Crescent Rogue

by Nicole R. Taylor

  “What—”

  “After dinner,” she interrupted. She was already feeling like a surrogate mother, and I grimaced. “There’ll be plenty of time to ask me what you would like to know. We can’t ruin a good meal with talk of darkness, hunting, and the death of magic. It just isn’t proper.”

  “The death of magic?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Oohhhh,” she said ominously.

  “It doesn’t sound like something you should make fun of.”

  “No, it’s serious business.” The smell of cooking filled the cottage, and my stomach rumbled. “So is attempting to fill a man’s stomach, it seems. I think you’ve eaten an entire sheep since you’ve been here.”

  After dinner, Aileen commanded me into the living room where she installed me on a settee upholstered with a flowery fabric.

  “You don’t seem very serious about everything,” I said, scowling.

  “Believe me, I am. But if you can’t have a laugh every once in a while, then what’s the point? Fighting to live a life that’s as dull as dishwater is not much of a life at all.”

  She had a point.

  “There is much you ought to know, I suppose, but let’s start with me. I used to like being the center of attention once upon a time, but the times they are a changing. Who I am has much more to do with the state of things than you would realize at first. The witches and this place…and others like it.”

  “Were you born here?” I asked.

  “Aye, I was born right here in Derrydun,” she said. “The Crescent Witches have called these lands home for longer than any can remember, but I never liked it. Not back then. The world was changing, Ireland was in turmoil, and out there, everything was shiny…and like a magpie, I wanted it all. I was determined to rebel and go against tradition, so when I turned eighteen, I ran off and traveled the world. I was in Australia when I met my husband.” She got a faraway look in her eyes, and a sad smile pulled at her lips. “Jonathan was a good man. He was human and had no idea I was a witch. None at all. It was refreshing being normal, you see. No pomp and tradition to worry about. He adored the ground I walked on, and we were very happy together. We lived by the beach in a little house with a veranda that overlooked the water. All hours of the day and night, we could sit there and watch giant cargo ships sail in and out of the bay. When storms swept over, we could see the clouds billow for miles and miles.”

  “Where is he now? Your husband?” I asked, wondering if he’d found out Aileen’s secret and cast her out. Perhaps he didn’t accept what she was.

  “Still there, I suppose.”

  “Do you think about him?”

  “Always.” She glanced away but not before I saw the tears in her eyes. “We even had a daughter together. After I had given birth to her, I knew she would develop the same abilities. She did, and I wasn’t expecting how strong she would be even as small as she was, so to protect her, I bound her powers. I knew it was wrong. I regretted keeping her heritage from her, but I thought it was best. We were away from the coven, Jonathan didn’t know, and we were alone. When she turned two, I received word that…” She trailed off, her voice breaking.

  I didn’t have to have a memory to understand the Crescent Witches were set upon, their magic drained, and their lives lost. It was written all over Aileen’s face. She was the last and her daughter…

  “I had to come back and leave my little family behind,” she went on. “To keep them safe. There are creatures out there that feed on magic, and they’re getting stronger. Every year, there are less and less witches and magic…Well, there mightn’t be any left before long. That’s why it’s so important to keep ourselves hidden. Those creatures would latch onto her like a parasite, draining every last scrap of life from her little body, and Jonathan…I couldn’t bring that down upon them.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Never you mind,” she replied. “It wasn’t your fault. It is what it is. It’s not much consolation, but at least the Crescents live on, and our magic is still in this world.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “Skye,” she murmured. “She’s still alive, none the wiser, believing I’m a terrible mother for abandoning her, but at least she’s safe from all this. There’s that, I suppose. She was twenty-seven this year. Twenty-seven… She must be beautiful.”

  “Duty,” I murmured, looking into the fire. It was a familiar word, and the thought of it stirred feelings I couldn’t pinpoint. I wondered if it had anything to do with my past. Thinking on it and attempting to unravel the mystery, a now familiar resistance cropped up, and pushing too far, my mind slammed into it like a psychic brick wall.

