He murmured “by the Dagdá” in a voice full of awe and disbelief.
Her heart did a skitter-skip. Hadn’t she known this would happen? The minute he laid eyes on the waters of his home the longing would overwhelm him. Her sister Aileen would call this hiraeth, a wistful nostalgia for something that was lost combined with a yearning that would not let go.
“I’ll find your skin,” she said, as her throat closed up. “I’ll find your skin and you can go back home to the sea.”
“You mistake me, lass.” His weight began to bear down upon her. “Those waters are home only to the dead.”
She stared at the churning channel and a strange chill went through her because she knew that he spoke the truth.
“I will go back to the sea,” he said darkly, “but it’ll be upon a ship.” He turned back to the pallet, sweat beading on his brow. “And when I do, I’ll go with a sword gripped in my hand.”
***
“I spoke to the boy last night.”
Cairenn looked up from pouring ale and froze under her father’s steady blue gaze. An image flashed through her father’s mind—Lachlan on the pallet with his dark hair spread across the pillow.
“His name is Lachlan,” she stuttered. Every man was a boy to Da, who’d lived more years than he could count. “I told you that yesterday.”
She’d told Da that Lachlan was Scottish from a place on the shores of a tributary to the North Sea. She’d told Da that he’d been stabbed on a ship, and that he was determined to wreak vengeance on somebody. As soon as Da had come back from the alehouse, she’d told her father everything she knew—except that she couldn’t read the man’s thoughts. She couldn’t confess that then, for her brothers and sisters had been swarming around them, their minds hungry with curiosity.
Her father continued, “I heard him shout in the middle of the night and went to find him collapsed by the window. A few more days and I would take out those stitches, but he’s determined to rip them himself.”
She put the pitcher of ale on the table and slipped onto the bench. Her brothers and sisters were lined up on the other side, stuffing their mouths with whitefish as they watched them with that preternatural sense that something was about to happen. Something was about to happen, indeed, but if she had her way her siblings wouldn’t be around to witness.
“Our stranger was staring at the sea,” Cairenn said, focusing her attention on the little ones, “because I think he’s a selkie.”
She heard them suck in a collective breath, but what she sensed the strongest was the burst of light in their minds, a mixture of fear and rising excitement.
“Cairenn.” Her father’s voice was a warning.
“He came from the sea, didn’t he?” She leaned in to her younger sister, Dairine. “How else could he have survived the surf otherwise?”
Little Dairine nodded, her mind full of innocence. Her two younger brothers stared with their fingers in their mouths, their thoughts whirling. Fiona was at that awkward age when growing girls feign constant disinterest, but her mind was open and waiting.
Little Dairine whispered. “Is it true?”
“I think so,” Cairenn said, knowing the lie wouldn’t hurt. “His skin is hidden on the strand somewhere. It’d be a slick black skin that he’d pull over him to swim back into the ocean with his brother and sister seals.”
Maybe it was the lie that brought her mother’s attention from the hearth where she poked at the whitefish she’d roasted upon the stones, or maybe it was just her mother’s special sense of knowing. “The first of you who finds that skin,” her mother announced, “will receive some sea-treasure from the selkie, no doubt.”
In a flash, her brothers and sisters shoved the last of dinner in their mouths and dashed out the front door.
Cairenn gave her mother a grateful smile. Her mother’s most powerful gift was a heightened sense of knowing the present as well as the future, so her mother understood Cairenn’s intent hardly before she did herself.
“Niall.” Her mother eyeballed her eldest son, still digging into his fish. “You go with your brothers and sisters and see that they collect winkles while they’re searching.”
Niall kicked up to alertness. “But—”
“Would you have Dairine drown while racing out to the rocks?”
Niall suppressed a sigh and cast Cairenn a resentful glance. In her mind she heard his voice as clear as a bell. Your fault. He shoved the last of his dinner in his mouth, swung his leg over the bench, and strode out into the sunshine.
Only when she heard the last of their voices fade did she place her knife on the table and break the expectant silence.
“Da,” she said, “I can’t read the mind of this stranger.”
She didn’t have the courage to look at either of her parents, though she felt her mother’s gaze upon her. Since the first day she discovered her gift, falling to her knees in agony on the Galway shore, Cairenn had always considered her talent more of a curse than a blessing. What advantage did it give her? Unlike Niall, she could not go to the heights and play the music that flowed in her. Unlike Aileen, she could not go to her father’s side and use her gift to heal people. All she could do was pierce the veils of human thought and suffer what she was forced to know.
She couldn’t even leave the island.
“Cairenn,” her father said, his mind straining with patience, “a wounded man often loses his memory. A knock on the head, a swelling under the skull, and then all is fog.”
She saw her father’s vision of Lachlan, buoyed on the waves, knocked up against the great boulders in the channel.
“It’s not like that, Da.”
“His mind is as battered as his body.” He picked up a piece of fish and weighted it between his fingers. “You should learn to recognize this.”
“When I look at him, I cannot see a thing beyond his eyes.”
Her father frowned. “Is that what this selkie foolishness is about?”
