The Isles of the Blest by Morgan Llywelyn

Author:Morgan Llywelyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller
Published: 1988-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Eight

CONNLA’S ONLY SENSATION was one of extreme cold as the blade of the sword severed his neck. His brain, being in his head, did not record the pumping of blood from the frenzied heart as the body emptied itself. His eyes went on seeing for a while, however, and noted the world spinning wildly around him as his head tumbled to the ground, rolled, and at last came to a stop in a tangle of grass.

Very close to the end of Connla’s nose an ant paused on its journey up a blade of grass and looked at the newcomer to its territory.

Having nothing else to do, Connla looked back at it.

“Are you going to step on me?” the ant inquired. It had a suprisingly deep voice for such a tiny creature.

“I am not,” Connla assured it. “I have no feet.”

The ant swiveled its round little head on its thread of a neck. “So. You have no body, either.”

“I have not.”

“So.” The ant considered this. “If I had no body, only a head, I would be dead. Are you dead?”

Connla considered this. In the Isles of the Blest, he had seen men with severed limbs recover to laugh and live. But could a decapitated man do so as well? Having lost one’s head seemed horribly permanent, even in a world of magic.

“I cannot say if I am dead or not,” he told the ant at last.

“Do you feel any pain? Any hunger?” asked the deep-voiced insect.

“None.”

“Can you go away from this place if you like?”

“I doubt it.”

“So.” The ant fell silent again.

“But my mind keeps on thinking,” Connla offered hopefully. “As long as I am thinking, I must be alive.”

The ant pondered this. “There are many who never think, yet are considered to be alive,” it said.

“Then what is ‘being alive’?”

Coming down its grass blade, the ant ventured closer to Connla’s face. It found a perch for itself on the very end of his nose, which tickled, but Connla had no fingers with which to scratch and it seemed impolite to mention his slight discomfort to his new—and perhaps last—friend. Having someone keep him company while he waited to be dead had become very important to him.

“Being alive,” said the ant, “means being part of something and taking part in something. I am part of an ant colony, and I take part in the support of the colony. You—” and here the creature waved a feeler disapprovingly at what remained of Connla—”are not even part of a whole person.”

“Surely there is more to being alive than that.”

“Perhaps,” the ant agreed. “There are others in my colony who recognize my smell, and if I did not return, they would have a small memory of me for a while. That may be a form of being alive. Are there those who would remember you?”

Connla’s lips were becoming very dry, but he managed a smile. “Blathine!”

“One of the Sidhe, is it? Well, I would not count on the memory of one of the fairy folk for much,” the ant warned him.

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