Bridget giggled again. “It’s how I heal the sick. Although my brothers say that I’m too full of fire, too impetuous. I like to think of myself as enthusiastic. Now you, on the other hand...” She leaned back and contemplated me for a moment. “You must be tied to the element of air.”
“Yes, but how did you know?” I asked. A jolt of fear hit me as if Bridget had just struck me with lightning.
Bridget waved away my worry with a laugh. “Sir Dagonet told me. He was telling me all about your journey here, how it rained and rained for days. You poor things! You must have been so cold and absolutely drenched. I just hate the rain. I won’t go out when it’s raining if I can help it. My brothers laugh. Of course, it’s because I can’t stand water or being wet—you know, fire and water just don’t mix. Well, but you are...” She closed her eyes for a moment, and took in a deep breath through her nose as if she was smelling something wonderful. “You are like a cool breeze on a hot summer’s day. So refreshing.”
That made me laugh. “Refreshing? And no one’s ever called me that before.”
“An excellent description!” Sir Dagonet agreed wholeheartedly.
“But I wish I knew where I’ve seen you. It’s just not like me at all not to be able to place a face,” Bridget began, but the door opened and Dylan came into the room, soundly dousing all of the good feelings flowing back and forth between me and Bridget.
“Scai... Oh! I beg your pardon,” he said, coming to a stop in front of Bridget.
I turned, forcing the smile to stay put on my face. It was so tempting to scowl at Dylan when I wanted so much to give him a piece of my mind. But we had a guest, so I held my tongue. It was also a little difficult to dredge up my earlier anger with him when Bridget was right next to me and Sir Dagonet had a broad smile of his face.
“Dylan, this is Bridget,” I said. “She’s a healer.”
“Oh, excellent! How did you find her?” he asked.
“I didn’t. She found Sir Dagonet.” And suddenly what had been teasing the back of my mind popped into the forefront—how had Bridget found Sir Dagonet? He said that she’d just found him on her own. Was that part of her magic?
“I heard you were looking for a healer. You did ask around, did you not?” Bridget asked. “I speak to people all the time, and someone mentioned to me that some strangers were looking for a healer, so I came looking. You know,” she said, turning back to me, “I may talk a lot—and don’t feel bad for laughing at me, I assure you, everyone does—but I do always listen as well.” She turned back to Dylan and raised her arms out to the side saying, “And so, here I am!”
“Ah, I see,” he said, frowning at her. “Well, excellent. Then I did find you a healer after all.” He turned to Sir Dagonet and straightened his shoulders, as if he was going to take all of the credit for bringing Bridget there.
Bridget and my eyes met, and we both just burst out laughing. How ridiculous men were! Dylan hadn’t truly found her. She’d come all on her own, and yet, without a moment’s hesitation, here he was puffing himself up like anything.
Dylan didn’t seem to understand the joke, but Sir Dagonet was chuckling as he drank some more of his ale.
“Sir, I am glad to see you so well recovered,” Dylan said, taking a step toward the foot of the bed.
“Owe it all to Bridget, don’t you know?”
Dylan gave Bridget a cold, if polite, smile. Turning to me, he asked, “And how did your meeting with Jonah go? Is he related?”
I shook my head. I didn’t reveal what I had overheard through the door before I’d left. I was certain it would anger Dylan if he knew I had been eavesdropping. Instead, I said, “I didn’t meet him. He was gone by the time I got to the other inn. But I’m certain that he would have been another dead end.”
“He was gone?” Anger flashed onto Dylan’s face. “Well, perhaps I could...”
“No. Really, that’s all right,” I said, perhaps a touch too quickly.
“What’s this?” Bridget asked.
“Dylan has been helping me search for my lost family.” I explained my search very briefly. “But so far none have been successful,” I concluded.
“Well, of course not. He’s not looking in the right places. You’re Vallen. You should be looking within our community,” Bridget said, as if it were obvious.
“There’s a community of Vallen?” I asked, taking a step forward. Could such a thing actually exist?
“Oh, well, I, er, wasn’t certain...” Dylan stumbled over his words.
Bridget cocked her head, looking at him. “Didn’t I see you last spring at the Beltane festival? At the jousting?”
“Oh, er, did you see me? Um, I was there with my foster brother.”
“I thought so,” Bridget said, nodding. She turned back to me. “I told you, I’m good with faces.” She turned back to Dylan. “You’re a squire? Or were then, right?”
“Yes,” he mumbled, suddenly very interested in his shoes.
“You were here before?” I asked Dylan. I could feel my anger beginning to stir inside me like a leaf caught in the wind.
“Er, yes, but you know, it was busy. A festival,” Dylan explained, “I was working. Squiring for my foster brother, who was participating in the jousts.”
“We have a wonderful festival every spring. It’s so much fun! We have jousting and jugglers and the most wonderful food you can imagine. The locals call it May Day, but in the Vallen community, we all know and celebrate it as Beltane. It’s almost the same thing—a celebration of the coming planting season. We pray for a good and fruitful summer and harvest, full of rain and sunshine. And then the real fun begins,” Bridget said, enthusiasm leaping from her eyes.