“Have you another explanation as to why, with him, my mind is blind?” She’d not soon forget the feel of his muscles moving against her as he stood by the window. “For I’d like to hear it, I would.”
She regretted the sharp words the moment they left her mouth. She did not make it a habit to speak to her father so, but her frustration was like a screeching flock of seagulls in her head. This gift that shackled her to this island had only one, single benefit—using it, she could keep her family safe by knowing the thoughts and intents of the strangers who ventured to their home. Without that benefit, what use was it?
What use was she?
Her mother’s hand fell upon her head. She glanced up and wished she could read her mother’s mind and see the fate that her mother kept secret from her.
“It’s not easy, this gift you have,” her mother said. “Even in the best of times, you see only the darkness, the sins, and the lies that men try to hide.”
Sean the fisherman’s envy over his cousin’s coracle. Sean’s wife’s lustful thoughts of Padraig of Inishmore. Tadgh’s theft of coins from the roof-thatch of the hut of his own blind grandmother, coins spent on whores and ale in Galway. Men undressing every woman they look upon, bending them down in their minds. Women slashing the faces of rivals with their kitchen-knives.
She shook her head as if that would help shake her free of the things she wished she didn’t know.
“You’ve grown wise these years,” her mother continued, “and have learned to keep your counsel. This is a thing not many with your gift would be able to do.”
“Niall appreciates it,” she blurted. In her mind, she could already see him sneaking around to the widow’s hut by the sea.
“Perhaps we have been unwise, Conor.” Her mother brushed her hand over Cairenn’s hair as if she were Dairine at bedtime. “Perhaps we shouldn’t have kept Cairenn safe on this island for so long, away from other people, strangers and mainlanders.”
Cairenn felt her heart leap.
“You did not s
ee her collapse that day.” Her father frowned. “You did not try to staunch pain for which there was no visible wound.”
Through Da’s mind she saw herself, barely thirteen years old, collapse on the mud of the strand outside Galway, her eyes rolling so that nothing showed but the whites. Through his mind she saw that her face had been the color of a gray, salt-stained sail. All that she really remembered was a cacophony of thoughts exploding from the city of Galway and funneling into her brain with such force that she’d felt as if her skull would explode from the inside. In the days that followed, pain was her only companion, until she finally came to a shaky alertness on the pallet that Lachlan now inhabited.
That was when her father stopped taking her to Galway, or even allowing her off the shore.
Funny how the one thing you’re forbidden to do becomes the thing your heart longs for the most.
“She was young, Conor,” her mother said quietly. “Her gift was new.”
“And still is,” he countered.
“How will it mature, if you don’t let her test the limits?”
“I will not lose another daughter, Deirdre, I will not.”
Her spirits sank. She knew Da had her best interests in mind, but she could not deny her yearnings. Unless Cairenn could find another moment to talk Seamus into going on their adventure, she’d be spending her days walking the length and breadth of Inishmaan—the whole stretch of her whole world—only to experience in other people’s minds the places she could never see.
Her mother said, “Maybe our new patient can be of help.”
Cairenn sensed a thought passing between them, high above her, moving so fast that not even she could catch it. It was like that with her ma and da. People in love had a special way of communicating that had nothing to do with fairy-gifts and everything to do with the kind of trusting closeness that she would never have.
“A blade needs a whetting stone, yes?” Her mother turned her swirling gaze on Cairenn. “Maybe your whetting stone is this Scotsman.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Black spots appeared in his vision as Lachlan slumped into a sitting position on the peat-pile just outside the sickroom. The doctor would probably blister him for disobeying orders, but he was tired of lying about. He had to get out of the dim room. He had to feel the sunshine on his face and know he was living on the earth. He had to get strong soon, so he could return to Scotland, tell his father he was alive, and unmask the men who wanted them all dead.
Then he saw an angel emerge from the darkness of a doorway to drift like a feather across the courtyard. The sea breeze batted tendrils of her pale hair out of its braid. Her tunic, in a deep shade of sea-blue, flattened against her legs. Cowhide shoes covered her feet. She hesitated as she saw him sitting there, but not for long. The color in her cheeks deepened as she approached.
She held out a bowl. “I’ve brought you some dinner.”
He slipped his palm under the bowl to take it, by happenstance brushing her fingers with his own. She snapped her hand back.
He said nothing but couldn’t ignore her reaction. He usually didn’t strike fear in women. In fact, the looks he usually got were of a much more flirtatious type. Then again, this was no dark-eyed, dusky-haired, Italianate mignotta standing before him. But he couldn’t imagine what this woman might fear, considering his weakened state.
Well, he was sitting here shirtless in nothing but his braies.
He pulled the bowl onto his lap. “Fish, I see.”
“Aye. A selkie’s favorite.”
“I prefer herring. But I’ll just get that for myself once you find my skin.”
“It may be sooner than you think.” She tipped her head toward the opening in the stone gates. “My brothers and sisters are off looking for it now.”
“I saw a horde of them shouting as they raced out of the courtyard a while back. Are they all your siblings?”
“Seven out of eight are living here now. There may soon be a ninth, with the way my father looks at Ma.”
