by Nora Roberts
If it was good enough for Jane Austen. Oh my God! How is this—Stop!
She lifted the pen with a jerk.
Too much, she decided. It was all just too much for one day.
She capped the pen, set it down with great care.
She hadn’t brought much, so put everything in the wardrobe that smelled of cedar and lavender before opening the door to the bathroom—water closet, she thought.
That about described it, she supposed. A big copper tub dominated the small room. She studied the tiny toilet with a pull chain with some anxiety. On a table, a large pitcher sat beside a bowl. The water in the pitcher was warm—very warm—when she dipped a finger in.
The impossibility no longer baffled her.
Shelves held a pair of fluffy white towels, crystal bottles filled with liquids, oils, tiny beads that smelled of herbs and flowers, and a cake of soap in a dish.
Iron sconces held candles as fragrant as the soap.
Maybe it lacked a shower, and maybe she remained dubious about the toilet, but she couldn’t deny the charm.
Fingers mentally crossed, she tried the toilet, pulled the chain. She heard no expected whoosh or creaky flush, but when she stood the bowl was empty and sparkling clean.
“Okay, we’ll call that practical magicks.”
She used the bowl and pitcher to wash up, then used the iron framed wall mirror to study her face.
“Might as well say it. You’re not in Kansas anymore.”
She went out, followed the scent of cooking into the kitchen.
The table held three place settings—crockery bowls, bread plates, white cloth napkins rolled into copper rings. Sedric stood at the little stove; Marg sliced brown bread on a board.
The easy domesticity told Breen they’d been together—not as witch and familiar, but as a couple—for, as she’d thought, a long time.
“It smells wonderful.”
“Sedric’s a fine cook.” Marg carried the bread and a crock of butter to the table. “I can promise you won’t go hungry. The bread I baked this morning before you arrived, as I’m a good cook myself. And the butter comes from the farm. The dinner wine is of Finola and Seamus’s making, and you won’t find better even in the Capital.”
“I’m not a very good cook,” she said, and sat when Marg did. “I’m trying to get better at it, as there’s no easy takeout near the cottage, and Marco’s not here to put something together. He’s a really good cook.”
“He’s a good friend to you. Finola was particularly taken with him.”
“She has an eye for handsome lads.” Sedric set the pot on the table, then began to ladle stew into the bowls.
“She does that. I’m told he’s musical, as you are.”
“Oh, I’m not like Marco. He’s what you’d call a natural. My father called him that, and taught us to play—the piano, the violin, the flute. But when—when he had to leave, Marco took more lessons. I . . . didn’t.”
Because it wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have, she sampled the stew. “Oh, it’s just wonderful. You grow your own vegetables.”
“The soil is for growing. You have a talent there as well.”
“I think I do. It’s something I want to learn more about. We live in an apartment, so there really isn’t anywhere to plant, and before . . . There wasn’t time with my job and all the rest for a real hobby or interest.”
“Your time is yours now,” Sedric commented.
“I’m getting used to that. I want to ask—and if you don’t want to answer or talk about it now, it can wait, but you’ve given me a lot of money. For me, it’s a fortune. Where did it come from?”
“Well now, money is easy enough to come by. We have no currency here, but—”
“No currency? None?”
“And no need. We barter and trade, and tribes, communities, take care of those who fall into the hard times. Others may appeal to the taoiseach and his council for help—a death, a sickness, or some other misfortune that causes them troubles.”
She had to say it again. “No money?”
“It’s metal or paper or some other form that has no real value above what a people ascribe to it.” Sedric shrugged, buttered some bread.
“But you gave me money.”
“In the world you’ve lived in you require it for safety, security, for food, a roof, a bed. I am your grandmother. Your father and I agreed to see to your needs. We have things of value here that can be sold outside. So it was done.”
“Thank you. Having the money changed my life, it gave me a freedom I didn’t have before. It sounds shallow sitting here, saying that, but it’s true.”
“Every world has its own rules and laws and cultures.”
“Sedric told me you have people who live outside.”
“Of course. Some may find a life outside more suitable, or happier. All are free to choose. Some from the outside choose Talamh; some from Talamh choose the outside.”
“When they choose to leave, they take an oath? You were explaining before.”
“Most sacred,” Marg agreed. “The most sacred of all is to cause no harm, to take no life except to defend life, not with magicks or without. Even then, if it’s done to protect or defend life, it must be judged. The taking of a life, the causing of harm in any other circumstance is punished by a stripping of power and banishment.”
“Banished to where?”
Sedric laid a hand on Marg’s and answered. “There is a world where the single portal opens only from the outside. Those who break the oath and are judged to have done so are taken there, where they must live without magicks.”
A kind of prison, Breen realized. “How do you know if they broke the oath?”
“We have Watchers, and their gift is empathy. They know, and must tell the council. We are people of the land, we are artists and craftsmen, storytellers, but we are also a world of laws. Most are not unlike the laws you know. To take a life, to take what is not yours or not given freely, to force another to lie with you, to neglect a child or animal. All of these acts cause harm, and our first law is to cause no harm.”
