by Anne Bishop
“Keely,” Breanna said quietly. “Oakdancer has to go home now.”
Keely pouted, reminding Liam of Brooke. “Arthur hasn’t come to fetch him yet.”
“He’s not going home with Arthur,” Breanna said firmly. “He’s going home with Liam.” She gave the stallion a pat as she slipped an arm around Keely’s shoulders and moved her away from the horse.
Liam mounted. “Ladies.”
“Blessings of the day to you, Liam,” Breanna said.
How much had it cost her to say those words? Liam wondered as he held Oakdancer to an easy canter all the way home. How hard had it been to grow up with a mother who had never grown beyond childhood emotionally? That had been his father’s doing, the scars Elinore said time hadn’t healed. And yet...
Breanna was his sister. She was a witch. She had power that frightened him now that he’d seen a small demonstration of it. And yet she was a woman like any other.
A sister.
A witch.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, how he felt about her. But he knew he’d find another reason, before too many days had passed, to cross that bridge again for another visit.
* * *
“You liked him.”
Standing next to Nuala as they watched Keely throw a stick for Idjit to fetch, Breanna nodded reluctantly. “Yes, I liked him. I didn’t expect to, didn’t want to.”
“He’s your brother,” Nuala said quietly.
Breanna shook her head. “He’ll never be that.”
“Never is a long time. Things can change.”
“Not that much.”
“We may need his help. He may need ours. The family is uneasy about the things that are happening in the eastern villages. Harsh words are being said about witches, and that has the elders worried, too. Some of our cousins will be coming for the Summer Solstice—and they may be staying for quite some time.”
Breanna turned to look at her grandmother—the gray that streaked the dark hair, the lines that accented a strong face. “Are you worried?”
Nuala remained silent. Then, “Yes, I’m worried. I dream of water that turns dark from the gore spilled into it. Keely has had a couple of nightmares recently about trees that weep blood. What about you, Breanna? What have your dreams carried in them?”
“Wind that turns black, becomes filled with wings and fangs. And everything it touches dies.” Remembering those dreams made her shiver.
Nuala nodded. “So, you see, I have reason to be worried. And the Small Folk have told me that the Fae have been skulking about lately.”
Breanna shrugged, but her voice had a bite to it. “The Fae come and go as they please and don’t care whose land they use to do it.” Not that she’d actually seen any of the Fair Folk. Well, perhaps once, when she was still a girl and had snuck out of the house one restless summer night to take a walk. But those riders she’d glimpsed at a distance in the moonlight could have been anyone.
“They’ve never questioned the Small Folk before, never paid any attention to anything beyond themselves,” Nuala said.
Breanna frowned. “What would they question the Small Folk about?”
“Us.” Nuala took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “It seems the Fae have developed a surly interest in us.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. The Fae don’t do anything that doesn’t serve themselves, so it has to have some benefit for them.”
“Did the cousins say anything about the Fae taking an interest in them?”
Nuala shook her head. “When there’s a wolf at the door, you don’t worry overmuch about the fox raiding the henhouse.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I. So it may be in our own best interest, as well as the interest of those who are coming to us, not to dismiss Liam as a potential ally—especially when we may have enemies gathering in Tir Alainn as well as in this world.”
Chapter Three
Morag, the Gatherer of Souls, sat back on her heels and stared with dismay at the profusion of little green plants before her.
“It’s easy, he says.” She almost snarled as she said the words. “Just pull up anything small and green that doesn’t belong in that patch of the garden, he says. Mother’s tits, Neall, how am I supposed to know what doesn’t belong here?”
“That doesn’t belong,” a voice said. A slim stick came over the waist-high kitchen garden wall and pointed to a spike of green. “That’s grass trying to find a home for itself in well-turned earth.”
Morag looked up. Ashk, Bretonwood’s Lady of the Woods, stood on the other side of the garden wall, smiling at her.
