On her naming day, Etheldreda was told she would lose everyone she ever loved. This bothered her at first, but after all it happens to everyone eventually. It was actually hardly a prophecy at all. Avrail could just as well have said, "You will find love and live a long, fulfilling life." It certainly would have been easier to hear said in that fashion, but Ethelreda supposed it didn't suit the oracle's style.
And so when her husband died of fever at the age of forty and seven, Etheldreda was saddened, of course, but not surprised. She had loved him and such a thing always precedes loss, as naturally as glorious summer gives way to autumn, as autumn settles into winter, as winter melts to spring again at last.
She buried her husband beside his father and mother, as every Maurva had been buried in Elden for generations, since the founding of the village in ages long forgotten. She felt sadness for his loss, and for the lonely years ahead. But surprise? No. She had expected this day since she was thirteen.
She was surprised to give birth to a baby boy seven months later.
She had attributed every symptom to her grief. The nausea, the tears. Even now, with the boy in her arms, she could not believe otherwise. Here was not a baby, but the offspring of her travails.
He had his father's dark brown eyes, her brown hair (her hair was brown, once, even if much of it was gray by now), and a radiance about him that serious, practical Etheldreda would never be so foolish as to attempt to explain.
She named him Dameon. To tame, to overcome, to conquer, because of the way the monster of her grief settled at the sight of him. It would always be with her because her love would always be with her, but it had no more power to destroy her. Watching her baby look back at her with her lover's eyes, she felt it had never wanted to destroy her. Grief will fight and claw and bite like a cornered animal, because it has no place to go, because it cannot have what it wants. But now it lay curled in her chest like a dog by a hearth and slept peacefully, only raising its head to check that all was well and safe, and lying down again until needed.
She knew she would lose him too, the moment she laid eyes on him. Avrail had warned her. Etheldreda's love was Dameon's doom. But she could not abandon him anymore than she could kill the dog by the fireplace. She would not.
It was spring now. The world was warm and gentle and there were a thousand things to do before winter came again. She would not let dread of the ice spoil her time in the sun.
Dameon grew, and Etheldreda watched as that peculiar radiance surrounding him shined ever brighter. It was not that he was a particularly happy child. He was quiet and serious, like his mother. He was slower to pick up words than the other children his age, and they teased him no matter how their parents scolded them for making fun of the village widow's child. But he grew gentle and kind despite their rejection, and despite the austerity of his mother.
Not that he ever called her mother. It was mama from the first.
"Mama, may I play?" Of course he could, when his chores were done.
"Mama, look what I found!" A snake… Lovely, Dameon. Now please put it back. Immediately.
"I love you, Mama." She loved him too. Infinitely. Ten thousand circles in a circle.
"Mama," said one day while they worked together in the garden, his gaze fixed intently on her, "did Papa die because of me?"
She dropped the trowel she had been using to dig out weeds.
"What? Where did you get that idea, Dameon?"
He had also stopped digging, brushing dirt off his little trowel distractedly. "Jediah Gibbons said my Papa died when I was born, same as Renald's mama did when he was born, and I don't think it was his fault, he's just a baby, but some other kids do—"
That Jediah, she would be having words with his parents. He was an older boy, almost a man. He would inherit his father's farm if he could ever figure out how to keep track of the cows. And if Etheldreda didn't maim him for his carelessness first.
"Mama?" Her son's voice pulled her back to the moment.
She tried not to scowl.
"No, dear one. There was nothing anyone could have done to save him. It was just…" she heaved a sigh, focused her gaze on the distant horizon where pine faded into mist, and mist faded into sky, "it was just time for him to go."
"Oh." Blessed silence. She picked up her trowel and began digging again.
"Mama?"
"… Yes, Dameon?"
"Will you die?"
How did the Goddess expect her to get any work done, with such a boy?
She set aside her trowel again and took his shoulders, looking into his dark eyes. "You know I would never lie to you, don't you, Dameon?"
He closed the small gap that was left between them and hugged her. "Yes, Mama."
She inhaled slowly through her nose, straightened her back. "All of us will die one day. Even me. Even you."
