Ailsa
I followed in his footsteps as closely as I could, my bare feet sinking into the imprints his leather boots left in the black peat. The tall grass blew dizzily in the sea wind, scratching my ankles as I kilted up my dress to keep up with his quickened pace. The night was black but brightened by stars as we crested the hill toward the cliffs. The sea made herself known with a freezing, salty wind, and goose flesh rippled up my spine and arms. The Druids met at dawn to pray as the sun came up, and he knew that sometimes I would leave my roundhouse a bit early to walk alone and gather my thoughts beforehand. It was an easy way to catch me alone, which he had, just outside my doorway, that morning.
As I exited my house and rounded the corner, I found him waiting for me there in his black seacloak. He bade me follow, so I did, without asking questions, as I had since we were children. This wasn’t the first time he had done this, wanting to show me a new boat construction or boats that were coming in with the morning tide; he always preferred we went alone or in secret on such occasions. We had snuck out of our houses many times before dawn, but this was different, sneaking around behind Aric’s back, and he knew it. I should have known we were going to the cliffs, but the urgency of this night was a different beast. The urgency of purpose echoed in his stride and voice, and I felt it in my bones. His sudden apparition had nearly made me jump out of my skin, and my body hadn’t quite settled since that moment. I normally felt completely safe walking alone in the darkness, one with the shadowland and the creatures that inhabited it during the night, but tonight all my hair stood on end, like a dog who had caught a wild scent on the air. My stomach was in knots of anticipation.
“Why are you walking so fast?” I finally asked him, wrapping my arms around myself, pulling my green wool cloak tighter around me with the hood up, my thick, dark hair stuffed inside keeping my neck warm. The winds were so bitter along the coast this time of year, people rarely made the trek this far.
“You could have told me we were coming to the cliffs, Ros; I would have brought my fur or a blanket, or something…” My constant chatter was yet another peculiarity of the morning and made Ros stop in his heavy tracks. Ros was younger than me by three and a half months and not much taller, but tonight his body loomed over me with powerful presence, his red-gold shoulder-length hair on fire, his heavy brow creased as he looked down his too-straight nose at me.
“Of course we’re going to the cliffs. Where else would we go, Ailsa?” he muttered, barely audible, looking back at me with the moon glowing over his shoulder.
The edges of the cliffs were mostly used for the Druid ceremonies in which we “called the sea,” so the people of the village had become superstitious about visiting the cliffs on days that weren’t marked by the festival of the wheel of the year. Of course, it didn’t help anyone’s feeling of safety that there had been occasional accidents at the cliffs, especially with foolish teenagers. And of course, my own father had thrown himself from a nearby spot nearly a decade ago. It was a place where Ros assumed he and I could have some privacy for all these reasons, and as kids we had dared one another to sit on the cliff’s edge, dangling our feet off, grasping each other’s hands tightly in equal fear and exhilaration when the wind blew.
Just like I collected my thoughts deep in the woods, among the trees, Ros felt calmed by the roar of the ocean and the promise of the caves down below where the boat builders stored their tools and provisions. Since returning from his months abroad, studying boat making on the other islands, he had often come down here by himself to think. He enjoyed the solitude of the coast and ship’s caves during the winter months, when boats were being built, patched, and cared for but new ones were not being tested on the rough seas.
Samhain had come and gone, which meant the winter solstice would soon be upon us. My one-year anniversary. This time of year, just before the snow starts, is wet and frigid. The damp cold of the air and ferocity of the wind on the edge of the island send a deep chill that reaches to the bone. Ros had stopped to wait for me, his winter cloak flapping in the wind. He stared out at the sea, and I stood beside him; our knuckles brushed, and my stomach clenched. It was like touching a lightning bolt. We walked the last several meters to the cliff’s edge together. I crossed my legs and slowly sat, knowing that it was safer to be lower to the ground for balance when there was this much wind roaring on the cliffs in the winter months.
He stood over me, looking out into the ocean and a sky full of fading stars, slowly dimmed by the rising sun. “It’s beautiful,” I said, breaking the awkward silence. I never felt the need to chat aimlessly or fill silence, but the discomfiting quality of the night, now turning to morning, continued to rattle me. “There’s nothing like the darkest moments before the sunrise. How quiet and still the whole world is, just waiting for the new day,” I said, more to myself than him.
“I know what you mean,” he responded. “It’s incredible that the mighty sun has to sleep every night just as we do. And rise again, just as we do. Even when it is hard to pull oneself out of bed and face the day.”
I looked up at him. “On the contrary, you don’t look like you’ve been getting much rest.” I smiled up at him, reaching out for his hand, out of both sympathy and desperation to reach out to him and have him open his heart and spill its secrets like he had when we were children. What is it about the touch of a hand that helps us to unfurl our hidden parts?