I couldn’t help but respond to Bridget’s excitement. “We do something similar where I come from, only we do it at Easter, and, of course, we don’t have jousting.”
Sir Dagonet laughed. “No jousting? Where’s the fun then, wot, wot?”
I couldn’t help but laugh, even though I was really annoyed with Dylan. All this time he had known there was a Vallen community here in Gloucester, and yet he kept bringing me ordinary people and saying that they could be my parents. He should have known to look among the Vallen! And why hadn’t he looked there to find a healer for Sir Dagonet, instead of asking at the inn and the grocer’s? We were lucky that word had gotten to Bridget anyway.
“The funny thing is,” Bridget was saying, “if you had gone to the Vallen community, you would have found me. Well, me and my family.”
I turned to her. “What do you mean?” I felt as if I had missed something important.
“Well, I know that my parents had another daughter before they had me,” she explained. “But they gave her away. Something about a prophecy? I don’t know. I just know that my oldest brother mentioned it to me once when I was complaining about being the only girl in our family. I have five brothers!” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Ha!” Dylan chuckled. “And I thought having two foster–brothers was bad.”
Somehow I didn’t find this at all funny. In fact, my mind was whirling with possibilities. “When did your parents have this other child?” I asked.
Bridget shrugged. “A year or two before I was born.”
I was beginning to get anxious and little impatient. For once Bridget wasn’t going on, adding more information. “And when was that? How old are you?” I asked, feeling like I was prying the information out of her.
“I’m eighteen. My sister would be about twenty. My next older brother, Matthias, is twenty–two and...”
“But I’m twenty!” I said as the excitement mounted inside of me. “You don’t know what they did with the child?” I asked.
Bridget thought about that for a minute, but then shook her head. “I think they went away with her. I know my oldest brother said that they left him in charge of our brothers and went away. That might have been when they went to Wales.”
“To Wales?” Sir Dagonet and I said in unison. Even Dylan’s
eyes had gone wide.
“Er, yes,” Bridget said, her eyes shifting among us. “But I’m really not certain. All I know is that they returned more than a month later. Can you imagine, leaving a nine–year–old boy in charge of four younger brothers for over a month? Anyway, I’m sure Thomas could tell you more.”
“Thomas?”
Bridget nodded. “My oldest brother.”
“Yes, I’d like to speak with him. When do you think I can do so?”
“It will have to be tomorrow. He and the others are extremely busy today. They’re finally fixing the roof of the house we rent to the blacksmith and his family. It caught fire last week and the poor things have been living with only half a roof ever since.”
“If your parents took this baby to Wales...” I mused, halfway to myself, but my voice petered out when faced with the overwhelming possibility.
“Excellent chance that they’re your family, wot?” Sir Dagonet finished for me, saying just what was on all our minds.
Bridget took my hands in her own and looked straight into my eyes. A small smile played around her lips. “You are my sister. I can feel it. And that’s where I’ve seen your face before—on my brothers.”
Chapter Seventeen
The three young men—hardly more than boys—hesitantly entered the private drawing room. Their heads were bowed and their hands visibly shaking, despite being clasped together in front of them.
Nimuë just shook her head sadly. “Do I frighten you so much?” she asked.
“N–n–no, ma’am,” one brave boy spoke up when the others didn’t say anything.
“Good. I certainly do not intend to frighten you.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Are you all enjoying your new positions in the royal household?” she asked, to calm them a little—before she terrified them once again by telling them why she had called them to her.
The tallest of the three let out a breath, while the third said with great enthusiasm, “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”
Nimuë smiled. “I am so glad to hear that, truly, I am.”
“It was very good of you to get us our positions, ma’am,” the first one added.
“Well, you did what I asked of you and for that you received what I had promised.” She paused, before continuing. “Now, I am afraid, I have another little job for you. It is something along the lines of the first.”
“But we already have our positions,” the third young man said.
“Yes, and you would like to keep them, would you not?”
His gaze dropped to the floor. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.”
“But ma’am...”
“Yes?” Nimuë asked. They were determined to test her patience.
“The first time you... well, we had... well, it was...”
“What is it? Just spit it out, boy.” She was really beginning to lose her patience.
“It’s just...”
“We felt urges,” the tall one whispered.
That stopped her. “Urges?” How delicious! And unexpected. “What sort of urges?”
“To...to kill,” the first one said, clearly disturbed.
The tall boy dropped his head into his hands in shame. Worry lines creased the forehead of the third.
Nimuë caught and stopped herself from laughing. “Oh, yes. That is not entirely surprising.” She paced in front of them. “I am sorry to tell you that, once again, you will not be able to act on those urges. I need the girl. The girl you watched for me last time. She is in Gloucester, and I need her brought to me.”
“How?” the third one interrupted.
Nimuë frowned at him, but continued, “You will go in the same form as last time. Attack her. Hurt her. But do not kill her. Do you understand? If you do, there will be dire consequences for you.” She paused to let that thought sink in. “I will be waiting for her outside of the Northern Gate to the city. Drive her there.”
