Born In Water

by Sarah Hegger

  They all stared at her.

  Had she said something odd? “Like I am a spirit walker.” She pointed to Niamh. “You are a guardian, the twins are wardens, Bronwyn a healer. Blessings.”

  “Argh!” Bronwyn smacked her head with the heel of her palm. “That’s why Roderick calls us Blessed.”

  Slack jawed, the others stared at Bronwyn.

  “I can’t believe we didn’t make that connection,” Sinead said.

  Mags wandered into the kitchen, grabbed a piece of bread and ate it. She left again without a word. Seers were like that, locked in their own minds. Time was a circular concept to a seer—

  “Locked in her own mind.” Maeve had heard rumors about witches who had shared Roz’s fate in the past. “Does Roz have your blessing?” She looked at Niamh. “Is she a guardian?”

  Niamh thought it through. “She could.” She pulled a face. “To be honest, I never had much to do with her when I was a child.”

  “It makes sense if Roz was like Niamh.” Alannah nodded. “I remember Sinead and I had a cat called Cupcake who liked Roz so much better.”

  Sinead held up her hand. “For the record, I didn’t choose the name. I would have gone with Ragnarok.”

  Rolling her eyes, Niamh said, “No wonder the cat preferred Roz.”

  “Well, what would you have named her?” Sinead ruffled up. She was passionate and outspoken like Lavina—like Lavina had been.

  “I don’t name them.” Niamh shrugged. “They sort of put a picture in my head and that’s how I think of them.”

  The others stared at her as if they had never heard the like. Maeve was starting to grasp how much these new witches didn’t know, and it terrified her.

  “I had no idea,” Alannah said.

  “You never asked,” Niamh said. “And I never questioned it. It’s always been something I do.”

  Maeve let that simmer in her mind. There was a truth there that escaped her at the present moment. “What element is Roz?”

  “I don’t know,” Niamh said. “She’s been like that for so long we don’t know much about her.”

  Alannah sighed. “Poor thing. We really should do something about her.”

  “The healer can help,” Maeve said. In her experience, healers could do almost anything given enough experience and natural magic.

  Bronwyn straightened in her seat. “I can?”

  “Well, yes.” She now understood Bronwyn had come from somewhere far away from Baile, which was why she spoke as she did. “Once your vows are spoken and accepted.”

  All gazes snapped her way and stuck.

  That missing truth hovered frustratingly closer, and Maeve tried to grasp it. “When you take your vows to Goddess and she accepts your service is what I meant.” They still looked baffled, so she added, “The free will around being Blessed, that you can choose to spend your life in service to Goddess or not.”

  “So-o-o.” Sinead took a deep breath and glanced at the others. “I know who Goddess is.”

  “Of course you do.” Maeve laughed. Sinead really did have an irrepressible sense of humor. Except nobody about the table was laughing with her. “Don’t you?”

  “Of course we know who Goddess is.” Alannah had the kindest smile that lit its recipient from within. “Although, up until recently, we assumed she was a legend connected to Baile. A bit like…gosh, I don’t know…Athena or a valkyrie or Xena or something.”

  Maeve had no idea who those other women were, but that truth she was chasing inched closer. Her horror outstripped everything else, however. “Goddess is not a legend; she’s real.”

  “Well, we know that now.” Sinead folded her arms. “You can hardly blame us for not taking Goddess more seriously before. No offense, but you people thought the earth was flat.”

  The earth was flat, any fool could see that, but Maeve chose a different battle. “If you did not believe Goddess real, then you did not ever reach her through Goddess Pool.” Desperation tightened her voice. “Did you?”

  They all stared at her.

  Bronwyn cleared her throat. “Why don’t you tell us about Goddess? Start from the beginning and take it slow.”

  “I think I must.” Dear Goddess, if they knew nothing, then Rhiannon had succeeded in her horrific plan. The day she had murdered the coven, she had buried magic and Goddess forever. “We don’t know when or why Goddess came into being, but she did, and she created all you see about you.”

