The Island House (30 page)

Bear fell hard, with nothing in his hands. “Signy!”

She stopped and looked back, panting.

The boy beat his chest, then lay still.

“Oh, Bear . . .”

Signy flung herself toward him, heart in pain. That huddled shape in the grass . . .

“Caught!” Bear’s arms whipped around her knees, and he pulled her down. But if he was strong, she was wily.

Kicking, half-laughing, half-gasping, Signy bit those grasping fingers.

“Ow! Not fair.”

She jumped up and fled again. “Life is not fair, Bear!”

Propped on an elbow, Bear shaded his eyes. He watched Signy sprint toward the stones and smiled. This was a game he liked.

Licking his hand, Bear sauntered after his quarry. Uncertain of so much in his life, he was certain of this—Signy’s heart was not in escape.

Will he come? Do I want him to come?
Fit as she was, Signy was panting as she ran toward the circle stones. She knew where to hide—a small, Signy-size crevice had been created when the brothers first tried to push the stones over in the inner ring. Like
trees half-fallen in the forest, two of the taller monoliths leaned against each other and toward a third, shorter stone. From some angles, the smallest stone concealed the hiding place.

Flat on her belly, Signy wriggled inside the earth-smelling shadow and refused to think. But that was impossible.

Why had she allowed Bear to kiss her after the goat escaped? She should not have. Abbot Cuillin preached regular, hours-long sermons on Sins of the Flesh, and despite that, she had somehow agreed to play this dangerous game.

It had happened so quickly. Between one instant and the next, after Bear ran the goat down and she joined him, there had been a moment of . . . what?

She had thanked him. Of course. But the nanny, outraged at being kept from a patch of new bracken, was twisting and bucking, and Signy could not hold her, so Bear wound his hand through the rope.

As if it were natural, he’d leaned across the animal’s back and his mouth had touched hers. She’d not known what to do, but he’d laughed, and she’d giggled too. Then he’d let the goat go—and taken Signy’s face between his hands and kissed her again. Linger-ingly. And she had let him.

He murmured, “You see, it’s nice.” His breath had been sweet and warm.

Unheeded, the nanny had escaped to the bracken, and viewed from a distance it might have seemed then as if Signy was running after her wayward charge. But she was not—she was running from Bear—and herself.

Lately Bear’s image filled her dreams with heat; more and more, she wanted to look at him, to talk to him. To touch him.

To have him touch her.

Be honest,
she thought. She was happy Bear had chased her, but that frightened Signy profoundly. This must mean the Devil was setting a snare—since her first moontide, Gunnhilde had told her so constantly.
Temptation, Signy, is his weapon. You must
guard against him, challenge him. You must keep yourself pure, for God desires purity above all things.

Yes, but what
was
purity?

“I know you’re there, Signy.”

The girl opened her eyes.

Bear was standing in the center of the circle. Slowly, he turned, his eyes raking each standing monolith. “Talk to me.” His voice caught. Bear had not expected this, playfulness consumed by yearning. “Please do not be scared, Signy. I would never hurt you.”

Signy edged forward a little. She remembered again, how well, the depth of her own loneliness and his. Once, they had been closer than sister and brother.

She called softly, “I’m here, Bear.”

The boy stopped. The damaged side of his face was half in shadow; sun and dappled light lent him beauty.

Signy exhaled a long breath. “You can find me if you try.”

But Bear did not move; he held out his arms. “Come to me, Signy.”

After a moment, she squirmed from her hiding place. She stared at Bear across the fallen stones. Would she do as he asked? Her blood rushed and whispered, and it was hard to hear the sounds of the world.

Bear dropped his arms.

Signy walked toward him—slowly, at first, and then she ran and he gathered her up as if she were a precious thing.

Time—the past and the future—had them in its grasp, and they chose surrender. To each other. Soon, her black kirtle, his old tunic, lay entangled and discarded.

“Signy!” One word, shouted to the sky. A cry, a blessing. There had been so much death, but now, Bear and Signy enfolded each other—man to woman, woman to man—for the first time, and life sought itself in each of their bodies as Bear’s hands found and lingered on the contours of this sweet, unfamiliar landscape.

His touch was hot, and Signy gasped, for her skin was not her
own now—it was his, too, as their bodies slid against each other. The muscles in Bear’s arms and chest were so hard she clung to him, but not for comfort, this was more urgent. She squirmed and molded herself around his legs, against his hips; pliant and soft, she kissed him, breathing his breath.

Bear slipped his thigh between hers. She pressed against him, allowed him higher, opening herself to him. He groaned; it was hard to savor this girl as he wanted to, for Signy was ripe and she was perfect. What he had imagined in his fantasies had been smoke. This,
she,
was real. His mind abandoned him. Now there was only fierce, red desire. He pushed her thighs apart, spearing down.

Signy welcomed Bear, took him deep inside her body. Now it was she, half-sobbing, who lay beside the stones, a man above her, her body for him, he for hers. She had watched, secretly, as other girls cried out, long ago, at the long-day summer gathering, and now it was her time. And if there was pain, like theirs, it was brief.

Intent, drowning in each other, the world and the past did not exist. There was skin, and hands, and eyes, and exquisite agony, almost more than could be borne.