Pushing at the strands of black hair that had escaped from the ribbon she’d used to tie it back, Morag gave Ashk a sour smile in return. “Are you certain? If I pull up the wrong thing, Ari will be upset and Neall will spend the rest of the year teasing me about it. ‘We’re having grass soup tonight because Morag weeded out the peas.’ Or the beans. Or whatever it is that’s supposed to be growing here.”
“The rest of the year?” Ashk said, her voice full of laughter. “You’re Clan now, darling Morag. You’d be lucky if he didn’t mention it for the next ten years.” She leaned farther over the wall and studied the little green plants. “But you may be right. Those might be the beans. Or the peas.”
“In other words, you don’t know either.”
“I can tell you what grows in the woods, but in the kitchen garden ...” Ashk shrugged. “But I am certain that that—” She pointed again with her stick. “—is grass and doesn’t belong there.”
Morag leaned forward, grasped the shoot of grass firmly between thumb and forefinger—and couldn’t bring herself to pluck it from the soil, to tear its roots out of the Great Mother. Last summer, she’d been steeped in death—cruel, vicious death—while she discovered the presence of the Inquisitors and uncovered why their destruction of the witches also meant the destruction of Tir Alainn. She had gathered too many spirits and taken them up the road to the Shadowed Veil so that they could pass through to the Summerland beyond. But here, staying in this Old Place with Ari and Neall, she was almost overwhelmed by the heady feel of life. So much of it, all around her. She didn’t want to hear Death’s whisper, not even for a weed.
“Day and night,” Ashk said softly. “Shadows and light. Life and death. They’re all part of the turning of the days, Morag. All pieces of the world. Life can choke out life. Weeds can leave no room for other plants to grow. Some harvesting must be done.”
“Are we talking about small green plants, Ashk?” Morag asked. The understanding in Ashk’s woodland eyes was as compelling as it was disturbing.
“We’re talking about life,” Ashk replied. She looked up, her gaze focused on the woods that bordered the meadow where Ari and Neall’s cottage stood. “This is the growing season. This is the time when the Lord of the Woods is called the Green Lord, the time when life is bursting into the world. But no one forgets that when the Green Lord walks, you can see the shadow of the Hunter, which is his other name.”
Morag rested her hands on her thighs. “My sister pointed out that there are no forests in Tir Alainn. I told her it was because life and death walk hand in hand there, that it was because forests have shadows and they’re too alive to be perfect.”
Ashk’s gaze returned to Morag. “Then you do understand. Pluck the weeds while they can still be plucked. The grass has its own place to grow. Let it grow there. But keep it out of the garden where it doesn’t belong.”
As they watched each other, a tension grew between them. Then a happy bark made Ashk turn, and the moment was broken.
“Ah,” Ashk said. “Here comes the person who can tell you what is weed and what is not.”
Getting to her feet, Morag saw Ari walking toward them while Merle ran exuberant circles around her. The big animal, half shadow hound, was still young enough to be puppyish in his behavior and had been acting even more so since being reunited with Ari.
Wh
en Ari reached one of the gates that opened into the big kitchen garden, she rested a hand on Merle’s head. “Go run and play in the meadow,” she said. “I’ll be right here with Morag and Ashk.”
Merle just looked at her and whined.
“It’s all right,” Ari said. She leaned toward him. “Go chase a bunny.”
With another happy bark, Merle turned and raced across the meadow, a black-streaked, gray shape. Only the tan forelegs gave away the fact that he wasn’t pure shadow hound.
Looking at the two women, Ari smiled ruefully. “When I closed him out of the bathing room last night, he sat at the door and howled.”
“We heard him,” Ashk said dryly. She laughed when Ari’s eyes widened.
“You may not have really heard him,” Morag grumbled, “but Neall and I certainly did.” And no command or scold could move the animal away from the bathing room door. She had taken the puppy when she left Ahern’s farm last summer, but Merle had never forgotten Ari, the first person who had loved him without reservation.
