Chapter Seven – The Final Verse


Susanna ran towards the clearing in the woods. It was a tad different than she knew, as some trees actually seemed to shift places as she moved. She knew what she had to do at last. It was so ridiculously simple that she smiled faintly. She would go to the cave and end it. But there was something she had to do first.

Suddenly she heard steps behind her and bumped into a trunk. Peter was walking right before her eyes and for a moment she froze. But he just passed by her and moved to his side. He could not possibly have missed her. Then she noticed a bluish glow in the dagger she had tucked in her belt.

“Brilliant.” It was clear to her then. “So much for protection, aye?” She caressed the handle and moved ahead.

When she reached the clearing the sight of the millstone startled her. It was the same she knew yet different. She could feel the danger as if she could touch it. They had been there and it had not been long ago.

She stepped on the millstone. Symbols carved on every spot of the surface were brand new and strange. She shivered when she realized that the dark smudges on the edge of the central hole were clotted blood. She reached instinctively for the dagger not so sure about what she was going to do, or how.

But she knew bloody well why. Augusta had not chosen that particular night in August to perform her sacrificial rite by chance. Julia had told her about the issue concerning the proper dates for the celebration of the Sabbats; old dates, astrological dates, changes made to calendars throughout the centuries, covens deciding with a considerable range of variation when to perform the celebrations, all that had seemed not more than an interesting topic for discussion then. But when it had become clear to her that Augusta had carefully planned her journey to Ainnar, that wicked ritual had found its place in the puzzle. That night, Julia had told her, was the night when the sun was exactly at fifteen degrees of Leo in the zodiac. Susanna now believed that Augusta had tried to use the rings before only to find out that the well to Otherland was locked or gave way to darkness. The ritual on that particular night might have been her only connection to Leoghan.

And she knew something had been done to the millstone in her own world; if the two worlds were connected, this millstone had also been changed; into what, Susanna could not tell. All she knew was, she had to do something to prevent Augusta from using it to her purposes, whatever they might be. She just hoped she was not too late when she avoided looking at the blood.

Now she stood on the millstone without the faintest idea of what to do.

Apparently the dagger knew. It pulled Susanna to her knees as it plunged itself into the stone surface. The next moment there was a blast of light and the stone vibrated as if struck by lightning. There was a crack and a roar as the land trembled with the might of an earthquake tossing Susanna through the air and with a thump on the grassy ground.

When she got to her feet again, the starlit velvet traced the profile of the millstone severed in two.

She carefully stepped on the stone and reached for the dagger that just flew to her hand.

“Brilliant.” She looked a little suspicious at the cold metal in her hand. “You’re full of surprises, aye?”

She placed the dagger back in the belt and walked back to the manor.

There was someone else she had to find.

* * *


She walked amongst the tress until she found herself in the backyard.

“Bugger.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and snorted while she searched for the bridge, the one over the lake, that wasn’t there. She said a prayer, though that this lake had bushes on the bank where she could hide; and another one when she found out that the stable house was on her side of the lake.

She stepped in swiftly.

“Hey, lad?” She tiptoed towards the stall; the shape of a head appeared darker than the surrounding darkness.

“Faol Mhòr?” She said and shook her head; that was a long shot.

“Sorry, Milady, I’m not acquainted with the gentleman.”

She froze halfway through a step. “Who’s there?” She held her breath.

“Bristle of Ainnar. At your service, Milady.”

Susanna instinctively touched the dagger and there was light, faint but enough for her to realize that the horse had spoken and was bowing to her.

“Fuck me.” She swallowed and shrugged her shoulders.

“Er… Sir? I’m Lady Susanna of Otherland and I have the need of your services for a mission of the utmost importance and urgency.”

“Och! So it’s true that Milady have come back! My honor entirely!”

“It might be a dangerous enterprise, Milord.”

“I was born for danger, Milady!” he neighed somewhat close to a laugh.

In a minute they were stepping slowly by the bank hiding in the bushes. The next they were bolting upriver towards the other bridge, the one she hoped that existed on this side of the water mirror.

