A shadow fell across her hands.
"I didn't know there were any Druids in Maine."
Maureen blinked against the sunlight. A slim, elegant woman stood on the ice in front of her, long dark hair in a straight cascade, dark eyes, skin that came from somewhere on the Mediterranean. Her outfit of gray fur looked like it had just walked out of a Paris salon and molded itself to her body, and she obviously wasn't worried about animal-rights activists splashing ink on it. Her perfume spoke of dollars-per-gram and said the fur wasn't fake.
Hairs rose along the back of Maureen's neck. The woman hadn't made a sound as she approached, no crunch and squeak from the ice. Maureen couldn't see any footprints on the snow.
"I need to talk to you about my brother."
"Brother?" What the hell . . . ? Maureen had never seen this dingbat before. Or maybe . . . . She had a hazy memory, twin shadows in the thick air of the club.
"I think he's calling himself Brian these days, Brian Albion. We saw you together last night."
Maureen's right hand fumbled in her pocket, slipping her finger into the trigger-guard of the .38. Anybody connected with last night wasn't fun.
The woman flipped her hair back with one hand and laughed. "You won't be needing that thing, love. Believe me, I had nothing to do with Liam following you. We were following Brian. I know him better than you do. Don't trust him."
"Who the hell are you?"
"Fiona. Just Fiona. Most of us don't use second names where I live. There aren't that many of us, to need them. And I promise you we won't be missing Liam. He was a shit."
The obscenity grated in Maureen's ear, out of character with the woman's elegant bearing, out of character with the lilting voice so much a reminder of Grandfather O'Brian that Maureen found herself relaxing against her will.
She fought against the same sense of psychic Thorazine she'd felt the night before. "You burned down that nightclub. Two people died."
Fiona shook her head and smiled. "Little Brian burned down the nightclub, love. He set a trap on the door, and it exploded when Sean went through. That started the fire, not us. Brian always was a touch careless with his spells. Ask him about how those fire doors got jammed. He doesn't worry much about mere humans. The holy ones never do."
Maureen blinked, distracted by the phrase. "Holy ones?"
"Yes, love. My darling brother is a monk, one of an order that's set itself the task of hunting down the likes of you and me. They've set themselves up as judge and jury and executioner of the old blood, in the name of Christ and all his angels. And they don't even see the irony of it. He's hunted the world for decades, under the cloak of various names and the uniform of a British soldier."
"A monk?"
"You've heard about the Templars, the Crusaders who protected pilgrims? Religious knights, delighted to separate any non-Christian head from its owner's neck? That's the Pendragons, love, in spades. They've even got their own monastery, tucked away in a dark corner of Wales where the neighbors think the rattle of machine-guns is the British army practicing for peace."
"Monks?" She hated the stupidity of repeating herself, but Maureen felt the warmth of Brian's hand again, and the confused sexual longing he'd aroused in her.
Fiona chuckled, maliciously, as if Maureen's thoughts had been written across her face. "Oh, they're not sworn to chastity, love. Just to obedience and violence. Violence against the old blood."
Maureen's thoughts shied away from the mention of chastity and the tangled path to which it led. She forced herself back to Fiona and danger--danger here and now. "He was warning me about Old Ones."
The woman sputtered with laughter. She caught her breath and shook her head again, the black hair swinging heavy across her shoulders.
"Oh, I love that duck! Brian is an Old One, dear. Ask him his age, the next time you see him. Ask him his true name and his purpose in life. He'll probably tell the truth. Most of the Pendragons will. They just won't tell much of it. You have to pin them down."
Holy Mary, Mother of God. "Just what the hell is an Old One?"
Fiona's dark eyes sparkled in the sunlight. "My brother didn't tell you much, did he? The title means just what it says. The Old Ones are the original people of northern Europe. Scientists like to have everything neatly boxed and labeled, but some of those old skulls they dig up aren't either Neandertal or modern man. We're both and neither, love. The genes give us some interesting powers, including access to the Summer Country. Did Brian tell you why Liam was following you?"
Maureen gritted her teeth. "Something about taking me to this Summer Country."
