The Dusty Forest
"...Goodbye, Finnian. For real this time." Ailbe's solemn words skewered Finnian's cold, still heart like a scalding rod through a block of ice. He could already feel a large lump rising in his dry throat.
"...You've said that before. But you always stay," Finnian said, a hint of desperate hope in his quivering voice. Ailbe gave a small, sympathetic smile, and her moon-white face fell slightly. She was hurting.
"Yes, I know...but this really is just too dangerous. You and I both knew it would have had to stop some time." Alan shook his head violently, a wave of shaggy, unkempt white hair falling over a pair of dead gray eyes. He didn't bother to brush it away. He didn't want to look at her; it only made the pain in his chest that much more unbearable. When Ailbe next spoke there was a hint of pity in her frail voice. "Please understand, Finnian. You know what would happen if the council finds out about this... it's a miracle that we've managed to keep it a secret from them this long." Finnian said nothing, and the desolate, ash-adorned forest was deathly silent. From the cold, hard ground to the warped white trunks of the trees with gnarled, drooping branches void of foliage; there was no noise. No birds crying out, no scurrying of small paws or scaly claws. The air was still and stale, like the smell of a dusty closet. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.
From just behind his curtain of snowy hair, Finnian watched as Ailbe's chalky black boots, laced up the front with a long, muddy yellow thread made of sturdy cotton, stepped slowly into his limited field of vision. He felt five icy fingertips brush his cheek, like a hushed winter breeze. Her touch still sent tremors down his spine. "Finnian, please..." Finnian heard the barely audible whoosh as Ailbe exhaled slowly through her mouth, and his hair floated up over his face and settled on the top of his head like a thousand strands of spider silk; a small puff of dusk flew from his hair. Her breath was like a blast of glacial wind, and carried the sweet scent of fresh earth. She tenderly lifted his chin so she could gaze upon his face; Finnian's eyes wandered, from the ground, to the trees looming not far from where they stood. Her dirt-smeared, knee-length skirt, with a subtle red plaid pattern and an intricate black lace trim that was ripped in most places, hanging in knotted block tendrils. Her dark violet bustier tied together across her chest with the same type of yellow thread used to lace up her boots. The slate colored cloak draped across her delicate shoulders, the hood draped loosely over her upper back; it was rare to see her without her hood on. As a banshee, it was considered taboo for one of her kind to look another being in the eyes. The only times Finnian had ever seen her with her hood down was when she was alone with him. He would miss those moments.
"I love you dearly, Finnian. I would gladly die another thousand agonizing deaths if it meant we could be together. But what with my position on the council, if word of my intimacy with-" She stopped herself abruptly, and Finnian knew why. He knew what she was going to say. For the first time since she'd called him out to the small, bleak, dusty clearing, Finnian looked at Ailbe's face, her long, wheat-colored hair cascading over her small shoulders and down her back, peppered with a thin mantle of white, powdery dust from the forest floor, from the branches stretching out above them. He glanced at her vivid emerald eyes; they were horribly bloodshot and would remain as such evermore; the result of thousands of years of mourning for countless deaths of countless families, the innumerable tears. It only reminded Finnian of how Ailbe had suffered ever since her own death in 1479, giving birth to a child that, after only three short years, had died of an extremely rare heart disease, with a deceased mother and no father to care for her. Ailbe, poor Ailbe, had wailed the forthcoming of her own daughter's death.
"Your intimacy with what?" Ailbe let the hand she had been using to hold up Ailbe's head fall stiffly to her side. She glanced away, her face ridden with guilt. Colorlessly, Finnian finished her sentence for her, his voice cracking; it felt like the lump in his throat was going to suffocate him. At least, if he could still draw breath. "With a Sluagh?" Ailbe remained silent, but Finnian knew. A Sluagh, a mythical being with origins in Ireland, like the banshee, only with a much more sinister reputation. Flying through the air in large numbers like vicious flocks of birds, Sluagh would scream through the skies from the west and steal the souls of the dying, carrying them away for an eternity deprived of the peaceful existence of afterlife. Finnian could not deny that he hadn't, for some time, done just that. But he wasn't himself in the least; a life of pain and hate had destroyed his mind, left his soul a disconsolate shell of what it had once been. It was like being shrouded in an icy fog; He could hear nothing, feel nothing, hardly see anything other than the other Sluagh, whom he blindly followed in a confused state of mind in which he thought, maybe in mimicking them, he would find his way out of the fog. He had stolen hundreds of dying souls after he died in 1643, at the age of fifteen. He had lived a short life full of stealing, scavenging, even killing, just to survive the grim, acrid life of an orphan. In the end, it still hadn't been enough. His life had been taken by the very same disease that had stole away Ailbe's daughter. This is what drew her to Finnian, on the night of his death. She loomed outside his bedroom window for hours, wailing as she gazed, bittersweet, into his dying eyes. His sickly pale skin, sticky and moist with cold sweat, his feeble chest heaving erratically in a pitiful, crippling attempt to provide him with enough oxygen to survive just a few agonizing minutes more, entangled in thin sheets soaked with sweat and the hot blood heaved from his rotting lungs. With each passing moment, his body grew weaker, his chest rising and falling with a more gentle rhythm. His lungs eventually ceased all movement, and he spiraled even more rapidly into the darkness. His eyes grew dimmer. In turn, Ailbe's heart-wrenched laments quelled to those of a resplendent, hushed lullaby that slowed with each passing second, such as that of a music box. A music box with splendidly rusted coils. She sang her tortured song far into the darkest hours of the night, long after Finnian had passed, wrenched free of the barbed chains that tethered him to a dying, crumbling world, a life full of nothing but wretched suffering. If one even dared to call the boys' anguish-afflicted existence a life...