* * *


There was a bridge indeed. But instead of the iron bridge over a shallow riverbed that Leo had once described to her there was a wrecked wooden bridge over a chasm; the river roared down below and she felt dizzy.

She slid from the unsaddled back to the ground and dismissed Sir Bristle with a warm thank you and a nod, curbing the impulse of kissing him on the nose.

“I bid you farewell and good fortune, Milady.” He bowed and rode slowly towards the manor.

* * *


“Fuck me!” She whispered between her teeth as her third step won the resistance of the rotten wood and her foot passed through up to her knee with a scratch.

She moved cautiously and painfully ahead choosing steps, snorting as drops of sweat blurred her vision and locks of hair blown by the shifting of the roaring waters below swirled madly around her face and into her eyes.

She had finally crossed in one piece and was drying her wet palms on her thighs when she heard a sound that froze the blood in her veins.

A snarl.

She turned round slowly in time to see two reddish tilted lozenges staring at her as they approached, the yellow fangs catching a glimpse of starlight.

She grabbed the dagger and ran back across the bridge not worrying to remake her safe steps. When she got to the other side she swung round just in time to see the sky disappear as a mass of darkness cast itself upon her.

A second later the beast was on top of her in full length, motionless, the dagger thrust into the heart up to the handle.

For a minute that felt like a million years she just lay there, the handle of the dagger a painful reminder of her situation, pressing against her chest bone like the blade did in the beast’s. She kept her eyes shut like a child who covers the head with the bedsheets as protection against evil leaving the feet outside. She did not know why but it seemed that the weight on top of her slowly began to lighten. She forced her body up to try to push the carcass to the side; somehow she managed to do so, but not before the movement had displaced the dagger slightly to the side causing a flood of hot blood that soaked her hands and her sweater. Trembling and disgusted, she finally opened her eyes and rolled over to her knees.

She wished she had kept her eyes shut. Instead of the carcass of a beast, a wolf, perhaps, she saw a mixed shape slowly shifting into a human being right before her eyes.

She jumped to her feet with a scream she could not try to suppress, as her hands were sticky with blood. She dropped involuntarily to her knees again when her legs went weak as she recognized the once handsome now distorted features of Spencer.

She did not know why exactly she had begun to cry. A couple of times in her darkest hours she had wished she could dance upon Spencer’s grave. She could understand her reaction now; after all she had just killed a man with her own hands. But it was more than that. She sat there crying, forgetting and remembering just too late that her hands were dirty with his blood as she wiped off her tears leaving smears of dark red on her face.

No matter how she tried to focus on the bad images of him, his cruelty just enhanced by his childish expression, all she could see was the first image of him, nice and handsome, fresh on a Sunday morning. She was mad at herself for a while for something in her she acknowledged as weakness at first. But then it was clear; it wasn’t weakness after all though she was not very sure about what to call it now. It was all that made her different than him and his mother. And she felt somewhat redeemed.

She closed her eyes and said a prayer for him. She grabbed the dagger and pulled it out at last. Not really knowing why, she drew a cross on his chest with his blood. And a swirling circle on his forehead. She forced herself to her feet and crossed her own chest.

In a state of shock she wiped her hands and the dagger on the wet grass and tucked the blade in her belt.

Then she crossed the wrecked bridge again heading towards the cave at last.

* * *


The foot of the moors could be seen clearly beyond the rim of the surrounding woods, outlined by the light of stars the flickered like beads sewn on the dark veil of night.

Susanna shivered slightly as she walked the rough ground towards the entrance of the cave. She noticed that it was wider than the one that she knew as she slowly stepped inside and found her way down the spiral staircase carved on stone towards the guts of the land.

At first she walked by instinct in absolute darkness; then the rough stairs became lit with the dim of fire coming from the main chamber. When she came to the parlor she realized that the high archway she knew was two heads lower than her here, nothing more than a hole on the wall and she would have to bend down to go ahead. She found a spot by the edge of the hole and cringed to peer inside.

Augusta was standing by the stone table on the left side of the cave facing the water mirror. In a black sleeveless robe that went to her feet and long white hair in waves down to her waist, she looked younger and taller than Susanna remembered.

