Chapter Sixty-One
Sixty-one
Faolan
I’m drowning.
Not in a memory, not in a dream.
The sea sucks me under before I can steal another breath, dragging me down and around in countless circles until I can’t help but open my lungs. Maira’s shield flies from my fingers—Eamon’s hammer from my grip. Nothing exists but the water, and that last image of Saoirse in my mind.
But this is what it all comes down to, isn’t it?
Me and the Knowing Sea; that’s always haunted my mind.
The Gan Ainm’s chant floods my memory.
Saoirse’s song, my heart.
Drink the bones dry, oh, drink the bones dry
…Daughter of the Knowing Sea…
’Til the earth cries out in madness,
’Til the ceasing of the tide
…Gaze sworn long ago to me…
The songs blend together until it’s a unified, sonorous sound in my mind.
I drown it out with a single word.
“Saoirse.”
Just like I always knew, it’s her name I speak with my last, dying breath.
And then the sea shifts. Clenches. It squeezes my body tight.
Blackness crowds my vision as it drags me down until there is nothing—until…
a brush of blue light crosses my vision, illuminating a stretch of golden sand and all the gods’ relics, shattered from their journey off the ship, lain in an impossible pattern: three spirals all joined at the center.
A triskele, like the one that marks the soulstones.
A marking of birth, death, and rebirth.
I reach out to touch it—barely scrape the edge—and then drop as something bursts open below me, a pocket of air swallowing me up. It expands around me, blocking out the ocean, leaving me on this strange, dreamlike shore.
Wicked coughs erupt from my throat, salt water splattering the ground where I kneel. But still, I can’t help laughing.
This is why I keep drowning.
This is what’s been calling me all this time.
“Winds o’ fury.” Gasping and laughing, I wipe an arm over my face and sit back. “Are you going to tell me why you’ve been hounding me, love, or would you rather keep me guessing?”
It feels almost sacrilegious—deliciously so—to speak to the sea like an old friend.
But I can’t imagine doing otherwise. So I walk across the damp, golden shore instead, and take in the relics scattered over the sands—the strangely domed sky above.
“Should’ve fecking guessed as much, knowing how coy you are with your appearances. ”
The sand ripples as though from an invisible breeze.
My heart skips, then beats three times faster.
“Right.” I sit down and rub at my knuckles, rings clinking together there.
“Stories. We’re all made of stories…Shall I tell you one?
” I look at that sky and wait for it to shiver.
Just like Saoirse told me. “The first time I fell for you, I was ten years old. Slipping away from my mam to watch how the sun glinted off your waves. It was magic. Impossible to resist—and I never thought there’d come a day when I’d really want to. ”
I rake a hand through my hair and pause, remembering the look of blood on my fingers.
Saoirse’s eyes fluttering shut.
When I speak again, my voice catches, though the touch I run through the sand is smooth. “But I’m afraid there’s another. A girl just as magic as you. A girl with—with ocean eyes.”
Again the sand ripples, but this time water laps as well.
I take it to mean she likes my story. Maybe that’s what it’s always been about.
“You see, Saoirse is brave, kind, and gentle. Good—a far better person than me. She’s your daughter in some sense of the word. A soulgazer. And…stars above, she’s the great love of my life.”
I press the heel of my hand to my eyes then. Try not to think of what’s going on above.
If I’m still alive. If this isn’t some mad realm teetering beyond.
“But she’s dying.”
The waves cease their rippling. The sand lies still.
“There’s a bastard up there who wants your power—wants it like maybe those old gods did, once upon a time.
And maybe I’m no better. Because—feck, there’s a part of me that wants it too.
Magic at my fingertips. Worship. Acclaim.
But…” My hands start shaking. “If having that means losing her…life would be worth nothing.”
I shove my face into my hands, then tilt my head back.
“So I’ll ask that you let her go. Release her from her bargain with Muireal, her duty with the stones.
The man up there who would take your power by force did the same to her—she’d never break a promise if she could help it.
Just…let her go. And for that matter, the souls as well.
Stones was a clever solution for a time, but, gods, the state of it now.
