The ghost of Lann, the old chieftain’s son, spoke flatly:

“When first I saw the child, I thought they were dead. Although, now that I think on it, perhaps I was right in my first thinking.”

He did not look around as he spoke, a spirit eternally frozen in the form of a young man. His husband, grown older, stared longingly at his incorporeal form.

“Spindle had strung them up in the cave,” Lann was continuing, his voice dispassionate. Surprisingly, Mage Spindle did not interrupt, until everyone realised that Spideog had stuffed a handful of ivy leaves in the druid’s mouth. “Driven iron through the child’s hands and feet. Beaten them with something, wooden rods, I reckoned. The skin was all bruises and blood.”

Listening to this all without any comprehension, Sou Yuet found that the necromancer was watching them from the corner of his eye. The monk squeezed his shoulder.

“Everyone gathered when Spindle called. He said all our suffering was at an end. All we had to do was give our hurts to the child, whole-heartedly. I left. I tried to kill myself. I was not successful.”

The other ghosts watched silently, indifferently. Although they could not understand the words being spoken, Sou Yuet observed the emotionless faces of the ghosts.

“They’ve been gone from the living for too long, Yuet,” the necromancer said wearily. He shivered, and his form morphed, feminising. “Why now… Emotions are mortal things.”

“But they can be revived, I think.”

The necromancer pressed her cheek against Sou Yuet’s hand.

“But the rest of ye, now,” said Macnia lazily, “ye so generously gave yer troubles to that little child, didn’t ye?”

“Aye.” The ghosts nodded, without guilt, without remorse, without joy.

Macnia turned his dangerous grin on the villagers. “Ye heard all that, people of Aiteann?”

Where the ghosts stood still, stone-faced, their living relatives, like twisted reflections, wept. Some took hesitant steps towards the spirits, others hid their faces or gnawed their fingers.

“People of Aiteann, your relatives are dead.” Lady Goirmin Serraigh’s voice was forceful. The ghosts flickered.

“I can’t hold them much longer here.” The necromancer grimaced, sweat and blood seeping across her skin. Sou Yuet could feel her shaking more and more.

“What if he’s just making them say whatever he… she… it wants?” a voice shouted from the crowd. “It’s controlling them!”

Before anyone could respond, out of the crowd of people, Muir Halfhand shakily walked to stand before the shadow of his former husband. Lann’s dead eyes were indifferent, but Muir leaned in to whisper in the ghost’s ear.

After a moment, the spirit murmured something back, and a flicker of something, a smile, perhaps, crossed his face. Then the ghost, and all the others around it, began to fade, until it was hard to tell what was spirit and what was mist, and then they were gone all together.

Muir turned to the necromancer, now only standing by virtue of Sou Yuet holding her up.

“It really was him. Thank ye.”

“So, Druid Spindle,” Macnia drawled, “what do ye have to say for yerself?”

Spideog pulled the leaves out of Spindle’s mouth with a look of distaste. He did not meet Sou Yuet’s nor the necromancer’s eyes. The death-witch slumped over, her breath ragged at Sou Yuet’s neck. The monk shifted position, wrapping an arm around her waist.

“So... the experiment needs… modification,” Mage Spindle said weakly.

“THAT'S IT?” the necromancer roared, and when she lifted their head, she no longer had bright green eyes, but glowing milky orbs that made every mortal stumble back hurriedly. “IS THAT ALL YE HAVE TO SAY FOR YERSELF, SPINDLE?”

The tall mage looked very, very small. He quailed, shifting his staff to the crook of his elbow and seizing handfuls of ivy leaves. “Stay... Stay back...”

“Stop being a fool, Spindle,” Elder Hawthorn said at last. Her tone and expression were grim, but triumph flashed in her eyes. “Ye're done. Let them take ye, quiet-like.”

“I won't... I won't...”

“Can we go home then?” Sou Yuet asked. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand most of what’s being said.”

“Nearly, Yuet. This bedamned druid is being thick.”

Sou Yuet looked thoughtfully at the quivering mage and his handfuls of greenery. A wind began to rise, circling the mage and tugging the leaves from his hands

“Air is a function of Wood,” Sou Yuet said, as though they were teaching the junior disciples back at Yuen Mei Temple, and the ivy leaves sprouted vines that wrapped around Spindle's ankle as he tried to grab them back. He quickly changed tack and put his hand to his staff, but it burst from his grasp, a fully-grown tree sprouting from within. The rough-barked, multi-trunked form sent the mage sprawling. In moments, a spindle tree stood in the centre of Aiteann Court.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Mage Coll stared at it in wide-eyed wonder as tiny, greenish flowers blossomed across the canopy. “Are ye one of the aes sidhe too? How can a human perform such a feat?”

Spindle was hoisted gently off the ground until his fingertips just brushed the grass, as the ivy wound its way around the limbs of the new tree.

Sou Yuet blinked until the green glow in their eyes faded. “So now what?”

“What’re yer thoughts, Lady?” Macnia asked of Lady Goirmin Serraigh.

Her eyes flickered over the grinning man. She stood, the gold at her neck glinting. “I’ve seen that there is much evidence to support yer claims of the harm that befell the accused, as a child.

“Still…” The Lady steeled herself. “If we are to follow the laws of this land, a price must be paid. Harm cannot be repaid with harm, or there will be no end.”

“That harm was brought by Mage Spindle,” Elder Hawthorn said. “The price should be extracted from him.”

“And for taking their kin from them,” Spideog added, “the life-price must be paid to those villagers who are left behind. By the perpetrator, or by their family if they cannot.”