The answers had more questions buzzing in her brain, but a glance from Sedric had her holding them back.
Enough, she thought again, for one day.
“I want to thank you for the paper, and the pen. I’m looking forward to trying to write with them.”
“I hope you’ll enjoy them, and work well. But also take time from the work to see more of Talamh. To let me teach you, to help you wake.”
“To wake what I had that broke the glass when I was little.”
“That and more.”
“I’d like to see more, and learn more. I could start with you showing me how you deal with dishes. I’ve figured out there’s no running water.”
“We have a fine well, but you’ll do no dishes tonight. Tonight you’re a guest as well as family. You enjoy your walks, and it’s a lovely evening for a walk.”
“All right. If I wanted to use the tub later, how do I fill it?”
Marg smiled. “The pitcher will fill it, and the water will stay warm until you’re done.”
“Saves on plumbing bills.” She needed the walk, she realized. Needed the air, the evening, the quiet to organize her thoughts, and reconcile them with what she’d come to know.
“Thank you for dinner. Everything was, well, perfect.”
She hesitated, then went with instinct. She leaned down, kissed Marg’s cheek. “Thank you, Nan.”
When Breen went out, Marg pressed a hand to her heart. “There’s so much, Sedric, so much left to give her, so much left to ask of her.”
“One world struggles with the other inside her yet.”
“And may always. Go, watch over her. Odran may have spies closer than we know. I’ll see to the dishes.”
He rose, bent down, kissed her lips gently.
As a man, he turned away. As a cat, he slipped out the door.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Breen spotted th
e cat slinking along in the grass on the side of the road, sinuously silver among the green. And realized almost immediately she wouldn’t have seen him unless he’d wanted her to.
While she wasn’t sure exactly what she thought of Sedric yet, clearly her grandmother trusted him—and just as clearly, they loved each other.
Breen would tolerate him. She was, kinship aside, a guest here. A visitor.
Stranger in a strange land, she thought.
The sun set fire to the western sky. Automatically she reached for the phone still in her pocket, tapped for the camera. It took her a minute, staring at the blank screen, to remember.
“Devices won’t work here,” she muttered. “No technology.”
She stuck the phone away again, and ignored the cat. She imagined he snickered.
Instead, she enjoyed the long, slow setting of the sun, the spread of that fire over the waters of the bay, the lingering flames of it against the distant hills.
What lay behind the hills? she wondered. More of this—fields and farms, water and woods? Magickal people who tilled and planted, cooked stew, made music?
Because she heard music, something light and bright carried on the evening air. A fiddle, maybe a harp, a flute, all blending, lively and quick.
Like another kind of dream, she thought. The perfect music for a late summer evening with sheep and cattle huddled in the fields, the air smelling of grass and peat smoke.
And a were-cat keeping pace with her like a feline bodyguard.
A lot of good a cat would do her if some maniac faerie swooped down to try to grab her again.
Remembering it, she looked up, and just froze.
The dragon, riderless, glided over the dusky sky like a golden ship over the sea. Nothing, nothing she’d seen or would see in this fantastic place could be as magnificent, as glorious as that silent, gilded flight.
Awestruck, she followed that flight, and saw in that dusky sky two moons. Both pale yet as a single star woke to shine, and both half-moons—one waxing, one waning.
“But . . . there are two moons.”
“As there always have been.”
Ready to run, scream, fight, she spun around.
She hadn’t seen him as dusk crept in, leaning back against the stone post of the gate. All in black, he blended into the oncoming night. He probably meant to.
The taoiseach, the leader, the rider of the gold-and-emerald dragon.
“How do the tides work with two of them?”
“They come in, go out, come in, go out. I’ll see to her, Sedric,” he called to the cat. “Unless she plans on wandering about half the night.”
“I just wanted a walk before . . .” Explaining herself, she thought. She had to stop feeling obliged, always, to explain herself. “I don’t want to be seen to.”
“Want and need are different things, aren’t they now? And Marg won’t worry if she knows you’re not alone.”
That stopped her from arguing. “I haven’t really thanked you for what you did today.”
“Thanks aren’t necessary, but you’re welcome in any case.”
She searched for something polite to say, and glanced toward the farmhouse, with all its windows lit like sunshine. “Sounds like a party.”
He glanced back toward the music, the voices. “It is that, a welcoming home sort of thing. You and Marg and Sedric were invited, as was most of the bloody valley, but Marg felt you might want something a bit less . . . lively for your first night. Still, if you want to go in, you’ll be welcome.”
“No, it would be awkward yet. I don’t really know anyone—or enough of . . . anything.”
“Well, you’ll need to learn, won’t you?”
Though his voice struck her as another kind of music—what she still thought of as an Irish lilt—her hackles rose.
“I’ve learned enough to know I have some sort of crazed god for a grandfather who’d like to suck me dry of what I don’t even know I have. And up until five damn minutes ago, I didn’t even believe in gods.”
He looked genuinely curious. “Why not?”
