Jennifer Shaw

This piece is a companion novelette to Elspeth and the Fairy. If you missed my May 13th post, you can read a little about this story’s context here.

Part I: RESTORATION

Chapter One

When the second, and final, transformation of his life occurred, Muir’s arms were smeared in blood past his elbows.

Toiling in Lord Aitken’s scullery, he gripped the buck’s hindquarter with his feeble left hand. With his equally afflicted right, he sawed the flattened blade of a skinning knife down the inside of the deer’s leg, careful to keep the blade between skin and muscle. Releasing the animal’s limb, he began to pull its flesh away, using the knife to separate the connective tissue where it clung.

Muir’s stringy muscles strained with effort. Sweat slicked the fleshed parts of him, for he was still mostly a wretched man. Of this exertion, he was not conscious; his body labored in motor memory. His throat tightened, however—inside, it was still very human despite his goat’s brow—though he’d done such butchery a hundred times.

Despite its gutting, the deer’s fur remained even and unblemished; it bore on its head only four points. It had been a young animal, and its mutilation made Muir ache, an internal throb that matched the rhythm of his efforts.

As he worked, he grunted a quiet prayer in Latin.

“Gratias tibi ago, Domine, pro hac largitate. Non vastare.”

Thank you, Lord, for this bounty. It will not go to waste.

Though a priest would have condemned it as heresy, he added in Gaelic, “Tapadh leibh, Cernunnos; tapadh leat, Danu, airson an tiodhlac seo dhut fhèin. Bidh mi ag ath-aithris, cha tèid e gu sgudal.”

I repeat, it will not go to waste.

When all the hide finally came free, he laid it aside. The fur would line some new garment to warm some good soul. Sill gripping the knife, Muir paused to stroke the animal’s cold head, its eye glassy. Meat now. Carnes. Only empty meat.

No, not empty. From it, other tangible things would come.

Indeed, nothing would go to waste. He thought it again for the thousandth time, and it was as precious and necessary as one of his prayer beads.

He’d said it first when, ten years ago, he’d suffered the initial curse, that great crucible of his life. That vow had kept him moving forward, enabling him to support Elspeth.

Elspeth. The younger daughter of Muir’s lord and master, whom he’d watched grow up.

She was his redemption here on earth.

No matter what happened, he must remain in her house. With her, near her.

He could not bear their parting.

While Alistair, the one she’d loved, had chosen another—blind fool that he still was—Muir was not so confident another man wouldn’t eventually recognize Elspeth’s great worth, beyond jewels indeed. She would likely marry this man and leave her father’s house.

Leave him.

Or, perhaps, she would take Muir, her devoted servant, with her. And he’d have to witness another man put his arms around her, watch her belly swell with children not his own…

He set the knife down and leaned his palms on the worktable. He tried to breathe through his nausea as he gazed at a hand. Muir’s hands, seared in boils and crimson as the deer’s blood, red as a blood moon. Though Elspeth never once shrank from them, they were hands that could not hold her.

He closed his eyes.

A sensation washed through him. Like warm seawater, it was soothing and ancient, rife with power.

It swept him into an old memory. Long ago, his parents had taken him and all his brothers south, to where the land, grown sandy, met the sea, which lapped upon it like an ardent lover, and the cawing sea birds were strange. There, he’d encountered a force of nature to rival even the vastness of the mountains, filling as it did every corner of his young heart. His mother, waning in her middle years yet at her tenderest, held his fingers as he stomped before her, amused at his own splashes. He’d been old enough to speak.

“God, Mummy?”

She’d chuckled, a sound like a bell against the ocean’s roar. “No, sweetest bairn–” But she’d hesitated. “Well, perhaps so…. We feel Him, though we do not see Him.”

He’d turned his tender face up to hers.

“Does this feel like God to you?” she asked.

“Yes.”     

Now, in the scullery, Muir’s sickness vanished.

He opened his eyes. He saw the smooth flesh of his large, strong hands. Hands the color of peach.

He blinked.

Powder blue veins ran beneath their surfaces, which were spotted here and there with freckles. At his birth, God had peppered him with freckles.

He had not seen them in ten years.

Gone were the boils.

Gone, also, was the deer’s blood.

He registered something else. Vanished was that constant, penitential sting, a torturous dermal hum he’d finally learned to live with thanks to the salves Elspeth prepared for his inflamed skin. In its place hovered cool, sweet relief, more potent even than the sight of his clear flesh.

His garments were different too.

Gone were the ragged cloak and stained apron. Back in its place hung his former chainmail and tunic, free of any smear.

Trembling, he ran a healed hand over the flawless velvet. He reached for his side, glancing down at a great ivory and iron hilt, cold beneath his fingers. Saltire, his great sword, there in its scabbard. He’d believed it long gone, lost with everything else to some shadowy ether.

He brought quivering fingers to his face. Bristles of beard, soft edges of human lips, smooth cheekbone.

No ragged fur, no parasites, no scabs.

He ran his hand up, through thick human hair and over a smooth crown of skull.

Gone were the horns.  

Dizzy, he leaned down again, feeling the hard press of the table’s surface.

The table shrank away. Though his hands remained where they were, his spirit rose out of his body. When the wooden surface closed in again, comprehension, powerful as any ocean swell, overtook him. He gripped the wooden edge.  

A virile new strength vibrated through him, like the pluck of a dormant string. The feeling was odd, almost uncomfortable. Too much.

Was this it—was he finally losing all sense? Was he only imagining what he’d nearly given up on? That old hope, growing ever smaller with each rise and fall of the sun?

He forced himself to stand. Silently, he counted in Latin.

Unus, duo, tres, quattuor, quinque… centum.

He held up his hands again. They did not revert.

Restored, they were indeed, to their natural form.

His majesty returned.

King Ian.  

“My God,” he breathed in Gaelic, into which, under duress, he now slipped—a result of a decade under Aitken’s pagan roof. “By Morrigan. Praise be. Lauda Deo.” But even returning to Latin, the words felt flat. He could hardly piece together all the fractals of this moment.

“Elspeth,” he whispered. Her name steadied him.

It had to be her. She had to have done it, that one magical, final time. That powerful third proof.

Of course she had. How could he have doubted her?

Perhaps he was giving God too much credit—a wicked thought, but he could not deny it.

He lifted his head and called out, “Beth!”

Silence.

She was not here. He knew that.

The torch on the wall flared high, perhaps a powerful domestic deity—or God himself—bearing witness. It brightened the deer’s reddened carcass. In the briefest flash, Ian saw its fur momentarily restored. Its eye bright.  

He needed to find Elspeth, now. He needed to know for sure.

He needed to…

He needed a horse.

For suddenly, he held in these clear, robust hands an entirely new possibility.

***

Thanks for reading!

XOXO,

Jenn