Chapter 10
Chapter ten
RORY
It was an hour before sunset, and Rory stood beneath the blue-and-gray sky, letting the soft spring breeze ruffle through her hair and press gentle kisses against her cheeks.
It still felt so hard to believe – that she was truly here, back home in éire, after so long away.
She closed her eyes, soaking in the familiar scents of home – different, here among the rolling green midlands of Leinster, far from the rock-strewn earth of Connacht, but the same, nonetheless.
The ever-present scent of rain, the billowing gray fog rolling across the hills, the heather blooming in the fields.
The indelible taste of secret magic, teasing her tongue, calling out to her to set it free.
For some reason, her mind flashed back to when she was a child, and her uncle Kieran, regaling her with the story of the doomed children of Lir, the god of the sea, and how Lir’s second wife, a powerful cailleach known as The Bright One, grew jealous of the love which her husband gave to the children born to his first wife, how she lured them to the edge of a loch and persuaded them to bathe, how as soon as the cursed waters touched their skin, they were transformed, turned into swans while the witch crowed in triumph to see her husband’s hated children brought so low.
For three hundred years, Kieran had said, the children of Lir mourned, weeping and singing grief-filled songs, their reason and their voices left unchanged by the witch’s spell, awaiting the day when the prophecy would be fulfilled and their curse broken – the day that a child of the east, of Leinster born, would wed a child of the west, the heir of Connacht.
“What happened to The Bright One?” Rory had asked, and Kieran smiled.
“Stories differ. Some say Lir in his rage and his grief turned her into a demon doomed to be tossed about on the backs of the winds for all eternity, shrieking and sobbing in the night. Some say she was imprisoned deep within the shadows of the sídhe, long ago, but that she escaped when her sister Fúamnach broke the confinement spells the gods had put in place on the other-realms, and that she still lives even now, high up in Mhám Toirc, in a cottage made of stone and ivy, all alone with her magic.” uncle Kieran stood, cradling her in his arms as he strode for the stairs to carry her to bed.
“Because there will always be magic to be found in the land of éire,” he had said.
“You only have to know where to look for it.”
Now Rory looked down at her hands, pale and ghostly in the waning light of the setting sun.
Soon, she thought as she flexed her fingers, slow and steady, no one would have to look very hard to see the full force of the magic which éire had to offer.
Soon, she would unleash it on what was left of the realm, would summon the howling storm of her shadows and her fog, would call forth the demons of the air and the sky and set them loose on those who had wronged her until there was nothing left of them but smoke and ash.
Once before, she had felt it, the true might of that terrible truth-magic of ice and ruin that festered within her.
Once before, she had unloosed it and watched as it had taken on a life of its own, had battled and beaten down that same witch whose power had awed her as a wide-eyed child sitting by the fire in her uncle’s lap.
She had been planning it for months, this visit to the Mhám Toirc and the cailleach who lurked within these stony ridges, and at long last, it was here.
Her vengeance. The éraic, the blood-debt owed to her and her mother.
A strange sort of calm descended over Rory as she followed behind her brother, drawing closer and closer to the cottage of the witch.
She could see what he could not – the gray-and-white stones of the walls, the lazy trail of smoke from the chimney, the pearlwort that covered the thatched roof, the green-and-purple vines of the fairy thimble curtaining the open windows.
It looked peaceful enough, a quaint and charming cottage tucked away high in the Mhám Toirc, but the signs were there, all the same, whispering to her of the truth of this place, the stain of evil that fell across the surface of every stone, every tree, every flower.
She hoped that it would be quick, whatever the witch had in mind for him.
Rory couldn’t deny that she had grown very fond of him, this boy, this brother.
He was sweet, laughably naive and idealistic, it was true, but there was also something endearing about the way he gestured with his hands when he spoke, the light in his eyes when he told his stories of heroes and warriors of old.
He was kind too – nothing overt, no grand gestures of princely magnanimity, but simple, goodhearted kindnesses.
