Excerpt: The Last Elf

A proper banshee couldn't keen as loud as the blizzard did that foul morning, yet Kyna Feadaíl slept through it. She had slept through the distant ringing and she had slept through the growing cold. At most, she snuggled deeper beneath the soft down blankets. All she had ever wanted was hers now and waking would only spoil it.

What woke her was a subtle thing. A slight brush against her cheek. Her husband's pillow had quivered, and the motion bumped it against her own. She half woke but did not open her eyes. Instead, she muttered, “Declan?”

No reply.

Another quiver, another brush, mistaken as a caress.

A smile formed on her lips. “Now love, you know I have to go into St. George in the morn. We can't. We just can't.”

She reached out to touch his sweet face, and her hand dropped to the pillow.

Where did he go? Still groggy, still confusing dream for reality, Kyna sat up, rubbed her eyes, then looked about the bed room. Darkness kept her from noticing pictures missing from their place on the wall, or that only her clothes drawer remained, and it now sat across from the bed.

From the blizzard came a loud wail that could have been mistaken for the cry of the damned. The windows rattled in their frame as the wind rushed past.

Kyna hugged herself, feeling the cold for the first time. To her husband, who had to be in the house, who couldn't be anywhere else, she called out, “You best not be checking Dunny again. Shepherd's crook, love, it's just a fever, gone in a few days. You keep this up, you're going to.. going to spoil...”

Her voice tailed off as the last shred of dream drifted away. The smile on her face, unwelcome, changed into a deep frown. Sorrow and regret washed over her. Time would heal this hurt, she had been told. Make it less, make it manageable. Yet a year later they felt as great as the night they were spawned.

This terrible despair would always be there, every waking moment, for the rest of her life. Kyna knew this. She could study all the books of magic she wanted, become more than a mere hedge wizard, stand at the World Tree Rems before the Court of the Gods Themselves, and it wouldn't change things one iota.

Her husband and son were died, taking all other emotions with them. They were dead, because of her arrogance, and she would see them no more. That was a wound that could not be healed by magic or eased by salve. One that festered and infected every moment she had.

Without thinking about it, she traced with a finger the wine colored blotch on her left check. The reminder of the illness she had dismissed, the reminder of how fallible she was. First thing she saw every morning. She had her dresser moved so she could see its mirror, be reminded fresh and early.

It should have been her. By rights, she should not have been the one to escape. She didn't deserve to live with them dead. It wasn't fair.

A warm voice whispered in her ear, “Yes. You should have died.'

Startled, Kyna shouted “Lonth ig!” A tingle raced through her as the spell lit the bulb in the ceiling. A brief flicker and darkness fled the room.

By the voice, a man sat in the bed with her, leaning over her. He could have sounded as compassionate as the Shepherd Himself, it didn't matter. He should not be there; he was not welcome.

No man sat in the room. All that was next to her was her husband's pillow. It drifted in the air like a feather in an updraft, just about even with her chest.

Kyna's first thought was that it was a prank. A rival from her past playing a trick. Then the Voice spoke again, “You should have died that night, with Declan, with Dunny. You know it now. If you really loved them, you would have died, too.”

Horrible words, even though she herself had thought them many a time. But the Voice sounded so kind, so caring.

Then the pillow dart at her, slammed into her chest, knocking her on her back. Kyna hit the bed hard, bouncing, but before she could come all the way off the mattress, the pillow smashed into her face. Red pain flashed from her nose. A great pressure crushed her into a stifling void.

Above her, she heard, “Let me help you, Kyna Feadaíl. Let me be the one to make this right.”