I just—” I rub hard at my brow. “Winds o’ fury, what am I even doing? ”
I roll to my feet again, pacing across the sand, then stop.
Hear her voice, somehow.
“Come back…come back to me…”
Swallowing hard, I hold out my palms: one with the soul stain, one with the scar from our handfasting. And think of the question the Gan Ainm asked.
What will you do if her story does not remember you?
I grit my jaw against the impulse—the nothingness.
The absolute terror of being forgotten.
But I’d rather be remembered by Saoirse as she lives her life than go on living in any world without her.
“Let Saoirse go. You can have me instead, if you want, but let her go. Please.”
There’s no disturbance, not for a long minute. And then stars start to drift across that domed sky, gathering together into shapes and images.
Memories.
I see Saoirse and myself that first night at the Damhsa, her arm extended like a magpie’s wing. My body curled around hers at the wheel, our hair blown mad by the storm. Her knitting the scarf as I lay feverish and lost in our bed. That first night together. The way I left her behind.
There’s beauty and ugliness tossed together—strength and vulnerability combined.
A question rises as the images move faster, flickering like a candle flame.
The man. The legend.
The boy. The Wolf.
Over and over again, memories spill between them until I could swear I hear the stars howl.
I blink.
I can hear them.
From the edges of the shoreline, where blue light flickers with every gentle wave, the water suddenly builds up.
Churns faster. And a massive wolf formed of water and blue light appears, jewellike in its facets with wickedly glowing eyes.
It races toward me and, for just a second, I reach for my knife as panic wells inside me.
But it’s just a wild creature.
Just…the Wolf I’ve always wanted to become.
The Wolf snaps its jaws as it runs closer, digging its paws into the sand.
Instinctively, I raise my arms to fight it.
To wind them around its throat and squeeze, or drive an elbow down into its snout.
I think about killing the Wolf for good—and why not?
The Wolf got Lorcan carved up and Nessa killed.
It nearly lost me Saoirse this summer—lost my parents long ago.
Perhaps it’s time for it to be over.
Time for the Wolf to die.
But something stops me.
The thought of Saoirse and her delicate woad tattoo. Its lines remind me of this creature’s: sleek and powerful and true. A feral, romantic thing.
One she embraced rather than feared.
The beast gets closer—close enough that I can see its pelt, fur lying as thick as the cloak that once damned me, its claws gleaming in the dark. Fear lashes up my spine, longing fills my belly, and just when I’m about to dig my feet in and tackle it…I see something else instead.
A tail, pitiful and scrawny, streaming out behind it.
Like the stupid thing I’d sewn the night of the Damhsa.
I can’t help it. A laugh bursts out of me and the Wolf draws up short—tossing its head proudly, beating its massive paws against the ground. And for all its danger, there’s a warmth to it too: wildness and wonder wrapped up in a furry gray cloak.
“Ach, would you give it a rest?”
Kneeling, I open my arms and wait.
Watch as the Wolf tilts its head again, tongue lolling out to lick its mouth.
And then it pounces—not to tear my throat out—but to lie on me.
Tears spring to my eyes as I scratch its neck and tolerate it tonguing my cheek.
It’s a ridiculous creature. Harmless, really.
I’m still laughing when I squeeze the beast, and instantly, the water and stars of it dissolve, soaking me in brine.
A hum starts up across the sand right after, rippling and then slinging together as winds build across the surface, water lapping at the shore. Then, like a bubble bursting above my head, water streams from that domed blue-black sky as I lurch to my feet, gasping for breath.
“Was that a test? Is—is Saoirse free? Alive?!”
Water seeps up my ankles, into my boots, laps at my hips as my laughter dies down.
“Do you accept?”
But there is no answer.
Only water, and silence, and drowning again—except this time, when I kick, my body pushes through the water. That same current that dragged me down pushes me up, up, until I see a hazy wave of light. Hear a voice, calling faintly.
“Come back.”
But it’s almost too far.
My lungs, too empty.
“Come back to me.”
My legs grow weaker as a smile spreads on my face.
Saoirse.
Saoirse was a girl with ocean eyes. She was quite wee, and broad in the thighs.
Worth denying godhood for.
Worth every legend.
Worth everything I could ever want.