If she looks anything like you, lass, I’ve no doubt of it.
“My older sister is gone off and has started a family of her own.” She tugged at the hem of a tightly-laced sleeve as if she wanted to pull the cloth over her fingers. “She lives in Wales now, married to one of Prince Llywelyn’s knights.”
He raised his brows. Wales was far from these islands. Prince Llywelyn of Wales was currently engaged in a battle with the English for control of the marshes. How a lass from such a remote place became the wife of a knight was a tale he’d very much like to hear.
“The reason why my brothers and sisters ran,” she said, still fussing with the sleeve-laces, “is because they expect a gift from you if they find your skin.”
His lips twitched. “So you have the whole brood convinced, then.”
“I did what I must to get them out from underfoot. My mother ordered them to collect winkles while they were looking.”
“I don’t like winkles.” He dipped his fingers into the bowl to scoop up some of the fish. “Too much trouble to break the shells. And the shards get caught in my whiskers.”
There it was, a ghost of a smile, flittering across her face, causing her eyes to arc in something like humor.
A beginning.
He bent his head to dinner. The meat was sweet, roasted, and seasoned liberally with pepper. Somehow it didn’t surprise him that Conor of Inishmaan would have a supply of the rare spice. The food melted in his mouth and brought with it a blind hunger. When next he looked up, his fingers were greasy with oil and the bowl was empty.
She raised a finely-arched brow. “You’ll live, I think.”
“Your father says as much.”
“You’re pale as a fish’s belly.”
He suppressed a laugh, because laughing tensed the muscles of his ribs, and that pulled on the wound. “My skin was once a lot darker,” he said, “but it’s been years since I basked under the Roman sun.”
“Rome?” She perked up. “You’ve been there?”
“I studied there.” He probably shouldn’t have mentioned that, but she must have figured out by now he was no sheep’s herder. “The sun is so fierce it toasts a man brown. I prefer the kinder warmth of your island’s sun.”
“Well you’ve lost a lot of blood,” she said, once again finding interest in some far horizon. “My father advises rest—”
“—rest, ale, and no sudden movements that could tear the stitches.”
“He can be a tyrant.” Her voice went soft. “We all dreaded coming to the sick house when we were little, taken by ague, or a spotted disease, or if we broke a bone climbing the cliffs. I can still taste the bitter brews he forced down our throats. Not a twinkle of sympathy.”
“Nine children, all living. That’s the true testament to his skill.”
“He’s the best doctor in all of Ireland.”
“Spoken with a daughter’s pride.”
He liked her smile. It made a dimple deepen in her cheek. Her eyes gleamed, even if she cast her fair lashes down in an attempt to hide her humor.
She reached for the bowl. He didn’t want to give it to her. She was likely to take it back to the kitchens and leave him sitting here alone. Yet he didn’t want to be the man who frightened her, either, so he handed it over and this time made sure not to touch her fingers.
She shifted the bowl between one hand and the other and hesitated, casting her gaze to the kitchens and back.
“It’s a fine strong place you live in, so high on the island,” he said, with rising hopes that she’d stay a while longer. “Has your family always lived here?”
“My da built it before any of us were born.”
He eyed the well-hewn stones of the walls, the close fit of the thatch, and the patterned flagstones of the courtyard that reminded him of Moorish mosaics. “A man of many talents, your father.”
“He brought my mother here from France.” She wandered closer to the peat-pile like a skittish young mare, curious but
wary. “From a place called Troyes. He’d been hired to tend to her because she was very sick. Eventually, he stole her away from her family and married her.”
She took a seat upon the peat logs, though at an arm’s distance. He felt a charge of excitement far stronger than was healthy for a man in his condition.
“Your home,” he said, smelling the brine of the sea and the sun-warmed stones, “it reminds me a little of my own.”
“My da says Scotland isn’t so far away. He’s been to many places.”
“I see why he settled here.” The Scotland he knew was grim and gray, colored by rising danger, but when he was a child it had seemed a brighter place. He supposed everyone remembered their childhood in such a way. “The light here is white and bright. It seems to come from the air rather than from the sun.”
“You’ll have to meet my brother, Niall. He’s a poet and says things like that all the time.”
“You’ve a brother who’s a poet?”
“A harpist, more like. But he tells the tales so well you think you’re living them.”
“So he’s the one who has to answer for putting this idea of selkies in your head?” She flushed a little and it was a glorious thing.
“I can’t blame him for that,” she said. “And that’s enough of your teasing, thank you very much.”
He traced her fine profile against the bright blue sky for so long that she turned to him in the stretching silence. She had green eyes like fresh hazel-shoots in the springtime, full of curiosity.
“I have a confession,” he said.
She dropped her gaze. “The priest comes to the village near the shore on Sundays—”
“My confession is only for you.”
Her throat flexed. “I tremble to hear it then.”
“I’ve been teasing you about thinking I’m a selkie,” he said, “but when I first laid eyes on you, I was sure you were an angel.”
In the silence that followed he watched the quickening rise and fall of her breasts under the fine wool of her gown.
Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3) Page 3