Page 114 of Queen of the Shadow

Cuchulainn’s voice broke through her morose thoughts. “It’s good to be back on the path. Wading through that snow was exhausting.”

She nodded and smiled at him. She hadn’t even noticed they’d reached the path where the snow and ice magickally cleared for them. His gaze met hers and she thought she glimpsed a struggle within him similar to the internal battle she was having. She knew the outcome would be the same. Cuchulainn would realize the time they had left together was short, and there was little they could do about it.

So instead of mourning or sulking or borrowing future despair in the present, Scáthach shook off her melancholy and vowed to herself to cherish the moments they had left. She moved closer as they walked. Their arms brushed. Sometimes they entwined their fingers. Often they shared intimate smiles. And when they passed groups of men slaughtering other men or turning painfully to stone or being engulfed by thorns or the earth herself, they looked to each other instead. They spoke about Chance and the pup, the training yet to happen back at Dunscáith, and imagined how much of a nuisance Leannan was being for Tabiti. As they walked and talked, laughed and touched, the awfulness of the Winterlands became less like a living nightmare and more like an indistinct dream they passed through together.

They heard the waves before they saw the water. The path curved around a hill, and when it straightened, they were suddenly walking along a steep bank that sheered down to a dark, restless sea.

“Is that it? The Winter Sea?” Cuchulainn asked.

“It is.”

His eyes scanned the gray waters. “Curruid must be close. Should we climb down there to the water? Call him?”

“We should definitely not do that unless the shadows guide us there. I get the feeling from them that Curruid doesn’t hide,” she said.

He looked from his study of the sea to her. “Do the shadows talk to you?”

“Not with words,” she explained. “I get feelings from them. They’re like an extra sense. They can show me things, but only if those things are fairly close.”

“They haven’t shown you Curruid?”

“No, not yet. But I do know we’ll find him today.” Scáthach stared out at the sea. She usually loved the ocean and felt at home there. These dark, cold waters were different. They held no allure for her. She knew too well what they hid—absorbed spirits of the unredeemable. The smell came to her as she turned her gaze from the Winter Sea.

Cuchulainn wrinkled his nose and shook his head like a dog coming in out of the rain. “What is that terrible smell?”

Scáthach’s voice was soft and held a world of misery. “She’s not fully absorbed yet.”

“She? Who?” He sneezed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Oh gods, did you say absorbed? Not another one.” He cast his gaze to their left and the rocky hills.

“Not there,” said Scáthach. “In the water. You’ll see her soon.”

“But I shouldn’t look?” he asked wryly.

“You absolutely should not look. Neither should I.”

“But we will?” he asked with the ghost of a smile.

“More than likely,” she agreed.

They continued on silently, both flicking gazes seaward and then back. The smell got worse.

“Is it rotten fish? It smells like that mixed with—” He paused, sniffed delicately, and then sneezed again.

“Shit,” she finished for him. “It smells like fish and rot mixed with shit.”

“Good description. Is that a weeping willow?” He answered his own question before she could. “No, it can’t be. There is no normal foliage here. It has to be something awful that’s...” Cuchulainn’s words faded as they drew closer to a small bay. The sand was black, and a tree grew where the beach met the dark sea. Its trunk was slender and it bowed under the weight of long, skirt-like branches.

Scáthach said nothing. She kept walking. She glanced once at the tree, noting the small changes that had happened over the many years since the last time she’d been in the Winterlands with her mother, and then her gaze focused on Cuchulainn. She saw the moment he understood. His handsome face blanched from a healthy tan to a sallow color somewhere between milk and bile. He jerked to a halt, staring at the beach below them, the tree, and what it held.

“That’s... I don’t... are those her intestines?” Cuchulainn pressed the back of his hand against his mouth.

“They are,” said Scáthach. “She’s being absorbed into the sea slowly as it dissolves her—skin and muscle, organs and fat first, and then bones. She was here when last I visited, which was more than two decades ago.”

“Lugh’s balls! That is ghastly.”

Reluctantly, Scáthach looked from Cuchulainn to the tree. At first glance it did appear to be a willow—except the long, leafless branches that arched down to the sea ended in a person. Her arms were raised over her head and had become fused to the branches so that she was held over the water. Dark waves lapped against her, each flow of the sea engulfed her to her waist. Then the wave ebbed, revealing what was left of her. Entrails spilled from eroded skin, flowing around her with the tide and mixing with her long, dark, hair-like tentacles. The ivory of hip and leg bones seemed too bright in the grayness. The horrible sound of rattling bones lifted to Scáthach and Cuchulainn along with the stench of rot. The waves washed against her again, ebbing and flowing unendingly. A sharp-toothed fishlike thing with the head of a man swam to her and began feeding from her entrails. The woman screamed and screamed and screamed.

Scáthach hooked her arm through Cuchulainn’s and strode briskly forward, pulling him with her. “Move, Sentanta. I cannot bear the smell, the sight, or the sound.”