Annaldra

Bang, bang, bang the loud thumping rattled the glass panes in Finley and Elaine’s front door.

‘Okay, calm down, I’m coming,’ Finley shouted from inside, putting a stop to the racket.

Opening the door, he looked surprised, but in a pleased way, to see Donald and Ann on his doorstep. However, his expression soured when he noticed the blood-soaked bandage tied around Ann’s arm. ’Oh my god, what’s happened?’He opened the door wider allowing them the space to enter.

‘I stupidly fell into some barbed wire and cut my arm.’

‘I suggested she came here. I thought, maybe Elaine could look at it. She’s point-blank refusing to go to the hospital,’ shrugged Donald.

‘Of course, come through.’ Finley gestured them into the kitchen. ‘Elaine, can you come downstairs?’

‘It’s not that bad. I will live.’

‘What’s going on, what’s happened?’ asked Elaine as she entered the kitchen.

‘Annaldra’s had an accident. She cut her arm on some barbed wire.’

‘It’s nothing really, just a small cut.’

‘It’s not a small cut, it’s a bloody deep cut and she should really go to the hospital, but she’s got a big phobia,’ explained Donald. Ann was relieved he had jumped to the wrong conclusion about her refusal to go.

‘All that blood, it does not look like a small cut to me,’ said Elaine. ‘Now let me see it.’

Ann let Elaine remove the bandage from her arm revealing a deep, three-inch long tear still oozing fresh blood.

‘It looks bad, I think you should go to the hospital,’ said Elaine as she peered at the wound. ‘It is deep, and you will need a tetanus jab. Barbed wire is really dirty.’

‘I had a tetanus jab last year,’ she lied. ‘I’m not going to the hospital. I can bandage it myself.’ No one was going to make her go, no one.

Donald shook his head. ’You won’t get her to go. Trust me, I’ve tried, really tried and she won’t go.’

‘It must be something in the blood then,’ said Finley.

Ann froze. In that moment, her heart stopped beating, and if she had any, the colour would have drained from her cheeks, had her complexion not already been ghostly pale, even before the blood loss. How could he possibly know? How! How! How, she despaired inside.

Donald screwed up his face. ‘Eh?’

‘Her mum hated hospitals as well,’ said Finley, his tone matter-of-fact.

Ann let out a deep sigh as the shock slowly subsided and her heart resumed beating.

‘In fact, they terrified her so much, that on the night Annaldra was born she gave birth in complete silence so that no one would know she was in labour. Imagine that.’

Everyone was staring at Finley with engrossed expressions, waiting for him to continue this interesting story.

‘It’s true,’ he said smiling at her. ‘Everyone was in bed, and it was almost midnight when you were born and we heard you cry. Until then the house had been silent, most of us were asleep. Dad was awake in the next room reading a book and heard nothing, not a peep, until then, and boy could you cry. You woke me up.’ He gave her a nod. ‘That’s how you were born in our house and not the hospital, and it’s a good thing you were or you might never have found us.’

Ann grinned, realising how fortunate the circumstances of her birth had been.

‘Okay then, I will do it,’ agreed Elaine with a reluctant sigh. ‘Can you get me my bag, Fin, and I will patch you up?’ Elaine was smiling kindly at Ann as she spoke. ‘This will hurt,’ she warned. ‘The hospital would give you a local anaesthetic you know.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m tougher than I look,’ said Ann confidently, but the statement turned out to be more expectation than the reality.

Elaine cleaned the wound with iodine. The stinging pain almost made Ann pull away, but she closed her eyes, clenching her teeth and fists. She wished she had something to bite into, like wood, something her jaws could grip with all their might, but at the same time, she knew she should relax. Snow-angels and the aurora borealis, she tried to breathe normally, snow-angels, and the aurora borealis, snow-angels and the aurora borealis. It was not working. If anything it was getting worse, so she turned her thoughts to Eleanora and the excruciating pain she suffered in her feeble human body; it was far, far greater than this. If Eleanora could endure such terrible pain, she could surely tolerate this, but that did not help either. Then she tried to imagine she was in the Otherworld with her parents and the blissful warm way it made her feel, but the pain was engulfing her, making it difficult to concentrate on anything. At one point, it was so great, she almost cried out. It came as a relief when Elaine began stitching her arm. Painful as it was, it was far more bearable than the burning iodine. After what seemed like an age, Elaine finished, and the pain finally reduced to that of tenderness.

