Chapter 15 #2
She saw it from the road, the foreboding mass of it, its peaks and tower and rambling walls. Under the thick sky it looked like something out of an old movie where creatures who shuffled in the dark hid and plotted.
She couldn’t wait to get a closer look.
The truck bumped down a skinny track with pretty little houses on one side, laced with gardens with blooms testing the chill. The other side of the track spread with fields loaded with cows and sheep.
Ahead, beyond the tidy and pastoral, loomed the ruins.
“I didn’t study up,” he told her. “But I know it’s old, of course—not as old as the abbey, but old for all that.”
She walked toward it, heard the whistle of the wind through the peaks and jut of stone, and the flapping of wings from birds, the lowing of cattle.
The central tower speared up above the roofless walls.
She stepped inside a doorway, and now her feet crunched on gravel.
Vaults for the dead, or stones for them fixed flat into the ground.
“I think the Brits kicked out the monks, as they were wont, then, as they were wont, the Cromwellians did the rest and sacked the place. Pillaged and burned.”
“It’s massive.” She stepped through an arch, looking up at the tower and the black birds that circled it.
The air felt heavy—rain to come, she decided. Wind blew through the arched windows, whistled down the narrow curve of stone steps.
“This must’ve been the kitchen.” She didn’t like the way her voice echoed, but moved closer to look down in what seemed to be some sort of dry well. “Stand over there.” She gestured to the ox-roasting fireplace.
He shuffled his feet, gave her a pained look. “I’m not much for pictures.”
“Indulge me. It’s a big fireplace. You’re a big guy.”
She snapped her pictures. “They’d butcher their own meat, grow their own vegetables, mill flour. Keep fish in the well there. The Franciscans.” She wandered out, even at her height ducking under archways, to an open area.
A line of archways, gravestones, grass. “The cloister. Quiet thoughts, robes, and folded hands. They looked so pious, but some had humor, others ambition. Envy, greed, lust, even here.”
“Iona.”
But she moved on, stopped at the base of steps where a Christ figure had been carved in the arch.
“Symbols are important. The Christians followed the pagans there, carving and painting their one God as the old ones carved and painted the many. Neither understand that the one is part of the many, the many part of the one.”
Wind fluttered through her hair as she stepped out on a narrow balustrade. Boyle took her arm in a firm grip.
“I died here, or my blood did. It feels the same. Breaking the journey home, too old, too ill to continue on. Some would burn the witch, such is the time, but her power’s gone quiet, and they take her in. She wears the symbol, but they don’t know what it means. The copper horse.”
Iona’s hand closed over her amulet. “But he knows. He smells her weakness. He waits, but must come to her. She can’t finish the journey.
And she feels him nearing, greedy for what she has left.
He has less than he did, but enough. Still enough.
She has no choice now. it can’t be done in the place of her power, at the source. He’s whispering. Can you hear him?”
“Come away now.”
She turned. Her eyes had gone nearly black.
“It’s not done, and it must be done. She has her granddaughter—such love between them, and the power simmers in the young.
She passes what she has, as the first did, as her own father had done with her, and with the power, she passes on the symbol.
A burden, a stone in the heart. It’s always been that for her, never with joy to balance it.
So she passes power and symbol with grief.
“And the rooks flap their wings. The wolf howls on the hill. The fog creeps along the ground. She speaks her last words.”
Iona’s voice rose, carried over the wind—in Irish. Above the layered clouds something rumbled that might have been thunder, might have been power waking. The circling birds swooped away with frightened calls, leaving only sky and stone.
“The bells tolled as if they knew,” she continued. “Though the girl wept, she felt the power rise up—hot and white. Strong, young, vital, and fierce. So he was denied what he craved yet again. And again, and again, he waits.”
Iona’s eyes rolled back. When she swayed, Boyle dragged her in close.
“I have to leave here,” she said weakly.
“Bloody right.” He plucked her off her feet, carried her down the narrow, curving stairs, through archways where he nearly bent double to pass through, and out again into the air and the patter of rain.
The wet felt like heaven on her cheeks. “I’m okay. Just a little dizzy. I don’t know what happened.”
“A vision. I’ve seen Connor caught in one.”
“I could see them, the old woman, the girl, bathing her grandmother’s face.
Fever, she was so hot, like she was burning from the inside out.