"Even me?"
"Yes."
He wiggled slightly in her arms, and his hair tickled her chin. "Where will I go?"
She laughed, or perhaps scoffed. She attended readings of the Sacred Book whenever a bard held one, she limited her diet to carrots on Tuesdays, but she was no priestess. Just a grumpy old woman with a curious son. "You'd better ask Avrail that one," she said at last.
"Okay, Mama." He patted her cheek. "But, Mama," he continued with urgency as she released him to return to her work, "who will take care of you if I go first?"
She brushed dirt off his forehead and pointed him towards another weed. "You must not worry about that. We are living the best we know how, aren't we?"
"Yes."
"Then we will keep doing that no matter who goes first, and we will see each other again in the land of the dead if the Goddess sees fit. All right, Dameon?"
"All right, Mama." He grunted a little as he pulled the intruding plant from the ground, then placed it in the basket to be used as kindling in the winter. "And mama?"
She braced herself.
"What are we having for supper?"
At last, an easy one. "Potatoes. And butter, if you come with me to pick some up from the Gibbons farm."
His brown eyes lit up immediately.
And so they lived like that, as best they knew how, for twenty-three ephemeral years. Etheldreda grew grayer and Dameon grew taller and stronger. He finished his chores very quickly these days, and often had hers done as well before she had finished morning tea. After tea he would go to the forest to gather herbs for his work; Avrail had named him an herbalist, and apparently given him no such foreboding predictions as she had Etheldreda.
He was good at his work, despite often having to chase off Gibbon's cow from his favorite gathering spots (Jediah had inherited the farm now, and never had quite figured out cow enclosures). Dameon knew which plants to use for Barbar's burns, Jevon's earache, and Renald's sore throat. He brought Geneva's fever down in a matter of hours. Etheldreda believed if Dameon had been there when his father was sick, she might still have her husband.
But it was useless to dwell on such things. His father was long gone, and Dameon was here, with her for Goddess only knew how much longer.
"Have you thought of taking a wife?"
It was exactly the kind of impertinent, uncomfortable question she would have hated at his age. The exact kind she swore she would never ask her children. Yet here she was, asking it. She just thought… hoped… perhaps, she could lose him to marriage, and not to the grave.
"Mama," he gasped, as though she had stabbed him. "Would you have me leave you?"
"Of course not! But I am old and boring. You will want to leave me eventually, and I don't want any fuss about it." She refused to look at him.
"Mama!"
"It's not as though there is nobody interested in you! I've seen the way Mildrea preens when she sees you."
He was quiet for a moment. She still didn't dare look.
"I suppose I know… what you are referring to," he said at last. "And it's not that I never want to…" he shook his head and started over. "I've never felt… that way about anyone. Maybe one day I will, but I'm happy how I am now, Mama. This life is enough for me. Can't that be enough for you?"
"Oh, my son!" She still didn't look, but caught him in a hug. "Of course it can, Dameon. Your happiness is all this old woman cares for."
And for a while it was true. She would lose him to marriage or death eventually, and she hoped it was the former, but it was never her choice to make. The only choice she had was to love him or neglect him, and she had made that decision the day he was born.
So every day she prepared morning tea while he fetched milk from Gibbons and bread from Reeda, packed his lunch while he finished taking care of the garden, and saw him off to his daily foraging trip with the fondest hug. And every day he returned to her with a dozen new things to talk about, a new herb he'd found, a new use for an old herb, a pretty flower he'd seen, admiration for the way the sunlight filtered through the pines. Perhaps he'd take up painting, he could order paints from Devenshire. Hebert had paid him generously for helping with the writer's hand cramps.
Then, at last, he came home talking about a woman, and Etheldreda sighed with relief that her secret fears had been in vain. To marriage it was, then.
The blessed woman's name was Nino.
"Is she from Devenshire?" She was not from Elden or Etheldreda would know her already.
"No, Mama. She's not from anywhere you know."
"Well, when can I meet her?"
A laugh. "I wish today! But no, she… she has to be careful. Not everyone would be kind to her."
