by C. E. Murphy
This was probably not the time to get in a theological debate with my Irish Catholic cousin. Besides, regardless of who or what thanks might be given to, she was right. It was a nice idea, and it was probably true. “How many holy days? Or not holy, whatever.”
“Every six weeks or so. Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasa, Samhain and the quarterly days. The solstices and equinoxes.”
Eight times a year. And she’d missed at least three while we’d traveled Europe together eighteen months earlier. No wonder the ground was parched. I nodded against the stone my forehead rested on. “Just how glowy are we talking?”
“The whole of the mountaintop,” Caitríona said in satisfyingly obvious awe. “Even the chapel is alight.”
“I thought ye hadn’t the power.” Méabh sounded one note shy of accusing. I tipped my head sideways again, prepared to leap up and defend my cousin at any moment. As soon as the nausea finished fading. Surely Méabh wouldn’t smack her around until then.
“I haven’t, but the glow is plain to see.” Belligerence met accusation, Caitríona’s Irish getting up in fine form.
“Only to one with the power!”
They were going to get in a knock-down drag-out. It was a small mountain compared to the Rockies, but it was plenty big to do Caitríona a lot of harm should she get thrown off. I had no doubt it was she who would lose, since even if Méabh wasn’t a trained fighter, she had a good solid foot in height on the O’Reilly girl. “Maybe,” I said loudly, into the ground, “maybe it’s me. I’ve put on visible fireworks before. Or maybe Cat’s got the power and just doesn’t know it yet. Or maybe it’s the goddamned stars aligning, but whatever it is, I would like to invite you to shut the hell up, because the last thing I need right now is your petty bitching adding to the weight of a few hundred human sacrifices. Capiche?”
“Sacrifices?” Caitríona’s voice shot up into a squeak just like mine did when I got alarmed. Then she downshifted into mortally offended historian mode, which I also might have done if I had the right knowledge. “That’s just a story they made up to scare people off from being pagan. The druids didn’t sacrifice anybody.”
“No,” Méabh said hollowly, “but my mother did. And today she seeks to again.”
A red-capped man with a scythe erupted from the earth and took a swing at Caitríona’s head.
I went head over heels, dislodged earth scattering in arcs of still-brilliant power. Metal clanged somewhere above me. I ended up on my back with Méabh standing above me, and between Red Cap and Caitríona. Méabh’s sword tangled his scythe, and she looked like she’d finally found her purpose in being here.
Red Cap was the grimmest, nastiest-looking little man I’d ever seen. Barely four feet tall, his scythe was half again his height, but he used it with brutal confidence: a sharp twist dislodged it from Méabh’s sword. She blanched with surprise and rolled the hilt in her palm to keep a grip on it. Nasty pleasure warped his deep-set wrinkles into smug superiority. His red cap, shoved far down over furious black eyes, made his ears poke through wild hair of a begrudging filthy gray. He bared his teeth at Méabh in a nasty grin—look, he was just nasty, there was no other word for him—and showed off vicious pointed teeth with the expression.
Caitríona was screaming her fool head off. Red Cap swung at her again and I snaked an arm out, grabbed her ankle and hauled her off her feet. The scythe zipped through the air where her head had been and she hit the ground with a grunt, her screams cut short. I bellowed, “Rumpelstiltskin! Rumpelstiltskin! Rumpelstiltskin!” into the silence, which only had the effect of making Red Cap and Méabh both gape. I slumped, for all I was on the ground. It had been worth a shot.
The reprieve caused by my shouting didn’t last nearly long enough. Red Cap swung his scythe high and brought it down at me like a pickax. I threw my arm up, which was a stupid, stupid thing to do if I ever wanted to drive a manual clutch again. I almost had time to regret it.
The scythe reverberated off more than just my power. Red Cap hit so hard he wobbled away, and Caitríona screamed again, this time in confusion. Even Méabh took a moment to stare curiously at the small round shield suddenly clamped to my arm.
It was copper embedded with gold and purple. I didn’t have to see to know there were stylized animals etched around the shield’s edge, because the bracelet my father had given me had those animals on it. Nor did I have to see the gold interior quartered by a purple cross to know they were marked with the weight of honor. I had only ever once brought those things together smoothly, and that had been for a dreamscape battle. I’d carried this very shield then, so it was as familiar as it was totally unexpected. I hadn’t called for it the way I’d called for my sword in the past. It had just appeared on its own.
