Very belatedly...
The next installment in the Tempus Fugit Fics, redux. Instead of Chinese New Year this time, it's written for Beltane. A/Z. Spoilers for the other Tempus Fugit fics, so follow the tags because I'm too lazy to link.
Zephan is nervous, that much is quite apparent in the way he taps his fingers restlessly against his leg as they sit in the airport terminal waiting for the flight to board. Outside the airport, Tokyo is bustling, cool spring breezes blowing through blossoming cherry trees. Different trees will be greening in Ireland, and Ami can only guess at what she'll see when they get there.
Rei and Jian see them off at the airport, bid them farewell at the security gates. The glow in her friend's eyes and the genuine contentment in Rei's smile have not diminished since February. A single milk-white jade bangle with a flare of fire-red adorns her slender wrist, a gift of love and a promise of forever. It was three months ago that she had met Jian's family, three months ago that she visited his homeland for the first time. Now it is Ami's turn, but she doesn't know what to expect.
Zephan himself has not gone back to Belfast since he'd left nearly seven years ago. Where Jian had gone back to a home that had stood for centuries, Zephan would be returning to a city that had taken away everything he'd originally had. Ami holds no illusions; she's primarily accompanying him for the moral support. But a part of her, buried underneath the logical, cerebral student who had just graduated the last year with honours, still secretly dreams.
The airplane reaches cruising altitude and he relaxes marginally as the seatbelt sign goes off and the flight attendants wheel carts with drink selections down the aisles. Both of them order tea: green for her, English breakfast with lemon for him. He cracks a faint smile as he squeezes the lemon wedge over the styrofoam cup, lets the teabag steep until the water is a dark, woodsy brown.
“Me mam always steeped the tea too long, brewed it strong and dark. She'd be waiting for it to cool and get distracted to sing with my sister and I, and then by the time we were done, the tea would be dark as ink. I'd never understood til I'd gone to London that tea wasn't supposed to be so dark and strong.”
His mother had been dead for more than a decade, and he still takes his tea the same way. He'd left Ireland without a backward glance seven years ago, and its musical lilt still colours his voice. Ami returns his smile, and reaches over to sample his tea. When she screws up her face-- it is absolutely as strong as advertised and then some-- he laughs, and underneath their tray tables, his fine-boned hand finds hers.
~*~
It's raining when they arrive in Belfast, and the mountains are shrouded with mist. The ocean, in the distance, is gray. The air is chilly on that late April afternoon, but rain and cold have never bothered her.
“I suppose we should go elsewhere for rolling green hills,” he says with a self-deprecating grin. In the drizzle, his hair is more copper than gold. “Belfast is a rather industrial city.”
She tucks her hand into his and squeezes. He's rather more quiet and pensive than the sociable, charming European King of a thousand years ago, but she loves the soft smiles as much as the memories of flirtatious banter. The raindrops catch on her eyelashes and outline the curve of her lips when she smiles. “You can still show me the sea.”
They stow their bags at the hotel and make their way towards the harbour. The waves are choppy-white as they hit the shoreline. Zephan pauses at the edge of the water, gazes out towards the open sea, his green eyes faraway.
“This is where I first started looking for you. There are stories, you know. Mermaids, selkies, merrows. I kept on dreaming of a girl emerging from the water with dark hair and all the world's oceans and tears in her eyes. I loved and feared her before I even knew what it meant to love and to fear. I heard her harp song in my mind as clearly as though she were playing it right in front of me.”
When they had finally met in this life, on a snowy winter's day in Oxford, it had been the music that had drawn her. Never had she thought that she'd hear her own elemental rhapsody echoed in the bright, lush tones of a violin, audible outside her dorm room window. Her heart had known that he was there even before she saw him. They'd recognized each other before they even knew each other's names.
“I don't think I'm all that terrifying,” she murmurs, stepping up to the edge of the ocean next to him.
“I'm no longer scared of you,” he glances at her through a fringe of damp blond lashes. “But I think I'll always be amazed by you.”
On their way back to the hotel, Zephan pauses at a tree growing in the courtyard, eyes thoughtful. Ami watches, curious, as he walks a full circle around the trunk, fingers caressing the rough bark, then unties the red band holding back his hair. Burnished bronze waves fall gracefully around his beautiful face as he carefully knots the band around one thorny branch.
“What's that for?” she asks curiously. His smile is enigmatic and strangely diffident.
“A wish for May.”
~*~
She wakes the next morning to see the sun rising through the window, and the spot next to her on the bed is empty. Before she can wonder, though, the door of the hotel room opens quietly and he comes in with a tray.
“I thought I'd bring you breakfast, and for now a light one,” he tells her, a grin quirking across his lips. “I daresay you'll experience an Ulster Fry sooner or later before we go back to Japan.”
He sets the tray down on the nightstand, and on it is a small plate of oat cakes with honey and a clutch of snowy-white daisies and feathery green ferns still wet with dew. He sits down next to her and tucks one of the daisies behind her ear, then cocks his head to survey the effect.
“'Tis a tradition to wash your face with the dew of flowers for beauty, but you're already the loveliest lass I know.”
Despite a thousand years of love and everything they'd been through, good and bad, she still blushes when he compliments her. Despite knowing her face as well as his own, seeing every nuance in the range of human emotion cross her features in dreams and reality, he's still charmed every time she does.
~*~
It’s impossible to put it off forever, and as the sun rises in the sky, they make the journey together down once-familiar streets towards a building once known as Delaney’s Pub. It is no longer a pub, and Zephan swallows hard, blinks twice, before he knocks on the door.
