The Journey From Oidhche Shamhna

Disclaimer: Not Mine

The Journey From Oidhche Shamhna

Chapter 46

Rowena's Leave Taking

"Rowena?" Helga called out to her.

"Here," she called from behind the fourth bookshelf. "I will be done shortly."

"Erwin is back."

Rowena put the rest of the books haphazardly on the shelves and hurried to her. "You have seen him? He is well?"

"Rowena, he is waiting for you in your chambers." She looked at her seriously.

"What is wrong?"

"I am not sure, Rowena, but he is not the same. He seems cold, distant."

"Helga, he has been on a long journey. I am sure that is all it is. He knows only that he did not bring Helena with him. It eats at him to know he could not save her. You know how he was with her, how he worshiped her. He has been different since she left."

"It is more, Rowena. Have you told him of your illness?"

"No, I thought not to put it in a letter. I could not with the news of Helena so fresh." She hid her face, knowing Helga would not understand withholding information from him. "I will tell him now, before he leaves again. I agree he needs to know, but Helga, he is here. Finally, he has come."

"Tell him at once." Helga scowled at her. "This is serious, Rowena. It is not a simple illness you hide."

"Tomorrow. Tonight is for other things." She laughed, and picking up her long robes, she ran through the halls and down the stairs, hearing her bare feet slap against the stones and echo against the walls.

He was standing at the doors of their chambers, watching her come to him at a full run. His baritone laughter filled the air as he reached out and grabbed her as she leapt up, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.

"Gods, witch, I have missed you." He nuzzled her neck and held her tightly. "You are as the song of a siren I hear and must have."

"Erwin, I have missed you for so long," she sobbed as her tears ran down his neck. Her hands fisted his hair, and she thought she would never find the strength to let go.

He turned into her rooms, kicking the doors shut, and carried her to bed. He had missed her face and her smell and the taste of her lips. He moaned her name as he lifted his arm, and with a soft "Nox", took her to bed.

She felt the difference in him as he leaned down and crushed his mouth to hers, hard and insistant. He was hurried and did not look to her needs. He was rough, and used her for what he wanted, hurting her in his rush. She clung to him, afraid and unsure, trying to find her peace as she always did in his arms but unable to do more then lay under him and keep from pushing him away.

"Erwin." She called his name and looked at him though tears. "Erwin, please, love me. Please, not like this. You are hurting me."

He pulled back from her and pushed her to her stomach, pulling her onto her knees, and continued to be rough with her as he leaned over her back and took her from behind, still unable to find what he wanted, not wanting to look into her face.

"I am sorry, Rowena, I need you, I need you with me now," he rasped into her ear. "Just let me do this. Don't push me away, witch, not now, not tonight."

"Erwin!" She called his name and tried to understand what had happened when she gasped in pain, and felt him at last stiffen and shudder his release. He held her tight, one arm around her waist, the other around her neck, pulling her into him and frightening her. She closed her eyes and tried to still her tears.

The second time that night he pulled her to him, she found her Erwin again in her arms and found it easy to forget how he had come to her the first time, and welcomed him as hers.

"I thought you were sleeping." He smiled and kissed her forehead as the grey sky of the evening turned to the black sky of night. "It is almost midnight, you need to rest."

"I have rested from you for two years." She looked at him. "I think I could stay abed with you all week. Erwin? What is wrong? You have never been like that."

"Nothing is wrong, Rowena. I have missed you badly." He laughed when he saw that after all these years she could still blush while she lay naked in his arms. "I think I could manage to stay in bed a while with you as well."

"You look tired." She reached up to touch his face. "Will you stay this time?"

"For a while."

Rowena sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, keeping her face away from him. "I thought perhaps this time you may stay for good, that you would want to."

"Until the fall I think. I can stay until then." He reached around her waist and pulled her back to him, feeling her resistance.

"Rowena, please let us not do this now."

"I can't breathe." She struggled away from him and tried to stand, only to fall to the floor on her knees.

"Rowena," he said sadly.

"Please, Erwin, leave me or stay, but this, this ... I cannot handle this any longer." She looked up at him, trying to hold the tears in her eyes.

He squatted down next to her, stroking her hair, at a loss for words. "Rowena, come back to bed. Lie with me. Let me make you happy again."

"When you are not here I long for you until it hurts, and when you are here I hurt, knowing you will soon leave again." She locked her eyes on his and saw him through her tears. "I told myself I would not cry this time. That I could be strong and let you go this last time."

"Last time?" He tipped her chin to his. "This will be over soon. I will find her and bring her home to bury. Gryffin looks as well. I need to bring her back, even now that she cannot be with us. I need to bring her back and bury her. Until then, I will keep looking."

