The Elf Widow

Wildflowers

David stared at the word Aubrey had typed on the screen then squeezed his eyes shut. The young woman was so habitually sunny he'd lost sight of the fact she was a widow. The need to race ahead of that inexorable wave of grief was what drove her baking and cleaning and sewing—even her cheerful singing and flower arranging. If she didn't busy herself, she'd drown.

David gripped the edge of the desk. He knew exactly how Aubrey felt.

One minute Kate was excitedly telling him Just one more half hour of coding and I promise I'll come to bed, and the next he was he was hearing a crash in the next room as she collapsed atop her keyboard in a diabetic coma. If Aubrey's grief was mixed with half as much guilt as his was, he shouldn't believe a single smile on her face.

He cocked his ear toward the kitchen. He should say something to her. But before he could make up his mind what, he heard the backdoor open. As her hurried into the kitchen, he saw the door shutting. He opened it a brief moment later, but Aubrey was already down the driveway, across the road and heading up the hill on the other side. He thought to call out. Instead, he began running after her.

As he sprinted along, David had the oddest sensation. He could see her walking slowly, lost in thought, yet no matter how hard he pushed himself, he never closed the distance. He had just left the macadam for the gravel and mud on the other side when she crested the ridge.

David stumbled. As he picked himself up, he thought of going back for his car and finding whatever twisting dirt sidetrack left the main road for the isolated cottage that had to be sitting on the other side of the rocky, brambly valley to which Aubrey was heading. Then he heard a sharp, brief wail.

David froze. Within a heartbeat, the keening became a melody. The sound was not of someone in danger—more like an old lament.

David was an expert in six different computer languages, but he knew less Gaelic than his youngest niece who had picked up phrases watching children's television. Learn to speak like a seventeenth-century highlander? He'd never seen the point.

Though he couldn't understand a single word, the meaning of Aubrey's song was clear.

Strangely exhausted, David struggled up the last few steps. He paused at the top, scanning the shadows beneath him. The morning sun hadn't reached the horizon yet, and the rugged valley was obscured with pockets of mist. At last, his eyes found Aubrey, standing on a mossy patch.

At least, the woman's hair was the color of Aubrey's, but the shoulder-length waves of the evening before couldn't have grown back into a billowing red mane in barely a night. And where were her modern slacks and pullover? The woman down in the valley was wrapped in strips of pale green gossamer as shimmery as dew.

Yet he knew the singer's voice.

Aubrey Wisheart, David whispered.

He stood motionless through verse after verse until at last, a low refrain segued from minor to major and lifted into a final verse that sounded like longing and hope. Then she Aubrey swept out her arms as if she were an orchestra conductor and the gnarled old trees and thorn bushes around her were musicians.

David gasped. As if at Aubrey's direction, the drab greens and dull browns of the valley around her transformed. Swathes of purple vetch and thrift competed with yellow gorse, cowslip and marigolds. Pink blossoms now dotted the now vibrantly green bramble bushes. Patches of bluebells completed the rainbow before him.

Slowly, Aubrey surveyed her work until her gaze fastened on him. For a moment they stared at each other. Then David blacked out.

***