“I want nothing,” Muir Halfhand said. “I have been given what I need.”

“These are our laws too,” Macnia agreed. He looked entirely too excited. “Are we agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Agreed.”

“Agreed.”

The other mages nodded meekly, avoiding the sharp eyes of Elder Hawthorn.

“Wait.” The necromancer raised her head again to look at the villagers, the relatives of those who had died when the death-witch, a child flayed inside and out, brought a terrible retribution upon them. She shifted again, back into male form, as though his body, damaged, was seeking a comfortable shape. There was a little pity on his face, but those gleaming white eyes betrayed little emotion. “I have no belongings. I cannot give ye compensation for those lives ye've lost.

“My family can't be giving ye compensation either. Sidhe gifts were not meant for mortals.”

Macnia scowled, clearly disappointed.

“Wait.” Sou Yuet slipped their hand into the necromancer's strong, rough fingers. They turned to Rigani as they did. The necromancer shifted again, this time into that indeterminate form that they rarely wore, neither male nor female.

“I... I don't know what the customs are here, but... in my homeland...” Sou Yuet looked back and forth between mother and child with unusual nervousness. “I mean, we're not wearing red, and I... When we m… marry, we give gifts and bow to the parents...”

Rigani clapped her hands together in sheer delight, her large, white-less eyes filling with tears. “Oh! Darling, there's no need!”

Sou Yuet's hand was a little cold and shaky in the necromancer's. The shaking stilled as the death-witch tightened their grip. “I’m sorry. Hold on, you can rest soon…”

Rigani rushed forward eagerly. “D'ye have a knife? Give me yer hands.”

Sou Yuet produced the dagger they had brought from Yuan Mei, that they had once used to slash open the throat of a creature driven mad with pain.

Rigani efficiently made a tiny slit on the monk's right palm and the necromancer's left.

“Put yer hands together, palms facing.”

With Sou Yuet holding the necromancer up (Could she afford to lose any more blood?), they joined hands, fingers interlacing, and Rigani pressed her forehead to them, speaking fluidly in Adhmaid the whole time. A faint golden glow warmed their hands.

“I'll tell ye what it all means later,” the necromancer said, “but it looks like we're stuck with each other now.”

“That sounds nice,” said Sou Yuet.

Rigani stepped back and burst into happy tears. The aes sidhe roared cheerfully, excited conversations about a feast breaking out.

Sunny snuffled her way up to the pair anxiously, gumming at their clasped hands as she tried to clean away the blood. The pair sank to the ground.

“Isn't this grand?” Rigani wept. “I hope there'll be plenty of little ones running around soon!”

“Maybe not,” Sou Yuet murmured to the necromancer. “After all, there are plenty of children at the Yuen Mei Temple.”

“It'll be enough trouble looking after that lot.”

With a laugh, Sou Yuet squeezed the necromancer’s hand. “Well, I'm your family now. Let me do this for you.”

The necromancer felt a tingle in their palm where it pressed against the monk's. A power that felt both utterly foreign and intensely familiar played across their skin, and Sou Yuet's eyes once more lit with a pale green glow. Their mouth moved soundlessly, and all at once, green light rushed across the ground from where they stood.

Ivy vines burst up around the village, winding through the old gorse bushes. Here and there, elder trees and bilberry bushes sprouted.

Sou Yuet clenched their free fist. The gorse bushes crumbled into sharp dust.

“Ye're giving them more than they're deserving of, little monk.” Macnia pushed Spindle gently, watching as the captured mage swung back and forth. He continued to casually move the druid back and forth as he looked to Spideog. “So ye’re the rat that’s been chasing me cousin for scraps.”

The bhard turned red and then white, but after stammering for a few moments, he rallied. “Now… Now I was only seeking justice, Lord.”

“Like that time in the river?” Sou Yuet asked innocently.

“What time in the river?” Macnia asked with great interest.

“That-!”

“Go flirt somewhere else. Let me die in peace,” the necromancer grumbled. Macnia held out a gallant hand to Spideog, and before he knew what he was about, the bhard found he had taken it. He was hauled off immediately.

The monk and the necromancer sat together, still hand in hand, watching the aes sidhe and the sphynx and Sunny gathered in the pale spring dusk. The villagers watched on with awe and fear, although they could not seem to help edging closer and closer, as though the immortal beings were like a fire where they could warm themselves.

A few drops of blood ran down their joined fingers and silently fell to the grass below. The monk sighed, deeply.

“Ye alright?”

“I wish Si fu was here,” Sou Yuet whispered.

The necromancer gathered the monk in an embrace. Sou Yuet pressed their face to that broad chest, heedless of blood and sweat.

“Ye'll see him soon, Yuet.”

*

There was a party. Of course there was. Those humans brave, or foolish, enough to accept a fairy’s invitation, danced on the lush grass not far from Rigani’s cabin. A huge fire burned, embers leaping into the night. All of Spideog’s misadventures were being coaxed out of him by Macnia and alcohol.

Alone in Rigani's cabin as the party continued into the darkness, Sou Yuet and the necromancer lay folded in each other’s embrace. The latter was wrapped in poultices and bandages and had been forced to drink a staggering variety of healing potions, but now, in the dark peace of the house, the death-witch translated the vows in a low murmur into Sou Yuet's ear.

“Ye have chosen each other now,

One heart between yer hands,

Crowned with a blessing.

Together walk in the light and dark,

And even through life and death,

As a wolf in the forest,

As the moon in the night sky.

May ye know no reason for these hands to be alone.

May ye know no reason for these hearts to be lonely.”