A woman with a mane of coal-black hair answers the door, then peers at Zephan and Ami with curious but not unfriendly green eyes. “Can I help you?”
“This is where Delaney’s Pub used to stand, isn’t it?” Zephan asks haltingly.
“Oh, aye, that it is,” the woman nods, smiling. “‘Tis not been a pub in a good five years, but the building’s strong. I’m Cassandra O’Malley. I teach Geography at the Grosvenor Grammar School. And you are...?”
“Zephan. Zephan Delaney,” came the whispered answer. “My family used to own the pub.”
“Oh, bless you, lad,” Cassandra O’Malley reaches for the hand that isn’t clutched in Ami’s. “And you’re bound to be wondering where your family is, what became of everything and everyone, I’m sure. Here, come on in, you and your friend. I’ll put on some tea.”
Zephan’s eyes flit over the walls, the floors, as though searching for scorch marks and cracked plaster, but as he and Ami follow the Irishwoman into the former pub, they could see no signs of the previous troubles. The main floor of the pub is converted into an open-plan living space filled with comfortable, sturdy furniture and colourful rugs. An oversized globe sits on a glass-top coffee table, and photographs of the Irish countryside adorn the cheerful butter-yellow walls. There is a piano in the corner, and involuntarily, Zephan takes a step towards it and smiles.
“Here’s the tea,” Ms. O’Malley bustles back in with a tray. “I brew it strong. I hope you don’t mind.” She fixes her beady gaze on Ami then. “And I never asked for your name.”
“Ami Mizuno,” came the answer. “I’m friends with Zephan.”
“That’s lovely,” Ms. O’Malley shakes Ami’s hand, then gestures both of them into the sofa as she pours tea. “Now, I suppose you’ll want to know what happened after the tragic accident with the pub.”
“Well, I moved out of Belfast about seven years ago. At that time, it remained barred, closed,” Zephan murmurs staring into his steaming teacup. “I moved to England and... ah, this is the first I’ve been back.”
“Ah,” Cassandra O’Malley adds a liberal amount of sugar and cream to her own teacup. “Well, there was a lot of restoration to be done, and not a one to do it for quite some time, as I understand. But then someone authorized it, cleared a blank cheque for all the necessary repairs-- I believe it was a Proserpine LTD or something of the sort-- something rather fanciful, that footed the bill for the repairs.” Zephan and Ami exchange a quick glance over their teacups as their hostess continues her story. “I moved into the area five years ago; got a position at the school, and it was just the thing. I found an ad in the paper about this place to let, and for a very reasonable price. The lady who took charge of the account wasn’t a local, but she introduced herself as Una and she was quite helpful and knowledgeable.” The GCSE-level Geography teacher’s green eyes meet Zephan’s curiously. “She said in passing that the people who’d lived here before might be back at some point. She was quite sure of it.”
Zephan’s breath escapes him in a little huff and he chuckles wryly as he sets down his empty teacup. “She’s a very wise lady.” His eyes drift soberly over towards the piano in the corner. “I’m glad it happened this way,” he says sincerely. “I’m glad this place is a home again, with nice rooms and a piano in the corner. It’s meant to be.”
“Oh, that’s my fiance’s,” Cassandra O’Malley says with a smile. “He teaches music at the college. I haven’t the talent, but he plays beautifully. You’re a musician, I take it? I’d heard that the family that owned this place was a musical one.”
“Aye,” Zephan smiles wistfully and glances at the instrument. Like the piano from his memories, it is old, with slightly yellowed keys free of dust, a coverlet of Irish lace lovingly spread over the top. “May I?”
Cassandra O’Malley nods her consent, and Zephan seats himself at the instrument. It is several moments after he places his fingers over the keys that notes of an old folk song can be heard.
His sister had been playing ‘The Water Is Wide’ all those years ago when the bomb had detonated in the pub. Now, in memory, perhaps in penance and closure, Zephan finishes the song for her.
Perhaps it is the nature of letting go of the past, of forgiveness and acceptance. Perhaps it is the steadfast love and faith in Ami’s blue eyes. But when his fingers linger on the last note, he feels the weight of the decade-old tragedy lift somewhat from his shoulders.
It is their hostess who breaks the poignant silence at long last. Her soft, understanding eyes meet Zephan’s as he stands. “The lady who sold this house to us gave a forwarding address for the previous residents,” she says quietly. “I can get it for you. It’s in Newcastle, but a day’s journey.”
~*~
Newcastle is a picturesque, smaller town than Belfast, with the Mourne Mountains looming in the distance and sandy beaches brushed by the sea. In a village along St Patrick’s Stream, the houses are decorated with flowers and the doors crossed with rowan and hawthorn branches for Beltane.
There is a Maypole in the center of the village square, adorned with ribbons in all colours and a wreath of fresh spring flowers. They stroll past a farm, and Ami finds herself face to face with a velvet-nosed calf with a chain of daisies around its neck. The tableau is charming enough that she laughs.
“Maypoles and flowers,” she turns and glances at Zephan. “What other traditions are there for Beltane?”
The mother cow moos and placidly chews her cud, letting Zephan run his elegant fingers over her stubby fur, and he smiles. “Lighting bonfires at night, leaping over them. Dancing in the fields, making love in the forest.” Ami blushes at the last bit, and his smile widens. “Lovers who consummate their relationship in the woods pledge to be together for a year and a day, and if their love remains strong and true after then, they’ll plan for a hand-fasting ceremony over the next summer.”