And after the suffering, after the blood and fire of their childhood, this first coupling, this uniting of flesh, brought strength to their bruised souls, brought blazing light and heat and sweetness. And peace.

Enfolded, naked, they lay together in the moving shadows of the afternoon, and the whale-ivory ship, hanging from a thong around her neck, rode between Signy’s small breasts. Slowly she traced the line of Bear’s jaw with one finger and kissed the scars on his face.

The boy caught her hand in his own. “We belong to each other now, Signy. I to you, you to me. Deeper and nearer than blood, while I have breath in my body.”

As he said the words, faces came to Signy from the dark and the past.

She began to chant. “Laenna, hear me. This is my beloved. Mother, Father, you have another son. Odhrahn, Nid, here is your brother Magni, the great Bear. Welcome him, my family, since we have joined together here, in this sacred place.”

Bear held Signy against his chest as her breathing slowed.

“You are my clan, Signy. You are all the friends of my childhood. You are my brother, Grimor; my mother and my father too. While I live, there will never be another woman at my side, only you. I have waited for you, and the Gods, here, have given you to me, as I give myself to you.”

Bear knelt beside Signy, and his eyes traveled each part of that slender body, whiter than whale ivory. The flowers of late spring were closing their petals, but he plucked them from the grass and scattered red clover and pink comfrey, tawny primrose and white primrose over her skin, a breathing garment of color. He laughed, and so did she because they were happy. An unfamiliar feeling.

“After such glory, it’s a pity we have only these to wear.” He picked up his tunic. It was colorless with age, and her black kirtle was a reproach to the bright afternoon.

Signy grimaced as he helped her pull on the dress. She stroked his chest drowsily, trailing her fingers along the muscles in his arms, savoring his skin and his smell.

But she dropped her hand. And stepped a pace away. She had never seen a man naked before and was too aware, suddenly, of his eyes on her body. Adam and Eve, before or after the fall?

Signy’s eyes filled with tears. Suddenly, right—so clear a moment ago—seemed wrong. “Have we sinned?”

Bear was devastated by her misery. He grasped her shoulders. “Look at me!” He tipped Signy’s face up and wiped the tears away. More gently he said, “They are fools to make their lives so barren, and we are not like them. You are all that keeps me alive.”

She brushed grass from her tunic, defiantly. “I do not want to believe this
is
sin, no matter what the Abbot says.” She would not think of that now. “This place is sacred—just as sacred.”

She stared around the circle of stones. Yes, this was holy ground.

A twig snapped, and there was bleating close by. “The goat!”

Bear grinned. “I’ll get the nanny. You can say she led you a chase. As you did me.”

“
That
I shall keep to myself.”

But Signy’s smile faded as she watched Bear go.
Father, Mother, help your daughter . . . bless us.
She closed her eyes to hear and see better.

Distantly, the bell at the Abbey tolled.

That summer was golden. After the upheavals of the last years, contentment settled over Findnar, and for the first time there was more than enough food to eat, even with continuing new arrivals from the Motherhouse in the South.

Each long, warm day the brothers and sisters marveled at the swelling grain and exclaimed at the quantity of milk given by the cows and the goats. Even the size of the eggs and the number of piglets born were cause for grateful comment on God’s blessings.

Signy knew better. This new abundance had a specific cause. Her moontide had stopped—the sacred coupling in that holy place had brought fecundity to the island.

She was ravenous all the time. Sneaking new milk direct from the cow was not enough—she begged extra food from Brother Vidor and ate early mushrooms as they sprang in the fields. And she dreamed, waking and sleeping, of Bear and of the next time they could be together. But she would not tell him about the baby until the third moon had passed, just to be sure.

Perhaps, at last, the time had come. The time when she would truly say good-bye to Laenna and go with Bear into the future. They would found their own family now. Her sister would understand.

The service of Prime, on a cold, dark morning. Summer had fled and the warmth of early autumn was a memory as the bleak day began with a homily from Abbot Cuillin.

“Brothers and Sisters, as was said by St. Gregory the Great, there are seven cardinal sins. You know of pride and greed. We wrestle with these each day and moment of our lives. But today, I shall speak of lust. As the apostle James says, ‘Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death . . .’ ”

At the back of the chapel, Signy heard Cuillin’s words as if each was new-made and meant for her.

“Tremble when I speak of lust! Fornicators, even in thought, will burn for eternity in a lake of fire. And they will be torn apart by ravening beasts as they burn, symbols of the appetites of the body uncontrolled in life.”

Was it Signy’s imagination, or was Cuillin’s glance sweeping the congregation to seek her out? Trembling, she wrapped arms around her belly as the Abbot’s voice dropped. The monks and nuns strained forward to hear what he said.

“Oh, my brothers, oh, my sisters, how little defense we have against such horror. The sin of Eve—offering temptation against the will of God at the bidding of the Evil One—stains us still. And the sin of Adam—helpless against the wiles of that woman, all women—is that he succumbed. Oh, weakness. Oh, abomination! We are all as they were. From this horror, the urgings of our flesh, only the Lord can protect us, strengthen us, preserve our purity of thought and body . . .”

A rigor shook Signy. She could
see
flames and smell flesh as it blackened in the fire, and yet, what dwelled inside her body was
not
sin made flesh. Was it? No! This child had been created in love and by love; it and she were not evil. Bear was not evil.