Slaughtaverty 1745

Wresting her face from the suffocating folds of the cloak wrapping her in a rough embrace, Merry gulps deep breaths of misty night air, staring up into the face of her captor, her heart a hundred galloping horses in her chest.

The boy was spun from moonbeams and white silk, his eyes silver disks of light, iridescent like those of animals that can see in the dark. Strands of his long, pale hair blow against her cheeks, tickling her skin as she gazes up at his ruby lips.

He is the most beautiful creature she has ever seen in her 13 years of life, and she has seen her brother's friend, Eoghan Sullivan... and loved him from afar for more than a year now. Eoghan is not pretty like this boy, and he is filled with sunshine and laughter, not with cold and danger. The beauty of this boy looking down into her face with his long-lashed eyes is terrible, suffused with the promise of death.

A shiver shakes her body, setting her lips trembling as the same dread she'd experienced last winter when she'd come face to face with a beautiful wolf crawls into her body and coils up in her tummy. That day, her brothers, Séamus and Conor saved her by shouting, waving sticks and throwing stones at the animal until he'd turned and ran away, leaving deep prints in the snow.

She knows nobody is coming to her aid today.

She is standing defenceless in the frigid shadows of the cemetery, the mist curling around her like seeking fingers shivering over her skin, trying to find a way in. The only witness of what she knows to be her final moments in this life is the ghostly girl with tangled hair clutching a baby to her bosom. A baby Merry knows, down in the deepest parts of her soul, is no longer alive.

If her heart wasn't filled with terror and the knowledge that she would soon join it in its passing, she would've wept for the infant. Instead, she is quivering in the arms of a boy who is not holding her captive just by the strength of the arms he has wrapped around her, but also by his shining eyes and his lips she can see twisting in a lazy, alluring smile.

She wants to scream, but her voice left her somewhere between recognizing traces of her beloved Maddy in the face of the gaunt girl skulking in the shadows of the tree to her right and finding herself pressed up against this ethereal boy. Judging by his height, he is around Séamus' age, 15.

A whimper escapes her lips when he slowly tangles his slender, white fingers in her hair, gently tugging her head to the side, exposing her neck to the cold night air. In some parts of her mind, she wants to believe that this is all a cruel dream and that a kick from her father, rousing her to take the sheep to the meadow to graze, would soon wake her from it. For the first time in her life, Merry longs for that kick.

She is finally ready to admit that some legends, no matter how fanciful they seem, might indeed be true.

It is time to wash her hair and scrub her dirt-smeared skin; she hasn't done that for over a week, and she hopes, in vain, that her lack of cleanliness would repel the boy, but he inhales her fragrance, groaning as if he finds it enticing. His voice whispers softly against her skin, saying words she cannot understand, conjuring goosebumps in their wake. She shivers as his lips brush over her tender skin, and then their coolness is replaced with searing heat ripping into the side of her neck.

An agonized scream finally tears from her chest when the pain scorches through her veins, and her fingers find his black cloak, curling convulsively into the luxurious material. She can hear herself gasp and splutter, trying but unable to recoil from the cold tongue, taking its time, playing slowly over her wounds.

As the pain starts to dissipate, flowing away with the tears drawing clean lines on her dirty cheeks, Merry wonders what weapon he'd used on her. She'd only felt his lips, and his teeth, when he'd smiled at her, did not seem sharp. Whatever he'd used cut deeply and cleanly, hurting much worse than the buckle on her father's worn belt.

Suddenly, her body is filling with a comforting warmth she'd never felt before, and she stops squirming, giving herself over to it. A sense of unreal well-being floods her heart, and for a moment, she feels almost happy. Like the day her grandmother bought her a beautiful lace ribbon for her hair from a Pavee seamstress. Whenever she'd worn it, she'd felt pretty. That ribbon is long gone. She'd lost it one night when they were all fleeing from her father's drunken rage.

Her eyelids flutter when she sees Madrigal, dangling the baby from its hand like a doll, creeping from the branches, sneaking closer, her lips parted, and her eyes as black as night. She is sniffing the air like an animal smelling its prey, and when her eyes meet Merry's, they are filled with a myriad of flickering shadows before they glassily flick to the droplets of blood trickling wetly down the younger girl's neck.

Merry can see clearly now, as if the moon has suddenly broken from behind the clouds, brightly illuminating the night and chasing away the shadows. She can even see things she'd never seen before. She is soaring among the clouds, her cares falling from her slender shoulders, making her feel light as air.

The happiness and the clarity don't last very long, though; it soon starts to fade into darkness as if the mist has found its way into her eyes, stealing her vision, drowning her euphoria, and an overwhelming sadness grips her heart. She longs for the people she has loved and lost. Her mother, her grandmother and Uilliam.

Her heart breaks for Séamus, Taillte, Conor and Taillte's baby, Lorcan. She knows Séamus would blame himself for her loss, just as he blames himself for Uilliam disappearing, though Merry was the one who told her little brother to run when their father started wielding his belt.

She wants to tell her brother that she is alright, that dying isn't all that bad after all, and that soon she'll be with the ones they love.

Her heart is not breaking for her father, and in the tiny vengeful part of her kind soul, she wonders why a fate like this could not befall that heartless beast of a man and set his children free.

Somewhere far, far away, outside of the darkness flooding her senses, the air is vibrating with sound like the beating of batwings, and she can make out shouted words. Tensing, the boy lifts his mouth from her neck, and she can hear him utter a long, low growl, curling icy fingers in her gut.

Near her ear, Maddy is angrily spitting like a feral cat fighting over scraps that fell from the carrion wagon on its way to the pig farm with what the hunters discarded when their work was done.

Merry tries to see what is happening, but she is slipping into the dark, becoming one with it, and the sounds all fade in and out until they finally die, and her whole existence disappears into the black.

~~~