I could hear them, and him. I could hear him trying to get to her, trying to draw her out.
I felt her pain, physical and emotional.
She wished, so much, she could spare the girl she loved from the risk and responsibility.
But there wasn’t a choice, and there wasn’t time. ”
He shifted her to open the truck door, maneuvered her inside, amazed his hands didn’t shake to mimic his heart.
“You spoke in Irish.”
“I did?” Iona shoved at her hair. “I can’t remember, not exactly. What did I say?”
“I’m not sure of it all. ‘You’re the one, but there must be three.’ And I think . . .” He struggled with the translation. “‘It ends here for me, begins for you.’ Something like that, and more I couldn’t understand. Your eyes went black as a raven’s, and your skin pale as death.”
“My eyes.”
“They’re back,” he assured her, stroked her cheek. “Blue as summer.”
“I need more training. It’s like trying to compete in the Olympics when you’re still learning how to change leads and gaits. And that’s a potent place, full of energy and power.”
He’d been there before, felt nothing but some curiosity. But this time, with her . . .
“It hooked to you,” he decided. “Or you to it.”
“Or she did, the old woman. She’s buried in there. One day we should come back, one day when this is finished, and leave flowers on her grave.”
At the moment he wasn’t inclined to bring her back ever. But as he walked around to get in the truck, the rain stopped.
“Look.” She took his hand, pointed with the other at the rainbow that glimmered behind the ruins. “Light wins.”
She smiled and meant it and, thinking rainbows, leaned over to kiss him.
“I’m starving.”
He didn’t think at all, but pulled her in again to kiss her until the image of her swaying on the ledge faded away. “I know a place not far that does a fine fish and chips. And Christ knows I could do with a pint.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. Thanks,” she added.
“For what?”
“For showing me two amazing places, and for catching me before I fell.”
She looked back at the friary, at the black birds, at the rainbow. Her life had forever changed, she thought. But unlike her ancestor, she considered it a gift.
* * *
IN THE COZY KITCHEN WITH THE HOUND AT HER FEET AND a fire in the hearth, Iona told her cousins everything.
“A busy day for you,” Connor commented.
“And then some.”
“That would be three events, we’ll call them, in a single day.” Branna, her hair still bundled up from her workday, contemplated her tea. “But only the first involving Cabhan.”
“The last one, too,” Iona reminded her. “She felt him coming.”
“A vision of the past. Whether yours or another’s, still the past. I doubt he’d venture so far now.” Branna looked at Connor.
“Not now, no, and why should he? Tell me what you were feeling—before, during, after the vision came on you.”
“Before I’m not sure. I felt I’d been there before, like the abbey, but not .
. . bright, not happy like that. It was dark and, well, sorrowful.
I knew the layout, what things were, but I realize now it was her, our ancestor.
I was thinking her thoughts, and some were pretty damn bitter.
She knew she was dying, but more than death she hated passing the amulet, the power, the responsibility on to her granddaughter.
“I don’t remember going up the steps. It seemed I was just there. The old woman in bed, gray hair streaked with white. Her face gray, too, and shiny with fever. And the girl sitting beside her, bathing her face. Long red hair. Eimear—I think she called the young girl Eimear.”
“You don’t remember the Irish you spoke,” Connor prompted her.
“No, just what Boyle thought it meant, or what he understood of it. I remember sorrow and fear, then the light just bursting into the room. For an instant, a sense of power—just wild, huge. Like a, well, like a really excellent orgasm. Then it all went gray, and spinning. Dizzy, weak, disoriented, and when that passed, hungry.”
“The dizziness will ease after a time,” Connor told her. “It’s good you weren’t alone when you had your first. You weren’t expecting this then?” he asked Branna.
“Not yet, no. Not yet. I want to say she’s—you’re,” she corrected, and addressed Iona directly, “accelerating. I think it’s where you are, and who you’re with.
We’re three together, so what you have is coming ripe more quickly than it might otherwise.
It’s a good thing, this. You’ll be stronger, less vulnerable. ”
“Should I expect any more surprises?”
“You’ll take them as they come.”
“Let’s backtrack a minute. The dream. Did Boyle and I share the dream because we were together?”
“The sex.” Connor leaned back, shot his legs out. “It’s a powerful link. Or can be.”
“So if I have sex with Boyle he can get dragged in with me? But it hurt him. His hand. The poison.”