“Your villagers may not appreciate such a spectacle in this day and age,” Ami says primly.
He laughs and says nothing, and plucks a flower from one of the numerous wreaths decorating the place to tuck in her hair.
~*~
It’s May Eve, and the darkness is broken by bonfires and laughter and music. It seems as though the entire town is gathered in the square, and even the smoke from the bonfires seems fragrant with the scent of flowers. Zephan stands by the doors of the local pub, his slim figure silhouetted by light, his fiddle singing merrily to the beat of clapping hands and cheerful laughter.
Ami watches as several teenaged lads and lasses leap nimbly over the small Beltane fires, and sips at the mug of cider that some smiling village matron had handed her a while ago. She knows no one here, but it’s so jolly, so fresh and hopeful, that it doesn’t seem to matter that she’s a stranger.
A movement at her side causes her to glance over, and she finds herself glancing down at a grizzled man in a wheelchair that is being pushed by the same matron who had handed her the mug of cider. The man’s face is shadowed by the brim of a ragged hat, but his hands tap a rhythm to the fiddle music and Ami can tell that he is smiling. The drooping curls of hair visible underneath the hat are more copper than grey, but it is difficult to tell the fellow’s age.
“Who’s that playing?” he asks no one in particular, his voice hoarse but as liltingly musical as any other Ami has heard in the country.
“Why, I am not sure,” the matron whose hands rest on the wheelchair handles answers. “‘Tis a young lad who arrived today from Belfast, with his lass. He’s a handsome one, to be sure, and a fine, bonny hand with his music.”
“Belfast?” That had the man’s head jerking up, and Ami’s startled eyes meet green ones identical to a pair that she’s stared into countless times. But where Zephan’s are bright and alert, the old man’s are dulled, unfocused. She knows who it is and almost chokes on the last sip of cider.
But she turns to face the man-- Brian Delaney, whose face and body bear the strain of the years and his injuries, but whose head remains high as he sits in his wheelchair. As though he senses her, the man who is Zephan’s father turns his face towards her with a quizzical look.
“Yes, he’s from Belfast,” Ami says quietly, just so the man can hear. “He came back to see you.”
Brian Delaney’s hands clench reflexively, then reach out, groping, and perhaps it is borrowed courage from the drink she’s had. But Ami stoops down in front of him, meets his fingers halfway with her own. Those blind green eyes are still blurry, but brighter now than the bonfires that surround them. Zephan’s father has a more rugged face than his son, but at the moment, it looks as vulnerable and beseeching as Zephan’s ever had. In comfort and reassurance, Ami gives the gnarled fingers a squeeze.
“Who are you, lass?”
“My name is Ami,” comes the quiet answer. “I’m... a friend of his.”
The fingers slowly reach in, testing, tracing over her face as they learn her countenance by touch. Then Brian Delaney smiles, and it’s the same exact grin that crosses Zephan’s face, down to the dimples. “He’ll consider you more than a friend, to be sure. The lass he always sought out and dreamt about as a boy couldn’t be prettier than you.”
Before Ami could do much more than blush at the avuncular compliment, Zephan pauses in his playing, clears his throat. His startled gaze find Ami and his long-lost father in the crowd, and even from a distance, Ami can see his eyes filling. But his voice is almost perfectly steady when he speaks.
“The next song’s less of a playful one, but it fits for a celebration of love. ‘Twas my mother’s favourite, back in the day.”
The bow moves fluidly, exquisitely over the violin strings. By Ami’s side, Zephan’s father quietly sings the words.
”Near Banbridge town, in the County Down
One morning in July
Down a bóithrín green came a sweet cailín
And she smiled as she passed me by...”
~*~
The Star of County Down concludes Zephan’s performance for the night, and as others take his place with tin whistles and bodhran drums, he makes his way through the crowd. His eyes are diffident when he reaches his father’s side, but he sets down his fiddle and crouches in front of the wheelchair with only a second’s hesitation.
“Da,” the single word bridges years of separation. In the wheelchair, Brian Delaney’s sightless eyes blur with tears. He reaches forward again, and Zephan catches the gnarled hands in his youthful ones.
“I’ve been talking to your lass,” his father murmurs, with a faint smile. “She says you’ve made something of yourself, wrote some highbrow program for the computer that’s being used all around the world and performed a concert tour with a world-famous violinist.”
“I did,” Zephan nods, still holding his father’s hands. “I played ‘The Star of County Down’ for that, too. She was kind enough to play along with it, though she performs mostly a classical repertoire.”
Ami remembers the concert in question, when they’d first arrived in Japan after her stint at Oxford. It had been a charity event with Michiru headlining and Zephan accompanying her on the piano through two concertos, then the two of them playing a rollicking duet on their violins. The money from the ticket sales had gone towards new equipment in the pediatrics wing at the hospital where she interned. She’d not known, then, the significance of the last song they’d played together for an encore.
Brian nods, and turns his face in the direction of the revelers. “So, are they still leaping over the flames and whatnot?”
“Aye,” Zephan smiles, and in a soft voice, begins to describe the sights of the festivities for his father.
~*~
May Day itself dawns balmy and glorious, and when Ami wakes, she sees the blossoming branches of trees through her window. Zephan is nowhere to be found, but she still hears the faint, lovely sound of violin music. It is not the folksy tunes of last night, but a lush, elemental threnody as familiar and second-nature to her as the rise and fall of the tides, the symphony of rain and snow.