Part of me wondered why it hadn’t done that when I was, oh, say, fighting zombies, but I didn’t have to look very far for the answer. My damned shields were finally instinctive, and more, my power was finally, finally, becoming an integrated whole. I only just now had all those needs and pieces functioning together in the real world. Of course, that flew in the face of being unable to heal the damned werewolf bite, but my burst of enlightenment ended as Red Cap wobbled, snarled and struck at me again.
I had, time and again, tried to use my magic and my sword together as a weapon. Time and again it had backfired. Warrior’s path or no, my healing magic was not meant to do damage. But right now I didn’t have the sword, and I didn’t need the healing power. All I needed was a little change, the tenet of shamanism. The shield’s edges were relatively dull. I willed them to be sharp, and swung the shield up to catch the scythe.
Its metal haft parted like butter under a hot knife. The blade bounced away, nearly skewering Caitríona, and Red Cap paused long enough for a fatal gawk. I crunched up, swung the shield again and opened the nasty little gnome from hip to collarbone.
By all rights, viscera and goo should have spattered from him. Instead, magic poured out of him. Blood red, to be sure, but magic, not blood, as if it was magic and magic alone that sustained him. I flinched under the onslaught until I realized I wasn’t being covered in gunk, and then, as it slowed, had a look at Méabh. Cernunnos bled: I knew that for a fact. I wondered if the aos sí were more like him, or more like Red Cap, creatures made entirely of magic. Nuada had a silver arm, after all. Anything could happen. But then, Lugh had done a pretty good job of bleeding. It was possible I would never fully understand magic. Of course, if it could be fully understood it’d be science, and the things I did were entirely comfortable with ignoring scientific probability.
Méabh studied me like I’d become something new and much more interesting. “It’s wrong I was, Granddaughter. You’re a worthy warrior after all.”
“Oh gosh, thanks.” The shield faded now that the need was gone, but I could feel its weight now, just like I could feel the sword I didn’t exactly carry. I got to my feet, feeling a little grim. “That was not your mother.”
“No. But it was her creature, and any one of us dead here today w—”
“That was a bloody Red Cap!” Caitríona bounced to her feet. “A fear darrig! A leprechaun, for sweet God’s sake! They don’t exist! They don’t—they’re not—they—they—!!”
I made a note to go back and apologize profusely to everybody I’d ever said anything like that to, then, inanely, said, “Leprechaun? I thought they wore green. And gave people pots of gold, not razor-close shaves. And lived at the end of rainbows.” I gave the still-power-enriched earth a nervous glance as I said that last. I’d triggered an end-times sign once because my newborn power had emitted all the colors of the rainbow. For a horrible moment I thought maybe I’d done it again, making a rainbow’s end on top of Croagh Patrick and thus inviting a leprechaun to visit, but the vestiges of power were the silver-blue they were supposed to be.
“Bloody tourist boards,” Caitríona muttered. “Turning the Red Caps green and giving them fairy powers. A real Red Cap is—” She gestured at the body, which, released of the m
agic that had sustained it, was now shriveling into dust. Magic-born things seemed to do that. “But they’re not supposed to be real! Will someone please tell me what is going on!”
Méabh and I exchanged glances, and I shrugged. Caitríona’d asked. I figured she deserved the answer. “This is Méabh, warrior queen of Ireland, daughter of Nuada of the Silver Hand and the Morrígan, who spent a few generations murdering the aos sí high kings to gain power for her master, who I refuse to accept is the Devil Himself. Seriously, I don’t think he is,” I said to Caitríona’s widening eyes, “but he’s absolutely a death power in this world, maybe the death power. My mother, your aunt, spent her whole life fighting against him, and I managed to screw it up not once but twice, and the price for that is she saved me but ended up in thrall to the Master as one of his murderous, blighted banshees. We have…” I turned my wrist up, found the bandages and bracelet there instead of a watch, but it didn’t matter because I didn’t need the exact time anyway. “Until sunset to burn her bones, find her captured spirit and free her before she becomes the Master’s forever. I also probably have just about that much time to find my friend Gary, who went off to fight a major battle with the Morrígan and the Master several thousand years ago, and if I don’t find him I’m going back to the beginning of time and rewriting this whole goddamned world’s history, which I can do because I’m a shaman, which means I have healing powers and also that I kick ass.” I turned to Méabh. “Did I miss anything?”