“What took you so long, my dearr? It is time.” She turned round and went pale as if she were not white enough already when instead of Spencer she saw Susanna.

No use in hiding anymore so she crossed the entrance into the main chamber. She knew at once that Augusta had figured out what she had done to Spencer; not that she could hide the smears of curdled blood on her face and hands and the thick brown clot on her black sweater. Yet Augusta’s look was one of incredulity that she had been able to do it in the first place.

The two women stared at each other by the torchlight and Susanna noticed as Augusta slowly pulled herself together and clipped on her familiar cruel grin.

“I would not need him anyways. He had done his job alrready.” She moved aside to allow Susanna a full sight of the stone table. “An eye forrr an eye, it seems.”

Susanna moved on foot aside in search for balance holding her breath as her diaphragm twisted painfully into a knot.

There on the stone surface lay the naked and brutally bruised shape of Leoghan.

“Leoghan.” She thought, not Leo as her mind insisted on screaming inside her skull though the realization did not bring any relief. The shredding pain, the hopelessness, the sadness larger than death, they were the same as she remembered them from a night lost in time when she had witnessed his sacrifice the first time.

“The stupid cat should have known betterr. Human flesh is so… veak.”

But Susana could not take her eyes off him, desperately watching his chest and finally snorting when she noticed the faint up and down of his rib cage.

She grabbed the handle of the dagger on her belt by instinct.

“You arre not so stupid as to believe you can stop me, arre you?” The cool wicked glance seemed to be striving to push Susanna’s eyeballs back into her skull.

“I might as well try.”

She blinked in a quiver at the sound of Augusta’s mad laughter. Then her body was violently jerked and tossed against the wall of stone over and over, finally sliding like a rag to the ground.

Augusta just turned round laughing and walked towards the stone table.

* * *


“I am not dead.”

Susanna could feel the handle of the dagger still in the grip of her hand and she knew it was due to the powers of her weapon that she could still breathe through punctured lungs. She forced her lids half open and watched horrified as Augusta prepared for the slaughter, unable to move a single muscle in her body.

Susanna recognized the scene and the dagger as Augusta raised it above her head reciting her guttural conjuring. But only now she noticed it. A small detail she had missed before. Augusta’s dagger had a symbol carved on the handle as well. An ancient symbol of power that her own world had seen vilified and turned into the mark of evil. She could not believe that the evil Augusta planned to conjure into Ainnar was the same evil that had wandered her own world as a flood of terror that had changed the history of human kind forever.

But there was nothing she could do to stop it, lying as a blob of shattered bones and torn flesh on the ground of the cave half leaning against the stonewall.


It was with the strange calm that comes with the absolute lack of faith at the border of the realms of death that Susanna gathered her last thread of strength and directed it to her lids.

She could bloody well look in the eye of doom.

* * *


Yet a grain of hope insisted on growing under burning ashes when Susanna realized that instead of plunging the dagger into Leoghan’s heart, Augusta made a clean cut on his arm below the elbow, allowing the blood to drip from the table, run on the ground and into the pond of steaming water.

“There’s time.” But in her mind she shook her head and smiled with sadness as it hit her that it only meant a slow death.

But then she noticed that something was troubling Augusta. At first in a trance of madness, she seemed to have become restless all of a sudden. Something had gone wrong.

“The stupid… The idiot!” Augusta began to pace up and down the chamber.

Susanna began to feel liquid fire rolling down her face and could almost hear the sharp edges of broken bones scratch the flesh inside her. It took her a second or two to realize that she was laughing and crying at the same time.

Augusta was searching the body on the table now though she already knew what had happened. She turned to Susanna and walked towards her.

“You arre laughing, little bitch?” She was furious, red for the first time since Susanna had met her. She looked beautiful, Susanna thought. Almost human.

“Let us see if you vill keep on laughing.” She grabbed her by the throat and lifted her from the ground. The pain was impossible to describe. Then she dropped her on the floor and dragged her by the throat, her lower back scratching on the stone. She lifted Susanna again, grabbed her neck with her free hand and forced her to look at the face on the table.

