by Grace Martin
I gaped at my wrist, then at the man. ‘That’s amazing,’ I murmured. I looked back up at him. ‘What is your name?’
‘Morann, Bach Chwaer.’ He halted, then said in a voice that was a little deeper, a little rougher, ‘Morann of the family Ganainn.’
Everybody applauded. That is to say, my family applauded, and I wasn’t the only one with tears in my eyes.
Morann went around the hall, clasping wrists and giving everyone else the family marking. I was led to sit by the fire, a gift I could gladly receive.
I’d just sat down when Aine rushed into the room. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded. ‘People are saying you created a new family. What do you think you’re doing, Emer?’
Everyone turned to look at her and the hall fell silent. Morann stepped forward. ‘With respect, your Highness, the Bach Chwaer is our family now, and within our walls she will be spoken to with honour.’
Yeah. No one had ever spoken to Aine like that before. Certainly not since she’d come to Ce’Branna.
I stood up. I didn’t want this to escalate. ‘Yes, today we became a family, Aine. How does that affect you?’ So maybe de-escalation isn’t one of my skills. Tell me truly, is that really such a shock?
Her mouth opened, then closed again. ‘I thought you wanted to be part of my family,’ she said at last. The tension in the room eased at the candid confession and people moved away to give us a little privacy.
‘I did want to be part of your family, Aine. I still do. But your family chose Saoirse over me. You didn’t want me.’
Aine shifted uncomfortably. ‘It wasn’t that we didn’t want you,’ she muttered.
‘You made it pretty clear.’ I wasn’t going to repeat here that Gwydion had nearly struck me. They would never forgive him for it. ‘You can’t have both me and a woman who insists that I’m a conniving liar.’
‘You can’t create a new family, though. That’s not how family works.’
‘That’s exactly how family works, Aine. The people who love and accept me are my family. The people I love are my family. Family isn’t about blood. Family is about bonds. Sometimes people related by blood can break those bonds. Sometimes people not related by blood can form the bonds of true family. If you think family is only about blood then you don’t know what family is.’
Even as I said it, the tightness that had formed in my chest when they rejected me in favour of Saoirse loosened. What I’d said was the truth. If they wouldn’t accept me and love me, then they weren’t my family. That was a shame for them, because they were missing out on the love I’d offered, but it wasn’t a shame for me because I could easily do without the unhappiness they’d tried to bring into my life.
My family loved and accepted me. If my relatives wanted to be a part of my family, then they would have to learn to love and accept me, too. There was no middle ground where I pretended to be something I wasn’t, in order to be accepted. They either welcomed me — or not. The loss was theirs.
‘But the Camiri family names have been around for centuries.’ She was still protesting. She hadn’t realised I’d just been set free.
‘They all had to start somewhere,’ I replied. ‘This one started today.’ I put my hand over hers, as she’d done to me this morning. ‘This is important, Aine. Please don’t argue about it.’
She wanted to. She really wanted to, but maybe the sincerity I was offering got through to her. Maybe she realised she was only arguing out of a childish desire that only wanted something when it was given to someone else.
‘It doesn’t mean you and I can’t be close, Aine. I’ll always want that. But you have to accept that I have other family, too, now. I don’t love you any less because I’m learning to love them, too.’
Aine’s lip started to quiver. ‘I don’t know what to believe,’ she whispered. ‘You can’t both be telling the truth.’ So, we were back to Saoirse. ‘Father believes her. He would know his own wife. And you’ve lied to all of us, Emer, how can I trust you?’
I shrugged. I guess she could still hurt me, because that stung. ‘I suppose you’ll have to make up your own mind about that, Aine.’
Ronan interrupted us, appearing at our side in a rush, hurrying in from outdoors if his ruddy cheeks were any indication. ‘Bach Chwaer, everyone is dancing. Will you dance with me?’
I heard Mhairi mutter, ‘Bold creature,’ but fortune favours the bold, so I said, ‘I’d love to.’
