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One of the first things the Mute learns about Diarmuid is that he is curious.
The second thing he learns is that Diarmuid is creative.
And the third—those two things in tandem mean mischief.
During the Mute’s first year at the monastery, back when he was only just learning the language of the monks, Diarmuid showed him a game he had invented as a child called Stones versus Shells. What would have been, in the Mute’s own childhood, a quick matter of smashing the far more delicate shells with the largest rock his grubby little hands could carry, Diarmuid turned into a pursuit of strategy. The rules were surprisingly complex, though the Mute only understood the initial explanation in bits and pieces. Diarmuid said he had spent several days collecting stones and shells of the exact color and size for the different roles they played in the game, and he handled each carefully, so that he could use them again, storing them in small satchels in the hollow of a dead tree where the other monks wouldn’t find the possessions he was not supposed to have.
By the second year, the Mute’s understanding of the language had improved enough for Diarmuid to tell him stories of his childhood at the monastery—the time he ‘accidentally’ shaved a long stripe down the back of Brother Cathal’s head when being taught to tonsure—the time Brother Ciarán finally agreed to play hide and seek with him and they’d both gotten in trouble—all the times Brother Rua chastised him for asking too many meaningless questions. The more stories he told, the more the Mute could see the person Diarmuid was now.
He was devout, that much had always been clear. But troublemaking ran through him as smooth as his blood, it seemed, and the Mute found himself—endeared to it.
Games, however, remained Diarmuid’s favorite way to fill their time together. Sometimes he started a game when they spent their late afternoon breaks in one another’s company, but most of their play happened in the in-between moments—skipping stones while foraging at the beach, thumb wars in the stables, treasure hunts and swordplay with sticks in the woods. Diarmuid had been particularly thrilled with how the Mute could disarm him in only a few moves, but the Mute had been in such a bad mood after their pretend-battle that Diarmuid never suggested it again.
Around the time the third year’s spring came into bloom, their relationship took a new turn—and Diarmuid began inventing new rules for their games.
Treasure hunts came with new rewards—Diarmuid would decide on an item, bird nests or flowers or a certain shape of shell, and the reward was a kiss for each one found. These games were often a team effort, though there were times when the Mute took a step back, allowing Diarmuid to run along the cliffshore, and follow the erratic bare footprints he left in the sand.
Though there were an abundance of shells on the shores of Kilmannán, Diarmuid’s favorite always seemed most populous in the island’s mild summers. Goose barnacles, they were called—small clusters of glittering silver-blue Diarmuid would find on washed-up driftwood, each one outlined by a shock of yellow. He would bring the piece of driftwood to the Mute, who would sit on a rock near the shore and scrape them off into a bucket, or Diarmuid’s eagerly-awaiting hands. Then Diarmuid would count them carefully—and he called them kisses, which never failed to make the Mute huff and turn away, red-faced.
Unlike the other shells they sometimes hunted for, the goose barnacles came in groups of so many that one day Diarmuid said, “It seems a waste to use them all up at once, doesn’t it?”
He stood over the bucket of shells they had just collected, hands on his hips. They were nestled under a cliff edge, just out of sight, should anyone glance down the hill from the monastery. The monks seemed to have given up on trying to teach Diarmuid out of his playfulness, and turned a blind eye to it, so long as all his tasks got done—still, it was never good to appear idle during work hours.
“Let’s divide them up between us”—it seemed Diarmuid had come to a decision—“and trade them slowly. We shouldn’t be gluttons.”
No mention of the vice of lust as he began counting out half the shells—only overindulgence. The Mute had never fully come to understand Diarmuid’s exact thoughts on their relationship—though the younger talked much, it was the one topic he always danced his words around—but he had long since stopped concerning himself with it. Diarmuid seemed happy, as he took the Mute’s hand in his own and poured shimmering shells into his palm—and in this quiet and unsullied place, the Mute found there was little beyond contentment and peace that one needed to concern themselves with.
As soon as Diarmuid had finished sorting the shells, the Mute stood with him, pressed one back into his palm—smaller, softer—watched Diarmuid’s eyes flutter shut, and leaned down into a kiss.
