Chapter 24 #2
She unfolded the object. And scrunched her nose.
“Umm…?” She held up a tattered length of cloth, about two inches wide and two feet long. Long threads frayed from swamp-green edges.
“What is that?” Reyna asked, squinting at it. “Looks like one good yank would unravel the whole thing.”
Taran sighed and kicked out the sliver of hope—No lying guests, thank you very much.
He squeezed Cadenza’s hand. “I’m sorry, mo chridhe.”
“That’s a bit underwhelming, isn’t it?” Cyrus said. He patted Cadenza’s shoulder. A penny whistle tune danced down her arm.
She jumped and stared at him. It couldn’t be. “Do that again.”
“Do what?” he asked. “Use understatement to break the tension in the room? Once you’ve done it you have to wait a wee bit before doing it again. Rules of comedic timing, you understand.”
She grabbed his arm, not waiting to explain. The penny whistle returned, jaunty and bouncing. She let go. It stopped. Arm, music. No arm, no music.
Three people. Three people?
Taran. Reyna. Cyrus. Cadenza narrowed her eyes.
“Ruairi, give me your hand.” She seized his fingers before he could respond. Bagpipes blasted her.
She laughed. Was that what it was? Guardians made music? That had to be it. And Taran, for her, made the most.
Everyone looked at her.
“It’s the stress of it all,” Cyrus stage whispered to Reyna. Taran smacked him.
Cadenza’s eyes fell on Drostan, and she saw a gap in her theory. “Drostan, why can’t I hear you?”
Taran cocked an eyebrow. “He wasn’t speaking.”
Drostan dropped his eyes and returned to his armchair, fiddling with a fingernail.
“No. Why can’t I hear you? I never heard music from people. Until I came here.” She stood, facing Taran. “I heard you first and I hear you the strongest. I don’t have to touch you to hear you. I can hear you across the room, and the longer I know you the farther away I can hear you.”
“You heard me first?” He tilted his head at her, a smile growing.
Cyrus interrupted again with more commentary to Reyna. “That’s so romantic!”
Ruairi smacked him this time.
“What do I sound like?” Taran asked.
“You sound like drums. Deep ones.” She laid her palm on his cheek, bathing in his ocean. “But also bodhran.”
He laughed. “I suppose that’s appropriate.”
“Reyna, you sound like these light strings, a little like a zither. Cyrus, you’re penny whistle. Ruairi, bagpipes.” She pointed at each of them. “The only people I’ve ever heard music from are all Guardians.”
Ruairi shrugged as if this weren’t a surprise. “Spinners can always hear Guardians.”
“They can?” Taran asked. “No one ever told me.”
“We have our origin in the music, and Spinners hear that, so Spinners hear us,” Cyrus said.
“Sorry little brother, there haven’t been any for so long.
Mum always used it when you were a bairn to find you if you were getting into mischief—so quite often.
She probably never said anything because she didn’t want you to figure out how to hide from her. ”
Cadenza’s mouth dropped. It was possible for a Guardian to hide their song? She turned back to Drostan, who was still not looking at her. Not a gap in her theory. A deliberate omission.
“Drostan,” she asked again, voice tremulous. “Why can’t I hear you?”
Drostan heaved a sigh and dropped his face in his hands. “Because I didn’t let you hear me, Caddie.” His words fell heavy and reluctant in the space between them.
“You ‘didn’t let me’? What reason could you have for ‘not letting me’ hear your music if you didn’t know what I was until the lightning shield with Taran? This month?”
Drostan’s reaction in the kitchen that night hit her with new meaning. I never meant for you to get dragged into this.
He lifted his head, tears glimmering in his eyes. “Try to understand, lass.”
“You knew!” she gasped. “All that time, Ilaria made me think I was insane, and you knew the whole time. You could’ve helped me!
” Her breath came fast and shallow, like her ribs were caught in a vise.
She rubbed at her face, and the cloth from the oracle, still clutched in her fist, scratched her cheek.