She nodded at the bandages I’d just re-noticed and I lifted my arm. “Oh yeah, right, yeah. All that and I’m turning into a werewolf. The end.”
Caitríona fainted.
Chapter Sixteen
People fall down fast when they faint. There’s not usually time to catch them, and neither Méabh nor I even tried. In fact, we both watched Caitríona collapse with a sort of clinical awfulness, me wincing as her cheek bounced off a sharp stone and a bruise began to blossom under a sudden rivulet of blood.
“You’re a healer,” Méabh said after a moment, and gentle-hearted me shrugged.
“She already believes some of this, but I might as well wait for her to wake up and notice she’s— Hi, are you okay?” Faints didn’t usually last very long, either. I crouched beside an exceedingly bewildered Caitríona and patted her shoulder. “You fainted. Perfectly understandable, it’s been a rough day. It’s going to get worse. Or differently interesting, anyway. How’s your cheek?”
“It hurts.” Poor Caitríona was too overwhelmed to even whine. At worst her statement qualified as a whimper. I felt around in the pockets of my brand-new coat like I’d find a mirror there—as if I ever carried a compact mirror—then waved my hand at Méabh.
“C’mere, let her see herself in your sword. It’s the only reflective surface we’ve got.” The polished silver was in fact remarkably reflective, and Caitríona’s eyes filled with tears as the visual component added insult to injury.
“It’ll scar so it will.”
Under normal circumstances, she’d be right. There was a nice little puncture seeping blood at a remarkable rate, and since it had been made by a rock, it was likely dirty. But I was there, so it wasn’t normal circumstances by very definition. Fully aware of how much facial wounds hurt, I touched her cheek very gently and said, “Well, no, it probably won’t.”
Healing, now that I could do it without all the vehicle metaphors, felt fairly awesome. It was like putting the last lug nut onto a wheel, the absolute finishing touch to a restoration. It carried a little click of satisfaction, of a job well done, of something brought back to rightness. It wasn’t effortless: the power to make something change had to come from somewhere, and largely it came from me. I’d learned the hard way that big diseases like cancer really needed a power circle to spread the power draw around so I didn’t kill myself trying to make somebody else healthy. But Caitríona’s cheek wasn’t anything like that magnitude, and it took only a moment of envisioning it as whole, complete, right, for that change to happen. The bruise faded, round cut at its center disappearing into unblemished skin. Her eyes got bigger and she clapped her hand over her cheek when I released her and sat back. I’d healed Gary yesterday. I’d thrown shields around. I’d just healed Caitríona. The only person I couldn’t fix was myself. There was probably a lesson in that, but before I figured out what it was, Cat’s eyes narrowed and she pointed at my cheek. “You didn’t have that when you were here before.”
I touched the thin scar on my right cheek. “Nope.”
“So how come you’ve got it? You shouldn’t have any scars.”
“I got it the day I became a shaman. It’s a reminder. I like it.” Not that facial scars were generally high on my list of favorite things, but I did like the little cheekbone scar. It kept me balanced, somehow.
Cat had gone back to prodding her own cheek. “It’s healed? I can’t feel it at all anymore. Aunt Sheila never did that.”
“Did she not?” I was turning Irish with my phrasing. I shook myself and tried again. “Paper cuts and scrapes never went away when she was around? I kind of do that a lot. My precinct’s jumped to the head of the class for fewest sick days called in.”
“She had—” Caitríona broke off, comprehension dawning. “She had magic plasters. Put them on and don’t take them off for three days, three days, d’ye hear me so? Sure and we’d take them off sooner, but the cuts and bruises were always healed. She magicked us!”
I couldn’t help grinning. “Yeah, she did. She totally magicked you.” A shiver ran over me and I straightened. “And now we’re going to magic her in return. Méabh? Um, Méabh?”