He grabbed my hand and led me from the hall at a breakneck pace. It was a wonder we made it down the stairs in one piece. The guards remained at the top of the stairs and watched me dance
Ronan was right — I hadn’t even heard the music while I was engrossed in talking with Aine. He pulled me into a big circle. I’d never danced in a group like this before. I’d only ever danced with one partner at a time, but there was an energy to dancing in a group like this. The joy in movement and music was somehow enhanced because we were all sharing it.
Ronan showed me the steps. They weren’t very hard and I still managed to completely screw them up, but no one cared. Eventually, I figured out what I was supposed to be doing and I was swept up in the music.
When the song ended, I was thoroughly out of breath. I collapsed onto the stairs of the hall and Mhairi came to sit beside me.
She showed me her wrist. On it was inked a wolf’s head. ‘It’s our family marking,’ she said. ‘I think by tomorrow, every Camiri will have their family marking on their skin. We’re making old ways new again.’ She nudged me. ‘You haven’t even been here a day and look what you’ve achieved.’
‘And look what I’ve gained,’ I murmured. I had a new family now, but I wished with all my heart that Caradoc was there with me. It was an ache inside me, that he was missing. I still needed him so much.
I was feeling serious and a little bit sombre, but Mhairi chuckled.
‘What?’ I asked. I turned to catch her still smiling broadly.
‘Aren’t you glad I stopped you going back to do more washing up?’ she asked.
I threw my head back and guffawed.
Word had got around the whole Camiri encampment that I had created a new family. As Mhairi had predicted, there was an enormous queue of people wanting Morann to etch their family marking onto their skin. Many of them came up to me afterwards, showing off the different designs and offering me congratulations on my new family.
My eye was caught by a group of women dancing together in a circle, smaller than the main ring. Their arms were linked tight around each other’s waists, as they flicked their hair and danced lightly over the grass. They were slender and lithe, but their exposed arms and legs rippled with lean muscle as they danced. Every one of them had something about her that drew me like I’d never known. It was a kind of magic that didn’t need the moon.
‘Who are they?’ I breathed.
‘They’re the Wild Ones. Just the women. The men have their own celebration, in the woods.’
‘I’m going to go introduce myself.
Mhairi caught my arm and pulled me back. ‘You’ll never get in to speak to them. They’re… different.’
‘Good different.’ Their skirts were shorter than everyone else’s, the hems ragged around their thighs as they danced barefoot. They moved so lightly on the earth; it was like they only touched the ground by choice rather than necessity.
‘Amazing different.’ My head flicked back to Mhairi to find grudging admiration in her face. From her dismissive tone earlier, I hadn’t expected any sort of admiration at all. They must be amazing, indeed.
‘Tell me!’ I demanded. ‘Either you tell me or I go over and ask them.’
‘They’re the ones who escaped. They lived alone in the woods. Niamh — your Caradoc’s sister — she was their Wild Queen.’
‘Niamh?’ I’d heard that name before. Where was it? I racked my brain, but the music was occupying too much of it to process the thought. Music, and the leaping of the wild women, lightly over the grass.
; Mhairi nodded. ‘She was like him. Wild, brave. People couldn’t help following her.’
‘Was?’
‘She was taken prisoner. They said that Caradoc went half mad when she was taken. He went to the ends of the earth to save her. They said that he made a bargain with a Draceni for the Seeds of Truth.’
He hadn’t told me that. I hardly breathed. ‘What are the Seeds of Truth?’ How could I speak so lightly, as if it didn’t even matter?
‘Natural magic. They’re harvested from a special flower that grows far, far from here. Only the Draceni can travel so far, high in the Salis mountains, among the snow and ice and deadly black rocks. There they harvest the Seeds of Deception that allow them to change their shape, to look like ordinary people. But there also flowers the Seeds of Truth, that will force them to reveal their true shape. If a mage imbibes the Seeds of Truth, all their glamours will be stripped away.