"And he didn't say why that pea-brained lout would be interested in a random stranger, did he? He didn't say why you could even reach the Summer Country, did he? It's the same reason Brian's interested in you. You carry the Blood. You have the Power. You are an Old One, love. So much for fearing them."
Maureen decided that "love" was going to get tiresome if she heard it about three times more. Particularly since Fiona loaded it with an edge that turned it into sarcasm.
Maureen was suddenly conscious of the oak bark pressed against the back of her scalp. Looking up, leaning against the tree, the ragged lichen and corrugated bark snagged her hair. She smelled the dry sharpness of Father Oak protecting her, and it drew her back into the moment.
She still squatted against the tree, glad of its support. Help me, Father Oak, she prayed, silently. I'm drifting into dangerous dreams again. "Old One?" she added, out loud. "I don't look a bit like Brian, like that Liam creature. I don't look like a Neandertal."
"Neither do I, love. Neither do I. Old Ones show sexual dimorphism. Men are big and hairy; women are small and smooth. Goes for humans, too. We're crossbreeds. Hybrids. I guarantee you have the Blood. Otherwise Liam and my beloved brother wouldn't be sniffing around you. I use the phrase literally. You have an effect on them like doe urine on a buck in rut."
Brother. "You and Brian. He's light. You're dark. Not just size."
"Different mothers, love. Same father. Kind of a hit-and-run man, if you know what I mean. It's an old family trait. You didn't find yourself behaving a bit odd, last night?"
Maureen blushed so hard she imagined steam rising from her cap. Odd was a polite way of putting it.
"It's called a glamour, love. My darling brother was tampering with your head. I don't think he did any permanent damage, but you have been warned."
Maureen felt her blush fade into white rage. She bounced to her feet. Her fists started to clench, and she jerked her right hand out of her pocket before she did something with the pistol and blew a hole in her jacket.
I'll flat-ass kill that bastard!
Besides, Fiona could probably hex the cartridges, just like Liam. It was time to buy a switchblade, or find Granny’s old hatpin. She focused her anger. "What the hell do they want with me? Don't you have women in this goddamned Summer Country?"
Fiona shook her head. "Hybrids, love. Hybrids. You don't breed mules to mules, to get more mules. There aren't many of us, and most of us are sterile. I'm not. You're not. You write it on the wind. Believe me, dear, it gives you a lot of power. You can make a man do anything you want."
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! That was just what little Maureen needed to go with her tangled sexuality. Talk about sending mixed signals!
"This sterile thing, it goes for men, too?"
"Most. Brian isn't. Liam wasn't. I'm afraid my little pet Sean is, no matter how much he might be wishing that he were not. He still has his uses, though."
And Brian had the gall to talk about Liam's seeing me as a womb . . . . I'll murder that bastard! I'll stake him out on an anthill in the sun! I'll . . . . To tamper with my brain!
She needed to get away from that subject, fast. "Why are you telling me all this? How can I tell if you're lying?"
Fiona laughed again, and her voice turned dry. "Rational self-interest, love. If you know what you are, the rest of us are better off. Less disruption. There's lots of empty
land in the Summer Country. We aren't that exclusive."
"Just what the hell is this Summer Country of yours? Why should I be interested in it?"
Fiona smiled a Mona Lisa enigma, seasoned with a touch of innocent malice. "Ah, the Summer Country. Alternate reality, love. It's two steps away from you, in any direction. It's what you make it be. It's where I come from, this crystal morning, and it's where I'm going back.
"Think of it as clay on the potter's wheel and you the potter. I have a house there, with gardens ever blooming in the summer afternoon. It's restful when the winter glooms too heavy." She smiled, with a gesture at the ice.
"Another of us keeps hawks and hounds and great hunting cats. For Dougal, life's a sharp thing, full of musk and blood and the threat of sudden death. The Summer Country's what you make it be, love. Sometimes we talk, we drink, we dance. Sometimes we fight. Carve out a space and build the world you want. All it takes is the Blood and Will. You've got the one. Do you have the other?"
