Chapter XXVIII
CHAPTER XXVIII
AISLING
A flash of Roktan blue, Aisling swept outside the tavern after nightfall.
Her cloak billowed behind her as she blazed a path through Bludhaven, head down and hood up. It was difficult for Aisling to remain indoors for long periods of time, especially when inside a mortal hospice. One where wisterias didn’t drip from the ceilings, thorns didn’t bite the banisters nor trace the walls. Where moss didn’t hug the decanter and magpies didn’t draw her a bath, filled with blossom butters and rose petals.
Not to mention, inside her Abhaile quarters, Aisling was left alone with her thoughts. Visions of the Lady, of Danu, of Fionn. Each and all pursuing her, nipping at her heels as she clawed for an answer to what she was. Who she was. Answers she feared she’d never find.
Aisling pushed through the crowds, shoved by those in as much of a hurry. Druids, seemingly afraid of the moon and its luminous aura. As though its pale light was poisonous to the touch, bewitched should they not find refuge before the moon sat atop its miraculous throne.
A shop billowing with incense and traced with windchimes, lanterns, and bundles of herbs, caught Aisling’s attention. She approached it cautiously, avoiding the crush of villagers as she slowed her gait.
A woman emerged from the warm light of the shop’s interior. She was perhaps a decade Aisling’s senior, vibrant despite the wintertide and painted in fae runes. She tossed a blonde braid over her shoulder, crossing her arms over her woolen dress.
“Come inside, stranger,” she said, pushing aside the garlands of herbs to better see Aisling. “By the light in your eyes, I can tell you’re looking for something. Or someone.”
Instinctively, Aisling pulled her hood closer, shrouding her features in shadow, forgetting for a moment she was still glamoured by Lir.
“I’m just passing through.”
“Even so, you might find something of interest inside my shop. The choice is yours.”
Aisling chewed on the inside of her cheek, considering. She had nowhere else to go and she’d draw suspicion wandering around Bludhaven’s streets alone. So, Aisling nodded her head, stepping inside the woman’s shop.
The shop’s interior was a mess of mortar and pestles filled with crushed sugar leaves, dried pine branches, bottles of smoking incense, parchments and books, jewelry made of precious stones and bones, and a table strewn with white rocks etched with symbols in Rún.
“I saw you enter Bludhaven with the Roktan prince,” the woman said, following Aisling with her pale eyes. “Are you also a Faerak ?”
Aisling shook her head, wandering further into the shop.
“A princess perhaps? From one of the southern or eastern continents? The west?”
Aisling said nothing but the silence spoke loudly enough.
The woman’s expression brightened with curiosity, stalking a few paces behind Aisling.
“Not a princess either then. We don’t often have visitors in Bludhaven. Especially those who accompany princes and Faeraks this far north.”
Aisling did her best to ignore the woman, brushing her fingers over the open tomes and studying the illustrations more closely.
Charms for forgetting , was written on one page.
Potions for love, incantations for dreams, songs for opening, and touch for memory, on the following pages.
“Those are spell books,” the druid woman said, stepping beside Aisling.
“Can druids cast spells?” Aisling asked, genuinely curious. As far as Aisling was told, she was the only mortal, in either this realm or the next, known to harness and summon the draiocht .
“No, although some enjoy believing they can,” the woman said, studying Aisling more closely. It occurred to Aisling then that perhaps her questions were common knowledge amongst mortals. Her ignorance piquing the shopkeeper’s interest. Throughout her childhood, Aisling was both sheltered behind iron walls and unaware of the duplicity of the world. Of the gray that blurred whatever Aisling once believed was black and white.
“Druids harness a certain… inspiration from the natural world. A connectivity with the bark of a tree, the undercurrent of a river, the layers of a mountain, the shape of ice. Nothing in comparison to the Sidhe themselves but impressive by mortal standards nonetheless.”
“Then why the spell books?” Aisling asked.
“Some druids believe, with enough time, study, and strength of mind, a druid bears the potential to master such spells and even cast them at will.”
“Yet even the fair folk do not cast spells,” Aisling added. “They breathe through their magic.”
“You know quite a bit about the Sidhe,” the lady said, narrowing her eyes. Aisling smiled half-heartedly, eager to change the subject.
“And what of the runes on the table?” Aisling asked. The woman turned on her heel, so Aisling took the opportunity and ripped whatever page the tome was already opened at.
