3/21/13

Yearning
By Linda M. Crate


The stars lit the sky with their white eyes as he burst forth from the opaque night, the hand of shadows had not yet rescinded; yet his face of sharp angles could be detected in the moonlight.

She could feel the intensity of his gaze. He hovered in her life, always, like the hand of zephyr. He would not leave no matter how many times she begged him to.

He might have been handsome had he not been so wild and so feral. Or if he weren’t nearly so forceful. She wished that she had never met him. Then maybe her life wouldn’t be so complicated. Yet if she hadn’t wanted a life of complication she would have left home long before this. There was something thrilling about being in the affection of two men, now the novelty had worn off. She had found that it was as wearying to her bones as winter. She wished that he would stop sucking the marrow from her bones.

She closed the blinds as a deterrent, but that never stopped him from coming through the window. It was just something that soothed her no matter how short lasting the comfort was. She sometimes contemplated ending it all in a flash of moon silver, but she was too much a coward to do even that. She had to convince herself that it wasn’t worth it — that they would miss her.

In truth, she wasn’t so sure if they would.

She clung so tightly to the dresser when he entered the window, that her knuckles whitened to a translucence like that of a ghost. Her lips were pressed firmly together. “What do you want?” she ground out. She was not in the mood for him, not tonight.

“You know,” he growled, his guttural voice rumbling.

She wouldn’t admit it, but there was something in his voice that still aroused her. There was just some ineffable quality about it that snared her closer to him each and every time. She hated herself for it.

She wished that she could cut the gossamer strands that linked them together lovingly. Her life would be so much simpler if he had not come walking into it.

“My husband is beginning to become suspicious,” she murmured, silently pleading that he would just go at this utterance. Instead, he laughed. “Please,” she begged. “Please go. Have you not done enough damage to me already?” she demanded, her anger flaring back. “I’ve given you five children, isn’t that enough?”

“The agreement was seven.”

“That was before all this,” she insisted. “Your family dropped that claim on me years ago. I was married to a man that I love —.”
“Not more than you love me,” he boastfully interjected. “I’m not blind. I see the way your body tenses when I speak.”

“And you’re all the worst for even mentioning it. A gentleman would do no such thing to a lady.”

“I do not see a lady, all I see is a cowardly wife that will not fulfill her duty to her rightful husband,” he snapped.

“You say that you’re a god,” she shrieked. “If that is so, can’t you throw yourself before the feet of other women?” she demanded. “Why me?”

“Because you’re mine, you’ve always been mine.”

“Why?”

“Ljaldra promised you to me, Asnyg,” he answered. “My family had no rights to loose that agreement that was between our families. You will always be mine more than you are his. He may have married you, but your soul has never been his. We are soul mates, Asnyg. One day we will shine brighter than the stars.”

“I love Kili not you,” she protested. “Kili is my love,” she lied.

She knew that once he reached for her, she would not be able to resist. The truth was that she loved both men, but she wanted Ferthi to let her go. If he set her free, she would be able to breathe again. Yet he constantly pursued her like a persistent buck after an unyielding doe. All she wanted was peace, and all he seemed to do was shatter that chance for her in every glistening ray of moon silver he was there to haunt her.

They both knew it, she could tell by the defiant way he gazed at her. “There have been other women, but none are you. They do not wish to be mine and I do not wish that fate upon them.”

“Why wish it upon me?”

“You’re of a different ilk than any other woman I’ve known, even the immortals have a different taste than you. There’s something irresistible about your aura, about your very spirit. Your musk was one I knew that I must claim.”

She felt pure unadulterated fury slip into her veins as if it had replaced her blood, itself. “I am not some prize to be won or some land to be owned!”

He slapped her hard, harder than she recalled him doing so before. “Your fire was something I always admired about you,” he said softly, kneeling beside her. “But today it’s vexing me beyond vexation! Why all these questions, you never questioned me before?”

“That’s because you used to have me wrapped around your finger. I was young and stupid, I didn’t know any better. I confused lust with love. I didn’t know the consequences that both of these things would have been wrought upon my life — I didn’t know that Kili would mean so much more to me now than he did then.” Tears spilled down her cheeks in salty rain. She placed her face in her hands. “I didn’t know that you’d wish to consume every part of my being heart and soul.”

“You’re afraid of what he’ll think?” he remarked, reading behind the lines as he always did.

“How could I not be? He’s my husband,” she insisted.