Oracle. What a joke. This ratty strip of fabric was no answer.
The Fates were playing her, dragging her down a pre-ordained path with no regard for what she wanted.
Just like they’d played Taran, leaving him stuck with this curse.
Suddenly she saw it all from Drostan’s eyes.
Of course he didn’t want her in this world.
But she’d needed help. Ignoring what she was hadn’t made it go away.
It hadn’t convinced the Fates to stop swinging her around like a ragdoll.
“That wasn’t your choice to make.”
“No, you’re right, Caddie. I’m so sorry.” Drostan’s eyes flicked to his sons. “But there’s something else we need to tell you and Reyna, about Canon.” His voice broke and he tried again. “About what happened tonight.”
“What?” Cadenza braced. What else could there be?
Taran rose from the couch and took her hand. “Cadenza, I’m so sorry. Canon did go to distract Thomas, like you said, but no, he didn’t come back here. And he won’t.”
Cadenza’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
Reyne gasped as she understood. “The cave?”
“Aye.” Drostan drew a chess piece out of his pocket and stared at it.
“Thomas is in charge of finding the next Crown, but he doesn’t choose the Crown.
The cave chooses. Or rather, the cave presents the candidate with a choice.
If he or she chooses incorrectly…” He laid the chess piece on its side on the coffee table.
“They don’t come back,” finished Cyrus. “The cave claims them as part of it.”
Ruairi’s voice rumbled through the room. “He’s gone.”
Reyna grabbed her middle like she’d been punched and laid her head on her knees.
Cadenza shook her head like she could make it untrue. Her lungs couldn’t get enough air. “What choice did he have to make?”
No one answered.
She looked at the fabric in her hand again.
Did any of them have choices to make? Vasilios was convinced there were too many.
Taran thought he had none. As Taran had pointed out, the choices she thought she’d made had led her here, to these people.
But nothing she’d chosen since then had borne fruit.
Was that because those actions weren’t in the Fates’ plan for her?
Her face flushed hot and cold. Sweat pricked her armpits, her scalp.
If you want something, you have to make it happen. But if the Fates really were running everything, was she capable of making anything happen?
Her heartbeat whooshed in her ears, jagged and discordant. Her body sucked in air too rapidly, hyperventilating like a cornered animal. She had to escape, had to run—had to find her stolen choices.
Her pulse pounded—stuck, stuck, stuck—and she fled out the front door.
Taran followed. The tents and booths set up in the field for tomorrow’s Highland Games made a maze of the back acreage—he’d forgotten about that; it seemed utterly incongruous that the games were still happening—but he didn’t need to see her to find her.
Even in this human form he could track her by scent.
He sampled the air, searching for caramel.
There. In the athletics field.
He sprinted and came to a stop just behind her. He didn’t speak. He knew now she could hear him. Despite the gravity of the evening, that fact coursed through him, bright as moonlight.
She turned, eyes red from crying. “Make it rain.”
“What?”
She pointed at the clear sky. “Make it rain. You can make it rain. The forecast says it’ll be clear.
It’s not in the plan to rain. Make it rain.
Change the plan.” She gripped his t-shirt, tears still falling.
“Make an earthquake. Right here. Rip up the ground where it wasn’t pre-destined to be ripped up. ”
“Oh, my love.” He understood.
And he made it rain.
In seconds they were soaked. Taran lifted her off the ground, holding her tight against him, his face buried in her neck. He built tension in his foot and brought it down once. The ground burst, a small crater appearing where there had been none.
She tangled her fingers in his hair, lifting his face to hers. “See? You just changed that. You affected it. It can’t all be decided, can it?” she asked, her voice shrinking.
“Mo chridhe, my heart.” He thought of Canon, changed forever into part of the cave.
Was that his destiny? Why purposefully make someone a life that ended in such a fate?
Or had Canon’s intended fate led elsewhere, and his ending in the cave was the consequence for straying from the foreordained path?
He shook his head. “I don’t know… I don’t know.”