She follows the music outside, out the back of the village through to the belt of oaks and rowans at the edge of the woods.
“I heard you playing that in Oxford,” she says quietly as she reaches his side. He’s standing at a small clearing, a few stray petals and leaves caught in the curls of his hair as they blow down with the spring breeze. “I’d never thought I’d hear anyone play my song.”
He carefully sets the fiddle down, his eyes greener than the leaves unfurling on the trees around them. “I don’t think I could have, until the time was right. Until it was meant for me to find you again.” A soft smile crosses his lips. “I haven’t thanked you for last night, for being there. You don’t know what it means.”
“You shouldn’t have been alone for that,” Ami says quietly. They’d been together, reunited and happy for the better part of two years now, and sometimes he still looked at her as though he didn’t deserve her or this new chance at happiness. She reaches up and frames his face with her hands, making sure that their gazes are locked, green to blue. “I love you.”
He bends his head, and as the sun rises over the ashes of last night’s fires and the dewy, blooming flowers of Beltane, meets her kiss halfway. His hands trace down her shoulders and arms to link with hers, then he pulls her close, his breath a caress as his lips trace over her temple, her jaw. “It will take more than a thousand years to tell you enough times that I love you, to show you how much I mean it.”
Beautiful, blossoming Spring. Green leaves and morning mist. Music and magic and love. Lighting fires and bathing her face in the dew of flowers. Dancing in the fields and making love in the forests. Ami feels her lips curving upwards in a smile, reaches for his hands again.
“You can start here. Now.”
His lips find hers again, and this time the kiss is hot and frantic. But when he lowers her to the mossy ground, he cradles her as gently as the spring breeze.
~*~
They stay in Newcastle for a week before heading back to Belfast. In that time, Zephan repairs the fractured, long-lost relationship with his father, lets both of them find their closure. On their last night there, Ami finds the two men sitting together at sunset, both nursing cups of too-strong tea. Brian Delaney turns her way at the sound of footsteps, and though there would always be something sad in it, he graces her with a smile.
“Now, when are you going to make an honest man out of me boy?” he inquires as she sits down in between them. He reaches forward with his hand, and it takes him a few moments before his fingers land lightly on hers. There’s a hint of fun in his expression as he leans forward. “Now, the lad’s always been a handsome one, and a charmer, and sure there were a dozen girlies who’d wished for his company as a boy. But he never paid them too much mind. We Irish are a sentimental lot, you know. Once an Irishman falls in love, ‘tis the most important, deepest thing in his life from that moment on. For Zephan, that’d be you.”
Ami ducks her head, her cheeks colouring, and smiles. She recalls the smell of damp earth and the tender green of new grass against her skin. She can almost still feel the silky caress of Zephan’s hair against her shoulders and breasts as he moved over her, whispering promises into her neck. She recalls that first meeting in this life-- the snowfall, the Mercury fountain in Oxford’s great quad, that first overjoyed kiss. Now she glances at him, shares a smile before she turns back to his father.
“In whatever ways that matter the most, I think I’ve already made an honest man out of him,” she says with utmost sincerity.
She’s not just talking about love, but love is the start and finish of it.
~*~
When they get back to the hotel in Belfast, Zephan makes a beeline for the hawthorn tree in the courtyard, and Ami follows him with a puzzled look, still holding her messenger bag under one arm and her purse slung over the other. The blossoms on the branches are in full bloom now, unfurled from the buds they’d been when the two of them had first arrived in Belfast. Zephan carefully inspects the thorny wood underneath the pale petals.
“We should probably put our bags away, go check in,” Ami starts, then stares at Zephan in bewilderment as a wide smile blooms over his face. He tugs something from a branch, sending a flurry of petals falling, and holds it up-- a red hair tie.
“I’d tied this on here, with a secret wish,” he says, and she remembers that day, less than a fortnight ago. He slides the band around his wrist, then steps forward to take her hands in his. “I told myself that if it was still here when we got back, it’d bring me luck. I’d have a chance at getting my wish.” Suddenly, a hint of nerves dance in his eyes, and his Adam’s Apple bobs. “Do you know what the wish was?”
Ami shakes her head, but before she could ask, he is digging something out of his pocket, something small and silver and blue that glinted in the sunlight. The Celtic knotwork on the ring is exquisite, accentuated by a round, brilliant sapphire blue as a calm sea. Ami’s mouth drops open and her heart leaps into her throat.
“A red band tied on the branches of a hawthorn tree is a wish for love,” Zephan says, his voice quiet and even, harmonious as his music. “I’ve found everything that I could wish for, everything that I’ve ever dreamt of, in you. I couldn’t stay in Belfast, but with you by my side, I could return to it, be free of the pain of the past. I’ve searched for you for all of my life, and now that I’ve found you, it’ll take the rest of my days to show you how much you matter to me. We’ve been together in Oxford, and Tokyo, and Belfast. The place isn’t the important thing of it, really. You’re my muse, my better half, my home. Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”
Amazingly, even through the tears that swim into her eyes, she can still see his face with perfect clarity. Dropping her purse and messenger bag on the ground, she holds out her hand for his ring, and then throws her arms around him.
Laughing, he lifts her and spins her in two quick circles before pulling her in for a kiss. Overhead, a light rain begins to fall, soft drops of water trickling merrily as though in celebration through the branches of the trees. The sun continues to shine, however, and when they finally pull apart, she can see a rainbow arching across the sky. “That’s supposed to be good luck too, isn’t it?”