‘Well done, you were really brave,’ said Finley giving her back a rub.

Ann opened her eyes and let out the breath she had been holding giving a relieved smile. Jesus, her body still trembled, thank god that’s over!

‘There, that ought to do it,’ said Elaine as she tied the final knot on the bandage. ‘You will need to take these as well, two in the morning and at night. Take them with food for the next week. You don’t want an infection now.’

‘I don’t know how to thank you, Elaine,’ said Ann taking the antibiotics from her—even though she did not intend to take them. She had never taken western medicine and was not planning to start now. Tunkeeta had filled her with a strong distrust of such things.

‘You can thank me by resting. Anyway, I will need to love you and leave you, the night shift is beckoning,’ laughed Elaine. ‘I’m going to pop up and see that Gracie has settled before I leave. Fin, you should heat Annaldra some soup. She’ll need to build her strength back up after losing all that blood.’

‘Mm, that sounds wonderful,’ said Ann noticing for the first time how hungry she was.

‘Well, if you’re okay now, I’m going to head off too,’ said Donald. ‘If I do not go now, I won’t catch the tide.’

‘What, you’re going?’ She was not expecting that. ‘What do you need to catch the tide for?’

‘Night fishing. I need something for my dinner tomorrow,’ said Donald striding towards the door.

‘Ah, well I’ll see you sometime tomorrow, Donald,’ Ann shouted after him as excitement displaced her initial surprise at his abrupt departure, and she realised that once Elaine had gone, she would be alone with Finley. She hoped her delight was not obvious.

Without turning Donald raised his hand to wave. ‘Yeah, see you,’ was all he said, and with that he left.

‘Is it sore?’ Finley asked her gently stroking her arm with a finger, close to the bandage. His touch, light as it was, made her whole body tingle in the most delightful way.

She suppressed her smile. ‘No, it’s not sore now,’ she said softly.

Finley heated the soup on the stove and gave Ann a bowl with some crusty bread. It tasted like heaven. She had not eaten since breakfast, and her body had been through so much.

‘Wow, you were hungry!’ exclaimed Finley as he watched her wolf it down. ‘Would you like some more?’

‘Mm yes please,’ she mumbled through her final mouth full of soup.

‘That was delicious. Did you make it?’ she asked when she finished the second bowl.

‘No, Elaine is the cook in this house. I usually burn everything.’

‘Yes, I remember.’ Damn, no sooner were the words out when she realised what she had said.

Finley looked bemused. ‘Eh sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘I remember my dad burning everything too. Is it not just a guy thing?’ she said hoping to conceal her slipup.

‘I’ll have you know all the best—’

‘Chefs are men,’ she said finishing his sentence.

Finley half laughed. ‘Would you like a coffee? An Irish coffee perhaps?’ he offered still smiling at her.

‘I’ve never had an Irish coffee, but I’d like to try one.’

‘Well, two Irish coffees coming up. Go into the living room and sit by the fire and I will bring it through.’

Ann smiled at him, remembering how she and Swain had spent their evenings in the winter months sitting by the hearth when the nights were long. In the summer evenings, when their day’s work was complete, they sometimes would walk along the shore. Even though they were hard times, being together made them easy.

Settling on the couch in front of the fire Ann curled her legs under her and rested her head on the arm. She could hear Finley at the door, seeing off Elaine. This was the first time they would be alone together, and she could feel fireflies buzzing in her belly. She knew she should leave, but she longed to spend some time with him, just the two of them. After all, she told herself, it was innocent; they were almost like siblings in this life.

‘It sounds as though Elaine is in for a long night,’ said Finley when he returned to the room with the coffees, but instead of sitting beside her, he stood beside the fire.

‘Poor Elaine,’ she said blowing into her cup. ‘Having to start work at this late hour, it must be exhausting.’ She hoped she sounded like she cared, but the truth was she was happy she had left.

‘Aye,’ was all he replied. He looked uncomfortable standing there deep in thought; his eyes guarded as though scared to look at her. She wanted to reach out, to ask him what was troubling him but thought better of it.

For the longest time neither of them spoke until Finley broke the silence. ‘You know, Annaldra… after you left—well, after you left I fell apart.’