Perhaps it was because of the Mute’s own silence that their relationship was made up of so few words. It was all actions, all moments that felt at once fleeting and suspended in time. Shells began appearing in strange places all around the monastery—perched in the stables where the Mute frequently worked, on Diarmuid’s desk in the scriptorium, scattered along the trail they frequented down to the river. Little reminders, for the days when their respective work kept them apart, and invitations—for when they next met to complete the trade.
Down at the river, the Mute held the eleven shells he had picked up along the path firmly in one hand, unwilling to let them go even as he cupped Diarmuid’s cheek with the other and kissed him over and over—his nose, his forehead, his eyes, his lips, until Diarmuid was a giggling mess. When the Mute finally finished—perhaps he had gone over count—Diarmuid pulled back, smiling so wide he glowed.
Then he opened his palm between them—a single barnacle shell, left earlier that day on the windowsill of the chapel.
Diarmuid dropped the shell into the grass, and the Mute dropped his, and Diarmuid knelt before him with his hands on his shoulders and kissed him, long and slow and gluttonous.
//
In the autumn it was nests.
The Mute had gained a new appreciation for birds since his arrival at the monastery. He left food for them when he could—pieces of bread and unused seeds—and often found himself praying for their abundance and vitality during the assigned time for holy contemplation. And he would try to count their nests, when he had reason to be in the more treelined areas surrounding the monastery.
But, as far as games went, Diarmuid waited for nests until autumn—particularly the time when all the leaves had shed and left stark, bony branches silhouetted against the gray sky, the nests among them like, as Diarmuid described, ink blots.
“I once turned an ink blot into a bird’s nest on a manuscript, in the margins,” he mused—in the woods, walking a few paces ahead of the Mute. “Oh, there’s another one!”
He ran ahead, following his own finger pointed upward, and the Mute let him go, felt the smile traiterously lacing itself along his face. They were ostensibly foraging for hazelnuts, but it was their first chance this year to spot bird nests together, and Diarmuid was overexcited. The Mute left him to it, content to carry the basket himself—Diarmuid was, in any case, doing far more important work.
They were everywhere this year, it seemed, which made the Mute think that perhaps there was a God. Diarmuid seemed absolutely thrilled, twirling through the trees to find them, one after the other. He looked oddly—one with the environment, the deep brown of his robes blending with the earth tones of the fallen leaves as he spun through them, wide-eyed and graceful as a deer.
The Mute stopped and stared, mesmerized.
Then, Diarmuid disappeared with a yelp. There was a violent rustling of upturned leaves as the Mute’s eyes darted wildly, just in time to catch Diarmuid’s sandaled foot go over a well-hidden drop. The Mute’s stomach swooped unpleasantly, and he tossed the basket, ran to the edge where he had seen Diarmuid plummet and dropped to his knees, leaning frantically over the edge.
At the bottom of a shallow dried-up streambed lay Diarmuid, arms thrown out to either side, legs bent against the gentle slope, dried leaves in his curls and stuck to his robe, meeting the Mute’s wild gaze with a bewildered stare. It was almost comical, and the Mute huffed to rid himself of the irrational anger that always followed fear.
“You know,” Diarmuid said after a moment, when the Mute held out a hand, “I’m very embarrassed. I think I’ll just stay here.”
He began scooping up leaves on either side of him, creating cozy-looking piles from the debris that had fallen into the ditch before him. The Mute tilted his head.
He did not always understand why Diarmuid did—well, some of the things he did.
When he was finished building a nest of his own, Diarmuid leaned back, sighed, and gazed up at the sky. Then, after a moment, he pointed. “Another one.”
The Mute looked up, and indeed, a nest was roosted in the highest bough. He watched a bird’s head poke up from it, so dark it looked as though all of it—the bird, the nest, the tree—were the same entity. Another bird swooped down from the sky, and the first bird’s head disappeared, both swallowed by the silhouette.
The Mute considered it for a moment—then went himself over the edge and laid beside Diarmuid in the ditch, in the nest or mess or whatever it was he had made.