“Look, bitch! This is not the stupid cat. The idiot of my son got the wrrong man! See, bitch? This is yourr boy, yourr little loverr! Augusta pushed Susanna’s face so close that her nose touched his nose. Leo’s nose.

Something clicked inside Susanna when Augusta dropped her on the ground by the stone table like a bag of dirty clothes and it was not the breaking of another bone.

It all happened in slow motion then.

Augusta grabbed the dagger again decided to kill Leo at once; after all her was of no use to her and she wanted Susanna to watch before she finished her as well. As she raised the dagger aiming at his heart, Susanna thrust her own dagger in Augusta’s thigh above the knee with both hands, gathering strength from some magical place, rage numbing the pain.

“No!” She screamed in her mind though all that came out of her mouth was a grunt. She would not allow Augusta to slaughter him like a pig. He did not belong there, he had nothing to do with this madness and he would not die for a world of fairytale. She felt when the bone cracked when she forced her torso against Augusta’s leg and the blade appeared on the other side tearing the black vest.

Augusta lost her balance and fell on the ground. Her weight pulled Susanna with her, still grabbing her dagger as if they were one; then the stone floor pushed the dagger out of Augusta’s flesh as the tip of the blade hit the hard surface with a spark.

Blinded by fury, Augusta jumped to her feet with impossible speed as if she had not been hurt and attacked Susanna with a strike.

Susanna knew she was lost. She just raised her dagger, with Augusta’s blood dripping from the blade on the dirt, and shut her eyes.

She heard a “cling” and a blast then a “cling-cling”. And then silence, but for the hissing in her chest. She opened her eyes to see Augusta lying on the ground half leaning against the wall and Augusta’s dagger broken in two by her own knees.

Then she slid to the side as if she were dissolving into nothingness.

* * *


She heard the voices before she opened her eyes. She was lying on her side on the ground, her back against the wall of stone. “Recovery position.” She remembered from first-aid class. She was numb and felt no pain. When she finally raised her lids, the surreal scene unraveled before her eyes.

Leo and Augusta were standing before each other. He was still naked and bruised but a glow came from his body. In a second she realized it was Leoghan she was looking at.

“Again, Milady?” He asked in a tired voice, his fists on both sides of his waist.

“Always, Milorrd.” She seemed unharmed and younger and more beautiful than ever. “You cannot blame me for trrying, can you? She said between her teeth, a disgusting smile on her face.

“Are you not tired of this cat and mouse game?” He waved in hopelessness.

“As long as you arre the mouse, Milorrd…” She said with a theatrical bow.

“You know you cannot win, do you not? He asked, sadly.

“Neitherr can you.” She winked.

“Why here, again?” His voice was as cold as ice.

“Vhy not?” She raised an eyebrow.

“I believe we are facing a conundrum, then”.

“Arre we not everry time?” She replied, a little uneasy with the unexpected talk.

“What were you planning this time? My slaughter on a stone table again?” His hand waved at the stone where Leo had almost bleed to death. “You have no imagination, do you? A crucifixion, perhaps? Impalement? Flogging? Gas chamber? Wires on my testicles?”

“It seems you arre the one with no imagination, Milorrd” She smiled, frankly amused.

“Glaciation? No, I guess you’ve tried that already… Apocalypse? Ethnic cleansing? Nuclear destruction? Matter dissolution?”

“Hmmm… Tempting.” She laughed an icy laugh leaning back her head.

“Will you never be satisfied?” He asked, a note of sadness in his voice.

“Neverr.” She hesitated. “Do you have any idea of what it feels to want everrything? She almost looked human right now.

“Milady, you are so pathetic. I’m honestly sorry for you.” There was no sign of irony in his voice.

“Sparre me your pity, Milorrd.” There was no sign of disturbance in her voice in turn. In fact, she seemed to be enjoying the situation now. “But I have to admit, I rreally miss the good old days. The rrush of the battle, the feel of blades in the flesh of the young, the smell of frresh blood of all rraces and colorrs… Even the binding of time and space… How did we come to that, Milorrd?”