Touch for memory.
Aisling crumpled and pocketed the page, starting for the threshold even as the woman still spoke, distracted by the runes spread across the table.
Aisling slipped out the door and rushed across the thoroughfare, glancing over her shoulder to ensure the woman wasn’t following her trail, turning in time to collide with another.
Aisling staggered back, quickly regaining her balance. Cursing her luck when she met eyes with the Sidhe king.
Lir tilted his head back, watching her. An amused smile played across his lips, quickly fading the moment he acknowledged the Roktan blue cloak she wore. Shadows taking root.
“Were you following me?” Aisling asked, face twisting in anger. She knew Lir wouldn’t let her escape so easily but if he believed her compliance was anything more than self-serving, he was wrong. Aisling could flee any time she liked; she rather found her chances of reaching Lofgren’s Rise more quickly higher if accompanied by a group of legendary Aos Sí. Ignoring the ache-like pain in her heart each time she was reminded Lir was real and no dream, no vision, no fireside tale alive in the periphery of one’s imagination.
“You collided with me, ellwyn . I have more reason to believe you were following me.”
Aisling snorted, “I’m in no mood for your games.” She shoved past him, continuing down the thoroughfare.
“Wait,” he called after her. “I have something to show you.”
“At this hour?” Bludhaven’s doors were slamming shut, locking, and bolting on the other side. The torrent of villagers passing by, eager to settle before the hearth for the night.
“Is there a better one?” he asked.
Aisling shook her head, searching for an excuse but finding none. The thought of returning to Abhaile and being alone with her thoughts sickening. While the prospect of following Lir was far more seductive than aimlessly wandering Bludhaven’s alleys.
Aisling dipped her chin, a silent agreement she forced herself to make, immediately regretting it the moment Lir brightened triumphantly, already gesturing for her to follow behind him.
Lir slipped through Bludhaven like a leaf in the wind, winding through cottage, apothecary, and smithy, Aisling shortly behind.
At last, they broke through the smoking city-town and wandered into a garden still protected by the village walls.
It was dismal. Naked, sickly trees drooping over carpets of dead flowers and pale fungi. The leaves that remained had all turned gray or brown, brittle and ashen. Lost to the kiss of wintertide.
Lir wandered through regardless till he reached the center where they grew cloaked by the twisted, rotting branches. Surrounded by statues of life-size stags and wolves chasing one another through the ruin.
“What is this place?” Aisling asked. For although it felt like a graveyard of everything green, it still chuckled with magic. The stars fell from their kingdom of black, tangling through Aisling’s hair, and scraped her cheeks with their jagged edges. Real or not, Aisling wasn’t certain until Lir brushed a star from his shoulder.
“Is this a dream?” Aisling asked.
“If it were, would you kiss me again?” Lir asked, circling her like a wolf padding around its prey.
“No,” Aisling said, swallowing.
“Why not?”
“A kiss is prayer, dark lord. Faith-filled, spoken on one’s knees and in the dead of night. Not a weapon to be wielded nor a currency for your ambition.”
Fionn’s kiss tore through her memory, making a hypocrite of Aisling. Yet the kiss she’d traded for an advantage in Oighir didn’t feel as sacred as whatever she shared with Lir. Didn’t feel as consequential, as cosmically important.
Lir tilted his head to the side, eyes glowing with the reflective sheen of beasts in the wood.
“Another reason we should share one tonight.”
Aisling frowned, turning when he caught her wrist and gently pulled her back. He bent down and kissed her cheek, tasting her blood where the stars scratched her skin. Aisling froze, their proximity, his touch, burning a fire in her abdomen.
Lir’s eyes flashed a headier shade of evergreen and the garden transformed. His magic given new breath with their kiss; for each time their lips met, both Aisling and Lir grew more powerful whether it be the kiss they shared when Aisling fled from Dagfin and Peitho’s union yielding the forest Lir summoned, their kiss in Fionn’s arena aiding Lir’s victory, or his kiss now, giving new life to the garden in which they stood. Every touch, every intimate glance, inspiring their draiocht . A kiss paid to the draiocht in exchange for Lir’s power.