  I winced and pressed my thumbs against my temples, rubbing slow circles. The motion seemed to help soothe the ache, but my mind was still locked.

  “The more you try to remember, the more it’ll hurt,” Aileen said, wagging her finger. “Stop poking at it.”

  “I can’t,” I said with a groan. “I have to know. Where did I come from? Why were those animals chasing me? Who am I?”

  Aileen hissed and rolled her eyes, looking torn.

  “Can you do something?” I asked, prodding at her. “Is there some spell that could take this darkness away?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. It depends on how your mind was tampered with. Either way, it’s not a nice thing to go through. Perhaps not remembering is kinder.”

  I fisted my hands around the arm of the chair, my fingers aching.

  “That’s enough of that!” Aileen cried. “Stop destroying my furniture!”

  Pulling my hands away, I gasped as I saw the claws that had grown from my fingertips. My fingers had elongated and curved as my hands formed into the talons of a gyrfalcon. Then I’d dug them into the upholstery of my rescuer’s settee.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t…” I’d begun to change and hadn’t even realized it was happening.

  “Oh, dear,” she said, clucking her tongue. “What a rogue you are.”

  “Look at what I am,” I declared, holding up my hands and brandishing my talons. “I can’t even control this! This is who I am, and I don’t even know I’m doing it! Were those wolves and ravens… Were they shapeshifters, too? If they come back, how can I fight them? Why do they want to kill me? Why?”

  “Calm down, Boone,” Aileen said, placing her hand on my knee. “Calm yourself before you change entirely. I can’t have an angry falcon flapping about my living room.”

  “Can you fix my mind?” I asked, heaving a sigh of relief as my claws began to ease back into human shaped fingers.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Will you try?”

  “I can, but it will hurt. A great deal, I’m afraid.” She pursed her lips. “Are you sure? You only landed in the forest a night ago.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Then we must go to the tree,” she said. “You may have lost your memory for a reason. Uncovering it may be the last thing you need.”

  “I’ve thought about nothing else,” I said, my brow creasing. “I may have asked someone to take it, I may be protecting something of my own, I may be protecting someone I care about, or someone may have stolen it. How am I to know which is true?”

  “Aye, you have a point. It’s a flawed plan—amnesia—because everyone craves an identity. Who we are is everything we are if you get my meaning.”

  “I don’t see that I have any other choice.”

  Aileen grimaced, but she waved her hand. “All right. Let me put on my shoes, then we’ll go to the hawthorn.”

  “Thank you,” I said as she rose to her feet.

  “Don’t be thanking me yet. You may be cursing the day I was born before long.”

  I doubted it, but I didn’t tell her that. As she disappeared into the hall, I hoped her magic could unlock something, anything, that could shed some light on who I was.

  The forest was dark as we made our way toward the ancient hawthorn.

  The wet, earthy scent permeated m
y senses as the closeness of the trees and the wildness of the place put me on edge. It felt as if a hundred pairs of eyes were glued to my back, and I instantly thought of the ravens. Peering over my shoulder, I could see nothing but the trees and ferns we’d already passed. We were alone.

  As with the previous night, I could hear bubbling water off in the distance. It must be much deeper into the wilderness past the clearing that held the hawthorn.

  Stepping into the clearing, Aileen nodded toward the hawthorn. “Can you feel it?”

  I stared up at it, noticing how tall it was compared to the one in the village. It must be a thousand years old to have grown into the dominant thing it was now. Even in the dark of night, I could pick out the colors. Its leaves were a rich emerald, the berries on its boughs red as blood, and its branches knotted and snarled.

  I nodded. “The air feels close. I didn’t notice it last night.”

  “I doubt you noticed much of anything,” she quipped. “That closeness you feel? That’s the tree’s protection. Whatever spell I cast here will be kept hidden, but only as long as we remain under her canopy.”