“You’re right, I haven’t. I lie awake all night, and when morning comes, I have no desire to rise,” he said without looking at me, still standing over me looking out into the ocean, which blended with the sky. Soon light would come to touch everything, and the colors that bled together now would separate and be wholly their own, but as long as the night lasted, they would blur together as one.
He smiled down at me as he laced his fingers with mine, and his piercing sea-green eyes warmed me like the sun for one fleeting moment. And then he unfurled his hidden heart.
“I could jump off this cliff right now. And I would be less miserable than I have been this past year. At this point it’s either that or leave home. Those are my choices.” He motioned with his chin out to the shore below, where the boats he was working on were racked inside an adjacent cave in various states of disrepair. Among them all, a large and elegant craft stood out because of the enormous sail attached to it. It could carry twenty people. Ros had been working on new sail technology for the last eighteen months, inspired by notes and memories of sails he had seen docked on neighboring islands.
He clenched his jaw, and I saw the light fade out of his face. I should have felt kindness and sadness toward him, but rage bubbled up uncontrollably as if in a cauldron inside of me, as it so often did when it came to our contrasting views, and I pulled my hand away. “You actually think that leaving me, your parents, and your sisters here without you would be your sacrifice? You would jump into the sea and become a part of what you actually love the most and leave me just like everyone I have ever loved has?” He began to shake his head and continued to clench his jaw. “That’s your version of bravery, Ros? To kill yourself in the same manner my father did? or run away? All you would prove is your weakness and self-love, which everyone expects from you, anyway.”
“OK, then tell me, what’s your version of bravery, Ailsa?” he asked.
“The brave thing,” I answered, “would be to stay and bear this with me.” I wanted to stand up, but my stomach was in knots and wouldn’t allow me. I knew everything was about to change now that we were truly bearing our hearts. Regardless, the wind was too strong, and I knew it wasn’t safe, so I rooted myself to the ground.
He stood immobile as a statue for what seemed like an eternity. Something in me told me he would never jump, and I was able to slow my heart rate and take a deep breath, but I couldn’t shake the vision of it. Then his fingertips brushed my outstretched hand, and my heart began to race again. “Bear what, Ailsa?” he whispered. I could barely hear him over the ocean and wind, even though we were close. I pulled him down next to me so we were safe and sitting on the ground, back from the cliff’s edge, icy wind still blowing. I looked into his ruddy face with my dark, crescent-moon eyes.
“You did this,” I said with tears in my eyes. “And you’ll bear it out with me since you were afraid to tell everyone that you loved me and wanted to marry me.” I was yelling now to be heard over the wind and waves.
“What do you mean ‘afraid’?” he asked. He had pulled his knees up to his chest and was looking over at me, shielded from the wind.
“Ros, you found any excuse to be seen with any girl other than me,” I said. “You made your intentions clear, and they were not aimed toward me, not ever.”
“I did not know one could be married to a Druid, Ailsa!” Ros screamed. “Isn’t that what they tell you when ye join? What you told me before I left? That you’re married to the other Druids? Everyone told me it was a lost cause and not to make it worse for you.”
I walked backward on my hands, moving away from the edge quickly, like a spider. The wind was too strong now, and I didn’t want to yell. I shook my head for clarity, and Ros crawled over to me, staring in disbelief. “No, I…I guess because I’m the last of my bloodline in my household, they always told me I could marry. Ray always said I would marry.” My heart was racing now, and I could barely get a sentence out. My frustration with the Druids, my grandmother, the elders, and the politics of the island had been cresting for the past several months, since my marriage to Aric was arranged without my approval, but now it was hitting a peak, as it seemed that contradictory information had been set afloat.
Confused and frustrated, I spoke with my face hidden in my hands. “But you were with so many other girls, Ros.” I couldn’t look at him. The painful memories of catching him in the woods with other girls or hearing him brag about it to the other boys were rattling around in my head, confusing me more.
“Yes,” he answered. “It was a futile attempt to get over the loss of us.” He was sitting up on his knees in front of me, the stars spread out behind him, framing his face in a celestial halo. He was so beautiful like that, I had to look away.
“Oh.” The wind had died down, and I responded quietly now. “I guess I thought you were bored of our childish friendship and just ready for something more.”
“More? More what?” he yelled with a hysterical smile on his face. I was totally surprised to look back up at him and hear the sound of laughter. He was laughing so hard he rolled over and his ribs seemed to ache with it. It had been so long since I had seen him laugh like that.