She could tell he was fighting back his emotions remembering how broken he had been when she had been taken away. She wanted to hold him: to tell him it was okay now, she was back. She even wished she could tell him about them, who they had been, but doing so would jeopardise their current relationship, it being highly unlikely he would believe her, anyway. Being a friend and a long lost family member was better than nothing she supposed.

‘I cannot explain it,’ he continued. ‘I suppose it was as if you’d died. I thought I would never see you again. That you were lost forever.’

Ann stared in disbelief as she realised he could feel their bond. He must be able to feel Swain and Eleanora. He may not remember, but he could sense them. Swain was somewhere inside him, in that moment, she was sure of it.

‘Well, I’m back, Swain,’ she said deliberately, hoping it would trigger something in him.

It seemed to work. Finley looked comforted by the name. He picked up his coffee and sat beside her on the couch. ‘Swain,’ he smiled contentedly as he repeated the name. ‘You do know that was the first word you spoke as a bairn.’

Intrigued, Ann sat upright and turned to face him. ‘Really, I did not know that.’

‘Aye, you were about ten months when you said it. No one knew what it meant or where it came from. At first we thought it must be a mispronunciation of some other word, but it was always me you said it to, and always with the most adorable wee smile,’ he said smiling to himself. ‘And the strangest thing was you never spoke any other words, well, not for a time anyway. It soon became clear that was what you were going to call me. Oh, and you could not be corrected, even by the time you were two-and-a-half you insisted that was my name. Not once did you call me Fin or Finley. It was strange, but I didn’t mind—in fact I really quite liked it.’

‘Mm, that is strange,’ she smiled to herself, if you only knew. She wished she could remember, but even for her with her amazing memory it was impossible. The age that memories start forming in children applied to her as well. It was her ability to store everything and recall it once they were formed that was different. However, that was something she had inherited from her father and he was not human. She did, however, get flashes of memory from when she was young, but they were so fleeting they were impossible to hold and make solid.

‘What was I like?’ she asked wanting to hear more.

Finley smiled at her while he thought. ‘You were a kind child. Well, to me you were.’

‘I was?’ she said, though she was not surprised.

‘Aye, in the summer the family would sometimes take a picnic to the brae beyond Dad’s garden. You would toddle around picking wild forget-me-nots and bring me small bunches. No one else got them, only me. Once my mum asked if she could have them, and the angry look on your wee face… well, if looks could kill.’ He chuckled recalling the moment. ’You looked so angry, you stomped a foot and shook your head saying Swain’s and marched over to me and gave me them. Once you could talk more, you always told me what they were.’

Ann stared in astonishment at him; she could not believe what she was hearing; Swain and Eleanora used to pick forget-me-nots for each other—all the time. Whenever they gave them to one another, they would always say ‘forget-me-not’, and the other would reply ‘never’. It was their flower. She was not telling him what they were; she was saying ‘forget me not’. In the summer, there had always been a jug of forget-me-nots on the table. Swain made sure of it. She had known him to walk miles at the start and the end of the season searching for the first or last ones.

‘Look,’ he said opening his wallet and digging into a small, almost hidden, compartment. He brought out a piece of white tissue paper, browned and tatty with age. Using great care, he unfolded it, revealing a tiny head of pressed blue flowers.

Ann’s heart missed a beat as she reached out to touch the delicate flowers frozen in time. How could that be?

‘This was the last one you gave me,’ he said smiling fondly at it. ‘It was the day before they took you away. I’ve kept it with me ever since. You see, I’ve never forgotten you.’ He was smiling at her now.

Yes, you have Swain. You have forgotten Eleanora, it’s Annaldra you’ve not forgotten, but did it matter? She thought not; the bond they shared a thousand years ago still existed for him, at least to some degree, even if the memories did not.

‘Mum talks often about that day, how poignant it was when you gave me the flowers and said the words “forget-me-not”. She had to walk away so I would not see the tears in her eyes because she knew it was your final day.’ He spoke to the flowers, staring at them as he twirled the dry stock between his thumb and forefinger, looking lost in the sadness of the past. ‘She said it was one of the sweetest, but also most heartbreaking things she’d ever seen.’

Ann reached across and rubbed his arm.

He looked up from the flowers and smiled affectionately at her. ‘They are still my favourite flower to this day,’ he continued in a more upbeat tone, ‘but Elaine thinks they are weeds. She can’t see their delicate beauty.’