He follows her gaze, then squeezes the hand that wears his ring, smiles with pure happiness. “Aye, it is. But I’ve already found my pot of gold.”
Zephan is nervous, that much is quite apparent in the way he taps his fingers restlessly against his leg as they sit in the airport terminal waiting for the flight to board. Outside the airport, Tokyo is bustling, cool spring breezes blowing through blossoming cherry trees. Different trees will be greening in Ireland, and Ami can only guess at what she'll see when they get there.
Rei and Jian see them off at the airport, bid them farewell at the security gates. The glow in her friend's eyes and the genuine contentment in Rei's smile have not diminished since February. A single milk-white jade bangle with a flare of fire-red adorns her slender wrist, a gift of love and a promise of forever. It was three months ago that she had met Jian's family, three months ago that she visited his homeland for the first time. Now it is Ami's turn, but she doesn't know what to expect.
Zephan himself has not gone back to Belfast since he'd left nearly seven years ago. Where Jian had gone back to a home that had stood for centuries, Zephan would be returning to a city that had taken away everything he'd originally had. Ami holds no illusions; she's primarily accompanying him for the moral support. But a part of her, buried underneath the logical, cerebral student who had just graduated the last year with honours, still secretly dreams.
The airplane reaches cruising altitude and he relaxes marginally as the seatbelt sign goes off and the flight attendants wheel carts with drink selections down the aisles. Both of them order tea: green for her, English breakfast with lemon for him. He cracks a faint smile as he squeezes the lemon wedge over the styrofoam cup, lets the teabag steep until the water is a dark, woodsy brown.
“Me mam always steeped the tea too long, brewed it strong and dark. She'd be waiting for it to cool and get distracted to sing with my sister and I, and then by the time we were done, the tea would be dark as ink. I'd never understood til I'd gone to London that tea wasn't supposed to be so dark and strong.”
His mother had been dead for more than a decade, and he still takes his tea the same way. He'd left Ireland without a backward glance seven years ago, and its musical lilt still colours his voice. Ami returns his smile, and reaches over to sample his tea. When she screws up her face-- it is absolutely as strong as advertised and then some-- he laughs, and underneath their tray tables, his fine-boned hand finds hers.
~*~
It's raining when they arrive in Belfast, and the mountains are shrouded with mist. The ocean, in the distance, is gray. The air is chilly on that late April afternoon, but rain and cold have never bothered her.
“I suppose we should go elsewhere for rolling green hills,” he says with a self-deprecating grin. In the drizzle, his hair is more copper than gold. “Belfast is a rather industrial city.”
She tucks her hand into his and squeezes. He's rather more quiet and pensive than the sociable, charming European King of a thousand years ago, but she loves the soft smiles as much as the memories of flirtatious banter. The raindrops catch on her eyelashes and outline the curve of her lips when she smiles. “You can still show me the sea.”
They stow their bags at the hotel and make their way towards the harbour. The waves are choppy-white as they hit the shoreline. Zephan pauses at the edge of the water, gazes out towards the open sea, his green eyes faraway.
“This is where I first started looking for you. There are stories, you know. Mermaids, selkies, merrows. I kept on dreaming of a girl emerging from the water with dark hair and all the world's oceans and tears in her eyes. I loved and feared her before I even knew what it meant to love and to fear. I heard her harp song in my mind as clearly as though she were playing it right in front of me.”
When they had finally met in this life, on a snowy winter's day in Oxford, it had been the music that had drawn her. Never had she thought that she'd hear her own elemental rhapsody echoed in the bright, lush tones of a violin, audible outside her dorm room window. Her heart had known that he was there even before she saw him. They'd recognized each other before they even knew each other's names.
“I don't think I'm all that terrifying,” she murmurs, stepping up to the edge of the ocean next to him.
“I'm no longer scared of you,” he glances at her through a fringe of damp blond lashes. “But I think I'll always be amazed by you.”
On their way back to the hotel, Zephan pauses at a tree growing in the courtyard, eyes thoughtful. Ami watches, curious, as he walks a full circle around the trunk, fingers caressing the rough bark, then unties the red band holding back his hair. Burnished bronze waves fall gracefully around his beautiful face as he carefully knots the band around one thorny branch.
“What's that for?” she asks curiously. His smile is enigmatic and strangely diffident.
“A wish for May.”
~*~
She wakes the next morning to see the sun rising through the window, and the spot next to her on the bed is empty. Before she can wonder, though, the door of the hotel room opens quietly and he comes in with a tray.
“I thought I'd bring you breakfast, and for now a light one,” he tells her, a grin quirking across his lips. “I daresay you'll experience an Ulster Fry sooner or later before we go back to Japan.”
He sets the tray down on the nightstand, and on it is a small plate of oat cakes with honey and a clutch of snowy-white daisies and feathery green ferns still wet with dew. He sits down next to her and tucks one of the daisies behind her ear, then cocks his head to survey the effect.
“'Tis a tradition to wash your face with the dew of flowers for beauty, but you're already the loveliest lass I know.”
Despite a thousand years of love and everything they'd been through, good and bad, she still blushes when he compliments her. Despite knowing her face as well as his own, seeing every nuance in the range of human emotion cross her features in dreams and reality, he's still charmed every time she does.
~*~
It’s impossible to put it off forever, and as the sun rises in the sky, they make the journey together down once-familiar streets towards a building once known as Delaney’s Pub. It is no longer a pub, and Zephan swallows hard, blinks twice, before he knocks on the door.