  I stepped closer, casting my gaze up as the branches stretched above my head, and the air thickened even more.

  “Kneel,” Aileen commanded. “Place your palms against the roots, and open yourself up to the magic in her old bones.”

  The notion that a tree held magic seemed absurd, but I’d felt something come from it the night before as I did now. Warmth, safety, and something else. Placing my knees into a hollow at the base of the trunk, I grasped the exposed roots and bowed my head.

  Aileen stood behind me, her hands on my shoulders, and I tensed.

  “This is going to sting a little,” she warned. “Try to hold still.”

  “Do what you need to,” I replied, bracing myself.

  "All right. You asked for it.”

  At first, I felt her magic trickle into my mind, her hands warm on my shoulders. Slowly, the darkness began to shift…then pain tore through my mind like a hundred hot pokers stabbing into my flesh. Over and over, biting, burning agony.

  A woman cried out from far away, and all at once, the connection was severed. Shoved forward into the tree by a silent explosion of air, I grunted, smacking the top of my head against the trunk. Dazed, I turned just in time to see Aileen fly across the clearing. With a wallop, she hit a pile of leaves, and they flew into the air, fluttering everywhere.

  Scrambling to my feet, I sprinted to her, my heart beating frantically. My head throbbed something fierce, but it was nothing compared to the alarm that overcame me at the sight of Aileen in full flight.

  I kneeled, scraping leaves away from her face, and dug her out.

  “Are you all right?” I asked as she blinked up at me.

  “Wowee!” she cried. “What a kick!”

  I frowned, not expecting her reaction at all. From the way she’d flown across the clearing, I thought she would be bruised and battered, but it looked like she was high as a kite.

  “What happened?” I asked. “You look…”

  “Whatever happened to you, it’s strong,” she said, sitting up. “Your mind is locked tighter than Fort Knox!”

  “What’s a Fort Knox?”

  “A really big vault that’s impossible to get into,” she explained. “I’m afraid there’s no getting inside there.” She tapped my forehead.

  I fell back onto my ass and cursed, rubbing my hands over my face. “So I’ll never know who I am?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then how can I unlock this Fort Knox?”

  “It’s not a Fort Knox… That’s just a metaphor.” Aileen sighed and started picking leaf litter from her hair. “I would say the only way you’re getting your memories back is by finding whoever locked them up in the first place. That kind of magic comes with a signature, like a combination.”

  I cursed again, this time growling my frustration to the sky. It came out a little too animal like for Aileen’s liking, and she flinched.

  The only way I was finding out who I was was finding someone I couldn’t remember to undo the spell they’d put on my mind. I was stuck, and I knew it, and so did Aileen. There was no quick fix to this. Realistically, there might not be one at all.

  This? My rebirth as Boone—the shapeshifter who couldn’t control his changes, the man who didn’t know his heritage, and the man without a home—might be it.

  I was hunted by a dark power I didn’t understand, and the only place I was safe seemed to be Derrydun with its mystical ancient hawthorn tree. I knew to come here, so what did that mean? The moment I left to search for answers, they could find me again. This was it. This place, this person I’d woken up as… This was it.

  I couldn’t leave. I was stuck here. Probably forever.

  “Come,” Aileen said gently. “Let’s go home.”

  “Home?” I whispered, feeling completely lost.

  “To be sure,” she declared. “Where else are you going to go?”

  Chapter 5

  A week passed, and I’d resigned myself to building a new life in Derrydun.

  Under the protection of the hawthorn, I was free to come and go as I pleased, helping Aileen with her garden and shop. We continued the ruse that I was nothing more than the son of an old friend of hers, and just like that, I was now a resident of the village.

  I didn’t know who or what was after me so I couldn’t leave, and Aileen knew about my abilities, so she could help me come to terms with what I was. Like a child, it seemed, I had to learn everything all over again. Instinct was one thing, controlling what happened in front of a bunch of people who didn’t know magic existed was another.