The warrior queen stood at the mountain’s edge, looking into a rising mist. “Do ye’s not see it, Granddaughters? Do ye’s not see the coming storm?”
We both crept to where she stood, me trying not to look down. I didn’t generally have a problem with heights, but the magic mountain creeped me out. I didn’t want to get too close to the two-thousand-foot drop, just in case. “Sure and it’s black on the horizon,” Méabh whispered. “Coming for my children, hungry as only the dark can be. Do ye’s not see it?”
Caitríona and I exchanged glances, then eyed the horizon cautiously. She let me be the one to say, “All I see is mist in the valley. Do you see the future a lot, Méabh?”
Memory swept me as soon as I spoke. Premonitions fed to me by a coyote in a hard white desert, dreams of futures yet to be. A few of them had come to pass. More were no doubt pending. I wasn’t especially keen on that, but there wasn’t much I could do but man up and take it on the chin. But Méabh shivered and shook her head. “My power’s in the heat of battle, not in foresight and forewarning. If it’s my sight that sees what’s coming, then it’s a bloody road indeed. I’ll stand at your side to fight it if I may, but there’s none so clear as that in the signs I see.”
“What do you see?”
“Blood of my blood lost to me. Lost to time, sure and so. A people gone. A dying world. It’s black as night, Joanne. There’s no future for us here.”
There were moments I really hated pioneering a new exciting path through the unexplored wildernesses of magic. Warrior and healer, future-tripper, past-visitor, accidental end-times-sign, bearer of bad news. I wanted that Shaman’s Handbook, damn it, and nobody was ever going to give me one. I clapped Méabh on the shoulder and put on my best hail men and hearty voice. “The future’s mutable, Grandmother. If we can’t see one past the storm, then we’ll by God make one we can see.”
She startled, then smiled, which was precisely why I’d chosen to use the nomenclature. “You’re a bold one, aren’t you, Granddaughter?”
“It’s part of my charm.” Worry lanced through me, depleting any hope of actual charm rolling off me. Gary used that phrase all the time, and Gary wasn’t here. Much more subdued, I said, “Look, let’s get this thing done before the Morrígan notices we axed her go-to guy and sends something scarier. Like herself. Why would she not come herself? It’s just past the equi
nox, the banshees should be at full strength, the Master must be hungry....”
“Sure and you stepped through time to stop her sacrifice, sent a warrior and the Wild Hunt to do battle with her in your name, set a goddess to bind her deathless cauldron and caused the forging of a wedding gift that broke her power and which only a child of her own blood could remove from her throat. It is possible,” Méabh said, oh so dryly, “that my mother has learned caution. The fear darrig is no idle threat, Joanne Walker. They torture and trick the strongest men, and yet you were slowed not at all.”
I wasn’t sure which astonished me more, the approval behind her litany or the revelation that Méabh, Warrior Queen of Connacht, considered a Red Cap to be a significant threat. I’d gotten so used to having my ass handed to me that I kind of figured anything I could dispatch without much effort—albeit with the help of an awesome magic shield—probably didn’t rate on the scale of nasty monsters. Caitríona gave me a distinct “I told you so” look, although she hadn’t actually told me how scary Red Caps were because the attempt had left her spluttering. Still, I kind of wanted to pat myself on the back. In fact, I almost did, which made my arm start itching again, which did a dandy job of deflating me. Nothing like the threat of turning into a werewolf to make a girl reconsider just how swell she thought she was.
“And there’s the magic flooding this mountain, too,” Méabh said thoughtfully, as if I hadn’t been going through mental gymnastics while she took a breath. “Life magic, anathema to the Master and his chosen few. It may be this place is too steeped in white magic for her and her kind to safely come.”
“Not likely. There’s all that residual death magic here. Black magic stains. I don’t know how long it takes for white magic to bleach the really bad stuff away.” Back at home, my friend Melinda Holliday had done a fantastic job of cleaning up after some very ugly ritual magic had made a mess around her house, so it was possible. Hundreds of sacrificial murders just evidently took more than Saint Patrick hanging out on the mountain for forty days, or my mother coming up here several times a year to lend a helping hand.