Page 21 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

“Th-there,” said Fairhrim. “That’s where we’ll want to do the healing.”

They approached. The flagstones underfoot softened as stone gave way to damp moss dotted with violets and the occasional reed.

Osric and Fairhrim stood before the great oak in silence. The tree’s enormity stifled them, made them subdued. They were in the presence of something ancient. The place felt too sacred for words.

The patch of sky above lightened. A warbler sang its aubade. Flutelike notes spiralled upwards. The scent of crushed nectarines filled the air and tickled at Osric’s brain.

Fairhrim tore her attention from the oak to her pocket watch. “Almost dawn,” she whispered. “It’s time.”

Osric removed his hood, pulled down his cowl, and loosened his collar. He felt a great heaviness not only in his legs but in his arms. But all had gone as smoothly as he had hoped. If the Færwundor stayed this quiet, the way out would be easy, too.

Now he needed Fairhrim to pull off another miracle healing.

“Dare I be stupid enough to hope again?” he asked. His tongue felt thick. The air was cloyingly sweet.

“This place was the most promising time and place yet, in termsh—interms—of the data,” said Fairhrim. She attempted to put away her pocket watch, fumbled it, and pulled it up from its chain. She frowned and stared at her fingers.

At their feet, the Begbéam moon’s reflection danced in the waters of the river. Wavelets surged around the moon, distended her, broke her; steadfast and indomitable, she reappeared, a white sphere among rushing black.

A moth pollinated one of the purple flowers. Osric watched as the flower dropped under its weight. The moth fluttered drunkenly off; the flower sprang back up into place.

The heart melody of the warbler rang through the tower.

Osric said that it was beautiful.

Fairhrim regarded him with worry.

Silly fool. There was nothing to be concerned about. All was well. Life brimmed around them. And how glorious the oak, which had stood here for a hundred frail human lifetimes; and how enchanting the moon, softening everything into fleecy points of light; and how incredible the purity of the dew upon the moss. All was so beautiful it almost brought him to tears.

That was when he began to suspect that something was wrong.

Heknewsomething was wrong when Fairhrim, staring vacantly at nothing, pressed her forefingers together and said, “Tibwiddles.”

A part of his brain registered quite how wide her pupils were, and that this was, perhaps, a point of concern.

The warbler sang. Osric listened, but he did not hear the sound through his ears. Sound wasn’t sound; he could perceive it by the eye as well as by the ear. Small shocks and aftershocks emanated from the warbler in notes that fell like pebbles in still waters and dissipated into wide golden circles.

“It’s so shiny,” said Fairhrim, staring at the warbler, too. Her voice came from far away, and joined the warbler in sending concentric waves of light around them.

“We’re high off our gourds,” said Osric.

His own voice added to the ripples in wide violet-blue arcs. They intersected with hers.

Fairhrim fell into a heap beside him, boneless. “I suppose the flowers are a hallucinogenic,” she said softly.

She was unbothered by the thought. Osric knew that she should be bothered by it, and so should he. But why? They lay on moss at the edge of a pool, and leaves caught the light of the moon, and that was what was really important.

Why was he here, again? He was pleasantly confused.

Fairhrim said, “I’ve got to heal you.”

She crawled towards Osric as he—his legs having gone completely numb—pushed himself towards her.

The first rays of dawn tinged the sky pink. Fairhrim, her legs tangled with Osric’s, pressed her palm to his nape and pushed her seith into him. Her tacn was a beauty all of its own, a stream of white light.

Time was no longer passive; like her seith it glimmered and swelled, pulsed like a heartbeat, refracted and intensified. With his hands in the moss, Osric could feel the earth moving beneath him—could feel its spin, how every revolution made a day, and how those days whirled into years, and years into centuries, only time was compressed and erased now, it did not exist linearly; it was like the four-season tree.

There, somewhere between time and untime, between self and unself, over the door to the Annwn, Fairhrim poured her healing into him. Osric’s skin seemed as translucent as a moth wing; he could see his seith channels and the light where Fairhrim’s seith filled them. He was at her mercy; her light went everywhere, into brain and eyes and heart, pushing healing in little jolts along the nodes, and in long rushes in his seith channels.