"What will happen then?"

"What do you want to happen, Rowena?" He stood and began to pace. "You were a child when we started together. If you were grown, if your father had not done what he did, would you still want to be with me?"

"How can you ask that? I have never given you reason to doubt me."

"Have you ever considered leaving here?" He looked at her angrily. "Have you once put our lives above all this? First it was running from him, then it was this place, and then it was for Helena. When is it for me?"

"I can't leave here, Erwin." She fought to tell him of her daily potions, of the beast that was inside her, killing her. "There are things, things I cannot say."

"That has always been our problem, Rowena." He shook his head sadly and leaned down, brushing her lips with his. "I am always your afterthought, never your confidante. If just once in all these years you came to me, maybe it would be easier now for me to come to you."

"If I were to ask you to stay one year, not even quite a year, and after that I would never ask anything of you again, could you do that?" She forgot how to breathe, knowing this would define her last time on earth.

"I don't know, Rowena, I really do not know if I could do that." He pulled her into his chest and sighed heavily. "I love you."

"But you will not stay with me. This one thing I ask, you will not do."

"I cannot, you do not understand."

"We will not talk of this." She closed her eyes. "Pretend with me, pretend to stay until the spring. It is all I need. Lie to me until you go."

"If I asked you to come with me when this is over, when she is safe and buried, how would you answer?" he whispered into her hair.

"I would say that I am your wife. That I love you without bounds." She pulled away far enough to see his face. "I would tell you that I have always loved you and will until I die. I would say all these things."

"And why would you not answer me?"

"Because I will not be here for you when you come again." She looked into his eyes and saw a flicker of recognition of her words and then his eyes told her he had put too much distance between them.

"I do love you, Rowena." He crushed his lips to hers to swallow his own sobs. "I have loved you since I first saw you in the village."

"Then stay in my bed," she whispered into his neck. "Stay with me, make love only to me. Do not go back to her bed."

"Answer my question." He frowned at her and grabbed her arms roughly. "Will you come with me? Will you be a true wife?"

"I am a true wife, but I cannot leave here." Her breath came in shallow gasps as she struggled to control herself. She was determined not to use her illness to keep him, to force him to her. She thought she loved him enough to give him his freedom but now that it was before her, she fought to let him go while she still fought to keep him.

"I thought not," he said coldly, pushing her from him.

"You don't understand," she said, sobbing up at him.

"No, I do not." He turned from her and walked to the liquor cabinet where he grabbed a bottle and headed towards the door. "I have never understood your love, Rowena. I am afraid I never shall."

"My love? How can you not understand my love? What is there to understand?"

"You never came to me," he hissed.

"I could not. I could not come to a place that banished me. I could not show my face in the village you chose to keep your whore..." She quickly looked away, and put her hands over her mouth. She had not meant to let her anger out.

"She is not a whore, Rowena. She is my wife, the mother of my sons." He spoke calmly to her, then turned and walked out of the bedchamber into the outer sitting room.

"Erwin?" Rowena looked around the dark room until she saw him sitting in the low chair by the window. "I was worried when I could not see you."

She crossed over and sat at his feet, resting her head in his lap. "I am sorry, I told you once we would not speak of her."

"We cannot keep things like this." He sighed and stroked her hair. "I think it best that I prepare to leave."

"I love you, Erwin." She looked up and saw the hardness he now wore like a cloak. "I don't know what to do. I don't know what you want any more. Tell me what to say and I will say it. Tell me what you want and it is yours. Tell me that you don't want to come to my bed and I will understand. Just do not leave me."

"Not this, I never wanted this." He put his hands back on the arms of the chair and leaned back.

"Is it because I never gave you children?" she whispered, laying down her head again, afraid of his answer.

"I don't know, Rowena," he said with a hesitation that she heard. "Perhaps if there had been children things would have been different."

"Does she love you?" She did not move her head, but closed her eyes and prayed to the god that had no name.

"I have been with her for several years now, you know this. I do not love her as I do you," he said honestly, not even realizing how badly she hurt. "She is a good woman, and a good mother who puts no demands on me. Gods, woman, I have been gone years at a time. You did not think I could wait for your bed, did you?"

"I have waited for yours," she whispered. "There has never been another."

He did not answer but pushed her head off his lap and stood, and began to pace. "I have always loved you, Rowena. I have never lied about that."

"Then what is wrong?"

"This," he said, waving his arms around the room. "All this is what is wrong. Rowena, listen to me. This is not a home, not to me, not a real home. I do not belong here. I never have."

