mock woe. "I really think if your eye ever wanders, she will surely pluck it out."
"I love you, Mary," Sean did not rise to the joke. He was not in the mood. "Tonight, Mary, just for tonight, my first night alone--just pretend that you love me, please. It would mean so much."
"I do love you, Sean. In so many ways," Mary pulled his head down on what was left of her lap and started combing her fingers through his dark curls, just as they used to do when they were children.
Sean drifted backward to a time when everything was so simple, a moment which had promised to go on forever, but which had proved to be over in an instant.
The first snowfall of winter dusted the world with layer upon layer of pristine white coverlets and crystalline appointments. The newly diverted river below the Cross Estate main house froze into bright sheets of glass stalactites. The longest night of the year grew even longer as the dark storm cast over the sun, as if it had never risen at all. Still, the inborn rhythms drove the early risers, those souls within the vast Cross network who saw to the real work of beginning the day, sun or no sun.
Grant slid soundlessly from his master's bed, added another quilt and stirred the fire, feeding it new wood and bringing in some snow-damped logs to dry by the time Cross woke. Pulling on jeans and sweater and boots, all in sizes that had to be ordered specially, Grant set the water over the fire and retreated up to the second level to begin breakfast.
The giant found the younger MacLeods, Mary and Sean, wrapped in each others' arms beneath a mountain of afghans and furs, by the hearth. Grant stepped over them and restarted the fire.
In the next quarter hour, the giant had cleared and tidied the entire main room, swept the deck outside and started the coffee, all silently as a wraith for all his considerable bulk. With a last check round the room, he paused at the top of the outside stairs and looked back on the two children, curled before the fire. Innocent slumber, he thought.No greater blessing. May God grant you the strength to face this Christmas morn.
Grant made his way down the steps, brooming off the snow, sprinkling salt. He reached the bottom where the new bridge led across the new brook and over towards the quadrangle of the barn. Striker and Dragon would already be doing chores and seeing to the horses' breakfast, but Grant had another, much more onerous duty to attend to.
The route through the house passage would have been warmer, faster, but Grant needed the cold to brace him, needed the time to prepare him for what he would find when he reached the enormous pit which had opened in the south pasture over the portion of the waterways which they had dubbed "the grotto."
Thin tendrils of smoke still rose from the pit's ragged edges and the snow, piled in tidy drifts elsewhere over the broad plane of the field, was here melted into sooty mud for a periphery of thirty feet. They had gone out in a most dramatic fashion, which Master Cross had explained as a fireworks for the Feast of Lights. The tiny black man had even managed a joke about honoring all their members who might be druids.
It was Christmas day. They would try to delay the dreadful news until tomorrow. Time enough for a proper funeral then. Grant peered over the edge of the pit. The steam obscured his vision. They must have boiled the pool water and it was still warm. He couldn't see any bodies. Would there even be anything left of them? Poor lads, he thought.
"I'd be careful there," a cheery voice called behind him. "That edge is awfully slick."
Grant turned and gasped and fell backward down two levels, into the steamy brine.
"Damn!" Duncan said, pulling his fists out of the deep pockets of his favorite coat and blowing on his hands to warm them. "Adam! I told you we should fence this thing off so no one--"
Adam leaned over and squinted. "Grant is it?"
Duncan nodded.
"Well you can jump in after him if you like," Adam commented. "Me, I'll take the long way around."
With that, the Oldest Immortal wrapped his greatcoat around his lanky frame and aimed his long legs towards the barn, and the nearest entry into the underground portion of the Estates...
If one did not count the unique skylight that their affectionate recreations had engendered in the middle of the field.
Thomas Cross stirred in his warm bed and cried out, waking himself up. He reached out reflexively for the giant, but that side of the bed was smoothed out and cold and empty. Thomas bolted out of bed. The cold slate floor woke, first his soles, then the rest, and he reminded himself why Grant was up so early. He was likewise reminded he had his own chores to do, just as dreary, if not as athletic. The short black owner of the Cross Estates trudged over to the hot tub and slipped in--not an actual bath, to be sure, but enough of a one to thaw him out and brace him for the impossible task of making a Christmas out of this dismal day.By the time he'd climbed up to the main room with its two trees, the sky was just lightening with dawn and the room was pleasantly warmed by the rebuilt fire. Empty. Good, at least he could begin this in silence, without having to attend to anything but his own concerns.
He took his time starting the coffee and setting out the dinnerware, moving the premade morning fare from cold box to warmer, stirring the grits, burbling away on the heat ring. Then he had no more excuses. The presents must be set to rights. He was the only one to do it.
Thomas walked over to the larger of the two bright firs and knelt down as if by a grave, which in some ways, it was. This would be his first act of mourning and he was more than a little loathe to begin.
"I started to sort," a soft voice brought Master Cross around with a start.
"--but I thought I would wait," Sean continued, "until you got up. I don't know about Molly's gifts. I--" Sean's head bowed down as he finished his exhalation without any more words left, it seemed.