  “Wow!” Sinead grimaced. “The church must have loved you back in the day.”

  “Not at all.” Again she had the feeling she’d missed the point, but this was too important to stop now. “In times long past, things were peaceful and harmonious. We lived with nature and she provided all we needed. Then came two brothers who fought.”

  The others listened, rapt.

  “One of whom wanted what the other had, and they fought. The envious brother killed the other in what we call the original wrong.”

  “I like this version so much better than the paternalistic bullshit I grew up with,” Bronwyn said.

  Sinead held up her hand. “Right there with you, sister.”

  They smacked their raised palms together.

  “Carry on,” Alannah said.

  Mags appeared in the doorway. “Oh good, I thought I’d missed it.” She took a seat at the table and beamed at everyone. “Maeve is about to tell us something we all need to hear.”

  Maeve had yet to meet a seer who wasn’t peculiar.

  “These brothers.” Bronwyn sat forward. “They weren’t called Cain and Abel, were they?”

  The brother’s names were hardly the important point to her story. “I have no idea, but the older killed the younger because of envy. It was the first time Goddess had seen such ugliness amongst her worshippers, and it made her angry. She withdrew from the world.” Her audience hung on every word she uttered. If it were not so frightening how little they knew, Maeve might have been flattered. “Goddess is life, and the taking of life is against all that she is. It is why we, as cré-witches, can never use our magic to harm, even under fear of death.”

  They all looked at her as if they knew none of this.

  “After a time, Goddess missed her creation and felt remiss for having abandoned it.” This was a story told to every baby witch from the moment they could understand it, but not these witches, apparently. “She returned to find the darkness hidden within her creation had grown and almost choked out her essence. She called the first four witches to her service, to remind and guide her creation back to a time when they were in harmony with the essence of life.”

  Alannah shook her head. “I had no idea…”

  “This is much bigger than anything we thought we were.” Sinead glanced at Alannah.

  “Oh, we’re the remnants of a dying order,” Mags said, looking strangely cheerful as she said it. “We’re the ones who need to defeat Rhiannon.” She made a helpless palms-up gesture. “At least Bronwyn is going to get the ball rolling on that.”

  Bronwyn stared at Mags. “Say what now?”

  The prophecy! Bronwyn was the daughter of life, and no doubt, Alexander was the son of death. This was the battle, the true battle, at which the victor would be decided. She and Roderick had been sent here, to this time, to weight the scales in the favor of life.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, almost four hundred years out of her time, Maeve finally got the answers to questions she’d posed before she and Roderick were spelled into stasis. So much of her previous life had been uncomfortable and inexplicable. A spirit walker raised to her full power so much younger than any other, a loner with few friends and fewer who understood her, suddenly the bonded mate of the most powerful coimhdeacht of all time. This was why. This was their purpose. She’d been right when she told Roderick they needed to bring magic back, but her task was bigger than she could have guessed. She had to teach these new witches how to be witches.

  From their conversation thus far, she could guess none of them had ever
been through any of the binding ceremonies required of a witch. If they had known nothing of Goddess, then it stood to reason they had never bound themselves in service.

  That infuriatingly insubstantial truth slammed into her with the force of a steel spike; Roz was lost to the magic, warped, because more witches than Maeve’s mind could grasp had been wielding magic without Goddess to ground and steady them.

  Maeve had been wandering around in a fog since Alexander had wrenched her out of a statue and pushed her back behind Baile’s wards. The fog cleared, and her first step was obvious; the new witches needed to make their pact with Goddess. Goddess needed them, and they needed to understand the power she represented.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bronwyn, along with Alannah, Sinead, Niamh and Mags followed Maeve across the bailey to the sea wall. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t excited. They were going to do some magic.

  Wield some magic?

  Cast some magic?

  Make some magic?