"Well who wouldn't? You know I'll put sense in them. I've lived long enough that I've earned the right to a little violence."
"Mama!"
But Etheldreda's protection was not enough for Nino, and the woman stayed hidden, from everyone but Dameon apparently. Not even nosy old Gretchen had so much as a tale about her.
Still, she made Dameon so happy. She sent him back to Etheldreda every day with a sparkle in his eye and a smile on his face. She showed him herbs that Etheldreda was not convinced weren't magical. She brought him paints from her homeland of such fine quality Etheldreda had to believe she was a princess. Well, that would explain the secrecy after all. It was right out of a fairytale, and Etheldreda would have scoffed to hear such fancy about anyone else, but her Dameon deserved the happily ever after. It would not be a loss to Etheldreda to lose him to a princess.
Then he came home with the baby, and now. Now Etheldreda had a care beyond her son's happiness, and had doomed yet another innocent soul with that froward heart of hers.
It was a lovely baby, brilliantly red hair, dark brown eyes just like Dameon's eyes, just like Etheldreda's husband's eyes. A little small, to be sure, but nothing a little goat's milk could not fix. Nothing Dameon couldn't take care of with his herbs.
But her son. Her son. She saw in the slump of his shoulders, the despair in his eyes, she had lost him already, more thoroughly than she had imagined in her worst nightmares.
He did not tell her, but she knew Nino was dead, or might as well have been. Perhaps she was forced to return to her kingdom, and wed some undeserving prince. It made no difference to Etheldreda and certainly not to the baby, who would never know a mother no matter the reason. Perhaps it made a difference to Dameon, but he was too distraught to say, and Etheldreda would never force it from him. He was the balm that soothed her grief, how should she be a thorn piercing his?
Renald, Jack, Hebert, Geneva, everyone told her he would get better. But Etheldreda recognized the cruel hand of fate when she saw it. She knew what was coming. She would meet it with a lifetime of firmness, for Dameon's sake. And she would stay firm, for the baby's sake, until she lost the baby as well.
He spent every moment with the baby. "Talia," he called her. Dew from heaven, blooming, flourishing. A name that called to mind flowers, spring. A renewal of life.
Talia grew on goat's milk and a mixture of flowers that Dameon prepared carefully every morning. He taught it to Etheldreda, too. One part yarrow, two part honeysuckle, one part lilac. He made her promise to teach it to Talia when he–
No.
All these years did not make it easier to conceive. She could not think it. Not yet. Not again.
Dameon could not keep up with his chores any longer. Etheldreda did them all, with help from some of his friends. Dear Renald, and that rascal Jack, and sweet Geneva. Together they let Dameon's last days be spent with his daughter.
He held her every moment she was awake. When she was not awake, he painted. Etheldreda did not have to ask what he painted. It could only be Nino.
When the painting was completed, Etheldreda hung it where she knew he would see it everyday. It did not matter for long. Dameon was gone mere hours later.
She buried him beside his father, as every Maurva had been buried in Elden for generations, since the founding of the village in ages long forgotten, and she was sad but not surprised–
You will lose everyone you ever love.
Did it matter at all? Was love worth the agony, when she knew in spite of it she would pass from this world empty and alone? The monster of her grief was growling now, teeth bared.
Talia was wailing. Etheldreda lifted her, held her close. The monster did not settle. She was too old to outlive a baby. She could not do this again.
She had reached unthinkingly for the flower mixture that had been set aside earlier. She was already feeding it to Talia. The wailing had already ceased.
It did not matter if it was worth it. Dameon had trusted her with his daughter, his only child, his last joy in this world. This grief would be hers forever, whether she chose to carry it or not. Grief is a dog. It may bite, claw, bark, and rage, but it is loyal to its master. It would follow her everywhere now. She may not bear it well, she may not hold it with grace, but it was hers as surely as the love had been.
I started writing this years ago. It's intended as the prologue for a story set between AP and AV1, but I make no promises as to when or if all that will ever come out. All I know is suddenly and randomly Etheldreda reached through the fabric of reality today and demanded to have her story told. So I've done my best. Hope you enjoyed:)