A woman with a mane of coal-black hair answers the door, then peers at Zephan and Ami with curious but not unfriendly green eyes. “Can I help you?”
“This is where Delaney’s Pub used to stand, isn’t it?” Zephan asks haltingly.
“Oh, aye, that it is,” the woman nods, smiling. “‘Tis not been a pub in a good five years, but the building’s strong. I’m Cassandra O’Malley. I teach Geography at the Grosvenor Grammar School. And you are...?”
“Zephan. Zephan Delaney,” came the whispered answer. “My family used to own the pub.”
“Oh, bless you, lad,” Cassandra O’Malley reaches for the hand that isn’t clutched in Ami’s. “And you’re bound to be wondering where your family is, what became of everything and everyone, I’m sure. Here, come on in, you and your friend. I’ll put on some tea.”
Zephan’s eyes flit over the walls, the floors, as though searching for scorch marks and cracked plaster, but as he and Ami follow the Irishwoman into the former pub, they could see no signs of the previous troubles. The main floor of the pub is converted into an open-plan living space filled with comfortable, sturdy furniture and colourful rugs. An oversized globe sits on a glass-top coffee table, and photographs of the Irish countryside adorn the cheerful butter-yellow walls. There is a piano in the corner, and involuntarily, Zephan takes a step towards it and smiles.
“Here’s the tea,” Ms. O’Malley bustles back in with a tray. “I brew it strong. I hope you don’t mind.” She fixes her beady gaze on Ami then. “And I never asked for your name.”
“Ami Mizuno,” came the answer. “I’m friends with Zephan.”
“That’s lovely,” Ms. O’Malley shakes Ami’s hand, then gestures both of them into the sofa as she pours tea. “Now, I suppose you’ll want to know what happened after the tragic accident with the pub.”
“Well, I moved out of Belfast about seven years ago. At that time, it remained barred, closed,” Zephan murmurs staring into his steaming teacup. “I moved to England and... ah, this is the first I’ve been back.”
“Ah,” Cassandra O’Malley adds a liberal amount of sugar and cream to her own teacup. “Well, there was a lot of restoration to be done, and not a one to do it for quite some time, as I understand. But then someone authorized it, cleared a blank cheque for all the necessary repairs-- I believe it was a Proserpine LTD or something of the sort-- something rather fanciful, that footed the bill for the repairs.” Zephan and Ami exchange a quick glance over their teacups as their hostess continues her story. “I moved into the area five years ago; got a position at the school, and it was just the thing. I found an ad in the paper about this place to let, and for a very reasonable price. The lady who took charge of the account wasn’t a local, but she introduced herself as Una and she was quite helpful and knowledgeable.” The GCSE-level Geography teacher’s green eyes meet Zephan’s curiously. “She said in passing that the people who’d lived here before might be back at some point. She was quite sure of it.”
Zephan’s breath escapes him in a little huff and he chuckles wryly as he sets down his empty teacup. “She’s a very wise lady.” His eyes drift soberly over towards the piano in the corner. “I’m glad it happened this way,” he says sincerely. “I’m glad this place is a home again, with nice rooms and a piano in the corner. It’s meant to be.”
“Oh, that’s my fiance’s,” Cassandra O’Malley says with a smile. “He teaches music at the college. I haven’t the talent, but he plays beautifully. You’re a musician, I take it? I’d heard that the family that owned this place was a musical one.”
“Aye,” Zephan smiles wistfully and glances at the instrument. Like the piano from his memories, it is old, with slightly yellowed keys free of dust, a coverlet of Irish lace lovingly spread over the top. “May I?”
Cassandra O’Malley nods her consent, and Zephan seats himself at the instrument. It is several moments after he places his fingers over the keys that notes of an old folk song can be heard.
His sister had been playing ‘The Water Is Wide’ all those years ago when the bomb had detonated in the pub. Now, in memory, perhaps in penance and closure, Zephan finishes the song for her.
Perhaps it is the nature of letting go of the past, of forgiveness and acceptance. Perhaps it is the steadfast love and faith in Ami’s blue eyes. But when his fingers linger on the last note, he feels the weight of the decade-old tragedy lift somewhat from his shoulders.
It is their hostess who breaks the poignant silence at long last. Her soft, understanding eyes meet Zephan’s as he stands. “The lady who sold this house to us gave a forwarding address for the previous residents,” she says quietly. “I can get it for you. It’s in Newcastle, but a day’s journey.”
~*~
Newcastle is a picturesque, smaller town than Belfast, with the Mourne Mountains looming in the distance and sandy beaches brushed by the sea. In a village along St Patrick’s Stream, the houses are decorated with flowers and the doors crossed with rowan and hawthorn branches for Beltane.
There is a Maypole in the center of the village square, adorned with ribbons in all colours and a wreath of fresh spring flowers. They stroll past a farm, and Ami finds herself face to face with a velvet-nosed calf with a chain of daisies around its neck. The tableau is charming enough that she laughs.
“Maypoles and flowers,” she turns and glances at Zephan. “What other traditions are there for Beltane?”
The mother cow moos and placidly chews her cud, letting Zephan run his elegant fingers over her stubby fur, and he smiles. “Lighting bonfires at night, leaping over them. Dancing in the fields, making love in the forest.” Ami blushes at the last bit, and his smile widens. “Lovers who consummate their relationship in the woods pledge to be together for a year and a day, and if their love remains strong and true after then, they’ll plan for a hand-fasting ceremony over the next summer.”
“Your villagers may not appreciate such a spectacle in this day and age,” Ami says primly.