‘The curse Master Darragh was holding Niamh under would have been destroyed and Caradoc would have been able to rescue her.’ Mhairi shrugged. ‘Something must have gone wrong. Caradoc didn’t manage to fulfil the conditions. Instead, Master Darragh was forced to show his true form, but his other glamours remained.’
He didn’t manage to fulfil the conditions. That was because the person who fed Darragh the Seeds wasn’t able to touch them, or Darragh would have just returned to his dragon form. Caradoc must have already touched the Seeds so he’d used me to feed them to Darragh. He hadn’t realised that I would be taken over by my desire for vengeance, until I made a mistake and touched the Seed before I forced it into Darragh’s mouth.
I’d failed him. He hadn’t saved Niamh because I’d screwed up the ritual. But I’d screwed up the ritual because he hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me what was at stake. Because he’d used me.
I felt like my throat was closing over. Like Caradoc had come back from the dead, just to wrap his hand around my throat and mock everything he’d been to me. My mind whirled with a thousand justifications, a thousand attempts to pretend that I didn’t feel like I was dying.
‘And no one managed to find Niamh?’ As if I cared. She could drown for all I cared, drown like I was drowning, as I was betrayed by the one person I’d never dreamed would betray me. I’d trusted him as I’d never trusted anyone but Sparrow. I was better off never trusting anyone again. If I couldn’t trust Caradoc, I couldn’t trust anyone. I wanted to stride off into the woods and scream.
‘No one ever heard from her again.’ Mhairi nodded towards the Wild Ones. ‘So, the Wild Ones say they will have no Queen, never again, unless Niamh is found.’
Let them be forever without their Queen. If she was in front of me, I would have killed her, for what she had done. No, not for what she had done. She hadn’t done anything. But Caradoc had used me, used me like I meant nothing to him, and he’d done it for her. If he’d been in front of me, I would have killed him, too.
‘How tragic,’ I said. Mhairi turned her head to look at me sharply, catching something in my voice, but I refused to meet her eyes. I stood up. ‘I’m going to dance with them.’
I didn’t take a single step before the music stopped. A drum began to beat, from deep within the woods. Everyone stopped dancing, even the Wild Ones. They gathered together into a close little group, talking amongst themselves in whispers and casting looks my way over their shoulders. The drumbeat grew ever closer. Torchlight flickered in the darkness between the trees.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
Mhairi got up to stand beside me. Her face was suddenly serious as she looked down at me. ‘You’re about to become a Rhydda officially, Emer.’
‘What do I do?’
‘The Elders will guide you through it.’ Maybe Mhairi saw I was not just nervous, but actually worried, so she clapped her hand on my shoulder. ‘We all went through it when we were six years old. If a six-year-old can do it, so can you.’
The only ceremonies I’d ever known had been the Solstice changeover ceremonies. Every year the creepyguardians had taken me and Sparrow back to Caillen for a ceremony. We would stand in the middle of the room and ask for the privilege of a new name and a new Guardian for the year. The creepyguardians would go away into another room to cast lots for the honour. And then we’d go away, ready to pretend to be the children of a person we might never have even spoken to before.
I had a new name today. A new name of my own choosing to make up for all the names that had been forced upon me. Maybe it was only right there should be a new naming ceremony, one to replace all the bad memories and begin anew. I drew in a deep breath and stood straighter.
As the drums grew nearer and the torchlight flickered ever closer through the trees, the Camiri around me began to sing. It was a low chant, simply repeating the names of the families at first, but as the music developed, it grew into the story of their history, from the time before their captivity.
I tried to follow it, but the torches came into view. There was a group of elders walking together. Every one of them had to be at least eighty, all of them with their long, white hair decorated with blue beads and braids. Many of them walked with a cane or a staff. Mhairi leaned in to whisper into my ear, ‘Each of them is the oldest in their family. You’re now looking at the highest concentration of osteoarthritis in Am Dien.’
My eyes went very wide as I tried not to react to that.
The man at the front of the small procession, a stumpy man whose long hair grew only from a fringe around the circumference of his bald head, came to stand right in front of me.