  She was spending a lot of brainpower finding the right verb. Mainly to keep the nerves at bay. All her life, she had been able to do stuff, inexplicable stuff that she had to keep hidden. Coming to Baile and meeting the Cray cousins had been a revelation. There were other people in the world like her and her family.

  “So, how does this work?” Sinead had been firing a steady stream of questions since they’d left the kitchen.

  What Maeve was talking about, and suggesting they get involved in, was on a whole new level. Maeve wasn’t talking about being able to touch somebody and sort of absorb their pain or hurt. Nope, Maeve called her a healer and said she could heal. Like Lazarus kind of healing. Well, not quite waking the dead, and she was really glad that wasn’t possible because…zombies—but taking someone’s disease into herself and passing it into the earth.

  Her gift would enable her—again she had only Maeve’s word to go on here—to locate injuries and disease in a body and fix it, like some kind of metaphysical mechanic.

  She was so deep in thought she almost tripped over one of Niamh’s badgers, who had come along for the party.

  The badger glared at her.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Mags fell into step with her. “You’re not going back to America.”

  “Eh?”

  “America.” Mags gave her a serene smile. “You’re not going back there. You’re staying here.”

  Bronwyn narrowly avoided another badger tripping. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “I know.” Mags didn’t seem at all bothered by Bronwyn’s opposition. “But you will.”

  According to Maeve, a seer like Mags should have the ability to see past, present and future. All the time. Mags was odd enough without adding that to the mix.

  “Is it difficult sometimes?” People always thought they’d like to know their future, but sometimes it was better not knowing. If she’d known she would lose Deidre so soon, it might have messed with the time they’d had together. “There must be stuff you wished you’d never seen.”

  Mags winced. “There is, but I don’t tell people about the bad stuff.” She looked sad. “They’d only try to change things, and that never works out well.”

  “Of course they do.” If she’d known, she might have warned Deidre not to get into her car that day, and she might have Deidre with her now. Deidre might have lived to see Baile and meet the other witches.

  “But time doesn’t work that way,” Mags said. “You can’t change one thing and expect it not to change everything else around it. Everything is interconnected.”

  Bronwyn still would have tried to save Deidre. But then she might not have come here with her inheritance.

  “Say I told you there would be an accident and a baby would die.” Mags said, chattier than normal today. “You’d want to save the baby, right?”

  Bronwyn sensed a trap. “Uh-huh.”

  “But what if that baby grew up to be Hitler, would you still want to save the baby?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “So you see.” Mags shrugged. “Everything is so woven together that for as long as we’re tethered to this physical realm we’re in, we can only see time as linear and how the events along that line affect us.”

  “And when you see the future, what do you see?” Bronwyn accepted Mags’s point, but she knew she wouldn’t have been able to stop herself from trying to prevent Deidre’s death.

  Mags sighed. “It’s mostly frustrating and comes to me in flashes that aren’t very clear. It leaves far too much to interpretation.”

  “Maeve says you can fix that by bonding with Goddess.” A concern raised its head. “I really hope this bonding thing isn’t going to involve blood. I can’t condone anybody cutting themselves on purpose.”

  Maeve opened the sea door and led the way down the stairs to the caverns. The stairs were steep, and Bronwyn was glad she’d first climbed them in the dark. She might not have used them if she had seen clearly how high they rose and how far the drop off the side was.

  Wind tugged at their hair and clothing. Like a sail, Mags’s caftan snapped against her legs.

  Crossing the threshold into the caverns, Bronwyn shivered. She felt…something, a watchful presence. Not in a creepy way, but there nonetheless.

  “These sigils represent witches who journeyed to the sacred isles.” Maeve ran her fingertips over the elaborate embedded patterns on the cavern walls. “As a spirit walker, it is my task to put the sigils upon the wall, and my gift is the ability to access the dead through them and walk amongst them.”

  Bronwyn shivered, more intensely this time. The idea of walking amongst the dead made her uncomfortable.

