It was late summer, and Rian and River were lying in a meadow looking at the stars.

“You aren’t going to get married, are you?” River reached out and brushed his dad’s solid arm.

“No woman will ever change the way I feel about you, son.”

“But are you?”

Rian sighed, tired. “I’m not planning on it.” Could be nice. Not at all possible.

River sighed, delighted. “Oh good. I heard you fell in love with the weaving mistress at Roscrea Castle. Is she pretty?”

“Since when are you interested in whether ladies are pretty?” Rian buried his chuckle at the boy’s galloping enthusiasm. 

“Since you’re going to marry one.”

“I’m not going to marry her.”

“All right, then I don’t care if she’s pretty or not.”

That was just as well, given that the weaving mistress was indeed pretty, and what was more Rian had just spent a month flirting with her. It didn’t mean anything, but she enjoyed it, and he liked making people happy and—well, of course it was pleasant. And in the middle of their stay at Roscrea, Rian got pulled away to deal with a flood (at a convent, nuns in grave danger), so by the time he got back he felt like he deserved a little comfort. But he wasn’t in love with the weaving mistress and he never implied that he was so much as thinking of marrying her. Rian had plenty of rules for his little love affairs, and they all involved not ever letting things get serious.

“What about….” River writhed on the grass, fidgeting with his léine. “What about my mother? Is she pretty?”

That was a jump. The air between them crackled like a lightning storm. 

Rian put his hand on his son’s head, stroking his long blond hair. River relaxed into his touch, and everything went calm again. He could get through this conversation.

“Your mother is striking,” Rian answered, keeping his voice smooth. “She was beautiful when she was young, although I think most people are beautiful when you know them.” His mouth was open to keep babbling on, but he made himself stop. He must say as much as River needed and no more.

“Why did she leave me?” 

This one, River asked every year. Rian knew what he needed to hear. “She didn’t want to send you away. She was trapped by a bad sorcerer, and I was the only one who could get you out. She’s going to come back when she is able to.”

River nodded. Usually at this point he wanted to talk about the evil sorcerer, coming up with dramatic ideas about traps and curses. River had created a whole fairy tale of the terrible things the sorcerer did, and the brave deeds that Rian had undertaken to rescue himself as a baby as they raced through obstacles. Rian never replied other than the occasional “is that so.” If that was what River wanted to believe, the truth would only be a disappointment Newborns are too floppy, and take forever to eat their food, and wail for no reason at inopportune moments. If anyone had wanted to catch them, they would have been as easy to pluck as a ripe plum, no matter that Rian was a brave warrior.

But tonight, River was not interested in his own stories. He turned on his side, facing his father but with his head tucked down. He plucked a blade of grass, dropped it, and plucked another. 

“Did you love her?” he asked, finally.

This was complicated. Rian much preferred it when River told himself the answers he wanted to hear, and he didn’t have to say anything—let alone open up the blurry secrets of his own soul. Where does love begin and end? What was the feeling he had for Nessa, all tangled up in loyalty and resentment?

“Did you?” River’s voice was small and helpless.

And Rian remembered that River wasn’t asking those big questions; he was a child, talking about himself. He was asking, really, am I worth loving. 

“Yes,” Rian answered, because they both were. “I loved your mother so much I gave her my life, and she gave me you.”

“So was she pretty?” River insisted.

And then Rian didn’t know what to do next. River had been asking questions about grown-up love the whole visit, and up until now it had been amusing. Rian had always told him that he wasn’t married to River’s mother, but now River wanted to know what they were.

Rian opened his mouth to say the truth, and shut it again. It would just hurt. He had so little time with his son, anyways. He couldn’t bear to throw an emotional dagger between them.

“Do you want to hear a story about your mother?” he said instead, making his voice cheerful.

“Yes! Is it a brave story?”

“Very brave. Let me see…how about the time our fianna captured the brigands at the river’s mouth?”

“Did my mother kill half of them herself?”

“Ah, she killed not a one, for there was a price upon their heads. We wanted to bring them in alive so we could buy supplies for the winter.”

