Free The Pig Comes to Dinner by Joseph Caldwell

itself from who and what they have become—and stays here, in this place, within these walls, through these fields and pastures, searching for what will make them complete for all time to come. Some task has been left undone. It agitates their souls. It harries their spirits. They are beyond time, where everything that ever was is now and everything that is to come is now as well. It is one moment—and it is forever without change. But sometimes they return to the world of time, where change is still possible. And it is within time that they will fulfill themselves. They will complete their task. And the moment for it is yet to be revealed. And maybe they are here—shown to us alone—to ask our help.” She turned toward Kieran. He was holding the harp again and had just raised his right hand as if to strum his fingers across the nonexistent strings. “They’re here,” Kitty whispered.
    She turned again to the loom. There were the threads not seen before—coarse and brown—worked through the machine. Spread out before her was a cloth, heavy and woven of the same brown thread. She raised her hands away from the loom and took her feet from the treadle. She heard, in the instant, the sound of the harp, touched more it seemed by a soft breeze than the thick fingers of Kieran Sweeney. Metal strings, brass it seemed, were strung in place. Kieran was gripping the harp more tightly, afraid he might let it fall. Both Kieran and Kitty had their mouths slightly open, their breaths held. First Kitty turned toward the stone steps where they opened onto the landing. Then Kieran shifted his gaze to follow hers.
    There, just to the left of the stair, stood Brid and Taddy, he slightly forward, she staying closer to the stones behind her. They were bewildered as always, but now it was as if they knew even less the reason they were there or what path would lead them away to a place of peace.
    Taddy’s hair, light brown, fell to just above his broad, straight shoulders. His body tapered down to the waist. His hands were hard and calloused, but the long fingers still retained a delicacy that could only come from the practice of a great tenderness. But it was his brown, almost black, eyes that defined him as a being most present.
    It was as if they were being given more than a single vision, forced to see not only this room and the objects and the people in it, but also some other place, some other time altogether, and they grieved the loss of one, and were perplexed by the sight of the other. Taddy’s mouth, small but well formed, was open more in quiet surprise than in preparation for speech. He took a half step backward, so his arm could touch Brid’s, and let the side of his mud-caked foot touch what would have been the soft flesh of Brid’s right heel.
    Brid, too, was filled with wonderment—and sorrow, too— but seemed more frightened than surprised. Her black hair and blue eyes—a blue deep enough to be the purple long allowed only to royalty or to the gods—were in contrast to her pale skin, a color too suggestive of fresh cream to be considered pallid. Her lips were red and moist as if she’d been eating berries picked from the hedges along the castle road. She was slender, and the erect hold of her head and the steady gaze of her eyes, sorrowful as they were, let it be known that there was no weakness in her. The homespun of her dress fell close to her body, forming itself over the small breasts, the compact thighs, and the calfs that narrowed to the trim ankles showing below the hem. She shifted her left foot so it covered the toes of Taddy’s right foot. Both their necks were circled with the raw burn of their hangings.
    The earth-brown threads in the loom and the cloth now vanished. Kitty stood and moved away from the treadle. Kieran set down the harp. The strings dissolved even as a few last vibrations of his single strumming still lingered in the air. As