by Cate Tiernan
Could it be Diarmuid and. and Siobhan?
Was this the spot where they had died?
I climbed over the ashes to study the skeletons. A gold ring was still wrapped around one of the charred finger bones—Diarmuid’s ring. I pressed my lips together, feeling a sting as I understood that the burned girl was Siobhan.
’Twould be the last time she hurt me.
I reached down and snapped the ring off Diarmuid’s charred finger bone. I would save it for my child. “I won’t tell your daughter the truth about you,” I told him, then thought better of it. How many years had I tried to pry the truth about Da from Ma? “Or mayhap I’ll tell her everything. every sordid detail of your weak and cowardly character.”
I laughed, realizing that Diarmuid no longer had any power in this life. Lifting my gown, I gazed upon the marking that I had branded on my belly. The pentagram was there, inverted. I blinked in awe. I had branded it so that I could look down and see it—but that meant the star shape was actually upside down upon my belly. An inverted pentagram was a legendary symbol for the harnessing of evil, though I’d never before used it.
I pressed Diarmuid’s ring against my own inverted marking. Somehow it brought me a dark pleasure, and I was glad to feel something even if it was a bitter end.
“ ’Tis your heritage,” I told my child. “The inverted pentagram, the dark spell, the dark wave, the origin of our redemption. This will be the spell I pass on to you to protect you and yours for all time.”
The babe gave a hearty kick, and I lowered my gown. ’Twas time to rest, but I could not find comfort here in this landscape of charred ruin. I tucked the ring into a satchel on my belt and moved on.
Instead of heading back to my own village, I kept going east, past the burned bog and heather that had surrounded Siobhan’s house. I paid no homage to the smoking remains there as I walked past, my sights set on a distant village where I might find lodging at an inn.
I came to a fork in the road and decided to continue east, to the place where the sun rose. Just beyond the fork someone called my name. I turned to find Aislinn waving at me, her red hair flying as she ran to catch up with me. Her energy seemed jarring in the silent woods, the site of so much recent destruction.
“Rose! Rose! It was you, wasn’t it? Did you see the ruin?” Her face was lit with a predatory smile. “Your spell wiped them out, the whole lot of them! By the Goddess, we really showed them! It will be a long time before anyone else crosses a Wodebayne.”
I rocked back on my heels, weary but relieved that Aislinn understood.
“You must be filled with wonder at what you’ve accomplished.”
“I can’t say that I am,” I admitted, wishing that I could summon some emotion.
“Well, then I am proud on your behalf,” Aislinn said. “Your dark wave of a spell has put an end to our persecution. You have altered our fate, Rose. Nevermore will we be downtrodden, nevermore the outcasts.”
“My ma does not agree,” I said. “She’s banished me from our coven.”
“Síle is a foolish woman,” Aislinn said. “She has no vision, no courage. Did you know that many of us had already abandoned her coven, long before last night? Coveners were tiring of Síle’s failure to take action. We’ve begun to have our own circle in the woods east of here, near a village called Druinden. Though sometimes we flounder. We haven’t really found a high priestess with the power to summon the Goddess.”
“Really?” I felt bolstered by this news. Perhaps I had not been abandoned as I’d thought. Perhaps it was Síle who was wrong. Perhaps she had been denying the ways of the Goddess, and that was why I was here traveling down this unknown road with barely a stitch to my name.
“Is that where you’re headed?” Aislinn asked. “Druinden?”
“I suppose, if I can get a room at the inn there.” I felt awkward revealing myself to Aislinn, yet I suspected she knew my entire story already. “I’ve not only been banished from the coven, but also from the cottage. And. you probably know, I’m with child.”
“Don’t even think of the inn!” she insisted, her face flushing with pride. “You must stay with my sister and me! It’s my father’s cottage, but he’s off at sea most of the time. And you mustn’t worry about the bairn. The Goddess will provide. Especially if you decide you want to be high priestess of the new coven. Of course, the others must agree, but how could they not see your power? The whole village of Druinden knows of the dark wave. I’ll wager everyone from here to Londinium knows. That spell has made you the high priestess of the Highlands.”
I hardly felt like royalty, shuffling down that long road upon my aching feet. At the moment all I wanted was a place to rest and a pitcher of water to wash the smell of death from me. Wash away the soot, and the grime, and the bitter memory of betrayal.
14. Samhain
“ ’Tis time to leave the light and enter the darkness,” I said from the center of the circle. My coveners gathered around me, listening intently as their new high priestess spoke the words of the Samhain rite. “I plunge the blade of my athame deep into the heart of my enemy,” I said, lowering my athame into a goblet of wine held by Aislinn.
“Plunge the blade, let evil die,” they chanted, circling around me.
I went over to the ceremonial fire and stirred it with a stick until embers flew through the darkness. “I stoke the fires of vengeance and point the wrath of the Goddess toward their evil.”
“Stoke the fires, let evil die,” they chanted.
