Ionin

I’d never needed to worry about my brother. He was older, for one, and always responsible. I knew the family would be taken care of as long as he was around. It was part of why I felt at leisure to set up a barrow in the freemarkets. That barrow had turned into a stand by the time he met her.

She was a Fyr-Ceann. We teased him for the way he watched her strut among our crates like an albino peacock, hair white and skin drained of most color, stiff with pride. I didn’t take his softness for her seriously. He’d flirted with girls before, and none of those relationships had lasted a year.

There had been the goat-keeper from the top of the next mountain. They had grown apart when Aodan gave himself fully to that year's harvest. Then the farmer from the village, the aspiring potter, and even the baker’s daughter. He couldn’t hold down a girl–or rather they couldn’t hold him down. Somehow, the fields held him captive in a way that their arms could not. I assumed she would be the same. No, I assumed she would be less.

Needless to say I was surprised to see them dancing. I knew my brother better than to think he had gone and invited himself to dance with her. She must have asked, but I didn’t know why. It was not until later that I heard the gossip about her fight with the hoity toity governmental guy right before she found my brother. It saddened me to know how she used him to insult another man. Aodan had pulled moves that night the likes of which I had not seen since the baker’s daughter. He’d thrown her around effortlessly. I had even heard her laughter over the music.

Don’t get me wrong, I teased him about her anyway. When he’d done with his dancing: “Was the Fyr-Ceann as light as you made her look, or were you that determined to sweep her off her feet?” When he wrote her back inviting her to dinner: “I could’ve sworn your feet usually dragged more around women, or does she make you light-footed as well as light-hearted?” When he claimed he saw her in the market: “They do say smoke follows beauty. Too bad your soul had to catch fire over such a birdling.” That’s what I said.

“A caged birdling,” he’d muttered. I didn’t understand, but I guessed it was a bad joke. He’d never been as funny as me.

Then the Fyr-Ceann came for dinner, and I saw it: the way they lingered near each other, eyes hesitating to leave the others’. She wasn’t an idle birdling chattering on a branch for attention, like I had thought. Instead, she was smiling and clever and never bristled at my jokes. 

Aodan never told me what happened when they stepped outside, but he came back changed, sullen. When we took our scythes to the field the next day, I couldn’t be rid of his sighing. “Lovesick pony, if you aren’t going to work, at least go graze someplace where I don’t have to listen to your gusty winds!” I told him, braced for a ribbing.

He only sighed again and bent to cut another sheaf, grumbling an apology.

Even for the baker’s daughter, after whom he’d lost a stone of weight, I could not remember him being that depressed. Though, thinking back, it had probably been a stone’s worth of her salted herb bread that he’d lost. She was always stuffing him with it. In any case, he was upset.

“No elbow to the ribs? No shin-bruising kick? Not even a denial?” I couldn’t believe it.

He raised himself, a bunch of barley clutched in his fist, freshly cut. “What do you want from me, Ionin?”

“A smile would be nice. Mine’s a pretty good rip-off, but the original is better.” I didn’t usually compliment him. I was really trying.

I may as well have insulted him, the way he growled in his throat. “Not today.”

“Frosts, is it that hard?! She’s just a girl, ardeten, and one you barely know. How bad could you really be feeling?”

Apparently it was the wrong thing to say. He squared on me, his scythe shifting as his grip tightened with anger. “ I like her! Okay? I really like her and there’s nothing to be done for it!”

He shouted at me. He almost never shouted except to call for me across the field. I stared at my brother, at the pain in the bend of his back as he gathered another sheaf. As soon as something could not be turned into a joke, I was useless.

I bent to my own work, but then a joke did come to me. I slid a sly look toward him. “I thought I was the one with high aspirations, trying to find a place in the city. But to romance a Fyr-Ceann?” I whistled.

He stood from his work, eyes aflame. I pressed on, certain of how the rest would land with him. “Perhaps I should congratulate you on making it into the fields today at all. I’d be sobbing at my own stupidity if I were in your boots.” That’s when I grinned, the twin of his. I put some of his kindness in it, too. I understood. He wasn’t angry with me or her, but with himself.

It was well timed. He snorted and tossed a sheaf at my head. It lagged in the air and bounced off my raised arm, harmless. I knew, then, that everything would be okay. Maybe he couldn’t forget her in one night, but that did not mean he would not move forward.