  As if sensing her reaction, Maeve turned to her and smiled. “As a healer, what I do often works contrary to your blessing.” She glanced at the sigils, a reverent expression on her upturned face. This was Maeve’s place. She was more present here than any other place Bronwyn had seen her thus far. The patterns on the walls had real meaning and significance to Maeve.

  When she’d first ended up in the caverns, Bronwyn had had no idea how extensive the network of caves really was. She got it now as she and the others followed Maeve from one cavern to another. Arched doorways and corridors connected the caverns, many of them also covered in patterns—sigils. They were not decorative but represented the women of her bloodline. Cré-witches past, who had come before her and known what she was about to learn.

  Maeve led them into a cavern that was larger than the rest. It also had more sigils on the walls, even up and over the ceiling. In the center of the cavern was a pool, glowing gentle luminous silver.

  “Goddess Pool.” Maeve stopped beside it. “And also the cardinal point for the water element.” She gave Bronwyn a loaded glance as if it being the cardinal water point would somehow mean something to her. “It’s also the nearest point at which we can communicate with Goddess from Baile.”

  Niamh tiptoed to the edge and peered into the water. “This pool is full of magic?”

  “Not in and of itself.” Maeve joined her. “It’s a portal, a door that needs to be opened to access the magical powers of the water element.” She nodded at Bronwyn. “Your element.”

  “I’m fire,” Niamh said and then grimaced. “At least I think I am. Where’s the cardinal point for fire?”

  Maeve shrugged. “I really don’t know, and I’m also fire. Before, when I lived here all four cardinal points were active. None of us knew where they were because we didn’t need to know.”

  “There must be something in the library,” Mags said. She shook her head. “I’ve been spending more and more time in there. You wouldn’t believe how much information is sitting on those shelves, and we had no idea.”

  Crouching by the pool, Maeve stared into its depths. After a while, she sighed and glanced at them. “She’s there. I can sense her, but she’s too faint for much more than the vague sense of her being there.”

  “Should I try?” Bronwyn really didn’t know how
any of this worked, but she’d like to try something.

  “You could.” Maeve frowned at the water.

  Bronwyn crouched beside her. “What should I do?”

  “Umm.” Maeve frowned. “Spell casting was not my blessing. I only ever watched other witches cast in their blessings. Reach your awareness into the water.”

  “Okay.” Bronwyn stared at the water.

  From this close, it was more a very pale blue than silver. The surface was as flat and clear as a mirror. Her face stared back at her. “I’m not sure what I’m doing,” she said. “I don’t feel anything.”

  Maeve pursed her lips.

  “What about how you stopped the water in the kitchen?” Alannah joined them at the edge. “Do what you did then.”

  “I’m not sure what I did.” Bronwyn tugged that memory to the forefront. “The water was running and I just—”

  “Look!” Alannah nudged her.

  A small ripple broke the pool’s surface.

  “Do it again,” Maeve said.

  Bronwyn reached within, the scent of honey and sage rose around her. Another ripple broke the water’s surface, the same as the one before.

  “Well,” Maeve said. “Now we know for certain you’re a water witch.”

  “Alexander knew that too.” Bronwyn had almost forgotten her first conversation with him. “How could he have known I was a water witch?”

  “I don’t know.” Maeve looked worried. Then her face cleared into a smile. “But I do know who can get Goddess to speak with us.” She beamed at them. “Roderick. She always talks to Roderick.”

  Maeve didn’t know where Roderick had spent his time the last few days, or what he was doing. He was always there, within her. Through the bond, she knew he was aware of her and he was well. Now that she was more accustomed to it, it was a state she could exist in indefinitely. He didn’t bother her or irk her; he was just a constant presence—comforting and safe.

  She reached down the bond to him.

  His question pulsed back at her, and she opened her senses so he could see where she was. She formed the desire for him to join them and combined that with the sense that she needed something from him.