“Evolution.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Ah, well…” She looked up, as if she was giving deep consideration to his word. “Anyways, Milorrd, this is rreally an interresting conversation. Long time, no talk, huh?

“Never a pleasure, Milady.” His time to bow.

“Touché.” She smiled with fire in her grey eyes.

“But what is it going to be this time, then? Cat or mouse?” He asked, a glimpse of impatience in his voice.

“I guess it is cat… Forr you, Milorrd. Adieu!” She said, diving into the water pond and disappearing.

“Make it never.” He said with a sigh of disgust.

* * *


He stood there in silence for a while, until he noticed that Susanna was awake. He walked towards her and helped her to sit up leaning against the wall of the cave. He kneeled before her and she was suddenly aware of his nakedness. It was not Leo, though.

“Is it over?” She realized all of a sudden that she was disgusted and slightly afraid of him.

“For now it is”.

“This is it, then. Just like that…” She would have snapped her fingers if she could. She was shocked, although she was not sure about what it was she had just witnessed.

“You too miss the good old days when the blood of innocents was spilt, Daughter of Eve?” He smiled sadly.

She would have punched him if she were stronger. But then she realized she would be hurting Leo.

“But… All of them… All this time… Then their sacrifice was in vain?” She felt her face burning, both of boldness and shame.

“That’s a question that lingers since the beginning of time.” The following silence was eloquent enough.

Her lips moved in search of an answer, but no word came out. Her sigh conveyed a promise to herself. Never forget.

He sat beside her leaning against the wall and shut his eyes as if he were asleep, while the glow began to fade. She grabbed his hand until it was only Leo, her Leo, sitting by her side.

* * *


A soft silvery glow was carried from the outside, faintly igniting the vapor that hung still above the hot spring, replacing the light of the dead torch.

A slight tremble told Susanna that Leo was coming slowly to awareness, his head resting on hers. He squeezed her hand with eyes still closed and for a moment it seemed to him that it was just another nap together in the cave after making love as he embraced her and searched with a moan for her neck, for a kiss.

But then he remembered.

He opened his eyes all of a sudden and went pale when he saw her covered in blood in his arms, smiling tiredly at him.

“Jesus Susanna ye’re hurt!” He jumped to his knees and began to search her for the source of the blood.

“It’s not my blood, m’eudail. Not most of it.” She smiled with teary eyes and rose to her knees to embrace him.

“What happened? They…” He squeezed her with fear and disgust as memories washed upon the shore of his mind, making her grunt.

“Jesus ye are hurt, mo bheagan!” He pushed her away gently with millions of questions in his eyes.

“I’m all right now. It’s over.” She kissed him with sudden desire as if he were the only thing that could heal her. Soon he felt the immediate response from his body and was suddenly ashamed.

“Sorry… Why on earth am I naked? He smiled awkwardly scratching his head.

“I’ll tell you later. You really don’t want to know, believe me.” She kissed him again.

He stared at her in confusion when she pulled him to his feet and began to take off her clothes. She wondered that Leoghan must have done something because she could feel flesh and bones all sound inside but for a most bearable pain as if she had had too much exercise and not fought for their lives a mere half hour ago.

“Susanna!” He was terrified when he noticed that her body was a mess of blood and bruises.

“Come, m’eudail.” She pushed him by the hand and he was about to follow her when he finally saw the fresh wound in the arm she was pulling and realized that he was as purple and bloodied as herself.

“What?!…” He looked at her in astonishment.

“Later.” She gave him a soft pull and they walked to the water. He frowned when he saw the stream of blood from the table through the stone ground and a gap in the stones on the bank of the pond and snorted as he began to understand.

Susanna ignored his questioning look as she pulled him to the deepest spot of the pond and began to bathe him tenderly. He shook his head in defeat and began to wash her face from the blood with his thumb.

After a while she just grabbed him crossing her arms around his waist and bent her head back for a kiss, making it clear enough that the bathing time was over.

And they made love to each other deeply and urgently until they reached the point of oblivion.

