Chapter Text
The child does not cry. Daeghun is unsure if this is a mercy or not; he wakes time and time again through those first few nights, straining his ears for the slightest murmur from the timeworn crib at his bedside. And every time, there’s not so much as a peep from Esmerelle’s child. Every time he is forced to crawl from his narrow bed, to check on the unnervingly silent creature.
He changes the child’s soiled clothing, carries it to a nearby house at regular intervals for feeding – the young mother there had lost both her children in her flight through the Mere, and had tearfully offered her services as wetnurse. When she offers to take the baby on a more permanent basis, Daeghun declines before he can think better of it.
Why had he turned the offer aside so thoughtlessly? Surely she could do better than his pitiful efforts. Anyone could. Daeghun just wants to sleep, to sleep and not to dream… Or if he must dream, to dream of Shayla. She would have known what to do with this strange, motionless husk of a baby. She would have known how to coax sound from the silent child, as she had always managed to tease words from behind his own icy reserve.
Much of West Harbour burned in the raid. Like many others, Daeghun and the child are housed in a small partition in the village hall. There are other babies, who cry often, along with their older siblings and often their parents. Neither Daeghun, nor his ward, shed a tear.
The child is silent, and Daeghun is slowly freezing inside.
He spends his days clearing out what remains of the house he had once lived in with Shayla. Before the raid, the cottage had stood at the edge of the village, two stories tall with carved lintels and whitewashed walls. It was customary among Shayla’s people for a house to be built during the courting period, so that the newlyweds could settle in after the ceremony. He had made a point of constructing several bedrooms in the first house, as a way of wordlessly reassuring his beloved that they would have the children she’d so longed for. But there had been no children, not then. Not until Esmerelle had returned from her travels, her thin frame already showing signs of the life she’d brought back with her.
He has no desire to labour in reproducing the house he had been so proud to build for his wife – Daeghun will be content with a simple cabin, square framed, as barren and lifeless as he feels now. It will suffice.
He works with Esmerelle’s child swaddled on his back. He can feel the tiny chest rising and falling with each breath and the relief is almost powerful enough to distract him from his grief. At least this way he can tell it’s still alive back there, despite its stubborn silence.
Galen turns up towards the end of that long, grey winter. He has clearly heard the news of West Harbour’s fall and comes with wagons laden with lumber and nails, with tools to replace those lost to the fire and the marsh, with seeds, and cloth, and crockery. A small herd of livestock is driven before the carts by hired men. He comes with almost everything they need to rebuild and takes payment in promises.
Esmerelle’s boy is still quiet – he unnerves the wetnurse to the point of hysteria. Thankfully the child is just old enough to be weaned. Daeghun barters the last of Shayla’s jewellery, found in the rubble of their ruined home, and buys a milk goat. The young mother leaves with the caravan, twisting her fingers into a protective sign as she scuttles past them to take a seat in one of the wagons.
The cabin is fully built by the end of spring. Daeghun tries not to take note of which pieces of timber were salvaged from the house he has come to think of as Shayla’s alone, and which he bought from Galen with promises of fur next fall. He is not entirely successful. He installs the child in its crib, makes his bed with blankets that still smell ever so faintly of smoke and unpacks what little he’d held onto through the long winter.
He lines Shayla’s spellbooks up along the shelf he built for them. He will not open them again. He can’t stand the bitter surge of emotion he feels at the sight of her spidery writing sprawling across the pages.
And then there is nothing left to do. The quiet spreads out into every corner of the cabin, like fog rising off the Mere. Daeghun sits in the single chair by the cold hearth and is alone.
In its crib, the child is silent.
Galen had handed him a carved cat when he came for the goat. “For the little one!” he’d explained with forced cheer. “Esmerelle’s boy! What’s the little fella’s name?”
He’d peered at the child bundled at Daeghun’s back, obviously thinking about pinching the infant’s smooth cheek and then just as obviously deciding not to. The child stared back at him with huge dark eyes.
“He doesn’t have a name,” Daeghun told him. “Not yet.”
Esmerelle had spoken little of her baby in the weeks leading up to the birth. She’d said nothing of the father. She didn’t mention where she’d been, or what had driven her to come back. She made no explanation of the scars on her hands and face, the shadows that lingered beneath the fall of her hair.
When the child was born, she’d reached out from the bloody bed, cradled her son close and stared into his eyes. Shayla bustled around the room, laying out clothes for the swaddling, pouring hot water into a basin to wash away the blood. “What will you name him?” she asked, tired but elated by the prospect of finally, finally having a child in the house.
Esmerelle didn’t reply for a long moment, occupied in gently stroking her fingers across her son’s face. Shayla handed her a dampened cloth, smiling down at her friend.
“His name?” she prompted softly.
Esmerelle lips curled in a slow grin. There was something strange in it, triumph almost, touched with a deep anger. “His name, Shayla? I don’t know yet. His father’s people… They don’t name new babies – they wait a year, to see if the child prospers. To see what it’ll become. I think… Yes, that’d be better.”
It was rare enough to hear Esmerelle speak of her lover, even in such an oblique manner, that Shayla let the moment pass. No matter how strange it seemed to leave a child nameless for so long, she was relieved that her friend might finally be ready to tell them what had happened in the years she’d been away.
“He must take after his father,” she said instead, gently brushing her fingertips against the boy’s dark hair. It was remarkably thick for a newborn, even still wet with blood from the birth. Certainly the colour was a gift from the father – darkened with sweat, Esmerelle’s curls were still copper against the pillows.
“We’ll see,” Esmerelle said, and that was the end of it.
Esmerelle's child would never bear whatever name his mother might have chosen for him. Two months later, she bleeds out over his crib as West Harbour burns. Ten months after that, Daeghun carries him out to the edge of the Mere, and as midnight passes, one day bleeding into the next, he dips the child’s feet into the still water.
“Your name is Drystan Farlong,” he says, voice thick with a grief he will never, never speak of again.
The boy - his son - stares up at him with hungry dark eyes, chubby fingers locked around a much chewed toy cat, and smiles. He croons, then, low and sweet.