“He ought not have interfered. Kili is no husband for you. Not the way that I am.” He brushed the tears from her eyes, his yellow-green catlike pupils making contact with her brown irises. “Let me make you remember.”

Her body shivered in the cold of opaque night that flashed its teeth. With the blinds closed there was no sliver or moon silver to save her sanity or spare her the reprieve of having to listen to his words. She was exposed, vulnerable. She didn’t like it one bit.

But he took what he always took, and her body bent as it always bended; succumbing to his will.

Then he left as he always left, and she found herself missing him again.

It was a vicious cycle that always repeated itself. This time she found that she was pregnant with twins. Two. That made seven. That meant that he would release her, but she didn’t want to be released. She was still intoxicated from his touch that both thrilled and horrified her. She didn’t want to be freed from her gilded cage.

When she gave birth to the twin boys, she couldn’t look at them. Seven boys. Seven boys that would do nothing but remind her of him.

Asyng named the boys Mara (bitter) and Jabez (sorrow).

She thought once freed from her bond to Ferthi she would be pleased, even she had thought that she would be overcome in joy, but she felt empty as if she were a living void. She wanted nothing more than to be his bride now.

She no longer felt the consistency of his gaze, only sometimes.

Asyng sought him out one day and found him in the evergreens, conifers were scattered across his black hair. Her red hair flashed between the needles of the tree like feathers of a cardinal she noted, but she turned her attention back to him. She had to focus on her words. “Please don’t leave me.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“I thought that was what I wanted to, but I want nothing more than to be your bride.”

“Then be,” he said, his voice sharp.

“But how?” she asked.

“You must leave him.”

“I love him,” she wept, feeling bitterly sorrowful for herself. “But not as much as I love you.”

“I know,” he responded. He grabbed her arms gently. “Take the boys and leave him.”

“Where will I go?” she asked.

“Follow the ravens, they will take you where you need to go.”

She nodded numbly, her legs feeling like jelly. She didn’t know what lie she would tell the boys to get them to leave her husband behind, but she would think of something. She left the god to his business in the trees, and burst forth from the wood. She found her sons in their rooms, and she quickly convinced them that they were going to visit an old friend of hers. “Dress warmly, we must be swift, too,” she added, “so don’t bring anything you don’t need.”

“Where are we going, mother?” asked her eldest.

“You shall see, Finni.” She followed the ravens into the snow, clinging to the hand of her youngest son, holding one of her babes. Finni held the other baby in his arms.

“Mama, we’ve gone so far,” gasped the second eldest child.

“Just a bit further, my love, I promise,” she soothed. She, too, was wearied from this journey, but she made it her priority follow the ravens. She would not miss Ferthi again. She would be bound to his side.

Finally, the ravens took her to the largest mansion she had ever laid eyes upon. She followed after the ravens, pausing at the gate. She had never known greatness like this.

“I see that you weren’t lying,” he smiled, by way of greeting. He looked hungrily at the boys, as if wishing to know all about them just by glancing at them. “None of them look like you,” he noted.

“No, they resemble only their father.”

Later that night when she reached over to feel her new husband beside her, she saw that Ferthi was gone. She wondered where he would have gone at such a late hour. She stole after his large footprints in the snow, gasping as the footprints of a man were transformed to that of a wolf. She chased after the footfalls of the wolf to see he had gone a great distance. She was determined to see where he had gone.

She followed the footfalls to her old home.

The snow was streaked with blood. She saw Kili standing triumphant over the dead wolf.

“NO!” she shrieked. “No! No! He was a god!” she shouted, raging at Kili. “He was mine!” she protested, bashing her fists against his chest. Angrily, she pulled the dagger from the wolf’s side and stabbed him over and over and over again until his body wasn’t moving and then some. She had never hated Kili more than she did in that instant. She turned to Ferthi whose eyes were closed. “You can’t be dead,” she sobbed.

The wolf opened its eyes and whimpered before its eyes closed for its final sleep. It seemed that even the gods weren’t immune to dying.

Asyng took the blade into her own hands and struck her heart. She felt the release of ruby cardinal feathers fall from her side. She smiled for one maddening moment. She was final free — there was no yearning in death. She would finally be with her beloved Ferthi in an immortal union, one that transcended death.


- - -
Linda Crate is a Pennsylvanian native currently migrated to Maine. She has a degree in English-Literature and her poetry and short stories have appeared in many publications the latest of which include: Birds Eye reView, Mirror Dance, Blue & Yellow Dog, Crisis Chronicles Online Library, Super Flash Fiction, and Dead Snakes.