148 - Revive - Barrow - wonderfinch - original

[wonderfinch.livejournal.com]

Finally back to writing.
Title: Barrow
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Revive
Warnings: None
Rating: PG
Summary: x

Patrick never formally met Eunys—not in the traditional sense, at any rate. He saw the flame-red trail of her hair disappearing around corners and into hallways and the like, but she was nothing but a splash of too-bright colour for the first five or so years of their aquaintance.

It wasn’t until she birthed her husband’s first child that Patrick even saw his lady’s face, and as she snapped her face up to look at him in the door, her eyes mirroring none of the pain etched into her face, that he saw her face. In that moment, he realised she had probably taken great pains to avoid him, because he looked into her eyes and he knew.

The Lady Eunys was a Druid.

He stood immobilised for a moment, before one of the maids told him to stop dawdling and fetch some more water. Patrick complied quickly, grateful for an excuse to escape his lady’s scathing, accusatory gaze. He hoped to never be caught alone with her, he thought as he rushed to the kitchen. She was liable to tear his flesh from his bones.

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The babe had been born healthy, Patrick later heard. A healthy, rosy-cheeked boy. The matter of the boy’s sex had confused not a few of the maids, though—the midwife had sworn up and down that she’d tugged a girl from the Lady Eunys’ womb. The midwife called Eunys a witch, and the lord had been preparing to kill the woman for attempting to sully his wife’s name when the news came:

The midwife, it seemed, had been found drowned in her well that morning.

Killing a midwife and changing a baby’s gender, Patrick supposed, were both small magics. For the Lady Eunys, well, he doubted either spell had taken much energy.

Gossip in the manor raged as everyone chattered about the midwife’s insanity, but Patrick was silent. Luckily, he thought, he was but a lowly slave—it never occurred to anyone to speak to the lanky, grubby young man, and for that he was grateful. Had he been asked, he would have likely said something that would have gotten him killed.

He thought he was quite safe from the Lady Eunys until twilight fell and someone rapped sharply on the door of his cell.

“Come in!” he called, wondering who it might be.

Mary, the lady’s handmaid, swept in. “Th’ Lady Eunys wishes to speak with you in the library, boy,” she said sharply, turning on her heel and leaving as soon as she had spoken.

Patrick felt as though he might be sick.

Slowly, grimly, he took the back stairs up to the library. They were further from the room where he was to meet the Lady Eunys, and he wanted to delay their meeting as long as he could.

Finally, he reached the library, and opened the door with a shaking hand. He very nearly dropped it, but the Lady Eunys, perhaps sensing that he was there, caused the door to glide open just enough to admit Patrick—and to then slam closed as soon as he was inside the room. He was inclined to bolt, but he was sure the Lady Eunys had worked some kind of magic to lock the door.

“I am not,” she said simply, “what you think I am.”

Patrick hadn’t noticed her before, but now he saw the lady on a small sofa near the door. She normally dressed in pale greens and sea blues, to match the stormy blue-green of her eyes, but today she wore a sweeping dress of deep purple and black, and though she was inside, she still wore a matching cloak of deep purple. Had Patrick any doubts about her Druidry, they would have been dispelled at the sight of his normally light-hearted and brightly dressed lady thus attired.

He tried to look into her eyes, and found he could not hold her icy gaze. Their irises were, he saw in a fleeting glance, so pale a blue they were nearly white, and her pupils seemed to have all but vanished and existed now as only a slightly darker shade of pale blue.

As though she could read his mind, she continued, “I am nowhere near as idiotic as those Druids, boy. Don’t insult my power by placing they and I to-gether.”

Patrick stared, dumbfounded, at her pale hands folded on her lap. What did this make the Lady Eunys, then?

“I am an enchantress,” she replied in answer to his unspoken question, “and have lived for nigh on two thousand years. I’ll live for a bit longer, Patrick, but I’ll need a small favour from you.”

He didn’t ask how she had known his name; he was too busy praying to pay attention to small details such as that. He just barely had the presence of mind to nod, dumbly.

“I shall die soon,” she went on, “and if you’d do me the favour of letting me out after the funeral, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

“But won’t I get hanged for doing that?” Patrick wailed miserably, the first words he had spoken since entering the library.

Eunys glared at him irritably. “Of course not, you twat,” she told him. “I simply need to make an escape, and faking my death is the easiest way to do it. I don’t age,” she added, “so it does look rather suspicious after a while.”

Patrick sighed, and said, “I suppose I ca—“

“Good,” she said. “And afterwards, you’re free to escape.”

-------------

The next night, the Lady Eunys died.

Patrick stood at her grave and prayed every night for a month, and simply could not bring himself to release the Lady Eunys’ body. Instead, he stole a horse and escaped on his own.

And when he came back to Ireland years later, he prayed at her grave every night, and still could not bring himself to roll the stone away from the mouth of the lady’s barrow. He pressed his ear close to it, and imagined he could hear her singing softly, tapping her fingers on the burial slab to keep time.

He rushed away then, quickly, and told his fellows that some manner of demon was trapped in the mound.

They laughed at him then, but when the stone was rolled away by two of the braver men, a torrent of snakes rushed out and reformed themselves into the shape of a woman. Moments later, Patrick could recognise the Lady Eunys, and no trace of the snakes (save for the pattern on her dark dress, the same purple one she had worn in the library and not the pure white shift he’d known she was buried in) remained.

“Drat you, Patrick,” she said. “I had seem this coming, of course, but one can always hope in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Did you like the serpents?”

Patrick shook his head.

“Well, perhaps they were a bit too much. At any rate, it’s not polite to leave your mistress trapped in a tomb for nigh on ten years, Patrick—you oughtn’t have done it.”

Patrick nodded dumbly.

“It was especially rude to come and wake me with your prayers, boy—I would have been slightly less angry had I been able to sleep away those long years. No matter,” she continued. “I rather enjoyed the solitude.”

And with that, she turned on her heel and walked towards the barrow without a backwards glance.

“I banish thee and thoupoisoned descendants from this land forever, vile serpent!” Patrick called after her in a last-moment stroke of brilliance.

The men with him cheered, but Patrick fancied he was able to hear Eunys laughing as she crested the barrow-hill and stepped into the sky.