River scootched across the grass and curled up into Rian’s side, nestling his face in his arm. Rian squeezed him tight, and lilted into the story. Full of derring-do, no mention of the hunger that pinched their cheeks and the spells the sorcerer tangled upon Nessa.

The sorcerer who was her husband. In the future, there would be debates about nature versus nurture, and adoption courts, and blended families. In their time, the father who begat the child meant everything—the child’s moral and cultural destiny. Rian couldn’t bear to tell River that he was connected to a character that River already hated with such passion.

But what if River wondered why he looked so little like his dark-skinned “father”? What if he thought that Rian had been lying to him?

When he got older. There would be a right time to explain everything.

Somehow.

Rian told stories about Nessa, watching the stars and stroking River’s hair, and his heart sunk into darkness. When he heard the boy’s breathing go slow, he switched to humming, then silence.

The first question that River asked—he wished it could be different. This was one of those nights he wished he could be married. He yearned for someone to talk to; someone he could trust with these questions. What do I tell River next? What if he stops calling me daddy, and my heart would break?

His wife would put her arms around him. Your heart will survive, she would say. I will take care of it, because I will keep us all close.

But the whole idea was foolishness. He could take a few hours of fun with a woman here and there, but he couldn’t manage to marry. 

Rian has his armlet, pulling him away hither and yon. And then on the other side, Fionn had just promoted him again. He had to manage troops, keep their villages safe. If he didn’t do his job—either of them—people would die. They were like two huge cliffs, looming on either side, leaving him only one way forward. He was doing it. He was defeating the monsters (and the floods, and the brigands), keeping himself alive, getting back and forth to that hospital in 1971, getting home for River. He was managing. 

But there wasn’t the opportunity to meander down a pathway lined with primroses, fall in love, and make more new promises to someone else. He couldn’t keep any more promises.

Rian scowled down at the top of his son’s head, thinking. Speaking of marriage, he’d heard rumors that Nessa had married. Another sorcerer, someone associated with the High Kings of Tara. She sent messengers occasionally, so Rian knew that she had not forgotten River. But did she really care? Would she ever actually come back?

Never mind. It wasn’t the first time he heard stories that Nessa had married, and it wouldn’t be the last. Probably affairs of her own, and certainly not of the heart—no, with Nessa it would always be what advantage she would have. Rian hated that women had to seduce their way into power, but Nessa had acknowledged the rules and made them her own. First she became a warrior to exact revenge. Now she would become a lover to build her power. 

Her new husband would have no interest in a nine-year-old boy from a miserable prior marriage, and perhaps Nessa would renounce her claim to River. Of course it would do River good to meet her, and Nessa really did have many good qualities, but it was just as well if she kept her distance. He and River were doing fine as they were.

A star shot across the sky, leaving a trail of silver sparks—and then nothing, blackness, so fast that it seemed like he had only imagined it. It was beautiful. Rian smiled into the dark and kissed his son’s head.

They were doing fine. River was safe and progressing well in his foster home, and then he came back and Rian filled him with love. Maybe Rian would have chosen an easier path if it had been offered, but this is what he had. Fionn on one side, the armlet on the other, River and the helpless people ahead. He was proud, really, of rescuing so many people. He liked learning new things. He was good at both his jobs, and he juggled it all and took care of River, too.

It was a delicate balance, but they were fine.

And this—the sky and the earth and the stars and the woods and the sweet warmth of a child curled in his arms—this was worth all the pain and sacrifice.

Rian didn’t need a wife, and he didn’t need Nessa. He had twin cliffs hemming him in, but his mission was clear and he kept going.

This was enough… 

…as long as he never made a mistake. 

The story continues in....

The Knight and His Magical Armlet

What if Nessa's new plan entangles her first-born son? What if Rian meets a woman who could answer the questions tumbling in his mind? Oh—and why is Fionn acting so peculiar? He is usually brash and selfish, but he is not usually a fool...

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The Squire and His Magical Library

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