Chapter 17
CIARA
Somehow, we get through the rest of the day. I grab a book, head into the kitchen, and watch as The Morrígan falls asleep on my couch. She doesn’t seem very goddess-like when she sleeps.
She snores.
I’m tempted to record it so I can play it back to her later; I get the impression that my Red would deny any such accusation, but instead, I wash the blood off my hands, make a cup of tea and just watch her.
I don’t know if all that she said about me becoming Pack is true, about me being on some kind of magic high, but when I look at her I can see something about her, some kind of haze and that glints when I move my head and try to see it from different angles.
I’ve accepted everything with reckless abandon, I know, but the thing is that when you think that your life is over, everything that comes after feels magical anyway. And when I saw Robert across the road yesterday, I knew that my life was over. He was either going to kill me, or drag me back to a life where I’d live doll-like in the box he made for me.
So now I’m here and I can believe that magic is real.
The haze shifts slightly and almost darkens.
Red is dreaming.
It’s not a good dream, if the color of the surrounding haze is anything to go by. It darkens to a cloudy gray and she winces, her face distorting, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know whether she’d want me to wake her, want me to see her vulnerable.
“Red?”
She doesn’t hear me, and instead shifts uncomfortably on the couch. That makes my mind up for me. High or no high, I can’t have her hurting herself.
I slide onto the couch and put my arm about her.
She sits bolt upright and stares at me, eyes unseeing, and I get the impression that I might have unleashed something very bad indeed.
The words that hiss from her mouth sound nothing like her. “It was a good kill…” I try to move backwards, but her hands reach out and catch my wrists.
I’m not feeling any happy high now. This is not good. It’s fucking scary.
I wrest control of my arms back and then slap her across the face.
The sound cracks through the atmosphere, and she recoils. “Ciara?”
I’m panting, my heart racing, and when she reaches out to me I push her hands away. “Stop.”
She stops instantly, doesn’t move, doesn’t try to touch me, nothing.
I get my breathing under control and try to speak. “You were… A dream… Bad dream I think… Gray haze… But when you spoke… It wasn’t you.”
She frowns then, and I see a silent internal battle break out. After a minute, Red sighs and it seems as if her entire body almost collapses in on itself. “That was Nemain.”
“Nemain?”
Red nods. “I am a triple goddess, and that means that I carry three other goddesses within me—I’m as much a vessel for them as I am for my own magic—Badb, Macha and Nemain.”
I cast my mind back to school and try to remember what The Táin said about Nemain in my Irish literature classes. I pull a blank.
“Nemain is… chaotic.” Red shuts her eyes and lets out a sigh of frustration.
“Is she talking to you now?”
“They’re always talking to me, in some way. Badb has been fairly sated by all my time in wolfshape, and Macha has liked being Pack, but Nemain feeds off the havoc of war and there hasn’t been much—oh will you shut up.” Red looks embarrassed by this final outburst. “Fuck, I’m sorry Ciara. She says she took you by the hand?”
“She grabbed my wrists,” I say, and the stark note in my voice is all that Red needs to understand.
“I’m… I’m so sorry. That’s really not on.”
“I guess waking you whilst you’re sleeping isn’t the best idea then?”
Her eyes widen. “No, probably best to let me wake naturally, or one of these three might take it as an invitation, even though it clearly isn’t.”
It all sounds a little bit like demonic possession, though I don’t believe in demons, and now I’m wondering if I should be believing in demons just a little bit.
“But you were having a bad dream?”
“Yes.” She doesn’t say any more than that, but she doesn’t need to.
I go back into the kitchen and make another cup of tea. I don’t know what to say, and tea is the closest thing to a hug that I can give her right now. Because I can still feel the grip of her fingers on my wrists and I don’t want anyone touching me right now.
“What’s this?” she asks. “Why are you bringing me dirty water?”
“It’s not dirty water,” I protest. “It’s tea.”
Red inspects it suspiciously, even sniffing at the drink. “What’s it made from?”
“Tea leaves—don’t look like that!”
“You put leaves in my drink?”
“Like you ever drank clean water your first time round here.” I’d studied history at school.
Red barks out a laugh. “That is true, Ciara mine.” She sips at the tea and tries to pretend that her words haven’t made the bottom drop out of my world.