It opened; they saw Ingeborg wonderstricken, heard her shout; the stranger immediately stepped through and closed it against them. A minute later, the shutters were latched and nothing could.. be heard from within.
A peat fife on the hearth gave scant illumination, but she had thriftlessly lit several tapers. They. picked out newly installed stove, table, chair, stools, texture of woven hangings, brightness of kitchen gear, smoke that swirled among food-laden rafters, amidst flickery shadows. The cat which had hitherto been her” single housemate had given up seeking attention and slept on the rushes strewn over the clay floor. Warmth and pungency filled the room, as if to stave off the night that had fallen.
Tauno and Ingeborg sat on a chest whose top, cushioned, was a bench with a backrest. A goblet of wine rested on a shelf at his side for them to share, but it had seen no heavy use, and the meal she set forth remained untasted. For after the storm of kisses, embraces, caresses, laughter, tears, wild words of joy had laid itself to rest in her, he had starkly begun relating his story.
“-I came overland, in hopes I might find something that would give hope. But the journey was merely slow, hard, and dangerous. Well, here and there were remnants of Faerie, different from any I’d ever heard of before. Once I’d have spent much time getting to know them. Now I found I had no stomach to linger long anywhere. I reached Copenhagen a few days ago. Niels and Dagmar made me welcome, but still less did I want the lodging they gave-too thick with sanctity, no place for my Nada. I told them naught about her. Instead, I got what I needed to be re-spectable and came straight hither. Aye, they bade me greet you kindly and urge your return. They’d like to see you mingling, taking pleasure, making a match with some genial widower who needs a mother for his children.”
Ingeborg leaned against him, his arm around her waist, hers reaching across his back to comb fingers through his hair. But she did not look at him, she stared into that hole of darkness which was the open door to the rear chamber. The second storm he raised in her, by his tale, had likewise died down. She still trembled somewhat, hiccoughed, spoke in a voice roughened and unsteady after much sobbing; her eyes were red, she snuffled, salt lay along her cheeks and upper lip. Yet she could quietly ask:
“How is it with you and her?”
He too gazed beyond. “Strange,” he answered, no louder. “Her
nearness-like a, a sweet drink that burns-or a memory of a darling lost, before grief has faded, though more than a memory: a presence- Is this how you Christians feel about your dead who are in Heaven?”
“I think not.”
“Waking, I have her with me, as I have my own bloodbeat.”
Tauno smote his knee. “That’s all-that, and remembrance more sharp than any other ever-it hurts!” He mastered himself. “But it quenches too. It is her presence, I said; she has not gone away. And when I sleep, oh, then she comes back in dreams. They’re like life; we’re together, just the way we used to be; because it is Nada in the sigil.”
Ingebord summoned her last strength: “Do you, in these dreams, fully know her?”
He slumped. “No. We roam and gambol through her homeland or in lands and seas where I’ve been and call forth for her. She grows wide-eyed with amazement. . . until sorrow seizes her that she must deny me more than a kiss. I tell her these are simply dreams and she tells me they are not, they’re a meeting of shades outside of space and time; she’s a ghost, she tells me, and if I lost myself in her I would share her death.”
“Oh, don’t!” Ingeborg’s fingers grew white-knuckled upon his shoulder. Unvoiced was that he would die like a blown-out flame.
Silence.
“Fear not, I shan’t,” he said.
“Bless Nada for her care-“ The woman drew a ragged
breath. “Yet, Tauno, whom I myself love. . . you’ll not go on thus, will you? Year after year, century after century, living only what you’ve lost. . . no, what you never really had?” She twisted about to see him. Her mouth stretched out of shape. “God gave you no soul. How can He leave you trapped in Hell?”