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Short Story Part 2
Category: Writing and Poetry
Part One Can Be Found Here
We were there, still kneeling, our hands linked around the book when Fiona stepped forward, placing her hand on both our heads. I had an odd sensation of being in church, the minister blessing me with a heavy hand on me, the Latin phrases sliding from his mouth. My father was a practical man, religious only as necessary for his standing in the community and my relationship with the local church was limited to occasional holy days and other familial anniversaries.
Which made my response all the more confusing, a tingling sensation stirring along the fringes of where Fiona's hand rested on my head. Liam looked up from our hands to his wife, his face exhibiting the kind of beatific adoration one would see in stained glass images of the Virgin Mary looking up at the Messenger. Although Fiona's hand was light on my head, I felt unable to move, unwilling to resist the power of the moment, the three of us connected in a moment that seemed to be as small as a pinpoint and as vast as the sunset on the horizon.
I broke the moment by simply pulling my hand out from under Liam's, leaving the book behind. Fiona reacted next, lifting her hands from our heads and closing her eyes, her brows knitting into a frown, her face etched and somber, lips moving in a sibilant hiss. Liam stood and reached to help me rise and although I took his hand it was more to steady myself for a felt oddly weak from the experience, standing too quickly and getting a wave of dizziness that was beyond my control.
Liam made as if to steady me and I resisted only because I felt a conviction of impropriety. He should not be attending to me in such a manner. The urge to go home had returned with the same force as the first time. Liam had walked over to the shelf where there were other books. "I have something else you might like," he said, pulling a similarly small book from the shelf. I did not hesitate, wanting to take nothing but more eager to escape the shop and the emotions I was experiencing. I held out my basket and let him tuck the book inside. I did not look at him, instead watching his hands reach forward and withdraw.
"Moira," Fiona said from where she stood, her back so close to the curtain that it moved with her breathing. "I hope you will return when you have more time to visit. I have some wonderful things I would like to show you."
I stammered some excuse for leaving and quickly left, this time walking with not the same haste as before but still compelled to get home as soon as I could.
That night I had a dream about Liam. I was bathing at the lake, something I had often done when I was much younger but had ceased doing when I was too old for a nurse to follow me wherever I went. I was swimming as I had seen my brothers do but had never learned to do for myself. As my arms rose and fell in the water, I felt something grab at my ankle, holding me. I felt no fear and in my dream laughed as though I had been expecting this grasp all along. Liam rose out of the water, his laugh echoing my own and we swam, side by side, to the shore. I rose from the water naked and unashamed noticing only briefly that, like me, Liam was wearing nothing. The water streamed down our bodies, muddied the soil at our feet as we walked to where the grass was lush and thick, a velvet blanket on which we both stretched out. The heat from the sun caressed my flesh, warming me as it dried the water from my skin. Liam, lying beside me, reached out a hand to take my own. We laced our fingers together, our eyes closed. Without needing to see for myself, I knew our breath was in sync with one another, inhaling together and exhaling together.
In my dream it seemed that the two of us were drifting into sleep when I felt another hand embrace my other hand. I did not open my eyes. There was no need. I knew it was Fiona, her cool flesh like that of the soil on my back, her slender fingers laced in a mirror image of Liam's. I lay between the two of them, the sun turning my lids to blood.
I woke up to the pressure of lips on my own. In my dream I did not know which of the two had risen to turn towards me, whether it was Fiona's lips or Liam's which stirred me from my sleep into wakefulness. I touched my mouth as I sat up, realized I was alone in my bed, and felt as though I would cry.
That day, I received the first of many gifts that would come from Fiona. The fabric which she had shown me was the first. When I returned the second book, a fable about a warrior talking with what I supposed was a god although the story confused me terribly, she sent another book this one written in English but a translation from Italian. Perfumed oils which she told me had come from as far as the Orient, places I had only heard about by accident in overheard conversations. I felt a duty to go to the shop and thank her for these items but often found that she was not there. Instead, I would thank Liam who would engage me in conversations about the books I was reading, generously donated to me from their personal library, and how I was enjoying the gifts. I found it difficult to leave and noticed that, over time, I was growing despondent on those days when I could make no excuse to walk to the shop.
It was Liam who first showed me the cards and explained to me that they were used by some to predict the future but it was Fiona who initiated me into how they were used. Liam would drill me in the meaning of each card until I had memorized every symbol but it was Fiona who procured a deck for me of my own, who had the carpenter make a box for them. Liam would suggest books I should read but I suspected that it was Fiona who had told him which books she wanted me to take home. Liam may be the one who gave me the flowers, mixed in with the herbs my father ordered, but I knew it was Fiona who grew the flowers, who plucked them for me, and when I saw the stain of blood on a thorn, I trembled, seeing clearly the white fingertip as it pricked upon the stem.
Unknowing, I had become their student as much as my father's although he had long since stopped training me. Soon my eldest brother would be home from university and he would be the one on whom my father called. At best, I would become necessary only in going to and from the shops, picking up the best herbs and equipment I could find. That training would never go to waste but my father saw no need to teach me anything more.
I found myself testing their limits, daring to ask bolder questions about their journeys. Liam would occasionally but rarely tell me that he would tell me about something "some other time" and I supposed even then that he was asking Fiona for permission to speak freely.
It became not uncommon for me to find myself in the back room, behind the curtain, where customers would not enter and find me there. This especially became the norm when the weather turned colder and Fiona would invite me into the back room where a small fire was kept burning almost constantly. "I get chilled easily after traveling through so much warmer climates."
Liam often joined them and the three of us would live as though we were in a cave. Customers were few and far between and father was too busy with traveling beyond our village borders during the early bite of winter. I had become used to being around Liam and Fiona, no longer feeling the same discomfort that had been endemic with her presence. Instead, whatever misgivings or qualms had been allayed by the attention and education that the two of them were giving to me.
One evening, when the sun was clouded over, snow began to fall in thick and heavy flakes, clusters of crystals frozen together. Fiona did not wish for me to travel under the poor weather conditions and because I had come to the shop on an errand for my father, she sent Liam to advise my father that Fiona thought it would be best for me to stay there for the duration of the bad weather unless my father could send a carriage to carry me. I knew that my father would send a carriage and did not make a move to get comfortable. Fiona, on the other hand, assumed my father would be obliging and started tossing various articles of clothing around to me where I was reclining on the various pillows that were cluttered across the floor.
Had I dared to sit on the floor in my own home, I would soon be sick with fever, the drafts finding their cold way beyond the hems of my dresses. But here, in the cave that was the back room of their shop, Liam and Fiona had managed to create a small and impossibly comfortable womb like place. When Fiona had first showed me into the room, I marveled at the peculiar concept of lying on floors but she explained that in the desserts where people lived under cloth canopies and traveled from one place to another, they all reclined on pillows. Although I would come to find it comfortable, I still believed that Fiona and Liam were making up stories to mock me, the naïve child who came to visit them, behind my back.
It was on this day with the snow smothering the world outside, that I learned that Fiona and Liam were nothing but honest. When I commented once again on the peculiarity of lying on the floor she rose to her feet with the sort of imperial authority one would expect to see only from a queen. "I know that Liam would prefer to show this to you himself but I know he mentioned showing you his journal. It will be a while before he returns."
She hesitated. This was my first time seeing anything but confidence radiating from her. However, she soon returned to the now familiar presence returned, the dominant and powerful woman I had come to love, if not like a mother then like a sister.
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Comfort of Strangers (with Bonus Disc)
By
Beth Orton
Release date: 07 February, 2006
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1:06 PM
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