Maureen shook her head. It all sounded like absurd escapism, and she wondered if she could believe a word this figment of schizophrenia was saying.
"Why should Ireland follow me here, find me in Maine? Shouldn't we touch the Happy Hunting Ground or whatever the local Abenaki use to take its place? Shouldn't that be the blood that matters?"
"Each people has its own world, love, its own spirit land, its place to follow the shaman's talking drum. There are hundreds of them. We only lose them when we try to follow the myths of another blood, when we lose touch with our roots. Why should the ghosts of the Sea of Galilee speak to the people of the Hebrides and Galway Bay? Why should my blood hear the voice of the Buddha? He spoke under different trees and suns and skies. He walked a different earth."
Maureen thought of voices and of lands. "I don't speak Gaelic. The most I know of Irish lore is a few children's tales and songs from my grandfather. I'd never fit in there."
Fiona laughed.
"Don't be for worrying, love," her voice went on, lilting. "The Summer Country changes as the world it touches changes. We're not Brigadoon or Shangri-La, to stay the same while centuries pass outside.
"Do you think we fight the Formorians all day long and sit around all night telling the Táin Bó Cúalnge? That you need to know every tale of the Fionn Mac Cuhal, to fit in? That you have to have the Erse? Don't be for worrying. The land translates for you. If it didn't, the Scots would nae be speaking to the Welsh and the Welsh couldn't speak to the Irish and the Bretons couldn't talk to the lot of them. Because all of us are forsaken pagans and damned to old Jehovah's Hell, the curse of Babel hasn't fallen on the Summer Country."
Brian had warned her against the Summer Country. Brian, the bastard. Brian, the rapist of her mind.
"Your brother seemed to think the Summer Country is dangerous."
"Of course it's dangerous, love. New York and L. A. are dangerous, too, but that doesn't stop a lot of people from wanting to live there." The dark woman smiled and shook her head at the follies of the world. "Life is dangerous. Are you preferring death, so to be safe?"
Fiona shrugged, and went on. "The dangers are the ones we bring with us, the ones we choose to take. Dougal chooses to tame killers to follow him on a leash, to sit on his wrist and take chicken wings from his hand. I train gardens to trap strangers, knowing they might someday trap me instead. Would you rather face a Mack truck than a dragon? At least you can kill the dragon."
Maureen sighed and shook her head. That talk of preferring the safety of death cut too close for comfort. "You never answered me, about lying. Why should I believe you? Why should I trust you?"
"I'm not trying to sell you anything, love. I'll tell you, flat out: yes, I lie. Whenever it's convenient. Why should I always tell the truth? Do I owe the truth to people who only seek it as a reason to hunt me down and kill me? No way, love!"
"That's getting a bit thick, isn't it? Kill you?"
"What did Brian do last night? He killed a man, attacking from behind. Killed without warning. Had Liam hurt you, threatened you, even touched you? Brian's the one who cast a glamour on you! All Liam did was stop you from shooting him."
The dark woman swept her hair back again, this time with an angry flip. "Beyond that, ask yourself about witches. Ask yourself about drowning, and stoning, and hanging, and burning at the stake. Ask yourself about what always happens to a woman with the Power. And remember, you are one of us! You can join us any time you want."
She turned away. Maureen blinked, and the woman was gone. No tracks. Two steps in any direction, she had said.
Maureen suddenly noticed that her fingers ached with cold. She blew on them, flexed them, and slipped them back into her gloves. She dusted lichen off her butt. The ice-coated trees crackled with the passing wind. She walked out, unseeing, through her crystal palace, chewing at a fabric of impossibilities and lies.
Magic.
Mystery.
Glamours.
God...damn...Brian!
Chapter Six
"Hello?"
"Hi, Mom, it's Jo."
The phone sputtered like an AM radio, nearly drowning out her mother's voice. She could hang up and try again, or just put up with it. That was the famous Verizon service: it cost more to call Lewiston than Seattle, due to the jacked-up in-state long distance charges. And then she still couldn't get a decent connection.
"Everything okay there?"
Mom's generation assumed a long-distance call meant somebody was dead or dying. Otherwise, you'd write.
