Chapter 3
Even the sky seemed to mock Caitlin, the sun arcing across the heavens like a golden ball tossed by an angel's hand. The buttery rays set velvet-green hills aglow and gilded the petals of flowers. Wing feathers flashed blue and red, black and silver, as birds soared against a perfect sky.
She wanted to close her eyes against the beauty of it, clutch her grief tight to her breast. She wanted to concentrate on loathing this surly stranger who had dragged her away from everyone she loved.
But as Niall guided the stallion deeper into the world she had never seen, Caitlin's nature turned traitor.
Eyes that should be straining to see behind her, memorizing all that she was leaving behind, were drawn forward to red deer leaping in graceful arcs and clusters of blossoms clinging precariously to tiny cracks in the rocks that strewed the ground.
In the lush countryside, tiny landholdings were tucked about rare as gems. Thatch roofs gleamed in the distance, figures the size of a little girl's poppet tending cattle that seemed small enough for Caitlin to hold in the palm of her hand.
All her life, the abbess had spun stories for her about the world beyond the abbey's walls, but never had Caitlin imagined how it would feel to have the wind in her face, every glen, every hill, every blossom unexpected, new.
Colors so vivid they made her chest ache, a sweep of limitless possibilities it would take a lifetime to discover. Freedom...
Guilt made her struggle to resist the pull of her own curiosity.
How could she be so unfeeling? Was her love so shallow?
Reverend Mother would still be grieving, would she not?
Locked away with her sorrow in the tiny cell that was her world.
Yet, what had the abbess said just as Niall was about to spur away from the abbey?
Open your arms to the world... to joy. That has always been your greatest strength.
That was what Reverend Mother had placed her faith in. Caitlin's resilience. A resilience far more important than any lingering resentment she felt toward the man whose arms held her upon the horse's back.
She closed her eyes, intrigued by a sound that seemed to roll toward her from the distance, a strange, haunting rhythm she had never heard before. God's voice, low? Echoing the abbess's words?
Opening her eyes, she strained to see in the direction of the sound, realizing that it had not been her imagination.
The haunting music swelled, more insistent.
In the throes of her temper hours earlier, she had vowed she would swallow her own tongue before she would speak another word to the oaf who was her guardian, but suddenly she was stunned to hear her own voice raised against the wind.
"What is that?"
"What?" He started in the saddle, as if the loaf of bread the sisters had packed in a sack for him had suddenly gained the power of speech.
"That sound—like thunder, but not."
"It is the sea. It lies over that rise."
"The sea," she echoed, remembering how many times her fingers had traced the curve of a shell, as if to unravel the sea's mysteries. "I never guessed it could sing."
Dark brows lowered over piercing green eyes. "If there was a storm coming, I would wager you would not like its song."
There was enough scorn in the words to prick at her temper, as if he were questioning her courage. Her chin jutted up, stubborn. "I love storms."
He gave a grunt of disbelief.
"When I was a child, I would run out into the rain, watch the sky split, and listen to the heavens roar. It was glorious."
"You were mad."
Caitlin could not stop the tiniest smile from curving one corner of her mouth. "Nay, I was full of wondering, and I wanted to see it all. Be part of it somehow."
"You must have led the abbess a merry chase. What penance did she assign you for such a grievous sin? Hours of prayer until your knees were raw?"
The memory stirred a sweet, soft pain in her heart. "I think her only regret was that she could not come out and join me." The loss of that gift, someone to share with—joy and sadness, fear and discovery—suddenly seemed vast indeed. Loneliness tightened Caitlin's throat.
Was it possible the great brute of a man sensed the subtle shift within her? Or was he oblivious to the emotions warring in her breast? "The sky is clear this day, Caitlin of the Lilies. I fear I cannot summon you a storm."
She clung to those words, trying to shake free of the melancholy places in her heart too private to allow anyone, especially this enigmatic stranger, to probe. She groped for something to distract them both.
"Tell me, is your chieftain's fortress near the sea?"
"The fortress is inland. He is for too canny to build close enough to the waters for the raiders to sail in and take all he owns. If an enemy has to cross the land, there is time to raise the alarm, gather an army for defense."
Caitlin caught her lip against a wave of disappointment. "Then I suppose I will never see it. The sea. Can you tell me what it is like?"