She was enjoying this. It was great hearing stories from her past, in particular stories that linked her to her life as Eleanora. Padraig had told her lots of stories about her past, but mainly ones involving her mother. Hearing stories involving Finley was exciting. He did not know their relevance, but she did.

‘So you and Donald, what’s the story?’ he asked casually, changing the subject.

‘Friends, we are just good friends.’

’Really?’He arched an eyebrow.

‘Yes, really,’ she replied staring into his eyes. ‘Anyway, he’s not my type.’

‘What is your type then?’ His tone was casual, nothing more than polite interest, but still it made her heart flutter.

She broke her gaze away from his to think before answering. ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ she said, idly twisting her hair around a finger. ‘I’ve never had a boyfriend, but I imagine he would be…’ she hesitated to consider if what she was about to say was appropriate. ‘You know, the usual —tall, dark, and handsome,’ she continued still not meeting his eyes. ‘And he would be kind. He would have a good soul and…and, most importantly, he would feel like a part of me.’

She had just described Finley, but loosely; the physical description was stereotypical of an attractive man, and would describe many men, not just him. Nevertheless, Finley looked pleased. He had the same twinkle in his eyes that Swain often had, the twinkle she remembered and loved. God, she wanted him!

‘What, you have never had a boyfriend? I don’t believe it. I thought they’d be lining up to take you out.’

Ann let out a half-laugh. ‘What in Greenland, you’ve got to be kidding? I didn’t know many boys in Greenland. We lived in the wilderness… literally.’

‘But what about London, they must have been chasing you in London?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No boyfriends. I was too busy taking care of my mum to bother about stuff like that. I was asked once, but wasn’t interested. Anyway, he was blonde.’

‘So there has been no one special?’ Now Finley’s tone was serious; the light heartedness had left the conversation.

‘I would not go out with just anyone. He would have to be the one for me. I will know him when I find him,’ she said staring into his eyes, wondering if he realised she was talking about him. ‘It will be intense and immediate…-like the big bang that started the universe. It will be love at first sight for both of us.’

For the longest time they stared into one another’s eyes, frozen in the moment. Knowing. Then Finley leant towards her his hands cupping her face, their eyes locking briefly before bringing his face to hers. Gently, their faces rubbed against one another, their lips brushing together unsure whether to kiss. In that moment, Ann’s mind filled with reasons why they should not: an image of Elaine and Gracie appeared in the forefront of her mind. This was wrong, but before she had the chance to do anything, she felt his forceful lips on hers, the image instantly melting away. She could not resist, she was his, and he was hers. As they kissed, she felt the fire igniting in her soul, and she was not strong enough to stop. She longed to be one with her husband again and Finley seemed to feel the same unstoppable desire for her. She had missed his strong arms, his warm body and soft flesh against hers: his tender touch transporting her back in time to their small hut, with the heather bed on the floor. The years that had parted them were inconsequential as they rekindled their passion and became one again.

Lying back on the couch, exhausted but exhilarated, a sudden shrill cry from upstairs made them both jump, jolting Ann back from the past to the present. For the briefest of moments, they stared in shock at one another as the reality of what they had just done hit them. Baby Gracie’s crying was a reality check like no other, that piercing pitch designed to cause upmost distress to the listener had shattered her contentment so completely. Sitting up, they both scrambled to get dressed unable to speak or look at one another. In that moment she felt ashamed; she was not Eleanora now. She knew it was her fault. She understood the attraction, and she knew she would not, no, could not resist him, but she could have avoided being in the situation in the first place. I should have left with Donald, but as soon as the thought formed, she dismissed it, turning it around on itself. No, why should I? Swain was, after all, the magnetic pull that had drawn her back to Maidenboat, so why should she not be with him, and they had been husband and wife. She turned to him unsure what to say, but before she had a chance to say anything, he stood up and without even a glance in her direction left the room to check on his baby daughter.

As quiet as a stalking wolf, Ann slipped out the house. Walking to the hotel, she felt at odds. She knew keeping away from Finley was the right thing to do, but it felt wrong, and being with him was the wrong thing, but it felt so right. She smiled; she could not help it. If she was honest with herself, she cared little for doing the right thing. All she wanted was to do the wrong thing, again, and again and again.