"Love You Forever..." started as an idea for a 3,000 word contribution to the Halloween contest and it turned out to have a life of its own. I have the complete story almost finished, so as I'm dedicating myself to the editing process, I'm releasing the lengthy story in sections manageable both for your reading and for my editing. The next chapter should be posted within a week from when this posts. I'm also planning on writing that shorter version, so if you enjoy this, there is more like it to come. Please spill your thoughts all over the comments.
*
What was it that was so fantastic about my Aideen that I could not let her go? My spirit, my shadow Aideen, will never leave me. She follows me always in my late life. She preserves me. She fuels my flame when it is dim red. And she haunts me. Aideen reminds me of the transience of my life. She, in her youth, and I, forever in my old age, will be together always.
But I have one foot in the grave.
Part One: The Great Family
The child Aideen was born on the warmest day of summer of the first year of the new century, and I was born on the coldest day in winter, sixty-four winters before. She was born to a lovely natural farming man, name of Eoin. He and his family and lineage were local legends. Eoin's wife Cait was the only girl who didn't bow to kiss his handsome feet, or laugh bashfully at his wit, or claw recklessly at his flesh for the chance of having his handsome child and handsome land. No, herself was a fiery girl who didn't take any horsing or blackguarding from Eoin. And she could work the land alongside him, too.
Though, even such a legacy as Eoin's skips every third generation, for while he and his son, and his daughter Aideen, and the son and daughter that were born after, were of the same hard-working, kind-hearted, soft-worded and handsome way, his father was a crippling brute who died in a fist-to-cuff at a young age, and his mother a long suffering doter. Being the upright man he was, Eoin named his first son, Humphry, after the cross old brute. Most of Eoin's four brothers and five sisters escaped the family but some stayed nearby, and all were held in the highest regard wherever they went. Eoin could be found with his local kin and their families in church each Sunday morning.
I was an old man when Aideen and I met, and she was just a babeen. Sixty-four years old and without a companion was I. I lived just a mile and a half down the road. My doggy died a fortnight before the girl was born. So as I would call over into the Connollys' house for tea or a talk from time to time, I would visit the green eyed little girl, Aideen. I would bring some small treat or pick some sours or blackberries from the side of the road for the baba on my way over. The look on her face as she enjoyed some sweet blackberry or pinched up her nose at the sours brought joy to my heart that I had never been able to feel before. I realized, in those moments, that I would gladly have married the first haggard betch on the hill if it meant having a family. But time had got on.
When I would arrive for tea at twelve, there the little child would be in Eoin's earthy hands as he stood behind the short wall in front of the house, or sometimes she would be in the cowhouse with Mrs. Connolly. Cait would be sat on the short stool with her head resting on the cows side, squeezing the milk out the teats into a zinc bucket, and there the babe would be playing in some fresh hay in the corner, away from the dangerous and powerful legs of the milk cow.
If ever there was a child of the earth it was Aideen. She played in the soft grass, in the fresh hay, on the stone floor of the house. She was a smiling, precious creature among creatures. The Lord had truly blessed the Connollys, blessed the road they lived on, and blessed my restless soul with Aideen.
Soon the babe became a little girl with three dresses: her Sunday dress, her old Saturday dress, and her tattered weekday dress, which itself was once a new Sunday dress. Though none of the other little girls were as fortunate to have three dresses, no one would wager that Aideen was not the one who deserved it. She had two other new things too, a little brother and sister.
The little boy and girl were be born to the Connolly's and then, queer enough, there was not another child to the Connollys ever after. It was a small family. If two children was a "gentleman's family", four children was certainly a "farmer gentleman's family", and it was the smallest one in Bonnakeen.
Now I would bring the littlest ones, names of Owen and Úna, the blackberries and the sours, and always be sure to shake the shy child Aideen's hand and pass her a coin. There was no need for her mother and father to find out. She would hold the coin, look at me and smile and run and put it some secret place.
**************
One occaision, I visited the Connollys by night. It was an October thirtieth and all were preparing the bonfires and making their costumes from rags and carving the turnip and practicing their pieces for the house calling the next night. We talked about the recent births and deaths in the community, the newlyweds, the widows and the widowers. We talked about the tragedies. I told them again about the blight on the crop and the blight on my family, the bad luck I had with the land, the stillborn horses and cows, the hens that plucked their own feathers. I told them about the blight on my family, the tuberculosis of my father and two sisters, the still born babies and my mother's stroke and passing, the one surviving sister I have in America. Since the famine, we have been a people in touch with mortality.
Then we told stories of faeries for the children: the time old Micky Dan Morley shot into the wood with his rifle at them, the time they came into the Murphy house through the windows, the time brave and skeptic Eoin himself felt he was chased by down the road when he was coming home from the village one night.
We told stories and I sipped my punch slowly. The whiskey warmed my bones, the sugar tickled my tongue, and the hot water steamed my eyes so that all was unclear except for the friendly voices of the Connolys. The warm blaze of the open fire filled my bleary vision fully.
For a second, I felt a tickle at the back of my half-bald head, and brushed it away. Then, I saw a shadowy figure over the fire, a chill went through me as the shadow absorbed the warmth of the fire, and cold sulfur crept into my nostrils. Were my eyes getting the better of me? It wasn't Shep the dog resting on the iron of the hearth as I thought it may be. My vision so poor, my eyes blurred by the smoke and steam and tears of joy, I didn't know what I was beholding.
"Ara c'mere lookit Denny..." said Eoin hushedly, with dopey amusement on his face. "...What's Aideen up to?"
"My eyes fail me," said I.
"Sure, young Aideen has cut your grey hairs with the knife off the table and burnt them in the fire."
"My soul, and why did she do a thing like that?" I codded, knowing the superstition well.
"My good man, it means you will be a bachelor no more. Aideen has locked you into a marriage with no escape," said Eoin "'twil be quite a marriage I should say," as he's getting more and more excited, talking through his laughter, raising his voice, trying to turn me as red as a radish. "What will the people say when I hand me daughter away to the old bachelor Denny Doyle!" Laughing harder, "I can't wait to get me hands on a piece of that land of yours, there'll be little Connolly-looking Doyls working that land in no time! Wwwwaaaaahahahaha!" said he, laughing quite literally in my face, his spit flying.