Thomas motioned him down to the floor and Sean sank beside him.
"You are such a good student, Sean," Thomas looked back at the bright boxes under the tree, "I always underestimate you."
"Well," Sean reached for his gifts to his father. He'd planned to take them in to town by lunchtime. Pops wasn't allowed at the Estates, because it was so--. But, of course, the point was moot now. He picked out the box that held the new hiking boots for Dahm. He supposed he could bury their gifts with them, but the thought was too eerie to entertain for long.
"Well?" Thomas watched Sean's selections. "You know, don't you?"
"Yes, Thomas," Sean pulled out three more gifts marked with Adam's name, and two from Adam to Duncan. "Will Mother be well enough to come?" he asked.
"I don't think so," Thomas pushed off his knees and watched the marvellous young son of Duncan MacLeod bully his way through his grief. Good stock there, more heart than sense, but brave enough to make you weep.
"Oh," Sean said breathily as he lifted up a tiny box which announced itself as a gift from his brother, now dead. He handed it over to Thomas. "Open it, please," he croaked.
"Oh, Sean," Thomas closed his strong fist over the package, "do you really think--?"
"Please," Sean whispered, folding his hands on his thighs and kneeling very still.
Thomas unwrapped the present carefully, preserving every fold, noticing how Adam didn't use any tape, that he secured the edges with an ingenious back fold and tuck. He tried not to think that those elegant, talented hands would never touch another thing. Inside was a box, and inside the box, a tiny gold replica of Adam's sword and a hand-penned note which Thomas handed over to Sean.
"He knew this would happen," Sean said after a long silence while he read the note and tried to gather his wits. "He bequeaths his sword to me, and that," he pointed at the charm in Thomas' palm, "is a reminder that I am his inheritor."
"They will never be forgotten," Thomas heard the lame words escape. He was ashamed to offer so little in the face of such a loss.
"I suppose," Sean sighed. "What else can we do? If I start crying now, I'll never stop." With more weariness than his young frame rightfully owned, the MacLeod heir stood up and gathered the gifts in his arms, trundling them off for a closet behind the kitchen in the entry to the underground levels.
Thomas had been spared the more onerous portion of his Santa-duties this morn. He would make it up to this Princeling Leod, long live this King. The young man was already showing, in his bearing and compassion, all the greater qualities which could not be taught. Oh, Father of All Horses, Thomas thought, that you have sent me such as these. Help me now to bear their loss.
And help us find poor Molly and bring her back to this hearth, whole and unharmed, he added, gathering her gifts and following after Sean.
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Ram threw off her covers. She shifted Amanda's alien and battered frame into yet another uncomfortable position and struggled to escape into the deepest corridors of her exhausted sleep. "You still here?" she attempted a humorous greeting to the man she had murdered. "So it would seem, you nasty basilisk," Connor's hissing epithet was delivered in a light and hearty mood. Ram came to a sudden suspicious alertness. "What are you up to, Connor?" "I've been on reconnaisance," he said mysteriously, "and just look what I've found!" "Bloody Hell!" Ram moaned. "Merry Christmas, Ram," a woman stepped from behind Connor and smiled shyly. |
When Ram did not answer, the woman continued, "Are you angry with me, Ram?""No, Set," Ram steadied her rage, "I am not angry. Just surprised. What are you doing?" Ram rushed to amend the question, "No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. "
"Lord Connor said you might take us to Christmas, and I could see Joe again," Set warbled excitedly. "That would be so nice, really. See, we are dressed up already."
They were hardly that, Ram thought to herself. Connor was barely draped in the MacLeod colors and Set was sporting a diaphanous pale gown that was transparent as window glazing. She knew what they'd been doing, damn them. She didn't need the self-satisfied smirk on Connor's fine features to paint a picture for her after all. Damn them!
"No," Ram said, folding her arms.
Set began to sob softly and Connor turned around as if to shelter her from the terrible dragon with his magnificent back as her shield against evil. He wadded up the tartan in his left fist and looked back angrily at Ram, over the impressive round of his left deltoid.
"Boohoo," Ram said cynically. "I am not liable for any vows you make in this place, Connor. Don't promise things you don't have. It isn't like you to be so stupid."
"Well," Connor gathered Set in closer and she snuggled into his bare chest. "Then we'll just have to think of something we do have in this miserable place. His broad hand stroked lovingly through Set's hair. Something, I might add, that you, for all your bluster, do not."
"Hey, hey, hey," Ram attempted a sodden parody of Connor's trademark laugh. "Stop!" she added quickly as the beige gown was drifted off Set's shoulders. "I'll take you to the breakfast party."
Set peeked around Connor's arm and smiled sweetly, wrinkling the scar that ran down her forehead to the left corner of her nose.
Ram shook her head. Part of me is hovering at Last Gate, part of me is lying in bed, smashed to bits, part of me is over there in Connor's arms. Even in Danaan terms, this was not normal.
Any more fragmentation, Ram thought, and what little sanity which remains will soon become a dim recollection.
If it hasn't already.
