"Have you heard the news?"

 

"Woman, gossip has no place at this table. If you wish to behave like a common fool take yourself to the tavern with the rest of them."

"You haven’t heard!"

"You are the one who is not hearing me. Erik, you look like you have seen a ghost. Take your mother back out into the garden and let her spill her nonsense to the roses."

"Father, please listen!"

"Now the boy is invested in your idle gossip! Well, speak quickly so we can move on with our evening in peace."

"It’s to do with the missing lovers! Those two teens who ran away together only a week ago!"

"Them again? Let me guess; they have returned wed but contrite for running off together. And she is with child to boot and now their good family names are soiled."

"They have found them in the tombs!"

"Say what now?"

"Eric found them!"
 

"It is true, father! Some of the lads and I were out for a stroll and Mudstick dared me to go inside the old crypt at the edge of the woods. Foolish, I know, but was I to look like a coward? No. I am a man. So I took a stick from the ground and used it to beat the spiderwebs back. Those fat widows make my skin crawl, as you very well know! And the tombs are deep, the floors solid clay so my footsteps echoed even though I tiptoed into the antechamber light as a newborn fawn. I didn’t have a lantern or even a torch, and the light was thin through the narrow slats leading into the hall where the coffins are kept. Connor dared me to go all the way to the end of the hall, and touch the furthest coffin from the door, so even though my heart was like a rabbit in my chest, and my hands were sweatier than a cold glass of milk on a hot summer’s day, I persisted."

"Can you get to the point?"

"Hush, Dear!"

" I wandered through that crumbling grave like a ghost, the only sounds the boys laughing outside the front gate and my breath. It is queer, to be the only thing alive in such a dark place, and I almost turned around, but I knew it was better to be afraid and successful than a laughingstock, so I pushed forward until there was almost no light, only shadows clinging to the walls like cobwebs, and I had to squint to make out the open coffin and beyond it, the wall Mudstick told me to touch. But why was it open? I was confused, so I leaned over the edge and saw not one but two bodies inside, and when I recognized them as Maeve and Liam I gasped and Maeve opened her eyes and they were red, Father, red as Hellfire! I realized my feet were sticking to the floor and I screamed and screamed like a little girl and pulled my feet loose. I ran to the tavern and now the rest of the village is at the crypt to figure out if I made it all up, but of course I did not and I can still see Maeve’s eyes now, and her gaze burns and calls to me and I worry I shall never be free of that crypt or those eyes now that I’ve ventured down into that dark place."