“Not so bad, is it?” Diarmuid grinned as the Mute settled in, and the Mute huffed again, this time in mild disbelief at him, at Diarmuid, at his strange little games and how he was lying in a ditch—and perhaps most strange and unbelievable, lying beside the Mute.
Diarmuid shifted, and the leaves crackled as he rested his head on the Mute’s shoulder—rustled as the Mute pushed an arm under and around Diarmuid’s shoulders.
There was a long stretch of silence, long enough for the sharp outline of the trees to start fading into the sky, for the cold to settle around them save where they were pressed together. The Mute drew Diarmuid closer to him, wrapped both arms around him, and Diarmuid rolled until he was propped up on the Mute’s chest.
“I don’t really care for hazelnuts,” he confessed—murmured like it was some important secret, his breath warm against the bare skin of the Mute’s collar. “I counted seven, by the way.”
And it was rare for him, happened only around Diarmuid—but the Mute laughed. It came from deep in his chest, a warm bellow in the cool dusk, and Diarmuid leaned into the sound—then into a kiss that warmed to the core.
//
Winter was a time for different games—for snow sculptures and art, for throwing rocks at icicles until they snapped, for provoking Brother Rua and then gleefully fleeing the onslaught of hastily, angrily-packed snowballs. It was also a time for different kinds of work—the Mute spent much of his days clearing snow from the walkways and the overhangs, making sure the fireplaces in various buildings stayed lit.
There was not much to search for in winter, though there was plenty of fun to be had—fun Diarmuid found easily. And though the season brought with it a feeling of emptiness he couldn’t explain, one that weighed him down, anchored him to mindless labor and quiet moments by firesides and sleep—though the Mute could hardly keep up with all the games and mischief and excitement, he never turned down Diarmuid’s invitations.
And sweet Diarmuid, with his boundless energy, was still quick to understand that the Mute was not one for snow frolicking, that his overwhelming, inexplicable urge was to slow down.
In the winter, pine cone kisses became a crisp and familiar scent in the Mute’s cabin. Diarmuid would spend precious time carefully crafting hanging displays of pine cones, holly, and fir branches—and since Diarmuid was not permitted decorations in his cell, the Mute, not being held to the same standards, curated a space for them in his own. He affixed the bouquets to the ceiling, his door, his bedframe, and they would linger here together, sometimes late into the night, Diarmuid curled up in the Mute’s lap by the fireplace, the Mute’s arms wrapped around him, strong and secure—the Mute couldn’t do much but he could do this, could be a foundation—enveloped in the aroma of the winter forest and each other.
//
“Have you woken up now?” Diarmuid asked, when spring circled back again.
He had—the winter tiredness melted away with the snow, as it always did. He quirked a smile at the question nonetheless, and when he nodded Diarmuid smiled back and kissed him.
There was still a chill lingering in this valley north of the monastery, the farthest they dare go. Even so, the color of the grass had returned like the flush on the Mute’s face as he kissed Diarmuid back—tiny early-spring blossoms bursting from the earth, light birdsong in the air. The Mute was to the valley as Diarmuid was to spring, one breathing life back into the other.
A warm breeze rippled through the grass and Diarmuid pressed forward, parting his lips for the Mute’s own, humming when the Mute’s hands met his waist and closed the last sliver of distance between them.
It had been a while since a moment like this, since they had been permitted so much time alone. The Mute’s grip tightened when Diarmuid’s tongue traced the curve of his bottom lip, and a deep, wanting sigh escaped him.
For a moment Diarmuid pushed forward, hands tangled in the Mute’s hair, tilting his head back to allow the Mute to take control completely—then he drew back, slipped a few paces out of the Mute’s grasp.
“Race you to the other end of the valley?” he asked. The Mute stared, breath heavy. Diarmuid laughed. “I bet you can’t catch me this time—I’ve been practicing.”
He started to move back, quickening his pace, eyes glittering with springtime impishness and never leaving the Mute’s. “Five second head start!” he called, and then turned around and took off through the field.
It would take more than that for Diarmuid to win, they both knew—but he was already laughing, flying through the crocus and the primrose and the sweet violet, already caught up in another game.
And the Mute played along.
//