* * *


They had just finished getting dressed – Leo had found his ragged clothes in a bundle at one corner of the cave; he felt a warm sensation of comfort when Susanna’s letter rattled in his pocket – when they heard steps hurrying down the spiral staircase.

The face of a very disturbed Peter showed in the entrance of the main chamber. He frowned when he saw her and snorted with both relief and confusion as he stretched himself in to hall and saw Leo.

“Susanna you’re all right? What happened here for Otherland’s sake?!” He blinked startled at the stone table that resembled a butcher’s board.

“It’s over, Peter.” It was hard to talk about what had happened. She wished she could just retain the pleasure and abandonment of being in Leo’s arms. But her war was not over yet.

“Augusta… Failed and escaped. Spencer is…”

“Dead, I know.” Peter went pale. “We found his body in the woods.”

Other worried faces appeared one after the other in the hole on the wall. Ed and Emeth looked as pale and confused as Peter.

“You…?” Peter searched her eyes.

“Yes.” Susanna looked down ad touched the dagger in her belt. “He attacked me at the bridge.”

“What?!” Leo was appalled.

“And who are you?” Peter walked a step towards Susanna with a look of suspicion on his face.

“He’s ---- “

“I’m Leo MacDomhann. I’m Susanna’s fiancée.” He straightened himself holding his breath.

She looked at him with eyebrows raised and shook her head, cheeks burning all of a sudden.

“What?!” Peter looked at them startled but Leo just ignored him and held Susana by the shoulders.

“Spencer attacked ye and ye… killed him?” He looked at her horrified finally understanding why she would not tell him what had happened straight away.

She looked at him then at Peter and the other men standing white-faced around her and sighed.

“It wasn’t really him… A giant wolf jumped on me and fell on my dagger. When I opened my eyes the wolf was… turning into him…” She shut her eyes and shook her head swiftly, trying to wipe off the memory.

“Mo bheagan…” Leo looked rather green.

“Damn, Susanna…” Pete came one step closer.

She turned to him. “Peter… Er… I think it was him who attacked Jill in the woods.” He began to tremble and she walked closer to him. “If traditional records are accurate, she is going to be fine now.” She gave him a faint but reassuring smile.

He stared at her in sudden understanding and then shut his eyes filled with guilt and shame.

“You ended it.” He opened his eyes and looked tenderly at her for the first time in years.

“Well… I guess for once I did what you told me.” She smiled softly.

He finally held her tight, eyes shut unable to hold back the tears.

“I’m sorry, Su… Thank you.”

They remained embraced for a while rocking each other. Susanna sighed and smiled, feeling that now she was finally meeting her dead brother again.

* * *


While they rode back to the manor, Peter asked Susanna once again what had happened in the cave. But she knew she would have to talk to Leo first in private. Peter squeezed her hand in understanding, walking silently beside the horse she was riding. Leo rode next to her on the other side, holding her hand, having accepted Ed’s horse after some insistence, after all he looked visibly hurt.

It was a long journey back. They moved in silence except for sighs of relief, although the weigh of the truth yet to be revealed hung above their heads like a shadow.

* * *


Lu was the first to spot them coming out of the woods in the backyard. Her warm hug was a balm to Susanna’s battered body as well as to her tired mind.

Peter ordered that messengers were sent to the allies with the news before running upstairs to find Jill visibly recovering.

Slowly the small army gathered by the side of the manor became a group of guests as provisions turned into meals and a small celebration came in shape.

Susanna and Leo were welcomed with both puzzlement and joy. He threw himself unashamed of his tears in the Professor’s embrace, not caring to understand how he could be alive and younger, only that he was meeting his family as well in the man he had learnt to love and respect as the father he had lost so long ago.

In that emotional state of mind, neither him nor Susanna wanted to eat, but they were forced to have chicken broth by Lu. “To help your recovery.” She had said, leaving no ground for discussion.

But for a frown by Ed, no one objected when Susanna and Leo went upstairs together to her room, almost the same as the one they had shared in their own world, for the most difficult conversation of their lives.

* * *


“Why did you come?”