  Like clockwork, I’d taken to sitting with Aileen in her shop every morning before prowling the forest of an afternoon. I couldn’t go far—I wasn’t sure where the boundary of the hawthorn’s magic ended—but it was far enough.

  I watched Aileen shuffle her tarot cards. She hadn’t asked me to draw another, and I hadn’t felt the need to with the message she’d given me that first day. Stabbed in the back. I had been, but besides the ravens, it could be the reason why my memories were locked away.

  I winced, a sharp spike of pain splitting through my head, and Aileen narrowed her eyes at me. Her look said everything.

  Turning to the counter, she placed the cards facedown and swept them across the surface in a long arc. She peered at them for a moment, then reached out and drew one from the left side.

  Turning it over, she sighed and set it down in front of her.

  “You always draw the same one,” I said, placing my finger on the card. “What is it?”

  “The Tower.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “A variety of things,” she replied. “So much has happened this last week, I was entirely positive it was pointing at your arrival, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Because it keeps coming up?”

  “Precisely.” Aileen smiled and pulled the cards back into a neat pile. “The Tower looks like a frightening card with its crumbling tower and storm clouds, but it’s actually quite positive. Tarot is like that, and so is the world. Nothing is what it seems.”

  “It reminds me of the tower house on the hill,” I murmured, thinking of the crumbling ruin that loomed over Derrydun.

  “If you travel deeper into the forest, you’ll find more ruins,” Aileen declared. “The tower house was once part of a sprawling estate built over lands that were once home to the ancient peoples of Ireland. The entire area is full of magical places and stories that would warm your heart and make your toes curl at the evils that live in our world.”

  “How far can I go before the hawthorn’s protection ends?” I asked.

  “The hawthorn in the forest stretches at least a few miles, and the one here in the village perhaps a mile,” she replied. “Why do you ask?”

  I shrugged. “Perhaps I should make myself useful if I’m going to be stuck here.”

  “I know
it’s not ideal, but it is what it is. Things tend to happen for a reason, you know.”

  “I can’t sit around and wallow in my misfortune,” I said, glancing out the shop window. Another busload of tourists had just navigated the hawthorn down the road and was pulling into the coach bay beside Mary’s Teahouse. “Besides, you clothe and feed me and ask for nothing. I may have lost my identity, but I haven’t lost my strength.”

  Aileen snorted. “If you want some work, there’s plenty of it around here. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.”

  “There is a bus coming,” I said. “Do you want me to stay?”

  “I can manage. Mairead should be here soon enough.”

  Leaving Aileen with her tarot cards, I ventured out into Derrydun to start building a semblance of a life. If this was to be my home, then I had to make it into something I could tolerate. Filling my days with work would mean less time inflicting myself with headaches trying to puzzle out my past.

  I set out with fierce determination, and by the end of the day, I’d negotiated duties and payment at several shops and also up on the farm overlooking the village. I was to help three nights a week in the kitchen at Molly McCreedy’s, and I’d offered to tend to old Mrs. Boyle’s garden and trim her hedges once a month. I was to fetch the local produce deliveries for Mary at the Teahouse, and I was the new farmhand on Roy O’Toole’s property on the hill behind Aileen’s cottage.

  It was simple and lonely work, but I would be close to nature where I felt the safest, and well within the boundary of the hawthorns.

  Molly McCreedy’s had been my last stop, so I pulled up a stool by the bar. It was a tiny little place, full of the scent of stale barley and hops as well as the lingering perfumes of cooking from the kitchen beyond. Behind the counter was a set of taps with large handles. I watched the barmaid pull down on one and fill a glass with beer, the top frothing as the golden liquid reached the rim.

  “Ye want one?” a man asked from beside me. “My shout.”

  “Sure,” I replied, looking him over. “Why not?”