She’d looked out her window once and seen him far below, on his hands and his knees, scrambling in the dirt to retrieve the cook Caoimhe’s spilled strawberries, carefully rubbing each one clean with the hem of his doublet before placing them back neatly in her basket.
A little thing, a small show of kindness, but it had mattered to Caoimhe, who had kissed him on the forehead, her smile warm and full of love for the princeling who’d abandoned his game of iomáint without a second thought to come to her aid.
Everybody loved Niall, she thought with a pang as he hesitated outside that fateful ring of mushrooms, his knife quivering in his hand, and not because they had to.
A sliver of doubt wound its way through her heart. “Niall –”
He stepped over the ring.
Rory flinched as a blast of too-warm air hit her face, reeking of half-rotted meat, and she gagged, bending over with her hands on her knees as she spat furiously to rid her mouth of the rancid taste.
Above them, the two kestrels shrilled in unison, urgent and alarmed, but Niall gasped. “Gods,” he said, awed. “There it is!”
She straightened, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Niall. Wait.”
But he was moving forward, the knife limp at his side as he moved towards the cottage, seemingly drawn to it by some inaudible, irresistible call. “Something smells amazing,” she heard him say. “Apple tarts and raspberry scones –”
“Niall, no!”
A figure appeared in the doorway, and Rory froze, because this vision of ethereal beauty did not look anything like the glimpse of the creature she had seen in her vision, feral and snarling and face distorted with rage.
This woman was clad in the softest silk, her sun-golden hair falling across her shoulders, lips spread wide in a welcoming smile.
“Little prince,” she said, eyes sparkling like the sun glistening off the waves of the sea.
“Welcome. Long have I awaited you. You must be hungry after your journey up my mountain.”
“Starving,” said Niall, and Rory tensed at the blunted edge to his voice, hazy and disoriented, even as he slipped his hand into the witch’s, his knife clattering to the ground beside him. “I could eat for hours.”
“Whatever you wish. Apple cake? Ginger snaps? Bread-and-butter pudding?”
Rory watched, wide-eyed, as her brother salivated in response. “Yes, oh yes, please – all of it!”
“Then come inside,” she said, stroking his hair with her spider-like fingers. “Come to my table and feast. You are far too skinny.” Her smile turned wolfish and hungry, a hint of sharp white teeth appearing behind her scarlet-red lips. “You’re needing a bit of meat on those bones.”
“You smell lovely,” said Niall, burrowing his face into her side, and Rory bit down hard on her lip as the witch’s face turned feral with hunger. “Vanilla, and sage.”
She made a hungry crooning sound as she traced the line of his neck with the tip of her finger, up and down, and Rory’s stomach turned sickeningly.
“Yes,” said the witch. “I’ve found that is – pleasing to the young.
” Her eyes, depthless and cruel as the unending sea, rose to meet Rory’s as she smiled. “Wouldn’t you agree, a pheata?”
And Rory shuddered to hear her mother’s pet name on those vile lips.
“I do thank you for this,” the witch said, her hand coming to rest atop Niall’s straw-colored head. “What do you ask in return, for bestowing on me this gift?”
Rory couldn’t bring herself to speak, lost in staring at the curve of her brother’s freckled cheeks, the slim shape of his hands.
“Nothing?” said the witch, pushing lightly on Niall’s shoulder to guide him inside. “Well. I thank you, a pheata, nevertheless.”
They disappeared inside, and the door snapped shut with a decisive click.
Molly let out a low keening sound from the branches above her, with Murph murmuring next to her. Rory looked up to see her falcon nuzzle his beak into his sister’s neck, soothing and solemn, watched how Molly leaned into his embrace, orange eyes fluttering shut.
The two of them, bound together by birth and by love, an unbreakable binding.
Rory felt her heart crack in her chest.
No. She could not do it – could not let her brother die.
She would not be the monster everyone thought her to be.
In a few quick steps, she was at the door of the cottage, ear pressed against it, listening intently.
No sound emerged, and she swore under her breath before creeping along the side of the cottage to the window veiled by the low-hanging curtain of fairy thimble vines.
She gingerly pushed aside the noxious flowers and peeked inside.