"Yeah, sure, I'm fine. How's Dad?"
The pause hung over the line, at about a buck a minute. So Dad wasn't fine. Or he was too fine, in Mom's opinion.
"He's off on another business trip. You know how this new job is."
Yeah. Days in sales offices, evenings in bars, nights in hotel rooms with the random whore. Jo thought that if Mom gave him what he needed at home, he wouldn't drink as much, sleep around as much. But he'd still hit her. The more things changed . . . .
"Mom, it's about Maureen."
Now the silence was deafening. She'd better bull right ahead with it, get it over with. As if she didn't know exactly how it would end.
"She's talking to trees again."
Jo heard more crackling and a whining hiss like a B-grade Sci-Fi movie.
"Mom, you still there?"
"Yes, honey. I don't know what to say. You know she's always been different."
Jo shook her head. Different was one way to put it. Paranoid schizophrenia also came to mind.
"Mom, she was dead drunk, passed out half in her bed when I left for work this morning. When I came back, she'd been out to the woods and talked to her sacred grove. She hit me with another one of her rants. You know how she shoots off her mouth when she's having one of her spells. This time she threw in some crap about witches following her around, even told me a wizard had laid his hands on that junk Toyota of hers and told her how to fix it. I think she's been mixing her drugs again. You see about that fire last night?"
"Oh, dear. Was she downtown when that broke out?"
"Says she was there when it happened, a goddamn strip club! Says it was started by a battle between warlocks."
"Oh."
That was it, just the single syllable. It might be the understatement of the year.
"Mom, I'm scared. David stayed over again last night. Now she's ranting and raving about how I stole her boyfriend. You know how she is about men."
Silence, again. Jo squared her shoulders as if facing a firing squad, waiting for Catholic Mom Lecture Number 25.
"Jo, you shouldn't let a man stay overnight. It's a sin. Sex is for marriage, for children. Have you gone to confession?"
"Mom!"
"Dear, I'm worried about you."
"Worry about Maureen. You know that damned gun Dad got for her? She carries it everywhere she goes. Loaded. God above, I swear she takes it to the shower with her. Why'n hell did Dad ever give that thing to her?"
"Jo,
you know he wants her to be safe. She was working nights . . . ."
"Mom, just how safe do you think life is, behind bars in the Women's Center down at Pownal? How safe is it in the Maximum-Security wing over at the crazy house? She's going to shoot somebody, and I'm sure as hell not going to jail to keep an eye on her!"
"Jo, you shouldn't swear like that."
Jo shook her head. If Mom ever heard sweet little Maureen's language . . . . You'd think she'd trained in longshoreman's school, spent four years in the army rather than in college.
"Look, Momma, Maureen is nuts! We all know that. She's dangerous. Can't we get her into treatment again? Make her take that new medicine? I tell you, I'm scared of her. Next time she starts in on me, I'm going to kick her out of here. Before she shoots me."
Jo listened to Verizon static for about a minute.
"Jo?"
"Yes."
"Jo, you know we can't force her into treatment. She's an adult. I can't control her any more. Do you want me meddling in your life? I don't approve of the way you live, either. Please, keep an eye on your sister. Please?"
Jo sighed.
"Mom, how many clinics has she been in? How many different psychiatrists and faith healers and just plain quacks has she seen? Not a damn one of them has helped. And you want me to straighten her out?"
"Jo, please?"
"Momma, I've been watching out for Maureen for twenty years. I went to tech school. She went to college. I've got a good job. She works part-time for minimum wage. I pay the rent and utilities. She sometimes buys food. More often, she buys whiskey. She practically pees her pants if a man comes within twenty feet of her, but when I meet a guy I'd maybe like to marry, she accuses me of stealing him from her. I've just about had it with my baby sister! When do I get to have a life?"
Silence filled the wires again. Jo chewed on her lip until her mother's voice came back, weary with the distance.
"Jo, God gives us burdens to carry. Your father is mine. Maureen is yours. All I can say is, pray for strength. She won't be heavier than you can carry. Good will come of it."
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