September 18, 2008

To Loves New and Old
By Kara Larson

They were spending the summer before Bryn's last year of work at Aberdeen and before Kyle took up the mantle of veterinarian down in Aberdeen. Erlend was happier than anything to have the boys home again, especially since even the Peedie lass had flown the nest. Just starting university, all of his pups had left, meaning it was almost time for his own flight.

The boys laughed and ate and drank their way through the summer, enjoying this last bit of 'freedom' before they entered the full adult world. As midsummer approached, though, the last thing Erlend expected was the find his son's boyfriend standing on the front stoop of the old cottage, Bryn himself nowhere in sight.

"You know you can just come in, lad," Erlend said reproachfully, holding the door open for Kyle.

Kyle peered at him from under that still overly-long light-brown fringe. "I know, sir, but this is different," he said as he walked in the door, as if he hadn't barged through that very door hundreds of times already in the past month.

The lad held up a bottle that Erlend recognized as whiskey distilled just across the island in Kirkwall. Erlend took it gingerly, wondering if the lad knew what he was offering. "Eighteen year old single malt whiskey. This is some of their finest, aye?"

Kyle nodded, suddenly looking nervous.

And then Erlend realized what the young lad from the Highlands was trying to do.

He put a hand on Kyle's arm, peering at the man he'd come to regard as his third son, one who had not only saved his eldest from the wiles of a waterhorse, but who'd risked life and limb against the Wild Hunt as well. "Is this the speirin night then, Kyle?" he asked slowly, leading Kyle to the kitchen table at the back of the cottage.

That shaggy head of brown hair nodded. "I'd like to ask for Bryn's hand," Kyle said formally, offering up the bottle of whiskey as if it were a bride price.

Erlend poured two shot glasses of the whiskey, handing one to Kyle and taking a long, slow sip from the other. He rolled the smoky-peat flavor over his tongue before swallowing. "Even though it won't be recognized here? I know we have civil rights now, but the marriage rights…"

Kyle grinned. "Have to go to California for that." It was hard to remember that the boy was not even twenty-six yet. Had he been that young when he sat Kirsten's father down in the same manner and asked for her own hand?

Erlend exhaled deeply. "So you're willing to go through the steps anyway, then?"

His answer was a feverish nod. "The booking night, the feet washing, the drinking sea water thing and eating the kissing food…"

"Orcadian wedding traditions do tend to go a bit overboard, eh, lad?" Erlend said with a laugh. He clapped his future son-in-law on the back. "Bryn's mum loved every one of them. We were the first wedding in a generation to carry the full tradition."

Kyle's blue eyes brightened. While Bryn had always been the stolid, stoic one of the family, he'd obviously found his mother's kindred spirit in Kyle.

"And I'm going to guess that you'll do as many as you can," Erlend continued, still smiling. "Well, lad, we might as well get started."

***

While they couldn't go to the local church and register their intentions, Kyle and Bryn diligently filled out their Civil Registration Act forms. They filed with the district registrar and picked the date for their ceremony. A friend of theirs from uni, the lad Kyle called "Horsemaster" was going to perform the ceremony. As the binding ceremony itself had no effect on the physical signing of the registration documents, Kyle and Bryn chose a lonely cliff overlooking the sea for it. Erlend had tried hard not to choke at that, knowing that there would be at least one member of the 'overseas' part of the family who would be grateful he could watch, if not attend. Though Ronan was no blood relation to the three children, Erlend knew that his partner loved them as his own, all complications of a selkie nature aside.

In days gone by, before the destruction of the Odin Stone out in Stenness' fields, the couple would have passed their hands through the hole in the stone and proclaimed the eternity of their love. Now, it was enough that his son and partner could proclaim this and have it legally recognized by the governing body of the country.

Two days before the ceremony itself, Kyle and Bryn undertook the 'fit-washin,' where both allowed their feet to be blessed and scrubbed within an inch of their lives by Erlend's mum. His mum's now once-strong hands blessed the feet before dunking both sets in the water, tears in her brown eyes. The words were in an Orcadian dialect so old that no one quite knew what they meant anymore, but Erlend knew that this wasn't the only blessing of the waters the pair would receive.

As the moon rose that night, Kyle and Bryn were led back to the beach and sat again with their feet in a bucket of water, this time carefully mixed sea with well water. The fit-washin' had been a more boisterous ceremony, but this time, even the Peedie lass was quiet. The rising moon bathed their faces in a pale light, as if granting its own blessing. Looking out over the waves, Erlend could just make out the shape of a seal, watching from the waves. At least that part of the family was able to watch this magic spectacle as well.

Once they were properly bathed in moonlight, the water was taken and saved for Bryn and Kyle to wash their hair in the following night. No one quite knew the significance of the bathing in the waters anymore, but Erlend couldn't help but feel it was appropriate, if only because of the very connection the Kirkness clan had to the sea. While they had pulled in their fishing nets generations before, Erlend knew he wasn't the first to catch and love a selkie, nor would he be the last.

Seven years, it had been, since his love went back to the sea. Seven years of the occasional visit, the moonlit tryst when neither of them could deny their longing anymore. "Soon," Erlend called out softly to the seal waiting for him in the waves. "Soon enough, love." Bryn wasn't the only one waiting for his wedding day.

***

Bryn and Kyle came in the next noon for lunch, dripping what looked like treacle and wet feathers all over the back steps. Erlend could only laugh. "They still do the blackening, then?" Tradition was that the groom's geudman--best man--would capture the groom before the wedding, treacle and feather him, and parade him through town on the back of a lorry. Having been called away on a bovine emergency, he hadn't heard the ruckus as it probably paraded from Kirkwall to Stromness and back again.

