The Knight of Slaughtaverty

Nightmares

Slaughtaverty, 1745

"Dáire! Noooooooooo! Dáire!"

The little boy's screams rip Merry Doyle's sleep to shreds, and she sits up in bed with a frightened gasp. The first thing she notices is that she doesn't smell the sheep or the ashes of the dead fire in the kitchen hearth. Nobody is snoring in the darkness, and it wasn't a kick to her ribs that woke her.

Her sleep-blurred eyes try to help her make sense of her surroundings as her confusion grows. When she recognizes the beautiful chest of drawers and the flower-splashed drapes, her body registers the softness of her nightgown and the warmth of her bedding. She finally remembers that she's in the pretty room that became hers a few weeks ago. 

Merry is living a long nightmare where joy, fear, and horror are constantly fighting to be the champion of her heart.

Right now, hearing the boy scream again, his voice breaking on a sob of terror and grief, it is sorrow that wins the war and takes ownership of her heart. She hurries from her bed, running barefoot, her long red hair streaming behind her, from her room to reach her little brother.

She knew it was a bad idea for him to try and sleep alone in his own room, but he insisted in a rare moment of bravado, showing the spark he used to have. The spark she thought had been entirely extinguished by the terrible ordeal he'd survived, nearly destroying his mind.

Ignoring the cold, she crosses the corridor to storm into her brother's room opposite hers. She can see him in the corner of his bed. He is just a tiny lump of material and hair, wedging his back into the seam of the two walls bordering his bed at the head and one side. He has his knees drawn tightly to his chest and is crying harsh, gasping sobs.

As it does every time she sees her brother like this, Merry's heart breaks for the little boy, and she runs across the carpet. Scrambling over the bed to reach him, she draws him into her arms, cradling him to her heart.

"Shhh," she hisses soothingly. "Shhh, my baby."

Recognizing his sister's scent and her thin arms hugging him closely, Uilliam buries himself in her embrace, where he cries for the friends he'd seen bleeding to death and getting chopped to pieces to be fed to pigs. Now and then, his cries turn into screams as the memories assault his young mind, and it becomes too much for him to endure.

Merry rocks him slowly, and as she'd done many nights through his six years of life, she sings him the old lullaby her grandmother used to sing to her when she was little and afraid... mostly of her father when he was drunk, as usual, or when she missed her mother.

"Sleep, oh babe, for the red bee hums the silent twilight's fall, and aoibheall from the grey rock comes to wrap the world in thrall." Merry's gentle voice trills sweetly, driving the darkness back, and Uilliam's anguished screams die down little by little. "A leanbhan oh, my child, my joy, my love, my heart's desire, the crickets sing you a lullaby beside the dying fire."

As she sings, she listens to him weep for Dáire, the adorable little blond boy he always had fun with in the fields. He cries for the other boys who died in the living nightmare he'd survived. He cries for Sam, who survived and even for Timmy, though he never used to like Timmy.

The wounds covering her brother's body have all healed nicely; aside from being too thin, his body has never been healthier. Unfortunately, the scars in his mind and heart are not as easy to mend.