I stood naked before them, the round ripeness of my body so befitting the harvest ritual. The coveners were also unclad, and I noticed that a few others had taken to branding their bellies with the inverted pentagram. Aislinn had done it first, inspired by the marking on my belly, which had healed but was now a deep brown—a permanent sign of the powerful spell I had created.
Around my neck I wore a necklace with the amber stone Kyra had charged for me along with jet black beads to signify my position as high priestess. I had not seen Kyra or my mother since the day after the dark wave. At times tales of Síle’s coven trickled into our circle, and I listened with interest, despite the fact that I knew I would never see my mother again. I realized now how she had tried to undermine my strength, depriving me of the power the Goddess intended me to wield.
I touched the golden stone at my neck, wondering if Kyra knew the power of her charm. Amber was also an excellent protector of children and a spell strengthener, and I often held the charmed stone close to my breast in anticipation of the birthing rite. My child would be here before Imbolc, I knew it. I had enjoyed visions of her—a tiny bundle in my arms as I knelt before Aislinn, summoning the Goddess’s power through the lighting of the candles in the crown upon my head.
“Let us reenact the great event of our year,” I said, moving to the side of the circle, “the dark wave.”
Aislinn led the dance, playing me as I crafted the spell in my prison cell. Other coveners played the forces of earth, wind, water, and fire. As I watched the dancers move, leaping in the air and dipping to the ground, I thought of the hours I had spent schooling my coveners in the elements of the dark wave. We planned to cast the spell over the Burnhydes to the north, for they had been stealing sheep from Wodebayne herders repeatedly. ’Twas unforgivable, the way they committed crime with abandon. “They must be stopped,” Aislinn said often. “And we have the power to do it.”
The dark wave.
The coveners had proven to be apt students of the grave spell. Already they had collected hair and fingernails from Burnhydes for use in the magick.
My baby shifted inside me, and I smiled. Aye, little one, you will learn the spell, too. I will pass it on to you. It is your legacy.
When the drama before me ended, I arose and held my hands up to the Goddess. “I fell into deep darkness,” I said. “I greeted death. I tore the velvet darkness of everlasting light. Ablaze with glory, I was reborn. Now the old year ends.”
“The new year begins!�
�� the coveners responded. “Plunge the blade! Stoke the fires!”
I went to the center of the circle, saying: “Their evil shall burn their own funeral pyres!”
The coveners danced around me, chanting: “Plunge the blade! Stoke the fires!”
I felt the power of the Goddess swirl around us. Aye, we were nearly ready to send the dark wave, so mote it be. “Welcome, new year, farewell, strife. From fiery embers arises life.”
“Plunge the blade! Stoke the fires...”
Epilogue
Hunter and I still sat silently on the couch. Plunge the blade! Stoke the fires! The words kept running through my head, like a mantra. This girl, this young, seventeen-year-old girl. I tried to imagine going through what she went through. Would I have reacted the same way?
“Morgan?”
I realized that Hunter was looking at me with concern. His hand lay on my arm. He seemed to be waiting for me to respond. Had he asked me a question? I shook my head, trying to clear it, and then reached for my cold chamomile tea. “Yes,” I said quietly. When I raised the cup to my lips, I realized that my face was wet with tears.
“Morgan, are you all right?”
I looked down at the closed book. Rose MacEwan, I thought, my ancestor. The creator of the dark wave. How was it possible? But I knew, I realized almost immediately, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I remembered the few times I had practiced dark magick—shape-shifting with Ciaran. Weather magick with my half brother Killian. It had felt so right, pure, and natural. Hunter realized it, too, I thought—when strange things had started happening at our circles, he had believed it was me. Rose could have been me, I thought with sickening clarity. We were so alike: blood relatives. I could have been Rose.
Hunter had knelt on the floor before me, and he sat now with his hands on my knees, begging me to speak.
“No,” I said softly, shaking my head. “I don’t know what I am.”
Hunter looked up at me, his eyes warm with concern. I could see pain there, pain at seeing me cry. Oh, Goddess, he loved me, without tricks or reservations. What he had done with Justine seemed so trivial now.
He sat back on the couch, reached out, and folded me into his arms. I didn’t resist. “She didn’t know, love. She didn’t know what she was doing.”
“But she still did it.” I shivered involuntarily, thinking of Rose and Diarmuid—she had been so sure of their love, as sure as I had been— was—of Hunter’s. And look where it had led. The same place my birth parents’ love had led—to death, destruction, and misery.
I looked up at Hunter’s face—the face that I dreamed of, the face that I believed to be there for me. Only me. I reached up and touched Hunter’s cheek—my mùirn beatha dàn. Even his parents’ love had led to hurt—abandoning their children, Hunter’s father hurting himself in an attempt to recreate what they had had after his love’s death.
“I know you, love. You’re not like Rose. You’ve chosen good.” Hunter whispered, stroking my hair.
I nodded, wanting to believe him. But as a daughter of such dark origins, I could only hope that he was right.
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