The first and third nodded, their faces solemn. The second still had not taken his face from his hands and his shoulders were now shaking as if he were weeping. Just so long as he did what she told him.
She positioned herself in front of them and began to concentrate on turning these young men into ravens.
Chapter Eightteen
Five enormous, monstrous giants came thumping toward me. Evil smiles revealed sharp, white fangs they gnashed with obvious intent. Their hands opened and closed into fists the size of boulders.
I turned to run, but there was nowhere to run to. I was surrounded by a thick forest with trees so dense I could barely wind my way through them, let alone run. The ground shook with the oncoming approach of the giants as I bounced from tree to tree, trying to escape.
“But, Scai, we’re your brothers,” one of them said from behind me. In a sweet, alluring singsong voice, he called out again, “We’re your family, we just want to taste you.”
“Be with you,” another one corrected.
“Er, yes, be with you,” the first one said. “Dear sister, don’t run away. Come back! Come back to us.”
I moved as quickly as I could through the overcrowded trees. Somehow, although I had difficulty squeezing in between the trunks, my brothers had no problem moving forward. They were gaining on me and still the trees crowded me in, making escape impossible. I whimpered in fright when I turned and saw how close they were. I had to get away!
Breaking out from the forest, I sprinted away, running as fast as I could. Looking back over my shoulder, I didn’t see the line of men approaching me from the other direction until I had nearly run straight into one of them. A man reached out and grabbed me by my shoulders just before I barreled into him.
“Who are you?” he asked, holding me at arm’s length.
“Don’t you remember, brother?” said the man next to him. “Bridget said she might be our long lost sister.”
I looked from one to the other of the five men. Each one was strong and handsome, with blond hair like mine and harsh blue eyes.
The first looked down at me as if he had put something awful into his mouth, and then he pushed me away. “Go back to where you came from, girl. We don’t want you.”
“But...” I began to protest.
“We thought that we’d gotten rid of you for good. We don’t want you. Go away.” He turned his back on me and walked away. The other men did the same, the last one spitting at me as he did so.
“But wait! I’ve come all the way from Wales just to meet you,” I cried.
“We don’t want to meet you. Go back to Wales.” The voice that drifted back to me sounded awfully familiar.
I started to run, following the men. Somehow they had gotten very far away very fast. I hoisted my long skirts and ran as hard as I could to catch up to them, calling out to them, “But you’re my brothers, my family.” But I didn’t seem to be getting any closer. I ran harder and faster as the men sauntered carelessly away.
I wouldn’t give up. I couldn’t! Not after all that I’d been through. I had traveled so far to meet them, they couldn’t just turn their backs on me.
“Go back to Wales,” the voice called back again, and this time I knew whose it was for sure.
“Dylan!”
I sat up with a gasp, staring directly into Dylan’s green eyes.
“How dare you,” I breathed. “You entered my dream. You toyed with my mind while I slept!”
“You can’t go to meet your family,” he said, not looking away.
“How did you do that?” Fear, true blood–chilling fear, crawled down to my very bones like the North wind in the dead of winter.
“It doesn’t matter. You cannot meet your family.”
“Why not? Why are you trying to scare me away from them?”
“They don’t want you, Scai. Why can’t you get that into your head?”
“Because it’s not true,” I insisted. It’s not true, I said again silently, convincing myself as much as I was trying to convince him. No, I was convinc
ed! I was. I knew that what I was doing was right.
“How do you know that? They left you, a helpless babe, on the steps of a church in a town they didn’t know. Isn’t that enough for you? Why do you insist on returning to them?”
“I have to. I have to find out why my parents gave me away.”
“But why?”
That stopped me. “Why? Because they just left me there. Who does that to their daughter? And why would they travel all the way to Tallent, so far from Gloucester, to give me away?” I unclenched my hands only to wring them together. They were hot and sweaty despite the cold that had invaded me.
“You’re right. No one does that unless they are strongly compelled to do so. Think about it, Scai.” Dylan leaned forward to make his point even stronger. “They didn’t want you and they went to a lot of trouble to get rid of you. Don’t you think you should honor their decision? Don’t you think there was a very good reason why they went to all of that trouble?” He paused and then added quietly, “Don’t do this. Show some respect for your parents and their decision. You know it had to be made for a good reason. Honor that.”
“What do you know about this? Do you know my family? Do you know why they gave me away?”
Dylan shook his head. “I know families. I’ve had two: my real family and my foster family. Believe me when I tell you that you are doing the wrong thing,” he said. His voice had softened, filled with concern. “I just don’t want to see you hurt when you’re not greeted the way you expect to be. I guarantee you, they’re not going to kill the fatted calf and welcome you home. You didn’t leave—they got rid of you.”
Pain slashed through me as I sat at the edge of my bed. He was right. I hated it, but he was right. They had given me away—left me miles away to ensure I didn’t come back. Maybe I should respect their decision, I thought, blinking away the tears that had begun to sting my eyes.
Clearly my parents had not done this lightly, or easily. But they had done it. I took a deep breath, trying to dispel the heaviness that had descended on my chest. I felt for a moment as if I was suffocating. I needed air.
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