The trees straightened, exhaling and blooming leaves like chips of emerald. Lush and radiant, they grew enormous, rising toward the night sky and bubbling over with red bulbs. Garlands of scarlet ripe apples, plump and polished. Crowding around the statues of stags and wolves until everything was lost to the sheer growth of the garden. The canopies eclipsing the moon and cloaking their underbelly in darkness. A graveyard brought back from the dead.
“Are you trying to impress me?” Aisling’s eyes, wide and sparkling, drank in the sight of Lir’s magic, half-worried it might vanish before she could memorize it. Pop like a soap bubble, never to be experienced again.
“Did it work?” he asked, stepping toward the nearest tree.
Aisling said not a word, but she didn’t have to. Her expression spoke for itself and so she damned it. Lir beamed, dimples tracing the edges of his brilliant grin.
“Follow me,” he said. He climbed up the tree, reaching down to help Aisling. She took his hand, a step behind as they navigated into the heart of the apple tree. Brambles of berries bubbling from the branches and making dense their path.
At last, they emerged where the tree’s limbs spread like the hand of a giant. Its palm facing the black sky, fingers splayed. But the leaves and the apples protected them both like a secret, obscuring them from the voyeuristic stars above. A cradle of apples, of branches braided and woven, and the light that spilled between the tree’s limbs.
Lir reclined atop the heaps of fruit; his fingers stained in berry juice from their climb. Aisling inspected her own hands, red too with their influence.
“You must be starving,” Lir said, his voice the sound of a twilight gale. “Had I known mortal foods no longer slaked you, I’d have provided something for you sooner.”
Aisling laughed beneath her breath. “You’d grow trees simply to abate my hunger?” She gestured to the garden around them.
“I’d do anything you asked of me.”
Lir plucked an apple from the piles in which they lay.
He took a bite, offering Aisling a taste next.
Aisling, when amongst the fae, found herself insatiable. She could devour cauldrons-full, if only for one more bite. Perhaps the remaining morsel of her mortal life, gasping for air.
Aisling indulged in the apple. Sickly sweet and scarlet, it shimmered, replenishing every bite the moment after she’d swallowed. The apple whole and seemingly untouched, time and time again.
Startled, Aisling gasped, dropping the apple. It rolled through the nest of branches, through the garlands, smashing onto an antler from the stag statue below.
Lir laughed, the sound of it setting flocks of silver-eyed ravens aflight in Aisling’s stomach.
“Sidhe apples are endless, capable of feeding entire kingdoms. Lest they be mortal kingdoms. A human could sit below this tree for a lifetime, gorging themselves on a rubycrisp yet never satisfied. And after decades, the tree would collect their bones, a single apple still clutched in skeletal hands, untouched. The legend of Connla is only one example of this.”
Aisling reached for another, watching again and again as the magic perfected the supple edge of the apple.
Lir drew a knife from his belt, peeling another plucked apple idly.
“How is such draiocht harnessed? Or is it simply born?” Aisling asked, her interaction with the druid in her shop still alive and burning in her memory alongside the torn spell paper in her pocket.
Lir thought for a moment, running his fingers through his hair.
“Enchanted objects or places are designs of the gods. Usually, areas where the Forge first spilled into the universe and its power grows most potent and ancient. But enchanting an object or a place that otherwise bore no special magic, is also possible. Though these spells are more complex.”
“Have you always known how to conjure such spells?” Aisling asked. By now, Aisling was familiar with how Lir bred magic on a whim. Sorcery, second nature to the Sidhe king who was half-spell himself.
“No,” he said. “To breathe through the draiocht is one thing. A matter of emotion and forming a connection with your draiocht . To construct, build, create, or even manipulate through the draiocht , is far more complex and almost always learned. The first to do so was Niamh. A Sidhe queen to the west where rain perpetually falls. It’s said, her sword, gifted by the gods, could cast spells upon wielding it: Sarwen, the mortal reaper .”
Aisling’s brows pinched.
“Why did they call it the ‘mortal reaper’?”
Lir smiled despite himself. “Niamh wielded Sarwen to destroy entire fleets of mortals.”
Silence brewed between them. Aisling’s heart surging at the tale of Niamh and her enchanted blade. But not with loathing as she would’ve anticipated. With satisfaction. As though this Sidhe queen had corrected a wrong Aisling wished she could correct herself.
“Can you teach me?” Aisling asked and Lir considered her. “To cast spells,” she clarified. Aisling held her breath, half anticipating him to decline. To warn her of its dangers, of its complexities, of its consequences.
