"Her Boy" by Chelsea Castonguay

            “Father, this seems most unfair!” the girl wailed, although she was far too old to be wailing like a bairn. She was twenty-four, but her appearance did not lend her more than seventeen years.  Her father watched in quiet exasperation as she flung herself around the room, ricocheting from wall to wall like a hen in too small a basket.

            “It does not matter if it is unfair, lass.  The wedding has been arranged and you are promised to Conner. You know what trouble it is to find husbands for women like you,” her father’s voice was gentle, but the young woman knew it wouldn’t be long before he tired of her fits of temper.  She threw herself down in a chair, glaring out the window at the green countryside.  Her bad luck that her mother was Elvish was tying her fate to a loathsome human boy.

            “I shall never lie with him,” she stated furiously, doubting that a boy of such young age could even know how such things worked.  There was no answer from behind, and when she turned, her father had gone.

            She watched the next morning as the boy Conner’s carriage arrived within the gates of her father’s castle, safely hidden behind a tall stone battlement.  The sentries nearby chuckled at her childish ways, but she merely hissed furious oaths at them and they continued on. Her emerald eyes followed the boy’s every movement as he stepped out of the carriage, bathed in a glow that only comes from one radiating with good health.  He kept his face pointed to the earth, and she would have to wait until that night’s banquet to really see him.

            She was most displeased to see that her father had seated her next to the young nobleman that evening, and she kept her eyes adverted from him, staring only at her plate of eel and roasted swan.  She occasionally noticed him glancing at her, but she refused to look.  He was only fourteen, and unworthy of her attentions.   She swore to herself under her breath, still fuming with fury.  Her father was marrying her to a child.

            Days passed, leading up to the wedding, which would take place on the first day of spring.  The lass followed her betrothed around her father’s castle, watching him from a distance.  She admired his wavy dark hair and flashing brown eyes, although she would never admit it aloud.  His kindness to the other boys, and gentle strength appealed to her, and she realized that day by day he was growing into a man.  He often tried to speak to her during meals or dancing, but she would keep her eyes adverted, and her nose in the air.

            On her wedding morn, she was bathed in water scented with lavender and her waist-long red hair plaited into many braids, and trimmed with pearls.  The maids that had once attended her mother on her wedding day now helped her into her long, flowing dress of green velvet, trimmed in sparkling jewels.  The dress was her dead mother’s, and it had been updated to match the new styles, including a tight bodice and flowing hem.  The girl sighed at her reflection in the looking glass, eyeing her slightly pointed ears, wishing she were marrying a man who would appreciate all the swelling curves the dress accentuated so nicely.  Although Conner had reached the height of most of the grown knights, he still wore the soft fuzz along his cheeks and chin that represented adolescence.

            “Might I have been granted a husband who could grow a beard and wear a full suit of armor,” she murmured to herself.

            With the wedding behind her, she went to her father, requesting that they send the boy off to school for another year.

            “He is young yet, Father.  He must be allowed to experience the things other boys do,” she pleaded, kneeling on the floor in supplication to her father’s authority.  He raised her bowed head with his large hand, his smile appearing from behind an amber beard.

            “We shall send him during the day, daughter.  However, he must not forget that he is a married man.”  The girl rose to her feet, and undid the ribbon from the end of her braid.

            “I shall tie this ribbon ‘round his head, Father.  It shall serve as a fair warning to all maids who should see him and wish to make him their own.  He is an attractive boy, after all.”  Her father nodded gravely, fingering the blue ribbon.

            “He is an attractive boy, and it’s about time you noticed that for yourself.” The girl narrowed her eyes, and reclaimed the ribbon.

            “He is a boy.  How can my eyes fall on a boy when my heart longs for a man?” she asked, holding the ribbon close to her heart.  Her father sighed heavily, and turned to the window.

            “You shouldn’t long for anything more than what you have.”

            The boy’s education continued, as did the girl’s avoidance of him.  Never once did he try to speak with her, or to take was rightfully his by marriage.  They continued to live apart, although the girl began to realize that they were joined in a way neither could explain.  The boy was changing into a man before her very eyes, a man she could see herself loving.  She watched him at sport with his friends, wondering how any of them could be considered handsome by the other maidens, when her husband stood out so brightly.  

            One morning, as he played with his friends, the girl entered the yard, seemingly on her way to the kitchen, but in truth to watch the boy.  She cursed as the ball hit her skirts, splattering her with mud.  The boy approached, and picked up the ball, his eyes catching hers. 

            “Have you ever played before?” he asked, smiling slightly.  She shook her head ‘no’, indeed, she had never played such a game.

            “Allow me to teach you,” her husband replied, taking her by the hand and leading her into an empty field beyond her father’s castle walls.  In the shelter of a grove of trees, she discovered that he could make her feel appreciated, even if he was a boy.

            Ten months later saw the boy fifteen, as his wife lay in childbirth, laboring to bring his child into the world.  She screamed in pain, lashing out at maids, attendants and any who came near.  Finally, fearing for the baby’s safety, the midwife brought thee young lord into the room, bidding him to calm his wife.

            “I fear they shall both die if she cannot stop her thrashing.”  The boy took his wife’s face in his hands, holding her close and whispering into her ear until she had quieted enough for her labors to begin again.  As milky twilight turned to black midnight, the young woman brought forth the young man’s red-face son.  He was laid to his mother’s breast, and they all three fell asleep together, grateful for the ordeal to be over.

            The girl watched as a year flew by, watched as bother her son and husband grew.  While he was still a boy in many ways, he had changed into a man in her eyes that day in the hayfields, and she smiled when she saw him coming back from a hunt, his cheeks kissed red by the wind.  He would sweep into her room, carrying the scent of horses and autumn, kissing both her and the child that lay in the cradle beside her. She sometimes worried for him, out all day on horseback, through rain or fog, but he was young and healthy.

            It was not ten days later when he was laid up in their bed, a cold ravaging his body.  The girl stayed by his side day and night, calling upon a wet nurse to feed her son, who refused her breast and cried day in and day out.   The boy insisted that she leave him, his voice worn down by a hacking cough, but she refused.  She watched in silent agony as her young husband’s body deteriorated, slowly turning him into a living corpse.  She closed her eyes and longed for earlier days, longed to see his strong limbs, his bright eyes and wide smile.  When she opened them, his breath was gone and he had left her behind.

            The girl sat in their empty chamber that night, a bolt of Conner’s favorite red and green flannel in her lap.  She took a stitch and with each stitch, stabbed her hand through the thin material. She gasped with the pain, ignoring the tears that flowed down her cheek, blurring her vision so that she could no longer even see where the stitches were.  There was a soft knock on the door, and her father entered, his kindly face wrinkled with concern.

            “How is the shroud coming?” he asked, for Conner was to be buried in two days, and she needed to complete the shroud before then. Without a word, she jumped to her feet, allowing the bloody garment to fall to the ground. Ignoring her father’s cries, she ran through the castle corridors blindly, pushing her way through anyone who tried to stop her.

            The cold air bit her skin as she ran across the muddy hayfields, her thin chemise whipping around her ankles. A root wrapped itself around her ankle and she fell into the mud, her tears and blood mixing with the earth that was reaching out to reclaim her love.