‘Emer, Bach Chwaer. You have come here today and have showed yourself to be a true member of this community. We welcome you with open arms. Today you are born into our family. And like any child, born new into the world, you have been given a name. Emer, of the family Ganainn. What is your name?’
I raised my voice so everyone could hear me. ‘Emer, of the family Ganainn.’
‘What is your name?’
Hadn’t we done this part already? Still, I repeated it, louder this time in case he hadn’t heard me. ‘Emer, of the family Ganainn.’
‘What is your name?’
I frowned, but I said it again, even louder. ‘Emer, of the family Ganainn.’
The man gave me a slight smile and spoke in a lower tone of voice, probably to stop me shouting. ‘Repeat this name to yourself, Emer, of the family Ganainn. This is who you are. Remember it, wherever you go in the world, whatever you become. You are Emer, of the family Ganainn. Repeat this name to yourself when you sleep and when you rise. Repeat this name to yourself when you eat and when you train. And when they take everything from you, know that they can never take this name from you, Emer, of the family Ganainn.
‘We have repeated our family names for centuries, entrusting our names to our children. But sometimes a child is orphaned, sometimes the family history is lost. Here, today, Emer, of the family Ganainn, you have made right all those fractured families over the years. Today those wounds are healed, and a new family is born. Family Ganainn, raise your voices. Who are you?’
The response came in an ocean of sound, swelling over us. ‘Family Ganainn.’ ‘Family Ganainn.’ ‘Family Ganainn.’
He asked twice more, and they responded each time with our new family name.
‘Brothers and sisters, we stand here together as a family brought together once more from the darkness in which we dwelled for so long. Much has been lost, but we gather together what remains, and today the first fruit is borne from our freedom. We have a new family, and that is cause for great joy. Today will be a day of remembrance for us, the day when the Rhydda look not only to the past, but to the future.’
The musicians struck up a tune again and the people began to sing a solemn, joyful tune. The Elder bowed to me and I bowed in return before he turned and walked back into the woods, followed by the other Elders and the torchbearers.
Overwhelmed, I wrapped my arms around my middle. I heard Andras’s voice behind me. ‘Emer, of the fa
mily Ganainn.’ He stood behind me and slid his arms around me until his hands rested over mine. ‘You did a great thing here today.’
I leaned back into him. I was a complete mess. I wanted arms around me, but I wanted them to be Caradoc’s arms. And at the same time, if I saw Caradoc alive again, I would have spat in his face. I raised my eyes, to stop the tears from flowing. I stiffened in Andras’s arms as I looked at the sky.
‘What’s that?’ I asked. A chill settled along my bones that the warmth of Andras’s body couldn’t dispel. I knew very well what it was.
A dragon.
Chapter Twelve
I panicked at first. Up until so recently, the appearance of a dragon meant Aoife’s Dragon Guards. It meant that we had to take cover — preferably in a hive, where the flames couldn’t reach through the rock. I had to remind myself that I’d met the Draceni and they weren’t evil. A dragon in the sky wasn’t a threat.
‘What?’ Andras asked, his voice soft and his breath warm against my ear.
I pointed. ‘A dragon,’ I replied.
Andras’s left arm pulled so tight around my waist that I cried out. His right hand ripped the dagger from his belt (that I was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to have) and pressed it into my hands.
‘Use this to defend yourself. Oh, God, Emer, be safe.’ He raised his voice and bellowed, ‘Dragon!’
The whole camp went utterly still, except for the movement of a thousand faces skywards. The silence lasted less than half a heartbeat before everyone leaped into action. They scattered, diving into halls and catching up small children to carry them to safety.
I gripped Andras’s arm. ‘What if it’s just a Draceni, though, what if they’re peaceful?’
His face was hard and I trembled against him. That was how he’d looked as a much older man, a man who’d seen grief and suffering beyond what he could bear until he’d become the Black Knight, capable of carving a path through Aoife’s fortress to rescue me.