The banshee had never felt such incredible heartache, neither in life or death. Even when compared to the night she wailed for her daughter's death...this time was just...different. Her daughter had been raised, cared for, loved by gentle foster parents. She was fed three full meals a day, had proper shelter, warm clothes in the harshest of winters. No matter how small, her existence was acknowledged by and cared for by her foster parents. Her existence was vague. But it was there. The boy had nothing. No one to wish him good night, no one to mend his clothes when they grew too ragged to wear. No one had ever so much as embraced him, told him how much he meant to them. Because, to anyone you could ask, he meant nothing. Just another filthy orphan ravaging the streets of Ireland. But despite everything, he fought so hard to protect his inane existence from the beckoning shadows that kept his decrepit heart clamped in their wintry, vice-like talons. Every day, he fought these shadows. For fifteen years he battled. And then he died. His existence was never once acknowledged save for a blow to the head from a revolted passerby, a shove into the cold, gritty mud, a barrage of heated curses and swears. Icy glares. Clenched fists. Disgusted grimaces. When the Ailbe's daughter died, she had died blessed with a happy and moderately satisfying life behind her. She hadn't ever asked for much, but still received much. The boy asked for nothing. And got nothing.
It wasn't until his second meeting with the banshee, on a windy, well-lit night, a night on which the death of a noble fell, his soul raw and ripe for swiping, that Finnian was liberated of the fog. All it took was one more song. He had been freed.
Ailbe's lower lip quivered; when she next spoke, her voice wavered, and the dream-like echo had become ever-so-slightly more shrill. "If word should ever reach public ears that a member of the council had fallen in love with... with a Sluagh, not only would I lose my position, but you would be immediately dismembered, your limbs tossed carelessly into The River..." She took a deep, shaky breath and continued, forcing her eyes not to meet Finnian's. "I know how you used to be, darling, but I also know, more than anything else, how you are now. You're not a corrupted, mindless, evil ghoul anymore. You're caring, you feel anger, jealousy, sadness, fear, happiness, love... you're more human than I had ever been, in both life... and death. If only we had met in a time before our hearts had stopped..." Finnian watched as bloody tears began to stream down Ailbe's powdery white cheeks; he took a slow, unsteady step towards her, his legs trembling. They felt horribly weak, like he might collapse at any given moment. When his bare foot scuffed across the cold, lifeless earth, he kicked up a small cloud of light, airy dust. Ailbe stepped away from him.
"No, Finnian...just...no. Never again." Finnian felt his own lip quiver, and his eyes grew moist, and hot. He couldn't find his voice. He stood silently and watched Ailbe's beautiful form warp and morph into that of a small, bloody eyed raven with gleaming, gossamer feathers. Finnian lowered himself slowly onto his knees, and held out a shaky hand. Ailbe hesitated; then nipped softly and affectionately at his finger, and he choked out a frail laugh between heavy sobs. I will never forget you, for as long as eternity remains evermore. But you... you'll find another love, Finnian darling. The hearts of the young are as apt to change as equally as the seasons, if not more so.
"My heart has long since ceased such changes. It aches only for you." She laughed softly, like an ensemble of bells and chimes. Her voice echoed from all around the clearing, perhaps the entire forest. Nothing could compare in beauty to that of the voice of a heartbroken banshee. Beauty isn't everything, love. This is one of many things you'll come to understand as you age, and grow more experienced with such things. By now, you are...200, 300 years old? But in truth, you're still just a child. Ailbe's voice was growing more and more acute with each word she spoke. One could almost call it singing.
Ailbe took a few short hops backward, away from Finnian, leaving tiny tracks in the dust and small puffs of it in the air. Her splendid wings beat the air rapidly, kicking up a tremendous amount of ash so that she was obscured fully from Finnian's eyes. Goodbye, Finnian, my love, my eternal love. Should by chance we ever meet again, I will not acknowledge you... I ask the same of you, darling. Finnian wiped his eyes, and nodded.
"What... what would happen if I were to join the council? Could we be together then? Ailbe?" There was no response. He slowly and tediously waved away the cloud with one arm, well aware that there was nothing, no one, within. His love. His eternal love, like a scar she had been carved into the deepest ravines of his rotting heart evermore. And, as the shrill lament of a brokenhearted banshee wailing for, not death, but lost love, pierced the melancholic sky, Finnian thought to himself, as he pulled himself to his feet, that he would have died if it could have meant just one last icy kiss.