“I know how it feels, dear one. As if your heart were torn in two. I feel your pain.”
I took a deep breath. Another.
“Finbar?”
“I know how it feels. As if you will never be whole again.”
I reached inside my dress, where I wore two cords about my neck. One held my wedding ring; the other the amulet that had once been my mother’s. I left the one, and took off the other. “This is yours. Take it back. Take it back, it was to you she gave it.”
I slipped the cord over his head, and the little carven stone with its ash tree sign lay on his breast. He had grown painfully thin.
“Show me the other. The other talisman you wear.”
Slowly I took out the carven ring, and lifted it on my palm for my brother to see.
“He made this for you? Him with the golden hair, and the eyes that devour”?
“Not him. Another.” Images were strong in my mind; Red with his arm around me like a shield; Red cutting up and apple; Red kicking a sword from a man’s hand, and catching it in his own; Red barefoot on the sand with the sea around his ankles.
“You risked much, to give your love to such a one.”
I stared at him. “Love?”
“Did you not know, until now, when you must say goodbye?”