He gave a growl of impatience. "It is wet."
Caitlin grimaced. She had been a fool to ask him. He was nothing like the abbess, who brushed color into her stories, poetry in the pictures she painted in someone else's head. Better just to imagine the sea herself.
Falling silent she delved into the tales she had heard—Jonah in the belly of the whale but, more delicious still, the lore of the fierce Celtic sea god, Manannán mac Lir, riding Enbharr, his wave-maned horse, across his mighty domain.
She was all but lost in her imaginings when suddenly the horse broke through a copse of trees. She cried out as the earth fell away before its great hooves. Niall reined the beast to a halt just before they all three plunged over what seemed the edge of a cliff.
Caitlin gasped, turning toward him to clutch at his arms. "Are you crazed?" she snapped at Niall. "There is no path here!"
"Only a fool would follow one into the sea."
"The—the sea?" She peered up into his face, still saw impatience, the hardness of a warrior, his expression inscrutable. Then she turned her eyes out to a sight that stole her breath away. Never had she seen such impossible beauty, even in her own imagination.
Giant black stones descended from the lip of green turf in a steep giant's stairway twice as high as the abbey walls.
At the curving base of rock, waves danced, sunshine casting glittering diamonds across a surface the mystical blue of mermaids' hair.
Foam swirled, as if bits of clouds had been woven in their tresses.
It stretched out forever, blue and green and white and wonderful.
A tiny sound tore from Caitlin's throat.
"The horse has a stone caught in its hoof." Niall sounded almost defensive. "You might as well wander about while I dig it out. It will keep you from being underfoot."
He was still speaking, but she was too excited to hear. She slid down the horse's sweaty side, stumbling for an instant, her limbs exhausted from riding, but the aches fled, banished by sea spray and sunshine.
She heard Niall's growled warnings, but nothing could have stopped her. She hastened to the edge, where the layer of turf gave way to a tangle of giant stones that formed a pathway to water so beautiful she had to touch it.
She caught the folds of her leine high above her knees and scrabbled down the stones, heedless of the scraping of rock against her tender skin. The music was calling her, the crash of waves as they impaled themselves on the stones.
She wanted to reach the lowest rock, to let the spray break over her. Wanted to feel the power of the sea, as she had the storm so long ago.
She climbed downward, breathed deep of salt air, marveled at the graceful flight of gulls. Green lace shirred the stones here and there, seaweed, picked at by tiny birds she had never seen.
She laughed aloud as the first sprinkling of sea spray dampened her cheeks, remembering tales of silkies, seals that left the water on magical nights, taking human form to find mortal lovers.
It had sounded so wonderful, so romantic, when she was a child, yet now she wondered how any creature, enchanted or human, could leave a realm as beautiful as the one that danced just beyond her reach.
It all seemed so perfect, so enchanting, as she neared the lowest stone that she did not expect its surface to turn treacherous.
Her foot skidded out from under her, the waves grabbing at the hem of her leine with stunningly strong fingers.
She felt herself tumbling, sliding, her hands scrabbling for purchase on the rocks, failing to find it.
Plummeting into the cold water, she felt an instant of astonishing weightlessness. Her leine billowed out in linen wings, but suddenly the sea's mysterious beauty betrayed her.
Stones battered at her kicking legs, waves slamming against her, filling her nose, her mouth. The music of the sea turned dark, the water closing her ears to anything but the roar that filled her head.
But just as the current was about to suck her under for the last time, a violent rush of bubbles tumbled about her, something large swooping toward her as she struggled against the choking waves.
A hard hand knotted in her hair, strong fingers clutching at her waist, flinging her upward.
Her ribs cracked hard against the rock, driving out what little breath she had left, but this time, when she breathed in, her lungs filled with blessed air that burned deep.
Niall hauled himself onto the flat surface, where they both lay, gasping.
She gazed at him through a wild tangle of wet hair, his own face gleaming with sea water, mighty, all-powerful, like Manannán mac Lir come to life.
A rock had gashed the muscles of his leg, a trickle of blood vivid red against the hair-dusted skin.
"Y-you hurt yourself," she choked out.
"You all but got yourself killed!" he accused, fighting to catch his own breath. "What the were you doing?"