Instead, Lir tossed her an apple.
“Close your eyes,” he said and so Aisling did, plunging into the dark. “How familiar are you with your draiocht ?” he asked.
“It’s most often shrouded in shadow,” Aisling said. “Huddled in the abyss inside. Its eyes just bright enough to peer back.”
“Over time, it will live freely inside you, no longer cooped deep below. But it’s feral, wild, and seeking to either be dominated or dominant. It will learn from you which role it prefers.”
Aisling’s draiocht stirred, waking from its slumber and blinking. Ancient bones clicking as it yawned and straightened.
“Try giving it a specific task. One not fueled by emotion but purpose.”
“Everything I’ve ever asked manifests in fire.”
“Aye, for whatever reason the Forge decided, that’s your nature: flame. Your essence. But with enough mastery, you can bend the draiocht to perform outside your impulses. Like you did with our dreams unknowing.”
Heat crept up the nape of Aisling’s neck, but she ignored it, focusing on the draiocht instead.
Come alive , she ordered it, imagining the apple floating in her palm, moving of its own accord. The draiocht grimaced at the details of its task, the newfound discipline she asked of it, and snarled.
“Don’t stop,” Lir said, as though sensing her draiocht ’s temper.
Aisling ordered it again, constructing the complexities of the spell in her mind for the draiocht to follow. It snapped its jaws like a hound objecting to the guidance of its master.
“It’s testing its boundaries. Seeing how far it can push you,” Lir said, his voice closer than it’d been before.
Aisling tried again and the draiocht snapped once more, a breath from clamping its jaws around her throat. She flinched, resisting the temptation to open her eyes and break her concentration.
“Dominate it, Aisling.”
Come alive ! she shouted at the draiocht . It roared, thrashing, and lunged for her. Lir, quicker than Aisling could anticipate, grabbed her hand, his draiocht strengthening her as she swelled with heat and shoved the beast back with her mind. The creature flailed, hissing as it squirmed back into its cavernous abyss inside Aisling.
“Open your eyes,” Lir whispered, his breath grazing her cheeks.
Aisling did as he said, meeting Lir’s eyes directly before her own. Closer than he’d been before she’d begun the lesson. Her chest hitched, almost oblivious to the apple still in her hands. Unmoving.
Aisling’s spirits fell.
“It didn’t work.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Lir tipped his head to his right where a blur of white flashed in Aisling’s periphery. The stag and wolf statues, frozen and chasing one another beneath the apple trees, now raced through the air, winding through the branches and their garlands. Enchanted and bewitched. By Aisling.
Aisling exhaled, her lungs suddenly filled with laughter as she traced the statues’ every movement while they frolicked. Yet Lir’s eyes were fixed on Aisling, searching her expression for what, Aisling knew not. His breath intermingling with her own. The world buzzing, heating, a strange thump sounding in the air as though his heartbeat were the boom of a distant drum calling her to a ring of fire.
“Return with me to Annwyn and I’ll show you everything. Teach you everything. The wonders of which will put the witchery of a fae apple and statues to shame. Spells limited only by the imagination, pools of moonlight, gardens that sing, mares as pale as gypsum and crowned with a single, resplendent horn.”
Aisling couldn’t help but grin, refusing to undermine the fantasy Lir spun with reality. Just for breath. Returning to Annwyn…Aisling frowned, stopping the thought from progressing. The backs of her eyes pricked with heat at the thought of never setting eyes on his kingdom again. And yet, how could she? Her future was tangled by both her own ends and those of others. Lir, Dagfin, her clann.
“You ask such things of me like it’s simple,” she said.
“It is.”
“No, it’s surrender.”
Lir’s expression grew hard, his jaw sharp.
“The mortals demanded you surrender. The Sidhe will ask you to withstand . Something you’re uniquely capable of, Aisling. Why the Forge has fated you queen.”
Aisling’s heart fluttered but the feeling was swiftly interrupted.
The temple’s bell-tower rang, tearing both she and Lir apart. From where they sat in the trees, it was deafening, rattling the garden till every one of Lir’s flowers, roots, and garlands recoiled from the vibration.
Swiftly, the fae king moved, looking out and over Bludhaven through the thicket.
Aisling pushed aside branches, catching a glimpse as well.
A shadow skulked across the drawbridge, the sparkling black river, and through the gates.