They were lying naked in each other’s arms, sunk in heavenly pillows under soft warm covers. They had shared a decent bath, hardly disguising painful looks as the soft morning light revealed the cuts and bruises on their bodies. Yet it seemed easier for their bodies to talk silently as they embraced than for their mouths to speak the heavy burden in their minds.

“I didna think. I just ‘ad to be wi’ ye.” He squeezed her slightly and kissed her hair.

“You almost got yourself killed… It was not your war.” She pressed her body against him with a sigh.

“I’d like ye to le’ me choose my fights... Next time.” He raised one eyebrow and lifted her chin. He stared at her intensely and kissed her softly.

“Tell me what happened to you.“ She asked and shut her eyes shrugging, afraid to know.

He told her everything from the moment he found her letter until his capture by the giant bird outside the High Walls. Beyond that point his memory was a blur assaulted by flashes of pain, the faces of Augusta and Spencer, the taste of his own blood. By the time he had finished, she was sobbing and shaking, grabbing him by the waist, face on his chest.

“Hey, a bheagan… ‘Twas no’ tha’ bad…” He tried to smile.

“You…” She clenched her hand into a fist, an incredible urge to punch him for putting himself in that situation unaware of the worst part of it. But the fist eased as she saw the beating of his heart in his chest and realized how close that chest had been to get stabbed. She just rubbed it and kissed it over and over between sobs. He just caressed her tenderly until her sobs lessened.

“Now ye tell.”

And she did. From the moment she got to the place in between to the moment she witnessed the bizarre conversation between Leoghan and Augusta in the cave. As she spoke she could feel Leo’s body stiffening beside her, his fingers clenching on her shoulders and her hair. He would snort at every blow that had hurt her as if he were taking them as well.

When she finished, she tried to look at him but he was holding her so tight that she that she couldn’t move. She began to kiss his chest softly, rocking him slightly until he slowly began to relax. When she could finally lift her head to look at him, he had the same expression on his face she had seen in that afternoon in the cave when they had finally talked about the rape attempt. The agony, the shame, the anger. Eyes shut, red and dry. A breath held back by pressed lips.

“M’eudail?” She was suddenly worried.

He seemed to have fallen into a trance of agony, the realization of her ordeal much harder to bear than all the pain and suffering he had endured. And the heartbreaking feeling that he had somehow brought it upon her.

“Leo.” She raised her hand and caressed his face pale and hard as stone. Her thumb touched his lips trying to ease the pressure and release his breath. She was alarmed all of a sudden.

“Leo, stop it!” She cried shaking him out of despair.

He opened his eyes abruptly and stared at her. Then came the scream from the depths of him as he grabbed her again and surrendered to a flood of tears.

“I’m sorry…” He whispered through sobs shaking as all the tension was released.

She rolled to her back pulling his head to her breasts, kissing his hair, rocking him slightly, his body between her legs.

“Hush, m’eudail. It’s over now.” She kissed his hair rubbing his back, as he seemed to shiver with a cold that came from within.

“I’m so ashamed…” The hoarse whisper was hardly audible.

“Why, m’eudail?” She was mortified.

“I had to protect ye…” He was shaking uncontrollably. “Ye almost died to save… me…”

“Leo, look at me.” She grabbed his skull in her hands and forced him to look at her. “I was not saving you, m’eudail.”

“Huh?” He looked at her in confusion, sniffing exhausted at the straining effort of release while she wiped his tears with her thumbs.

“Don’t you see? I was saving me…”

He looked at her with admiration and understanding, a faint smile on his lips. He finally collapsed in her bosom, breathing heavily as he held her.

“There, m’eudail. Everything will be all right now.” She closed her eyes.

They finally fell deeply asleep in each other’s arms.

* * *


Broad daylight came in the room through the tall windows when they woke up at the same time.

A spot of sadness still weighed in Susanna’s heart. She did not need to go back to the cave to be sure of something she already knew. The portal to their world had been inexorably shut the moment Augusta had used it to escape. One way in, one way out; the portal could never be used again. She and Leo were trapped in Ainnar and she would never go back for her mother, who would be frozen in time there as she grew old and died here.