"We will build a house on the other side of the lake." She tried to smile as she stood unsteadily. "They don't need me here any longer. We will have a home like the old ones. We will get a small patch of land and..."

"Rowena, stop!" He ran his hand through his hair. "Where? Across the lake from the school? No? Not here? Then where? Even if we were to leave this place, even if you were to finally say yes to me, where could I take you that you would not see a funeral pyre? You have never learned to live without magic, you have always refused. You could never hide your magic now, and you will not let me teach you how."

"We will only be across the lake. I will not use magic if you do not want it. I will learn to..."

"I said stop!" he yelled at her, raising his hand as if to slap her. "I cannot stay. Rowena, you have never fought my leaving this way. What has changed? What is it you do not understand?"

"I understand I love you and if you leave I have nothing," she yelled back at him. "I have nothing left. It is gone. Everything is gone."

"I will return. When it is safe again, when we bury our daughter." He turned away from her.

"The last time you left you were gone for two years," she raged. "I can't sleep when you are not here, I can't eat, I can't think right. I don't want to die with you not here."

"That is how I feel when I am here." He pleaded with her to understand. "Rowena, I am not a scholar. I feel I am trapped here, in prison. It suffocates and sickens me."

"Then, you will go to her?" Rowena felt bile rise in her throat.

"Where do you think I go?" he sneered at her.

"My gods." She gasped and slumped to the floor as her knees gave up.

"Rowena, understand." He went to her, tipped up her chin and looked into her eyes.

"No, Erwin." She pulled away from him.

"She is not a witch," Erwin said flatly. "I can have a life, a whole life that I do not have here."

"She gave you more children? More than Elan and his brother? Non-magical children?" Rowena turned to look out the window, feeling her life slip though her fingers.

"Yes," he said, so softly she almost did not hear. "I have a daughter now."

"I am tired, Erwin, more tired than you know." Rowena said. "I don't want you to remember me on my knees in tears. Leave me now. I have to finish something. Something I started long ago."

She stood at the window looking out at the grounds, watching Erwin as he walked away from the tower. Having a sudden urge to be outside, she slipped on her shoes, grabbed up her cloak and hurried down the hallway. She stopped in the potion lab and searched the shelves until she found what she needed and, smiling, she put it in her pocket and ran outside.

Rowena wrapped her cloak tight against the wind and walked the path to the lake. She knew he would be there. He would sit on the boulders and look out over the lake and up the mountain to the path that would take him to the pass and down the spine of the mountains. He would say a prayer to the gods he still held close and then he would walk up the mountain and be gone.

"You are leaving here tonight?" Rowena stood behind him looking at the same spot on the mountain as he.

"Yes, I think it best." He stood without looking at her. "The moon is full, and I know the path well."

"Then, I give you your freedom from our binding." She took up her wand and passed it over his hand, removing the scar. "I do not remember not loving you Erwin, I want you to remember only that. Only that you were loved, by me and Helena."

He turned to her and lifted her face. He kissed her deeply, tasting her tears as she tasted his. Then he turned and left, leaving her to watch him walk away.

She waited until he was far out of hearing before uttering her part of a final leave-taking she remembered from Elbragh all those years ago. "May my death be swift and your life be long."

Rowena closed her eyes and knew at that moment that there were no gods in this cold, lonely place. They died long ago and were buried in a circle of stone on a plain, in a land that she used to belong to that existed no more. She shivered against the cold and gazed at the stars, wondering why she had never noticed how brightly they shined at this time of year, and wondered how she had been so blind to have wasted her life on gods and dreams.

She smelled the fire of her mother's hearth, and breathed deep the roasted parsnips and mead left in jugs, and heard the sounds of children playing in the square, and felt the cool water on hot summer days in a pond she had thought of as hers. She heard the laughter of others' children, and knew her daughter would not return and her husband would come to her bed no more but find his joy in the arms of another.

She pondered the cold glass vial she still kept in her pocket and smiled as she dropped it to the ground. She began her walk toward the sea, to the end of the quiet valley's lake that pointed to the north like a long, narrow finger, wondering how long it would be before she finished the trip started so long ago.

Her world was gone. The world of gods, and stolen kisses taken in a stand of elderberry bushes that had burnt as surely as the bodies at Godric's Hollow. She pushed her hood back and began to unravel her hair, wanting the plaits gone, and wanting her hair to fly free as it had in her youth. She dropped her cloak and bent to pull off her shoes, needing to feel the earth under her feet, to connect to the soil of her birth.

She died before seeing the rocky shore or hearing the cries of the gulls. She reached the end of her trip, alone in a cold new world that she had never wanted and never sought, holding her left fist tightly closed around her bridal scar.