Chapter 19 #2
“Now, hold on,” TJ interjected. “She’s not a witch or whatever. She can’t just take stuff like that out of the dirt or put it back in.”
Ethel nodded as if now the answer was clear. “The events on the field that night, you have not shared with anyone. You have not talked them out of your body. Not even to your kin. You are unsettled, and more than that, you are still wielding Ormr’s powers.”
I felt my face wince at exposing my brother to the gritty details. “He knows about it.”
Ethel was shrewd. “So he knows that Ormr slipped your skin over his ethereal body and wore your face like armor into battle and wielded the Ulfberht as if he were a berserker once more? He knows how Ormr made you bring your sword, fist, and strength down on your one true love over and over again until I pulled Orabilia out of the clan chief to defend him against you?”
My mouth went dry.
Tee’s voice sounded far away. “Sissy?”
“You have shared with your blood brother that the power you wielded that night physically bound Orabilia’s grandson, the chief MacLaoch, Rowan, to you via blood and soul?
I may have given you the elixir, but it’s what’s in your blood that held the power.
It was also that power that Ormr brought forth in you that fed Orabilia, brought her back from the afterlife, then aided her in sending his warriors, her and my grandson Ormr, back into that plane of existence.
Your blood brother, he knows of all this from your own lips? ”
I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could keep the feelings, and myself, in. My pig was tossing pews in the other room. “How?” I managed. “How do I even begin to explain that?”
Tee gripped my hand like a hug, pulling my attention to his understanding gaze that was kind and serious for once. “You have done that for me, Pipsqueak.”
“Yeah, but this is different. There’s all this metaphysical energy—”
“Magic,” Ethel amended.
“Yeah.”
“And when I was there for Rowan, that was different?”
Ethel smiled at the mention of TJ being there for Rowan.
“That thunderclap of connection was felt as far out as to this very soil. The singular instant your fingers touched his flight suit, yanking him into the war monster you flew in on, started the ripple effect that built the momentum to take this Minory-MacLaoch curse from whence it began to its end. I reminded Rowan James Douglas MacLaoch of this when we met over a year ago, even though his mind was foggy with the atrocities and the unraveling of the curse. I warned him, it had begun. And now, you know your part in it all. How close the Minory has gotten in every age, that for this MacLaoch chief, thrice in his life a Minory has come to him. And he is the first to reach out and accept the love that has been in lockstep with him since his mother’s death thirty years ago. ”
Hearing my theory confirmed was humbling. I was just one of three Minorys who’d been sent to Rowan.
Ethel continued to explain to Tee about the Minory and MacLaoch connection as I closed my eyes and tried to quiet my mind and get my sow to stop tossing furniture in the other room.
In the quiet, I heard Rowan’s inquiry chime over my skin.
I let go of Tee’s hand and grasped my own arms and tried to quiet my mind further. Rowan had felt Ethel’s power wash over me and wanted to know what was happening up there in that church kitchen.
I’m coming.
I’m fine.
Ye are no’.
I’m with Ethel. She’s doing…stuff.
I can be there in a few minutes.
Tee is here. We’re sorting through it all.
Good, I’ll be there shortly. I need a distraction or I’ll go to Murdoch’s manor and break his neck.
I smiled as our connection faded, leaving an ocean glow lapping inside of me like a calm tide.
Ethel brought me back to the present. “And you freely speak with the MacLaoch through your connection, even though he is miles away.” She held one of her silent conversations while looking at me, digesting the questions that came to her mind like a checklist until she said, “More than Ormr’s magic has stayed.
He was gifted with the spirit craft, knowing the movement of magic through all things and how to use those energies to heal, harm, and create.
You have this as well, but it is unbalanced.
You need to learn to balance it. Ormr learned this at my knee for the better part of his youth.
You have been given it overnight and without instruction.
Ormr has destroyed who you once were, and in his wake, he’s made you into another facet of yourself.
And yet, within all his destruction, he’s left you with a gift. ”
I attempted to swallow my scoff, but it came out my nose in a huff. “Gift?”
“You have been left with his abilities.”
I heard her say it but wasn’t sure what any of it meant and simply said, “Abilities?”
TJ nudged me. “Abilities might be nice. Be able to reheat your coffee wherever you are? Golden.”
He was trying to cheer me up. “I still don’t think—”
“Just don’t tell Mother or Daddy.”
I did scoff then.
“Mother will make you keep her hair from frizzing in the Carolina heat, and Daddy will expect record peach production at top market prices every year.”
This time Ethel scoffed.