“Give him time,” Ashk said. “He’s been with you only a few days. He doesn’t trust yet that a closed door doesn’t mean you’ll go away.”
“I know,” Ari said, opening the garden gate. “At least Neall has convinced him that he can’t sleep in the bed with us.”
Ashk smiled. “The next step will be convincing him that he can’t always spend the night in your bedroom.”
Ari blushed. Then she frowned at the empty basket at Morag’s feet. “I came out to help you weed.”
“You’re supposed to be resting,” Morag said as Ari sank to her knees, braced one hand on the ground in order to lean over, and neatly plucked the shoot of grass out of the soil.
“I rested,” Ari said, sounding a bit defensive. She tossed the grass into the basket and busily continued to weed that patch of the garden.
Life can choke out life, Morag thought as she sank to her knees beside Ari and reached to pluck a small plant from the soil.
Ari grabbed Morag’s hand. “That’s a bean plant.” She pointed to a sprout right beside it. “That’s a weed.”
“How can you tell?” Morag muttered. “They look the same.”
“No, they don’t. Their leaves look different.”
Maybe those leaves looked different to Ari, since witches were the Daughters of the Great Mother and drew their power from Her four branches—earth, air, water, and fire— but to Morag, they were all just sprouts of green that made the ground look soft and fuzzy.
“Besides,” Ari said, “I want to do the work now, before I get so fat with the babe I can’t get up off the ground by myself.” She sighed. “Our first harvest here, and I won’t be able to do more than waddle around while others do the work.”
“It was quite thoughtless of Neall to have his way with you after the Winter Solstice feast and not take into account you might be waddling by the harvest season,” Ashk said dryly.
Morag looked up at Ashk. There was something sharp behind the words that were teasingly said.
Ari didn’t seem to notice. She blushed fiercely, then laughed. “All right. We enjoyed each other, and neither of us was interested in counting on our fingers that night to see when a babe might come.”
Wanting to turn the conversation to something else, Morag said, “You planted a lot of beans. You must like them.”
Ari wrinkled her nose. “I like peas better, but Neall likes beans. I want to be sure enough plants grow so that he can eat all the beans he wants fresh and still give me enough to can so that he’ll have some over the turning of the seasons.”
Glancing at Ashk, Morag was surprised to see pleasure and pain in equal measure on the other woman’s face.
“Are you feeling well?” Ashk asked quietly. “Neall mentioned that you’ve nodded off a few times almost before you’ve finished eating the evening meal. You shouldn’t be that tired after sleeping during the day.”
“I—” Ari looked around, as if checking to make sure it was still just the three of them. “I don’t really sleep during the day.”
“Oh?”
“When Neall and I went to Breton last month, I traded some of the weavings I’d done over the winter for fabric to make clothes for the babe, and something for me to wear while the babe’s still growing in me. And I got a fine piece of linen to make Neall a shirt for the Summer Solstice. I hid the linen among the rest of the fabric because he would have dug in his heels about me getting something for him that cost so dear.” Ari hesitated, took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “All those years when Neall lived with Baron Felston, he never had anything new, anything fine. All his clothes were Royce’s cast-offs. But this is Neall’s home; this is his mother’s land. He’s gentry here, and a Lord in his own right. So I want him to have something new and fine. And I want it to be a surprise, so I can work on it only when I’m supposed to be resting because that’s the only time when Neall takes care of chores that aren’t close to the cottage and I can be sure he won’t walk in before I can hide the shirt.”
What’s going on in your head and heart, Ashk? Morag wondered as that mixture of pain and pleasure filled Ashk’s face again before the woman looked away.
“Fair warning,” Ashk murmured. “The young Lord approaches.”
Ari started weeding vigorously.
Morag rose to her feet, feeling oddly protective but uncertain why that was so.
Neall strode toward the kitchen garden. He frowned when he reached the wall and saw Ari.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” he said.
Ari looked over her shoulder. “I rested. Now I’m teaching Morag how to weed the garden.”