“What is it, a bheagan?” Leo had been watching her following the worry as it grew on her face.

“I think we’re trapped here.” And she told him about the portal locked forever. “I’m sorry… It’s not fair to you.” She hid her face in his chest.

“’Twas my choice to come too. I dinna care.”

“You don’t?”

“Nay. I’m home, mo bheagan.”

She sighed with relief and searched for his lips. It was not the passion of the first encounter that had moved their hands and lips and tongues through uncharted territory that moved them now. It was not the need of a floating board on the surface of misery or anchorage from the shifting currents of despair that explained the grabbing of limbs as if it were possible to merge two bodies into one. And it was not the desperate need to wipe off the marks of violence from their skins, their memories, their souls that moved his throbbing manhood into the depths of her fertile land ready to welcome his seed and their beings in the cadence of building pleasure.

This time when ecstasy washed upon them it conveyed a deeper meaning, a sign of the eternal bonding of their spirits, when the sum of one and one equals more than two.

* * *


When Susanna and Leo finally joined the family in the kitchen, it felt to her like the end of a book when everything is explained.

“Lady Susanna.” Jill looked at her in awe, sitting at the old wooden table with John by her side. “Sister.” She finally reached for Susanna, a hand still pale; but the smile on her rosy cheeks showed that she was well. Susanna kneeled by her feet and kissed her hand softly.

“Jack, did you know that your auntie is a Great Queen of Otherland?” She said with pride as if she were looking at the character out of a fairy tale; it was not so far from the truth, anyways. The boy looked at Susanna solemnly for a while and then smiled at her for the first time.

“It’s just aunt Su to you, dear.” Susanna curbed the impulse of kissing both his cheeks; if she remembered it well, he would turn red with embarrassment as his father used to.

“I think that’s enough of chicken broth to you two.” Lu filled two bowls with steaming stew and placed them before Susanna and Leo with a face that knew everything.

“Auntie Su! Mommy, auntie Su is here!” Clara washed upon the kitchen like a wave of light, pulling by the hand the most beautiful woman Susanna had ever seen in her life.

“Sister.” A taller and somewhat subtler version of her daughter, a voice like bells ringing saluted Susanna and a soft embrace involved her in a halo of golden dust. Susanna could see Ed go red in the nose with pride of his family.

As they shared all the light memories of twenty-years and seven months between them, Susanna squeezed Leo’s hand and welcomed the first day of the rest of their lives.

* * *


Later that evening the Friends and spouses got together in the library to share the more gloomy details of what had happened on the last couple of days.

Peter spoke first. After losing Susanna in the woods, he had run back to the manor. He was sure she had headed to the cave alone so they dismissed the scouts and decided to look for the cave by themselves. Her map gave them the idea that the old bridge to the east was nearer and they had wasted precious time to ride there only to find out that not only it was actually further than they recalled but that it had crumbled down, making it impossible to cross the river, wider and deeper at that point. By the time she had already arrived at the cave they were beginning their own ride back and towards the bridge upriver. They had found Spencer’s body and Peter had recognized him at once with a shock. Then they had hurried towards the cave.

It was a painful moment for Susanna when she recalled all the horrible things that they had been through. Leo sat by her side holding her hand, squeezing it from time to time, eyes shut in a pale face, the shadow of the unspeakable brutality they had been submitted to hanging around him.

When she finished, the family was silent with shock, the first touch of evil in the new world sunk heavily in their hearts.

As words seemed to be useless, it was Peter who did what everyone in the room wished to do. He stood up and walked towards Susanna embracing her fondly. But everyone could feel that Susanna was amongst her kind and had fought a battle for a world that once had been her own. It was Leo’s ordeal that had touched them in a different way, a stranger dragged by evil hands into a war that was not his, a man who had walked the realms of death by holocaust having as shield the pledge of love.

It was with those silent words in his eyes that Peter, solemn and touched, grabbed a very surprised Leo by the shoulders and gave him a strong hug.

“Welcome. Brother.”

* * *
* end of Chapter Seven*

chapter seven at last. sorry, it's huge