Dúleigheasóra

"I told him, I told him to leave it and wait for our boy to come back from market!"

Ailill Dearbháil fussed at her husband, at that moment stretched out on my kitchen table and looking decidedly unwell. She'd been right to tell him to wait to finish reaping the barley; the gash in his shin where the scythe blade had sunk was deep, and were it not for the moss she'd jammed in there in a fit of quick-thinking, he'd have bled out before they would have made it to me. As soon as they'd arrived, I'd swept everything off the table and called Órlaith to help me haul him up onto it, before sending her running for Young Flannán.

You didn't need to have been me to have known Old Flann was in trouble. His pale face was slicked with sweat, and he could barely keep his eyes open, glassy and unseeing as they were from the pain. Being me did help with knowing they were coming; from the moment they passed my gate, I could smell the stink of death soaking into the moss plugging the hole in his leg. I glanced up at Ailill, who had hold of her husband's hand in a vice grip, as if she could give him the will to keep his blood in him just through the strength of her hand alone.

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