“Ye make me feel many things, Ailsa, but bored has never been one of them.” I laughed then too. He reached up from the ground and grabbed my face with both of his frozen hands. Being trapped between the two blocks of ice gave me chills, and then he said it. The words that he etched on my soul: “And as for wanting more…there is nothing that could ever be more than us.” I breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled me gently toward him by my wool cloak, and I bent my forehead to touch his and closed my eyes while his nose pressed into my cheekbone. I shivered, partly from cold but mostly from this touch I had longed for for as long as I could remember.
I shouldn’t have done it, but almost reflexively from the cold, I pressed myself against him. Both of us were shivering now, and his laughter turned back into tears.
I slid my fingers into his wild auburn hair, and with my thumbs on his red cheeks, wiped the tears away, then I kissed the trails they had left on his face with eyes open. Because I had to know how it felt, I kissed him, desperately and deeply. His eyes were closed, but he smiled the biggest smile I had ever seen, and then, closing my eyes, I sank into the kiss and let go of all my worries.
Ros relaxed from my loving, confident touch too. I felt the warmth of him pressing into me and the blood rushing through his entire body as we melted into one. The kissing and the rising sun both had a thawing effect and I started to move more fluidly and quickly. I was warm enough to sit up and remove my cloak and pull my dress up around my hips. I wrapped my legs around him and he lay flat still, smiling up at me. We laughed breathlessly for an instant, fingers intertwined. Then he kissed each of my fingertips and I smiled back at him, haloed in pale, orange light from the rising sun. He held me by my hips, steering me as lightly but firmly as a ship. It was simultaneously relaxing and invigorating to be one with him after years of building tension.
Soon he shuddered and reached up to pull me down to his chest, where he stroked my black hair from crown to waist. “You’ve never done it like this with your Norse warrior, have you?” he asked. Without answering or looking at him, I silenced him with the tips of my fingers.
“The sunrise this morning is the color of your hair.” I smiled, and he thought for a moment. I could always feel him thinking.
“And you’re as beautiful as the star-filled night was; that’s certain. But sometimes I’m afraid ye hold as many secrets, Ailsa.” He sighed deeply into the top of my head.
“I do hold many secrets. Just not from you,” I replied, looking at him.
He nodded. “Well, then I’m afraid I’ve just created another one for you to keep. But if we’re really going to do this, I mean really be together, then we have to leave,” he said seriously.
I nodded down over the cliffs at the cave full of giant boats made from hollowed oak. Making our boat from the oak grove was like bringing the symbols of me and Ros together, bringing the woods to the ocean. Perhaps we were meant to be.
“When do you think you can finish it for sure?” I looked over at Ros, and his mouth was still agape. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Do you really mean it? I mean, sure we used to fantasize about going on adventures as kids, but you’re a Druid, Ailsa. You can’t just leave unless they say you can or send you somewhere else.”
I thought about that for a moment. “I know the way up to Orkney; we can go there or beyond that. I know the Druids, and they will welcome us there.”
“Come down with me to the boats.” Ros extended his hand, palm up, waggling his fingers, enticing me to take his hand, like he had done since we were tiny. “I want to show you everything.”
I grabbed his hand and followed him gingerly down the coastline to the only spot on the cliffside that was graded gently enough to descend to the beach. It helped to store the boats down there because Ros knew there was only one way to approach from the land, so he felt they were safe.
“To answer your question,” he said as he helped me maneuver over the mossy rocks and boggy holes of our descent, “I should be done with the sail by Imbolc time. It’s not safe to face the sea so deep into winter anyway. So around Imbolc I’ll finish and begin taking her out.” He continued after we jumped the last few feet onto the shore, “I’ll have a good feeling from the spring sea of what she can do and what needs fixing. Of course, during my test excursions on the boat, I’ll keep an eye out and learn where we can easily go when we leave. We will have to stop off somewhere before Orkney.”
“So we could leave by the summer solstice, then?” I asked. Feeling eager for my nineteenth birthday.
“Maybe,” he responded. “But I swear by the gods”—he took out his flint boat carving knife and slashed it in a quick motion against his open palm after we ducked under the lintel stone that led into the cave where the boats were stored for protection—“if ye say it’s what you truly want, Ailsa, I’ll make it happen and take us away from here as fast as I can.”
He knelt down in front of me in the tradition of a blood oath in the doorway to the cave, and I kissed his bleeding palm and pressed it to my heart. Water lapped around my feet, and I pulled him up to stand again. I took the knife and cut my own palm, an act of faith and devotion we had first done when we were nine. I pressed my palm to his and kissed his lips sweetly. His bottom lip was full and pink and felt like home between my lips. I didn’t want it to end, but the Druids would be expecting me. “Show me what you’ve made, then,” I answered, and we disappeared into the darkness, hiding our love away, deep in the recesses of the cave.