"Kiernan is dead to me," Bryn muttered, shaking tarred-and-feathered hair out of his face. "Then the blasted whalp dumped us in the harbor."

"And they skrecked the whole way," a gleeful voice countered from behind them. "Just like peedie weans."

Bryn lunged behind him, as if to throttle his brother. Luckily, Kyle stepped in. "Easy, Bryn," Kyle said, distracting Bryn with what looked like a hearty kiss.

Kiernan rolled his eyes. "Almost as bad as you and Ro--" His son stopped, then smiled a wavering smile that reminded Erlend of the small boy his son had once been. "As bad as you and Ronan, eh, Da?"

"Speaking of the kissing," Erlend said, waving the lads toward the hose. "After you clean up, we have the kissing maet."

Kyle scowled. "We really have to eat limpets boiled in milk?" He shuddered as Bryn turned the cold hose on him.

Bryn shrugged, hosing himself off. "You wanted to do this by tradition," he reminded his partner with a patience that Erlend recognized as his own.

"But you must kiss before and after," Peedie reminded them, coming out of the kitchen and carrying two bowls of steaming limpets. She looked more and more like her mother every day, though the toss of her long blond hair was something that was pure Ronan. "If you don't mind slug-breath."

"And that was one kiss down," Kiernan added, dancing out of the way of Bryn's swipe. "Eat up!"

Kyle made a face, but complied. "Not bad," he said around a mouthful of limpets. "Kinda rubbery. Needs garlic."

"Like escargots," Bryn added. "They take on the flavor of whatever you cook them in."

When the bowls were empty, Bryn nudged them toward each other, staying carefully out of reach of the treacle and feathers that still dripped off. "Now seal it with a kiss."

The two happily obliged.

***

Erlend never thought he'd make the wedding walk alone. Kiernan and Peedie danced ahead with the other attendants, marching off toward the cliffside where John would perform the ceremony. It was a simple hand-fasting ceremony Kyle had found in one of his books. The joy that he felt helped to counteract the sorrow, since the last time he'd made this walk, he'd done it arm-in-arm with Kirsten's maid of honor, and later, Kirsten herself as they walked back to the cottage for the wedding feast.

They gathered at the cliff overlooking Skara Brae and the sea. It was fitting that a sea-haar had gathered, clinging to the cliff in a low fog. Kirsten had been buried in a similar sea-haar, and it was almost as if her spirit was watching over the day.

Bryn and Kyle gathered at before the circle of family and friends, standing before John with their hands clasped together. John carefully tied six braided cords around their right wrists, binding them together.

"We call on the spirits of Orkney, of the water and earth and air," John said slowly, his somber voice rolling out across the landscape. "We call on the ancestors of Scotland and Norway, of the people who tied themselves to this land a thousand generations ago." His eyes met Erlend's. "We call upon the guardians of the water, the givers of life."

John's voice carried on, naming gods and goddesses and ancestral spirits whose names resonated in Erlend's bones. Then, he turned to the couple and said, "What do you ask these spirits that watch over you and bless you?"

Bryn's voice shook as he responded. "We ask them to bind us, two as one, to bless us in sickness and health, to watch us and guide us for better or worse."

Erlend almost expected--had hoped--for the slim, cool hand that slipped into his, and the flash of pale blond hair that whipped in the wind beside him.

"We swear our troth to each other," Kyle said, taking over. "We pledge our love in its eternity, as long as we both live and ever after."

"Through--" Bryn's voice stopped, as if he'd just noticed the figure that stood beside Erlend. "Through life and love, passion and pain, we'll face it together," his son finished in a soft voice.

"Thank you," Erlend whispered to Ronan, burying his face in that silky blond hair as John pronounced the lads husband and husband.

Ronan quirked that slight smile of his, brown eyes glowing with pride and sorrow. "He's my boy," his lover said softly. "And I can't--" Ronan's body shook for a moment, his face pinched up as he struggled to control whatever emotion wracked him "It's the least I could do."

Erlend couldn't help laughing a little. "At least you found clothes this time. He's probably grateful for that most of all."

***

The wedding feast back at the cottage reminded Erlend of another, nearly thirty years before. It seemed as if half of Mainland was there, and Kyle's contingent from the Highlands besides. The fields around the cottage rang with Scottish accents and guffaws.

When Erlend and Ronan went looking for the young couple later, Erlend wasn't surprised to find them on the back steps, tucked away from the ruckus. "It's time for the drinking of the cog," he said gently, holding out his hand to his son and son-in-law.

Bryn looked up at him, seven years of pain in those brown eyes. "I--"

Ronan took Bryn's face between his pale hands, kissing his forehead gently. "Because I love you, and it's what I owe you, rotten stepfather that I am."

Bryn shook his dark head almost furiously. "Never rotten," he protested. Then, a small smile twitched at his lips. "Melodramatic, maybe."

A long hug, and Bryn seemed ready to face the rest of the day.

"You'll go soon?" Kyle asked softly as they walked to where the cogs and the vats of wedding punch waited.

Erlend shrugged. "Not while he still needs me."

Kyle smiled slightly. "He has me now," was all Erlend's new son-in-law said before running to catch up with Ronan and Bryn.

"Cheers!" John shouted, filling up the first wooden drinking cup and passing it to Erlend. Erlend took a swallow before passing it sun-wise. Another cog made its way into Bryn's hands. Apparently, that made Bryn the bride.

"Cheers to the new couple, and their life together!" Kiernan called out, once the cup reached him.

Now Kyle took the cup, raising it in Erlend's direction. "To love," he said, his voice full of emotion. "New and old. Long may it last, never may it stop."

An arm around Ronan, Erlend just looked out at the gathering of friends and family and smiled.

***

Today's clue: It's all about Kara.