“I already told her how to do that.”
“And now I’m showing her how to do it.”
Before Neall could say anything more, Ashk said briskly, “Come, young Lord. While Morag has her lesson, it’s time for yours.”
Morag watched Ashk and Neall walk toward the woods. Neall looked human, but his father had been half Fae and his mother had been a witch, a Daughter of the House of Gaian. Ever since their arrival here last summer, after he and Ari had fled from Ridgeley and the Inquisitors who had come there to destroy Ari because she was a witch, Ashk had been teaching him how to nurture the power that had lain dormant within him, how to be a Lord of the Woods.
That much Morag had learned from Neall in the handful of days since they had welcomed her as friend and family and invited her to stay with them. But there were things she sensed weren’t being said when she spent time with the Fae who lived in this Old Place. More often than not, when she asked a question, the answer was, “That is for Ashk to answer.” And Ashk, who could be quite forthright about many things, turned away far more questions than she answered.
Who are you, Ashk? I’ve never seen a Lord or Lady of the Woods rule over a Clan the way you rule this one. Who are you that you can command this kind of obedience? That’s the real question no one will answer. Not even you.
“The weeds are down here,” Ari said.
“What do you do with the weeds after you’ve pulled them from the soil?” Morag asked, putting aside the questions that had no answers.
“They go in the compost piles at the end of the garden,” Ari replied. “The heat of the sun, the rain, and the wind all help turn them into a rich food for the earth.”
Earth, air, water, and fire. The four branches of the Great Mother. The four branches of power that were the heritage of witches.
Life and death. Shadows and light. Witches understood those things, too.
Morag sank to her knees beside Ari. “All right. Show me what to weed.”
Ashk wandered the forest trails with Neall, her thoughts and feelings too scattered to remain focused on the intended lesson. Neall wasn’t paying much attention either. There were times in the woods when one could drift peacefully with one’s thoughts turned elsewhere. And there were times when a moment’s inattention could be fatal. A snapped twig, a subtly different scent in the
wind were enough warning for her, but Neall was still learning to use the gifts that had come from his father and couldn’t afford to be careless.
Although, Ashk thought, when the teacher’s mind wanders, it’s hard to fault the student for the same thing.
“Since it’s only your body that trails along with me, should we end the day’s lesson?” Ashk asked mildly.
“What?” Neall looked puzzled; then he smiled an apology. “Sorry. My mind was elsewhere.”
“When you’re in the woods, young Lord, keep your mind with you.”
“Yes, Lady.” He hesitated. “There’s nothing wrong, is there? With Ari or the babe?”
“Why would you think there was?”
“You all seemed so serious when I approached the kitchen garden, so I wondered if Ari had mentioned something to you and Morag that she wouldn’t have told me.”
There were plenty of things Ari had said, none of which she wanted to discuss with the young man standing nearby.
“Ashk—”
“If you must know, we were comparing the cocks of the lovers we’ve known.” She spoke without thinking, answering him the same way she answered Padrick whenever he prodded her about something that she didn’t want to talk about. Padrick always laughed and held up his hands in surrender, knowing she’d talk to him when she was ready—or wouldn’t talk if whatever was on her mind wasn’t hers to tell.
She wasn’t prepared for the stricken look Neall gave her before he turned away.
Fool, she thought. You not only stepped off the trail, but you also landed in a tangle of thorns.
“So,” Neall said quietly. “How do I compare?”
Ashk stared at him. “Neall. I was teasing.”
The uncertainty in his eyes revealed things he’d kept well hidden until now.
“Ari chose you, Neall.”
“There wasn’t much choice,” he replied. “Not after the Inquisitors showed up in Ridgeley.”
“She made her choice before they came,” Ashk replied sharply. “That’s what you told me. Was it a lie?”
Neall shook his head. “But I can’t help wonder if... I wonder if I disappoint her as a lover, if she feels with me as much as she felt with ...” His voice trailed off. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.