He laughs and says nothing, and plucks a flower from one of the numerous wreaths decorating the place to tuck in her hair.
~*~
It’s May Eve, and the darkness is broken by bonfires and laughter and music. It seems as though the entire town is gathered in the square, and even the smoke from the bonfires seems fragrant with the scent of flowers. Zephan stands by the doors of the local pub, his slim figure silhouetted by light, his fiddle singing merrily to the beat of clapping hands and cheerful laughter.
Ami watches as several teenaged lads and lasses leap nimbly over the small Beltane fires, and sips at the mug of cider that some smiling village matron had handed her a while ago. She knows no one here, but it’s so jolly, so fresh and hopeful, that it doesn’t seem to matter that she’s a stranger.
A movement at her side causes her to glance over, and she finds herself glancing down at a grizzled man in a wheelchair that is being pushed by the same matron who had handed her the mug of cider. The man’s face is shadowed by the brim of a ragged hat, but his hands tap a rhythm to the fiddle music and Ami can tell that he is smiling. The drooping curls of hair visible underneath the hat are more copper than grey, but it is difficult to tell the fellow’s age.
“Who’s that playing?” he asks no one in particular, his voice hoarse but as liltingly musical as any other Ami has heard in the country.
“Why, I am not sure,” the matron whose hands rest on the wheelchair handles answers. “‘Tis a young lad who arrived today from Belfast, with his lass. He’s a handsome one, to be sure, and a fine, bonny hand with his music.”
“Belfast?” That had the man’s head jerking up, and Ami’s startled eyes meet green ones identical to a pair that she’s stared into countless times. But where Zephan’s are bright and alert, the old man’s are dulled, unfocused. She knows who it is and almost chokes on the last sip of cider.
But she turns to face the man-- Brian Delaney, whose face and body bear the strain of the years and his injuries, but whose head remains high as he sits in his wheelchair. As though he senses her, the man who is Zephan’s father turns his face towards her with a quizzical look.
“Yes, he’s from Belfast,” Ami says quietly, just so the man can hear. “He came back to see you.”
Brian Delaney’s hands clench reflexively, then reach out, groping, and perhaps it is borrowed courage from the drink she’s had. But Ami stoops down in front of him, meets his fingers halfway with her own. Those blind green eyes are still blurry, but brighter now than the bonfires that surround them. Zephan’s father has a more rugged face than his son, but at the moment, it looks as vulnerable and beseeching as Zephan’s ever had. In comfort and reassurance, Ami gives the gnarled fingers a squeeze.
“Who are you, lass?”
“My name is Ami,” comes the quiet answer. “I’m... a friend of his.”
The fingers slowly reach in, testing, tracing over her face as they learn her countenance by touch. Then Brian Delaney smiles, and it’s the same exact grin that crosses Zephan’s face, down to the dimples. “He’ll consider you more than a friend, to be sure. The lass he always sought out and dreamt about as a boy couldn’t be prettier than you.”
Before Ami could do much more than blush at the avuncular compliment, Zephan pauses in his playing, clears his throat. His startled gaze find Ami and his long-lost father in the crowd, and even from a distance, Ami can see his eyes filling. But his voice is almost perfectly steady when he speaks.
“The next song’s less of a playful one, but it fits for a celebration of love. ‘Twas my mother’s favourite, back in the day.”
The bow moves fluidly, exquisitely over the violin strings. By Ami’s side, Zephan’s father quietly sings the words.
”Near Banbridge town, in the County Down
One morning in July
Down a bóithrín green came a sweet cailín
And she smiled as she passed me by...”
~*~
The Star of County Down concludes Zephan’s performance for the night, and as others take his place with tin whistles and bodhran drums, he makes his way through the crowd. His eyes are diffident when he reaches his father’s side, but he sets down his fiddle and crouches in front of the wheelchair with only a second’s hesitation.
“Da,” the single word bridges years of separation. In the wheelchair, Brian Delaney’s sightless eyes blur with tears. He reaches forward again, and Zephan catches the gnarled hands in his youthful ones.
“I’ve been talking to your lass,” his father murmurs, with a faint smile. “She says you’ve made something of yourself, wrote some highbrow program for the computer that’s being used all around the world and performed a concert tour with a world-famous violinist.”
“I did,” Zephan nods, still holding his father’s hands. “I played ‘The Star of County Down’ for that, too. She was kind enough to play along with it, though she performs mostly a classical repertoire.”
Ami remembers the concert in question, when they’d first arrived in Japan after her stint at Oxford. It had been a charity event with Michiru headlining and Zephan accompanying her on the piano through two concertos, then the two of them playing a rollicking duet on their violins. The money from the ticket sales had gone towards new equipment in the pediatrics wing at the hospital where she interned. She’d not known, then, the significance of the last song they’d played together for an encore.
Brian nods, and turns his face in the direction of the revelers. “So, are they still leaping over the flames and whatnot?”
“Aye,” Zephan smiles, and in a soft voice, begins to describe the sights of the festivities for his father.
~*~
May Day itself dawns balmy and glorious, and when Ami wakes, she sees the blossoming branches of trees through her window. Zephan is nowhere to be found, but she still hears the faint, lovely sound of violin music. It is not the folksy tunes of last night, but a lush, elemental threnody as familiar and second-nature to her as the rise and fall of the tides, the symphony of rain and snow.
She follows the music outside, out the back of the village through to the belt of oaks and rowans at the edge of the woods.