“Which you tended to well. That’s good instinct.”
“But the next time it could be worse.”
“You take it as it comes,” Branna reminded her. “Cabhan hurt him, but Boyle hurt Cabhan as well. Cabhan felt the blow—a human blow and in a dream—and that’s interesting to me.”
“It was black, mixed in Boyle’s blood. I could see it. If it had spread before—”
“It didn’t,” Branna said briskly. “We deal with what is. You can’t cloud what is with what-if, and the emotions.”
“She loves him.” Connor rubbed a hand over Iona’s when she jolted. “Love clouds everything and shines through it as well.”
“I never said I . . . How do you know what I just figured out?”
“It’s coming through you so strong I can’t avoid seeing it.” He gave her hand another rub. “I don’t mean to peek through the door, but it’s wide open.”
“I haven’t said anything to him.” Couldn’t and shouldn’t, she thought, reminding herself of her vow to be patient. “I’m just sort of savoring it. I’ve wanted to feel this way for so long, tried to feel this way. And with Boyle I didn’t have to want or try. I just did.”
“That’s all well and good, and sure he’s one of the best men I know. But you can’t let what you have filter through the haze of love,” Branna warned.
“We have different ways of thinking on that,” Connor put in.
“I think love only adds to the power. Where she is, yes,” he said to Branna.
“And being with us. But I’m thinking what she feels is another reason she’s gaining so fast. How she knew the poison was in Boyle, and how she drew it out so clean, when she’d never done the like before. ”
“I won’t argue. It’s different for everyone, isn’t it? Love, magick, and how we see and deal. And in each, the choices we make. I’ll only say you’ve had but a short time here, and with him, to think of love and the choices that go with it.”
“I knew the minute I saw him. Maybe that was a kind of vision. I don’t know.
But I felt this flutter.” She pressed a hand to her belly.
“And this rising.” Slid her hand to her heart.
“Attraction, I told myself, because he looked so amazing riding in on Alastar. But it was more. I told myself I couldn’t go there because, well, at first I thought he was with Meara. ”
She lifted her eyebrows when Connor let out a laughing snort.
“I don’t know why that’s so funny. They’re gorgeous together. Tall and fit and stunning. And they have this connection—it was clear from the start.”
“Sure like Branna and me, for they’re as close as brother and sister, and never been otherwise. But you thought they were more, so you pushed aside what you felt or might have felt. That’s to your credit. Not all would do the same. I’m wondering if I would myself.”
“Love at first sight’s a fairy tale,” Branna said, firmly.
“I love fairy tales.” With a laugh, Iona propped her elbows on the table, her face on her fists.
“I decided it was just attraction, and okay once Meara set me straight. I decided I just wanted to sleep with him, but I’ve never felt what I feel for him.
And I know what it is, and I know it started when I saw him riding up on Alastar, both of them so fierce and furious.
I fell for both of them right then and there.
I’m trying to be patient, which isn’t my nature at all.
Alastar figured out he loved me. Now I just have to wait for Boyle to figure it out. ”
“You’re confident he will?” Branna asked her.
“You can’t just hope for happy endings. You have to believe in them. Then do the work, take the risks. Slay the dragon—though I really think dragons get a bad rap—kiss the princess, or the frog, defeat the bad witch.”
“Well defeating the bad witch is happy ending enough for me.”
It shouldn’t be, Iona thought, but Connor gave her hand a little squeeze before she said it.
“I’ve things to see to, but later on, after dinner,” Branna continued, “we’ll practice again. Connor can help you with the visions, the healing. The solstice comes closer every day, and there’s still work to be done.”
“You have an idea what to do?”
“You said Boyle hurt him, in a dream, and with only a fist. We can do better than a fist.”
“I’ve got to go back to the school, check on some hatchlings. But I’ll be home within the hour.”
“I’ll walk with you,” Iona told Connor. “I’d like to give Alastar some exercise, even if it’s just around the jumps course.”
“Then I’ll come back by, walk home with you.”
“I can probably get a ride, but if not, I’ll text you.”
“Fine then, go off with both of you, give me some thinking time.” Branna pushed back from the table. “You said Fin was to do a protection charm for Boyle’s bed. Make sure he has before the two of you make use of it again.”
“Okay.”
“The next time you, or any of us, go into a dream, I want it to be a choice, and us doing the pulling in.”