“Because they’re supposed to be myths. Like worlds with two moons where dragons fly overhead and my grandmother’s lover turns into a cat. Now I’ve got a pen that writes down my thoughts, a pitcher that never runs out of hot water. I can’t use my stupid phone, but I looked into the fire with Nan and saw my father waging war. I saw it as if I’d been there.”
He watched her as she spoke, still leaning back against the post, his hands casually in his pockets.
And a sword at his side.
“You were there, at least for the start of it. I was too young, though I begged my father to take me with him when they went after you.”
And he’d died, Breen remembered. He’d died in that horrible place protecting her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you lost your father, sorry he died helping to save me.”
“Wasn’t a fault of yours, was it, as you were hardly more than a baby. And you fought, didn’t you? A child of three pitting her power against the god’s. There are songs and stories of the young one breaking down the god’s walls with her will.”
The idea of that burned the back of her throat. “I don’t know how I did it.”
“You’ll have to remember.” He said it as if nothing could be simpler. And kept watching her. “You stopped your practice and training far too soon, but that can be mended now that you’re here.”
Instinctively, she took a step back. “I’m not here. I’m visiting.”
He pushed off the post. “This is your world as much as it’s mine. Will you give it nothing?”
“What am I supposed to give?” she tossed back. “I’m trying to adjust, and it’s huge for me. I’m just starting to figure out what I want to do with my life, then bam, I find out that most of my life, if not a lie, was full of half-truths.”
“Want and need, again, are different matters. You need to hone your gifts, and there Marg will show you. You need to train, and there, bad luck for us both, you’ll have me for instructor.”
“Training for what?”
“To fight, of course, to protect yourself and others. To stand for Talamh.”
“Fight? Like with one of those?” Appalled, she pointed at the sword at his side. “I’m not a soldier.”
“You’ll learn unless you expect to be rescued at every turn.” Now that musical voice turned just a little snide. “Is that how you see things in your world? A woman such as yourself just cowers and screams?”
“I took a self-defense class,” she began, then let her temper rise. “You know what, I don’t have to explain myself to you, or anyone. All my life I’ve had people like you criticizing, bullying, making me feel less. And I’m done with it. I’m done standing back and apologizing.”
“That’s fine then. You’ll need to step up instead. He’ll try for you, believe that, Breen Siobhan, and I’ll give my life to stop him. So will every man and woman in this world. You are the daughter of Eian O’Ceallaigh, the taoiseach before me, the one who, when mine fell, stood as a father to me. In his name, I’m pledged to protect you. But by all the gods, you’ll learn to fight.”
She did step back again, but not in fear this time. “You loved him. My father.”
“Aye, he was a great man and a good one. Much of what I am, I am because he taught me. And so in turn I’ll teach you. He would expect no less of me. Or of you.”
“I don’t know what he’d expect of me.”
“You do, aye, you do, or will when you stop pretending otherwise. But for now, I’ll see you home. I want my own bed.”
“I can see myself back.”
“You don’t have to speak to me. I like the quiet when I can get it. But I’ll see you safe to Marg’s cottage, as she’d wish it.”
“One question, then we’ll have that quiet. Did I know you? Before, when I lived here before?”
“Sure you knew me, and I you, though you were well beneath my notice as a girl child.”
He smiled,
really smiled, and everything about him radiated charm. “You were after calling birds and butterflies and the like and whispering secrets with Morena. I was more interested in wooden swords and battles to come, and searching for the dragon that would be mine.
“One day,” he added, “that’s not this one, I’ll tell you of another time we met, and how that sealed my blood destiny. Now the quiet.”
She didn’t speak as he walked beside her with those two half-moons bright in a star-washed sky.
She had plenty to think about, and she would. But for that, she wanted not just quiet but alone.
So she said nothing as he waited halfway down the path until she went inside the cottage. The fire burned low, and the quiet soothed.
Still, she glanced out the window, saw him walking back down the path.
She’d try out the tub, she decided, then the pen, then the bed. And with all of them, she’d think about her first day in Talamh. And what tomorrow might bring.
She slept deep and dreamless, as if cocooned. Part of that, she imagined, came from a long, hot, fragrant bath, then a full hour of writing with the magick fountain pen.
And not enough, she thought, could possibly be said about the entertainment of filling a huge copper tub with a bottomless pitcher.
Since she couldn’t put that in her blog, she decided it was just as well she’d written the blog before her bath. And that she’d filled it with her thoughts on finding self—and learning to live with what was found, descriptions of the pretty, misty morning she’d enjoyed with Bollocks rather than actual activities and events.
Those went into her personal journal.
Pleased her night work left her clear to work on her book, she thought of coffee.
Obviously with no coffee machine—that was off the menu—but she thought she could handle brewing up some strong tea to get her brain cells working.
As she made her way to the kitchen, she wondered if she’d have to figure out how to light a fire in the stove, then found the kitchen warm, the stove hot.
Either someone rose earlier than she, or the fire was like the pen, and just never ran out.