“I heard you playing that in Oxford,” she says quietly as she reaches his side. He’s standing at a small clearing, a few stray petals and leaves caught in the curls of his hair as they blow down with the spring breeze. “I’d never thought I’d hear anyone play my song.”
He carefully sets the fiddle down, his eyes greener than the leaves unfurling on the trees around them. “I don’t think I could have, until the time was right. Until it was meant for me to find you again.” A soft smile crosses his lips. “I haven’t thanked you for last night, for being there. You don’t know what it means.”
“You shouldn’t have been alone for that,” Ami says quietly. They’d been together, reunited and happy for the better part of two years now, and sometimes he still looked at her as though he didn’t deserve her or this new chance at happiness. She reaches up and frames his face with her hands, making sure that their gazes are locked, green to blue. “I love you.”
He bends his head, and as the sun rises over the ashes of last night’s fires and the dewy, blooming flowers of Beltane, meets her kiss halfway. His hands trace down her shoulders and arms to link with hers, then he pulls her close, his breath a caress as his lips trace over her temple, her jaw. “It will take more than a thousand years to tell you enough times that I love you, to show you how much I mean it.”
Beautiful, blossoming Spring. Green leaves and morning mist. Music and magic and love. Lighting fires and bathing her face in the dew of flowers. Dancing in the fields and making love in the forests. Ami feels her lips curving upwards in a smile, reaches for his hands again.
“You can start here. Now.”
His lips find hers again, and this time the kiss is hot and frantic. But when he lowers her to the mossy ground, he cradles her as gently as the spring breeze.
~*~
They stay in Newcastle for a week before heading back to Belfast. In that time, Zephan repairs the fractured, long-lost relationship with his father, lets both of them find their closure. On their last night there, Ami finds the two men sitting together at sunset, both nursing cups of too-strong tea. Brian Delaney turns her way at the sound of footsteps, and though there would always be something sad in it, he graces her with a smile.
“Now, when are you going to make an honest man out of me boy?” he inquires as she sits down in between them. He reaches forward with his hand, and it takes him a few moments before his fingers land lightly on hers. There’s a hint of fun in his expression as he leans forward. “Now, the lad’s always been a handsome one, and a charmer, and sure there were a dozen girlies who’d wished for his company as a boy. But he never paid them too much mind. We Irish are a sentimental lot, you know. Once an Irishman falls in love, ‘tis the most important, deepest thing in his life from that moment on. For Zephan, that’d be you.”
Ami ducks her head, her cheeks colouring, and smiles. She recalls the smell of damp earth and the tender green of new grass against her skin. She can almost still feel the silky caress of Zephan’s hair against her shoulders and breasts as he moved over her, whispering promises into her neck. She recalls that first meeting in this life-- the snowfall, the Mercury fountain in Oxford’s great quad, that first overjoyed kiss. Now she glances at him, shares a smile before she turns back to his father.
“In whatever ways that matter the most, I think I’ve already made an honest man out of him,” she says with utmost sincerity.
She’s not just talking about love, but love is the start and finish of it.
~*~
When they get back to the hotel in Belfast, Zephan makes a beeline for the hawthorn tree in the courtyard, and Ami follows him with a puzzled look, still holding her messenger bag under one arm and her purse slung over the other. The blossoms on the branches are in full bloom now, unfurled from the buds they’d been when the two of them had first arrived in Belfast. Zephan carefully inspects the thorny wood underneath the pale petals.
“We should probably put our bags away, go check in,” Ami starts, then stares at Zephan in bewilderment as a wide smile blooms over his face. He tugs something from a branch, sending a flurry of petals falling, and holds it up-- a red hair tie.
“I’d tied this on here, with a secret wish,” he says, and she remembers that day, less than a fortnight ago. He slides the band around his wrist, then steps forward to take her hands in his. “I told myself that if it was still here when we got back, it’d bring me luck. I’d have a chance at getting my wish.” Suddenly, a hint of nerves dance in his eyes, and his Adam’s Apple bobs. “Do you know what the wish was?”
Ami shakes her head, but before she could ask, he is digging something out of his pocket, something small and silver and blue that glinted in the sunlight. The Celtic knotwork on the ring is exquisite, accentuated by a round, brilliant sapphire blue as a calm sea. Ami’s mouth drops open and her heart leaps into her throat.
“A red band tied on the branches of a hawthorn tree is a wish for love,” Zephan says, his voice quiet and even, harmonious as his music. “I’ve found everything that I could wish for, everything that I’ve ever dreamt of, in you. I couldn’t stay in Belfast, but with you by my side, I could return to it, be free of the pain of the past. I’ve searched for you for all of my life, and now that I’ve found you, it’ll take the rest of my days to show you how much you matter to me. We’ve been together in Oxford, and Tokyo, and Belfast. The place isn’t the important thing of it, really. You’re my muse, my better half, my home. Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”
Amazingly, even through the tears that swim into her eyes, she can still see his face with perfect clarity. Dropping her purse and messenger bag on the ground, she holds out her hand for his ring, and then throws her arms around him.
Laughing, he lifts her and spins her in two quick circles before pulling her in for a kiss. Overhead, a light rain begins to fall, soft drops of water trickling merrily as though in celebration through the branches of the trees. The sun continues to shine, however, and when they finally pull apart, she can see a rainbow arching across the sky. “That’s supposed to be good luck too, isn’t it?”
He follows her gaze, then squeezes the hand that wears his ring, smiles with pure happiness. “Aye, it is. But I’ve already found my pot of gold.”